Reforming Rome: Karl Barth and Vatican II by Donald W. Norwood (review)

The author (b. 1940) is a minister of the United Reformed Church in Britain and “a longtime participant in ecumenical affairs,” as the bookjacket tells us. His expertise shows itself in the ease with which he presents ecumenical discussions of various doctrinal topics, some of them more and some less disputed.

Donald W. Norwood claims that Karl Barth “should be understood as an heir of the Reformation” in the sixteenth century, thus also inheriting “a vocation to contribute to the reform of Rome” (p. 7). Barth was invited to participate in the Second Vatican Council as observer, but due to ill health he preferred not to attend. In 1966, however, he traveled to Rome for a series of conversations with high-ranking Vatican representatives, including a brief meeting with Pope Paul VI. The events are documented in Barth’s collection Ad Limina Apostolorum (Zurich, 1967). On the whole, Norwood’s presentation of theological topics and discussions occurs in the form of an ecumenically minded essay. Only few sections develop an argument systematically or in detail.

The book consists of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the following questions: Why Rome? Why Reform? Why Barth? The second chapter clarifies why the Council was a reform council. Chapter 3 discusses two constitutions, Dei Verbum (1965) and Lumen Gentium (1964), and Barth’s comments on them. Norwood could have added depth to his presentation by including material from the protocols of Barth’s seminars on Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium at the University of Basel, which are now published in the diary of Barth’s confidante Eberhard Busch, Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth (Göttingen, 2011). Chapter 4 discusses the papacy and the question of order in the church, again with Barth’s comments.

Chapter 5 changes the focus and addresses several areas of concern for Roman Catholic critics of Barth, including ecclesial mediation, human cooperation in salvation, and the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. It also devotes a section to the role of women in the Church, which is “a question addressed to Barth and Rome” (p. 146, emphasis in original). Chapter 6 considers remaining differences between Rome and the Protestant churches in the post–Second Vatican Council era, including the question of justification by faith, the analogia entis (natural knowledge of God), and Mariology. In regard to the last topic, which is difficult for many Protestants (and for some Roman Catholics as well), Norwood claims that the Council

was determined to listen to non-Roman Catholic theologians [and] heard and accepted the criticism that whatever was said about Mary must not detract from the shared belief that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Savior of the World and Son of God.

(p. 192)

Still, what exactly it means to “detract” from the uniqueness of Christ’s person and work needs clarification.

Finally, the seventh chapter refers to the question of church unity as perhaps the central issue. It is cautious in regard to the widely heralded Decree on Ecumenism (Unitas Redintegratio, 1964) and proposes that the Council itself “became a much better example of the church seeking to answer Jesus’ prayer that all may be one” (p. 198). For Norwood, the Council was an event that proved that church unity can become real as a gift, in practice rather than on paper, such as in praying together and responding to the Word of scripture. Moreover, the Council “can revive our confidence in the discovery of Truth through debate” (p. 220).

On the whole, the book displays a refreshing ecumenical optimism and corresponds to Barth’s own confidence that in Christ we already are one:

it belongs to the being of the congregation [Barth’s preferred term instead of church] to be a unity in the plurality of its members, i.e., of the individual believers assembled in it, and to be a single unity, not...