Karl Barth passed away forty-four years ago today, on
December 10, 1968. Since he is generally regarded as the greatest Christian
theologian of the twentieth century, I am writing this in memory of his life
and the significant contributions he made to the world of Christian theology.
Barth was born in Switzerland in 1886. A couple of years
after studying at some of the best universities in Germany, learning from the
leading liberal theologians of the day, in 1911 he became pastor of a Reformed
church back in his home country and served that church for ten years.
In 1919, Barth published a commentary, The Epistle to the Romans (Der
Römerbrief). That seminal book resulted from his struggle over
what to preach during the difficult years of World War I. What he had learned
from his liberal professors did not seem to work, so as he began work on that
book in 1916 he turned to what he called “the strange new world within the
Bible.”
Despite not having a doctorate, Barth was appointed a
professor in Göttingen in 1921, and he taught in Germany until he was exiled
from the country (Germany) in 1935. He was exiled partly because of his penning
the Barmen Declaration the year before, a document of the Confessing Church
that was formed in opposition to the “German Christians” who pledged their
loyalty to Hitler.
Barth’s greatest theological achievement was the writing of Church Dogmatics, a detailed exposition
of Christian doctrine that ended up being more than 9,000 pages (and six
million words!) and which was published in thirteen volumes from 1932 to 1967.
The great Swiss theologian made only one visit to the United
States, in 1962. I still regret not being able to go with some seminary friends
to hear Barth speak that year when he came to Chicago Divinity School. (I
didn’t think I had the time, and as a full-time student with a wife and two
children I certainly didn’t have the money to make that trip to Chicago from
Louisville.)
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| April 20, 1962 |
Many of you have heard the anecdote about a question he answered
when he was in the U.S. A seminary student asked him what the most momentous
discovery of his long theological life had been. Barth’s terse answer was, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible
tells me so.”
Barth was widely criticized by conservative Christians who
thought he was too liberal. But ironically, his theology was developed mainly in
opposition to the theological liberalism of the early twentieth century—and the
support of the German war effort by some of his former liberal theology
professors.
It is true that Barth did not affirm the inerrancy of the
Bible, and he accepted the historical-critical method of biblical
interpretation. But he rejected many of the central emphasizes of theological
liberalism and re-emphasized many of the central themes of the Protestant
reformers. Thus, in this country, his work became widely known as neo-orthodox theology.
Personally, I was influenced more by another Swiss
theologian, Emil Brunner (1889-1962) with whom Barth sometimes disagreed. But
they both were advocates of neo-orthodoxy—a theology of the “radiant center,” which
I have long emphasized in my teaching and writing.
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