Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Dezember/2023 |
Spalte: | 1229-1231 |
Kategorie: | Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Torrance, Alan J., and Andrew B. Torrance |
Titel/Untertitel: | Beyond Immanence. The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth. |
Verlag: | Grand Rapids u. a.: Wm. B. Eerdmans 2023. 407 S. = Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker. Geb. US$ 49,99. ISBN 9780802868039. |
Rezensent: | George Pattison |
The central argument of Beyond Immanence is that Kierkegaard and Barth had a shared theological vision. A key element of this shared vision is that both resisted contemporary attempts to understand and to explain Christianity within an exclusively immanentist horizon that effaced the possibility of human beings being addressed from a reality beyond that of their worldly being and concerns.
Those familiar with Barth’s acknowledgement of the influence of Kierkegaard on the second edition of his commentary on Romans will not be surprised by this, not least because of the role he gives to Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the »infinite qualitative difference« between the divine and the human. However, those also familiar with Barth’s later comments about the need to move beyond the »school of Kierkegaard« may wonder how far the commonality of the two thinkers extends.
The authors, Alan J. Torrance (father) and Andrew B. Torrance (son), do not neglect these differences in their attempt to develop a Kierkegaardian-Barthian theological vision—what they call the KBT or Kierkegaard-Barth trajectory. As they acknowledge, Barth’s early acquaintance with Kierkegaard turns out to have been somewhat limited and his later critical remarks were as much influenced by Kierkegaard’s presence in the thought of theological opponents such as Emmanuel Hirsch as by a close and attentive reading of Kierkegaard’s own works. Indeed, their argument is that had Barth engaged in such reading, he would have found a Kierkegaard much closer to his own position than he had imagined. Against the view that Kierkegaard indulged a subjectivist and existentialist preoccupation with the human self, the authors argue that Kierkegaard, no less than Barth, made the divine address in Christ both the starting-point and the ultimate criterion of theological reflection. As they put it, »there is a far more profound Christian realism in Kierkegaard’s thought than was ever adequately communicated to Barth – a realism that associates the truth with the objective reality of God who lies beyond human subjectivity« (7).
Following a loosely chronological sequence, the authors begin by setting Kierkegaard in his own theological context, which, as they say, »will involve a focus on the Hegelian ideas that were so formative of the theological landscape in which Kierkegaard worked, especially those ideas that encouraged Christians to become caught up within their own immanent thought worlds and cultures« (24). This is followed by a close examination of key Kierkegaardian concepts relating to the theological themes of creation and Christology. The authors next adduce what they see as striking parallels between Barth’s context and that of Kierkegaard and, before coming back to a more detailed examination of Barth’s reading of Kierkegaard, they consider the implications of his approach for church and theology. The emerging Kierkegaardian-Barthian theological vision (KBT) is then applied to the relationship between church and theology and secular society. Due to the current return of the kind of natural theology that provoked Barth’s notorious »Nein!« to Emil Brunner, they see this as a matter of contemporary and not merely historical interest. A final, densely argued, chapter puts forward a case for the philosophical legitimacy of the Barthian Trinitarian approach.
For those familiar with Scottish Barthianism, Beyond Immanence contains few surprises. Having sat at the feet of both T.F. and J. B. Torrance (and benefited greatly from so doing), the present reviewer recognized a number of familiar tropes. At the same time, the intrinsically polemical character of Barthian theology (not to mention Kierkegaard’s own polemical inclinations) means that this is almost inevitably a study that provokes and invites arguments about several key issues of continuing importance.
In terms of the book’s focus on the Kierkegaard-Barth relationship, perhaps the interpretation of Kierkegaard should come top of the list—and here there are a number of questions to be addressed. As noted above, the authors focus on those aspects of Kierkegaard’s intellectual context that best facilitate a comparison with Barth. In a sense, this is entirely reasonable. However, it does load the dice and also involves a slight but significant misrepresentation of Kierkegaard’s intellectual situation. For example, the authors state that »the Hegelian culture of Denmark put strong pressure on individuals to doubt themselves before they doubted the community« (41). The problem with this statement is that Denmark never had a »Hegelian culture«. The senior faculty of Copenhagen university and the leading figures of Danish Church life were basically anti-Hegelian and when the future Bishop H. L. Martensen’s use of Hegelianism in his lectures of 1837 and 1838 caused massive excitement amongst the students the establishment remained sceptical. Of course, it is true that Kierkegaard himself engaged rather deeply with this new intellectual wave and his negative responses to Martensen, Erdmann, Strauss and others are, broadly, along the lines sketched in Beyond Immanence. However, by making this their starting-point, the authors effectively remove an earlier Kierke-gaard from the picture, namely, the Kierkegaard of the Gilleleie journal of 1835 and other early journal passages, writings that reveal a young man struggling with the kind of issues around personal identity and vocation typical of a late-Romantic version of personal Bildung. Why is this important? Because Kierkegaard was never just the doughty proto-Barthian opponent of the Hegelian »volatilization« of Christian concepts. He was, from the start and throughout his literary development, deeply concerned with the existential question as to what it is to be a self or, more precisely, how to become the self that we are called to be. Theologically, I suggest that this is connected with what has been called Kierkegaard’s Irenaean view of the continuing presence of the divine image in human existence and his rejection of the Reformation view of original sin in favour of the view that we each fall through our own free act.
Putting this another way, despite a certain Barthianism, Kierkegaard had the kind of sustained interest in the »hearer of the Word« for which Barth would lambast Brunner in his »Nein!«. This tension—or, it may be, contradiction—drives Kierkegaard to his most characteristic and original literary re-presentations of Christianity and it is this that makes him, distinctively, Kierkegaard. In these terms, a more plausible summary of the Kierkegaard-Barth relationship might be a reworking of Kierkegaard’s own thesis regarding the relationship between Christ and Socrates: that their similarity is to be found in their dissimilarity. Another way of putting this would be to say that Heidegger, probably better versed in the relevant primary sources, was as legitimate an inheritor of Kierkegaard as Barth – even though he too saw only half the picture.
A recurrent theme of Beyond Immanence is that a Barthian approach proved itself in practice to provide a better bulwark against the demonisms of, notably, Nazism, Anti-Semitism, and Racism than the liberal theologies of the age. However, this is a theologically double-edged sword. Barth may have been right about Hitler, but he was wrong about Stalin. He was right about Anti-Semitism, but it is questionable whether he was right about the contemporary actuality of the calling of Israel. Conversely, Hirsch may have been deeply wrong about Hitler, but his commentaries on Kierkegaard are well-sourced and remain insightful and valuable. At the same time, non-Barthians such as Tillich and Bultmann (the latter several times castigated in the course of Beyond Immanence) also spoke out against Hitlerism. Indeed, Tillich provides criteria relating to the legitimate objects of ultimate concern that make it possible to see why Hitler and Stalin were both wrong. And, if we bring Kierkegaard into the picture, we have to acknowledge that he opposed both democracy and women’s emancipation. As today’s geo-political upheavals also attest, the path to an authentic theological approach to social and political issues is often opaque and only to be ventured with much fear and trembling and is always to be accompanied by the admission that, in any given case, we may be mistaken. There is no silver bullet, not even a Barthian one.
Whether with regard to these and other controversial points, the authors present their case clearly and robustly and readers will be in no doubt as to what they are arguing for in this stimulating joint presentation of two of modern theology’s defining figures.