Apocalypse and Epistemology

In his introduction to Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology, Joshua Davis traces the travail of modern theology to Kant: “Seated at the heart of modern theology, and especially of modern Protestant theology, is the existing and still unresolved problem of the relation between knowledge (Wissen) and belief (Glaube). Immanual Kant’s dualistic configuration of that relation is responsible for causing this problem” (6).

Various efforts have been made to overcome this dualism, but many have remained within its grip. The rise of interest in apocalyptic was vitiated by Kantian pre-commitments. Johann Weiss argued that apocalyptic was not a mere form, but the very content of Christian belief, and thus forced a choice: “Not only was there no sense in talking about the cultural expression of an apocalyptic, world-denying value and the imminent end of the cosmos, but neither could one any longer talk about the distinct but mutual correlation of value (belief) with validity (knowledge).” Ironically, this choice was forced by “scientific” scholarship itself, which uncovered the apocalyptic form of the “kerygma” (23).

As Davis argues, though, this version of apocalyptic remains enmeshed in Kant: “A rigorous skepticism takes the knowledge of primitive Christian apocalyptic to be the dissolution of the possibility of any modern Christian belief, and a rigorous eschatology takes fidelity to the apocalyptic order of Christian belief to be the dissolution of modern knowledge. Importantly, it is Kant’s dualism of knowledge and belief, framed according to an abstract application of the logical rules of validity, that is responsible for the antinomy” (23).

In Davis’s reading, the early Barth doesn’t overcome Kant either, since for Barth (in Davis’s words) “Belief simply is the embrace of the contradiction between knowledge and belief” (29). Barth later recognized that this opposition makes theology impossible, since “belief is only validated through the application of an abstract logic of negative dialectics,” but even later Barth doesn’t entirely elude Kant. Davis sees Barth’s “Marburg neo-Kantianism” in “formed of contemporary theology that retain a sharp distinction between knowledge and belief” (39). (I can’t resist pointing out that this residual Kantianism is precisely what van Til saw, and attacked, in Barth.)

For Davis, though, J. Louis-Martyn’s apocalyptic theology promises to overcome Kantian dualism: “Martyn has advanced the formidable argument that Paul’s doctrine of rectification [Martyn’s term for justification] eradicates from the cosmos any ontological principle of constitutive opposition. What is more, he has asserted that the advent of Christ is the advent of the new creation of unity in the Spirit under the rule of Jesus Christ as the true cosmic kurios.” Martyn’s “apocalyptic rejection of dualism entirely transforms the relation of belief and knowledge as it has developed in modern theology,” since apocalyptic is “a cataclysm of the frame, the overturning of the totality of conditions that render dialectical negation possible, Perhaps apocalyptic makes possible a renewed recognition of faith – as opposed to belief – as the proper form of all knowledge throughout the whole of distinct but mutually interpenetrating sensual, conceptual, and practical dimensions of life” (44).

Tis an outcome devoutly to be wished, and though I don’t think Martyn has said the last thing, and though I think he’s said false things (e.g., on the demonic origin of Torah), he has also opened some possibilities for bursting out of the Kantian frame once and for all.