Dialectical theology

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As dialectic theology a is theological direction within the Protestantism denotes that arose after World War II and their flowering time had to about 1,933th It is based on publications by Karl Barth (especially the second version of the commentary on Romans and the "Tambacher Lecture" The Christ in Society from 1919) and Friedrich Gogarten (his essay Between the Times appeared in June 1920 in the liberal magazine Die Christliche Welt ) and from 1923 had its main organ in the magazine Zwischen den Zeiten , published by Christian Kaiser Verlag . In addition to Barth and Gogarten, the main representatives were Emil Brunner , Rudolf Bultmann , Eduard Thurneysen and Georg Merz . Important documents are also Karl Barth's collection of essays Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (1924) and Emil Brunner's monographs Die Mystik und das Wort (1924) and Der Mittler (1927).

term

The term dialectical theology was a foreign term that came up in 1922 and had been widely used by the mid-1920s. The term was rather reluctantly accepted by those in this direction; they preferred the terms theology of God's Word or Word of God theology or theology of crisis or theology of crisis . Because the school as a whole positioned itself against the theological rationalism of the Enlightenment and liberal theology , it was classified by critics, especially from the United States, as "neo-orthodox" and is better known in the English-speaking world under the term neoorthodoxy . This term also includes other theological upheavals such as the von Lund school ( Gustaf Aulén , Anders Nygren ) or the continuation of Barth's impulses by Reinhold Niebuhr , which are not included in dialectical theology in the German-speaking world. Karl Barth clearly rejected the label of (neo) orthodoxy for himself.

Characteristic

In dialectical theology, a theology “from above” was pursued, which strictly rejected human knowledge of God and thus subordinated any approach of the believer to the preceding revelation of God. This position of the "impossible possibility" of knowledge of God stands in the tradition of the philosophy of faith , although it did not change into the radicalized variety of fideism , but rather the new foundation of the ability to believe against a theological rationalism , as it was above all the liberal theology of the time, which still represented Barth's teacher Harnack .

The direction received important impulses from the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Franz Overbeck , but also from the biblical theology of Johann Tobias Beck and Hermann Cremer . Last but not least, the writings of Martin Luther and Johannes Calvin were used, so that there was contact with the Luther Renaissance .

The attitude of the representatives of dialectical theology was never self-contained. Rather, what unified them was the common opposing position to established theology, which can be understood primarily as a consequence of the uncertain interwar period . From 1933 the main representatives went different ways: Barth, Bultmann and Merz into the Confessing Church , Gogarten to the German Christians , Brunner to the neutral camp. Since Barth, Bultmann and Brunner also made significant changes in their theology in the 1930s, 1933 is mostly considered to be the end of dialectical theology.

Karl Barth, for example, retained the basic approach of setting the Word of God in opposition to the crisis phenomena of the modern age . He supplemented the rejection of an analogy of being with the possibility of knowing God in the sense of an analogy of faith, since God reveals himself to believers.

criticism

A concise critique formulated Johannes Hoffmeister , when the dialectical theology than those of theology called,

" [...] which makes it particularly clear to what extent philosophizing based on faith, which disdains the mediation of thinking reason, gets stuck in the abstractions and paradoxes of the mind ".

Further criticism was formulated by Wolfhart Pannenberg and Falk Wagner , among others . Pannenberg particularly criticizes the epistemological isolation of Barth's theology, while Wagner basically understands dialectical theology as an interruption in a meaningful transformation of Christianity ( Emanuel Hirsch speaks of the transformation crisis of Christianity).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volume 34, pp. 374–378
  2. ↑ See e.g. B. neoorthodoxy in Encyclopedia Britannica (online)
  3. ↑ Vghl. Church dogmatics III, 3, p. XI.
  4. ↑ Werner Thiede: Foreword by the editor . In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death, 2018, pp. 5–8
  5. ↑ Ulrich Beuttler: Radical Theology of Revelation: Karl Barth and the postmodern phenomenology and hermeneutics. In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 51–67
  6. ↑ Hoffmeister: Dictionary of Philosophical Terms. 2nd Edition. 1955, p. 274.

literature

Source collections

  • Jürgen Moltmann (Ed.): Beginnings of dialectical theology (= Theological Library 17). 2 volumes. Kaiser, Munich 1962.
  • Walther Fürst (Ed.): “Dialectical Theology” in Divorce and Probation 1933-1936. Articles, reports and explanations (= Theological Library 34). Kaiser, Munich 1966.
  • Karl Barth: Writings. Vol. 1. Dialectical Theology . Edited by Dietrich Korsch. Publishing House of World Religions, Frankfurt a. M. 2009. ISBN 978-3-458-70022-7 .

magazine

  • Journal of Dialectical Theology . Edited by the Committee for the Promotion of the Study of Dialectical Theology, Kampen 1985ff.

Lexicon article

Monographs

  • Christof Gestrich : Modern thinking and the split in dialectical theology. Tuebingen 1977.
  • Michael Beintker : The dialectic in the "dialectical theology" of Karl Barth. Studies on the development of Barth's theology and on the prehistory of “church dogmatics” . Kaiser, Munich 1987. ISBN 3-459-01701-5 .
  • Dietrich Korsch : Dialectical theology after Karl Barth. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1996.
  • Christophe Chalamet: Theologiens dialectiques. Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann . Dissertation, University of Geneva 2002.
    • English: Dialectical theologians. Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann . Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2005.

Essays

  • D. Timothy Goering: "The intellectual network of dialectical theology", in: Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Michael Schäfer (eds.), Circles - frets - intellectual networks. Forms of civil socialization and political communication 1890–1960 , Bielefeld 2017, pp. 137–154.
  • D. Timothy Goering: "System der Käseplatte. Rise and Fall of Dialectical Theology", in: Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte , 24.1 (2017), pp. 1–50 ( doi : 10.1515 / znth- 2017-0001 )

Web links