Protestant Theology in Early
By Douglas J. Cremer
The theological controversies of the early 1920s are a long
neglected source of illumination with respect to the intellectual problems
confronting Weimar Germany after years of war and
months of revolution. Theological discourse, as is well known, is not solely
concerned with matters of liturgy, scripture, and dogma. It is a living
discourse created by human beings who are intimately concerned with
understanding humanity, the world in which human beings exist, and the problems
of ethical behavior. As such, it has much in common with the dominant
discourses of intellectual history: philosophy, science, literature, and art.
Theological discourse, however, brings an added dimension to the discussions of
the others. In its explicit attempt to come to grips with ultimate values and
ethical behavior, theological reflection verbalizes concerns that remain
unspoken in many other discourses.
A further reason for analyzing the thought of Karl Barth,
Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann within the context of Weimar intellectual thought is that they were
among the most creative members of the generation of 1905. Born in the 1880s,
and reaching their mature years after the First World War, this generation
shared a perspective of the world that was disillusioned by the uncertainty of
history and dominated by the irrational, the psychological, the ethical, and
the aesthetic. The members of this generation focused on the inner crisis of
their culture, a crisis characterized by the rejection of the dominant liberal
myth and the general lack of intellectual coherency and authority.1
The world within which this choice was made was a complex
one. The events of the First World War crystallized a multitude of trends
within modern Germany ,
including a crisis in religious faith. This development is one of the most
fundamental shifts of European culture in the last four hundred years. Lucien
Febvre, in his study of unbelief in sixteenth-century France ,
demonstrated that it was an historical anachronism to label the writings of
Rabelais atheistic, given that he was born into an "inspired century, one
that sought in all things first of all the reflection of the divine."2 For
sixteenth-century France ,
unbelief in the modern sense of the term was an impossibility.
For twentieth-century Germany , however, it was belief,
not unbelief, that had become problematic. The steady rise of scientific
criticism and the decay of traditional structures of authority contributed to
the demise of a world that Febvre had characterized as fundamentally unable to
conceive of profane history or laws of nature. The writings of Karl Marx, Søren
Kierkegaard, and especially Friedrich Nietzsche called into question the
traditional truth claims and values of European Christianity. These
developments, along with the second industrial revolution and its social and
economic dislocations, contributed to a growing trend of agnosticism and
atheism. Ideas that were unthinkable to those of the sixteenth century
permeated the intellectual world of twentieth-century Germany , so
much so that a decline in religious belief was quite noticeable even before the
First World War.
The cataclysm of 1914-1918 exacerbated the crisis of faith
within German society through the experience of a seemingly interminable and
pointless struggle. The defeat of 1918 and the problem of reconstituting the
German polity on a new foundation forced many to reconsider long-held beliefs.
In the eyes of Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and
Rudolf Bultmann, the growing problem of politics in Germany was associated with
the growing problem of belief, both of which they believed had reached a crisis
level. After the war, each sought to find a new ground upon which to reestablish
the validity of the Christian proclamation and to combat the growing atheism of
their contemporaries. Though they pursued divergent paths, their common purpose
was to present a solution to the philosophical and ethical problems involved in
coping with a transformed world, a world that no longer took for granted
Christian affiliation and faith. Influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche,
Barth, Tillich and Bultmann each saw the need for a new understanding, a new
interpretation of the meaning of God that was also a political and social
commentary on German and European society. This new conception was to be one
that could express the fundamental meaning of the Christian experience, recast
the fundamental truths of Christianity without sacrificing their core meanings,
and yet present these truths in language that could speak to the alienated
consciousness of Germans in the period following the First World War.
Each of these theologians confronted this problem in a
different fashion, yet shared a pair of common reference points in the unlikely
combination of the tradition of liberal theology and the work of Friedrich
Nietzsche. Karl Barth's Platonic assertion that God was absolutely separate
from humanity sought to restore the certainty of meaning by removing the source
of meaning from the changing and transitory world of humanity. Barth held to
the uniqueness of God's communication to humanity through divine revelation,
not through the activity of human reason. In so doing, Barth came close to
asserting his own form of irrationalism. The political consequences of Barth's
thought were profoundly conservative, rejecting as it did the relevancy of
human action. Paul Tillich, in distinction to Barth, argued that meaning could
be reclaimed by a recognition of the role of the eternal and the unconditioned
in human existence. He also posited the necessity of ceaseless action in the
social realm in order to actualize this meaning. His quest was to revive the
ethical and religious dimensions of socialism, in effect to recreate a politics
based on ethical social action. Rudolf Bultmann, taking a different yet related
tack, claimed that God was knowable to humanity in part through the structures
of human existence, and in full through the instrument of revelation. He
attempted to restore meaning by stripping away the philosophical and
mythological stumbling blocks to faith. He argued that there was a formal
structure to human existence that made certainty possible. His attempt to
restore credibility to the liberal tradition eventually led him to a view of
human nature remarkably close to that of his teachers. Bultmann thus embraced a
liberal middle ground, relative to Barth and Tillich, of solid liberal concerns
rooted in individual responsibility and moderate human action.
* * *
Any discussion of philosophy and theology in Weimar Germany
must begin with Karl Barth, especially if one wishes to understand those
aspects of the two disciplines that directly confronted the heritage of the
liberal tradition and the problem of atheism. Barth was born in Basel in 1886. His father
was a New Testament scholar and professor, and Barth's early education took
place at Marburg and Berlin under the masters of liberal
theology, Adolf Harnack and Eduard Hermann. In 1911 he was appointed pastor of
the Reformed church in Safenwil, but by 1921 he had a chair in theology at the University of Göttingen
While in Switzerland ,
Barth was engaged in socialist politics, even becoming a member of the Social
Democratic party. His involvment on the side of the industrial workers of
Safenwil has led some to see within his entire theology a decidely socialist
bias. In his theology, and especially in his preaching, Barth was certainly
reacting to the complacency and self-satisfaction of the bourgeois of his own
Safenwil and of Switzerland
in general. In 1916, Barth had attacked the people of his congregation for
seeking a man who would confirm their preferences and sanctify their comfort,
rather than one who would preach the challenge of the word of God. He was
already beginning to think of the Gospel as a radical critique, a disturbance,
of all human values. With the outbreak of the war, his desire to challenge,
through his preaching, the indifference of the Swiss towards the political and
social issues of the day intensified.4
Written during the war, first published in 1919, and then
revised and republished in 1922, Barth's commentary on Paul's "Epistle to
the Romans" has been hailed as the founding document of twentieth-century
Protestant theology. It is also a document that reveals much about the
intellectual world of modern Germany
in the wake of war, defeat, and revolution. In the first edition, Barth's
critique of the Swiss bourgeoisie and the liberal Protestant tradition was
written as a validation of the proletarian point-of-view. While he refrained
from advocating religious socialism, that is a socialism derived explicitly
from the Gospel, Barth did call on Christians to become Social Democrats.5 Yet
after his relocation to Germany
in 1921, and the revision of Romans in 1922, this socialist bias was to
give way to the real kernel of Barth's exegesis of the epistle. Barth was
claiming to defend the independence of the theologian from all political and
cultural influences, bourgeois or proletariat. Rather than defending a
socialist theology, Barth was to claim in the second edition of Romans
that the contextual and conditioned nature of all contemporary theology and
preaching was illegitimate, that theology needed to be totally free of these
influences in order to let Scripture speak freely.6
In the preface to the second edition, Barth introduced the
two themes that were to dominate his work for the next decade. He attacked the
liberal, historical-critical method as it was applied to theology and asserted
his own 'dialectical' theology, or what he often referred to as a theology of krisis.
Although he acknowledged that historical criticism was both "necessary and
justified," Barth claimed that historical and philological theology, as it
was currently practiced, was little better than "a first step towards a
commentary," producing works that claimed little in the way of
"genuine understanding and interpretation."7 This
kind of pseudo-exegesis, with its emphasis on philology, Barth argued,
attempted to flatten out and resolve all the inherent difficulties and
challenges of a work such as Romans, robbing Christianity of its vitality and
power to move individuals. True critical exegesis, for Barth, had to be more
critical than the historical approach; it had to be more than "a
disjointed series of notes on words and phrases."8 In
1923, in a lecture entitled "The Task of the Reformed Churches,"
Barth made this criticism more explicit: "We had lost the wonder of God,
and now we had to learn to eke out an increasingly difficult and miserable
existence by asserting the wonder of the world, the miracle of history
and of the inner life (all equally questionable!)"9
Barth claimed that the interpretation of texts must
confront "the tension displayed more or less clearly in the ideas written
in the text.... measuring words and phrases by the standard of that about which
the documents are speaking." Liberal theology had brought too much of its
own agenda to the interpretation of Scripture, Barth argued, and he sought to
counter that agenda with a strict limitation on what questions could be brought
to bear in the task of interpretation. He claimed that one should only ask the
questions that the text itself raises, pressing on towards "the one
cardinal question by which all are embraced. Everything in the text ought to be
interpreted only in the light of what can be said, and therefore only in the
light of what is said." The task of exegesis was therefore the exposition
of "the Word... in the words." Barth also put forth the radical
notion that the purpose of "intelligent comment" was the
"dissolution [Aufhebung]" of the boundary between author and
commentator, a dissolution he characterized as knowing "the author so well
that I allow him to speak in my name and am even able to speak in his name
myself."10 For
Barth, this was both a claim of authority and the essence of interpretation,
and it was precisely in attempting to maintain a rigorous distinction between
subject and object, a rigouous objectivity, that liberal theology lost its
commitment and its value.
Barth's understanding of exegesis and textuality was filled
with contradictions similar to those that would beset his theology of krisis.
In asserting the demand that the text should speak for itself, Barth desired to
expunge the presentism of the liberal tradition. Yet his claim that one ought
to limit one's interpretation only to what is explicitly said contradicts his
contention that he could speak with the same voice as the original author of
the text. This collapse of the subject-object distinction removed the
limitations on the text that his original argument desired to uphold, unless
one claims that the identity of interpreter and text in no way violates the
integrity of the text. Barth was veering close to a mystical, irrational notion
of unity between text and interpretation, an idea of union that would appear
again in his discussion of the krisis of the world.
These ideas of interpretation were intimately linked to
Barth's conception of dialectics and the theology of crisis. Barth used the
Greek word krisis when discussing this aspect of his thought, a word
with much more meaning than its English or German equivalents, with their
limited meanings of trouble or instability. Barth's conception of krisis
was closer to the idea of crisis as a turning-point. In Greek, krisis
carries the connotations of discord, trial, judgement, decision, and
punishment. It was in the full common and conjoined meaning of this one word
that Barth used the idea of krisis. Theologically, Jesus Christ
represented this krisis as the "permanent krisis of the
relation between time and eternity."11
Krisis also applied to
the condition of humanity in the early twentieth century, and in Barth's
thought it served as the bridge between the nature of Christianity and the
needs of the concrete historical situation of Europe
in the 1920s. His position was on the one hand a rejection of liberal
certainties in a world gone mad during World War I. On the other hand, it was a
rejection of any human-centered solutions, of any ideologies that pointed
towards a heaven on earth, that sought to bring a divine good into a fallible
earth, or that sought to bridge the gap between the realm of divine eternity
and human time. This conclusion also led Barth in 1922 to reject the political
claims concerning socialism that he had laid out in 1919. The relationship of
time and eternity in Barth's early work reflected what he called, in a term
taken from Søren Kierkegaard, "the 'infinite qualitative distinction'
between time and eternity," a distinction that also applied to the
relationship between God and humanity.12 With
this, Barth established a virtually absolute dichotomy between the divine (God,
Christ, and eternity) on the one hand and the profane (humanity, history, and
time) on the other.
Early in his commentary itself, Barth asserted the radical
distinction between God and humanity. Barth claimed that the Gospel and the
power of God were much more than the highest of all powers and the greatest of
all forces. For Barth, it was precisely in the transcendence of God and the
Gospel that they were the krisis of all powers, the judgement on all
humanly-constructed meaning, and the dissolution of all earthly authority.
"The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a
question-mark against all truths."13 The krisis
that confronted humanity in the Gospel was the realization that, in the face of
the unknown God, the apparent contradiction between human values and human
pride dissolved: human values were thus revealed as manifestations of human
pride. Faith for Barth was thus the willingness of an individual to accept the
contradiction, the negation, of the world by the presence of God, and thus
affirm "the divine 'No.'"14
Barth had no problem conceiving of God as embracing both Yes and No, both
creative force and negation. He was treading close to the ground laid out by
Nietzsche in his concept of the revaluation of all values by claiming that both
the Yes and No had to be held in tension. Barth held even his speech about God
within this tension of contradiction, making his speech a form of non-speech.
Barth saw a profound difference between the reality of God
and the God whom humanity desired to know. Taking up Kierkegaard's distinction
that the knowable God is merely an idol, Barth renounced the liberal
shibboleths of objectivity and secure knowledge. He grasped paradox and
uncertainty as positive values, as opposed to the certainty and security of the
"liberal prospect of vast future possibilities." For Barth, theology
had to be more than rational, to "talk of what one cannot talk... [stand
where] one cannot stand."15 This
plight was seen as paradoxically healthy. This time "between the
times" was one of divine judgement and the negation of the world, but also
one in which the question of God only now became possible. This tension or
paradox is seen in the interpretation that Barth gave to the idea of dialectical
theology, for according to Barth, the dialectic was always to be held separate,
interrelated but yet never reaching a position of synthesis. He strongly
maintained that this was not dualism, but a duality that was established in
transcending itself, and transcended in establishing itself.16
The constant repetition of krisis, paradox,
dialectic, transcendence, and contradiction acted as signposts alerting the
reader that not only was Barth rejecting the certainty and positivism of his
liberal educators, but that he himself did not desire that his own work be
accepted as the new orthodoxy. Barth's embrace of the ideas of paradox and krisis,
and the fundamentally irrational perspective that they brought to Christian
theology, his acceptance of negation and rejection of any true human certainty,
and finally his absolute separation of the eternal from the temporal, were all
in their way hallmarks of a theology that enshrined the irrational, or rather
the non-rational, as the true marks of divinity.
Nevertheless, Barth's position had its political
consequences. Despite his desire in this time of krisis to hold all
human decisions subject to the "question Mark" of the Gospel, the
radical critique of all choices appeared to leave no choice, no action, as the
only possible recourse. Barth's separation of the human and divine realms led
to passivity, to acquiesence, and ultimately to acceptance of the status quo
because it refused to sanction any action in the social world as unquestionably
that of the Gospel. Even though he explicitly rejected what he referred to as
legitimism, his stance led to de facto conservativism, to the rejection
of human action based on religious principles.17
* * *
One of the first to enter into a dialogue with Barth, not
in defense of the traditional liberal order, but in reaction to what appeared
to be Barth's absolutizing of the transcendence of God and its irrational and
conservative corollaries, was Paul Tillich. Born in 1886, just a few months
after Barth, in a small village in Brandenburg
near the Silesian border, he moved with his family to Berlin in 1900. From 1904 to 1911, he
studied at the Universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Breslau, and Halle . Engaged in parish work in Brandenburg at the
outbreak of the war, Tillich left to become a military chaplain until 1918. The
war years left him strongly committed to activism and socialism. He became an
instructor at Berlin from 1919 to 1924 and a
professor of theology at Marburg from 1924 to
1925; he then went on to short stays at Dresden ,
Leipzig , and finally Frankfurt
in 1929. In a short essay entitled "Autobiographical Reflections,"
Tillich claimed to have been influenced by Karl Marx's "prophetic,
humanistic and realistic elements," while he rejected the
"calculating, materialistic and resentful elements." He applied the
same principle to Nietzsche, claiming that in order to maintain intellectual
autonomy, one must confront the great figures of history with both "a Yes
and a No."18
The influence of Marx and Nietzsche was evident in
Tillich's reaction to Barth's theology. In an article entitled "Critical
and Positive Paradox," written in 1923, Tillich attacked the unending and
unresolved nature of the Barthian dialectic. He claimed that there must be some
point of reference, an absoluteness that is not purely transcendent but
reachable in part by human consciousness, despite the fact that Barth's
dialectic theology forbade such a conception of the ineffable. The dialectic
itself, Tillich claimed, was not absolute, and therefore there must be an
unconditioned starting point.19 In
his "Answer to Karl Barth," published in the same edition of Theologische
Blätter, Tillich asserted that his speech of the unconditioned was both a
following of the stricture not to speak of God, a stricture based on the idea
that humanity is not capable of truly speaking of the ineffable, and an
entry-way to precisely such speech.20 The
critical paradox of dialectic theology, Tillich argued, must issue from a
positive paradox, just as a "No presupposes a Yes... the negative can
reveal itself only in terms of the positive, not the negative."21
Tillich extended this argument to claim that which is conditioned, limited,
containing an element of negativity, presupposes an unconditioned, an
unlimited, that which is purely positive. He was reaching, in opposition to
Barth, towards a position in which political action was preferable to inaction.
Tillich also appeared to be reaching for the ground from
which Nietzsche shied away. Nietzsche saw that a great "no" was
dependent only upon a greater "yes," that negation was possible only
in the light of assertion. Unbelief, or atheism, was for Nietzsche more than a
rejection of Christianity; in his words, "the concealed 'yes' in
yourselves is stronger than all 'nos' and 'maybes.'" Nietzsche attempted
to transcend this fundamental atheism by demanding that humanity reject
religion and construct a new faith. To do this did not require only denial, the
"no" of Christianity and nihilism, but rather both a "no"
and a resounding "yes" to life, to nature, to the future of humanity.22 Yet
Nietzsche never adequately resolved precisely what he desired to assert as an
alternative. Tillich was prepared to go this far, and it was precisely this
determination, and his desire to avoid the ethical and political consequences
of a denial of the "yes" that separated him from Barth.
Barth responded to Tillich's critique in the same issue, in
an essay entitled "The Paradoxical Nature of the 'Positive Paradox.'"
He attacked Tillich's use of the term transcendence for its imprecision and
lack of definition: was it human, intellectual transcendence, divine
transcendence, or some "entity beyond 'yes' and 'no'?" Furthermore,
he asked, what is this "unconditioned" except another name for God,
and why was Tillich as a theologian afraid to utter it? Barth implied that
Tillich sought to be more than a theologian, to be a philosopher as well. Such
a conjunction Barth personally rejected. Seeing the paradox as ultimately resolved
in Tillich's ideas as a throwback "to the God of Schleiermacher and
Hegel," a transcendental resting-place where the dialectic is resolved,
Barth wanted at all costs to keep the tension of the dialectic alive.23 He
valued the questioning and the paradoxes that kept faith alive and uneasy, that
continued to make believing a risk. He felt that Tillich was trying to make the
critical paradox too easy, and that their substantial differences were here,
and not in a matter of negative or positive emphases, or even conservative or
radical politics.
It was Barth's notion of the absolute transcendence of God
that also led him to a political position that was opposed by Tillich. Towards
the end of the second edition of Romans, Barth began a highly critical
discussion of revolution. The socialism of his days in Safenwil gave way, in
post-revolutionary Germany ,
to a rejection of human-authored change. With respect to the powers of the
world, the establishment of "the great positions of Church and State, of
Law and Society," Barth claimed that Paul's letter gave no grounds for
either "Legitimism" or "Revolution," concerned as it was
with "the honor of God."24
Nevertheless, Barth argued that due to the thrust of Paul's argument in raising
the issues of "disquiet, questioning, negation," the danger existed
that Paul could be "so misunderstood so as to be transformed into a
positive method of human behavior..., into the Titanism of revolt and upheaval
and renovation."25 The
danger of revolution, especially socialist revolution, in Barth's mind lay
precisely in that it was "so much nearer to the truth" than
legitimised. Yet revolution was also in his eyes a transgression against the
transcendence of God in that it hubristically claimed to be capable of
transforming the world through human means. The revolutionist can only
"set what exists against what exists," in other words,
revolution is only the "conflict of evil with evil." Barth saw
revolution as something that only served to strengthen the repression of the
existing order, for "God's Order" was the rebuke and
"transcendence [Aufhebung]" of all existing orders, and thus
any revolution, no matter how successful or radical, still stood in opposition
to the will of God.26
Barth implied that it would be arrogant of any Christian to "understand
even a part of our actions as action for the Kingdom of God
Barth's ideas concerning revolution also betray his
relationship to Nietzsche, a relationship quite different from Tillich's.
Barth's mention of "Titanism" calls to mind the imagery of
Nietzsche's heights, his struggle with the gods, and his attempt to overthrow
their tyrannical grip on humanity. His rejection of this Nietzschean struggle,
however, and his dedication to the principle of leaving all change in the hands
of the deity, recall Nietzsche's own ambivalence towards struggle and revolt.
Despite his brooding, dark, and destructive images, Nietzsche emphasized those
of clear air, the chill of the mountain heights, and the optimism that arises
when one contemplates and accomplishes the conquest of a mountaintop.29 This
apparent contradiction in Nietzsche's thought was paralleled by Barth's refusal
to accept revolution as a legitimate human undertaking, even if such a refusal
tacitly accepted the status quo. Nietzsche himself, for all his railing against
the decadence and impotence of the established order, could find no effective
means for initiating the transformation that he so ardently desired.
This apparent decision by Barth not to decide had its
quietist and other-worldly side, and it was precisely this attitude that
Tillich opposed. In one of his foundational works, the essay entitled
"Kairos," published in 1922, Tillich asserted, like Barth and his compatriots,
that Europe stood at a moment of crisis.
Tillich, however, chose not the Greek word krisis, but rather the word kairos,
which carried the meanings of a right time, a critical moment, an opportunity. Kairos
thus carried a much more optimistic undertone than Barth's krisis.
Tillich's conception of the major problem of the time was thus not a judgement
by God on humanity, but rather a time for decision, for concrete action, for a
choice between the "unconditioned 'no' and the unconditioned 'yes.'"
As characterized by Tillich, this kairos was as the "breaking-in of
the Unconditioned," an event that challenged any assertions of absolute
authority by any human institution or society.30 To
this extent, he appeared to parallel Barth, especially in claiming that
"the absolute tension is only between the Conditioned and the
Unconditioned, not between two forms of the Conditioned," a statement
similar to Barth's claim that God could not be understood as the greatest thing
among all things.31
Where Tillich profoundly differed from Barth was over the
ethical question of "what is it we ought to do?" The distinction
between kairos and krisis was fundamental, for in Barth's hands,
the ethical initiative was left in the hands of God, while for Tillich, the
decision had been placed firmly in the hands of humanity. Barth, having
witnessed the destruction of the war from Switzerland
and the chaos of revolution in Germany ,
saw human attempts to master the world as fundamentally destructive. He desired
to keep the separation of the transcendent and the human in permanent tension,
and thus ethically advocated a position of conservatism that called for human
inaction. Tillich, having witnessed the war from the front, sought to reconcile
the transcendent and the human, bringing the former into the latter as a
purifying moment of decision and commitment.
This distinction in perspective was fundamental to their
differing views about ethics and action. The "anomie of the 'bourgeois
age'" and "the reality of atomized individuals" were for Tillich
the hallmarks of the kairos in this particular historical manifestation.
Political socialism had "seen the kairos, but had not perceived its
depth." What was required now was a religious socialism that was beyond
"church or party politics," beyond "law" and the
"absolutism of the concrete." What was required of the religious
socialist was the realization of the unconditioned in "living, creative
truth." This was the essence of Tillich's "positive paradox,"
for the "embodiment of kairos" is both "error... and never
an error," for although the unconditioned cannot be bound by any
"period of time," it could not be possible unless "a kernel of
it was already there."32 The
model of in-breaking and the idea of a seed, a dual interaction from within and
without, thus served as Tillich's paths for the interaction of the transcendent
and the human. This model also provided the basis upon which he built his
conception of religious socialism and ethics. Humanity could grasp the
unconditioned, according to Tillich, for it already formed part of the human
world, and in fact was the source, the essence of meaning in the human,
historical world.
Despite Tillich's insistence on the importance of history,
his analysis of the interaction of transcendent reality and human existence was
still undeveloped. Barth's criticisms of Tillich still appear telling: if God,
or the "Unconditioned," or whatever other rubric under which one
cares to discuss the transcendent, is to have a direct impact on human
existence, some means of contact between the two must be established. Barth, in
seeking to preserve the purity of God, placed the moment of interaction solely
in the person of Jesus and the Word that was revealed. Yet this apparent return
to fideism, the assertion that the sole relationship between God and humanity
was one of infinite qualitative distinction, was a distinction that lead
Barth's radical Christianity to its own form of atheism, just as Nietzsche's
call for the end of morality was an essential part of his atheism. The
assimilation of Greek concepts of the true, the good and the beautiful to the
Christian conception of God was precisely what Barth, as well Nietzsche, wanted
to do away with. Heinz Zahrnt referred, quite accurately, to Romans as a
"theological twilight of the gods."33 The
theological problem in this inability of the finite to comprehend the infinite,
the temporal to understand the eternal, was that it asked for speech about what
was unutterable. The challenge of Barth's commentary was that it presented the
end of theology as the solution to the problem of belief, just as Nietzsche
proclaimed the end of philosophy as the solution to the problem of metaphysics.
* * *
Barth's solution was ultimately opposed by others beside
Paul Tillich, and on grounds that were different from Tillich's concerns with
human decision and social action. An early sympathizer, but one who always
maintained a critical stance towards Barth's project, was Rudolf Bultmann. Born
in 1884, two years before Barth and Tillich, Bultmann was raised in Oldenburg by a family with close connections to the Evangelical Lutheran Church Tübingen , Berlin
and Marburg ,
graduating from the latter in 1910 and teaching there until 1916. After a few
years at Breslau and one at Giessen , he went
back to Marburg
in 1921, where he remained until retirement in 1951.34
As early as 1920, Bultmann had laid out some of the major
themes of his thought. In an essay entitled "Religion and Culture,"
Bultmann sought to demonstrate the continued relevance of belief despite the
modern "emancipation of culture from religion." This significance he
grounded in a human "consciousness of pure and simple dependence," a
consciousness of "paradox" wherein the self, in a moment of
transcendence, in experiencing "an abundance of life... as a gift,"
recognizes its "plain dependence." Bultmann's interpretation of the
old religious themes of "submission and subjection" as an "experience...
of free self-surrender" was an attempt to link religion, and thus faith
and belief, to "man's taking his destiny into himself."35 For
Bultmann, the significance of belief was not in the realm of the transcendent,
but rather in the human realm where individuals became conscious of their
dependence on the transcendent, thus taking their destiny into their own hands
- the paradox of self-submission and self-affirmation.
Bultmann distinguished himself from Barth, for whom the
human realm was virtually insignificant, and from Tillich, who sought a
religious, socialist answer to the problem of modern culture. Yet Bultmann was
in someways akin to both: like Barth he advocated the autonomy of religion from
politics and the restraints of human society, and like Tillich he sought to
base the validity of religion and faith on human experience, not in the pure
revelation from some transcendent realm.36 This
commitment to human understanding was evident in Bultmann's work in scriptural
exegesis. As opposed to Tillich and Barth, Bultmann saw himself standing firmly
within the tradition of liberal theology. This recognition separated Bultmann
especially from Barth, whom Bultmann directly accused of reinterpreting
"history as myth," and indirectly accused of the piety of
"Gnosticism."37
Bultmann's combined critique and defense of liberal
theology was a reinterpretation in the light of Barth's assault. The synthetic
nature of Bultmann's work is quite evident in a pair of articles entitled
"Liberal Theology and the Latest Theological Movement," and
"What Does It Mean to Speak of God?" Written in 1924, these articles
demonstrated the full impact of Barth's work on Bultmann's thought, while also
demonstrating the depth of his indebtedness to his theological educators.
In the first essay, Bultmann charged that liberal theology
had erred in dealing "not with God but with man" in an attempt to
make the "stumbling-block of the cross" less so. This error in
theology, for Bultmann, arose out of liberal theology's idea of history and the
actual situation of humanity in this world. The historical interest of liberal
theology had instilled in its students a "critical sense" and an appreciation
for "radical truth."38
Bultmann recognized the dubiousness of the search for the historical Jesus and
absolutely rejected a faith based on what the historico-critical method can
reveal about this Jesus. Nevertheless, Bultmann held to the validity of this
method in so far as it trained scholars in the values of "freedom and
veracity" and revealed that "the world which faith wills to grasp is
absolutely unattainable by means of scientific research."39 He
thus gave the historical method a limited authority and a usefulness that went
beyond Barth's opinion of it as merely preparatory to any real work of
exegesis.
The major problem of liberal theology for Bultmann was that
historical inquiry demonstrated that its subjects were "relative entities,
entities which exist only within an immense inter-related complex."40
History therefore can present no absolute values. Liberal theology reduced
Christianity to a phenomenon of this world, according to Bultmann, bound by the
constraints of human psychology and history. Bultmann in effect accused the
liberal theologians of a "pantheism of history," either equating the
given of history with God or reducing God to a given entity among other
entities. As such, the adherents of liberal theology believed that Christianity
was both man's comprehension of divinity as well as an historical necessity.
Bultmann's claims to the "unending inter-relatedness" of all
historical phenomena and the impossibility of attributing absolute significance
to any event made him highly critical of any attempt "to win direct
knowledge of God" for this implied that one could understand "the
concept of God as a given object." More bluntly, Bultmann stated that one
must recognize "the truth that history has come to a dead end, that its
meaninglessness has become plain."41
The problem of liberal theology was that historical
inter-relatedness could be seen as connoting fatalism, the destruction of human
creativity, and the rejection of any attempt to deify humanity, goals it
appears that Bultmann accepted as well. Yet he stated that one need not make a
"sacrifice of reason" and abdicate any attempt to understand human
history; his claim was rather that any meaning attributed to history must come
from outside history, and not from a second, religious history which saw acts
of God as immanent in the world.42 The
idea of history here was strangely reminiscent of the problem Nietzsche
confronted when considering the "Myth of the Eternal Recurrence." The
question being: how does one assert meaning if history is essentially
non differentiable and therefore meaningless? Nietzsche's answer was to assert
that humanity had to seize its own meaning even in the face of meaninglessness,
a position similar to and yet different from the one Bultmann sought to assert.43 At
first glance, such an argument appears to place Bultmann closer to Tillich's
conception of an Unconditioned from which all meaning must be taken. Yet
Bultmann argued that faith and belief could not be based on historical grounds,
and in this he appeared to be following Barth and the idea of the unbridgeable
chasm, which, at least from the human side, separates humanity from God. Love
and forgiveness, according to Bultmann, are not knowable in themselves through
history. Only the phenomenology of love and forgiveness, the consciousness of
belief in, and acts of, love and forgiveness can be known historically.
Furthermore, "no immediate knowledge of God's love and forgiveness can be
derived from them."44
Bultmann continued to demonstrate his general agreement
with Barth when he claimed, in connection with the Lutheran conception of the
futility of good works, that "God is wholly 'Beyond.' He calls in question
both ourselves and our faithfulness in our calling." Furthermore, Bultmann
distanced himself from the religious socialism of Tillich by claiming that no
human work, no "social work... is as such the work of God's kingdom."
Demonstrating the affinity of liberal and conservative politics in early Weimar for the status
quo, for Bultmann, as well as for Barth, the "Word of God is a
'stumbling-block'" for all those who wish to realize the Kingdom through
concrete action, asserting that "there is no Christian ethic." The
reason that one cannot posit a positive course of action, something that
Tillich strove to accomplish, was for Bultmann tied to the same line of
argumentation as Barth's. God was a negation of everything human, and Bultmann
evoked the Barthian idea of krisis through such terms as judgement, as
God "calling into question" all that was of humanity.45
This judgement of humanity by God led Bultmann into a
discussion of the nature of faith. Faith for Bultmann, as with Kierkegaard, was
composed of both knowledge and decision: knowledge of one's utter dependency,
of one's inability to answer the question put by God; and the decision, in the
face of despair and the abandonment of hope, to walk "on the edge of the
knife." This metaphor expressed for Bultmann what was the essence of
faith, to accept one's status as a sinner, "always under judgement and
condemnation," and thus always open to the grace of God. This too for Bultmann
was a "paradox," for humanity stood as always condemned and always
blessed. For Bultmann, the solution to the problem of belief was, as with
Tillich and Barth, the acceptance and the embrace of paradox as the essence of
belief. The problem of belief was that humanity had sought certainty, had
desired a firm foundation upon which to establish its faith. This conception
Bultmann expressly rejected: "There is no possible standing-ground on some
achieved insight; there is no position that can be permanently won."46
Faith was resoluteness on the brink of the abyss; it could be nothing more.
If the critique of liberal theology appeared to place
Bultmann firmly on the side of Barth's theology, his subsequent essay,
"What Does It Mean to Speak of God?," published in 1925, immediately
dispelled any notions that Bultmann was an unthinking adherent of Barthianism.
Bultmann made an analytical move that would have been most difficult for Barth.
In humanity's speech about God, Bultmann not only saw sin, as Barth would, but
also humanity's speech about itself. For if God is the negation of humanity,
then all talk of God is indirectly talk of humanity. Bultmann pushed this line
of argument even further, claiming that anytime someone puts forth a
"recommendation to others something on the basis of which they can
be certain of God -- in that moment we are speaking about our existence
and have detached ourselves from it."47 His
conclusion was that in objectifying one's experiences, one denies one's own
existential reality, thus making the conception of God objective, an entity
among other entities.
This objectivizing of the self or of God was rejected by
Bultmann as a manifestation of the human desire to find a comfortable
world-view, for such objective world-views, be they science or psychology,
"relieve individuals of the problem of their concrete existence, of
anxiety about it and responsibility for it." A world-view is something one
can turn to when one "is confronted by the riddle of destiny and
death." For Bultmann, as for Barth, a corollary of his statement that
there were no Christian ethics was that God could not be "something in
respect of which a specific attitude is possible or appropriate."48
On the basis of this insight, however, Bultmann attacked
Barth's implicit quietism, spoken of at the end of Romans, as falling
into the very same trap of which Barth had accused others. Barth's principle of
non-action, according to Bultmann, was itself as a world-view, as an
objectification of God. What Bultmann posited in its place was that God placed
before humanity a "must" that demanded a decision. Non-action
remained a possibility, but it had to be taken as an existential decision of
one's entire person, a "free act" which arises from one's
"essential being." Bultmann's subsequent concern about the structures
of human existence arose from his conviction that God does not stand over and
above humanity, issuing commands, nor within as some "psychological
compulsion," but that the must is an existential that is then met
by an act of freedom.49
Bultmann thus positioned himself away from Barth's rather negative and
pessimistic view of humanity, and nearer to Tillich's open optimism and
emphasis on act and freedom, but in a manner that did not compel adherence to a
specific ethic.
Bultmann's distinction of his own thought from that of both
Barth and Tillich can be seen in the reworked definition of faith he presented
at the end of this essay. Speaking in the language of dialectical theology,
Bultmann had defined faith as a paradox. Now he refined the idea of paradox in
existential terms. Faith was the belief in "the must as a
reality" and "the conviction that some specific deed was our free
act." Yet this free act, which is identical with human existence, for
"we exist only in such action," and "such action is really nothing
other than our existence itself," is a paradox, for it is not
"objectively provable."50
Faith was thus for Bultmann an act of trust that could never be the object of
definitive knowledge, and in fact it was the desire for such definitive
knowledge that led liberal theology astray. Yet it was also not purely a trust
in the revealed Word of God, for it issued from a human act, given in freedom.
Such was Bultmann's initial attempt to resolve the crisis of meaning and the
problem of faith in the early 1920s.
* * *
The work of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann
not only established the thematic boundaries of the discussion within
Protestant theology for decades after the First World War, it also revealed the
depth of the post-war crisis of meaning in German-speaking Europe. Their
attempts at a reinterpretation of the liberal Christian tradition in the light
of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche only highlighted the modern dilemma of making
ethical choices in a world where certainty seemed unattainable.
Barth's main notion of krisis, with its overriding
themes of judgement, trial, and external decision, all characterized by an
affirmation of the radical distinction between God and humanity, led him to a
standpoint from which ethical action was meaningless at best, dangerous at
worst. The krisis of the times was therefore to be met with a
Nietzschean "Yes" and "No" to the politics of the age. The
absolute dichotomy between God and humanity gave rise for Barth to a continual,
permanent crisis in which change could be pursued only if it was never taken as
permanent or final. This view is remarkably similar to Nietzsche's demand for a
revaluation of all values and his myth of the eternal return - no negation, no
assertion is ever final - but its practical consequence was political quietism
and passivity.
Such a negative perspective on human existence was sharply
challenged by Tillich, who instead sought to reconcile the transcendent and the
immanent through his idea of the kairos, the in-breaking and up-welling
of the transcendent in such a manner that it demanded an internal decision, a
commitment to action and ethical concerns. Tillich saw the same crisis as
Barth, but he saw it in more of an optimistic light, not solely a time of
rejection, but one of opportunity. For Tillich, choice or action was a human
necessity precisely because it had been placed in human hands by God. As Barth
had argued, there was no absolute certainty to be found in this world, but
Tillich asserted that an historical and social ground for ethical action could
be found within the Christian proclamation, one that was essentially socialist
in nature.
While criticizing, as Barth had, any notion of history as
absolute, Bultmann asserted that faith was incomprehensible outside of human
existence. The complex inter-relatedness of all things forced an historical
consciousness on humanity as the only proper manner of self-understanding.
Bultmann's concept of Müssen, of the 'must,' was based on his values of
truth and freedom, and his insistence that human existence demanded a decision
and an acceptance of responsibility. Bultmann shared the perception of Barth
and Tillich that they were living in a time of crisis, yet he rejected both of
their proposed solutions. He agreed with Barth that the Christian religion
could have no specific politics, but he also agreed with Tillich that human
experience could form a credible base for ethical action. For Butmann, however,
this action was not to be found in socialist traditions, but rather within each
individual's existential situation. The call to action was experienced as a
command, a "must," called forth by the Gospel.
The existential root of Bultmann theology brought him to a
discussion of the same problem that had confronted Tillich and Barth. Faith in
the modern world, for all three men, could only be paradoxical, a resolute
stance in the face of meaningless, the assertion of conviction and trust
despite the lack of evidence. Each saw that the old liberal certainties were no
longer valid, and each struggled to develop a position within the Christian
tradition that would accommodate this revelation. Yet each also came close to
advocating a moral relativism, a position that said human beings must act in
the world, but that they can never be certain of the ultimate goodness of what
they create. Each in his own way accepted the fundamental premise of Barth,
that objective certainty in human affairs was an impossibility. In fact, they
all argued, the outcomes of all human choices are condemned to be partial,
incomplete, flawed. For each man, faith, like human existence, had to be
accepted as paradoxical, unresolved, always subject to critique, always open
to new possibilities, a frightening and insecure position.
What they collectively created was a reinterpretation and
synthesis of intellectual problems inherited from the late nineteenth century:
the questioning of liberal traditions, especially in the work of Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard and the lack of a firm ground for religious faith in the modern
world. Nietzsche had sought to hold affirmation and negation in tension, never
surrendering to either. Yet Nietzsche had also failed to construct a paradigm
for action that went beyond the maintenance of paradox. In grasping the
problem of paradox as Nietzsche had, these major theologians of post-war German
Protestantism restored vitality to the traditions from which they emerged while
highlighting the unsettled nature of the human condition after 1918. On the one
hand, their new perspectives on the crisis of post-war Germany
reestablished theological debate as a valid, living, and enlightening
discourse, one filled with political and ethical implications that were
relevant to the dilemmas of the early twentieth century. On the other hand,
much like Nietzsche, they had difficulties in applying their new insights to
concrete action. Barth's de facto theological quietism was rejected by
both Tillich and Bultmann, but neither could ground ethical action purely in
theological reflection, needing to turn to socialist or existential philosophy
for such interpretive tools. Their success in revitalizing theological
discourse, asserting religious faith as essentially a paradox, and
demonstrating the contemporary relevance of both theology and religious faith,
however, only illustrated the continuing difficulties of Germans and Europeans
to find a new political and ethical consensus in the early 1920s.
Notes
1. David S. Luft, Robert
Musil and the Crisis of European Culture, 1880-1942 (Berkeley , 1980)16-8; H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness
and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930 (New
York, 1958), 336-8. Rudolf Bultmann, an Evangelical Lutheran instructor at the University of Marburg Berlin .
2. Lucien Febvre, The
Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, tr.
Beatrice Gottlieb
(Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 463.
3. Karl Barth, "Der Römerbrief: Vorwort zur 1. Auflage,"
Jürgen Moltmann (ed.), Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie (2 vols.;
Munich, 1962-63), I, 77-8. See also "The
Need and Promise of Christian Preaching," in Karl Barth, The Word of
God and the Word of Man, tr. D. Horton (New York, 1957), 97-135.
4. George Casali, Portrait
of Karl Barth, tr. Robert McAfee Brown (New York, 1963), 44; James D.
Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern Theology (Philadelphia, 1967), 77. For a socialist interpretation
of Barth's theology, see Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Theologie und
Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich, 1972).
6. Dieter
Schellong, "On Reading Karl Barth from the Left," George Hunsinger
(ed.), Karl Barth and Radical Politics, (Philadelphia , 1976), 139-45.
15. Ibid., 47-50.
See also Heinz Zahrnt, What Kind of God? A Question of Faith (Minneapolis , 1972),
21-37.
16. John Robinson,
"Introduction," John Robinson (ed.), The Beginnings of Dialectic
Theology, trs. K. Grim and L. DeGrazia, (Richmond, Va., 1968), 14-5, 24-8.
18. Paul Tillich,
"Autobiographical Reflections," Charles Kegley and R. Bretall (eds.),
The Theology of Paul Tillich (New York, 1964), 13-5. See also Philip E.
Hughes, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, 2nd rev. ed. (Grand
Rapids, Mich., 1969), 447-8.
22. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft,"
Girogio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds.), Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Part 5 (2 vols.; Berlin, 1973), II, 313. See also "Der Antichrist,"
Girogio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds.), Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Part 6 (3 vols.; Berlin, 1969), III, 192-5.
27. Karl Barth, "Grundfragen der christlichen Sozialethik,"
Moltmann (ed.), Anfänge, I, 162. See
also Romans, 424-74.
32. Ibid., 70-2.
See also his 1919 essay "The Conquest of the Concept of Religion in the
Philosophy of Religion," Paul Tillich, What is Religion? (New York,
1969), 122-54.
37. Rudolf Bultmann, "Ethische und Mythische Religion im
Urchristentum, (1920)," Moltmann (ed.), Anfänge, II, 40-1.
38. Rudolf Bultmann, "Die liberale Theologie und die jüngste
theologische Bewegung," Glauben und Verstehen: Gesammelte Aufsätze
(3 vols.; Tübingen, 1933), III, 1-3.
47. Rudolf Bultmann, "Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu
reden?," Glauben und Verstehen, III, 26-30; emphasis in the original.
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas 57, no. 2
(April 1995):289-307.
http://web3.woodbury.edu/faculty/dcremer/personal/research/Protestant%20Theology%20Article.htm
http://web3.woodbury.edu/faculty/dcremer/personal/research/Protestant%20Theology%20Article.htm
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