Review:

Karl Barth’s Theological Method, 2nd edn.

By Gordon H. Clark

(The Trinity Foundation, 1997). xvii +277 pp. pb. $18.95. ISBN: 0-940931-51-6

Dr. John C. McDowell

New College

University of Edinburgh

Scotland, UK

Much commentary on Barth fashions a ‘straw man’ who is rendered helpless against critical assault by the nature of the reading, a figure whose apparently one-sided theological presentation actually bears little resemblance to the composer of the complex movements and counter-movements, recapitulations and contrasting themes of the CD’s symphonically-charged style. Such is the case with Clark’s republished 1963 ‘study’ – with the addition of an extremely problematic, shockingly abusive and irresponsible, but nevertheless entertaining, foreword by John W. Robins (this foreword is not in the spirit of Clark’s more measured tone, and neither is one of the Robins’ accompanying booklets which opens: "Civilization as we know it began on October 31, 1517").

While this book is billed as a critical examination of Barth’s theological method it reads more like an extended book review – there is no substantiation of Clark’s own theological perspective; there is little use of a wide-range of sources; and there is a too heavy leaning on a particular, and significantly early, volume of Barth’s "intolerably long volumes" [150] (CD I, although he does, albeit all-too briefly and undevelopedly, acknowledge that Barth writes other things, and sometimes in different ways [see, e.g., 175]).(1) Moreover, Clark’s Barth is not only a ‘momentary’ Barth of the early 1930s, but one ahistorically shorn of his context. On numerous occasions Clark demonstrates his failure to grasp what Barth is saying by his ignorance of the contexts of (1) Barth’s own intellectual development, (2) the political and intellectual Zeitgeist of Barth’s writing, (3) the subtle nuances of the German lost to, or at least ambiguous in, the English translation (e.g., Clark confuses Wissenschaft and scientia by erroneously claiming that Barth "wishes to exclude theology from" the former as well as the latter [60]).

It is unsurprising that the overwhelming impression left is not only that Barth is an ‘irrationalist’ (albeit an unintended irrationalism [143]), but that he is confusing and self-contradictory (for example, Barth the legitimacy of theological systematisation and yet his actual practice is often explicitly systematic [66f.]).

he denies several times that theology can be made systematic, whereas if its contents were rational and logical one would normally expect it to form a system. ‘God’s Word is not a thin to be described, nor is it a concept to be defined. It is neither a content nor an idea. … The equation, God’s Word is God’s Son, makes anything doctrinaire in regarding the Word of God radically impossible. In it and only in it is real and effective barrier raised against what can be made … of Holy Scripture according to the theory of later Old Protestantism, a fixed total of revealed propositions to be systematized like the sections of a corpus of law’ (I, 1, 155-156). Perhaps this does not mean that the propositions of theology are mutually contradictory; it may mean that they are disjointed and irrelevant one to another; or it may mean that the Word of God is a superrational entity never grasped in propositions. … It is abundantly clear, therefore, that Barth in many passages accepts and uses the law of contradiction. He makes unmistakable claims to intelligibility and rationality. [62 and 66f.; cf. 63]

Quite simply, Clark misunderstands what Barth intends with the term ‘revelation’ – the Self-giving of God in Jesus Christ, encountered in the Spirit. He, for example, complains

it is not quite clear whether the doctrine of the Trinity is itself the original axiom or whether revelation is. [107](2)

The trouble primarily is caused by the fact that Clark imagines truth and meaning, or knowledge, in propositional terms, and therefore fails to comprehend performative utterance [149; cf. 150]. "Knowledge and meaning always have the form of a proposition" [149; cf. 150]. But what proposition is being expressed in the statement, for example, ‘I know my wife loves me’, or is the cognitive value of this statement secondary to its being a performative utterance, a speech-act? It is appropriate, therefore, that Clark feels that Barth has "a confused theory of language", since Barth’s refusing to play the game in these terms can only be confusing to someone who naïvely does.(3) Clark unfortunately has to ask how Barth can use the word ‘knowledge’, "when used in a religious context," to something not "resembling the ordinary meaning of the word" [171] – quite simply, because the word has multiple senses. In a naively anthropomorphic statement, with an un-reflexive assumption of what possibilities ‘omnipotence’-talk require, Clark argues

if God can speak in sentences, and there is no logical impossibility in this supposition to obstruct omnipotence, then obviously a revealed truth can be a proposition. [152]

Moreover, assertions of irrationality lead logically to claims of ‘mysticism’ and arbitrariness [135; cf. 206]. So Clark argues:

if dogmatics is defined as the activity of devout Christian, one cannot do dogmatics without being a Christian. But such a definition has the embarrassing characteristic of depending upon the faith of the writer, whereas definitions of subjects, e.g., physics, zoology, politics, ordinarily state the limits of the subject-matter and have nothing to do with the character of the scholars who study them. … Barth seems to confuse a body of truth the same for all man with the individual psychology of a given man. … But to believe true in theology what one believes false in science is the virulent irrationalism of self-contradiction. … Herein opposing the Congruity Postulate Barth seems to thin that science and theology can each go its own way without disturbing the other. He seems to ignore what other people find so obvious: that the contemporary scientism flatly contradicts Christianity. [70ff.]

Clark then discovers that Barth refuses to abandon the concept of ‘science’ to the other sciences, and consequently enters into a protest against the ‘heathen’ concept of science. This only facilitates Clark’s sense of Barth’ inconsistency. Contrary to Barth’s critiques of natural theology, Clark seems very confident that Truth can be discovered neutrally, rationally, and uncontextually. After all, Reformed theology maintains that the imago dei "consists of or at least includes their ordinary rational ability as human beings" [114]. There is here, however, no sense of the specific factors that determine the shape and flavour of reading, and of the sin that distorts the proper exercise of the imago [Calvin’s emphasis on the mind as the "factory of idols"] – whether that be in theology or in other disciplines. This is evident in his strongly ‘evidentialistic’ and ‘foundationalist’ claim that "The proper and valid deductions from … the ordinary sciences … do not lead to atheistic scientism but, quite the opposite, prove the existence of God and prepare for the acceptance of revealed truth." [91] How he accounts for the vast bulk of scholars who disagree would make for interesting conjecture.

Clark claims that Barth denigrates language by advocating its sinfulness:

first, that [for Barth] language is shaped in form and content by the creaturely nature of this world, and second, that it is conditioned by the sinful and perverted nature of man so that theological language ‘is the language of the per se faithless and anti-faith reason of man.’ Such a strong condemnation of language throws doubt on every possibility of its use in theology. Indeed, if language is the product of sin, conditioned by man’s perverted nature and unsuitable even when revelation grasps it, there arises the question whether God himself would or could use it. If God should use this perverted instrument, it is still difficult to see how he could communicate truth to man or give him any reliable information. God would contaminate his message with the result that if there should remain ‘something in it,’ no one could discover what it might be. If, on the other hand, revelation escapes this nemesis by not being a communication of truth, then Barth should never have written his previous material, but should have openly acknowledged uncontrolled irrationalism. [138f.]

But can there be any uncontaminated language? What is the doctrine of total depravity if not a recognition that there is human and cultural product that is not innocent, uncontaminated? And what is the incarnation of the Logos if not the beginning of the healing of this language, a language that had it grounding in worship but became contaminated (at least in the Edenic mythology of the Fall)? Even then, can we ever hear this Logos without contamination since our hearing is itself constantly requiring the event of grace for its own healing, and grace is given through ‘ambiguous’ (creaturely) media (Jesus’ humanity, scripture, sacraments, and so on)? There is nothing that the world possesses that could give rise to the expressibility of the Word – the witness to the Word only becomes possible because the Word has actually been spoken in our language, because God has created the analogy fidei. Again considerably missing the point, Clark states that "The real difficulty, as it is with chemistry also, lies in the subject-matter, not in the natural capacity of words." [142] But the Sache is precisely that which is ‘natural’ (Barth actually revises the sense of the ‘natural’ by claiming that what we commonly speak of as ‘natural’ is unnatural since it is not reflecting its eschatological nature) unspeakability of the Word, the Word that can only become speakable through the discourse of testimony/witness.

In order to justify his point through a reductio ad absurdam, Clark simplistically and misleadingly announces that "If language is sinful because human, then Christ because human must have been sinful." [140; cf. 156] But, it is not that language is sinful because it is human – the human is not sinful because human – but rather is pervaded by sin because it is shaped and used by sinful humans, and that is a different matter altogether. Barth, as especially (but not only) CD III makes abundantly clear, creation (and therefore the creation of human beings) is an act of grace and not a limitation. Thus simultaneously rendered foolish is Robins’ strutting claim that "If man can know nothing truly, man can truly know nothing." [280] However, the distortions of our knowing do not mean that we cannot know anything at all, but that our knowing tends to distort. (What distinguishes Christian claims to absolute knowledge of God through a stable and inerrant scriptural revelation and politically totalitarian claims to be in possession of absolute knowledge?)

Epistemological foundationalism searches for stable foundations for knowledge, and such a belief in an uncontaminated innocence, or theoretical stability, certainly determines Clark’s critique. He consequently protests against Barth’s eschatologically informed understanding that there can be no definitive results by revealingly asking: "But if there are no definitive results at all, how can we maintain assurance that not everything might be different? How can we be sure that we are not deceived? How can we claim any knowledge of God?" [165](4) So he attempts to dismantle Barth’s critique of infallibility, at least in its biblical form, by associating revelation with the infallible words of scripture. An analogy is drawn:

Although not usually recognized as such, a certain claim to infallibility meets us in our everyday affairs. When an accountant balances his books, does he not assume that his figures are correct? … Possibly the accountant has made a mistake in arithmetic …; but so convinced are we of the Westminster Confession’s agreement with the Word of God, that the bare possibility of a slight mistake somewhere ought not to paralyze obvious action. [146f.]

Clark is confusing truthfulness as trustworthiness and infallibility. Infallibility is a qualitative categorisation of ideas or propositions. To accord the bible infallible status, in this sense, is to imagine that it is not a work to be performed, but one to be thought through and argued for.

While this is not Barth’s approach to revelation and doctrine, his more performative sense of biblical authority requires a certain simultaneous trust in the power of description, in its statements, and so on. In other words, he is not guilty, as Clark supposes, of having "a view of non-propositional truth" as if the only options are to be propositional or not to be propositional [157].

By way of explaining what he feels is at stake, Clark resorts to two common evidentialist tricks. Firstly, the exclusion of relativism,

Since no statement is evident, everyone has an equal chance of being right and of being deceived. Theology becomes a futile occupation. [100]

Secondly, the appeal to apologetic possibilities for proclamation to the secular world. The implications of Barth’s theological method are that

faith has nothing to say to the outside world. … However, in spite of these introductory denials that faith need take unbelief seriously, Barth’s practice is again better than his theory. [102f.]

if there is no common presupposition, and if theology can be based only on its own grounds or axioms, then apologetics must be apagogic, and the theologian can only engage in deception if he attempts a discussion with unbelief. Deceit or silence – that is the dilemma. [109]

This implies that the way to engage the ‘world’ is through arguments. It is precisely such an idealist form of knowing that Barth rejects, seeking to reintegrate theology and ethics in a way that takes seriously Marx’s injunction not (merely) to interpret but to change the world. Barth’s, in other words, is pre-eminently an theologico-ethical response to secularity, an ethics rooted in faith in the gracious God of Jesus Christ – a by their fruits shall you (and the world around) know them.(5)

Had Clark engaged more substantially with Barth’ writings and their contexts he might have found Barth less confusing and self-contradictory; discovered that Barth refused to play this game of determining theological ‘rationality’ on post-Enlightenment terms; and resisted making a foolhardy statement such as "[Barth’s] dogmatics was restricted to a conversation within the church. Barth hesitated to meet the outside world head-on" [172]. This is said of one who upset the possibility of any hermetically sealed intra-ecclesial conversations by claiming the need for the church to listen for God’s voice in strange places. This conversation is lost on Clark who manifests his hermeneutical naïveté by asking "can God, with all his omnipotence, take the harangues of Feuerbach and Marx and make them his Word?" [177] When Clark complains that Barth cannot converse with the world, he does not seem to have conversation in mind at all – but rather, only a self-secure and persuasive proclamation which the world must hear and respond to unconditionally. But, then, any constructive theological appreciation of Barth, this reader feels, would seem to be a very dangerous thing for those who associate themselves with the Trinity Foundation, as Robins’ Foreword seems to impress.

The Book’s Foreword

Suggestive of the value of this book is John W. Robbins’ foreword. Robins rather uncharitably, but revealingly, commences:

Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) must be ranked as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. That, of course, is a dubious distinction, since Adolf Hitler, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stahlin, and Mao Tse Tung must be ranked among the most influential politicians of the twentieth century…. [vii]

Soon he turns to "Barth’s continuing opacity" and claims that

there are three principal reasons why one’s writing may be unclear: (1) confusion in one’s thought, which is exhibited in one’s writing; (2) insincerity, as George Orwell explained in his classic essay, ‘Politics and the English Language,’ which motivates a writer to disguise his true intention and meaning by using words in equivocal and subversive ways; and (3) a guiding philosophy which holds that the assertion of contrary and even contradictory statements is genuine philosophy and theology. Karl Barth seems to have been guilty on all three accounts. [viii]

What Robins means by the first, for example, is that Barth "perfected the art of using all the right words to say all the wrong things". There seems to be no room here for any appreciation of Barth or his achievement because of the force of the all in "all the wrong things". Moreover, there is no sense that Robins is interested in comprehending the context of Barth’s talk. This is demonstrated by the fact that Robins fails to see what Barth was doing in his "dialectical theology", revelling in contradictions, interpreting it as mere obscurantism rather than a theological statement in and of itself, and resulting in a Barth-ian promotion of "irrationality" [what kind of ‘rationality’ is this when the arrival of this book was accompanied by 3 booklets, one of which begins: "Civilization as we know it began on October 31, 1517"].[xi]

No person can believe contradictions, knowing them to be contradictions. But contradictions and dialectical theology are useful, not only for confusing one’s readers, but for allowing one to accomplish a purpose without clearly stating what the purpose is.[xi]

Quite clearly Barth’s essay ‘The Task of the Ministry’ has not been read.(6) Underlying the critique is the fact that Robins’ perspective cannot agree with, or at least will not permit the space to try and converse with, Barth’s, and this because of a strange hermeneutical assumption that because words are translated from one context to another they must be unusable – that only straightforward copying rather than interpretation is appropriate. After all, Ludwig Wittgenstein famously maintained that the meaning of words can be obtained from their use. Added to this is a lamentable rhetoric of the seductiveness of the "deception", which Robins emphasises may well have been a self-deception, of Barth’s claim "to be a child of the Reformation". In a similar vein Frederick Nymeyer claims, when speaking of Barth’s filling old terms with new meanings, that

Redefinition of terms is the best disguise for perpetrating personal self-deception and an intellectual hoax on readers that is available to an ingenious mind.(7)

The overwhelming sense given by Robins is of a deliberately devious Barth corrupting the Good, the True and the Beautiful pure Word of God:

He rejected sola Scriptura, sola gratia, solo Christo, and sola fide, all the while smiling with the words on his lips. It is impossible to believe that Karl Barth did not know what he was doing, as many of his defenders have suggested.[x]

Robins here appears as one supremely confident in knowing what is true and good and beautiful. There is little sense of the fragility of all our ways of conceiving, of the darknesses through which we see before the eschaton, of the disrupted patterns of our speaking and acting through the distorting effects of sin, etc. In other words, there is little of the humility of one conscious of his/her own weaknesses. This sense is reinforced by an appendix to the book by Robins, ‘The Crisis of Our Time’, which seems to function as a sort of mission statement for The Trinity Foundation (279-285). The Foundation is made here to sound like the bastion and militant rearguard action against the godless pluralism and irrationalism that is plaguing contemporary culture (presumably western culture).

The chief purpose of The Trinity Foundation is to counteract the irrationalism of the age and to expose the errors of the teachers of the church. … We believe that The Trinity Foundation is filling vacuum in Christendom. We are saying that Christianity is intellectually defensible – that, in fact, it is the only intellectually defensible system of thought. … [W]e believe it is our duty to present the whole counsel of God because Christ has commanded it. (284)

This "only" in "Christianity is … the only intellectually defensible system of thought" is very revealing, especially of the commitment to a whole host of assumptions that it takes to be able to make this kind of statement in the first place, and within the context of which this statement makes sense:

Our emphasis … [is] on the Bible as the sole source of truth, on the primacy of the intellect, on the supreme importance of correct doctrine, and on the necessity for systematic and logical thinking … (284)

If nothing else, the foreword demonstrates how Barth can be read in so many ways, how important it is to attend to him carefully, and how significant his thinking is (enough to merit this form of lambasting). Moreover, unlike many other commentators (such as Nymeyer for instance), Robins senses the importance of Barth’s socialist-style political allegiances, although this is very much a cause for complaint on Robins’ part as an indication of Barth’s fall from theological glory:

Despite his orthodox words, Barth’s dialectical theological enterprise was always shaped by his prior and lifelong commitment to socialism. He chose theology as a basis for social action.[xv]

For Robins, as with Nymeyer, then, it would appear that the term Neo-orthodox should be maintained as a categorisation of Barth [similarly, see Clark, 191], although Clark prefers that of Barth’s (or his intentions at least) as "the theology of the Word" [14]. Nevertheless, he fears that Barth’s refusal to castigate the communist East for its atrocities is an "indifference to the post-World War II struggle", a "shutting his eyes to historical reality … and denying the commandments of morality" [44].(8)

In view of this passionately packed and entertainingly, but highly risible, reading (or rather ignorance) of Barth’s theological importance Clark’s book somewhat disappoints in this respect, although one must admit that he does attempt to be more positive about Barth’s theological usefulness than Robins.(9) In this sense, then, Robins’ introduction is misleading as to the nature of Clark’s study. According to Robins,

In his usual efficient, dispassionate, and surgical manner, Clark dissected Barth’s jugular, with predictable results: Barth is dead.[xv]

What is unclear from this is whether the book is a postmortem (suggested by the medical imagery), or itself the occasion of the slaughter (suggested by the violence of the image). That the latter is more appropriate to Robins’ assessment is further suggested by his cannibalistic-like commenting on a statement of Barth’s that "These fundamentalists want to eat me up":

Now come, all you reprehensible fundamentalists, dinner is served, a feast prepared by a Master Chef.[xvi]

This foreword is not only unbecoming for one claiming to be Christian, but shockingly academically irresponsible, an abuse of position. Not only does it not seek a judicious, and informed, opinion of Barth’s writings, it lacks any charity. Barth himself had the reputation of being an implacable and hostile critic on occasions, and yet his performance was frequently tempered by a certain theological perspective that Robins, and to a lesser degree Clark also, seems to lack:

Only the heretic, indeed only the arch-heretic, the one who is totally lost even for God’s invisible Church, could really belong to the past and have nothing more to say to us. And we are in no position to identify such arch-heresy. Not even among avowed pagans, much less among Jews or suspect, even very suspect, Christians. All heretics are relatively heretical, so even those who have been branded heretics at one time or another and condemned for their avowed folly and wickedness must be allowed their say in theology. The theology of any period must be strong and free enough to give a calm, attentive and open hearing not only to the voices of the Church Fathers, not only to favourite voices, not only to the voices of the classical past, but to all the voices of the past.(10)

Something of this is can be sensed in Bernard Lonergan’s articulation of the rules of Christian conversation: "Be attentive, be responsible, be responsible, be loving, and, if necessary, change."(11) Barth’s generosity, his refusal to rule out a hearing of the Deus dixit outside of the self-secured confines of the church is missed by Robins and Clark. Clark even complains of Barth’s use of Feuerbach by strangely asserting that "Barth hardly compliments himself by supposing that Feuerbach was as fundamentally concerned – in a positive way – about the Christian faith as he is." [85]

This is an extremely weak treatment of Barth’s theological method; distinctly limited in its use of sources and substantiation of its perspective; and that reveals more about one way in which Barth was received by the theologically educated public and about Gordon Clark’s own perspective than about what Barth is doing theologically. These weaknesses are precisely those that determine a degree fail for candidates at doctoral level.

Consequently, this book’s value, if there is any at all, can only lie in its historical interest – either for those interested in Clark’s own work (although this book does not encourage one to think that this is worth doing), or for the way Barth has been received.

To Robins’ cannibalistic comments one must respond by acknowledging that while feasting on Barth’s writings is far from being a dead practice, but hopefully the days of this kind of appallingly ignorant and uncharitable reception will be numbered.

Endnotes

(1) When I began my doctoral research on Karl Barth, Prof. David Ford (then acting in lieu of my supervisor who was on sabbatical) convinced me that it made theological sense, and was fairer to any subsequent critique of Barth, to begin reading him the CD back to front – from IV backwards. What I came to be directed to see was precisely the ways in which Barth’s theology had been continually in process of being rewritten, and reformulated. For example, in the 1956 lecture The Humanity of God one finds him criticising his earlier expressions of God-world relations, and rewriting them in a way that he feels is more appropriate to what he has come to learn about God’s ways with the world in Christ. Not only was Barth self-critical in principle, he was in practice too.

(2) Another glaring example is Clark’s charge that "Barth implies that creedal statements can never be true; they can only strive toward the truth of something; but is there an intelligible sense in which a proposition can strive toward truth?" [148, after citing CD, I.1, 307-9] No, there is not – but that is not Barth’s point. Creedal statements are, to adopt Lindbeck’s language, more akin to the rules of grammar – they structure and shape the nature of our language. As such, one could continue, these creedal statements are only true insofar as they perform a truthful witness, provide reliable testimony for Christian living, or participate in the Truth that is God in Christ.

(3) Clark, 159: "Der Hund, le chien, and the dog are three different words that point to the same object; and in ordinary conversation no one I concerned with the sound of the word: It is the meaning of the sound, the object that the sound designates, which demands our attention." 160: "If we know the situation, the linguistic sense, the speaker’s intention in the actual context, what further is there to understand?"

(4) This is an odd series of questions for someone within the Christian faith as asking – for what assurance can there be that we are not those Jesus spoke of when he announced that not all who call ‘Lord, Lord’ will be saved?

(5) In this way Barth also resists reducing theological ontology to ethics, as does, for example, Braithwaite.

(6) Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, 183-217.

(7) Frederick Nymeyer, ‘The Real Meaning of Neo-Orthodoxy’, Contra Mundum 12 (Summer 1994). This appears to be an expanded version of Frederick Nymeyer, ‘Barth vs. Brunner on Communism’, Progressive Calvinism (November 1955).

(8) This Clark contrasts with Barth’s opposition to Hitler [52ff.]. Nymeyer complains that "Barth is ‘soft’ on communism. … Progressive Calvinism does not consider Stalin to have been a ‘man of stature’ nor in any way better than Hitler. … And Barth calls the most infamous butcher of all time a ‘man of stature’! Our readers will begin to understand how strongly our values differ from those of Barth."

(9) He claims that "it is premature to dismiss Barth as a flash in the pan. Barth is a great theologian." [1]

(10) Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History, trans. Brian Cozens and John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1972), 17.

(11) Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1972), 231.

Dr. John C. McDowell

New College

University of Edinburgh

November 2002