Barth, Tillich and Post-modernism
Ok, it's the middle of the week and my Galatians thesis has taken up all my spare time at the moment so I don't have much time to post on here. I intend to write a little more on ID and also chip in with some ideas on the have they/haven't they ceased debate about spiritual gifts that is currently hot topic of discussion at the moment.Until then, I've dragged one of my old essays out of the archives. The title was "Compare and contrast the theology of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Which deserves the title of 'theologian to the Post-modern Generation?' It's not the best essay I ever wrote and doesn't really deal with either postmodernism, Barth, or Tillich in too much detail but it covers the basic ground well enough.
Introduction
Karl Barth and Paul Tillich are two theological giants who tower over twentieth-century theology and despite having similar beginnings on their theological journeys; they arrived at very different destinations. Whilst neither of them set out with the express intention of responding to postmodernism, there are elements in both their theological systems that will usefully serve those in a post-modern context. First of all however, it will be necessary to establish just what the post-modern generation looks like and what their theological needs and expectations may be before deciding whether it is Barth or Tillich who can best be described as ‘their’ theologian.
Post-modern theology
One of the curiosities of post-modernism is that it is very difficult to define, and may prove to be especially enigmatic in our area of study, that of theology. For instance, postmodernism esteems spirituality and yet is distrusting of institutionalised religion, so it is not clear how postmodernity will respond to theology. Postmodernist Mark Taylor notes that “for some, post-modernism suggests the death of God and disappearance of religion, for others, the return of traditional faith, and for still others, the possibility of recasting religious ideas.”[1] Even as regards religion, post-modernity is ambiguous.
The ambiguity of post-modernist thinking is due in part to the rejection of modern understandings of truth and absolutes. Milbank notes that the arrival of postmodernism has meant the end “of a single system of truth based on universal reason,”[2] and on this basis postmodernism rejects the idea that there is any one single notion of truth, because it maintains that the words used to describe truth “are always shifting and are dependent on the perceptions, presuppositions, and assumptions of both speaker and hearer and on the context in which the speaker and hearer are situated.”[3] It follows that the absolutisation of the claims of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ are then seen as scandalous, if not altogether outmoded and actually impossible. In my view postmodernism is right to identify that constraints of language and context prevent any untarnished statements on truth from being made, though the difficulty in communicating truth does not necessarily mean that all truths and interpretations in the postmodern relativist milieu are equally valid.
The task of a postmodern theologian will then be to hold in tension the particularity of Christianity with the relativism that abounds in culture. He or she must also recognise the postmodern view that truth is dependent on the language and context of the speaker and hearer, and that a particular truth only makes sense within its narrative framework, which is the history of its construction.[4] That is to say, that Christian truth must not be indissolubly linked to a particular cultural and linguistic expression of it. The Gospel is not indivisible from, say, nineteenth century British Evangelicalism and the particular language and form of that particular movement, for example.
One can see how it may be tempting for theology to react to postmodernism in the same way that some fundamentalist groups reacted to modernism by the further absolutisation of their own position and a refusal to engage with new philosophical and cultural forms. Such a response in postmodernism would serve only to make theology a fringe and extreme discipline that had little to offer to the world and to culture, and it is not as though Christianity stands for reactionary traditionalism over against postmodern culture. A postmodern theologian then will recognise the need to engage positively with the world whilst at the same time recognising that his or her own theology is not pure undiluted truth and will also be a product of his or her own worldview, language and experiences, but that this does not preclude the Gospel from being communicated meaningfully.
The rise of relativism in a postmodern context has led to the emergence of experience as a criterion for discerning and discovering truth. Disillusionment with the scientific method has led to a lack of confidence in the ability to discover objective knowledge. Truth is not known simply through reason, but through other channels, such as intuition.[5] Postmodern theology must then recognise the importance of experience in the perception and discovery of truth. Objective dogmatism separated from the reality of personal experience is unlikely to thrive in a postmodern context. Theology must account for, but not be limited to, human experiences. This of course lends itself to a more inductive approach to theology that begins with a ‘bottom up’ understanding of God, rather than a ‘top down’ revelatory approach. At this stage, the conditions of postmodernism would seem to favour Tillich’s existentialist model over Barth’s model of revelation, but we shall see that there are severe flaws in Tillich’s method and that Barth cannot be so easily dismissed as having nothing to contribute to postmodernism. We shall first examine Tillich’s theology, followed by Barth’s and then attempt to establish who can best be described as the ‘theologian to the postmodern generation.’
Paul Tillich
Like Barth, Tillich’s background was in Liberal Protestantism and he was greatly influenced by Rudolf Otto, who had taught him that all religious ideas were attempts to articulate what was beyond thought.[6] This would greatly affect Tillich’s later theological thought, and recognises the postmodern problem that language creates – namely the difficulty of describing reality because language and meaning are so bound up in particular socio-historical conditions. Nevertheless, Tillich’s aim was to “make Christianity understandable and persuasive to religiously skeptical [sic] people, modern in culture and secular in sensibility,”[7] and so his theology sought to identify and understand the predicament of human existence and then to relate Christianity to it.
For Tillich, a human being was an integral whole, who socially and culturally was part of more inclusive wholes, but additionally a human is finite and so vulnerable to disintegration at all his levels of existence.[8] Man is a finite being, always in danger of being crushed by the power of non-being, and his life is an ambiguous and disruptive conflict between chaos and fulfilment, between non-being and being. This conflict arises out a separation from our essence in our present existence. Tillich describes this dialectically as union and separation, with soteriological resolution coming as reunion.[9]
In its existence in the world, humanity is separated from its true essence. In Christian thought, this is explained using the symbols of Creation and Fall, but is conceptually identical. The crisis of existence is then that of estrangement and alienation from God, the Ground of Our Being, and from each other. Man has abused the freedom of his being and has “used his freedom to waste his freedom; and it is his destiny to lose his destiny,”[10] with the result that he is now threatened by non-being and enmeshed in a life of conscious alienation and aloneness. As Tillich preached:
“Being alive means being in a body – a body separated from all other bodies. And being separated means being alone.
This is true of every creature, and it is more true of man than of any other creature. He is not only alone; he also knows that he is alone […] it is his destiny to be alone and to be aware of it.”[11]
This existential crisis arises out of our Unbelief (turning away from God, who is the source of our being and life), making ourselves the new centre of our being (Hubris) and then acting on the desire to draw everyone else towards us (Concupiscence).[12]
Tillich’s description here may well be applied to the postmodern problem of alienation and isolationism. These phenomena are caused by individualism, which although is itself not a product of postmodernism, is an integral part of it. The rejection of a meta-explanation and unified worldview in postmodern thought has helped to create the existential and epistemological crisis of postmodernity. The postmodern generation will then be readily able to identify with Tillich’s description of the human condition, but what of his solution? How does Christ and salvation fit into his model, and will it be able to talk to postmodernity whilst maintaining a workable Christological basis? Before discussing Tillich’s Christology, it will be necessary to briefly outline his doctrine of God in as far it may be useful to our discussion on how well his theology relates to postmodern religious and cultural phenomena.
Tillich argues that humanity is by nature religious, and that we all have an Ultimate Concern that we worship. Behind our Ultimate Concern lies our desire to reconnect with the Source-of-Being from which we are existentially estranged. Human worship expresses a longing to reconnect with God, even though this is expressed implicitly in the worship and pursuit of the Ultimate Concern, rather than in an explicit confession of ‘religious faith’.
Similarly, it is a typical phenomenon of postmodernity to seek meaning and direction in life. Testimony to this is the explosion of interest in spirituality, and the rise of ‘seeker friendly’ models of Church. In addition to this openness to the religious in all aspects of life, Tillich’s system will also allow the necessary experiential aspect of religion that I have outlined as a category for a successful postmodern theology. The idea of Ultimate Concern is essentially a phenomenological description of worshipper and worshipped,[13] and thus holiness involves participation with our Ultimate Concern and so becomes a relational and experienced category.[14] That is to say that worship and the seeking after the Source-of-Being are identifiable in many areas of Concern, and that they allow for an active experience of participation in worship that is not isolate from the object of worship. It is important to note however that Tillich believes that while we are ultimately yearning for God in our pursuit of our Ultimate Concerns, that worship may not be Christian, either explicitly or implicitly.
The bridge between God (who Tillich prefers to describe as ‘Being-Itself or the power of being, or the ground of being”[15]) and estranged man is built by Christ. Jesus remains grounded in Being-Itself and so resists and overcomes the powers of non-being that threaten man’s existence. He participates in and completes the dialectic of separation-union-reunion and in doing so becomes the New Being who has rescued man from alienation and reunited him with the Ground-of-Being, who is God. He unites our existential experience with all its individualism and relativism with the Absolute that is God, and so preserves both of them. The tension of relativism and absolutism are held together in Christ[16] because he participates with humanity whilst remaining connected to God. This would seem to be a promising way in which to explain the absoluteness of Christ in a culture of shadowy uncertainty and relativism.
I would argue however that Tillich’s Christology is highly deficient and whilst it may perhaps be more easily understood by a postmodern culture, it is too flawed to actually be of any real value. Tillich rejects traditional two-nature Christology because he saw it as impossible to ascribe a nature to God, who is “beyond essence and existence,”[17] but instead he develops a Christ who is always connected to the Ground-of-Being and yet is able to participate in the separation from the Ground-of-Being that characterises human existence – this seems a contradiction to say the least as it would be impossible for Christ to remain connected to God if he were genuinely alienated from him as we are. Christ is neither God, because God cannot have essence or existence, and neither is he fully human because he does not really participate in the genuine condition of humanity. Tillich’s Christ is rather more of a docetic superhuman and bears little resemblance to the Christ of the New Testament or the Christ of Nicea and Chalcedon.
In closing, Tillich offers a diagnosis of the human condition that would resonate strongly with the postmodern generation, and that gives legitimate space to allow for experience of God in the midst of human existence. However, while he may perhaps be more accessible to the postmodern world, his theology (particularly his Christology and Soteriology) is too flawed to give his philosophy sufficient theological mileage.
Karl Barth
Perhaps then Karl Barth will be better able to speak to the postmodern generation? Barth has been accused of isolating Christian thought from the intellectual and cultural life of his day[18] by making radical dialectical distinctions between God and humanity, which may seem to make it more difficult to engage Christ with a postmodern culture. It is my hypothesis however that Barth does this in response to the assimilation of Christ into culture that he found in Schleiermacher, (and that I believe is also a potential consequence of Tillich’s system.)
Barth, like Tillich, had a background in the Liberalism of the 19th Century, and also like Tillich he rejected it after it had helped fuel the German nationalism that had led to World War One. For Barth, Liberalism had simply bound Christ up with the “success of our own historical and moral and religious endeavor [sic]”[19] as opposed to the historical endeavour and mission of God. God is not simply a projection of a heightened humanity, as Barth believed Schleiermacher had made him to be, but God is radically other and everything about him goes crossways to our world,[20] God will only be understood by God relating to us, and not by humanity relating to the divine.
The preference of the Enlightenment for ‘natural’ theology had in Barth’s view robbed Christianity of many of its core elements because the Christian faith was not based on natural theology but rather on revelation in the scriptures and in church tradition. A theology conditioned simply by nature and culture will leave Christianity shorn of some of the key elements (such as the Incarnation and the Trinity for example) that make it unique. Barth then sought to make revelation the centre of understanding for Christianity rather than experience and natural religion.
Unlike Tillich, Barth argues that the task of theology is not primarily to talk about God to the world but that rather “theology consists of talk about God in the Church.”[21] There is a divide between culture and church, and this reflects Barth’s belief in a great divide between God and humanity. For Barth, God is completely objective. God is simply ‘Thou’, and exists fully and completely in a Trinitarian relationship apart from the ‘I-Thou’ of his relationship to humanity. The objectivity of God is “particular and utterly unique,”[22] in that he is objective to himself and to human beings.[23] This being the case, only God is able to reveal God to humanity, and he cannot be grasped or understood apart from revelation by his Word.
Humanity then is to be understood in the light of God, and not vice-versa. If Tillich begins with human existentialism and arrives at God as the Ground-of-Being, Barth works in the opposite direction and seeks to understand humanity and its predicament in the light of God. This is of course an oversimplification, but it will serve to highlight more clearly why I prefer Barth to Tillich as the theologian to the postmodern generation.
Humanity is the object of divine grace[24] and is such because it is sinful and unrecognisable from its true form. It is only in Christ that humanity can be seen as it was created to be, and so it follows that all anthropology is simply deficient Christology. It is only in Christ that we can reach knowledge of true man.[25] In Christ the true man, our humanity is lifted and restored back to God, achieving our salvation.
Barth’s theology is not without its weaknesses insofar as it is concerned with being suitable for postmodernism. The utter objectivity of God and the particularity of his self-revelation do not sit comfortably in a culture of relativism. Perhaps more seriously however is the lack of an experiential aspect in his theology. I would grant of course that he was eager to avoid the mistake that Schleiermacher made in creating an anthropocentric and encultured understanding of God that derived from experience. However in my view Barth moves too far in the opposite direction by putting an overemphasis on objective revelation to the neglect of subjective experience. As Moltmann remarks:
“By setting up this antithesis between revelation and experience, Barth merely replaced the theological immanentism [of Schleiermacher] he complained about by a theological transcendentalism. […] Anyone who stylises revelation and experience into alternatives, ends up with revelations that cannot be experienced, and experiences without revelation.”[26]
The doubts about the possibility of pure objectivity in postmodernism mean that devoid of an experiential aspect in the life of human subjects, Barth is perhaps less easily accommodated to postmodernism than Tillich.
Conclusion
So is Barth or Tillich the theologian to the postmodern generation? The answer rather depends on one’s view as to what the task of the theologian is. Tillich’s model certainly seems to sit more comfortably with a postmodern culture, and he is certainly more accessible to postmodernity than Barth. He identifies with its existential angst, and affirms the inquisitive seeker attitude of modern spiritualities, although his Christology seems to me to be woefully inadequate and has little correspondence to the historical Jesus and the Christ of church doctrine. Tillich’s intent was to mediate between faith and culture,[27] but in the event I would argue that he translates the content of Christianity without remainder into the deepest convictions of the secular culture it is trying to address.[28] Thus Christianity loses its power to speak to postmodernism and to transform it.
This is why I have chosen Karl Barth as the theologian to the postmodern generation. He himself is only postmodern in a very loose sense in that he attempts to transcend and overcome the problems in Enlightenment modernity, but I would argue that the strong dialectic he creates between God and humanity and between Christ and culture allows Christianity to speak to postmodernism and to offer it the possibility of cultural transformation by a Gospel which is superior to and begins outside of any given cultural model, be it postmodernism or otherwise. Tillich’s theology is too entrenched in postmodern culture for it to serve to change it (although the concepts of estrangement and reconciliation function well in psychology and in some forms of pastoral counselling.[29])
Postmodernism seeks to make all expressions of truth relative by attributing them to particular socio-historical factors, making real objectivity impossible and illusory. The danger to theology is that theology itself may eventually be swallowed up and dismissed as being simply a socio-historically created discipline. To survive this requires that the original objectivity of Christ be maintained,[30] even if our interpretation of him is culturally determined to an extent. A objective God who is prior to time, space and experience is able to accomplish this, which is why I think that Barth’s theology will ultimately better serve the postmodern generation, rather than Tillich’s God who is “never more than a subjective experience of the moment”[31] and who simply fulfils an existential need.
Bibliography
Barth, K Church Dogmatics I.1 trans. G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975)
- Church Dogmatics II.1 trans G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975
Berry P and Wernick A (eds) Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992)
Bromiley, G Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979)
Clayton, J The Concept of Correlation (Berlin, 1990)
Erickson, E J Postmodernizing the Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998)
Ford, D (Ed) The Modern Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
Hyman, G The Predicament of Postmodern Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
Macquarrie, J Jesus Christ In Modern Thought (London: SCM, 1990)
Christology Revisited (London: SCM, 1998)
Mahan, W Tillich’s System (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1974)
Moltmann, J The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992 and 2001)
Tillich, P Systematic Theology I (London: SCM, 1978)
-Systematic Theology II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957)
-The Eternal Now (London: SCM, 1963 and 2002)
Webster, J Outstanding Christian Thinkers: Karl Barth
Journal articlesMilbank, J Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions (Modern Theology 7, 1991)
Phillips, P The Toppling of Idols: Tillich’s Account of Ultimate Concern (Theology Jan-Feb 1996, p29ff)
[1] Taylor, M Re-framing postmodernisms in Berry P and Wernick A (eds) Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) p11
[2] Milbank, J Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions (Modern Theology 7, 1991) p225
[3] Hyman, G The Predicament of Postmodern Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) p27
[4] Ibid. p27
[5] Erickson, E J Postmodernizing the Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998) p19
[6] Heywood-Thomas, J Outstanding Christian Thinkers: Paul Tillich (London & New York: Continuum, 2000) p7
[7] Kelsey, D H Paul Tillich in Ford, D (Ed) The Modern Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) p87
[8] Ibid. p89
[9] Mahan, W Tillich’s System (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1974) p95
[10] Tillich, P Systematic Theology II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957) p63
[11] Tillich, P The Eternal Now (London: SCM, 1963 and 2002) p3
[12] See Mahan, pp50-51
[13] Phillips, P The Toppling of Idols: Tillich’s Account of Ultimate Concern (Theology Jan-Feb 1996, p29)
[14] Tillich, P Systematic Theology I (London: SCM, 1978) p215
[15] Ibid. p235
[16] See Ford, p93
[17] Mahan, p110
[18] Ford, p100
[19] Jenson, R Karl Barth in Ford, p21
[20] Ibid.
[21] Barth, K Church Dogmatics I.1 trans. G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), p33
[22] Barth, K Church Dogmatics II.1 trans G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975, p14
[23] Webster, J Outstanding Christian Thinkers: Karl Barth (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), p77
[24] Bromiley, G Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979) p123
[25] Ibid. p124
[26] Moltmann, J The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992 and 2001) p5
[27] See Clayton, J The Concept of Correlation (Berlin, 1990)
[28] Kelsey, in Ford (2000) p100
[29] Ibid. p99
[30] See Macquarrie, J Christology Revisited (London: SCM, 1998) p12
[31] Macquarrie, J Jesus Christ In Modern Thought (London: SCM, 1990) p301