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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In III, 2 of the Church Dogmatics, Barth develops the analogy of relations revealed in Jesus Christ to obtain between three levels or ‘planes’ of persons in relationship. These are (i) within the Triune God as the eternal relation between the Father and the Son; (ii) between God and man as the free election by God that man should be his covenant partner; (iii) between human persons as the basic form of humanity. The single factor which constitutes this analogy, the one thing which is similar in spite of all the great dissimilarity between God and man, the indestructible imago Dei, is the concept of personal relationship, the dyad, the I-Thou encounter. This theme of personal relationship is central not only in its location within the Church Dogmatics but perhaps throughout Barth's theology.
1 For ‘perceives’ we may also read e.g., ‘thinks about’, ‘knows’, ‘understands’, ‘imagines’, ‘remembers’, and other forms of cognitive apprehension, as well as ordinary ‘seeing’.
2 For a recent review of the research, see Antaki, C., and Lewis, A. (eds.) Mental Mirrors, London: Sage, 1986.Google Scholar
3 ‘Recursion’ is a technical term borrowed from logicians, and denotes an infinite reflection of a logical subject within its object in self-referential symbol-systems. It is most appropriately used in speaking about logical abstractions. When speaking about real persons we have to do with approximations and tendencies towards a model of recursion. It is therefore more appropriate to term this approximation, which exists in the sphere of concrete and particularly human relationships, ‘recursiveness’.
4 This order is adopted for expositional purposes only, and is not intended to imply any epistemological or theological priority in this direction; on the contrary, and in keeping with Barth's own method, our understanding of this theme of recursiveness is, like all other aspects of I-Thou relationality with which Barth is concerned, first and foremost derived from God's self-revelation, and the property of relationality to which our theme refers is to be seen as having its origin and perfection in God himself.
5 Church Dogmatics III, 2, p. 245 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960).
6 III, 2, p. 247.
7 III, 2, p. 246.
8 III, 2, p. 246.
9 III, 2, p. 246.
10 III, 2, p. 252.
11 III, 2, p. 260.
12 Male and female he created them (Gen. 1.27). The significance of the creation saga for Barth is that it culminates in neither man, nor woman (and thus not in any individual) but in relationship, man-woman, ‘[which] will be the great paradigm of everything that is to take place between him [man] and God, and also of everything which is to take place between him and his fellows’ (III, 1, p. 186). This essential relatedness is concrete and inevitable in our very biology, in sex, and ‘the differentiation of sex is the only differentiation [between persons] …’. All other distinctions, in terms of larger ‘groups, and species, and races and peoples, etc.’ (III, 1, p. 186), have nothing to do with the essence of humanity as created, which instead are based upon I-It and It-It relationships which invite all the evils of ‘bureaucracy’ (III, 2, p. 252).
13 Hartwell, H., The Theology of Karl Barth, London: Duckworth, 1964, p. 130.Google Scholar
14 III, 2, p. 137, p. 274f., p. 320.
15 It is worth asking at this point whether any of this recursiveness really matters. It may be that all we have here is merely a cognitive description of something which is perhaps more adequately summed up in less cognitive, and more emotional (even mystical) terms, such as love, wonder, mystery, and adoration. Our purpose here is merely to point out what would seem to follow from Barth's exclusively cognitive definition of persons in relationship; whether the concept of recursion and recursiveness can serve any useful purpose in going beyond Barth's own formulations remains to be seen. But here is where a very interesting matter arises for those of us concerned with Barth's relevance to theology today. When we say that it remains to be seen whether recursiveness has any significance, this question can be asked at two different levels. We can explore further concerning its theological relevance for understanding persons in relationship, and no doubt much more could be said than has been said here. But if we are correct in seeing this recursiveness as an inherent feature of interpersonal cognition, then is there any place for asking the empirical question, as psychologists, as to whether there is any evidence in real relationships that recursiveness is anything more than an elaborate fiction? For what it's worth (and for Barth it wouldn't be worth much!), psychologists have in recent years been pursuing such empirical enquiry with positive results (see the chapter by Miell, D. K., and Miell, D. E., in Antaki and Lewis, Mental Mirrors).
16 E.g., Bouillard, H.The Knowledge of God. London: Burns and Oates, 1967Google Scholar; White, R. ‘Notes on analogical predication and speaking about God’. In Hebblethwaite, B. and Sutherland, S. (eds.) The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology. Cambridge: CUP, 1982, pp. 197–226.Google Scholar
17 II, 1, p. 231.
18 Neither Bouillard nor White make mention of it.
19 II, 1, p. 231.
20 Why should critics have failed to recognise this personal-relational aspect of Barth's doctrine of analogy? It may be that Barth has been insufficiently clear in distinguishing between two distinctions God-man, and personal-impersonal. Much of Barth's doctrine of analogy has to do also with the latter. Barth himself is to be held responsible for locating his clearest account of analogia relationis not in the main sections of Church Dogmatics concerned with the problem of analogy, but in the context of his doctrine of humanity, where it has, on the whole, been overlooked. A welcome exception is Lee, J. Y. on ‘Karl Barth's use of analogy in his Church Dogmatics’ (Scottish Journal of Theology, 1969, 22, pp. 129–151)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who shows ‘Barth's positive appreciation for the use of analogy’ (p. 129) in terms of analogia relationis, and in contrast to critics who see Barth as having only a negative view of analogy (i.e., his argument against analogia entis).
21 Again, psychologists have done much to remind us of this fact. See, for example, Altman, I., and Taylor, D. A.Social Penetration: the development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, 1973.Google Scholar
22 For example, Barth is accused of presenting us with ‘a model of two subsistents linked by a quality — a very asymmetrical Trinity indeed’, for how can this ‘mere vinculum’ warrant the status of hypostasis? (Williams, R. ‘Barth on the Triune God’ in Sykes, S. W. (ed.) Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Method. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, pp. 147–193.Google Scholar)
23 Jüngel, E.The Doctrine of the Trinity. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976, p. 95.Google Scholar
24 Barth seems reluctant to speak of the Spirit in Vol. I to the same degree in cognitive terms as he employs of human relationships in Vol. III, though it is not clear why this should be so, if the analogy of relations is to hold here, and after all only here, that is, with respect to the cognitive structure of I-Thou relationship.
25 W. Pannenberg, for one, has expressed the hope that the patristic doctrine of perichoresis might be developed through a clarification of the person-relation distinction. (See his Jesus: God and Man. London: SCM, 1968, pp. 182 ff.)Google Scholar
26 E.g. Willis, R. E., The Ethics of Karl Barth. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971, p. 262.Google Scholar
27 With some embarrassment, and apologising for the limitation this will place upon many potentially good and recursive relationships, I have decided to use the term ‘man’ consistently with Barth's own usage. Although neither he nor I will (nor deserve to) escape the charge of sexist language, since neither has the right to take such a liberty either with persons or with language, it may emerge that Barth's use of the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are, as with much of Barth's terminology, to be understood in their specific and technical usage, and not to be confused with the same names we give to that which we encounter empirically!