Whence knowest thou this?
(Question 19, The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563)
An interesting development in dialectical theology which has played out over the course of the last twenty years has been the emergence of widespread scholarly acceptance of the view that Karl Barth's own account of the ‘vital key’ to his theology is – at least in important aspects – misguided.
This interpretation was first introduced by Bruce L. McCormack in his 1995 work, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology.Footnote 1 The issue revolves around the status of Barth's book on Anselm of Canterbury from 1931, the Fides Quaerens Intellectum. Does the book, as Barth insists, provide ‘a vital key, if not the key, to an understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed me more and more in my Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology’?Footnote 2 Is Barth correct in his lofty estimation of his own work on Anselm? Whether we take him at his word or not, how are we to read his texts? Certainly, this question is relevant to a proper assessment of the status of the theory and praxis of dialectical theology. Footnote 3
I must immediately acknowledge that it is not a question which can be quickly settled in a twenty-page article. It demands more careful and detailed consideration. What a short intervention can do is to provide some clarity on what I believe is a central issue raised in Barth's Fides Quaerens Intellectum (hereafter FQI), and an issue which has proven significant in attempts to determine the scope of the work in the secondary literature. This will provide some context for assessing the correctness of the radical claim that undergirds the current scholarly consensus. The section of the FQI with which we will explicitly engage is the fourth section of the first part of the book, titled ‘The Manner of Theology’.
The Issue
Why this particular section? As mentioned, the main work which inaugurated the current reading of Barth's theology, dismissing Barth's own account of the key to his work, is McCormack's above-mentioned intellectual biography of Barth. One of the most important theoretical chapters in this book consists of a reading of the FQI, seven pages long, which ends by drawing the following conclusion:
Barth's book on Anselm is not a wholly reliable guide to his own theological method – regardless of what he might say on the subject later – unless it is read dialectically. To ask after the internal coherence of a particular doctrine x with the rest of the Creed is an operation which is placed in brackets by the fact that conformity to the ratio fidei offers no guarantee whatsoever that conformity will also be established with the ratio veritatis.Footnote 4
Abstracting from the claim that Barth's own account of his work is unreliable, the paragraph makes three points. First, according to McCormack the main point of the FQI is to provide a rough version of the coherence theory of justification, understanding theology as based on a set of accepted axioms to which the theologian is committed (the Creed) as well as the law of non-contradiction. Second, McCormack's critical point is that the internal coherence of the various doctrines does not guarantee correspondence to the brute facticity or reality posited outside the internal rationality of the concepts – the relationship between the knower and the thing itself.Footnote 5 This notion is what appears to be at the root of McCormack's account of Barth's ‘realism’. Finally, McCormack implies that the book is not immediately recognisable as ‘dialectical’.
We are, I think, justified in paraphrasing the overall point in the following way: Barth's own account of his work is unreliable, because the FQI first and foremost presents a version of the coherence theory of justification, and Barth operates primarily with a version of the correspondence theory of justification (his ‘theological realism’).Footnote 6 Moreover, I think we can infer that McCormack does not significantly distinguish between what he calls ‘dialectics’ and his own interpretation of Barth's theological correspondence theory of justification (‘realism’).Footnote 7
We should take note that in his treatment of the FQI, McCormack takes up only the first part, in which Barth discusses Anselm's theology more generally as a preparation for engaging with Proslogion 2–4, and thus explicitly ignores the longer, second part, which addresses one of the most difficult theological and philosophical problems produced in the last millennium: the so-called ‘ontological proof of the existence of God’. McCormack's reader will thus easily get the impression that, rather than the first chapters of Anselm's Proslogion, it is actually the Cur Deus Homo to which Barth refers in the quote above as the main source of theological inspiration in considering Anselm's theological thought.
The section of the FQI with which McCormack engages in most detail is, as I have noted, ‘The Manner of Theology’. The section includes a quite challenging fourteen-point programme outlining what theological rationality, understood as intellegere qua its philological basis intus legere, entails. It is in this section, in the context of Barth's general reading of Cur Deus Homo, that we find the particular formulations which are echoed in McCormack's conclusion regarding the FQI. There Barth writes:
Throughout all Anselm's investigations the origin of the rationes necessaria is to be found somewhere other than where it ought to be found in a philosopher who deduces the Credo a priori – namely, on the same level as that on which the question to be answered is raised, within the Credo itself. Within it, now this Article and now that Article figures as the unknown X which is solved in the investigation by means of the Articles of faith a, b, c, d . . . which are assumed to be known (without assuming knowledge of X and to that extent sola ratione). The inquiring theologian, with his capacity for forming concepts and making judgments, is never assigned the function of determining the fixed point or fixed points from which the argument is to proceed. His function is rather as follows: on the one hand, a selection from among the points fixed previously (elsewhere, or in another way); and on the other hand – and this is his proper task – the formulation, according to the rules of logic based upon the law of contradiction (and within the limits it permits), of the definitions, conclusions, differentiations and correlations necessary for the resolution of that X.Footnote 8
When read on its own, abstracted from its context, this particular section appears – at least in part – as a justification for attributing to Barth's account of Anselm some form of a coherence theory of justification. If this is actually the case – and if Barth actually operates with a correspondence theory of justification or a ‘Realdialektik’, as McCormack puts it – it would seem that McCormack is justified in his conclusion, and the current consensus regarding Barth's self-understanding contra the actual structure of his thought (as radical as it initially appears hermeneutically) rests on solid ground. Our question is whether there is another possible reading which addresses the sectional context of the quote, and, at the same time, provides the justification for Barth's own account of his thought. Or, put differently, is there another way of reading this particular section dialectically?
Intus legere
What should initially make us hesitant with regard to McCormack's summary of Barth's Anselm is that it nowhere mentions the praxis of reading. There are two reasons why this should make us pause: first, as mentioned earlier, the section in question, ‘The Manner of Theology’, begins by providing an outline of what Anselm understands by intelligere, the operative concept in his theological theory and praxis. Barth writes: ‘In explaining Anselm's use of “intelligere” it is vitally important to remember the literal meaning of the word: intus legere. After all that we have said there can be no question but that the fundamental meaning of intelligere in Anselm is legere: to reflect on what has already been said in the Credo.’Footnote 9 So, it is vitally important to understand intelligere as ‘reading inwardly’, and, even then, the accent falls on the act of reading itself. Second, in terms of the context and development of Barth's thinking, we should keep in mind that he is a deeply Protestant theologian and that his groundbreaking theological insights derive from engaging in scriptural commentary – Romans 2 is the paradigmatic example. This biographical context should make us take the initial comments on intelligere (as inherently tied to the praxis of reading) very seriously.
Nonetheless, is it not the case that Barth explicitly invokes the ‘creeds’, and that what is implied in the quote above is a confessionalism of sorts, whereby the Creeds’ formulations function as basic axioms which cannot be challenged or changed? Differently put, does ‘reflecting on the Credo’ not mean that we are simply extrapolating on the immanent logic and grammatical form of, say, the Nicene Creed? And in order to do so, one must, of course, read it, but this is simply a truism not worthy of serious reflection.
If not, how does Barth then understand the term Credo, which he posits as a presupposition of Anselm's theology? As Barth is quick to point out, for Anselm faith is bound to the hearing of the human preaching of the Word of God. ‘Anselm's view as to the precise extent of this human word, the authentic representative of the Word, is not very clear. But it is certain that it would include the Bible in a very special way. But the concept of “Holy Scripture” is itself, according to Anselm, to be understood in a fundamentally broad sense: at all events those inferences that are consistent with its text join the text with equal weight and authority.’Footnote 10 What does this mean?
It means that there is a set of conceptual or theoretical constructs derived from reading the Bible which we seem to come up against again and again as we try to understand the canonical texts; or, in other words, as we read the Bible a certain series of questions emerge again and again and the structure of the answers we can derive from the text across time is surprisingly similar. Barth: ‘Anselm has more than once very solemnly affirmed his “faith” in the Symbolum Romanum, in the Symbolum Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum and in the Symbolum Quicumque, and at the same time given great latitude for the adoption of further necessary elements of faith that are still outside formulated dogma.’Footnote 11 Again, as we read through the Bible, the question ‘what do the New Testament texts denote by the terms “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit”?’ emerges again and again – and the overall form of our various answers, based on the same series of texts, appears across the history of the church repeatedly to lead us back, either to the trinitarian symbols themselves or to some other formulation very much like them.Footnote 12 In this sense, our theological constructs are inherently plastic. The ‘Credo’ denotes the aggregate, or the determinate shape of the sum of concepts derived from the text itself, which – at any given historical moment – is ready at hand and accompanies the grounding praxis of reflectively reading the biblical scriptures (continuously making determinate judgements about their content), where the reading praxis itself ultimately determines and grounds both our questions and our answers. In other words, the Credo denotes the virtual set of conceptually mediated, theoretical constructs derived from the implicit conceptual determinations of the biblical texts, its conceptual content, at any given moment in the church's history; it is the self-conscious horizon by which we can provisionally judge (or measure) the correctness of our exegetical claims.
In fact, returning to ‘On the Manner of Theology’, this understanding provides us with the co-ordinates for the most straightforward reading of the fourteen-point programme which Barth presents as the schema for deciphering the rationality of Anselm's theology.
Ontic and noetic, a bit more down to earth
In the section under discussion, Barth is trying to understand what the notions of rationality and necessity entail in Anselm's theology. The fourteen-point programme is filled with references to ‘ontic necessity’, ‘noetic necessity’, ‘ontic rationality’ and ‘noetic rationality’ – terms which are continuously worked out in relation to one another. The desired intellectus fidei denotes an understanding of the proper relationship of these various notions to each other.
Our question is this: is it possible for us to ground these various notions a bit? In the FQI, what is the ‘ontic’ and ‘noetic’ distinction actually a distinction between? Where are we seeking our understanding of faith? Barth's answer: ‘He [Anselm} will not seek it anywhere outside of or apart from the revealed Credo of the Church and certainly not apart from or outside Holy Scripture. Anselm is distinguished from the “liberal” theologians of his time in that his intellegere is really intended to be no more than a deepened form of legere.’Footnote 13 We are reading scripture within the horizon of the inferences derived from our earlier readings and previous judgements. As I pointed out above – but it bears repeating – the distinction between ‘ontic’ and ‘noetic’ is a distinction in our respective, reflective relationship to the canonical texts – as readers. In other words, it denotes the simple and commonplace distinction between a written text as it is immediately present before us to be read, and the same text as read and understood. Barth writes: ‘From our point of view, the revealed truth has, as it were, an inner text which of course simply asserts that what to us is the outward text is the truth, according to its claim to authority and our faith.’Footnote 14 The two are not immediately identical – seeing their identity is the result of a reflective movement on our part. The FQI is a treatise on (for lack of a better word) speculative reading; a theory of how to wrestle with, reflect upon and understand the conceptual content immanent to the biblical texts as theologians without importing foreign norms or axioms to decipher its propositions and claims.Footnote 15
The ‘ontic’ and the ‘noetic’ levels reflect the distinction between the concrete structuring praxis of reading and the accompanying theoretical and self-conscious mediation of what is actually read. The ‘dialectics’ in Barth's theology reflects the self-mediating praxis of reading and understanding the texts of the church; the self-relating negativity of this grounding praxis itself – its practical as well as its theoretical form, which are continuously reflecting and determining each other. It is expressed as a Church Dogmatics because the actual (ecclesial) praxis overdetermines the theoretical constructs and can potentially call them into question at any given time: ours is a plastic science.Footnote 16 Theology is the continuous praxis of explicit conceptual mediation of the rational structure of our determinate texts – again, to be read without importing extraneous norms and axioms.Footnote 17
When Barth points out that both the ‘ontic’ and the ‘noetic’ aspects are conditioned on the truth itself, that is, on God's sovereign and free will, this is more or less the good old theological insight that God is the free Lord of the church, both its praxis and its dogma. Truth is found where God's Spirit actually resides and we – good Protestants – are quite powerless in this regard. Our task is simply to comply with the divine mandate to read and expound scripture – to make the implicit rationality of our praxis explicit – to the best of our abilities; and to stress that the praxis can decompose our theorems at any point.
So, when reading Barth's programme in ‘The Manner of Theology’, we should keep in mind that we are reflecting on the problem of how to understand a text, and correct the inferences we draw from its conceptual content in light of the actual wording of the texts themselves. As Barth writes in the preface to Romans 2:
The matter contained in the text cannot be released save by a creative straining of the sinews, by a relentless, elastic application of the ‘dialectical’ method. . . . When documents contain answers to questions, the answer must be brought into relation with the questions which are presupposed, and not with some other question. And moreover, proper concentration of exegesis presses behind the many questions to the one cardinal question by which all are embraced. Everything in the text ought to be interpreted only in light of what can be said, and therefore only in light of what is said.Footnote 18
In the following, I will not explicitly invoke the respective numbered paragraphs in the section, but simply paraphrase the argument point by point.Footnote 19 One more thing: I have already given an account of what is meant by ‘ontic’ and ‘noetic’. The two other important terms are necessitas and ratio. Here Barth explicitly provides the definitions: ‘Necessitas undoubtedly means the attribute of being unable not to be, or of being unable to be different’, and ratio means ‘conformity to law’, which we can paraphrase as ‘regularity’ without greatly distorting the sense.Footnote 20
There is a necessity immanent to the object of faith, a determinate structure to the content. This necessity finds expression in our reflections on the object of faith by means of the impossibility of our conceiving of the object of faith as non-existing or existing differently. In other words, the grounding text has a structure; various concepts are used regularly in a sufficiently similar context at various junctures, thus limiting and determining the set of predicates we can ascribe to them. We must judge in a certain way in accordance with this conceptual content if we wish to remain within the scope of the text. On this basis, the text allows us to simplify or abstract the sense and thus deduce the determinate scope of a particular concept in the abstract, explicitly positing a determinate rule for its use. That the text allows for this conceptual operation is its immanent rationality, and our ability to reflect this determinate structure and conceptually mediate it through our judgements, making the implicit rationality of the text explicit, is the measure of our reasoned grasp of the text.
From this it follows that the determinations of our knowledge of the text emerge as simplified theoretical constructs which are then measured against the particular immanent structure of the texts themselves (our concrete praxis of reading through the actual wording of the text repeatedly serves to determine and potentially reshape our conceptual simplifications); it follows also that the rationality of our understanding of the text is determined by the text's own immanent/implicit conceptual regularities from which the explicit, albeit abstract, rules for our concept-use are derived through our actual judgements. In Barth's terms: ‘Ontic necessity precedes noetic’, and ‘ontic rationality precedes noetic’.Footnote 21 Still, necessity and rationality, on both the practical (‘ontic’) and theoretical (‘noetic’) levels, reflect each other – with the necessary condition that the rationality in either case depends on a strict recognition of its own basis in the praxis itself. That rationality is discernible only through the speculative movement on the part of the reflective reader, who recognises that the entire scope of the theory and praxis is always already implicitly conceptually determined, and so seeks to mirror the rational structure of the text within the purely conceptual sphere – gaining a self-conscious understanding of its rationality. This is another way of saying that the rationality of the theological, theoretical constructs emerges sui generis from the structuring of the conceptual possibilities of the reading praxis by the text itself, and that its purely conceptual rationality is conditioned by incorporating precisely this acknowledgement. In other words, one must be brought to recognise that the structure and thus immanent rationality of the text precedes and determines the correctness of our theoretical constructs, even if its rationality is discernible only through the actual conceptual mediation: this is essentially the definition of Barth's theological notion of Nachdenken.
The basic correctness of this conceptuality is conditioned upon the texts themselves somehow necessitating the thought that they are true – that is, the correctness of the biblical texts is in the last resort conditioned by the existence of the God of the Bible. Here we should keep in mind that the entire section we are treating forms part of the preparatory notes for an exposition of a proof of the existence of God – a conceptual proof which claims to emerge as valid sui generis. Again, Barth's actual reading of that proof is not our present concern in this article, but we cannot but recognise the importance of this determinate aspect of the text, especially since we are implicitly considering the ‘correspondence theory of justification’ in relation to Barth's thought.
The speculative point is this: insofar as the immanent rationality of our conceptual abstracts generates a determinate necessity, and an inherent moment of that immanent conceptual necessity is the recognition that it has its ground in the structural necessity inherent to the texts themselves, then we must acknowledge that the conceptual (noetic) necessity emerges sui generis from the ‘ontic’ necessity inherent to the texts and the concrete reading praxis. Again, Barth's actual task in the FQI is to grasp a purely conceptual proof of the necessary existence of God – a proof that Anselm claims emerges sui generis – and, further, to determine the actual (theological) praxis which provides the rational context for acknowledging the concrete (existential, we might say) correctness of the proof itself.
Barth puts it nicely: ‘It also follows from a consideration of the parallel conception to ratio, the conception of necessitas, that the “rational” knowledge of the object of faith is derived from the object of faith and not vice versa. That means to say that the object of faith and its knowledge are ultimately derived from Truth, that is, from God and his will.’Footnote 22 It is not hard to recognise, reflected in these explicit formulations, the same implicit rationality which is found already in Romans 2, where the immanent principle of divine judgement in the cross of Jesus Christ is brought to bear on all possible sublated particular determinations of human existence; determinations which could be used as extraneous norms for determining the veracity of the text's own affirmation of the sovereignty of God. In Romans 2 this is brought to expression through an unsublatable negation. In the FQI it is expressed in the logical prohibition against conceiving of anything greater than God: id quo maius cogitari nequit.
So, what does theology consist in for Anselm? ‘To conceive necessitatem, that is the basis of the object of faith (the impossibility of its not existing or of its existing differently), necessitate; to conceive it “with reason” (conceiving the impossibility of its not existing or of its existing differently).’Footnote 23 That is, theology consists in understanding the rationality of the immanent structure of the biblical text in order to understand the legitimacy of the theoretical construction that we employ speculatively to answer the deeper questions raised by those very same texts. Or, more simply, to use the text itself to generate theoretical constructs which can facilitate a deeper grasp (through our judgements) of the rationality reflected in the texts themselves: reading speculatively.
We can now return to the quote on which McCormack grounds his version of Anselm's ‘coherence theory of justification’ and read it in its proper context keeping the insights on Barth's account of speculative reading in mind. Quoting Barth at some length:
Throughout all Anselm's investigation the origin of the rationes necessariae is to be found somewhere other than where it ought to be found in a philosopher who deduces the Credo a priori – namely, on the same level as that on which the question to be answered is raised, within the Credo itself. Within it, now this Article and now that Article figures as the unknown X which is solved in the investigation by means of the Articles of faith a, b, c, d . . . which are assumed to be known (without assuming knowledge of X and to that extent sola ratione). The inquiring theologian, with his capacity for forming concepts and making judgments, is never assigned the function of determining the fixed point or fixed points from which the argument is to proceed. His function is rather as follows: on the one hand, a selection from among the points fixed previously (elsewhere, or in another way); and on the other hand – and this is his proper task – the formulation, according to the rules of logic based upon the law of contradiction (and within the limits it permits), of the definitions, conclusions, differentiations and correlations necessary for the resolution of that X. And so – not mastering the object but being mastered by it – he achieves true noetic ratio, a real comprehension of the ontic ratio of the object of faith: he attains intellectus fidei. Even in Cur Deus Homo – the writing which at this point we regard as the one most open to dispute – it is exactly the same.Footnote 24
Let us give a brief example of a theological problem, one which reflects the conceptualisation operative in this paragraph: to understand what the biblical scriptures denote by the incarnation we cannot simply quote John 1:14, since it is precisely texts such as John 1:14 that we need to understand. Nor should we be tempted to find the answers outside the biblical texts, but rather search within the texts themselves with the aid of our other theoretical constructs, as they are expressed in the text's loaded passages and concepts (the ‘Articles of faith’) – derived from exactly that same praxis at other points in time – as signposts to aid our navigation. This seems to be a quite accurate definition of Barth's own theological programme in the Church Dogmatics.
This is not merely an abstract procedure consisting of the retreat to commitment, the deployment of (arbitrary) axioms and appeals to basic logic – it is an account of theology as a self-mediating praxis, which we can profitably call ‘speculative reading’. As Barth writes: ‘Not all “speculative” theology says what is true. But even theology which does say what is true is still “speculative” theology. Theology can neither avoid nor ignore the fact of being thus conditioned; nor ought this make it ashamed.’Footnote 25
A bit of dialectics
Nonetheless, in spite of these up-building words from Barth concerning speculative theology, have we not imported a notion of dialectics into Barth's writings? Or, put another way, can we provide any other grounds for understanding Barth's notion of dialectics in terms of the praxis of reading? To answer this question, a slight digression is in order. We must return to an earlier text by Barth: namely, Romans 2. This is, in a way, fitting, since we have already referenced that particular text at important junctions in our argument thus far. Specifically, we must return to the second preface from the 1922 edition, in which Barth explicitly discusses his exegetical strategy.
In the midst of an exchange with an imagined critic on the theme of Paul's letter, Barth writes the following: ‘I answer by asking quite simply whether, if the Epistle is to be treated seriously at all, it is reasonable to approach it with any other assumption than that God is God’.Footnote 26 This is obviously problematic. Grammatically, this resembles a justification, but logically it appears to be a tautology. ‘That God is God’ appears to be a rational ‘dead end’. Our question now must be whether we can find some justification – some reason – for the tautology. Does Barth's apparently problematic rule for reading scripture have a speculative significance?
We can and it does. There is at least one other important text in the tradition of dialectical reflection which makes speculative use of the grammatical structure of the tautology: Hegel's Science of Logic. In the section on judgement in the ‘Subjective Logic’, Hegel takes up what he calls ‘infinite judgement’. Here Hegel makes a distinction: an infinite negative judgement initially takes the form: ‘A rose is not a dog’. It serves to wrest the concept out of its abstract and immediate form through negation. Essentially, a rose is not anything other than a rose; that is, the infinite negative judgement is essentially reducible to the tautology, ‘A rose is a rose’. Nonetheless, according to Hegel, this is not simply an empty conceptual determination. What we are brought to see is that the only adequate predicate of the subject ‘Rose’ is itself. As such, through a pure negativity, or difference, the determinate concept of ‘rose’ emerges, distinct from all other concepts, but void in and of itself. What we get is the emergence of the concept as self-relating negativity; a pure form which can reflect an essence, a predicate. Or, in dialectical parlance: a singular universal. As Hegel writes: ‘The positive moment of the infinite judgment, of the negation of the negation, is the reflection of individuality into itself, whereby it is posited for the first time as a determinate determinateness.’Footnote 27
Returning to Barth, the point we are making is the following: the tautology in the second preface functions dialectically as an infinite judgement. It posits, on the basis of the text itself, the concept ‘God’ as infinitely negatively related to all other conceptual determinations. No predicate is adequate, but the concept ‘God’ should be understood as a pure form, a pure X, which marks an unbridgeable difference between itself and everything else.
Thus, for Barth, dialectics is tied to judgement, in the strong theological sense but also in the logical-dialectical sense found explicitly in Hegel's theoretical writings. A concept gains determination through first emerging within the reading praxis as a pure form, an unknown X, which can only then reflect a determinate set of essential predicates: without this self-relating negativity, as immediately present to us, it remains abstract and irrelevant. It is this reading operation and provisional dialectical moment which undergirds the reference to ‘particular doctrine X’ in the FQI. Practically, in Romans 2, the unsublatable negativity of the obedientia passiva remains the overarching determination: no predicate is adequate, and the entire realm of theoretical constructs is brought under critical negation. In the FQI, on the other hand, we find an account of how we are to proceed if we want to give content to the pure form of a concept, to allow an unknown X to gain determination – through the reading praxis already outlined in Romans 2. We are invited to read speculatively, and thus allow our conceptual abstractions, our theoretical constructs, to be developed and gain rational content through our reflective (and deeply Protestant) praxis.
In concreto
We are approaching the end. All the distinguishable pieces of our argument have been developed and it is time to draw them together. We began by asking whether it was possible to understand Barth's appeal to the FQI differently from the current consensus in the secondary literature. Can we read the FQI without finding in it a theological ‘coherence theory of justification’, appealing to confessional commitment, static axioms and common-sense logic? Is it possible to read it dialectically, where ‘dialectics’ is not simply another way of saying ‘correspondence theory of justification’? Can we, in other words, profitably read Barth without any appeal to either of these problematic binaries?
Yes, we can. What Barth develops in the FQI seems to me to be quite distinct from a theological coherence theory of justification – certainly, distinct from one in the form presented by McCormack. Moreover, it seems just as distinct from the correspondence theory of justification. In actuality, it seems to be a theory of how to read and understand the texts of the theological tradition, first and foremost the Bible: the self-conscious, conceptual mediation of concept-laden texts.
Seen from this angle, the immanent dialectics of its theory and praxis is as striking as it is in Romans 2, only now the dialectic takes on a speculative character. Even if we restrict ourselves to the very limited section of the FQI that McCormack analyses, what we find are the contours of an understanding of theology as the continuous reconceptualisation and speculative development of our theoretical constructs through a critical praxis of reading, a theory of how a theological concept gains determination through the actual wording of the biblical texts.
Barth is a Protestant theologian. He has a stake in the Protestant wager that within the church the reading and explication of these determinate texts are at the practical and theoretical basis of justification – both existential and conceptual. On a more affirmative note, we are thus led to provisionally draw the following conclusion: historically, various theories of epistemological justification come and go, with both merits and blind angles. Speculative reading has accompanied the church since its first written documents.
With this in mind, a final dogmatic point: reflected in this article is an implicit pneumatology, which understands the Holy Spirit concretely; it is known first and foremost in a determinate praxis – not in the abstraction of doctrine: first and foremost, acknowledged in the obedientia passiva of Jesus Christ, and in the determination this places on the reading (theological) subject. On this note, we should let Calvin have the last word: ‘Certainly there should be a different teachableness among God's children; because they see that they are destitute of all light of truth when they are without God's Spirit, they do not therefore fail to pay attention to the fact that the word is like an instrument by which the Lord distributes His Spirit to the faithful. For they do not know any other Spirit than the one who dwelt with the apostles and spoke by their mouth, by whom they are always guided and brought back to pay attention to the word.’Footnote 28Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
