Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis: T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology

Offers new ground for dialogue between Protestants and Catholics.

Keith L. Johnson holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary and is Assistant Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, USA.

Keith Johnson's "Karl Barth and the analogia entis" is perhaps the best work on this demanding topic ever to have been written. It contributes not only to the field of Barth studies but also to modern theology in general. It approaches this vexing question with painstaking care, erudition and sophistication. In the process it makes a vital contribution to contemporary ecumenical discussion among Protestant and Roman Catholic theologies. I believe it will become a standard point of reference and that it will be widely read and cited.
Given that metaphysics seems to be making a comeback in American Protestant theology, Keith Johnson's fine study of the debate between Karl Barth and Roman Catholic theologians with respect to the so-called "analogy of being" could not be more timely. The verdict of the last generation on this debate was that it rested on a misunderstanding on Barth's side. Johnson gives us ample reason to question this verdict - and even more reason to take Barth's criticisms seriously. This is ecumenical theology at its best - sober and penetrating but unfailingly courteous. This book will be much-discussed.
Keith Johnson's forcefully argued and elegantly written book is the best we have on the theological substance and historical development of Karl Barth's treatment of the analogia entis. Following von Balthasar, most have assumed that Barth's resistance to the analogia entis of Przywara and Söhngen was misplaced, that he never really understood their efforts, and that he eventually, and on the sly, allowed a version of the idea to form his mature account of divine and human relations. Johnson shows the mistake in each of these assumptions. Barth's resistance never wavered. It followed directly from the Protestant commitments that he spent his career reviving and explicating, and he understood the analogia entis well enough to see its incompatibility with the Reformation's understanding of justification (in Przywara's case) and with its insistence upon the ever sinful nature of the nevertheless justified (in Söhngen's). Along the way, Johnson tells a fascinating story of theological cross-fertilization. Przywara's account of the analogy of being generated Kantian anxieties in Barth, anxieties about the knowing subject's access to its intended object. This encouraged Barth to make explicit the Protestant substance of his theological commitments. It compelled him to locate his account of revelation, not in the doctrine of creation, but in Christology and, ultimately, in the doctrine of justification. This, in turn, pushed Söhngen and von Balthasar to recast their interpretations of Aquinas on natural knowledge of God and situate the analogia entis within an analogia fidei. This concession enabled Barth to admit that his earlier anxieties did not apply here and at the same time to insist that fundamental differences nevertheless remained. For Barth, grace yields an analogy of being only as fallen nature is opposed and overcome, not as it is perfected and assumed. So the story ends. The fallout is both a defense of Barth's resistance to the positions staked out by his Catholic conversation partners, and, more importantly, a deeper understanding of the history and issues involved. Throughout, Johnson's mastery of Barth's theology, its continuities and its developments, its nuances and depths, is flawless. He helps us see what a truly Protestant theology of grace looked like for Karl Barth, and he helps us imagine what such a theology might look like for us now.
Keith Johnson's study of the debate between Karl Barth and Roman Catholicism over the issue of analogia entis is first-rate historical theology. Carefully researched, balanced in judgment, and clearly written, it helps fill a gap in scholarly literature on Barth's remarkable relationship with Roman Catholic theology and opens numerous doors for future research.
Johnson has written an excellent book, offering a lucid analysis of Barth's lifelong engagement with the /analogia entis/, an engagement often referenced but seldom understood. In the course of this work, he carefully exposits and evaluates not only Barth's approach to the topic, but also its relation to the approaches of his key conversation partners - Przywara, Söhngen, and Balthasar. The result is at once fascinating and compelling, and establishes Johnson as a theologian of the first order.
Careful historical research, a stimulating and well-defined interpretative agenda, and a willingness to venture bold, yet nuanced, theological judgments distinguish this timely and impressive book. Scholars interested in the development of Barth's thought and the difficult question of Barth's relationship to twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology will gain much from it.

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A study that challenges the classical view of Karl Barth's rejection of the Roman Catholic understanding of analogia entis. It opens up fresh avenues for ecumenical dialogue between Protestants and Roman Catholics.