Abstract
In the wake of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical revolution, modern freedom has been defined as autonomy. As Kant puts it in his 1784 essay, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ ” modern freedom requires breaking free from the “self-incurred minority” imposed by traditional forms of authority in order to think for oneself and to live a life of one’s own. Above all else, it requires breaking with the heteronomous and paternalistic authority of the church and religious tradition. This essay develops and defends Karl Barth’s account of Reformed tradition in order to demonstrate that neither the textual authority of scripture and the Confessions, nor the social authority of church, precludes modern freedom. With Barth, it reconceives authority in Reformed tradition as a form of freedom that incorporates Kantian self-legislation and Hegelian mutual recognition. Beyond Barth, it employs this reconception of authority and freedom to illustrate how Reformed practices of pedobaptism and catechism are nothing other than a highly formalized and dramatically ritualized praxis of moral formation meant to bring minors into their majority within the community.
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Notes
- 1.
The Kantian elements of Barth’s conception are obvious. They come by way of explicit reference. The Hegelian elements are less obvious, but no less robust. They come by way of implicit resemblance. Much ink, and not a little blood, has been spilled over Barth’s relationship to Hegel. Michael Welker has shown that there is almost no direct literary dependence. Barth read just small portions of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (see Welker 1983). More recently, Nicholas Adams has argued that what little of Hegel Barth did read, he read poorly (see Adams 2013a, 211–212, 2013b, 2–3). Nevertheless, that a relationship of influence apart from literary dependence does exist is incontestable.
As a result of this indirect influence and implicit resemblance, we can say that Barth’s conception of authority and freedom is “broadly Hegelian” in two senses. First, Barth begins with more or less the same (Kantian) problems that Hegel does. In general, these are the problems of coordinating natural, social, and historical determination with rational, moral, and political self-determination. In particular, these are the problems of coordinating the authority of the community with the freedom of the individual. Second, Barth arrives at roughly similar solutions to those of Hegel. Barth reconciles authority and freedom, community and individuality, by embedding the rational conditions of self-legislation within social practices of mutual recognition. For Hegel’s own diagnosis and solution to this problem, see Lewis (2005). For a more thorough account Barth’s relationship to Kant and Hegel, see Woodard-Lehman (2019).
- 2.
Hereafter, CD. Subsequent citations will be by Volume, Part, Paragraph, Section, Subsection and English/German pagination: in this case, CD I/2 §§20–24, 538–884/598–990. Translations throughout are my own. I indicate those that I have altered significantly with “translation revised.”
- 3.
Within this chiastic structure, there are four pairs of Paragraphs rather than just two. Paragraphs Twenty and Twenty-One form the first pair (authority and freedom). Paragraphs Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four form the second (hearing and teaching). Barth frequently and explicitly cross-references these Paragraphs creating two additional pairs. The third is Paragraphs Twenty and Twenty-Three (authority and hearing). The fourth is Paragraphs Twenty-One and Twenty-Four (freedom and teaching).
- 4.
For Barth, “individual” and “community” take on several meanings. They can indicate one individual within a single community (e.g., Morgan and First Methodist Church). They also can indicate one congregation within their wider denominational connection (e.g., First Methodist and the United Methodist Church). They also can indicate a denomination in their wider ecumenical connections (e.g., the United Methodist Church and the World Methodist Council, or even the World Methodist Council and the World Council of Churches).
- 5.
Barth explains the mutually determining and reciprocally defining internal relationship of divine authority and freedom in classically intellectualist terms (see CD II/1 §28, 257–321/288–361). God’s authority is that of God’s being: the divine character of love. God is “the God who loves in freedom,” whose being and act are in perfect harmony. There is no “choice,” because God cannot do other than God is. There is “freedom,” because God always does what God is. I have developed and defended Barth’s account of the vertical relationship between the divine Word and human words elsewhere (see Woodard-Lehman 2017, 2019).
- 6.
It is not accidental that clergy in the Reformed tradition are referred to as “teaching elders,” or that laity elected to offices of congregational governance are called “ruling elders.”
- 7.
Although Barth identifies scripture as the authoritative source of the Word of God in the church, his doctrine of revelation and phenomenology of the Word denies strict identity. His claim is not that the Bible is the Word of God. His claim is that the Bible becomes the Word of God through God’s own active self-disclosure through the Holy Spirit. Barth lays out this claim in the preceding portions of the first volume of the Dogmatics, especially Paragraphs Four and Five, Eight, and Nineteen. These Paragraphs spell out what Barth calls the objective communication of revelation: how God speaks in revelation through scripture. The Paragraphs under discussion here, Twenty to Twenty-Four, spell out the subjective reception of revelation: how humans hear God in revelation through scripture.
- 8.
Barth reiterates this claim in the “general ethics” of Volume Two. “If there is an imperative, which I must obey, then this must approach me in the most radical sense from without, coming to me from there, then also claiming [me] inwardly. If there is a command concerning our actions, then it must not ultimately be only the command which I have given myself, grounded in my intuition, my experience, my feeling, and sense for truth, goodness, and beauty themselves: it must, then, instead be an alien command that approaches me as the command of another, and, as such, demands from me that I myself make its content into my own command” (CD II/2 §38.1, 651/725).
- 9.
Wittgenstein names “praying” as one such language game.
- 10.
Barth himself exercises this critical responsibility in Volume Two of the Dogmatics as he undertakes an admittedly radical revision of the traditional doctrine of election that revises and rejects pervious interpretations, including Calvin’s.
- 11.
In putting things this way, I follow Kevin Hector, who, in turn, follows Robert Brandom and Robert Pippin (see Hector 2015; Brandom 1994, 2013; Pippin 1999, 2000a, b). Hector identifies the tandem problem of “mineness” and “oursness” as the defining issue in modern theology and philosophy. His account includes Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, but not Barth. Even so, Barth’s account of mineness is compatible with Hector’s.
- 12.
Note well that by saying this is the only analogy, Barth is denying the analogy that Luther, Calvin, and others draw between parental authority and political authority. This is a subtle, yet substantive, undermining of their arguments for deference to unjust, and even tyrannical, rulers on the basis of the fifth commandment.
- 13.
Here Barth uses the compound Sichrichten to describe the self-legislative activity of children (CD III/4 §54.2,253/282). This parallels his description of the Christian’s self-legislative activity within the Church as selbst an sich selbst richten (CD I/2 §24.2, 859/960).
- 14.
Although Barth discusses the passage from outwardly imposed obedience to inwardly free obedience under the heading of adolescence, he concludes his discussion with a caveat: “It is clear that the boundaries and transitions from this ‘still’ [i.e., childhood] to this ‘already’ [i.e., adulthood], and the relationships between its heteronomous and its autonomous behavior as well, here allow themselves to be designated neither temporally nor materially, [but only] schematically” (CD III/4 §54.2, 254/284).
- 15.
The entirety of the “baptismal fragment” (CD IV/4) is an extended argument against infant baptism. For his rejection of confirmation, see 185–190/204–209. For a defense of infant baptism on Barthian grounds, see W. Travis. McMaken, The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical Doctrine of Infant Baptism After Karl Barth (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013). For my purposes, Barth’s rejection of infant baptism and confirmation is neither here nor there. Whether “baptized,” “dedicated,” or just plain dragged to church, what matters is the developmental process in which children are involuntarily formed in the faith and then are later given the opportunity to voluntarily affirm or reject that faith as adolescents. The relevant pedagogical process, roles of authority and freedom, dynamics of community and individuality, and practices of recognition involved are the same regardless of the sacramental and liturgical forms in which they take place.
- 16.
Again, it is formally the same for those communities with materially different practices credobaptism. Simply substitute “dedication” for “baptism” and the description remains the same.
- 17.
This “uptake” is an upshot of Donald Davidson’s point that truth, rather than meaning, is explanatorily primitive. Davidson primarily has in mind the employment, rather than the development, of language and concepts. Here, the point of Davidson’s principles of charity and veridicality is that learning a natural language or a language game is, as Barth says of Christian confession, based on trust. In order to learn a set of words and concepts, one has to trust one’s teachers (see Davidson 2006a, b). Robert Brandom makes a similar point when he notes that in order to “pick up” someone else’s words, those words need to be able to “pick out” the object to which they refer (see Brandom 1994, especially the chapters on “Anaphora” 413–494 and “Ascribing Propositional Attitudes” 495–613).
- 18.
Here “mind” and “mindedness” carry the Hegelian senses of Geist and Sittlichkeit. In less rarefied terms, think of our common descriptions of strong-willed or rebellious children as “having a mind of their own.” In his general ethics, Barth himself makes a remark about being “minded” Christianly: “On the contrary, the command of God decisively demands, according to the apostolic formulation, precisely this: that we should be ‘minded’ in a certain way, and thus excludes any other mindset by designating any other [mindset] as enmity and disobedience” (CD II/2 §37.3, 610/679).
- 19.
For the distinction between tacit and focal knowledge, see Polanyi (1958).
- 20.
This way of putting things assumes an idealized version of catechesis and confirmation. It presumes that the process is, as Barth puts it, an “open conversation” that it is “open on both sides” (see CD I/2 §20.2, 589–590/656). Anyone familiar with actual practices knows that all too often they are corrupted by parental and/or peer pressure to conform. The point here, however, is to display the logical and ontological structure of the process as an example of self-legislation and mutual recognition. It is precisely at this point, that descriptive accounts of actual practices complement and complete the normative account offered here.
- 21.
I will note, once more, that it is much the same for free church practices of credobaptism. In many such traditions, children are “dedicated,” rather than “baptized.” Then, like their pedobaptist counterparts, adolescents are catechized leading up to their baptism. In both cases, the sequence begins with heteronomous habituation in the faith as a small child leading up to an autonomous affirmation of faith as a teenager or adult.
- 22.
See Taylor (1992).
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Woodard-Lehman, D.A. (2019). Choosing to Become Who You Are: Authority and Freedom in Karl Barth’s Account of Moral Formation. In: Ranganathan, B., Woodard-Lehman, D. (eds) Scripture, Tradition, and Reason in Christian Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25193-2_5
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