^{page 431 note 1} Kaufman, Gordon, ‘Theological Historicism as an Experiment in Thought’, in Peerman, Dean, ed., Frontline Theology (Richmond, VA.: John Knox Press, 1967), pp. 53–54Google Scholar. Cited by Gilkey, Langdon, Naming the Whirlwind (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), p. 7.Google Scholar

^{page 431 note 2} Ogden, Schubert M., The Reality of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 6f.Google Scholar Ogden describes the cultural shift as one from ‘secularity’ to ‘secularism’, The word ‘secularity’ is descriptive of the belief that the scientific method must have complete autonomy within the field where it alone logically applies. ‘Secularism’ goes beyond this to affirm that this method is the only valid means of knowledge we have. Theology, Ogden suggests, is perfectly amenable to a legitimate secularity but would be completely ruled out by the view he calls ‘secularism’, Cf. p. 9.

^{page 431 note 3} Gilkey, p. 9.

^{page 432 note 4} Tracy, David, Blessed Rage For Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), p. 29.Google Scholar

^{page 432 note 5} Gilkey, pp. 89–90.

^{page 432 note 6} cf. Tracy, p. 28.

^{page 432 note 7} Tracy p. 34.

^{page 433 note 8} Kaufman, Gordon, The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), pp. 263–264.Google Scholar

^{page 433 note 9} ibid., pp. 15–16. This is a very significant statement. In what follows, the attempt will be made to show that ‘re-presentation’ and ‘imaginative construction’ are in no ultimate conflict. Yet, since Kaufman here makes clear that for him, ‘re-presentation’ and ‘imaginative construction’ are an ‘either-or’, it becomes very clear that he stresses imagination in a way quite different from that which will be advocated here.

^{page 434 note 10} ibid., p. 138.

^{page 434 note 11} Kaufman, Gordon, An Essay On Theological Method (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1975), p. 8.Google Scholar

^{page 435 note 12} In dealing with Barth, it will be necessary to operate with a simplifying assumption. It is always possible, in considering the work of any theologian, that a gap may be discovered between the way in which he or she proposes to do theology and the method or methods actually employed. Particularly is this possible with one like Barth, in whose case a large amount of time elapses between the publication of his programmatic statements on method in CD. I/1 and I/2 and the subsequent publication of the remaining volumes of the Church Dogmatics. The recently published collection of essays, Karl Barth — Studies of His Theological Methods argues that there is no one method employed in the Church Dogmatics; rather, there are methods. For the sake of this paper, it will not be possible to consider the question of how Barth actually does theology. I will restrict myself to considering only how he proposes to do it in I/1 and I/2. Cf. Sykes, S. W., ed., Karl Barth — Studies of His Theological Methods (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).Google Scholar

^{page 435 note 13} Kaufman, , Essay, p. 9.Google Scholar

^{page 436 note 14} ibid., pp. 4–5.

^{page 436 note 15} ibid., p. 5.

^{page 436 note 16} ibid., p. 6.

^{page 437 note 17} ibid., p. 9.

^{page 437 note 18} Kaufman, , Imagination, p. 265.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 19} Kaufman, , Essay, p. 21.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 20} Kaufman, Imagination, p. 242.Google Scholar

^{page 438 note 21} ibid., p. 244.

^{page 439 note 22} ibid., p. 37.

^{page 439 note 23} ibid., pp. 37–8.

^{page 440 note 24} ibid., p. 38.

^{page 440 note 25} ibid., p. 40.

^{page 441 note 26} ibid., p. 50.

^{page 441 note 27} ibid., p. 48.

^{page 441 note 28} ibid., p. 49.

^{page 441 note 29} ibid., p. 47.

^{page 442 note 30} ibid.

^{page 442 note 31} ibid., Chapters 6 and 7. Kaufman does in fact speak of various other criteria in theology. Cf. for instance, Imagination, pp. 155–6. However, he is far from clear as to how he intends his various criteria to be assessed. The position taken here is that for all practical purposes, he operates with a single, over-arching criterion — that of humanization. All others are subsumed into this one. For example, in speaking of God as ‘relativizer’, he makes it clear that the absoluteness of God does not function on an equal level with the humaneness of God as a criterion for theology. ‘To give oneself in worship and devotion to anything less than “the ultimate point of reference” — anything less than God — is to fall into bondage to some other finite reality, eventually destroying the self and making true human fulfillment (salvation) impossible. All idolatry is enslaving and destructive: by God we mean that reality which rescues us from all these enslavements into which we continually fall, that reality which brings human life to its full realization.’ (Imagination, p. 268) It is clear that the absoluteness of God is stressed because it serves humanization.

^{page 442 note 32} ibid., p. 44.

^{page 443 note 33} ibid., p. 167.

^{page 443 note 34} Kaufman, , Imagination, p. 45.Google Scholar

^{page 443 note 35} ibid., p. 138.

^{page 443 note 36} ibid., p. 143.

^{page 443 note 37} ibid., p. 129.

^{page 444 note 38} ibid., p. 138. This is Kaufman's charge. How far it is valid is a question which remains to be answered.

^{page 445 note 39} C.D., I/2, p. 797.

^{445 39a} C.D., I/2, p. 844.

^{page 445 note 40} C.D., I/1, p. 42.

^{page 445 note 41} C.D., I/2, p. 853.

^{page 446 note 42} C.D., I/1, p. 16.

^{page 446 note 43} C.D., I/2, p. 855.

^{page 446 note 44} C.D., I/2, p. 860. Barth here also suggests that the choice made will have to be justified to others.

^{page 447 note 45} C.D., I/2, p. 857.

^{page 447 note 46} C.D., I/2; p. 859.

^{page 447 note 47} Cited by Gill, Theodore A., Karl Barth As Artist (an unpublished manuscript delivered to the Karl Barth Society, n.d.), p. 22Google Scholar. I believe the citation comes from C.D. III/3, but Gill does not provide the reference. Gill also cites a statement from Charlotte von Kirschbaum to the same effect. She speaks of her experience of watching the Church Dogmatics grow and develop. It was ‘always a breathtaking affair to see how such a chunk of rock evolved by almost imperceptible degrees through his constant concentration on innumerable and tireless efforts at chiseling and shaping’. Gill, p. 23.

^{page 448 note 48} C.D., I/1, p. 26. It might be argued that Tillich means something different by ‘situation’ from Barth's speaking of the ‘situation of the Church’, Tillich defines ‘situation’ this way: ‘“Situation”, as one pole of all theological work, does not refer to the psychological or sociological state in which individuals live. It refers to the scientific and artistic, the economic, political, and ethical forms in which they express their interpretations of existence.’ (Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 3–4Google Scholar) This understanding of ‘situation’ is clearly a cultural one. Nevertheless, while Barth would not speak of the ‘situation’ as one of two theological poles, there is no reason to believe that he did not mean something very similar in using the word ‘situation’.

^{page 448 note 49} C. D., I/1, p. 15.

^{page 448 note 50} ibid., p. 111.

^{page 449 note 51} ibid., p. 113.

^{page 449 note 52} C.D., I/2, p. 829.

^{page 449 note 53} ibid., p. 815.

^{page 450 note 54} ibid.

^{page 450 note 55} ibid., p. 816.

^{page 450 note 56} This way of putting Barth's conception of the authority of the Bible must not be taken too rigidly. It is not as if a human work already existed and God came along, found it to his liking, and gave it his imprimatur. Barth's conception of the production of Scripture also includes the idea that Scripture was engendered by the event of revelation. So the statement that God elevated a human work to the level of divine authority must not be taken in a rigidly temporal way.

^{page 450 note 57} C. D., I/1, p. 109.

^{page 451 note 58} C.D., I/1, p. 107.

^{page 453 note 59} Kaufman, , Imagination, p. 183.Google Scholar

^{page 453 note 60} ibid., p. 190.

^{page 453 note 61} American theologians in particular have had the unfortunate tendency to dismiss Barth out of hand. See Sykes, S. W., ‘The Study of Barth’, in Sykes, S. W., ed., Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Methods. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.)Google Scholar

^{page 454 note 62} Secularism as an argument for the necessity of apologetics was encountered by Barth in 1932 in virtually the same form in which it was expressed by Gilkey, Ogden, et al. Barth wrote, ‘At this point the customary procedure, followed with new zeal in modern work, is to indicate the change in general cultural awareness and the general world-picture which has taken place in the last 300 years and called theology as such in question … This altered situation, we are told, is what makes dogmatic prolegomena necessary today.’ The argument made little impression on him. ‘There is no theological foundation for the assumed difference between our own and earlier times. Has there ever been an age in which theology has not basically confronted a radical negation of the revelation believed in the Church? … the struggle between the unbelieving reason of man and the revelation believed in the Church has always been with fundamentally the same seriousness the problem of Christian utterance in general and of dogmatics in particular. Hence we need not regard the tragedy of modern godlessness as anything out of the ordinary …’ (C.D., I/1, pp. 26–8) If secularism was not new in the 60s, neither did it have the strength commonly imagined. In his recent contribution to the Christian Century's ‘Change of Mind’ series, Langdon Gilkey professes to see in the present context, the ‘re-evaluation of the secular’ and the ‘reappearance of the religious’, (Gilkey, , ‘Theology for a Time of Troubles’, Christian Century (April 29, 1981), p. 475.Google Scholar) What this suggests is that the social upheaval of the 60s was not as radical as was thought. Seen up close, the 60s indeed seemed revolutionary. Taking a longer view, from a perspective fifteen years later, the historical continuities are more striking than the discontinuities. That President Reagan could find a chord of response in the voting electorate with descriptions of America as a ‘chosen nation’ and a ‘city set on a hill’ is just one indication of the close ties our day has with the nineteenth century. Many others could be adduced. What this means is that systematic theologians ought to exercise a great deal of caution before concluding that a ‘new’ situation has given us grounds for a thorough reconception of the entire task of theology. Systematicians would be well-advised to take a longer view of the historical situation.

^{page 454 note 63} This is not to say that the situation does not have a valid role to play in systematic theology. As was stressed in this paper, theology is an activity of imaginative construction. The situation inevitably plays a part in such imaginative work.