A Map of Twentieth-Century Theology

A MAP OF
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
THEOLOGY
READINGS FROM KARL BARTH
TO RADICAL PLURALlSM
Edited and Introduced by

CARL E. BRAATEN
and
ROBERT W. JENSON
~
. ,
FORTRESSPRESS Minneapolis
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To LaVonne
and
Blanche
A MAP 01" lWENT[ETH-CENTURY THEOLOGY

Rcadings from Karl Barth to Radical Pluralism
Copyright @ [995 Augsburg Fortress. AlI rights reserved. Except for brief quotalions in critical arti-
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The editors grateflllly acknowledge permissions to reprint received from Pllblishers listcd in the Ac-
knowledgments, which constitute an addilion to Ihis page.
Cover photos: Albert Schweitzer (Beltmann ArchÍ\'es); Karl Barth; Rudolf Bultmann (Edward C.
Hobbs); Karl Rahner (Andes Press Agency)
Cover designo )udy Swanson
Library of Congress Carologing-in-Publication Daro
A map of twentieth-century Ihcology : rcadings from Karl Barth to

radical pluralism I edited and inlroduced by Car[ E. Braatcn and
Robert W. )enson.
p. cm.
[ndudes bibliographical references and index.
[SBN 0-8006-2686-9 (alk. paper)
1. Theology, Doctrinal. 2. Theology, Doctrinal-History-20Ih
century-Sources. 1. Braaten, Carl E., [929- . 11. )enson,
Robert W.
BR53.M38 1995
230' .09' 04-dc20 95-[9864
C[P
The paper uscd in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Stan-
dard for [nformation Sciences-Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library Materials, ANS[ Z329.4-
1984.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. Al" 1-2686

99 98 97 96 95 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10
Contents
Preface IX
Introduction 1
The BackgroundofTwentieth-Century Theology
PART ONE OIALECTIGAL THEOLOGY
ANO ITS DESCENOANTS 13
l. The Crisis in Theology 15

Editors' Introduction
l. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus 18

2. Karl Barth, The Strange New World within the Bible 21
3. Ernst Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity 31
2. Oialectical Theology 39
Editors' Introdl,ction
4. KarlBarth,The Epistle to the Romans 42

5. RudolfBultmann, The Question of"Dialectical"
Theology 50
6. Emil Brunner, Nature and Grace 54
3. New Systematics 62
Editors'Introduction
7. KarlBarth, Church Dogmatics 65

8. Paul TiIlich, SystematicTheology 80
4. Theologies ofSecularization 94
9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Letters to Eberhard Bethge 98

10. Friedrich Gogarten, Secularization and
Christian Faith 107
v
- ~
CONTENTS
5. The New Hermeneutics ll5

11. Rudolf Bultmann, The Problem of Hermeneutics 119

12. Cerhard Ebeling, The Word ofCod and Hermeneutics 130
13. Ernst Fuchs, The Essence of the "Language Event" and
Christology 138
6. EschatologicalTheology 147
14. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Revelation as History 151

15. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope 160
16. Johannes Metz, The Church and the World in Light of
"Political Theology" 168
7. Trinitarian Theology 179

17. KarlBarth,The Ooctrine ofthe Trinity 182
18. KarlRahner, The Trinity 190
19. Eberhard Jüngel, The Ooctrine of the Trinity 196
PART 1WO ALTERNATIVE PARADIGMS

IN THEOLOGY 207
8. Theology of Religions 209
20. Paul TilIich, The Significance of the History of

Religions for the Systematic Theologian 213
21. Hendrik Kraemcr, Christian Attitudes toward
Non-Christian Religions 222
22. Karl Rahner, Christianity and the
Non-Christian Religions 231
9. Confessional Theologies 247
23. Werner Elert, The RevelationofCod 257.
24. AndersNygren,Agapeand Christianity 262
25. WilIiamTemple, The PersonofChrist 268
10. Transcendental Thomism 276
26. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology 281

27. Karl Rahner, Knowledge ofCod 289
"i
CONTENTS
11. Theology and Language 300

28. AntonyFlew, R. M. Hare, and BasilMitchell,
The UniversityOiscussion 305
29. lan T. Ramsey,ReligiousLanguage 313
30. Paul Ricoeur,Myth and Symbol 319
12. Process Theology 328
3l. Pierre Teilhardde Chardin, Evolution and thc

Christian Future 332
32. AIfredNorth Whitehead, Cod and the World 340
33. Charles Hartshorne, The Oivine Sclf-Creation 349
13. Neo-Protestantism in America 352
34. Walter Rauschenbusch,Theology and the SocialCospel 356
35. H. RichardNiebuhr, Revelationand RadicalMonotheism 361
36. Reinhold Niebuhr, Human Nature and Politics 367
37. Carl F. H. Henry, Cod, Revelationand Authority 377
Acknowledgments 383
1ndex 387
vii
L "-
Preface
A Map ofTwentieth-Century Theology charts the roads that have led to the pres-
ent situation of theology. It offers readings that cover the most significant devcl-
opments in twentieth-century theology up to the. emergence of the current
radical pluralismo The readings are selected from the formative writings of the
principal theologians of the periodo At each branch in a road, the next group of
selections is introduced by an essay that interprets the basic themes and trends
represented in it.
Every teacher of theology knows how difficult it is to introduce students to the
fundamental theological events and ideas that have shaped our present situation.
This volume plaees in the hands of students readings that eontain the generative
ideas of the leading sehools of thought, from the crisis in theology in the first
decades of the eentury to the rise of the radical pluralism that is the distinguish-
ing feature of present-day theology. Without some road map, eontemporary stu-
dents often find it diffieult to make meaningful contact with the theologieal
giants of the era just passed. They tend to become dependent on sweeping gen-
eralizations and seeond-hand slogans. The difficulty is compounded by the fae!
that many truly historie doeuments are out of print.
Where there is seleetion there must be eriteria. The editors disclaim any in-
tentional ideologieal control óver the choiees made. The eriteria have instead
been pedagogieal: to show how we have arrived where we are. The question was
always: What must be included to enable neeessary knowledge of our immediate
theologieal history? To display the chain of links between the present and the
past? Our aim has been to eounteract the amnesia that enervates so mllch COI1-
temporary theology.
The introductory essays explain the reasons for the individual selections. That
there is a predominance of German theologians cannot be helped; it simply is
the ways things unfolded lIntil the center of gravity of creative theology shifted to
the United States. This shift brought with it the explosion of pluralism that char-
acterizes the present situation. The readings break off at the threshold of popular
contemporary currents: liberationism, feminism, multiculturalism, environmen-
talism, deconstructionism, neo-liberalism, etc. Important individual German
and American theologians of the just-ending generation are also omiUed. We
break off where we do beca use these movements and thinkers are readily accessi-
ble through current pllblications and are commonly taught in theological semi-
naries and departments of religion.
ix
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PREFAC~
The texts are taken from standard editions of authors' works, as cited in the Ac-
knowledgments. Because the selections even in translation cover such a broad
historical period, there were in the originals considerable differences of style (in-
cluding punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and footnoting). We have modified
some of the texts in order to achieve a modicum of stylistic consistency but with-
out seeking complete uniformity and without affecting the content. In particu-
lar, we have not attempted to render the selections gender-free since to do so
would have required substantial rewriting with the possibility of altering the orig-
inal meaning. Biblical citations have been allowed to stand in the form given by
the selected texts, without striving for consistency of style or translation. Where
necessary, however, we have corrected chapter and verse references to corre-
spond to modern English editions. Capitalization has been held to a minimum
throughout, and footnotes have been eliminated. Omitted passages are marked
by ellipses. During the earlier periods of the preparation, some of our stlldcnts
helped with work on the texts; the contriblltion of onc, Stephcn Verkollw, thcn a
student at Cettysburg Scminary, deserves explicit mention.
Carl E. Braatell
Robert w: /ellSOl1
J-
Introduction
The Background of
Twentieth-Century Theology
Every period in the church's history provides Christian theology with chal-
lenges of its own particular sort. Perhapswe may say that Western modernity's
challenges have becn to the faith's plausibility within Western culture. The
eighteenth-century European and North American Enlightenment undid the
culturally establishedwaysin which WesternChristianity had assured itselfthat
its talk of Cod could responsiblybe taken for truth and that the authority of lhe
Bible was appropriate. So corrosive indeed were the Enlightenment's effects on -
the established life of Christianity,that by the opening of the nil1etcenthccntury
European and North American elites generally took it for granted that Chris-
tianity'sday wasovero -
We predict and Cod disposes.The nineteenth century proved in fact to be
one of the great periods of Christian intellectual and missionary expansion.
And the intellectual side of this feat was achieved by creative confrontation
with the Enlightenment.
For OUTpurposes, we may characterize the Enlightenment quite simply. .
The seventeenth century had witnessedthe firstgreat explosion of modern sci-
ence. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment consisted in being mightily im-
pressed by science's achievements and in adopting a general intellectual
policy shaped by this awe. For our particular purposes, we may describe this
policy under two headings: (a) suspicion of tradition, and (b) reshaping of the
West's established enterprise of comprehensive understanding, usually called
metaphysics. .
11
The new science was based on only a few methodological commitments. One
was culturally determinative: rigorousdetermination not to take things at face
1
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INTRODUCTION
value. The archetypical and inspiring case of such "critique of appearances" was
Copernican astronomy. It certainly appears that the sun goes round the earth;
astronomy was rescued from sterility by persistence in the question, "Yes, but
does it realIy? Let us look again."
It was inevitable that once Europe and America had seen how the critique of
appearances produced abundant new understanding of the world in which we
live-and vastly improved technology based on this understanding- the dream
should arise of extending the policy to the knowledge and improvement of
human personal life and society. Pursuit of this dream was the great intelIectual
enterprise of the Enlightenment.
But what is humanity's face value? What are OUTinitial "appearances"? In the
essential temporality of our life, it is the tradition of the past that is our face value.
When we ask, "What are humans?" we have no other place to look for an initial
presentation than to parents and then generalIy to humans who carne before us.
Thus, the critique of appearances, applied to human life, became the critique of
tradition. Humankind generalIy supposes that an opinion's establishment in tra-
dition is the very thing that makes it plausible. "Enlightened" Westerners came
to suppose the opposite.
The critique of tradition poses theological problems in severa] ways. Very di-
rectly, trust in the traditional teaching of the church will be replaced by suspi-
cion, and the dissolution of dogma has been a continuing phenomenon of the
modern periodo A "modern" theology is one that proposes some way of dealing
with the resulting void.
Most specificalIy, the critique of tradition attacks the identification of God,
which in any religion is accomplished by tradition. Indeed, every actual rcli-
gion simply is a historical tradition that identifies God in some way, as "Mar-
duk, the primal Hydrologist," or "the God of Israel, who raised Jesus from the
dead."
This point was not always apparent to the Enlighteners themselves; some of
them thought there was or could be a functioning religion natural to l1U-
mankind and therefore independent of tradition, a religion that worshipped a
God identified only genericalIy. The attempt to practice such religion, however,
demonstrated its emptiness: to worship as Benjamin Franklin did and not to
worship at alI quickly work out to much the same thing. ActualIy to pTay to and
be blessed by God, we must identify which God we intend as the true one,
among the multitude of candidates. A prayer is an address to someone, and one
god's blessing is another god's curse.
The "natural" religion of Enlightened religionists first emptied the churches
by depriving its adherents of trust in the specificalIy identified God there wor-
shipped, and then displayed its own insipidity. The spiritual void these events left
in Western culture has been the chief theological and philosophical preoccupa-
tion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
3-
THE BACKGROUND OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY THEOLOGY
111
Christianity's talk of God had been plausible not only because it was anchored in
tradition, but also because it belonged to a comprehensive interpretation of real-
ity. The classic metaphysical thinking of the West claimed insight by which the
world immediately knowable as the deep structure of that world, and the reality
of God, could alI be interpreted within one discourse and with one standard of
truth. It was supposed that such various truths as thatwater runs downhill and
beauty is good and Jesus is Son of God, must alI somehow make one truth to-
gether. The Enlightenment attacked also this context of theology.
Some Enlighteners. noting the great differences between the cognitive pro-~
cedures of metaphysics and those of science, became metaphysical skeptics. It
certainly seems to the human mind that, for example, every event must have a
cause and that this connection itself must then have a Cause. But such things
can hardly be established by scientific procedure, and if science is to be our one
paradigm of truth, such things cannot be established at all. Thereupon, critical
reason suspects: perhaps the only reason we think such things is that human
minds need to think them. David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) \\'ere the great leaders down this path; on it, talk of God lost much
of its old context.
Other En]ighteners made a metaphysics of their own that was to be "scien-
tific." The l11etaphysicalIy il11pressive aspect of the world as science l11ade it
known was its oTdeT.So muchof the worldhad heretoforeresistedhumanity's
longing for order that the new science seemed actively revelatory, unveiling a
blessed vision of harmony. Every vision of universal harmony is at its heart po-
etic; it explicates some "root metaphor." The new science did not itself provide
such a metaphor, but the teclmology based on it seemed to.
Seventeenth-century physics is called mechanics because its laws explain the
behavior of machines. And a machine can be a metaphor of harmony: it is put
together of numerous and disparate parts and encompasses great contending
dynamisms, yet is itself stable and constrains all forces to one end.
If God's creation is a universalmachine, God must be a universal Engineer;
some Enlighteners tried to worship just such a God. A good engineer's creation
does not need frequent repair or adjustment; an omnipotent Engineer's creation
would never need it. Therefore, the God of the machine-cosmos cannot be ac-
ti'/e in creation once it is there; every "intervention" would only show that God
had been incompetent in the first place.
Thus, this metaphysics does have place for a God but not for the Christian
God. The God of the Bible cannot be cast as a perfect Engineer: his very deity is
invested in interruptions and new beginnings, in forgiveness and resurrection. If
the universe is envisioned as a machine, the God of the Bible must appear in-
competently godly.
"-- -
INTRODUCTION
Two great efforts to meet these challenges were launched in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, and set the pattern for all that followed.
One was the work of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834),
the other of the philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831).
The Enlightenment began with writers in the English language and only later
was exported to French and German territories. It was in Germany that inte-
gration of Christian faith and Enlightenment was persistently attempted, and
this effort made Cermany the center of the theological world for a century and
a half.
Friedrich Schleiermacher was a leading participant in the burgeoning intel-
lectual and artistic life of tllrn-of-the-century Cermany. The book that made him
the "church falher of the nineteenth century" appeared in 1799: On Religion:
Speeches io lis Cultured Despisers.
Schleiermacher did not defend traditional interpretations of Cod; he as-
sllmed that the Enlightenment had undone them for the cIass to which he be-
longed and for which he wrole. He accepted that religion cOllld be defended
neilher as a metaphysical sort of knowlc.dge nor, as the proponents of "natural"
rcligion often Ihollghl, as a necessary correlate of morality. But knowledge and
moral action are nol, he said, the whole or cenler oflife, and it is the great error
of Ihe Enlightenment to sllppose that they are.
Throllgh the lasl qllarler of the eighteenth century, a new ideal of humanity
had been taking shape in artislic and intellectual Cermany. lts chief articulator
was perhaps Johann Cottfried Herder (1744-1803); ils paradigmatic embodi-
ment was Ihe greal Johann Wolfgang von Coethe (1749-1832). These arlisl-
philosophers envisaged Ihe human person as a being of infinitely diverse
potenlialities, whose calling is Ihe maximalllnfolding of these polentialities and
their simultaneous integration into harmony. That is, the human person is lo be
his or her own work of art, of the kind thal occupies time, as do music or poetry
or drama. We may say that the new ideal was of ahuman life as a self-composed
Mozart symphony.
In effect,the Speechessaid to Iheirreaders:Do you indeed wantyour life to be
an achievement of musical-dramatic coherence? Is Coethe your model? Then
you must-surprising though it may be to you-cultivate your religious life. You
think religion irrelevant only beca use you are, despite your enthusiasm for such
as Goethe, still bound to the Enlightenment's superficial vision of humanity, in
which religion has no proper place. But in religion and only in religion can the
events and aspects of a life, through time, cohere to make a beautiful whole.
Religion's utterances, interpreted as would-be factual statements, as meta-
physics, said Schleiermacher, are indeed unverifiable. And morality needs no
support of divine rewards; it is rather spoiled by such. But religion is in fact nei-
ther of these. Religion is rather a mode of "feeling," of "taste" or "sense." Along
with knowledge and practice, feeling is a third mode of human existence in its
own right.
4
L
Schleiermacher's "feeling" has little directIy to do with "emotion." We are

cIoser to his use when we speak of someone having "a feel" for color, or cultivat-
ing "a taste" for oysters. "Feeling" is a contact with reality that is more primitive
than knowledge or choice yet somehow already encompasses both. Just as such,
it is the conscious person's unity with himself or herself, the mode of experience
that is present in every experience and in which particular experiences can
therefore be possessed together as belonging to the persono Moreover, as the ex-
perience in which cognitive and active experiences of the worId originate and
are not yet divided, feeling is also the point of the conscious person's unity with
the worId, in which knowing and acting first become possible.
As the unity of my experience in itself and as the unity of my experience with
its object, feeling is thus conscious being's grasp of wholeness. And so there is re-
ligion. Religion, says Schleiermacher, is feeling for "the universal," for the "un-
bounded." Religion is the sense of the coherence of things, by which alone we in
fact venture from moment to moment. It is therefore a fundamental function of
human being, a mode of experience necessarily co-present in every experience,
a grasp of reality without which conscious life would fall apart into temporal frag-
ments ofknowing and doing. Therefore, we cannot not be religious; we can only
be richly or poorIy religious. And Cod is the word by which we aim ourselves to-
ward that infinite with which-in every religion-we feel ourselves at one, bul
which we can never know or act upon.
Religion, however, is never actual except as some particular religion, for to be-
come actual it must embrace knowing and doing, and these are always of partic-
ulars, never of the whole as such. Actual religion always belongs lo some
community united by a common particular focus of religious feeling. Our actual
choice, therefore, is among historically actual religions; and our challenge is to
embrace a religion that fulfilhf the religious function copiously and precisely.
Theology is a description of the knowings and doings that characterize some
such particular religion. What specifies Christianity among the religions is,
Schleiermacher thinks, plain: the concentration of all religious feeling on the
figure of Christ.
Through the nineteenth century, there were few who simply adopted
Schleiermacher's whole proposa!. But the main features of his procedure were
instantly and almost universally adopted and enabled the theological enter-
prise's new beginning; these define what historians of theology call "Neo-
Protestantism." There could be and were many succeeding and competing
sorts ofNeo-Protestant theology, united and defined as such only by sharing in
Schleiermacher's procedure.
Neo-Protestant method begins with an analysis of human being, which 10-
cates in us a necessary and paramollnt experiential function-whether feeling or
some other-and finds in it a place for "religion." This analysis does not need to
be done transcendentally as by Schleiermacher himself; it can be done psycho-
logically, sociologically, or metaphysically, or even read from the Bible or church
5
L
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INTRODUCTlON
tradition. Next, history is identified as the realm within which actual religions
appear. One can then make a particular religion plausible by showing how it ful-
fills the religious function. Finally, theology is critical self-reflection of the par-
ticular religion itself.
Hegel has a different place in the history of theology. There were more
avowed "Hegelians" among the theologians of the nineteenth century than there
were material imitators of Schleiermacher, but within the theology of the church
it was Schleiermacher and not Hegel who provided the common basis. In the
broader intellectual life of Germany and North America, on the other hand,
Hegel's influence was extraordinary.
Hegelianism itself ceased to dominate around the middle of the century, but
many movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental philoso-
phy-existentialism, Marxism, personalism, or the stream through Nietzsche
and Heidegger-may each be described as a fragment of the Hegelian system
gone off on its own. And whenever theologians have turned against Neo-
Protestantism-as decisively at the beginning of our century-these movements
and Hegel himself have regularly offered resource.
Hegel met the Enlightenment head-on. Christianity, in his judgment, could
not be restored by negotiating with "natural" religion, or by seeking a realm of re-
ligion's own not subject to the Enlightenment's critique, such as "feeling." In-
stead, Hegel built yet one more-the last, it is often thought-in the great
sequence ofthe West's metaphysical systems, to be the context and explication of
Christianity's knowledge of God. And he built it by taking the crisis of metaphys-
ical thinking into the system itself.
Hume and Kant had apparently shown that what human subjects take for
metaphysical truths are merely the necessary demands of subjectivity itself: we
think, for example, that all events have causes because otherwise we could not
think events at all. Very well, said Hegel-and other German "idealists" with
him-that only means that reality taken whole is the self-expression of Subjec-
tivity. So all events do indeed have causes, beca use were it not for the structure of
Mind that demands causes there would be no events to lack them.
The "religious" word for the Mind that thus expresses itself in all things is
God. Philosophy and religion have the same matter, but in different forms. Phi-
losophy grasps eternal truth in thought; religion, in symbols and stories. This dis-
tinction was to cast a long shadow over the twentieth century, in, for instance,
the debates over "demythologizing."
Enlighteners who created a mechanistic worldview pitted metaphysical truth
and historical &eedom against each other, thereby excluding the biblical God
&om metaphysical truth. Hegel attacked directly, constructing a metaphysics in
which historical eventfulness is itself the model of encompassing truth. Hegel
analyzed the movement of history, precisely in its unpredictability and contra-
dictoriness-in its seeming irrationality-for its 0W11sort of sense.
J
Thus, for example, the way in which, during Hegel's lifetime, the French
monarchy had provoked its opposite, popular revolutionary government, which
then produced in Napoleon a synthesis ofboth, has, said Hegel, its own logic-
the famous logic of"thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis." This is not the logic of
abstract reasoning but the logic of creative reasoning, of "spirit." Spirit is the
lively order that emerges in all reality, of which mechanical orderliness is but a
passing aspecto And again, the religious word for the Spirit that by and through
all reality brings forth its own opposite and then reconciles that opposite to itself
within itself, is God.
IV
The Enlightenment's direct challenge to the authority of tradition, and its chal-
lenge to the faith's metaphysical plausibility, carne together in the center of
Christian theology, the doctrine of Christ. The critical spirit of the Enlighten-
ment created, as Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) wrote, an "ugly ditch" between
the new historical mode of thinking and the dogma tic Christology of the church.
Lessing formulated the problem that beca me critical for all subsequent theology
as a sharp distinction between "accidental truths of history and necessary truths
of reason."
Applied to Christology, this distinction created a dualism between the "his-
torical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith." Traditional Christology had read the
Gospels' narratives about Jesus within a system of concepts that identified Jesus
Christ as one person who is both fully human and fully divine. As long as this
Christology rel1lained in force, it could scarcely occur to anyone to search for a
human Jesus of history a~ he'1night have been before he became the object of
faith and the content of doctrine.
But critique of tradition could not spare the sources that told the story of Jesus
ofNazareth. Iml1lanuel Kant, in the important essay, "What Is Enlightenl1lent?"
defined Enlightenl1lent as coming of age, as emancipation from adolescent de-
pendence on authorities. "Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason' -
that is the motto of the Enlightenment." The Bible became the test case. AII the
latest critical methods and concepts were applied to the sacred texts, without
reservation. "Criticism does not recognize infallible texts."
Thus Lessing's ditch widened, and became a huge gap between christological
doctrine and the historical Jesus. If the gap could not be bridged, Christianity it-
self would be the victim for having failed to meet the challenge of critical histor-
ical consciousness.
The New Testament provided two forms of the basic christological proposi-
tion essential to faith: John 1:14, "The Word became flesh," and 2 Corinthians
5:19, "God was in Christ." From the beginning of theology, these propositions
7
INTRODUCTION
were understood to assert a special unity of Jesus with God. In speaking of Christ,
both the unity (more stated by the Johannine passage) and the duality (more ap-
parent in the passage from Corinthians) had to be maintained. If the unity of
God with Jesus is wrongly stressed, the temptation is to overshadow his real hu-
manity, his flesh and blood; those in the andent church who fell to this tempta-
tion were called "monophysites," and accused of "docetism." If the duality is
wrongly stressed, the view results that Jesus is ahuman being at best very inti-
mately related to God; no real incarnation occurs. This position was called
"Nestorianism" in the ancient church; the extreme form that treats Jesus simply
as an exceptional human has been called "ebionitism."
Friedrich Schleiermacher, in The Christian Faith, identified docetism ando
ebionitism as perennial heresies, also in his own time. The nineteenth century's
struggle to reach a modern understanding of Christ oscillated between these do-
cetic and ebionitic poles; underlying both was an understanding of God that
made his union with humanity an ontological impossibility. Thcologians of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries inherited an idea of God as ullerly im-
mutable and impassiblc, and thus incapable of entering the realm of finite and
contingent human persons. The Word could not rcally become flesh and Jesus
not really be God. The old adage that "the finite is not capable of the infinite"
ruled. Thus, while many of these theologians rejccted the Christology of the an-
cient church on account of its use of Hellenistic metaphysical concepts like
"being" and "hypostasis," their difficulty with the Incarnation was in large part
due to assumptions about God inherited from the same Hellenistic philosophy.
Immanucl Kant bclieved he could spell out the meaning of Christianity as a
"religion within the limits of reason alone." This religion enshrines the idea of
the moral person as well pleasing to God. Every human is drawn by this ideal,
but Kant considered Jeslls its most perfect example. In principie, however, the
moral ideal is universal, and needs no historical example to be present in human
reason. We may think of"Christ" as an eternal ideal only incidentally connected
to the individual Jesus. Since Jesus was no other than human for Kant, Kant's
Christology could be called ebionitic. But since he has the concepl of an ideal
Christ, as the real object of faith, who is represented by but not embodied in the
person of Jesus, his Christology is also docetic.
Kant's merely ethical Christology was quickly transcended by the more pow-
erful views of Schleiermacher and Hegel. Schleiermacher's account of Chris-
tianity was radicéllly christocentric: what is unique to Christianity is that
everything in it is related to the redemption achieved by Jesus of Nazareth. Thus,
he started his system of Christian doctrine with the present experience of re-
demption shared by the Christian community, and moved inferentially back-
ward to ask: Who and what must Jesus have been to explain the Christian
experience of salvation? The answer was that Jesus is the original and creative
model of the redeemed life that he inspires in his followers. I-lis uniqueness lies
in his perfect consciousness of God, and in this sense he may be called divine.
8
- ---
Schleiermacher's critics were quick to point out that Jesus' awareness of God,
no matter how constant, does not make him categorically more than humano To
callJesus God on this account is pious hyperbole. Schleiermacher could not ac-
cept the dogma tic formula of"one person in two natures" because he felt it con-
tradictory and illogical, but even more because he found it unnecessary to
account for contemporary christocentric religious experience.
I-Iegel took a different path. From his transcendental point of departure,
Hegel constructed a speculative theory of the Christian doctrines ofTrinity and
ofChristology. The Absolute, "God the Father," objectifies itsclf and so posits an-
other, the eternal "Son of God," the world of finitude in distinction from the In-
finite. Next, the difference between the Father and the Son is overcome in the
"Spirit," the principie of return and reconciliation.
Some theologians rejoiced to see such a beautiful overcoming of the gap be-
tween Christianity and modern philosophy: what Christians mean by the incar-
nation of God, and the history of being, are reconciled in a universal synlhesis.
But what do es all this speculation from above have to do with the lowly man
from Nazareth? Hegcl seemed to bypass the concrete person of Jesus. Lessing's
point was apparently vindicated again: there can be no essential connection be-
tween facts of history and truths of reason. But the Christian gospel is not based
in a philosophical synthesis of deity and humanity but in the Word become a his-
torical individual.
Hegel's metaphysical Christology provoked strong reaction from tluee sides:
(a) Positivisthistoricismturned awayfrom a prior; philosophyto establishwhat
"really happened" in the history of Jesus; (b) a Ion e protester in Denmark, S¡.jren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855), rebelled against universal historical systems in the
name of the concrete particularity of Jesus Christ in whom the eternal God ap-
peared in human time; and'(c) ~ third front was opened by confessional theolo-
gians who tried lo integrate the new emphasis on the historicalJesus into the
framework of traditional Christology. Thus, for example, Gottfried 'nlOmasius
(1802-1873) advanced a "kenolic" Chrislology according lo which the eternal
Logos emptied himsclf of his cosmological attributes, limiting himsclf lo a
human finite life thal could occur in hislory. All three of these lines continue in
various twentieth-century schools of theology.
"I-listorical-critical" positivism aimed to build Christology directly on the life
ofJesus. The beginning of"the quesl for the historicalJesus" coineided with the
breakup of Protestant orthodoxy; the new scholarship attempted to view Christ
from a historical, not a dogma tic, perspective. The goal was to approximate as
closely as possible a kind of cinematographic reproduction of the life of Jesus,
free of dogmatic prejudices. The interest of these biographers was far from
purely antiquarian. Most of the "Iife of Jesus" scholars were religiously moti-
vated: they hoped to draw a true-to-life picture of Jesus relevant to modern
times. They searched for natural explanations of myths and miracles. They
wanted to base piety directly on the religion and morality of Jesus rather than on
9
1
INTRODUCTION
later "mythological" or dogmatic constructions. They widened the ditch be-

tween the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christ of the Creeds.
Not only dogmatic Christology had to be smashed to enable the quest for the
historical Jesus but also the orthodox doctrine of Scripture's inspiration and ple-
nary inerrancy. Freedom to study Scripture critically, without dogma tic restric-
tion, was achieved in a series of fierce battles against orthodox theologians. In
order to write a biography ofJesus, scholars had to decide which sources were re-
liable. Thus, the root of modern biblical criticism is the religious drive to dis-
cover the personality. religious experience, and teaching of Jesus. If these could
be recovered, historical critics assumed, Christianity could again be at home in a
world shaped 'by enlightened and emancipated reason.
The more scholars examined the sources for a life of Jesus, the more they re-
alized that the sources have many gaps. Periods of Jesus' life recei\'e no mention
at all; at best, there are a few cIues here and there. For the rest, schulars had to
supplement the evidence with inferences from modern psycholog~'.on the prin-
cipie of analogy.ln consequence, as Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was to show,
their portrayals of Jesus' experience and teaching regularly bore striking resem-
blance to their own.
Kierkegaard was a solitary thinker whose struggle with the Begclian system
was to receive belated worldwide recognition in twentieth-century existential-
ism. Bis thought turned on Lessing's challenge to cross the "ugly ditch" between
historical facts and eternal truths. The answer fur Kierkegaard was the "leal' of
faith." The ditch could be bridged neither by metaphysical speculatiun nor by
histurical demonstration. History can at most prove that Jesus Christ was a great
mano But it cannot prove he was God incarnate. Christ is "the absolute paradox"
who cannot be reached by reason, metaphysical or historical.
Kierkegaard minted the coins that became current in dialectical and existen-
tialist theology: "infinite qualitative difference," "the moment," "incognito," "para-
dox," "encounter" and the like. They were calculated to break the christological
hold ofboth absolute idealism and positivistic historicism. Faith needs no external
props or authorities to gain access to the living Christ of the Bible. External assur-
ances can at most provide "approximate" certainty, too weak a foundation for the
hope of eternallife. Faith has to overcome the objective uncertainty of the histori-
cal brute fact that the God-man appeared as a particular person of the past, that
the eternal God has entered historical time. That eternity has entered time with-
out canccling it is a paradox that can be believed only in its offensiveness.
The nineteenth century did not harbor only rationalists, idealists. and histori-
cists. There were conservative and pietist theologians who cIung to the Bible's
authority and interpreted it by the Creeds. Theologians of the "Erlangen
School" made the most influential attempts to combine the cIassical traditions
with Schleiermacher's experiential theological method and the historical study
of Scripture, creating the "history of salvation" scheme of theology that was to be
popular also in the twentieth century.
10
v
Thus, after Schleiermacher and Hegel, various theological movements, of
which we have described only a few, proposed bridges over the "ugly ditch."
Kierkegaard's call for a leap of faith seemed to leave matters hanging in the air.
Attempts to discover a more secure location for faith and theology, even an "in-
vulnerable sphere," can be cIassified as subjectivist and objectivist.
Subjectivist or "expressivist" projects interpret theology as the expression of
the theologian's experience of faith. The Bible and church tradition enter only
subsequently; they are expressions of previous Christian experience, and so can
confirm or possibly correct what any individual theologian derives from his or
her expetience. This approach \Vasinitiated by Schleiermacher and continued
by the Erlangen School and by "liberals" such as Wilhelm Herrmann
(1846-1922). (We will come to other liberals in the first chapter.) Finally, such
interpretation leaves faith to rely on itsclf as the creator of its own basis and
contents.
An opposite approach was the quest for objective supports on which to rest
the relation between faith and God. Martin Luther had said that faith and God
belong together: your God is where you put your faith. But what mediates the
two? What holds God and faith together? We have already mentioned the ninc-
teenth century's most modern attempt to loca te a basis for faith in objcctive fact:
the "Iife of Jesus" movement. Leopold von Ranke (1794-1866) defined history
as the science that discovers what "really" happened in the past. This positivistic
historicism presented a tempting option for theology: an alternative to the secm-
ing arbitrariness of mysticism, rationalism, or dogmatism. In the historical facts
underlying the layers of later interpretation, contemporary faith could find a
sure basis backed by scientÍfic scholarship. But this ally proved fickle. If histori-
cal scholarship could provide an objective basis for faith, it could as easily with-
draw it; thus, faith was suspended in endless uncertainty. Those who sought
refuge from dogmatism in historicism merely exchanged one system of author-
ity for another.
Through the century, circles of Protestant orthodoxy remained, as another ob-
jectivism. These looked to the Bible as an absolute guarantee of faith amI doc-
trine. The doctrine of verbal inspiration was intended to underwrite that
guarantee, providing faith with a high threshold of objectivity. But faith's confi-
dence in divine revelation itself must then be shaken as soon as the aecuracy of
any statement in the Bible is doubted. Thus, orthodox theologians engaged in a
continuous battle against biblical scholarship and, in the end, could offer no de-
terrent to subjectivism.
Roman Catholicism offered a more massive system of objective supports.
Protestantism's struggles in the enconnter with modernity were addressed by
Roman Catholic authorities in a series of decrees and encyclicals, once even
requiring of priests and teachers an "oath against modernism." This defense was
11
;.
INTRODUCTION
maintained virtually to the time of the Second Vatican Council, when the flood-
gates opened.
VI
We can tarry no longer with the nineteenth century. Its detailed history is rich
and fascinating, but is not the one \Vehave to tell. In the introductory essay tothe
first set of readings, we will describe the beginning of specifically twentieth-
ccntury theology as the crisis of the nineteenth century's Neo-Protestantism.
The crisis was partly internal: the problems that worked themselves to the fore
had been inherent in the ways Schleiermacher and Hegel made the Christian
God newly plausible. And the crisis was partly a matler ofhistorical events whose
challenge Neo-Protestantism could not meet.
12
~
PARTONE
DIALECTICAL THEOLOGY
ANO ITS DESCENDANTS
1
The Crisis in Theology
The last great school of Neo-Protestantism was the "liberal" theology,

prominent in the decades around the turn of the century, so called because
of its moral coherence with liberalism generally, that is, with the politics
and economics of the bourgeoisie. Among the Neo-Protestant schools, the
liberal theology was distinguished by the particular analysis ofhuman exis-
tence with which it began and by the particular way in which it asserted
the historicality of religion.
Hegelianism and other idealist projects had fallen out of favor, perhaps
largely because of sheer conceptual ponderousness. And, with Darwinism,
mechanistic interpretations of the world again came to seem unavoidable.
Those we call the "liberal" theologians were unwillingto retreat to feeling or
a similar refuge. Instead, such theologians as Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889),
ErnstTroeltsch (1865-1923), and Adolfvon Harnack (1851-1930) turned to
1mmanuel Kant's moralism for their initiating analysis of human life.
Kant had worked to invalidate mechanistic metaphysics by invalidating
metaphysics in general. It'indeed appears to us that, for example, all events
must have a cause, and that this circumstance must itself have a Cause,
whether God or impersonal law. But, said Kant, this is an appearance im-
posed by the necessities not of reality somehow "out there" but of our re-
ality as subjects; except through such framing concepts as "cause," we
would not experience such things as "events" at all. We must resist the
temptation to think that the guiding concepts of our own subjectivity en-
able knowledge of reality "out there," given by the nature and relations of
those concepts themselves. To continue the central example: the circum-
stance that we must indeed think all events have causes does not enable
knowledge that there is in fact a universal Cause.
Kant did not undertake the critique of metaphysics in order to abolish all
talk of God but to enable a new, a-metaphysical location for it. Although
the idea of a universal personal Cause cannot be known to correspond in
metaphysical fashion to anything other than itself, it is a necessary postu-
late within mora/subjectivity; and there, moreover, it is true in the way ap-
propriate to moral conviction. Nor do we thereby make God a postulate of
15
J-
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGY
merely individual aspiration, for a conviction is moral precisely insofar as it

is asserted as a rule for all.
The most influential systematician of liberalism, Albrecht Ritschl, found
his foundational analysis of human existence in these Kantian principies.
Humanity's specific reality is its calling to establish the "kingdom of God,"
that is, according to Ritschl, the realm of rationally dictated political and
social love. This is the kingdom of God in that it is possible for us to act
freely in the world, despite the natural determinism that rules all events in
it, if we trust a WiII who at once commands the "values" that are the goals
of our free action and ordains the natural law that governs the world. This
trust is our entire relation to God and does not constitute knowledge of
any"object."
Forthis, we must in fact be able to trust God; it is at this point that liber-
alism's particular christocentrism and particular use of history entero AII
Protestantism has insisted that the ability to trust God is the great gift be-
stowed by jesus Christ. But how do we come in contact with jesus, in order
to receive it? jesus, said the liberals, is a historical figure if he is anything at
all; therefore, at least our initial contact with him must be of the same sort
as is our contact with any historical figure. And in the world after the En-
lightenment, such contact can with honesty be claimed only by critical in-
vestigation of the historical sources. "Historical-critical" study of the New
Testament to find the "real," that is, the "historical" jesus, was for liberal-
ism a sort of fundamental sacrament, the action by which we meet the
Lord. And when we do then find the historical jesus, we find one who pro-
claimed the kingdom of a loving God and died in testimony to that love.
Liberalismwas undone by a remarkable coincidence of events: discover-
¡es made by historical-critical biblical scholarship itself, world political cat-
astrophe, certain liberal intellectuals' own theological analysis of the
nature of history, and the political and religious radicalization of a small
group of younger liberals. Therewith the theology specific to the twentieth
century began. Where the impact of these events was not so strongly felt,
as in much of the English-speaking church, liberalism has continued as the
ordinary theology; and we will in Part Two consider this and closely related
alternative paradigms. But the theology precipitated by revolt against nine-
teenth-century principies has been the century's new and defining current.
Already in 1892, the great liberal New Testament scholar, Johannes
Weiss (1868-1916), demonstrated in Die Predigt )esu vom Reich Gottes
(jesus' Proc/amation of the Kingdom of God) that the historical Jesus was
no liberal and that the kingdom of God he proclaimed was not to be set up
in this world by human moral action but was to replace this world by the
action of God. A decisive similar blow was struck by Albert Schweitzer
(1875-1965) whose Von Reimarus zu Wrede (translated as The Quest of
the Historical)esus), published in 1906, showed that liberal portraits of the
16
"historical Jesus" had been works of ideological imagination, and that

the historical Jesus, insofar as he can be known at all, presents a mystery
of apocalypticism utterly useless to our projects af self-improvement.
Not just the specific liberal theology, but the whole Neo-Protestant
project depended on seeing Christianity as one phenomenon in the history
of religion and on arguing in one way or another for its superiority within
the offerings of that history. Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), one of the tow-
ering figures of modern intellect, devoted his life to the problems of such
argumento He concluded that when reality is grasped in its full historicity,
no case can be made for the superiority of one religion over another. Die
Absolutheil des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte (translated as
The Absoluteness of Christianity, 1902), brought the nineteenth century's
historicism to its climax and final problem.
Then, in 1914, the liberallycultivated nations of Europe fell to slaughter-
ing one another, for no ascertainable reason and with unprecedented feroc-
ity. Where this event was experienced directly, itbecame hard to hope for
a kingdom of mutuallove and justice to be established by human liberality.
Meanwhile, a young Swiss had been studying theology with Adolf von
Harnack at Berlinand Wilhelm Herrmann (1846-1922) at Marburg. Then,
to be seasoned for an expected academic career, he had taken a parish in
his native Switzerland. Yon Harnack and Troeltsch expected great things
of him.
Karl Barth (1886-1968) became Protestant pastor of Safenwil, a small
industrial city in Switzerland, in 1911. He came to his parish trained to
cultivate the Christian religion and the ethical enthusiasm this religion was
supposed to enable. Pastoral experience at Safenwil broke this understand-
ing of his calling and of the <=:hristianfaith, radicalizing him theologically,
politically, and personally.
In the parish, he had to preach regularly and was expected to expound
set texts. Fulfillingthis responsibility, he came to read the Bible differently
than as a source of historical knowledge about jesus' religion and ethics.
The Bible, he discovered, is indeed about something called the kingdom of
God, but what that might be came to puzzle him deeply; it was plainly not
what liberalism proclaimed as the goal of our religious and moral quest or
activism. Barth found the Biblein general surprising, a "strange new world"
that one would have to inhabit to understand, a world in which everything
seemed to go differently than in the world of self-fulfillmentconstrued by
the European bourgeoisie, a world given meaning not by our religious quest
for God but by God's sovereign grasp on uso
Moreover, it quickly beca me clear to Barth that his working-class
parishioners, in their unmistakable economic and political exploitation,
had more urgent concerns than the cultivation of religiousexperience. Nor
was a kingdom of God constructed as the religious fruition of the liberal
17
J-
political-economic project something for which they were likely to be en-

thusiastic, it being the agents of that project who oppressed them. Hope
for a kingdom only God could bring seemed more to the point, even the
political and economic point.
Then World War I broke out, and Barth had to watch German liberal
culture enthusiastically enlist in the service of blind nationalism. To his hor-
ror, most of his old teachers signed a famous "Oeclaration of German In-
tellectuals" on behalf of "emperor and fatherland."
Thus, Barth's radicalization came from all sides. Yet, for him, it made but
one experience, which Jeft him in the midst of parish duties with no con-
cept of what he was there to accomplish, except that it was not what he had
thought it was and it had to do with entering the Bible's strange new reality.
Politically,he beca me a social democrat, that is, a non-Communist Marxist.
As a proper young academic, he did his theological struggling in print, pro-
ducing,amongother essays,those translatedin the collection The Word of
God and the Wordof Man.
Theseearly essayswere read and understood as something new and .
began to establish Barth as a rallying center for others discomfited like
himself. In 1921, he was called, without a doctora te, to the first of severaJ
teaching posts in Germany. There, events were again to overtake him, and
he would become a theologicalleader of the churchly resistance to Adolf
Hitler and the drafter of the BarmenDeclaratíon. In 1922, he published
the book that would make him the leader of a generation of theological
revolutionaries, the second attempt at a commentary on Paul's letter to
the Romans.
1. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical jesus
We modern theologians are too proud of our historical method, too proud of OUT
historical Jesus, too confident in our belief in the spiritual gains which OUThis-
torical theology can bring to the world. The thought that we could build up by
the increase of historical knowledge a new and vigorous Christianity and set free
new spiritual forces, rules us like a fixed idea, and prevents us from seeing that
the task which we have grappled with and in some meaSUTedischarged is only
one of the intellectual preliminaries of the great religious task. We thought that it
was for us to lead our time by a roundabout way through the historical Jesus, as
we understood him, in order to bring it to the Jesus who is a spiritual power in
the present. This roundabout way has now been cIosed by genuine history.
There was a danger of our thrusting oUTselvesbetween men and the Cospels,
and refusing to leave the individual man alone with the sayings of Jesus.
There was a danger that we should offer them a Jesus who was too small, be-
cause we had forced him into conformity with OUThuman standards and human
18
1-
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
psychology.To see that, one need only read the Livesof Jesuswritten since the
sixties, and notice what they have made of the great imperious sayings of the
Lord, how they have weakened down his imperative world-contemning demands
upon individual s, that he might not come into conflict with OUTethical ideals,
and might tune his denial of the world to OUTacceptance of it. Many of the great-
est sayings are found Iying in a comer like explosive shells from which the
charges have been removed. No small portion of elemental religious power
needed to be dra\\'n off from his sayings to prevent them from conflieting with
OUTsystem of religious world-acceptance. We have made Jesus hold another lan-
guage with our time from that which he really held. . . .
In the course of the critical study of the Life of Jesus, after a resistance lasting
for two generations, during which first one expedient was tried and then another,
theology was forced by genuine history to begin to doubt the artificial history
with which it had thought to give new life to our Christianity, and to yield to the
faets, which. as Wrede strikingly said, are sometimes the most radical critics of
all. History will force it to find a way to transcend history, and to fight for the
lordship and rule of Jesus over this world with weapons tempered in a different
forge.
We are experiencing what Paul experienced. In the very moment when we
were coming nearer to the historical Jesus than men had ever come before, and
were already stretching out OUThands to draw him into our own time, we have
been obliged to give up the attempt and acknowledge our failure in that para-
doxical saying: "If we have known Christ after the flesh yet henceforth know we
him no more." And further we must be prepared to find that the historical knowl-
F.dgeof the personality and life of Jesus will not be a help, but perhaps even an of-
fence to religion.
But the truth is, it is not jes~s as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually
arisen within men, who is significant for OUTtime and can help it. Not the his-
torical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from him and in the spirits of men
strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world. . . .
Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but
his spirit, which lies hidden in !lis words, is known in simplicity, and its influ-
ence is directo Every saying contains in its own way the whole Jesus. The very
strangeness and unconditionedness in which he stands before us makes it easier
for individuals to find their own personal standpoint in regard to him.
Men feared that to admit the cIaims of eschatology would abolish the signifi-
cance of his words for our time; and hence there was a feverish eagerness to dis-
cover in them any eIements that might be considered not eschatologically
conditioned. When any sayings were found of which the wording did not ab-
solutely imply an eschatological connexion, there was a great jubilation-these
at least had been saved uninjured from the coming debacle.
But in reality that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the very faet
that they are based on an eschatological worldview, and contain the expression of
19
-
a mind for which the contemporary world with its historical and social circum-
stances no longer had any existence. They are appropriate, therefore, to any
world, for in every world they raise the man who dares to meet their challenge,
and does not turn and twist them into meaninglessness, above his world and his
time, making him inwardly free, so that he is fitted to be, in his own world and in
his own time, a simple channel of the power of Jesus.
Modern Lives of Jesusare too general in their scope. They aim al influencing,
by giving a complete impression of the life of Jesus, a whole community. But the
hislorical Jesus, as he is depicted in the Gospels, influenced individuals by
the individual word. They underslood him so far as it was necessary for them to
understand, wilhout forming an)' conception of his life as a whole, since Ihis in
ils ultimale aims remained a myslery even for the disciples.
Because il is thus preoccupied with the general, Ihe universal, modern theol-
og)' is determined to find its world-accepting ethic in the teaching of Jesus.
Therein lies ils weakness. The world affirms itself aulomalically; the modern
spirit cannot but affirm .1. But wh)' on that accounl abolish Ihe conflict between
modern life, wilh the world-affirming spirit which inspires il as a whole, and the
\\"orld-negaling spirit of Jesus?Why spare the spirit of the individual man ils ap-
poinled task of fighting its way Ihrough the world-negation of Jesus, of conlend-
ing wilh him at every step over the value of material and intelleclual goods-a
eonflict in whieh it may never rest? For the general, for Ihe instilutions of society,
the rule is: affirmalion of Ihe world, in conscious opposilion to Ihe view of Jesus,
on Ihe ground that the world has affirmed ilself! This general affirmalion of Ihe
world, however, if it is lo be Christian, musl in the individual spirit be Christian-
ized and Iransfigured by the personal re;cction of the world which is preached in
Ihe sayings of Jcsus. It is only by means of Ihe tension thus set up thal rcligious
energy can be communicated to our time. There was a danger that modern the-
ology, for the sake of peace, would deny the world-negation in the sayings of
Jesus, with which Protestantism was oul of sympalhy, and thus unstring the bow
and make Proleslanlism a mere sociological instead of a religious force. There
was perhaps also a danger of inward insincerity, in the faet thal it refused to admit
to itself and olhers that it maintained its affirmation of the world in opposition lo
the sayings of Jesus,simply because it could not do otherwise.
For that reason, it is a good thing that the true hislorical Jesus should over-
throw the modern Jesus,should rise up against the modern spirit and send upon
earlh, not peace, but a sword. He was nol teacher, not a casuist; he was an impe-
rious ruleL It was beca use he was so in his inmost being that he could think of
himself as Ihe Son of Man. That was only the temporally condilioned expression
of Ihe facl that he was an authoritative ruler. The names in whieh men expressed
their recognition of him as such, Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, have be-
come for us historical parables. We can find no designation which expresses
what he is for us.
20
KARL BARTH
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side,

he carne to those men who knew him not. He speaksto us the samewords: "Fol-
low thou me!" and sets us to the taskswhich he has to fulfill for our time. He
commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will
reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass
through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shalllearn in their
own experience Who he is.
2. Karl Barth, The Strange New World within the Bible

We are to attempl to find an answer to the question, What is there within the
Bible? What sorl of house is it to which the Bible is Ihe door?What sort of coun-
Iry is spread before our eyes when we throw the Bible open?
We are wilh Abraham in Haran. We hear a call which commands him: Get
Ihee oul of thy country, and from Ihy kindred, unto a land thal I will show thee!
We hear a promise: 1will make of thee a great nation. And Abraham believed in
the Lord; and he counted il to him for righteousness.What is Ihe meaning of all
this? We can but feel there is something behind these words and experiences.
But what?
We are with Moses in the wilderness. For forty years, he has been living
among the sheep, doing penance for an over-hasty act. Whal change has come
over him? We are not told; it is apparenlly not OUTconcern. But suddenly Ihere
comes to him also a call: Moses, Moses! -a great command: Come now there-
fore, and I willsend thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people,
Ihe children of Israel,out of.Egypt!-and a simple assurance:Certainly I will be
with thee.Hereagain are wordsand experienceswhich seem at first to be noth-
ing but riddles. We do not read the like either in the daily papers or in other
books.What liesbehind?
It is a lime of severe oppression in the land of Canaan. Under the oak at
Ophrah stands the farmer's son, Gideon. The "angel of the Lord" appears to
him, and says,The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. He sees nothing
amissin protesting,If the Lordbe withus,whythen is all this befallen us? But
"The Lord" knows how to bring him to silence: Go in this thy might, and thou
shaJtsave Israel from the hand of Ihe Midianiles:have not 1senl thee?
In the labernacleat Shiloh lies the young Samuel. Again a call: Samuel,
Samuel! And the pious priesl Eli, lo whom he runs, wisely advises him lo lie
down again. He obeys and sleeps until, the call returning and relurning, he can
no longer sleep; and the thought comes to the pious Eli: It might be! And
Samuel must hearand obey.
We read all this, but what do we read behind it? We are aware of something
like the tremors of an earthquakeor like the ceaselessthundering of ocean waves
21
1-
against thin dikes; but what really is it that beats at the barrier and seeks entrance
here? . . .
Then come the incomprehensible, incomparable days, when all previous
time, history, and experience seem to stand still-like the sun at Gibeon - in the
presence of aman who was no prophet, no poet, no hero, no thinker, and yet all
of these and more! His words cause alarm, for he speaks with authority and not as
we ministers. With compelling power, he calls to each one: Follow me! Even to
the distrustlul and antagonistic he gives an irresistible impression of "eternal
life." "The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
and the deafhear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached
to them." "Blcssed is the womb that bore thee," cry the people. And the quieter
and lonelier he becomes, and the less real "faith" he finds in the world about
him, the stronger through his whole being peals one triumphant note: "1 am the
resurrection and the life! Because llive-ye shalllive also'"
And thcn comes the echo, weak enough, if we compare it with that note of
Easter morning-and yet strong, much too strong for our ears, accustomed as
they are to the weak, pitiably weak tones of today-the echo which this man's
life finds in a liUle crowd of folk who listen, watch, and wait. Hcre is the echo of
the first courageous missionaries who felt the necessity upon them to go into all
the world and preach the gospel to cvery creature. Hcre is the echo of Paul:
"The righteousness of God is revealed' If any man be in Christ, he is a new crea-
ture. And he which hath begun a good work in you will finish it'" Here is the
deep still echo of John: "Life was manifested. . . . We beheld his glory. . . . Now
are we the sons of God. . . . And this is the victory that overcometh the world,
even our faith."
The echo ceases. The Bihle is finished.
Who is the man who spoke such words and lived such a life, who set these
echoes ringing? And again we ask: What is there within the Bible? What is the sig-
nificance of the remarkable line from Abraham to Christ? What of the chorus
of prophets and apostles? And what is the burden of their song? What is the one
truth that these voices evidently all desirc to announce, each in its own tone, each
in its own way? What lies between the strange statement, In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth, and the equally strange cry of Ionging, Even
so, come, Lord Jesus! What is there behind all this, that Iabors for expression?
It is a dangerous question. We might do better not to come too near this hurn-
ing bush. For we are sure to betray what is-behind us! The Biblc gives to every
man and to every era such answers to their questions as they deserve. We shall al-
ways find in it as much as we seek and no more: high and divine content if it is
high and divine content that we seek; transitory and "historical" content, if it is
transitory and "historicaI" content that we seek-nothing whatever, if it is noth-
ing whatever that we seek. The hungry are satisfied it is surfeiting before they
have opened it. The question, What is within the Bible? has a mortifying way of
22
J
KARL BARTH
converting itself into the opposing question, Well, what are you looking for, and
who are you, pray, who make bold to look?
But in spite of all this danger of making embarrassing discoveries in ourselves,
we must yet trust ourselves to ask our question. Moreover, we must trust our-
selves to reach eagerly for an answer which is really much too large for us, for
which we really are not ready, and of which we do not seem worthy, since it is a
fruit which our own longing, striving, and inner labor have not planted. What
this fruit, this answer, is, is suggested by the title of my address: within the Bible
there is a strange new world, the world of God. This answer is the same as that
which carne to the first martyr, Stephen: Behold, 1 see the heavens opened and
the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Neither by the earnestness of
our belief nor by the depth and richness of our experience have we deserved the
right to this answer. What 1shall have to say about it wiII he only a small and un-
satisfying part of it. We must openly confess that we are reaching far beyond our-
selves. But that is just the point: if we wish to come to grips with the contents of
the Bible, we must dare to reach far heyond ourselves. The Book admits of noth-
ing less. For, besides giving to every one of us what he rightly deserves-to one,
much, to another, something, to a third, nothing-it leaves us no rest whate\'er,
if we are in earnest, once with our shortsighted eyes and awkward fingers \Ve
have found the answer in it that we deserve. Such an answer is something but, as
we soon realize, not everything. It may satisfy us for a few years, but we simply
cannot be content with it forever. Ere long the Bihle says to us, in a manner can-
did and friendly enough, with regard to the "versions" we make of it: "These may
be you, but they are not I! They may perhaps suit you, meeting the demands of
your thought and temperament, of your era and your 'circle,' of your religious or
philosophical theories. You wanted to be mirrored in me, and now you have re-
ally found in me your own rebection. But now 1bid you come seek me, as well.
Seek what is here." It is the Bible itself, it is the straight inexorable logic of its on-
march which drives us out beyond ourselves and invites us, without regard to our
worthiness or unworthiness, to reach for the last highest answer, in which all is
said that can be said, although we can hardly understand and only stammeringly
express it. And that answer is: A new world, the world of God. There is a spirit in
the Bible that allo\Ysus to stop a while and play among secondary things as is our
wont-but presently it begins to press us on; and however we may object that we
are only weak, imperfect, and most average folk, it presses us on to the primary
fact, whether we will or no. There is a river in the Bible that carries us away, once
we have entrusted our destiny to it-away from ourselves to the sea. The Holy
Scriptures wiII interpret themselves in spite of all our human limitations. We
need only dare to follow this drive, this spirit, this river, to grow out beyond our-
selves toward the highest answer. This daring is faith; and we read the Bible
rightly, not when we do so with false modesty, restraint, and attempted sobriety,
for these are passive qualities, but when we read it in faith. And the invitation to
23
J-
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGV
dare and to reach toward the highest, even though we do not deserve it, is the ex-
pression of grace in the Bible; the Bible unfolds to us as we are met, guided,
drawn on, and made to grow by the grace of God.
What is there within the Bible? History! The history of a remarkable, even
unique, people;the history of powerful, mentally vigorous personalities; the his-
tory of Christianity in its beginnings-a history of men and ideas in which any-
one who considers himself educated must be interested, if for no other reason
than because of its effects upon the times following and the present time.
Now one can content himself for a time with this answer and find in it many
true and beautiful possibilities. The Bible is full of history: religious history, lit-
erary history, cultural history, world histor)', and human history of every sort. A
picture full of animation and color is unrolled before all who approach the Bible
with open eyes.
But the pleasure is short-lived: the picture, on doser inspection, proves quite
incomprehensible and flat, if it is mcant only for hislory. The man who is looking
for history or for slories will be glad after a little to turn from Ihe Bible to the morn-
ing paper or to other books. For when we study history and amuse ourselves with
stories, we are always wanting to kno",: How did it all happen? How is it that one
eVent followsanother? What are the natural causes of things? Wh)1did the people
speak such words and live such lives? It is ¡ust at the most decisive points of ils his-
tory that the Bible gives no answer to our Why. Such is the case, indeed, not only
with the Bible, but wilh all the tml)' decisive men and events of hislory. The
greater a crisis, the less of an answer \\'e get to our inquisitive Why. And "ice versa:
the smaller aman or an era, the more the "historians" find to explain and estab-
lish. But the Bible meets thc lover of history with silences quite unparalleled.
Why was it that the Israelitish people did not perish in the Egyptian bondage,
but remained a people, or rather, in Ihe very deepest of their need, became one?
Why? There was a reason! Why is it that Moses was able to crea te a law \\'hich for
purity and humanity puts us moderns only to shame? There was a reason! Why is
it that Jeremiah stands there during the siege of Jerusalem with his message of
doom, an enemy of the people, aman without a country? Why Jesus' healing of
the sick, why his messianic consciousness, why the resurrection? Why does a
Saul become a Paul? Why that other-worldly picture of Christ in the fourth
gospel? Why does John on the Isle of Patmos- ignoring the Roman Empire in its
very heyday-see the holy city, ne", Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband? There was a reason!
How much trouble the Bible makes the poor research workers! There was a
reason (with an exdamation point)! is hardly an adequate answer for a history;
and if one can s:]yof the incidents of the Bible only There was a reason! its his-
tory is in truth stark nonsense. Some men have felt compelled to seek grounds
and explanations where there were none, and what has resuIted from that proce-
dure is a history in itself-an unhappy history into which Iwill not enter at this
time. The bible itself, in any case, answers our eager Why neither like a sphinx,
24
L
KARL BARTH
with There was a reason! nor, like a lawyer, with a thousand arguments, deduc-
tions, and parallels, but says to us, The decisive cause is God. Because God lives,
speaks, and acts, there was a reason . . . !
1'0 be sure, when we hear the word "God," it may at first seem the same as
There was a reason! In the leading artides of our dailies, and in the primary his-
tory readers of our Aargau schools one does not expect to have events explained
by the fact that "God created," or "God spoke!" When God enters, history for the
while ceases to be, and there is nothing more to ask; for something wholly differ-
ent begins-a history with its own distinct grounds, possibilities, and hypotheses.
Theparamount question is whether we have understanding for this different,
new world, or good will enough to medita te and enter upon it inwardly. Do we
desire the presence of "God"? Do we dare to go whither evidently we are being
led? That were "faith"! A new world projects itself into our old ordinary world.
We may reject it. We may say, It is nothing; this is imagination, madness, this
"God." But we may not deny nor prevent our being led by Bible "history" far out
beyond what is eIsewhere called history-irito a new world, into the world of
God. . .
We might also say, There is morality within the Bible. It is a collection of

teachings and iIIustrations of virtue and human greatness. No one has ever yet
seriously questioned the fact that in their \Vaythe men of the Bible were good
representative men, from ",hom we have an endless amount to learo. Whether
we seek practical wisdom or lofty examples of a certain type ofheroism, \Vefind
them here forthwith.
And again in the long run we do not. Large parts of the Bible are almost use-
less to the school in its moral curriculum because they are lacking in just this
wisdom and just these "good examples." The heroes of the Bible are to a certain
degree quite respectable, b~t t~ serve as examples to the good, efficient, indus-
trious, publidy educated, average citizen of Switzerland, men like Samson,
David, Amos, and Peter are very iII fated indeed. . . . How shall we find in the life
and teaching of Jesus something to "do" in "practical !ife"? Is it not as if he
wished to say to us at every step "What interest have 1 in your 'practicallife'? I
have little to do with that. Follow after me or let me go my way!"
At certain crucial points, the Bible amazes us by its remarkable indifference to
our conception of good and evil. Abraham, for instance, as the highest proof of
his faith desires to sacrifice his son to God; Jacob wins the birthright by a refined
deception of his blind father; E:lijah slays the four hundred and fifty priests of
Baal by the brook Kishon. Are these exactly praiseworthy examples?
And in how many phases of morality the Bible is grievously wanting! How
little fundamental information it offers in regard to the difficult questions of
business life, marriage, civilization, and statecraft, with which we have to strug-
gle! 1'0 mention only a single problem, but to us todaya mortal one: how un-
ceremoniously and constantly war is waged in the Bible! Time and again, when
this question comes up, the teacher or minister must resort to various kinds of
25
extra-biblical material, because the New as well as the Old Testament almost
completely breaks down at this point. Time and again, serious Christian people
who seek "comfort" and "inspiration" in the midst of personal difficulties will
quietly close their Bibles. . . . Time and again, the Bible gives us the impression
that it contains no instmctions, counsels, or examples whatsoever, either for in-
dividuals or for nations and governments; and the impression is correcto It of-
fers us not at all what we first seek in it.
Once more we stand before this "other" new world which begins in the Bible.
In it the chief consideration is not the doings of man but the doings of Cod - not
the variollSwayswhich we may take if we are men of good will, but the power out
of which good will must first be created-not the unfolding and fmition of love
as \Ve may understand it, but the existence and olltpouring of eternal love, of
love as Cod lInderstands it-not industry, honesty, and helpfulness as we may
practice them in our old ordinary world, but the establishmenl and growlh of a
new world, the world in which Cod and hís morality reign. In Ihe lighl of this
coming world a David is a great man in spite of his adultery and bloody sword:
blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniqllily! Into this world,
the publicans and the harlots will go before your impeccably clegant ami righ-
teous folk of good society! In this world, the tme hero is Ihe losl son, who is ab-
solutely lost and feeding swine-and not his moral clder brother! The reality
which lies behind Abraham and Moses, behind Christ and his apostles, is the
world of the Father, in which morality is dispensed with beca use it is taken for
granted. And the blood of the Ne\VTestament which seeks inflO\\'into our veins
is the will of the Father which would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We may have grasped this as the meaning of the Bible, as its answer lo our
great and small questions, and still say: I do not need this; I do not desire it; it
tells me nothing; 1 cannot get anywhere with it! It may be Ihat we really cannot
get anywhere with it on our present highways and byways-on our byways of
church and school, for example, and, in many instances, on the byway of the per-
sonallife which we have been traveling with such perseverance. There are blind
alleys of a thousand types, out of which the way into the kingdom of heaven can
at first lead only backwards. And it is certain that the Bible, if we read it careflllly,
makes straight for the point where one must decide to accept or to reject the so\'-
ereignty of Cod. This is the new world within the Bible. We are offered the mag-
nificent, productive, hopeful life of a grain of seed, a new beginning, out of
which all things shall be made new. One cannot learn or imitate this life of the
divine seed in the new world. One can only let it live, grow, and ripen within
him. One can only believe-can only hold the ground whither he has been led.
Or not believe. There is no third way.
Let us seek our way out on still another side: let us start with the proposition
that in the Bible we have a revelation of tme relígíon, of religion defined as what
we are to think concerning Cod, how we are to find him, and how we are to
condllct ourselves in his presence. . . . The Bible as a "source-book for godly
26
-
1
KARL BARTH
living" -how much has been said and written upon this theme in the last years!
And such the Bible is. It is a treasury of tmth concerning the right relation of
men to the eternal and divine-but here too the same law holds: we have only to
seek honestly and we shall make the plain discovery that there is something
greater in the Bible than religion and "worship." Here again we have only a kind
of cmst which must be broken through.
We have all been troubled with the thought that there are so many kinds of
Christianity in the world-Catholic Christianity and Protestant, the Christiani-
ties of the various commllnions and of the "groups" (Ríchtungen) within them,
the Christianity of the old-fashioned and the Christianity of the modern-and
all, all of them appealing with the same earnestness and zeal to the Bible. Each
insists, Ours is the rcligion revealed in the Bible, or at least its most legitimate
successoI. And how is one to answer? Does it not require a generous bit of ef-
frontery to say, We Proteslants, or we members of such and such a communion
or society are right, for sllch and such reasons; and all the others are wrong?
When once one knows how eas)' it is to find "reasons," the pleasure of participat-
ing in this elernal game begins to pall.
Then shall we take the position that fundamentally we are all right? Shall we
dip our hands into that from which the spirit of the Bible silently turns away, the
dish of tolerance which is more and more being proclaimed, especially in our
nation church, as the highest good?
Or may we all, jointl~' and severally, with our variolls views and various forms
of worship, be-wrong? The fact is that we must seek our answer in this direc-
tion - "Yea, let Cod be tme, but every man a liar." AII religions may be found in
the Bible, if one will have it so; but when he looks closely, there are none at all.
There is only-the "other," new, greater world! When we come to the Bible with
our questions - How shalt I tl1ink of Cod and the universe? How arrive at the di-
vine? How present myself?-it answers us, as it were, "My dear sir, these are your
problems: you must not ask me! Whether it is better to hear mass or hear a ser-
mon, whether the proper form ofChristianity is to be discovered in the Salvation
Army or in 'Christian Science,' whether the better belief is that of old Reverend
Doctor Smith or young Reverend MI. Jones, whether your religion should be
more a religion of the lInderstanding, of the will, or of Ihe feclings, you can and
must decide for yourself. If you do not care to enter upon my questions, you may,
to be sure, find in me all sorts of arguments and qllasi-arguments for one or an-
other standpoint, but ~'ou will not then find what is really here." We shall find
ourselves only in the midst of a vast human controversy and far, far away from re-
ality, or what might become reality in our lives.
It is not the right human thoughts abollt Cod which form the content of the
Bible, but the right di\"ine thoughts about men. The Bible tells us not how we
should talk with Cod but what he says to us; not how we find the way to him, but
how he has sought and found the way to us; not the right relation in which we
must place ourselves to him, but the covenant which he has made with all who
27
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGY f
are Abraham's spiritual children and which he has sealed once and for all in
Bible. Christ. lt is this which is within the Bible. The word of God is within the
Jesus
Our grandfathers, after all, were right when they struggled so desperately in
behalf of the truth that there is revelation in the Bible and not religion only, and
when they would not allow facts to be turned upside down for them even by so
pious and intelligent a man as Schleiermacher. And our fathers were right when
giousguarded
they warily against being drawn out upon the shakyscaffolding of reli-
self-expressiono
The more honestly we search the Scriptures, the surer, sooner or later, comes
-
the answer:The right formsofworshipand service? "they are they which testify
of Me!" We seek ourselves-we find God; and having done so stand before him
with our religions, Christianities, and other notions, like blundering scholars
with their A B C's. Yet we cannot be sad about it but rejoice that we have found,
among alllesser considerations, the chief one, without which every form of reli-
gion, even the most perfect, is only a delusion and a snare. This chief considera-
tion conta¡ns, again, the living grain of seed out of which a right relation to God,
a service of God "in spirit and in truth," necessarily must issue, whether we lay
stress more upon this detail or that. The word of God! The standpoint of God!
Once more we have every liberty of choice. We may explain: "1 cannot get
anywhere with this: the conception of the 'word of God' is not part of my philos-
ophyo I still prefer the old ordinary Christianity of my kind of 'worship' and my
own particular standpoint." Or we may be willing to hear what "passeth all un-
derstanding"; may desire in the power of God and the Savior to let it grow and
ripen within us according to the laws of the great life process set forth in the
Bible; may obey the spirit of the Book and acknowledge God to be right instead
of trying to prove ourselves right; may dare-to believe. Here we find ourselves
faced once more by the question of faith. But without anticipating our answer to
it, we may rest assured that in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testa-
ments, the theme is, so to speak, the religion of God and never once the religion
of the Jews, or Christians, or heathen; that in this respect, as in others, the Bible
lifts usofout
world of the old atmosphere of man to the open portals of a new world, the
God.
But we are not yet quite at an end. We have found in the Bible a new world,
God, God's sovereignty, God's glory, God's incomprehensible love. Not the his-
tory of man but the history of God! Not the virtues of men but thc virtues of him
who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light! Not human stand-
points but the standpoint of God!
Now, however, might not a last series of questions arise: Who then is God?
What is his will? What are his thoughts? What is the mysterious "other," new,
greater world which emerges in the Bible beyond all the ways of men, summon-
ing us to a decision to believe or not to believe? In whom did Abraham believe?
For whom did the heroes fight and conquer? Whom did the prophets prophesy?
28 1
f KARL BARTH
In whose power did Christ die and rise again? Whose name did the Apostles pro-
daim? The contents of the Bible are "God." But what is the content of the con-
tents? Something "new" breaks forth! But what is the new?
To these questions there is a series of ready answers, serious and well-founded
answers taken from the Bible itself, answers to which we must listen: God is the
Lord and Redeemer, the Savior and Comforter of all the souls that turn to him;
and the new world is the kingdom of blessedness which is prepared for the little
flock who escape destruction. Is not this in the Bible? o oAgain: God is the foun-
o
tain of life which begins its quiet murmuring when once we turn away from the
externalities of the world and bow before him in silence; and the new world is
the incomparable peace of such a life hid with Christ in Godo ls not this also in
the Bible? . . oAgain: God is the Lord of the heaven which awaits us, and in
which, when our journey through the sorrows and imperfections of this life is
done, we are to possess and enjoy our citizenship; and the new world is just this
blessed other life, the "still cternity" into which the faithful shall one day enter.
This answer also comes directly from the Bibleo
These are tme enough answers. But are they truth? Are they the whole truth?
Can one read or hear read even as much as two chapters from the Bible and still
with good conscience say, God's word went forth to humanity, his mandate
guided history from Abraham to Christ, the Holy Spirit descended in tongues of
fire upon the apostles at Pentecost, a Saul beca me a Paul and traveled over land
and sea-all in order that here and there specimens of men like you and me
might be "comoerted," find inner "peace," and by a redeeming death go some day
to "heaven." ls that all? ls that all of God and his new world, of the meaning of
the Bible, of the content of the contents? The powerful forces which come to ex-
pression in the Bible, the movements of peoples, the battles, and the convulsions
which take place before us thére, the mirades and revelations which constantly
occur there, the immeasurable promises for the future which are unceasingly re-
peated to us there-do not all these things stand in a rather strange relation to so
small a reslllt-if that is really the only result they have? Is not God greater than
that? Even in these ans,,"ers, earnest and pious as they may be, have we not mea-
sured God with our own measure, conceived God with our own conceptions,
wished ourselves a God according to our own wishes? When we begin to read the
Bible carefully. must we not grow beyond these answers, too?
Must we not also grow beyond the strange question, Who is God? As if we
could dream of asking such a question, having willingly and sincerely allowed
ourselves to be led to the gates of the new world, to the threshold of the kingdom
of God! There one asks no longer. There one sees. There one hears. There one
has. There one knowsoThere one no longer gives his petty, narrow little answerso
The question, \\'ho is God? and our inadequate answers to it come only from our
having halted somewhere on the way to the open gates of the new world; from
our having refused somewhere to let the Bible speak to us candidly; from our
having failed somewhere truly to desire to-believe. At the point ofhalt the truth
29
,
again becomes unclear, confused, problematical-narrow, stupid, high-church,
nonconformist, monotonous, or meaningless. "He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father." That is it: when we allow ourselves to press on to the highest answer,
when we find God in the Bible, when we dare with Paul not to be disobedient to
the heavenly
receive!" Godvision,
is God.then God stands before us as he really is. "Believing, ye shall
But who may say, 1 believe? - "Lord, 1 believe; help thou mine unbelief." It is
because of our unbelief that we are so perplexed by the question, Who is God?-
that \Vefeel so small and ashamed before the fullness of the Godhead which the
men and women of the Bible saw and proclaimed. It is because of our unbelief
that even now 1can only stammer, hint at, and make promises about that which
would be opened to us if the Bible could speak to us unhindered, in the full fJu-
enc\' of its revelations.
Who is God? The heavenly Father! But the heavenly Fathcr even upon earth,
and upon earth really the heavellly Father. He will not allow life to be split into a
"he re" and "beyond." He will not leave to dealh the task of freeing us from sin
and sorrow. He will bless us, not with the power of the church but with Ihe power
of life and resurrection. In Christ he caused his word to be made fJesh. He has
caused eternity to dawn in place of time, or rather upon time-for what sort of
eternity were it which should begin "afterwards!" He purposes naught but the es-
tablishment of a new world.
Who is God? The Son who has become "the mediator for my soul." But more
than that: He has become the mediator for the whole world, the redeeming
Word, who was in the beginning of all Ihings and is earnestly expected by all
things. He is the redeemer of my brothers and sisters. He is the redeemer of a hu-
mani\}' gone astray and ruled by evil spirits and powers. He is the redeemer of the
groaning creation about uso The whole Bible authoritatively announces that
God must be
beginning of aallnew
in all; and the events ofthe Bible are the beginning, the glorious
world.
Who is God? The spirit in his believers, the spirit
by which we own
The Son who Jived and dicd and rosc;
Which crystal clear from God's pure throne
Throllgh quiet hearts forever flows.
But God is also that spirit (that is to say, that love and good will) which will and
must break forth from quiet hearts into the world outside, that it may be manifest,
visible, comprehensible: behind the tabernacle of God is with men! The Holy
Spiril makes a new heaven and a new earth and, therefore, new men, new fami-
lies, new relationships, new politics. It has no respect for old traditions simply be-
cause they are traditions, for old solemnities simply beca use they are solemn, for
old po\Verssimply because they are powerful. The Holy Spirit has respect only
30
ERNST TROELTSCH
for truth, for itself. The Holy Spirit establishes the righteousness ofheaven in the
midst of the unrighteousness of earth and will not stop nor stay until all that is
dead has been brought to life and a new world has come into being.
This is within the Bible. It is within the Bible for uso For it we were baptized.
Oh, that we dared in faith to take what grace can offer us!
1 need not suggest that we all have need of this. We live in a sick old world
which cries from its soul, out of deepest need: Heal me, O Lord, and 1 shall be
healed! In all men, whoever and wherever and whatever and however they may
be, there is a longing for exactly this which is here within the Bible. We all know
that.
And no\\' hear: "A certain man made a great supper, and bade many; and senl
his servant at suppertimetosayto themthat werehidden,Come,forall things
are now ready! . . ."
3. Ernst Troeltsch, The AbsoJuteness of Christianity

The modern idea of history, which depends on critical source-analysis and on
conclusions derived from psychological analogy, is the history of the develop-
ment of peoples, spheres of culture, and cultural components. It dissolves all
dogmas in the fJow of events and tries sympathetically to do juslice lo all phc-
nomena, first measuring them by their own criteria and then combining Ihem
into an overall picture of the continuous and mutually conditioning faclors in all
individual phenomena that shape the unfolding development of mankind. This
overall picture, steadily pursued despite the incompleteness and \1ncerlainty of
our knowledge, is today, with all its different stages of development, Ihe presup-
position of every judgment cohcerning the norms and ideals of mankind. For
this reason the modern idea ofhistory is no longer merely one aspect of a way of
looking at things or a partial satisfaction of the impetus to knowledge. It is, rather,
the foundation of all thinking concerning values and norms. It is the medium for
the self-refJection of the species upon its nature, origins, and hopes.
It is easy to see how Christianity is affected by this mode of thought which is
entirely free as regards the oulcome of specific investigations and yet bound to
definite methodological presupposition. Christianity, like all great religious
movements, has from the outset possessed a naive certainty as to its normative
truth. Apologetic refJections have fortified this confidence since the earliest
times by contrasting Christianity with everything non-Christian as a whole. In
this way the latter became more and more a homogeneous mass of human error
while the former beca me more and more a divinely ordained institution, recog-
nizable as such on the basis of external and internal miracle. Ecclesiastical phi-
losophy and theology then perfected the concept of the church. Founded as an
absolute miracle and authcnticating itself in the miracles of conversion and the
sacraments, the church was conceived as a supernatural institution that stands
31
!
within history but does not derive from history. Ordinary history with its merely
human and humanly conditioned truths is, according to this view, the sphere of
sin and error. Only history as written by the church gives truth that is absolutely
certain, though not absolutely exhaustive, because it works with powers that de-
rive not from history but directly from God.
The modern idea of history, however, has had a radically dissolving effect on
this apologetic structure of thought. Opposition to the rationalistic watering
down of Christianity, often thought of as a kind of restoration of church-oriented
theology, led to a revival of the notion of the historical uniqueness of Christian-
ity. But this in turn simply led to the incorporation of Christianity as one indi-
vidual phenol11cnon that history has brought forth, even though the Christian
phenomenon was not to be declared false on the basis of extraneous normative
concepts.ln particular, it Icd to the incorporating ofChristianity into thc contcxt
of the history of rcligions. The apologetic wall of division, the wall of external
and internal miracle, has slowly been broken down by this idea ofhistory, for no
matter what one may otherwise think about miracles, it is impossible for histori-
cal thought to believe the Christian miracles but deny the non-Christian. Again,
however frequently one may discern something supernatural in the ethical
power of the inner life, no means exist by which to construe the Christian's ele-
vation above sensuality as supernatural while interpreting thal ofPlalo or Epicte-
tus as natural. . . .
Oncc Ihe modern idea of history made it impossible to provc Ihc normativc
value of Christian Ihought by the means Ihe church had Iraditionally used, at-
tempts were made lo reach the goal by yet another path. lis starling poinl was the
concept of a total history of mankind with hislory taken as a dynamic principie
in its own right. The history of mankind was viewed casually and Icleologically
as a single whole. Within this whole, the ideal of religious trulh was Ihought of as
moving forward in gradual stages, and al one definite point, namely, in the his-
torical phenomenon of Christianity, it was deemed to have reached absolute
form, thal is, the complete and exhaustive realization of its principIe.
This approach remained true lo the Enlightenment and ils incorporating of
Christianity inlo Ihe religions of the world. 11also remained true to the historico-
critical way of viewing Christianity. Because the lotality of history in general and
the history of religion in particular were comprehended by an all-embracing in-
tuition and were brilliantly interpreted, it was expected that this approach would
overcome Ihe lension betwecn the multiplicity ofhistory and ils relative, individ-
ual forms. It was to do so by means of the concept of a universal principIe thal
bore within itself the law of its movement from lower, obscure, and embryonic
beginnings to complete, cIear, and conscious maturity-a universal principIe
represented as a normative power actualizing itself by degrees in the course of
history. In this way Christianity was held up as the actualization of the principIe
of religion, the absolute religion in antithesis to mediated and veiled expressions
of this principIe. There exists, in reality, only one religion, namely, the principIe
32
-
ERNST TROELTSCH
!
or essence of religion, and this principIe of religion, this essence of religion, is la-
tent in all historical religions as their ground and goal. In Christianity, this uni-
versally latent essence, everywhere else limited by its media, has appeared in
untrammeled and exhaustive perfection. IfChristianity is thus identical with this
principIe of religion that is elsewhere implicit and that comes to complete expli-
cation only in Christianity, then the Christian religion is of course normative
religious truth. Thus the older apologetic speculation, which opposed history,
has been replaced by a new one that is on the side of history. Thus too, in fact,
the concept of a principIe of Christianity that is at the same time the realization
of the principIe of religion as such has become the foundation of the modern
apologetic. . . . .
The basic ideas of this interpretation are cIear. First, itsubordinates history to
the concept of a universal principIe which represents a uniform, homogeneous,
law-structured, and self-actuating power Ihat brings forth individual instances of
itself. Second, it elevates this concept of a universal principIe to that of a norm
and ideal represenling what is of permanent value in all events. Third, it binds
these two concepts together by means of a theory of evolutionary development.
This implies, as the fourth basic idea, both a perfect congruity between the re-
sults of the law-regulated causal process as brought forth in accordance with the
concept of the universal principIe and the successive creation of value as pro-
duced in accordance with the concept of absolute realization.
The irrefutable objections to this interpretation are, however, equally cIear.
The modern idea of history knows no universal principIe on the basis of which
the content and sequence of events might be deduced. It knows only concrete,
individual phenomena, always conditioned by their context and yet, at bottom,
undeniable and simply existent phenomena. For this reason, the modern under-
standing of hislory knows nb va'lues or norms that coincide with actual univer-
sals. It knows them, rather, strictly as universally valid ideas, or ideas purporting
to be universally valid, which invariably appear in individual form and make
their universal validity known by their resistance to the merely exislent. For all
these reasons the modern understanding of history knows no evolutionary devel-
opment in which an actual, law-regulated universal principIe produces values
that are universally authentic. It knows, finally, no absolute realization of such a
universal principIe within the context of history where, as a matter of fact, only
phenomena that are uniquely defined and limited and thus possess individual
character are brought forth at any given point. . . .
It becomes evident that the concepts men sought to weld together in a theory
of this kind have now come apart. The concept of that which is really and au-
thentically universal in the basic and characteristic phenomena of religion and
the concept of a norm governing authoritative religious truth were appended to
each distinctive, historical religion seen as a concrete, individual phenomenon.
These concepts, precisely beca use their definitions are so obscure and uncertain,
show cIearly how impossible it is to take a universal principIe or essence and
33
suddenly give it nonnative status or, conversely, to defend the concept of a nor-
mative principIe by reference to its concurrent property ofbeing a universal one.
Even more serious, in the second place, is what happens with regard to the ab-
solute realization of this universal principIe in the process of historical develop-
mento Here two possibilities existoOn the one hand, greater emphasis may be laid
on the causal aspect of the universal principIe. In this case, however, its absolute
realization is embodied only in the sequence ofhistorical configurations taken as
a whole. Among these configurations, then, there can ob\'iously be no absolute re-
ligion in which this principIe or essence is exclusively and exhaustively realized.
"The idea prefers not to pour out all its abundance into one individual speci-
men." However plausible such a view ma~'appear to the historian, since it enables
him to form conceptions freely and impartially, it can hardly suffice for him who
sees in religion not merely an object of historical inquiry but a queslion of life it-
self and who for this reason is even Icss inclined lo forget thc teleological aspect of
the universal principIe. Yet al the samc limc it is Ihe hislorian himsclf who cannot
evade the teleological problem, inasmuch as he pursues his labors not mcrcly for
the sake of gaining knowledge of things past but ralher for Ihe sakc of compre-
hending Ihe values that gradually make themselves known in hislory.
If the aspect of gradual manifestation is given the stronger emphasis, however,
then the second possibility comes into \'iew. One senses Ihat he is indced ori-
ented toward a goal, but he feels thaluntil the end of history is reached, he ought
not to speak of an absolute religion bul should a\\'ait il in close conjunction with
the end of all history. There musl be complete twilight before the owl of Minerva
can begin its flight in the land of the realized absolute principIe. But if that
is how matters stand, how can the uni\'ersal principIe be charactcrized with
sufficient certainty as long as its definiti\'e realizalion slilllies far off in Ihc incal-
culable distance? And if thc character of lhe universal principie canllot be deler-
mined with certainty how then can its slages be described with certainty-those
stages by which it has moved toward realization up to the present timc and
among which we are supposed to make a choice? Precisely for this rcason, the at-
tempt to demonstrate a religion as absolute never continues long with one his-
torical religion but tends to become a projection of the religion of the future.
The impracticability of this concept of absolute realization is ll1ade unmistakably
evident, however, by the fact that these depictions of the coming religion, each of
which is set forth as the goal of the evolutionary process, are ll1utually inconsis-
tent. As a result, there is greal disparity in the determination and evaluation of
the stages that lead to this goal, the highest being the one on which we are sup-
posed to take our stand.
More specifically, the modern study of history gives no indication whatever of
any graded progression such as this theory might lead us to expect. History man-
ifests no gradual ascent to higher orientations as far as the vast majority of
mankind is concerned. Only at special points do higher orientations burst forth,
and then in a great, soaring development of their uniquely individual content.
34
-
ERNST TROELTSCH
By no means, however, are the great religions that burst forth in this way related
to each other in a stage-by-stage causal process. They stand, rather, in a parallel
relationship. The only path to an understanding of their relationship in terms of
value is toil and inner moral struggle, not schemes of progressive development
like those that are always being constructed. Since it is no longer merely the his-
tory of religion in the Near East and in the cultures around the Mediterranean
but also the world of the East Asian religions that stands before our eyes, we can
no longer deceive ourselves about this matter. Thus even with regard to this as-
pect, our conclusion is that while the modern study ofhistory cannot avoid form-
ing concepts of normative principIes, it cannot arrive at such concepts by proofs
for the absolute realization of a universal principIe.
Most problematic of all, in Ihe third place, is the interpreting of Christianily
as the absolute religion. This holds true not only because, as suggesled above, no
such demonstration is possible in historical terms, but above all because the ill1-
possibility of uniting a theoretically conceived universal principIe with a con-
crete, individual. historical configuration becomes directly discernible at this
point. Of COlITSe all religious men naturally understand that Christianity is a dy-
namic religious orientation of great significance, that it is under all circum-
stances an eminent religiolls truth. Yet it is also evident that Christianity in every
age, and particularly in its period of origin, is a genllinely historical phenome-
non-new, and large, in its conseqllences, but profoundly and radically condi-
tioned by the historical sitllation and environment in which it found itself as well
as by the relations it entcred into in its further development. 11presupposes the
breakdown of the ethnic religions of antiquity and also of the naive values that
had sprung up \\'ith them. It likewise presllpposes the new religious movemcnts
that emerged from this rubble and gravitated toward Christianity as the most
powerful force. Indecd, thesé movements may possibly have participated in
some way in Christianity's earliest, formativc history.
In its central concepts, moreover, Christianity is clearly determined in a radi-
cal sense by the eschatological ideas that were a sourcc of strength to Israel in
this situation. It was in connection with these ideas that Christianity first articu-
lated its purely inward and ethical faith. At this particular juncture, however, the
early Christian ethic was so strongly stamped by the expectation of the end of the
world and of standing in the presence of God, as well as by indifference to all
earthly values, that it took on the religious harshness and one-sidedness that is
possible only in such situations and under such presuppositions. Yet no sooner
had Christianity freed itself from these first popular and mythical forms and dis-
closed its concern for humane and inward values than it drew to itself the closely
related ethics of Platonism and Stoicism together with the metaphysics of ideal-
ism and the teleology of Aristotelianism. Thus it showed again, by virtue of these
relations, that it was a thoroughly concrete, limited, and conditioned movement.
And so it continues to the present day. Nowhere is Christianity the absolute
religion, an utterly unique species free of the historical conditions that comprise
35
o' ,
its environmentat anygiven time. Nowhere is it the changeless,exhaustive,and

unconditioned
religion. realization of that which is conceived as the universal principIe of
To be sure, it is necessary to seek out the controlling idea of Christianity and

to understand, as far as possible, the development and continuation of Christian-
ity in view of the content of this idea. But this controlling idea must be derived
strictly from Christianity, which means that it is at every moment intimately in-
terwoven with quite definite historical conditions. Like allother ideas, it lives by
virtue of its involvement in a historical context and thus always in completely in-
dividual, historical forms. Conversely, this controlling idea is falsified and placed
in an utterly artificial relationship to its own reality if it is contrived from without
as the absolute idea of religion and then injected into Christianity. . . .
Thus our conclusion may be expressed as follows: Whatever the permanent
significance of the concept of evolutionary development may be, it is not to be
\\"orkedout in the form of a sequence that assumes a congruity between causality
and finality and thus seems to make possible a theoretical computation of the
value of the various stages. It is not to be used to prove the absoluteness of any
one religion as the definitive realization of the principIe of religion itself.
It is evident, therefore, that the attempt to present Christianity as the absolute
religion is untenable. The fathers of the theology of evolutionary development
found it possible to put a construction like this on Christianity only beca use the
history of religion of their day was still quite undeveloped and provincial.
Equal/y important, their historical research into Christian religion still fluctu-
ated between rationalistic-pragmatic explanations of individual phenomena, on
the one hand, and poetic-intuitive improvisations, on the other. Only through
the mist of historical knowledge that was still quite hazy could the rainbow of
sllch speculation shine.
Moreover, these theologians still stood under the influence of an older habit
of thought that saw Christianity as the divine realization of natural religion, of
the Lagos, and of the natural morallaw. Their "essence of religion," seen from
that angle, was simply the poetic idea of natural religion made perfect and intro-
duced into history by God. Thus old habits of thought still have power even over
those who have broken away from them at critical points. Furthermore, in their
use oftothis
tions it. .construction,
.. these men were obliged to attach significant qualifica-
The personalistic redemption-religion of Christianity is the highest and most

significantly developed world of religious life that we know, being grounded in
the prophets and in Jesus, possessing its primary and classical attestation in the ,f
Bible, and having disclosed a wealth of potentialities in its fusion with the cul- J
ture of antiquity and with that of the Germanic tribes of western Europeo The au-
thentic life it contains will endure in every conceivable future development. Its
authentic life may be assimilated by such development, but it will never be an-
nul/ed. And if it is incumbent upon us to consider the possibility of a disruption
36
ERNST TROELTSCH
and decline of culture and of religious development, we stil/ have every reason to
believe that this authentic life will reappear and make a fresh start in a form anal-
ogous to the Christianity we know.
That is our situation, and only in this sense is it possible to affirm the "ab-
soluteness of Christianity." This judgment issues from a joining together of ab-
solute decision in the present with an interpretation of the developmental
process that affirms historical relativity. It cannot emerge from repeated demon-
strations of how Christianity, taken as an isolated object, produces an impression
of absolute miracle, nor can it be dedllced from the developmental process as a
certain and verifiable law. In both positions something authentic has been rec-
ognized, but neither is exhaustive; instead, each must be worked out in and with
the othero The "absoluteness" to which this inquiry has led us is simply the high-
est value discernible in history and the certainty of having found the way that
leads to perfect truth. . o.
The religious man wants to possess truth, genuinely desires to find God,
yearns to ding to an authentic revelation and manifestation of Godo For this,
however, does he require an absolute religion, a knowledge of God that exhausts
its essence and idea, that is withdrawn from all change and enrichment, that
overleaps the bounds of history? Or if, with an admittedly quite unjustified at-
tenuating of the word, one defines absolute religion as meaning only that pinna-
de of religious knowledge which has definitely been reached and can never be
surpassed, is the principal thing one needs for his own religious life the certainty
that subsequent generations will never attain a higher knowledge of God? Is
there not contained in such demands all too much of the natural, human pre-
sumptuousness that would vault over the boundaries and conditionality of life
and transpose itself at once to the perfect goal where there is a cessation of toil,
conflict, and difficulty ovCrtl1ismatter of truth? Is not this presumptuousness un-
becoming, especially in the faithful, who, beca use of their own spiritual struggles
and their own lack of conviction and strength, ought to understand how decep-
tive the riddle of earthly life is better than the superficial crowd that strivcs self-
confidently for perfect solutions? Does it not reflect more timidity and inner
uncertainty for one to become completely certain about a religious orientation
whose power he has actually experienced only whcn he knows that it must be ex-
perienced in this way, in this historical context, and in this form of thought? that
it must be experienced as we ourselves experience it today?
Is not the principal need of the religious man, rather, the rcal and innermost
certainty of having encountered God and heard his voice? of following, from
among the mandates of God of which he becomes aware, those that strike him as
particularly plain, simple, and impelling? of committing to God the question of
how he will proceed from this point on? If so, can he not be certain that what he
has felt inwardly and tested in experience as the truth oflife can never in all eter-
nity become untruth? Can it be a threat to him if it is sheer faith which asserts
that beyond the revelation ofGod in Jesus there is nothing higher to be hoped for
37
in our entire range of vision? That assertion is, to be sure, only a statement of
probability. But is this probability something we may snobbishly scorn or disdain
when our knowledge is stiJI so obscure and confused that all confidence in the
existence and victory of the Spirit is itself a probability judgment only partially
supported by observation and experience? when even the boldest theories of reli-
gion have attained no further than the instinctive probability judgment that God
would not undertake such a display of miraculous powers and extraordinary
manifestations twice or even more frequently?
With statements of this kind, we have admittedly made a transition fram sci-
entific discourse to religious: from scientific substantiation by means of universal
principIes, laws, and necessary relations, to religious reflection upon the imme-
diate value of a religious orientation for our life and feeling. It is the tone of the
serlllon or lIleditation that we have sounded. However, in view of the question
under consideration, it can hardly be otherwise. The only kind of person who
lIlight wish to have it differently is the "scientistic" fanatic, who refuses to trust
his own beliefs and values unless he has first translated them into seemingly sci-
entific propositions.
mation of life. . . . but as long as that eludes him. renounces any direct affir-
AII that the Christian needs. therefore, is the certainty that within the Chris-
tian orientation of life there is an authentic revelation of God and that nowhere
is a greater revelation to be found. This certainty he can discover even in a purely
historical consideration of Christianity. In sllch a consideration the faith in God
that animated Jesus and his followers encounters hilll with a power that is irre-
sistibly transforming, profoundly lIloving, and binding in the highest degree.
With complete COlllposure, he can consign to the world to come the absolute re-
ligion
of that rcpresents not struggling faith but changeless and certain knowledge
the truth.
38
1
2
Dialectical Theology
It is a repeated phenomenon of theological history: one book marks an

epoch. Anselm's Why God Became Man and Schleiermacher's Speeches
on Religion may serve as examples. Der Romerbrief (1922), by Karl Barth,
translated as Commentary on Romans (hereinafter, Romans), is another.
The book made the decisive break between the characteristic theologies
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The theology of Romans was promptly labeled "dialectical," and readers
will see why. The work is a dizzying spin of positions and counterposi-
tions, of dicta and paradoxes. "Oialectic" has been practiced through
Western intellectual history; since Socrates, a conversation of position and
counterposition, of question and answer and new question, has been seen
as the proper philosophical method. Oialectic can be closed or open; the
meeting of position and counterposition can eventuate in synthesis or
sheerly in a new question. Through the time of his radicalization, Barth
studied Plato and "the Oanish Socrates," S0ren Kierkegaard, to learn a di-
alectic very different from Hegel's, one not only open but actively hostile
to al! synthesis. . ,
Romans is intended as an assault on the reader. Its dialectic is a con-
scious renewal of Socrates' attack on Athenian certainties. It does not seek
to provide the reader with information or theory but rather to derange his
or her religious assumptions. As Socrates elicited self-contradictions to de-
construct the claim that what justice meant in Athens is what justice means
in itself, so Barth's whirl of paradoxes intends to undo any direct identity
between what faith can mean within the Christian religion and what it truly
means, in the Christian gospel. Liberal theology is never indicted by name,
but it is the clear model of the Christian religiosity Barth assails.
Romans adopts Schleiermacher's understanding of religion as the essen-
tial and crowning human possibility, and then reverses the valuesigns.Re-
ligion is, just as Neo-Protestantism supposed, our unquenchable and
ennobling longing for the eternal totality beyond our temporal being, in
which alone our lives can come together. Just so, said Barth, religion is the
attempt to use eternity for our temporal purposes, and so denies what it
seeks. We cannot but dream of God, and indeed not to dream of God
39

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A MAP OF

Edited and Introduced by

A MAP 01" lWENT[ETH-CENTURY THEOLOGY

Cover designo )udy Swanson

Library of Congress Carologing-in-Publication Daro

A map of twentieth-century Ihcology : rcadings from Karl Barth to

Manufactured in the U.S.A. Al" 1-2686

l. The Crisis in Theology 15

l. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus 18

4. KarlBarth,The Epistle to the Romans 42

7. KarlBarth, Church Dogmatics 65

9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Letters to Eberhard Bethge 98

5. The New Hermeneutics ll5

11. Rudolf Bultmann, The Problem of Hermeneutics 119

14. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Revelation as History 151

7. Trinitarian Theology 179

PART 1WO ALTERNATIVE PARADIGMS

20. Paul TilIich, The Significance of the History of

26. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology 281

11. Theology and Language 300

3l. Pierre Teilhardde Chardin, Evolution and thc

Schleiermacher's "feeling" has little directIy to do with "emotion." We are

later "mythological" or dogmatic constructions. They widened the ditch be-

The last great school of Neo-Protestantism was the "liberal" theology,

merely individual aspiration, for a conviction is moral precisely insofar as it

"historical Jesus" had been works of ideological imagination, and that

political-economic project something for which they were likely to be en-

1. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical jesus

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side,

2. Karl Barth, The Strange New World within the Bible

We might also say, There is morality within the Bible. It is a collection of

3. Ernst Troeltsch, The AbsoJuteness of Christianity

its environmentat anygiven time. Nowhere is it the changeless,exhaustive,and

To be sure, it is necessary to seek out the controlling idea of Christianity and

The personalistic redemption-religion of Christianity is the highest and most

It is a repeated phenomenon of theological history: one book marks an

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