Karl Barth: Post-Holocaust Theologian? 9780567677051, 9780567677778, 9780567677068

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KARL BARTH

KARL BARTH

Post-Holocaust Theologian?

Edited by George Hunsinger

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © George Hunsinger, 2018 George Hunsinger has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-7705-1 PB: 978-0-5676-8998-6 ePDF: 978-0-5676-7706-8 eBook: 978-0-5676-7707-5 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Preface Chapter 1 BARTH, BERKOVITS, BIRKENAU: ON WHETHER IT IS POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND KARL BARTH AS A POST-HOLOCAUST THEOLOGIAN Mark R. Lindsay Chapter 2 KARL BARTH’S SERMON FOR ADVENT 2, 1933 Introduction and translation by John Michael Owen Chapter 3 THE COVENANT OF GRACE FULFILLED IN CHRIST AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE INDISSOLUBLE SOLIDARITY OF THE CHURCH WITH ISRAEL: BARTH’S POSITION ON THE JEWS DURING THE HITLER ERA Eberhard Busch Chapter 4 THE JEWISH SAMARITAN: KARL BARTH’S ETHICAL CRITIQUE OF THE VÖLKISCH CHURCH Faye Bodley-Dangelo Chapter 5 SAYING “YES” TO ISRAEL’S “NO”: BARTH’S DIALECTICAL SUPERSESSIONISM AND THE WITNESS OF CARNAL ISRAEL Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman Chapter 6 ISRAEL AS THE PARADIGM OF DIVINE JUDGMENT: AN EXAMINATION OF A THEME IN THE THEOLOGY OF KARL BARTH David E. Demson Chapter 7 KARL BARTH’S INFLUENCE ON CATHOLIC THEOLOGY ABOUT JUDAISM Philip J. Rosato

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Contents

Chapter 8 KARL BARTH, ISRAEL, AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM Paul S. Chung

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Chapter 9 WHERE IS KARL BARTH IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY? Rudy Koshar

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List of Contributors Index

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The publisher and editor gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following material (sometimes with revisions): Eberhard Busch, “The Covenant of Grace Fulfilled in Christ as the Foundation of the Indissoluble Solidarity of the Church with Israel:  Barth’s Position on the Jews during the Hitler Era,” Scottish Journal of Theology 52 (1999): 476–503. Paul S.  Chung, “Karl Barth, Israel, and Religious Pluralism,” Ching Feng 9 (2008–9): 103–27. David E. Demson, “Israel as the Paradigm of Divine Judgment: An Examination of a Theme in the Theology of Karl Barth,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26 (1989): 611–27. Rudy Koshar, “Where Is Karl Barth in Modern European History?” Modern Intellectual History 5 (2008): 333–62. John Michael Owen, “Karl Barth’s Sermon for Advent 2, 1933,” Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review 36 (2004): 161–80. Philip J. Rosato, “Karl Barth’s Influence on Catholic Theology,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 659–78.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1932–1968) ET English translation GD Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) KD Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1932–1968) WTJ Westminster Theological Journal

PREFACE It is widely recognized that Karl Barth’s attitude toward the Jews and Judaism was mixed. Some commentators find supersessionism in any form to be deplorable, and they detect a version of it in Barth. Others, such as myself, believe that what David Novak has described as “soft supersessionism” is required by the inner logic of the Christian faith. According to this view, the old covenant is not replaced by the new, but it is fulfilled, extended, and supplemented, while also fundamentally confirmed in Christ. Barth’s supersessionism arguably fell into this category. Supersessionism is not the only worry about Barth in this area. He said some things that ought not to be repeated. Nevertheless, questions remain about the more positive resources of his work. Are they sufficient to point the way toward a newly responsible post-Holocaust theology in the church? This volume attempts to explore that question from a variety of angles. In Chapter 1, Mark R. Lindsay argues that parallels may be discerned between Karl Barth and the Jewish theologian Eliezer Berkovits. Both depicted the God of the covenant as remaining hidden in the midst of his self-revelation. Both see God as veiled, though not absent, in the afflictions of his people, even afflictions as severely horrendous as the cross of Christ, for Barth, or the Holocaust, for Berkovits. Possibilities for at least a partial post-Holocaust rapprochement might be entertained on this basis. Chapter 2, by Karl Barth, is a sermon that he preached during Advent 1933 at a university service in the Bonn Schlosskirche. In the midst of Hitler’s Germany, Barth pointedly proclaimed, causing a scandal, that Jesus Christ was a Jew, that Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and that God had not abandoned his covenant with Israel. The Jewish people signified nothing less than the free grace of God. That they had persisted though the centuries was proof of God’s faithfulness, and even of his existence. The sermon is introduced and translated by John Michael Owen. In Chapter 3, Eberhard Busch contends that when the historical record is set straight, some of the more severe criticisms of Barth’s attitude toward the Jews and Judaism will not bear scrutiny. He concludes with Barth’s revolutionary interpretation of Rom. 9–11, a key passage. Regarding Rom. 9, the Jews were seen to attest that God’s own suffering did not invalidate the covenant, whereas the Gentiles attested that in Christ, the bounds of the covenant were thrown open. Rom. 10 then deals with paradoxical reversals of status that serve to promote the wideness of God’s mercy. Hope that “all Israel” would be saved is established in Rom. 11. In judgment and grace, Jews and Gentiles together formed the one indivisible people of God, abidingly distinct while also indissolubly united. In Chapter 4, Faye Bodley-Dangelo reads between the lines to offer a surprising contextualization of how Barth interpreted the parable of the Good Samaritan

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during the Third Reich. Unlike some other members of the Confessing Church, and certainly unlike the German Christians, Barth adamantly opposed the prevailing nationalist völkisch theology and its inherent anti-Semitism. In Barth’s interpretation, the lawyer who asks Jesus a question about the identity of his neighbor is directed to emulate “the Samaritan, the foreigner, whom he believes he should hate, as one who hates and is hated by God.” The Samaritan thus becomes a figure of the despised Jew. He becomes the commendable neighbor who models compassion toward the one in need. Barth’s subversive reading mimics the original subversiveness of the parable as told by Jesus. In Chapter 5, Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman brings a new level of analytical precision to bear on Barth’s discourse about the Jews. Barth sometimes discussed them so typologically that he seemed to lose sight of their concrete identities. As this problem gets sorted out, Barth is subjected to severe criticism, especially for his discussion of the Jews in his doctrine of election. In his later doctrine of reconciliation, the situation is somewhat improved. The synagogue is credited with a measure of faithfulness, while the church is censured for persecuting the Jews to the point of unbelief in the gospel. The “Jewish question” has pointedly become a “question about Christians.” In Chapter 6, David E. Demson revisits Barth’s groundbreaking interpretation of Rom. 9–11. With unsurpassed insight and power, Barth is at once explained and thoughtfully corrected in a way that he might well have welcomed himself. Demson’s beautiful effort of retrieval recovers Barth at his very best. Demson penetrates to the true spirit of Barth’s work over and beyond the mere letter. If Barth interpretation has a contribution to make to a post-Holocaust theology, David Demson leads the way. In Chapter 7, Philip J. Rosato explains how Barth impacted Roman Catholic theology about Judaism. He gives Barth credit for influencing Vatican II, while also noting Barth’s sharp criticism of Nostra Aetate for simply lumping Judaism together with other world religions. On the contrary, Barth protested that, unlike other religions, Judaism was grounded in the unique covenant of the electing God, thus giving it a special relationship to the Christian faith. Rosato rounds out his discussion with an extended look at Barth and Catholicism on the Holy Spirit and on the practical implications of the gospel. The impact that Rosato charted in 1986 would continue into the future. In an official Vatican document published in 2000, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray quoted Barth as follows: “The decisive question is not ‘what can the Synagogue be without Jesus Christ?’ but instead ‘what is the Church, if for so long it finds in front of it an Israel which is a stranger to it?’ ”1 Barth’s criticism of Nostra Aetate had been taken to heart in Rome.

1.  Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, “Why the Christian Faith Needs Judaism,” www.vatican. va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01111997_p-24_en.html.

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Chapter  8, by Paul S.  Chung, represents the growing focus on religious pluralism from a Barthian theological standpoint. In accord with the more recent book by Sven Ensminger,2 Chung argues that Barth was remarkably open, in his own way, to the wide diversity of religions. Chung discusses Barth’s view of Israel from this perspective. Of particular interest is his sensitivity to Barth’s dialectical imagination. Inclusion in Christ, for Barth, did not mean the homogenization of religious pluralism. It meant rather that the religions would be “kept and reserved and transformed in light of God’s coming kingdom, rather than totally denied, superseded, and destroyed.” What Barth posited of religions in general would be all the more true of Judaism. In God’s kingdom, it would not be totally effaced but, like everything else, would be sanctified and preserved in its particularity on a higher plane. In Chapter 9, Rudy Koshar discusses Barth’s place in modern European history. Elegantly written and thoroughly researched, Koshar’s essay brings a rare mastery of cultural history to bear on a rare appreciation of Barth. Barth’s immunity to the destructive ideologies, right or left, sweeping through the Europe of his day was a function of his aversion to idolatry as grounded in the First Commandment. Whatever his shortcomings regarding the plight of the Jews in the Third Reich, “Barth in any case opposed the ominous implications of a conservative Lutheran ‘supersessionism,’ based on the idea that Christianity had rendered Judaism irrelevant, insisting instead on the continued structural relatedness of Jews and Christians.” The Nazi butchery of the Jews was rooted not only in anti-Semitism, but perhaps more disturbingly in the violence and mass death of modernity itself. “The Holocaust, for all its unique and inexplicable features, merely continued modernity’s intimate relation with mass slaughter.” The essays in this volume are more nearly a tentative beginning than a conclusive end. They are collected in the hope of contributing to the theological conscience of the church. For after the horrors of the last century and the continuing horrors of the new one, nothing could be more urgent than for the church to face up to the bloodstained history of its relations with the Jews as an emblem of the deep repentance incumbent upon it, in many spheres, if it is to be faithful to its calling as a church. In this necessary task of mortificatio—the purging from its ranks of all anti-Semitism and all complicity in mass slaughter—Karl Barth may still have a role to play in leading the church through its agonies to the vivificatio that awaits it in hope.

2.  Sven Ensminger, Karl Barth’s Theology as a Resource for a Christian Theology of Religions (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).

Chapter 1 B A RT H , B E R KOV I T S , B I R K E NAU :   O N W H E T H E R I T I S P O S SI B L E T O U N D E R STA N D K A R L B A RT H A S A P O ST- H O L O C AU S T T H E O L O G IA N Mark R. Lindsay

Karl Barth’s relationship with the Jewish people, and his understanding of and reflections upon arguably the greatest tragedy to have befallen them, the Shoah, are, as with so much else in his life and work, beset by controversy and contradiction. Historians and theologians have construed Barth’s attitude toward Jews and Judaism to be both irredeemably anti-Judaic and profoundly sympathetic. On the one hand, Barth is exegeted as a theologian for whom the distinction between Israel and the Church is of primary import. On the other hand, he is also presented as someone who prioritized the unity of Israel and Church as together the one People of God. He has been roundly rebuked for some of his more penetrating comments on the infidelity of the Old Testament people of Israel, but has also been commended for those same comments by scholars such as Michael Wyschogrod. Recognition of Israel’s unfaithfulness, says Wyschogrod, should be completely acceptable to Jewish ears when it comes from such a good friend of Israel as Barth:  “The discovery of Israel’s sinfulness is one thing when it comes from a Christian theologian who believes that Israel has been superseded by the church and that Israel’s sorrows are the result of its obstinacy. It is something entirely different when it comes from a Christian theologian with roots in Judaism as deep as those of Barth.”1 While Wyschogrod does not let Barth entirely off the hook—he is still tainted by a certain Christian anti-Semitism—nonetheless, this is something against which Barth clearly and openly fights. To see Barth struggling toward the sign that is Israel, to see him fighting against his Gentile nature that demands antipathy to the people of election, to see this

1.  M. Wyschogrod, “A Jewish Perspective on Karl Barth,” in D. K. McKim (ed.), How Karl Barth Changed My Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 159.

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Mark R. Lindsay nature yield to the Word of God and to Barth’s love for that Jew whom he loves above all others, is to see the miraculous work of God.2

Of course, Barth did not always help his own cause. His confession to FriedrichWilhelm Marquardt toward the end of his life that his feelings toward Jewish people had always been ambivalent and uneasy has haunted any attempt to show a different side. One of the most enduring criticisms of Barth has been that the Barmen Declaration, of which he was the principal author, failed unequivocally to repudiate the anti-Semitic actions of the Nazi government. Yet Ernst Wolf and Eberhard Bethge have argued against that interpretive tradition to claim that Barth, and Bonhoeffer with him, self-consciously understood Barmen to entail specific political resistance against the regime.3 And while Kate Sonderegger has contended that post-biblical or rabbinic Judaism is confused in Barth’s mind with Second Temple Judaism, such that modern-day Jews existed for him merely as ciphers,4 he was unstintingly supportive of the Israeli state. It is evident, then, that this area of Barth scholarship remains hotly contested. What has been somewhat less considered is the extent to which Barth’s theology is consonant with the concerns of post-Holocaust theologians. Irving Greenberg famously said, “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children.”5 If this is the criterion by which theology after Auschwitz must be measured (and of course, all theology is now “after Auschwitz”), how does Barth’s own work stand up? Can Barth be situated among the early post-Holocaust theologians? Does his theology stand up credibly before the victims of Auschwitz? At the outset, let me make the rather obvious point that this was not a question to which Barth himself attended, at least not in these terms. Barth did not regard himself as a post-Holocaust theologian—indeed, I suspect that the term itself would have been abhorrent to him, and not a bit nonsensical, other than in the most

2.  M. Wyschogrod, “Why Was and Is the Theology of Karl Barth of Interest to a Jewish Theologian?” in H. M. Rumscheidt (ed.), Footnotes to a Theology: The Karl Barth Colloquium of 1972 (Toronto: Corporation for the Publication of Academic Studies in Religion, 1974), 109. 3.  E. Wolf, in H. Graml, H. Mommsen, H.-J. Reichardt, and E. Wolf, The German Resistance to Hitler (London: B. T. Batsford, 1970), 202; E. Bethge, “The Confessing Church Then and Now: The Barmen Declaration, 1934 and 1984,” in H. G. Locke (ed.), The Church Confronts the Nazis: Barmen Then and Now. The Barmen Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly, Toronto Studies in Theology 26 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 210. 4.  K. Sonderegger, “Response to ‘Indissoluble Unity,’ ” in G. Hunsinger (ed.), For the Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Future of Ecclesial Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 82–3. 5. I. Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in E. Fleischner (ed.), Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? (New York: Ktav, 1977), 23.

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chronologically naïve sense. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that he would have assented to Greenberg’s criterion of theological acceptability. To put it bluntly, it is not the burning children of Auschwitz who are the arbiters of credibility, but the Word of God. Indeed, a casual reading of Barth’s work (and regrettably some Holocaust scholars are far too casual in their reading) may suggest that Barth and post-Shoah theology are like Kipling’s East and West—never the twain shall (or should) meet. How can there be any sort of rapprochement between the two when Barth nowhere in the Dogmatics mentions the Holocaust specifically at all, not even as an example of evil in his post-Holocaust discussion of das Nichtige? Even more troubling is his intemperate language in §59. The irrevocability of Israel’s election notwithstanding, he also speaks here of the “scorching fire of God’s love” (CD IV/1, 174) toward Israel. Whether one accepts Greenberg’s dictum or not, Barth’s language in this section is unconscionable when the fires of the Nazi crematoria had been extinguished only a few years before. If this was all there was to say, if this was a neat and accurate summary of Barth’s thinking, then he could surely not be considered alongside post-Holocaust theologies, except perhaps as an example of what not to do. But this is not all that can be said. These examples of incautious shortsightedness do not do justice either to Barth’s thought or to its logic. And so I  offer this essay with no claim at all that Barth would recognize or accept its premise. However, I do so because I suspect that some of Barth’s foundational theological method is congruent with the aims of post-Holocaust theologians. Peter Ochs has shown in his recent book that, in spite of their primary intent being ecclesially reparative, George Lindbeck and the other post-liberals have, perhaps inadvertently, served the cause of post-Holocaust theology by their hermeneutical approach to the Hebrew Bible. That is, the post-liberal reading of the Old Testament renders supersessionism—surely one of the primary targets of any after-Auschwitz theology—inherently absurd.6 In the same way, I  contend that, perhaps in spite of his intent, Barth’s theology is at least not inconsistent with the imperatives of post-Holocaust theologians. More positively, there are a number of loci where we can observe this synchronicity, including Barth’s attitude toward the State of Israel, his theological repudiation of anti-Semitism, his (in my view) rejection of any form of supersessionism (both economic and punitive), and his embracing of the passibility of God. Each locus is an instance of post-Auschwitz contention—and in every case, Barth’s theology is reparative rather than divisive. In this essay, however, I will focus my attention on one particularly problematic question facing theology after the Holocaust: where was God in the death camps? This is one of the most fundamental theological questions facing postAuschwitz Christianity, pressing beyond the nuances of competing theodicies. If one cannot locate God in the hells of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chełmno, Bełżec, and

6.  P. Ochs, Another Reformation:  Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

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the other sites of Nazi atrocity, then one cannot accept his covenanted solidarity with his people, Israel, nor therefore indeed with anyone. If, at this moment of the Jews’ near-annihilation, God turned away in indifference, then he would perhaps still be God—but he would not be the God of Israel. And if not the God of Israel, then not the God of the nations, for which Israel was elected to be a light. If, on the other hand, God was present, in no matter how veiled a form, then his covenant of solidarity with the Jewish people would remain intact, the Jews would not finally have been abandoned, Hitler would not have won a posthumous victory, and Emil Fackenheim’s 614th Commandment would have been upheld. If God’s presence with his people during the Holocaust can be affirmed, then, in spite of Richard Rubenstein’s protestations, God would still be the God of Israel (and therefore and thereby also the God of the Church). This question, therefore, takes on dogmatic significance. On the answer hang our contemporary understandings of God’s being and his electing will. That is, this is not so much a question of evil and theodicy. Dare I say, it goes much deeper than that. Theodicies are typically anthropocentric—they refer in the end to the way in which human free will can be defended in the context of a loving and omnipotent God. The question of God’s presence in Auschwitz, conversely, is exclusively a question to and of God. Quite understandably, this question has been prosecuted with particular energy and angst by Jewish scholars, by both Orthodox and Reform rabbis, by those for whom the Shoah has problematized the entire notion of a beneficent God and of a Chosen People, and by those whose response is, on the contrary, to affirm the goodness and the presence of God. Richard Rubenstein, for example, is possibly the most articulate exponent of the Jewish “death of God” movement. Rubenstein argues that the near-success of Hitler’s genocidal program renders belief in covenant theology and in the (ultimately benevolent) Fatherhood of God absurd and obscene. The Holocaust makes it simply impossible these days to retain the notion of a God in covenantal partnership with the Jewish people. When, in André Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just, Mother Judith cries, “When will God stop miracling this way?”7 she is articulating the anguish of the elect who, precisely because they are the elect, are persecuted and misunderstood. This is a notion of election that Rubenstein refuses to countenance. In Zev Garber’s words, as a “basic minimum . . . the Jews [must] give up the notion that they are the Chosen People of a personal deity.”8 This, in Rubenstein’s view, is the inescapable either/or for contemporary Jews. We can either affirm the innocence of Israel, he says, or the justice of God but not both. If the innocence of Israel at Auschwitz is affirmed, whatever God

7.  A. Schwarz-Bart, The Last of the Just, trans. S. Becker (New  York:  MJF Books, 1960), 260. 8. Z. Garber, Shoah: the Paradigmatic Genocide: Essays in Exegesis and Eisegesis, Studies in the Shoah, VIII (New York: University Press of America, 1994), 36.

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may be, He/She is not distinctively and uniquely the sovereign Lord of covenant and election. If one wishes to avoid any suggestion, however remote, that at Auschwitz Israel was with justice the object of divine punishment, one must reject any view of God to which such an idea can plausibly be ascribed.9

In Rubenstein’s view, paganism—by which he means recovering again the Jewish attachment to land and earth10—is now the only credible alternative to covenant theology, precisely because the God of whom such theology speaks must be deemed, in a certain sense, “dead” after Auschwitz. Conversely, the Reform rabbi Ignaz Maybaum argues instead that the deaths of the Jewish victims of Nazism should be interpreted through the lens of a cruciform hermeneutic. The murdered Jews are reflective of a new crucifixion, through which God raises humanity to a greater level of maturity and leads the world into a new era of progress. For Maybaum, the Shoah is yet another event in Israel’s history that mediates atonement. Like the destruction of the First and Second Temples, Auschwitz is Churban—destruction not for its own sake, but for the sake of sociocultural evolution, first of the Jews and then, through them, of all humanity. Maybaum’s thesis depends upon his understanding of Churban, which in turn is informed by his belief in the eternal providence of God. Churban is not simply a catastrophic event, although it is at least that. More to the point, though, it is an event that “make[s] an end to an old era and creates a new era. The Churban is a day of awe . . . beyond human understanding.”11 There is, in other words, a creative aspect to Churban. It has a peculiarly dialectical structure, being at once an event of total destruction, and simultaneously the herald of a new dawn. It carries this significance because the Churban is a distinctly providential event; it happens in, through, and at the will of God, with the express purpose of drawing the gentile nations to Godself. It is an historical expression of the function of Israel’s election to be a light to the nations. Though not a rabbinic scholar as such, Elie Wiesel answered the question of God’s presence in a rather more poignant way. Despite being well known, the passage is worth quoting in full: One day, when we came back from work, we saw three gallows . . . in the assembly place . . . Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained. Three victims in chains—and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel. The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of

9.  R. L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz:  History, Theology and Contemporary Judaism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 172. 10.  R. L. Rubenstein, “Some Perspectives on Religious Faith after Auschwitz,” in F. H. Littell and H. G. Locke (eds.), The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), n267. 11. I. Maybaum, The Face of God After Auschwitz (Amsterdam: Polak and Van Gennep, 1965), 32.

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Mark R. Lindsay thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. “Long live liberty!” cried the two adults. But the child was silent. “Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting . . . Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive . . . But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive . . . For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? He is here—He is hanging here on this gallows.”12

Wiesel’s response is hardly a dogmatic theological answer, nor is it an answer that does not in itself also ask further questions. Nonetheless, it serves as a narrative rejection of the Rubensteinian pessimism. And so, in Rubenstein, Maybaum, and Wiesel we see represented three contrasting—indeed in some ways contradictory—hermeneutics of the Holocaust. But a similarly diverse situation is noticeable also within Christian theological discourse, within which the Shoah carries a range of meanings, from the nonexistent to the maximalist. That is to say, a small handful of scholars—among them Rosemary Radford Ruether, Alice and Roy Eckardt, and Paul van Buren—argue that the Holocaust problematizes the entirety of the Christian tradition, including the place of Scripture and the person of Jesus. More typically, though, the Holocaust appears within Christian theology as marginalia—a terrible tragedy to have befallen the Jews, no doubt, but of no great relevance to the Church and certainly of no constitutive or ingredient significance to the construction of Christian doctrine per se. So where along this spectrum should we locate Karl Barth? Given his contemporaneity to the Holocaust, as well as his enduring significance for modern theology, it is worth pondering what we might glean from Barth about how to approach the tremendum that is the Holocaust. More specifically, I  am interested here in asking whether his method is or can be in any sense aligned with the determination of post-Holocaust theology to inquire into the question of God’s presence. To do so, we need to consider Barth’s epistemology of revelation. And so it is to that theme that we now turn. Without a doubt, the great and lasting triumph of Barth’s second commentary on Romans was the rediscovery of the “Godness” of God. Contrary to the

12. E. Wiesel, Night, trans. S. Rodway (London: Penguin, 1981), 75–6.

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prevailing Kulturprotestantismus, by which God had been variously domesticated to suit a raft of political, cultural, and philosophical ideologies, Barth’s commentary shattered the easy assumption of an unbroken ontological line from humanity to God. In consequence, in our humanity, we are irretrievably unqualified for any knowledge of God. Standing between us and such knowledge is the “infinite distance between Creator and creation,”13 the recognition, as Barth famously put it, of the Kierkegaardian “ ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between time and eternity” (Rom. 2:10).14 This time-eternity dialectic controls the nature of the relationship between God and humanity, with the two poles of that dialectic conceived as genuinely (because ontologically) different and (from the human side) wholly unbridgeable. The gap between Creator and creation is not merely one of size, but one of ontological category, and therefore of noetic possibility. This realization was the crucial turning-point in Barth’s theological method. It takes on controlling significance within his dogmatic work and, in particular, becomes the determining feature of Barth’s understanding of the possibility and actuality of revelation. So how do we speak of God? Within his Göttingen lectures, Barth argues that the foundational presupposition of revelation, and of theology’s reflection upon it, is the Christological Deus dixit: God has already spoken. “The fact that God himself is on the scene, speaking about himself, is . . . the permission and command” for us also to speak about Him. In so speaking, we are thus called and commanded not to say anything about God that God has not already said, but simply to bear witness to the fact that God has already said all that is needed. As the “speaking subject,” God becomes ‘an object of human speech’ (GD, 57). But God is not thereby objectified. God retains divine self-subjectivity. Barth ensures that this subjectivity is retained by recourse to the nature of address, as opposed to the nature of being-in-itself. Barth says this: “the presupposition of the Bible is not that God is but that he spoke. We are directed, not to God in himself, but to God communicating himself ” (GD, 58). There is therefore no unmediated access to God, even here. The revelation of God, the I-Thou encounter presupposed and made possible by the Deus dixit, “is not a direct openness on God’s part but a becoming open.” In the miracle of self-revelation, God “removes the incomprehensibility,” he “tears away the veil, the husk, the concealment” (GD, 58). That is, the revelation of God involves a paradox:  the Word of God is given in the historical frailty of authentic human words within Scripture, and in the incognito of the incarnation, but is nonetheless thereby and therein revealed. The divine revelation is a revelation from behind a veil; it is a disclosure out of

13. Barth, “The Word of God and the Task of the Ministry,” lecture from October 1922, in K. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. D. Horton (London:  Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), 205. 14.  Ibid., 196. See also Thomas Torrance, Karl Barth:  An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1936 (London: SCM Press, 1962), 39.

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hiddenness, in which both the revealedness and the hiddenness remain intact. As Bruce McCormack has noted, the veil by which God is hidden is never lifted, but rather becomes only ever transparent.15 God is therefore able to remain subject of his own revealing; we can know God only in the hiddenness with which he chooses to disclose himself, and never as an object of our own manipulation or understanding. With respect to the incarnation, the historicity of the God-become-flesh must never, Barth insists, cause us to forget that, even and especially in his revelation, God is God. Ontologically (and therefore epistemologically), exactly in his revelation, God is the hidden God. Even in being wholly revealed, God is hidden. “God is the hidden God precisely because he is the living God, the self-revealing God, the God before whose Godhead we can neither flee from transcendence to immanence nor vice versa, the one who is never so distant as when he is near, the one who, because he is God, can never be object” (GD, 135). Were God not so completely God, argues Barth, we could see him as he is (1 Jn. 3:2) this side of the parousia. But it is indeed that very Godness that necessarily hides God from us, even in the midst of the divine Self-revealing. One would not be entirely mistaken to discern here a correspondence with Maximus the Confessor’s treatment of the transfiguration—this, despite the fact that, as far as I have been able to tell, Barth never explicitly refers to Maximus at all. Yet in the transfiguration, says Maximus, the radiance of Jesus’s face blinds because of its brilliance—but in so much as it does, it also reveals Jesus’s divinity.16 Or, as he says in his Queastiones et Dubia, “the face of the Word, that shone like the sun, is the characteristic hiddenness of his being.”17 Is this not Barth before Barth? It may look, then, as though revelation is in fact nonrevelation, that the revealing of God is in fact a mirage. And indeed it would be, were it not for God’s Godness—that which means we cannot apprehend him as object, and only ever in his concealment, which, paradoxically, therefore also makes it possible for God to be not-God also, and therefore makes it possible for his revelation to be revelation and not nonrevelation. “What if,” says Barth, “God be so much God that without ceasing to be God he can also be, and is willing to be, not God as well . . . This is the decisive point. He would have to be not merely an object but a recognizable I, a human being. If nonrevelation is to be revelation, everything hinges on God covering his inaccessible divine I-ness with a human I-ness as with a veil so that we can grasp him as a person” (GD, 136). With this we are brought into the heart of Christology. God is wholly God in the concealment of his revelation, but that concealment must also be complete. “The divine incognito must be total,” just as the revelation must be wholly of God, and wholly God. Barth insists that the veil remain in place, even in the event of the

15.  B. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 255. 16. Maximus, Ambigua 10, 17: 1125–8D. 17. Maximus, Quaestiones et Dubia, 191–2.

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unveiling. The one through whom God is revealed “must not make God so perceptible that anyone can see and perceive” (GD, 138). In order, that is, for God to meet us, then the self-disclosure must truly and only be of God himself. But in order for God to meet us, as an I through whom we can encounter his Thou, that self-disclosure must be in a veiled form; the form, that is, of a true and complete human. “The point is that God reveals himself in his nonrevelation inasmuch as he, no more and no less than he, wholly God, encounters us therein in his very concealment in a way that is human, visible, perceptible, and comprehensible . . . He shows himself from behind, as he did to Moses in the cleft of the rock” (GD, 140). Barth’s insistence that the qualitative distinction between God and humanity, and the consequent noetic implication that we are quite simply unable either to meet God directly (unless he himself removes the impossibility) or to know him as object, compelled him therefore to understand the revelation of God as always and ever God’s own possibility and not ours. Even in this possibility, however, we do not meet God directly, but only in hiddenness. To remove the hiddenness removes the possibility of revelation at all (GD, 143). There remains what Barth calls an “irremovable mystery” in the fact that, while entering time and becoming “palpable and actual,” God nonetheless reveals himself only in indirect communication (GD, 152–3). In this way, the self-subjectivity of God remains intact, as does his qualitative distinction from those to whom he shows himself, and yet, under the veil of that distinction and otherness, he nonetheless chooses to be completely revealed, in the person of Jesus Christ.18 So much for Barth’s Göttingen lectures. Much the same arguments appear in the pages of the Church Dogmatics. In the first half-volume of the Prolegomena, Barth returns again to the notion of the Word of God as address, noting in particular the “secularity” of this divine “speech-act.” By secularity, he means the mediated nature in which the Word of God is made visible.19 That is, God’s revelation of Godself can always be understood to be something other than that. Returning to a familiar metaphor, “The veil,” says Barth, “is thick.” Thus the reception of God’s Word is “an act of God in the reality which contradicts God, which conceals Him” (CD I/1, 168). God does not thereby remove the concealment. On the contrary, God unveils himself only in the veiling, or secularity, of his Word (CD I/1, 169). And yet, miracle of miracles, says Barth, it is this very God who by nature cannot be unveiled to

18.  Unlike in all traditional natural theologies, argues McCormack, Barth refuses the idea that God is partly hidden and partly revealed. God either speaks or he does not. There are no half-measures in God’s self-disclosure. The revelation is complete, even while God remains veiled by otherness and qualitative distinction. See McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 352. 19.  It comes to us in human historical form, which is “never demarcate[d] from other events in such a way that it might not be interpreted at once as part of these other events” (CD I/1, 165).

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humankind who is in fact unveiled in his revelation (CD I/1, 321). And so “revelation is always a veiling as well” (CD I/2, 42). Jesus Christ, says Barth, is the Word of God as man, man as the Word of God—and in both cases, the sign of the willingness of God “to veil Himself by becoming a man, in order by breaking out of the veiling to unveil Himself as a man” (CD I/2, 41). It is this dialectical understanding of God’s self-revelation that remains determinative for Barth’s theological method. Because God is God, he can only ever be known if, when, and how he chooses to unveil himself, and yet at the same time necessarily remain veiled from direct apprehension. So far, this is all well-trodden ground. But how on earth does it relate to the atrocities of Nazism? More specifically, how does it cohere with the post-Holocaust question of God’s absence, or presence, in the death camps? One possible answer lies in the thought of Eliezer Berkovits. Berkovits, an Orthodox rabbi, was convinced that the Holocaust posed no new questions for God or for theology. There are no issues presented by the deaths of six million Jews that are not presented by the death of one. On the contrary, Berkovits was determined that humanity should take responsibility for human actions and not devolve historical event to the realm of divine whim or caprice. And so the Holocaust was, for Berkovits, fundamentally a questioning not of God but of humankind. Culpability for the Holocaust therefore lies less with God and more with men. For this reason, he saw it as proof of the ultimate bankruptcy of Western civilization. Yet even within this scheme, in which human rather than divine culpability is stressed, there is a question to God that must be asked. Where was he? In his book Faith after the Holocaust, Berkovits asks precisely this question by interrogating the idea of the divine Hester Panim, the “hiding face” of God. Berkovits notes that the hiding of God’s face has two basic explanations within the Hebrew Bible.20 On the one hand, it is a divine response to the fact of human sin. God hides his face mipnei mataeinu, “because of our sins.” Berkovits cites Deut. 31:16–18 as illustrative of God’s hidden face: “They will forsake me,” says the Lord, “and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed . . . And I will certainly hide my face on that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods.” One could, of course, just as easily refer to Isa. 1:15, 8:17, and 59:2, as well as Mic. 3:4. In each such passage, the sinfulness of God’s community repulses God to the point that he cannot, for a time, consider them. Unlike the original Edenic sin, where Adam’s guilt causes him to hide, in these later parts of Scripture it is, on the contrary, God who hides—not, of course, as the subject of sin, but as the offended one. In each case, the offense of individual or national sin causes God to recoil and, in righteous anger, hide his face from the guilty.

20. It is important to note that Berkovits does not here refer to the hiddenness of God’s face as a necessary consequence of God’s majesty (e.g., Exod. 33:20).

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Berkovits rushes to reassure his readers that this clearly cannot be the explanation of God’s hidden face during the time of the Shoah, nor indeed during any age of Jewish martyrdom. That Jewish suffering at the hands of others down through the ages—one thinks, for example, of the medieval executions of Jews accused of so-called ritual murders, of the Spanish expulsion of Jews during the Inquisition, and of the Russian pogroms of 1881—might be attributable to divine judgment “is obscene.” It was, and always has been, “injustice absolute,” albeit (paradoxically) injustice that has been “countenanced by God.”21 If God hid his face during the Holocaust, it was not because the Jewish people were being punished at his hand. There is, on the other hand, an alternative rabbinic tradition of Hester Panim, for which Psalm 44 provides textual support. God hides his face not only because of the suffering caused by punishment, but in the face of the suffering caused by human evil. Psalm 44, that is, bespeaks God’s utter indifference to the tribulations of his people. Though the victims go to their deaths for the sake of their God, yet he is accused of “sleeping” (v. 23), even of hiding his face and forgetting their misery (v. 24). The writer of Ecclesiastes says much the same thing in places. The tears of the oppressed flow unacknowledged, for “they have no comforter” (Eccl. 4:1). To rub salt into the wounds, it is all too evident that “righteous men get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men . . . get what the righteous deserve” (Eccl. 8:14). In this rabbinic tradition, one can observe only divine indifference. God seemingly hides his face. This is the “experience of divine unconcern, of God’s indifference toward human suffering . . . God [has] often been silent in history.”22 In most recent Jewish memory, and despite the many acts of Kiddush HaShem, God was silent during the Shoah. If this is the observable reality throughout history and the Holocaust, how can it be explained? Berkovits insists that God’s hiddenness is in itself a divine attribute. He recalls us to Isaiah: “Truly, you are a God who hides Himself, O God and Savior of Israel” (Isa. 45:15). That is, in his very being as Israel’s redeeming God, God hides. It is ingredient to who he is. In this case, God does not hide his face because of his wrath or his indifference. Rather, “God’s hiding his face . . . is a quality of being assumed by God on his own initiative . . . God’s hiding of himself is an attribute of the God of Israel, who is [as such] the Savior.”23 Significantly, this quality of divine being is assumed and not intrinsic. He does not hide his face out of an essential necessity within his very self. Rather, it is a choice made in divine freedom, in view of the created freedom of humanity. According to Berkovits, the explanation for this assumption of hiddenness is to be found in the rabbinical understanding of creation’s dialecticism. That is to say, the dialectics of creation, such as good and evil, are not to be understood as ontologically pure opposites. They are relative contrasts, which exist not as categories of creation per se, but as consequences of human moral autonomy. God creates

21. E. Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust (New York: Ktav, 1973), 94. 22. Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust, 96, 98. 23. Ibid., 101. Emphasis added.

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neither the righteous nor the wicked. Rather, God creates individuals who choose for themselves their own ethical path. Berkovits says the freedom to be one type of person must include within it the freedom also to be a quite different type of person. God does not so much create evil as he creates the possibility for it, which indeed he must do if he is also to create the possibility of good. Conversely, were he to create good itself, instead of simply its possibility, then it would not be a freely chosen good that he had created, and thus not a good at all. To put it otherwise, while God is good essentially, humanity must strive for goodness. In order for humanity to be good, the good must be realized in act, and not in essential being. Thus there is created the freedom to actualize either good or evil. Only in this freedom is humanity really human.24 “If God did not respect man’s freedom to choose his course in personal responsibility, then not only would the moral good and evil be abolished from the earth, but man himself would go with them.”25 It is within this ethically free space that we encounter the Hester Panim. Lest humankind be overawed by God’s majesty and thus compelled into obedience, God must absent himself from the sphere of human decision-making. Yet there is risk here. In the wake of the Shoah, Berkovits shows an understandable pessimism about humankind’s ability to live harmoniously together. Left to its own devices, says Berkovits, humankind will perish at its own hand. And thus, while God must absent himself from history in order for humanity to actualize ethical freedom and therefore be human, he must also be present in history in order to protect humanity from itself. “That man may be, God must absent himself; that man may not perish in the tragic absurdity of his own making, God must remain present.”26 Thus God’s involvement in world history exists in an unresolved dialectical tension. The Hester Panim denotes neither divine wrath against human sin nor divine indifference at human suffering, but rather the dialectics of God’s self-manifestation in history by which both human existence and human freedom are protected. This, says Berkovits, is how we can perceive, behind the hiddenness of God’s face, also his divine presence even in the hell of the Holocaust. Remember, Berkovits did not posit this idea in a contextual vacuum, or even (mainly) in the philosophical tradition of free-will rhetoric. On the contrary, he explicitly addressed the question of how faith in God, in a post-Auschwitz age, is both possible and meaningful. It is precisely here that we find a synchronicity with the controlling theme of Barth’s theology. That is to say, I would wish to propose at least a formal similarity between Berkovits’s understanding of the Hester Panim and Barth’s dialectical conception of revelation. Both perceive God, in the manner in which he becomes present within historical occurrence, to be both hidden and present, veiled and unveiled, simultaneously.

24. Ibid., 105. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 107.

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Barth, of course, did not construct his understanding of revelation’s dialecticism in response to the Shoah. His epistemology of revelation is determined by God von oben and not by historical event von unten. It is not the epistemological ground of a Barthian theodicy. Consequently, it would be disingenuous to suggest that alongside the formal similarity, there is also a motivational similarity between Barth and Berkovits. Nonetheless, it is, I  think, possible to suggest an implicit, even if unintended, alignment between what Barth says about revelation and what some post-Holocaust theologians, including Berkovits, would wish to say about the hidden presence of God, even in the death camps. The silence, and seeming absence, of God during the Shoah should not be taken as an ultimate justification of why the covenant should now, with moral authenticity, be abandoned in response to God’s first abandonment (a là Rubenstein). On the contrary, the dialectical absence/presence of God about which both Barth and Berkovits speak, in their different ways, points to the same enduring message of judgment and hope, of “No,” but also and more ultimately of “Yes.” For Berkovits, the divine absence is a double-edged sword. It affirms humanity’s autonomous freedom, but, in recognizing the threat to humanity’s existence that such freedom poses, is balanced by the hidden presence of God that, inasmuch as it proclaims a judgment against humanity’s capacity for evil, also stands as an affirmation of God’s will to rescue humanity precisely in and from its evil. For Barth, the incapacity of humanity to hear or receive the Word of God in all its Godness represents a fundamental “No” against us. But that God deigns even to be not-God, and so reveal himself in a manner that is perceptible behind and under the veil of hiddenness, is his abiding “Yes” to humanity. For both Barth and Berkovits, therefore, there is nowhere God is not, not even the Nazi extermination camps. His silence and apparent absence in those days and places are not, in the end, constitutive of reality. Neither the depths of evil nor the profundity of humanity’s incapax infiniti can ultimately thwart God’s determination with and for his people.

Chapter 2 K A R L B A RT H’ S S E R M O N F O R A DV E N T 2 ,   1 9 3 3 Introduction and translation by John Michael Owen

In his study of the anti-Semitism pervading the minds and moral sense of the German population that made possible the destruction of European Jews under the Nazis, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen writes, “Karl Barth, the great theologian, leader of the Protestant Confessing Church, and bitter opponent of Nazism, was also an anti-Semite. As the 1930s progressed, he became for theological reasons a defender of the Jews, despite his own deep-seated anti-Semitism, which had moved him, in his Advent sermon of 1933, to denounce the Jews as ‘an obstinate and evil people.’ ”1 From that short paragraph, an endnote refers to a book by Julius Schoeps2 and also to Barth’s admission in a letter of 1967 that “in personal encounter with the living Jew (even Jewish Christian!) I have always, so long as I can remember, had to suppress a totally irrational aversion.”3

1.  Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners:  Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 113. 2. Julius H. Schoeps, Leiden an Deutschland: Vom antisemitischen Wahn und der Last der Erinnerung (Munich and Zürich: Piper, 1990), S. 58–9. 3.  Karl Barth, letter to Dr. Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, September 5, 1967, in Karl Barth, Gesamtausgabe (GA) V.  Br 1961–1968, Jürgen Fangmeier and Hinrich Stoevesandt (eds.) (Zürich:  Theologischer Verlag, 1975), S.  419–22, S.  420–1; ET Karl Barth, Letters 1961–1968, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), 261–3. Barth wrote rather more vaguely, “so etwas wie eine völlig irrationale Aversion” (“something like a totally irrational aversion”), and continued: “naturally on the basis of all my presuppositions knew to suppress it at once and to conceal it completely in what I expressed, but yet did have to suppress and conceal it. To this so to speak allergic reaction of mine, I can only say, ‘Fie!’ ” On this, see Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes. Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn:  Neukirchener Verlag, 1996), S.  12 n4; and J. M. Owen, “Karl Barth and His Advent Sermon, 1933,” Colloquium 37, no. 1 (2005): 3–25.

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Goldhagen also uses as epigraphs to Part I,4 among three brief statements, two from Barth in the following forms: “How is it possible that our ears, the ears of Christians, do not ring in the presence of the . . . misery and malice [suffered by Jews]?”5 “We do not like Jews as a rule, it is therefore not easy for us to apply to them as well the general love for humankind.”6 Later, Goldhagen writes,7 “No serious historian would dispute the anti-Nazi theologian Karl Barth’s verdict contained in his parting letter before leaving Germany in 1935: ‘For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart’ (quoted in Gerlach).”8 Goldhagen is, at least in part, quoting Barth from secondary sources. Some quotations are supposed to show that Barth shared in the anti-Semitism endemic to the German population. Others serve as a witness against the indifference of German and Swiss churches to Jewish suffering. Put together, they do not give a coherent or fair picture of Barth’s attitude and actions with regard to the Jews of Germany between 1933 and 1945. Their use partly reflects the considerable misunderstanding and misrepresentation to which he has been subjected. Publications of Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt in the 1960s ought to have helped others onto the right track.9 Eberhard Busch would later seem to have done all that was needed to set the picture straight.10 But effects of the distortions Busch exposes still persist, and perhaps particularly in the English-speaking world, where authors do not 4. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 25. 5.  “It may then be possible for someone not to hear any of the unspeakable misery, brought about by the anti-Semitic plague, that is right now crying to heaven in all German lands. But how is it possible that the ears of us Christians do not ring in the face of what this need and evil objectively mean? What would we be, what are we, then, without Israel?” (Karl Barth, “Die Kirche und die politische Frage von heute” [1938], in Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme 1938–1945, 2nd ed. [Zollikon-Zürich:  Evangelischer Verlag,  1948], S.  69–107, S. 90). 6. “The Jewish question is the question of Christ . . . And the fact that we do not exactly like the Jews, as a rule, so that it is not at all so easy for us to apply to them, too, the universal love for humankind, cannot alter [the fact] either that precisely they are the people of the Christ” (Karl Barth, “Verheißung und Verantwortung der christlichen Gemeinde im heutigen Zeitgeschehen” [1944], in Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, S. 307–33, S. 318). 7. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 437. 8.  “For millions who suffer injustice, it does not yet have a heart” (Karl Barth, Letter to Pastor D. Hermann Albert Hesse, June 30, 1935, in Barth, GA V.  Off Br 1909–1935, ed. Dieter Koch [Zürich: TVZ, 2001], S. 336–53, S. 349). 9. Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, “Wendungen im Verständnis Israels,” in ΠΑΡΡΗΣΙΑ, ed. Eberhard Busch, Jürgen Fangmeier, and Max Geiger (Zürich:  EVZ-Verlag, 1966), S.  617–38; F.-W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie. Israel im Denken Karl Barths (Munich:  Kaiser, 1967)  (Abhandlungen zum christlichjüdischen Dialog, 1). 10. Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes, 1996; Busch, “The Covenant of Grace Fulfilled in Christ as the Foundation of the Indissoluble Solidarity of the Church with

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always get sufficiently into the relevant works to be able to check out the negative information still coming to them second- or thirdhand. For that reason, it would be helpful to look more carefully at the sermon of 1933, in which Barth is supposed to have “denounced” the Jews. This essay introduces a translation of the sermon. Following ones will offer an appreciation and a discussion of it.11 Now, before the sermon itself, we note its historical setting. The abdication of the kaiser and all ruling princes in November 1918 left the German Evangelical (Protestant) churches in a precarious position.12 In each territory, the prince had been head of the church, and its administration and finances were linked with those of the state. Left-wing parties in national and state parliaments contained strong anti-church elements. In the event, the new national constitution accorded churches the status of public corporations, and the various state churches negotiated settlements that enabled them to raise taxes from church members in conjunction with state taxation systems. The polities the newly independent Evangelical churches developed, while including synods with a proportion of elected representatives, tended to be weighted in favor of ecclesiastical administrators. From the point of view of the leadership, the outcome of those developments called for self-congratulation, but some saw in that a serious failure to perceive the true nature of Christ’s church. The earlier tie between church and monarchy, together with the expectation that “powers that be” ordained by God would provide strong and strict government, meant that few Evangelical pastors or officials felt much rapport with the new republic or the coalitions that ruled it. They largely accepted its Godgivenness, but were alienated by the form it took. The majority favored conservative nationalist parties. The Catholic Centre Party scarcely came into question; those of the left were seen as opposed to the churches, but the Evangelical population did give much stronger support to the Social Democrats than Catholics did, and as Kupisch notes, voted strongly for democratic parties in the important elections for the National Assembly in 1919.13 The Evangelical churches were Lutheran, Reformed, or United. There were many more Lutheran than Reformed, but most Evangelicals were in United state churches, in the majority of which individual congregations and pastors

Israel: Barth’s Position on the Jews during the Hitler Era,” trans. James Seyler and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, ed. Darrell L. Guder, in SJTh 52 (1999): 476–503. 11.  J. M. Owen, “Karl Barth’s Advent Sermon, 1933: An Appreciation,” Colloquium 36, no. 2 (2004): 181–99; Owen, “Karl Barth and his Advent Sermon, 1933,” 3–25. 12. For this and following paragraphs, see Karl Kupisch, Die deutschen Landeskirchen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1966) (Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte, Bd 4, R, 2), S. 98–103; Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich. Bd 1: Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen, 1918–1934 (Frankfurt am Main:  Ullstein [Propyläen], 1977), S.  3–12, 19–22, 26–64, 153–9; ET The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions (London: SCM, 1987), 3–10, 15–18, 21–51, 122–6. 13. Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S. 100f; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 22; Churches, 18.

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maintained the Lutheran or Reformed tradition. Reformed congregations and churches practiced the presbyterial-synodical system of government by councils of pastors and elders, and it had been maintained in the higher levels of the united churches of the Rhineland and Westphalia as those states, too, were incorporated into Prussia. Some Lutherans, on the other hand, favored a revival of the office of bishop, and bishops came to head some Lutheran churches. There was a growing feeling that the twenty-eight separate state churches should be united into one Evangelical church for the Reich, rather than loosely confederated. For many, that would, while allowing a place for the Reformed minority, have to be a Lutheran church, for they held Luther to have given authentically German expression to the Christian faith, and some contemplated a Lutheran Reichsbischof as head of the national church.14 Defeat in the war had been extremely difficult for Germans to comprehend—or even to recognize. How could so much dedication and self-sacrifice be rewarded with total failure and the loss of so much of the social and moral fabric of the nation? With the kaiser gone and the Reich turned into a Western-style democracy, it was difficult to center loyalty on the state, and the people themselves, the Volk, assumed fundamental importance. Lutheran theologians discovered in it an “order of Creation,” divine gift and divine demand in equal measure.15 In the prevailing bitterness and perplexity, an existing anti-Semitic element was able to sell the notion that Germany had been betrayed by a Jewish conspiracy and was being exploited by Jews in various spheres. Nationalism thus became fused with racism. Hitler had made biologically conceived anti-Semitism a core element in the National Socialist Party’s ideology and program, and circumstances provided it with a fertile field. Depression, unemployment, and the increasing political violence practiced and provoked by National Socialist storm troopers destabilized the republic and allowed the Nazis to emerge as the strongest party, with more than a third of the seats in the Reichstag, the national parliament, by 1933.16 Support for the Communists, too, had doubled between 1928 and 1932, and anti-democratic parties thus held more than half of the total seats. From 1930, Germany was governed by a conservative cabinet upheld not by a parliamentary majority, but by

14.  On the idea of one united Evangelical Church for the German Reich, see Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 355–7; Churches, 280f. 15.  Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S.  130f; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S.  124–50; Churches, 99–119. 16.  For this and the following paragraph, see Walther Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus:  Dokumente 1933–1945 herausgegeben, eingeleitet und dargestellt (Frankfurt a. M.:  Fischer, 1957), S.  12–18, 42–7, 50–61, 268–70, 282–4; Michael Stürmer, “Das industrielle Deutschland,” in Hartmut Boockmann, Heinz Schilling, Hagen Schulze, and Michael Stürmer (eds.), Mitten in Europa. Deutsche Geschichte (Berlin:  Siedler, 1984), S.  289–409, S.  325–44; Richard Overy, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 1996), 8–13, 16f, 20f, 36f.

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the reserve powers of von Hindenburg, the president directly elected by popular vote. Particularly because of the Bolshevik regime in Russia, the Communists were generally seen as the real threat to the nation. In order to benefit from the support enjoyed by the Nazis, the then-chancellor, von Papen, suggested that the president invite Hitler to form a coalition government as chancellor. He did so on January 30, 1933. The storm troopers celebrated with torch-light processions and behaved from then on with increasing impudence and brutality. Seeking to gain an outright majority, Hitler called new elections for March 5. On the night of February 27, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Whoever was responsible, the Nazis exploited the situation, declaring it to be part of a Communist plot. Hitler got the president to issue an ordinance suspending constitutional rights and giving the authorities emergency powers. Armed with those, the Nazis effectively shut down the Communist Party and put increased pressure on other opponents. They still failed to gain a majority in the March elections, but thereafter won the support of the Centre and other parties, with the honorable exception of the Social Democrats, for an act to enable the government to rule without parliament. In that way, Hitler established his dictatorship on a “legal” basis. German Jews were, from the start, exposed to the menace expressed in the Nazis’ racist propaganda and to haphazard acts of harassment, all greatly exacerbated by Hitler’s rise to power. Others whose conservative, liberal, or left-wing views distanced them from the Nazi movement were also increasingly under threat. Many were arrested and detained in concentration camps. The Nazis suggested a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy against Germany and claimed to have just forestalled it. They reacted to early criticism abroad of unjust treatment of German Jews by organizing a national boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, represented as a spontaneous upsurge of popular feeling against horror stories spread by Jews. A law for the restoration of the public service was enacted on April 7, with compulsory retirement of officials who were of Jewish descent (the so-called Arierparagraph) or who were seen as politically unreliable. On the insistence of the president, Jews were exempted if they or their fathers had served creditably in the war. On June 22, the Social Democrat Party was banned, and on July 14, a further law declared the National Socialist Party the only political party in Germany and imposed prison terms for any who sought to maintain other parties or form new ones. The great majority of Evangelical church people had welcomed the initial coalition government under Hitler, because it seemed to bring about a united front of central and nationalist parties under President Hindenburg, a Protestant.17 But the National Socialist movement itself also found some support in all churches. Hitler presented himself as a God-fearing person and expressed uncompromising opposition to Marxist atheism. He acted with firmness and authority, so that people could feel that powers ordained by God were properly in control. His program

17.  For reactions in the Evangelical churches, see Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 277–99; Churches, 219–36.

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claimed to offer a path to moral and spiritual renewal and reawakened a sense of national destiny, particularly for the young, and for church youth, too. During and after the war, a few theologians had been advocating a new approach to theology on the basis of complete identification with one’s people and full participation in its fate and destiny: One could only validly speak of God if one accepted one’s own God-given place in the Volk and in what was happening for it.18 From 1933 on, for an increasing number of others, too, German theology had to commence with affirmation of God’s action in giving the German people Adolf Hitler as its leader. For some, this involved a combination of theological and philosophical subtlety and political naivety, but also theological blind spots that made such a combination possible. There were others whose enthusiasm for the Nazi movement went much deeper than their understanding of Christian faith and theology. Movements arose among people known as “German Christians.”19 In Thuringia, the Church Movement of German Christians sought to cultivate a new German spirituality in a renewed national church. Elsewhere, the Faith Movement of German Christians was formed as a party of National Socialist Evangelicals to contest elections for the Prussian and other synods. It emphasized mission, with the goal of winning the German people back to the Christian faith, and proposed that the way to do that was by getting the Evangelical churches fully to identify with the National Socialist program: by participating in the political movement, Christians would purify it and ensure that it helped to bring the nation back to faith in God and back into church life. The leadership of the German Christians came, above all, from the generation who had fought in the war. They could readily believe that much of the old order needed to be overthrown in the churches, too, and brought a revolutionary spirit into Church politics. Karl Barth was German-Swiss and Reformed.20 He had studied in Germany and felt close bonds with former teachers and fellow students from the liberal wing. From 1909 to 1911, he was assistant minister of the German-speaking Reformed congregation in Geneva and then, until 1921, pastor in Safenwil, a country town in the Swiss Aargau. Concern for the conditions of local workers involved him in

18.  Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S.  130–2; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S.  212–15; Churches, 168–70. 19.  See K. Hutten, “Deutsch-christliche Bewegungen,” in RGG3, Bd 2 (1958) Sp. 104–7; Wolfgang Tilgner, Volksnomostheologie und Schöpfungsglaube. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck, 1966) (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 16), S. 218–232; Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S. 132–138; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 245–74; Churches, 194–216; Kurt Nowak, “Deutsche Christen,” in EKL3, Bd 1 (1986), Sp. 825–7. 20. The major reference for what follows is Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth’s Lebenslauf nach seinen Briefen und autobiographischen Texten (Munich:  Kaiser, 1975); ET Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1976). See also Karl Kupisch, Karl Barth in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten dargestellt (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1971, 1972) (Rowohlts Monographien, 174).

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industrial relations and with the Christian Socialist movement.21 Increasingly, he felt a disjunction between the theology he had brought with him and the responsibility of preaching to the people every Sunday. At the outbreak of war in 1914, he was shocked by the full and uncritical support given by professors and church people he respected to the official German line and the call to arms. It was not that he particularly favored the other side, but he considered that Christian faith should enable a degree of critical detachment. (He was also dismayed at the way in which Socialists of different countries swung in behind national governments in support of war.) Barth’s relation to liberal theology could no longer be the same. He found his own way ahead by preparing weekly sermons and related studies, concentrating on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In time, he drew back from the Christian Socialist movement, but he joined the Swiss Social Democrat party in 1915. It was as if, once he was seriously engaging in theology as theology, he felt free also to engage in politics as politics. He published a commentary on Romans in 1918–19, with a revised edition in 1921 attracting much attention. As a result of the first edition, Barth was offered a professorship of Reformed theology in Göttingen. From there, he was called to chairs of dogmatics and New Testament in Münster (1925) and systematic theology in Bonn (1930). He still preached occasionally, often at university services, with more than thirty sermons between 1921 and 1933. As a German university professor and an official of the state of Prussia, Barth sought to identify with the German people. He became a German citizen in 1926, while also retaining Swiss citizenship. He was greatly concerned about the extremely negative attitudes shown by the majority of German church leaders and academics toward the young democracy of the Weimar Republic. He deplored the way their right-wing nationalism inclined them to reject policies that lay within the bounds of the possible. In May 1931, he joined the German Social Democrats, not in affirmation of their ideology, but in support of the one party capable of acting constructively and realistically. Once the Nazis were in power, German Christians began to press for more say in church government, and specifically for the formation of a Reichskirche.22 Wishing to diminish disturbance in the churches, Hitler, a Catholic, appointed as his representative in Protestant affairs one Ludwig Müller, a military chaplain he had once met. A committee of the confederation of state churches hastened to approve a form of constitution for a national church and nominated the respected leader of the great caritative institution in Bethel, Fritz von Bodelschwingh, to be Reichsbischof. When Bodelschwingh was elected and summarily assumed office, Müller reacted sharply, supported by the German Christians, who had adopted him as their patron. The Nazi government seized the opportunity presented by

21. Cf Barth’s reminiscences in conversation with Wuppertal students in 1968, in GA IV. Gespr 1964–1968, ed. Eberhard Busch (Zürich: TVZ, 1997), S. 505f. 22.  For this paragraph, Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S.  134–7; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 357–69, 391–4, 411–24, 426, 441–6, 453–7, 560–70; Churches, 281–91, 308–9, 324–35, 336, 348–52, 357–60, 441–9.

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dissension and resignations in the church to appoint August Jäger as commissioner in place of the Prussian church’s supreme council. Jäger acted quite destructively, suspending many officials and installing radical German Christians in positions of leadership. A new constitution was approved for the church, and the Reich government called general elections for the state synods. That put the decision in the hands of the vast nominal membership. Nazi officials, storm troopers, and Hitler himself lent support to the German Christian party, which won majorities in church after church and then began to deprive minorities of a voice in government to an unprecedented extent. By early September, Ludwig Müller was bishop of Prussia and president of its supreme council. Legislation was passed in parallel to what had been enacted for the state to exclude Jews from positions in the Prussian church’s ministry or administration.23 Other state churches had already passed similar measures or would soon do so. At the end of September, the national synod met and appointed Müller Reichsbischof. But then, just when the German Christians seemed to be having it their own way, a crisis erupted, possibly brought on by the restraint shown by Müller and his subordinates as they sought to quiet down dissension.24 For radical German Christians, the impetus had been lost and the revolution in the church had led to nothing but high offices for a few of their leaders. A  mass rally was held in

23. “The General Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union has resolved on the following church law: §1: (1) Only those may be called as clergy or officials of the general church administration who have received the education prescribed for their respective careers and support without reserve the national state and the German Evangelical Church. (2) Those not of Aryan descent or married to persons not of Aryan descent may not be called as clergy or officials of the general church administration. Clergy and officials of Aryan descent who marry persons not of Aryan descent are to be dismissed. Who is to count as a person of non-Aryan descent is determined in accordance with the provisions of the law of the Reich . . . §3: (1) Clergy and officials who by their previous activities do not offer assurance that they will support the national state and the German Evangelical Church without reserve at all times can be retired. (2) Clergy and officials of non-Aryan descent or married to a person of non-Aryan descent are to be retired. (3) Section (2) need not be applied where there have been special contributions to the building up of the Church in the German spirit. (4) The prescriptions of Section (2) do not apply to clergy or officials who have already been clergy or officials of the Church, the Reich, a state or another corporation of the public law since 1 August 1914 or who served in the World War at the front for the German Reich or its allies or whose fathers or sons lost their lives in the World War” (extract from the church law on the legal situation of clergy and church officials of September 5 and 6, 1933, in Heiko A.  Oberman, Adolf Martin Ritter, and Hans-Walter Krumwiede (eds.), Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte in Quellen. Ein Arbeitsbuch, vol. IV, 2, 2nd ed. [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener-Verlag, 1986], S. 128–9; also quoted in the opinion of the Marburg faculty in Junge Kirche [JK], 1 [1933] S. 166–7 and note 1). 24.  For this paragraph, Kupisch, Landeskirchen, S.  137–8; Scholder, Kirchen, Bd 1, S. 701–6, 711–29; Churches, 550–4, 558–72.

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the Berlin Sport Palace on November 13, 1933, where Dr. Reinhold Krause gave a rousing speech calling for the church to be purged of all Jewish elements. Not only the Old Testament was to go, but also Paul and other aspects of the New Testament. Resolutions carried “by 19,999 votes” spoke of the goal of “the religious renewal of our people and the completion of the German Reformation out of the spirit of National Socialism.” They demanded immediate and strict application of the Arierparagraph to the Prussian church’s ministry and bureaucracy, the gathering of all church members of non-German blood into separate congregations of their own kinds, the establishment of a Jewish Christian church, and the freeing of the German church from everything “un-German” in its worship and confession, especially from the Old Testament and its “Jewish ethics of reward,” together with the proclamation of a simple Gospel, “cleansed of all Oriental distortions,” and of a “heroic Jesus-figure as the basis of a Christianity corresponding to the German national character.” The final clause read: We confess that the only real divine service for us is service to the fellow members of our people and feel that our God lays on us as a combat community the obligation to contribute to the building up of an able-bodied and genuine church of the people (einer wehrhaften und wahrhaften völkischen Kirche), in which we perceive the completion of the German Reformation of Martin Luther and which will alone do justice to the totalitarian claim of the National Socialist state.25

Public statement of such an extreme position shocked many into withdrawing their support from the German Christian movement. Müller gave up his own position as its patron and dismissed some of those implicated in the Sport Palace affair from leading positions in the church. The Faith Movement of German Christians thereupon lost its momentum, but most of those it had helped into office remained there. Karl Barth did not react directly to the Nazis’ coming to power. He continued his university teaching, retained membership of the Social Democrat Party, and took steps to safeguard both of those involvements with the authorities. In face of the church developments sketched above, he joined with others in producing two sets of theses setting out a current Reformed position in continuity with the Reformation, “A Theological Declaration on the Form of the Church” (the Düsseldorf Theses of May 20, 1933)26 and “Demands on the Form of the Church” (the Elberfeld Theses

25. “Entschließung der Deutschen Christen,” in JK 1 (1933) S. 312; cf [Fritz] Sö[hlmann], “Die Kundgebung der Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen am Montag, den 13. November 1933,” JK 1, S. 309–11. 26.  “Eine theologische Erklärung zur Gestalt der Kirche,” in GA III. Vortr.u.kl.Arb. 1930–1933, ed. Michael Beintker, Michael Hüttenhoff, and Peter Zocher (Zürich:  TVZ, 2013), S. 255–9; ET in Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, 2nd ed. (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1976), 229.

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of June 4, 1933).27 They held out for the sovereignty of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Scriptures in a way that implicitly countered German Christian teaching and explicitly stood against the imposition upon the existing pattern of Reformed ministries of a bishop as “spiritual leader” (geistlicher Führer) of the church. Then, in response to demands from many sides, he published a pamphlet, Theologische Existenz heute! (“Theological Existence Today!”),28 in which he spelled out rejection of the German Christian position as a heresy. He also questioned the need that all church leaders currently saw to affirm the Nazis’ coming to power as a good gift from God that somehow redefined the task of the church in the present and the suddenly discovered the importance of heading the church with a bishop, in obvious imitation of the political Führerprinzip. The pamphlet sold extremely well and became the start of a series, also called Theologische Existenz heute (without the exclamation mark), of which Barth himself wrote the first five numbers and many subsequent ones. The series maintained the line that Barth had taken in his first pamphlet, and his prefaces offered critical comment on current developments in the church struggle, until they seemed to attract a ban on the publication. The sermon that we are considering was published in the fifth of the series, which bore the title Die Kirche Jesu Christi (“The Church of Jesus Christ”). It was preached within four weeks of the Sport Palace affair and appeared in print the same month.29

Sermon on Romans 15:5–13 December 10, 1933 (ADVENT 2) University Service in the Schlosskirche, Bonn30 Karl Barth Translated by John Michael Owen [5] But may the God of patience and consolation grant that you may be of one mind among yourselves in accordance with Jesus Christ, [6] so that you may 27. “Forderungen zur Gestalt der Kirche,” in GA III. Vortr.u.kl.Arb. 1930–1933, S. 267–70. 28. Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz heute! (Munich: Kaiser, 1933) (Beiheft 2 von Zwischen den Zeiten, repr. as ThExh, 1); new ed. Hinrich Stoevesandt, 1984 (ThExh, 219); ET Theological Existence To-Day! (A Plea for Theological Freedom), trans. R. Birch Hoyle (London: Hodder, 1933). 29. Barth offered his own biting comments on the Sport Palace affair in the preface to the issue of Theologische Existenz heute in which his sermon appeared (“Vorwort” [December 11, 1933], in Die Kirche Jesu Christi [ThExh, H. 5], S. (3)–10, S. 4–7; repr. in GA III. Vortr.u.kl. Arb. 1930–1933, 2013, S. 601–18, S. 603–12). 30. Karl Barth, “Predigt über Röm. 15,5–13,” in Die Kirche Jesu Christi (Munich: Kaiser, 1933) (ThExh, 5), S.  11–19; repr. in Karl Barth, GA I.  Pr 1921–1935, ed. Holger Finze (Zürich: TVZ, 1998), S. 296–305. After completing this translation and the articles relating to it, I was told of an already published translation, “The Church of Jesus Christ: Sermon on Romans 15:5–13,” trans. Charles Dickinson, in Letter from the Karl Barth Archives, 1 (1998) 7–13.

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unanimously with one mouth praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. [7] Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed us to the praise of God. [8] But I say that Jesus Christ has been a servant of the Circumcision for the sake of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the Fathers, [9] that the Heathen may praise God on account of mercy, as it is written, “Therefore I will praise thee among the Heathen and sing to thy name.” [10] And again he says, “Rejoice, you Heathen, with his people!” [11] And again, “Praise the Lord, all Heathen, and praise him, all peoples!” [12] And again Isaiah says, “There will be the root of Jesse, and he will rise up to rule over the Heathen; in him will the Heathen hope.” [13] But may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may have full hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.31

Dear friends! The church of Jesus Christ is a crowd, a band, a gathering—a “community,” as the lovely old word Gemeinde says,32 which we must just learn to understand again completely afresh—a community that is not held together by common interests nor by the blood we share nor even by opinions and convictions we hold in common, but surely by the fact that, within it, there ever 31.  To aid the following discussion, I have inserted verse numbers in the epistle reading and numbered the paragraphs of the sermon with Roman numerals. References in the text with parentheses are Barth’s own. Those in square brackets are supplied by Finze in his edition. Finze states that Barth here follows the “newly revised” version of the Luther Bible of 1912, except for preferring the variant “us” to “you” in v. 7, as he already had in his Romans commentary. But Barth also reads in v. 8 the more literal translation, “of the Circumcision,” in place of 1912’s “of the Jews.” This suggests that he reverted to an earlier edition, which Dr. Hans-Anton Drewes identifies in a letter as probably being the “revised” version of 1892. 32. “Die Kirche Jesu Christi ist ein Haufe, eine Schar, eine Versammlung—eine ‘Gemeinde’, wie das alte schöne Wort lautet . . .” Cf “Denn das Wort ‘Ecclesia’ heißet eigentlich auf Deutsch ein ‘Versammlunge’. Wir sind aber gewohnet des Wörtleins ‘Kirche’, welchs die Einfältigen nicht von einem versammelten Haufen . . . verstehen, wiewohl das Haus nicht sollt’ eine Kirche heißen ohn allein darümb, daß der Haufe darin zusammenkömmpt. . . . Also heißet das Wortlin ‘Kirche’ eigentlich nicht anders denn ‘ein gemeine Sammlung.’ . . . Darümb sollt’s auf recht Deutsch und unser Muttersprach heißen ‘ein christliche Gemeine oder Sammlung’ ” (Martin Luther, Großer Katechismus, in Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche . . ., 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1952), S. 656; ET “The Large Catechism of Dr Martin Luther,” in Theodore G. Tappert et al. (trans. and ed.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, [Philadelphia:  Fortress,  1959], 416f):  “For the word ‘ecclesia’ really means a ‘gathering’ in German. But we are used to the word ‘church’, which the simple people don’t understand to refer . . . to a gathered crowd, although the house ought not to be called a church except for the reason that the crowd comes together in it. So the little word ‘church’ doesn’t really mean anything other than ‘a common gathering’ . . . Therefore it ought to be called in proper German and our mother tongue, ‘a Christian community or gathering.’ ” Finze does not identify an allusion to Luther here, but Barth’s use of the old form “Gemeine” in ¶ IX and the following quotation show that Barth will have been thinking of Luther at this point: “so dürfte es sprachlich und sachlich richtig sein, davon

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again sounds forth, not to be silenced and not to be faked and not to be confused with any other sound, this voice that we hear at the beginning and at the end of our text, “But may the God of patience and consolation grant you!” “But may the God of hope fill you!” The voice that talks to us in this way, so beseeching and, at the same time, bestowing so much, so serious and also so friendly, is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, the voice of the divine Word itself, from which the Church of Jesus Christ is born33 and from which it must also ever again nourish itself and only can nourish itself. God knows who God is; and in his Word he tells us: He is the God who gives patience, consolation, and hope. God knows that we have need of him like nothing else and do not at all have him at our command; and in his Word he tells us, pulls our thoughts and wills together and towards himself, that we must beseech him: May he grant us! May he fill us! And God knows how close to us, how ready for us he is; and in his Word he tells us, by laying it on our lips as a sigh uttered in the closest proximity, and in the deepest, most confident trust, to him: May he, may he give us! May he fill us! This voice with which God tells us what he knows about himself and us may sound forth from far off—the Apostle Paul is indeed really a long way away from us and the whole Bible is very far away from all the books and newspapers that we otherwise read—but if only that voice does still just ring out with its sound, its message, its claim and encouragement, then the Church of Jesus Christ is there, in which I, too, as I hear this voice, “am and shall ever remain a living member” (Heid. Cat. q. 54).34 [II] But in this season of Advent, we have occasion to think that the fact that there is a Word of God for us and a church of Jesus Christ as the locale of the consolation, patience, and hope that come from God is not a matter of course. It is not like the air, always and everywhere real. It is not placed in our hands by nature or by history, so that we could deal with it as something that belonged to us. The fact that there is God’s Word in the Church is not established in human spiritual life,

auszugehen, daß die Kirche auf alle Fälle ein Volk ist. Ein Haufe, eine Versammlung, eine Gemeine, wie Luther gerne und richtig sagte” (Barth, “Die Kirche und die politische Frage von heute” [1938], in Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, S. 69: “it should thus be linguistically and materially correct to assume that the Church is at all events a people: a crowd, a gathering, a community, as Luther quite correctly liked to say.” 33. “The holy Christian Church, whose only head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and does not hear the voice of a stranger” (“The Ten Conclusions of Berne” [1528], in John H. Leith, Creeds of the Churches: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present, 3rd ed. [Atlanta: John Knox, 1982], 129–30). 34. “What do you believe about the holy, universal Christian Church?—That, out of the whole human race, from the beginning of the world to the end of it, the Son of God gathers, protects and preserves for himself by his Spirit and Word in the unity of the true faith a chosen community for everlasting life, and that I am, and shall eternally remain, a living member of it” (The Heidelberg Catechism, in Witness of Faith: Historic Documents of the Uniting Church in Australia [Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1984] 87–108, 94f).

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nor is it a cultural achievement, nor does it belong to the nature and character of any particular people or race, nor is it grounded in the necessary course of world history. It is much rather a mystery, with which our existence is—not, say, fitted out from within, but clothed from without, which is in no sense founded in us, but wholly in an alien power and force over us. That there are the Church and God’s Word is true because, and only because, as our text says, “Christ has welcomed us,” picked us up like a beggar from the street, taken us up as people who had not at all thought or been able to think of taking him up, but who could really only be taken up. We could also say: adopted, as an orphan child is adopted into the family, adopted as something that we are not at all by nature, viz. as his siblings and as children of his Father. We could also say, included or taken in into the sphere where he, the Son of God, leads, rules, bears the responsibility, and manages things so that no one apart from him may have worry or anxiety. We should never of ourselves have come along and entered into this sphere. But he has taken us in. That is the message of Christmas, which we shall soon be able to celebrate again: Christ has welcomed us! And welcomed us, at that, “to the praise of God”: not as if it had to be that way, not in accordance with any law of nature or because God had had need of us, and also not for the sake of our needs and wishes, but because it suited him in his freedom to be great and glorious by his Son’s welcoming us, adopting us, including us, and taking us in. That is why the angels sang on Christmas Eve:  Glory be to God on high and peace on earth among the human beings of good-pleasure [Lk. 2:14]—of his, the divine good-pleasure!—But now, precisely according to our text, all of that is true in a double sense, which has to be borne in mind: [III] It certainly means for a start the all-embracing fact that he has taken on being human, viz. taken it on in order as God to be our neighbor and, at the same time, as a human being to be God’s neighbor. So that, in him, God’s kingdom has drawn near to us human beings [Mt. 4:17]35 and, in him, we human beings may, on the other hand, stand before God’s throne as well-pleasing to God. Because God himself has in Jesus Christ clothed himself with being human, we are clothed with the mystery of the Word and the Church. [IV] But, over and above that, we are here given something special to consider. It is not a matter of course that we belong to Jesus Christ, and he, to us. “Christ has been a servant of the Circumcision for the sake of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the Fathers.” What that says is that Christ belonged to the people of Israel. That people’s blood was, in his veins, the blood of the Son of God. That people’s character he has accepted by taking on being human, not for the sake of that people or of the superiority of its blood and its race, but for the truth, i.e. for the proof of the truthfulness, the faithfulness, of God. On account of the fact that God had made a covenant with that people and with that people alone, a stiff-necked and

35. Finze supplies the reference to Matthew here, but Matthew writes of the kingdom of heaven, not of God. Barth himself refers to Mk. 1:15 for the kingdom’s having drawn near, GA I, Pr 1921–1935, S. 594, and Finze himself supplies the Marcan reference on S. 646.

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wicked people [cf Exod. 32:9 and frequently],36 but with that people of all peoples, had bestowed his presence upon it and given it the promise of an incomparable redemption—not in order to reward and distinguish the Jews, but to confirm, to fulfil, that free, gracious promise “given to the Fathers,” Jesus Christ has been a Jew. He has himself once said of himself: To the lost sheep from the house of Israel and to them alone is he sent (Mt. 15:24; cf 10:5f). For us who are not Israel, that means a closed door. If it is now, after all, open, if Christ now after all also belongs to us, and we, to him, that must surely say once again in a special sense: “Christ has welcomed us to the praise of God.” We are reminded that that is the case by the existence of the Jewish people right up to this day. Frederick the Great is supposed once to have asked Zimmermann, his personal physician, whether he could name him a single completely certain proof of the existence of God; and he is supposed to have received the laconic reply, “Your Majesty, the Jews!”37 The man was right. The Jew reminds us by his existence that we are not Jews and therefore intrinsically “without Christ, alien and outside the citizenry of Israel and strangers to the testaments of promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). The Jew reminds us that it is something special, new, and wonderful, if we are now, despite all that, “no longer guests and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). We are not that by nature. The Jew, in his so puzzlingly strange, and equally puzzlingly indestructible, existence in the midst of all other peoples, is the living proof that God is free to choose whom he will, that he does not owe it to us to choose us, too, that it is grace, when he does also choose us. It could well be that one is warding off this indeed stringent proof of God, warding off the God of free grace, when one wards the Jews off with all too much passion. [V]38 But the special, new, wonderful thing about the way in which Christ— although a “servant of the Circumcision for the sake of God’s truth”—has now also welcomed us, consists in the fact that Israel, the people blessed with God’s election and grace, has behaved toward this its redeemer in no other way than— all peoples of all times and lands would also have done in its place. It has namely rejected him and nailed him to the Cross, not in foolish precipitance, not out of a

36. Israel is called “stiff-necked” in Exod. 32:9, 33:3, 5, 34:9; Deut. 9:6, 13, 31:27; cf Acts 7:51. “Stiff-necked” is nowhere paired with “evil” or “wicked,” although Exod. 34:9 does continue, “pardon our iniquity and our sin.” Deut. 31:26f declares the chief function of the book of the law placed beside the ark of the covenant to be that of a witness against the people as rebellious and stiff-necked. Cf the quotation of Isa. 65:2 LXX in Rom. 10:21. 37. Finze finds authority for attributing the saying to Voltaire, and the role of reporting it to Zimmermann. 38. Finze has a new paragraph begin here, although there was not one when the sermon was first published. He may have manuscript evidence for the break, which certainly seems suitable or even called for. The same applies to the break between ¶¶ V and VI. In Die Kirche Jesu Christi (1933), the sermon ends on the last line of page 19 and two paragraph breaks may have been sacrificed in order to avoid going over the page.

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misunderstanding, but in precise, conscious continuation of the manner in which it had always behaved toward its God. “My people,” as God had so often called this people, proved itself once more and now definitively to be “not my people” [Hos. 1:9]. But the prophet Hosea had indeed said precisely the opposite; and now it became true in just this way in the crucifixion of Christ! “It shall happen in the place where one has said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ that one will say to them: ‘O you children of the Living God’ ” (Hos. 1:10).39 “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!” [Lk. 23:34]—that was said to this people on Golgotha. Except that that could then no longer only be said to it. By putting itself on a par with the other peoples, Israel also put the other peoples on a par with itself. The closed door opened. Israel itself had to open it. God’s covenant and truth were not broken, but came to fulfilment for those in Israel—but now also for those among the Heathen [—] who now recognized and accepted God’s mercy as the work of his covenant and truth. For that was the fulfilment of the Covenant, God’s faithfulness precisely in the death of Christ on the Cross: “God imprisoned all in disobedience, so that he might have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32). [VI]40 That is why it can now go on to say, “The Heathen praise God on account of mercy.” Hear that properly: Not because they were better, purer, more upright than the Jews! If there were any advantage, the Jews would still have it today, not because of any good qualities, but because it has pleased God to choose them, with them to make the covenant that he fulfilled in Christ, in order to keep it with us, as well. So the reason why the Heathen praise God is that God has, in the Christ crucified in the midst of Israel, shown and confirmed upon them, who were not Israel, his mercy to them, too. Because the covenant with Israel became manifest for Israel and for the Heathen as a covenant of grace for sinners who cannot boast of any faith that they have kept, who are only able to live from mercy, but who really are permitted to live from mercy.41 That is the end of the Jews’ advantage and of our disadvantage. That’s what a real Jew cannot understand right up to the present day:  That precisely the covenant that God certainly concluded with his people, and with his people alone, has become manifest in that people’s rejection of Christ as the free, undeserved goodness that God wants to do for everyone. Precisely this covenant!, says Paul, and he allows precisely the book of this one, old and now fulfilled covenant to speak and to witness to the glory of God among

39. Barth here gives the reference as Hos. 2:1, but the verse is 1:10 in the English Bible. See also Rom. 9:25f. The change to 1:10 is also made below in ¶ VII. 40. See note 34. 41.  “The covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one and the same. Yet they differ in the mode of dispensation . . . Secondly, the covenant by which they were bound to the Lord was supported, not by their own merits, but solely by the mercy of the God who called them” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vols. 1–2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960], II.x.2).

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the Heathen: “Therefore I will praise thee among the Heathen and sing to thy name.” “Rejoice, you Heathen, with his people!” “Praise the Lord, all Heathen, and praise him, all peoples!” “There will be the root of Jesse, and he will rise up to rule over the Heathen; on him will the peoples hope.”42 It is thus then that Christ has received us to the praise of God. “Salvation comes from the Jews” (John 4:22). Jesus Christ was a Jew. But by his bearing and taking away, in the sin of the Jews, the sin of the whole world and our sin, too [cf Jn 1:29], salvation has come from the Jews to us also. We rejoice in this wide opening door, when we rejoice that there is a Word of God for us and so a church of Jesus Christ. How should we not, each time we reflect on that, have to think above all of the Jews? And how should we not, each time that we reflect on the Jews, think above all how “the Heathen praise God on account of mercy”? [VII] Now we can understand the other thing that our text has to say to us about the Church of Jesus Christ:  As Christ has welcomed us to the praise of God, welcome one another. That is a law that there is no getting around. That is a command, and a strict, inexorable command, at that. But the Heathen and the Jews, all those welcomed by Christ who praise God on account of mercy, fulfill this command. They welcome one another. “Welcome one another” means mutually to see each other as Christ sees us. He sees us all as covenant-breakers, but also as such with whom God wills, despite that, to maintain his covenant. He sees us in our religious and secular Godlessness, but also as those to whom the Kingdom of God has drawn near. He sees us as such as are utterly dependent on mercy, but also as such as mercy has already befallen. He sees us as Jews in conflict with the true God43 and as heathen at peace with the false gods, but he also sees us both united as “children of the Living God” [Hos. 1:10]. But we are, to be sure, unable of ourselves to see each other in that way. If we see each other of ourselves, then it is regularly the case that we miss both the first thing, that we are covenant-breakers, and the second, that, despite that, God maintains his covenant. We then take both the perfections and the faults that we perceive in each other much too seriously; we then praise each other much too loudly and we then censure each other much too vehemently. Either way, we do not then welcome one another. We are then in the marketplace and not in the Church. The Word of God is then surely silent. But when it is not silent, when we consider that we have been welcomed by Jesus Christ to the praise of God, then we see each other with the eyes of Jesus Christ, and that surely means then that our deep breach of covenant, godlessness, and pitifulness are not concealed, but that neither is the faithfulness of God steadfastly holding sway over each one of us, and that, overlooking all perfections and faults, praise, and censure—however important they may be in their own place—we can only join hands in order together to praise God’s faithfulness to us, the unfaithful Ones. When we see

42.  Paul quotes Ps. 18:49 (LXX 17:50), 2 Sam. 22:50; Deut. 32:43 (LXX); Ps. 117:1; Isa. 11:10 (LXX). 43. See the story of Jacob at the Jabbok, Gen. 32:28; Hos. 12:3f, and the name “Israel.”

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each other in this way, then we welcome one another, then we are in the Church of Jesus Christ. For that is what the Church of Jesus Christ is: the community of those who, listening to the Word of the God of patience, comfort, and hope, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. That is “the Communion of Saints.” The praise of God on account of mercy has brought them together and will hold them together through everything, hold them together in a way that no friendship or common convictions or community of a people, or state can hold human beings together, hold them together in the way that, in the whole world, only the members of the Body of Christ are held together by him, the Head [cf Col. 2:19]. [VIII] And now we can close with a brief indication of the things that are prayed for in our text. [IX] It is first of all this, “that you may be of one mind among yourselves in accordance with Jesus Christ, so that you may unanimously with one mouth praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That means: From the mutual welcoming of each other as Christ has welcomed us, it would have to follow that, in the Church of Jesus Christ, one thought and one will would be alive and powerful in everyone—not, to be sure, some or other kind of human unity in thought and will, but a unity of perhaps very diverse human thinking and willing in the purpose of now letting the praise of God on account of mercy be heard, of passing it on, of arousing it also in those who do not yet know that mercy has befallen them. That purpose would then of necessity have to be carried out “unanimously with one mouth.” But that means that the Church of Jesus Christ would have to be a community that together knew the heard Word, in order to confess it together. It would have to be! Is it? If it is, where are its knowledge and its confession? And if it is not, why isn’t it? Out text tells us simply to pray for the Church that it may become a church of knowledge and confession. If only we would again just unanimously pray together for that. What does praying mean? Crying, calling, reaching out, that what is after all already true once and for all, that Christ has accepted us, may also be true for us. Church knowledge and Church confession would surely follow upon such a prayer, if it were serious [cf Jas 5:16], as thunder follows lightning. [X] The other thing is this:  That God may “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may have full hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” That means:  From the mutual acceptance of each other as Christ has accepted us, it would have to follow that, in the Church of Jesus Christ, all unhappiness would at least be on the way to joyousness, all discordance would at least be on the way to peace, all distress of our own present would somehow finally be swamped by hope for the presence of the Lord. Are confession and knowledge missing in our church because there is so much unmoved and immovable unhappiness, discordance, and distress among us? Or is there so much rigid unhappiness, discordance, and distress among us, despite our supposed faith, because our church is lacking in knowledge and confession? It will surely be the case that a certain connection exists here. And it is therefore understandable that here, too, it is simply pointed out to us that we have to pray for the Church, to pray that, in its believing, joy and

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peace may increase, that we may—not by the power of our own sentiments, but by the power of the Holy Spirit—share in a full, an overflowing hope. And indeed our prayer will again have simply to be that it may after all not remain so hidden from us that Christ has accepted us to the praise of God. If that does remain hidden from us, then we shall scarcely accept one another; and, as long as we fail to accept one another, how are we supposed to have peace, joy, and hope? They are certainly waiting at our door. And they will be given us, when we seriously pray for the one thing for which one must pray. [XI] The thoughts of many human beings are, at this time, more seriously concerned than previously with the question of what the Church lacks and of what we in the Church lack. Let us note that our text is not speaking of that, but that, where it could speak of it, it simply prays, and also tells us to pray, to the God of patience, comfort and hope, who is the Lord of the Church. If we hear that, and let ourselves be told that we should, may and can simply pray, then it may thereby become clear to us that there is one thing, and the decisive thing, at that, that the Church and we in the Church do not in fact lack today, either: the Word out of which it is born. When we hear that there is a prayer that can achieve much [cf Jas 5:16], then we certainly have the Word of God. Let us keep it, by doing what we are thus urged by the Word of God to do! Perhaps this present time has come upon our church so that we may learn to pray differently and better than hitherto, and thus to keep what we have [cf Rev. 3:11].

Chapter 3 T H E C OV E NA N T O F G R AC E F U L F I L L E D I N C H R I ST A S T H E F OU N DAT IO N O F T H E I N D I S S O LU B L E S O L I DA R I T Y O F T H E C H U R C H W I T H I SR A E L :   B A RT H’ S P O SI T IO N O N T H E J EWS D U R I N G THE HITLER ERA Eberhard Busch

If we wish to rethink how the church is related to Judaism, how might Karl Barth’s struggle with that question during the Nazi era be of help to us? It is obvious that we cannot simply repeat his statements today. Yet turning to Barth would be pointless were we curiously to conclude, as have some commentators, that his protest against anti-Semitism was actually in league with his adversaries. (These commentators, it seems, imagine the Nazi era as a proverbial night on which all cats are gray.) It would, moreover, be of little use to find in Barth some interesting preliminary ideas, to the extent that they agree with our own, in order, where we differ from him, to magnify all the supposed problems in his position that we believe ourselves to have successfully overcome. In neither case would we learn anything, but only confirm our own position. If our encounter with a teacher of the church is to be fruitful, we must enter into a conversation in which we are not only the questioners, but also those who are questioned. Admittedly, such a teacher, whom we may critically question, is only an authority subject to the Word of God. But a proper teacher of the church is indeed an authority under the Word, and his or her question to us, therefore, is whether, in our desire to move forward, we are following God’s Word as attested in the Bible or only our own authority. Certainly, there can also be futile encounters. Could it be that the light Barth believed he glimpsed was merely a flickering ember, too weak to have been instructive even then, let alone worthwhile for today? According to the currently predominant interpretation, not only Barth’s doctrine in those sorry times, but also his conduct must be regarded as deficient. It is this matter that I wish to explore.

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The Contemporary Historical Context To begin with, in this interpretation, a glaring weakness is perceived in Barth’s practical conduct, a weakness also supposedly reflected in his theological teachings. Klaus Scholder interprets the situation as follows:1 In 1933, with his strong emphasis on the First Commandment and on the binding force of God’s Word, Barth took a stand that, though well-intentioned, should have been expressed with less intolerance. While he concentrated on keeping doctrine pure in the church’s pulpits, he saw no problems in the Nazi state itself. Inevitably, he glossed over the significance of “the Jewish question.” Because he managed to implant his views during the German church struggle into the emerging Confessing Church, he himself is principally to blame that this church ignored the Jewish crisis so completely. This is a picture that has been painted with many variations, enriched by two further elements. Some claim that, even after returning to Switzerland (one researcher ascribes this to his desire for a higher salary2), he was still uninterested in taking a stand for the Jews. He worked quietly in his study on his Dogmatics as if Hitler did not exist.3 Others suggest that he was hindered by the Christocentrism of his stance from seeing the Jews as concrete human beings. He regarded them partly as God’s chosen people, but also partly as divinely rejected.4 That Barth alone, not Gogarten, Hirsch, or Althaus, finally drafted a confession of guilt and repentance toward the Jews5 has been interpreted as an admission of his own failure. In light of the sources, however, we can see that such appraisals involve a web of misrepresentations. Let me give some examples. The Civil Service Act of April 1933 contained more than simply a section on the protection of Aryan culture, though that is what we usually read about it. It was especially effective for eliminating critics of the Nazi state. After the act was instituted, Barth asked Rust, the minister for cultural affairs, whether he could continue to teach in Bonn even if he were to exercise the same loyalty to Hitler’s regime that the nationalists had shown toward the Weimar Republic (i.e., none whatsoever).6 Clever interpretation 1.  Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. I (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1977), 546–59. 2. Wolfgang Gerlach, “Theologische Höhenluft über der Wupper,” Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt, November 3, 1985,  16. The slander that twists Barth’s expulsion from Germany into a retreat for dishonorable reasons has its parallels in the Nazi propaganda of that time. 3. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen: Bekennende Kirche und die Juden (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1987), 408. 4. F.-W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Barths (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1967), 266ff. 5.  Cf. Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl und die Juden, 1933– 1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1996), 523–37. 6. According to Hans Prolingheuer, Der Fall Karl Barth: Chronographie einer Vertreibung, 1934–1935 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1982), 233.

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turns this into Barth’s approval of the state, so that he might continue to indulge in his theology undisturbed.7 Again, to take another example, if Barth, in his widely distributed sermon of December 1933 (which he even sent to Hitler), interpreted the Jewishness of Jesus as a nonnegotiable item of faith and emphasized that he regarded both Jews and Gentiles as children of the living God,8 then the commentators conclude that Barth would have remained silent on the Jewish question, had the text not compelled him to do otherwise.9 Scholder supports his allegation that Barth was silent about the Jews in 1933 by citing from a letter,10 without revealing that it asserts: “The solution to the Jewish question that is currently being sought in Germany is an impossibility—humanly, politically, christianly . . . It is necessary that the Evangelical Church make itself heard with a resounding ‘no’ [and] enter the fray in diligent support of the members of the synagogue.” The trouble was, however, that such a church “as things stand simply does not exist.”11 Similarly, another commentator, Krumwiede, seeks to document Barth’s lack of interest in the Jews with a letter dated September 1, 1933, while leaving out its contents.12 The letter states: “The Jewish question is certainly, seen theologically, the key to all that is happening in our time . . . Here, especially, I could not participate, even in the smallest fashion, in National Socialism. Here, if anywhere, one must draw the line which, if crossed, can only be seen as a betrayal of the Gospel . . .”13 What kind of scholarship is this whereby Germans, in dealing with someone who was a victim of the Nazi regime, now claim in retrospect that he was wrongly brought to trial and then expelled from the country because in truth he was a child of that same diabolic spirit? It is indeed true that during the months of his direct involvement in the German church struggle, he fought for the principle that God’s Word is exclusively binding. Why was it that Barth’s central concern was not to repudiate the German Christians—who were completely unacceptable to him—but rather to criticize those within the church who rejected the German Christians? Recent commentators dismiss Barth’s opposition to the more intermediate group as exaggerated and harsh, although its significance at that time was clearly understood not only in the church and among theologians, but also by Thomas Mann, by the SPD-inexile, and even by some synagogues.14 I repeat Barth’s statement: “Such a church as things stand simply does not exist”—not even among those who rejected the

7. For one example out of many, see Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 41. 8.  Karl Barth, “Die Kirche Jesus Christi” (Theologische Existenz heute 5), (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1933). A copy of Barth’s letter to Hitler is in Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. 2 (Berlin: Siedler, 1985), 77. 9. For references, see Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 165f. 10. Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. I, 558 n101. 11. Barth’s letter to Frau Schmidt (January 1, 1934) (Barth-Archiv, Basel). 12. H.-W. Krumwiede, “Göttinger Theologie im Hitler-Staat,” in, JGNKG 85 (1987): 160. 13. Barth’s letter to Frau Dalmann (September 1, 1933) (Barth-Archiv, Basel). 14. References in Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 87–95, 179–80.

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German Christians. In other words, a church failed to exist, which, as an expression of its very being, would speak out in support of the Jews. The really existing church was distorted to the core because it did not support the Jews as the most obvious thing it had to do. How so? In April 1933, Barth wrote about the intermediate group: “The assumption that one could be in agreement with the German Christians’ Preamble (in their affirmation of the Nazi state), yet still be a pure church in opposition to them, . . . will prove to be one of the most deceptive illusions of an era replete with such illusions. Let us leave out the Preamble, totally and forthrightly, and then we will speak further about that which follows.”15 Unlike the mix of Christendom and Nazi doctrine promulgated by the German Christians, a type of “two-kingdoms” doctrine prevailed among the intermediate group opposed to them. Politically, it was supposed, one could be a brown-shirt or a German nationalist, and therefore support the state’s policy toward the Jews, as long as it proceeded “lawfully.” Ecclesiastically, on the other hand, one wished to uphold the church’s confessional stance. Therefore, one would not separate oneself from baptized Jews, even though one viewed them as an alien race. It was completely pointless, in Barth’s judgment, to exit a German-Christian church that segregated itself from baptized Jews, as recommended by Bonhoeffer, in order to set up a free church based on such a two-kingdoms doctrine.16 As long as that doctrine (in its prevailing version) was not repudiated, this church would be founded on a colossal mistake. It would be unable to speak out for any Jews outside the church, since it abandoned them to the devices of the state. That Barth’s stance should indicate a “lack of interest” in the Jews, as commentators constantly repeat, does not seem to rest on sound logic. By attacking this two-kingdoms doctrine head-on—by insisting on the First Commandment and on Mt. 6:24 (“You cannot serve God and mammon”)17—Barth attacked the roots of the church’s political miscarriage of justice. He insisted that the church’s positions toward the Nazi state, its ideology, and its racism, should be defined strictly according to the Word of God, not according to state ideology. It was well understood at the time that this was Barth’s concern. In October 1933 in Berlin, in his first encounter with the newly organized church resistance of the Pastor’s Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund), Barth articulated the crux of his stance: “What does the church have to say about what is happening in the concentration camps? Or about the treatment of the Jews?” The church, he urged, must not remain silent on these questions. For “the one whose duty it is to proclaim the Word of God must address

15. Barth’s letter to Georg Merz, cited in W. Koch, “Barths erste Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Dritten Reich,” in Richte unsere Füße auf den Weg des Friedens (München:  Chr. Kaiser, 1979), 501. 16. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1965), 165–70. Cf. Barth, “Lutherfeier 1933” (THE 4), (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1933), 4–5. 17. See Barth, “Reformation als Entscheidung” (THE 3) (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1933), 12–14; Barth, “Gottes Wille und unsere Wünsche” (THE 7) (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1934), 6.

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such events with what the Word of God declares.”18 That sums up, in a single sentence, the practical thrust of his quarrel with the two-kingdoms doctrine. Again, this was understood at the time. It was not merely his refusal to swear the oath of unconditional allegiance to Hitler, in which his concern was certainly to take seriously God’s Word as exclusively binding; it was those Berlin statements about the treatment of the Jews that led politically to his dismissal from the university, to the Confessing Church’s movement away from him, and finally to his expulsion from Germany.19 From his life in Switzerland between 1935 and 1945, two further episodes may be mentioned. The first took place after the Kristallnacht of 1938. At that time, Barth gave a lecture to the Swiss Protestant Relief Agency, which from then on, and with his assistance, gave support to the racially persecuted. Its motto was Jn 4:22, “Salvation is from the Jews.” In his remarks, Barth stated that in the German “plague of anti-Semitism,” in the destruction of Jewish synagogues and Torah scrolls, in the willful “physical extermination” of the Jews, a profound struggle existed against the God of the Jews. Moreover, because the God of the Jews was also the God of Christians, the church was also under “fundamental attack.” Therefore, the church must urge, “even if no one else does,” that military resistance to the German state “is unconditionally necessary.”20 In the years that followed, Barth persisted with this appeal so outspokenly that the Nazi Foreign Ministry, together with the Swiss government, tried to do everything to silence him.21 Rabbi Geis explained in retrospect: “Who, other than Karl Barth, could have demonstrated more clearly the struggle and courageous resistance that develops from grace?”22 The second episode dates from July 1944. After the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, and after Rabbi Taubes had informed him about the extermination of the Hungarian Jews, Barth pleaded with his government to act.23 In a lecture, his voice quavering, he spoke of a new Golgotha and asked about the presence of God with his suffering servant. We must cling, he said, to the promise of Jeremiah 31. As surely as the fixed order of the heavens will not pass away, so surely will “the offspring of Israel” never “cease to be a nation before me forever” (Jer. 31:36). It was a “proof for the existence of God,” he stated, that any nation murdering the Jews as Pharaoh and his army had done must “inevitably” meet a horrific end.24

18. Eberhard Busch (ed.), Reformationstag 1933: Dokumente der Begegnung Karl Barths mit dem Pfarrernotbund in Berlin (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1998), 69–70, 106. 19. Ibid., 20–6. 20. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, 1938–1945 (Zürich: Zollikon, 1945), 69–107. 21.  See Eberhard Busch, “Der Theologe Karl Barth und die Politik des Schweizer Bundesrats:  Eine Darstellung anhand von unveröffentlichten Akten der Schweizer Behörden,” in Evangelische Theologie 59 (1999): 172–86. 22.  R. R. Geis, Leiden an der Unerlöstheit der Welt:  Briefe, Reden, Aufsätze, ed. D. Goldschmidt and I. Überschär (München: Kaiser, 1984), 240. 23. For more, see the citation in Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 515–17. 24. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, 307–33.

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A statement as blunt as this is still painful for Germans today. The unambiguous clarity of Barth’s position at that time has convinced me, at least, that the difficult passage from volume II/2 of his Dogmatics on Israel and the church (written in approximately 1940) must be interpreted in a different light than has commonly been the case. It should be read in such a way that, in agreement with his critique of the two-kingdoms doctrine, it lays out the theological basis for his political action. In fact, we must examine this passage all the more carefully, because an allegation exists that although Barth fought against political anti-Semitism, he did so as an anti-Judaic theologian.25

The One Elected Community in God’s One Covenant of Grace While drafting that passage, Barth wrote: “Though everything is very difficult and deep, I think I have nevertheless seen a certain light.”26 His text itself is certainly “very difficult.” That is also a function of its subject matter. Even when the enigmatic relationship between Israel and the church becomes somewhat clearer to us, even when we have left behind every form of anti-Judaism and have traveled a long road as Paul did in Romans 9–11, we will still stand before the ultimate mystery of God’s election and confess: “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11: 33). The difficulty also lies in the fact that Barth attempted to say something new on this question, while he was also apparently influenced by dubious traditions and tenacious patterns of thought. Frequently taken up and reworked in modernity, these old thought forms have in some ways influenced his attempt and clouded it as well. One must note, however, how he dealt with them. One difficulty lies in Barth’s manner of expression. The meaning of his statements—complicated, spiraling, and often compressed as they are—only becomes evident when one grasps the precise intellectual structures in which he develops his thought. They force us to understand the author, against some of his own statements, better (in Schleiermacher’s phrase) than he understood himself. This passage, however, remains opaque if one draws only a few quotations from it, whether in the interest of pro- or anti-Jewish–sounding statements, or for the sake of showing the contradiction between the two, wanting to improve them by omitting one side or the other. What is the “certain light” here that Barth believed he had seen? It involves three basic principles, the neglect of which renders his text incomprehensible. The first principle is this: We can arrive at a new theological outlook on the relationship between Israel and the church only if we recognize that God’s Word as attested in Holy Scripture is exclusively binding. At that time, this principle was asserted against the German Christians, against the two-kingdoms doctrine of moderates

25. Cf. Katherine A. Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s “Doctrine of Israel” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 26. Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 441.

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in the church, and also against more longstanding traditions. It also meant breaking with a concept widely ingrained among German Lutherans, who saw this relationship within a larger, abstract “orders of creation” scheme, grounded in the law, and into which every human being is born. These theologians sometimes wished to soften the harshness of the disparity between Jews and Christians, supposedly based in the created order, by referring to the love of one’s neighbor or one’s enemy, or to baptismal waters. Nevertheless, this disparity remained effective as the law of God, namely the disparity between Germans and Jews, that is, between one’s own race and a race of aliens.27 Barth’s first principle categorically rejects this entire conceptual framework. It also breaks with Schleiermacher’s liberal view, according to which Judaism’s relationship to Christianity is no different from that of any pagan religion.28 Under the condition, then, that the Old Testament is to be removed from the Christian Bible,29 this view permits a wide latitude of practices and attitudes. These include evangelism of the Jews as a form of mission to the heathen; the thesis of a historical supersession of the dead Jewish religion by the living Christian one, even a religious dialogue such as one might have, for example, with Buddhism; and a tolerance according to which one must treat those of different faiths at least as human beings. Against these conceptions, it must be said that, from Barth’s point of view, they are not formulated according to the exclusively binding character of God’s Word as attested in Scripture. Here as elsewhere, Barth believed he had learned from Paul that “scriptural proof is everything, so to speak.”30 And therefore, he wrote in 1967, he did not much engage with the voices of modern Judaism (though in fact he did so much more than he let on), because the witness of Scripture gave him “so much to think about and to take in.”31 27. For much greater detail, see ibid., 97–124. 28. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christlicher Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche, vol. 1 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1835), 77–80. 29.  Schleiermacher, Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (Leipzig: G. Reimer, 1910), ¶115. 30. Barth, KD II/2, 284. 31. Barth, Briefe 1961–1968 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 420–1. It is important to understand Barth here correctly. He is not contending that one’s hearing of the Scripture replaces hearing the Jewish testimonies from the past and today. This would be as unacceptable as saying that the church’s necessary attending to the biblical witness rendered its attending to its own utterances over time superfluous. Barth demonstrates his commitment to sola scriptura here by emphasizing that it is even less possible that such hearing of Jewish and churchly voices should ever replace our listening to Scripture as it speaks to us about the Jewish people and the Christian church. Rather, in our listening to Scripture, we perceive the illumining and normative light in which both Jewish and ecclesial statements are to be seen, understood, discussed, and judged. The assumption Barth makes is that there is a continuity not only between the church and the New Testament community, but also between Judaism and biblical Israel, so that their illumination with this light is entirely appropriate and does not alienate them from their calling and identity.

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In short, the criterion—the norm the church needs to assess itself as well as its relation to Judaism—can only be found in the biblical witness. The result of Barth’s “scriptural proof ” is basically to recognize that the church stands with Israel in indissoluble solidarity. This solidarity means that the New Testament is inseparable from the Old Testament, which can never be abandoned. Although Christians cannot understand the Old Testament without the New, neither can they understand the New Testament without the Old. A few quotations will illustrate.32 The church can only be the church, Barth wrote, “in its unity with Israel.” “By its fellowship and solidarity” with Israel, the church indeed “stands or falls.” It is the very One who stands at the center of the church’s faith who binds it to Israel. For “those who believe in Jesus cannot fail to accept the Jews. They must accept them as the ancestors and relatives of Jesus. Otherwise, they cannot accept Jesus the Jew. Otherwise, along with the Jews they reject Jesus himself.” The anti-Jewish reproach that the Jews had rejected Christ was then turned against the church. The church, Barth argued, dare not say: “The Jews crucified Jesus Christ. Therefore, this people has ceased to be the holy people of God. The Christian people has now taken its place. The church is the historical replacement for Israel. With the existence of the church, Israel as such has become a chapter in history. Of this disobedient people it can only be said that God has abandoned it.”33 For Barth, all Christian anti-Judaism is rooted in the idea that Israel is superseded by the church, an idea he completely rejected. Of course, the so-called anti-Judaism of the New Testament seems to pose many difficulties for any argument resting its case on “scriptural proof.” Whether these difficulties placed his position in doubt was something Barth grappled with intensively. He has been reproached for having adopted the New Testament’s antiJudaism instead of just dropping the appeal to Scripture for substantive and critical reasons.34 However, the German-Christian abridgement of the Bible in pursuit of a scripture free of Judaism must not be forgotten. What the reproach overlooks is that abandoning the appeal to Scripture would have validated the GermanChristian insinuation that anti-Judaism was legitimated by the “second” testament. Such substantive criticism is defenseless against the possibility that the excised portions can continually be reclaimed and used to counter its Jewish-friendly outcome. Moreover, even if such a “cleansing” of the New Testament occurs, a host of passages even more harshly critical of Israel can be found in the “first” testament. Indeed, Christian anti-Judaism had focused precisely on those texts, because in them God announces the end, the extermination and destruction of his obstinate people.

32. KD II/2, 223, 318. 33. KD II/2, 319f. 34. L. Steiger, “Die Theologie vor der ‘Judenfrage’—Karl Barth als Beispiel,” in R. Rendtorff and E. Stegemann (eds.), Auschwitz—Krise der christlichen Theologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1980), 82–98.

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Continuity exists between both testaments, Barth observes, in the passages that are critical of Israel. But when taken in continuity, he continues, they can be understood as the nonrevocation of Israel’s covenant.35 The procedure of critical cleansing, by contrast, would always eliminate those sections of the first testament as well. For Barth, this is a liberal procedure that projects images of another god onto the biblical witness. In the modern period, in fact, this procedure has mostly been used against the Jews. Barth sees no point in standing it on its head. For him there is only one way. All the difficult texts must be read in the total context of God’s actions toward his people in judgment and grace,36 as attested in the biblical account. The bold thesis thus took shape in Barth’s mind that the offensive passages are actually indispensable for establishing the twin propositions that God’s covenant with Israel is irrevocable, and that the church’s connection with Israel is indissoluble. Barth’s second principle is this:  The church’s connection with Israel can be indissoluble only if grounded in the core of the Christian faith—namely in the belief that Jesus is the Christ—but then the connection is secure. If the connection were only historical, then it would also be only external and always dissoluble. Yet how can Christ connect Christians with Jews, since belief in Christ is precisely what divides them? Barth looks more closely at the matter. Christ divides Christians from Jews only if he is interpreted as the founder of a new covenant or a new religion. In that case, the birth of Jesus among the Jews is merely accidental, if not indeed the dark background against which he shines forth in radiant light (E. Hirsch). Israel is then of no consequence for the church (R. Bultmann).37 If, furthermore, the church’s confession of Christ is defined as essentially antiJewish, then the entire sweep of church history must be accused of being antiJewish from the New Testament onward. This allegation leads to the zeal with which Christocentric theologians in our day are castigated as anti-Jewish even when they are the ones who emphasize solidarity with Israel. Disreputable theologians of the last 200 years, who based their rejection of the Jews not on the Jewish refusal to believe in Christ, but on their alien religion or race, are meanwhile left unscathed. The unavoidable consequence is that, for the sake of peace, the church’s confession of Christ is watered down. The answer to the question, “Are you he

35. See as early as KD I/2, 566–6. 36. See KD I/2, 567. According to Barth, God’s grace cannot be understood when separated from God’s judgment. Nor can God’s judgment be understood to mean expulsion from the covenant. It is, rather, an event within the covenant. God exercises “grace in judgment” and “judgment in grace.” According to Barth, anti-Judaism does not understand that God’s judgment, bound to grace, takes place on the basis of the covenant. It does not cut off from the covenant. For Barth, this misunderstanding is precisely how external criticism of the supposed New Testament (or, rather, biblical) “anti-Judaism” thinks. In effect, it disputes that the gracious God of the covenant is also the uncompromising judge of his community. 37.  Rudolf Bultmann, “Glauben und Verstehen,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 1 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1958), 333.

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who is to come?” (Mt. 11:3) is quietly pushed off into the future. At the end of it all, Christians no longer know why they are Christians, nor why those Christians who are Gentiles are accounted as members of the covenant people without having to become Jews. The proposition that the church’s connection with Israel is decisive derives from a new understanding of the core Christian confession, which excludes its being used for anti-Jewish purposes. Barth does not ask how the Jews relate to Jesus Christ, but how he relates to them. Although Jews may say no to Christ, Christ says yes to them, and it is the latter, not the former, that is determinative. Barth urges us “to see each other as Christ sees us:  as Jews struggling with the true God, and Gentiles at peace with false gods, yet both united as ‘children of the living God.’ ”38 From this perspective, two points immediately become clear. First, the Christ was necessarily a Jew, for otherwise he could not have opened up the covenant to the Gentiles. Second, Israel’s election was definitively confirmed, for in Christ the only salvation that ever reaches Gentiles is that which comes “from the Jews” (Jn 4:22). The church can only repudiate the idea that it supersedes Israel, Barth argues, when it sees that Jews and Gentiles both stand together through their common foundation in Christ. This connection can be validated, however, only if confessing Christ is taken with new seriousness, not by watering it down. At this point Barth takes up an insight that he highly valued in Calvin.39 Biblical discourse about the old and new covenant, Calvin taught, does not mean two covenants, but a single covenant of grace in two “dispensations.” When Barth interprets God’s reconciling action in Christ as the fulfillment of the covenant, Calvin’s insight is enlarged. Israel belongs within the covenantal fulfillment, Barth submits, bringing a new accent to Calvin’s orientation. Although the two “dispensations” are different, they are inseparable aspects of a single covenant because of the reconciliation accomplished in Christ. The primary content of Church Dogmatics II/ 2 is the working out of this proposal.40 The covenantal fulfillment, God’s eternal election as embodied and revealed in Jesus Christ, is an event with two aspects.

38. Barth, “Die Kirche Jesu Christi” (THE 5), (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1933), 17. 39.  John Calvin, Institutio christianae religionis, 2.9–11, and especially 2.10.2. See also Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion (1924–1925), vol. 2 (Zürich:  Theologischer Verlag, 1990), 381–98. At the beginning of 1933, Barth entered into conversation with the Jewish theologian H. J. Schoeps, but one can understand why Barth did not find his thesis helpful. Schoeps wanted to transfer the concept of the Christ-Revelation, which he had learned from Barth, to the Sinai-Revelation. (See Schoeps, Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit: Prolegomena zu einer systematischen Theologie des Judentums [Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1932].) This move would have departed from Barth’s concern, namely that the church lives with the synagogue “in a fellowship that is not possible between any two other ‘religions.’ ” For that very reason, “What more could the church desire than to be confronted constantly by all that it inherits from the synagogue in all its distinctiveness.” See Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes, 174–9, esp. 179. 40. KD II/2, 101–214.

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The first is God’s free decision of grace. In Jesus Christ, God elects himself for fellowship with a particular people, thereby humbling himself to dealings with sinners. The second is God’s election of these very sinners to be lifted up to fellowship with himself. In the process he executes judgment. He declares an uncompromising “No” to the sinfulness of his elected partner. He negates the essential reason why fellowship with him is blocked. At the same time, God shows mercy to this partner. He counteracts the partner’s culpable lack of readiness with a powerful “nevertheless.” By electing in Christ to be in fellowship with sinners, God takes the judicial condemnation, the offense of the sinner, to himself alone and no one else.41 He takes this burden upon himself in the cross of Jesus Christ, who in this way is both the “Messiah of Israel” and the “hidden Lord of the church.” With that very step, God mercifully elects sinners to salvation and to life in fellowship with himself. The Risen One of Easter demonstrates this merciful judgment. He is at once the “Lord of the church” and the “revealed Messiah” of Israel.42 With the covenantal fulfillment in Christ, Israel’s election is made so definitive that it cannot be revoked even by a breach of covenant on its part. The church must therefore bear witness, “in defiance of all Gentile arrogance, to the eternal election of Israel.”43 Because the covenant is fulfilled precisely through divine grace to sinners, furthermore, the Gentiles, who are all the more sinners, and who previously stood outside God’s just and gracious activity, are no longer excluded from the covenant. This covenantal fulfillment means—and it is fundamental to see this—that for Jews and Christians alike, both sides of God’s reconciliation in Christ, namely the divine judgment and grace, are valid across the board and without any basic difference. The only difference is that Israel is elected first. Precisely because Israel remains elect in Christ, the Gentiles have only one possibility, namely their calling to be joined to the one covenant. Therefore, anyone who would reject the Jews also rejects Christ. Therefore, only by trusting precisely that God’s covenant with Israel is indeed unbroken—as seen through the world’s reconciliation with God in Christ—can Gentile Christians be assured that they, too, are elected by grace. Therefore, only as the Messiah of Israel is Christ also the Savior of the world. The third principle follows. What attests God’s election of himself for communion with sinners and of sinners for communion with himself is the existence of a community. It exists in two “dispensations”—not simply in temporal succession, as Calvin maintained, but rather in a differentiated unity. Joined together by the arc of the one covenant that spans both of them, they are, despite their difference, the one “community of God,”44 says Barth, the one “body”45 of Jesus Christ,

41. Ibid., 177–90; e.g., 177: “God wills to lose that man might gain.” 42. Ibid., 218. 43. Ibid., 225. 44. Note the title of the section in which Barth treats Israel and the church: “The Election of the Community.” 45. KD II/2, 220, 286.

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who fulfills the covenant of grace through reconciliation. The overarching covenant that binds them together into one community of grace is, however, “no neutral vantage point of observation.”46 The church, therefore, may not stray from its appointed place under this arc. Rather, its thinking must always begin and proceed from the place assigned to it. Otherwise, the church would no longer know why it is called into Israel’s covenant, nor why, from a Christian perspective, the covenant with Israel is not terminated, and why the church is inseparable from the Jews in one community. The search for Barth’s “doctrine of Israel” leads to a dead end. His single-minded concern is to recognize the “election of the community.” The covenantal community exists, as he defines it, “according to God’s eternal decree, in two forms: as the people of Israel (in all its vast history, both past and future—ante- and postChristum natum!) and likewise also as the church of Jews and Gentiles (from its revelation at Pentecost to its fulfillment at the return of Christ).”47 Accordingly, Israel is the primary form of God’s community, because it retains its chosen status even after the birth of Christ. Therefore, states Barth, one may not call “the Jewish nation the ‘rejected’ and the church the ‘chosen community’.”48 The one community elected by God takes two definitive forms, so that the church cannot exist by repressing Israel. One difference between the two forms is that Israel is a “people,” of which one usually becomes a member through birth, whereas one becomes a member of the church by being called.49 Furthermore, although the church may well have been revealed at Pentecost, it did not originate there. It already “preexisted” in a hidden form in the Israel of the Old Testament.50 Therefore, as long as Judaism is rooted in this Israel, it cannot seriously be a foreign body to the church, nor the church to Judaism. Judaism is essential to the church, because the church, as the second form of the one community, has been grafted into God’s people. It is essential for the church to have Jews not only around it, but also in it. The presence of Jews in the church was represented by the first apostles, particularly Paul, who were simultaneously Jewish and Christian. They did not abandon Judaism because of their faith in Christ, but remained Jews, loyal and obedient members of Israel, the eternally elect people. Though hidden except to faith in Christ, the reality of this twofold community is not entirely imperceptible. It can be recognized, according to Barth, by its witness to the fulfilled covenant of grace. The covenantal community is not only

46. Ibid., 221. 47. Ibid., 218. 48. Ibid., 219–20. 49.  Terminologically, Barth reserves the term “people” (Volk) for Israel, while he uses “assembly” (ecclesia) as a synonym for the church. The two together he calls “community.” This agrees with the definitions in Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erklösung (1921) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), 381. 50. For example, KD II/2, 234–5.

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represented by the church, as classical dogmatics would have it, but first of all by Israel—and then, along with Israel, by the church as well. Both attest the election of grace, says Barth, by virtue of their very “existence.”51 This idea has not always been well understood. What Barth means is that the significance of their witness is not to be distilled from an abstract phenomenology of Judaism and Christianity, nor from an abstract prescription of what they ought to be. Rather, both offer their witness by virtue of their relative positions, which they receive and actually possess through the fulfillment of the covenant by Christ’s accomplishment of reconciliation. Israel’s position is that of the first chosen, while the church’s position is that of being called into the covenant from among the Gentiles. The communal witness takes on a double form, corresponding to the twofold election of grace. God chooses to be himself in communion with sinners—that is what Israel attests as the first chosen. God chooses sinners to be in communion with himself—that is what Gentile Christians attest as those who were called later. Each, therefore, bears witness to a distinctive aspect of the covenant. Both aspects are to be respected in their uniqueness. Under the arc of the one covenant, each complements the other.52 Both bear witness to God’s gracious election and covenant in significantly different ways, but only so that their testimonies need and complete each other. At the same time, each attests to the other precisely what the other tends to forget. The church, therefore, cannot be a witness to the covenant of grace all alone, but only together with Israel. With their twofold witness, they manifest the community’s unity from different vantage points. Mission to the Jews is thereby excluded as making no sense, since both together are already witnesses to the electing God. They bear witness concurrently vis-à-vis the lost masses who do not belong to the community. In Church Dogmatics II/2, Barth illustrates this lostness by referring to the nationalistic Führer-state.53 They bear their respective witness in particular ways. Since the first chosen are the people (Volk) defined by birth, whereas the church is defined by being called into the one community, the essential task for the church is to carry out its mission precisely among the Gentiles, for they are the ones who are now called to enter the covenantal community.54 In agreement with Franz Rosenzweig, Barth concurs that in its mission to Gentiles, the church’s most immediate task is to convert the heathen in Christendom.55 “Salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4:22) thus takes on a specific meaning. It means

51. On this, see Busch, Unter dem Bogen, 457–8. 52. Barth says “resonates together” (zusammenklingt), KD II/2, 288. 53. Ibid., 341–4. 54. Ibid., 312. 55.  Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, 309ff, especially 317 and 379. In 1928, K. H. Miskotte referred Barth to this “great book,” which brings to light “signs of the unity of God’s one community (in Israel and in the church).” See Karl Barth and K. H. Miskotte, Briefwechsel 1924–1968, ed. H. Stoevesandt (Zürich:  Theologischer Verlag, 1991), 79. Barth asked Miskotte to help him to read this book, which seemed to him difficult to understand (104).

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that salvation now comes from the Jews to the Gentiles so that the latter, through the church’s mission, can enter the one community.56 Jews who believe in Christ, with Paul as their prototype, form the special link from Jews to Gentiles, and from Gentiles to Jews.

The Difference between Jews and Christians in the One Community of God The Jewish and Christian forms of testimony are so diverse, however, that one might doubt whether they can really make one community. Aren’t they so disparate as to make two disconnected religious entities? Can the one covenantal community really come into being without bringing on at least one of two calamities, either the Jewish testimony being suppressed by the Christian testimony or the Christian testimony being absorbed by the Jewish testimony? Barth’s thinking runs very much in another direction. Crucial to the community’s differentiated unity, he argues, is that the two forms render the very same testimony in two different ways. What links them together is precisely the reason for their difference. Without this division of labor, the church would not necessarily need Israel’s testimony. Israel, however, expresses something unique that the Gentile church cannot attest, so that the church would be deficient were Israel not to represent it. Israel’s testimony, however, represents something that cannot put the gospel of Christ into question and that cannot alienate the Gentile church from the gospel, because the difference is rooted in that which binds both testimonies into one.57 The two forms of witness display the covenant’s twofold fulfillment in Christ. As a result, neither form is neutralized, and in their distinction they enhance one another. Recognizing this complementarity is difficult, however, because, according to Barth, a “non-necessary” fact overlays the necessary difference. For the most part, Israel does not recognize that the covenant first made with it has now been fulfilled in Christ. Israel “abstracts” itself from this fulfillment,58 and therefore also from its membership in the one community. According to Barth, however, Christ

56. KD II/2, 289. 57.  “The Jew keeps the question of Christ open.” This is the much-quoted statement of Bonhoeffer, often taken out of context (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethik [Munich:  Chr. Kaiser, 1985], 31). Barth would agree that “Christ” is not a possession that the church can brandish without and against “the Jew.” When the church does that, it fails to perceive the “sign” of the divine goodness and seriousness that “the Jew” signifies for Christianity (Bonhoeffer). For Barth, however, the statement would be unacceptable in the sense often ascribed to it, that the Jewish testimony can help Christianity to deal with the question “Are you the one who is to come?” as if unanswered, in order then to regard the question as quite irrelevant and to seek common ground with Jews at all kinds of other points, such as in the hope for a decisive event yet to come in which the question could be revealed as totally nonessential. 58. KD II/2, 289.

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does not abstract himself from Israel. He is “above all, theirs,” since he has elected to “make his abode in the flesh and blood of Judah and Israel.” “Because the irrevocable promise which was made to them remains in effect, their chosenness and their membership in the one fellowship is confirmed and proven. It is confirmed . . . with regard to their service, which they cannot escape,” as well as “with regard to God’s mercy toward them,” which they “cannot make unreal.”59 This promise gives the church hope that at the conclusion of God’s ways, the non-necessary divide will be overcome. Then, as Barth’s wonderful statement puts it, “the difference within the community will confirm its unity.”60 The church hopes for the advent of this fullness, because it is already a reality in Christ, even if not now manifest in the community on earth. But the church cannot properly hope that the difference will be set aside. For the church lives forever “on nothing else than God’s faithfulness to Israel.”61 As long as the Jews do not realize that they are inseparably linked in one covenantal community by the same divine faithfulness that calls and adds others to them, then the church “must take the lead, confessing the unity of the fellowship of God,” but with the desire “that Israel’s particular service to the one fellowship not cease, but continue in faithfulness.”62 For Barth, the indispensable function of Jewish Christians—precisely in the church, as represented by the original apostles—is to open the eyes of Gentile Christians. The former enable the latter to see that the distinctiveness of Israel’s witness is confirmed by Jewish-Christian obedience to Israel’s being chosen first, before the calling of the Gentiles. When the larger part of Israel rejects the messiahship of Jesus, that invalidates neither its election nor the necessity of its distinctive witness. The larger part of Israel, despite its refusal of Christ, also gives this witness in its own way. By no means, moreover, does belief in Christ relieve Jewish Christians from offering the very witness to Gentiles that is proper to Israel as the first-chosen people. Just what do the two forms of the one community attest? According to Barth, Israel bears witness to the divine judgment, to the promise as heard, and to the humanity that is passing away. The church bears witness to God’s mercy, to the promise as believed, and to the humanity that is yet to come.63 These concepts have caused much offense. Many have thought that here, once again, Israel was regarded as accursed. Israel’s present suffering was thus supposedly fitting. It could only be delivered from its distress by casting off its Judaism and coming into the church. However, this reading is clearly a mistake. Otherwise how could Barth also see Jewish Christians as providing the distinctive witness of Israel? It is very important to see that Barth seeks to read the old texts in a new way. He is seeking to unravel the special scriptural character of the two witnesses,

59. Ibid., 231. 60. Ibid., 228. 61. Ibid., 294. 62. Ibid., 257. 63.  See ibid., II/2, 226–336 (ET, 195–305). Note the titles of the three sections that lay out the difference in the togetherness of “Israel and the Church.”

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especially as expounded in Romans 9–11. The exposition of this text takes up fully three-quarters of his section on the relationship of the church and Israel. And yet it is in Paul’s text itself that one can discover anti-Jewish–sounding thoughts that run counter to the preceding thesis of Rom. 9. For Paul’s central thesis is that the covenant with Israel is unbroken, and that Israel and the church cannot be extricated from one another. With regard to this thesis, the anti-Jewish–sounding statements pose at least three difficult problems for Barth.64 (a) What does it mean when Rom. 9 speaks of God as having mercy and hardening hearts? What does it mean when it says that God appoints some, those called from among the Gentiles, to be “objects of mercy” and others, the elect Israel, to be “objects of wrath”? The meaning of this allocation of mercy and hardening of hearts, strange as it is, is only disclosed, Barth suggests, when one notices that Paul (vv. 10f.) portrays it as typical of how God has always dealt with Israel as his people. Because mercy and hardening both take place inside the structure of the covenant, they are not directed against Israel fundamentally. God’s action should not be understood merely as his reaction to good or bad human conduct. God’s preparation of objects of wrath does not mean the exclusion of people from his covenant. Rather, it signifies a divine obliviousness toward all the natural and moral predispositions of this people. God takes their destiny out of their hands and into his own. In his hardening of hearts and in his mercy, therefore, he is not pursuing two conflicting intentions. He is pursuing only the intention of his

64.  Note that the three divisions that follow are not derived solely from Rom. 9–11. In reflecting theologically on the general relationship between the two biblical testaments, Barth follows an analogous threefold division (KD I/2, 77–133). In dialogue and dispute with contemporary Jewish theologians (ibid., 87), he develops his position as follows: Both testaments say the same thing, but in different ways. The Old Testament speaks (1) of the covenant of God, (2)  of the revelation of the hidden God, and (3)  of the eschatological coming of God. By saying the same thing, the New Testament connects the church “indivisibly” with the people of the Old Testament (ibid., 111). “It can only have to do with their [the church’s] incorporation into the one covenant” (ibid., 115). At the same time, moving beyond the Old Testament, the New Testament attests (1) the fulfillment of the covenant in the incarnation of God, (2) the perfecting of the hiddenness of God in the passion of Christ, which is revealed at Easter as the good news, and (3) the One who has come as the One who is to come. Note further that when presenting God’s gracious election in Christ in II/2, Barth again adopts a threefold pattern: (1) God determines himself to be the covenant partner, (2) God confirms himself as witness to the covenant, and (3) God elects humanity to be his covenant partner. At the same time, he presents his doctrine of election in a yet another threefold pattern: (1) God as the one who graciously elects (as just mentioned), (2) the elect community (Israel/the Church) as his covenant witness, and (3) humanity outside this community as the addressee of the gospel of God’s gracious election. The threefold pattern adopted here (relating to the “elect community” as God’s covenant witness) pertains to the community as attesting (1) God’s covenant action, (2) God’s covenant revelation, and (3) the addressees of God’s action and speaking.

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mercy. The “objects of wrath” are, despite every appearance, embraced by God within the intention “of his merciful will and action.” This peculiar structure of God’s covenantal action, formerly enacted within Israel, is something that, on the basis of the Christ-event, Paul sees as now being repeated, but between different parties: the party of divinely called Gentiles and the party of Jews outside the church. Nothing foreign to Israel really occurs in this repetition. God acts again according to the same pattern that had always governed his conduct toward Israel. These Gentiles, therefore, should not suppose that God’s intention is an anti-Jewish act, as if God was now abandoning Israel. Paul formulated his thesis boldly, however. As such, Gentiles are not Israel, not elect, and therefore, he presumes, not even considered by God as possible objects of wrath. Only the superabundant mercy that God had always shown toward Israel has made it possible for Gentiles now to be called. Paul’s apparently anti-Jewish train of thought may thus be distilled, according to Barth, into this twofold statement: First, if God’s mercy, as now revealed, is so richly bestowed on the Gentiles, who are subject to his rejection in totally other ways, how much more will it be bestowed upon those to whom it was originally promised? Second, if everything depends precisely on God’s mercy toward the fortunate Jews, according to God’s covenantal faithfulness, how much more does everything depend on that same mercy for the hapless Gentiles?65 When Barth says that Israel (outside of and in the church) bears witness to God’s judgment, whereas the Gentile church bears witness to God’s mercy, he means the same thing as Paul. With their different testimonies, both stand within the same covenant of grace and attest it. Israel attests the divine judgment, but not because of a particular sinfulness. As the witness elected to judgment, it is obedient to its relative position as the first chosen. It testifies to the initial aspect of God’s eternal election, his free and gracious election of himself to enter into community with sinners. Israel attests the very judgment on human guilt that it finally does not bear, because God through Christ takes it upon himself. Leo Baeck understood Barth well when he approvingly took up Barth’s reference to John the Baptist’s finger, in Grünewald’s painting, pointing toward the Crucified One, and said with Barth that the movement of this hand is the characteristic of Jewish existence.66 Israel attests God’s judgment in the strict sense, because it attests that belonging to God rests exclusively on his free grace, excluding every conceivable worthiness or entitlement. Israel represents what Gentiles and Gentile Christians either do not know or always seem to forget. For by its very existence, Israel testifies against natural theology with its assumption of humanity’s natural openness toward God.67 What Israel attests is complete dependence upon God’s free election. 65. KD II/2, 254, 256. 66. Leo Baeck, “Die Existenz des Juden: Lehrhausvortrag am 30. Mai 1935,” in Leo Baeck Institute Bulletin 81 (1988): 1. 67. According to Barth, the Jews testify to Gentiles that they are not elect, that one must be Jewish or belong to them in order to be elect (III/3, 255). This is, he thinks, the thing about the Jews that bothers the Gentiles (cf. KD I/2, 567). Rosenzweig expressed a similar

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If Gentile Christianity is the witness to God’s mercy, then that is because it was elected last. In its relative position as subsequent in God’s plan, it attests the second aspect of election. Because of God’s decision to be in fellowship with sinners, in other words, even those originally excluded from his election can in fact enter into fellowship with God out of pure mercy. For the church not to misunderstand the promise of mercy in a spirit of triumphalism, however, Israel’s testimony must still be heard. God’s covenanting action excludes every human claim to suitability for membership in this covenant. But it does not exclude God’s mercy, so that even the non-elect are gathered in. Just as Israel testifies to “knowing the human reason for God’s suffering,” which is hidden from the Gentiles, and which excludes all human entitlement to covenant membership, so the host of those elected later testifies to the “divine meaning” of God’s judgment in the cross of Christ, namely that God is merciful despite all human ungodliness and wickedness.68 The church is dependent on Israel’s witness. At the same time, it must comfort the Jews with its own witness. The witness of the church is a living reminder to the Jews of what they themselves must not forget as they bear witness to the Gentiles against natural theology, namely that mercy is valid for everyone. The witness of the church is valid, therefore, only as it brings comfort to Israel. (b) What does it mean in Rom. 10 where it says that Israel is a disobedient nation that strives for righteousness but does not attain it, as opposed to the Gentiles, who attain it without striving for it?69 The key lies, Barth suggests, in seeing that Paul’s talk of Israel’s transgression is “directed to the church.” Paul’s point is to place the church in solidarity with Israel. The church is to recognize that its own calling rests on God’s mercy alone. The church is expected to understand that what Paul states here is not something “against Israel.” Rather, it is “for the electing God, and, indirectly, for the elected people and in its election . . . unfaithful Israel as well.”70 But what does Paul regard as the “transgression”? He speaks of it in connection with Isa. 65. It is certainly not a novelty in Israel, confirmed only in the rejection of Christ. It is not a matter of Israel listening to God’s Torah or not striving sufficiently to follow it. As the people of the covenant, they are obligated to follow God’s law. The transgression consists of being inattentive, in this legitimate pursuit, to the law within its own law. According to Paul, judgment rests on gracious election (which is still the source of its life) and not on some alien demand. Therefore, this disregard of Christ is not necessary to being a Jew, for a Jew who recognizes God’s mercy in Christ confirms his being a Jew and does not renounce it. Furthermore, since this failing does not pertain to the law, but to its underlying divine mercy, it cannot invalidate the mercy shown to the disobedient. The divine mercy toward Israel cannot be abolished, despite its rejection of Christ (and in him reconciliation) as

thought: This people “must . . . remain always alien to and an offence to world history.” Cf. Der Stern der Erlösung, . 68. KD II/2, 227, 229. 69. More precisely, the text under discussion is Rom. 9:30–10:21. 70. KD II/2, 267.

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the fulfillment of the covenant. Therefore, even its rejection of Christ is an active “confirmation of its election” and a glorification of God’s faithfulness.71 Therefore, not even the church can know what transgression means at this point if it does not first know, with Israel, of God’s mercy. Finally, therefore not even the church can be certain of this mercy without being in solidarity with Israel. Barth thus reformulates Paul’s idea as follows. Israel attests the Word of God as heard, whereas the church attests it as believed. Israel’s transgression does not, Barth underscores, pertain to its hearing the instruction of God. By hearing the divine instruction, the Jews show themselves to be the first elected. As careful hearers of God’s Word, they accord with the Word that always precedes the witness of the one community. By signifying the primacy of the Word, the Bible is, in both its parts, “a product of the Jewish spirit.”72 Since hearing always precedes faith, therefore, a church that does not emulate Israel’s appointed service will be a church whose talk becomes “loose speculation.” Whether “the Israelites’ (‘Jewish!’) attention to sentence, word and letter” continues in the church is a matter by which the church stands or falls,73 for “the promise must be heard in order to be believed.”74 After reading a book by Rabbi Cohn of Berlin in 1934, Barth wrote to him, saying that for both the church and the synagogue, the basic issue was a new listening to God’s Word. Barth asked him, however, why he appeared to call the Jew “more decisively to himself than to his God.” He added: “Is that already the question of a Christian theologian?” For the Christian theologian necessarily asks about faith’s essential and “total confidence” in the complete mercy of God.75 Furthermore, faith’s dependence on hearing emerges especially in those who are called later, for the Gentiles enter the covenantal community only by God’s great mercy. By relying in faith on the mercy extended through Christ, these Gentiles attest that the hearing that precedes and the believing that follows belong together. And again,

71. Ibid., 281, 285. 72.  Ibid., 566. Elsewhere, Barth says that as the “librarians of the church” (Augustine), the Jews are not the antiquarians, but rather “the constantly self-renewing realization and exposition of that human being” who, according to those books, is the counterpart in God’s covenant (III/3, 240; ET) 73. KD II/2, 257. If it did not listen to the Jewish witness, the church would “have nothing more to say to the world.” 74. Ibid., 263. 75. Ibid., 261. On January 28, 1934, Cohn had sent Barth his book, Aufruf zum Judentum, and stated in the accompanying letter that in synagogue circles, Barth’s writings were being read with lively interest. The letter, together with Barth’s response of February 2, 1934, is found in the Barth-Archiv in Basel. What is at stake here becomes clear when we recall Franz Rosenzweig’s remark that “Christian faith is ‘faith in’ ” as opposed to Jewish faith, which concerns “not the content of a testimony, but the product of a begetting. The one who is begotten as a Jew testifies to his faith in that he continues the procreation of the eternal people” (Der Stern der Erlösung, 379–80). Barth’s question to Cohn apparently concerns this view.

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the Jews within the church attest to Gentiles that the difference between hearing and believing does not inhere in Judaism alone. (c) What does it mean in Rom. 11 when Paul argues that Israel as a whole has not been rejected from God’s covenant by pointing to the existing “remnant”? This remnant is that segment of the Jews who are now in the church together with those Gentiles who are called. With its faith in Christ and its consequent membership in the church, this remnant does not lose its membership in Judaism. It stands in continuity with the believers of the first testament. According to Barth, it would indeed be anti-Judaism if Gentile Christians were to see this connection as irrelevant. They would thereby be ashamed of the church’s Jewish origin. Since Jews who believe in Christ do not forfeit their membership in Israel, reconciliation in Christ does not mean renunciation of Israel. Reconciliation in Christ is the verification of Israel’s gracious election, not a “new revelation” over against it. This verification means, however, that the remnant stands “for the totality of Israel.” It is “the clear proof ” that “God’s election is not simply transferred to the Gentiles from Israel, departing from Israel as its original object.” The remnant confirms the “election of Israel.”76 If, however, Gentile Christians belong together with those Jews who, even as Christians, remain part of Israel, then such Gentiles also belong to Israel beyond the church. And if God has not simply transferred his election from Israel to the Gentiles, then Gentile Christians cannot themselves become Israel and thereby replace it. They can only be grafted onto it. Barth interprets Paul’s olive tree metaphor as follows: The (temporary) pruning of the olive tree’s natural branches and the grafting on of wild shoots does not imply that the Gentile church supplants Israel. It enters the place that belongs to Israel. The gospel of God’s mercy is not taken away from Israel, to which the place belongs. Rather, Israel’s vacating of its place allows the originally nonelect Gentiles to be implanted where they do not by nature belong. There, the Gentiles are so dependent upon on God’s mercy “that they themselves would have been discarded by God, had he truly discarded Israel.”77 Instead of conducting a mission to the Jews, Christianity should stand in alliance with them and attest the gospel among the heathens.78 Since Israel outside the church does not acknowledge that its gracious election is fulfilled in Christ, and thus also that it is connected inseparably to the church (as the church must confess its connection to Israel), the anomaly certainly “disturbs” the unity of God’s community.79 The resolution of this disturbance lies in God’s future, which Paul envisages when he asserts that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26). Barth reads this verse together with the following one, that God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all (Rom. 11:32).80 Although in God’s future Israel will “enter into” the church, that does 76. KD II/2, 298, 301. 77. Ibid., 313. 78. Ibid., 312. 79. Ibid., 289. 80. As the conclusion to the entire argument of Rom. 9–11, just before Paul breaks into his doxology to God’s mysterious ways, Rom. 11:32 is, for Barth, the key to the whole. He

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not mean, according to Barth, that Israel’s appointed precedence over the newly believing Gentile Christians will be set aside, or that Israel will be dissolved into the church.81 Christian anti-Judaism will never be justifiable. What the salvation of all Israel suggests is that the larger portion, like the remnant and united with it, will confess precisely the mercy of Israel’s God in Jesus Christ, seeing in this mercy the basis for the covenantal interconnection between Jews and Gentile Christians. According to Barth’s interpretation of Rom. 9–11, what Israel attests is the unbelieving humanity that is passing away, whereas what the church attests is the believing humanity that is coming. However, why, according to Paul, should there be this reduction in God’s elect people to the small remnant, as seen, for example, in Elijah’s isolation, or indeed in the pruning of the olive tree’s natural branches? It is precisely by this reduction, Barth suggests, that Israel attests the humanity that is passing away. Recall Martin Buber’s words in 1933 regarding a Jewish cemetery, which Barth knew and may well have had in mind: “As I stood there, all the death washed over me, all the ashes, all the silent misery. I lay on the ground, fallen like these stones. But I was not revoked.”82 Referring to the Jewish cemetery in Prague, Barth once said that it contains “objectively more true gospel” than all the unbelieving (and much Christian) “goyim-wisdom.”83 Note that Israel does not pass away; it remains elected. Yet it attests the humanity that is perishing. It bears this testimony in the midst of a Gentile world that presumes it can establish itself in the godless idiocy of “unending time.”84 It is this world that wants to push Israel, which disturbs it, out of the way. A Gentile Christianity that does not heed Israel’s witness will fall back into sheer paganism. It is as the first elect, and not because of a divine punishment, that Israel attests the God who, in his gracious election,

understands this statement together with Jesus’s word about the first being last and the last being first (ibid., 330–31). It describes the topsy-turvy law of grace in God’s covenantal activity. Because God accepts those who are lost, and because the Gentiles are indeed those who are most lost, the last will be first. Moreover, because accepting the lost Gentiles reveals that the (enduring!) benefit of the Jews’ election is based solely upon the fact that God accepts the lost, the first are indeed also the last, without loss of the “Jewish rights of the firstborn.” 81. Ibid., 309–13. 82. Martin Buber, “Kirche, Staat, Volk, Judentum: Zwiegespräch im Jüdischen Lehrhaus in Stuttgart am 14. Jan. 1933” (with K. L. Schmidt), in Theologische Blätter 12 (1833): 257– 74. Note that in the final part of KD I/2, 77–133 (as mentioned in n65 above), Barth was undoubtedly thinking of Buber’s Der Kommende: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte des messianischen Glaubens, vol. I (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1932). 83. KD II/2, 260. 84.  Cf. KD III/2, 679. According to Barth, the Old Testament testifies to the limitation of created life (ibid., 715ff.). In the New Testament, this testimony is then intensified (ibid., 728ff.) In the “word of the cross,” death itself (as suffered in our place, allowing our “old man” to pass away) takes center stage as the accursed death. Only against this background does Easter hope becomes visible.

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lets the disobedient “pass away, so that they can receive a real future.” Allowing humanity to pass away is therefore a blessing from God, and Israel’s testimony to this passing away is “praise to the mercy of God.”85 However, when Israel does not realize that it is already “the people of the risen Jesus Christ,” it “brings sorrow on itself.”86 For then it gives its witness, which will certainly continue, “in abstraction.” For what its own witness objectively attests is the hopeful “new, gracious beginning” that has dawned in the resurrection of Christ. From a different vantage point, this new beginning is also what the Gentile church attests. It attests the coming humanity whereby the “nobodies” who have no place in God’s original election will also be wondrously elected and called. The inclusion of the excluded Gentiles manifests the power of Christ’s resurrection. It discloses a “real future” for the humanity that is passing away. As the church of the resurrection testifies to the coming humanity, it does not move away from Israel, for it will “want to live by nothing else than God’s grace directed toward Israel.” It thus declares itself for “the unity of humanity which is passing away and which is coming, according to the will of divine mercy.”87 It declares itself for the unity of the enlarged community of God. And so it awaits God’s future, in which all Israel will confess this unity. Did not the Jew Franz Werfel also speak of this expectation? “How much longer will this Hell reign here on Earth / with blind hate in the South, West, East and North? / Until the Jews become Christians / and until the Christians have become Jews.”88 This passage recalls the promise of Rev. 21: “And God will dwell in them, and they will be his people.” Somewhat more determinately than Werfel, Barth envisioned the same plurality. In the multitude united with God, consisting in the Jewish people and those who come from the Gentiles, unmixed and yet inseparable, he foresaw the one community of God.89

85. KD II/2, 286. 86. Ibid., 289. 87. Ibid., 294. 88.  Franz Werfel, “Delphisches Orakel,” in Das lyrische Werk, ed. A. D. Klarmann (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1967), 527. 89.  Translated by James Seyler and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, PhD. Edited by Darrell L. Guder and George Hunsinger.

Chapter 4 T H E J EW I SH S A M A R I TA N :   K A R L B A RT H’ S E T H IC A L C R I T IQU E O F T H E V Ö L K I S C H   C H U R C H Faye Bodley-Dangelo

In Church Dogmatics I/2, §18, “The Life of the Children of God,” Karl Barth describes the ethical dimensions of theological activity. He orients his discussion around the question of the identity of the neighbor and the obligation the neighbor imposes upon the dogmatician. Barth prepared this part-volume for publication shortly after a period of time in the early 1930s when he was immersed in public opposition to the German Christian movement.1 Barth does not explicitly reference that polemical context in §18 (although he does so elsewhere in the first volume of Church Dogmatics), and so it has received little attention in the literature on his role in the Confessing Church.2 My intent is to expose the subtle ways in which Barth’s depiction of the neighbor speaks to that 1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. T. Thomson and Harold Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956). Page references to I/2 appear in parenthesis within the text. This part-volume was completed in the summer of 1937 and published the following year. 2.  Section 18 is relatively neglected in scholarship on Barth. Scholars who attend carefully to the ecclesial and political context of Barth’s ethical work in the 1930s, specifically as it concerns his anti-Semitism, have not looked carefully at §18 (see, for example, Timothy J. Gorringe, Karl Barth: Against Hegemony [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999] and Carys Moseley, Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013]). The most sustained treatments of §18 are found in Paul D. Molnar, “Love of God and Love of Neighbor in the Theology of Karl Rahner and Karl Barth,” Modern Theology 20, no. 4 (October 2004):  567–99; David Clough, Ethics in Crisis:  Interpreting Barth’s Ethics (Burlington, VT:  Ashgate, 2005), 84ff; and John N. Sheveland, Piety and Responsibility: Patterns of Unity in Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Vedanta Desika (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 59–110. However, these assessments do no situate the paragraph in its sociopolitical context and so are not attentive to the ways in which it gestures to that antiSemitic rhetoric. I give an extended analysis of §18 in its polemical context in the first chapter of “Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth’s Gender Trouble” (Th.D. diss., Harvard Divinity School, 2016).

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polemical context. I will argue that Barth subverts key terms in the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the German Christians by strategically locating the neighbor within a sacramental framework that effaces the ethnic and religious boundaries of the visible church.

Orders of Creation and the Völkisch Church In §18, Barth explicitly rejects an “orders of creation” framework for ethical obligation as part of his broader resistance to natural theology. The orders of creation, a Lutheran doctrine formulated in the nineteenth century, gained momentum as a viable ethical framework in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was evoked by German Christians in their effort to situate the Jewish “foreigner” outside the sacramental life of a völkisch church. Its various iterations enshrined Luther’s law and gospel dialectic in a dualist ethic that demarcated the will of God knowable in creation from the will of God revealed in Christ. All human beings were said to exist in a framework of universal orders, institutions, or ordinances operative prior to and independent of belief in Christ or membership in the church. These included the orders of nation, race, family, and vocation. God’s law and commandments for all people were expressed through these, and they were understood to supply stable reference points for the organization of human life and the configuration of ethical responsibility. This widely appreciated framework was employed by some of Barth’s closest theological allies. In the early 1930s, the German Christian movement embraced nationalistic and anti-Semitic appropriations of this framework, especially as found in the theologies of Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch. In these theologies, the Volk was the primary order (Ordnungen) and was considered an indispensable form of human social life. The Volk was conceived as an organized biological and spiritual community, sharing common blood, common history, and common destiny. The German Christian movement appropriated these theologies in its effort to ally itself with the Volk ideology of National Socialism. The movement’s guiding principles for the reorganization of the German Protestant Church declared race, folk, and nation to be God-given orders of creation. These orders were said to be God’s law for the German people, and Jews were cast as alien blood constituting a grave threat to an authentically German Christian faith and family.3 Barth will echo this rhetoric in §18, but toward subversive ends.

3.  Jonathon David Beeke, “Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms, Law and Gospel, and the Created Order:  Was There a Time When the Two Kingdoms Were Not?” Westminster Theological Journal 73 (2011):  191–214; Richard Higginson, “Bibliography:  The Two Kingdoms and the Orders of Creation in 20th Century Lutheran Ethics,” Modern Churchman 25, no. 2 (1982):  40–3; Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler:  Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Jean-Loup Seban, “The Theology of Nationalism of Emanuel Hirsch,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 7.2 (1986): 157–76.

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Barth was a prominent leader of the countermovement, the Confessing Church. In 1933–34, tensions between the Confessing Church and the German Christian movement came to a head over the Aryan paragraph. The German Christians sought to purify a völkisch church from degenerate moral and spiritual foreign influence with this piece of legislation, which would have dismissed and barred from clergy and church office anyone who was not of Aryan descent, anyone whose parents or grandparents were Jewish or who were married to Jews. The Confessing Church opposed the Aryan paragraph and used it as a rallying point around which it successfully mobilized public opposition to the more extreme efforts of the German Christians to remove all Jewish influence from the church.4 For my own argument, it is especially notable that the debate over the Aryan paragraph hinged on the efficacy of baptism and its relationship to racial and sexual differences. Arguments for the exclusion of Jews from church office relied on the distinction between the universal, invisible church and the visible church. In the visible church, it was argued, such distinctions as race and sexual difference remained intact, grounded in divine ordinances established in creation. Race was to be privileged over sacramental efficacy, for race was to determine one’s place within any specific national church. It was argued that converted Jews belonged in separate congregations, and that an authentic church for the German people should be based upon blood and not baptism.5 While the Confessing Church opposed the Aryan paragraph, many of its members appreciated this nationalist völkisch theology and its inherent anti-Semitism. Some leaders of the movement considered the presence of Jewish Christians in the church to be a hurdle for its German constituents, and they proposed that officeholders of Jewish ancestry spare their fellow Christians by declining prominent positions in the church. Against such colleagues, Barth stood out for his outspokenness against compromising positions over anti-Semitic policies.6

4.  Shelley Baranowski, “Confessing Church and Antisemitism:  Protestant Identity, German Nationhood, and the Exclusion of the Jews,” in Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (eds.), Betrayal:  German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999), 90–109; John W. Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner:  The Formation and Dissolution of a Theological Alliance, 1916–1936 (New  York:  Peter Lang, 2001), 141–9; Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1996). On scholarly efforts within the German Christian movement and among German university faculty to remove Jewish influence from Christian theology, liturgy, and Scripture, see Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 5.  Baranowski, “Confessing Church and Antisemitism,” 101–2; Bergen, Twisted Cross, 68–9, 86; Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner, 145–6. 6.  Baranowski, “Confessing Church and Antisemitism,” 102; Bergen, Twisted Cross, 90; Frank Jehle, Ever Against the Stream:  The Politics of Karl Barth, 1906–1968 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 46–55, 143–9.

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Barth’s public opposition to anti-Semitism and National Socialism has been well documented, and has been both praised for its prophetic character and criticized for its inadequacy.7 My intent is not to defend Barth against these criticisms. Rather, I want to note the public critical stance he takes in order to make explicit the perhaps too subtle ways in which he subverts the rhetoric of Volk, nation, and blood by locating the neighbor in a sacramental framework that undermines the distinction between visible and invisible church and unsettles the seemingly fixed character of ethnic and religious differences.

The Outer Sign of an Inner Reality In §18, Barth uses the two commandments—the love of God and the love of neighbor (Mt. 22.37ff; Mk 12.29ff; Lk. 10.27ff )—to structure his discussion of how life ought to be lived in conformity with God’s revelation in Christ. He is particularly concerned with the identity of the neighbor and with the sort of obligation the neighbor imposes upon the self. His reasons for refusing to locate the neighbor within the orders of creation are part of his broader rejection of natural theology. In §18 and other publications of this period, he argues that the orders of creation separate law from gospel by locating divine mandates for human life in sociohistorical constants that can be accessed apart from Scripture’s witness to God’s revelation. Such an ethical framework assumes a human capacity to discern God’s will in social constants and to act in accord with it. It is an ethic of self-justification, an ethic that Barth considers to be ultimately self-obsessed and self-loving in orientation. Within such a framework, the neighbor is the embodiment of law without the grace of the gospel, the object of self-loving efforts at self- justification.8 We will soon see these criticisms in play in Barth’s reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

7.  See Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, “Theological And Political Motivations of Karl Bath in the Church Struggle (1973),” in Andreas Pangritz and Paul S. Chung (eds.), Theological Audacities:  Selected Essays (Eugene, OR:  Pickwick, 2010), 190–222; Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945 (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1996); Jehle, Ever Against the Stream, 46–60; Mark R. Lindsay, Barth, Israel, and Jesus: Karl Barth’s Theology of Israel (Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2007), 15–35. Jehle and Lindsay gathered statements from private correspondence, discussions, and public speeches in which Barth expressed outrage at the treatment of the Jews. Barth’s position toward the Jews and his doctrine of Israel continues to be a topic of discussion and debate. For a review of this literature, see Katherine Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s “Doctrine of Israel” (University Park:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), and Lindsay, Barth, Israel, and Jesus, 15–36. 8.  Barth expresses these criticisms in I/2, 404–6, The First Commandment as an Axiom of Theology (1933), Theological Existence Today! (1933), Barmen Declaration (1934), Nein! (1934), and “Gospel and Law” (1935).

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Barth transposes his discussion of ethical obligation into a reformed sacramental framework that emphasizes the role of divine agency in the efficacious communication of grace through mundane media. Playing on the language of “order,” Barth locates the neighbor within an “order of praise” (424), an “order of humiliation” (394), an “order of grace” (409). The neighbor represents a revelatory event that confronts the self with the gospel and, in so doing, enables obedience to the law that the neighbor embodies. My neighbor is one human being among the many, who becomes the material medium of God’s self-disclosure to me: one who functions both as a mirror reflecting my misery and need and as a sign pointing to the incarnate Christ, who both shares and meets that need. Evoking the two commandments to structure this event, Barth identifies the love of God as the inner and hidden reality, of which the love of neighbor is the outer sign and external manifestation (368–71). These two commandments are not pure law imposed upon the self, but rather the response required of one who has already been made the beneficiary of the gospel’s gift. The love of God and of neighbor is the human response to an enabling divine revelatory act. Barth discusses first the inner reality (371–401) before turning to its outer sign (401–54). Barth depicts the command to love God as a prescription for a ceaseless search for God—a search in need of constant divine redirection. Obedience to this command can only be the response to a preceding and enabling divine act of love, for if we are to know the divine object of our love, and if we are to be able to love in turn, then we must first be confronted by the Word in an event that interrupts our self-loving and self-justifying pursuits and redirects us toward Christ. The love of God is evoked when we are met by the revelatory divine Word, under the guise of a creaturely medium—when we are met by the person of Christ as he confronts us in the various media that witness to him. The Word confronts us as a mirror that reflects an unsettling truth about ourselves: we are utterly unworthy and incapable of earning God’s love or of properly loving God in turn, yet nevertheless we are loved. Only as we become recipients of this gospel are we confronted with the law to love God in turn. This gift of divine love evokes in recipients both gratitude and the desire for God. It redirects us out of self-love and launches us on a search for the proper object of love. Since the love of God requires a repeated redirecting of the self, our efforts to fulfill the first commandment are propelled by this need and hope for gracious divine redirection. Barth thus prescribes for the would-be lover of God a ceaseless activity, fueled by desire and hope: an activity that does not wait for assurance that it has been given its proper direction, but seeks in blind hope of being led to, found, and redirected by Christ, again and again. The endless activity of dogmatics ought to be this sort of pursuit. Barth depicts the neighbor as the outer sign, the material and tangible reference point, toward which the lover of God directs his or her seeking activity. He configures the neighbor as the medium of a dialectally structured, revelatory event. The neighbor first confronts the self as gospel, and then as law. The neighbor renders the gift of reflecting the self ’s need and pointing to Christ, who meets that need. This gift imposes an obligation upon the beneficiary to respond in kind by coming to the aid of the other.

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In his re-description of the Lucan pericope of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25–35), Barth secures a biblical template for his construal of the neighbor as the embodiment of both gospel and law (417–19). Jesus tells the parable in order to help a lawyer properly identify the neighbor who is to be the object of the second commandment. Barth dramatizes a scene in which Jesus redirects the self-justifying search of this lawyer of Israel by confronting him with the figure of the Good Samaritan. Jesus’s parable holds up a mirror in which the lawyer is to see himself and his neighbor, and we might hear in Barth’s re-description of the Lucan pericope his own invitation to his Christian German readers to look with him into this mirror:  to see themselves in this self-justifying lawyer and in the injured Israelite of the parable, and to see Christ, their benefactor, in the guise of the ethnic other. The lawyer who comes to Jesus is confident of his place among the visible community of God. In Barth’s words, he is “a doctor of the Law in Israel.” “Outwardly and in appearance, by his very calling, he belongs to the community of Yahweh,” and claims to be a prominent member of it, a participator in its divine promises, and one who knows and is able to recite the commandments of God (417). The lawyer recites the two great commandments as the means by which he might inherit eternal life. But by asking Jesus who his neighbor is, the lawyer shows that he is not capable of fulfilling these commands, for he does not know the identity of his neighbor, and so he does not know the identity of God. Thus the lawyer approaches Jesus as one who seeks but does not know for whom he is seeking. While he directs his search toward Jesus, he does not recognize Jesus as his neighbor—as that gracious benefactor whom he ought to love. He remains preoccupied with justifying himself and thus caught within his own solitary sphere of isolated self-seeking and self-discovery. Jesus responds to this misdirected inquiry by telling a parable that holds up a mirror to the lawyer, a parable that reflects the lawyer’s own neediness and gestures to the true neighbor who stands right before him. “The man who fell among thieves” lies half-dead and neglected, but is attended to “without hesitation and with unsparing energy” by the Samaritan. It is this Samaritan benefactor who is a neighbor to the fallen man: “For the lawyer, who wants to justify himself and therefore does not know who is his neighbour, is confronted not by the poor wounded man with his claim for help, but by the anything but poor Samaritan who makes no claim at all but is simply helpful. It is the Samaritan who embodies what he wanted to know. This is the neighbour he did not know” (418). The scene between the Samaritan and the distressed Israelite effects a surprise reversal and reorientation of the lawyer’s search for self-justification (if he has ears to hear), for he must recognize himself as the one who is most in need: All very unexpected: for the lawyer had first to see that he himself is the man fallen among thieves and lying helpless by the wayside; . . . above all, he has to see that he must be found and treated with compassion by the Samaritan, the foreigner, whom he believes he should hate, as one who hates and is hated by God.

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He will then know who is his neighbour, . . . He will then know the second commandment, and consequently the first as well. He will then not wish to justify himself, but will simply love the neighbour, who shows him mercy. He will then love God. (418, italics added)

The neighbor whom the lawyer is commanded to love is one who, like this Samaritan, confronts him with a gift that he desperately needs but cannot acquire through his own efforts. This gift requires an imitative response, for in another surprise turn in the narrative, Jesus gives a challenge to the lawyer, instructing him to “Go and do thou likewise”: be a benefactor to another, imitate the Samaritan, and thus be one who brings “comfort, help, the Gospel to someone else” (419). It is surprising, Barth tells us, that Jesus does not, at this juncture, impose the law upon the lawyer by repeating the two commandments. Without waiting for the lawyer to properly recognize his neighbor, Jesus summons him to act and imitate the merciful acts of that Samaritan (whom he thinks he should hate) and, in so doing, to seek and find his neighbor. Why would Jesus demand this sort of merciful activity of one who does not even know who his neighbor is, one who is incapable of recognizing himself in the mirror held up to him? Barth delivers the answer in a final narrative twist. Jesus, the one who delivers the summons, is the gracious benefactor who redirects the lawyer to his neighbor. Barth writes: “On His lips the ‘Go and do thou likewise’ is only Law because it is first Gospel. The good Samaritan, the neighbour who is a helper and will make him a helper, is not far from the lawyer . . . He stands before him incarnate, although hidden under the form of one whom the lawyer believed he should hate, as the Jews hated the Samaritans” (419). Barth’s reading of the parable provides the template for his subsequent exposition of the second commandment. The Samaritan and the fallen Israelite function as figurative representations of the two sides of a dialectical event in which the neighbor confronts the self. The Samaritan represents the benefit the neighbor confers, while the fallen Israelite foregrounds the neediness that the neighbor embodies. Together they point to the human misery and suffering that the incarnate Christ shares with us, and to his gracious saving activity on our behalf (428–9). In my neighbor, I am confronted with a benefactor who confers a gift that exposes my own neediness and sinfulness and reminds me of the redemptive activity of the Christ. This gracious conferral imposes upon me the obligation to play the neighbor in turn. In this capacity, embodying both gospel and law, the neighbor is a sacramental event in which “I am actually placed before Christ,” for the neighbor faces us as “the bearer and representative of the divine compassion” (429): “Whether willingly and wittingly or not, in showing it [my need], my neighbour acquires for me a sacramental significance. In this capacity he becomes and is a visible sign of invisible grace, a proof that I, too, am not left alone in this world, but am borne and directed by God” (436). This sign has its efficacy through a divine revelatory act, and not through anything that I do or that my neighbor does. It beckons me to conform myself to my benefactor (421). I am in constant need of this summons, and so am in

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constant need of seeking and finding my neighbor, and my neighbor shares this same need for a neighbor. Barth foregrounds the humbling effects of this shared fellowship with the suffering of Jesus: “our fellow-man in his oppression, shame and torment confronts us with the poverty, the homelessness, the scars, the corpse, at the grave of Jesus Christ” (428). I am allowed no sense of superiority over the other, for I must recognize myself in this mirror (430–1). Gesturing to the despised status of the Good Samaritan (and of Jesus), Barth tells his readers they will not like what they see of themselves in this mirror and will want to reject the existence of the neighbor who exposes this truth: This neighbour will cause me a really mortal headache. I  mean, he will seriously give me cause involuntarily to repudiate his existence and in that way to put myself in serious danger. In face of this neighbour I certainly have to admit to myself that I would really prefer to exist in some other way than in this coexistence. I would prefer this because from this neighbour a shadow falls inexorably and devastatingly upon myself. (431)

To love one’s neighbor is therefore to submit to the humbling order that the neighbor imposes upon oneself (434–5). My responsibility for my neighbor arises from this shared need, for I cannot know if my neighbor is also aware of the grace of which she or he has reminded me. Thus, Barth argues, I must expect to find in my neighbor one who shares with me the continual need of this reminder of God’s grace. I must therefore play the part of one who hopes in turn to become a sacramental sign to another, a witness of Christ’s compassion in the world (438). The performance that Barth now prescribes embraces the entire self. I am not to pronounce commandments and laws to the other, for Jesus did not do so to the self-justifying lawyer. Rather, in my speech, acts, and attitude, I am to obey Jesus’s command to go and do likewise, to imitate the Samaritan neighbor of the Lucan narrative. I am to witness to Christ by speaking to the other of the grace I have experienced. My speech must be accompanied by acts of assistance directed toward the psychophysical existence of my neighbor. Finally, in my entirety I must display the sort of attitude, disposition, and mood that corresponds to these words and acts. And so in speech, word, and disposition I must aim to model a life reordered by grace (441–54). Barth calls for a performance that cannot live up to the norm it aspires to imitate, for he reminds his readers that the efficacy of this performance is not something they have control over. It depends on the revelatory intervention of Christ, the Good Samaritan, who commands us to go and do likewise: “We have to trust in the fact that Jesus Christ will be present in this meeting with my neighbour. It will be His business, not mine, and however badly I play my part, He will conduct His business successfully and well” (453). Thus neither my inability to become what I attempt to enact, nor the necessity of the divine miracle to render my activity efficacious, relieves me of the responsibility of playing the neighbor to another.

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Like the lawyer in the parable, I may be on a misguided quest for self-justification, yet nevertheless I am summoned to act, and so to imitate the model-neighbors presented to me in the biblical witness. I am summoned to seek and to expect to find my neighbor in anyone and everyone. The love of neighbor requires, therefore, a ceaseless movement toward the other, for it is the outer sign of the inner reality of our loving search for God. It is the search for Christ hidden in the guise of the neighbor.

The Jewish Samaritan In his reading and exposition of the parable, Barth himself aspires to perform the role he prescribes. He writes as one who has recognized himself in the mirror of the Word that the Gospel of Luke holds up to him. Barth refers to the voices of the biblical witness as exemplary neighbors: “Who and what a neighbour is, we can best realise from those who founded the Church, the biblical prophets and apostles. What they do is the purest form of that work of divine mercy which is assumed by the children of God. They bear witness to Jesus Christ” (422). As beneficiaries of these neighbors, we are to seek neighbors even where we do not expect to find them: For if in the prophets and apostles we see men to whom Jesus Christ has become a neighbour, and they themselves have become helpful and compassionate neighbours by bearing witness to Him, if it has become a general possibility in the Church that men can have this function, then we must obviously be prepared and ready for the fact that man, our fellow-man generally, can become our neighbour, even where we do not think we see anything of the Church, i.e., in his humanity he can remind us of the humanity of the Son of God and show mercy upon us by summoning us in that way to the praise of God. (425, italics added)

Barth’s reading and exposition of the parable draws the reader into a mimetic chain of recognition and re-description. It incites his readers to also play the part:  to recognize themselves in the self-justifying lawyer and the fallen Israelite, to hear Christ’s command to “Go and do likewise,” to imitate the Samaritan, and so to imitate Christ. For if the lawyer, who seeks to justify himself, must recognize his own inability and need in the man fallen among thieves, so also must Barth, and so also must his readers. Whether or not his readers can recognize themselves in this mirror, they must make haste to play the neighbor to another. Barth’s performance can be read as enacting the sort of subversions and reorientations that he finds in the parable. Since we are to seek and expect to find our neighbor in anyone and everyone, Barth’s account effaces the boundaries of the visible church, along whatever lines they might be drawn, and situates those who might be deemed “outside” within its very boundaries as a sacramental means of grace. The implications of this account for contemporaneous anti-Semitic theologies and arguments for a völkisch church are not far from the surface. The

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relationship of the fallen Israelite to the Samaritan enables Barth to argue that while the neighbor becomes a medium of the revelatory Word, the neighbor need not actually be a member of the visible church in order to do so. In fact, the neighbor may well be one who is perceived as indifferent or even hostile to the church; the neighbor might be someone whom members of the visible church mistakenly think of as hated by and hating God, as the lawyer thought of the Samaritan, and also of Jesus (422; 418–19). Since it is the divine Word that speaks to me through this human being, my neighbor retains no capacity in him- or herself to become such a sacramental medium to me. The apparent “outsider” of the church must not therefore be treated or regarded as such. Barth states: “simply as he is, as a man, he can be a neighbor to me here and now at any moment, as the Samaritan was to the man half-dead by the roadside, it is in this light, and not in the light of the fact that he is an outsider, that I must regard him from within the Church” (423). In subtle ways, Barth’s description of the neighbor turns the tables on contemporaneous discussions over the racial delineation of a völkisch church. We can hear Barth inviting his Christian German readers to recognize themselves in the selfjustifying Jewish lawyer of the parable, who does not know his neighbor and so does not recognize Christ. The contemporary Jewish “foreigner” is aligned with the Samaritan “other,” who is figurative of Christ himself. This sort of reversal appears to be in play when Barth briefly identifies the “hidden neighbor” with Gentile outsiders to the nation of Israel, figures in the Old and New Testaments who are presented as “strangers who from the most unexpected distances come right into the apparently closed circle of the divine election and calling and carry out a kind of commission, fulfill an office for which there is no name, but the content of which is quite obviously a service which they have to render” (425). He names the wellknown biblical figures Balaam, Rahab, Ruth, the Queen of Sheba, Naaman, the wise men, the centurion of Capernaum, the Syro-Phoenician woman, the centurion at the cross, and, finally, the paradigmatic figure “Melchisedek, King of Salem, and a ‘priest of the most high God,’ who brings bread and wine to Abraham, blesses him and receives from him a tithe” (425). The rhetoric of nation and blood is not far from the surface. Barth shifts quickly to talk of the New Testament equivalent term for “neighbor”—the term “brother”— and invokes the language of “blood relationship” to refer to the relationship made possible between Jesus and those whom he calls into relation with himself. To be brother to Christ, Barth states, is to recognize Christ in the other:  “in every man we have to expect a brother (for that only means a neighbor in the full sense of the word)” (426–7). Barth thereby detaches the biblical notions of neighbor and brotherhood from any association with contemporaneous appeals to societal institutions of shared blood and nationhood, and he situates the terminology of neighbor, brother, and blood within a sacramental framework in which there is no “outside” to the sphere of God’s grace, and thus no outside to the sphere of the Christian’s ethical obligation. Barth’s description of the neighbor pushes at the limits of his contemporaries’ ethical frameworks in order to redraw the ecclesial boundaries that would exclude

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the Jewish other from the province of Christian fellowship and its sphere of ethical obligation. The concrete, visible, temporal boundaries dividing religions and races are rendered permeable, while the Word incarnate remains the agential center and force through which mundane fellow human beings become media for a fresh hearing of the divine address. With the figure of the Good Samaritan, Barth reorients his readers on an endless aid-lending search for Christ—hidden in the those they think they should hate.

Chapter 5 S AY I N G “ Y E S” T O I SR A E L’ S “ N O” :   B A RT H’ S D IA L E C T IC A L S U P E R SE S SIO N I SM A N D T H E W I T N E S S   O F C A R NA L   I SR A E L Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman

Introduction Karl Barth is simultaneously the theologian whose Confessing Church repudiated Nazi anti-Semitism and the man who confessed himself allergic to Jews. He condemns anti-Semitism as a heresy, thus theologically securing Jewish existence, only to consign the continued existence of Judaism to theological insignificance. Jews warrant protection. Yet Judaism is unworthy of reflection. For Barth, “unbelieving” Israel exists only as cut off, in limbo between the covenantal promises to its patriarchs and its promised eschatological restoration. Yet after Auschwitz, a place-holding Pauline affirmation of eventual restoration seems insufficient. Perpetual deferral remains theologically perplexing. Moreover, it can be ethically and politically paralyzing. Insistence that God remain faithful to Israel and its covenant does not specify how Christians should be faithful to Jews. The admonition to take the election of Israel seriously fails to clarify what it means to take actually existing Jews and Judaism seriously. In what follows, I attempt to clarify the theological significance of “carnal” Israel for Christian thought and practice. In order to do so, I attempt to rectify Barth’s ecclesiological formulation of election in paragraph 34 of Church Dogmatics.

An Ambitious and Ambiguous Legacy As I read paragraph 34 of the Dogmatics, and the so-called Judas Excursus that follows from it in paragraph 35,1 I  find that Barth’s “discovery of Judaism for 1.  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (CD), trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–) and Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1932–). Translations throughout are my own. Minor alterations to the standard translation are indicated by “translation revised.” Major alterations are indicated by

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Christian theology” ironically makes it impossible to discover anything theologically significant in the continuing existence and ongoing witness of carnal Israel.2 In paragraph 34, “The Election of the Community,” Barth argues that the witness of the Church subsumes the witness of Israel. In paragraph 35, “The Election of the Individual,” he argues that each and every Jew who is not a Christian assumes the guilt of Judas’s betrayal. Doing so, Barth concludes that Israel is elect only “in and from their rejection.”3 Jews “again and again corroborate this sin of betrayal.”4 And Judaism is “Yahweh-religion without Yahweh.”5 While not “supersessionist” in the standard sense that Kendall Soulen identifies as “economic” or “punitive” supersessionism, Barth’s doctrine of election nevertheless remains supersessionist in the nonstandard sense that Soulen identifies as “structural” supersessionism.6 On the one hand, Barth denies Israel’s replacement and rejection. He pronounces an eventual and ultimate “Yes” upon its election. Yet, on the other hand, Barth affirms Israel’s relegation. He pronounces a proximate and provisional “No” against its election. Although not permanent, this present “No” remains potent. For now, in the time between the times, Israel “hears” but does not “believe.” Jews are commanded but do not obey. Judaism has promise but lacks fulfillment. For Barth, carnal Israel is, as Eugene Rogers puts it, in some strong sense “Spirit-bereft.”7 All this renders Barth’s ambitious reconfiguration of election an ambiguous legacy for contemporary theology. This is especially true for postliberal theologies that attempt to construct nonsupersessionist dogmatics and shared JewishChristian theopolitics.8 Randi Rashkover, herself a Jewish postliberal deeply influenced by Barth, makes this painfully clear when she asks, “What reason would Christians have to acknowledge the validity of the Jewish political witness,

“translation mine.” Citations throughout are by volume, part-volume, paragraph, and section, with English pagination and German pagination. 2. See Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Die Entdeckung Des Judentums Für Die Christliche Theologie. Israel Im Denken Karl Barths, vol. Abhandlungen zum christlich-jüdischen Dialog. Bd. 1 (München: Kaiser Verlag, 1967). 3. CD II/2, §35.4, 505/562. 4. Ibid., §34.2, 210/231, translation revised. 5. Ibid., §35.4, 465/515, translation revised. 6.  See Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1996), 4–18, and “Yhwh the Triune God,” Modern Theology 15, no. 1 (January 1999): 29–31. 7.  See Eugene Rogers, “Supplementing Barth on Jews and Gender: Identifying God by Anagogy and Spirit,” Modern Theology 14, no. 1 (January 1998): 55, 62. 8.  For the best of these attempts, see Soulen, God of Israel and “Yhwh the Triune God”; Scott Bader-Saye, Church and Israel After Christendom:  The Politics of Election (Boulder:  Westview Press, 1999); Rogers, “Supplementing Barth”; and Randi Rashkover, Revelation and Theopolitics: Barth, Rosenzweig and the Politics of Praise (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 2005).

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if from their future vantage point, Jews must either become Christian or be deemed ‘disobedient’?”9 At present, Rashkover’s question stands unanswered. Indeed, unless something can be said more or otherwise than what Barth said in paragraphs 34 and 35, her question is, in principle, unanswerable. A nonsupersessionist dogmatics and shared Jewish-Christian theopolitics are unrealizable. A shared theopolitical witness is unimaginable. Fortunately, there is much that remains to be said, both more and otherwise. In fact, elsewhere in the Dogmatics, Barth himself says more and otherwise. I will argue that, based on what Barth says elsewhere, particularly in volume 4, we can say otherwise than what he says in volume 2. We can think beyond Barth, yet still think with and through Barth. Moreover, we must say that, on his own grounds, Barth not only need not say what he says in paragraphs 34 and 35, but should not say what he says there. We can rethink his ecclesiological formulation of election in terms that are more consistent with his best insights. More importantly, we Christians may say “Yes” to Israel’s “No.” We may think of the ongoing existence of the Synagogue and the continuing witness of Jews as fulfilling what Barth calls the “special office of Israel within the Church,”10 albeit as a “real light,” “true word,” and “parable of the kingdom” extra muros ecclesiae.11 And, most importantly, we Christians and Jews can think together about our shared witness to the one God who elects us all.

Supersessionism Mutatis Mutandis “The Election of the Community” (CD II/2, §34) unfolds as a sustained theological elaboration of Romans 9–11. Although the decisive exegetical excursus doesn’t come until the very end, Paul’s letter informs Barth’s entire exposition of the one community’s twofold form—especially its form as Israel. Like Paul, Barth repeatedly states his own emphatic negation of any suggestion that God has abandoned Israel or abrogated its election. On the promise of God’s final affirmation and the precedent of Paul’s salvation-historical narration, Barth speaks freely and forcefully of Israel’s “election in and from its rejection.” Doing so, he takes himself to be offering a perfectly unexceptional, and therefore wholly unobjectionable, remnant theology in keeping with the apostle, as well as the Law and the prophets. In the days of old, God chose Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; and the 7,000 at the time of Elijah. Now, in the latter days, God has chosen Jesus Christ and those Jews and Gentiles who believe in him. Although all Israel is elect in Jesus Christ, not all Israel is determined for belief and obedience.

9. Randi Rashkover, “Judaism’s Twentieth-Century Conversations,” Cross Currents 49, no. 4 (Winter 1999–2000): 548. 10. See, CD II/2, §34.2. 11. See, CD IV/3.1, §69.2.

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The twofold form of the one community follows the pattern of God’s election and ongoing determination of the remnant. This pattern culminates in the election of Jesus Christ and his twofold determination as both elect and reprobate. Barth explains, This unity and biformity of Jesus Christ himself now corresponds to that of the community of God and its election. It exists according to God’s eternal decision as the people of Israel (in the entire extent of its history—past and future, ante and post Christum natum!), and, at the same time, as the Church of Jews and Gentiles (from its revelation at Pentecost to its consummation by the second coming of Christ). Precisely in this, its dual (its Old and New Testament) form of existence, this twofold determination of Jesus Christ himself is reflected and repeated. And the community is, as Israel and as Church, indissolubly one. It also as the one is ineluctably two: Israel and Church. Even as Church it is Israel, and even as Israel it is Church. This is the ecclesiological formulation of the facts previously characterized christologically.12

For Barth, the Christological and ecclesiological determinations of election must be isomorphic. The twofold pattern of the one elect community must “reflect” and “repeat” the twofold election of the man Jesus of Nazareth and the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. In each and every respect, the community must represent both the positive and negative determinations of his election: the “facts” of the divine “Yes” and the divine “No.” The ecclesiological determinations of election, therefore, must be dimorphic. Israel is the community determined by the divine “No.” Church is the community determined by the divine “Yes.” Even so, anything predicated of the one belongs to the other, and vice versa. Refusing to consider either determination in isolation, Barth insists, “One is not allowed, therefore, to name the people of the Jews the ‘rejected’ [community] and the Church the ‘elected’ community. The object of election is neither Israel for itself, nor the Church for itself, but rather both in their unity. (One speaks of elected Israel or of the elected Church. But, one must be clear that one speaks ‘synecdochically.’) What is elected in Jesus Christ (His ‘body’!) is the community, which has the twofold form of Israel and the Church.”13 Here, just a few pages into paragraph 34, Barth already signals that “Israel” and “Church” serve as exegetical and theological archetypes. To speak synecdochically is to let one form of the twofold community typologically stand in for both forms. Though figured as “Israel,” the “passing form” of the community determined for promise, hearing, disobedience, and judgment really is Israel-Church. Though typified as “Church,” the “coming form” of the community determined for fulfillment, believing, obedience, and mercy likewise is Israel-Church.14 12. CD II/2, §34.1, 198/218–19, translation revised. 13. Ibid., 199/219–20, translation revised. 14. In order to make Barth’s usage clearer and more determinate, I employ the following conventions. First, “Israel-Church” will indicate “the one elect community in its twofold

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However, Barth immediately reasserts that the ordered dependency and differentiated unity of Israel and Church are asymmetrical. He continues, Admittedly, everything has a different form here than there. Namely, that here and there, the relationship of election to the rejection which inevitably accompanies it is different. And this difference is well-founded, precisely, in the twofold determination of Jesus Christ himself. It consists in the fact that the Israelite form of the elected community makes visible its essence in its Old Testament condition as determined from the side of elected humanity as such; its Churchly form, on the other hand, makes visible the same essence of the elected community in its New Testament condition: determined by the electing God as such.15

Although the one community together shares a single election, its two determinations as Israel and Church are discrete. Its indissoluble unity is differentiated dialectically. Church is determined from the side of electing divinity. Israel is determined from the side of elected humanity. As Barth explains, “What is decisive there [i.e., for Israel]: the human turning away from the electing God, here [i.e., for Church] the turning of the electing God toward humanity.”16 Now, of course, Barth quickly adds a dialectical caveat: “Therefore, here as there, one must retain, but restrain, all its necessary sharpness—the antithesis between the two may not be formulated as exclusive.”17 Even so, exclusive or not, “Israel” form.” This echoes Paul van Buren’s preferred terminology of “the Jewish-Christian reality” (see Paul van Buren, Discerning the Way:  A Theology of the Jewish Christian Reality [New  York:  Seabury Press,  1980]). Second, “Synagogue” will identify postresurrection Judaism. It indicates the community and practice of Jews from the apostolic-rabbinic era onward. “Ekklesia” will serve as its Christian counterpart. These designations are the English equivalents of the Greek usage in the Apostolic Witness (σουναγωγή and ἐκκλεσία), and they provide a separate pair of terms with which to designate the earthly historical forms of world-occurrence of the one elect community Israel-Church. Thus, third, “Israel” and “Church” (without the definite article) will indicate Barth’s two typological forms of the one community. Fourth, the Jewish side of this world-occurrence will also be referred to as “empirical Judaism” and/or “actually existing Jews/Judaism.” These are to be contrasted with Barth’s constructions of “theological Israel” and/or “typological Jews/Judaism.” These terminological conventions are intended to highlight the tension between Barth’s exegeticaltheological descriptions and the empirical-historical phenomena they may or may not be meant to describe and/or may or may not describe correctly. 15. CD II/2, §34.1, 199/220, translation revised, emphasis added. Note well that “elected humanity” is not reconciled and sanctified humanity that lives the life of the flesh by faith in the resurrection of the Son. Rather, “elected humanity” is sinful humanity, the flesh that God takes on even unto the crucifixion of the Son. 16. Ibid., 200/220, translation revised. 17.  Ibid., translation revised. The first verb here is zurückhalten, which denotes both “to retain” and “to restrain.” I  have rendered both, because I  suspect that Barth is using the verb dialectically, trading on both of its senses. The sharpness must, on the one hand,

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is burdened with humanity’s turning away from God and its consequent judgment. “Church” is blessed with God’s turning toward humanity and its concomitant mercy. Israel is determined by the divine “No,” Church by the divine “Yes.” Having distinguished the discrete determinations of Israel and Church, Barth’s synecdochical speech then doubles and divides. The Israelite form of the community now receives two distinct descriptions. The first describes Israel with reference to Church. The second describes Israel without reference to Church.18 Described in relation to Church, there is “the preexistence of the Church in Israel” before Christ, and the persistence of “Israel in the Church” after Christ.19 The preexistence and persistence refer to the minority who did, and do, put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or whose faithfulness under the Law is reckoned as such. Described apart from the Church, there is only “Israel as such and as a whole” (Israel als solches und im ganz), both before and after Christ. This refers to the majority who did not, and do not, put their faith in Christ, or whose unfaithfulness under the Law is reckoned as such. Together, these descriptions encompass all Jews before, during, and after the time of Christ. And, whether before or after, these descriptions define every Jew as either believing or disbelieving in Christ. Notice what happens through Barth’s descriptions of Israel in relation to Church. Barth begins with Paul’s basic claim that, after Christ, the remnant of Israel consists of those determined for belief in the Messiah. But Barth’s claim is much stronger than Paul’s. Barth adds that all of Israel that is “genuine Israel” (echten Israel) also is Church. He insists, “[T]his remnant testifies that God’s election was and is also the election of Israel. Indeed, even more: that it was and is, really and primarily, the election of Israel: its election to the Church, but really its election.”20 Just as Peter, Paul, and the Jerusalem Christians are “Israel in the Church,” so too Isaac, Esau, and the 7,000 are the “preexistent Church in Israel.” Before or after Christ, “genuine Israel” is always already Church. Rather than remaining Israel, Barth’s remnant remains Church. In other words, “remnant” is theologically synonymous with “Church.”21 be retained. But, on the other, it must be restrained so that it does not become an absolute antithesis. 18. Here “first” and “second” are neither sequentially nor conceptually ordinal. There is neither chronological nor logical priority. Barth uses both sets of descriptions within the space of the same thought, and sometimes within one paragraph, or even a single sentence. Their separation and identification as first and second is heuristic only. 19. See CD II/2, §34.2, 212–15/233–4. 20.  CD II/2, §34.4, 274–5/302, translation revised. Here, “Gentiles” is not strictly synonymous with “the Church.” Elsewhere, “the Church,” that is, the Ekklesia, is construed as predominantly or definitively Gentile. 21.  The absence of the definite article (“the”) is meant to hold open the question of if or how “Church” as a theological type relates to “the Church” (Ekklesia) as a phenomenal world occurrence. The article appears here only in those phrases that are Barth’s own. He himself uses the article throughout. The omission here is a way of highlighting the nonidentity of “Church” construed as theological type and “the Church” considered as phenomenal

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Notice also what happens through Barth’s description of Israel apart from Church. Having identified “genuine Israel” with the “preexistence of the Church in Israel” and the persistence of “Israel in the Church,” he now identifies “Israel as such and as a whole” as “counterfeit Israel” (unecht Israel).22 And here, all synecdochical caveats notwithstanding, Barth’s theological typology cannot help becoming empirical phenomenology. The genuine Israel that persists as the remnant lives on in the Church—the Ekklesia. The counterfeit Israel that resists lives on only as a remainder—the Synagogue. After Christ, theological “Israel” is empirical Ekklesia. In other words, the theological remnant is phenomenologically synonymous with the Church. Barth’s churchly remnant now little resembles Paul’s. By subtly reversing Paul’s ingrafting metaphor, Barth severely distorts the ordered dependence and differentiated unity of the one elect community Israel-Church. On Barth’s reversal, it is no longer the Gentiles who join believing Jews in the Church; it is now Jews who join Gentiles. This simply cannot be. For this even to be possible, there would have to have been a prior predominantly Gentile Church that Jews later joined. As foreign as this is to the Pauline and Lukan accounts, Barth states just this: For this reason, too, [Paul] can now present as the real aim of his activity as a missionary to the Gentiles, as a founder of the Gentile Church, the conversion and deliverance of “some of them” [i.e., some of the Jews] (10.14) as he has experienced it [i.e., Jewish conversion] here and there among the Jews of the Diaspora, as exceptions to the general rule [i.e., Jewish unbelief]. The [Gentile] Church acquires its proper luster only as these “some” [i.e., Jewish converts] are added to it [i.e., the Gentile Church] as it becomes the Church of Jews and Gentiles.23

Barth claims that Paul understands the Ekklesia as a Gentile phenomenon into which a few Jewish believers later are added as “the some” that makes it “the Church of Jews and Gentiles together.” The Ekklesia’s “proper luster” comes with the belated and exceptional addition of Jews. However, in Acts and the associated epistolary accounts, the Church (Ekklesia) begins in Jerusalem as a predominately Jewish body. For Paul himself, the Church’s “proper luster” comes through the subsequent and surprising addition of Gentiles.

world occurrence. Though perhaps syntactically awkward, the conceptual disruption caused by this rhetorical intervention hopefully serves to keep this tension in view. This convention will carry through the remainder of the argument, with only slight exceptions. 22. Ibid., 294–5/324, translation revised. A note on my translation. The standard English translation perhaps overreaches with “debased Israel.” Even so, unecht can denote “adulteration” and “bastardization.” I have rendered “counterfeit” in order, first, not to assume that Barth has the darkest denotation of the term in mind and, second, to capture the element of betrayal or falsification that Barth certainly has in mind. 23. Ibid., 281, emphasis added.

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Having first typologically doubled Israel into its genuine and counterfeit forms, and then phenomenologically divided genuine Israel from the Synagogue, Barth proceeds with an aggressive rhetoric of rejection. Because he unwaveringly affirms both God’s ongoing historical “Yes” to “Israel in the Church,” and God’s coming eschatological “Yes” to “Israel as such and as a whole,” Barth unrelentingly confirms the present rejection of “counterfeit Israel”—the Synagogue. To do so, he resorts to all the standard tropes of the adversus Judaeos lexicon, but with his fingers synecdochically or dialectically crossed, so to speak. In the long excursus on Romans 11 that concludes paragraph 34, Barth’s invocation of the so-called deicide is unmistakable: This is the existence of all those who in Israel, from Ishmael up to the Synagogue of today, although they were and are Israelites, were unserviceable for that which God willed with Israel, and finally and at last brought forth from it, and, therefore, in their totality could form only that monstrous shadow-side of Israel’s history. This is the disobedient, idolatrous Israel of every age; these are its false prophets and its godless kings; these are the scribes and Pharisees; that is the high-priest Caiaphas at the time of Jesus; that is Judas Iscariot among the apostles. That is the whole of Israel on the left hand, sanctified only by God’s wrath.24

This collective ad hominem can only be followed by the devastating, if now anticlimactic, dénouement of the notorious Judas Excursus that concludes paragraph 35. There, Barth’s synecdochical description of “Israel as such and as a whole” culminates in the calumnious condensation of each and every Israelite into the one Israelite Judas:  “He and all Israel, he, Judas, and with him and in him the Jews as such!”25 Though an apostle and a member of the Church, truly elect, the son of perdition’s betrayal is “the work of Israel from the midst of the apostolic circle which comes about in the midst of the Church.”26 Judas is the Jewish element among the twelve, that negative determination of Israel amidst the positive determination of Church. His betrayal is Israel’s final, yet original and prototypical, rejection of its election. After this there can be only judgment, the divine rejection of the paradigmatic human rejection of the divine. Three times before concluding, Barth describes this judgment. Each time, Judas’s act is described as the act of all Israel, of each and every Jew who ever lives. And each time, all members of Israel are described as willfully exposing themselves to judgment.  For the time of the Temple, the time of Jerusalem itself, the time of the special worship of this place and of the existence of Israel as the special people of

24. Ibid., 287/316, translation revised. 25. CD II/2, §35.4, 465/515, translation revised. 26. Ibid., 471/522, translation revised.

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God, was up. As Judas handed over Jesus, this time began to expire . . . With the Judaism that Judas, for his part, had chosen in place of the promised and appeared Messiah of Israel, after this rejection that he had set in motion, for the continued existence of the Temple, and of Jerusalem, and of Israel as the special people of God, there was nothing more to be done.27

At the very least, this borders on an economic supersessionism of replacement. Twice: With the killing of its Messiah, Israel had given itself up to the way on which, not only does the judgment of God on its entire existence become inevitable, but much more, remaining true to itself, it finally had to commit suicide. This is what it finally has done in the uprising against Rome, and in particular, in the defense of Jerusalem against Titus in the year 70. In that it could no longer live, it has given itself—one thinks of the report about the end of the last high priests— wittingly and willingly to the death which, as such, could be no atonement for its sins, but rather their final consummation.28

This teeters on the brink of punitive supersessionism. What for Judas ends in the potter’s field, for Israel ends at Masada. A few pages later, the macabre momentum of Barth’s dialectic careens toward its catastrophic conclusion. Thrice: Judas, the παραδιδούζ does nothing more than, in a concentrated attack on Israel’s Messiah, that which the elect people of Israel of every age did vis-à-vis their God, and with what they had finally proven themselves in their entirety to be the people rejected by God. In Judas, all the great rejected of the Old Testament once again come to life (“in compendium,” so to speak), those who already have had to testify that this elect people is in truth a rejected people, elected in and from their rejection, elected only in the form of the divine promise given to them from the beginning and never taken away; finally elected only in the person of the one, for whom this people may and must have their special existence. In view of the act of Judas, now, after it has handed over to the Gentiles for killing the one in which it is elected, there can be no further doubt about the rejection of this people, and about the seriousness of the exemplary rejection of all these individuals from among its midst. This Judas must die, as he died; this Jerusalem must be destroyed, as it was destroyed. Israel’s right to existence is lost, and therefore its existence can only be extinguished.29

Here Barth crashes over the edge. This, undeniably, is a teaching of contempt that no synecdochical caveat or dialectical counterpoint can sufficiently qualify. The

27. Ibid., 468/518, translation revised. 28. Ibid., 470/521, translation revised. 29. Ibid., 505/562, translation revised, emphases added.

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traitor’s kiss in the garden of Gethsemane seals Israel’s fate as the passing form of the community and, theologically speaking, concludes its history. With this, Barth pronounces “ichabod” on Israel exta muros ecclesiae. The glory of the Lord has departed from Israel as such and as a whole—the counterfeit Israel that is not the genuine remnant that lives on in, and as, the Church. Despite, or perhaps because of, the final divine affirmation of Israel’s election, its present humiliation must be as great as its future exaltation. If Israel’s election is to be real, then so too its rejection—if only temporarily so. Barth writes, “The Church exists in faith, and indeed, only in the faith of its members:  precisely in the decision, therefore, which the unbelieving Jews have refused and still refuse. In faith, and indeed, in faith alone, are the Gentile Christians partakers in the salvation promised to Israel, which is provisionally withdrawn from unbelieving Israel, and given to them, precisely, in virtue of that unbelief.”30 This withdrawal is not a metaphor or an illusion. Though dialectical, the negation of a negation resulting from a more fundamental affirmation, the divine rejection of human rejection of the divine nonetheless is real rejection. For now, within the chronological frame of the earthly historical unfolding of election within time, Israel’s rejection is actual. Though not permanent, the present “No” remains as potent for Barth as for any of the classically supersessionist fathers or reformers. In the time that remains in Christ’s advent, the time between the times of resurrection and parousia, the existence and witness of carnal Israel thus can have no positive theological significance. Though not standard supersessionism, the ecclesiological formulation of Barth’s doctrine of election is, mutatis mutandis, dialectically supersessionist. Deus Revelatus, Communitas Abscondita Barth’s reconfiguration of the doctrine of election overcomes the problem of a deus absconditas, only to create the problem of a communitas abscondita. For all the theological concretion of the twofold election of Jesus Christ, the twofold election of Israel-Church suffers from persistent historical abstraction. Christological specificity is secured at the expense of ecclesiological generality. In Barth’s hands, the Israelite form of the community becomes irrecuperably equivocal, both ambiguous and ambivalent. Israel is simultaneously too much like Church and too little. On the right hand of election, its determination for belief and obedience is too much like Church. Israel’s disposition is indistinguishable, synonymous with the Church’s. Elect Israel is “Israel” only nominally. When Jews believe and are faithful to their covenant, they are Church, Christians avant le lettre. On the left hand of election, Israel’s determination for unbelief and disobedience is not enough like Church. Israel is disposable, superfluous to the Church. When Jews don’t believe or are unfaithful to their covenant, they are unregenerate humanity, pagans après la loi. Either

30. CD II/2, §34.4, 290/319, translation revised, emphasis added.

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way, “Israel” is either Church or humanity, but never actually existing Jews and Judaism. “Israel” never means the phenomenal world-occurrence of the Jewish people. Theological Israel, Israel qua Israel, floats free of empirical Judaism and functions solely as a cipher for disobedience and rejection for Adamic humanity as such: humanity determined by its “turning away from the electing God.”31 As a result, actually existing Jews and Judaism are no longer even the pruned natural branches of Romans 11. Against all Pauline admonitions, Barth evicts them and relocates them to Romans 1. No longer able to profit from the revelation of the Law and the prophets, Jews are consigned to have only what even the unrighteous nations have through their natural knowledge of God. In his “Doctrine of Providence” (CD III/3, §48), Barth scoffingly refers to “the semi-biblical religion of post-Christian Judaism.”32 He continues, Here, at least in Judaism, we have a history of salvation as the meaning and center of universal history. But it is a history of salvation which has not reached its goal and strives toward it in endless approximation. And the fact that Judaism refuses to know anything of a history of salvation which has reached its goal means that it cannot penetrate beyond the knowledge of a supreme being furnished with those attributes, and beyond the confession of His omnicausality. Its God and Ruler of the world has necessarily a strangely obscure and hidden character. The devout Jew is never wholly clear as to His love or wrath, His grace or judgement.33

Judaism, despite its salvation history and the revelation of Tanakh, oddly has become no better than natural religion. Judaism no longer worships the true and living God of the patriarchs. The God of the modern Jew is nothing more than the God of the philosophers. Elsewhere, Barth presses the point even further, depriving Jews even of the Pauline concession of righteousness allowed Gentiles, who by nature do what the law requires. Here Barth equates Jewish unbelief with pagan idolatry. He writes, “The situation, the problem of both Jews and Greeks in regard to the confession of the Church is identical . . . When the Jew hears this confession in the mouth of the Church as the Gentiles also hear it, he above all should not draw back. In no circumstances should there be that parallel between a hellenic emperor-worship which resists this confession and a YHWH-faith which resists it equally.”34 Barth’s correlation of Gentile emperor worship with post-Christian Jewish worship of YHWH draws the very untoward parallel between Jew and Greek, which he says should not exist. Doing so, he declares Judaism to have veered toward paganism.35 31. Ibid. 32. CD III/3, §48.1, 28/31 emphasis added. 33. Ibid., emphasis added. The results are similarly unreasonable when he discusses “The History of the Jews” at CD III/3, §49.3 (238–57/175–271). 34. CD II/2, §34.1, 249/274. 35.  Barth’s consistent descriptions of Jewish religion and natural theology are telling. Their epithets are among Barth’s most pointed polemics. They are most frequently used

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Barth’s salvation history skips from Adamic humanity to Christian humanity, bypassing Abrahamic humanity and leaving it behind. For all his unflagging emphasis on the priority of scripture, Barth somehow ignores that the biblical narrative does not proceed directly from the first Adam to the second. The theological and historical progression is from first Adam to Abraham to second Adam. But the binary of Barth’s synecdochical exegesis occludes this third. His inflexible bifurcation of the twofold determination of election obscures the fact that the Abrahamic promise and the Mosaic covenant are already the determination of a human partner. Already in the election of Israel, God has provided creaturely participation in divine glory. While Barth rightly attempts to make visible the twofold form of Christ’s election in the witness of the one elect community, he wrongly makes actually existing Jews and Judaism invisible. He displaces Israel as the first form of the humanity recreated by the merciful divine turning, even if he does not quite fully replace it with the second form of recreated humanity, the fellow-humanity of Jew and Gentile together reconciled in Christ. Though lacking in supersessionist intent, his ecclesiological formulation of election is supersessionist in effect. The spiritual body of Christ, the one community in its two forms, may indeed somehow be indissolubly united. But the material bodies of Synagogue and Ekklesia are not. And in so decisively prioritizing the spiritual body of Israel-Church, Barth effaces the material body of “carnal” Israel. While not anti-Semitic, Barth’s Israellehre is what Zygmunt Bauman calls “allosemitic.” It abstracts the concept of the Jew from empirical Jews. Discursive and nondiscursive knowledge are separated. Theoretical and practical reason are segregated. As Bauman puts it, there is an “unbridgeable divide between ‘the Jew as such’ and ‘the Jew next door.’ ”36 Barth is preoccupied with the Jew as such, against his two archenemies: bourgeois neo-Protestantism and Thomistic Catholicism. It is also no accident that, from the time of the first Römmerbrief on, Barth also often figures both as forms of “Judaizing.” These three, then—neo-Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism— are, for Barth, interchangeable exemplifications and figurations of recalcitrant human vanity and self-assertion. For an overview of this matter, see Katherine Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s “Doctrine of Israel” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 36.  Zygmunt Bauman, “Allosemitism:  Premodern, Modern, Postmodern,” in Bryan Chyette and Laura Marcus (eds.), Modernity, Culture, and the Jew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 148. Allosemitism takes Jews to be a people set apart, radically different from and incomparable to all others. Their difference requires separate concepts in intellectual discourse and separate practices in social intercourse. It’s not just that Jews are unique in some significant respects that require specialized thought and action to comprehend; Jews are singular and cannot be comprehended through the thought and action appropriate to other peoples and persons. Considering Jews as the elect people of God requires Barth to have a separate set of concepts and practices. But Jews themselves have such concepts and practices. This is especially true of Orthodox Jews, but also of Reformed Jews, whose Judaism is normed by Torah im Derech Eretz.

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“Israel as such and as a whole.” Actually existing Jews are irrelevant, a matter of dogmatic indifference.37 Mark Lindsay acknowledges that these features of Barth’s Israellehre are “unfortunate” and “inexcusable” locutions. Indeed they are. But they are more than just “regrettable sentences.” The problem is not simply a little unseemly diction here and there. While Barth can qualify explicit denotations of rejection and replacement, he cannot quarantine implicit connotations of the same. Judgments come packaged with language. Lindsay admits that Barth’s language consistently “runs the risk of portraying Jews as little more than constitutive elements of a paradigmatic construct.”38 Lindsay also concedes that Barth “is using ‘Israel’ as a cipher that represents all human religious ventures”39 and indeed “all humanity.”40 Yet for Lindsay, this is a solution rather than a problem. Barth isn’t really talking about real Jews. He’s talking about Jews as a way of talking about humanity. Therefore, for Lindsay, this proves that Barth cannot be supersessionist or anti-Judaic. But this ciphering is precisely Bauman’s point about allosemitic discourse. As an ambiguous figure, as both a literal person and a literary personification, “the Jew” or “Israel” becomes a ready proxy for ambivalence of all kinds:  social, cultural, political, and—paradigmatically—theological. Barth’s fixation on a theological figuration of “the Jew as such” and relative disinterest in “the Jew next door” do not solve the problem.41 They multiply it threefold. First, Barth’s “Jew” is a distorted fiction. Second, Barth has too little substantive theological interest in those persons with whom he purports to share membership in the one elect community. Third, Barth mistakes his fiction for his fellow, his “Israel as such and as a whole” for his Jewish neighbor.

Deciphering Israel The problem, I trust, is now clear. I say “trust,” because it is by no means clear to me that Barth’s readers agree that Barth’s Israellehre poses a problem. This is why I have tarried so long and toiled so much with the texts of paragraphs 34 and 35. But my purpose in doing so is not only, or even primarily, critical. I now press on to my proposed solution.

37.  Witness the brevity of §49.3, in which he discusses “The history of the Jews” (210– 26/238–56). 38. Mark Lindsay, Barth, Israel, and Jesus (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing), 67. 39. Mark Lindsay, Covenanted Solidarity (Bern: Peter Lang Publishing), 282. 40. Lindsay, Barth, Israel, and Jesus, 66. This observation is repeated at several points in both volumes. 41. Sonderegger comments on Barth’s alienation from his contemporary Jewish fellows. She suggests that “Barth’s work may have been ‘retarded’ by his superficial knowledge of Judaic thought” (That Jesus Christ, 2).

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As I have said, elsewhere in volume 4 of the Dogmatics, Barth says otherwise than what he says in volume 2. In “The Being of the Community” (CD IV/1, §62.2), we find a remarkably different description of the two forms of the one community. Instead of an Israel that hears but does not believe, Jews who are commanded but do not obey, and a Judaism that has promise but not fulfillment, there is an Israel that in some significant way believes, Jews who in large measure obey, and a Judaism that is to some extent fulfilled. Moreover, it is the Church that is inadequate in belief, imperfect in obedience, and incomplete in fulfillment. He asks, “For what does the Church have which the Synagogue does not also have, and long before it (Rom. 9:4–5)—especially Jesus Christ himself, who is of the Jews, who is the Jewish Messiah, and only as such the Lord of the Church? The decisive question is not what the Synagogue can be without [Christ], but what the Church is as long as it confronts an alien and antithetical Israel.”42 Here it is Church, rather than Israel, whose identity and determination are under interrogation. It is Ekklesia, not Synagogue, that is the object of suspicion. Barth continues this remarkable line of questioning, inquiring after the nature of the breach between Judaism and Christianity. He concludes, And what a monstrosity, when the Church itself now should have been about it [i.e., removing the breach], having so little understood itself, that it has not only withheld this knowledge from these brothers and sisters, but made it difficult, it not impossible! Credo unam ecclesiam? There are even more serious questions about this confession. But, here, we confront the so-called Jewish question in the darkest darkness with which it is surrounded. “The Jewish Question”? If Paul is right, then in the light and context of that confession, it is, on the contrary, the Christian Question.43

By characterizing the Jewish “No” historically rather than typologically, Barth introduces a categorical distinction between Jews at the time of Christ and at present. Doing so, he allows us to differentiate between unbelief before Christ, disbelief at the time of Christ and in the apostolic age, and present nonbelief. He also now assigns the blame for present Jewish nonbelief to the Church and its two millennia of persecution.44 Not only is the Synagogue credited with some measure of belief and faithfulness, the Ekklesia is discredited for Jewish nonbelief caused by Christian unfaithfulness.45 The Judenfrage has become the Kirchenfrage. 42. CD IV/1, §62.2, 671/749, translation revised. 43. Ibid., translation revised, emphasis original. 44.  Barth makes similar observations in “The Ministry of the Community” (CD IV/ 3, §72.4). There he writes, “It need hardly be said that the life of the community [i.e., the Church] as a whole neither has been nor is this call . . . It has debated with him [i.e., the Jew], tolerated him, persecuted him, or abandoned him to persecution without protest. What is worse, it has made baptism an entrance card into the best European society” (878/1006). 45.  Thousands of years have passed since the first intra-Jewish controversies started down the path to the parting of the ways. And since that parting many millions lie dead,

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The importance of this categorical distinction between Jewish disbelief at the time of Christ and Jewish nonbelief in the post-apostolic age cannot be underestimated. The “Yes” and “No” of the contemporary Church and Synagogue are not those of Paul and Judas. The rabbis, Orthodox and Reformed, are not the Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots. At present, the Jewish “No” is not a direct rejection of Jesus Christ. At most, it is a passive or indirect refutation of the Christian “Yes.” It is far more disregard than dispute. This is not to say that there are no disputes. There are. They are carried out every day by laity, clergy, and faculty in both traditions. As David Novak observes, Jews can and certainly have been what I would call “counter-supersessionists.” Jewish counter-supersessionists are those who listen to the arguments of many Christians about the Church having superseded the Jewish people as God’s elect and then turns it on its head, thus seeing Judaism as the Christian antithesis . . . The ultimate coup de grace of the Jewish counter-supersessionists is to assert that Christians do not worship the Lord God of Israel as do the Jews but, rather, another god altogether.46

That there is something like Jewish “counter-supersessionism” is undoubtedly true. But whether in its minimal form as a firm rebuttal to Christian supersessionism or in its maximal form as something of a Marcionism in reverse, it is reactive. It is a contingent response to Christian supersessionist claims. Saying “No” to Christ is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for Jewish existence. Nevertheless, as Robert Jenson keenly observes, “From a certain angle of vision, the mere existence of Judaism looks much like a refutation of Christianity—and it may be just that.”47 Just so, Christianity cannot help but make claims about Judaism. Inverting Jenson’s remark, Christianity’s very existence is a claim about Judaism. Christians must say something about the implied Jewish “No.” But what should we say? Whatever the proper ecclesiological form and formulation of Barth’s doctrine of election may be, they must render intelligible the actual state of affairs of the Jewish-Christian reality:  this “Yes” and this “No.” Modern Jews are nonbelievers who continue to worship YHWH in the ways of the patriarchs. Contemporary

because all too often adoptive faith has become covenantal fratricide. Gentile guests in the house of Israel continually have undertaken the conceptual eviction, and ultimately attempted the corporeal extermination of God’s elect. The pressing issue today is supersessionism, not Judaizing—Shoah, not bris milah. 46. David Novak, “From Supersessionism to Parallelism in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Robert W. Jenson and Carl E. Braaten (eds.), Jews and Christians: People of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 96. 47. Robert W. Jenson, “Toward a Christian Theology of Judaism,” in Jenson and Braaten, Jews and Christians, 4.

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Judaism is primarily an affirmation, and only secondarily, derivatively, and indirectly a negation. The present Jewish “No” to Christ is most basically a “Yes” to YHWH. This “Yes” and this “No” that also is a “Yes” are the present twofold form of the one elect community—the actually existing Jewish-Christian world-occurrence of Israel-Church. The ecclesiological form of Christological election is subjectively determined not by a “Yes” and a “No,” but by two different “Yeses.” Although here it might appear that an ecclesiological form structured by a twofold “Yes” cannot adequately represent both the positive and negative determinations of Christ’s election, that appearance misleads. In fact, what Franz Rosenzweig, David Novak, and Michael Wyschogrod, among others, describe as Judaism’s refusal of premature messianism is strikingly similar to Barth’s own description of the “special office of Israel within the Church.”48 Barth writes, If Israel were to be obedient to its election, then, at once, its response would mean this, that its special witness about God’s judgment would become the undertone to the Church’s witness about God’s mercy, and therefore, sustained, covered, and (in the best sense of the word) softened by the voice of the Church, it would be incorporated into the praise of the one elect community. As a reminder of the reconciled conflict, of the torn up indictment, of the forgiven sin, its witness would lend critical salt to the message of the reconciliation of the world with God that has taken place, without calling it into question.49

For Barth, the “undertone” and “critical salt” of Israel’s special witness reminds us that, although the Church lives within this accomplished reconciliation, the world, including unbelieving Israel, does not. Where Barth emphasizes accomplishment, Novak and others emphasize prematurity. Still, they agree that the witness of the Jewish “No” forbids both the ambivalence and the arrogance that come with overly realized eschatology. Their disagreement concerns the identity and location of Israel’s witness relative to Church—intra versus extra ecclesiam.50

48.  See Franz Rosenzweig and Barbara E Galli, The Star of Redemption, Modern Jewish Philosophy and Religion: Translations and Critical Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God and the People of Israel (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996). 49.  CD II/2, §34.2, 208/229, translation revised, emphasis added. Barth repeats this claim again in §4: “Without the salt of that knowledge it cannot continue to exist as the Church for even a moment” (§34.4, 260/287, translation revised, emphasis added). 50.  To be clear, for Barth, at least in paragraph 34, Israel’s witness simply cannot exist outside and alongside the Church: “As if it could realize its true determination alongside and outside the Church! It therefore creates the schism, the gulf, in the middle of the community of God” (CD II/2, §34.2, 208/229, translation revised).

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However, elsewhere Barth again suggests otherwise. In “The Light of Life” (CD IV/3.1, §69.2) Barth not only allows for “true words” and “other lights” outside the Church, he insists that these oftentimes possess a novelty and superiority to the witness of the Church itself. Therefore, there are further Barthian grounds for a Christological affirmation of the witness of the Jewish “No.” The Christian “Yes” and the Jewish “No” that also is a “Yes” can, in fact, represent the twofold election of Christ in their two ecclesiological forms. Together they still represent Christ’s twofold election. But their mode of representation differs. As the representation of the divine “Yes,” the Church bears witness as the portrait of divine grace and mercy. The Christian “Yes” is the loving depiction of solidarity with the nations. As the representation of the divine “No,” the Synagogue bears witness as the portent of divine judgment and condemnation. The Jewish “No” is the living declaration of distinction from the nations. Jews, however, do not personify the passing form of humanity upon which the divine judgment falls. Rather, they proclaim judgment on passing humanity by insisting, as Novak puts it, that “[hu]mankind is not yet humanity.”51 This complements the Christian judgment that true humanity is the fellow-humanity of the one Israelite Jesus of Nazareth, who also is the Messiah and God of Israel, and whose humanity is Judaic humanity.

Conclusion If true words and lights possibly exist extra ecclesiam simpliciter, as Barth thinks, then why should we not think, a forteriori, they likely exist extra ecclesiam sed electio? If the Word of God may be found in the mouth of the pagan Gentile, then so much more must we seek it on the lips of the elect Jew. Doing so, Christians can participate in what Kendall Soulen calls the divine “economy of mutual blessing” shared by Ekklesia and Synagogue.52 The “Not yet” of the Jewish “No” chastens the hastening “Now” of the Christian “Yes.” It refuses hasty identification of the present political projects of Babylon with the eschatological polis of the New Jerusalem. The obedience of the Jewish “No” remains a valid political witness, because the existence of carnal Israel proclaims divine judgment against the theological disidentification of Israel as the bearer of God’s purposes in history, and the sociopolitical misidentification of another nation (people and/or state) as the bearer of those purposes. It perpetually rebukes Christianity’s inner paganism, its Constantinian tendency that is, as Scott Bader-Saye observes, at best to “belie the persistently unredeemed character of the world” and at worst to “consecrate the present order, capitulating to the world’s unredeemed existence.”53

51. Novak, Election, 397. 52. See Soulen, God of Israel, 109–40. 53. Bader-Saye, Church and Israel, 50.

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This would be the primary blessing that the theopolitical witness of Synagogue bears to Ekklesia. It might also be the answer to Rashkover’s question. Christians and Jews can share the common vocation of mutual witness and testimony that she calls a theopolitics of praise. They can ever again remind one another that, while the earthly peace of the civitas terrena remains legitimate, it is never the heavenly peace of the civitas dei.

Chapter 6 I SR A E L A S T H E P A R A D IG M O F D I V I N E J U D G M E N T:   A N E X A M I NAT IO N O F A T H E M E I N T H E T H E O L O G Y O F K A R L   B A RT H David E. Demson

Introduction It is widely known in theological circles that Karl Barth in his works referred to Jews as manifesting paradigmatic disobedience to the gospel; he also referred to the situation of Jews in the world as manifesting a paradigm of the divine judgment. In these comments, Barth did not intend to speak disparagingly of Jews, but was referring to the role of “representative” of the whole running human race that Israel is given in the Bible. Indeed, because his comments arose as exposition of Scripture, Barth declared—against those who said Jews were “cut off ” from God—that Jews are members of the people of God and members of the body of Christ. While that latter point should not be neglected, we must say that for contemporary Christians to speak of Jews as paradigmatically disobedient is prima facie to speak disparagingly. Thus, one would like to retain some of the positive comments of Barth and to jettison the negative ones. However, such a partim, partim approach would accomplish little theologically, because Barth’s presentation about Christians and Jews in his lectures on Romans in 1941–421 and in the Church Dogmatics II/2 of 19422 presents an exposition of Romans 9–11 as a coherent whole. It appears that one must either accept or reject his presentation of this matter in toto. If one did reject it in toto, that would not be to say one could learn nothing from it, however. A certain dilemma arises. While Barth’s exposition of Romans 9–11 forms a coherent whole that one either accepts or rejects, does he stray so far from the line (and lines) of Paul’s presentation that total rejection is possible? I think that is unlikely. That is not to say that nothing needs correction or that we will not see better expositions of Romans 9–11. Nor is it to say that other earlier and different, 1. Karl Barth, Kurze Erklärung des Römerbriefs (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1956). 2.  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1942).

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or later and different, explications of this passage are not also valuable, or that another presentation might not apprehend the basic thread running through Paul’s arguments in a different but just as valid way. What, precisely, is the dilemma? Barth’s presentation about Christians and Jews represents an extensive, profound, and coherent treatment of Romans 9–11. It cannot rightly be simply rejected. Yet, this treatment may not be true to what God is enacting between Christians and Jews. The dilemma cannot be resolved by retaining one aspect and rejecting another, since the exposition forms a coherent whole. The fruitful path to resolution is to follow carefully and respect Barth’s treatment while recasting it from within. This essay, accordingly, presents Barth’s exposition of Romans 9–11, then delineates the problem his exposition creates for us and, finally, recasts Barth’s presentation. What understanding will determine this recasting? Paul was writing to the church in Rome. Almost all members of that congregation were Gentile Christians. (He may have sent this letter to other congregations as well, but they, too, would have been largely Gentile.) Did Paul write Gentile Christians about Jewish disobedience in order to create Gentile-Christian enmity toward Jews? That would be nonsense, if we take seriously the first few lines of Romans 9, wherein Paul indicated the love he had for his own people. He would even be cut off from Christ for their sake. He wrote to Gentile Christians about Jewish disobedience (and therefore about his own disobedience, since he was a Jew) in order to warn them about their own disobedience. Jewish disobedience and Gentile-Christian disobedience are different, but the representative character of the former casts light on the actuality of the later. Thus, as Gentile Christians read this part of Paul’s letter, we should ask what light this depiction casts upon us and how we are told of our disobedience by it. Even as Jesus did not go into the Jordan at his baptism in order to point to those on the shore and say, “Tsk, tsk,” but to confess their sins as his own sins, so we Gentile Christians are not to look at Jews and say, “Tsk, tsk,” but rather confess disobedience to the gospel as our own sin. (While Barth said, clearly enough, that Paul’s intention was to draw the attention of the Gentile Christians to their own sin, we cannot escape Barth’s comment that Jewish disobedience is paradigmatic.)

Karl Barth on Romans 9–11 According to Barth, in his introductory remarks to his explication of Romans 9– 11, Jews are members of the one community of God, members of the body of Christ. Israel (i.e., the Jews) is not an anachronism. Barth referred to Israel as the passing form of the community, yet not as an anachronism, for Israel lives, and by God’s will its members live as members of the one community of God. The disobedience of this part of the community, while a theme of Romans 9– 11, is not the theme of this section, but rather subserves it. The theme is God’s way and work. Israel’s disobedience never becomes a ground for complaining about or accusing Jews, but Israel’s disobedience is depicted such that it serves the glorification of God and God’s character. It is not that Paul did not take disobedience

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seriously; of more importance is the way in which he took it seriously—by taking God seriously. Paul did not give disobedience to the gospel the honor of the last word; rather, the God of the gospel was given the honor of the last word. Before presenting three lines of thought presented by Paul, Barth stated that disobedience to the gospel was identical with the disobedience of Israel, because the gospel and Israel (Jews) belong together. Israel has been adopted as God’s son, and the glory of God dwells in Israel. God cut the divine covenant with Israel and renewed it again and again; Israel has the Torah, the worship, the patriarchs. Jesus Christ, according to the flesh, arose from Israel. God’s grace is directed to the Jews, and from them to the world. The place of the revelation of God’s grace is, perforce, the place of the revelation of human disobedience. (This is what makes Jewish disobedience paradigmatic, original, and proper disobedience.) However, the revelation of Jewish disobedience neither caused Paul irritation nor caused him to bring any accusation against the Jews. That was not his business, nor is it the business of any in the church. Instead of accusing his people, he said of their rejection of the gospel, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” (Rom. 9:2).3 Out of this great sorrow and anguish of heart, Paul preached on this matter. He spoke of this matter—here primarily to Gentile Christians—in order to announce his faith and his hope. He depended upon it as a fact that the disobedient would not remain disobedient. Were they to remain so, he too would wish to be cut off with them by the gospel. So far was Paul from any accusation that, in fact, he recognized that the gospel demanded unconditional solidarity by the obedient with the disobedient. Barth then turned to Paul’s three lines of thought in which he delineated the attitude that the gospel demands toward disobedience to the gospel paradigmatically represented by Israel. All three lines of thought have a common feature: none of them says simply that there is damnation corresponding to this disobedience. Rather, all three proclaim that both the disobedience and its corresponding damnation are encompassed by God’s way and work of mercy. How, then, can those who presently glory in God’s mercy do anything other than give and leave to God’s mercy the first and last word as far as the disobedient are concerned? The First Line of Paul’s Argument: Rom. 9:6–26 Paul attested that even the fearful event of disobedience was encompassed by God’s work of mercy. The statement governing this section is verse 6: “[I]t is not as though the word of God had failed.” The gospel has not been annulled or suspended by Israel’s disobedience. In its own way, Israel’s disobedience confirms the gospel. When we see the synagogue excluded by the gospel because of its refusal of the gospel, we are to despair of neither the gospel nor this people. In Israel, where

3.  Quotations from Romans are from Herbert G.  May and Bruce M.  Metzger (eds.), The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973; New Testament section, 2nd ed., 1971).

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the gospel originated and is at home, the gospel has always brought exclusion— not for the sake of exclusion, but for the sake of inclusion. Israel must die with the Christ promised to it, in order to live with the Christ. God’s will sees to both. This has always been the case in Israel’s history. God’s choosing is always accompanied by a nonchoosing: Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. Who excludes one and includes the other? Not the good or bad will of one or the other, but the Word of God. However, this is not the Word of a bare sovereignty but the Word of God’s free mercy. Both the chosen one and the excluded one are exponents of God’s mercy. Paul understood God’s relation to Pharaoh and Moses in just this way. God, by turning to Moses, revealed God’s mercy (as the power that brings life). God, by turning to (hardening) Pharaoh, showed the killing of God’s creature, without which there would not be God’s mercy. In a parallel manner, God now hardens the synagogue. This work shall be revealed as a work of divine mercy, in that it serves the work of divine mercy no less than the church. If God hardens the heart of Israel, how can God find fault with its disobedience? This question displays a misunderstanding of God’s activity. God finds fault only with the creature Jesus Christ, and thereby not with any of his brothers and sisters. There is an acceptance by the creature of this mercy and a resistance to it. God uses both to serve God’s mercy. Acceptance is made a witness to the fulfillment of God’s purpose for us; resistance is made a witness to the human incapacity to fulfill this purpose. Although Pharaoh was made a witness to the human incapacity to receive God’s mercy, the hardening of his heart did not bespeak God’s forcing him to resist, but rather God’s use of his resistance. Paul did not say that God had prepared “vessels of wrath” as he said God had prepared “vessels of mercy.” Rather, God endured them. It is true that, when God shows mercy and it is rejected, God is wrathful. However, God makes the rejection by the disobedient serve God’s will, by employing these “vessels of wrath” as witnesses to the judgment executed at Golgotha. In parallel with Pharaoh, Israel serves this function as a “vessel of wrath.” Not for one moment may the aim of this judgment be forgotten: by it, God says yes to Israel and all creatures. In sum: God endures “vessels of wrath” and even wills their service as a witness to God’s judgment, because God wills to refashion them into “vessels of mercy.” The existence of the church comprising Jews and Gentiles is proof of this. Those who were earlier not chosen but were patiently endured, the Gentiles, are now fashioned into “vessels of mercy.” This demonstrates that God, in righteousness, always aimed at being merciful to all, even to those whom in the first instance God did not choose. Indeed, the election of the Gentiles reveals the secret of God’s way with Israel. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; Moses, not Pharaoh. God’s choosing and nonchoosing were tactical, not ontological. This is now revealed, since the nonchosen par excellence—the Gentiles—now receive God’s mercy. Isaac, Jacob, and Moses testify to God’s mercy. Ishmael, Esau, and Pharaoh testify that the mercy of God is free. The inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s election reveals not only that the earlier sphere of God’s nonchoosing is not closed to God’s mercy, but also that the whole economy of choosing and nonchoosing is

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fulfilled in God’s free choosing of all in mercy and in its free acceptance by all. By choosing some in Israel and rejecting others, God employed the whole nation as a witness: the one part as a witness to God’s mercy, the other as a witness to the freedom of God’s mercy. Now that God in Jesus has fulfilled the promise of mercy and bestowed it on the nonchosen outside of Israel, how can this promise, originally given to Israel, not be applied to all within it, even those who today are nonchosen by virtue of their resistance to Jesus Christ? Paul’s point in this first section is that, while God may use the resistance of the majority of Jews to their election in Jesus Christ to serve as a witness to God’s judgment and to the freedom of God’s mercy, this does not provide them with an excuse for their resistance, since the whole pattern of God’s election of them aims at their being “vessels of mercy” and not “vessels of wrath.” The Second Line of Paul’s Argument: Rom. 9:30–10:21 In this section we find the same issue examined from a second perspective. Disobedience to the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ was already the secret of the whole history of Israel. To know this is terrible, because disobedience is inexcusable; however, to know this is also comforting, because the creature of disobedience is not without hope. The promise of God is fulfilled with the coming of Jesus, but Israel persists in the will to fulfill the law by its own doing, rather than by accepting God’s mercy. God is prepared to take responsibility for all of Israel’s disobedience. This is Israel’s comfort and hope; however, in accord with its history, Israel rejected this. These people have zeal for God, and in this way confirm their election. Yet, this very zeal is their disobedience in that their zeal to establish their worthiness of the promise marks their failure to trust in God’s mercy. It is when the whole grace of God directed to Israel is revealed that the secret of its history of disobedience is also manifested. In Rom. 10:4–13, Paul says that Israel was the nation to whom Christ was promised from the beginning. The coming of Christ is the content of Torah. The Christ who has come now addresses Christ’s people through the voice of Moses, through the Law. To obey the Law means to believe in Christ, who is the voice and content of the Law. Israel, in trying to establish its own righteousness before the Law rather than believing him who was always its content, missed the faith to which it was called. This is its disobedience. The Jew should be the first to know and confess: Jesus is Lord. Indeed, Paul’s own proclamation to the Jews of his day that Christ is the content and voice of the Law proves that it is not because of ignorance that they do not believe. Yet this is not bad news, for this is preaching, and wherever there is preaching, there is active power. This power belongs not to the preacher, but to the one whom preaching attests, namely the Servant of the Lord, who makes unbelief in the gospel impossible, for it is resistance not merely to an apostle or prophet, but to God. Who can believe? In terms of human capacity, no one! Only the creature whom God’s mercy calls out of unbelief will believe. So, again, the Jews who disobey are not without hope. Just as important is the fact that by fulfilling prophecy, in part,

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they confirm prophecy that most profoundly sets out a hope for all flesh, despite all disobedience. It was certain, Paul said, that Israel had heard this news, since he himself had preached it among Jews, and his preaching had been borne to their inmost being by the power of the resurrection. Perhaps Israel did not understand. This was no excuse, for the issue could not be the comprehensibility of the gospel. It was assumed that the gospel was not comprehensible to the creature, yet the Gentiles had heard and understood. The uncomprehending people (the Gentiles) who did not seek God had been allowed by God to hear and believe the Word. The existence of these Gentiles gave Israel a reason for jealousy. Uncomprehending people understood, and those who did not seek God found God! Their faith and life in the Ekklesia were evidence that these Gentiles had understood. Could the Jews, then, maintain that they could not understand? They could understand, but they would not. Although in this section Paul alludes to his own missionary work, he settled his argument upon Scripture, since he wished not to deny, but to confirm the calling and election of Israel, even and precisely in its disobedience. For just as Israel had always been disobedient, so God had always faithfully showed mercy to these disobedient people. Paul referred his argument to Scripture because he did not want to let anything but the purpose of God’s merciful election be uppermost. Surely the theme of Israel’s disobedience was not uppermost. The salient point for the church is not the disobedience of Israel, but the point that God has always stooped to these people and given Godself to them. Their guilt is clear, but here is the good news: God has made these people the objects of God’s constant mercy; God has not abandoned them in their guilt, for God’s mercy is greater than their guilt and greater than all human guilt The Third Line of Paul’s Argument: Rom. 11:1–36 This section is governed by the question, Has God cast off God’s people? No, God has not cast off the people whom God predestined. Paul himself, who was a disobedient member of disobedient Israel, had been called by Christ to be an apostle and to have his election proved. If Paul was elected to be an apostle, was this not proof of the faithfulness of God’s mercy to God’s people? How could Paul not expect fulfillment for other disobedient ones? However, Paul was not the lone witness. In Elijah’s day, God set apart a remnant by grace: “[I]f it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works” (Rom. 11:6). The members of this remnant were not set apart only for themselves, but for the sake of the whole people. Likewise, Jesus Christ is vindicated not only for himself, but also for the whole people. This is the merciful way God deals with Israel. That which Israel seeks it has not obtained, but the election of Jesus Christ has obtained it for Israel. Israel sought by its own willing and doing to fulfill the Law and therein is disobedient. However, if the Gentiles have a righteousness they did not seek, and have found a God they did not seek, it is impossible to think Israel’s disobedience is the final word said about Israel.

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God has already elected a remnant from Israel along with the Gentiles:  that is, the Jews in the church. This shows that God’s mercy toward Israel continues. God has hardened others in order to reveal the freedom of God’s mercy. This very emphasis on the freedom of God’s mercy provides the hope that this part of Israel will also enjoy God’s mercy, for it is the freedom of God’s mercy that sets a limit to the consequences of the disobedience of the creature. Did the Jews stumble so as to fall into an abyss? No! Their hardening by God was tactical; by means of their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles. The hardened in Israel have delivered Jesus to the Gentiles. This disobedience belongs to the history of salvation in a way decisive for the Gentiles—but what shall happen to the hardened ones? They shall discern that God saves the ignorant and lost and shall know what this means for them. Indeed, Paul could not think of election by God without thinking of all Israel, for if the root is holy, so are the branches. (The root is the promise given to Abraham as it is fulfilled in Christ.) As relatives of Jesus, all Jews are branches and thus are set apart for the service of God. Indeed, some branches are broken off. This theme will be taken up on the Jewish side shortly, but first the point is made that the Gentiles have taken the place of disobedient Jews and enjoy the salvation granted to Israel. How can Gentiles enjoy being supported by the holiness of this root without recognizing in unbelieving Jews the holiness of the root? How could Gentiles boast of their position? To be adopted means to believe that, in his resurrection from the dead, Jesus has made an end of Jewish rejection and pride (and therein of all pride). For the Gentile to be proud would be unbelief, and she or he would then be cut off from her or his election. What attitude is left for the Gentiles? The attitude that is commanded of them is that they abide in the mercy and kindness of God, which has been revealed to them. This is their faith. How, out of this faith, could they possibly conceive that God has abandoned God’s people? If they think this, they have lost their faith and are cut off. This is enmity to Jews, and such is a sin against the Holy Spirit. At the end, Paul spoke positively: The hardened shall be grafted on again, under the condition that they not continue in their unbelief. When Paul remembered what had happened to the Gentiles, that even they who were so remote from God’s calling had been included in God’s election, it was impossible for him to believe in the persistence of rejection among those who were first called. The mystery was not that someday Israel would enter into its election, but that it had not yet happened. Disobedience among Jews is a fact, yet this mystery casts some light. First, Israel remains hardened because the full number of Gentiles must enter into election before it. Second, the Deliverer wishes to mark those delivered as, first of all, lost. The election of Israel is hidden behind its rejection, but it is sure and “irrevocable.” Paul spoke, at the end, of the divine sovereignty, the divine freedom, but it is the sovereignty of God’s mercy. Those who believe in this God trust in the faithfulness of God’s mercy toward Israel. Those who hope in this God hope for the future of the people of Israel, God’s beloved. Jews are only enemies of God for the sake of the Gentiles, for a season. “Just as you [Gentiles] were once disobedient

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to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy. For God has consigned all . . . to disobedience that [God] may have mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:30–32, R.S.V.). Together, Jews and Gentiles are gathered in disobedience—they are put into prison together, and in Christ they are both destined to be free. This is how those who believe the gospel are to regard the Jews.

Jews and Christians in Today’s World According to Barth’s explication of Romans 9–11, Paul, a Jew and a Christian, speaks of Jews who refuse the gospel as the paradigmatically disobedient creatures. On the one hand, this situation caused Paul great sorrow and anguish of heart; on the other hand, he was not downcast by it, for he perceived in Jewish rejection a tactical maneuver by God, who hardens Israel for a season—for the revelation of the freedom of God’s mercy—but who will yet in mercy pluck the brand from the burning. The positive elements in this witness are scarcely to be ignored. However, Christians cannot ignore the fact that this characterization of Jews by Paul as Barth presented it, as the paradigmatically disobedient people, has fostered hostility toward Jews among alleged Christians and has been a source and root of even more hostility, in the form of atrocities brought upon Jews. In our day, and indeed during the time Barth was writing the Kirchliche Dogmatik II/2, the murder of millions of Jews was taking place, not because they were guilty of any civil or criminal offense, but simply because they were Jews. The scope of this murderous activity is beyond our comprehension. We gain more understanding by hearing the witness to specific occurrences. Elie Wiesel wrote of the hanging of one innocent, “angel-faced” Jewish boy at Auschwitz: The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him. The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. “Long live liberty!” cried the two adults. But the child was silent. “Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. “Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. “Cover your heads!”

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Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive . . . For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”4

The responsibility in our theological work with regard to the relation of Jews and Christians is both clear and grave. It may be that the examination of this relation is the most important part of our work. It can be said that enmity to Jews was patently not the motive of Paul’s statements (quite the opposite), nor was enmity to Jews a consequence of a proper reading of his statements. However, because of the way they read Paul, Chrysostom and Ambrose would not speak to a Jew on the street. Chrysostom characterized Jews as possessed of demons; Ambrose endorsed the destruction of a synagogue by a mob. Thomas Aquinas and Innocent III sanctioned discriminatory measures toward Jews; Calvin and Luther characterized Jews as vile. All of this prepared the way for pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust. Our work has to be radical, thus it must go to the biblical root. While Jesus Christ was killed once and for all others, his brothers and sisters according to the flesh—simply because they were this—have been killed several million times and for no one, but rather for satanic power. Can we think this has brought other than unceasing anguish and sorrow to Jesus Christ? Can we help thinking that this covering over of the mercy God wills for God’s people Israel has so hidden that mercy that a decent person will declare not only that the church’s vocation is dead, but also that God is dead? This is a judgment of the creature, which only the mercy of God, in the miracle of faith, can overturn—but faith comes by preaching. What is the content of our preaching to be, the preaching wherein we hope that the mercy of God may execute its miraculous task? The clue is already present, as Barth’s explication indicates, in Romans 9–11. Paul warns Gentile Christians against boasting in the face of Jews or accusing them. Enmity toward Jews, since it misunderstands their witness to the freedom of God’s mercy, is the paradigmatic disobedience of Gentiles toward the gospel. The Gentile who is against Jews is the paradigmatically disobedient Gentile. This is the real heart of Romans 9–11.

4.  Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Stella Rodway, 25th anniversary ed. (New  York: Bantam Books, 1986; orig. Paris:  Les Editions de Minuit, 1958; E.T., New  York:  Hill & Wang, 1960), 61–2.

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Proposal My proposal is to read Romans 9–11 following Barth’s explication of this pericope, which, according to Barth, depicts those who are paradigmatically disobedient to the gospel, namely the Jews. However, I propose to recast the explication in order to throw light upon our situation, that is, on the paradigmatic disobedience of the Gentile. The paradigmatic disobedience of the Gentile is declared in the text to be enmity toward Jews. The parallel between Jewish disobedience and Gentile disobedience will not be perfect, but that does not render such a proposal invalid. The question is whether enough light will be shed—by drawing upon the declaration about paradigmatic Gentile disobedience in the text—to enable us, on an exegetical basis, to take up our theological and preaching responsibility concerning Gentile enmity toward Jews. First of all, the sound ground for normal Gentile anti-Semitism is taken away from the Christian. It is a human offense for a people to regard itself as the special recipient of God’s promise, covenant, and law. For the Gentile who professes Jesus Christ, however, this offense is past. Such a Gentile believes that salvation is of the Jews. The claim of Israel is not offense (human arrogance), but it is good news also for Gentiles. To take the mercy of God seriously is to pay heed to how it has been enacted. Its enactment has involved the service that has borne witness to the law and the promise. We do not have our God, our Savior, apart from this people. Our Gentile rejection of this people is our paradigmatic rejection of Jesus Christ, but the last word is God’s, not that of our rejection. Despite our rejection of the Jews, God keeps these people alive and bearing witness to us of God’s promise and law. It is not for us Gentiles to accuse these servants of disobedience. Disobedience in Israel’s life is a matter between Israel and its judge. We may only long for oneness with its members in their hope. What we may surely do is pray for and expect God’s mercy to fall upon every Jew as well as upon ourselves. Paul asseverates that Gentiles have been included in the covenant, so as to make Jews jealous, to make them zealous for righteousness. Here is, indeed, a place for the accusation of us by the living God. Where has the Christian community (almost entirely Gentile) lived before the God of Israel in such a way that Jews would be jealous of the faithfulness and mercy that the God of Israel has engendered in Gentile Christians by God’s faithfulness and mercy? If Christians have a “mission” to Jews, it can express itself in no way other than in showing faithfulness and mercy to these brothers and sisters who are separated from us. It eventuates, then, that we Gentile Christians must speak of disobedience, accusation, and God’s mercy. However, it is the disobedience of which God accuses us, the disobedience that has occurred through our accusation of our Jewish neighbor, and here we must persistently apply for and expect God’s mercy upon us. In the first argument of Paul as Barth presented it, there is an exclusion by the gospel. But in the case of us Gentiles, exclusion has a special meaning. We are excluded by the gospel wherever we wish explicitly or implicitly to have the God of Israel without the Jews, for such a disobedient attitude reckons that God does

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not keep God’s promise. The glorious Word of God revealed by this exclusion is precisely the Word of God’s utter faithfulness and love. At this point we may examine briefly a certain asymmetry that arises between Jewish disobedience and Gentile disobedience. God wills to use Jewish disobedience in God’s service, said Paul. God can refashion these “vessels of wrath” into “vessels of mercy.” For Gentiles, the judgment of God is not, as Barth contended, to be primarily associated with Jews, but rather with anti-Jewish Christians. These are the “vessels of wrath” that manifest the judgment of God. These “vessels” participate in the hanging of innocent Jewish children. However, while Jewish disobedience is inexcusable, it is not without hope. May we say that these Gentile “vessels of wrath,” those who express judenfeinschaft, have any hope? We cannot say that the perpetrators of judenfeinschaft are excluded by the gospel unto eternity, but there is an asymmetry. Jewish disobedience, while inexcusable, is serviceable, said Paul, since Jews gave Jesus over to the Gentiles in the service of the God of Israel. Indeed, the S.S. men, in killing innocent Jewish men, women, and children, also served their master, but this master was not the God of Israel. In sum: when God saves Jews, God saves those whom God loves, despite all they do. When God saves anti-Semites (converting them from anti-Semitism), God saves those whom God hates. God’s attitude toward Israel is the same as always: God has always loved the members of this people. The gospel declares that God’s attitude toward the Gentiles is not different from the attitude God has always had toward Israel. In the case of anti-Jewish Christians, this love comes in the form of hate, yet the gospel prompts us to declare that God can and may also save those whom God hates. In this is the testimony that there is no godlessness that is beyond God’s mercy, but we can only detest godlessness in ourselves (particularly in this paradigmatic form of enmity toward Jews). In relating Paul’s second description of Jewish disobedience to the gospel to Gentile disobedience, a sorrier history than the one he depicts must be related. Israel’s history reveals, he said, that it had always been disobedient. A narration of the history of the church reveals that it has always expressed enmity toward Jews. In this regard, the history of Gentiles in the church points only to their damnation. (We can only thank God that salvation is a gift!) Christianity has failed the gospel in its enmity toward Jews. That is the secret of its failure, even as it is only by the grace of God that its task has ever been executed. When we survey the history of anti-Semitism in the church, we learn with poignancy the truth of the attestation that the Reformation learned from Paul: by grace alone do you stand at all. The church has not believed in the mercy and faithfulness of God wherever it has said that Israel is cut off by God; Israel is an anachronism. Israel is part of the rock of salvation; wherever the church has failed to look for Israel, it has stumbled over that rock. Stumbled so as to fall? “By no means!” But the “by no means” simply refers to the abiding grace of God, shown us in God’s Son. We are saved only as God’s mercy burns out our enmity toward Jews and keeps us in solidarity with them and with the Jew Jesus.

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Even as Paul was preoccupied with his Jewish brothers and sisters, we must be preoccupied with our anti-Jewish brothers and sisters—not in order to accuse and condemn them, but in order to confess our oneness and complicity with their antiJewish attitude and actions, to acknowledge to our God that we know how deeply this is enmity toward God, and to invite God to employ God’s love in burning this out of us. We must persistently study the Scriptures that speak of God’s love for Israel, so that our enmity toward this nation may clearly be manifest to us for what it is:  enmity toward God. Indeed, Paul tells us that Jesus was the content of the Torah, which was and is ever nigh to Israel. What we Gentiles should take from this is that long before any Gentile heard the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the grace and claim of the God present in Jesus were attested among the Jews. There never has been a Jew whose very existence did not attest the grace and claim of the God who is also the God of the church. While Israel may be disobedient (that is not a subject for Gentile accusation), its disobedience has not had the characteristics of abysmal ignorance, idolatry, and “beyond the paleness” of Gentile disobedience. Paul’s letter clearly indicates, said Barth, that Jesus Christ takes form in the history of the people Israel and in the Scripture of Israel. It may be appropriate for Christians to inquire of Jews whether or not this attestation is offensive to them and why. However, for our purposes—the examination of what Romans 9–11 and Barth’s exposition of it tells us about Gentile disobedience to the gospel—we can again see why enmity toward Jews is enmity toward Jesus Christ. Here, in this people, is where Christ originally took form and where even today Christ may take a form, the form most proximate to us. To express any enmity toward Jews as Jews is to express enmity toward Jesus Christ. Reading Romans 10, we associate Jesus’s coming to us with preaching, but the history and actuality of this people are the beautiful feet of him who addresses us in preaching. To reject the Jews is to attempt to sever the beautiful anointed feet of the Preacher from the body. More formally, do we think to have the content of the Word without its form? (Protestants might ask of John Calvin, who loved Israel past, whether he wanted the content of the Word in only part of its form, that is, in Israel past but not in Israel present. Did he not see that the people of this book were not only those who wrote it, but also those who continue to live out of it? These are not only Gentile and Jewish Christians, but also living Jews.) Jewish disobedience, said Paul, serves the Word; God wills obedience for God’s Word, and God will not fail to make that Word heard and obeyed. When Israel disobeys God’s Word, God speaks it to the Gentiles. What purpose does the paradigmatic disobedience of Gentiles (namely anti-Semitism) serve? There simply is no symmetry here. Yet I  cautiously and boldly propose that antiSemitism may evoke in us the hope that God will also save those whom God hates. Is that an excuse for original malice (which is what anti-Semitism is)? Do faith and hope in the God of mercy encourage malice? Such a perverse question does not need a reply, but it does point to the fact that, as we execute our

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preaching task and proclaim anti-Semitism to be the paradigmatic sin of Gentile Christendom, we may expect that anti-Semitism will only be strengthened by such preaching wherever the miracle of God’s mercy in the preaching does not find fruit. Where it is told that God raised Jesus from the dead in order to vindicate the fact that Israel was the bearer of God’s promise and claim, all those who had not heard this claim (and now fail to believe it) will take human offense at Israel for the first time. Understanding, they will not understand. Hearing, they will not hear. They who were not looking for this God will now be all the more disinclined to seek God, since acknowledging God entails the obnoxious human claim that this people, the Jews, is the special bearer of the promise and claim of God. Shall we cease preaching, so that this paradigmatic disobedience of Gentiles will not eventuate? Should the sin of the creature cause us to cease preaching? Or is our faith such that it is so confident of the effective mercy of God that it continues even though it knows that the proclamation of the grace of God stirs and reveals sin? Paul spoke not only of his experience of Jewish disobedience, but also of the disobedience of Israel attested in Scripture. Barth indicated that Paul spoke of Scripture’s witness to the disobedience of Israel because it enabled him to emphasize the whole witness of Scripture: that despite its disobedience, God is faithful to the merciful election of God’s people. So we Gentiles may note, if God is faithful to the people God loves, despite their disobedience, perhaps God’s mercy will also extend to those whom God hates (and bring them to repentance). Indeed, in Romans Paul told us, “Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6) and “God shows [God’s] love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). The argument inferred is that despite Israel’s consistent rejection of its Lord, its Lord continues in faithfulness to God’s people. In Christ, God has acted not only for God’s people, but also for the ungodly. As God is faithful to God’s people despite their rejection, so also, since God has poured out God’s love in Christ for all the ungodly, we may preach that there is hope that even Gentile Christian disobedience will be forgiven. Forgiveness does not excuse (it rather judges) the sin, but saves the sinner. Finally, the most hopeful section of all appears in Romans 11. God ever awakens obedience among the disobedient. For Gentile Christians, this means that God ever converts them from enmity to brotherly and sisterly affection for their elder brothers and sisters. As profound as anti-Semitism may appear to us, all those Gentile Christians who have been awakened to brotherly and sisterly affection for Jews must now be strengthened in their labor on behalf of Jews by the hope that all the Gentile Christians will be awakened from enmity toward their Jewish brothers and sisters to affection for them. Here, then, is a mystery. What is my attitude toward my neighbor and toward my neighbor Jesus? This is most profoundly revealed in my attitude toward Jews. This is what discloses the character of all my relations with others. If I bear enmity toward Jews, this is the clue to the character of all my interpersonal relations. Moreover, insofar as we are anti-Semites, we are apostates. The casting aside of

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our anti-Semitism in part or in toto is evidence of the work of the grace of God upon us. In that God has taken our anti-Semitism from us, we may be hopeful that God will do so among all the Gentile Christians and also among Jews (for it exists there too). Indeed, even in the days of the Holocaust—the outbreak of perennial antiSemitism that is unparalleled in scope and depth—there was a remnant of faithful Gentile Christians who acted in solidarity with their Jewish brothers and sisters. God does and can awaken us to this solidarity with the Jews. While there may be enmity toward Jews in us, God in God’s mercy has so constrained us that many Christians have learned never knowingly to utter an anti-Jewish remark and never knowingly to commit an anti-Jewish act. (We have to study a great deal more to know what constitutes anti-Jewish action or speech, since it is not evident to us. In fact, we may only finally know by the living Word of God.) This constraint in us testifies that God does not abandon even those who hate God’s people and whom God therefore hates. God awakens them from this enmity. God is so free that God can even be who God is (the One who loves) to those whom God hates—not that the judgment is not severe: “Note . . . the kindness and the severity of God” (Rom. 11:22). If anti-Semitism is grave, and it is, the kindness of God sets limits to it. If that seems unbelievable in the face of the Holocaust, we may at least cautiously and boldly point to the emergence of a new vitality among Jews with the establishment of the State of Israel. If that seems unbelievable in the face of the fact that many Gentile Christians served the Nazi regime, we may cautiously point to a remnant of them who today confess Gentile-Christian complicity and will not let their Gentile-Christian brothers and sisters forget that complicity in the Holocaust.5 This remnant effects solidarity with Jews, so that the covenant people of God is not broken asunder at this point. However, this is not yet redemption, which we await. We do not know in fullness what redemption means, but in part we do. In part, redemption means that the wall of partition will no longer exist between Jews and Gentiles and that they shall live together as brothers and sisters in the house of the Father, the God of Israel. On the way to this redemption, we know that Gentile contempt for Jews is impossible, but we also know that the anti-Semitic Gentile Christian may not be taken as a hopeless case (much as we may hate his or her anti-Semitism). If Jesus accepted the Gentiles who rejected him (“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”), if we have known in ourselves some defeat of anti-Semitism, then we live in hope for the final defeat of this paradigmatic enmity. As it is defeated by grace, so the blessing given to Abraham and transmitted through his offspring shall begin to reach the Gentiles. On the way to redemption, how could any Gentile boast in the face of Jews? How could he or she boast when the very gift of grace is his or her love for the Jews? That is what grace (originally) effects in

5. Any who deplore this may be reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s affirmation that, by our confession of guilt, Christ renews Christ’s image in us.

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someone. To believe in Jesus Christ is to love Jesus Christ and all his brothers and sisters of the flesh. If anyone says he or she loves God and hates his or her Jewish neighbor, that one is a liar, and there is no faith in him or her. In Jesus Christ God does not reject the Jews, but rejects the rejection of the Jews, which includes our rejection of them too. What is demanded of Gentile Christians is that they abide in the kindness of God, which is revealed to them, and apply it (in the first place) to their Jewish brothers and sisters. How could a Gentile Christian, knowing the kindness of God, draw the conclusion that God has other than kindness stored up for Israel? A warning, then: Even as God is free to be kind toward God’s people (God’s severity with them being a matter between God and them), so God is free to be severe with those who hate God’s people. While this cannot be the last word, it is a very serious word. If God wills a limit to the enmity that God’s people must endure, we may not deny the severity—even ultimate severity—with which God may deal with those who visit enmity on this people (and thereby on God). The mystery is that anti-Semitism continues. That it is still a large fact is a mystery we cannot dispel, but this much we can say:  God has endured with much patience the “vessels of wrath” made for destruction, in order to refashion them into “vessels of mercy.” We can hope in the power of God’s mercy in Christ to refashion us Gentile Christians from “vessels of hatred” into “vessels of love.” “For God has consigned all . . . to disobedience, that [God] may have mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:32). Gentile Christians did not come to Jesus; he came to them. They have profoundly rejected him by their anti-Semitism, placing themselves in peril. However, as he first came to them in his love, he comes and comes again. He does and can destroy their enmity and raise them to love. It is in terms of this fact that we can regard the future. If some Gentile Christians have been awakened to brotherly and sisterly affection for Jews, will we really say this will not be effected in others? Is it not our special vocation in this time to say that Christ is effecting and can effect this metanoia in the Gentile members of the church—and even in the Gentile world beyond it? We may make it known that this new reality is available. We Gentile Christians have had enmity toward Jews and have provoked their enmity. We have constructed a prison for ourselves of this enmity and imprisoned Jews by it as well. Christ frees us from it. That is the good news to be preached to our fellow sinners among Gentile Christians—and its fruit will be good news for Jews as well.

A Final Note Paul spoke of Jewish disobedience to the gospel in Romans 9–11, but since this letter was sent to largely Gentile-Christian congregations, we may be confident that he speaks of Jewish disobedience only in order to cast light upon Gentile-Christian disobedience to the gospel. This Gentile-Christian disobedience is the declaration that Israel is cut off. Why, for Paul in his time, was this act of disobedience so

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grave, even to the point of imperiling the salvation of Gentile Christians? Paul’s answer is clear: God has given God’s irrevocable promise to Israel. Any Gentile Christian who says the Jews are cut off declares thereby that God does not keep God’s Word. Such a declaration denies the gospel, the message of the fulfillment of God’s Word of promise.

Chapter 7 K A R L B A RT H’ S I N F LU E N C E O N C AT HO L IC T H E O L O G Y A B OU T J U DA I SM 1 Philip J. Rosato

Early in his theological career, Karl Barth stated that if he were compelled to choose between Liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, he would opt for the latter because of its adherence, despite considerable aberrations, to the revealed truths about God and humanity that are recorded in the Scriptures and elucidated by tradition. Yet Barth was relieved that he did not have to make such a choice; instead, he could travel an untrodden path by restating in the twentieth century the pristine theological vision of the sixteenth-century Reformers, and thus challenge the two advocates of an erroneous anthropological interpretation of church doctrine to rediscover its orthodox Christological character.2 Barth’s repudiation of his theological adversaries was as incessant as it was self-assured. Barth understandably provoked strong yet varied reactions from those he criticized. The Liberal Protestant rebuttal was generally acrimonious and unbending, since Barth was regarded as a Christian fundamentalist whose unthinking and irresponsible repetition of biblical and doctrinal statements contradicted the innovative spirit of the very Reformers he championed. Unlike Barth, the original Reformers had truly reappropriated Christian tradition for their contemporaries by courageously setting it forth in terms that corresponded to the actual experience and worldview at the time.3 The Catholic rebuttal, in contrast, was more mild and respectful, since, especially in the period following World War II, Barth’s Church Dogmatics 1.  This paper was delivered at a symposium organized by the theological faculty of the Pontifical Gregorian University to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Karl Barth on May 10, 1986. 2.  Cf. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, x; Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (hereafter KD), viii. After identifying Liberal Protestantism as the destruction of Reformation theology, and the analogia entis as the invention of Antichrist, Barth states: “Whereupon I at the same time allow myself to regard all other possible reasons for not becoming Catholic as shortsighted and lacking in seriousness.” 3. A work that captures the acrimony of the debate Barth stimulated in Liberal Protestant circles is K. Barth and E. Brunner, Natural Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946); cf. also

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offered a solid basis for better understanding and a new hope for gradual accord between Catholic and Protestant ecclesial communities, which, shaken by the conflagration of Europe, repented having countered each other for four centuries rather than striven for eventual reunion. Catholic scholars who studied Barth’s thought carefully, while far from being irenic and uncritical, valued his positive attitude toward the essential teachings of the Scriptures and the Creeds, and by their openness to dialogue with him rendered Barth amenable to increased contact and cooperation with them.4 The crowning symbol of this mutual respect was the invitation extended to Barth in 1963 to serve as a Protestant observer at the Second Vatican Council; although academic responsibilities at Basel prevented him from attending the sessions of the Council, he did travel to Rome in 1966 and meet in a cordial manner with Pope Paul VI, Curia officials, and university professors. His Ad Limina Apostolorum, written to commemorate this visit and to publicize the questions he had put to his interlocutors concerning the documents of the Council, afforded him the opportunity both to reciprocate the previous estimation of his work by Catholics and to stimulate further debate with them on the main theological issues he believed were yet unresolved.5 However, besides asserting that the Roman trip culminated a long and profitable exchange between Barth and some Catholic scholars, can one propose that his thought has exerted and still exerts a notable influence on Catholic theology as such? If this influence exists at all, to what particular aspects of Barth’s theology can it be traced? To the first question, one can confidently answer yes:  the intellectual production and the moral example of Barth have given and will give, both to individual Catholic theologians and to official collaborators with the Roman pontiff, the courage to express their own tradition in a more biblical, dynamic, and prophetic manner. This is true despite the conjecture that, as in the past, Catholic theologians to come will encounter serious difficulty in accepting those elements of Barthian thought which, on account of his thoroughly Christological point of view, excessively relativize the autonomy of the human subject and the mediatory function of the Church.6 Yet in the

T. Rendtorff (ed.), Die Realisierung der Freiheit, Beiträge zur Kritik der Theologie Karl Barths (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975). 4. A detailed bibliography of works by Catholics on the theology of Barth can be found in C. O’Grady, The Church in the Theology of Karl Barth (London:  Geoffrey Chapman, 1970), 357–60, and A. Quadt, Gott und Mensch, Zur Theologie Karl Barths in ökumenischer Sicht (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1976), 361–4. 5.  Cf. K. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1968). 6. Although Barth remained a friend of the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, the latter’s critique of his “christological restriction” of dogma led Barth to distance himself somewhat from him in 1952, and to criticize any “holy repetitions” of Christ’s history in addition to Christ himself: “The being and activity of Jesus Christ needs no repetition. He is present and active in his own truth and power.” Cf. Church Dogmatics IV/1, 769 (KD 858).

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final analysis, the vastness, the energy, and the spirituality of Barth’s work will always allow Catholics to consider him a trusted brother and an admired teacher. In response to the second question, it can be said that, although a number of other beneficial influences could be singled out, three theological themes expounded by Barth, not merely with his pen, but also by his style of life, can be shown thus far to have been sources of inspiration and incentives to the development of Catholic theology. These themes, which will be briefly examined in this essay, are the following:  (1) the unique and continuing role of the Jews in the communication of humanity’s election by the Word of God, (2) the delineation of pneumatology as the divine ground of the faith and sanctification of Christians, and (3) the essential link between the eschatological message and the practical-social behavior of the church. Before proceeding to justify the choice of these themes, a preliminary remark about them will underscore the efficacy of both Barth’s honesty in dialogue with Catholicism and the latter’s willingness to learn from him. Each of these themes corresponds to one of the three elements of Catholic theology that Barth sharply censured as anthropocentric: the first theme, concerning Judaism, corresponds to his critique of Catholicism’s appreciation of the natural religiosity of the human person to the point of evaluating the religion of Israel within this perspective; the second theme, concerning pneumatology, corresponds to his disapproval of Catholicism’s claim that the faith and sanctification of Christians rests on an ontic participation in the divinity of the Holy Spirit rather than on a totally actualistic reception of divine grace; and the third theme, concerning an eschatologically determined orthopraxy, corresponds to Barth’s difficulty with Catholicism’s exaggerated tendency to enculturate itself in the world rather than serve as a kerygmatic counterpoint to its intellectual self-understanding and political values. In other words, the influence of Barth on Catholic theology can be rooted precisely in the criticism he directed toward it.7 Thus, Barth persevered in dialogue with Catholicism because he was firmly convinced that it was capable of listening to as well as opposing his objections. In effect, it is proposed here that the serious engagement of Catholics with main themes of Barthian theology, which were originally critical of them, has borne fruit in the post-Conciliar period through the development of a more sharply focused theology of Israel, of the Holy Spirit, and of prophetic action.

7. In two high-spirited letters to his sons, Barth characterized himself as a “Trojan horse” introduced by Catholic theologians into their camp. The first reference resulted from an encounter with Hans Urs von Balthasar; cf. E. Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Philadelphia:  Fortress, 1976), 362, a letter to Christof Barth on December 30, 1948. The second reference appeared in a discussion of Henri Bouillard’s appraisal of Barth; the reference ends with the phrase “there is much to suggest that I have another chance of becoming a kind of Catholic church father in partibus infidelium” Cf. ibid., 421, a letter to Barth’s sons on September 14, 1953.

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Israel’s Unique and Continuing Role in the Communication of Humanity’s Election by the Word of God Although Barth staunchly berated Catholicism’s advocacy of natural theology and its affirmation of valid theological elements in non-Christian religions, he was particularly dismayed by one evident lacuna in the broad spectrum that Catholic theology devised as its intellectual backdrop. There was one truth that he thought was never clearly enough articulated there and that he would readily have embraced if it were: the unparalleled and perduring place of the faith and existence of Israel in the self-understanding of Christians. Barth’s lifelong frustration with the failure of Catholicism squarely to confront the reality of Judaism was not abated by the disappointingly brief treatment of it that he discovered in Nostra Aetate of Vatican II. In fact, of all the documents issued by this Council, it was precisely the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions that Barth found “so difficult and perhaps impossible” to interpret in a favorable way.8 To his mind, the gravest defect of the declaration, apart from its overall lack of Pauline candor in criticizing all religions, whether higher or primitive, as having been judged idolatrous by the cross of Christ, was “to speak of the past and the present history of Israel in the same breath with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam as a ‘non-Christian religion.’ ”9 Barth was astounded by the declaration’s facile categorization of Judaism as simply one spiritual phenomenon among others in the world, because the Old Testament, far from being merely an instance of the universal selfdisclosure of the Creator, is “the original form of the one revelation of God.”10 With playful sarcasm, Barth implied that Catholicism’s traditional defense of proofs for the existence of God would have been considerably offset had Vatican II openly conceded that “in the existence of later and contemporary Judaism (believing and unbelieving) we have the sole natural (i.e. in terms of world history) proof of God.”11 The theoretical deficiencies of Nostra Aetate with regard to Israel were not diminished but only aggravated, according to Barth, by the conspicuous absence from the declaration of a public confession of guilt to the Jews over the Catholic Church’s historical involvement in anti-Semitism. With all sincerity, the Protestant Barth addressed a disinterested and pointed question to Roman Catholicism: did not Vatican II owe a fervent apology more properly to the Jews than to the separated brethren? In response, Catholic theologians might legitimately point out that a more detailed and coherent exposition of the Church’s stance toward Judaism was initially envisioned and forcefully yet unsuccessfully supported by some bishops at the Council, that Nostra Aetate, admittedly a document forged as a compromise by bishops who had much or little opportunity to encounter Jews, did in fact

8. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 35. 9. Ibid., 36. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.

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advance the church’s theology of Judaism and implicitly ask pardon of the Jewish people for its past wrongdoing toward them, and that other Conciliar documents, especially Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium, contained unambiguous assertions of Israel’s privileged position in God’s self-revelation.12 Nevertheless, Barth’s critique of Catholicism’s attitude toward the faith and function of Israel concerned not so much the objective existence of a theological position, but its existential influence upon the minds and actions of the members of this church. Barth’s serious objections to the minimal statements of Nostra Aetate regarding the former as well as the present role of Israel in God’s election of humanity did not spring from the abstract musings of a Protestant theologian equally culpable of having neglected this topic, but from the specific writings and decisions of one who suffered personal and public injury because of the discomfort he aroused in his fellow Christians by both insisting “out of season” on Israel’s permanent part in God’s salvific will for humanity and acting on behalf of Jewish refugees during the Nazi period. In 1934, Barth, then professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Bonn, convinced many noted theologians belonging to the Confessing Church to formulate the Barmen Declaration, which publicly accused the government of Adolf Hitler of practicing idolatry and justified refusal to cooperate with its inhuman regulations. As an eventual consequence of this protest, Barth was expelled from Germany and returned to his native Switzerland, where he was active in securing the safe passage of Jews and in keeping the “Jewish question” alive, not only on humanitarian grounds, but chiefly out of respect for “the carnal brothers of Jesus Christ.” When his sermons clearly stating that Jesus was a Jew caused indignation in some of his hearers, Barth commented that “anyone who believes in Christ, who was himself a Jew, and died for Gentiles and Jews, simply cannot be involved in the contempt for Jews and in the ill-treatment of them which is now the order of the day.”13 Yet Barth found himself isolated from many colleagues in the Confessing Church whom he regarded as having fought only for their own academic freedom and as having neglected, by their subsequent silence, to uphold the rights of Jews and other political prisoners. Barth thus asked himself if he had failed to be prophetic at Barmen in not making the Jewish question a key element in his draft of the text: “Of course in 1934 no text in which I had done that would have been acceptable even to the Confessing Church, given the atmosphere that there was then. But that does not excuse me from not having at least gone through the motions of fighting.”14 Moreover, Barth was constrained

12.  For further references to the influence of Nostra Aetate on Catholic theology, cf. A. Bea, The Church and the Jewish People (London:  Chapman, 1966); J. Daniélou, Dialogue with Israel (Baltimore:  Helicon Press, 1966); C. Thoma, A Christian Theology of Judaism (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). 13. K. Barth, Letter to E. Steffens on January 10, 1934, preserved in the Barth Archives in Basel and published in part by Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters, 235. 14. Κ. Barth, “Brief an Eberhard Bethge,” in Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968): 555.

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theologically to defend the actual and not only the past role of Judaism in the divine economy of salvation. In 1941, Barth was at the point of dissociating himself from the Swiss Society for Aid after Emil Brunner along with others had questioned the orthodoxy of his observation that the present tense of the verb in the biblical verse “salvation comes from the Jews” (Jn 4: 22) was still valid and pertinent.15 To be anti-Semitic was, for Barth, nothing less than to sin against the Holy Spirit, because a true proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord implies his Jewishness; to deny this fact is to withstand divine grace. In 1954, at the ecumenical conference in Evanston, Barth attempted in vain to integrate the Jewish question into the message “Christ Is the Hope of the World,” for even the Jews are recipients of this hope, since what separates Jews and Christians in fact holds them together, namely “the Jew on the cross of Golgotha.”16 Although it is impossible in this essay to summarize Barth’s comprehensive theology of Israel, a brief analysis of a section from Church Dogmatics III/3 will serve to bring together his various insights into this topic, which have been mentioned so far in a disjointed fashion. In treating the divine governance of the world, Barth claims that the very existence of the Jews in world history has a decidedly providential significance, although their role in God’s plan is sui generis, being negative rather than positive, a riddle rather than a revelation when viewed in the light of the Christian message. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Jews should not have perdured, and indeed, since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, every force except one has attempted to eradicate them from world history. Only God himself maintains them as a sign of his eternal election of them in Jesus Christ and of his faithful pledge to abide by them because of Christ: “These are the people whose history God fulfilled by himself becoming one of them, and as an Israelite, a Jew, maintaining the covenant which they broke and ratifying the promise; the people from whom this Israelite, this Jew, came forth, to be the Savior of the world. It is because they are this people that the Jews are still there with their own particular history within world history generally: a people which is no people and as such is the people, the people of God.”17 Moreover, Barth interprets God’s providential love for the Jews as a means of confronting all human beings with a mirror of themselves as they stand before his judgment-seat; they, like the Jews, are “the enemies of God, enemies to whom he has turned in the supremacy of his grace and not according to their own merits or deservings.”18 Barth was so consistent in viewing the Jews as a sign and testimony of God’s electing grace that he defended their right to establish and defend a modern state. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Barth remarked that “it was necessary to make a distinction between one’s own political assessment of the situation and the biblical view of the people of Israel.

15. Cf. Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters, 313–14. 16. Ibid., 402, where the author records a seminar report of 1953–4 found in the Barth Archives. 17. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3, 218 (KD, 247). 18. Ibid., 223 (KD, 252).

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Of course the foundation of the state of Israel was not to be seen as an analogy to the conquest under Joshua and thus as a sign that God cannot let his people be defeated. Yet we can read in the newspapers: ‘God keeps his promise.’ ”19 As the centenary of Barth’s birth is being celebrated, one can read comments by Jews and Christians alike, some critical but most laudatory, on the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to the chief synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986. This concrete gesture is being hailed as an exemplification of the growing consciousness of the entire Catholic Church concerning the greater importance of the continuity rather than the discontinuity between Judaism and Christianity. Furthermore, the Commission of the Holy See for Religious Relations with Jews has recently published a directive for preachers and catechists that stresses the common spiritual bond uniting the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and calls for a presentation of Jesus Christ in the light of his Jewish origins and self-understanding.20 Clearly, the edifying coherence found not only in the Judeo-Christian theology of Barth, but also in his courageous moral behavior toward the Jews, has exerted an influence on the Christian world, a reverberation of which is already evident in the documents of Vatican II, in the worldwide pedagogical methods of Catholics, and in the actions and directives of the official magisterium. Yet Barth would surely retort, as he had done in Ad Limina Apostolorum, that similar gestures on the part of the Catholic Church toward other world religions would seem to deny a total acceptance of the unique and perduring role of Israel in God’s salvific plan. Catholic theology, in conformity with its long tradition of respect for the natural religiosity of every human person, is in fact forced to maintain a constant tension between the universality of God’s offer of salvation and the particularity of his election of Israel and the Church. Without equating the faith of Judaism, the ground of its own religiosity, with that of other religions, Catholicism can still claim that the multiformity of religions is proof of the transcendental openness of all persons to the Creator, who truly intends to communicate himself, while the categorical, unparalleled, and continuing realizations of his self-communication in the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures give witness to the valid elements and criticize the aberrations of all other forms of human religion.21 Thus, Catholicism would base its appreciation of other religions on nothing less than the self-revelation of the Creator, who has chosen to be able to root the special election of Israel and the

19. Recording of a conversation of Karl Barth with friends as it is preserved in the Barth Archives and presented by Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters, 492–3. 20.  Cf. Commission of the Holy See for Religious Relations with Jews, The Common Bond: Christians and Jews— Notes for Preaching and Teaching, Rome, 1985. 21.  For further reflections on the relationship of Christianity to non-Christian religions, cf. K. Rahner, “Christentum und nichtchristliche Religionen,” in J. Chr. Hampe (ed.), Gegenwart des Konzils und Zukunft der Kirche im ökumenischen Disput III (München: Kösel Verlag, 1967), 568–73; cf. also J. Dupuis, “The Cosmic Economy of the Spirit and the Sacred Scriptures of Religious Traditions,” in Jesus Christ and His Spirit:  Theological Approaches (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1977), 211–27.

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Church in the desire for himself, for his Word, and for his Spirit, which he has instilled in the human person.

The Delineation of Pneumatology as the Divine Ground of the Faith and Sanctification of Christians Precisely with regard to the potentia obœdientialis of the human spirit, both before and after the act of faith in Christ, Barth was most skeptical. It was reaction to insistence on the human person’s capacity to know God’s nature apart from his sole revelation in Jesus Christ and to share ontologically in God’s life after receiving baptism that induced Barth to become the champion of Christocentrism: only in Christ is there true knowledge of God, and only in Christ is the sanctification of the believer to be located. Christians are permitted to do nothing more than noetically approve the ontic change of their being, which exists outside of them in the crucified and glorified Christ. Accused of sustaining a position bordering on an unacceptable Christomonism, Barth engaged in a counterattack not only with Catholics like Erich Przywara, but also with Protestants like Adolf von Harnack. In both thinkers he discovered personifications of the penchant to attribute to human persons a capacity that belongs to God alone and that was actualized only once in the God-man Jesus Christ. Yet, as a result of prolonged dialogue with his theological adversaries, Barth gradually distanced himself from his original model of Christianity as a circle with Christ as the center, and adopted instead an elliptical model with two foci: the incarnate Word filled by the Holy Spirit and the Christian living by the power of the same Spirit.22 This change of view is evident years later in Barth’s comment on a meeting with his former professor von Harnack in Münster in 1926: “Harnack manifestly spoke for Neo-Protestantism, for which the real object of faith was not God in his revelation but the man who believes in the divine. A theology which is governed in its thinking and speaking by Holy Scripture and the Church will not be able to accord man such honor or think him so significant. But that does not mean that the concerns which led Neo-Protestantism on its own particular course should be forgotten altogether. It has a legitimate place within the framework of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.”23 Barth was thus ready to view the excessive anthropocentrism of his ideological opponents as a disguised and misdirected pneumatology, that is, as an explanation of the transcendent work of the Holy Spirit in the human person who first comes to faith in Christ and then abides in the holiness of this faith. Since it is no exaggeration to assert that Barth’s option for the discipline of pneumatology as the means by which he might be able to interpret his theological antagonists in optimam partem marked a turning point in the history of

22. For Barth’s description of theology as having two foci, cf. K. Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History (London: SCM, 1972), 471–2. 23. Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 367–8 (KD, 403–4).

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ecumenical dialogue, a brief review of the reasons for his choice will further elucidate his influence on Catholic theology. When Barth undertook a detailed study of the third article of the Creed, he realized that both the Christian and the church are objects of faith, because they exist solely on account of the divine work of the Holy Spirit. What his Catholic and Liberal Protestant adversaries were prone to describe as ecclesiological and anthropological truisms might well be salvaged as orthodox, if they could be shown to be grounded in not a human, but a transcendent potentiality, namely that of the Third Divine Person. Since it was particularly Friedrich Schleiermacher, the “Father of Liberal Protestantism,” whose emphasis on the subjective aspect of faith both repelled and intrigued Barth, he repeatedly attempted from 1947 until the end of his life to understand him as a cryptic pneumatologian, and in so doing opened up the possibility of considering all Liberal Protestants as well as Roman Catholics in the same manner: “It would be comfortless if all were to remain totally objective. There is also a subjective aspect, and one can understand the modern exaggeration of this subjective side, which had already begun in the middle of the 17th century and which was brought to systematic order by Schleiermacher, as a tortured attempt to respect the truth of the third article.”24 Yet Barth was never absolutely certain that der Gemeingeist about which Schleiermacher so eloquently spoke was truly to be identified with the divine Spirit of the third article of the Creed; thus, Barth questioned “whether the divinity of the Holy Spirit can be proved as the center of Schleiermacher’s thought, that is, not only whether it was his intention to do so, but whether it really is the divinity of the Holy Spirit which forms the proper center of his theology.”25 These important statements, and others like them, were lent added force by Barth when, in his last publication, he returned to the same theme, suggesting that a pneumatological meeting ground with opponents of his Christocentrism was indeed possible: “What I now and again have mentioned occasionally as an explanation of my relationship to Schleiermacher and what I here and there have indicated among friends, is that there might be the possibility of a theology of the third article— predominantly and decidedly, therefore, of the Holy Spirit.”26 If one examines the Church Dogmatics to determine the place of pneumatology within Barth’s predominantly Christological thinking, one does discover that he made sincere efforts in his theology of the Holy Spirit to comprehend in a positive manner the anthropological and ecclesiological concerns of his adversaries. Employing Anselm’s distinction, which Barth had already exposed in his study Fides Quaerens Intellectum, between the ontic ground and the noetic apprehension of divine truth, he attributed the former to Christ and the latter to the Holy Spirit. Thus, Jesus Christ rather than the human mind is presented as the objective possibility of revelation, and the Holy Spirit rather than the human will as its subjective

24. K. Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 137–8. 25. Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 460. 26.  K. Barth, “Nachwort,” in Schleiermacher-Auswahl (München: Siebenstern Taschenbuch, 1968), 311, translation mine.

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possibility; consequently, the knowability of God is not a human prerogative, but a divine capacity freely shared with humanity by the Word and the Spirit, so that Christian anthropology and ecclesiology can be based on the truth about the human person, which God alone possesses: “We have only to accept the witness about Jesus Christ, and we have then only to look to Jesus Christ—and it is indeed the work of the Holy Spirit, it is indeed the nature of true faith and of the true Church that this happens—to see the man to whom God is knowable, to see and understand ourselves as those to whom God is knowable. And then we can go on to speak in truth of man in his relationship to God, and there can and will actually be a Christian anthropology and ecclesiology.”27 With his thoroughly pneumatic concept of the individual and the community, Barth denied that human persons as such had any autonomous knowledge about or freedom for God; these gifts depended totally on the “may” (das Dürfen) or the “transcendent enabling” (die transzendente Ermöglichung), that is, on the activity of the Holy Spirit in human persons as the basis of their very existence as body and soul.28 An ecclesial corollary of Barth’s pneumatic anthropology was the tenet that the efficacy of baptism does not lie in the exterior liturgical act of pouring water, but in the prior interior washing with the Holy Spirit: “Baptism with the Spirit is effective, causative, even creative action on man and in man. It is indeed divinely effective, divinely causative and divinely creative. Here, if anywhere, one might speak of a sacramental happening in the current sense of the term.”29 As a result of such statements, Catholic theologians are not entirely convinced that Barth’s pneumatology served as a true complement to his Christology by affording the human person and the ecclesial community an authentic role in the spiritual appropriation and liturgical enactment of new life in Christ. The Holy Spirit seems to overshadow the legitimate role of believers, just as Christ’s ontic function in justifying human persons seems to subordinate the Holy Spirit’s noetic function in sanctifying them.30 Despite the limits of Barth’s own pneumatology, his intention to enrich precisely this discipline so as to provide a divine horizon against which the faith and sanctification of believers might be legitimately delineated stimulated new interest in the third credal article on the part of Protestant and Catholic theologians during the 1950s. Besides dialogue with the Eastern churches, for which pneumatology is a prevalent theme, ecumenical openness to the debate generated by Barth’s Spirit theology was a contributing factor to the preservation of balance between the work of the Word and that of the Spirit as portrayed in the documents of Vatican II, and in the subsequent writings they inspired. For example, Yves Congar, in defending

27. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, 161–2 (KD, 181). Barth also presents the Holy Spirit as the “medium” between the objective revelation of God in Jesus Christ and its subjective appropriation by the believer in ibid., II/1, 10 (KD, 8–9). 28. Ibid., III/2, 362–3 (KD, 435–6). 29. Ibid., IV/4, 34 (KD, 37). 30.  For a more detailed presentation of this argument, cf. P. J. Rosato, The Spirit as Lord: The Pneumatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), 131–55.

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the Council against the critique of those who lamented its pneumatological irrelevance, recently published three impressive volumes, entitled I Believe in the Holy Spirit.31 The need for a more profound theology of the Holy Spirit has also been voiced and acted upon by the official magisterium of the Church: Pope Paul VI encouraged further inquiry into pneumatology so as to illumine the teachings of Vatican II, and Pope John Paul II not only convoked the International Theological Congress on Pneumatology in 1982 on the occasion of the 1,500th anniversary of the Council of Constantinople, but also dedicated his latest encyclical, Dominum et Vivificantem, to an exposition of the Holy Spirit’s activity in the church and in the world.32 These instances of increased and widespread effort by Catholics to underline the interaction of the human spirit and the divine Spirit, and thus to offset a purely anthropological presentation of either the human capacity for faith or the nature of Christian sanctification that ensues from it, indicate a willingness to meet Karl Barth on the ground he found most acceptable. No doubt, Barth would not be sympathetic to Catholic insistence that a free and sanctifying dialogue exists between the spirit of the human person and the Spirit of God from the very beginning of humanity’s creation. Yet Barth would appreciate Catholic attempts to insert anthropology and ecclesiology into an overarching pneumatology, and to moderate discourse about the human capacity for faith and holiness by accentuating the relative autonomy of human persons who receive both their original existence as creatures and their justified status as new creatures as gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life in all its manifestations.33

The Essential Link between the Eschatological Message and the Practicosocial Behavior of the Church From 1911, when Barth, having just completed his ecclesiastical studies, became pastor in Safenwil, a small Swiss village, his public pronouncements and actions became increasingly controversial. Although as a Social Democrat Barth did not advocate a radical solution to the injustices he discovered in the course of practicing his ministry, he did support the local labor unions, and therefore was branded the “comrade pastor.” As was indicated previously in the course of discussing

31.  For Congar’s exposition of the importance of the Holy Spirit in the documents of Vatican II, cf. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. I (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), ch. 10: “The Pneumatological Question of Vatican II.” 32.  Pope Paul VI explained the purpose and set the tone of the magisterium’s concern for the Holy Spirit: “To the christology and especially the ecclesiology of the Council there ought to be added a new study of the Holy Spirit and a new devotion to the Holy Spirit, precisely as an indispensable complement to the teaching of the Council.” Cf. Docwn. Cath. n. 1635 (1. VII. 73), 601, an account of the General Audience of June 6, 1973. 33. For a synthetic treatment of the recent Catholic contribution to pneumatology, cf. W. Kasper (ed.), Gegenwart des Geistes. Aspekte der Pneumatologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1979).

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Barth’s attitudes toward anti-Semitism, his conviction that living according to the Gospel entailed fostering social justice grew with the years and, as he became more well known, had more far-reaching effects and stirred more disputed reactions. Claiming to be a theologian with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, Barth voiced and acted upon a series of practicosocial stances that ran counter to the then prevailing mentality both inside and outside the Swiss Reformed Church: he was against the neutrality of Switzerland during World War II, persistent with regard to the necessity to pardon Germany after the fall of the Nazi government, in opposition to both the excessive anti-Communism of the West and the dangerous tension between the superpowers during the 1950s, and confident of the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between the churches and the governments behind the Iron Curtain. Because of the particularly acrimonious debate this last stance provoked, its origin and rationale serve to reveal the underlying theme of Barth’s own ethical decisions. In talks delivered during his second trip to Hungary in 1948 and in subsequent lectures on the question of the “Church between East and West,” Barth outlined a third way of their own for Christians who were tempted to either fully oppose or identify with Communism: in perfect freedom and without fear, Christians should follow the way of Jesus Christ and refuse to take part in the conflict of power and ideology between the Western and Eastern blocs, since distortions of the truth and forms of injustice existed on both sides; the church must always keep its eye on its evangelical mission: “The Church best performs its service in the midst of political change when its attitude is so independent . . . so sympathetic that it is able to summon the representatives of the old and the new order alike . . . to humility, to the praise of God and to humanity, and can invite them all to trust in the great change (in the death and resurrection of Christ) and to hope in his revelation.”34 As this reference to hope in revelation indicates, Barth grounded his practicosocial decisions on a Christian ethics that was explicitly eschatological, that is, marked by tranquil freedom (because evil has already been overcome by the humiliation and glorification of Christ) and by courageous restlessness (because Christian hope is oriented toward the second coming of Christ).35 By basing his theological ethics not on universal principles, but on the contents of Christian dogmatics, Barth wanted to avoid two extreme tendencies: on the one hand, the traditional separation of doctrine and morality espoused by cautious churchmen on the grounds that the first concerned the actions of God and the second those of believers, and on the other hand, the radical reduction of doctrine to morality

34.  K. Barth, Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings 1946–1952 (London: SCM Press, 1954), 92. 35.  Busch, Karl Barth:  His Life from Letters, 85. The author attributes the eagerness and patience of Barth’s ethics to the influence of Christof Blumhardt: “The way in which Blumhardt combined an active and eager search for signs and ‘breakthroughs’ of the Kingdom of God with a tranquil, patient ‘waiting’ on God and the decisive action he alone could perform, was evidently important for Barth.”

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by theologians like Rudolf Bultmann and Friedrich Gogarten on the grounds that the true meaning of the ontological, cosmological, and spiritual assertions of the Bible and the church is that they comprise an existential message with regard to a life that is totally free and hopeful. As an answer to the first tendency, Barth insisted that orthodoxy is strictly conjoined to orthopraxy, because the authentic knowledge of Jesus Christ entails, and therefore necessitates, credible ethical action carried out in his name by his followers. Thus, Barth was an opponent of political indifference on the part of the church, since its message is directed to the world, which in its own right is to provide a secular parable of the fulfillment of humanity analogous to the religious language about the kingdom proclaimed by the church. The relationship between the church and the state was like that of two concentric circles of different diameters; the state is “outside the Church, but not outside the range of Christ’s dominion,” because Christ is the Lord over both, and “both have their origin and their center in common.”36 As a response to the second tendency, namely that of reducing dogma to morality, Barth stated succinctly that “dogmatics must be ethics, and ethics can only be dogmatics.”37 Christian ethics can never be considered a sphere closed off from Christian truth, for the dogma toward which it is directed is an eschatological concept bounded only by the return of Christ in glory. While in this way admitting the ethical import of revelation, Barth refused to identify the moral life itself as the genuine interpretation of the revealed truths about the divine election of humanity, the incarnation of the Word, the pardon of sin, the sanctification of Christians by grace, and the promise of eternal life. Thus, when Barth was asked, “What ought we to do?,” he retorted, “We ought to do that which corresponds to grace.”38 For these reasons, Barth characterized Christian morality as obedience not to an absolute law, but to an ever actual invitation, offered to humanity between the creation of the world by Christ Alpha and its completion by Christ Omega, to respond freely to a gracious God. Because of his conviction that inherent to the prophetic nature of the church is the obligation to testify to the values of Jesus Christ, no matter what the negative consequences for either its internal harmony or its public relations, Barth was particularly pleased with the publication of the encyclical Pacem in Terris of Pope John XXIII, which spoke out “on human rights, the problem of race, minorities, refugees and colonialism, the task of the United Nations, atomic and general disarmament.”39 However, after having studied the “Pastoral Constitution on the 36.  Barth, Against the Stream, 27. For further insights into Barth’s understanding of the relationship between church and state, cf. G. Hunsinger (ed.), Karl Barth and Radical Politics (Philadelphia:  Westminster, 1976), and U. Dannemann, Theologie und Politik im Denken Karl Barths (Mainz: Kaiser, 1977). 37. Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 795 (KD, 890). For Barth’s understanding of the eschatological nature of all Christian dogmatics and ethics, cf. ibid., 876 (KD, 967). 38. Ibid., 576 (KD, 598). For a further analysis of Barth’s ethics, cf. R. E. Willis, The Ethics of Karl Barth (Leiden: Brill, 1971). 39. K. Barth, “Thoughts on the Second Vatican Council,” in The Ecumenical Review XV (1963): 365.

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Church in the Modern World,” Gaudium et Spes, of Vatican II, Barth posed the bold question:  “Why does the constitution set forth so few concrete positions? Where is the prophetic function of the Council in the face of the real problems of the middle of our century?”40 In the post-Conciliar period, the Catholic Church is more consistently practicing its own conviction that a constitutive element of evangelization is involvement in efforts to withstand the social injustice that is all too often furthered by believers whose faith is subjectively orthodox but whose actions are objectively heterodox. Catholic theologians, like J. B. Metz, affirm the necessity of an eschatological ethics and its social ramifications in a tone as imperative as that employed by Barth; the church, without erroneously placing the Kingdom of God into the categories of politics and economics, must admit that “religion has been made guilty by its attempt to purchase its political innocence by not participating in the historical struggle for all people and their status as subjects.”41 Furthermore, Pope John Paul II, in his letter Dominicae Cenae, underscored the relationship between dogma and ethics with reference to the Eucharist:  “If our Eucharistic worship is authentic, it must make us grow in awareness of the dignity of each person. The awareness of this dignity becomes the deepest motive of our relationship with our neighbor. We must also become particularly sensitive to all human suffering and misery, to all injustice and wrong, and seek the way to redress them effectively.”42 These two examples, chosen from the theological and official magisteria of the Catholic Church, are indicative of a widespread movement, spurred on not only by the advocates of a theology of liberation, but also by the explicit declarations of episcopal conferences on political and economic issues, to rediscover and voice the essential link between the eschatological message and the practicosocial behavior of the church. In a concrete manner, such theological reflections and pastoral statements, by mirroring the actual practice of many contemporary Catholics, point to an emerging consensus about a third way, between capitalism and communism, which is clearly related to Barth’s own ethical stance. The conclusion of this entire essay can be appropriately appended to this final subsection, since Barth’s eschatological ethics, like his theology of Israel and his pneumatology, contains a pervasive element that renders it problematic for Catholics, despite the considerable influence it has exerted upon them:  the complexity of human experience that is rooted in the freedom granted by the Creator-Father to creation is too abruptly dismissed by Barth so as to dwell almost exclusively on the new freedom granted humanity by the Reconciler-Son and the Redeemer-Spirit.43 Although it is the proper work of the Son and the Spirit to 40. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 28. 41. J. B. Metz, Faith in History and Society (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 71. 42. Pope John Paul II, Dominicae Cenae, official English translation as reproduced in E. J. Kilmartin, Church, Eucharist and Priesthood: A Theological Commentary on “The Mystery and Worship of the Most Holy Eucharist” (New York: Paulist, 1981), 76. 43.  As Barth himself admitted, this critique was shared by his Liberal Protestant colleagues as well as by Catholics: “They were quite happy for my manifestos—as they were then regarded—so as to speak in terms of the second and third articles of the Creed (on

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enhance and fulfill the already graced human capacity to discover moral norms by revealing to humanity the folly of the cross (1 Cor. 1:22–25) and by convincing it of sin, righteousness, and judgment (Jn 16:8–11), the proper work of the Father, who continually concedes a relative autonomy to human ethical choice (Gen. 1:26–31), is not thereby overshadowed or depreciated. Christians are not exempt, by the sending of the Son and the Spirit, from the difficult task of engaging in moral debate along with all humanity, even if they have an unambiguous obligation to show how the definitive or eschatological revelation of God in the Spirit-filled Jesus sheds light on human complexity and lends hope to human failure.44 A  similar defense of the Catholic desire to safeguard the creaturely independence of humanity before the Creator was also mentioned in the course of explaining how Catholic theology can respect Israel’s unique and perduring role in salvation history without denigrating the sincere attempts of all religious people to seek and serve God; the sovereign activity of the Holy Spirit within human reason and within the Christian community can also be maintained by Catholics without relegating to nonimportance the insatiable striving of human intelligence for truth and the laborious struggle of the church for the holiness it is meant to communicate sacramentally to humanity. In effect, Catholics have objected and will object to Barth’s preference for the second article of the Creed to the unnecessary detriment of the third, and to the even more unnecessary detriment of the first.45 Yet, once a frank admission of this problem has been made, it must immediately be added that Barth’s call to all Christians to head toward ecumenical unity by means of a concerted confession of Jesus Christ and a fearless reliance on the Holy Spirit has broadened Catholic theology, and in particular its treatment of Israel, the Holy Spirit, and orthopraxy. In a nonthreatening way, Barth encouraged Catholics to overcome an excessive emphasis on the first credal article so as to take up once again the Christological, pneumatological, and eschatological themes that, in reaction to the Reformers, it had for too long neglected. Barth’s service to Catholic theology was thus no small one; he was willing to progress from disagreement to dialogue with Catholics and even to determine mutually amenable meeting points with them; in turn, they were willing to pass from distrust to admiration of his thought and even to regard him a “Protestant Father” of the

Christ and the Spirit), while insuring themselves with Gogarten, who spoke in terms of the first article (on the Creator),” in “Abschied,” Zwischen den Zeiten XI (1933): 538. For an Anglican critique similar to that stated here, cf. J. Bowden, Karl Barth (London: SCM Press, 1981), 68–86. 44.  For a contemporary Catholic approach to theological ethics that follows the lines indicated here, cf. J. Fuchs, Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1983). 45.  For an extended treatment of this objection, cf. H. Bouillard, Karl Barth III, Parole de Dieu et existence humaine (Paris: Aubier, 1957), 292. The author remarks that the action of the Father and the Spirit is not sufficiently detached from that of Christ in Barth’s thought: “Theology may be christology, but only if christology encompasses a theology.”

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twentieth century. As the following passage indicates, Barth was tireless in affirming that only a vibrant response to Christ and the Holy Spirit could make Christian unity possible: “Both Catholics and Protestants are directed to the unification of all Christians as their final end. Both live by the dynamics of the evangelical Word and Spirit which are totally constitutive for both. Both live to the extent that they are living communities of the living Jesus Christ.”46 This hopeful statement can be fully endorsed by Catholics, even if they would prefer more “first-article” language so as to describe the “final end” of the Church as the glory that the transformed cosmos will render to the Creator-Father. However, the fact that, because of their respect for Karl Barth, they can comfortably allow their preference to remain implicit rather than expressed so as to be more fully open to dialogue with their fellow Christians well summarizes his lasting contribution to the theology and the future of Roman Catholicism.

46.  K. Barth, “Thoughts on the Second Vatican Council,” in The Ecumenical Review XV (1963):  362–3; with regard to Barth’s contribution to an ecumenical theology, cf. B. Willems, Karl Barth: An Ecumenical Approach to His Theology (New York: Paulist, 1965).

Chapter 8 K A R L B A RT H , I SR A E L , A N D R E L IG IO U S P LU R A L I SM Paul S. Chung

Introduction Since Vatican II, the traditional attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church toward other religions (“no salvation outside the church”) have been radically challenged. Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians” was the watershed in approaches to other faiths and religions. Among Protestants, Tillich takes religion to be the state of being grasped by the ultimate concern. In light of the ultimate concern, Tillich paved a way for Buddhist-Christian dialogue. In an interreligious context, however, Karl Barth has long been regarded as a staunch evangelical-conservative theologian in his attitude toward non-Christian religions. The neo-orthodox charge against Barth associated with Bonhoeffer’s unfortunate critique of him as positing a “positivism of revelation”1 has pushed Barth’s theology into a cul-de-sac with regard to interreligious dialogue. In fact, Barth’s theology is often regarded as outmoded and inappropriate with respect to the reality of religious pluralism.2 Be that as it may, in my view, Barth’s theology presents a structure of radical openness toward the world. This aspect has been overlooked, and thus his Christocentrism has been unilaterally misunderstood as an antireligious and anticultural stronghold. First of all, Barth’s theology is deeply connected with his complex deliberation of God’s faithfulness to Israel, which offers a basis for further discussion of non-Christian religions. Second, in the doctrine of reconciliation, Barth elaborated his theology of extra muros ecclesiae (words and lights of God outside the ecclesial walls), which is remarkably open to the reality of religious pluralism. In this essay I am interested in retrieving the legacy of Karl Barth regarding 1. In his prison letter, Bonhoeffer critiqued Karl Barth as a theologian of positivism of revelation, because in Barth’s theology there is not much openness to the world coming of age. Due to Barth’s one-sided commitment to revelation from above, the worldly issues receive little attention. Cf. Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000). 2. Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward World Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 80–96.

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a theology after Shoah and furthering interreligious dialogue from Barth’s provocative perspective, which stands in solidarity with massa perditionis, minjung, in our global world.

Karl Barth and Israelite Election 1. For Barth, God, in choosing Jesus Christ, destines humans for election, blessing, and life, whereas God also elects Jesus Christ for rejection, condemnation, and death. This decision took place ultimately in Christ’s death on the cross. For this reason, “there is no condemnation . . . for those that are in Christ Jesus.”3 Therefore, the doctrine of election for Barth is “the sum of the Gospel.”4 When Barth discusses the community of those who are elected in Christ, he understands this elected community as the reality for both Israel and the church. Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the church shapes Barth’s grounding principle in his approach to the relation of Israel to the church. In their unity, both stand under the covenantal grace of Christ. What is decisive in Barth’s doctrine of election is to affirm, clarify, and develop “the bow of the one covenant [that] arches over the whole.”5 Despite Barth’s concept of solidarity in the covenant between Israel and the church, he, in his typical dialectical fashion, treats Israel as a witness to God’s judgment, while the church witnesses to God’s mercy.6 This dialectical model is criticized by a circle of theologians who are committed to Jewish-Christian renewal.7 However, unlike the assumption of these critiques, Barth states that in the event of Jesus Christ, Israel has already become new by being converted from death to life. Israelite participation in Jesus Christ—even including the unbelieving Jews—does not necessarily mean that Israel is superseded by the sphere of the church. In particular, Barth perceives Israel to be a witness to humanity in the form of passing away. When Barth refers to the Jewish cemetery in Prague, he states that it contains an objectively truer gospel than the wisdom of all of the unbelieving goyim8 (and many Christians).9

3.  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD) II/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 167. 4. Ibid., 3. 5. Ibid., 200. Cf. Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden, 1933–1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1996). 6. CD, II/2, 205. 7. For instance, Katherine Sonderegger argues that Barth conceives of Israel-election only for rejection. She charges Barth with allowing full expression for “a form of dogmatic antiJudaism.” Katherine Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s “Doctrine of Israel” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 123, 129, 146. 8. Goyim: Gentiles or non-Jews. 9. CD II/2, 236.

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In fact, Barth articulates a Christological embracing of disobedient Israel by interpreting it as Christ’s Jewish natural background. Israel is not unilaterally elected only for rejection. As the church lives on in Israel, so Israel lives on in the church, for coexistence and proexistence. In his doctrine of election, Barth does not ghettoize theology for the sake of positivism of revelation from above, but embraces the historical implications of Israel for the church. Just as the New Testament stands in indissoluble connection to the Old Testament, the church is in indissoluble solidarity with Israel. In fact, the church stands or falls in fellowship and solidarity with Israel. According to Barth, Christian anti-Judaism is essentially rooted in the doctrine of the replacement of Israel by the church. However, a person who believes in Jesus must accept the Jews, that is, accept them as the ancestors and relatives of Jesus. Otherwise, one rejects Jesus along with the Jews. Contrary to the main argument of Christian anti-Semitism, Barth warns the church not to say that it was the Jews who crucified Jesus. If the church did so, Israel would be regarded as an entity in the past history forsaken by God.10 Against such Christian anti-Semitism, Barth interprets the resurrection of Jesus as nullifying the Jewish disobedience.11 Barth’s reflection on Israel as the natural background and the church as the historical background of Christ makes it impossible to make the division that Israel is only for rejection and the church is only for election without qualification. Rather, the arch of God’s eternal will of election dialectically includes Israel and the church together against the background of Jesus Christ. God’s mercy is the final ground and justification for establishing the relation between Israel and the church. Even in the face of an anti-Christ Judaism, God’s mercy would remain the first and final word for the election of Israel. Nevertheless, Barth is not capable of integrating the Jewish existence as the natural background of Jesus Christ in light of a formal Christology as compared to the factual Christology in Christian theology.12 2. Despite the limitations in his theology of Israelite election,13 Barth looks to the future of Israel—including the present state of the unbelieving Jews—and the

10. Ibid., 290. 11. “The finis arbitrarily written by the unbelieving will of Israel in the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus has been finally cancelled by a higher hand in His resurrection from the dead.” Ibid., 291. 12.  F.-W. Marquardt, Das christliche Bekenntnis zu Jesus, dem Juden. Eine Christologie, Bd. 2 (Munich/Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, Güthersloher Verlagshaus, 1991), 7. 13.  For Barth’s negative description of synagogue, see CD II/2, 263. Unfortunately, in Barth’s unthoughtful and controversial description of synagogue, we see that an idea of integrating (or even replacing) Israel with (or by) the church would secretly govern in Barth’s theology of Israel. Against Barth’s negative description of synagogue, Marquardt asks whether Israel is not, even in its bruised form, a witness to God’s condescending goodness, or whether Israel as a witness to the death of Jesus Christ is not also a witness to his resurrection. See F.-W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Barths (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1967), 352.

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future of the church from the perspective of God’s gracious love.14 What makes Christian anti-Semitism impossible is Israelite hope, which is in fact the hope of both Israel and the church. Therefore, the future in relation to Israel calls for the church’s actions in taking responsibility to be a wholly present reality.15 As far as the Jewish people are “the librarians of the church,” believing in Jesus Christ means believing in the fulfillment of God’s promise given first to Israel, which is “the substance of all the hope of the fathers,” “of all the exhortations and threats of Moses and the prophets,” and “of every letter in the sacred books of Israel.”16 In this interpretative sense, Barth’s idea of dissolving Israel and the synagogue into the church does not necessarily require that it is to be understood unilaterally as an ecclesiological replacement of Israel without reservation. At this juncture, Barth does not fail to stress the inviolability of God’s faithfulness and election in the face of Israelite resistance. Based on God’s faithfulness, Barth is eager to affirm a blessed and hopeful future for Israel. Regardless of the reality of present Israelite resistance to the gospel, “the fundamental blessing, the election, is still confirmed . . . [The] final word is one of testimony to the divine Yes to Israel.”17 The protological aspect of God’s covenant with Abraham carries the weight of eschatological correspondence. The whole of Israel is not sanctified through the remnant, but the remnant represents the whole. What is represented authentically in the rest is the root, that is, Jesus Christ, the last-born, the last number of the remnant who is, in fact, the first-born brother.18 Moreover, in his doctrine of providence, Barth began to speak positively of post-biblical, anti-Christ Judaism, depicting it as the single natural proof of God. The existence of Judaism is the sign of divine reign and it functions as the natural background of Jesus Christ. In his approach to Jewish history, Barth does not take as a point of departure historical relativism or the Jewish self-understanding, nor the interpretation of philo-Semitism or anti-Semitism. Instead, he associates himself with the standpoint of the Christian message that professes God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ for Israel.19 Therefore, it is natural to say that Barth’s perspective on the history of the Jews and their covenantal significance is based on God’s faithfulness to them and should also be considered in light of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ as their Messiah. The Word became Jewish flesh.20 God became a man of Israel. The “I” of Jesus came from Israel. He, according to his Jewish flesh, retains in his constitution the old Israel, the natural offspring of Abraham. The covenant of God is fulfilled by his faithfulness in the coming of the Son from the

14. CD II/2, 303. 15. Ibid., 305. 16. Ibid., 204. 17. Ibid., 15. 18. Ibid., 300. 19. CD III/3, 216–17. 20. CD IV/1, 171.

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tribe of Abraham. The natural and biological dimension of Jewish hope should not be mystified in an anti-Semitic manner, nor should the tribe of Abraham be spiritualized in a Christian manner. Those who condemn and persecute the Jews do the same thing to Jesus Christ. Anyone who is a principal enemy of the Jews is a principal enemy of Jesus Christ. Thus, “anti-Semitism is a sin against the Holy Spirit.”21 The entire history of Israel reveals itself as God’s gift of covenant and grace. Barth took into consideration the prophecies in the messianic history of Israel as an adequate prefiguration of the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ: “in and with the prophecy of the history of Israel there takes place in all its historical autonomy and singularity the prophecy of Jesus Christ Himself in the form of an exact pre-figuration.”22 Herein we can discern Barth’s model of correlation between the entire messianic history of Israel and the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ. Barth presented his unique and remarkable dogmatic systematization of Israelite relevance to his Christology by comparing Jesus with the entire history of Israel without reservation. God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Israelite election and covenant. God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ for God’s people—whether they are faithful or unfaithful—becomes the principal hermeneutic in Barth’s approach to the Jewish people. Barth subsequently calls for the abandonment of Christian mission to the Jews. The concept of Christian mission to the Jews is theologically impossible. “In relation to the Synagogue, there can be no real question of ‘mission.’. . . Mission is not the witness which it owes to Israel.”23 A conversation for the purpose of converting the Jews to Christianity is meaningless. The church must live together with the synagogue, not as a separate religion or confession, but as the root from which the church emerged. If the Old Testament is the root of the Christian church, should not Jewish self-understanding of the Old Testament through Talmud (even including Kabbalah) be appreciated as the configuration of God’s Word in relation to the Christian church? At any rate, Barth, in his Ad Limina Apostolorum (1967), devoted himself to a serious study of the sixteen Latin texts in Vatican II, especially regarding matters of Israel and non-Christian religions. Barth asked on what grounds the declaration could speak of the past and present history of Israel in the same breath as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, all non-Christian religions. Recognizing that the Old Testament presents “the original form of the one revelation of God,” Barth wondered if we should not make a formal confession of guilt in view of the anti-Semitism in the ancient, medieval, and modern church.24 Therefore, the

21. Karl Barth, “Unsere Kirche und die Politsche Frage von Heute” (1938), in Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, 1938–1945 (Zurich: TVZ, 1985), 90. 22. CD IV/3.1, 65. 23. CD IV/3.2, 877. 24. Karl Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II, trans. Keith R. Crim (Virginia: John Knox Press, 1968), 36–7.

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ecumenical movement today suffers much more from the absence of Israel than from the absence of Rome and Moscow.25 Be that as it may, Barth was not prepared to affirm the Jewish self-understanding of their saying no to the Christian church as “an act of Israel’s faithfulness to the Torah.”26 Critically distancing from Barth’s limitation (a so-called face looking backwards), it is furthermore of special significance to integrate and deepen Jewish self-understanding as an important categorical dimension in the theological discussion about Israel. In other words, if God has not thrown away his people, Israelite self-consciousness and existence should not remain a quantité négligeable.27 At any rate, Barth was not blind to the political reality in Palestine. We notice his concern about Islam in his dialogue with J.  Bouman from Lebanon. In his letter to H.  Berkhof in Leiden (1968), Barth reported on his conversation with J. Bouman: “In theological appreciation of the situation there [in Lebanon] . . . we were but completely in agreement” that “a new communication about the relation between [the] Bible and Koran is an urgent task for us.”28 This statement refers to Barth’s argument for a confession of guilt regarding “the deplorable role of the church in the so-called crusades.”29 I  will deal with this interreligious necessity later in the conclusion of this essay.

Karl Barth and the Theology of God’s Word in Action Let me examine the internal structure of Barth’s theology regarding openness for the world. In his deliberation on the Word of God in a threefold sense (written, proclaimed, and revealed), Barth put the priority of the revealed Word over the other two forms of the Word of God. His reflection on revelation, seen in the context of his theology of the Word of God, cannot be adequately understood apart from his reflection on God’s irregular and unexpected voice. According to Barth, God can speak to us in a totally different way than we would expect God’s voice in the church (proclaimed) or from the Scriptures (written). God can speak to us through a pagan or an atheist. Or God may be pleased to bless Abraham through Melchizedek, or Israel by Balaam, or help it by Cyrus, argues Barth. When God does speak in actuality, we have to listen attentively to God.30 As God can

25. CD IV/3.2, 878. 26. F.-W. Marquardt, “Feinde um unsretwillen,” in Marquardt, Verwegenheiten: Theologische Stücke aus Berlin (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1981), 315. 27. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie, 296. (Quantité négligeable: negligible quantity.) 28.  K. Barth, Briefe, 1961–1968, ed. J. Fangmeier and H. Stoevesandt (Zurich:  TVZ, 1975), 504f. 29. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 37. 30. CD I/1, 55–60.

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speak to us in strange and profane forms, we are urged to a humble attitude and openness to other voices. As Barth argues, “God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog . . . God may speak to us through a pagan or an atheist, and thus [help] us to understand that the boundary between the Church and the secular world can still take at any time a different course from that which we think we discern.”31 These alien voices of God occur on the basis of the universal reign of Jesus Christ, that is, the Word of God inside and outside the church. In the doctrine of the Word of God, Barth brings the Word of God in the church to the task of regular dogmatics, while the Word of God outside the church belongs to irregular dogmatics. Furthermore, Barth continues to deepen his insight into the strange voices of God’s Word up to his later doctrine of lights within reconciliation, namely true words extra muros ecclesiae. Thus, Barth can be understood as a theologian of God’s Word in action.32 Barth first developed the theme of religious pluralism in his doctrine of secular parables in Church Dogmatics IV/3.1. For Barth, God’s reconciliation (distinct from universal salvation) is of a universal-pluralist horizon. His teaching of secular parables, or his so-called doctrine of lights and words in the world, can be understood as a continuous deepening and actualization of his previous concept of God’s irregular and alien voices in terms of God’s “universal” reconciliation. In his inquiry of secular parables of truth, Barth dialectically combines the Word of Jesus Christ with various truth claims in a pluralistic context. For Barth, God cannot abandon any secular sphere in the world reconciled with him in Jesus Christ. Even from the mouth of Balaam we recognize the well-known voice of the Good Shepherd, which should not be ignored despite its sinister origin.33 Given this fact, Barth’s position implies an inclusive-universalistic tone with a radical openness to the forms of secularism or pluralistic truth claims, even in spite of their sinful origin. However, Barth is hesitant to canonize or give dogmatic status to such extraordinary ways and free communications of Jesus Christ.34 If Barth canonizes or gives dogmatic examples of secular parables, he would inevitably run into a relativisticmetaphysical syncretism, which would result in an expropriation of God’s covenant with Israel in a concrete, historical reality. Without leaving the sure ground of Christology, Barth maintains that the church has the task of examining closely whether these profane words and lights are in agreement with the Scripture, church tradition, or dogma, and whether the fruits of these words outside Christianity are good and their effect in the community is positive. This is what Barth calls a supplementary and auxiliary criterion, namely “the fruits which such true words . . . seem to bear in the outside world.”35

31. Ibid., 55. 32. Cf. Paul S. Chung, Karl Barth: God’s Word in Action (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2008). 33. CD IV/3.1, 119. 34. Ibid., 133f. 35. Ibid., 127f.

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Karl Barth and Buddhism Barth’s reading of Buddhism by way of a symptom-seeking (symptom of God’s universal grace) hermeneutics needs to be discussed and developed in his examination of the profane words and lights in terms of the Scripture, church tradition, or dogma. In his theology of religions,36 Barth already articulated the significance of the name of Jesus Christ in interreligious dialogue. He also scrutinizes Pure Land Buddhism, which stands close to the grace religion of the Reformation. In his reading of this Buddhism, Barth notices that there is “a wholly providential disposition”37 in the faith of Amida Buddha. Still, he does not discern the name of Jesus Christ in this Buddhism. If the name of Jesus Christ does not contradict God’s universal activity in the world of religions, could not Barth evaluate this Buddhism more positively by way of a parable of God’s kingdom? Although Barth does not give a clear account of this hermeneutical principle of encounter, we note later, in his doctrine of lights, his positive evaluation of religions for the sake of secular parables of God’s kingdom:  “We may think of the radicalness of the need of redemption or the fullness of what is meant by redemption if it is to meet this need.”38 When we discern the radicalness of human desire of redemption in other religions, when we meet a desire of grace or completeness of redemption in other religions, we can hear from world religions the true words of Jesus Christ. Revelation as Aufhebung (sublation) of the religion39 gives a messianic parabolic character and dynamism to religions in light of the messianic prophetia universalis40 of Jesus Christ.41 Furthermore, Barth’s critique of religion is primarily directed to Christianity as a religion, as his polemic is not against nonChristian religions. Barth’s theological approach to religions appeals to a tolerance that is informed by the forbearance of Christ deriving from the grace of God’s reconciliation.42 Therefore, Barth’s intent is to affirm, first of all, the priority of revelation over religion without exhausting, ecclesiasticizing, and Christianizing other religions, because they will be given a parabolic character in pointing and witnessing to God’s kingdom. Barth’s affirmation of the Christian religion as the locus of true religion

36. CD I/2 and I/17. 37. CD I/2, 340. 38. CD IV/3.1, 125. 39. CD I/2 and I/17. 40. Prophetia universalis: universal prophecy. 41.  In the positive sense of Aufhebung, according to Barth, religions are kept and reserved and transformed in light of God’s coming kingdom, rather than totally denied, superseded, and destroyed. Barth’s use of Aufhebung in a dialectical sense demonstrates his evaluation of religion in both the negative and positive sense. For Barth, the abolishing of religion by revelation does not mean only its negation, but rather that “religion can just as well be exalted in revelation” (CD I/2, 326). 42. Ibid., 299.

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does not mean its fulfillment of human religion or affirmation of Christianity as a superior religion over non-Christian religions.43 Christianity, in fact, stands in coexistence with many religions. From the standpoint of God (von Gott her), “in His revelation God is present in the world of human religion.”44 We discern God’s work in “a sphere in which His own reality and possibility are encompassed by a sea of more or less adequate . . . parallels and analogies in human realities and possibilities.”45 Christians should not become “iconoclasts in face of human greatness as it meets [them] so strikingly in the sphere of religion.”46 Christian attitude toward non-Christian religion is characterized by self-criticism, spiritual poverty, and openness. As Barth provocatively argues, “The Veda to the Indians, the Avesta to the Persians, the Tripitaka to the Buddhists, the Koran to its believers: are they not all ‘bibles’ in exactly the same way as the Old and New Testaments?”47 As we have already mentioned, a Barthian reading of Buddhism continues to be deepened and reactualized in the framework of extra muros ecclesiae.48 In the encounter with other religions, Barth in later stages asks whether the radicalness of the human need of redemption (grace) in other religions or the fullness of what is meant by redemption should not correspond to the true words of the prophecy of Jesus Christ. When we discern the radicalness of human desire of redemption in other religions, when we meet a desire of grace or completeness of redemption in them, we can hear true words of Jesus Christ from them, which may function as free communications of God. In Barth’s preferred quotation from Shinran’s49 statement from Honen: “Even sinners will enter into life; how much more the righteous.” But this was significantly reversed by Shinran: “If the righteous enter into life, how much more in the case of sinners.”50 Barth would prefer to see the radicalness of justification by the power of Amida in Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism in comparison with the Reformation theology of grace and justification. According to Barth, we should be grateful for the lesson and teaching that such Buddhism provides.51

43.  Ibid., 298. In his Tambach lecture, as seen in connection with thesis IV of his Amsterdam lecture (“Church and Culture”), Barth’s theology of analogy has already been socially engaged, culturally open, and Christologically universal in light of God’s reconciliation. 44. Ibid., 297. 45. Ibid., 282. 46. Ibid., 300. 47. Ibid., 282. 48. CD IV/3.1. 49.  Shinran (1173–1263), Japanese philosopher and religious reformer, founder of the Jōdo Shinshu school of Japanese Buddhism. 50. CD I/2, 341. 51. Ibid., 342.

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Karl Barth and Paul Tillich God’s irregular voices in Barth’s early stages52 are now actualized and deepened in light of God’s reconciliation in Christ with the world. From this perspective, Barth would seem to propose an “unrelativistic-unmetaphysical” pluralistic approach to truth claims of other religions to sharpen interreligious dialogue, especially in terms of the messianic, universal prophecy of Jesus Christ. As Barth states, while man may deny God, according to the Word of reconciliation God does not deny man . . . No Prometheanism can be effectively maintained against Jesus Christ . . . [For God], neither the militant godlessness of the outer periphery of the community, nor the intricate heathenism of the inner, is an insurmountable barrier . . . All human words can be true only as their genuine witnesses and attestations . . . They are true words, genuine witnesses and attestations of the one true Word, real parables of the kingdom of Heaven.53

In comparison to Barth, Tillich’s approach to the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism is based on his famous method of correlation: for Tillich, Buddhism appears more and more as a living religion in polar tension with Christianity. Tillich thinks all religions find a sacramental basis for themselves. If this basis is properly balanced and united with mystical and prophetic elements, a religion of a concrete Spirit will come to birth, and theonomy will appear with an eschatological reservation. This theonomous element is part of the structure of the religion of the concrete Spirit. At its foundation, Tillich’s method implies a hermeneutical relevance that was concretized in view of religious pluralism. Furthermore, George Hunsinger explains Barth’s position with Tillich’s categories of autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy. Other lights are neither selfcontained nor self-sufficient nor simply autonomous in relation to the great light. Other lights are not conceived to be outside the great light, which is external, alien, and heteronymous. True human words or secular parables are conceived as coexistent with Jesus Christ as the Word of God that may be regarded as the theonomous principle. As Hunsinger argues, “In a theonomous situation, the periphery is fully determined and governed by the truth of the center, but not violated or overwhelmed by it.”54 Because of the mystery of creation, the periphery, which is not subsumed into the center, holds “its own real freedom (relative autonomy) and real existence (relative heteronomy)” in light of the truth of the center. Secular parables are supposed to be accepted as “free communications of the will of [the] Lord.”55 For Barth, there could be a salvation without Christianity, that is, outside 52. CD I/1. 53. CD IV/3.1, 119–21. 54.  George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth:  The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 263. 55.  CD IV/3.1, 130. However, Hunsinger’s summary of Barth’s position—“exclusivism without triumphalism or inclusivism without compromise”—seems to lose sight of Barth’s

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the walls of Christianity, because salvation belongs to the mystery of God. This is characteristic of Barth’s unique confession of Jesus Christ, but with radical openness toward God’s strange voices in the world. Let’s delve further into Barth’s theology of reconciliation and its world openness. Karl Barth and a Pluralist Theology of Divine Discourse In light of God’s reconciliation, Barth is, moreover, boldly affirming “dangerous modern expressions like the revelation of creation or primal revelations.”56 Barth assumes that the divine work of reconciliation does not negate the divine work of creation, nor does it deprive creation of its meaning. There is no point of tearing asunder “the original connection between creaturely esse and creaturely nosse.”57 Secular parables are supposed to be accepted as “free communications of the will of [the] Lord,”58 which become a central motif in Barth’s so-called doctrine of true words extra muros ecclesiae. How does Barth articulate “words outside Christianity”? He states that “to all the witnesses of the Christian community, it is promised and given to be parables of the kingdom of heaven.”59 If there are such words and lights, namely parables of the Kingdom at a very different level in the secular world, “should it [the Christian community] not be grateful to receive it also from without, in very different human words, in a secular parable?”60 However, Barth does not want to talk about words in the world by recourse to the sorry hypothesis of natural theology, but rather to the universal dimension of Christology that is associated with the mystery of God. According to Barth, “in the world reconciled by God in Jesus Christ there is no secular sphere abandoned by Him . . . even where . . . it seems to approximate most dangerously to the pure and absolute form of utter godlessness.” Further, in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we must “be prepared at any time for true words even from what seems to be the darkest places.”61 After all, there is no refusal “on the part of non-Christians [which] will be strong enough to resist the fulfillment of the promise of the Spirit

deliberation concerning the irregular grace of God, which shows that Barth is open to recognizing religious pluralism. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 278. 56.  CD IV/3.1, 140. Regarding this statement, Hans Küng affirms Barth’s correction of his previous position about natural theology, accusing him of not admitting it publicly. Hans Küng, Does God Exist? An Answer for Today (New York:  Vintage Books, 1981), 527. However, in his early stage, Barth had already accepted Söhngen’s thesis in an Christological sense: There has to be an assumptio of the analogia entis (analogy of being) by the analogia fidei (analogy of faith)—“the analogia fidei is sanans et elevens analogiam entis”—namely through Jesus Christ. CD II/1, 82. 57. CD IV/3.1, 139. Esse: being, existence. Nosse: knowing. 58. Ibid., 130. 59. Ibid., 114. 60. Ibid., 115. 61. Ibid., 119.

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which is pronounced over them too . . . or to hinder the overthrow of their ignorance of Christ.”62 In relativizing, integrating, and transforming “natural theology” socially, materially, and culturally by means of “universal” reconciliation in Jesus Christ,63 Barth gives some indication that the true words may be heard even from “openly pagan” worldliness: We may think of the mystery of God, which we Christians so easily talk away in a proper concern for God’s own cause . . . We may think of the lack of fear in the face of death which Christians to their shame often display far less readily than non-Christians far and near . . . Especially we may think of a humanity which does not ask or weigh too long with whom we are dealing in others, but in which we find a simple solidarity with them and unreservedly take up their cause.64

In commenting on this statement, Marquardt argues that we see in this passage Judaism, socialism, and practical forms of humanness without faith and world religions next to the great light of Jesus Christ.65 At this point, the maturity of nonChristian religions finds justification in the Jewish “No” to the Christian monopoly of God’s salvation. Thus, interreligious dialogue gains inspiration when the Christian church takes seriously a positive reception of the Jewish “No” to the Christian church. Marquardt’s comment finds its validity in Barth’s rejection of Christian mission to the Jews and his commitment to more social justice and democracy. For Barth, the concept of Christian mission to the Jews is theologically impossible. Barth states that “the Jews, even the unbelieving Jew, so miraculously preserved . . . through the many calamities of his history . . . is the natural historical monument of the love and faithfulness of God, who in concrete form is the epitome of the man freely chosen and blessed by God, who as a living commentary on the Old Testament is the only convincing proof of God outside the Bible.”66 Furthermore, Barth himself, in explication of his so-called doctrine of lights, affirmed that the children of this world are often wiser than the children of light. There are cobrothers and -sisters in socialist atheism who stand in the inheritance of the promise and hope of the kingdom of God.67 According to Barth, there resides in the secular world a more distant (the express and unequivocal secularism of militant godlessness) and closer (the mixed and relative secularism) periphery of the biblical-ecclesial sphere.68 Barth’s 62. Ibid., 355. 63. F.-W. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1972), 264. 64. CD IV/3.1, 125. 65. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 254. 66. CD IV/3.2, 877. 67. Karl Barth, Gespräche IV, 1964–1968, ed. Eberhard Busch (Zurich: TVZ, 1997), 401. 68. CD IV/3.1, 118.

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preference for secularism of militant godlessness over mixed and relative secularism is obvious in the following statement: We must continually ask ourselves whether this mixed and relative secularism might not be characterized by perhaps an even greater resistance to the Gospel for the very reason that it is used to being confronted by and having to come to terms with it, and is thus able the more strongly to consolidate itself against it, making certain concessions and accommodations no doubt, parading in large measure as a world of Christian culture, but closing its ears the more firmly against it, and under the sign of a horrified rejection of theoretical atheism cherishing the more radically and shamelessly a true atheism of practice.69

Barth’s particular commitment to Jesus Christ as a Jew does not block his radical openness for the ways of religious others in light of God’s reconciliation. A  Christian uniqueness is sought in the context of religious pluralism without doing harm to the different ways of religious others. Secular truth claims can be revealed to have “their final origin and meaning in the awakening power of the universal prophecy of Jesus Christ Himself.”70 Along this line, it is essential to deal with Barth’s Christological universalism in reference to theologia naturalis. According to Barth, “natural theology (theologia naturalis) is included and brought into clear light within the theology of revelation (theologia revelata), for in the reality of divine grace there is included the truth of the divine creation.” In this sense, “grace does not destroy but completes it.”71 Moreover, Barth’s renewal of extra Calvinisticum72 provides a universalinclusive basis for his Christology of anhypostasis73 and enhypostasis.74 This doctrine becomes, for Barth, not only an indication of the remaining majesty of the divine Word even in the state of incarnation, but also, in Barth’s typical supplementary way, a witness for the divine actuality as well as divine universality of the Word.75 In this light, Marquardt assumes that Barth might revoke his previous 69. Ibid., 120. 70. Ibid., 128–9. 71.  T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1990), 147. 72.  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeil (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), II, 13.4. Extra Calvinisticum: The belief among Calvinists that Christ’s humanity is not infinite or omnipresent and therefore can only be at one place at one time, even after the ascension. 73.  Anhypostasis: The belief that Christ, when incarnated, did not take on the characteristics of a specific human being, but of humanity in a “generic” sense. It is traditionally rejected by the church as an inadequate explanation of Christ’s humanity. 74.  Enhypostasis: The belief that the divine and human natures merge in the person of Jesus Christ. 75.  Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 260. Furthermore, Otto Weber states that the logos asarkos (the logos must exist outside the flesh or incarnation) can, in truth, be

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radical rejection of theologia naturalis through his published article “Light of Life” in 1959.76 As evidence for this, Marquardt introduces Barth’s own testimony in his interview with Brüdergemeine in 1961: “Later I retrieved the theologia naturalis via Christology again. Today my critique would be: One must say theologia natiralis only differently, that is, just Christologically.”77 Barth made a concerted effort to clarify the relation between enhypostasis and enhypostasis in the service of Christological universalism. His famous sentence reads: “In his being humanity as human God has implicitly assumed the humanity of all men . . . With humanity is the church, which exists anhypostatically and enhypostatically in Jesus Christ. At the end of time Jesus Christ will be the totus Christus.”78 The enhypostasis of the humanitas79 of the collective human species exists in the incarnated Word. Therefore, there is not merely one human in Jesus Christ, but the humanity of all humans, so that all humanity is exalted as such to unity with God. Given this fact, the Christological establishment of natural theology is identical with the transformation of the structure of its inherited form.80 Thus, Christ’s divinity belongs to the theology of revelation, whereas his humanity belongs to the content of theologia naturalis, because in Jesus Christ the humanum of all humans exists and is exalted as such to the unity with God.81 In explicating the comprehensive character of the humanity of Jesus Christ as the totus Christus, Barth again affirms that “the human nature elected by Him and assumed into unity with His existence is implicitly that of all men. In His being as man God has implicitly assumed the human being of all men. In Him not only we all as hominess, but our humanitas82 as such—for it is both His and ours—exists in and with God Himself.”83 There is no natural realm existing independent of Christological effectiveness. In the typology of Adam and Christ in Romans 5, Barth emphatically says, “Jesus Christ is the secret and the truth of sinful and mortal humankind and also the secret and the truth of human nature as such.”84 Therefore, the doctrine of “the recapitulation of all things” (apokatastasis panton) becomes open for Barth: “To speak of an open number of men here instead

only a pure boundary concept for Barth. See Otto Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1987), 143. 76. CD IV/3.1. 77. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 263. 78. CD IV/2, 60. Totus Christus: the entire Christ. 79. Humanitas: human nature. 80. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 264. “The Judaism is for Barth witness to the kernel of truth of the natural theology within the revelation of grace.” See Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie, 316. 81. CD IV/2, 49. 82. Hominess: human being. 83. CD IV/2, 59. 84.  Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, trans. T. A. Smail (Edinburgh, London: Oliver and Boyd, 1956), 50.

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of all men is not to impute any impotence or limitation to God’s salvific design. It is God’s will to save all men, as 1 Timothy 2:4 and other scriptural passages clearly point out . . . The open number of the elect should not be made a closed number, as the classical doctrine of predestination tends to.”85 In connection with his doctrine of election, we again read in Barth’s statement: “The Church will then not preach an apokatastasis,86 nor will it preach a powerless grace of Jesus Christ or a human wickedness which is too powerful for it. But without any weakening of the contrast, and also without any arbitrary dualism, it will preach the overwhelming power of grace and the weakness of human wickedness in the face of it.”87

Karl Barth and the Unfinished Project for Religious Pluralism Barth’s pluralist model of divine discourse with Judaism and other religions would not give full credit to the theological circle that highlighted the relativisticmetaphysical pluralism (at the cost of the particularity of Jesus Christ), or to the theological circle that featured the superiority or absoluteness of Christianity (for the sake of ecclesiological triumphalism). The messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ is in correlation with the entire messianic history of Israel, in which Barth rejects a Christian mission to the Jews as theologically impossible. This perspective may become a point of departure for developing a theology after Shoah. In his doctrine of true words and lights in world history and in the creation, Barth is not convinced of exalting the absoluteness of Christianity over other religions, but is rather integrated in leading the Christian church to self-criticism with a humble attitude and radical openness toward the religious others as free communications of the Lord. Barth is skeptical of any attempt at evangelizing ideologies, cultures, and other religions in the name of Christianity, because God is reconciled in Jesus Christ with the ungodly world. In it there occurs an essential “theanthropological” correlation between God, human beings, and the cosmos. A Christian theology of religions in favor of Christian uniqueness does not in fact stand in opposition to the reality of pluralism, because God is the one who accepts the world’s pluralism and integrates all its variety and pluriformity into the coming kingdom of God through his universal grace in Jesus Christ. Barth’s deliberation of true lights and words as free communications of God, although he does not give any single example of them, would not necessarily contradict the hermeneutical project of fusing the horizons between Christianity and other religions. Nevertheless, this historical-ontological grounding of interpretation in the midst of interfaith dialogue is vulnerable to the underside of religious history, which is in the service of the powerful. The ontology of hermeneutics no longer poses the question of what social and cultural factors have shaped and

85. CD II/2, 466. 86. Apokatastasis: the state of being restored. 87. CD II/2, 477.

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characterized the ideological-linguistic structure correlated with the history of effect. Language is not only “a house of being,”88 but also an instrument of distorted communication. Analyzing false consciousness rooted in human interpretation and ontological consciousness should become an indispensable moment in the hermeneutical project of suspicion, audacity, and resistance. It becomes a basis for irregular reading and encounters with the religious others as the strange voices of God.89 Barth refers to the uniqueness of Christianity in encounter with other religions:  “The religion of revelation is indeed bound up with the revelation of God:  but the revelation of God is not bound up with the religion of revelation.”90 In addition, according to Markus Barth’s report on his father (provided by Bertold Klappert at the Leuenberg conference of 1992), if allowed, Karl Barth wanted to preoccupy himself with the history of religion. In consideration of Barth’s plan on the history of world religions, Klappert introduces his research plan in the following way:  1. The relation between Christianity and Judaism; 2. The relation between Judaism and Islam; 3. The relation between Buddhism and Hinduism. In examination of Markus Barth’s authorized text on his father’s plan on the history of world religions, Eberhard Busch, an important biographer of Karl Barth, wrote to Klappert (on December 12, 1992) that Markus’s text reveals Barth’s impression concerning the question about non-Christian religions in the Second Vatican council. Instead of the title “the general history of religion,” as proposed by Markus Barth, Busch is certain of “the ecumenical theology of the Holy Spirit” in Barth’s own plan.91 In view of Barth’s plan, Klappert speaks of a dialogue model of neighboring relations with other religions in the framework of ecumenical theology of the Holy Spirit, which is based on the axiomatic correlation between the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ and the entire messianic history of Israel. Barth’s ecumenical and global theology of the Holy Spirit, which is embedded in God’s reconciliation, demonstrates the universal work of the Holy Spirit in view of a doctrine of apokatastasis. “To be more explicit, there is no good reason why we should not be open to this possibility . . . of an apokatastasis or universal reconciliation.”92 This refers to Barth’s confession of hope regarding an open possibility of universal salvation due to Christ’s reconciliation with the world and the universal promise of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, Jesus Christ is the hope even for those of other faiths.93 88.  Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 190–242. 89. Paul S. Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism: Aesthetics of Suffering, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2007). 90. CD I/2, 329. 91. Bertold Klappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung: Versuche, Karl Barth kontextuell zu verstehen (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1994), 50. 92. CD IV/3.1, 478. 93. Ibid., 355–6.

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The messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ has already happened upon all flesh: the Spirit is promised. Barth distinguishes among the resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the final return of Jesus Christ.94 Christ’s coming in the promise of the Spirit is the hope of all, to the extent that “no aversion, rebellion, or resistance on the part of non-Christians will be strong enough to resist the fulfillment of the promise of the Spirit which is pronounced over them too . . . or to hinder the overthrow of their ignorance in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”95 For Barth, an ecumenical and global theology of the Holy Spirit is of particular universalistic character and horizon. Barth, in his response to an interview question concerning the hidden Christ in the Indian context, said, “The wind blows where it wills (Jn 3:8): Break-through (revelation) of the hidden Christ is always and everywhere possible: Inside and outside the church; even in the life and work and message of strangers (Melchizedek! [Gen. 14:18f; Heb. 7:1–4]), heathens, atheists!”96 In the year 1967–68 Barth questioned—beyond the guilt confession of the church to Israel in the Vatican document to non-Christian religions—whether or not, with regard to the Muslim, such a guilt confession would remind people of the church’s fatal role in the so-called crusades.97 As we have already mentioned, Barth’s conversation with the Islamic scholar J. Bouman regarding the political situation in Lebanon, a new communication between the Bible and the Koran, is an urgent task for today. For this urgent task of understanding the relation between the Bible and the Koran, Barth is concerned with developing a world-open theology of the Holy Spirit in an ecumenical and global horizon, despite its unfinished project.

Conclusion: For Radical Barth In deliberation on an irregular theology, Barth articulates the unmethodical, chaotic, and provocative dimensions in his theology of the Word of God. As in guerrilla warfare, this irregular dogmatics runs counter to the danger inherent in the regular scholastic practice of dogmatizing, ossifying, and stubbornness.98 Therefore, Jesus Christ as the revealed Word of God gains priority over the written Word and the proclaimed Word of God. In the irregular approach, the result to be gained would be more productive than what regular and systematic methodology achieves. This irregular and post-ecclesial theology is no less scientific than the regular systematic theology. In reference to God’s universal reign, Barth states that “the fundamental lack of principle in the dogmatic method is clear from the fact

94. Ibid., 294. 95. Ibid., 355. 96. Barth, Gespräche IV, 1964–1968, 565. 97. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 37. 98.  Karl Barth, Die Christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, vol. 1, ed. Gerhard Sauter (Zurich: TVZ, 1982), 15.

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that it does not proceed from the center but from the periphery of the circle or, metaphor apart, from the self-positing and self-authenticating Word of God.”99 As the event of God’s work and activity, the Word of God actually speaks in all directions, like the circumference speaking toward the center or the center speaking simultaneously to the whole circumference. In his presentation of the speech of God as the mystery of God,100 Barth relates this aspect of mystery to “a penultimate ‘de-assuring’ of theology.”101 In light of God’s Word in action, Barth stresses the significance of culture for Christian theology, stating, “The dogmatician, too, must think and speak in a particular age . . . theology is a specific activity of humanity. The problem of theology and dogmatics can also be seen as wholly set within the framework of the problem of culture.”102 This perspective articulates Barth’s commitment to the contemporary issues, because the fact that God’s Word is God’s act means first its contingent contemporaneity.103 Given this fact, Barth’s provocative thesis “alles in allem real verändernde Tatsache dass Gott ist”104 is of special significance for the Christian church to be open to the world of non-Christian religions, being faithful to God’s transforming act on the sides of massa perditionis (the lost public mass105) in an interreligious context. This is what theologians of religion and the neo-orthodox Barthians do not understand in dealing with Barth’s attitude toward other religions. In fact, Barth’s Christological openness to religious pluralism not only inspires interreligious dialogue, but also retains a concrete sociopolitical dimension in the preferential option for the poor and attention to social justice. Jesus Christ for Barth is “the partisan of the poor.” “People of God’s grace are the ones who are swimming against the stream, constantly provoking irritation and hostility.”106 Jesus Christ was in solidarity with massa perditionis who belonged to the party of the godless assailed by the Pharisees.107 For Barth, Christian mission or witness should aim

99. CD I/2, 869. 100. CD I/1, 162. 101. Ibid., 164–5. 102. Ibid., 283–4. 103. Ibid., 145. 104.  “The fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things—the fact that God is.” Ibid., 258. 105. CD IV/3.2, 587. 106. Ibid., 581. 107.  Ibid., 587. The ochlos (mob) as massa perditionis in Barthian fashion offers an important insight for me to engage in improving minjung theology in the fourth-eye formation with respect to minjung hermeneutics of ochlos Jesus from sociobiographical perspective as well as to socially engaged Buddhism. See Paul S. Chung, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Seen from Asian Minjung Theology and the Fourth Eye of Socially Engaged Buddhism,” in Chung et al., Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium: Theology of Minjung in Fourth-Eye Formation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2007), 127–46.

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neither to strengthen confessional positions nor to extend European or American culture and civilization. Furthermore, Christian mission should certainly have no desire to support colonial or general political interests and aspirations.108 In light of reconciliation, there is nothing alien to God. It seems to me that with respect to reconciliation, there is an essential “theanthropological unity” between God, human beings, and the cosmos. The fact that God is always with us means that God is present explicitly in people of other religions. The church should learn to listen to those religions, in which there are unknown yet revealed lights from God’s kingdom. In light of God’s universal reconciliation with the world, Barth rejects the conversion of people of other cultures into the Christian religion. For Barth, conversion is not the work of the Christian church at home or abroad. “This is the Work of God alone.”109 For the necessity of interreligious dialogue and the importance of world Christianity, Barth expressed his expectation of discovering a true Christianity in a lecture held for 300 students who were staying as guests of the Mustermesse in Basel (most of whom came from developing countries): “There may be a religious West, but there is not a Christian West . . . It could well be that one day true Christianity will be understood and lived better in Asia and in Africa than in our aged Europe.”110

108. CD IV/3.2, 875. 109. Ibid., 876. 110. E. Busch, Karl Barth:  His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 468.

Chapter 9 W H E R E I S K A R L B A RT H I N M O D E R N E U R O P E A N H I S T O RY ? 1 Rudy Koshar

Anglophone historians of modern Europe know Karl Barth primarily as the intellectual leader of the anti-Nazi Church Struggle and the principal author of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which spoke a dramatic “No” to National Socialism’s attack on the German churches. But Barth was also arguably the most important—and most prolific—theologian of the twentieth century. Aside from his unfinished magnum opus, the fourteen-volume Church Dogmatics, he published more than one hundred books and articles, and he quite literally wrote until the day he died in 1968.2 Barth’s output has elicited an equally impressive secondary literature, produced mostly by students of theology and amounting to around fourteen thousand titles in twenty-five languages.3 As might be expected, theologians differ in their interpretations of Barth, seeing him as a formative voice in “neo-orthodox” Protestantism,4 a left-wing socialist,5 a fitting subject of deconstructionist philosophical theology,6 a thinker who showed the way “past 1.  My thanks to students from my graduate seminar, Neal Davidson, Jeff Hobbs, Judy Kaplan, Brad Moore, Brian Schoellhorn, and Ben Shannon, University of WisconsinMadison, Spring 2007, whose discussions stimulated many of the ideas in this piece. 2. Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1975), 497–9. 3. Hans-Anton Drewes, “Theologie im Umbruch: Ein Heidelberger Symposium zu Karl Barth,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11 Nov. 2005. Thanks to Ulrich Rosenhagen for making this source available to me. 4.  Richard H. Roberts, “The Reception of Karl Barth in the Anglo-Saxon World: History, Typology and Prospect,” in S. W. Sykes, ed., Karl Barth: Centenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 140–41. 5.  Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus:  Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich: Kaiser, 1972). 6. Graham Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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the modern,”7 or a “critically realistic dialectical theologian.”8 In view of this record it may come as a surprise to find that until recently the Swiss was still “habitually honored but not much read,” as theologian George Hunsinger wrote in 1991. Hunsinger was not the only observer to see that Barth’s work was never fully integrated into the corpus of theological culture in Europe and the United States despite the scholarly interest in his thought. This situation may be changing, as a transatlantic “Barth renaissance” now gathers momentum, nearly forty years after the great theologian’s death.9 The theological reception of Barth may be of only tangential interest to students of modern European intellectual history, but is this disinterest justified? It is significant to point out that Barth was as important in his field as Adorno, Freud, Wittgenstein, Weber, Heidegger, or Saussure were in theirs.10 Whereas these thinkers have garnered much attention outside their specialties, the full compass of Barth’s oeuvre remains relatively unknown to intellectual history. Barth was a theologian above all, but he was also a pastor, a moral philosopher, and a public intellectual. He was convinced that theological writing was always political writing. His position was that all human social endeavor, from economics to art, must be understood in relation to God’s objectivity, and that any form of “God-talk,” whether it took place in theological faculties or the public square, encompassed all human history. He cultivated this self-image through unceasing teaching and writing that resonated well beyond systematic theology. For Barth, theology was both a scientific discipline and a form of cultural knowledge, a template for understanding social endeavor, not only the expression of belief or the articulation of dogma; when he discussed “God and man” in the world, he meant world, just as he meant God and humankind. A distinguished historian of theology once argued that Barth’s Church Dogmatics created a “counter-concept,” or even a “counterworld,” to modern thought.11 If that is the case, then surely Barth’s writings merit 7.  Michael Trowitzsch, Über die Moderne hinaus. Theologie im Übergang (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). 8. Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). 9.  George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth:  The Shape of His Theology (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1991), 27; John Webster, Barth, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2004), 1; Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1966), 43; Michael Beintker, Christian Link, and Michael Trowitzsch, eds., Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch–Klärung–Widerstand (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2005); Bruce L. McCormack, “The Barth Renaissance in America:  An Opinion,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 23/3 (2002), 337–40. 10. Webster, Barth, 1. I leave aside the more specialized subfield of the history of theology; see Bruce L. McCormack, “Die theologiegeschichtliche Ort Karl Barths,” in Beintker, Link, and Trowitzsch, Karl Barth in Deutschland, 15–40. 11.  Trutz Rendtorff, “The Modern Age as a Chapter in the History of Christianity: Or, The Legacy of Historical Consciousness in Present Theology,” Journal of Religion 65/4 (Oct. 1985), 478–99, 498.

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more attention from historians outside theology or Church history than they have had until now. The reasons for Barth’s narrow foothold in the historical narrative require separate treatment, but two issues might be raised by way of introduction. First, scholarship’s continued interest in the Holocaust is a central factor shaping Barth’s reception among historians. Why indeed should Barth not emerge as a central figure at this historical moment in light of the dominant narratives of modern German history? Yet as we know, the history of twentieth-century Germany is always in danger of allowing this perspective to overwhelm research and to consider all lines of historical analysis primarily as they flow through the trauma of Nazi genocide. Scholarship on the Church Struggle has an analogous character. Recent works have cast a more critical eye at the German churches, charging them with sins of commission, not just omission, as much earlier research had.12 Barth has not escaped this critical view as his theology in the 1930s is said to have been ambivalent toward Judaism and too late in recognizing Nazi anti-Semitic persecution. Nonetheless, as with scholarship on so many intellectual figures from the interwar era, presentist concentration on failure diminishes our understanding of the context in which he worked and the evolution of his thinking. It is arguable, for example, that “Barth’s leftist politics” cannot be easily derived from his “Christocentric dogmatics,” as Shelley Baranowski states for the 1930s.13 If one avoids focusing too exclusively on the flawed Barmen Declaration, and instead takes a more developmental view of Barth’s political theology, then the association between Barth’s non-ideological leftism and his Christocentrism becomes more explicable. A second reason for Barth’s paradoxical hiddenness is that the insistent secularism of much historical research casts a shadow over Christian thinkers in twentieth-century Europe, especially in recent American historical writing. This is attributable in part to an ideological disinclination toward studying matters of faith, a disinclination that often moves Christian thought to the margins of historical inquiry. It may also be rooted in what Brad Gregory calls “secular confessionalism.” Gregory argues that postmodernism, the linguistic or cultural turn, feminism, postcolonialism, and other trends are now so integrated into historical study that they are taken for granted as truths, all claims of opposition to “master narratives” notwithstanding, rather than recognized as the beliefs they are. And since in the secular-confessionalist mode these “truths” have a higher priority than

12. Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, eds., Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999). 13. Shelley Baranowski, “The Confessing Church and Antisemitism: Protestant Identity, German Nationhood, and the Exclusion of the Jews,” in Ericksen and Heschel, Betrayal, 103. Matthew D. Hockenos’s A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past (Bloomington and Indianapolis:  Indiana University Press, 2004) makes frequent mention of Barth in the post-World War II period, but of course its thematic focus connects directly to the history of the Church Struggle, and it is not as such a study of Barth.

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beliefs based on allegedly nonrational criteria, there is an unacknowledged and often dogmatic “skepticism about all religious claims—that no religion is, indeed cannot be, what its believer–practitioners claim that it was.”14 Regardless of what the causes are, such perspectives on the role of religion in late modern Europe are relevant to understanding historians’ lack of interest in Barth. To remain with modern German history, there is a long tradition in synthetic treatments of the Weimar Republic simply to ignore the important theological debates of the early 1920s in which Karl Barth emerged as a seminal thinker.15 Or to take another perspective, few students of modern Germany would regard the twentieth century as the “age of the Church.” But in fact this era saw vigorous debates over doctrine and the Church’s societal responsibilities.16 In part because the intertwining of Church and state was much stronger and longer-lasting in Germany than in the US, Britain, or France, these debates had even greater impact in German-speaking political culture. Barth in turn did much to shape them because he was the foremost Protestant thinker in interwar Germany, where he taught in theological faculties from 1921 to 1935 before the National Socialist regime deported him to his native Switzerland. He retained that stature into the 1960s. Nonetheless, in a recent book on the “seduction of culture” in twentiethcentury German history, the churches get one paragraph and several desultory references. Protestant thought is treated summarily as an example of the “eschatological interpretation of history” that allegedly distorted German political culture.17 Barth, an “eschatological realist,”18 appears nowhere in the text. It remains to be seen if modern German history’s renewed sense that “religion lives in modern society” will overcome this inattention,19 or if it will counterbalance other tendencies in scholarship that cannot be discussed fully here, such as the inclination to treat organized Christianity as at best a residuum in the march toward secularization, or the habit of seeing it as a fellow traveler of racial, gender, and political oppression. That Christendom has been all this is true, but so also is

14. Brad S. Gregory, “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion,” History and Theory, Theme Issue, 45 (Dec. 2006), 132–49, 137; original emphasis. 15. Consider Detlev J. K. Peukert’s The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), still influential nearly two decades after its appearance in English, which is, however, silent on the theological ferment of the 1920s. 16.  Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 5:  Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture since 1700 (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1989), 281. 17.  Wolf Lepenies, The Seduction of Culture in German History (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2006), 39. 18.  Ingolf U.  Dalferth, “Karl Barth’s Eschatological Realism,” in Sykes, Karl Barth: Centenary Essays, 14–45. 19.  Michael Geyer and Lucian Hölscher, “Einleitung,” in Michael Geyer and Lucian Hölscher, eds., Die Gegenwart Gottes in der modernen Gesellschaft:  Transzendenz und religiöse Vergemeinschaftung in Deutschland (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 9.

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the fact that its diverse interactions with modern history cannot be reduced to a single interpretive category, or considered only as a shell for other social transformations. Nor should its staying power as an institution with broad public influence, even among nonbelievers, be underestimated at any time in the last century.20 Fortunately, intellectual historians have opened up a narrative space (without necessarily agreeing with or acknowledging the foregoing critique) wherein Barth may be considered more fully in terms of both the evolution of his thought and the interaction between his ideas and their context. Anson Rabinbach’s work reminds us of the strong messianic component in German intellectual life in the first half of the twentieth century. Although it argues against received notions of the religious character of the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig’s thought, Peter Gordon’s study of Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger is attentive to the linkages between religious and philosophical debates in Weimar culture. Samuel Moyn’s recent studies of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the German philosopher Leo Strauss make a strong case for the influence of early Weimar dialectical theologians in general and Karl Barth in particular, although their focus necessarily leads away from a fuller discussion of Barth himself. And in one chapter of Mark Lilla’s new synthetic study of the history of political theology, Rosenzweig and Barth are paired in a discussion of the nature and consequences of the post-World War I response to liberal theology.21 These studies suggest that the time is propitious finally to let Barth enter through the front door of the house built by the European history of ideas rather than leave him peering in through a window. There is a need for a more expansive, developmental, and connective view of Barth as a major interlocutor of twentieth-century culture. But giving Barth his due and placing him in his proper context are no easy matters, not least because of the obvious complexity of the history through which he lived and the multifaceted nature of his thinking over five decades. The following remarks are therefore suggestive rather than comprehensive. They focus on Barth’s understanding of history, his relation to culture, and his political theology. These were areas of great concern for Barth, and they have the added advantage that they tell us much about

20. Hugh McLeod, ed., The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 9: World Christianities c.1914–c.2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 21.  Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe:  German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press, 1997); Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger:  Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003); Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); idem, “From Experience to Law: Leo Strauß and the Weimar Crisis of the Philosophy of Religion,” History of European Ideas 33/2 (June 2007), 174–94; Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York:  Knopf, 2007). Thanks to Mark Lilla for generously sharing chapter drafts with me before the publication of his book.

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how his theology addressed extra-theological issues. The following gives shorter shrift to the shortcomings of his thought not only for reasons of space but also to remain consistent with the main goal, which is to widen the narrative platform on which to consider Barth. My remarks speak primarily to English-speaking scholarship and more specifically to North American history-writing about modern Germany and Europe.

Historical Consciousness Karl Barth’s critique of liberal Protestantism (or Kulturprotestantismus) established his reputation as a dissenting theologian and public intellectual. But Barth began his professional career under the sway of those historicist perspectives on which liberal theology depended as it gained power in German theological faculties in the nineteenth century.22 As a university student in Switzerland and Germany between 1904 and 1909, Barth identified with theologians who made Christianity a predicate of the historical evolution of European civilization in general, and of German nationhood in particular. Buttressed by historical critique of the Bible,23 convinced of the need to adapt religious teaching to an ever more dominant scientific world view, germanophone liberal Protestantism linked Church and world in an indissoluble identity. “German Protestant theologians of the Wilhelmine era were more concerned with the existing world as the venue of Almighty God’s selfrevelation than with the Bible as the source of revelation.”24 The theologian Ernst Troeltsch, an acute student of historicism and its intellectual consequences, was one of the most influential representatives of this perspective. It is no coincidence that he would become a target of the young Barth and his allies once their critique of liberal theology got under way.25

22.  Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2006); Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, “Kulturprotestantismus: Zur Begriffsgeschichte einer theologiepolitischen Chiffre,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 28 (1984), 214–68. 23.  Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible:  Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 24. John A. Moses, “Bonhoeffer’s Germany: The Political Context,” in John W. de Gruchy, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999), 7–8. 25. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, ed., Ernst Troeltschs ‘Historismus’ (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2000); Mark D. Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Harry Liebersohn, Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870–1923 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), 40–77; George G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 177–95.

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A seemingly optimistic liberal interweaving of Christianity and history in fact reflected a deeper ambivalence about the relevance of faith. The second half of the nineteenth century saw, especially in the intellectual classes, “a growing tendency … to do without religion, or to try to do without religion.”26 Historians have thought too teleologically about the so-called “secularization of the European mind,” reading the twentieth century back into the nineteenth without considering countervailing forces. For example, European Christendom at the turn of the century held out great hope for the future of missionary activity (which in fact later exceeded all expectations in places such as Africa) and for the prospects of ecumenicism even as both Catholic and Protestant leaders recognized the institutional weakening of the churches.27 Combined with hopefulness and anticipation, a sense of unease about the relevance of faith was nonetheless palpable. To search for the dehydrated “essence of Christianity,” as the leading liberal Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack did in a famous book of 1900,28 was in effect to save what could be saved in a world where rationality, science, capitalism, and nationalism disengaged “sources of the self ” from transcendent meaning. The reduction of Christianity to this-worldly essentials based on an enduring ethical component was a kind of “spiritual lobotomy,”29 albeit in the paradoxical form of passionately articulating belief ’s key premises. Such theological reduction was by no means confined to Christianity, but could be found as well among Jewish thinkers, most notably Leo Baeck, whose Essence of Judaism appeared five years after Harnack’s book. Analogously to Harnack, Baeck saw Judaism in relation to more secular conceptions of reason, humanity, and morality. But it was Christianity’s combination of arrogant affirmation and anxious self-definition by secular standards to which Barth reacted so strongly. The situation was sharpened too by the Christian churches’ increasing distance from the working classes. During a ten-year stint (1911–21) as a Reformed pastor in Safenwil, a small industrial town in Switzerland, Barth was drawn to religious socialism, a commitment which got him involved in local trade union conflicts— he earned the nickname “the red Pastor”—and led him to become a member of the Swiss Social Democratic party. His engagement with democratic socialism reinforced a sense that liberal Protestantism’s close identification with “progress,” which also meant its close identification with the bourgeoisie, blinded it to the social teachings of Christianity and weakened its ability to respond to economic

26. Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 17. 27. Brian Stanley, “The Outlook for Christianity in 1914,” in Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley, eds., Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 8:  World Christianities c.1815–c.1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 593–600. 28. Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), based on lectures given 1899–1900. 29.  Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 520.

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distress.30 But it also kept him in touch with the liberal Protestant tradition, since it presupposed a relation between Church and world through transformative social action. Barth shared in a broader dissatisfaction with the world of their fathers felt by the “generation of 1905,” born in the 1880s, whose members were building careers in the decade before World War I.31 Prewar expressionism, which gave powerful voice to such discomfort, had a strong impact on the young Barth, as discussed below. But it was the experience of the Great War that sharpened his break with his teachers and helped to transform dissatisfaction into a new theological agenda. In 1914, twelve of the ninety-three German intellectuals who signed a pro-war “Appeal to the World of Culture” were theologians. Whereas this did not mean that “pretty much all” of Barth’s teachers had signed on, as Barth claimed, it is true that two of them, Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann, were among his mentors.32 World War I  confirmed Barth’s suspicion that historicist optimism and liberaltheological “progressivism” led to disaster. Barth held to this position consistently through the next decades even as his theology underwent slow change and his political attitudes evolved within the broader penumbra of liberal theory. Barth’s disillusionment was evident in wartime writing and speeches, but it reached a crescendo in his book on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Römerbrief), which appeared first in 1919, then in a 1922 revision.33 The goal was to clear away layers of historicist scholarship so as to read the Bible with new eyes. The link between theology, history, and politics was unmistakable insofar as Barth aimed to free Scripture from historicist criticism and the nationalist–political uses to which it had been put. Expressionist influences were evident, as Barth tried to “get beneath” the text of Romans to discover that “aboriginal perspective” for which expressionist artists Franz Marc and Paul Klee also searched in their work.34 Barth wrote that he “caught a breath from afar, from Asia Minor or Corinth, something primeval, from the ancient East, indefinably sunny, wild, and original, that somehow is hidden behind these sentences.”35 Theological scholarship has not addressed

30. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 78–125. 31.  Douglas J. Cremer, “Protestant Theology in Early Weimar Germany: Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56/2 (April 1995), 289–307, 289. 32.  George Rupp, Culture-Protestantism:  German Liberal Theology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 11. 33.  Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London:  Oxford University Press, 1933), the English translation of the revised German edition, cited below as Romans II. The first German edition is Der Römerbrief (Berne: G. A. Bäschlin, 1919). 34. Irit Rogoff, “Modern German Art,” in Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 264. 35. Cited in Busch, Karl Barth, 98; see also Barth to Eduard Thurneysen, 27 Sept. 1917, in Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen:  Ein Briefswechsel aus der Frühzeit der dialektischen Theologie (Munich: Siebenstern, 1966), 47.

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Barth’s “popular Orientalism,” which gained literary form in Hermann Hesse’s novels Demian (1919) and Siddhartha (1923), and in the philosophical travel writing of Hermann Graf Keyserling.36 Whereas secular Orientalism was antipathetic to orthodox Christianity, or at least syncretic in its mixing of Christian, pagan, and “Eastern” influences, Barth’s Romans combined anti-bourgeois sentiment, counterliberal critique, and the recovery of a more radical (in the Latin sense) Christian perspective. Barth’s creative engagement with European culture at this moment may be found in part in his attitude toward history. Barth was the leader of a phalanx of Protestant (Lutheran and Reformed) critical theologians who attacked the primacy of historical learning, the so-called “crisis” or “dialectical” theologians, stressing instead the superiority of revelation as a source of knowledge of God. This critique was by no means confined to Protestants, but also included Jewish intellectuals, such as Franz Rosenzweig, whose thought on divine revelation emerged parallel to Barth’s. Like Barth, who cooperated briefly with them in the Patmos group, along with other key religious thinkers such as the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, French Catholic Gabriel Marcel, and the Russian Orthodox Nikolai Berdyaev, they wanted to free themselves from nineteenth-century historicism and its interpretive apparatus.37 To clear away this apparatus, which like a complicated maze prevented the believer from seeing what was on the other side, was the aim of many intellectuals who faced the spiritual and political upheaval of the postwar years. Barth’s reading of Scripture was both radically empathetic (in this he agreed with Troeltsch) and radically critical of historicist hermeneutics.38 His approach was stated in the preface to the first edition of Romans when he wrote: “Paul, as a child of his age, addressed his contemporaries”: It is, however, far more important that, as Prophet and Apostle of the Kingdom of God, he veritably speaks to all men of every age. The differences between then and now, there and here, no doubt require careful investigation and consideration. But the purpose of such investigation can only be to demonstrate that these differences are, in fact, purely trivial. The historical-critical method of Biblical investigation has its rightful place: it is concerned with the preparation of the intelligence—and this can never be superfluous. But, were I driven to choose between it and the venerable doctrine of Inspiration, I should without hesitation adopt the latter, which has a broader, deeper, and more important justification.39 36. Suzanne Marchand, “German Orientalism and the Decline of the West,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145/4 (Dec. 2001), 465–73. 37. Moyn, Origins of the Other, esp. chap. 4; David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 38.  Thomas W. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History:  A Critical Comparison of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth (Louisville, KY and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 112–14. 39. Barth, “Preface to First Edition,” Romans II, 1.

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The tradition of German historicist criticism of the Bible had placed an insurmountable gulf between contemporary life and the “primitive” Christianity of the New Testament. Even before Friedrich Nietzsche’s acid attacks on Christianity, the theologian Franz Overbeck condemned modern Christianity as a pale reflection of its heroic, “primal” predecessor; for Overbeck, the distance between then and now was irretrievable, not least in liberal theology, which had “thrown away the shell of Christianity with the kernel.”40 Scholarly research on the life of Jesus had done much the same, leading in one direction to liberal Protestantism’s emphasis on the purely ethical teachings of Christianity, and in another direction to pantheism, political radicalism, and atheism, reflected powerfully in the nineteenth century by the Young Hegelians and their successors, including Karl Marx.41 Barth argued that these historical investigations were less compelling than many thought. They sharpened the intelligence and gave the reader a richer understanding, but their results were neither constitutive nor disturbing to the believer. Indeed, in contrast to their claims, they rendered insignificant the difference between then and now, between the moment of Christ’s presence on earth and the benighted twentieth century. Barth proposed to move against and beyond both biblical criticism and misdirected contemporary attempts to capture the “essence” of Christianity by paring away its “backward” elements. His goal was to rediscover the unmediated urgency of St Paul’s language by listening to the text as apostolic witnessing to the Word of God. In the nineteenth century the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard demanded that people “forget the 1800 years” dividing the present from the moment of Jesus’ life on earth, a perspective Barth increasingly adopted as his own. As Kierkegaard had once stated that Christianity should be seen not in its historical development, not “updated” for society’s sake, but as something that was radically contemporary as eternal revelation, so Barth regarded the results of historical research on early Christianity as ultimately “trivial” when placed next to the Word of God in the Pauline text. The point was to avoid making a category error by equating human understandings of the Word with the Word of God itself in its full reality. It is important to see that despite this sharp criticism, he did not reject historical research as such, but rather recognized its limits for biblical exegesis and Christian proclamation. When in the above-quoted statement he said that the historicalcritical method “can never be superfluous,” he meant it, and he followed through on this conviction throughout his career. No consideration of Barth’s work that focuses on the maturation of his thought could remain satisfied with claiming him as an antihistoricist intellectual. One of his major later publications is a detailed study of

40. Franz Overbeck, On the Christianity of Theology (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications, 2002), 89. 41.  Warren Breckman, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999); Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).

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nineteenth-century Protestant theology, based in part on lectures given in the 1930s, in which he insisted that although theological study must begin and end with theological concerns, historical analysis was still irreplaceable to understand how the Church’s witnessing evolved over time. That he began with such theological concerns makes the study problematic for historical research, but that he insisted on placing historical methodology at the center also reveals his continued engagement with the past. To fail to see the value of historical research, Barth argued, was to close a door on potentially instructive theological voices from the Church’s earlier history.42 Indeed, in a later assessment of nineteenth-century theology, Barth conceded that his earlier criticisms had been too strong, and that the giants of liberal theology, such as Schleiermacher, deserved continued reflection.43 His “secret passion” for history was reflected in his personal reading, often divided evenly between secular and religious authors and including much historical literature and historical biography.44 To classify him as “antihistoricist,” as so many interpreters have (and as so many contemporaries did45) without such qualifications, is inaccurate with respect to both his understanding of theology and his general intellectual interests. But it is also to be misled by the overreaching rhetoric of his earlier work. Such evidence suggests in any event that the proper way of framing Barth’s relation to the nineteenth century is one of critical dialogue rather than total discontinuity. Barth’s writings reflect not a rejection of history but a concern with the relation between God’s reality and human being in time. Although he is often said to be the leading “dialectical theologian” of the age, Barth did not have a selfenclosed dialectical method, as Hegel did, so much as he had an entirely dialectical view of human history.46 Precisely because Man sinned, because he was fallen, and because his distance from God was incalculable, history itself assumed shape from a diastatic relation between the human and the divine, between time and eternity. Theology, political discourse, culture—all analogized this movement in a reality defined by God, whose “No” to fallen humankind was at the same time a merciful “Yes” that allowed persons to exist in the first place. Synthesis was unattainable in history; only God brought dialectic movement to a standstill, only the Gospel, the “good news” of God’s election of humankind through Christ, was undialectical.47 Barth’s “Christocentric concentration,” as he termed it, became

42. Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 1–15. 43.  Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1960). 44. Busch, Karl Barth, 169. 45. Cornelis van der Kooi, “Karl Barths Zweither Römerbrief und seine Wirkungen,” in Beintker, Link, and Trowitzsch, Karl Barth in Deutschland, 57–75, 64–5. 46.  Timothy J. Gorringe, Karl Barth:  Against Hegemony (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1999), 108–11. 47.  Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik II/2 (Zürich:  Evangelischer Verlag Zollikon, 1942), 11–12.

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stronger with time, and the historical reality of humankind became explicable as a unity only through the metaphor of God’s veiling and unveiling through the Incarnation as a whole. “The man Jesus lives in His time,” wrote Barth, who argued also that, as God’s mediator, Christ in history encompassed all human life and relations with God in all times. To say “that the being of man is history,” as Barth put it, meant that God’s incarnation was a real event in “primal history” from which all human history, the panoply of temporalities that constitute human lives, derived meaning.48 It is difficult to overlook the relevance of Barth’s reading of history for Martin Heidegger’s more famous (and atheistic) philosophy. Heidegger drew not only from Greek philosophy and the conservative revolutionaries of the early Weimar Republic but also from “crisis theologians” such as Barth, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten. Revelation for Barth was an unprecedented interruption of the flow of human time; its nature was diametrically opposed to the uniform and progressive evolution of history characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought in general and liberal theology in particular. As he wrote in Romans, revelation was “KRISIS,” which meant judgment or sentence, a bomb crater left behind in human culture. Here Barth moved beyond accepted historicist assumptions that “crisis” was a transitional stage leading to more advanced ages.49 Instead it was a structural element the permanence of which placed human history within Christian eschatology, “the most practical thing that can be thought.”50 It had, to put the matter differently, the character of a permanent, real “encounter,” between God and man and between man and man, rather than a “development.”51 Heidegger’s notion of “interruptedness,” which for him was an essential premise for the search for authenticity, derived in part from such theological critique, particularly as Heidegger went back to the Pauline–Lutheran texts in his reading of Barth and others.52 At the heart of this “eschatological” moment of Weimar culture, we find Barth. Unlike Heidegger or other intellectuals who also incorporated eschatological perspectives, such as Walter Benjamin, and unlike many of his former theological allies, such as Friedrich Gogarten, Barth was never seduced by utopian or totalitarian politics.

48.  Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2 (London:  T. & T. Clark, 2004), 157, 439. On the metaphor of veiling and unveiling, see McCormack, Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 366–7. The much-discussed question of the historicity of Christ cannot be addressed here. For a critical appraisal of Barth in German Christological thought see Alister E. McGrath, The Making of Modern German Christology, 1750–1990, 2nd edn (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1994), 123–43. 49.  Reinhart Koselleck, “Crisis,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67/2 (April, 2006), 357–400, 398–9. 50. Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper, 1959), 154. 51. Ogletree, Christian Faith and History, 185–91. 52.  Benjamin D. Crowe, Heidegger’s Religious Origins:  Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006).

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Taking into account his more mature thinking, we are led to conclude that Barth’s critique of historicism did not lead him to endorse a position that would be described neatly as unhistorical, antihistorical, or antihistoricist. His view of history—with respect both to its theological foundations and to the wider culture of the twentieth century—was too dynamic and mixed to fit easily such analytical labels. In fact, he accepted many of the findings of historicist thought, such as the relativism of all cultural values, with far less anxiety than did Troeltsch, who in his final years seemed unwilling to face fully the consequences of historicism’s corrosive effects.53 Barth’s analysis of biblical language similarly revealed much about his evenhanded attitude toward history. This essay necessarily has little to say about that subject, but it may be useful to point out that Barth’s perspective on biblical language was neither wholly historical-critical nor literalist. Neither symbolic language nor myth (as historicists might have put it), and not factual accounts of past events (as literalists insisted), were the primary features of biblical narrative. Rather, biblical narrative, its historical content, and the theological truth to which it pointed, depended on analogical reference and witnessing, modes of understanding appropriate to a subject matter ungraspable solely through ordinary analytical methods. As with his reading of the Pauline text, historical criticism was not without an important function, indeed it was necessitated by scriptural content itself, but it was framed by other, more revealing methods, rather more akin to the reading of “saga” than of legend, myth, or fact.54 Here and elsewhere, Barth subscribed to a contained historicism, inapplicable as a general rule but still centrally part of his theological and methodological repertoire and his view of the wider society.55 We see below that this approach meshed well with his overall perspective on culture and politics.

Culture Throughout the war years and the two versions of Romans, Barth developed his dominant theme, namely that “God is God.” Organized religion was only a very fallible symptom of man’s understanding of a wholly other God, whose transcendence and simultaneous copresence were the grounds, not the results, of human experience. In one aspect of Barth’s theology, religion was “unbelief ” because it remained so thoroughly anthropocentric, especially in its nineteenthcentury liberal variations. Properly understood, Christian faith was arguably not a religion at all, since its reality lay in God’s revelation, not the human “idea of

53. Iggers, German Conception of History, 195. 54. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 43–9. 55.  By contrast, Van A. Harvey, The Historian and Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (Urbana, IL:  University of Illinois Press, 1996; first published 1966), 153–9, sees inconsistency in Barth’s reading of “faith and fact.”

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the holy,”56 not the history of knowledge of God, and not the psychology of religious projection. God existed, as evidenced in revelation and Jesus’ suffering, but man’s ability to comprehend this unavoidable reality was limited. This was Barth’s “critical realism,” the roots of which still had strong links to the Kantian idealist tradition in which he gained intellectual maturity. It was Kant’s critical epistemology that enabled Barth to conceive of God’s self-revelation through dialectical veiling and unveiling in the first place. The continuities of Kantian thought in twentieth-century European culture remain a fitting subject for research on Barth’s influences and impact.57 Barth would later further clarify what many took to be his radical vision of humankind’s diastatic relationship with God, in which presumably world and God remained totally separate. Barth himself and later Hans Urs von Balthasar left the impression that Barth’s book on Anselm of Canterbury of 1931, Fides quaerens intellectum, signaled a move away from the earlier dialectical position, but this argument is now in doubt.58 No matter how questions of periodization are handled, the textured digressions of Church Dogmatics gave abundant evidence that Barth saw divine proclamation as proof of God’s relation to man and culture, a position from which he never wavered even during the years of his radical break with liberal Protestantism. This relation was particular and direct, not abstract or “general,” because it was grounded in a living human being, in a moment in history, a creaturely time and space. His relational theology, rooted in an evolving Christological specification, opened the door to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ideas of “Christ for us,” which obligated the Christian to “being-for-others.” The obvious communitarian implications of this Barth-inspired Christology have taken on great importance in global Christianity, from liberation theology to American evangelicalism. But Barth’s relevance for secular theory is also not to be underestimated, as is clear with Emmanuel Levinas, the French Jewish philosopher who deployed Barth for his concepts of intersubjectivity and “the other.”59 Barth’s elaboration of “God’s humanity” as a central thesis of his theology also outlined a Christian ethics, a feature of Barth’s thought that has gained minimal scholarly recognition or has been represented as ambivalent or unclearly stated. Whereas it

56. Marburg theologian Rudolf Otto’s still famous The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), first published in 1917, received a qualified but positive response in Barth to Thurneysen, 3 June 1919, in Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen, 50. 57. McCormack, Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 464–7. 58. Ibid., 422; Michael Beintker, “… Alles andere als ein Parergon: Fides quaerens intellectum,” in Beintker, Link, and Trowitzsch, Karl Barth in Deutschland, 99–120, where the author argues that the transition from Barth’s early work to his Church Dogmatics cannot be located in a sudden turn represented by the Anselm study. 59.  Larry L. Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:  Reality and Resistance (Louisville and London:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); Moyn, Origins of the Other; Stephen R. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).

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is true that Barth resisted creating a system for rational reflection on ethical behavior, wanting to preserve the primacy of God’s concrete command in the world, a purely voluntaristic reading of Barth’s ethical writings is, as one commentator stated, “grossly simplistic.”60 In his discussion of predestination, perhaps the central moment of his theology, Barth wrote that “there is no dogmatics that must not immediately become ethics.”61 The “analogy of faith” (analogia fidei) served Barth well as an appropriate paradigm with which to assess humankind’s relation to God, giving further evidence of the relational elements of his theology, even as his emphasis on God’s transcendence remained. Barth offered the analogy of faith in response to both Catholicism’s “analogy of being” (analogia entis) and Protestant natural theology’s positing of knowledge of God from the perspective of human experience, history, or reason.62 The analogy of faith meant that Christians filtered nature and reason through an evolving understanding of the Word of God. Nature and reason were not thereby rejected or displaced but always contextualized and made relative with respect to God’s prior grace.63 As God’s command and action in the world were His reality, so the believer necessarily relied on self-reflection and listening for God’s command in making decisions at each moment of creaturely existence. Barth’s supporters and critics in the early post-1918 period understood well that as the upstart theologian developed such themes, he was not only attacking an academic theology shaped in the nineteenth century by philosophy and history—and thereby drawn away from what Barth thought should be its real focus. They saw that Barth’s position was not only an attack on organized religion, or on Christendom’s close association with state and nation, an association that had become unsettled in the postwar context not least because the churches were forced to explore new relations with Germany’s first democratic republic.64 Barth’s position encompassed all this and more as he was also making a comprehensive statement on twentieth-century culture. This theme has had a rather uneven track record in scholarship, even in theological debate, where the analysis of Barth’s “theology of culture” is undernourished. It is a theme that has relevance in twentieth-century European intellectual history as well, evident for example in the “secularization” debate of the post-World War II period, in which

60. Nigel Biggar, The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 45. 61. Kirchliche Dogmatik II/2, 11. 62.  Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco:  Communio Books, 1992), 47–55. 63. Biggar, The Hastening that Waits, 155. 64.  Kurt Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland:  Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft vom Ende der Aufklärung bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich:  C. H. Beck, 1995), 205–42.

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Barth was often portrayed (inaccurately) as a “gnostic” who denigrated secular culture.65 The exchange between Adolf von Harnack and Barth in the journal Die christliche Welt (1923) illustrates what was at stake in the early Weimar Kulturkampf.66 Harnack was the doyen of German Protestant theology, chair of the Prussian academy, a close personal friend of the former kaiser Wilhelm II, and a supporter of the war effort. He was a living symbol of modern German Lutheranism’s integration into contemporary German national culture even when his theological work brought him into conflict with his orthodox confessional background. In Harnack’s “fifteen questions,” addressed to “the theologians who are contemptuous of the scientific theology”—Barth, Friedrich Gogarten, Emil Brunner, Eduard Thurneysen, and others—he probed these thinkers’ views of biblical interpretation and religious experience. Was it possible, he queried, to understand the Bible only on the basis of the experiences of the individual without resort to historical reflection, as Barth’s statement on Paul’s contemporaneousness seemed to aver. If God and world were total contrasts, then what was the status of Christian morality, or of Christianity’s attempted alliance with “the good, true, and beautiful” (a favorite phrase of Wilhelm II’s) in contemporary culture through historical research? How was it possible to avoid atheism when God seemed so distant? Harnack’s defense of “scientific theology” was also an attack on Barth’s notion of culture. Harnack understood that for Barth (in contrast to a worldly liberal Protestantism) German culture, and the Christianity that played a central role in it, were finally inassimilable to God. But if culture was inassimilable it was not inadmissible. Not withdrawal or asceticism but engagement was the only choice. Just as Barth argued through much of his career that the place to understand and, if need be, to critique religion’s identification with worldly power was within the Church, so too he argued that one does not step outside contemporary culture but dissents against it while remaining committed to it. Scientific theology was not to be rejected but rather reminded that “its object had previously been its subject, and must become this again and again, something that has nothing at all to do with ‘experience’ and ‘experiences’.”67 It was a matter of priority, and of directionality. Faith awakened by God, no matter how closely shaped by either piety or history, “would never be able fully to avoid the necessity of a more or less ‘radical’ protest against this world.”68 The contrast between God and world remained, only finally to be closed 65. Robert J. Palma, Karl Barth’s Theology of Culture: The Freedom of Culture for the Praise of God (Eugene, OR:  Pickwick, 1983); Benjamin Lazier, “Overcoming Gnosticism:  Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64/4 (Oct. 2003), 619–37; John Stroup, “Political Theology and Secularization Theory in Germany, 1918–39,” Harvard Theological Review 80/3 (July 1987), 321–68. 66. See James M. Robinson, ed., The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1968), 165–6. 67. Ibid., 167; original emphasis. 68. Ibid., 168; original emphasis.

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by the eternal God. “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7) was a necessary reminder that the contrast was a true crisis, the solution to which really did surpass all knowledge because it came from God’s mysterious action. History and scientific theology were not avenues to faith but indicators of man’s distance from the divine. If theology had the courage to be “objective” about its mission of witnessing to revelation, if it did not let science dictate its methods but rather asserted itself vis-à-vis science, then the rest of the culture—“the jurors, physicians, and philosophers”69—might also listen. Their listening might reveal to them how far German culture had strayed from the God to which they gave misguided and, in Barth’s eyes, ultimately sinful allegiance. Barth’s supporters understood the general cultural crisis that underlay these criticisms. Already in 1920 Friedrich Gogarten, a “dreadnought” for the new critical theology, wrote that “it is the destiny of our generation to stand between the times” and to occupy an “empty space” bounded by disillusionment with the previous generation and an uncertainty about the future due to the inability to “conceive of God.”70 This sense of irresolution was rife among secular thinkers as well. Siegfried Kracauer captured the moment in 1922 when he wrote of a “metaphysical suffering” felt by those who sensed the “lack of a higher meaning in the world, a suffering due to an existence in an empty space.” “Those who wait” for such meaning were “companions in misfortune” even if they did not share similar political or religious (or irreligious) backgrounds.71 Barth’s fame rose in this period because the “companions in misfortune” who were “between the times” were prevalent in the educated classes. Barth never attained the general influence of Oswald Spengler, whose Decline of the West roiled cultural debate, nor did he share the conservative-revolutionary stance adopted by Spengler and his ilk. But Barth’s work on Paul was nonetheless one of the publications that generated anticipation in the immediate postwar years. “These two works by Spengler and Barth,” wrote Karl Löwith, a German university student in the early 1920s and later a major philosopher, “were the books that most excited us.”72 In the third volume of Church Dogmatics, Barth stated that “the doctrine of creation means anthropology.”73 One does not derive God from the anthropological understanding of religious experience, as Ludwig Feuerbach had, but

69. Ibid., 170. 70.  Ibid., 277, 279. Gogarten’s piece appeared as “Zwischen die Zeiten,” Die Christliche Welt 34 (1920), 374–8. On Gogarten as “dreadnought” see Barth to Thurneysen, 27 Oct. 1920, in Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen, 56. 71.  Siegfried Kracauer, “Those Who Wait,” in Thomas Y. Levin, ed., The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 129. 72.  Karl Löwith, My Life in Germany before and after 1933 (Urbana, IL and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 26. Löwith was no exception; see Van der Kooi, “Karl Barths zweiter Römerbrief und seine Wirkungen.” 73. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, 3.

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only anthropology from God. Precisely this perspective underlay his sustained engagement with human culture. To read the Church Dogmatics over its decadeslong gestation is also to follow Barth’s response to philosophy, music, literature (nineteenth-century realism and detective novels were among Barth’s favorites), politics, and of course theology. I am unaware of any anglophone scholar of modern European intellectual history who has explored this multivolume work for its use of such extra-theological sources. Barth wrote that Church history demonstrated how Christianity had always made “eclectic and non-committal use of current world views.”74 From the use in Genesis of the Babylonian creation myth to more modern attempts to reconcile faith and world, the churches and culture had come together in manifold ways. If, however, the proponents of faith gave themselves over too strongly to any particular world view, they stepped outside the dissenting sobriety with which Christians necessarily entered society. But even when Christians did commit to particular philosophies, their faith remained “disturbing, destructive, and threatening to the very foundation of these philosophies.”75 Faith’s noncommittal openness shaped Barth’s response to cultural modernism. Scholars who uncritically depict Barth as a “neoorthodox” thinker create a misleading impression both with regard to the content of his theology and with regard to the implication this term had for his response to cultural trends. Barth’s early work was rooted in German expressionism’s anxious, antibourgeois hope for spiritual transformation.76 The expressionist movement was centered in Germany but it had a strong following in Switzerland, where during and after World War I many German dissenters—Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hugo Ball—found exile. Its longing for a new humanity, for an age of spiritual renewal beyond the liberalpositivist culture of the nineteenth century, marked the young Barth’s work in profound ways, demonstrating again that his criticism of modern theological thought had strong prewar foundations. One of Barth’s most prescient Catholic interlocutors, Hans Urs von Balthasar, described Barth’s early methodology as “theological expressionism.”77 There is a strong stylistic correspondence between the turbulent force of expressionist language and the Romans commentary, the prose of which has an urgent, corrosive ambience.78 But just as expressionist longing gave way to the more dispassionate tones of new objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), so too did Barth’s work move away from the earlier emotions. When Barth insisted ever more frequently on God’s “objectivity,” he acted as an agent of the new sobriety, even when his understanding of “the real” was quite different from that of secular thinkers.79

74. Ibid., 10. 75. Ibid., 11. 76. McCormack, Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 31–5. 77. Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 83. 78.  Stephen H. Webb, Re-figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth (Albany :  State University of New York Press, 1991). 79. Gorringe, Against Hegemony, 73–84.

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Barth’s cultural provenance also reflects his status as a European intellectual conversant with the important thinkers of the time. The luminaries of high bourgeois culture appear scattered across Barth’s writings, especially in the Church Dogmatics, where perhaps many readers expect not to find them because of this publication’s “churchly” character. Such eclecticism is fitting for one whose work “orders all the paths of human wisdom, philosophical and religious, around the central core of a purely theological point of view.”80 In the Church Dogmatics we find commentaries of varied length on Mozart (Barth’s favorite composer), Shakespeare, Spinoza, Rousseau, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Marx, Darwin, Richard Wagner, John Stuart Mill, Max Weber, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Jung, Jaspers, and many others interwoven with often labyrinthine theological and biblical references and historical analysis of Church doctrine. Barth’s stance of engagement within distance remains evident throughout this massive referential system, which (seeing that Barth often listened to Mozart as he worked) had the character of a symphonic score rather than a theological treatise. Let us take one example among many of the tone and direction of Barth’s cultural analysis. Barth appreciated the existentialist thinkers of his time, both Christian and secular, but his acceptance was tempered. In his response to Karl Jaspers’s work, Barth concentrated on the concept of the “limit experience,” or “frontier situation” (Grenzfall), as a point of critique. The limit experience renders “human experience … unavoidable and inexplicable and totally questionable,” reminding man of his “historicity … and his relatedness to another.”81 Insofar as this relatedness could lead the person through the self in a moment of crisis and disruption to a transcendent other, Barth found that the concept of personhood to which it pointed was closer to the truth than that of naturalism and idealism. Nonetheless, how could one be certain that such moments did what Jaspers said they did? Did not the world wars suggest that people in fact learned nothing from frontier situations? “According to the present trend,” wrote Barth, “we may suppose that even on the morning after the Day of Judgment—if such a thing were possible—every cabaret, every night club, every newspaper firm eager for new advertisements and subscribers, every nest of political fanatics, every pagan discussion group, indeed, every Christian tea-party and Church synod would resume business … with a new sense of opportunity, completely unmoved, and in no serious sense different from what it was before.”82

The limit experience brought any number of responses, including surrender and faith, defiance (the atheist position), or resignation. And because existentialist philosophy retained a sense of human existence as self-contained entity, because it presupposed that man alone attained transcendence and the “unconditional

80. Von Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 36. 81. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, 112, 113. 82. Ibid., 115.

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attitude,” its openness to God’s free grace and to “anything that might be identified with the God who is distinct from man and the world, and superior to both,” was thwarted.83 Cultural engagement within distance could also result in harsh criticism of those thought to be close to Barth. Here it should be remembered that Barth’s critical eye focused on the Church or on other believers as much as it did on secular thinkers. There is the notoriously contentious exchange between Barth and his friend Emil Brunner over natural theology, which Barth rejects with a devastating “No,” in the 1930s.84 Another example is Barth’s response in 1948 to a famous statement by the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann that “it is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.” Barth asks, “who can read this without a shudder? But what if the modern world-view is not so final as all that?”85 Coming as it did after the Holocaust, Barth’s shudder responded not solely to the idea that the modern world was a “disenchanted” unity. He also wanted to point out that its victory was accompanied by, indeed presupposed, violence and mass death.86 It may also be noted that Barth countered Bultmann’s historicist argument with his own historicist rejoinder insofar as “the modern world-view” he critiqued was necessarily provisional. Few scholars who have celebrated Walter Benjamin’s characterization of civilization as a “document of barbarism” note that, years before, Barth wrote that “religion is not the sure ground upon which human culture safely rests; it is the place where civilization and its partner, barbarism, are rendered fundamentally questionable.”87 For Barth, World War I was evidence of contemporary society’s complicity with barbarism, a complicity that did not exclude Christendom itself. The Holocaust, for all its unique and inexplicable features, merely continued modernity’s intimate relation with mass slaughter. At the same time, revelation’s corrosive character, its bomb-like quality in the cultural landscape, offered a clear alternative for those who too enthusiastically embraced modernist culture or its political analogues. Barth’s reticence to engage fully in any modern philosophical movement, to remain actively and hopefully within the interstices rather than on the ramparts of society, bore striking similarities to postmodernist suspicion of

83. Ibid., 119. 84. The debate is reprinted as Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 85. Church Dogmatics III/2, 447. 86. Gorringe, Against Hegemony, 174. 87. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (written in 1940), in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York:  Schocken Books, 1969), 256; Barth, Romans II, 258. Benjamin was unaware of Barth’s work; see Martin Jay, Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 316.

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“master narratives.” But Barth’s skepticism was grounded in a deep religious faith offering precisely the kind of transcendent meaning that postmodernist theory allegedly does without. This faith also meant that the Christian entered political life with greater confidence than the wary postmodernist could.

Political Theology Political theology concerns the changing relation between “power” and “salvation.” As such, political theology manifests both “descriptive” and “polemical” dimensions, in the argument of Jan Assmann. In the descriptive (beschriebene) mode, scholars analyze how religious concepts are deployed to uphold or critique power relations. In the polemical or operational (betriebene) mode, thinkers develop ideological and analytical-critical projects grounded in “the theological.”88 Historians of modern Germany regard Carl Schmitt as the modern founder of political theology. Schmitt was famous, or notorious, for arguing that all twentieth-century political concepts derived from the secularization of theological paradigms.89 But in fact political theology has a long history well preceding twentieth-century developments. Moreover, Barth’s contributions were as important as Schmitt’s, if not more so, a fact recognized by contemporary theologians but rarely by historians, at least in North America. Indeed, Schmitt’s thinking in the 1920s evolved with Barth’s Romans commentary always in sight.90 The state of contemporary historical study of Barth’s political thought (as opposed to his role in the Church Struggle) gains more definition if we compare it to the scholarship of earlier periods, for example the 1950s, when the political scientist Dante Germino critically analyzed Barth as the formative influence on “fideist” political

88. Jan Assmann, Politische Theologie zwischen Ägypten und Israel, 3rd edn (Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2006), 23–35. 89. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005); idem, Roman Catholicism and Political Form (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996). For recent scholarship on Schmitt see Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt:  Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998); idem, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago and London:  University of Chicago Press, 1995); John P. McCormick, “Political Theory and Political Theology:  The Second Wave of Carl Schmitt in English,” Political Theory 26/6 (Dec. 1998), 830–54. 90.  On recent uses of Barthian political theology see Gorringe, Against Hegemony; Haddon Willmer, “Karl Barth,” in Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Malden, MA and Oxford:  Blackwell, 2004), 123–35; on Schmitt’s awareness of Barth see Dietrich Braun, “Carl Schmitt and Friedrich Gogarten,” in Bernd Wacker, ed., Die eigentlich katholischer Verschärfung … Konfession, Theologie und Politik im Werk Carl Schmitts (Munich: Fink, 1994), 203–27, 223, 225.

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thought, one of the two main currents in Christian political theory at that time (alongside the Catholic “rationalist” tradition).91 How and why Barth’s contributions to political thought sunk into relative oblivion later on in the century is a fitting subject for intellectual history. Barth’s political thought is perhaps best seen as a “theological politics,” which is to say that he did not interpret theology politically but rather viewed politics from a theological perspective.92 Like his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, Barth believed that Germany’s tribulations were linked to the crisis of faith. In a November 1918 letter to Eduard Thurneysen, he wrote of the “organic relationship” between the worlds depicted in the New Testament and the newspaper.93 But this did not mean the worlds were of the same order. In fact, Barth’s political thinking was shaped most fundamentally by the First Commandment—“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”—and his insistence that the interpenetration of the divine and the profane realms was regulated by the prohibition against idolatry. From this perspective, liberal Protestantism had domesticated the Christian message to the point that the sheer otherness of God’s revelation was obfuscated. Nationalism and socialism offered little in the way of alternatives: “We know that the domain of grace has no existence or nonexistence that may be observed; that it is not the property of this or that man; that it does not belong to Children or to Socialists or to the Russian Nation or to the German people.”94 Yet unlike so many of the thinkers of the early 1920s who attacked prevailing political conditions, Barth’s view of the political-historical moment was optimistic, not pessimistic, and it would remain so throughout his life. He advocated neither revolution of right or left, nor defense of the old order, nor political utopia, but hopeful “witnessing” to God’s actions in the world as they appeared in particular political situations. Starting with his theological presupposition of God’s being as “act” and “decision,” for which revelation was the fulcrum, Barth’s politics always focused not on ideological programs but on concentrated moments and problems, and how the Church could respond to them. This could entail support for positions that appeared inconsistent to someone expecting linearity within a preconceived ideological framework. But such linearity was foreign to Barth’s theological

91.  Dante L. Germino, “Two Types of Recent Christian Political Thought,” Journal of Politics 21/3 (Aug. 1959), 455–86; Charles C. West, Communism and the Theologians: Study of an Encounter (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1958). But see now Matthew Hockenos, “The German Protestant Debate on Politics and Theology after the Second World War,” in Dianne Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 92.  David Haddorff, “Karl Barth’s Theological Politics,” introduction to Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004), 3. 93.  Cremer, “Protestant Theology,” 290; Barth to Thurneysen, 11 Nov. 1918, in Karl Barth– Eduard Thurneysen, 48–9. 94. Barth, Romans II, 220.

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politics, which operated analogously to the dialectical form Barth saw in human history. Cremer argues that Barth’s “conservatism” and quietism were evident in the 1920s, but this misses the mark.95 In fact, Barth argued that “men must not be permitted to remain spectators, otherwise they will be unable to apprehend the conversion which God effects.”96 In an influential 1919 lecture in Tambach, Thuringia, he insisted that “analogies of the divine” and “parables of the kingdom of God” on earth were still possible even as he stated that God’s “revolution” preceded and subverted all political revolutions.97 This remained a consistent theme of his thought in succeeding decades. It also inoculated him from that totalitarian politics to which many other contemporary critics were drawn in the interwar era. This message of active witnessing outside ideological expectation was analogous to his cultural engagement within distance. As with his ethics, his politics presupposed “permanent revolution without revolutionary self-consciousness.”98 This put him at odds with Marxist theorists of the time such as Ernst Bloch, whose concept of utopia had religious dimensions but remained secular in orientation, or György Lukács, who advocated intentional and self-conscious “permanent revolution.” It put him at odds with liberal theology, which accepted German nationalism and allowed its investment in imperial German political culture to lead it into a disastrous war. Indeed, liberal theology had been a political theology when it stepped into the public arena, not theological politics, because it allowed its theology to be defined by political interest. Barth also contradicted Paul Tillich’s attempts to engage socialism for theology. He was drawn to religious socialism early in his career, and as pastor in Safenwil he joined the Swiss Social Democratic party. But such involvement was based not on ideology but on the need to express solidarity with the victims of injustice. The late date of his entry into the German Social Democratic Party (May 1931) could be taken as evidence of prior political disinterest. On the other hand, a condition of his appointment at the University of Göttingen in 1921 was that he not be involved politically as he had been in Switzerland. He wrote often of his reluctance to take strong political stands in public conflicts due to his foreigner status in a German university, where his colleagues’ strong nationalism (of, for example, the nationalist theologian Emmanuel Hirsch, later a Nazi supporter) made him feel like an outsider. But hopeful witnessing was not necessarily quietist in this context. This was a time when many educated Germans were at best “Republicans of the head” (Vernunftrepublikaner) rather than of the heart, a position that crippled the new republic and robbed it of its emotional legitimacy. Barth’s position—a witnessing that precluded political advocacy only if it was irresponsible to God’s revelation in Christ—might have extended parliamentary democracy’s “loan period”

95. See Cremer, “Protestant Theology,” 290. 96. Barth, Romans II, 220. 97. Busch, Karl Barth, 111. 98. Dietrich Korsch, Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), 36.

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by allowing for political activity without the pressure of transforming it into the “friend–enemy” binary that, for example, Carl Schmitt argued was the essence of the political.99 Permanent revolution without revolutionary self-consciousness put all political actors on notice that their word could not be the last word. When we consider the fact that Barth lived at a moment when democracy was a contested option, not a matter of consensus, then the position he took may have redounded to the advantage of a weak republic that needed time before many Germans made the definitive and irreparable choices they made for either communism or Nazism.100 After all, working democracies function on the basis of a deferral of ultimate answers and on continued extension in the penultimate. Such a position did not prevent Barth from entering political debate, as when he publicly defended the appointment to the theology faculty in Halle of Günther Dehn, who had made critical remarks about World War I, against the protests of nationalist students. Nor did it keep him from discussing politics with his students, for whom he held a weekly evening discussion group at which contemporary issues and the biographies of political figures such as Liebknecht, Ludendorff, Tirpitz, the kaiser, and Scheidemann were considered. In 1931 his open discussion evenings were devoted to analysis of the German political parties and their ideologies.101 In a short autobiographical statement he wrote for the Christian Century, he asserted that political questions had always been of central interest to him, not only in 1933. The record bears him out if we are to understand his political engagement not only in party-political terms. Barth was not immune to the criticism he encountered for his political positions. Later in his life he conceded he could have shown more political decisiveness in the 1920s.102 But it is an open question whether Barth’s remark was an accurate assessment of the political reality of the time or an overly self-critical stand influenced by later events and Barth’s humility. Such issues are especially relevant when we turn to the Church Struggle. Historians often point to Barth’s controversial Theological Existence Today, published in June 1933 at a key moment in the Nazi attempt to take over the German churches. In this short booklet, which circulated widely before being banned, Barth stated that his inclination was to remain “untimely” (unaktuell) and “to do theology and only theology.”103 Barth made this point in reaction to many who had asked him to remark on the political situation. In fact, already in 1931 Barth had criticized “hyphenated Christianity,” which linked Christ with nationalist goals, and which read the Bible through a German-nationalist lens.104 Hyphenated 99. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976). 100. Willmer, “Barth,” 124. 101. Gorringe, Against Hegemony, 77; Busch, Karl Barth, 209, 218. 102. Willmer, “Barth,” 124. 103.  Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz heute! (Geneva:  World Council of Churches, 1933), 3. 104. John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 10–11.

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Christianity defined the “German-Christian” movement, which now threatened to bring the Nazi party directly into Church life. It was this movement that supported a policy of “ethnic cleansing” of the Gospel by denying Jesus’ Jewishness, questioning the legitimacy of the Old Testament, and claiming that knowledge of God was grounded in ethnic–national identity.105 Barth’s opposition to such absurdities had been clear from the beginning, and thus to advocate “theology and only theology” was not only to continue his previous political critique, but also to strike at the idolatrous heart of Nazi theo-politics. A related topic is the question of Barth’s recognition of Nazi racial persecution. It was noted above that recent scholarship criticizes Barth for ambivalence or tardiness in defending Jews against the regime.106 Even so, it remains an open question as to whether Barth’s position was flawed because among other things it failed to draw out the full implications of his theological politics.107 In the Barmen Declaration, Point VI quoted 2 Timothy 2:9, “God’s Word is not fettered.” This meant that “the Church’s commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ’s stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.” For many in the resistant church movement (Confessing Church), “all people” meant only those baptized Jews within the Christian churches. But the implication was much broader, as was the message of the Gospel as a whole. Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this, and perhaps much more insistently than Barth did, but his stance was exceptional, and in any case few could have predicted at this moment that Nazi anti-Semitism would result in mass-extermination policies. Barth in any case opposed the ominous implications of a conservative Lutheran “supersessionism,” based on the idea that Christianity had rendered Judaism irrelevant, insisting instead on the continued structural relatedness of Jews and Christians.108 Barth’s politics presupposed that all political movements deserved only conditional approval at best. To have recognized that minimal guideline would have been an important step forward, especially at a time when Hitler’s power was not yet secure. To hesitate and not go forward, at that historical moment, was a powerfully critical message, and one that was consistent with Barth’s theology of God’s particular action in the world. Presentist political concerns should not obscure the tremendous potential for political resistance to be found in Barth’s stance, which rested on the idea of avoiding all political abstractions on the right or left. Barth

105. Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 106.  But there is also a recent affirmative scholarship:  Mark R. Lindsay, Covenanted Solidarity:  The Theological Basis of Karl Barth’s Opposition to Nazi Antisemitism and the Holocaust (New York: Peter Lang, 2001). 107. Hockenos, A Church Divided, 173. 108. See Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, the entirety of chap. 7, over five hundred pages long, where this point is made repeatedly.

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bracketed all political action, which is not to say that he thought unpolitically, but that he located ultimate authority in divine action, not nation, class, race, or ideology. Many contemporaries in post-World War II Europe and elsewhere, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr among them, castigated Barth for his politics in the Cold War, when he refused to issue the same resounding “No” to communist regimes that he had given to National Socialism. The critics argued that his stance was inconsistent with the strong antitotalitarianism of the earlier period. But there was in fact a deep continuity in Barth’s political thinking, as there was in his theology. As he told an audience in Hungary in 1948, “the Church may have to speak very conservatively today and very progressively or even revolutionarily tomorrow—or vice versa.”109 Barth explained his position succinctly when he said that communism had never been guilty of the outright sacrilege of National Socialism, the displacement of the real Christ with a national Jesus, or of antiSemitism.110 The accuracy of this observation may be questioned, just as it may be asked whether Barth’s self-positioning “between” East and West was itself a function of the guarantees provided by liberal democracy. But the point is that Barth’s unwillingness to make a full condemnation of communism was an instance of Christian particularism, which was seen in relation to God’s specific and concrete action toward humankind. Not abstract principles, or party “lines,” but concrete decisions, offered in the spirit of contingency, was the only possible Christian position for Barth, even in the increasingly tense international atmosphere of postwar Europe. Communism was not guilty of idolatry, and by this specific criterion it was to be judged differently from Nazism. Barth’s theological politics assimilated neither to the “end-of-ideology” syndrome that affected many intellectuals in war-ravaged Europe, nor to a Lutheran “two-kingdoms” approach, which unduly separated Church and state and thereby freed the state for manifestly evil actions. Nor did Barth adhere to a liberal pluralist theory that reduced the Church to a special interest among others, each roughly equidistant from the state. Barth in fact placed the Church, in a famous metaphor, at the center of a system of concentric circles, the outer rim of which was the state.111 Whether it knew it or not, the state operated in an environment in which the Christian proclamation was formative, but it was not to be a “Christian state,” nor was there to be a “state” within the “Church.” This was at the same time not an antiliberal position, because as Barth argued, Christendom would on balance always choose liberal democratic polities since they alone ensured the proper degree of freedom for the Church to proclaim the Word and for people to hear it. Barth’s ideas have recently been the direct or indirect focus of a renewed

109.  West, Communism and the Theologians, 312–18; Karl Barth, Against the Stream: Shorter Post-war Writings, 1946–52 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), 92. 110. Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums, 315. 111.  See, above all, Karl Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” in idem, Community, State, and Church, 149–89.

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political-theological discussion that gives the Church a more powerful political profile than it had in the Weberian secularization model, which so many assumed had grasped the internal dynamic of Western political culture.112

Conclusion This essay’s goal was to broaden the space occupied by Karl Barth in historical narratives of modern European thought, a space that should neither be confined to the figure of the radical, dialectical theologian of the 1920s, nor to that of the Church dogmatician narrowly tending a disciplinary garden over the course of a century in which theological discourse became irrelevant to politics and culture. It must necessarily remain a rather sketchy argument because of the voluminous nature of Barth’s work and the paradoxical fact that we have a large scholarly literature on Barth, overwhelming in scope and content, generated above all by theologians. But this is the core of the predicament, namely that whereas theology values Barth as an epoch-making figure casting his shadow over past and present, intellectual historians have for the most part been satisfied to leave him standing in his own shadow. My modus operandi has been to isolate three themes, namely history, culture, and politics, which the historian might use to trace the way in which Barth worked as a central interlocutor of European culture. With regard to historical consciousness, Barth’s oeuvre suggests that he not only did not disengage conclusively from the historicist and idealist influences of the nineteenth century, but that he also remained in dialogue with those liberal historicist thinkers whom he is said to have rejected. Only a preoccupation with the early Barth, the firebrand who wrote the electric critique of liberal theology in the two Romans commentaries, would allow one to classify him without significant qualification as an antihistoricist thinker. If the theological origins of historicism are now the subject of fuller scholarly attention,113 then Barth’s work, usually taken to be a decisive break with historicist perspectives, may in fact be a stronger source of continuity than has been assumed. By the same token, the continuities of Barth’s thinking, both formal and historical, lead to larger questions about the relation between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or more specifically about how the fin de siècle’s “resonances with the longer time-span of the twentieth century” are to be explored.114

112. See Daniel M. Bell, Jr., “State and Civil Society,” in Scott and Cavanaugh, Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 423–38. 113. Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. Wetter, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Samuel Moyn, “Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64/4 (Oct. 2003), 639–57. 114.  Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld, “Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle:  An Introduction,” in Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld, eds., Germany at the

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A second point is that Barth never regarded theology as a fortress against secular influences, but rather presupposed that human knowledge of the Word of God operated in a relation of distance within engagement to nontheological knowledge. This too raises the question of how Christianity in particular, and religious thought in general, worked within twentieth-century culture. At the very least, it lends further evidence to the growing scholarly dissatisfaction with historical narratives of religion’s inalterable decline in the age of high secularization. But the argument may also lead to a more ambitious interpretation, namely that “even as religion seems to vanish from politics and public culture, it never ceases to define the project of modernity.”115 Barth’s attempt to formulate a counter-world to modern thought represents a fruitful line of inquiry in the examination of such issues. Finally, Barth’s political thought was inassimilable to any particular ideology. As such, his theological politics offered a strong challenge to the “isms” of the past century, which if anything became stronger than they had been in the nineteenth century, supposedly the “age of isms” par excellence. Barth’s prohibitions on idolatry made up an important part of a developing repertoire of antitotalitarian politics, which tragically remained buried or malformed in much of European political culture in the first half of the last century, but which deserves continued study both for its origins in Christianity and Judaism and for its relevance to the rethinking of the intellectual history of European political thought now taking place.116 Presumably such politics, in its “operational” mode, might be applied in the contemporary period not only to the classical political ideologies, as they form and re-form in the new millennium, but also to the more general phenomenon of the “sacralization of politics,”117 or even to recent “identitarian” movements, which have acted so corrosively in so many different ways. But regardless of whether there is a “Barthian” response to twenty-first-century politics,118 the foregoing suggests the need for Barth’s stronger presence in the history of modern European thought, the theological constituents of which, after a muted recent career, are now again increasingly important and provocative subjects of study.

Finde-Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 30. 115. Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible, ix. 116.  Two examples:  Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind:  Intellectuals and Politics (New York: New York Review Books, 2001); Richard Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2004). 117. Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 118.  For a recent attempt to relate Barth to Habermas see Timothy Stanley, “From Habermas to Barth and back again,” Journal of Church and State 48/1 (Winter 2006), 101–26.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Eberhard Busch is professor emeritus for Systematic Theology at Georg-AugustUniversität Göttingen, Germany (chair for Reformed Theology). Paul S. Chung, currently serving as a Lutheran pastor, was associate professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Faye Bodley-Dangelo, PhD, is managing editor of Harvard Theological Review. David E. Demson is professor of Systematic Theology, emeritus at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology, Canada. George Hunsinger is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA. Rudy Koshar is the George L. Mosse/Wisconsin Alumni Research Professor of History, German & Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Mark R. Lindsay is Joan F. W. Munro Professor of Historical Theology, and deputy dean, Trinity College Theological School, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia. Philip J. Rosato, SJ (1941–2011) was professor of Theology, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, USA. Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman is lecturer in Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago, New Zealand.

INDEX Advent sermon of 1933 15, 17, 24–32, 35

allosemitism 78–9, 78n. 36 Althaus, Paul 56 Ambrose 93 analogy of being 151 of faith 151 anhypostasis 129, 129n. 73 anonymous Christians 117 Anselm of Canterbury 119 antihistoricism 147 anti-Jewish Christians 48, 95 anti-Judaism 38, 40, 52, 119 anti-Semitism 1–2, 15, 16, 18, 33, 38, 57, 63, 94, 97–8, 99, 106, 112, 119–20, 162 apokatastasis 132 Arierparagraph 19, 23 Aryan descent 57 Assmann, Jan 157 Aufhebung 124, 124n. 41 Bader-Saye, Scott 83 Baeck, Leo 49 Essence of Judaism 143 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 102n. 6, 150, 154 baptism 108 Baranowski, Shelley 139 Barmen Declaration 2, 105–6, 137, 139, 161 Barth, Karl Ad Limina Apostolorum 102, 107, 121 anhypostasis 129, 129n. 73 anti-Semitism 1–2, 15, 16, 18, 33, 38, 57, 63, 94, 97–8, 99, 106, 112, 119–20, 162 and Buddhism 124–5 Christological universalism 129–30 on church and Israel 41–3, 72–3 Church Dogmatics 9, 34, 38, 42, 45, 55, 67–9, 101–2, 119, 137, 138–9, 150, 153–4, 155

communitas abscondita 76–9 covenantal fulfillment 42–5 critique of Catholicism 102–8 on culture 149–57 delineation of pneumatology 108–11 “Demands on the Form of the Church” 23 description of neighbors 63–5 divine judgment 85–100 ecclesiastical studies 111–16 Eine Schweizer Stimme 6, 16nn. 5 election, doctrine of 68, 70, 76, 81–2, 118–22 enhypostasis 129, 129n. 73 epistemology of revelation 6–10 ethical dimensions of theological activity 55–65 exposition of Romans 9–11, 85, 94–100 extra Calvinisticum 129 Fides Quaerens Intellectum 119 on God's grace and judgment 41n. 36, 49–51 on intermediate group 36 invocation of deicide 74 and Israelite election 118–22 Israellehre 78–9 Jewish Samaritan 63–5 light, doctrine of 128 love of God 58–63 love of neighbor 58–63 on “orders of creation” framework 56–8 and Paul Tillich 126–7, 159 and a pluralist theology of divine discourse 127–31 political theology 157–63, 164 popular Orientalism 145 providence, doctrine of 77, 120 radicalism 133–5 recapitulation of all things, doctrine of 130–1 re-description of the Lucan pericope 60 Romans 145, 148

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on salvation 126–7 on Scripture 39–40, 39n. 31, 48n. 64, 53n. 84, 64, 144–5 secular parables, doctrine of 123 and Social Democratic Party 23 Sport Palace affair 22–3, 24n. 29 in Switzerland 37–8, 159 “Theological Declaration on the Form of the Church, A” 23 Theological Existence Today 160 and the theology of God’s Word in action 122–3 on two-kingdoms doctrine 36–7 and the unfinished project for religious pluralism 131–3 Barth, Markus 132 Bauman, Zygmunt 78 Beintker, Michael 150n. 58 Benjamin, Walter 148, 156 Berdyaev, Nikolai 145 Berkhof, H. 122 Berkovits, Eliezer 10–13 Bethge, Eberhard 2 Bloch, Ernst 159 Blumhardt, Christof 112n. 35 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 46n. 57, 98n. 5, 117n. 1, 150, 171 Bouman, J. 122, 133 Brunner, Emil 156 Buber, Martin 53, 145 Buddhism 124–5 Bultmann, Rudolf 113, 156 Busch, Eberhard 16–17, 132 Calvin, John 42, 43–4, 93 Catholic Centre Party 17 Catholicism 78n. 35, 101–3 Christians, and Jews 92–3 Christianity 45 and Judaism 80–1 Christocentric concentration 147–8 Christocentrism 117–18, 139 Christological restriction of dogma 102n. 6 Chrysostom 93 Churban 5 church and monarchy 17 Civil Service Act of 1933 34 Cohn, Rabbi 51, 51n. 75

Commission of the Holy See for Religious Relations with Jews 107 communitas abscondita 76–9 Confessing Church 37, 55, 57, 105–6 Congar, Yves 110–11 counter-supersessionism 81 covenantal fulfillment 42–5, 48 Creed 115 Cremer, Douglas J. 159 crucifixion 5 cultural modernism 154 culture 149–57 “death of God” movement 4–5 Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non- Christian Religions 104 deicide 74 Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium 105 divine absence 10–14 divine obliviousness 48 divine revelation 6–10 Dominum et Vivificantem 111 Eckardt, Alice and Roy 6 economic supersessionism 75 Ekklesia 73, 78, 80 elected humanity 71n. 15 enhypostasis 129, 129n. 73 evangelism 17–18, 19, 39 expressionism 154 extra Calvinisticum 129 Faith Movement of German Christians 23 Feuerbach, Ludwig 153–4 Finze, Holger 25n. 31, 27n. 35, 28nn. 37, 38 forgiveness 97 Garber, Zev 4–5 Gaudium et Spes 114 Geis, R. R. 37 Gentile Christians 49–50, 52, 53–4, 76, 86, 93, 94 Gentiles 42, 45–6, 47, 48, 49, 51–2, 73, 91 disobedience 85–100 German Christian movement 55, 56, 57, 161 German Christians 20, 21–3, 24, 36, 40, 64

Index German Protestant Church 56 Germino, Dante 157 God covenantal action 48–9, 50 hiddenness of 10–12 and humanity 6–7, 9, 12 one community of 46–54 passibility of 3–4 presence of 5–6 reconciliation 42, 43–5, 52, 117, 121, 123–4, 125n. 43, 126, 127, 129, 132, 135 revelation of 6–10 Gogarten, Friedrich 113, 153, 158 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah 15–16 Good Samaritan 60, 62 Greenberg, Irving 2, 3 Gregory, Brad 139–40 Harnack, Adolf von 108, 142, 144, 152 Heidegger, Martin 148 Herrmann, Wilhelm 144 Hesse, Hermann 145 Hester Panim 10–11, 12 Hirsch, Emanuel 56 historical consciousness 142 Hitler, Adolf 18, 19 Hockenos, Matthew D. 139n. 13 Holocaust 4, 6, 10, 98, 156 Holy Spirit 108, 110, 115, 132–3 Hunsinger, George 126, 138 hyphenated Christianity 160–1 I Believe in the Holy Spirit 111 incarnation 8, 148 intra-Jewish controversies 80–1 Israel 40, 44, 46–8, 49 and church 41–5, 48, 71–2 deciphering 79–83 disobedience 85–100, 119 election of 3, 42, 49–50, 69, 76, 118–22 God's mercy and judgment 74–6, 85–100, 118–22 rejection of 76 role in the communication of humanity’s election 104–8 “stiff-necked” 28n. 36 transgression 50–1 Israel-Church 70–1n. 14, 73, 76, 82

169

Jäger, August 22 Jehle, Frank, 58n. 7 Jenson, Robert 81 Jesus Christ 10, 41, 42–3, 43–4, 46–7, 60, 69, 96, 99, 106, 107, 108–9, 113, 118, 120–1, 126, 130, 134 Jewish Christians 47, 57, 69, 81–2 Jewish Samaritan 63–5 Jews 42, 49, 51n. 72, 57, 76–7 and Christians 92–3 disobedience 85–100 self-understanding 121–2 John Paul II, Pope 107, 111, 114 John XXIII, Pope 113 Judaism 33, 39, 40, 44, 45, 67, 77, 104 and Christianity 80–1 Kant, Immnuel 150 Keyserling, Hermann Graf 145 Kierkegaard, Søren 146 Klappert, Bertold 132 Klee, Paul 144 Kracauer, Siegfried 153 Krause, Reinhold 23 Krumwiede, H.-W. 35 Küng, Hans 127n. 57 Kupisch, Karl 17 Levinas, Emmanuel 150 liberal Protestantism 101, 109, 142–4, 146, 150, 158 Lindbeck, George 3 Lindsay, Mark R. 58n. 7, 79 Löwith, Karl 153 Lukács, György 159 Lutheranism/Lutherans 18, 39, 93, 152, 161 “orders of creation” framework 56–8 Mann, Thomas 35 Marcel, Gabriel 145 Marc, Franz 144 Marquardt, Friedrich-Wilhelm 2, 16, 119n. 13, 128, 129–30 Marx, Karl 145 massa perditionis 133–4 Maximus 8 Maybaum, Ignaz 5 McCormack, Bruce 8, 9n. 18

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Index

Metz, J. B. 114 minjung theology 134n. 107 Miskotte, K. H. 45n. 55 Müller, Ludwig 22 National Socialist movement 19–20 National Socialist Party 18, 19 natural theology 127–30, 156 Nazism 19, 20, 160 neo-Protestantism 78n. 35, 108 New Testament 40–1, 48n. 64, 53n. 84, 64, 119, 146, 156, 158 Niebuhr, Reinhold 162 non-Christian religions 104, 121 Nostra Aetate 104–5 Novak, David 81, 82 Ochs, Peter 3 Old Testament 39–41, 44, 48n. 64, 53n. 84, 104, 119, 121, 161 “orders of creation” framework 56–8 Otto, Rudolf 150n. 56 Overbeck, Franz 146 Pacem in Terris 113 paganism 5 Papen, Franz von 19 Pastor’s Emergency League 36 Paul 48–9, 50, 52–3, 73, 86–7, 93, 96 Rom. 9:6–26 97 Rom. 9:30–10:21 89 Rom. 11:1–36 90 Paul VI, Pope 102, 111 pluralist theology of divine discourse 127–31 pneumatology, delineation of 108–11 political theology 157–63, 164 popular Orientalism 145 post-liberalism 3 practicosocial behavior of the church 111–16 presbyterial-synodical system of government 18 presentists 161 prewar expressionism 144 progressivism 144 Przywara, Erich 108 punitive supersessionism 75

race 57 Rahner, Karl 117 Rashkover, Randi 68–9 Reconciler-Son 114 Reconciler-Spirit 114 Reformation 23–4 Reformers 101 Reichsbischof 21 Reichskirche 21 religious pluralism 117, 123 religious socialism 159 Risen One of Easter 43 Rogers, Eugene 68 Rosenzweig, Franz 45, 49–50n. 67, 51n. 75, 82, 145 Rubenstein, Richard 4–5 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 6 Samaritan 60–1 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 109, 147 Schmitt, Carl 157, 160 Schoeps, H. J. 42n. 39 Schoeps, Julius 15 Scholder, Klaus 34–5 Schwarz-Bart, André Last of the Just, The 4 scientific theology 152–3 Second Temple Judaism 2 secular confessionalism 139–40 secularism 127, 129, 139, 150, 151–2, 164 self-justification 58, 60–3 Shinran 125, 125n. 49 Shoah 1, 4, 5, 6, 13 Söhngen, Gottfried 127n. 56 Sonderegger, Katherine 2, 89n. 41, 118n. 7 Soulen, Kendall 68, 83 Spengler, Oswald 153 supersessionism 3, 68, 69–79, 78, 81, 161 economic 75 punitive 75 Swiss Social Democrat party 21 Synagogue 70, 71n. 14, 73, 74, 78, 80, 119n. 13, 121 Theologische Existenz heute! 24 Thomas Aquinas 93 Thomistic Catholicism 78n. 35

Index Thurneysen, Eduard 158 Tillich, Paul 117, 126–7, 159 Troeltsch, Ernst 142 two-kingdoms doctrine 36–7 van Buren, Paul 6 Vatican II 104, 110–11, 114, 117 Volk 56 völkisch church 56–8, 63 von Hindenburg, Paul 19

171

Weberian secularization model 163 Weber, Otto 129–30n. 75 Weimar culture 148 Werfel, Franz 54 Wiesel, Elie 5–6, 92–3 Wolf, Ernst 2 Word of God 9, 10, 13, 33, 35, 36–7, 39, 51, 64, 95, 133–4, 146, 151, 164 World War I 144, 156 Wyschogrod, Michael 1–2, 82