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Karl Barth's Concept of the Divinity of Jesus Christ
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
Karl Barth's concept of the divinity of Jesus Christ is subject to two opposing interpretations. According to one, Barth maintains that Jesus Christ is a complete, human person who is distinct from God but who can be said to be divine because of God's unique presence in and with him. In this view, divinity in the strictest sense belongs only to God, but it can be attributed to Jesus because of his relation to God and his role as the special medium of God's revelation. If this interpretation were correct, Barth would stand in the Antiochian theological tradition.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1981
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1 Antiochian theologians in the past and in the present have understood Jesus as a complete human individual who could be said to be divine because of his relation to God. Theodore of Mopsuestia, perhaps the most able defender of Antiochian thought in the ancient church, argued that human qualities and actions can be attributed to Jesus because of his nature but that divine qualities and actions can be attributed to him only because of his relation to God. See Norris, Richard A., Manhood and Christ, A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963) 215–16Google Scholar. The modern thinker W. Norman Pittenger explicitly defends an Antiochian definition of the divinity of Jesus. He states, “That which the divinity of Christ denotes is the act of God the Word in him.” The Word Incarnate (New York: Harper&Bros., 1959) 181Google Scholar. See also 32, 187, 194, 221.
For a more complete discussion of Antiochian theology and an Antiochian interpretation of Barth, see my Ph.D. dissertation, “Karl Barth's Alexandrian Christology” (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1976) 2–4, 38–152Google Scholar. For a discussion of Barth's concept of the divinity of Jesus Christ, see 153–216.
2 For substantiation of the claim that Alexandrian theologians accept this understanding of the divinity of Jesus Christ, see Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Doctrines (2d ed.; New York: Harper & Bros., 1958) 317–23Google Scholar. See also Waldrop, “Barth's Alexandrian Christology,” 38–58.
3 Theologians who interpret Barth as an Alexandrian thinker include Walter Günther, Herbert Hartwell, and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Günther, Die Christologie Karl Barths (Mainz: Gutenberg Universität, 1954) 27Google Scholar. Hartwell, , The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964) 185–86Google Scholar. Pannenberg, , Jesus—God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968) 33Google Scholar. Scholars who place Barth in the Antiochian tradition include Bouillard, Henri, Prenter, Regin, and Bouillard, Fred Klooster, Karl Barth: Parole de Dieu et Existence Humaine (2 vols.; Aubier: Editions Montaigne, 1957) 1Google Scholar. 22. Prenter, , “Karl Barths Umbildung der traditionellen Zweinaturlehre in lutherischer Beleuchtung,” Studia Theologica 11, Fasc. 1 (1957) 10–30Google Scholar. Klooster, , The Significance of Barth's Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1961) 94–95Google Scholar.
4 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F. (4 vols.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–69) 1/1. 443Google Scholar. For the corresponding pages in the original German, see Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1/1. 406. Hereafter, references to this work will use the abbreviations CD and KD, and simple citations will be placed in parenthesis in the text.
5 CD 1/2. 501 (KD, 555). See also 463, 685(KD, 512, 768) where Barth speaks of the “divinity of Holy Scripture.”
6 CD 1/1. 151(KD, 138). See also 188 (KD, 171–72) where Barth states, “We do not possess the Word of God otherwise than in the mystery of its worldliness…. We always have it in a form which as such is not the Word of God and as such, moreover, does not betray that it is the form precisely of the Word of God.”
7 Ibid., 349(KD, 321). See also CD 1/2. 368, 492, 500, 736, 743, 755 (KD, 405, 545, 554, 826, 831, 844).
8 CD 1/2. 499 (KD, 553–54). See also CD 3/2. 219 (KD, 261) where Barth states: ”If the humanity of Jesus is the image of God, this means that it is only indirectly and not directly identical with God.” See also CD 2/1. 486 (KD, 547).
9 CD 1/1. 155(KD, 141–42). “‘God's Son’ in the language of the doctrine of the Trinity does not differ from ‘God's Word.’” See also 493 (KD, 453).
10 Prenter(“Barths Umbildung,” 30–32) states that the “is” in statements such as “Jesus Christ s i the Son of God” should be understood analogously. Jesus is God's Son in the sense that he reflects and illustrates the Son.
11 CD 1/1. 180 (KD, 163). “The Word of God is uncreated reality, identical with God Himself.”
12 CD 4/2. 107 (KD, 118). In this discussion of Jesus Christ as the act of God, Barth speaks of Jesus Christ as the event (Ereignis) of revelation, the act (Tun, Tat, Akt)in which God reveals himself, and the history (Geschichte) in which God deals with man.
13 1 CD 1/1. 358 (KD, 329). See also 436–40 (KD, 400–404).
14 Ibid., 403, 412 (KD, 370, 379). Barth applies the concept “mode of being” (Seinsweise) to each of the three in God.
15 Ibid., 403, 412, and 502 (KD, 370, 379, and 461). Barth uses Wesen to designate God's oneness.
16 Ibid., 474 (KD, 435). See also 457–60 (KD, 419–22).
17 Ibid., 474–512 (KD, 435–70). Barth's section “The Eternal Son” defends the claim that Jesus Christ is the eternal act of God.
18 CD 1/2. 162 (KD, 177–78). Christ's “manhood is only the predicate of His Godhead,” which he assumed “in inconceivable condescension”when he became man.
19 CD 2/1. 262–63 (KD, 293–94). “God is He who in this event is subject, predicate and object; the revealer, the act of revelation, the revealed; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” This quote indicates the double character of “act.” It indicates the “whole,” that is, the “event” which God is “in”; and it indicates the second “part” of this “whole.”
20 CD 4/1. 177 (KD, 193–94). See also CD 2/1. 275, 317 (KD, 308–9, 357).
21 CD 4/1. 202–3 (KD, 221–22). God is “One who rules and commands in majesty and One who obeys in humility.”
22 Jenson, Robert W. (God After God: The God of the Past and the God of the Future, Seen in the Work of Karl Barth [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969] 112Google Scholar, 125–27) presents a sympathetic defense of Barth's position.
23 CD 2/1. 297 (KD, 334). “What we can describe as personality is indeed the whole Trinity … not the individual aspects by themselves.” See also CD 1/1. 402–3 (KD, 370) where Barth states that the one essence of the trinity means one individual, not merely equality.
24 CD 1/1. 426–31 (KD, 391–95). See also 452–56 (KD, 415–19).
25 CD 3/2. 59 (KD, 69). See also CD 4/2. 193 (KD, 214).
26 CD 2/2. 96–97 (KD, 103–4). See also CD 1/1. 535 (KD, 490).
27 CD 4/2. 73 (KD, 79–80). Translation mine.
28 For a more thorough discussion of Barth's christological language, and the principles which govern it, see Waldrop, “Barth's Alexandrian Christology,” 217–75.
29 For example, see McIntyre, John, The Shape of Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 167Google Scholar. For a critical analysis of McIntyre's interpretation of Barth, see my article, “Revelation, Redemption, and the Divinity of Jesus Christ,” SJT 31 (1978) 501–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 CD 1/1. 274 (KD, 252); CD 1/2. 37, 43 (KD, 41, 48); CD 2/1. 82–83 (KD, 90–91); CD 3/2. 343 (KD, 413); CD 3/3. 103 (KD, 115–16).
31 Prenter, Regin, “Die Lehre vom Menschen bei Karl Barth,” ThZ 6 (1950) 221Google Scholar, seems to conclude that Barth's analogia relationis is not an alternative to analogia entis but a new form of it.
32 For a similar view, see Hartwell, The Theology of Karl Barth, 56.
33 For a similar criticism, see Jenson, God after God, 70, 151–54, 173.