International Symposium on Karl Barth
“Barth in Germany (1921-1935): Emergence, Clarification, Resistance”
An international symposium on Karl Barth was held in Emden, Germany from
the 1st to the 4th of May, 2003. The symposium, titled “Barth in Germany
(1921-1935): Emergence, Clarification, Resistance,” was centered around the
decade and a half that Karl Barth spent in Germany between the World Wars.
The symposium was co-sponsored by the
Seminar for Reformed Theology at the University of Münster, the Academic
Advisory Council of the Karl Barth Gesellschaft, and the
Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden.
The Johannes a Lasco library provided a wonderful backdrop to the
conference. The librar
y
dates from 1559 and counts among the oldest Reformed libraries in Europe.
The physical structure housing the library was once the Große Kirche
of Emden, which was destroyed by Allied bombing in the Second World War. The
modern library rose from the ruins of the destroyed church, creating a
uniquely atmospheric combination of gothic brick columns and modern steel
book stacks.
Approximately 160 scholars attended the symposium. The majority were from
Germany. Many of the most well-known German scholars were there—Eberhard
Busch, Hans-Anton Drewes, Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Fangmeier, Wolf Krötke and
Christian Link among them. A sizable minority of the scholars hailed from
the Netherlands. (Emden is well-known to the Dutch Reformed. The Synod of
Emden in 1571 set the constitutional framework for what later became the
Dutch Reformed Church.) Senior Dutch scholars like Hendrik Adriaanse and
Arie Spijkerboer were present as were many younger scholars–including Arie
Molendijk of the University of Groningen, the author of an imposing study of
Barth’s philosophical sparring partner, Heinrich Scholz. There were, of
course, scholars from other European countries as well, including Denmark,
Hungary, Sweden and Switzerland. Scholars from Japan and Korea also
attended. Strangely, only a single scholar from Great Britain made the trip
over the Channel. And the several representatives from Princeton Theological
Seminary were the only North American theologians in attendance.
Walter Schulz, the director of the Johannes a Lasco library, welcomed the
attendees, reminding them that Karl Barth had visited Emden himself on
several occasions. (Barth delivered “Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart”
in Emden in 1922 and “Reformierte Lehre, Ihr Wesen und Ihre Aufgabe” in
1923. Barth was even called in 1935 to be the pastor at Emden but declined
because he wanted to continue writing and lecturing on the Church Dogmatics
[cf. Barth-Thurneysen, Band III, page 804, note 28]). Schulz recalled
Barth’s comments about the stiff formalities of the old-fashioned Reformed
“Coetus” that he met with in Emden: Barth wrote his friend Eduard Thurneysen
about the “darkly paneled consistory room” with the “the severe faces of the
entire 16th and 17th century on the walls” (cf. Barth-Thurneysen, Band II,
page 111). Schulz pointed out to the audience’s amusement that those grim
portraits were still looming over them. Alluding to the often polemically
charged atmosphere of Barth studies in the past, Schulz called on the
gathered scholars not only to discuss the place of Karl Barth in theological
history, but also to sharpen the contemporary debates about the
interpretation of Barth’s theology. “Streiten Sie gut!” he admonished
the participants.
Bruce
McCormack of Princeton Theological Seminary opened the symposium with a
lecture on Karl Barth’s place in theological history. McCormack noted that
Barth’s period in Germany fell in between the 2nd edition of the
Römerbrief and his exposition of the doctrine of election in Church
Dogmatics II/2, two of his crowning theological achievements. He sought
to shed light on these achievements by focusing on the “truly ‘new’ element”
that emerged in Barth’s theology during his German period: his critical
realism. McCormack claimed that Barth’s struggle during the 1920s to do
justice to the reality of God ultimately led him to transcend the familiar
categories of Kant’s critical philosophy and to adopt a critically-realistic
standpoint in his theological epistemology. McCormack noted that several
philosophers of science have subsequently taken an analogous turn away from
both critical idealism and naive realism toward critical realism in the
theory of knowledge, making it possible to speak about ‘parabolic’
resonances between Karl Barth’s critically-realistic theological
epistemology and critical realism in the sciences. The lecture provoked much
discussion, particularly concerning McCormack’s conception of the analogy
between critical realism in theology and critical realism in philosophy and
the sciences.
Eberhard Jüngel gave a public lecture later the same evening
titled “Provocative Theology: On the Theological Existence of Karl Barth.”
Jüngel reminded his audience that Karl Barth was not always the celebrated
and beloved Reformed theologian he is remembered as being today, but that
his “theological existence” frequently brought him into open conflict with
authorities in the church, the academy, and the state. Jüngel sketched the
sequence of events that brought Barth from his pastorate in Safenwil to
professorships in Göttingen, Münster and Bonn, and finally to expulsion from
Germany. The large audience of scholars and non-scholars enjoyed this
perspicuous introduction to the primary events and themes that characterized
Barth’s German period.
The schedule of the symposium during the next few days was divided
between plenary and break-out group lectures. Approximately twenty lecturers
addressed aspects of Barth’s life and thought, ranging from his
Auseinandersetzung with Adolf von Harnack to his perspective on the
Jungreformatorische movement. A couple of moments merit particular
notice. When Hinrich Stoevesandt, speaking on Karl Barth’s lectures on
dogmatics in Göttingen and Münster, announced the long-awaited publication
of the third volume (in German) of those lectures, the audience broke into
spontaneous applause. In a densely argued lecture, Eilert Herms put forward
the provocative thesis that the Church Dogmatics essentially represents an
execution in contemporary idiom of the theological program that Friedrich
Schleiermacher published more than a century previously in his Brief Outline
of Theology as a Field of Study.
All the lecturers faced the interesting
problem of defining and maintaining an appropriate balance between the
historical analysis and the theological interpretation of Karl Barth. In one
of the panel discussions, a scholar provocatively asked whether Barth should
be consigned to the domain of the theological historians. While most
participants strongly disagreed with that proposal, there was widespread
consensus that interpretation of Barth’s theology should take historical
context into account. The German scholars in particular expressed great
interest in probing the relationship of Barth to Neuzeit or
“modernity.” (Barth’s relationship to postmodernity, by contrast, received
less attention, perhaps because the Germans scholars placed such emphasis on
reading Karl Barth in his historical context.) But does this concern for
historical context not raise the specter of the historicism Barth sought to
exorcize from theology? Some European scholars expressed interest in the
tendency among North America scholars to “use” Barth’s theology without
paying much heed to historical context. Bruce McCormack cautioned, however,
that scholars in North America all too often develop a distorted picture of
the overall shape of Barth’s theology because they lack a firm grasp of his
historical situation and cannot read his untranslated, more
contextually-oriented publications. In a concluding panel discussion,
Cornelius van der Kooi emphasized the centrality of scriptural exegesis to
Karl Barth’s theology. He exhorted contemporary scholars to give as much
intellectual scrutiny to Barth’s exegetical writings as they give to his
theological authorship.
Michael Beintker closed the symposium on Sunday afternoon. He expressed
the hope that another international symposium would take place, maybe in
five years time, perhaps in the Netherlands or Switzerland. He also
announced that a selection of the papers will be published by the
Theologischer Verlag Zürich next year. Although subsequent “international
symposiums” should consider holding break-out sessions in English and French
as well as in German and encourage greater participation by British and
North American scholars, the symposium in Emden constituted a highwater
point in international scholarship about Karl Barth. The impassioned
interest in the theology of Karl Barth shown by scholars at the symposium
made clear that Barth’s theology was not only transformative for the church
in the 20th century, but also contains great promise for the church in the
21st century.
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