Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Preoccupation

Introduction

Introduction Hans Urs von Balthasar’s presentation and interpretation of Karl Barth’s theology has fallen on hard times. Once heralded as a landmark analysis of Barth’s theology (even by Barth himself), and a breakthrough in ecumenical relations, Balthasar’s interpretation finds fewer and fewer takers. Significant Protestant theologians charge him with an inaccurate periodization and understanding of Barth’s conversion(s) from liberalism, as well as an inadequate recognition of Barth’s central theological insight. Balthasar failed to see the radical implications Barth contributed to theology when he placed the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God. Significant Catholic theologians claim that Barth misled Balthasar. His preoccupation with Barth resulted in the loss of a robust doctrine of nature and a rejection of metaphysics, especially the analogia entis, as the condition for theology. The following work defends Balthasar’s interpretation of, and preoccupation with, Karl Barth against these significant theological voices. The charges miss the heart of Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth and divert attention away from the significant ecumenical and theological achievement their friendship and work produced. What follows is more than a defense of the specific argument Balthasar presented in his 1951 published work, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung Seiner Theologie (Karl Barth: Presentation and Interpretation of His Theology); it defends the theological and ecumenical fruit of their friendship and conversation. Balthasar’s preoccupation with Barth, beginning in the 1930s and extending until the end of his life, led to a remarkable theological achievement.1 My argument does not defend Balthasar or Barth’s theology per se; it defends Balthasar’s preoccupation with understanding, presenting, and discussing the “enigmatic cleft” between Catholic and Protestant Christianity Barth identified. Balthasar acknowledged Catholicism lost something significant with this cleft, and he refused a self-satisfied Catholic theology that dismissed the Reformed Barth out of hand. His refusal brought attacks upon him from both Catholic and Protestant sides. A lesser person might have given up trying to present Barth to Catholics, and Catholicism to Barth, and thereby to Protestants in general. Some theologians think Balthasar did give up after Barth’s death and turned away from the Catholic-Protestant rapprochement 1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung Seiner Theologie (Köln: Jakob Hegner, 1951). 1 present in his early work. But that too, I think, misstates Balthasar’s post—Vatican II concerns. It was because of his engagement with Barth that he worried about Vatican II developments. Rather than dismissing him as a conservative reactionary who abandoned his earlier preoccupation, his preoccupation with Barth helps make sense of his later concerns. The following argument, then, is not an example of Barthian or Balthasarian scholasticism. Neither of them is innocent of theological and moral errors. It is, instead, a defense of the conversation between them and of a way of doing theology that involves friendship rather than conquest. Significant theological fruit came from their conversation. I fear that conversation is not being taken up and built upon by contemporary theologians. Instead, we find a retrenchment to positions prior to their conversation that now threatens their ecumenical fruit, a fruit that often occurred despite them. In order to defend Balthasar’s preoccupation with Barth and its ecumenical fruit, six steps are necessary. The first step is to tell the story of that friendship; it is not well known, largely because Balthasar never publicly acknowledged the difficulties he had in presenting and interpreting Barth’s work.2 Chapter 1, “An Unlikely Friendship: Balthasar’s ‘Conversations’ with Barth,” tells that story up to the publication of Balthasar’s book on Barth in 1951 and a brief reaction to it in 1953. The history ends at that point because a second step in the story is necessary before properly situating their ongoing conversations in the 1950s and 1960s. The complexity of Balthasar’s interpretation must be recognized in all its fullness, and this is what some of the charges brought against Balthasar neglect. Chapter 2, “Presenting and Interpreting Karl Barth,” offers a careful analysis of Balthasar’s published book on Barth, placing that book within its long and complicated history prior to its 1951 publication. Situating the book within that history results, I hope, in a different and more nuanced reading than interpretations that focus either on Balthasar’s supposed twofold periodization of Barth’s conversions (where Balthasar merely restates Barth’s own words) or one that wrongly suggests Balthasar loses a Catholic understanding of nature. Only after these two steps...