Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Preoccupation

2 Presenting and Interpreting Karl Barth

2 Presenting and Interpreting Karl Barth Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Balthasar presented Barth’s work to a Catholic audience, offering a nuanced interpretation along with affirmative and negative evaluations. His conversations with Barth, his struggles with the censors, and the constant critiques from Catholic and Protestant theologians resulted in his 1951 publication: Karl Barth: A Presentation and Interpretation of His Theology.1 It is a complicated work. It had to be if it were to achieve its goal of presenting a convincing presentation of Barth’s theology, an ecumenical “rapprochement,” and at the same time demonstrate fidelity to Vatican I. In fact, Balthasar’s preoccupation, interpretation, and presentation of Barth’s work is much too broad, dynamic, and changing to be encapsulated in any single formula such as “from dialectic to analogy.” This chapter chronologically traces the development of Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth’s theology. It is a detailed discussion of the shifts and turns by which Balthasar traced the “ways” Barth broke through to a substantive dogmatic theology, which Balthasar claimed came closest to the Catholic approach because it adhered so closely to Christ. Although the details in this chapter might try the patience of the reader, they are necessary in order to make the arguments in the succeeding chapters. The next chapter assesses the abandonment of Balthasar’s interpretation by Catholics and Protestants. If any theologian is to follow this abandonment, he or she should at least be clear on what is being abandoned. The stakes are high in abandoning Balthasar’s interpretation for our understanding of Barth, of Balthasar, and of the ecumenical fruit their friendship bore. For this reason, Balthasar’s interpretation must be set forth in all its complexity. Once that has been done, 1. I have translated Balthasar’s book on Barth more literally than the English translation because the literal translation better expresses Balthasar’s intent to present and interpret Barth’s work to a Catholic audience and to Barth himself. 37 the appropriateness or inappropriateness of this call for abandonment can be calmly assessed. The structure of this chapter is straightforward. It begins by examining four essays Balthasar published dealing with Barth in the 1930s, including his lengthy chapter on Barth in his dissertation, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (Apocalypse of the German Soul). Barth is the only theologian to appear in that book, and it is there where Balthasar first states that Barth identifies the wrong Catholic error. It is not the analogia entis that should concern him, but a doctrine of pure nature. Each of these essays was written before Balthasar met Barth. After their personal conversations, some of the themes in these essays will remain, such as Balthasar’s claim Barth misidentified the Catholic error, and some of the themes will disappear, such as Balthasar’s use of Gesetz to express the form of the basic Christian principle, the incarnation. The second step in this chapter examines Balthasar’s two published essays in the 1940s, “Analogy and Dialectic” and “Analogy and Nature.” These two essays were chapters from the original 1941 manuscript that were published at the suggestion of Balthasar’s Jesuit provincial. In a third step, each of the essays will be compared to relevant sections of the 1951 publication, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung Seiner Theologie, which also provides the occasion to set forth Balthasar’s complicated presentation and interpretation of Barth’s theology. The final step draws some conclusions, tracing the similarities and differences in Balthasar’s reading of Barth during his two-decades-long preoccupation. Interpreting Barth in the 30s Balthasar’s earliest interpretations of Barth are the 1939 publications “Karl Barth,” in the third volume of Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, which is subtitled The Apotheosis of Death (Die Vergöttlichung des Todes);2 and a short essay that same year that bore the same title as the 1948 public lectures in Basel, “Karl Barth and Catholicism” (“Karl Barth und der Katholizismus”).3 A third 1939 publication, “Patristics, Scholastics, and Us” is not explicitly about Barth’s theology, but it addressed Barth and set Balthasar’s interpretation of him in the context of theological concerns about the Fathers, Scholastics, and moderns. It is a programmatic essay for both Balthasar’s own work and his presentation of Barth. He also had a brief review in 1938 of Helmut Thielicke’s Die Krisis der Theologie that was more about Barth than Thielicke. 2. Apokalypse der deutschen Seele: Studien zu einer Lehre letzten HaltungenBand III: Die Verg...