Evangelicals and Karl Barth: Friends or Foes?

by
Mark DeVine

Delivered at the Annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Societ, Colorado Springs, CO (2001).

In 1980 Gregory Bolich published Karl Barth and Evangelicalism in which he

divided evangelicals into two camps in relation to the theology of Karl Barth—namely

friends or foes. Albert Mohler, now president of the Southern Baptist Theological

Seminary, further sub-divided evangelicals into three categories in his yet unpublished

dissertation entitled Evangelical Theology and Karl Barth: Representative Models of

Response. These two works bear witness to the inability of evangelicals, three decades

after Barth’s death in 1968, even to approach consensus regarding his theology. In this

paper I will suggest that Barth should not be regarded as an evangelical. His denial of

Biblical inerrancy alone must exclude him from the evangelical ranks. However, I will

contend that Barth’s theology can serve as a model for evangelical theology in certain

crucial aspects. I will also argue that ignorance and misunderstanding of Barth’s work

among evangelicals has led to inaccurate construals of his thinking and sad neglect of the

Barthian corpus. I will suggest that Barth be viewed by evangelicals as more friend than

foe, albeit with some serious blind spots. The chief purpose of my paper is to encourage

evangelicals to give Barth another look or perhaps, a first look before consigning him to

that contemptible class of dismissable and neglectable heretics one may and perhaps must

comment upon but need not read.

Evangelical Response to Barth

Evangelical assessment of Barth’s theology presents an extraordinary range of

contradictory conclusions. In 1954 Cornelius Van Til virtually identified Barth as the
worst heretic in the history of the church: “No heresy that appeared at any of [the

councils of Nicea, Chalcedon, and Dort] was so deeply and ultimately destructive of the

gospel as is the theology of Barth.” 1 Few events frustrated Van Til more than the periodic

appearance of favorable assessments of Barth among evangelicals. The above quote was

prompted by evangelical praise for Barth’s affirmation of the virgin birth. Van Til’s

response, published in the Westminster Theological Journal essentially insisted that

Barth’s theological system precluded such an affirmation notwithstanding Barth’s own

clear statement on the matter.

Meanwhile the fundamentalist Presbyterian pastor and founder of Eternity

magazine, Donald Grey Barnhouse could gush “Barth is in the camp of the true

believers.” In 1986 J.I. Packer contended that Barth provided contemporary theology

with a “powerful Bible-based restatement of Trinitarian theism,” “Barth’s purpose of

being rigorously, radically, and ruthlessly biblical and his demand for interpretation that

is theologically coherent, is surely exemplary for us.”2 Among Evangelicals favorable to

Barth, perhaps Bernard Ramm could be viewed as Van Til’s evangelical opposite. In his

1983 monograph After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology, Ramm

called for recognition of Barth’s theology as the best model for the future of evangelical

theology.3 Ramm’s subsequent writings confirm his deep and grateful dependence upon

Barth.

While Van Til and Ramm retained their respective views, Carl F. H. Henry’s

reception of Barth’s theology developed over time. In his 1969 address in a plenary

1
Cornelius Van Til, “Has Karl Barth become Orthodox?” Westminster Theological Journal 16(1954), p.
81.
2
J.I. Packer, “Theism for Our Time,” in God Who is Rich in Mercy ed. Peter T. O’Brien(Homebush
West, Australia: Lancer Books, 1986), p.10.
session of the Evangelical Theological Society, Henry identified Barth as part of the

problem, not the solution, to the ongoing effort by evangelicals to preserve the

reformation doctrine of justification by faith within the Protestant community.4 But by

1995 Henry found himself pointing others to Barth as a faithful champion of orthodox

teaching on justification. In the article, entitled Justification: A Doctrine in Crisis,

Henry quotes Barth again and again against betrayals of the doctrine of justification by

faith he identifies emerging from numerous ecumenical efforts to reconcile longstanding

Protestant-Catholic doctrinal differences.5

This brief review of the vast range of evangelical opinion of Barth’s theology

only represents the tip of the iceberg. In certain cases contradictory readings of Barth can

be accounted for with some confidence. For example, it seems clear that Van Til ruled

out the possibility of development in Barth’s theology over time. Thus, he

unapologetically read Barth through the lense of his earliest writings despite Barth’s own

disavowal of many of those early views. Equally certain was Ramm’s insensitivity to

evangelical nervousness regarding Barth’s curious double-talk concerning the historicity

of Biblical accounts.

Can Barth be Understood?

Barth drew fire from the left and from the right. The difficulty of understanding

Barth should not surprise us. The sheer volume of his output alone presents would-be

interpreters with a daunting task. Barth also stands as one of the most original theological

minds the church has ever produced. Add to the mix profound developments in Barth’s

3
Bernard Ramm, After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1983).
4
Carl F.H. Henry, “Justification by Ignorance: A Neo-Protestant Motif? JETS 1970.
5
Carl F.H. Henry, “Justification: A Doctrine in Crisis,” JETS 38/1 (March 1995) 57-65.
theology over the course of his career and the difficulties deepen. After critiquing Barth

negatively for several decades, following a personal encounter with Barth on his vist to

America in 1962, Carl Henry published an article entitled “The Enigma of Karl Barth”

which seems to mark something of a turning towards a discernibly more positive

engagement of Barth’s theology.

The answer to the question is “yes!” Barth can be understood, but only with great

and sincere effort. Understanding of Barth will require that we first read him. Albert

Mohler has rightly noted that many evangelicals who worked hard to cast Barth as an

enemy of the gospel showed little evidence of having read him. Second, we must

recognize that Barth’s views do change dramatically over time, especially when we move

from the Barth of the Romerbrief to the Barth of the Church Dogmatics. Third, we must

let Barth say what he says and take it at face value. Thomas Torrance correctly

complained that Cornelius Van Til simply refused to believe it when Barth showed his

conservative orthodox side in ways Van Til did not anticipate.

Still, even if Barth is understandable, is he worth our time. Does a cost benefit

analysis encourage the investment of time involved. A colleague of mine put it this

way—why pick through a hand full of bones for a tiny bite of catfish which then still

contains a bone or two—better to eat flounder. He’s got a point. But it is also true that

some of the church’s best teachers had glaring weaknesses and blind spots. I think

esspecially of the atrocious allegorizing of biblical texts of which Saint Augustine was

capable. I want to suggest that the effort to read Barth is worth it. But first I want to

address briefly certain common evangelical charges against Barth.

Universalism

In 1967, Joseph Bettis published an article in the Scottish Journal of Theology

entitled “Is Karl Barth A Universalist.” 6 Once again we note the difficulty of simply

comprehending Barth’s views, much less forming a critique. No one can read very far

into any volume of the Church Dogmatics without concluding that, yes obviously, Karl

Barth was a universalist. But, Barth repeatedly and pointedly denied the charge of

universalism. Barth rejected what he understood as the only two options for limiting the

scope of God’s redeeming activity, namely Arminianism and double-predestination.

Barth’s statements in CD 4/3 make it clear both that Barth believed it proper to pray and

hope for the salvation of the whole world but that to advance a doctrine of universal

salvation would be impossible. Dale Moody, the late Southern Baptist theologian, studied

with Barth in Basel. During a final meeting in Barth’s study, Barth said, “dear brother

Moody, I hope that if, in the end, God saves the the entire world, you will not be too

upset.”

I would argue that several convictions combine in Barth’s theology to produce a

kind of universalistic inertia of a distinctively calvinistic character. The first factor,

however is pointedly against Calvin. Barth accepts Calvin’s identification of the glory of

God as the ultimate divine purpose in creation and redemption. But, he rejects Calvin’s

contention that the divine glory might display itself equally according to the divine

justice in the case of the reprobate and of the divine mercy in the case of the elect.

Barth’s celebrated Christomonism combined with a denial that the divine justice and

mercy oppose one another results in a doctrine of election more akin to single

predestination but with the possibility of the universal scope of salvation held out as at
least something for which we might hope. Barth, like any good calvinist, believes that

everyone for whom Christ died will be saved. Barth views Christ as the elect one,

resulting in redemption for all who are found in Him.

It should be noted that Barth’s distinctive tendency toward the affirmation of

universal atonement has a definite “calvinistic,” or perhaps, radical Augustinian character

in that it powerfully contends for the sovereignty of God and the gratuity of salvation.

Barth’s bent toward universalism emerged from the same conviction which also resulted

in his rejection of both Arminianism and double-predestination, namely, God’s freedom

in salvation.

When one considers the relative dominance of reformed thinking within

evangelicalism, it seems curious that Barth’s view would have been seen as any more

threatening to the missionary enterprise than evangelicalism’s own reformed contingent.

For reformed Christians, obedience to the missionary mandate derives from gratitude and

love to God for his grace, the desire of beloved children to please their heavenly father,

and love for those beloved by God whom God wills to reach through the witness of the

Church. Thus, as regards the preaching of the word and the missionary enterprise, it

would seem that Barth should be in no more trouble with evangelicals than our reformed

sisters and brothers.

The real objection to Barth’s universalism for evangelicals must be the witness of

scripture. However, we evangelicals also should take seriously the rather formidable

biblical support Barth finds for the universalistic tendency at work within his theology.13

6
Joseph D. Bettis, “Is Karl Barth a Universalist?,” Scottish Journal of Theology 20 (1967) 423-426.
13
See, e.g., John. 12:32; Rom. 6:10, 11:32-36; Eph. 1:9-10; Col. 1:15-20; 1 John. 2:2. For Barth, the
biblical witness sets forth a combination of factors which come together to produce the universalistic bent
of his theology.. These are (1) the objective reconciliation of all for whom Christ died, (2) that Christ dies
At the same time, Barth acknowledges the biblical warnings of eternal damnation

together with the freedom of God in salvation and cites these factors as reasons for his

refusal to embrace universal salvation as a warranted conclusion for Christian

proclamation.14 Barth’s position is that the theologian has no prerogative either to affirm

or to deny universalism in principle since this is a derogation of God’s freedom.

The Bible: Revelation or Mere Witness to Revelation?

Here I want to address what has become perhaps the most common criticism not

so much of Barth, but of neo-orthodoxy, with which Barth tends to be identified. I believe

that the term neo-orthodoxy is misleading and virtually useless in comprehending the

theology of Karl Barth. In any case, it is often noted that neo-orthodox theologians

contend that the revelation of God or the Word of God cannot be identified with Scripture

but that the Word or revelation can be found within the scriptures. This view applies to

once, for all, for the sins of the whole world (1 John. 2:2), (3) the conception of Jesus Christ as the first-
born of all creation, (4) the affirmation of true humanity as hidden in Christ, and (5) the understanding of
Christian hope as the unveiling of Jesus Christ which includes the manifestation of the children of God.
Once his distinctively high view of the freedom of God in the work of salvation is added to the above
theses, the justification for identifying Barth’s understanding as a universalistic “inertia” becomes clear. It
is an accumulation of factors which draws Barth toward the hope of universal redemption. It would seem
that reformed evangelicals must at least experience some unease in a cocksure denial of universal salvation
in face of the biblical affirmation that Christ died for the sins of the whole world (1 John. 2:2). At the same
time, Barth is confronted with clear biblical warnings of eternal damnation. In fact, just these biblical
witnesses, togethr with the same conviction of God’s freedom in salvation do give Barth pause, and are
identified by him as the cause of his refusal to accept universal salvation as a warrnted conclusion.
14
On the “peril” attending superficial critiques of Barth’s univrsalism, see R.A. Mohler, Barth, esp. pp.
177-185 and Joseph D. Bettis, “Is Karl Barth a Universalist?,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 20 (1967),
423-436. Cf. also CD 4:3, 477-478. For evidence of the tension Barth experiences in dealing with the
issue of the scope of salvation, note this statement: “The old theologians used to end their work with the
doctrines of the eternal blessendness and eternal damnation, and in this context to ask how the blessed feel
when they think of the damned. The answer was that the thought does not trouble them: on the contrary,
when they look at the damned they rejoice that God’s honor is so great. It would be better if we restrain
ourselves here and not sing with Dante the song of paradise, much less the more famous song of hell. If we
want to understand condemnation correctly, we must hold fast to the fact that all men (we too!) are his
enemies--but that we all go to meet the Judge who gave himself for us. It is true that he is the Judge; there
can be no doctrine of universal salvation. Nevertheless, he is the Judge whom we Christians may know.
Would it not be better in the time of grace in which we still live to proclaim to men this good news, to tell
them who our Judge is, rather than to reflect on whethr there is and eternal damnation?” Karl Barth,
Learning Jesus Christ through the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1964), p. 82.
true Protestant Liberals but not to Barth. There is no higher-critical separation of the

gospel kernel from the mythological husk in Barth as one finds in the writings of Adolph

Von Harnack and Rudolf Bultmann. Barth stands under the Scriptures not beside or

above them as the higher critics tended to do. In fact, Barth’s aversion to the pretentions

of the higher critics becomes obvious in his decades long correspondence with Bultmann.

What is true is that Barth distinguished between the Bible as a human book

susceptible to historical investigation and interpretation and the revelation of God itself

which the Bible may become according to the working of the Holy Spirit. What did Barth

mean by this? What he did not mean is that the Biblical witness depends upon either the

internal witness of the Holy Spirit or its reception by man to become true. What he did

mean was that genuine understanding of the word of God, genuine reception of the

revelation of God always involves “profitable” understanding, or “salvifically

efficacious” understanding. Like Calvin before him, when the words only touches the

brain, understanding has not been achieved. Only those who encounter salvifically the

One to whom the scriptures bear witness can be said to have benefited from revelation.

Barth conviction that God’s sovereignty extends to knowledge of himself caused him to

draw back from statements about the Bible which suggested general access to the

rvelation God. Ironically, similar concerns related to God’s sovereignty and freedom led

Barth to oppose liberal and higher critical views of scripture and inerrancy. For Barth,

both views suggested a kind of exalted position of man above the Bible from which the

former could deny its authority and the latter could pro it up. What inerrantists in

America viewed as a necessary defence of Biblical authority involved, for Barth, an

appeal to some imaginary external guarantee in order to secure what the Bible could not

lose.

So, then, can Bath serve as a model for evangelical theology? I believe so, in certain

repsects.

Defining Protestant Liberalism7

Putting Doctrine in its Place

Barth identified the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher as the greatest threat to

the gospel and tended to account for most of what was wrong with moder theology

according to a failure avoid Schleiermacher’s influence. According to his own

conviction, Schleiermacher had partaken of the fundamental Christian fellowship-

producing experience of the United Brethren without sharing Moravian doctrinal

convictions or at least without sharing the capacity to articulate that experience in a form

recognizable within that community. Thus, nothing belonging integrally to

Schleiermacher's formative initiation into the Christian community biased him against

Kant's exclusion of metaphysical referents from the knowable realm. Convinced that the

experience he enjoyed at Niesky and Barby held the clue both to the highest fulfillment

of human nature and to the secret of universal truth, Schleiermacher also welcomed

Kant's insistence that the mind was not competent to comprehend the whole of reality.

However, since the precise nature of Schleiermacher's experience involved "neither a

7
For what follows see my “Friendship and the Cradle of Liberalism: Revisiting the Moravian Roots of of
Schleiermacher’s Theology,” Churchman 112/4 (1998), 339-356.
Knowing nor a Doing, but a modification of feeling," He was bound to reject Kant's

identification of the moral consciousness as the organ of human religion.8

Instead, feeling, according to Schleiermacher, is the unifying element which

comprehends the essential nature of the Christian self-consciousness most fully and in an

explicitly religious way. Doctrines then, odious to Kant in that they suggest

epistemological capabilities beyond their reach, are not dismissed by Schleiermacher so

much as they are dethroned and domesticated. No longer should dogmas judge of true

faith. Instead, true faith will assess doctrines as attempts to give expression to the content

of the Christian self-consciousness.9 Thus, attention to doctrinal formulation, both

historic and contrutive, runs high in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehrer because it involves

the explicit attempt to give expression to the content of the Christian self-conscousness.

Whenever doctrines stray beyond their descriptive function, they tend to obscure

and even undermine true faith rather than confirm and nurture faith. Schleiermacher's

fascinating dialogue Christmas Eve displays clearly his view of the danger posed to faith

by an over intellectualizing fixation upon doctrinal and historical concerns.

Significantly, this Advent dialogue is set in a middle class German home quite

similar to those which would have hosted Schleiermacher's beloved salons. As various

guests arrive, the conversation gradually centers around the question of the virginal

conception of Jesus Christ and the broader question of the incarnation itself. The evening

is almost spoiled by the tense debating of the men who are bent upon an analytical search

8
Christian Faith, 5-12; Soliloquies, 20 n., 30-31.

9
Christian Faith, 76-93. See also Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline on the Study of
Theology, (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1966), . 67-68, 78-79.
for some conclusive understanding of those ancient events surrounding the birth of the

Christ child. At length, Ernestine, the hostess, and her young daughter, named

conspicuously, Sophie, rescue those gathered and salvage the spirit through music. The

evening ends with the entire cast singing Christmas hymns in unison around the piano as

Sophie plays and true Christian communion is achieved, not just without, but in spite of

the thorny questions of doctrine left unresolved.10

Evangelical Liberal?

B.A. Gerrish contends that the apparently oxymoronic labeling of Schleiermacher

as a liberal evangelical is actually redundant.11 According to Gerrish, Schleiermacher

belongs to the ranks of evangelicals because, as with Luther, it was his own distinctively

Protestant consciousness which served as the basis of his theological inquiry. Still,

Schleiermacher was a liberal because "he did not consider himself tied to old expressions

of [that consciousness]."12 Certain current trends among some self-identified American

evangelicals may indicate an unwitting drift toward proving Gerrish right.

The Psychologized Gospel

When one reflects upon the decidedly psychological focus of Schleiermacher's

theological program, the fascination of the church with the psychology of recovery and

self-esteem becomes particularly interesting. Schleiermacher depended upon his ability

to describe the actual events within the self-consciousness of his audience in order to win

10
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, (Richmond, VA:
John Knox, 1967).
11
G. P. Fisher first described Schleiermacher's theology in this way in his History of Christian
Doctrine (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1897), 512.
12
Gerrish, Prince of the Church, 32.
them to communion with the Savior as mediated by the church. Similarly today, many

pulpits relatively devoid of serious engagement with scriptural texts overflow with

elaborate descriptive construals of personal experience aimed as producing the

exclamation "Aha!, that sounds exactly like me." Audiences act as competent judges

while the message awaits their verdict.

From his early twenties Schleiermacher could only receive dogmatic confessional

demands as a distraction, even a barrier to his embryonic Christian experience.

Accordingly, for Schleiermacher, doctrine, far from functioning as a legitimate test of

genuine piety, had to prove its viability according to its descriptive power in relation to

one's own faith. This meant that the doctrine of the Trinity, the vicarious atonement of

Jesus Christ, miracles, and virtually the whole of the Old Testament were either retained

uncomfortably or denied altogether. Today, the fascination with the psychologist's power

to describe experience seems to beg the question of truth in ways strikingly similar to

Liberalism's original “turn to the subject.”

The Thirst For Community

Unlike his spiritual heirs within Protestant Liberalism, Schleiermacher never

succumbed to Enlightenment pressures toward autonomous individualism. While

focusing great interest in the uniqueness of individuality, Schleiermacher refused to

comprehend Christian conversion and spiritual growth apart from the community as the

necessary context for their genuine fulfillment. Having set forth his own general

understanding of communion as the very basis for Christian identity, doctrine was

recognized only insofar as it proved supportive of that distinctive shared experience.

 Today certain interpreters of the emergent postmodern culture are celebrating an

apparent widespread longing for "community," "neighborliness," and "civility" as a

special point of entry for Christian proclamation and outreach. Supposedly, the church is

now in a position to offer its own rich tradition and practice of community as the answer

to the current human search. Indeed, rich possibilities of communal intimacy are surely

afforded within the body of Christ. But does this fact warrant supposing that the church's

own promise of divinely-wrought community will easily mesh with human searching

without distortion.

Market-Driven Church Growth

If apologetic doctrinal malleableness is an index to a post-Enlightenment loss of

theological nerve, some late twentieth century evangelicals may have more cause to blush

than would Friedrich Schleiermacher. However much he may have fallen short of his

aim, Schleiermacher did, after all, intend to ground Christian dogmatics upon its own

independent basis, namely, on reflection upon the Christian self-consciousness. It

followed that the relative strength or weakness within the self-consciousness of the

feeling of absolute dependence became the irreducible barometer of genuine Christian

piety.

In this aspect of his thought Schleiermacher’s theology was comparatively more

dogmatic than say, that of Paul Tillich whose method of correlation assumed the burden

of discerning current ultimate questions before searching out an answer from the

Christian revelation. Schleiermcaher has the answer ready to hand, namely, the

heightening of the religious self-consciousness, the content of which is not open for

revision, namely, the feeling of being absolutely dependent.

 Today church growth strategists often speak broadly of meeting felt needs as a

means of access to the unbelieving ear with little consideration of the spiritually

debilitating effects of sin or of the necessity for the work of the Holy Spirit to convict and

draw those who are being saved. Such apologetic efforts would seem to embrace an open

ended and distinctly more robust “turn to the subject” than did Schleiermacher. Where

Schleiermacher insisted upon identifying the "felt need" Christianity proposed to meet,

one hears today of a sovereign audience which churches must satisfy first in order to

prepare the way for receptivity to the gospel. One reads of Jesus Christ conceived as a

product to be marketed. In a curious irony, it would seem that some evangelicals may

have unintentionally, even unconsciously, beaten Schleiermacher at his own game.

The Intrusion of Alien Norms

It may well be that the same person who studied Schleiermacher with the greatest

care and even love rejected his work most aggressively and fundamentally. For Karl

Barth the fatal step for Schleiermacher and for that matter, for any theology worthy of the

name ‘Christian’ is the temptation to acknowledge some alien norm external to the

Christian revelation by which to gauge its viability. Instead, advises Barth,

theology has first to renounce all apologetics or external

guarantees of its position within the environment of other sciences,
for it will always stand on the firmest ground when it simply acts
according to the law of its own being. 13

The crucial intersection between Schleiermacher’s quest and so much that

informs both theologizing and church leadership today may not involve so much a

turning to the subject per se, but simply the act of turning itself. Once Christian

13
Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, 15.
reflection lets itself become distracted from the one object of its witness, namely

God revealed in Jesus Christ according to the witness of Holy Scripture, the

intrusion of alien norms becomes inevitable. It matters not whether new tests of

theological viability issue from current psychological fads, postmodern hankering

for community or fascination with market techniques and managerial theory.

Once Christian proclamation begins to take its epistemological cues from outside

the norma normans of Holy Scripture as the witness to God’s revelation, a lack of

confidence in the possibility of theology itself is already exposed.

The result, too often, as Barth warned, is a Feuerbachian projection of human

dreams, hopes, and fantasies into the metaphysical realm. When this occurs,

anthropology replaces theology and, as Sidney Cave has put it so well, we “make our

poor experience the measure of what God is.” Unlike Schleiermacher, many today

seem oblivious to the erosion the church’s distinctive message as it becomes unwittingly

co-opted by psychological interpretations of the human predicament, market-focused

readings of church growth dynamics, and the agendas of various political

constituencies.14 However compromising of historic Christian affirmations

Schleiermacher’s mature theology turned out to be, the father of Modern theology

pursued his course with his eyes open. Having tasted of something he believed to be

universal and true in the rich religious milieu of Moravian piety, Schleiermacher plumbed

the depths of that experience, became its champion and spent himself in the quest to

discover and nurture this distinctive Christian self-consciousness in others.

14
See e.g., Michael Scott Horton ed., Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical
Church (Chicago: Moody, 1992); and Os Guiness & John Seel eds., No God But God (Chicago:
Moody, 1992).
 Without denying the profundity and genuineness of Schleiermacher’s experience

among the Moravian’s, the practice of defending Christianity on the basis of its power to

evoke and express the content of the human religious self-consciousness reverses the

proper relation between dogmatics and apologetics. Schleiermacher’s quest fits nicely

with the search for a universally verifiable religion, but not with attempts to articulate a

“Christian” theology where doctrines not only express the faith of believers but also test

the appropriateness of appending the adjective “christian” at all. Barth was confident his

former partners at the embryonic stage of the so-called neo-orthodox movement had

failed recognize and so resist the theological Copernical revolution in Schleiermacher’s

theology.

Theology as Science

“ . . . theology has first to renounce all apologetics or external guarantees of its

position within the environment of other sciences, for it will always stand on the
firmest ground when it simply acts according to the law of its own being.” 15

At age 75 Barth remained capable of such sweeping dismissals of apologetics. Why was

this so? What did Barth mean by “apologetics?” The words “external guarantees” offer a

clue. Barth parted company with most of the other so-called Neo-Orthodox and Neo-

Liberal thinkers of his generation in his understanding of dogmatics as a science. In fact

Barth believed that virtually the whole of Protestant theology following Schleiermacher

had betrayed the gospel according to a kind of non-scientific, apologetically-fixated

theological method. From Schleiermacher and Ritschl in the nineteenth century to

Harnack, Bultmann, and Tillich in the twentieth century, protestant theology had,

according to Barth, abandoned genuine the-ology for anthropology. And, however

15
Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), p. 15.
impressive the felt relevance of such efforts might turn out to be, for Barth, “one cannot

speak of God, simply by speaking about man in a loud voice.” 16

The seriousness of Barth’s critique of protestant theology since Schleiermacher’s

so-called “turn to the subject” becomes clear when we examine his understanding of

theology as a science. All sciences, according to Barth, pursue knowledge of some object

or some subject matter. True science concerns itself first of all with the apprehension of

the subject matter in question. Insofar as science remains true to itself, it also remains

true to its subject matter. Thus it will not allow itself to become distracted, diverted or

otherwise preoccupied with secondary concerns such as the potential cultural felt

relevance of its findings. Truth about the subject matter must govern all. Accordingly,

science submits itself to its subject matter as to the means of apprehending the knowledge

it seeks. Differences in scientific method may be expected to vary according to the

subject matter in view. Subject matter determines method, period.

According to Barth, the subject matter of Christian Theology is “God revealed in

Jesus Christ through the witness of Holy scripture.” The uniqueness of its object

determines the means by which theology must do its work. God has given Himself to be

known by faith through the witness of Holy Scripture enabled by the ongoing work of

God the Holy Spirit. Thus, authentically scientific theology requires faith in the

theologian. The God whom theology wishes to know and of whom it wishes to speak

gives Himself to be known aright only to those who seek Him by faith. Scientific

theology will stand under Scripture, not beside or above it as the higher critics tended to

do. In his Epistle to the Romans, the so-called bombshell dropped into the playground of

the theologians, though Barth remained enamored with certain aspects of existentialist

16
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (N.P., Pilgrim Press, 1928), 195-196.
thinking (particularly with Kierkegaard) and his notion of theology as science had not yet

taken shape, even then Barth had rejected the pretentiousness of the still emerging higher

critical hermeneutical methodologies in favor of canon friendly approach to the Bible

which he saw in Calvin—“how energetically Calvin, having first established what stands

in the text, sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls

which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and

the man of the sixteenth century hears. The conversation between the original record and

the reader moves round the subject-matter, until a distinction between yesterday and to-

day becomes impossible. If a man persuades himself that Calvin’s method can be

dismissed with the old-fashioned motto, ‘The Compulsion of Inspiration’, he betrays

himself as one who has never worked upon the interpretation of scripture. 17

(re: Barth and Henry) Might one suggest that Barth rightly recognized the

inaccessability of the claims of the gospel to historical investigation and the danger of

post-enlightenment obsession with prolegomena in ways Henry could not. In fact, I

would suggest that Henry presents an example of exactly the kind of captivity to

prolegomena Barth found unscientific. On the other hand Barth’s fierce protection of

theology’s independence from other sciences led to an impossible attempt to insulate the

historical claims of the faith from historical enquiry. Once the one insists that the events

recorded in Scripture occurred in space and time, which Barth does, the vulnerability of

Christianity to historical enquiry cannot be avoided.

The Last of the Church Fathers?

Barth has been dubbed the last of the Church Fathers mainly because of the

breathtaking scope of his theological goals and the equally stunning breadth of his

17
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Edwyn C. Hoskyns, trans. (London: Oxford, 1933), p.7.
knowledge over a range of theological disciplines from biblical studies to historical

theology to philosophy and dogmatics. Ina day when the weaknesses of over

specialization seem obvious, I would suggest that Barth’s Church Dogmatics presents a

model for evangelicals in at least two respects. First Barth makes available, through the

famous excursuses in the CD, the exegetical foundations of his theological construction.

More so that any systematic theology of which I am aware, Barth’s invites the interpreter

to think alongside him at the exegetical and hermeneutical level.

Second, Barth interacts with the virtually the whole history of exegesis and

theology to an extent unparalleled in the history of the Church. He interacts with the East

as well as the West, with the Early Church, Medieval scholoasticism as well as 18th

century pietism. Barth gives attention both to the whole history of the development of

doctrine and to the voice of the global historic church in way that should make both

Jaroslav Pelikan and Thomas Oden beam.