Karl Barth (1886–1968)

It is ironic that after thirty-five years and thirteen volumes spanning 9300 pages, Swiss theologian Karl Barth should put down his pen and leave off work on his Kirchliche Dogmatik with a volume dealing with the first step of the Christian life, baptism. It reminds us that theology, by its nature, never reaches the end of its quest to understand God.
This volume has an unusual structure. Barth devotes the first 42 pages to baptism with the holy spirit, then the remaining 190 pages to baptism show more with water. This, although for him, the baptism with the holy spirit (a term Barth equates with divine calling) is essential for making a water baptism effective, whereas water baptism, though also indispensable, is secondary. The first is the work of God, the second the work of man.
Barth organizes his discussion of water baptism into three aspects: source, goal, and meaning, answering each Christocentricly. Rather than locating the command to baptize in the words of the resurrected Christ to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel, Barth finds that Jesus’ submission to the baptism of John is the source of our practice. That the goal is Jesus is expressed in the language used when baptism is performed “in” the name of Jesus.
Barth interrupts his discussion of the third aspect, meaning, with what is most famous about this volume: a rejection of the practice of infant baptism. In taking this position, Barth reversed his own earlier teaching on the subject and expressed agreement with a book his son Markus had written that concluded that the practice had no New Testament support.
Barth does a good job of showing the weaknesses of the exegetical and dogmatic arguments for infant baptism and is certainly right that the central issue for the Reformers was the preservation of the post-Constantinian idea that equated the church and society.
So is Barth right to reject the practice? Only if he is right in his insistence that the baptism with the Holy Spirit refers to the divine calling, which allows us the freedom to choose to seek baptism.
Even when one disagrees with Barth, it is stimulating to engage with his arguments. This is the payoff for persevering through his prolix writing style, which often seems to make a point by recasting the same idea in as many as five different formulations. He’s one of the last masters writing in a German that takes the multi-claused architectonic miracle of an elaborate Latin period as its model for scholarly prose. It is prose marvelously suited to the subtle and complex course of Barth’s thought, which often seems to be engaged in a dialectic with itself. Yet it’s a relief that most no longer write like this. show less

I’m really glad I begun my cursory little glance back into theology with this work after a little over three years of having done virtually zero serious work on the subject. Having possessed both a feigned belief in Christianity during my enrolment at a Catholic primary school in my youth and a subsequently confrontational style of discussion during my predictable, yet still intensely irritating, stage of adolescence where I thought that New Atheism was the real deal it was refreshing to show more come at things from a Protestant perspective.

The series of lectures that Barth has penned here has its slow moments but the two central chapters on theological existence and the threats that the discourse of theology faces both internally and externally were incredibly enlightening and enjoyable. In particular the lecture on Temptation was very moving, causing a momentary atheistic vitriol to be stirred in my gut which I hadn’t felt in years. Thankfully this quickly subsided, but nevertheless the idea that God’s righteous wrath can cause Him to up and turn his back completely on a devoted community’s intellectual and practical efforts, ‘disdain[ing] these offerings of your fatted calves’, was a pretty difficult to pill to swallow. Tough love I guess, eh? The assertion by Barth that one should study the secondary witnesses (say, for instance, the Church doctors who never directly encountered Christ), with their theological systems which stand as the very pinnacles of Christianity, only to have to remain constantly aware while doing so that they too possess a danger which all must be cognisant of, was particularly striking. I can understand why Barth posits this, simul justi et peccatores and all that, but it’s an insight so novel to me to that I haven’t quite got round to fully digesting it yet. I was always a staunch proponent of the idea of Sola Scriptura, a clear heresy decried by my teachers, even during my atheist days - but the idea that some of the finest theologians may have written during periods of God’s withdrawal was patently dismaying.

That’s all to say that only one small discussion within this slim volume was enough to set me down a whole trail of thought I hadn’t considered in years. There are plenty of insights to be gleaned in here and I’d highly recommend it. I’ll close this out with a some fairly sizeable quotes that resonated with me fairly strongly:

‘So excellent may be the theologian's work. But of what help is it? Everything is in order, but everything is also in the greatest disorder. The mill is turning, but it is empty as it turns. All the sails are hoisted, but no wind fills them to drive the ship. The fountain adorned with many spouts is there, but no water comes. Science there is, but no knowledge illumined by the power of its object. There is no doubt piety, but not the faith which, kindled by God, catches fire. What appears to take place there does not really take place. For what happens is that God, who is supposedly involved in all theological work, maintains silence about what is thought and said in theology about him’

‘The God of whom we speak is no god imagined or devised by men. The grace of the gods who are imagined or devised by men is usually a conditional grace, to be merited and won by men through supposedly good works, and not the true grace which gives itself freely. Instead of being hidden under the form of a contradiction, sub contrario, and directed to man through radical endangering and judgment, man's imagined grace is usually directly offered and accessible in some way to him and can be rather conveniently, cheaply, and easily appropriated. Evangelical theology, on the other hand, is to be pursued in hope, though as a human work it is radically questioned by God, found guilty in God's judgment and verdict—and though collapsing long before it reaches its goal, it relies on God who himself seeks out, heals, and saves man and his work. This God is the hope of theology.’

‘In this love there is no fear. This perfect love drives out fear because in it God loved man for his own sake and man loved God for his own sake. What took place on both sides was not a need, wish, and desire but simply the freedom to exist for one another gratis. This was God's own primal freedom for man and at the same time man's freedom which was granted him by God. This was Agape, which descends from above, and by the power of this descent, simultaneously ascends from below. Agape is both movements in equal sovereignty, or, rather, this single movement.’

‘But theological observation of God cannot be a genial and detached survey. Theology cannot be an easygoing (or even interested and perhaps fascinated) contemplation of an object. For in the last analysis the attitude of the more or less enraptured subject toward this object might remain indifferent or skeptical, if not spiteful. If this object allowed its beholder to protect himself behind a fence of reservations, it would not at all be the wonder of God of which we spoke. When this object arouses wonderment of the type we have described, transforming the man whom it involves into an astonished subject, this man also becomes concerned.’

‘The question about truth, therefore, is not stated in the familiar way: is it true that God exists? Does God really have a covenant with man? Is Israel really his chosen people? Did Jesus Christ actually die for our sins? Was he truly raised from the dead for our justification? And is he in fact our Lord? This is the way fools ask in their hearts—admittedly such fools as we are all in the habit of being.’ show less

Can God be known? If so, what is he like? These are the questions Barth begins to tackle in his third volume of "Church Dogmatics," the first of two volumes on the doctrine of God. The first question he answers in the affirmative, but only if we understand that God is free to reveal himself as and how he chooses. If we begin with our own perceptions, building from a natural theology in which we hypothesize big ideas or spin clever deductions and work our way up to God, we inevitably show more construct a lifeless caricature, an idol in our own image, which ends only in dead religion or sterile secularism. Only by humbly receiving God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ as attested in the pages of Scripture can we know the God who has chosen to make himself known.

The second question is misleading as I've phrased it. God is not "like" anything because he is utterly unique, without analogy to anything in our existence. He is the only completely free being, and he has chosen freely to love us. His grace is his holiness, his righteousness his mercy, his patience his wisdom, his unity his omnipresence, his constancy his omnipotence, and his glory his eternity. In his simple multiplicity, in his triune unity, he is then, now, and always only who he is. His attributes cannot be separated out one from another, surgically dissected and labeled and displayed as a monument to our scientific glory. The distinctions within his nature are all expressions of his one, divine, and living being. He can only be understood as we submit to what he has freely chosen in love to reveal through the incarnation as attested in Scripture, and we can only react with thanksgiving and glad service to this incomparable God. show less

Here's my first encounter with Karl Barth: I was asked to present a three minute profile of the man to my class in Bible College. I went to the library's theological dictionary, thinking to find a one or two column profile I could regurgitate in class. It was then that I knew I was out of my league.

Since then I've always wanted to read him. He's touted (for good reason) as one of if not the most influential theologian of the twentieth century. Still, every time I think about buying his show more Church Dogmatics, I get a nervous flutter in my stomach. 9,000 pages is a serious commitment. Enter: Evangelical Theology.

Near the end of his career, Karl Barth toured the United States and offered a series of seventeen lectures on what constitutes true Evangelical Theology. This book is the text of those lectures. It provided me with a good grasp of the way he thinks without having to wade through the details of theological battles fought in the mid-1900s.

Barth is everything I hoped he would be. His passion shines through on every page. His writing is full of pithy quotable sentences worth spending time thinking about. Most of all, he views theology as a high calling—an important science.

For years I've encouraged anyone entering theological study to read Hulmut Thielike's A Little Exercise for Young Theologians. I now have two books to recommend. show less