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Karl Barth (May
10, 1886–December
10, 1968)
(pronounced Bart) was an influential
Swiss
Reformed
Christian theologian. He was also a pastor and one of the leading thinkers in
the
neo-orthodox movement.
Early life and education
Born in Basel, Barth spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. Later he was professor of theology in Göttingen, Münster and Bonn (Germany). He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel.
Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Herrmann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt and Søren Kierkegaard, and the impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck.
The most important catalyst was, however, his reaction to the support most of his liberal teachers had for German war aims. The 1914 "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals to the Civilized World"[1] carried the signature of his former teacher Adolf von Harnack. Barth believed that his teachers had been misled by a theology which tied God too closely to the finest, deepest expressions and experiences of cultured
human beings, into claiming divine support for a war which they
believed was waged in support of that culture, the initial experience
of which appeared to increase people's love of and commitment to that
culture. Much of Barth's thinking is also a direct response to the
philosophy of Hegel and the theology of Schleiermacher.
Epistle to the Romans
In his commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (germ. Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second ion of 1922) Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus
challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures,
achievements, or possessions. Many theologians believe this work to be
the most important theological treatise since Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers.
In the decade following the First World War, Barth was linked with a
number of other theologians, actually very diverse in outlook, who had
reacted against their teachers' liberalism, in a movement known as "Dialectical Theology" (germ. Dialektische Theologie). Other members of the movement included Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten.
Barmen Declaration
In 1934, as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with the Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration (germ. Barmer Erklärung) which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity—arguing that the Church's
allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus and
resources to resist the influence of other 'lords'—such as the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. This was one of the founding documents of the Confessing Church and Barth was elected a member of its leadership council, the Bruderrat.
He was forced to resign from his professorship at the university of
Bonn for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler and returned to his native
Switzerland, where he assumed a chair in systematic theology at the
university of Basel. In the course of his appointment he was required
to answer a routine question asked of all Swiss civil servants, whether
he supported the national defence. His answer was, "Yes, especially on
the northern border!" In 1938 he wrote a letter to a Czech colleague,
Josef Hromádka, in which he declared that soldiers who fought against
the Third Reich were serving a Christian cause.
[
Church Dogmatics
Barth's theology found its most sustained and compelling expression through his thirteen-volume magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics
(germ. "Die Kirchliche Dogmatik"). Widely regarded as one of the most
important theological works of all time, "The Church Dogmatics"
represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Barth
began working on the Dogmatics in 1932, and continued until his death
in 1968, when it was 6 million words in length. Highly contextual, the
volumes were written chronologically, beginning with Vol. I.1, and
addressed political issues as well as questions raised by his students
after lectures. Barth explores the whole of Christian doctrine,
where necessary challenging and reinterpreting it so that every part of
it points to the radical challenge of Jesus Christ, and the
impossibility of tying God to human cultures, achievements or
possessions. It was translated into English by T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley.
Later life
After the end of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice in support both of German penitence and of reconciliation with churches abroad. Together with Hans-Joachim Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement
in 1947, which was a more concrete statement of German guilt and
responsibility for the Third Reich and Second World War than the Stuttgart Declaration
of 1945. In it, he made the point that the Church's willingness to side
with anti-socialist and conservative forces had led to its
susceptibility for National Socialist ideology. In the context of the
developing Cold War, this controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in the West, who supported the CDU
course of re-militarization, as well as by East German dissidents who
believed that it did not sufficiently depict the dangers of Communism. In the 1950s, Barth sympathized with the peace movement and opposed German rearmament.
In 1962, Barth visited the USA, where he lectured at Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago. He was invited to be a guest at the Second Vatican Council, but could not attend due to illness.
Theology
A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in his
lengthy Church Dogmatics. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: "Jesus
loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
Barth tries to recover the Doctrine of the Trinity in theology from its
putative loss in
liberalism. His argument follows from the idea that God is the object of
God’s own self-knowledge, and
revelation
in the Bible
means the self-unveiling to
humanity of
the God who cannot be unveiled to humanity. Note here that the Bible is not the
Revelation; rather, it points to revelation.
Barth and Liberals and Conservatives
Although Barth's theology rejected German Protestant Liberalism, his theology
has not always found favour with those at the other end of the theological
spectrum: conservatives, evangelicals and fundamentalists. His doctrine of the
Word of God, for instance, does not proceed by arguing or proclaiming that the
Bible must be
uniformly historically and scientifically accurate, and then establishing other
theological claims on that foundation. Some
evangelical and
fundamentalist critics have therefore tended to refer to Barth as "neo-orthodox"
because, while his theology retains most or all of the tenets of
Christianity, he is seen as rejecting the belief which is a linchpin of
their theological system:
biblical inerrancy. (For instance, it was for this belief that Barth was
criticized most harshly by the conservative evangelical theologian,
Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, who was a student of strident Barthian critic
Dr. Cornelius Van Til.) Such critics regard proclaiming a rigorous Christian
theology without basing that theology on a supporting text that is considered to
be historically accurate as a separation of theological truth from historical
truth; for his part, Barth would have argued that making claims about biblical
inerrancy the foundation of theology is to take a foundation other than Jesus
Christ, and that our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only
properly emerge from consideration of what it means for it to be a true witness
to the incarnate Word,
Jesus.
The relationship between Barth, liberalism and fundamentalism goes far beyond
the issue of inerrancy. From Barth's perspective, liberalism (with
Friedrich Schleiermacher and
Hegel as its
leading exponents) is the divinization of human thinking. Some philosophical
concepts become the false God, and the voice of the living God is blocked. This
leads to the captivity of theology by human ideology. In Barth's theology, he
emphasizes again and again that human concepts can never be considered as
identical to God's revelation. In this aspect, Scripture is also written human
language, expressing human concepts. It cannot be considered as identical to
God's revelation. However, in His freedom and love, God truly reveals the
Godself through human language and concepts. Thus he claims that Christ is truly
presented in Scripture and the preaching of the church. Barth stands in the
heritage of the Reformation in his wariness of the marriage between theology and
philosophy.
Writings by Karl Barth
The Church Dogmatics in English translation
- Volume I Part 1: Doctrine of the Word of God: Prolegomena to Church
Dogmatics, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090132, softcover:
ISBN 0567050599
- Volume I Part 2: Doctrine of the Word of God, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090124, softcover:
ISBN 0567050696
- Volume II Part 1: The Doctrine of God: The Knowledge of God; The
Reality of God, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090213, softcover:
ISBN 0567051692
- Volume II Part 2: The Doctrine of God: The Election of God; The Command
of God, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090221, softcover:
ISBN 056705179X
- Volume III Part 1: The Doctrine of Creation: The Work of Creation,
hardcover:
ISBN 0567090310, softcover:
ISBN 0567050793
- Volume III Part 2: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creature,
hardcover:
ISBN 0567090329, softcover:
ISBN 0567050890
- Volume III Part 3: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creator and His
Creature, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090337, softcover:
ISBN 0567050998
- Volume III Part 4: The Doctrine of Creation: : The Command of God the
Creator, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090345, softcover:
ISBN 0567051099
- Volume IV Part 1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090418, softcover:
ISBN 0567051293
- Volume IV Part 2: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the Servant
As Lord, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090426, softcover:
ISBN 0567051390
- Volume IV Part 3, 1st half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ
the True Witness, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090434, softcover:
ISBN 0567051897
- Volume IV Part 3, 2nd half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ
the True Witness, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090442, softcover:
ISBN 0567051498
- Volume IV Part 4 (unfinished): Doctrine of Reconciliation: The
Foundation of the Christian Life (Baptism), hardcover:
ISBN 0567090450, softcover:
ISBN 0567051595
- Volume V: Church Dogmatics: Contents and Indexes, hardcover:
ISBN 0567090469, softcover:
ISBN 0567051196
- Church Dogmatics, 14 volume set, softcover,
ISBN 0567058093
- Dogmatics in Outline, (1947 lectures), Harper Perennial, 1959,
ISBN 006130056X
- Church Dogmatics: A Selection, with intro. by H. Gollwitzer, 1961,
Westminster John Knox Press 1994 ion,
ISBN 0664255507
- Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, books with
CDROM,
ISBN 0567083748
- Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, CDROM only,
ISBN 0567083640
""""Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.
Karl
Barth
Jews have God's promise and if we Christians have it, too,
then it is only as those chosen with them, as guests in their house, that we are
new wood grafted onto their tree.
Karl
Barth
Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him.
He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its
opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.
Karl
Barth
Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not
quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.
Karl
Barth
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