Karl Barth and the Historical Jesus

Abstract

F ONE asks Barth what significance the historical Jesus has for Christian faith, the answer will be: the so-called historical Jesus is a construction of historicism which misses the fullness and reality of his life and death by limiting it to that realm of history that can be reconstructed by the historical-critical method (Historie). Jesus, however, belongs to that realm of history in which is executed the eternal will and decree of God (Geschichte). This answer is further supported by Barth's exposition of the anhypostasis of Jesus Christ's human nature. Jesus did not exist as a man separate from the incarnate Son of God, but only as the man Jesus Christ. The humanity of Jesus cannot be considered apart from the divinity, because the divinity is constitutive of this particular, specific man. With this dogmatic' affirmation every neutral, historical-critical approach to the reality of Jesus Christ is rejected as misleading and illegitimate.2 Barth reinforces this position by refusing to use the traditional concepts of exinanitio and exaltatio as descriptions of the temporal succession of Incarnation and subsequent Elevation of Jesus. Even in the humility and obedience of the man Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus is and remains the elevated Lord, the Son of God. Even as in the triumph of Resurrection and Ascension, Christ is and remains the humiliated and obedient man Jesus.3 When viewed from the standpoint of the problem of the historical Jesus much of Barth's theological method appears seriously questionable. Barth holds that Jesus Christ is God's history with man in space and time, known to us through the witnesses of the New Testament, a book written by human men in human words. As a written document the New Testament can be an object of the historical-critical method. But the historical method must be limited to the secondary function only of instrumentally helping to understand the essential nature of the Scriptures as witnesses to God's history with men. Barth refuses to concede to the historical-critical method any possibility or legitimacy of going behind the given canon to understand its historical development. Therefore, Barth obviously cannot and does not speak about the historical Jesus. Any attempt to go behind the given canon to a historical Jesus in Barth's eyes misses the real nature and intention of the New Testament to confess Jesus as the risen Lord. The Scriptures are historical only in their givenness, but not in their participation in the course of history itself. Operating from the base of a dogmatic hermeneutics, Barth posits the actual and essential unity of the New Testament canon. This means that the question of his-