on her one foundation on the Word of God if it was really to be able to declare both the judgements and reconciling grace of God to culture and state. Hence this aspect of Barth’s thinking had yet to reach the really decisive point where the way ahead could be seen as clearly as he saw it in 1933. But there can be no doubt that in these essays that bear here on this question, we can see that Barth has and will not give up his deep appreciation for the responsibility for culture that had been so bravely assumed by nineteenth-century Protestant theology in spite of his radical disagreement with the disastrous line that it actually took.
It was in 1927 that Barth published his first attempt at dogmatics, which he called Christian Dogmatics. That work was to prove the beginning of a few years of even greater self-criticism and clarification. The lecture which he delivered to a conference of ministers in Düsseldorf on ‘Roman Catholicism as Question to the Protestant Church’ lets us see to some extent how his mind is moving, to an even more positive conception of the Word and the Church, and to a critical revision of historical Protestant notions which may help it to recover an understanding of the very ground of its existence in the Word of God. It is not surprising therefore that the revised edition of his dogmatics should bear the title of Church Dogmatics, although before he could rewrite it considerable further thinking had to be done in disentangling his own theology from the remnants of existentialism and in working out the scientific method of dogmatics over against the claims of philosophy and exact science which we have already discussed.
This volume on Theology and Church should be read together with Barth’s account of nineteenth-century theology published in English under the title, From Rousseau to Ritschl (in USA Protestant Thought From …). In that work we can see how patient and sympathetic Barth is with his great predecessors in the history of modern theology, how eager he is to learn from every one of them, even when he must disagree and even when that disagreement is sharp and severe, and how dedicated he is to the task of understanding, with all the previous course of Christian thinking and teaching before him, the positive message of the Gospel, and of aiding his contemporaries in their search for secure foundations upon which to fulfil the task of the Church in preaching and teaching the Word of God. It has led him to speak of God the Creator in such a way that man is not allowed to vanish into nothingness or to be treated as a pawn in the fulfilment of God’s eternal purposes, but is called to stand before the heavenly Father as his dear child, and to live in such a way that his relationship with God is made visible in his daily existence. It has led him to speak of God the Saviour in such a way as to recognize the sovereign freedom of God’s grace in all his ways and works, and yet to recognize in that divine freedom the ground and source of man’s true freedom in which he is called to live as a child of the heavenly Father who in Jesus Christ has come to share his humanity and bids him in obedience to the divine love to share in the humanity of his fellows. It has led Barth to speak of God’s wisdom and patience with men, of his compassion for the world, and of the creative and regenerative work of God’s Word and Spirit for man and all mankind, of his accompanying providence that overrules all the confusion of men, and of the will of God that at last the peoples and nations of the world shall bring of their glory into the new creation, and share together in the glory of the Lord whom they are created and redeemed to serve.
UNSETTLED QUESTIONS FOR THEOLOGY TODAY (1920)
Christentum und Kultur. Thoughts and observations on modern theology by Franz Overbeck, formerly Doctor of Theology and Professor of Church History at the University of Basel. Edited from his papers by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli. Basel, Benno Schwabe & Co., 1919.
How was it possible that the early protagonists of the theology that is today dominant could ignore a colleague like Franz Overbeck and remain so indifferent and so untroubled by the questions which he put to them? How could they possibly have been content to admire his historical scholarship and then deem it sufficient to congratulate themselves on the futility of his ‘purely negative approach’ and shake their heads in astonishment and disapproval at the fact that he was and remained a professor of theology in spite of himself and the world’s opinion?
Some of us have long puzzled over how it happened that at that time (I mean thirty years ago) theologians managed to pay no attention at all to the older and younger Blumhardt and their friends. There would have been something significant to learn—as later developments prove—from the books of Friedrich Zündel, for example. Theology would have been spared all sorts of round-about ways and false paths if we had let ourselves hear it. Were Blumhardt and Zündel too monolithic for us, too pietistic, too unscientific and technically inaccurate? That refusal to listen must be confessed, hard as it is for us to put ourselves back into the lofty academic atmosphere so characteristic of that time, which obviously closed many otherwise attentive ears to sounds from that direction.
But—we must ask today—why then did no one listen to Overbeck? If theologians were unwilling to give further consideration to the rather too murky performances at Möttlingen because the stumbling-block was much too great for the spirit of the time, why did they not turn to consider all the more carefully the equally promising and the closer stumbling-block offered them by the Christlichkeit der heutigen Theologie (The Christian-ness of Present Day Theology)?
Actually, Blumhardt and Overbeck stand close together; back to back, if you like, and very different in disposition, in terminology, in their mental worlds, in their experience, but essentially together. Blumhardt stood as a forward-looking and hopeful Overbeck; Overbeck as a backward-looking, critical Blumhardt. Each was the witness to the mission of the other.
Why did no one listen to Overbeck? He was no pietist, no believer in miracles, no obscurantist; he was as acute, as stylishly elegant, as free from all assumptions as could be desired. Was it because we wanted no stumbling-block at all that we did not allow ourselves to hear the call to our real task, even when it was given by a critical Blumhardt, the senior of the Basel Faculty? If we keep before our eyes only this one refusal, can we ever again hold the Lord God responsible for the slow and meandering course of the movement of Christian thought? Can we wonder, when we consider the opportunities missed, that the signs of the time in theology and church today point so definitely to deviation and disintegration? Should not those who today stand secure on the conclusions established by the consummation of the old war against orthodoxy and the like now in all seriousness turn back to the place where so many fruitful possibilities were disregarded? Such were the questions which occupied me as I read C. A. Bernoulli’s edition of Overbeck’s papers.
The book is a collection of fragments fitted together and given titles by the editor. It is ‘part material, part blueprint; half quarry and half foundation’, as the editor calls it (p. xxxvi). This is exactly the right form for what Overbeck has to say. The subject itself was too vast and the situation too complicated for him to do more than to make test borings. The well itself will finally be drilled—who knows when and by whom? Overbeck only took some soundings.
But in this prolific period which is so exhaustively exploring the whole meaning of our Hellenistic or pre-Reformation age, we must strain our ears to listen to this man, so that he may teach us to hear him aright, if now finally we have ears. I may add that the origin and form of the book are such that it cannot be read cursorily. It must be read as a whole, read more than once, and be viewed from different angles if it is to have its full effect.
‘Christianity and Culture’ is the title Bernoulli gives it. He could equally well have called it ‘Introduction to Theology’, for that is basically its theme. But it is necessary to note that this introduction could easily transform itself into an energetic expulsion of those uncalled. I very much wish that our students might gain from this book a real preview of what they are about to undertake—or rather will stumble into. But we pastors can still less afford to lose this opportunity for
