Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)
2012 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Brinkman, Martien E.: Is There a Reciprocal Relation Between Anthropology and Christology?
Brinkman, Martién e. pen. Barth was more concerned to emphasize that Christology and anthropology are closely related than to show how they are related. And, of course, Eds reluctance had everything to do with the historical setting of the genesis of his theology (the rise of Nazism). The content of his theology is historically determined by his refusal to integrate ‘foreign’ (in the sense of not rooted in God’s revelation) elements into his theological reflection, scared as he was that these elements would overrule God’s own authentic Word. Anthropology like philosophy or psychology was considered to be such ‘foreign’ element. Hence, it was for him impossible to account methodologically for the also for him indispensable use of existing anthropological concepts. Of course, he had out of soteriological reasons to use them, but he never used these concepts deliberately according to an explicit theological method. My point would be that nowadays things are changed considerably. Barth needed an antagonistic attitude over against existing (idealistic, Marxist, existentialist, etc.) anthropologies to be able to claim the necessary freedom for his own search for the authentic roots of Christian anthropology. In our secular times, however, theology is put into isolation and runs the risk to become ghetto theology. Current theology needs the dialogue with other sciences and these sciences show often the preparedness to be engaged in such a dialogue because of their own search for meaning. So, they have a common interest. Theology and anthropology (like philosophy and psychology) cannot anymore be considered as separated areas.27 Evaluation The experience in the humanities to be only in a limited way self-constitutive creates the main condition for the recognition that all our ideas of what humanity is, have to be transcended: our ideas of forgiveness, sacrifice, substitution, hope, righteousness and love. All these concepts receive their richest meaning only in Christology. They refer to a specific history, the history of Jesus of Nazareth, that reveals our divine destiny. By opening up the immanence of our earthly existence, philosophers like Jean-Luc Marion, Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur transcend the more or less classic boundaries between anthropology and theology. They do not offer a kind of ‘anthropological proof of God’, but show how theology, and in this case Christology, can help to disentangle and clarify anthropological aporia’s.28 A good example has been given by the South-African novelist J.M. Coetzee in an impressive essay about the role of secular autobiographical confessions. In this extended essay of 42 pages he analyses the confessions in the work of Tolstoy, Rousseau and Dostoevsky. He concludes — following Dostoevsky — that true confession does not come from the sterile monologue of the self, from introspection, but from faith and grace. Dostoevsky explores the impasses of secular confessions, 27 Cf. T. Waap, Gottebenbildlichkeit und Identität: Zum Verhältnis von theologischer Anthropologie und Humanwissenschaft bei Karl Barth und Wolfhart Pannenberg (Image of God and Identity: The relation of theological anthropology and the humanities with Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg) (Forschungen zum systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, Bd.121) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 473-490, who characterizes the anthropological concepts of both as too abstract, not recognizing the open character of many, modern anthropological concepts. 28 Cf. P. Ricoeur, Thinking Creation’ in: A. LaCocque and P. Ricoeur, Thinking Biblically, 31-67. 24 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK 2012/1
