The Catholic Critics of Karl Barth In Outline and Analysis

Abstract

In 1932 R. Grosche, editor of the newly founded magazine Catholica, attributed to Karl Barth the chief honour of ‘having made the Catholic-Protestant controversy again possible in the form of theological discussion’. For the Catholic critics of Barth the full possibilities of this discussion were first realised in 1951 in a brilliant work by Urs von Balthasar, whose central thesis was rated by Barth himself as ‘incomparably more powerful than that of most of the books which have clustered around me’ (C.D. IV. 1, 768). Now, in his latest part-volume, Barth expresses his gratitude to three other Catholic authors of excellent books on his theology, one each in German, French, and Italian, all showing a ‘thorough familiarity with the text’, and even more important, ‘an earnest wish to comprehend and a real comprehension’ (K.D. IV.3.1, viii). Hans Küng's Rechtfertigung reconciling the Catholic doctrine of justification with Barth's own, and raising a storm of interconfessional debate, has since become virtually a part of the continental theological vocabulary. Henri Bouillard's three-volume 900-page analysis, surpassing even von Balthasar's research in objectivity and breadth, and stimulating sheer envy for its French-reading public, appears to be the introduction to Barth's theology for the foreseeable future. And Emmanuele Riverso worthily represents even Italy's traditionally conservative Catholicism with a lengthy critique ranking with most Protestant attempts to date. Among the multitude of questions which this whole remarkable phenomenon raises for the Protestant spectator, several are basic: how does catholicism see Barth's dogmatics, what does it say to what it sees, and why should it to a greater extent than Protestantism be so obviously interested in seeing anything at all there?