Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth by Alan J.Torrance and Andrew B.Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023), xiv + 393 pp.

It is an indisputable fact that the nineteenth-century philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard had a significant influence on the twentieth-century pastor and theologian Karl Barth. Anyone who opens the second edition of Barth's Römerbrief will find not only the implicit influence of Kierkegaard present in concepts such as the moment, infinite qualitative difference, paradox, and divine incognito; she will find several explicit references to Kierkegaard as well (see, for example, the comments on Romans 3:22 or 8:3 or 12:3-5). The influence of Kierkegaard upon Barth is hard to miss, and it has often been noted. However, it has not been the subject of in-depth research, especially not in Anglophone scholarship. There have been monographs on the Kierkegaard-Barth relationship in French, German, Italian, Korean, and Japanese. Alan Torrance's and Andrew Torrance's Beyond Immanence is the first book-length treatment of the relationship between these two highly influential figures in English. At least three elements are a necessary part of such a genealogical project: (1) patient documentation of the successor's explicit textual citations of his or her predecessor; (2) notation of where the predecessor's conceptual influence is not explicitly indicated by the successor but is nonetheless plainly evident; (3) adjudication of how faithful the successor is to the predecessor in the use of his or her texts and concepts. These scholarly mandates are ably fulfilled by Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance. However, like Lee Barrett's exemplary tome on Augustine and Kierkegaard, Beyond Immanence is not content with simply documenting the influence of one figure upon another. It also seeks to draw both subjects into a constructive theological project, showing how a particular trajectory established in Kierkegaard and continued by Barth remains relevant within contemporary theological discourse. Chapter 5 deals with the textual and historical issues of Kierkegaard's influence upon Barth. These are thorny matters. Though Barth points to Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity as the source of his thoughts and words on several occasions, it remains the case that Barth was not interested in rigorous citation of his influences in his Romans commentary (as Beverly Roberts Gaventa has put it, Barth either fails or refuses to "show his homework"1). Thus, any documentation of Kierkegaard's influence cannot be content with explicit citations. Furthermore, the explicit citations of Kierkegaard are not always a reliable guide, not even with respect to which texts of Kierkegaard most influenced Barth (more on this below). Scholarship that would be accurate on this matter of influence must also be somewhat speculative, moving into the space of the second element listed above. More difficult still is negotiating the third element. Barth himself claimed that he moved away from Kierkegaard's influence in his later writings. How true is this claim? A particularly helpful aspect of Beyond Immanence is the authors' parsing of where the later Barth actually moved away from Kierkegaard and where he merely thought he was moving away from Kierkegaard, based upon misperceptions of the Dane fostered in the German Kierkegaard scholarship of the time. With this chapter, historical theology has moved far beyond the simplistic adage: "The later Barth moved away from Kierkegaard." While Chapter 5 of Beyond Immanence will be eminently useful for the study of Barth and modern theology in general, the real heart of the book is the constructive theological project undertaken in Chapters 6 and 7. At stake in these chapters is the status of what the authors call the "Kierkegaard-Barth Trajectory," or "KBT." The KBT is essentially a set of instructions as to how Christian theological thinking should proceed. It affirms the following: Since God was pleased to dwell with us fully in the person of Jesus Christ, this person is the privileged site of revelation, and all theological thinking should begin with him and attempt to conform itself to him. Even when we use a word like "God," who God is and what God is like should be defined by Jesus Christ—his life and his character. The KBT is opposed to an immanent theological approach, wherein a group of concepts unconnected to Jesus becomes definitive of the theological task. (For the authors—following Barth's lead—this immanent theological approach is interchangeable with "liberal theology" itself.) In such an immanent approach, humans decide through rational reflection that certain attributes define the concept "God," such as omnipotence, omniscience, and impassivity. They also frequently decide that certain cultural formations—for example, single-family homes or privately-owned cash-crop devoted farmland—clearly reflect God's will. It is not any particular conclusion of the immanent theological approach that Kierkegaard and Barth take issue with; rather, it is the whole way of approaching the theological task, a way that does not begin with the person by whom God has chosen to reveal God. After all, it should not make sense to neglect the one sure guide given—if one's goal in the theological task is accuracy (this is perhaps not always the case). One of the ironies of this constructive project is that it does much to clarify the influence Kierkegaard had upon Barth, perhaps better than restrictive historical-critical or text-critical methods are able to do. Though this is never stated explicitly in Beyond Immanence, it becomes clear that even though the work of Kierkegaard that Barth cites most often is Practice in Christianity, the text with which Barth's work has the most consonance is Philosophical Fragments (161). The question which opens Philosophical Fragments is: "Can the truth be learned?" At stake is the difference between a Socratic approach—in which the truth resides immanent within each human being, needing only a skilled guide to prompt it forth (see, for example, the geometric demonstration in Meno)—and a Christian approach, wherein human beings are fundamentally in error and need to have the truth brought to them from outside, by a Teacher. It is this sort of epistemological crisis to which Barth repeatedly returns. For Barth, the truth is not in us, and it is for this reason that we must begin with Christ. The maneuver of taking all knowledge and making it captive to Christ is reiterated again and again at great length in Barth's Church Dogmatics, and thanks to Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance, we can see that this conceptual operation directly follows the path Kierkegaard laid out in Philosophical Fragments. In sum, Barth adopts what would now be described as an externalist account of Christian knowing … The resulting cognitive environment in which the believer finds herself is the body of Christ in which human creatures have been reconciled and thereby delivered from a state of alienation for proper epistemic function in relation to God. This is construed by Barth in terms of God's free action and lordship, creating anew what would otherwise be impossible. Knowledge of God is not a human achievement; it constitutes a miraculous and redemptive gift of grace (340). As Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance comment: "Yet again, the continuity and parallels between the approaches of Kierkegaard as a philosopher and of Barth as a theologian are unambiguously clear" (340), to which—following such extensive demonstration—one can only wholeheartedly agree. In sum, Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance have shown the profound consonance between Barth's theological project and Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. One question naturally arises: what should we make of the fact that it is not actually Philosophical Fragments but Practice in Christianity which Barth quotes more frequently? In fact, there are elements of Philosophical Fragments which are carried over into Practice in Christianity (a fact suggested by the similar names of the works' pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus), such elements being: the moment, paradox, and contemporaneity—in short, all those elements Barth highlights in his own work. Those elements that are distinctive to Practice in Christianity, on the other hand—such as imitation, abasement, and the poverty and marginality of Christ—seem to be selectively filtered out. This raises a connected question: where do we go once the kind of epistemological critique made in Philosophical Fragments is successfully prosecuted? Where Kierkegaard arrives is a thick-description of the life of Christ as it is seen in the Gospels and a demand that this life be imitated (Practice in Christianity). Where Barth goes in a negative sense is clear: he goes away from the liberal theology of his age, with its "enlightened" identification of the interests of God with the self-assertive and dominative interests of European culture. Yet where might Barth go in a positive sense, if one were to extrapolate from his thought? Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance give us some hints, especially with respect to the universal inclusivity of the Gospel (e.g., 120, 147-50, 189, 289-302); a fully articulated answer to this question, however, is not attempted. Given the difficulty of the question, the already extensive length of the text, and the considerable accomplishments of Beyond Immanence, this should not be cause for blame. However, it should give us pause and provoke further questions. Perhaps what needs to be asked is: once we are free of liberal theology (and the epistemologies that fund it), where do we go? An intriguing suggestion is made by the contributors to a recent volume, Karl Barth and Liberation Theology, edited by Kaitlyn Dugan and Paul Dafydd Jones. The general thrust of this edited volume would suggest the following proposition: once we are free of liberal theology, the direction we should take is liberation theology. (It is necessary straightaway to qualify the "we" of the preceding statement by noting that there are theologians who have no need to be freed of liberal theology because they never identified with it in the first place. However, the KBT is relevant to those who either have been a part of liberal theology or whose context entraps them with multiple temptations to adopt positions in accord with such a viewpoint.) The suggestion that freedom from liberal theology should free us for liberation theology is not only in line with hints given by the authors of Beyond Immanence; it is also fully in keeping with Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity. It is true that liberation theology risks identifying whose side God is on in the present world—something seemingly anathema to Karl Barth. However, this identification is made on the basis of Jesus Christ himself—that is, who Jesus was and whom he identified with. It therefore seems within the realm of possibility that not only would Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance and Søren Kierkegaard approve of this extended trajectory; Karl Barth might have done so as well. Alan Torrance and Andrew Torrance have done admirable and much needed work in their demonstration of the coherence of a Kierkegaard-Barth Trajectory, especially in showing the power and persuasion of both Kierkegaard's and Barth's critique of liberal epistemology. Perhaps now that trajectory needs to be extended yet further, freeing us from identification with the bourgeois-imperialist project of liberal theology for the radical identification with the poor and disinherited of the earth that is—or should be—liberation theology. It was true that this point was made long ago by James Cone (amongst others), but it bears repeating.