Hans-Martin Barth, Dogmatics: the Protestant Faith in the Context of World Religions: a Textbook

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2004 by Reinhold Bernhardt

Hans-Martin Barth, Dogmatics: The Protestant Faith in the Context of World Religions: A Textbook, Gutersloh, Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher, 2001, 862 pp., 49.95 [euro].

The task that H.M. Barth sets himself in his lengthy Dogmatics is to develop the main themes of the Christian, or more precisely Protestant, faith in relation to humankind's most important religious traditions. It proposes a break with the self-referential nature of theological doctrine, which has developed primarily in relation to the established tradition provided by the doctrinal framework of Western intellectual history, in favour of a theology in interaction with world religions. Barth wants his work to be seen as a textbook, and this explains why the basic material of the dogmatics sections consists of lectures. It is also in line with his attempt to give an overview, from a new inter-religious perspective, of conventional Protestant dogmatics and doctrine of the kind you would expect to find in a reference book. Thus what is innovative is not mainly the text itself, but the context.

After introductory explanations which are a prerequisite for this kind of avant-garde project, H.M. Barth works through the main themes of Christian dogmatics, starting (in the tradition of Schleiermacher) with faith and going on in the following section, "the foundations of faith", to address fundamental theological issues. To develop the material doctrinal questions he opts for a trinitarian structure, which reflects the fundamental significance of trinitarianism for his approach to systematic theology in general, and adds the themes "the world and humankind" (creation theology, theological anthropology), "redemption" (soteriology, including ecclesiology) and "hope beyond death" (eschatology) to this schema.

Each chapter is constructed in three parts: first, the author sets out his view of the Protestant position on the relevant subject area; he then explains it in relation to the assertions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism; finally, he discusses the challenges that can be drawn from this for the Christian faith. He does not try to identify any central meta-religious perspectives, but presents and maintains a position linked to what is contained in Christian confessions of faith. H.M. Barth does not attempt a phenomenological or history of religions approach and certainly does not attempt an evaluation, nor does he propound a harmonizing synthesis or an apologetic, seeking Christian answers to the doctrines of non-Christian religions, as is the case with Hans Kung in the book he co-edited, Christianity and the World Religions (1986). Instead, Barth aims for a new self-awareness for the Christian faith in order to achieve a more thorough disclosure of its substance.

It is obvious that such a concept involves theological assumptions which require reviewing certain traditional theories, and Barth gives a good account of this. Already in the introduction he sets out his basic conviction, "that the Holy Trinity is at work--even if only in a concealed way--behind the traditions being researched" (p.8). Only if it is assumed that God also wishes to speak by means of non-Christian religions (p.49) can there be a "theology of religions" in the sense of a qenitivus subjectivus, i.e. one which treats the sources and tradition of non-Christian religions as valid subjects of theological discourse (p.50, quoting Waldenfels).

This kind of starting point must have consequences for the Christian understanding of revelation. Barth makes reference to this in his modified version of the first thesis of the Barmen declaration: "the church may also recognize 'as a source of its proclamation' albeit not 'beyond or besides this one word of God', but under this one word of God, other events, powers, figures and truths as God's revelation'" (p.169).

According to H.M. Barth, the holy scriptures of the non-Christian religions are a result of the providential activity of God and may be consulted for clarification of Christian holy scripture. Moreover, they are "to be read as being from and to Jesus Christ" (p.221, see also p.200). The normative self-understanding of the triune God is encountered, in Christ, at the heart of scripture. A relation can, and indeed must, be made between the scriptures not only in terms of the biblical revelations in the Old and New Testaments, but also to those non-Christian sources of revelation. Thus is envisaged an inclusivity which is driven by a Revelation-based theology, one that makes the basic substance of the Christian faith into the focus of the hermeneutical circle (p.220)--and therefore cannot do justice to the self-understanding of non-Christian religions.

If H.M. Barth establishes that the biblical message transcends non-Christian ways of communicating certainty and truth (p.214), then the same also must be said of the respective messages of the different religions. In every religion based on revelation there is a critical religious distinction to be made between the transcendent point of reference of the revelation and its religious manifestations.