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Karl Barth on Divine Command: A Jewish Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David Novak
David Novak
Affiliation:
Jewish Studies Programme, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, University College, Room 314, 15 King's College Circle, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3H7Canada
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Extract

Usually one does not include Karl Barth in contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. Unlike his Protestant theological contemporaries, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, there in no evidence that during his long theological career Barth had any real contact with Jewish thinkers. The only contemporary Jewish thinker whom he engages, to my knowledge, is Martin Buber, but in his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, Buber is discussed almost en passent and with a rather hurried dismissal. Barth's relations with Judaism are seriously complicated, but one gets the impression from reading what he says about Judaism that he is doing typology, engaging a type already created in his mind largely by Paul and those who followed in his path. He does not seem to be dealing with Judaism as a living tradition, indeed a current rival religious option to Christianity. After all, how can one engage Judaism as a living tradition, let alone as a current rival, if one has no serious contact with living Jews during the most productive years of one's thought? For that reason it would seem an engagement of Barth's thought by a contemporary Jewish theologian could only be, at most, an arcane academic exercise having no real Jewish significance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , November 2001 , pp. 463 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2001

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References

1 For the best current study of Barth on Jews and Judaism, see Sonderegger, Katherine, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew: Karl Barth's Doctrine of Israel (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

2 Church Dogmatics ll/2 [hereafter ‘CD’], ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F.; trans. Bromiley, G. W., et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 698Google Scholar, where he calls Buber a ‘neo-Pharisaic Jew.’ In CD1/2 (1956), p. 80, Barth refers to Buber (and H. J. Schoeps and E. B. Cohn, two other Jewish theologians) as those who ‘are instructive to listen to on our question [the meaning of the Old Testament, which Barth defends against the attempts of Schleiermacher et al. to denigrate its importance for the Church], both in what they say as earnest Jews,’ and what they cannot say as unconverted Jews.' In CD III/2 (I960), pp. 277–8, Barth distinguishes his theological anthropology from that of Buber (and some other non-Christians). See, also, Busch, E., Karl Barth, trans. Bowden, J. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 272, 368–9 for some epistolary connections of Barth to BuberGoogle Scholar.

3 Nevertheless, for Barth's opposition to anti-semitism, both theological and political, throughout his career, see Busch, Karl Barth, 234–5, 247–8. For various Jewish engagements of Barth's thought, see Novak, D., ‘Before Revelation: The Rabbis, Paul, and Karl Barth’, Journal of Religionil 71 (1991), 50–51, n. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For Barth's influence on the increasingly influential work of the Roman Catholic theologian, von Balthasar, Hans Urs, see his The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Drury, J. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972)Google Scholar.

5 For two of Barth's disciples whose interest in Jews and Judaism exceeded that of the master, although very much inspired by his overall thought, see Gollwitzer, Helmut (with Rendtorff, R. and Levinson, N. P.), Thema: Juden-Christen-Israel (Stuttgart: Radius Verlag, 1967)Google Scholar; Marquardt, Friedrich W., Die Entdeckung des Judentums fur die christliche Theologie (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1967).Google Scholar

6 See e.g. Novak, D., ‘Theology and Philosophy: An Exchange with Robert Jenson’, in Trinity, Time, and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert W.Jenson, ed. Gunton, C. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 42–61Google Scholar. Jenson is one of Barth's most important contemporary students. I don't think my conversations with Robert Jenson over the years would have been as illuminating as they are had it not been for what we both have learned, mutatis mutandis, from Karl Barth, who even when not explicitly present, is always in the background.

7 These commandments are always in a dialectical relation with the commandments that pertain to what is ‘between humans and God’ [bein adam k-maqom]. See Mishnah: Yoma 8.9; Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah: Peah 1.1.

8 See CD, 515–16.

9 See Busch, Karl Barth, 44, 56, 69. For the integration of Judaism and philosophy in Hermann Cohen's person and thought, see Fisher, Simon, Revelatory Positivism? Barth's Earliest Theology and the Marburg School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 80–122.Google Scholar

10 CD, 757.

11 See Novak, D., ‘Introduction’, Christianity in jewish Terms, ed. Frymer-Kensky, T., Novak, D., Ochs, P. W., Sandmel, D. F., and Signer, M. A. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 1–6Google Scholar. For a longer version of this argument, see Novak, D., ‘Avoiding Charges of Legalism and Antinomianism in Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, Modern Theology 16 (2000), 275–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Kirchlkhe Dogmatik 2/2 [hereafter ‘KD’] (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1948), 847.Google Scholar

13 CD, 511.

14 See his Dogmatics in Outline, trans. Thompson, G. T. (New York: Harper, 1959), 50.Google Scholar

15 See Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 23–34.Google Scholar

16 CD, 514. Note Cohen himself in his major work in ethics, Elhik des reinen Willens, 5th edn (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1981), p. 70Google Scholar: ‘Das Recht des Rechts ist das Naturrrecht oder die Ethik des Rechts.’ Barth was undoubtedly familiar with the 1st edn of 1904. According to Fisher, Revelatory Positivism?, 341, Barth purchased his copy of this work for his library in Geneva in June, 1910.

17 For the great modern phenomenology of the experience of Sabbath observance, see my late revered teacher, Heschel, Abraham Joshua, The Sabbath, 2nd edn (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1952).Google Scholar

18 See Palestinian Talmud: Nedarim 9.4/41c, where this commandment is designated by the greatest of the Sages in the Talmud, Rabbi Akibah, to be ‘the most inclusive commandment [kelal gadol] in the Torah.’ See, also, Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Mourning, 14.1.

19 CD, 548 = KD, 608

20 I and Thou, trans. Kaufmann, W. (New York: Scribner's, 1970), 157–158Google Scholar = Ich und Du (Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider, 1962), 110–111, 113.Google Scholar

21 See Novak, D., Jewish-Christian Dialogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 80–86.Google Scholar

22 ‘The Builders’ in Rosenzweig, Franz, On Jewish learning, ed. Glatzer, N. N.; trans. Wolf, W. (New York: Schocken, 1955), 115.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 85.

24 For Rosenzweig's recognition of the early Barth, see Glatzer, N. N., Franz Rosenzweig, 2nd edn (New York: Schocken, 1961), 278Google Scholar. There Rosenzweig concentrates on Barth's early notion of God as ganz Anders, famously expressed in his 1919 commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Rosenzweig contrasts that with the nearness of God emphasized by the eleventh-century Jewish theologian/poet, Judah Halevi. But, I suspect that Rosenzweig would have resonated much more favourably to Barth's later theology, which also emphasizes the nearness of God. Along these lines, see Rashkover, Randi, Covenantal Ethics in Theologies of Revelation: A Comparison of Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Barth (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 1999).Google Scholar

25 CD, 655 = KD, 729.

26 CD, 663 = KD, 739.

27 See Novak, D., Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 142–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 See Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 1.26; also, 2.40.

29 Cf. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.2.1–3; 1.3.1. I disagree with Calvin et al. that our intuition of God is a causal inference. Instead, it is a phenomenological trace of the divine behind human presence. Cf. Levinas, Emmanuel, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bergo, B. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 75.Google Scholar

30 Barth himself makes this distinction between what is direct and indirect in theologically justified ethics. See CD, 541–2.

31 In Scripture, it seems that the universal recognition of prime divine authority is designated elohim (‘God’ but, perhaps, better translated ‘divinity’) in distinction from YHWH (‘Lord’). See e.g. Gen. 20:11; Exod. 1:17; cf. Exod. 3:13–14; 5:2. As elohim God need not be experienced as person.

32 See Novak, D., Covenantal Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3–25.Google Scholar

33 One could certainly say that in the Hebrew Scriptures all love (ahavah, hesheq, etc.) is eros. See esp. Dent. 7:7–9. The famous thesis of the Lutheran theologian, Nygren, Anders, in his Agape and Eros, trans. Watson, P. S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar, who sees eros as ‘egocentric’ (p. 722), built on ‘the foundation of self-love’ (p. 723), and being ‘after the pattern of human, acquisitive love’ (ibid.), is mistaken about eros phenomenologically. Instead, true eros is ecstatically self-giving, so much so that the true lover allows himself or herself to be radically affected by his or her beloved. That is why God, as the exemplar of all eros (see Exod. 34:6; Babylonian Talmud: Shabbat 133b re Exod. 15:2) allows us to love him, wholeheartedly and erotically in response (see Deut. 6:5; Mishnah: Berakhot 9.5). That is why in both Jewish and Christian traditional exegesis, the mutual love between God and his people is best expressed in the palpably erotic imagery of Song of Songs. True eros is not lust, which inevitably turns into violence (see 2 Samuel 13:1–19; Novak, Natural Law Judaism, 36–9).

34 See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Benedictions, 11.2 and Karo, Kesef Mishneh thereon.

35 See Novak, , Natural Law in Judaism, 16–26.Google Scholar

36 CD, 541.

37 Ibid.

38 For the original philosophical use of these important terms, see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1022a14.

39 See CO, 520–8, 543–51.

40 For Cohen's influence on Herrmann, see Fisher, , Revelatory Positivism?, 124–126, 153–63Google Scholar. For Herrmann's uneasiness with that influence, however, see ibid., 133–40.

41 See Natural Theology: Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ by Emil Brunner, and the Reply ‘No’ by Karl Barth, trans. Fraenkel, P. (London: G. Bles, 1946).Google Scholar

42 See CD, 528.

43 For Barth in the context of Lutheran-Calvinist debates about law, see van Dijk, J., Die Grundlegung der Elhik in der Theologie Karl Barths (Munich: Manz Verlag), 1966), 262–263, nn. 95–9.Google Scholar

44 Even though he was certainly not in Karl Barth's theological league, it is still useful, along these lines of enquiry, to look at the work of the Dutch Calvinist theologian/statesman, Abraham Kuyper. See Abraham Kuyper, ed. Bratt, J. D. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar. I think that Reinhold Niebuhr, who certainly was in Barth's theological league, has a theological anthropology, upon which he bases his political theory, closer to Calvin than that of Barth. See his Nature and Destiny of Man 1 (New York: Scribner's, 1941), 158–159Google Scholar. Indeed, despite Niebuhr's criticisms of natural law theory as represented by the Roman Catholic moral theology of his day (ibid., 278–97), his own critiques of the pretensions of human culture and politics can now be seen as akin to the minimalist natural law theory being suggested here. For a comparison of Barth and Niebuhr, favourable to Niebuhr as having a more politically adequate theological position, see Herberg's, Will introductory essay, ‘The Social Philosophy of Karl Barth’, to Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church, ed. Herberg, Will (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 55–67.Google Scholar

45 See Fox, Marvin, ‘Maimonides and Aquinas on Natural Law’, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 24–51Google Scholar. Cf. Novak, D., Jewish Social Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 25–29.Google Scholar

46 See Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Christian Ethics in Jewish Terms: A Response to David Novak’, Christianity in Jewish Terms, 135–140.Google Scholar

47 Barth accepted the idea that there is a law of God pertaining to universal human nature, but he denied that this commandment could be known universally, except by direct divine revelation. For Barth, there only seems to be specific revelation which, without a reference to general revelation, becomes singularly exclusive revelation. See his Ethics, ed. Braun, D.; trans. Bromiley, G. W. (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 209–210.Google Scholar

48 See Novak, , Natural Law in Judaism, 174–178.Google Scholar