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The “Reverent Agnosticism” of Karl Barth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

H. L. Stewart
H. L. Stewart
Affiliation:
Halifax, Nova Scotia
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Extract

Denial of the competence of the human mind for exploration of the ultimate meaning of the Universe may be associated with a serene confidence that the secret is otherwise accessible. Athenians of the fifth century, B.C., had a mystical element of which Plato speaks at times with contempt but at other times with profound respect. Careless alike of the Protagorean skepticism and of its Socratic refutation, they would withdraw periodically to Eleusis for devotional rites, from which they came back radiant about the manner in which they had been “helped.” Plotinus and his Neo-Platonists found in distrust of reasoning the basis for a surer trust. St. Augustine's Neo-Platonist youth was, as he said, a fitting preliminary for the mood of his mature Christian assurance: Non in dialectica cotnplacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum. More than seven centuries later, St. Bernard was not only distressed but alarmed as he overheard discussions at a Paris street corner among students coming from Abelard's lecture-room, where they had been actually encouraged to subject the Faith to intellectual analysis. The fourteenth century mystics of the Rhineland showed reaction on a great scale from the cut-and-dried “Natural Theology” of Aquinas. It had been too much for even Bonaventura and Duns Scotus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , July 1950 , pp. 215 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1950

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References

1 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, p. 87.

2 Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz Heute, translation entitled “God in Action,” p. 42, by Homrighausen and Ernst.

3 Ibid.

4 Paradise Regained, Book I.

5 A. Loisy, L'évangile et l'église, p. 6.

6 E. Brunner, Christianity and Civilization, p. 34.

7 Wilhelm Pauck, Karl Barth, p. 11.

8 Zwischen den Zeiten, 1927. Cf. Barth's address to a meeting of Swiss ministers, September 11, 1934, on “Ministry of the Word of God,” in which he enumerated personal and cultural qualities desirable in a minister, and pointed out that the very Age which has successfully insisted on them is the Age for which the ministerial office seems to be more and more judged superfluous. He agrees that it is superfluous if it calls for such qualities only. The address was later published in Theologische Existenz Heute.

9 Karl Barth, Credo pp. 7, 8 (J. S. McNab's translation).

10 A passage of God in Action (translated from Theologische Existenz Heute) may be quoted to refute what I have here argued. Barth there (p. 30) says “The Scriptures govern the Church, and not the Church the Scriptures.” But this is just another case of flagrant contradiction, making the interpreter of Barth despair.

11 Translator's preface to Barth's Credo (Translation by J. S. McNab).

12 H. L. Mansel, Bampton Lectures, p. 160.

13 Letters of Dean Stanley, II, p. 14, edited by Prothero and Bradley.

14 J. S. Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 129.

15 “Perhaps the ruin of idealistic beliefs may have to follow hard upon that of the beliefs which are supernatural, and the real abasement of mankind's morality will date from the day it has seen the truth of things.” (Renan, The Future of Science, Preface xix. Translation by A. D. Vandaur.)