Karl Barth on Catholicism – Peter Dobbing – 19.10.03

CTC401: Catholic Identity and Its Main Themes

Assessment Task 1 (Portfolio)

Karl Barth on Catholicism

Analogia entis

I want to place the analogia entis (analogy of being) first in this review of

Barth’s writings and ideas. The presence of this subject in Barth’s work may

be likened to the principle theme in a musical fugue: there is a sense in which

many of his thoughts about key theological ideas such as grace, faith,

authority and justification are like contrapuntal episodes that relate back to an

often repeated rejection of any analogy of being for a Reformed church that

wants to witness to the absolute sovereignty of God in matters pertaining to

humankind’s redemption and salvation.

In his book The Theology of Karl Barth (Ignatius, 1992), Hans Urs von

Balthasar writes that Barth raises his objection about the analogia entis ‘at

every point where specific doctrines clash’ (50). He suggests that, for Barth,

the Catholic passion for couplets such as ‘faith and works’, ‘nature and grace’,

‘reason and revelation’ is ‘only a new symptom of the analogy of being’, ‘an

analogy that tries to synthesize from the standpoint of the onlooker, to survey

and see through what is not given to us to see’ (50).

It has to be said that Barth is pretty vehement in his rejection of the analogy: ‘I

regard the doctrine of the analogy of being as the invention of the Antichrist

and hold that precisely because of this doctrine one cannot become a

Catholic. At the same time, I believe that all other reasons that one can have

for not becoming a Catholic are shortsighted and frivolous’ (Church

Dogmatics I, viii-ix). Commenting on this subject in his Karl Barth’s Critically

Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford, Clarendon, 1997), Bruce McCormick

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Karl Barth on Catholicism – Peter Dobbing – 19.10.03

writes that ‘From Barth’s point of view, to ground the possibility of the

knowledge of God in an analogy which is built into the world as created

renders revelation superfluous’ (386).

Barth’s views on the analogia entis are set out quite succinctly in Karl Barth’s

Table-Talk (ed. J Godsey). Speaking of the experience of desiring something

that will satisfy our restlessness, Barth asserts that, in the case of Augustine

(pre-conversion), Pascal, Plato and, presumably, anyone else outside the

sphere of God’s grace, this cannot be an authentic need of God since we can

only experience this need if we are already within the same sphere of grace.

The circularity of this seems to be a product of Barth’s view that there is ‘no

good way to find a correlation between philosophical questions and

theological answers’ (29). Whatever the upshot may be of man’s felt need for

something that would satisfy his existential restlessness, the theological

‘solution’ of God’s saving grace is not to be considered as the transcendent

end or dimension of that original need.

Clearly, the whole issue of the analogia entis provides the ultimate context for

Barth’s belief that ‘we are either in this circle of knowledge [of revelation] or

we are not’ (29) and Barth follows up his observations on the desire of God

with some revealing remarks about the natural theology of the Roman

Catholic Church. A crucial weakness in Barth’s thinking own thinking about

the analogia entis is revealed when he reflects that ‘’being’ is a purely

philosophical notion not at all concerned with the character of God and the

creature’ (30) (my emphasis). It is certainly true that analogia entis is a

philosophical notion but as to its content and implications, these very much

depend on the direction from which it is approached. From what may be

called a perspective of implicit unfaith, any suggestion of a causal principle

that would relate human imperfection and limitation to, and explain it in terms

of, some antecedent reality possessing all perfections would be meaningless

and vacuous. However such a position is not exhaustive of the ways that

analogia entis can be understood or applied. Indeed, from a position of what

could be termed implicit faith – that is, a position that concedes that there is

an implied and ultimately substantiable ‘perfection’ to complement perceived

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Karl Barth on Catholicism – Peter Dobbing – 19.10.03

imperfection and limitation - human being characterised as ‘contingent’ or

‘creaturely’ seems to entail a fuller notion of being that is required to render

human being intelligible. In this connection, it is interesting to note what

Vatican I had to say about this matter (see Cf. Const., Dei Filius, cap iv,

1860). Before revelation, at best we can only know what God is not, rather

than what he is. In and after revelation, analogy is necessary, since God

cannot reveal the mysteries to men except through conceptions intelligible to

the human mind, and therefore analogical. Given Barth’s comments on the

legitimacy of reason and rationality within the sphere of grace, the Catholic

position does not appear to be so diametrically opposed to what he is

asserting as was first assumed.

Further difficulties with/objections to Catholicism

I will refer first to objections that Barth regards as corollaries of Catholicism’s

‘overarching systematic principle’ (cf von Balthasar, op. cit. p 37), namely the

above-mentioned analogy of being, and then go no to mention some further

points that he makes about the Reformed and Catholic churches.

One symptom of the analogy of being is the Catholic ‘passion for

couplets’ – sometimes called the ‘theology of and’ by Barth: ‘faith and

works, ‘nature and grace’, ‘reason and revelation’. Barth will have no

truck with any (Catholic) notion of co-operating with grace since,

according to his Protestant view, grace is a one-way relationship

‘without reciprocity’ (Church Dogmatics 295-96) over which man has no

control. For Barth, such co-operation is tantamount to a contradiction in

terms. Worse still is the presumptuous appropriation of the gracious

effect of the sacraments defined as ex opere operato which, pace

Barth, makes them impersonally efficacious, administered and

controlled by human functionaries rather than vehicles for God’s loving

action.

Again, following directly from the analogia entis, the idea of a ‘pre-

grasp’ (Vorgriff) or, more schematically, a philosophical

foreunderstanding, of the being of God that is constitutive of human

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Karl Barth on Catholicism – Peter Dobbing – 19.10.03

nature, has profound implications for any doctrine of Jesus Christ as

the unique and definite revelation of God. If we all, in virtue of our

humanity, possess an intuition of God, then God’s revelation in Jesus

Christ would seem to be primarily the fulfilment of an already existing

knowledge and reality. In opposition to this, Barth’s position is radically

christocentric. He emphatically rejects any merely human (pre-

revelation) awareness of God, however tentatively construed, just as

he distances himself from the kind of general religious awareness

espoused by Schleiermacher. Barth considered both positions as an

abandonment of the centrality of Christ. In this connection it is

interesting to note the distinction made as early as Irenaeus (d. AD

200) between the similitudo Dei and the imago Dei. While the former

likeness was the supernatural gift of righteousness enjoyed by Adam

before the Fall, the image is retained in man’s purely natural powers

even in his sinfulness.

In order to not to convey the impression that Barth is against

Catholicism per se, it is germane to refer to a couple of points that he

made about liberal Protestantism and about the extent to which Christ

can be found in the (unreformed) Catholic Church. Regarding the

former, Barth was so appalled by the relativisation of the significance of

the Christ-event in the interpretation of the Reformation presented by

Schleiermacher and his supporters that he said, if he had to choose

between the two ‘evils’ of liberal Protestantism and Catholicism, ‘I

would in fact rather become a Catholic’ (see von Balthasar, op. cit. p

31). Finally, while discussing the precise nature of the project of the

reformation of the ‘unreconstructed’ Catholic Church in his Thelogy and

Church (SCM, 1962 p. 316), he remarks that ‘in spite of all the

ambiguity of the forms in which the sense of [the presence of Christ] is

expressed’ … ‘we have cause to know ourselves questioned by the

Roman Church with its ‘Christ present (Christus praesens)’.

(1338 words)

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Karl Barth on Catholicism – Peter Dobbing – 19.10.03

References and bibliography

J.D. Goodsey (ed), Karl Barth’s Table-Talk (Oliver and Boyd, 1963), 28-31

Karl Barth, ‘Roman Catholicism: A Question to the Protestant Church’ in

Theology and Church (SCM, 1962), 306-333.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth (Ignatius, 1992), 30-

55.

B.L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology

(OUP, 1995)

G. Hunsinger, ‘Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl

Barth’ at www.ptsem.edu/grow/Conversational%20Theology.htm

Ed. Grenz, Guretzki and Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms

(Hodder & Stoughton, 1979)

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