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Karl Barth on election and nationhood: Christological reflections from 1936
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2022
Abstract
This article probes into Karl Barth's theology of nationhood set forth in Gottes Gnadenwahl, a volume on the doctrine of election published in November 1936. I will attend to his use of Hegelian terms and concepts to demonstrate his refutation of secularist and immanentist reinterpretations of the Christian doctrines of election and providence under the Enlightenment principle of historical progress by modern German thinkers, most notably Hegel. As Barth sees it, Hegel was largely at fault for having provided theological and philosophical justifications for the rise of Germany's mystical nationalism in the name of German Christianity. Using Hegelian language, Barth insists against Hegel that election is God's predetermination of human existence in Christo. Rather than negating nationhood altogether, Barth's repudiation of nationalism is intended to stress that nationhood is an external basis of the communion of the elect, and that the election of the community is the internal basis of nationhood.
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References
1 Barth, Karl, Gottes Gnadenwahl: Theologische Existenz heute 47 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1936)Google Scholar. I will quote from my own translation of the volume, currently undergoing rights-related procedures with the publisher and Barth's literary estate.
2 The significance of Gottes Gnadenwahl as a milestone in Barth's development as a theologian was first brought to scholarly attention by McCormack, Bruce, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 453–63Google Scholar.
3 See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics [hereafter CD], 13 vols, ed. Thomas F. Torrance and Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75), III/4, pp. 285–323.
4 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, pp. 36–43.
5 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 36.
6 One famous example is the volume by Karl Löwith, written in Japan 1939 while in exile from Germany and published in Switzerland in 1941: From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, trans. David Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
7 The documentary was directed and produced by Christian filmmakers Wang Xin and Pan Leilei under the guidance of Professor Moltmann's former Doktorsöhne, Hong-Hsin Lin and Hong Liang. https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDIwNDY2OTAwNA==.html; accessed 3 September 2021.
8 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 40.
9 Ibid.
10 Barth, Karl, Rechtfertigung und Recht, Christengemeinde und Bürgergemeinde, und Evangelium und Gesetz (Zurich: TVZ, 1998)Google Scholar.
11 See Carys Moseley, Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth (Oxford: OUP, 2013).
12 Ibid., p. 204.
13 Most succinctly: Shao Tseng, Kai, ‘Barth on Actualistic Ontology’, in Hunsinger, George and Johnson, Keith (eds), Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), pp. 739–51Google Scholar.
14 Nimmo, Paul, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision (London: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 8Google Scholar.
15 Ibid. Here Nimmo is citing Bruce McCormack, ‘The Ontological Presuppositions of Barth's Doctrine of the Atonement’, in Charles Hill and Frank James III (eds), The Glory of the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), p. 359.
16 See Tseng, ‘Barth on Actualistic Ontology’, pp. 749–50.
17 Barth, CD II/1, p. 496; trans. revised. Cf. Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatk [hereafter KD], 12 part-volumes (Zurich: TVZ, 1980), II/1, p. 558.
18 Barth, CD II/1, p. 409; KD II/1, p. 461.
19 Pace Bruce McCormack and Matthias Gockel. See McCormack, Bruce, ‘Seek God Where He May Be Found: A Response to Edwin Van Driel’, Scottish Journal of Theology 60/1 (2007), p. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gockel, Matthias, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election (Oxford: OUP, 2006), p. 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Tseng, Shao Kai, Barth's Ontology of Sin and Grace: Variations on a Theme of Augustine (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 54–9Google Scholar.
20 Barth, CD II/1, p. 409.
21 Houlgate, Stephen, The Opening of Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006), p. 348Google Scholar.
22 Sparby, Terje, Hegel's Conception of the Determinate Negation (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 4.
24 Ibid., p. 7.
25 Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 60.
26 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Brian Cozens and John Bowden (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), p. 379.
27 Löwith, Meaning in History, p. v.
28 See Karl Löwith, My Life in Germany Before and After 1933 (London: Athlone, 1994), p. 26.
29 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans: 1922 Edition, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford: OUP, 1933), p. 252.
30 Barth, CD II/2, p. 7.
31 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 15.
32 Ibid., p. 45.
33 Ibid., p. 44.
34 Sigurd Baark, The Affirmations of Reason: On Karl Barth's Speculative Theology (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 255–6.
35 For Barth's take on Hegel's philosophy of ultimate divine-human identity, see Barth, Protestant Theology, pp. 370–407. I acknowledge that interpretations of Hegel diverge on this point. See Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: CUP, 1979); in a similar vein is Michael Rosen, Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: CUP, 1982).
36 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 44.
37 Barth, CD III/2, pp. 218–19.
38 Ibid., p. 311.
39 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 16.
40 Ibid., p. 23.
41 Ibid., p. 21.
42 Ibid., p. 37.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid, p. 40.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., p. 37.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., p. 31.
53 Ibid., pp. 31–2.
54 Ibid., p. 44.
55 Ibid., p. 11.
56 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), A445/B473–A449/B477.
57 Ibid., A445/B473; A449/B477.
58 Ibid., A803/B831; A534/B562.
59 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009), p. 4.
60 Ibid., pp. 32, 56–7.
61 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 11.
62 Ibid., p. 44.
63 Ibid., p. 8.
64 Ibid., p. 22.
65 Ibid., p. 30.
66 Ibid., p. 32.
67 G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part 1: Logic, ed. and trans. Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel Dahlstrom (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 60.
68 Ibid., p. 57.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., p. 60.
71 There are different interpretations of Hegel's notion of objective freedom. For a Marxist interpretation, see Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (New York: Penguin Random House, 2012), pp. 149, 205–11.
72 G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), pp. 273–4.
73 Ibid., pp. 356–8.
74 Ibid., p. 356.
75 So Löwith, Meaning in History, p. 60.
76 This possibility is powerfully demonstrated in the first chapter of Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society.
77 Barth, CD II/1, p. 317.
78 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, pp. 31–2. See Barth, CD III/2, p. 220.
79 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 36.
80 Ibid., pp. 37–8.
81 Ibid., p. 39.
82 Ibid., p. 40.
83 Ibid., p. 38.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid., pp. 42–3.
86 Moseley, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 145, 162.
87 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 39.
88 Ibid., p. 40. Here Barth is paraphrasing the final line from Keller's poem, An das Vaterland: ‘Beten will ich dann zu Gott dem Herrn: “Lasse strahlen deinen schönsten Stern/ Nieder auf mein irdisch Vaterland.’’’
89 Barth, Rechtfertigung und Recht, p. 24; trans. mine.
90 Ibid., p. 12.
91 Ibid., p. 19.
92 Ibid., p. 24.
93 Ibid., p. 19.
94 Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl, p. 39.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid., p. 43.