Subject-Object Dialectic in Karl Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics: Critical Comparison of Song-Ming Confucianism and European Philosophy of God

The first part of this article probes into Karl Barth's subject-object dialectic in The Gottingen Dogmatics (1924-25), whereby he tackles the kind of subject-object identification in modem consciousness theology to which Hegel and Schleiermacher gave rise. The second part of this article addresses the relevance of Barth's subject-object dialectic to Sino-Christian theology. Akin to the subjectivist theology that Barth challenges, East-Asian philosophy of which Confucian thought lies at the center does not posit in general a dualist distinction between the subject and object of knowing as do Platonic-Cartesian traditions. As Feuerbach's criticism demonstrates, such subjectivist methods would inevitably entail for Christian theology an anthropological essence. Barth's proposal of the objectives of Christian theology in The Gottingen Dogmatics for overcoming this dilemma sheds light on the possible developments of Sino-Christian theology: to affirm God's absolute subjectivity in the act of revelation, God's true objectivity and knowability to the human subject in this event of divine act, and God's unchanging aseity and transcendence even in this self-giving event.