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The freedom of the Spirit: the pneumatological point of Barth's ecclesiological minimalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
Abstract
Karl Barth's ecclesiology has come under fire in recent years from those who find his work on the church insufficiently concrete. Proponents of concrete ecclesiologies argue that Barth's use of the wirkliche Kirche/Scheinkirche motif, and his general lack of attention to the way in which the assent of faith takes shape in the concrete church, result in the belittling of the concrete church. In turn, this lack of regard for the visible church creates problems relating to the role of the Holy Spirit. This article rereads Barth's lack of concentrated attention on the concrete church and argues that his ecclesiological minimalism functions as a theological crash barrier. By attending to the structure and doctrinal context of Barth's sections on the church in the Church Dogmatics, Barth's reticence to pronounce on the concrete church can be seen not as omission or denigration, but as a methodological principle preserving the freedom of the Holy Spirit in relation to the concrete church. The way in which Barth opens up space for the work of the Spirit in the historical, sinful church has much to offer those in search of a challenging, faithful, realistic and pastorally careful concrete ecclesiology.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011
References
1 The ‘new ecclesiology’ typically considers the concrete life of the church as the primary context for theological reflection, rather than its idealised form. It can be loosely characterised as having neo-orthodox influences from Barth, via Hans Frei, and post-liberal leanings, via Lindbeck and MacIntyre.
2 Hauerwas, Stanley, With the Grain of the Universe (London: SCM, 2001), pp. 145, 202Google Scholar.
3 Ibid., p. 145.
4 Healy, Nicholas M., ‘The Logic of Karl Barth's Ecclesiology: Analysis, Assessment and Proposed Modifications’, Modern Theology 10/1 (1994), pp. 253–70, 264–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Ibid., pp. 254–5. See Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics II/1, The Doctrine of God, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., trans. Parker et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 149Google Scholar.
6 Healy, ‘Logic’, pp. 260–3. Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics IV/2, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., trans. Bromiley et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), §67, ‘The Upbuilding of the Christian Community’Google Scholar.
7 Healy, ‘Logic’, pp. 258–63. Healy concludes: ‘Barth's ecclesiology is internally inconsistent, is difficult to reconcile with Scripture, and seems to work against his larger theological agenda’. Ibid., p. 268.
8 Ibid., p. 264.
9 Mangina, Joseph L., ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus: The Church in the Economy of Salvation in Barth and Hauerwas’, Scottish Journal of Theology 52/3 (1999), 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Ibid.. Reinhard Hütter sees a similar problem, arguing that, by playing off witness as ‘event’ against eschatological provisionality, Barth ‘ascribes no unique work of any concretion or duration to the Holy Spirit’: Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice, trans. Doug Stott (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 107. I am suspicious of the provenance of questions about allocating identifiably ‘unique’ work to the Holy Spirit (see below, n. 38), and think Hütter's criticism misplaced in two ways. First, Barth's understanding of the church as actual history, a ‘has-happened’, relocates the contingent event–provisionality dynamic within the will of God (and hence our election in Christ). Barth is clear that faith, while an ‘event’ brought about by the Spirit, must be concrete. See Hütter on obedience, ibid., pp. 103–4, or Healy on ‘knowledge’ in his ‘Karl Barth's Ecclesiology Reconsidered’, Scottish Journal of Theology 57/3 (2004), 290–4. Apart from this, the sacramental life of the church surely is provisional. Hütter acknowledges the limited nature of his remarks (p. 108), but suspects the Peterson–Barth debate evinces a problematic vector in Barth's theology in the Church Dogmatics also (pp. 108–11).
11 On soteriology, see Mangina, ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, p. 274. The faith and soteriological objectivism point comes from Hunsinger, George, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology (New York: OUP, 1991), pp. 109–10Google Scholar. On resurrection, see Mangina ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, pp. 275–7.
12 Mangina, ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, pp. 277–8. Rasmusson sees in Barth's treatment of the state a similarly atemporal, non-concrete problematic. See Rasmusson, Arne, ‘The Politics of Diaspora: The Post-Christendom Theologies of Karl Barth and John Howard Yoder’ in Jones, L. Gregory, Hütter, Reinhard and Ewell, C. Rosalee Velloso (eds). God, Truth and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), pp. 94, 100–3Google Scholar.
13 Mangina, ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, pp. 280–1. For Barth on the church as unnecessary, see Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), p. 826.
14 Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, pp. 106–7.
15 Hütter does acknowledge that Barth develops his ecclesiology and pneumatology significantly in the Church Dogmatics (Hütter's own critique here is based on Barth's response to Peterson, Church and Theology). Nevertheless, he concludes that the problematic vector evident in Barth's 1925 piece is extrapolated rather than resolved in the Church Dogmatics. See Suffering Divine Things, p. 108.
16 Mangina, ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, pp. 294–5.
17 Healy, ‘Ecclesiology’, p. 289.
18 Ibid., pp. 290–4. For the pneumatological nature of this view of the possibility of knowledge, see Rosato, Philip J., The Spirit as Lord: The Pneumatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), pp. 38–43Google Scholar. Werpehowski argues that Barth's ethics can be defended against the charge of intuitionism by considering how he ‘“annexes” terms such as “command” and “obedience”, albeit legally, and puts them to a use determined by reflection which is bound in principle to the narrative depiction of God's dealings with humanity in Jesus Christ. The sense of these terms, so bound, is irreducible to any other sense generated by or in any other world of depicted discourse and activity’. See Werpehowski, William, ‘Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth’, Journal of Religious Ethics 9/2 (1981), p. 302Google Scholar. Healy's defence of Barth's ecclesiology shows that terms like ‘knowledge’ and ‘sanctification’ are annexed, but does not illustrate fully how it is that Barth's specifically narrative setting allows such annexed terms to function in his ecclesiology.
19 Note that I am not addressing whether or not this relationship between ecclesiological minimalism and pneumatological function is deliberate – just whether we can reasonably read it this way, and whether it is helpful.
20 Biggar, Nigel, The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics II/2, The Doctrine of God, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 267Google Scholar; Church Dogmatics IV/1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), pp. 728ff.
22 CD IV/2, p. 620.
23 CD II/2, p. 237, IV/1, pp. 660–2, 651, 734–5; Dogmatics in Outline, trans. G. T. Thompson (London: SCM, 2001), pp. 124ff.
24 CD IV/1, pp. 728–9.
25 Dogmatics in Outline, p. 113.
26 Ibid., pp. 116, 119.
27 CD II/2, pp. 233ff., IV/1, pp. 664–6, IV/2, pp. 631–2, Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 117, 120.
28 CD IV/1, p. 725, in relation to time, see pp. 734–5. The kingdom of God is also between the two parousias: CD IV/2, pp. 655–6.
29 CD IV/1, p. 737. For the patience of God see Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 118–19; for the waiting and hurrying church, ibid., pp. 117, 139, CD IV/1, pp. 726–7.
30 Dogmatics in Outline, p. 119, CD IV/1, pp. 726–33.
31 CD IV/1, p. 646.
32 CD II/2, p. 237, IV/1, p. 725, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 132.
33 CD IV/1, pp. 646, 651, 662, 737, IV/2, pp. 617, 620ff., Dogmatics in Outline, p. 10.
34 CD IV/3.2, p. 816.
35 CD II/2, pp. 197 ff., IV/3.2, p. 794, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 118. The language of mirroring indicates a link to the analogia fidei here, as Mangina points out: ‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, p. 272.
36 CD IV/1, pp. 737–9.
37 Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 123, 130–3, CD IV/1, pp. 646–9, IV/2, p. 623.
38 Hunsinger, George, ‘The Mediator of Communion: Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, in Webster, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), pp. 177ff., 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also CD IV/2, pp. 651–4. Mangina argues that this makes the Holy Spirit less than a distinct salvific divine economy (‘Bearing the Marks of Jesus’, p. 270) because it manifests Christ's work rather than having any agency of its own. This seems to rest more on Mangina implying ‘merely’ whenever Barth says ‘only’ with relation to the Spirit's activity. Barth's claims about the Holy Spirit seem no more problematic than Jesus’ own statement in John 5:30–1: ‘I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me. If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony cannot be verified.’ Concomitantly, Rosato writes of Barth's pneumatological anthropology ‘Man thus assumes solely a receptive role in Barth's pneumatology, but it is a role nevertheless. . .’, The Spirit as Lord, p. 34.
39 Barth, Karl, ‘Fate and Idea in Theology’, in Rumscheidt, Martin (ed.), The Way of Theology in Karl Barth (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1986), p. 40Google Scholar. Hunsinger, ‘Mediator’, pp. 182–3.
40 Hunsinger, ‘Mediator’, p. 181. See Barth's work in Die Christliche Dogmatik discussed in Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, pp. 34–6.
41 Hunsinger, ‘Mediator’, p. 183.
42 Ibid., p. 184. Barth, ‘Fate and Idea’, pp. 49–50. Thus, God's witness does not depend on ours, but ours on God's. We do what we can, and thereafter the Word speaks and we keep silent (CD IV/3.2, p. 738).
43 Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 10, 20, 123, CD IV/3.2, p. 716. Barth often speaks about faith in terms of knowledge: ‘For all men are ordained to eternal life . . . Christians are those who are awake to the question [of preparing to attain it]’ (CD IV/2, p. 702). Nicholas Healy discusses this more fully in ‘Ecclesiology’, pp. 290–1.
44 Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 20–1.
45 Ibid., pp. 132–5, CD IV/1, pp. 650–2. For visibility of church as Chalcedonian principle see CD IV/3.2, pp. 724–6.
46 CD IV/1, pp. 650, 704, 721.
47 Ibid., p. 654.
48 Barth says the same of the holiness of the church, which is given only by Christ and visible only in the Spirit. CD IV/1, pp. 693–701. The visible and invisible elements are not two different churches. Barth also talks about die wirkliche Kirche (the true church, Jesus’ witness to himself in the Spirit) and die Scheinkirche (the semblance-church, the church's witness to itself). Both are historical realities, but the first cannot be seen, and the second can. CD IV/2, pp. 617–20. Because the church is Christ's body, Barth also talks about the true church as the pleroma, the totus Christus, or Christ's fullness, without which Christ would not be what he has been appointed by God. CD IV/2, pp. 625, 659.
49 CD IV/1, pp. 657–62. The church's growth is also a secret phenomenon. CD IV/2, p. 644. The church's third dimension is only visible in the Holy Spirit: CD IV/1, pp. 685, 693–4.
50 CD IV/1, p. 669. On the danger of the church separating itself from the rest of humanity see CD IV/2, p. 670.
51 CD IV/1, pp. 654–60, CD IV/2, pp. 696–7. Just as Christ's glory has not yet been revealed to the whole of humanity, and has a hidden character until the last day, so the church's glory is hidden. CD IV/1, pp. 656–7.
52 Glorifying God CD IV/1, p. 658, CD IV/2, pp. 697–8, task of witness Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 137ff., CD IV/1, p. 725, throughout CD IV/3.2 §72 ‘The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community’, esp. pp. 780ff., 825.
53 CD IV/1, pp. 650–2.
54 CD IV/2, pp. 647–8, IV/3.2, pp. 714, 719.
55 CD IV/1, pp. 666, 732, IV/2, pp. 620–1.
56 Hunsinger, ‘Mediator’, p. 179, CD IV/2, pp. 652–3. That is, the Holy Spirit coordinates the totus Christus. See Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, pp. 109–11.
57 Kathryn Tanner, ‘Creation and Providence’, in Webster (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, p. 124; Dogmatics in Outline, p. 47. For instance, Christ can use our words, so that they have a different function and capability, but are nevertheless our words (CD IV/3.2, p. 737). The Holy Spirit makes possible a human echo to God's accomplished work of reconciliation by making Jesus known and making God's Word rung out in creation find resonance in human hearts (CD IV/3.2, p. 761). Reinhard Hütter, discussing Barth's Chalcedonian move in the context of his disagreement with Peterson, finds Barth's emphasis on the event character of the coincidence between God's action and human witness through the Spirit problematic. See Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, pp. 95–115.
58 CD IV/1, pp. 693–4. See Hütter for a criticism of this move: ‘What doubtless constituted a meaningful regulative in a substance-ontological context does not in an action-determined context automatically apply. First, the unequivocal referent, one already given in the christological context, is obviously missing in this kind of problematic action-determined nexus of “God and human being.” Second, this model reduces the person and work of the Holy Spirit in a highly problematic fashion.’ Suffering Divine Things, p. 106.
59 Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 62, 114, 122, CD IV/1, pp. 667, 773, CD IV/3.2, p. 716. Interestingly, Barth's ongoing discussion of Rom 9–11 in CD II/2 § 34 seems to suggest a parallel between sola fide as the truth which unites Jews and Gentiles and frees them to continue in unified service in God's church, and the Holy Spirit here as the truth which, in imparting knowledge of the promise of Christ to the community, allows the church to carry on in confidence despite its frailty and manifest imperfection. However, the church's invisible principle is not to be identified with Christ (CD IV/3.2, p. 729).
60 Here I am contra Hütter (see n. 58 above). I do not think the action-determined nexus such a problem for a concrete ecclesiology, which must always be active in discernment.
61 For such criticisms, see e.g. Healy, Nicholas M., ‘Misplaced Concreteness? Practices and the New Ecclesiology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 5/3 (2003), pp. 287–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fergusson, David, Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), pp. 48–79Google Scholar.
62 Kathryn Tanner helpfully describes Christian communities as places of argument around key beliefs and practices. See Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), pp. 124–55.
63 Fergusson, David identifies this in ‘Another Way of Reading Stanley Hauerwas?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 50/2 (1997), p. 246CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Healy, Nicholas, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), p. 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Healy recognises the need to move from an epic to a theodramatic frame, pp. 52–76.
65 I am very grateful to Paul Molnar and Anastasia Scrutton for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. Colin Crowder and Christopher Insole also read the article in its previous life as part of an MA thesis.