Can Non-believers Do Theology?

Let me turn that question around: Can non-believers not do theology? If Jesus is “before all things and by him all things consist” (Col. 1:17), then how can any act or statement avoid having its existence in relation, one way or another, to Jesus Christ? If “sin” as such is not just transgression of a moral code, but the acts and attitudes of rebellion against God, then how can they not also be theological statements about the nature of the world and one’s independence from and opposition to whatever “gods” might be out there?

What about theology as a focal, conscious pursuit: can non-believers do that kind of theology?

Look around. Don’t non-believers in fact write and publish books and articles about Christian theology? Again, we must answer, “Yes.”

Well, what is Barth getting at in C.D. I/1, §1, when he says, “[T]here is no possibility of dogmatics at all outside the Church. … In faith, and only in faith, human action is related to the being of the Church, to the action of God in revelation and reconciliation. Hence dogmatics is quite impossible except as an act of faith, in the determination of human action by listening to Jesus Christ and as obedience to Him” (p. 17)?

Close attention to Barth’s definition of “dogmatics” is necessary for untangling this knot. “As a theological discipline dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God” (section heading, p.3). The underlying idea is that Christ has given his Church not only the responsibility for telling the world about him, but also the responsibility for growing in its understanding of him and for reviewing constantly the content of its message to the world. As the world changes and as the Church’s depth of understanding Jesus grows, each day presents the Church with new challenges for articulating its message.

Nor is this merely an archeological exercise, as if two millennia separate the Church from its Lord, requiring the Church to excavate texts as well as Near Eastern ruins. Rather, every day the Church looks to Jesus the Christ for life and sustenance, for guidance and discipline, and therefore for its very words to say to the world. Dogmatics is part of that process, part of a self-examination. Thus, “In dogmatics Christianity means the proper content of talk about God ventured in the fear of God” (p. 18). If one talks about God apart from that fear, apart from faith, then one isn’t talking from within the Church, so such talk isn’t the Church’s self-examination. It may be theology, but it isn’t dogmatics.

Is theology that is done from a non-faith position useful? Barth responds, “Without faith it would be irrelevant and meaningless. Even in the case of the most exact technical imitation of what the Church does, or the most sincere intention of doing what the Church does, it would be idle speculation without any content of knowledge” (p. 17). He continues, “[T]he construction of an impressive form of Christianity without believing in it for better or for worse, is certainly an attractive and rewarding possibility. But there can be no question of this in dogmatics. In dogmatics Christianity means the proper content of talk about God ventured in the fear of God” (p. 18).

I don’t think that in this section Barth mitigates his hostile opposition to giving any place to a theology done from the position of unbelief. In any case, it has not proper place in dogmatics.

But Barth certainly does respond to the idea spoken from outside faith and outside the Church (e.g., Feuerbach, Kant (?), Voltaire) elsewhere in this volume, so he definitely has a use for them. But their work is not dogmatics.

Then we must further ask whether Christians and not-Christians can have profitable theological discussion, and, if so, upon what terms. Daniel Kirk at his blog “Storied Theology” asks

Can there be a shared, assumed arena of conversation for those who study the Bible (et al) as historians or theoreticians or religion on the one hand and those who study while assuming the faith of the church on the other?

While I think the answer is yes, Barth problematizes such a position, in part by asking the would-be biblical theologian if agreeing to the terms of such a parlay isn’t somehow selling the farm.

Again, although such a conversation might be theological, it wouldn’t be dogmatics (“the Church’s self-examination …”).

Yes, Barth does point out the danger of “selling the farm,” but this just raises the question of how to be approachable to non-Christians and faithful to Christ at the same time. Since I have already gone on too long here, let me point my reader [oh—are there two of you?] to some excellent books by Lesslie Newbigin on that very subject, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and Proper Confidence.