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Revelation as apologetic category: a reconsideration of Karl Barth's engagement with Ludwig Feuerbach's critique of religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

Richard Paul Cumming
Richard Paul Cumming*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2A7, Canadarichard.cumming@mail.mcgill.ca
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Abstract

This article examines Karl Barth's engagement with the philosophy of religion of Ludwig Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach proposes that religion is a function of human projection and that the Christian concept of God represents the crystallisation in one objectified subject of all the finite perfections of individual human beings. In Church Dogmatics, I/2, Barth seeks to respond to Feuerbach's critique of Christianity by affirming Feuerbach's critical account of the nature of religion but arguing that, since the original impetus of Christianity issues not from human projection but from God's act of self-revelation in Jesus Christ, Feuerbach's critique of religion does not apply to the Christian faith. Glasse notes that this response, whilst satisfactory to the Christian, would be ‘not intelligible’ to those who do not accept the Christian faith. Furthermore, Barth's apologetic manoeuvre, Vogel claims, entails that Barth is unable to defend the plausibility of the Christian faith on the terms set by secular culture, and that Christian theology is therefore required to abandon any attempt to participate constructively in general public discourse. Vogel recognises that this is a drastic recourse indeed, observing that it would be judicious for Christian theology to seek to elaborate a response to Feuerbach's critique which can stand without requiring the critic to assume the veracity of the Christian faith. This article argues that, by taking into account the role of Feuerbach's earlier work, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, for constituting the philosophical impetus of Feuerbach's critique of Christianity, the Christian theologian is able, using Barth's theological anthropology, to provide a response to Feuerbach's critique on Feuerbach's own terms. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality, Feuerbach argues that Protestant Christianity, as the paradigmatic expression of religion, conceives the individual as an absolute being, and that, due to the fact that everyday existence clearly counter-indicates this absolutisation of the human individual, Protestantism posits a second, eternal life, in which the limits bound up with individual existence are eradicated. Using Barth's theological anthropology in Church Dogmatics, III/2 and III/4, this article proposes that Barth concurs with Feuerbach's critique of the absolutisation of the individual, but that he is positioned to deny that this absolutised conception of the individual has anything to do with the Christian faith insofar as he accurately represents it.

Keywords

apologeticsKarl BarthLudwig Feuerbachphilosophy of religionrevelationtheological anthropology
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 43 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2015 

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References

1 I should like to thank Dr Jim Kanaris (McGill University) for his critical comments on the paper on which the present article is based.

2 Rodrigues records e.g. that Lane ‘chega a afirmar que toda a teologia de Barth é uma resposta a Feuerbach’, and that Niebuhr claims that ‘a teologia barthiana’ was ‘uma completa antítese do pensamento feuerbachiano’. Rodrigues, Adriani Milli, ‘Religião, teologia e antropologia: o confronto entre Karl Barth e Ludwig Feuerbach’, Horizonte: Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciências da Religião da PUC Minas 7/14 (2009), p. 163Google Scholar.

3 Glasse, John, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, Harvard Theological Review 57/2 (1964), p. 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Glasse views this exclusive preoccupation with The Essence of Christianity as a shortcoming on Barth's part, writing that Barth ‘makes no use of the developmental interpretation [of Feuerbach's works] . . . which has concerned modern students of Feuerbach himself. This parallels Barth's lumping of early and late writings, without discriminating their significances, in designating the capital sources’. Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, p. 72, n. 8. Vogel issues a mild corrective to Glasse, remarking that ‘actually, judging by the number of references, Barth's Feuerbach is pre-eminently the author of both Das Wesen des Christentums and Die Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft’. Vogel, Manfred H., ‘The Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, Harvard Theological Review 59/1 (1966), p. 33, n. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Vogel also defends Barth's restriction of his focus to The Essence of Christianity on the basis that Barth's ‘interest in Feuerbach is determined exclusively by the theological aspect’. Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 34.

4 Rodrigues, ‘Religião, teologia e antropologia’, pp. 159–60.

5 Ibid., p. 160, n. 7.

6 Massey, James A., ‘Feuerbach and Religious Individualism’, Journal of Religion 56/4 (1976), pp. 368–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 380–1. Massey acknowledges the sufficiency of Barth's response to Feuerbach from a theological standpoint, but not for the purpose of an externally coherent apologetic engagement which would answer Feuerbach on his ‘anthropological ground’. This interpretation parallels closely the distinction I shall make in the present article between the internal and external coherence of Barth's response to Feuerbach.

8 Glasse emphasises this point. See Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, pp. 91–2. On the other hand, Vogel attempts to downplay its significance, arguing that, because Barth is engaging with Feuerbach in his capacity as a dogmatic theologian (in the 1950s stage of encounter), it is ‘incidental and immaterial to the argument’. Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 48. Vogel, however, demonstrates that he is well aware ofthe potentially disastrous consequences for Christian theology of Barth's renunciationof the attempt to supply external coherence, see Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, pp. 49–51.

9 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75), I/2, p. 309Google Scholar. Subsequent references to Church Dogmatics will take the following format: CD I/2, p. 309.

10 Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1983), p. 17Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 19.

12 Ibid., p. 14.

13 Ibid., p. 195.

14 Ibid., pp. 29–30.

15 Feuerbach, Ludwig, Lectures on the Essence of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 17Google Scholar.

16 CD I/2, p. 302.

17 Ibid.

18 CD I/2, p. 315.

19 CD I/2, pp. 314–15.

20 CD I/2, p. 316. The degree to which Barth adopts Feuerbach's critique of religion is elucidated in his Zwischen den Zeiten article on Feuerbach, in which he writes that Feuerbach ‘mit seiner Religionsdeutung auf der ganzen Linie Recht hat’. Barth, Karl, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, Zwischen den Zeiten 5 (1927), p. 32Google Scholar.

21 As dogmatics is a function of the church which is called into existence to witness to Jesus Christ, CD IV/3, p. 801, dogmatics presupposes that God truly has revealed himself in Jesus Christ: faith is the precondition of dogmatics. CD I/1, p. 22.

22 CD I/1, p. 188. Concretely this means that one can affirm, as Barth does, the idolatrous character of religion, but in addition, that, on account of the nature of dogmatics, one is obliged to adopt as a methodological point of departure the principle that the event of Jesus Christ is the event of divine self-revelation, which necessarily precludes the possibility of accepting the classification of the event of Jesus Christ within the genus ‘religion’ as Barth understands it. As we shall presently see, this decisively informs Barth's later assessment of Feuerbach's critique.

23 CD I/2, p. 326.

24 CD I/1, pp. 134 and 154–5.

25 CD IV/3, pp. 821–2. This polarisation applies paradigmatically to the Christian religion: ‘before the end of all time we cannot expect that the Christian will not always show himself an enemy of grace’. CD I/2, p. 338.

26 CD I/2, p. 327.

27 CD I/2, p. 339.

28 CD I/2, p. 358. Barth's affirmation of the elevation of Christianity above the ‘other’ religions by virtue of its constituting a witness to and manifestation of divine revelation (Jesus Christ) does not mean that, for Barth, true Christianity is identifiable with the visible, institutional church, and so it cannot be adduced in support of a programme of religious exclusivism. As he states: ‘the statement that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God has really nothing whatever to do with the arbitrary exaltation and self-glorification of the Christian in relation to other men, of the Church in relation to other institutions, or of Christianity in relation to other conceptions’, CD IV/3, p. 91. Barth explains that the revelation-bearing community is distinguished from the variety of religious manifestations by the name of Jesus Christ, but that the ‘name’ of Jesus Christ refers, not solely to his nominal designation, but to ‘the very essence and source of all [his] reality’, and that God, as a free subject, not being ‘mechanical . . . is not under any external constraint [and thus] . . . is not bound to what seems to have, and claims reality as Christianity, as Christian doctrine and conduct and institutions, as pursued by ostensibly Christian men or the ostensibly Christian portions of humanity’. CD I/2, pp. 348–9. Barth argues that the glory of God in Jesus Christ is ubiquitous: ‘we do not confine God's glory when we call the Church its provisional sphere. This does not mean that only the Church is its sphere. Rather we shall be both comforted and shamed by the fact that there is no sphere in heaven or on earth which even here and now is not secretly full of the glory of God. It is in the Church that this is known . . . He is the God who is glorious in his community, and for that reason, and in that way in all the world’. CD II/1, p. 677.

29 For information on where Feuerbach and Barth part company, see Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, pp. 74–7, where he writes that ‘Barth took Feuerbach seriously. Moreover, he agreed with him. In fact, he went beyond mere passive agreement by using Feuerbach's views to further his own . . . [Barth] defend[ed] Feuerbach against theological counterattacks . . . [on] his interpretation of religion as illusory projection . . . [However,] having agreed with his reading of the story of Protestant theology, having urged his criticism against theology and the Church, having repulsed a theological counterattack upon his reduction of theology to illusory projection, Barth finally wished to say “No” to the Feuerbach to whom he had said “Yes” on all these other counts’. Glasse identifies this point at which Barth parted company with Feuerbach as Feuerbach's deification of humanity: Glasse is correct, as he is recapitulating the Barth–Feuerbach encounter of the 1920s, whereas I am concentrating on Barth's engagement with Feuerbach in Barth's construction of his own critique of religion, where the divergence between Barth and Feuerbach eventuates at the point where Barth demurs on the classification of authentic Christianity as a species of ‘religion’. In respect of Barth's later engagement with Feuerbach, it is worth mentioning that, according to Glasse and Vogel, Barth actually retreats from the negative anthropology which characterised his earlier encounter. See Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, pp. 84–5, and Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 43, n. 27.

30 Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Encounter’, p. 51.

31 Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, p. 88. Vogel agrees: ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 47, n. 33.

32 Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, p. 88.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 90.

36 Ibid., p. 92.

37 Ibid., p. 95.

38 CD IV/3, pp. 85–6.

39 Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 41. Whether Barth would have delighted in being designated a Barthian theologian is a different matter altogether.

40 See Glasse, ‘Barth on Feuerbach’, pp. 89–91. Vogel agrees, remarking that ‘from the vantage point of the “manifest radiance of God,” Feuerbach's challenge simply evaporates. It simply does not arise’. Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 48.

41 Descartes makes this precise point in his Meditations on First Philosophy in which, in the dedicatory letter to the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, he writes that theological discourse proceeds according to circular reasoning, which is perfectly valid in itself, but whose cogency is limited to those who accept the existence of God and soul, two theses which he intends to establish by the use of deductive reason, which he argues will position the Christian apologist to respond effectively to the intellectual challenge of atheism. See Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies, trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: OUP, 2008), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

42 Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 49. In a post-modern intellectual culture in which the position of Christian theology in the academy is subject to continual challenge, this retreat from an externally coherent apologetic is of particular contemporary significance. Having retreated from the intellectual mainland, it is quite unsurprising that contemporary promoters of the academic role of Christian theology, disarmed of any externally coherent apologetic framework, have recourse to a redefinition of Christian theology ‘as a species of cultural studies’, which redefinition consciously and purposely accidentalises its ecclesial character. Cooey, Paula M., ‘The Place of Academic Theology in the Study of Religion from the Perspective of Liberal Education’, in Cady, Linell E. and Brown, Delwin (eds), Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), p. 180Google Scholar. See also Sheila Greeve Davaney, ‘Rethinking Theology and Religious Studies’, ibid., p. 150, where Davaney prescribes the acceptance of ‘canons of common argumentation’ as a conditio sine qua non of the participation of Christian theological discourse in the academy. A discussion of the nature and possibility of such canons of common argumentation must be postponed to another occasion, but in the present context it is instructive to note that, according to Barth, theology ‘cannot . . . accept the obligation of submission to standards valid for other sciences’, CD I/1, p. 10.

43 Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p, 51.

44 Ibid., p, 49.

45 Ibid., p, 52.

46 CD III/2, p. 285.

47 I must remark that whether this was ever his intention is beside the point: this section is intended to explore how Barth's work can be understood to function apologetically.

48 Feuerbach, Essence, p. 23.

49 Feuerbach, Ludwig, Thoughts on Death and Immortality: From the Papers of a Thinker, along with an Appendix of Theological Satirical Epigrams, Edited by One of his Friends (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), p. 11Google Scholar.

50 Harvey, Van A., Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 61Google Scholar.

51 Feuerbach, Thoughts, p. 19.

52 Feuerbach, Ludwig, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1986), p. 5Google Scholar.

53 Feuerbach, Essence, p. 184.

54 Feuerbach, Thoughts, p. 6.

55 Feuerbach, Thoughts, p. 12. Cf. Massey, ‘Feuerbach and Religious Individualism’, pp. 369 and 372 where Massey summarises Feuerbach's ‘philosophical critique of modern Christianity’ as guided by the consideration of its ‘individualistic [nature] . . . absolutizing the value of the individual human subject to the extent that the laws of “objective” reality are irrationally denied’. The fact that Massey writes that an interpretation of Feuerbach's later work which takes cognisance of this philosophical foundation ‘qualifies Barth's rejection of him’ supports the argument of the present piece, that this is precisely the juncture at which an assessment of the Barth–Feuerbach encounter is to be conducted.

56 CD III/2, p. 277. According to Barth, Feuerbach, along with the other two authors whom Barth mentions in this passage (Confucius and Buber), are to be considered ‘the wisest of the wise of this world’. CD III/2, p. 278.

57 Karl Barth in Harvey, Feuerbach, p. 62.

58 See Barth, ‘Feuerbach’, pp. 22–30. Massey, ‘Feuerbach and Religious Individualism’, p. 379, confirms this.

59 CD III/2, p. 285. This represents a marked contrast with the decidedly more individualistic approach Barth adopts in his original assessment of the contribution of Ludwig Feuerbach in his Zwischen den Zeiten article, see Barth, ‘Feuerbach’, p. 32.

60 CD III/2, p. 324.

61 CD III/2, p. 320.

62 CD III/4, p. 565.

63 CD III/4, p. 568.

64 CD III/4, p. 570. See also CD III/4, p. 631, where Barth argues that human finitude is necessary for redemption to ‘take effect for us’. This schematisation in fact parallels Feuerbach's conception of the necessity of finite existence. See Feuerbach, Thoughts, p. 77, where he writes that ‘wherever all the conditions required for life are not completely and fully present – and not only the universal elements and matter, but also the determinate form, the measure, the determinate proportion, belong to these conditions – there is no life’.

65 CD III/4, p. 574.

66 CD III/2, p. 241. In consideration of his claim that Thoughts on Death and Immortality represents the philosophical foundation for Feuerbach's critique of religion, Massey's identification in ‘Feuerbach and Religious Individualism’, p. 380, of the conceptual impetus of Thoughts on Death and Immortality as the repudiation of the ‘exalt[ation of] the individual human to identity with the divine’ which Feuerbach detected in contemporaneous Christian discourse, and the fact that Massey issues such an identification as a rejoinder to Barth's interpretation of Feuerbach, forcefully suggest that the self-exaltation of the individual is the basis of the Feuerbachian critique and as such is the proper locus for its evaluation. As such, having argued that Barth dismisses the self-exaltation of the individual as a Nietzschean contrivance fundamentally contrary to the Christian faith, Feuerbach's critique simply cannot apply to Barth's conception of Christian faith. Vogel, ‘Barth–Feuerbach Confrontation’, p. 48, writes that Feuerbach's critique ‘evaporates’ in the face of Barth's appeal to the ‘manifest radiance of God’: it now appears that, even without this recourse, the Feuerbachian critique ‘evaporates’, as Christianity, insofar as Barth constitutes one of its faithful representatives, is misidentified as its target.

67 A hypothetical supposition: if Barth had engaged with Feuerbach's earlier corpus, I expect that he would have been situated to draw these rhetorical implications himself, and in this respect it is regrettable, but contextually understandable that, as I have previously noted, Barth elected to restrict his engagement with the Feuerbachian critique to Feuerbach's later work. These remarks notwithstanding, Barth was aware that he was aligning himself fundamentally with Feuerbach against Nietzsche, and that this constituted a point of polarity between Christian and anti-Christian anthropology, writing in the context of his affirmation of the theologico-anthropological convergence between him and Feuerbach that ‘it need not be, and is not actually, the case, that this worldly wisdom with its very different criteria has always been mistaken, always seeking humanity in the direction of Idealism and finally of Nietzsche, and therefore establishing and describing it as humanity without the fellow-man’, and identifying Feuerbach as one of those few who had succeeded in avoiding this error. CD III/2, p. 277.

68 CD III/2, p. 242.

69 CD IV/3, pp. 114–17.

70 CD IV/3, p. 622.