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The Doctrine of Creation and the Task of Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Katherine Sonderegger
Katherine Sonderegger
Affiliation:
Middlebury College
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Extract

“One is never done with Schleiermacher,” Karl Barth once wrote, and those who have read Church Dogmatics know just how true that is. Schleiermacher's work presents a constant task for theology to incorporate fully and critique its sophisticated method; to follow its rigorous passion for ethics; to imitate, if only palely, its synthetic power and breadth; to stand open-eyed before its beauty and elegant simplicity. Barth knew this well. To read his Church Dogmatics carefully is to hear Barth's respect for Schleiermacher on every page. The dispute with Schleiermacher's method and doctrine, far from being dismissed, courses through the Dogmatics, paying tribute to the gift and the burden of Schleiermacher's thought to his descendents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 185 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

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References

1 Barth often spoke of his unfinished relationship to Schleiermacher. See, for example , Barth, Karl, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at Göttingen (ed. Ritschl, Dietrich; trans. Bromiley, G. W.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 277Google Scholar.

2 See, for example , Duke, James O. and Streetman, Robert F., Barth and Schleiermacher: Beyond the Impasse? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)Google Scholar ; Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984)Google Scholar ; and Gerrish, Brian, Tradition and the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

3 Schleiermacher scholarship is an industry. Terrance Tice has published a bibliography for the English-speaking world and has recently amplified it in a new edition. See Tice, Terrance, A Schleiermacher Bibliography (2d ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar . I have worked from two older studies : Brandt's, Richard B.Schleiermacher's Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1941) andGoogle ScholarNiebuhr's, Richard R.Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion (New York: Scribner's, 1964)Google Scholar . More recent works supporting and at times correcting these ground-breaking studies, are Tice's, Terrance “Schleiermacher's Theological Method” (Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1961)Google Scholar ; Thiel's, JohnGod and World in Schleiermacher's “Dialektik and Glaubenslehre” (Bern: Lang, 1981)Google Scholar ; Johnson's, WilliamSchleiermacher and Nygren (Leiden: Brill, 1964)Google Scholar ; Redeker's, MartinSchleiermacher's Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973)Google Scholar ; Tanner's, KathrynGod and Creation in Modern Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar . A few surveys I have found particularly helpful are Hirsch's, EmanuelGeschichte der Neuern Evangelischen Theologie (5 vols.; Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1949)Google Scholar vols. 4 and 5 ; Mackintosh's, Hugh R.Types of Modern Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1937)Google Scholar ; and Rupp's, GeorgeCulture Protestantism (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977).Google Scholar

I have used two editions of Schleiermacher's work:

Der Christliche Glaube (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960Google Scholar ) and The Christian Faith (trans. Mackintosh, Hugh R. and Stewart, James S.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976).Google Scholar

Karl Barth, though an interested party, was a remarkably keen and subtle interpreter of Schleiermacher. His lectures on Schleiermacher (The Theology of Schleiermacher) and his addresses (“Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie” in Gesammelte Vortrage, vol. 3 : Theologische Fragen und Antworten [Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1957]Google Scholar and “Dogmenprinzip bei Wilhelm Herrmann” in Gesammelte Vortrage, vol. 2: Die Theologie und die Kirche [Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, n.d.])Google Scholar show his mastery and innovation in the interpretation of nineteenth-century religious thought.

4 The term stems from Hans Frei's dissertation (“The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth, 1909 to 1922: The Nature of Barth's Break with Liberalism” [Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1956])Google Scholar , a masterful interpretation of Barth and Schleiermacher-inspired liberal.

5 Gerrish, Brian, A Prince of the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 17–18.Google Scholar

6 Gerrish, Brian, Tradition and the Modern World, 108–9.Google Scholar

7 I hasten to add, a most sophisticated neo-Marxist, influenced by American pragmatists and post-structuralist thought. See West, Cornel, Prophesy Deliverance! (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982) 15-24, 95–127Google Scholar.

8 Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Garden City, NY: Image Books/Doubleday, 1960) esp. chap. 1.Google Scholar

9 I take this to be the methodological claim advanced by Barth throughout his work, but especially prominent in his early essays in Word of God and the Word of Man (trans. Horton, Douglas; New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar and “Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie”; and by Rosenzweig, Franz in The Star of Redemption (trans. Hallo, W.; Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985)Google Scholar . To be sure, such critique of idealism is not a modern concern exclusively. Both Barth and Rosenzweig, as well as secular theorists, leaned upon Kierkegaard, whose writings were just appearing in German journals during those years.

10 , Frei, “The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth,” esp. chap. 2.Google Scholar

11 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 227Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 300. Schleiermacher pursues a similar train of thought in his hermeneutics; see his “The Academy Addresses” in idem , Hermeneutics: the Handwritten Manuscripts (ed. Kimmerle, Heinz; trans. Duke, James and Forstman, Jack; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977)Google Scholar , particularly the second address.

12 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 227Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 300.

13 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 178–84Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 234-42.

14 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 138Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 181.

15 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 76Google Scholar; Der Christliche Glaube, 105.

16 Like his teacher Herrmann, Barth often appealed directly to his readers. See, for example, his address to the reader on the doctrine of election , Church Dogmatics (ed. and trans. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F.; 5 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957) 2. 323–25Google Scholar.

17 Schleiermacher's celebrated definition of God-consciousness is found in Christian Faith, 12; Der Christliche Glaube, 23.

18 The reader will notice that I have attempted to skate briskly over very thin ice. The distinction between foundation and coherentist conceptions of the true or real has generated a literature all its own, and I do not attempt to do it justice here. The relation between these categories and realism of various kinds is another matter of importance to theological method, and I hope only to allude to it here.

19 I am convinced that “indirectness” remains the principal method in Barth's later work and is a rather bland translation of his “analogy of faith.”

20 This intuition forms the basis of Maritain's reformulation of the Thomistic demonstrations of the existence of God. See, for example , Maritain, Jacques, On the Uses of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) essay 3Google Scholar.

21 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 152–56Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 198-204.

22 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 174Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 229.

23 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 142–49Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 185-95.

24 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 222Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 293.

25 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 177Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 232.

26 , Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 241Google Scholar ; Der Christliche Glaube, 317.

27 The parallels to the neo-Kantian conceptions of “origin,” “ground,” and “generativity” are striking, and, in Karl Barth's mind at least, not coincidental. For Barth's reliance upon Cohen and Natorp see Fisher's, SimonRevelatory Positivism? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) chaps. 4 and 5Google Scholar.

28 , Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher, 279.Google Scholar

29 Schleiermacher, “Second Aspect of the Antithesis Explication of the Consciousness of Grace,” in Christian Faith, 355-476; Der Christliche Glaube, 2. 11-90.

30 See Barth's diagnosis, for example, in Barth, Karl, Protestant Theology in the 19th Century (trans. Cozens, B. and Bowden, J.; London: SCM, 1972) 432Google Scholar.