What Did Karl Barth Believe About Matter?

Starting at the bottom of page 280 [“The Epistle to the Romans”, Oxford University Press paperback, 1968], we read:

What is human and worldly and historical and ‘natural’ is shown to be what it veritably is in its relation to God the Creator — only a transparent thing, only an image, only a sign, only something relative. But that it is a sign and a parable is surely in no wise trivial or unimportant. Indeed, men and things may perhaps be vastly more important when seen as signs and parables than when we first separate them from their proper relation to God, and then regard them, in their opaque detachment, as the supreme and ultimate reality. This is the illusion of the flesh which has been done away in Christ.

I’m not sure what to make of this but I tend to think this is an existentialist revision to pagan beliefs rather than a Christian form of existentialism. I’m not making an attack on the Christian theological beliefs of Barth. Gilson made severe criticisms of the philosophy of St. Augustine while praising him as a truly great theologian — I wouldn’t put Barth in the same category as Augustine but I admit his theological intuitions seem quite good, but also think those intuitions are corrupted by an inadequate philosophy. He’s like Augustine to that extent.

To Barth matter is but an image of God. I might have some problems with his particular term — his use of sign is almost itself a sign that he’s denying the possibility of sacramental union of God and matter, including that union of God and flesh which is Jesus Christ. I see too much chance that most developments of Barth’s way of viewing matter would lead to a denial that Christ’s human body was truly in union with the Son of God. That raises the further question in my mind: Can a thinker be a true Trinitarian Christian if he views that union as illusory in any way? What reason do we have to believe that there is more than one Person in the one God if we have no real belief that Christ was separate from the Father? What reason do we have to believe that Christ was a separate Person in God, that He was the Son, if He was not fully present as both God and man in a particular Jew who lived 2,000 years ago? The bottom-line is that it doesn’t take much humbling of the human nature of Christ to deny His power to speak for God. Could a parable of a creature, a mere sign speak truly of God in His transendence?

In Christian theology, a sign points towards something, typically a greater reality, but it’s not necessarily united with that reality. In fact, that’s one difference between Catholics/Orthodox and (nearly all) Protestants. We Catholics/Orthodox, and some called Protestants or catholics, believe that it’s possible for things and relationships in this world to be truly sacramental, for them to be unions of matter and God. The bread and wine in the Eucharistic Rite is certainly a sign, but it’s also the reality — the Real Presence of Christ.

Are we then nothing but signs, two-dimensional flats of cardboard that do nothing but point to a greater reality? No. Barth looked towards a great insight but then he flailed wildly and missed the target. Human flesh is an object of God’s love. God, in His love for that human flesh, executes acts-of-being which create the underlying stuff of that flesh from nothing and then shape the universe and then shape that human flesh. Barth saw that God in His Transcendence is everything, that only God truly exists, but the counterpoint is that God is a pretty good Creator as well. He created stuff that has its own lesser reality, but it’s a created reality with an existence gifted by God.

For all of his neo-orthodoxy, the philosophy underlying Barth’s theology seems true only to a pagan world which exists independently of God’s will in some meaningful sense. There is no such world. There is only the world which is sacramental, the result of God’s acts-of-being, a world which is an object of God’s love and exists in that sense. Is our existence, and the existence of the world itself, shadowy in comparison to God’s existence? Of course, but it can also be said to be as real as the Love which creates it. That’s probably the hook we need for speaking properly about this world. God chose to love this particular world and thus the existence of this world is contingent but not shadowy in the way that Barth uses that term and others such as ‘relative’. The world and all it contains has only gifted existence but it’s not an existence in rebellion against God’s true existence. As human animals, we’re not even in rebellion against God — an insight which can be seen in a more rational reading of Genesis:1. We enter a state of rebellion when we refuse, or reluctantly accept, God’s offer of companionship and eternal life.

Reading Barth, I have renewed sympathy for Charles Hartshorne who was similar to Barth in the way he viewed created stuff. Hartshorne quite logically concluded that our eternal life would be as divine memories. We wouldn’t live again to be friends of the Son of God. We’d be images in some sort of photo album pulled out by God when He wanted to remember our mortal selves.

Again, the world and each thing or creaturely relationship it contains exist as objects of God’s love. God’s love doesn’t just create memories or even spirit which is only defined as not-matter. God’s love creates concretized objects — if He so chooses. We can speak in more measured and temperate terms to allow exploration of the true meaning of modern empirical knowledge — and I try to do exactly that in most of my writings, but any Christian, or any non-Christian willing to bracket Christian belief when examining Christian thought, should realize that it’s the very fleshiness of human flesh which gives it some limited independence from God. This is an independence that God wishes, though He wishes us to learn obedience as did Jesus Himself. Maybe this independence is even necessary for Father and Son and Holy Spirit to feel the fullness of love for us? Or maybe this independence is a result of the fullness of that divine love for us?

How could we be friends to God if we didn’t have some sort of substance — mortal flesh or perfected flesh — which is an object of God’s love? Without flesh, we would truly be only shadows — as are those infinities of worlds and creatures which could have existed but were not brought into objective existence as we were by God’s free decision to love us.