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The Transcendental Method in the Theology of Karl Barth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

George S. Hendry
Affiliation:
101 A Kingston Terrace RD4 Princeton NJ 08540, U.S.A.

Extract

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Kantian element in the theological method of Karl Barth and, more particularly, to show that this element, which is openly displayed in the Epistle to the Romans, did not disappear after the turn in his thought occasioned by his encounter with Anselm, but was carried over into the Church Dogmatics and forms an indispensable clue to the interpretation of the doctrine of reconciliation, which marks its climax.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

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References

page 213 note 1 v. Balthasar, H. U., The Theology of Karl Barth, New York, 1971, pp. 170ffGoogle Scholar. Barth's enthusiasm for Hegel, ill-concealed behind some ill-conceived criticisms, has also been noted by Roberts, R. H. in his ‘Barth's Doctrine of Time: Its Nature and Implications’ in Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Method, ed. Sykes, S. W., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 93.Google Scholar

page 213 note 2 Barth's, chapter on Kant in his Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge, Judson Press, 1973, pp. 266312)Google Scholar deals mainly with the transparent weaknesses of his theory of religion and, while it gives a short account of the theory of knowledge presented in the first Critique, makes no mention of the transcendental method.

page 213 note 3 The phrase is taken from R. H. Roberts, op. cit., p. 130.

page 214 note 4 Antwort, pp 846f.

page 215 note 5 Royce, Josiah, Lecture on Modern Idealism, Yale, 1964 (1919), p. 23.Google Scholar

page 215 note 6 Critique of Pure Reason, B 167.

page 216 note 7 The Epistle to the Romans, by Karl Barth, tr. Hoskins, Edwyn C., Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 10Google Scholar. All page references are given to this translation, but in many cases the translation has been altered in order to bring it literally closer to the original, since Hoskyns's freedom obscures the echoes of Kant's language in the original Römerbrief.

page 216 note 8 op. cit., p. 4.

page 216 note 9 op. cit., p. 46.

page 217 note 10 ibid.

page 217 note 11 op. cit., p. 168, etc.

page 217 note 12 Kant, op. cit., A 707ff.

page 217 note 13 Barth, op. cit., p. 271. It has been argued by Rudolf Otto and others that the dualisms which pervade the Kantian system represent disruptions of an original monism, and that the urge to system, despite the restraints Kant imposes on it, has its root in a pre-cognilive apprehension of unity which resembles the anamnesis of Plato. Kant's language at times lends support to this view. (Otto, R., Mysticism East and West, New York, Meridian, 1957, pp. 244f.Google Scholar)

page 217 note 14 op. cit., p. 149. cf. p. 173: ‘Sin is the specific gravity of human nature as such. Sin is not a fall or a series of falls in the life of man but the fall which has already taken place with his life as man.’

page 218 note 15 ibid.: ‘As the righteousness revealed to the world in Christ, so also the sin introduced into the world in Adam.…’.

page 218 note 16 op. cit., p. 175

page 218 note 17 ibid.

page 218 note 18 op. cit., p. 371.

page 218 note 19 op. cit., pp. 168, 230, 247, 250, etc.

page 218 note 20 op. cit., p. 242. Hoskyns shows a curious reluctance to translate Barth's term, Unmittelbarkeit, literally as ‘immediacy’, and resorts to periphrases like ‘direct dependence’ (which makes Barth sound like Schleiermacher, p. 242), ‘direct relationship’ (pp. 16, 230),‘direct union’ (p. 252).‘Immediacy’ appears on pp. 254, 256.

page 218 note 21 op. cit., p. 321.

page 219 note 22 See especially Oepke, Albrecht, Karl Barth und die Mystik, Leipzig, 1928Google Scholar. (It may be significant that this book sat undisturbed on the shelves of the Princeton Seminary Library from 1929 through 1970, when it was borrowed for the first time by this writer. The opening sentence of the Introduction is a gem which deserves 10 be quoted for its own sake: ‘The German language [like the English] possesses a mystical word of the first order, ll is “and”. If one is not clear about the relation of iwo magnitudes to each other, one connects them with an “and” and delivers a lecture or writes a more or less learned treatise about them.’ (p. 5).)

page 219 note 23 CD III/I, p. 59.

page 219 note 24 Kant on History, ed. Beck, L. W., Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 163, pp. 5368.Google Scholar

page 220 note 25 op. cit., p. 53.

page 220 note 26 Kant finds the answer to his question regarding the condition of the possibility of history, not in creation as such, but in the fall of man, which he saw as the birth of freedom, and the emancipation of human reason from animal instinct. This led Kant to the view that, while the fall was a fall downwards for the individual, it was a fall upwards for the race — an odd variation on the theme, O felix culpa!

page 220 note 27 CD III/I, pp. 65ff.]

page 220 note 28 CD III/I, p. 77.

page 220 note 29 op. cit., p. 81.

page 220 note 30 op. cit., p. 67.

page 221 note 31 CD III/2, p. 400.

page 221 note 32 CD III/2, p. 403.

page 221 note 33 CD II/I, p. 17.

page 221 note 34 Kant opined that the divine knowledge would be intuitive and thus different from (B 72).

page 221 note 35 CD II/I, p. 16.

page 221 note 36 CD II/I, p. 49.

page 222 note 37 op. cit., p. 5.

page 222 note 38 Kant, for one, credited the Platonic ideas with ‘creative power’ (A 569).

page 222 note 39 On this term (Übergriff) and its significance in Hegel see this writer's article on The Freedom of God in the Theology of Karl Barth’ in SJT, 31 (1978), p. 241.Google Scholar

page 222 note 40 CD II/I, pp. 311 ff. That Barth's position will not stand up, if taken in a purely logical sense, has been shown by Brown, R. in ‘On God's Ontic and Noetic Absoluteness; a Critique of BarthSJT, 33 (1980), pp. 533549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 222 note 41 CD IV/I, p. 10.

page 222 note 42 op. cit., p. 9.

page 222 note 43 op. cit., p. 18.

page 223 note 44 op. cit., p. 10.

page 223 note 45 op. cit., pp. 13f.

page 223 note 46 CD IV/I, p. 19.

page 223 note 47 op. cit., p. 742.

page 223 note 48 op. cit., p. 751. According to R. H. Roberts, Barth makes the redemption of men ‘something which happened to and not in their human nature … to and not in their human history and development’ and ‘the path of salvation a merely noetic realization’ (op. cit., p. 120).

page 224 note 49 op. cit., p. 747 (italics added).

page 224 note 50 Critique of Pure Reason. B xxx.

page 225 note 51 Ogden, Schubert M., ‘What Sense Does II Make to Say, “God Acts in History”?’ In The Reality of God, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, pp. 164187Google Scholar; Kaufman, Gordon D., ‘On the Meaning of “Act of God”’ in God the Problem, Harvard University Press, 1972, pp. 119147.Google Scholar

page 225 note 52 Ogden, p. 166.

page 225 note 53 Ogden, p. 175.

page 226 note 54 Kaufman, p. 136.

page 226 note 55 Ogden, pp. 17gff.

page 226 note 56 Ogden, p. 184.

page 226 note 57 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 644.

page 226 note 58 Kaufman, p. 142.

page 226 note 59 Kaufman, p. 137.

page 226 note 60 Kaufman, pp. 141 f.

page 226 note 61 Kaufman, pp. 142f.

page 227 note 62 Kaufman, p. 125.