Archives for December 21, 2009

Barth explains his objections to exegesis that never moves beyond the historical-critical level [for context see previous two posts]:

Taking Jülcher’s work as typical of much modern exegesis, we observe how closely he keeps to the mere deciphering of words as though they were runes. But, when all is done, they still remain largely unintelligible. How quick he is without any real struggling with the raw material of the Epistle, to dismiss this or that difficult passage as simply a peculiar doctrine or opinion of Paul! How quick he is to treat a matter as explained, when it is said to belong to the religious thought, feeling, experience, conscience, or conviction,—of Paul! And, when this does not at once fit, or is manifestly impossible, how easily he leaps, like some bold William Tell, right out of the Pauline boat, and rescues himself by attributing what Paul has said, to his ‘personality’, to the experience on the road to Damascus (an episode which seems capable of providing at any moment an explanation of every impossibility), to later Judaism, to Hellenism, or, in fact, to any exegetical semi-divinity of the ancient world!

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 7f.

The most influential opponent to the kind of commentary critiqued in the previous post is Karl Barth. In the Römerbrief Barth critiqued historical criticism’s failure to serve the preacher. He advocated moving beyond historical critical study in order to understand what God is saying to Christians in the present day. This demanded the commentator understand the theological import of the text. Barth also insisted that each part of the Bible be interpreted in light of the whole.

Though Barth’s polemics against liberalism made him unpopular among many liberals in his day and in the decades that followed, the influence of postmodernity on theology led to a revival in interest in Barth. For some Barth is attractive because he provides theologians with a way of addressing the problems of modernism without entirely abandoning their liberal presuppositions or theology.  (For the view that Barth’s theology, despite its critique of liberalism, remained liberal theology see Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion (Louisville: WJK, 2001), xxi.)