Objections and Opportunities: Karl Barth, the Jews, and Judaism

Modern Theology 35:4 October 2019 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online) DOI:10.1111/moth.12531 OBJECTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES: KARL BARTH, THE JEWS, AND JUDAISM DANIEL HERSKOWITZ The two volumes under review, Karl Barth, the Jews, and Judaism, and Karl Barth: PostHolocaust Theologian?, both edited by George Hunsinger, are dedicated to the question of Karl Barth, Judaism, and the Jews, broadly understood.1 The reason for discussing the two volumes together is not only their related subject matter or their common editor, but the simple fact that they are both the published fruits of a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in June of 2014. While each volume can and does stand on its own, they are rightfully seen as two parts of a single collection. I will therefore survey them individually but treat them as two parts of a unified whole. The animating concern of the various articles in these volumes is assessing and arguing for Barth’s role in the present world, which is dubbed, according to the title of one volume, as ‘post-Holocaust’. In the context of these volumes, this designation, ‘post-Holocaust’, is to be understood in two ways: the first is ‘in light of the Holocaust’, that is, in light of the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust and the reckoning it propelled; the second can be rendered as the particular cultural mentality that took hold in the time-frame of the second half of the twentieth century until the present, especially as it concerns Jewish-Christian dialogue. Now, this kind of historically-situated intellectual reconsideration is hardly a-typical. As contexts shift and conceptual frameworks develop, past systems of thought are reassessed in light of these changes: Do they stand the test of time? Do they still speak to the present world? Yet this is not just any ‘system of thought’ that is being revisited; it is the theology of Karl Barth, who is sometimes hailed as the most important Christian theologian since Schleiermacher, Calvin, Luther, or Aquinas (depending on whom you ask). And what is under discussion here is not simply a relevance-check of a renowned theologian of provocative perspective and staggering published output, but one that is predicated on the subject that arguably complicates his legacy: his personal and theological relation to the Jews and Judaism. But this is not simply another case in a regretful line of thinkers whose legacy is questioned due to their past views or deeds as pertaining to Jews (the names of Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, among others, immediately come to mind). For the truth is that adding Barth to this disreputable list is unfair and misguided. His stance with respect to Judaism and Jews is Daniel Herskowitz Department of Religion, Columbia University, 617 Kent Hall, New York, NY 10027, USA Email: dh2956@columbia.edu 1 Karl Barth, the Jews, and Judaism, edited by George Hunsinger (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), viii + 189 pp. and Karl Barth: Post-Holocaust Theologian?, edited by George Hunsinger (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), xi + 171 pp. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Objections and Opportunities 789 complicated and ambiguous, yes, but it is certainly not tainted in the way that, say, Heidegger’s or Schmitt’s is. It is complicated and ambiguous because, on the one hand, few theologians have been as vocal and firm in their utter opposition to the Nazi regime and to anti-Semitism during the 1930s and 1940s. Barth’s spiritual resistance to National Socialism and opposition to the Party’s theological supporters took many forms. The Barmen Declaration, to the drafting of which Barth was central, may be the best known, but it came alongside preaching, writing pamphlets, and other activities – for which he paid a personal and professional price. He objected to proselytizing of Jews and was unique in his insistence on coming to terms with the fact dass Jesu Christus ein geborner Jude sei – a task ever more provocative when conducted during the Nazi reign. We may add to this list, among other points, that he was involved in various initiatives of Christian and Jewish encounters after the War, that he openly supported the State of Israel, and that his reading of Romans 9-11, with its insistence on God’s enduring covenant with the Jews and the centrality of ‘Israel’ for Christ’s proclamation of grace to the world, proved impactful on subsequent Christian theology and its mark is visible on the approach toward the Jews in the Second Vatican Council. On the other hand, notwithstanding these many ‘pro-Jewish’ credentials, there has been an accumulation of criticism of his stance on this front. It has been noted that his anti-Nazi activities of the 1930s focussed primarily on the purity of doctrine while conspicuously glossing over the significance and urgency of the ‘Jewish question’ and the plight of the Jews. Moreover, Katherine Sonderegger influentially argued that Barth’s doctrine of Israel (if, indeed, one can correctly speak of a solidified ‘doctrine’ on this matter in his writings), while anti-anti-Semitic, nevertheless promotes ‘a form of dogmatic anti-Judaism’ and is confusingly supersessionist.2 Similarly, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt and Eberhard Busch both claimed (with different emphases) that in his theological considerations, Barth is guilty of treating ‘the Jews’ as an abstract category operating in a Christocentric system which overlooks and trivializes actual, concrete Jews.3 (There is also the sorry 1967 letter to Marquardt where Barth admits to having had to repress a ‘totally irrational aversion’ when he encountered ‘living Jews.’) These basic critiques are repeated in different variations, and while at times overstated, their implication may lead to the conclusion that his theology is ill-suited for the context of the post-Holocaust world. Barth’s record thus appears to be somewhat mixed. He generated a new Christian openness towards Judaism but fell short with respect to some critical issues. At this point, however, after so much has been written on this topic, two possible ways to proceed seem impractical: either developing an apologia for Barth and demonstrating the appropriateness of his thought for this age despite the critiques; or contrarily, formulating a sweeping condemnation of his thought – or at least of his views on Judaism and Jews. Both seem to be intellectually dishonest. Instead, the way to proceed is far more complicated: seeking further information, clarifying ambiguities, attempting to sort out the apparent paradoxical, identifying the problematic, and suggesting avenues of contribution in light of this reassessment. As I understand it, this third, more difficult task is precisely what has been undertaken in the two volumes under review. The question that many of the articles in them implicitly address is how, that is, on what terms and which elements, can Barth’s reflections on Jews and Judaism still speak to us today. In other words, the chapters in these volumes conduct historical and theological analyses and appraisals of Barth’s relation to the Jews and Judaism, and navigate the role his thought can play and the 2 Katherine Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s ‘Doctrine of Israel’ (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 3 Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Barths (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967); Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933-1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996). © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 790 Daniel Herskowitz contribution it can make to the present day Jewish-Christian interreligious moment. The result is a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and multifaceted account of the challenges that Barth’s theology poses to the contemporary world as well as the challenges that the contemporary world poses to Barth’s theology. In this respect, these volumes constitute the next stage in the discussion on the topic of Barth and Judaism. I now turn to an overview of the volumes, beginning with the volume Karl Barth: PostHolocaust Theologian? The articles in this volume can be organized under a few sub-categories. One such category would be Barth’s ‘Israelology’ after the Holocaust. Mark R. Lindsay in ‘Barth, Berkowits, Birkenau’ approaches this matter with a comparative examination, suggesting that Barth’s theology shares some central imperatives with post-Holocaust theologians and comparing the Barthian notion of the concealed form of divine self-disclosure with the post-Holocaust Jewish thinker Eliezer Berkovits’s idea of God’s revelation as ‘Hester Panim’ (‘hidden face’). Other articles negotiate between problematic and promising elements of Barth’s Israellehre and recast it from ‘within’ to better cohere with present-day sensitivities. Appropriately, Barth’s exegesis of Romans 9-11 from volume II/2 in Church Dogmatics on the One Elected Community of the Church and Israel is the touchstone text which is time and again returned to in both volumes. In Barth’s Christocentric analysis of these chapters, the community of Israel and the Church are one indivisible community of God: the Church is elected in and through its acceptance of Christ, and Israel is elected in and despite its disobedience and rejection of Christ. One of the most powerful articulations of the ‘constructive negotiating’ approach is the article ‘Saying “Yes” to Israel’s “No”’ by Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman, who levels a devastating critique of Barth’s treatment of Judaism and at the same time affirms that Barth’s thought also offers the foundations for a more adequate approach. After Auschwitz, WoodardLehman claims, ‘a place-holding Pauline affirmation of eventual restoration’, which he identifies in Barth, ‘seems insufficient.’ Taking the election of Israel seriously, as Barth urges, ‘fails to clarify what it means to take actually existing Jews and Judaism seriously’ (67). At the heart of Woodard-Lehman’s critique is the claim that Barth’s ‘discovery of Judaism for Christian theology’ is allosemitic – the notion popularized by Zygmunt Bauman indicating in this context the abstraction of ‘the Jew’ from concrete Jews – and at the end of the day also supersessionist. It is basically a version of ‘remnant theology’ whereby ‘remnant’ becomes theologically synonymous with ‘Church’ and as such cannot provide a suitable framework through which the theological significance of the continuing existence of carnal Israel can be recognized. Woodard-Lehman refuses to solve the matter by dismissing Barth’s statements on the Jews as simply ‘unfortunate’ or ‘disturbing’, or by neutralizing and interpreting them away as constituting a cipher for ‘all humanity,’ as is often found in the secondary literature on the subject. Instead, he offers a constructive avenue by focusing on Church Dogmatics (IV/1, section 62.2) where Barth perceives the Jewish ‘No’ to Christ as a ‘Yes’ to YHWH, and re-reading Barth’s account of the One Elect Community through this prism, as a statement of a common vocation of mutual witnessing and hence as a powerful Christian justification of Jews as Jews. Continuing this line of ‘constructive negotiating’, in ‘Israel as the Paradigm of Divine Judgment’, David E. Demson proposes to recast from ‘within’ Barth’s explication of Romans 9-11 in order to claim that these biblical chapters throw light not so much on Jewish disobedience, as Barth reads them, but primarily on Christian disobedience, which is rendered as enmity toward the Jews. Another sub-category of articles in this volume is dedicated to shedding light on Barth’s efforts during the Nazi era. These articles examine the references to the Jews in his writings as well as his political activities and theology against the Nazis and their theological counterparts from the völkish Church who sought to align the Church with the Aryan revolution. The motivation of some of these articles seems to be to ‘set the records straight’ after a proliferation of what © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Objections and Opportunities 791 is seen as over-critical or misinformed accounts of Barth’s perspective on the Jews from this period. Thus we are provided a translation of Barth’s sermon for Advent 2 delivered on December 10, 1933 in Bonn, where he scandalously proclaimed Christ’s Jewishness and God’s lasting covenant with Israel, together with an accompanying historical background by John Michael Owen. Eberhard Busch’s article ‘The Covenant of Grace Fulfilled in Christ as the Foundation of the Indissoluble Solidarity of the Church with Israel’, on Barth’s position on the Jews during the Hitler era, is a historically and theologically informed defence of Barth against the common critique of the deficiency of his doctrine and conduct during this time. Against those who read Barth’s exegesis of Romans 9-11, which was written around 1940, as fundamentally anti-Judaic, Busch claims that any difficult statements about the Jews should be reinterpreted in light of ‘the unambiguous clarity’ of Barth’s pro-Jewish and anti-Nazi position. He further states, affirmatively, that Barth envisioned a plurality of Jews and gentiles in one community in Christ, ‘unmixed yet inseparable’ (54) (though, of course, the exact meaning of this ‘plurality’ is precisely what is under debate). Faye Bodley-Dangelo in ‘The Jewish Samaritan: Karl Barth’s Ethical Critique of the Völkish Church’ deals with the ways in which Barth’s opposition to anti-Semitism and battle against the völkish Church is imprinted in the theology he was producing at the time. Through a sensitive reading of Church Dogmatics I/2 section 18 ‘The Life of the Children of God’, Bodley-Dangelo argues that Barth’s depiction of the ‘neighbor’ in this section is intended to subvert some key anti-Semitic terms used by the German Christians. Providing an ecumenical perspective, Philip J. Rosato’s study, ‘Karl Barth’s Influence on Catholic Theology about Judaism’, delivered originally as a conference paper in 1986, illustrates Barth’s impact on Catholic theological perspectives on Judaism in the post-Holocaust (and post-Vatican II) world. Continuing this general line, ‘Karl Barth, Israel, and Religious Pluralism’, by Paul S. Chung makes the surprising argument that Barth’s theology is particularly fruitful for the post-Holocaust context of interreligious dialogue because of the religious pluralism it advocates. While ‘religious pluralism’ is not a category that immediately comes to mind when one thinks of Karl Barth, Chung identifies in his thought a ‘structure of radical openness toward the world’ (117) that is directed not only toward Judaism and Islam, but also toward Buddhism and other ‘confessions’, as well as toward ‘openly pagan’ worldliness. Wrapping things up, Rudy Koshar’s ‘Where is Karl Barth in Modern European History’? (published previously in 2008 in the journal Modern Intellectual History), discusses the overall neglect of the prominent theologian by the critical attention of the field of intellectual history that is beyond the purview of theological scholarship. Locating Barth’s conceptions of ‘historical consciousness,’ ‘culture’, and ‘political theology’ in the context of the momentous and tumultuous Weimar era and its intellectually fermenting atmosphere, Koshar’s goal is to ‘broaden the space occupied by Karl Barth in the historical narratives of modern European thought’ (163). Anyone who is familiar with the work being done in the field of intellectual history since the original publication of this article can attest to the fact that interest in Barth is slowly but gradually on the rise. The inclusion of this essay in the volume reads as an invitation for more engagement with Barth’s thought from more disciplinary perspectives. If Karl Barth: Post-Holocaust Theologian? mainly examines historical and theological aspects of Barth’s theology as it relates to Judaism and Jews, the centre of gravity of the volume Karl Barth, the Jews, and Judaism is investigating the platform that Barth’s theology can serve for interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians. It opens with two chapters, one by the Jewish theologian David Novak and the other by Eberhard Busch. Novak is one in an impressive cohort of twentieth-century Jewish thinkers who have engaged constructively with Barth’s thought, but he is one of the few to have publicly reflected on this debt (other noteworthy exceptions are Michael Wyschogrod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, and on that note it is worth pointing © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 792 Daniel Herskowitz out that while some scattered studies on the topic exist, we still await a comprehensive study of twentieth-century Jewish thinkers’ receptions of Barth, a study which I believe will show that he was a far more important figure to the contours of Jewish thought than perhaps previously recognized). In his article ‘How Jewish was Karl Barth?’, Novak confesses that not only does he ‘admire Barth’s respectful and insightful treatment of the Jews and Judaism’ – any anti-Judaism that emerges ‘from time to time’ in his work is merely the result of Barth’s minimal contact with Jewish thinkers – but that he tries ‘to think with him.’ Novak argues that Barth thinks in a way that is in some important respects similar to the Rabbis’ way of thinking, and when compared, Barth emerges closer to the ‘Jewish’ way of thinking than his Jewish teacher Hermann Cohen. Thus, perhaps expectedly, Novak’s answer to the question bearing the chapter’s title, ‘How Jewish was Karl Barth?’ is – ‘quite Jewish indeed.’ Busch’s chapter in this volume, following Novak’s, entitled ‘Karl Barth and the Jews: The History of a Relationship’, is another historical study of Barth’s relations with Jews, full of previously unknown information on some of the theologian’s personal ties with various Jewish figures. After their respective chapters, the following chapter is a transcript of a conversation that was organized between Novak and Busch, mediated by Hunsinger. This fascinating conversation touches on multiple issues relating to Jewish and Christian thought, but reads above all as a homage to Barth, reflecting not only the richness of his thinking but also the eloquence of those who perceive themselves as his students. For me, the most memorable – and striking – statement in this dialogue was uttered by Novak: ‘I thank God that God sent Karl Barth to the Christians, and enabled us Jews to overhear a lot of what he had to say to you’ (53). Chapter 4, George Hunsinger’s ‘After Barth: A Christian Appreciation of Jews and Judaism’ (reprinted for the volume), is perhaps the most thought-provoking essay in the volume. It is an honest theological attempt to go through and beyond Barth in thinking about Christianity’s account of Judaism and Jews. Basing his reflections on Barth’s insights but also further developing them, Hunsinger argues for a version of what he terms ‘soft supersessionism’, which is neither anti-Judaic nor anti-evangelical but insists on God’s ineradicable covenantal love to the Jews as Jews. Alongside Novak, another contemporary Jewish thinker who takes Barth as a valuable theological source and who is represented in this volume is Peter Ochs, whose reflections on Dabru Emet, the ‘Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity’ he composed together with Novak, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, and Michael Signer in the year 2000, are offered as chapter 5, entitled ‘To Love Tanakh is Love Enough for the Jews: Reflections on Dabru Emet’ (the text of Dabru Emet is reprinted as an appendix). Ochs’ thoughts on the motivations and aftermath of this initiative are stimulating in their own right, and their connection to Barth is rather straightforward: Ochs states that post-liberal Jewish-Christian theological exchanges of the present and recent past are ‘very’ Barthian, for it is this ‘Barthian’ perspective, loosely defined, that liberates from the binary logic of self-indulging modernism, allowing for what he calls a ‘reparative inquiry’ by both Jews and Christians to be cultivated. Following this, chapter 6, ‘Karl Barth and the Early Postwar Interfaith Encounters, 19451950’, is a historical study of the important, if at times overlooked, topic of the emergence of interfaith encounters between Jews and Christians primarily in Europe immediately after the War. Since most often the main focus of scholars is directed to Vatican II, these early efforts (which prefigured and are in an important sense the condition of possibility of Nostra Aetate), receive far less attention. Working to fill this gap, Victoria J. Barnett draws on previously unknown archival material and examines these early interfaith encounters and specifically Barth’s personal involvement in them. The final four essays are all theological; three of them are republished here after appearing elsewhere previously, and one is an original piece. Ellen T. Charry, in a controversial work of constructive theology, ‘Toward Ending Enmity’, argues that insofar © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Objections and Opportunities 793 as Christianity has looming Marcionite elements and Judaism, which never formulated an official account of Christianity, is guilty of the theological neglect of the ‘other’, then both ought to rethink their theological assessment of the other, for their own sake. Demonstrating what such an endeavour might look like from the Christian side, she rethinks ‘Christian Israelology’ by examining Paul, Aquinas, and Barth, and then suggests what theological ‘gifts’ Judaism and Christianity can exchange in order to ‘become friends.’ The three previously published articles are by some of Barth’s very esteemed students and followers: Thomas F. Torrance’s ‘The Divine Vocation and Destiny of Israel in World History,’ C. E. B Cranfield’s ‘Light from Saint Paul on Christian-Jewish Relations,’ and Hans Küng’s moving ‘From Anti-Semitism to Theological Dialogue.’ The inclusion of these essays in this volume is a deft editorial decision, for not only do they extend important examples for the rethinking of Christian theologians’ attitude toward Judaism in a post-Holocaust age, but they also illustrate how leading theologians who were impacted by Barth continued to develop a reconciliatory accent to the Christian relationship with Judaism. Whether or not one agrees with all the arguments put forth in these essays – and one could not, as they tackle the matter at hand from varying perspectives and are not always in agreement with each other – it is difficult to deny the overall richness of these collections, taken individually and certainly together. Most of the articles are written from Christian perspectives, but Jewish voices are present as well, and Islam, Buddhism, and even secularism are not absent from the discussion. Historical accounts are followed by constructive theological arguments, and enthusiastic endorsements are balanced out by critical appraisals. Indeed, after reading the wealth of new information about Barth’s biography and activities in the historical pieces, one is left with the feeling that there is still much more to be disclosed, and more archival research, more examinations and publications of correspondences cannot be encouraged enough. It is clear that these volumes offer a great service to both the world of interfaith dialogue and to Barth scholarship, and anyone interested in these broad topics would be wise to consult them. They are exceptionally rich and multifaceted resources of historical and theological insight, providing illuminating studies of events and texts of the past and provoking gestures towards the future. Their reader will get a good sense of the relevant historical information, a mapping of the various views on the matter, knowledge of the contentious texts and challenges that ought to be addressed, and the stakes involved in addressing them. We could ask for little more. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd