Christophe Chalamet - Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans: Retrospect and Prospect

Theologische Bibliothek Tpelmann

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ISBN 9783110750522

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2022 Christophe Chalamet, Andreas Dettwiler, Sarah Stewart-Kroeker, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston // The book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Someone is going up the stairs in a churchs tower It is nighttime, completely dark. Losing his balance, that person finds something hanging loose next to him and holds fast onto it. But what he is grasping is in fact the bell rope: he ends up waking the entire town!

This is the image Karl Barth used for his commentary on the apostle Pauls epistle to the Romans. What might have been one more book among many others in Christian theology at the time of publication became a major sensation, in the ensuing months, in the world of German-speaking theology and Christianity.

Certainly, Barth wanted his commentary to be read and heard. His long, powerful lecture in Tambach in September 1919 on The Christian in Society, only half a year after the publication of the commentary, certainly generated the interest of a good number of readers. But no one, including Barth himself, could have foreseen its widespread and lasting effects.

Why and how did the Rmerbrief become a classic of Christian theology? And what may this book have to say to us still today, one hundred years after its publication in its first (1919) and second (1922) editions? Various answers can be given to these questions. The present book gathers a few such responses, written by both seasoned and younger scholars, by theologians as well as by historians, philosophers and political thinkers. These essays were presented at an international conference hosted by the Theological Faculty at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) in June 2019. One of the key aims of the conference was indeed to place scholars who represent these various disciplines and do so with great distinction in conversation with one another. Ethicists were encouraged to confront their approaches with Barths radical reconfiguration of theological ethics, scholars interested in the greening of theology were invited to reflect upon the Swiss theologians insights on a key biblical chapter such as Romans 8, experts in political science and political philosophy pondered Barths views on political themes, and philosophers were invited to locate where, as they see it, Barths real breakthrough might be found, already in the first edition of the commentary.

This much is clear: Karl Barth effected a number of important developments with his book, which was his first monograph (many more would follow until his death in Basel on December 10, 1968).

First, he showed both liberal and conservative theologians that the quest for a genuinely theological interpretation of the New Testament was still both possible and necessary, even for people who have been trained in the modern, historical and critical study of the Bible. It was a well-known fact that many liberal theologians were not at ease with a theological interpretation of the Bible: their focus, in many instances, was mostly directed at the context and so at the historical background of the text. Conservative Protestant theologians, for their part, had difficulties paying attention to the lively, unceasing movement of Gods word as well as to the human dimension of the text: they tended to tame the text instead of letting it question their dogmatic presuppositions. Barth upset both the liberals and the conservatives with his commentary but he did not want it any other way! Those who place Barth within the camp of neo-orthodox are mistaken. He was never simply interested in bringing back orthodox doctrines: the first aim of any theology must be to listen to the message of the Scriptures. If orthodox doctrines concur with this message, then so much the better. But one cannot begin by assuming that these doctrines correspond to the Scriptures: this has to be established through a careful interpretation of the texts. Biblical interpretation needs focus on the matter (Sache) that is both somehow present in the text and presented by the text: exegesis must be sachlich, as Barth put it in one of the prefaces to the first edition.

Second, Barths commentary was arguably the first successful attempt at integrating the recent retrieval of the thoroughly eschatological dimension of the New Testament writings, first initiated by Johannes Weiss in the 1890s and then by Albert Schweitzer at the turn of the century. In most cases, theologians were either embarrassed by the retrieval of the eschatological nature of Jesuss and Pauls message (not to mention the other New Testament authors), or they were oblivious to it. Not Barth, who made eschatology a crucial piece of his interpretation of Pauls letter to the Romans. Precisely in that regard, the two editions of his commentary would prove to be very influential, into the 1960s and beyond. Rudolf Bultmann found in the second edition of the Rmerbrief a stance which he deemed consonant with the fourth gospel, on the ultimate (the eschaton) and its judgement as encountering time, our time, at all moments of (our) present time. Whereas the first edition contains what has been termed an organic interpretation of eschatology, with the Kingdom growing like a mustard-seed, independently of any human influence, the second edition departs from such a linear, progressive interpretation to stress the strictly vertical nature of the eschaton as it encounters time straight down from above (senkrecht von oben).

Third, even though this was a commentary of a biblical book (debating whether Barths Rmerbrief is a genuine biblical commentary is a bit of a dead-end, as the answer to that question can only be two-sided), it announced a major renewal of Protestant theology: a theology that would not base itself on human experience, but rather on the transcendent reality that confronts human beings in this world without being of this world. Even religious experience, a central theme in Protestant theology at the time (see Wilhelm Herrmanns works), was disqualified by Barth. For anyone who had the stamina to read through Barths thick book, it was clear that Christian theology had to concern itself not just marginally but quite centrally with ancient doctrines such as predestination or divine judgement. And while liberal theology often articulated a more generous or positive view of humanity than the 16th century Reformers as well as a doctrine of God centered on Gods goodness at the risk of eclipsing the dimensions of Gods righteousness and Gods judgment, Barth struck a tone that unmistakably recalled the leading voices of the Protestant Reformation, especially the young Martin Luther. Barths sense of a hope that is located in the midst of crisis may, despite the pessimistic readings it has occasioned, in fact be part of the Rmerbriefs enduring significance.

The present book contains seven parts, presenting Barth as a scriptural theologian (I), hermeneutics and metaphysics (II), the historical context (III), the first edition of the