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Why Read Karl Barth?


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For Christmas this past year, I asked for two books: Incarnation by T.F. Torrance and Christiane Tietz's new biography every theology nerd has been raving about, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict. I can confidently say, even before I received the books, that the subjects of these two books have had more impact on my life and Christian walk than any other figure outside of the early church fathers. Further, my appreciation and passion for the writings of Torrance intimately stems from my appreciation for his spiritual and intellectual mentor, Karl Barth. Why should you read this towering, momentous figure Karl Barth? What is there to be gained by reading and meditating on Barth's doctrinal and biblical expositions?


"There is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ."


I first learned about Karl Barth after coming out of a Christian Theology class I took during my sophomore year in college. My theology professor kept saying this phrase in connection to natural theology (the assumption and study of the natural world in order to come to truths about who God is) and as time went on I was more and more captured by the phrase. My professor explained that many times theologians will speak as if what can be learned about God through nature is essential to truly understanding what Christians have in the biblical text. In other words, Christian theologians sometimes speak as if we needed the natural world in order to interpret the Bible. The more I kept thinking about that phrase, though, that "there is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ," the more I came to see clearly the problems I was already perceiving in a theological system which allowed language about God to be bound by what we can see (or think we are seeing) in the natural world. My professor helped me realize that to concede that the natural world is a valid lens through which to interpret Divine Being is to refuse to take the revelation of God - which we most definitely have in Jesus Christ - as fully and authentically serious. Put simply: to look elsewhere other than where God has clearly said "Here I am!" is to not take God's "Here I am!" seriously.

Where is God's true and exclusive "Here I am!"? It is in Jesus Christ! Barth says. Barth's famous quip demonstrates the absolute focus of the whole of his massive theological corpus: Christ, Christ, and only Christ! Now, my theology professor at the time would not have admitted that what he was espousing was what Barth taught - since evangelicals, generally, are not very friendly to Barth as they have considered his teachings on the Bible and the preaching moment - but, not being able to get the phrase out of my head I looked it up. And there, looking back, was Barth's wrinkly, intelligent face. I immediately started devouring his more introductory works (like this one and this one), and was, simply, hooked!

Karl Barth is undoubtedly the most influential, provocative, and important theologian of the twentieth century. As the son of a well-respected academic himself, Barth grew up at the very beginning of the twentieth century, and through his political and theological disputations during the Second World War helped to cement his name and doctrine as internationally renown. Theologically, he is perhaps best known for his massive, unfinished set of theology books, the Church Dogmatics. Among the wider evangelical world, Barth is characterized by certain teachings of his which evangelicals perceive deviate from the norm of Christian orthodoxy (yet, considering the Protestant liberalism in which he grew as a theologian and thinker, he is a stark and healthy contrast). Perhaps one disclaimer could be made about Barth (this, keep in mind, coming from an evangelical myself): the way Barth is interpreted and appropriated today among those who are reasonably characterized as Progressive Christians may help you to see where Barth could have been clearer on the implications of what he wrote. This is not to say that how he is appropriated among Progressive Christianity today is the right way of interpreting Barth, but keep in mind that Barth has been used to espouse and set the cornerstone for contemporary Christian Progressivism (as seen in most of the mainline denominations). Nevertheless, he will undoubtedly go down as a flawed theologian who still helped the Church worldwide use language which benefitted Christians' understanding of their own doctrines, like revelation, who God is in Christ, and, most of all, the nature of the Triune God's relationship with humanity.

So, to return to the question: Why should you read Karl Barth?

Well, in my experience, to learn from Barth that the locus (the exclusive place) of God's revelation is Jesus Christ (and, I would add, Jesus Christ as put forth by the whole biblical text) was to revolutionize my understanding of what the task of theology, and the Christian life, in turn, is all about. Some interesting implications, too, opened up concerning theology's relationship with philosophy, and my understanding of what it means for "all truth to be God's truth," a favorite saying of many natural or analytic theologians. Karl Barth, as an expositor of God's Word and as a Christian theologian in harmony with the voice of the Christian past, will help you to see the centrality, beauty, and exclusivity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Triune God which he reveals to all people. Amid all of Barth's heady and complicated theological musings is a beautiful, central focus on God as revealed in Christ, and can be a helpful, useful way of understanding anew the task that Christians have in continually reforming, re-using, and rethinking their employment of theological language.


Some works on Barth's writings/life:






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