Marquardt, Gerhard Sauter says that Barth had no political theology in any plausible sense of the term.34
Jüngel, in his study on Barth, also takes issue with other interpretations of Barth on two fronts. He challenges the liberal-fascistic interpretation of Barth in the school of Munich, and the religious-socialist interpretation of Barth in the school of West Berlin. Jüngel first calls into question works of Falk Wagner and Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, stating,
I marvel at the ‘reconstruction of the construction’ of Barth’s theology, which in Germany comes primarily from Munich. They see through Barth’s theology and pronounce it to be simply a genuine product of the spirit of its time, even though it was directed against that spirit. In this connection I should also like to expose, as an offense against good taste, the thesis that Barth’s theology has a fascist structure. Surely theology can stand as a critic of its time only insofar as it is a child of its time. But in light of the work of Karl Barth this should not even be an issue.35
With this criticism Jüngel has in mind the thesis of Wagner, who argues that “the content and structure of Barth’s theology is relevant to not only socialism but also fascism and the making of fascist theory.”36
Jüngel’s judgment of the Munich school—the thesis of the fascistic structure in Barth’s thought as an offense against good taste—is also relevant to Pannenberg’s approach to Barth. For instance, when Pannenberg regards the absoluteness of Jesus in Barth’s theology as “necessarily totalitarian” in the sense of theological forcing to conformity, he is appropriately associated with Wagner.37 On the other hand, Jüngel also takes issue with the religious-socialist interpretation of Barth by Helmut Gollwitzer and Marquardt in West Berlin: “I truly envy the imagination of the socialist interpretation of Barth (which in Germany comes primarily from West Berlin) and its practical-sounding yet preposterous theorems. In this connection I should like to continue to make a distinction between the artifice of word association and the strenuous task of interpretation and, in case of doubt, to prefer historical and logical argumentation to any sort of undisciplined explanation.”38 Regarding both interpretations as abstraction in which Barth’s dogmatic line of argument can be eclipsed, Jüngel applies Barth’s own warning “Latet periculum in generalibus” (Danger lurks in generalities) to such interpretations.39
Jüngel’s entire essay on “Barth’s Theological Beginnings” is, by and large, a rejoinder to Marquardt’s profound but controversial book Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (1974). Marquardt’s fundamental thesis is that Barth’s theology can be understood by way of the correlative interaction between theology and democratic socialistic praxis. In Marquardt’s view, Barth’s concept of God should be interpreted by way of his social experiences. By contrast, Jüngel’s fundamental thesis is that the political is surely a predicate of theology, not the other way around. This remark is essentially correct. His insistence that Barth thoroughly depoliticized the concept of revolution in Romans II is directed against Marquardt’s position. However, Marquardt’s intent is not to make theology a mere predicate of the political, as Jüngel suspects.
Barth, in his letter to Eberhard Bethge (in May 1967) concerning his Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography, articulated his concern and direction for the political praxis that he had silently or only incidentally mentioned to that point: “ethics—co-humanity—servant church—discipleship—socialism—peace movement—and, hand in hand with all that, politics.”40 In this line Gollwitzer, in his article “Reich Gottes und Sozialismus bei Karl Barth” (1972), portrayed Barth’s way as starting from a religious-socialist identification between the kingdom of God and socialism toward a distinction between the revolution of God’s kingdom as analogans and the democratic-socialistic option as analogatum.
Although Jüngel is critical of Gollwitzer and Marquardt, he poses an important question regarding one of the tasks of future research. He raises the question of “the extent to which Barth’s contemporary experiences (“praxis”) helped to shape his knowledge. A reciprocal relationship between knowledge and praxis can be clearly seen in the striking reversals which punctuated his theological development.”41
Dialectical Theology and Neo-Orthodox Theology
Bruce McCormack’s reading of Barth reveals a reciprocal relationship between theological knowledge and life-praxis in Barth. His treatment of Barth’s early period is evaluated highly, and it is unlikely to be superseded for many years in English-speaking countries. McCormack’s term, “Karl Barth’s critically realistic dialectical theology,” plays a decisive role in convincingly interpreting and analyzing the mutual relationship between Barth’s contemporary experiences (praxis) and his theological way of knowledge. However, McCormack’s “critically realistic dialectical theology” takes issue with the religious-socialist interpretation of Gollwitzer and Marquardt in terms of historical accounts and materials.42 In addition, McCormack’s book challenges a neo-orthodox reading of Barth. McCormack notes that neo-orthodox readings of Barth in the Anglo-American world were propelled and reinforced in the 1950s above all by Balthasar’s thesis on Barth’s second groundbreaking turn from dialectics (in his commentaries on Romans) to analogy (in his book on Anselm).43
However, on closer examination of the social and political situation in which Barth’s theology emerged, we must not direct our attention from the fact that his theology was always bound to situational and political spheres. Barth’s theology is always time-bound and up-to date rather than timeless and nonpolitical. When we look at the genesis and development of Barth’s theology during his pastoral work in Safenwil, his dialectical theology was expressed and articulated in a highly contextual way with respect to World War I, religious socialism, the October Revolution in Russia, and the general strike in Switzerland. In addition, Barth’s theology of analogy, which can first be seen explicitly in his Tambach lecture and then in Romans II, demonstrate the political relevance of God, society, and human beings from the start.
In view of Barth’s dogmatic turn, we do not need to marginalize his keen interest in his cultural situation. The connection between the theological awareness of Sache and the political consciousness of the time is well articulated in the preface of Church Dogmatics with respect to German liberation. His dogmatic theology cannot be properly understood apart from its social and critical consciousness. His dogmatic theology includes a social and historical perspective by “beginning always at the beginning” rather than repristinating church doctrines.44
Karl Barth and Theologia Naturalis
In speaking of a neo-orthodox interpretation of Barth, we need to mention Karl Barth’s critique of theologia naturalis. An attempt to relate Barth to theologia naturalis or analogia entis would be complicated, even a conundrum. It was Barth himself who was strongly resistant to such metaphysical discourse for the sake of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jesus Christ. However, in the process of breaking new ground in Barth’s development, Balthasar perceived that an old doctrine of extra-Cavinisticum provides a basis for Barth to preserve and integrate natural theology in his christological inclusivism.
In scrutinizing Barth’s Amsterdam lecture on “Church and Culture” (1926), Balthasar affirmed that Barth agreed with Thomas Aquinas’s dictum that grace perfects nature rather than destroys it.
