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Barth on Sacraments

Barth on Sacraments

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:47 pm by Peter Leithart

Barth on Sacraments 2017-09-06T22:47:49+06:00 Peter Leithart

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I started this article some time ago, and will never be able to finish it off. It may be of some use in its present form, however.

Justification and sacramental theology were the chief doctrinal issues in the division between Roman Catholicism and the Reformers at the time of the Reformation, and divisions remain within the church concerning these doctrines. Within sacramental theology, no issue has been so divisive as the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Early in the Reformation, Luther chastised Catholics for being disciples of Aristotle instead of Christ, but then also offered his mock-Aristotelian critique of Catholic dogma. Not long after, Luther chastised Zwingli with equal vigor for undermining the clear words of Scripture: Hoc est corpus meum .

Too often, however, ecumenical debates concerning sacramental theology and the doctrine of the real presence have been conducted without any attention to Zwingli and Zwinglian sacramental theology, apparently under the impression that these ?anti-sacramental?Etheologies have nothing to contribute to the discussion. In this brief article, I argue to the contrary that the ?neo-Zwinglian?Esacramental theology of Barth italicizes a crucial dimension of sacramental theology and the doctrine of the real presence, one that is too often lost in the linguistic and metaphysical conflicts that have often dominated the discussion. In particular, Zwingli and Barth both place sacramental theology firmly within ecclesiology, and develop an ecclesial understanding of real presence.

Barth Back to Front

Ecclesiology and sacramental theology are normally among the last items covered in a systematic theology textbook, but a good case could be made for evaluating theologians ?back to front.?E We know that the Christian life is lived out in the community of believers, and we know that this community initiates by baptism and celebrates at the Lord?s Table. If a theologian comes to the last volume of his dogmatics and is incapable of providing, on the basis of the theology developed in the previous volumes, to give an adequate account of these unquestionable facts of Christian living, that is strong prima facie evidence that something is seriously awry in his fundamental theology.1

An example: As a ?counter-check?Eto his sacramental theology, Louis-Marie Chauvet briefly discusses the ?non-sacramental theology of Karl Barth.?E Citing Barth?s denial that baptism is a ?mediation of an event of grace,?EChauvet suggests that this anti-sacramental emphasis derives from Barth?s exaggerated emphasis on the transcendence of God. Barth?s Christocentrism does not, Chauvet argues, qualify this emphasis; on the contrary, Barth?s ?Christology already bears within itself . . . his non-sacramental theology.?E Even in Christ, Barth avoids any notion that God?s action is mediated through human action. Hence his tendency to speak of the incarnation as ?the Word living in the flesh?Erather than ?the Word made flesh,?Eand his insistence that the Word wins the victory, ?the Word in the flesh and by the flesh ?Ebut the Word and not the flesh.?E Linked with this purely instrumental understanding of the humanity of the Incarnate Word is a paradox concerning Barth?s view of history. As Chauvet comments, ?there are few theologies that speak so much of events and history, and yet there are few theologies where so little takes place on the properly historical plane.?E Thus too the church is reduced, in the judgment of A. Dumas, to ?an ahistorical unfolding which God accomplishes within God?s self.?E

The force of Chauvet?s criticism is blunted, for Reformed Christians, by his further claim that Barth?s Nestorian tendency is found also in Calvin, and the suggestion that Barth robs history of reality because Barth believes that ?what happens in time is merely the execution of God?s original decision.?E Yet, doubts about Barth?s sacramental theology remain and are sharpened by the work of Bishop Stephen Sykes of Ely. Sykes traces the development of what he calls the ?inwardness tradition?Ethat attempts to define the ?essence?Eof Christianity by appeal to some inward feeling or event in the soul. Barth, on Sykes?Ereading, does not counter this tradition but represents its ?apotheosis?Eand radicalization. Barth insisted that man is never in ?possession?Eof the Word and can never hold it in his control because the Word is not a verbal reality or even a religious experience but an ineffable event. Barth rejects the terms of the debate on the essence of Christianity in favor of an inwardness that is ?deeper?Ethan the religious feeling of Schleiermacher or the moralistic ?kernel?Eidentified by Harnack.5 Barth?s repeated attacks on ?religion?Eare also relevant here, since he attacks religion as an externalization and fixing of what is continually dynamic, ineffable, and deeply internal. On this basis, it is difficult to see how any significant room can be built for the church and sacraments.

Chauvet and Sykes provide sufficient and sufficiently persuasive evidence to warn us about potential pitfalls in Barth?s sacramental theology. Despite the force of these objections, Barth?s sacramental theology rewards examination and shows genuine ecumenical promise.

Zwingli on Church and Sacrament

A key initial issue is the question of Barth?s relation to Zwingli. Barth himself described his sacramental theology as ?Neo-Zwinglian.?E To see the continuity between them, however, it is important that we have a clear understanding of Zwingli. Contrary to popular caricature, Zwingli rejected the Anabaptist as much as the Catholic and Lutheran understanding of the sacraments. Instead, he defined sacraments as signs or ceremonies by which man presents himself to the church as a disciple of Christ. They certify faith to the church infinitely more than to oneself. Because if faith is such that it is necessary to have a ceremonial sign for confirmation, that is not faith. True faith sets itself unshakeably, firmly, and imperturbably on the mercy of God.7

As Jaques Courvoisie explains, Zwingli parts company with alternative sacramental theologies primarily by setting sacraments in an ecclesiological framework; they are signs for the church, not means of grace for isolated individuals. Thus, the Supper ?joins us with other brothers into one body which is the body of Christ.?E On this basis, he insists that ?the body of Christ is present to those who believe in it,?Esince ?we are the body of Christ in that we come to the same action of grace and that we break the same bread.?E Courvoisier summarizes Zwingli?s view:

the sacrament is essentially ecclesiastical; it is not to be conceived without the church and without the visible church. It illumines the fact that a Christian without the church is an impossibility and that all individualistic conceptions of the sacrament are negations of the very idea of a sacrament . . . . the body of Christ is really present in the Supper, not in the bread but truly in the reunited assembly that takes the bread.9

Barth?s Ecclesial Sacramentology

In this context, the continuity between Barth and Zwingli becomes illuminating. I will focus on Barth?s brief discussions of sacraments in Church Dogmatics IV/1-2.10 In the first of these volumes, the comments on sacraments comes in the context of an examination of the work of the Spirit, which Barth defines as the work of gathering the Christian community. Following the creed, he insists that Christology is not the husk of which the concrete form of the church is the ?existential?Esubstance, but neither is church is not an addendum to the main substance of faith but an essential part of it. Indeed, the gathering of the church is merely another side of the doctrine of the atonement. Atonement has both an objective side, having to do with the work of God in Christ, and a subjective side, having to do with the work of the Spirit in gather
ing the church. Thus, ?the Christian community and Christian faith belong to the substance of the one confession which has its centre in Jesus Christ?E(1.644). The church?s history is the ?actualization?Eof the history of Jesus Christ, ?in which the history of all men is virtually enclosed and accomplished?E(1.649). The church is thus the ?earthly-historical form of the existence of Jesus Christ?E(1.710).

Practically, this means that membership in the body is a sine qua non of Christian existence. While hedging the meaning of the patristic dictum that ?there is no salvation outside of the church,?EBarth does argue that there is no revelation, faith, knowledge of salvation, or holiness extra ecclesiam : ?We are either in the communio sanctorum or we are not sancti . A private monadic faith is not the Christian faith?E(1.678). There is no awakening of faith that does not lead into the community, and there is only one kind of holiness, separation to the communion of saints. Barth describes this as ?the awakening of the faith of individuals, the purpose of which is their gathering into the community ?Ethe gathering of the community in the form of the awakening of faith of individuals?E(1.688). Anyone who withdraws from the fellowship, then, ?denies himself as a sanctus, as one who believes and knows. What is true is that there is no legitimate private Christianity?E(1.689).

This actualization of the history of Jesus in the church takes place in real history ?among men in the form of a human activity.?E Thus, ?it not only has a history, but . . . it exists only as a definite history takes place?E(1.650). Though he admits that the church is in one sense invisible, and that the visible and invisible are as inseparable as mystery and form of the mystery (1.669), he insists that this should not rob it of its necessary historical form. The church is embedded in history and is an historical community:

It is a phenomenon of world history which can be grasped in historical and psychological and sociological terms like any other. There is, there takes place, a gathering and separation of certain men to this fellowship. This involves — in varying degrees of strictness or looseness ?Ean ecclesiastical organization and constitution and order. In this gathering and separation there takes place its cultus, teaching, preaching, instruction, theology, confession, and all in definite relationships to the political and economic and social conditions and movements, to the scholarship and art and morality, of the surrounding world . . . . In all this ?Eto use the term which has become classical, the church is visible, ecclesia visibilis . . . . The Church never has been and never is absolutely invisible (1.652-653).

However right Chauvet might be about the systematic coherence of Barth?s emphasis on history, one ought not deny that the emphasis exists.

Consistent with the ?dynamic?Eemphasis throughout his theology, Barth insists that the church as a community is the event of gathering. Understanding the church requires that we ?abandon the usual distinctions between being and act, status and dynamic, essence and existence?E with regard to the church, ?its act is its being, its status its dynamic, its essence its existence?E(1.650). What is important here for Barth?s sacramental theology is the suggestion that this event which is the church takes a concrete, visible form: ?The Church is when it takes place, and it takes place in the form of a sequence and nexus of definite human activities?E(1.652). Among the activities that constitute the form in which the church ?happens?Eis the Lord?s Supper. Ultimately, Barth insists, it is the election of God in Christ and not any of the church?s activities that constitutes its being/act (1.667).

Some of the serious problems with Barth?s theology appear here. Take the comment that the church may be grasped in historical or sociological or psychological terms, which Barth later qualifies by insisting that to such ?two-dimensional?Eevaluations of the church there must be added a third dimension available to faith. Even so qualified, the statement is dangerously in error, for it implies that one might pursue a theologically neutral sociological examination of the church, which would be true ?as far as it goes?Eor ?insofar as the church is a human community.?E But an examination of the church that operates on the assumption that it is merely a human community is not neutral; it is simply false.11 The dynamic emphasis also moves into unstable territory. Applied to the Word, Barth?s formula suggests that the Bible is the Word of God only ?dynamically,?Ethat is, when it is involved in a dialogue of faith. Paul, on the contrary, believed that the text or ?writings?E( graphai ) ?Ethe fixed public document ?Ewas the product of God?s out-breathing (2 Tim 3:16-17).

Despite these problems, Barth?s insistence on the irreducible visibility of the church is important and necessary. The church realizes itself as the church in the enactment of the sacraments. In other words, it is improper to separate, even conceptually, the church and the Supper. The church exists in its activities, including the Supper, and the Supper is enacted by the church. Barth points out that the term ?body?Eis never used of humanity as such but only of that community where there is ?a dispensing and eating of the bread which is broken in common.?E He goes on:

Only in it is there the visible fellowship . . . of this body, the perceiving and attesting of His real presence, the recognisable and recognised union of a concrete human fellowship with Him . . . . Their communion with one another, their common action in remembrance of Him, their common proclamation of the death of the Lord until He comes . . . , as it takes place in this action, does not create and put into effect their union with Jesus Christ Himself ?Ewhich is unnecessary; it reveals and publishes and documents that union, it is that union in concreto, as the earthly-historical activity and experience of these particular men. Where there is not this communion, we cannot speak with the New Testament of a union of men with Jesus Christ and therefore of a real presence of His body (1.665).

Barth denies that the Supper creates or puts into effect the union of the communicants with Christ; this union, he insists, was established in their eternal election. Rather, the Supper reveals that union in a concrete, historical form. In fact, Barth goes further to say that the Supper not only reveals that union but that it is only in the concrete action of the common meal that the union of men with Christ has a real, historical presence in the world. The Supper is the union of the body, and of the body with Christ, in concrete form.

Thus, to the question, ?where can I find Christ here and now??EBarth answers, ?where men and women gather to break bread in His name.?E Where is the ?earthly-historical form of Christ?s existence?E In the church, assembled at the table. Though this does not resolve the continuing disagreements among Christian churches concerning the nature of the real presence, Barth?s treatment highlights an indispensable, and often neglected, dimension of that presence.

1Two important studies of Calvin?s theology take this something like this approach. Benjamin Milner ( Calvin?s Doctrine of the Church [Leiden: Brill, 1970]) suggests that the organizing theme of the Institutes is the church, defined as the product of the ?distinct but not separate?Eoperations of Word and Spirit. More recently, B.A. Gerrish ( Grace and Gratitude: the Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993]) shows that the whole of Calvin?s theology has a Eucharistic shape: The loving Father sets a lavish table for His children; they sinfully spurn His gifts; in Christ, they are restored to sonship and invited to return to His feast.

2This echoes Van Til?s judgment on Barth, which he took over from Berkouwer, that ?there is no historical transition from wrath to grace?Ein Barth?s theology.

3Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Experience (trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 538-543

4Ibid., pp. 539, 543. One can surely not accuse Calvin?s sacramental theology of Nestorian tendencies, and, far from robbing history of meaning, I would argue, as John Frame suggests, that God?s absolute decree is the basis for the reality and meaning of history. History is real not in spite of but because of God?s determination of all things.

5Sykes, The Identity of Christianity: Theology and the Essence of Christianity from Schleiermacher to Barth (London: SPCK, 1984), pp. 174-207.

6Akira Demura, ?Zwingli in the Writings of Karl Barth ?Ewith Special Emphasis on the Doctrine of the Sacraments?Ein Probing the Reformed Tradition: Historical Studies in Honor of Edward A. Dowey, Jr. (ed. Elsie Anne McKee and Brian G. Armstrong; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989), p. 199.

7Quoted in Jaques Courvoisier, ?Zwingli et Karl Barth,?Ein Antwort: Karl Barth zum siebzigsten Geburtstag (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag AG. Zollikon, 1956), p. 380 (my translation).

8Ibid., p. 381.

9Ibid.

10All references in the following paragraphs are from Church Dogmatics IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation (ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956, 1958), Parts 1-2. In the citations, the first number indicates the part of CD IV, while the second number indicates the page.

11For a brilliant examination of the theological assumptions of modern social science, see John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

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