The vanity of theologians
The love of God in Christ is the model of all good theological work. That is Barth's basic thesis: “If the object of theological knowledge is Jesus Christ and, in him, perfect love, then Agape alone can be the dominant and formative prototype and principle of theology.” Yet who among us would claim to consistently meet this standard? It is one thing to agree that teaching ought to be an act of self-emptying love on behalf of students, but quite another to teach that way. And while each of us falls short of this ideal in our own ways, Barth draws our attention to an especially corrosive vice that commonly infects us. The illness presents as, among other things, an excessive concern for our reputations; a morbid craving for praise; a narcissistic pretentiousness combined with insecurity; a relentless desire to outdo our colleagues and to broadcast our accomplishments; a loveless envy when others succeed; and a gloomy anxiety about our legacies, about how people will remember and evaluate us when we're dead. The vice, of course, is vanity, and Barth considers it a menacing threat to theologians.
To put it simply, Barth thinks a vain theologian is an embodied contradiction of the gospel and the very antithesis of Jesus Christ himself. And he doesn't care how obvious this is. Barth doesn't care that making fun of self-important theologians is by now a tired cliché. He knows that vanity disables us, and because of that he is willing to sound the alarm. And we would do well not to evade his critique by dismissing it as moralistic or judgmental or whatever. . . .
It is tempting to interpret passages like these as nothing more than Barth's way of deflecting the ocean of praise that was being directed at him toward the end of his life. He was, after all, the most famous theologian in the world. When he traveled to America to give the first five lectures in Evangelical Theology, Time magazine put him on its cover. Or perhaps one sees in these statements a tacit admission that Barth did not always manage to live up to his own standards, and that is certainly true. But Barth is aiming these passages at us too, and only an instinct for self-protection would lead us to think otherwise. Because if he wasn't troubled by our desire for greatness, he wouldn't aggressively remind us that we are nothing more than “little theologians.” He wouldn't criticize us for being more interested in the question “Who is the greatest among us?” than we are in the “plain and modest question about the matter at hand.” If he wasn't worried about the way we inflate ourselves by demeaning our rivals, he wouldn't ask why there are “so many really woeful theologians who go around with faces that are eternally troubled or even embittered, always in a rush to bring forward their critical reservations and negations?” And he wouldn't keep reminding us that evangelical theology is modest theology if he wasn't distressed by our immodesty—by the serenely confident way we make definitive pronouncements, even as we theoretically agree that all theological speech is limited and subject to revision. You don't write passages like the ones in this book unless you are concerned by how easily theologians confuse zealous pursuit of the truth with zealous pursuit of their own glory. It would not be far off to say that Barth's examination of this theme is something like a gloss on Jesus’s claim that you cannot simultaneously work for praise from God and praise from people. You can seek one or the other, but not both.
It is important to see that Barth is not taking cheap shots at theologians here. Yes, he is giving us strong medicine, but he is giving it to us because he thinks vanity turns us into the kind of people whose lives obscure the truth people who make the gospel less rather than more plausible. We cannot, of course, make the gospel less true. God is God, and the truth is the truth, and nothing we do can change that. But Barth understands the role that the existence of the community plays in both the perception and concealment of truth. “The community does not speak with words alone,” he writes. “It speaks by the very fact of its existence in the world.” There's what we say, and then there's who we are, and who we are says something.
And the connection with teaching is obvious. We believe that God sometimes uses flawed and sinful people like ourselves to make himself known. Since those are the only kind of people there are, those are the kind God uses. But how compelling could it possibly be for our students to hear us say, for example, that the Christian life is a life of self-giving that conforms to Jesus Christ's own life, or that the church lives to point away from itself to its Lord, when at the same time they see us carefully managing our CVs, ambitiously seeking acclaim and advancement, and morbidly competing with one another in exactly the same cutthroat ways that people in every academic discipline compete with one another? It doesn't add up. Arcade Fire is right: it’s absurd to trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount. And it’s no less absurd for students to trust vain theologians when they talk about a crucified God.
I know this is not everyone's problem. Some readers don't need to hear this. They struggle with other vices. But anyone who has read the Gospels knows that Jesus goes out of his way to address this problem. Speaking specifically about teachers, he says, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. . . . They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats . . . and to be greeted with respect . . . and to have people call them [teacher]. . . . [But] the greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matt. 23:1–12). In Luke 14 Jesus tells his disciples that following him requires giving up their possessions, and for many of us, the possession we covet most, the thing we cling to like greedy misers, is our reputation.
—Adam Neder, Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith (Baker Academic, 2019), 64-70
