The Impossible Possibility

AbstractThe word ‘coinherence’ made an early entrance in a lecture that Williams gave on the theologian Karl Barth in 1939. Williams’ fascination with Barth’s phrase ‘impossible possibility’ mingles with his own notion of ‘co-inherence’ to produce an original perspective on Barth’s commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. First, Williams aligns Barth’s ‘impossible possibility’ of the divine call with the ‘Beatrician moment’ when the lover ‘sees’ the beloved in glory. Second, he takes up Barth’s stress on the ‘impossible possibility’ of a life of faith, and generalizes it into many human experiences. Third, Williams recalls Barth’s recognition of the ‘impossible possibility’ of communion with Christ in the present moment—a Kierkegaardian theme—and asserts that co-inherence offers a resolution. Finally, he interprets Barth’s vision of the church as an ‘impossible possibility’ as a co-inherence in Christ. All this confirms recent Barth scholarship on the difference of Barth’s dialectic from Kierkegaard’s.