Against the backdrop of two world wars, the rise of megalomaniacal dictators and a weakening Christian message, Swiss-born theologian Karl Barth emerged as the most influential theologian of the 20th Century.
Born in 1886, Karl Barth was born into a family with connections to ministry that went back generations. His mother was the daughter of a pastor whose family was filled with a history in ministry. His dad taught ministry at the College of Pastors in Basel, Switzerland.
Surrounded as he was by ministry, it was no surprise when young Karl decided to follow in the family business. What surprised everyone, however, was that Karl broke with his family’s conservative Lutheran tradition to enter studies at the University at Marburg, the Swiss center for liberal theology.
Liberal theology focused on the belief that Christianity and the Enlightenment did not need to be in conflict with each other. Liberal theologians like Freidrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm Hermann contended that Christianity was a religion that should be based on the individual experience of the believer with God. They also contended that the religion could not be measured for goodness or badness from an outside observer or observation. This belief of the personal experience would lead to the believer acting in concert with the needs of others to have the same experience that ultimately made up the Kingdom of God.
Karl’s fascination with liberal theology stemmed from his belief that his Father’s theology was dead. He believed that the outside control of dogma was causing active faith to die. He believed in a faith that caused people to look out for the well being of other people. He saw the plight of his parishioners and often preached against the non-action of wealthy Christians to help their working class brothers.
However, that fascination all came to an end with the advent of World War I. What Barth experienced was a church that sold its soul to the government. It was a church protecting its vested interests in a social doctrine that was supported by the government. The church was even promoting the idea of a justification for the war Germany has started.
Disillusioned, Barth entered a period of reflection. He questioned whether Christianity had anything of substance to bring to the world. Was their any hope offered by the church? During this time, Barth started to focus his attention and study on answering one central question, “Who is Jesus?” It is the pursuit of the answer to this question that would guide his professional and spiritual life until the day he died.
Barth believed that interpretation was not something we humans could legitimately do. He would say that it was not possible for the finite to interpret the infinite, the mortal and limited to interpret the eternal. At the same time, it was his belief that the Bible was meant to define the relationship between God and finite humans.
One of Barth’s favorite areas to focus on was the difference between relationship and religion. Sure that religion was focused on the acquisition and advancement of power and the appearance of righteousness, it creates idols that are easily pleased. In that, he muses, religious people create gods of their own so that they can feel justified. Barth states that there is only one God, and he is not owned by any human institution, one Kingdom and one truth. That fact alone delegitimizes any institution because it is not, in the end, the Kingdom of God. Not even the Christian church has that right.
Ultimately, what we know of God is none of our doing. God freely chooses to reveal himself to us since knowing God as He truly is is a human impossibility. But that impossibility is made possible in the revelation of God in Jesus. Jesus said, “I can do nothing except what I see my Father in Heaven doing.” (John 5:30) So what we see in Jesus is the revelation of God in human form.
Having rejected the liberal theology of his youth, Barth went on a voracious study of reformed theology. He found the reading tedious and dry. Author John R. Franke quotes Barth in saying he had entered an, “atmosphere in which the road by way of the Reformers to H[oly] Scripture was a more sensible and natural one to tread, than… the theological literature determined by Schleiermacher and Ritschl.”
With the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the German church lost its way dropping the Gospel for an organized religion bowing to the State. Barth opposed both Hitler and the German national church in sermon, even telling the people of Berlin that they could have only one King and that they must reject Hitler and defy the Nazis. In 1934 he signed the Barmen Declaration, along with other great German theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposing the idea of a superior race and the Nazi control of the Church.
Barth returned to his native Switzerland after his position in Bonn, Germany was taken away by the Nazis. He was offered a professorship at the University of Basel, the town of his birth. He would remain there until his retirement in 1962. Barth would compile his teachings in a multi-volume series entitled Church Dogmatics. In this series he would cover subjects such as the Doctrine of the Word of God (Volume I). He would hold to the position that we can know nothing except that which is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Human speech is given to us to bear witness to God and His Word.
In the second volume, Barth would discuss the Doctrine of God. He addresses the questions, “In the Bible, who speaks?” God speaks revealing Himself. “What does God speak?” God reveals Himself through Himself. “What actually happens when God speaks?” He reveals Himself. He says that God is “other” and only God can reveal Himself, we cannot discover Him unless He reveals Himself. Barth holds fast to the Trinitarian nature of God and reveals Himself to us by sending His Son. In sending the Spirit God continues to reveal Himself by “bringing to remembrance” the things that God has said of Himself. Barth writes, “God Himself is unimpaired unity yet also in unimpaired distinction is Revealer, Revealed and Revealedness.” God is what God does and God is Love.
In the Doctrine of Creation, Barth’s third volume, he attests to the revelation of God in the designed purpose for Creation. This purpose, to be loved and cared for by God, is revealed in Jesus Christ who “did not come to condemn the world, but that the world (Greek, cosmos) might be saved through Him.” God covenanted with Himself to love and care for creation, and especially with humanity, which was made in the likeness of God. In this concept, creation and the Trinity are forever and indissolubly intertwined.
In Volume IV, Barth writes of the Doctrine of Reconciliation. He states that the unity of Christ’s work and person cannot be violated. Yet we must distinguish between the two, for it is the person who saves us by grace, but that salvation comes because this God/Man lived the sinless life we could not and is restoring us to the place we were meant to be in relationship with the Trinity. Sin is no longer what we have done that is wrong. Those sins are paid for by the crucified Lord, but in believing that which has no basis in the Trinity.
Karl Barth died in Basel on December 10, 1968. He has been called one of the preeminent theologians of the 20th Century. He has trained or been the source of training of many of today’s theologians and pastors. There has been a resurgence of interest in his theology. There is now a Karl Barth Society of North America and a Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary.
If you want to know more in brief about Karl Barth, let me recommend Barth for Armchair Theologians by John R. Franke.