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‘An Extraordinarily Acute Embarrassment’: The Doctrine of Angels in Barth's Göttingen Dogmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2013

Donald Wood
Donald Wood*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3DSd.wood@abdn.ac.uk
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Abstract

Study of Barth's doctrine of angels has languished, and the time is ripe for a thorough reassessment. While any full account will centre on the magisterial theology of angels in the Church Dogmatics, much can be gained from a close, contextually informed reading of the earlier treatment of angels in the Göttingen dogmatics lectures. These lectures are shaped by a twofold procedural commitment: Barth's presentation is ordered, on one hand, to a recognisably modern conception of the logical content of Christian preaching; and it conforms, on the other hand, to a doctrinal sequence recommended by the dogmatic textbooks of the classical Reformed tradition. A tension between these two aspects becomes visible in Barth's handling of the doctrine of angels – a tract of teaching by which he is visibly unsettled. Barth accordingly attends with particular care to two fundamental modern objections to the doctrine – namely that it involves a superfluous reduplication of anthropological themes and that it has no independent doctrinal standing. The first objection exploits the observation that the doctrine of angels traditionally stands in close proximity to the doctrine of the human creature; the second follows from the claim that Christian preaching, and the dogmatic theology which serves it, attends strictly to the relationship between God and humanity, realised and revealed in the gospel. Barth's attempts to respond to these criticisms, and so to draw out the necessity and the proper dogmatic status of the doctrine of angels, are traced in detail. Angels and demons, conceived as real spiritual forces, are ineluctable features of the situation within which human moral agency is exercised. And angels are ingredients in, though not central to, the scriptural depiction of the relationship between God and humanity. Barth's elaboration of the positive features of Protestant scholastic angelology is summarised, and the motivating impulses and constructive potential of his theology of angels are briefly noted: Barth's exposition may be read as a complex exercise in theological self-differentiation; a recommendation of a distinctive style of biblical reasoning; and a creative contribution to the revitalisation of a culture of Christian witness.

Keywords

angelsBarthChurch DogmaticsdemonsGöttingen dogmatics
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 319 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2013 

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References

1 Whitehouse, W. A., ‘Providence. An Account of Karl Barth's Doctrine’, Scottish Journal of Theology 4 (1951), pp. 241–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitehouse, ‘God's Heavenly Kingdom and His Servants the Angels. An Account of Kirchliche Dogmatik §51 by Karl Barth’, Scottish Journal of Theology 4 (1951), pp. 376–82.

2 Whitehouse, ‘Providence’, p. 241.

3 Whitehouse, ‘God's Heavenly Kingdom’, p. 376.

4 For Schleiermacher (see Der christliche Glaube 1830/31, ed. M. Redeker (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999), pp. 204–11 (§§42–3)), because the biblical portrayal of angels as pure spiritual creatures, active in the worship of God and the service of his people, contains nothing inherently impossible and does not conflict with the feeling of absolute dependence, it may continue to play a role in the liturgy and in expressions of personal piety. But, while the Bible everywhere assumes the existence and activity of angels, it nowhere intends to set forth a definite teaching about them. Dogmatics thus need not ask after the creation and nature and activity of angels but discharges its obligations with the warning that belief in angels must not be allowed to shape our public understanding of or conduct within the world. In all this, Schleiermacher sought to exercise a moderating influence in a long-standing debate within the Protestant church over the nature and activity of created spirits. For the eighteenth-century background, see esp. Buddeus, J. F., Theses theologicae de atheismo et superstitione variis observationibus (Jena: Ioannem Felicem Bielckium, 1717), pp. 579–82Google Scholar; Oporin, Joachim, Die erläuterte Lehre der Hebräer und Christen von Guten und bösen Engeln (Hamburg: Felginer, 1735)Google Scholar; D. Balthasar Bekkers bezauberte Welt, trans. J. M. Schwager, ed. J. S. Semler (Leipzig: Weygandschen Buchhandlung, 1781); D. Franz Volkmar Reinhards Vorlesungen über die Dogmatik, ed. J. G. I. Berger, 5th edn (Sulzbach: Seidel, 1824), pp. 184–92.

5 On which see e.g. Tavard, Georges, Die Engel (Freiburg: Herder, 1968)Google Scholar; Mayr-Harting, Henry, Perceptions of Angels in History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998)Google Scholar; Muehlberger, Ellen, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity (Oxford: OUP, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keck, David, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York and Oxford: OUP, 1998)Google Scholar; Iribarren, I. and Lenz, M. (eds), Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar.

6 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 103Google Scholar. Cf. Tavard, Die Engel, p. 93: Barth undertakes ‘the most significant theological attempt to renew angelology in Protestantism’, and along the way offers ‘the most consistent and thorough overview of an angelology in modern theology’.

7 See e.g. Wolff, Uwe, Die Wiederkehr der Engel: Boten zwischen New Age, Dichtung und Theologie (Stuttgart: EZW, 1991)Google Scholar; Wolff, ‘The Angels’ Comeback: A Retrospect at the Turn of the Millennium’, in Reiterer, F. V., Tobias, N., and Schöpflin, K., eds, Angels: The Concept of Celestial Beings: Origins, Development and Reception (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 695–714CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 The proceedings of a 1996 symposium on Barth's angelology were published in part in Zeitschrift für Dialektische Theologie 12/1 (1996). Other notable recent treatments include Achten, H., Das Engelmotiv in der Theologie von Karl Barth und Paul Tillich (Marburg: Tectum, 1998)Google Scholar and Heidtmann, Dieter, Die Engel: Grenzgestalten Gottes. Über die Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit der christlichen Rede von den Engeln (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag 1999), pp. 71–115Google Scholar.

9 For a recent review of major twentieth-century contributions and a constructive doctrinal proposal, see Dürr, Oliver, Der Engel Mächte: Systematisch-theologische Untersuchung: Angelologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009)Google Scholar.

10 Whitehouse, ‘God's Heavenly Kingdom’, p. 381: ‘We must have a book by an English theologian on the subject’.

11 It is not clear that Barth included a discussion of angels in his Münster dogmatics lectures. The typescript of the lectures held at the Barth-Archiv in Basel, in any case, does not include an independent section on angels, and it offers no indication that Barth recycled his Göttingen lectures de angelis in Münster (I am grateful to Hans-Anton Drewes and Peter Zocher for advice on this point). More generally on the Münster dogmatics, see Marga, Amy, ‘Karl Barth's Second Dogmatic Cycle, Münster 1926–1928: A Progress Report’, Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 21/1 (2005), pp. 126–37Google Scholar; Marga, Karl Barth's Dialogue with Catholicism in Göttingen and Münster: Its Significance for his Doctrine of God (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010)Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Brandom, Robert, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 2–4Google Scholar.

13 Barth advertised the resonance with Calvin to his students: ‘Wenn Sie den Titel ins Lateinische zurückübersetzen: Institutio religionis christianae, so ist er gleichlautend mit dem Titel des bekannten Hauptwerkes von Calvin’. Unterricht in der Christlichen Religion, vol. 1. Prolegomena 1924 [henceforth UCR 1], ed. H. Reiffen (Zürich: TVZ, 1985), p. viii; Eng. trans. The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), p. x. He privately acknowledged a (waggish) reference to Ritschl in a letter to Thurneysen on 5 Feb. 1924: Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel, vol. 2, 1921–1930 [B–Th 2], ed. Eduard Thurneysen (Zürich: TVZ, 1974), 221; cf. Ritschl, Albrecht, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion: Studienausgabe nach der 1. Auflage von 1875 nebst den Abweichungen der 2. und 3. Auflage, ed. Axt-Piscalar, C. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 See Barth, Karl, Unterricht in der Christlichen Religion, vol. 2, Die Lehre von Gott, die Lehre vom Menschen 1924/1925 [UCR 2], ed. Stoevesandt, H. (Zürich: TVZ, 1990), pp. 1–10Google Scholar; Eng. trans., pp. 317–24.

15 UCR 2, pp. 1, 3 (Eng. trans., pp. 317, 319); see the fuller development at UCR 1, pp. 3–51 (Eng. trans., pp. 3–41), and the neat distillation at UCR 2, p. 51 (Eng. trans., p. 354).

16 UCR 2, p. 3; Eng. trans., p. 319.

17 Cf. UCR 2, p. 6; Eng. trans., p. 322.

18 Cf. e.g. UCR 2, pp. 6–7 (Eng. trans., p. 322). Barth's instincts here differed sharply from those of his brother Heinrich, who regularly lamented Barth's relentlessly and vividly biblical idiom. See Barth to Thurneysen, 27 July 1917 (Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel, vol. 1, 1913–1921 [B–Th 1], ed. E. Thurneysen (Zürich: TVZ, 1973), pp. 219–20): ‘unsre allzu biblische Art des Denkens’; 23 July 1918 (B–Th 1, pp. 266–8): ‘unserer beweglichen bildhaften Ausdrucksweise’.

19 UCR 2, p. 8; Eng. trans., p. 323.

20 UCR 2, p. 167; Eng. trans., p. 440.

21 In his own way, Barth thus fully endorses ‘the correlation of God and faith that rightly is so important to modern theology’ (UCR 1, p. 13; Eng. trans., p. 11); cf. e.g. Kaftan, Julius, Dogmatik (Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1897), p. 107Google Scholar: ‘the knowledge of God must be and remain the knowledge of faith’. To the danger, which Feuerbach so acutely diagnosed, of an inversion of the relation between believing faith and its object see already the critique of Kaftan's motivational analysis of religion in Herrmann, Wilhelm, Dogmatik (Gotha-Stuttgart: Verlag Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1925), 9Google Scholar. For Barth, the problem is avoided not by self-extraction from a situation of immediate and utter trust in the God of Christian confession nor by the addition of metaphysical ballast to the gospel but by a scripturally deferential characterisation of God as the infrangibly free subject in his self-disclosure and of faith as the human response or ‘answer’ to the divine address. Already clearly articulated in the Göttingen lectures, the point is restated with greater precision in Münster (see Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf. vol. 1, Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes. Prolegomena 1927, ed. G. Sauter (Zürich: TVZ, 1982), pp. 117–18): ‘the object of dogmatics is not the Christian faith but the word of God. . . . The intention [of this thesis] is not to sever the correlation between the word of God and faith but rather to render it comprehensible in its particular structure, which is utterly asymmetrical and irreversible. The rejection of the concept of the “doctrine of faith” in no way involves the establishment of a scientia de Deo prescinding from faith’.

22 UCR 2, p. 309; cf. UCR 1, pp. 86, 215; Eng. trans., pp. 72, 174; UCR 2, p. 344.

23 See UCR 2, p. 310.

24 See Barth's circular letters of 26 Nov. 1924 and 15 Feb. 1925: Barth–Thurneysen Briefwechsel 1921–1930, ed. Eduard Thurneysen (Zürich: TVZ, 1974), pp. 285–94 (esp. p. 293) and 301–9 (esp. p. 302).

25 UCR 2, p. 172; Eng. trans., pp. 444–5.

26 Cf. UCR 2, pp. 214–15.

27 UCR 2, p. 310.

28 UCR 2, p. 310. As is well-known, in his early engagements with Protestant scholastic theology, Barth regularly drew upon and referred his students to the sourcebooks of Heppe, Heinrich (Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche dargestellt und aus den Quellen belegt (Elberfeld: R. L. Friderichs, 1861)Google Scholar) and Schmid, Heinrich (Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche dargestellt und aus den Quellen belegt (Erlangen: Carl Heyder, 1843)Google Scholar; cf. e.g. UCR 2, p. 10 (Eng. trans., p. 324)). But Barth secured a copy of Burmann's Synopsis theologiae et speciatim oeconomiae foederum Dei in late 1924, and here he cites Burmann directly from the original (see H. Stoevesandt's editorial remarks at UCR 2, p. 11). One should treat with caution claims that ‘Barth's recovery of Reformed theology in Göttingen was synonymous with his discovery of Heppe and a coterie of nineteenth-century historiographers of the tradition’ or that ‘his understanding of the Protestant orthodox tradition at this point was entirely dependent on later historiography’ (Glomsrud, Ryan, ‘Karl Barth as Historical Theologian: The Recovery of Reformed Theology in Barth's Early Dogmatics’, in Gibson, David and Strange, Daniel, Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 89, 111)Google Scholar.

29 UCR 2, pp. 310–11.

30 See, most pointedly, UCR 2, p. 56; Eng. trans., p. 358.

31 UCR 1, pp. 6–7 (Eng. trans., pp. 5–6). On the sense of the Lebensgefährlichkeit of preaching and dogmatics in Barth, see Stoevesandt, H., ‘Die Göttinger Dogmatikvorlesung. Grundriß der Theologie Barths’, in Beintker, M., Link, C., and Trowitzsch, M. (eds), Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch – Klarung – Widerstand (Zürich: TVZ, 2005), pp. 77–98Google Scholar. See here also Thurneysen's remarks on the character of Barth's dogmatics lectures in his letter to Hermann Kutter of 11 Feb. 1925 (B–Th 1, pp. 315–18).

32 This and several other aspects of Barth's presentation may also profitably be read in view of Erik Peterson's lectures on Aquinas, which Barth and a number of his students had audited in the winter semester of 1923/24 (see Peterson, , ‘Thomas von Aquin: Vorlesung Göttingen Wintersemester 1923/24’, Peterson, Theologie und Theologen, 9/1Google Scholar, Texte, ed. Barbara Nichtweiß (Würzburg: Echter, 2009), pp. 67–190). In his own reflections on ‘the real difficulties for our modern dogmatics in understanding the doctrine of created spirits’ (144), Peterson sharply criticises what he perceives to be a prevailing subjectivism in the theological faculties: ‘In dogmatics what matters is not the personal conviction of the individual but what the church believes and confesses in its dogmas. . . . If we do not know from our own experience what angels and demons are, why should we not be enlightened about what the church knows to say in its teaching about angels and demons?’ (145). Barth never accepted that the dogmatic task was fully discharged in such a restatement of church dogma, and he saw the question of truthfulness as lying beyond the alternatives of ecclesial authorisation and theological subjectivism. Whether he accorded the pneumatological issues implicit in his exchanges with Peterson sufficient attention remains widely controverted.

33 UCR 2, p. 311.

34 UCR 2, pp. 312–13; cf. Strauss, David Friedrich, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Osiander, 1840), p. 671Google Scholar; Haering, Theodore, The Christian Faith. A System of Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans. J. Dickie and G. Ferries (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913), p. 411Google Scholar. The first critique conflates the form and content of traditional teaching; the latter commits the genetic fallacy.

35 See Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Osiander, 1841), p. 18Google Scholar.

36 UCR 2, p. 324.

37 UCR 2, p. 344; cf. UCR 2, p. 314: a ‘prologue in heaven’ to the mundane history of humanity (the reference is, of course, to Goethe's Faust); UCR 2, p. 328: ‘a prelude to the doctrine of humanity’.

38 UCR 2, p. 315.

39 UCR 2, p. 309; cf. p. 337: to the human decision (Entscheidung) corresponds the angelic or demonic being-decided (Entschiedensein) or decidedness (Entschiedenheit); this is why the fall of the angels is irrevocable: ‘The die is cast and lies, once for all, in freedom; but in the freedom that no longer wants to choose otherwise than it has chosen.’

40 See UCR 2, p. 313; cf. pp. 224–6. Barth's argument here involves a translation of scriptural and traditional doctrinal language into the idiom of critical idealism. Angels are ‘heavenly’ beings; and ‘heaven’ stands in relation to ‘earth’ as the abstract to the concrete, the transcendental to the empirical, the spiritual to the natural. The legitimacy of this hermeneutical tactic, Barth stresses, turns on a strong account of creation ex nihilo and a corresponding doctrine of the relative transcendence of the heavenly creation over the earthly.

41 UCR 2, pp. 319–20.

42 UCR 2, p. 320.

43 UCR 2, p. 322.

44 UCR 2, p. 322.

45 Cf. UCR 2, p. 324.

46 UCR 2, p. 326.

47 UCR 2, p. 327; cf. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 262–3: ‘[a]ngels are not the object of faith – that is solely God in his revelation – and consequently they are not an object of the knowledge of faith and of the doctrine of faith in the narrower sense’. The distinction between what scripture says and what it teaches goes farther back, and is central to Balthasar Bekker's De betooverde Wereld (1691–93) – a text which is decisive for the career of the doctrine of angels and demons in modern Protestant theology: ‘One must take to heart the fact that when the Bible refers to the angels or spirits it never says what they are according to their essence and their attributes. And why should it? It is not written for angels but for human beings, who are to learn from it the way to blessedness. Thus it teaches us to seek Christ alone, who for our sake has become neither angel nor spirit but a human being’ (Bezauberte Welt, p. 334). Generally on Bekker, see Andrew Fix, Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief, and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic (Dordrecht: Springer, 1999); on his hermeneutics, see Fix, ‘Bekker and Spinoza’, in van Bunge, Wiep and Klever, Wim (eds), Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 23–40Google Scholar.

48 UCR 2, p. 309.

49 UCR 2, p. 328.

50 UCR 2, pp. 329–33, 333–7, 337–42, 342–3.

51 As e.g. the displacement of theological interest in witchcraft by a commitment to the explanatory power of the natural sciences (see UCR 2, p. 339).

52 Daniélou, Jean, Les anges et leur mission (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1953)Google Scholar; Eng. trans., The Angels and their Mission (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2009).

53 See here, in addition to Peterson, Erik, Das Buch von den Engeln: Stellung und Bedeutung der heiligen Engel im Kultus (Leipzig: J. Hegner, 1935)Google Scholar, the important essay of Hofius, Otfried, ‘Gemeinschaft mit dem Engeln im Gottesdienst der Kirche. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Skizze’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 89 (1992), pp. 172–96Google Scholar. Further afield, Wilken, Robert L., ‘Angels and Archangels: The Worship of Heaven and Earth’, Antiphon 6/1 (2001), pp. 10–18Google Scholar.