On God's Ontic and Noetic Absoluteness: A Critique of Barth

Abstract

Karl Barth's formidable attack on all forms of natural theology is one of the major events in twentieth-century religious thought. He anathematized every effort by unaided reason to conceive adequately of the nature of God or to demonstrate God's existence. To him all are disguised attempts to ‘domesticate’ God in the circumscribed and self-serving world of human interests. Those theologians who are dissatisfied with this dimension of Barth's thought sometimes criticize it, but more often find it easier just to ignore him and go their own ways. Those philosophers who are interested in provoking a confrontation with Barth find it difficult to penetrate the confessional circle and establish a point of contact which the defenders of Barth's prohibition of natural theology would themselves be constrained to acknowledge.My contention is that there is such a point of contact open to theological and philosophical critique, one which previous critics have overlooked. The argument is organized around five theses. They are:1. The foundation of Barth's position on God's knowability lies inChurch DogmaticsII, 1. Here he declares that God's noetic absoluteness derives from his ontic absoluteness (pp. 310f). To the critical eye this spurious derivation appears to be anon sequiturrather than an acceptable statement of logical entailment or of metaphysical or theological necessity.2. Barth fails to support the derivation with convincing exegetical arguments of the sort required to override its conceptual weakness. This is a rather surprising circumstance for one who strives to rest his entire theology on revelation.