Berkouwer’s book was titled The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Barth wished the title had been The Triumph of Freedom in Jesus Christ) he relentlessly attacked modernism he defended the revealed Word of God he even defended the ideas of sola Scriptura and solo Christo - but in his mouth the meaning of these words changed, just as the meaning of “election” changed. This deception - and it is an incredible deception by which Barth may have deceived himself as well - is seductive. Barth claimed to be standing squarely in the “Reformation tradition” he had offered some “correctives” to Calvin, such as saying that all men are elected in Christ to salvation, but Barth clearly claimed to be a child of the Reformation. One of the things that makes Barth so puzzling to Christians is that he perfected the art of using all the right words to say all the wrong things. Let us address the matter of insincerity first. Karl Barth seems to have been guilty on all three counts. Now there are three principal reasons why one’s writing may be unclear: (1) confusion in one’s thought, which is exhibited by confusion in one’s writing (2) insincerity, as George Orwell explained in his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which motivates a writer to disguise his true intention and meaning by using words in equivocal and subversive ways and (3) a guiding philosophy which holds that the assertion of contrary and even contradictory statements is genuine philosophy and theology.
has neither head nor tail, and where one looks for the middle there is darkness.” His turgid prose, not clarified by his English translators, does not lend itself easily to understanding one might say of Barth’s own theology, as he said of someone else, “your enterprise. A second reason that Barth remains a conundrum to Christians is his style. These turns in his theology are confusing enough for the reader, but there are other, far more important, reasons for Barth’s continuing opacity. In the 1930s Barth retreated from the paradoxical extremes of the 1920s and advocated a theology that he said was more in line with the Reformation. During the second major phase of his thinking, roughly the 1920s, he was indebted less to the nineteenth century German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher than to the nineteenth century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. During and after World War I, a conflict that shattered, in general, the naive optimism of many modernists and liberals, and, in particular, Barth’s faith in his modernist teachers, Barth emotionally reacted against modernism and attacked it. In his own words, “I had made myself a committed disciple of the ‘modern’ school, which was still dominant up to the time of the First World War, and was regarded as the only school worth belonging to.”Īfter leaving the university, in 1909 Barth served first as a pastor in Geneva, and then, from 1911 to 1921, in Safenwil, Canton Aargau. Educated in modernism, liberalism, and the historical-critical method by Adolf von Harnack, Wilhelm Herrmann, and other members of the theological company of Korah in Germany, Barth’s first voice spoke modernism fluently. First, his theological views changed over the years, even during the decades in which he wrote Church Dogmatics. Indeed, the Karl Barth Society of North America, founded in 1974, is flourishing, from all accounts, and many neo-evangelicals, some of whom are in the (neo) Evangelical Theological Society, are trying to revive the Barthian corpse and corpus.ĭespite, or perhaps because of, the volume of his work (his unfinished Church Dogmatics is nine times as long as Calvin’s Institutes and twice as long as Thomas’ Summa Theologcae), Barth remains an enigma to many Christians, for several reasons. For several decades in the middle of the century, Barth was a main attraction in the theological vanity fair, and his influence, now diminished, has not disappeared. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung must be ranked among the most influential politicians of the twentieth century John Cage and Elvis Presley among the most influential musicians and Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol among the most influential painters. That, of course, is a dubious distinction, since Adolf Hitler, V. Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) must be ranked as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Clark’s book - which is the best available on Barth - may be obtained from the Foundation for $18.95. The following essay is the Foreword to Karl Barth’s Theological Method by Gordon H. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your system please click here onĭownload the E-Book version of this review.ĭownload the Kindle version of this review.
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