Described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas, the Swiss pastor and theologian, Karl Barth, continues to be a major influence on students, scholars, and preachers today. Barth’s theology found its expression mainly through his closely reasoned 14-part magnum opus, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik. Having taken over 30 years to write, the Church Dogmatics is regarded as one of the most important theological works of all time, and represents the pinnacle of Barth’s achievement as a theologian.
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[Barth] undoubtedly is one of the giants in the history of theology.
—Christianity Today
There are at least three key ideas in [Barth’s] early thought critical for his later writings. The first is the absolute transcendent sovereign God in contrast to sin-dominated mankind. Second is a dialectical theological method which poses truth as a series of paradoxes. For example, the infinite became the finite; eternity entered time; God became human. Such paradoxes create tension, in which one finds both a crisis and truth. The crisis, the third idea, involves humans. The individual discovers in the tension of the dialectic a crisis of existence, judgment, separation, belief/unbelief, acceptance/rejection of the ultimate truth of God concerning mankind as revealed in the Word.
—Biographical entries from Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
Barth’s greatest influence was theological, with his emphasis on God’s sovereignty placing him firmly in the Reformed (Calvinistic) tradition. He differed radically from the mainstream of continental European theology, rejecting both its subjective emphasis on religious experience and the prevalent idea that Christian doctrine is subject to, or limited by, its historical origins. By reaffirming what Kierkegaard had called an ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between God and humankind, Barth rescued theology from captivity to anthropology—that is, he reasserted God’s reality and sovereignty over human knowledge or imagination.
Karl Barth (1886–1968), a Swiss Protestant theologian and pastor, was one of the leading thinkers of twentieth-century theology, described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. He helped to found the Confessing Church and his thinking formed the theological framework for the Barmen Declaration. He taught in Germany, where he opposed the Nazi regime. In 1935, when he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, he was retired from his position at the University of Bonn and deported to Switzerland. There he continued to write and develop his theology.
Barth’s work and influence resulted in the formation of what came to be known as neo-orthodoxy. For Barth, modern theology, with its assent to science, immanent philosophy, and general culture and with its stress on feeling, was marked by indifference to the word of God and to the revelation of God in Jesus, which he thought should be the central concern of theology.
“The nature of the man Jesus alone is the key to the problem of human nature. This man is man. As certainly as God’s relation to sinful man is properly and primarily His relation to this man alone, and a relation to the rest of mankind only in Him and through Him, He alone is primarily and properly man.” (Page 43)
“No, in theological anthropology what man is, is decided by the primary text, i.e., by the humanity of the man Jesus.” (Page 226)
“Real man lives with God as His covenant-partner. For God has created him to participate in the history in which God is at work with him and he with God; to be His partner in this common history of the covenant. He created him as His covenant-partner. Thus real man does not live a godless life—without God. A godless explanation of man, which overlooks the fact that he belongs to God, is from the very outset one which cannot explain real man, man himself.” (Page 203)
“The time of man begins, therefore, on the basis of the work God has done before his time and not with reference to any work still ahead of him. The time of man begins, therefore, with a day of rest and not a day of work; with freedom and not with obligation; with a holiday and not with a task; with joy and not with labour and toil; under the Gospel and not under the Law. These other things will all come, but when they do they will be secondary and additional. The first thing in the time of man is that he belongs to His Creator; just as the last thing in the time of the Creator is that He belongs to His creature.” (Pages 457–458)
“Man is made an object of theological knowledge by the fact that his relationship to God is revealed to us in the Word of God.” (Page 19)