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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2025
Eric Mascall and Karl Barth shared a common concern with the influence of liberal Protestantism on their churches in England and Germany. They agreed this problem was best addressed through the lens of natural theology. Yet, while for Mascall a Thomistically informed understanding of natural theology was the best way to counteract liberal Protestantism’s influence on the Church, for Barth, natural theology was to blame for the Church’s confusion. The concern this paper raises was Barth’s sharp delineation between human reason and divine revelation in the end, complicit with the ontological duality of modernity that was the basis of the liberal Protestantism he was rejecting? By dealing with modernity on its own terms, Barth undermined the capacity of the Church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament to be effective agents of personal transformation. Whereas Mascall’s realistic ontology not only repudiates the idealist foundations of liberal Protestantism but also offers the Church the necessary ontology foundation for understanding its ministry of Word and Sacrament as effective embodiments of God’s transforming grace.
1 Peter Webster, Eric Mascall and the making of an Anglican Thomist, 1937–1945, 222.
2 He Who Is, 2.
3 C.D, I.1, xiii.
4 J.A. Franklin, Charles Taylor and Anglican Theology: Aesthetic Ecclesiology (Pilgram Macmillan: Gewerbestrasse, 2024), 112.
5 Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation Translated by J.L.M. Haire and Ian Henderson (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1938), 26.
6 I am indebted to Johnson for his excellent summary of Barth’s rejection of natural theology in, Keith L. Johnson, Barth on Natural Theology in “The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth: Barth and Dogmatics”, Vol. 1. Edited by George Hunsinger and Keith L. Johnson (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2019).
7 Johnson, Barth, on Natural Theology, 98.
8 Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans. Translated by E.C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 30.
9 Ibid., 30.
10 Ibid., 60.
11 Karl Barth, THE GÖTTINGEN DOGMATICS: Instruction in the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns Publishing, 1990).
12 See Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 (Clarendon: Clarendon Publication, 1997) for detailed understanding of Barth’s use of this Christological formula.
13 Barth, GÖTTINGEN DOGMATICS, 45–69.
14 Ibid., 59.
15 Ibid., 90.
16 Ibid., 340–41.
17 Johnson, Barth, 98.
18 Ibid., 98.
19 K. Barth, “Fate and Idea in Theology,” in The Way of Theology in Karl Barth. Edited by M. Rumscheidt. Intro. by Stephen Sykes (Pickwick Publications: Allison, 1986), 38.
20 Ibid., 39.
21 K. Barth, The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life (John Knox Press, Louisville, 1993), 24.
22 Ibid., 32.
23 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975).
24 Ibid., 236.
25 Barth, Holy Spirit, 33.
26 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 238.
27 Ibid., 238.
28 Ibid., 238.
29 Gottlieb Söhngen, “Analogia Fidei: Gottähnlickkeit allein aus Glauben Catholica 3(3), 1934: 113–136 quoted in Johnson, Barth’s Natural Theology, 104.
30 Ibid., 104.
31 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 82.
32 Söhngen, “Analogia Fidei, 104.
33 Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, 82.
34 Ibid., 83.
35 Ibid., 92.
36 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 132–202.
37 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 9.
38 Eric Mascall, He Who Is (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2023), 1.
39 Ibid., 3.
40 Eric Mascall, The Openness of Being: Natural Theology Today (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1971), 92.
41 Eric Mascall, Existence and Analogy, (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2023). 48.
42 Mascall, Existence and Analogy, 48.
43 Existence and Analogy, 53.
44 Mascall, Openness, 99.
45 Ibid., 100.
46 Eric Mascall, Words and Images: A Study in Theological Discourse, (London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1957), 65.
47 Mascall, Openness, 100.
48 Ibid., 110.
49 Mascall, Openness, 145.
50 Ibid., 146.
51 Mascall, Existence and Analogy, 17.
52 Ibid., 92.
53 Ibid., 113.
54 Ibid., 116.
55 Ibid., 118.
56 Mascall, Openness of Being, 145.
57 Ibid., 148.
58 The Importance of Being Human, 61.
59 Franklin, Charles Taylor and Anglican Theology, 112.
60 Mascall, Openness, 100.
61 Ibid., 143. Mascall sites Farrer, Finite and Infinite (London: Dacre Press, 1943), 2f.
62 Ibid., 149.
63 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.4 Trans. by G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1981), 46.
64 Franklin, Charles Taylor and Anglican Theology, 130.
65 Barth, Dogmatics IV.4, 46.
66 Ibid., 46.
67 Christ, The Christian, and the Church, 81f. See also, E. Mascall, The Importance of Being Human (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 68.
68 Ibid., 114–125.
69 Ibid., 150.
70 Ibid., 154.
71 Ibid., 153.
72 Mascall, Openness, 155. See especially Christ, the Christian, and the Church.
73 BarryHarvey, Taking Hold of the Real. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015) cite in James Lawson, Loving and Hating the World: Ambivalence and Discipleship (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2021), 179.