While increasingly published Reformed theologian John R. Franke (Biblical Theological Seminary, Hatfield, Pennsylvania) is known less for his expertise in Barth than for his constructive engagement with postmodernism, the present work constitutes a brief, accurate, even slightly revisionist treatment of which Barth scholars will certainly take notice. Within the scope established for the "Armchair Theologians" series, Franke meets and exceeds his objective of furnishing a highly readable introduction to, and overview of, Barth's life and thought.
In fact, Franke seamlessly weaves together (1) a biographical sketch, (2) the development of Barth's thought, and (3) a discussion of Barth's chief writings. Most of the book has the feel of historical narrative, and upon finishing it, one is surprised at just how much theological data and reflection Franke has packed into its comparatively few pages.
Franke cautions that Barth's dialectical methodology (corresponding to his dialectical understanding of revelation, explained below) assures that any superficial or fragmentary reading of his works (especially Church Dogmatics) will spawn serious misunderstanding. Since Barth perceives the theological enterprise as a human (but churchly) witness to ongoing but never specifically guaranteed revelation, the theologian—Barth included—never accesses truth directly but must circle around it, coming from divergent angles and perspectives, praying all the while that God will speak his Word in the midst of this (all too and never but) human task. This dialectical method means that Barth does not expect that useful theology—even his own—can once for all and finally be set out in simple, linear propositions. Rather, good theology continually circles around its target and, in fact, is often perceived as seemingly self-contradictory, since God's revelation itself encounters us in seeming contradictions. Conclusions drawn from a hasty or incomplete reading of Barth will, therefore, probably be erroneous, because his work requires digestion of the entire theological process of multiple and sometimes competing perspectives in order to grasp what he is trying to say.
I found five of Franke's own interpretations of Barth to be especially poignant.
First, although most readers are aware that Barth's theology arose in reaction to the nineteenth-century theological liberalism in which he was trained, Franke takes the time to explain both the particular strand of liberalism to which Barth was reacting (epitomized in Wilhelm Hermann) and why Barth eventually found this particular strand so repugnant.
Second, Franke observes that an underlying, perhaps the underlying, tenet of Barth's theology is his intent to "let God be God": more specifically, to maintain the Reformed dogma of the Creator-creature distinction. Franke's most scintillating insight at this juncture is that Barth's construction suggests the necessity of continuous epistemic dependence on God—knowledge is not at man's disposal (not in the Bible, and certainly not in creation), but he is continually reliant on God to reveal himself. In addition, since man is continually dependent on God for (the event of) revelation, man may not bring to that revelation a general conception of God common to humanity but must instead rely on God to define himself in terms of his own dynamic revelation.
Third, within contemporary Barth scholarship, Franke sides decisively with Princeton's Bruce McCormack in positing (contra traditional interpretations) that Barth never abandoned his early dialectical approach and that one simply cannot do justice to Barth without seeing this overarching dialecticism as guiding his theology. In Barth's case, dialecticism translates into an "indirect identity" between divine revelation and the creaturely forms by which it comes to man and a simultaneity of the veiling and unveiling of God to man. God never divinizes the human conduit by which his revelation reaches us, either in Jesus Christ or the Sacred Scripture. In conformity with the Chalcedonian Creed, the humanity of Jesus is linked to his deity but is not itself divinized. Similarly, the human dimension of the Bible bears all the marks of that humanity but stands coordinate with the divine revelation when it communicates that revelation. In this way, God's revelation is not directly but rather is indirectly identified with the human forms with which it encounters us. God, then, simultaneously unveils himself in his revelation while veiling himself in creaturely forms. By this dialectic Barth avoids both skepticism on the one hand and revelational positivism on the other—i.e., God really can be known, but only via creaturely forms not identical with revelation but through which God nonetheless enlivens us to perceive that revelation. Franke's explanation of this distinction is particularly illuminating.
Fourth, Franke observes that since Barth posits Jesus Christ as the revelation of God to humanity, and since Jesus is both human and divine, we cannot know God apart from knowing man. This observation will strike Christians nourished in a "knowing God" devotionalism as counterintuitive, but Barth's point is that we do not take the incarnation seriously if we grasp for a knowledge of God that short-circuits the (Christ's!) human condition.
Finally, given Franke's avid interest in postmodernism, no one should be surprised that he mines Barth as a theological resource to navigate the present cultural currents. But Franke acknowledges that Barth was in many ways a thoroughly modern (not postmodern) theologian and suggests that his contributions to postmodernity lay in theologians' careful understanding of Barth's actual dialectic and not in transforming Barth into a nascent postmodernist.
As neither passionate advocate nor fierce opponent of Barth, but instead sympathetic critic, I found this book a superb introduction. I hope it gets a wide reading and fosters growing interest in Barth's theology, no matter how one may assess that theology in the end.
