D. Stephen Long: Saving Karl Barth
Stephen Long, Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Preoccupation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 272 pages, ISBN 1451470142
Stephen D. Long, professor of systematic theology at Marquette University, presents a remarkable rendering of the long ecumenical discussion and theological friendship between Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth. While Balthasar received significant backlash for this friendship, he felt that in Barth he had discovered a Protestant theology grand enough to enter into a discussion with Catholic theology. Long primarily follows the younger Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth and traces the influence of Barth’s theology—albeit not uncritically—on Balthasar. This relationship allowed both theologies to interact, challenge, and shape the other at their strongest and most divisive points. While disagreements continued to exist, Long suggests ultimately a stronger theology emerged.
The work begins with a description of Barth’s and Balthasar’s largely unknown friendship that involved not only Balthasar’s book on Barth, but vacations, participation in each other’s seminars, and extensive letter writing. Balthasar rarely made the friendship public due to both Catholic and Protestant disagreement with his Barthian preoccupation. This chapter alone will be of interest to scholars. The second and third chapters set out Balthasar’s reading of Barth and the contemporary rejection of that reading from both Catholic and Protestant theologians. The remainder of the work rehabilitates Balthasar’s reading of Barth for contemporary theology. In turn, Long examines Balthasar’s interaction with Barth on the realm of God dealing with the question of natural theology and revelation, the realm of ethics dealing with the move from a propositional ethic to one that spreads the glory of the Incarnation to creation, and the realm of the Church as means for both renewal and unity.
Barth and Balthasar agreed that the incarnation, rather than a conception of God constructed from within the realm of natura pura (a state of pure nature), was the starting point of theology. Theology radiates outward from the incarnation into nature to define nature in light of the person and work of God-in-Christ becomes the challenge and beauty of the theological enterprise. To first discover God from nature and only then move towards the Incarnation and Trinity, places the unity of God ontologically prior to the Trinity and risks constructing a god from abstraction that inevitably conforms to the image of man rather than the particularity of the revealed God. Barth argued a natura pura does not exist for there is no place that exists into which God has not spoken in Christ (3); as such there is no need for an analogia entis (analogy of being) to bridge the creature-Creator gap. The dividing difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, therefore, was to be found in the analogia entis dogmatized in the Vatican I’s duplex ordo cognitionis (two-fold order of knowledge) that asserted a natural realm in which God could be known via reason outside of God’s revelation in Christ (155).
In Balthasar’s estimation, Barth wrongly saw the dividing difference between Catholicism and Protestantism as the analogia entis (analogy of being), when the real issue was that of a view of natura pura that had pervaded much of Catholicism through Neo-Scholasticism, and which Balthasar feared liberal Protestantism was following. For Balthasar, to follow Barth and negate pure nature meant humans simply became passive recipients of God’s act: “what role could there be for any other actors once God appear on the historical stage (7).” This did not mean, however, that the Church had to accept Aristotle’s natura pura on its own terms, but had to interpret natura pura incarnationally. In appropriating Aristotle via Aquinas, the Church had to remember Aristotle’s conception of nature was incomplete because it did not take into account the incarnation, the resurrection, or sin. Whereas Aristotle contended the end of man was natural and thereby nature had to provide the means by which humanity could reach their potential, for Balthasar, the incarnation demonstrated the natural end of humanity finds its fulfillment in union with the divine without evacuating human nature (76). Therefore, Aristotle’s realm of pure nature had to be reworked and viewed through a theological lens to become useful. This is what Balthasar felt the Neo-scholastics and liberal Protestants failed to do; they defined natura pura from a philosophical or abstract conception apart from Christ rather than as a theological concept that begins from Christ. Barth was right to oppose certain views of the analogia entis but in rejecting a realm of pure nature outright along with the analogia entis, Barth risked seeing nature as completely absorbed by grace. For Balthasar, pure nature exists but as a hypothetical category only able to be seen in reverse from Christ; pure nature works within revelation. A form of the analogia entis is still necessary because while it is difficult to detect the boundary between pure nature and graced nature, delineation between creature and Creator does exist: grace remains grace, and nature, nature.
By placing the starting point of theology within God’s revelation of Christ, Balthasar felt Barth provided a form that pressed through a divide between election and human freedom. Balthasar thought some expressions of Reformed orthodoxy and Neo-scholastism argued from a tacit nominalism that saw “an abstract, unitary God of power exist[ing] behind the Triune God manifested in the economy of salvation,” “a hidden God behind the revealed Triune God” (130). Here, God’s election comes prior to his revelation as Trinity, making the Trinity, creation, and human choice subject to election. Barth argued against the prior will of God by “placing the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God” for election cannot happen before or outside of Christ (139). God’s perfections, therefore, are not limited to those that exist in God’s unity, such as power, but are open to those found in his Triune nature, such as the freedom to love. Because God is love in himself and does not need creation to complete himself, he remains free and creation remains a free act; he does not become love when he creates, nor does he hold an absolute power able to act contrary to his essential being of love. Election does not create the Trinity. In this way, the Incarnation does not become a response to sin, but was always the means by which human nature could find its fulfillment within the divine. “Grace is proper to human nature because the latter’s true end exceeds its nature, friendship with God” (162).
Balthasar and Barth never came to agreement on the enigmatic cleft that separated the Catholic and Protestant Church. Barth continually saw the Christ as over and against the Church while Balthasar viewed the Church as the “chaste prostitute.” However, Long convincingly argues whereas Barth is often used today to drive a wedge between these two ecclesiologies, Balthasar’s oft-dismissed reading of Barth actually provides one of the strongest points of contact between them. Balthasar’s theology remained throughout his lifetime a nuanced appropriation of Barth. Perhaps most importantly, Long provides a “defense of the conversation between them and a way of doing theology that involves friendship rather than conquest”(2).
Reviewed by Derek Geerlof
Publisher’s page: http://store.augsburgfortress.org/store/productgroup/658/Saving-Karl-Barth
