The Methodology of John Howard Yoder

Part One: Influences and Development

Introduction

Yoder’s theological contributions to the twentieth century were not by any means revolutionary. In fact they were radically submissive and meek.[1] Yet, even though he seems to have had little impact, some of America’s premier theologians of the twenty-first century will owe much of their distinctiveness and faithfulness to the Church to his example. Stanley Hauerwas says of him, “I am convinced that when Christians look back on this century of theology in America, ‘The Politics of Jesus’ will be seen as a new beginning.”[2] Hauerwas capture the scene onto which Yoder arrived with typical colorful candor.

Yoder comes into this territory from the sectarian badlands. He is the lone hero standing up to the mob that is willing to secure justice through the anguished acceptance of violence. He insists that the christologically disciplined account of nonviolence displayed in “The Politics of Jesus” cannot be dismissed the way that liberal Protestant pacifism was. Also, Yoder’s account of nonviolence requires theologians to acknowledge that their work makes no sense abstracted from the church. In short, for Yoder both the subject and the audience of Christian ethics are Christians—the people who are constituted by that polity called church.[3]

This image, (and Stanley acknowledges this) though amusing and telling of the adversaries he encountered, does not do justice to Yoder’s life work of questioning the role of knight, and praising the role of martyr. The word “martyr” means witness, and that is precisely what John Yoder saw the church to be, but to understand Yoder’s vision more lucidly it is helpful to understand the development of his methodology through the examination of his influences; both positive and negative.

To attempt to unfold a methodology for Yoder is a dubious task. He strongly resisted any suggestions to write introductory or overview materials for his theology, saying that theology can never “start from scratch,” and he therefore “insisted on writing and speaking always in response to specific requests and on behalf of particular audiences.”[4] Even the compilation of his lecture notes into “Preface to Theology,” was done with some hesitation. The introduction to “Preface to Theology” describes Yoder as “often puzzled that anyone not part of the original audience would think what he had written important.”[5] Yoder claimed that “The Politics of Jesus” was merely a report on scholarship, and editors of “Preface to Theology” Hauerwas and Sider imply that “he would no doubt claim that ‘Preface to Theology’ was no more than an attempt to acquaint Mennonite seminarians with the theological developments required by the Gospel.”[6]

“Yoder was a comprehensive, but not a systematic writer,” says Alain Epp Weaver in an article in “The Review of Politics.”[7] “As a result, most of the times Yoder addressed the question of the church’s political witness.”[8] Lectures and essays always began with the task at hand or “the assignment” given, and one of the reasons much of his work remains unpublished is because “he distrusted ‘thought’ in the abstract.”[9] Yoder was very suspicious when theologizing preceded the exposition of the narrative of God relating to His people. For Yoder this was a possible sign that one was attempting to fill in the gaps of an already extant theological system, because to question abstractly indicated that one is attempting to answer abstractly, and this is something theologians must not do. In an article found in “Theology Today,” Yoder claims that the Gospel (the “good news”) “says something particular that would not be known and could not be believed, were it not said.”[10] The object of theology is particular for Yoder and even carries a particular message. The challenge of theology is the right exegesis and practice of that message. Yoder held such views largely due to a “methodology,” (though he would not use that term) which he acquired under the influences of the Mennonite Church and Karl Barth.

The Mennonite Church – Discipleship

While attending Goshen College during a period of academic reform under the supervision of Harold S. Bender, Yoder received a “Mennonite” training, which consisted of a “Mennonite emphasis” and a “biblical emphasis.” Bender supplemented a truncated systematics course with two years of Church history claiming, “Mennonites do not emphasize creeds and theology,”[11] but in a pamphlet he authored on Anabaptism, Bender proposed some “identifying marks” of Anabaptism that many held as core values for Mennonites. In the pamphlet Bender wrote that the “Anabaptist vision included three major points of emphasis; first, a new conception of the essence of Christianity as discipleship; second, a new conception of the church as a brotherhood; and third, a new ethic of love and nonresistance.”[12]

Bender thought positively of these signatures and their benefit to the Mennonite Church, but Yoder criticized him for his systematic analysis of the Anabaptists, by which he pigeonholed a vast portion of Anabaptists who did not fit into Bender’s monolithic categories. Yoder agreed that there was something valuable to be recovered from the Anabaptists, but Yoder could not allow Bender to eclipse that something in his attempted annexation of their “identifying marks.” Yoder argued that in the Anabaptist movement, and particularly beginning with Michael Sattler, there was an eternally reformative note that focused on the person of Christ in a way that emphasized the humility of personal encounter and discipleship with the Lord of the cosmos.

It was in Sattler that Yoder began to see a theology that was truly dialectic. It pleaded for correction in humility and sought to resolve differences at any cost.[13] Sattler also echoes Yoder (and the Mennonite Church with him) in his firm stance on the voluntary nature of Church participation, and more importantly the voluntary nature of service to God. In the chapter entitled “On Two Kinds of Obedience” Sattler differentiates between servile and filial obedience.[14] This is an important parallel in Yoder’s theology as it is a direct connection to Yoder’s concept of submission and non-resistance. For Yoder, coercion and violence remove the possibility for filial service, making it into a counterfeit form of faith, which cannot constitute the community that is the Church.

The aspect of Anabaptist theology that Bender neglected by framing it into the generalized typologies was its constantly reformative and simultaneously submissive nature. It was reformative because it sought Christ in a way that could never be fully expressed in a systematic or methodological way, but in spite of its critical and dogmatic approach it remained submissive and non-resistant both politically and theologically. Bender’s assessment crystallized the values of an instant but failed to regard the fluid “striving” of the Anabaptists that Yoder captured.

Karl Barth – Humility

When Yoder was studying at Basil under Karl Barth, he discovered a remarkable congruence between his Mennonite heritage and Barth’s Christo-centric theology. Barth’s emphasis of the Word of God faithfully heard, placed a mediated “encounter” with the life changing Christ as the prolegomena to theology. This mediation is the degree to which Barth allows for human reason. To begin with human reason, questioning God and theology is inappropriate for Barth, because it seeks to place God within its own a priori theological/philosophical grid rather than letting the word speak on its own terms. Barth held, that “theology is not called in any way to interpret, explain, and elucidate God and his Word,” rather it “can only consist in confirming and announcing the Word as something spoken and heard prior to all interpretation.”[15] For this reason Barth claims “theology must begin with Jesus Christ and not with general principles.”[16] Few Barthians have taken to task Barth’s theological revisions as faithfully as Yoder. He sought, as Barth did, to escape the methodologism and systematics of theology, believing it to be unfaithful to and an unjust treatment of the person of Christ, but where Barth rejected all forms of systems or formulas as an “alien standard,” Yoder deems them as merely the wrong starting point.[17]

It is clear, then, that like Bender, Barth held that, whether or not they serve the Church, Creeds and theologies certainly do not define it, and that ecclesiology always precedes theology. Barth also held that theological enquiry always begins in submission. Barth expressly describes the surrender of theology in terms of humility and pertinence. A posture of humility is necessary for Barth in that it is not by any feat of the theologian that allows God’s Word to be miraculously mediated to the church, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hauerwas writes in the introduction to Yoder’s book Preface to Theology, “Of course everything Yoder ever wrote, as might be expected from one shaped by Barth, is determined by his Christological focus.”[18] Within this radical Christo-centrism, Yoder found a way to relate Barth to Sattler and the Anabaptists who would not define themselves under any criteria except that of being disciples of Christ. In the acquisition of Barth, Yoder found language that was capable of embodying that “fluid” and “dynamic” faith of the Anabaptists, but also found the means by which to criticize that phenomenon that became central to all of Yoder’s theology; namely Constantinianism.

Methodological Non-Constantinianism

Yoder believed that the changes from the Early Church to the Constantinian Church were substantial ones, which can be identified as the “sources of western social ethics.”[19] This identification, for Yoder, is a severe criticism. Yoder held “western social ethics” to be a form of thought that was “necessitated” by Jesus’ inapplicability to social orders. Yoder, however, held political and social ethics to be at the root of Jesus’ life and teaching, and posited that “the church had ceased to see Jesus as an ethical norm,” and that “the church‘s acquiescence to or espousal of the sword in contrast to the teaching and life of Jesus constituted the most visible symbol of the shift in norms.”[20] The taking up of the “sword” constituted the most significant problem that Yoder had with the Constantinian church. The Church’s willingness to take recourse to violence showed their misunderstanding of the meaning of Christ; namely that of “subservient rule.”

Furthermore, when the Church ceased to be the exception and began to be the status quo, “the basis for belonging switched from faith in Jesus Christ, which made the church clearly a voluntary structure, to conforming to the society under the emperor’s jurisdiction, which meant that people were born into the church.”[21] This was problematic under the same basic rubric as the problem of the “sword.” It failed to be submissive after the model of Christ in that it: a) enacted violence upon others physically, through the rule and polemics of the Empire, and b) enacted violence upon its members ideologically, in coercing or compelling them in a way that eliminated the church’s voluntary membership. Even in concepts like that of the Trinity, the Constantinian church did violence to the free and non-coercive nature of humanity in Christ. Yoder posits that“[the Trinity] meant rather that language must be found and definitions created so that Christians, who believe in only one God, can affirm that that God is most adequately and bindingly known in Jesus.”[22] In phrasing the Trinitarian creed this way, Yoder takes away the Constantinian temptation to begin with creeds and theologies rather than with Christ himself.

This approach to theology is what Chris Huebner calls “methodological non-Constantinianism.”[23] This method assumes that the truth about God is not something that can be possessed or secured through some kind of ex ante theory of justification,” but “can only be witnessed, which is to say vulnerability given and received as a contingent gift.”[24] According To Huebner, this is the reason for Yoder’s hesitation to either “start from scratch” or offer any kind of “final reading.” Huebner points out that “the temptation to start from scratch and the rhetoric of finality can be seen as a kind of epistemological violence in the same sense that they constitute a retreat from vulnerability.” Huebner states poignantly that “just as Yoder’s reading of the politics of Jesus involves the renunciation of the temptation that it is up to us to ensure that history come out right, so his understanding of epistemology rejects the pursuit of effectiveness in terms of ex ante theoretical dualisms or abstract principles which can be read as attempts to secure guarantees.”[25] To put it another way, “Yoder argues that there is no single method, epistemology, or idiom to which the church must be committed.”[26]

Part Two – Yoder’s Theology as Response

Social Responsibility

During a time in America’s history when the Niebuhrs were criticizing the pacifist agenda for not loving other’s enough to justify an unfortunate but necessary use of violence in order to preserve some measure of order and peace in the world, Yoder offered a new – or at least refreshed – vantage point concerning the place of the Church in the world. The social gospelers and the Christian ethicists shared a basic assumption that Yoder did not and that was that they assumed that it was God’s will that they, at least attempt to, redeem the world in the loving shalom of the Father. The pragmatic approach of liberal theology did not accept violence and coercive rule because they thought it was good, they accepted it as a “step towards” an end unknown.

Yoder has no reason to follow pragmatically since he holds that everything one needs to know about being a disciple of Christ can be found in faithful examination of the life he lead. Typically, and perhaps pragmatically, Jesus’ actions have been marginalized because of their ineffectiveness and irresponsibility, but where the Niebuhrs and Troeltsch left Christ’s antiquated ways behind in search for better methods, Yoder interprets Jesus to be saying something radical about our views of effectiveness and our role as his disciples in society.

“The most basic issue facing Christians is not that of war, but rather the social assumptions that lead Christians to assume the necessity of war.”[27] Yoder argues that no Christian believes in the intrinsic value of war and violence, but “because they assume that the church is called to run society in collaboration with the state.”[28] In his book “The Politics of Jesus,” Yoder argues extensively about whether the Church is called to “save” the world and to what extent God is truly in control and ultimately responsible where we are powerless anyway. "The point is not that one can attain all of one's legitimate ends without using violent means," (as if one could eliminate war by becoming a pacifist), "it is rather that our readiness to renounce our legitimate ends whenever they cannot be attained by legitimate means itself constitutes our participation in the triumphantly suffering Lamb.”[29] In “The Politics of Jesus” Yoder writes, "the triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys."[30] Perhaps Hauerwas is right in his assessment that Christians “should be more relaxed and less compulsive about running the world.”[31] Perhaps “the assumption that people have the capacity to make the world come out right or that an insightful minority could make the world good by coercively outlawing war through the technique of minority control was not faithful to the Gospel.”[32]

Pluralistic Responsibility

Another accusation that Niebuhr and the liberal school use on Yoder is that he is sectarian or absolute in his claims. Yoder does not appear to offer something “all-encompassing” or “ontological” in nature that can unite the differing ways of interpreting Jesus. To the degree that one call Yoder a sectarian because he believes in a Church that is a reversal of the Constantinian values that are normative in humanity. Yoder even speaks “affirmatively ‘sectarian’ character of the church and its ‘irresponsibility’ vis-à-vis the world.”[33] More recently Yoder has been careful to communicate that the “methodological non-Constantinianism” of his theology, though it is distinct from the world, it is not withdrawn from the world.[34] If Yoder can be label sectarian it must be “ideological” and “axiological” and never “sociological.”

Part Three – Reflections on Yoder

Yoder does not object to systematics in principle, but on the grounds that western philosophy has consistently used them improperly. The ascribing of limits to an object is an important psychological faculty. It allows us to conceptualize and make large amounts of data manageable so that they can be related to larger paradigms of thought, or other conceptualized objects. Western philosophy goes wrong when it takes these categories to be the essence of the object rather than a means of conceptualizing and communicating it. Believing an object to be limited in nature by the concepts that describe it creates a dualism that is not “realistic” but “idealistic.” It can be appropriate and helpful to “conceptualize” or systematize Yoder’s thought to bring out a fuller sense of its nuance and depth, as long as it remains open to the inevitable and appropriate criticism of its finitude and limitedness.

Yoder’s theology reveals a thoroughgoing intimacy between love and freedom. The two appear to exist for the sake of each other. The truest love is one freely entered into; in fact love is not truly love except in freedom. Freedom seems to be an aspect of love, perhaps even the capacity or grounds for love. If freedom is an aspect of our nature given solely fro the purpose of loving, then freedom becomes just as important as love because love cannot exist without it.

Our king is a servant to us, and in dying for us, grants us the capacity to die for Him, even at the hands of those who are not in him. Yoder therefore like his master Jesus values Freedom and Love as the greatest values for worship. This would indeed fit into an understanding of the world that does not “take responsibility” for it. This is not meant pejoratively, but simply as a way of saying, “Thy will be done, and not mine; and in Thy own time.”

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[1] Perhaps I overstate this, but I want to draw a connection to his own ideas about effectiveness in the world, which we will treat later.

[2] Stanley Hauerwas, “When the Politics of Jesus Makes a Difference,” The Christian Century 110:28 (13 October 1993): 982.

[3] Stanley Hauerwas, “When the Politics of Jesus Makes a Difference,” The Christian Century 110:28 (13 October 1993): 982.

[4] Gerald J. Biesecker-Mast, “The Word Made Flesh: The Skin of History in Yoderian Historiography,” Fides et Historia 36:1 (Winter 2004): 53.

[5] John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 9.

[6] John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 14.

[7] Alain Epp Weaver, “After Politics: John Howard Yoder, Body Politics, and the Witnessing Church,” The Review of Politics 61:4 (Fall 1999): 637.

[8] Alain Epp Weaver, “After Politics: John Howard Yoder, Body Politics, and the Witnessing Church,” The Review of Politics 61:4 (Fall 1999): 637.

[9] John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 11.

[10] John Howard Yoder, “Sacrament as Social Process: Christ the Transformer of Culture,” Theology Today, 48:1 (April 1991): 33.

[11] John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 12.

[12] Harold S. Bender, “The Anabaptist Vision,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review (1944). Available at http://www.mcusa-archives.org/library/anabaptistvision/anabaptistvision.html (Accessed 31 May 2006).

[13] John Howard Yoder, trans. and ed., The Legacy of Michael Sattler, (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973), 19.

[14] John Howard Yoder, trans. and ed., The Legacy of Michael Sattler, (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973), 121.

[15] Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963), 18.

[16] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: II/2 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957), 4.

[17] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: I/1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), 2.

[18] John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method, ed. by Stanley Hauerwas and Alex Sider (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 15.

[19] John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 135-47.

[20] J. Denny Weaver, “Renewing Theology: The Way of John Howard Yoder: Musings from Nicea to September 11,” Fides et Historia 35:2 (Summer 2003): 85.

[21] J. Denny Weaver, “Renewing Theology: The Way of John Howard Yoder: Musings from Nicea to September 11,” Fides et Historia 35:2 (Summer 2003): 85.

[22] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972), 99.

[23] Chris K. Huebner, “How To Read Yoder: An Exercise in Pacifist Epistemology,” Theology and Culture: Peacemaking in a Globalized World – International Consultation of Historic Peace Churches, Bienenberg, Switzerland, 25 June 2001.

[24] Chris K. Huebner, “How To Read Yoder: An Exercise in Pacifist Epistemology,” Theology and Culture: Peacemaking in a Globalized World – International Consultation of Historic Peace Churches, Bienenberg, Switzerland, 25 June 2001.

[25] Chris K. Huebner, “How To Read Yoder: An Exercise in Pacifist Epistemology,” Theology and Culture: Peacemaking in a Globalized World – International Consultation of Historic Peace Churches, Bienenberg, Switzerland, 25 June 2001.

[26] Chris K. Huebner, “How To Read Yoder: An Exercise in Pacifist Epistemology,” Theology and Culture: Peacemaking in a Globalized World – International Consultation of Historic Peace Churches, Bienenberg, Switzerland, 25 June 2001.

[27] Stanley Hauerwas, “Democratic Time: Lessons Learned From Yoder and Wolin,” Cross Currents, 55:4 (Winter 2006): 534.

[28] Stanley Hauerwas, “Democratic Time: Lessons Learned From Yoder and Wolin,” Cross Currents, 55:4 (Winter 2006): 534, quoting from John Howard Yoder, “The Unique Role of the Historic Peace Churches,” Bretheren Life and Thought 14 (Summer 1969): 136.

[29] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972), 237.

[30] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2^nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972), 238.

[31] Stanley Hauerwas, “Democratic Time: Lessons Learned From Yoder and Wolin,” Cross Currents, 55:4 (Winter 2006): 534, quoting from John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 158.

[32] Stanley Hauerwas, “Democratic Time: Lessons Learned From Yoder and Wolin,” Cross Currents, 55:4 (Winter 2006): 534.

[33] Alain Epp Weaver, “After Politics: John Howard Yoder, Body Politics, and the Witnessing Church,” The Review of Politics, 61:4 (Fall 1999): 637. Referencing and earlier article by Yoder entitled “The Anabaptist Dissent.”

[34] Alain Epp Weaver, “After Politics: John Howard Yoder, Body Politics, and the Witnessing Church,” The Review of Politics, 61:4 (Fall 1999): 637.

Abbreviations

CDS Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics: A Selection. H. Gollwitzer, ed.

ET Barth, Karl. Evangelical Theology

FQI Barth, Karl. Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum

PTNC Barth, Karl. Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century

Anselm, Scripture, and the Search for the Theological Method

Introduction

The Reformation could be attributed with the introduction of the western world to a path that would inevitably lead to fallibilism and the epistemic doubting of every form of knowledge. The European world was greatly challenged by the position implied in the Reformation, which argued that truth must be examined, reformed, and constantly re-asserted. The offspring of such doubting of fundamental beliefs of the Church was a rise in uncertainty and the growing emphasis upon the necessity for human reason to qualify beliefs. René Descartes made the process of doubting all truths and values well known in his application of methodological skepticism, and according to C. S. Pierce, this already implies foundationalism, which we will define here as the qualification of knowledge by their being supported by “basic” beliefs or non-beliefs that give justificatory support.[1] Theology in the 19^th century was questioned as to its epistemological foundation for knowledge of the existence of God, and furthermore questioned how it could know anything about such a God as the one held by the confession of the Church. This critique was answered in the pivotal work of Immanuel Kant.

Kant

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, wrote of his era, “Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit.”[2] Kant’s challenge to religion was clear; “Religion through its sanctity, and law-giving through its majesty may seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion, and cannot claim the sincere respect which reason accords only to that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination.”[3] According to Barth, “from Kant onwards, all self-affirmation of human reason would be asked, and would continualy have to bear with ‘being’ asked, whether it in fact rest upon a true maturity.”[4] The effects of Kant’s critique were too pervasive that Barth writes, “from now on theology would no longer be able to formulate its tenets, no matter on what foundation it might base them, without having a clear conception of the method of reason, which it also uses in the construction of its tenets.”[5] Theological liberalism was born when theologians began to take Kant’s challenge critically, attempting to critically examine the values of Christendom by the method Kant proposed. According to Trevor Hart, two forms of such liberalism particularly interested Barth: the theologies of Friedrich Schleiermacher and that of Albrecht Ritschl.[6]

Schleiermacher

Schleiermacher proposed a general “God consciousness” by which it becomes possible for all life to be experienced religiously. He described religious experience as “a feeling of absolute dependence,” and although “he wanted in all circumstances to be a modern man as well as a Christian theologian,”[7] Schleiermacher was always conscious of “the danger of a theology which is essentially apologetic in its approach – its impending metamorphosis into a philosophy; and if there was one thing he fought almost desperately against as an academic theologian, it was this danger.”[8] Schleiermacher’s rejection of humanity’s ability to conceptualize God except by this “feeling of absolute dependence” was a direct response to Kant’s claim that rationality was the only claim to epistemic validity. The only connection between humanity and the “otherness” of God is the spiritual aspect of the human soul, something which no amount of rational thought could completely understand or conceptualize.

Barth read the theology of Schleiermacher very positively in his early years at the University of Berne, and agreed with this mutual concern of Schleiermacher’s, believing that apologetics was a “bowing” of theology to the primacy of the philosophical or epistemological intelligere of man. This type of theology validated itself in terms of the brilliance of humanity’s understanding rather than trust and faith in God’s revealed Word. Barth writes in Protestant Theology in the 19^th Century, “Schleiermacher has least attacked the problem of theology at the point where it must be attacked if it is to be attacked at all; with a basic consideration on what the Church may, can, and should teach in its prevailing present, in prevailing connexion with the biblical norm upon the one side and with the Church’s past upon the other.”[9] This means that Schleiermacher held that theology must be a science in which the dogmatics of the church proclaim – to the best of human efforts – the nature and content of their religious object, Jesus Christ, as revealed by the religious aspect of experience in “the historical ‘composite’ life of all humanity.”[10]

Unfortunately, though, Jesus Christ fit very awkwardly into this attempt at philosophical universalization, and Barth did not believe that Schleiermacher’s theology necessarily lead to Christ by its very nature. The problem, Barth contended, is that Schleiermacher failed to be radically Christocentric, and that it would have “perhaps been said better, more lucidly and more concisely, if he had been able to say it in the form of a circle with one center, instead of as an ellipse with two foci.”[11] In this way Barth, in addition to strongly criticizing Schleiermacher’s a priori of religious experience, considers Schleiermacher’s theology too broad and general to be distinctly and particularly Christian, but according to Barth the alternative offered by Ritschl suffered from the weakness of leaning too heavily upon the intelligere of humanity.

Ritschl

For Ritschl the Church was a direct result of the ongoing historical phenomena left by the wake of Jesus’ life and work.[12] For Ritschl the importance of God’s revelation in Christ were his “teachings.” Barth writes “He went back to Kant, but Kant quite definitely interpreted as an antimetaphysical moralist, by means of whom he thought he could understand Christianity as that which grandly and inevitably made possible, or realized, a practical ideal of life. In this his abandoning of all knowledge which could not be rendered comprehensible within this framework is seen properly as the characteristic thing about his theology, provided we hold up beside it the positive determination with which one the one hand he apprehends and affirms this practical ideal of life as such, and with which on the other he makes the interpretation of Christianity, the Bible and particularly the Reformation, serve the founding and strengthening of his ideal.”[13] Ritschl emphasized the teachings of Christ as revealed in the Scriptures making ethics his central focus and thereby employing the Kantian connection to the realm of the transcendent that is moral consciousness.

Ritschl believed he had escaped the problem of epistemology by using ethics as his key methodological component, but Karl Barth argued that special revelation consisted in something more than “those this-worldly phenomena from Jesus’ life which remained once the scholars had done their work on the text of the Gospels.”[14] For Barth the main concern of theology was the knowledge of God and Ritschl’s method reduced God to a utilitarian revelator of a universal principle of life. Ritschl was, however, able to at least to make distinctly Christian claims and his appropriation of Christ’s teachings gave his theology a central focus that always drew its theological conclusions out of the context of the Christian faith. He was able to achieve this because his theology had an object, (the teaching of Christ), even though it was not a viable one. Michael Polanyi’s “problem of scientific obscurantism” appropriately describes the innate problems that a rational positivism like Ritschl’s encounters in theological deconstruction. Polanyi states in his book Meaning, that the “whole” is greater than the sum of its parts, and argues that the deconstruction and dissection of objects reveal their components but not their meaning and value as a whole.[15] Ritschl is attempting to reduce the Incarnation to a concept (the teachings of Christ), without appreciating His revelation in its wholeness (the person of Jesus Christ). This proves devastating to his theology because it depends on humanity’s ability to conceptualize the Infinite, which is in principle impossible, just as saying anything about God whatever is impossible for humans. It is only by the miracle of the Incarnation that theology receives the object it needs to remain centered in the Christian faith and in the Credo of the Church.

These theologies portray two ends of a spectrum that Barth accuses collectively as being what he calls “religion,” where humanity attempts to approach God from the side of created order. Schleiermacher’s folly is in that he believed that humans have an innate spiritual capacity by which they can, of their own ability, experience life religiously and Ritschl’s by way of claiming that humans have the power to rationally reduce the whole of Christendom to a principle of ethics taught by Christ. Both offered a kind of a priori by which humanity could consider God. Karl Barth may seem to some as an anti-intellectual, and against religious academics but this is not the case. Barth above all else emphasizes the pursuit of the knowledge of God, but only by first setting up epistemology of revelation, which he called the Word of God. Barth borrowed this methodology of the Word from Anselm who believed that human reason (in the context of theology) was only appropriately applied to the Word of God already believed, which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and in the Credo of the Church.

Anselm

In his book Anselm: Fide Quaerens Intellectum, Barth unfolds Anselm's methodology which helped Barth overturn the norm of modern theology in two ways: first in the inversion of the order of being and knowing; and second in the inversion of the order of actuality and possibility.[16] These inversions allow Anselm to reject the need for supporting one’s faith with reason. The intellect for Anselm served to explore more than to identify truths worthy of faith or belief. Faith is a free gift of the Holy Spirit and needs no other foundation beside the foundation that it is already believed. The possibility of believing requires that the object exist, a priori, in order to give grounds for belief. The argument is clearly circular but that is precisely why it is so appealing to Barth. It does not require any manner of proof from humanity’s point of view, and thus depends solely upon God (as Schleiermacher’s does) for the Grace to understand itself. Anselm and Schleiermacher were both wary of apologetics but where Schleiermacher’s theology suffers from having its basis in religious a priori, Anselm completely frees himself of such philosophical and metaphysical explanations by rejecting all epistemological models for the knowledge of God. In essence, he argues that apart from miraculous intervention, God is wholly other and cannot be known. This is why Anselm depends upon the divine act of God’s self revealing, and self-giving to creation in the person of Jesus Christ.

Thus, Barth is able to say in his work on Anselm, “the aim of theology cannot be to lead men to faith, nor confirm them in the faith, nor even to deliver them from doubt,”[17] and that theology “will therefore be able to claim only scientific certainty for its results and not the certainty of faith and it will therefore not deny the fundamental imperfection of these results.”[18] This is the true meaning of fides quaerens intellectum: That the faith seeks to understand itself because its very nature requires it to, and not to respond to any outside attack or criticism. Anselm believed that “it is not a question of faith ‘requiring’ the ‘proof’ or the ‘joy,’” rather “Anselm wants ‘proof’ or ‘joy’ because he wants intelligere and he wants intelligere because he believes.”[19] For Anselm “it is not the existence of faith, but rather – the nature of faith, that desires knowledge.”[20] Anselm uses the phrase credo ut intelligam to convey this idea. It translates “it is my very faith itself that summons me to knowledge.” Karl Barth describes the futility of external skepticism and critiquing of the Church’s claims saying, “a science of faith, which denied or even question the Faith (the Credo of the Church), would ipso facto cease to be either ‘faithful’ or ‘scientific,’” and “its denials would a priori be no better than bats and owls squabbling with eagles about the reality of the beams of the midday sun.”[21]

The exposition of this faith, though, is entirely possible once the confession of belief (fides) is made because theology is able by the Holy Spirit to identify its source and object of examination. This object is only made a reality by first believing and only then is it miraculously offered by God for His Church to study and re-proclaim to the world. Barth interprets Anselm's two-fold prayer for God to “enlighten his eyes and to “let him see his face” as more than a “mere rhetorical repetition.” [22] He interprets it as an argument that humanity, in addition to needing a divine bestowing of human reason, needs God to miraculously cross the infinite chasm between God and the complete otherness of humanity. What is required for theology is not epistemological and philosophical precision, but “a pure heart, eyes that have been opened, child-like obedience, a life in the Spirit, rich nourishment from the Holy Scripture to make him capable of finding these answers.”[23] Barth calls this process intellectus fidei, as it does not look to anything “naturally” existing in reality, but to the existential paradox of the Incarnation as the expression of the Inexpressible One.

In Fides Quaerens Intellectum, Barth holds that “the ultimate and decisive capacity for the intellectus fidei does not belong to human reason acting on its own but must always be bestowed on human reason as surely as intelligere is a voluntarius effectus,” and that “this capacity which is bestowed consists in following correctly the successive logical steps that lead to knowledge.”[24] Here logic and reason enter Barth’s theology (and only after the believer faithfully acknowledges its source), and here is where Barth discovers the epistemological construct for his methodology and doctrine of revelation.

Barth’s doctrine of revelation was instrumental to the development of his dogmatics and foundation for his theological endeavors for the rest of his life. Being freed of the necessity to prove the value of theology in ways external to its own science, Barth did not need the boundaries or support of any theological system and in fact denied their appropriateness in theological discipline. He instead, preferred to say that the right and faithful practice of theology was its own authentification.

Systematizing, Barth believed, failed to let the Word of God speak, and interpreted it in terms of a preconception. Any attempt to speak of God was to be considered preposterous; all one could hope to achieve is a faithful and sufficient proclamation of God’s Word. In Evangelical Theology Barth writes, “Theology is not called in any way to interpret, explain, and elucidate God and his Word.”[25] How, then, can we understand the intelligere present in fides quaerens intellectum if theology “can only consist in confirming and announcing the Word as something spoken and heard prior to all interpretation?”[26] For Anselm the Credo of the Church and the Holy Scriptures offer a substance upon which faith can be placed, but this does not absolve the Christian from attempting to understand their faith as divinely given truth,[27] and Barth believed that the Word of God was known only by the faithful attempts of theologians to understand (intelligere) their source of revelation by which God has already spoken. Revelation does not become the Word of God unless it is sought out by faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum) through interpretation, exegesis, contextualization, and other theological disciplines.

These sources of revelation are not determined by some philosophical standard or metaphysical rationale, rather they are purely descriptive. Karl Barth’s sources of revelation are the sources by which God has spoken to the Church, and continues to speak in a way that is peculiar to the Credo of the Church and the historical reality of the incarnation of Christ. Like Anselm, the sources which Barth identifies are twofold: encounter with the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth who is God incarnate, and the prophecies and witnesses about him which comprise the Holy Scriptures.[28] Even though Anselm and Barth have taken God’s revelation as an object for theological intelligere, it changes the purpose and function of intelligere, from “an intellectual storming of the gates of heaven,” to a “sacrificium intellectus.”[29]

Scripture

Anselm adhered faithfully to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, but why Scripture if the true revelation of God is his pre-existence as an incarnate human being? Why is Anselm’s (and Barth’s) revelation of Jesus Christ founded in Scripture as well as the actual person of Jesus Christ? Would the incarnation inadequately serve the Church as her final authority? In his article entitled “Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals: Reassessing the Question of the Relation of Holy Scripture and the Word of God,” John Morrison interprets McCormack as arguing that Scripture is the Word of God on the grounds of Anselm’s inversion of possibility and actuality. The argument begins with the statement “’Barthians’ (with reason) have understood Barth to assert that Scripture, as simply human written text, ‘becomes’ what it is not, ‘the Word of God,’ when God sovereignly chooses to ‘speak’ (non-contentfully through the text, so as to thereby meet/encounter persons who respond in faith.”[30] He connects this thought with the doctrine of God’s ‘being in becoming,’ as proposed by Eberhard Jüngel in order to argue the point made by Bruce McCormack that for Barth everything has its being in becoming. Morrison’s argument (and McCormack’s) appears to be that the Holy Scriptures are ontologically the Word of God in their being since it is possible for them to become the Word of God. Morris writes,

This means that where and when Scripture ‘becomes’ the Word of God, it is only ‘becoming’ what it already is. But second, where and when Scripture does not ‘become’ the Word of God there God has chosen provisionally not to bear witness to himself of his or that particular reader. But note, McCormack says, this changes nothing as to the nature of Scripture as defined by the divine will.[31]

This view of Scripture is not one that would contend that every word is transmitted from the mouth of God to the hand of the scribe, but that by God’s power it ‘becomes’ that which it already was ontologically, even though it ‘became’ God’s Word from the words of humans. Morrison relates this change to the office of prophecy and witness, wherein the words of man ‘become’ the Word of God by His own act of self-revealing. This is not to be confused, Morrison warns, with the ‘change’ that occurs within the words of the proclamation of the Church. He writes, “While Scripture and church proclamation may be similar s human phenomena, they are dissimilar in Barth’s understanding in that Scripture has ‘absolutely’ constitutive significance for the latter.”[32] The scriptures ‘being’ in its ‘becoming’ is also attested by Bernard Ramm who wrote, “In the providence of God there is no better means of preserving the special revelation of God than by casting it into writing,” and that “the creation of Scripture is but the extension of the modality of the divine speaking.”[33] This view sounds appealing as it seems harmonious with Anselm’s inversion of actuality and possibility, but we must remember that Anselm used these to understand that which he already believed. Anselm’s faith was already strongly deposited upon Christ and the testimony to him via the Credo of the Church and the Holy Scriptures. To give reason for the being of the Word is to create an epistemic methodology that is based upon a principle and not upon the person of the Incarnation. ‘Being’ in ‘becoming’ appropriate as it may be as a declaration of God within God’s-self, cannot be used by humans to determine the validity of Scripture or any other doctrine. Furthermore, in response to Morrison’s use of Ramm, there is most certainly is, in the providence of God, a better means of preserving the special revelation of God than by casting it into writing, and that it the eternal Christ, the Incarnation, the Son of God who sitteth at the right hand of the throne of God for ever and ever. In Church Dogmatics Karl Barth writes, “It tells it to us as witness: witness to a person, to Jesus Christ, to the whole nexus and history of reality and truth bound up in his name.”[34] It is never the witness itself with which one is concerned, but only that which the witness is a testimony to.

Conclusion

Perhaps one could say that the Scriptures occupies such a position as described by Morrison, but it could not be argued on the grounds of metaphysical or ontological being, and it would be better argued as the “Inscripturated Word of God” which, just as the Incarnation, must be accepted or denied outside the jurisdiction of any science or craft of humankind. It must be believed in by faith as given by the grace of God. It seems that perhaps the authority of Scripture is part of Barth’s “take it or leave it” faith that is required in order to study the objects of theology.

When Barth speaks of the Scriptures, he uses language like “taking hold of us” and “using its reader for its ends.” Barth holds that this “witness” takes hold of the reader and removes from us all “aloof detachment.” Perhaps, though, Barth could have elaborated a doctrine of Scripture which did not depend on such a “fideist” foundation. Beginning with the theologian’s credo in the Word of God is one thing, but the credo of the theologian in witness Scripture could be better unfolded as a doctrine extrapolated from the Word, rather than a given alongside it. Holy Scripture certainly does not shed any new or persuasive information about its content, but people come to faith by its speaking nonetheless. Is scripture the Word of God for Karl Barth because by accepting its witness, we accept its content? Not likely, because hearing the Word in Scripture already assumes faith in the Word given by God… Scripture’s place in the Word’s discourse with us seems to be a mere description of the way things appear to be, rather than a rational deduction which qualifies their being.

Schleiermacher and Ritschl failed to escape the intelligere of humans as a starting point for theology, but Anslem’s methodology presupposes the Credo and the witness of the Holy Scriptures. Barth’s use of Anselm as a means of critiquing modernity and rational positivism (or foundationalism) is poignant. Considering, however, Barth’s eternal endeavor to make his theology Christocentric – as Christ is the only true bridge between the “wholly otherness” of God and the “createdness” of man – his view of scripture would profit from a doctrinal “grounding” in Christ as well. What distinguishes the nature of Scripture from that of preaching? Barth would say a great deal, but on what grounds (other than its self-authenitication or acceptance on the grounds of faith alone)? There is yet a doctrine to be elaborated from the revelation of Jesus Christ and that is the nature of Scripture. Perhaps this could be done by examining the relation of Christ to the Scriptures as testified to by witness and prophecy in the Scriptures and beyond them as well.

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[1] Clifford Anderson, “A Pragmatic Reading of Karl Barth’s Theological Epistemology,” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy Vol. 22 Iss. 3 (Sep 2001) : 241.

[2] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason abridged ed. (New York, NY : The Modern Library, 1958), 7.

[3] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason trans. by Norman K. Smith , abridged ed. (New York, NY : The Modern Library, 1958), 7.

[4] Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 259.

[5] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 259.

[6] Trevor Hart, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth Ed. by John Webster (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2000), 40.

[7] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 419.

[8] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 417.

[9] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 417.

[10] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 418.

[11] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 418.

[12] Trevor Hart, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth ed. by John Webster (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2000), 40.

[13] Karl Barth, Prtotestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1947), 641.

[14] Trevor Hart, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth ed. by John Webster (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2000), 40.

[15] Michael Polanyi, Meaning (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1975), 25.

[16] Christoph Schwöbel, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth Ed. by John Webster Webster (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29.

[17] FQI, 17.

[18] FQI, 40.

[19] FQI, 16.

[20] FQI, 18.

[21] FQI, 27.

[22] FQI, 38.

[23] FQI, 34.

[24] FQI, 37.

[25] ET, 18.

[26] ET, 18.

[27] FQI, 41.

[28] FQI, 48.

[29] FQI, 26.

[30] John Morrison, “Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals: Reassessing the Question of the Relation of Holy Scriptue and the Word of God,” Trinity Journal Vol. 25, Iss. 2 (Fall 2004) : 187.

[31] John Morrison, “Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals: Reassessing the Question of the Relation of Holy Scriptue and the Word of God,” Trinity Journal Vol. 25, Iss. 2 (Fall 2004) : 187.

[32] John Morrison, “Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals: Reassessing the Question of the Relation of Holy Scriptue and the Word of God,” Trinity Journal Vol. 25, Iss. 2 (Fall 2004) : 187.

[33] Bernard Ramm , Special Revelation and the Word of God (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1961), 125-38, 159-60. quoted from: John Morrison, “Barth, Barthians, and Evangelicals: Reassessing the Question of the Relation of Holy Scriptue and the Word of God,” Trinity Journal Vol. 25, Iss. 2 (Fall 2004) : 187.

[34] CDS, 70.