E-Book, Englisch, 239 Seiten
Reihe: Explorer's Guide Series
Guretzki An Explorer's Guide to Karl Barth
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9433-8
Verlag: IVP Academic
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 239 Seiten
Reihe: Explorer's Guide Series
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9433-8
Verlag: IVP Academic
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
David Guretzki is professor of theology, church, and public life at Briercrest College and Seminary in Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a coauthor of Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms.
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Karl Barth
Who Was He?
There are widely varying opinions on the status of Karl Barth in theological history. Some readily announce that Barth is a twentieth century “church father” and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, theologians since the Reformation. Others are more reticent, thinking that ascribing greatness to Barth at this point in history is premature. They don’t necessarily belittle his contribution, but argue that it’s still too early to know his long-term impact in the unfolding of Christian history to come. Still others discern that Barth is one of the more dangerous, if not the most dangerous, threats to Christian orthodoxy in modern history.
But whatever one’s theological assessment of his significance (an assessment we will resist making this early in the book), it is always good to situate a theologian’s contribution in the broader context of history. When we do so, we remember that our battles are likely not theirs and that our ultimate assessment of them must not fail at least to consider their life history. So we “begin at the beginning,” as Barth liked to say, and seek here to provide a brief account of his life.
Karl as a Child
Karl Barth’s life began and ended in his hometown, Basel, Switzerland. He was a firstborn son and came into this world on May 10, 1886, to parents Johann Friedrich (“Fritz”) and Anna Katharina (née Sartorius).1 It was almost as if Karl were destined to be an academic, as his father was a professor of theology and his mother was the granddaughter of a professor of literature.
Karl was known as a boisterous young man who was both a dreamer and a fighter. His teachers testified that he often daydreamed in class and consequently often had to stay in for detention for failing to complete his schoolwork. He was also known to enjoy getting into fights with some of the local boys, so much so that Karl became the leader of a small gang of boys. Karl’s band of fighters eventually got into a feud with another gang led by a boy named Martin Werner, who, ironically, also eventually became a theologian!
In between dreaming and fighting, Karl also took up poetry and playwriting. Barth’s most important biographer, Eberhard Busch, called the young Karl a “fighter and a poet.”
Karl the Pupil
Barth began his theological education in 1904 at the university in Berne, Switzerland. The decision to attend Berne was at Fritz Barth’s insistence. Though young Karl resisted, he eventually acquiesced. Once Barth felt his obligations to honor his father’s wishes were fulfilled, he moved to Berlin where he started to soak up the lectures of the great dogmatic historian and theologian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), a professor to whom Barth was drawn more than any other of his teachers.
In Barth’s day it was common for students to study at various universities, so, again at the insistence of his father who was concerned with the liberal influence at Berlin, Karl moved for a brief stint to Tübingen in 1907. Unfortunately for father Fritz, young Karl remained even more unconvinced by the more theologically conservative faculty he encountered at Tübingen and so quickly moved on to Marburg where in late 1907 he became a pupil of Wilhelm Herrmann, one of the most revered professors of dogmatics of the day. Under Herrmann, Barth learned of the intersection of theology and politics—an interest that never left him his entire life. It was during this time that Barth also became acquainted with Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Troeltsch, both of whom Barth would later enter into longstanding theological disputation. While at Marburg, Barth published his first theological article in 1909 in the Journal for Theology and Church (Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche), titled “Modern Theology and Working for the Kingdom of God.” Barth would later point to this article as evidence of what was then his utter and complete support of the program of modern theology, particularly as he had learned it from Herrmann and Harnack.
Barth the Political Pastor
After completing his theological education, some of Barth’s peers were surprised to hear him announce his intention to move into pastoral work. And so, in the autumn of 1909, Barth became an assistant pastor in the Reformed church in Geneva at the same church where the great Reformer, John Calvin, had preached. Barth stayed at Geneva for two years, during which he learned the pastoral ropes, especially the art of preparing sermons, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He himself recollected especially his series on the epistle of James. As sermons, they tended to be quite academic in nature, and Barth later confessed that he doubted the great Calvin himself would have likely approved either of their form or content.
While in Geneva, Karl met young Nelly Hoffmann, a student and accomplished violinist in the confirmation class he was teaching. Karl and Nelly were engaged in 1911 when Nelly was only 18 years old. They eventually married in July 1913. Together, Karl and Nelly had one daughter (Franziska) and four sons (Markus, Christoph, Matthias, and Hans).
In 1911, between his engagement and wedding, Barth moved to Safenwil, Switzerland, where he became the sole pastor of a small village church. At the time, Safenwil was a small industrial town facing serious economic hardship. Barth became politically involved in the labor union movement, and even became a member of the Social Democrat party, which sought to bring social and economic relief to the everyday workers, thus earning Barth the epitaph of being a “red pastor.” Even though Barth eventually left church ministry to became an academic dogmatic theologian, his concern for matters political and their intersection with the reign (kingdom) of God never left him.
Barth spent just over a decade at Safenwil, during which he underwent what most Barth scholars now see as a significant conversion away from the theological liberalism he had adopted from his divinity professors. However, Barth, together with his close pastor friend Eduard Thurneysen (pronounced, “Tur-NYE-zen”), knew that leaving liberalism did not necessarily mean adopting the “positive theology” that his father had hoped he would adopt. But what was the alternative?
It was during an extended study of Plato, Paul, and Kierkegaard during the years of the Great War (World War I) that the pastoral pair, Barth and Thurneysen, discovered a “strange world within the Bible.” More specifically, Barth spent a number of intense months studying the epistle to the Romans accompanied by his own notes—a furiously written biblical commentary that turned out quite unlike most commentaries of the day. That commentary—Barth’s first edition of The Epistle to the Romans (German, Der Römerbrief ) published in 1919—became one of the most significant public evidences that Barth had abandoned the liberal leanings of his teachers. The release of the commentary eventually launched him into the theological limelight. After gaining increased attention during a series of lectures delivered in both Switzerland and Germany, Barth was offered a teaching post at a theological faculty in Germany. Barth accepted the offer and left the pulpit in Safenwil for the podium in Göttingen in 1921. It was during this tumultuous period that the alternative to liberalism began to emerge: the theology of crisis, or dialectical theology (see dialectic in chapter four).
Barth the Professor
Prior to leaving Safenwil for Göttingen, Barth completed an extensive revision of his Romans commentary, which was eventually published in the second year of his first professorship in 1922. Barth’s position at Göttingen was chair of Reformed theology in what was predominantly a Lutheran school. At first, Barth spent his podium time lecturing on biblical exegesis of New Testament books, while in his study he immersed himself in the dogmatic tradition of Reformed theology—an area of study he realized had been lacking in his own theological education.
By 1924, Barth finally began teaching seminars on dogmatics, the lectures of which would much later be published as the Göttingen Dogmatics. While Barth continued to lecture and write, he met Charlotte (“Lollo”) von Kirschbaum, a Red Cross sister from Munich who had great interest in theology. Charlotte eventually, though not without some controversy and family tension, became Barth’s lifelong research assistant, who also took up residence in the Barth household for many years.
When Barth’s fame grew as a cutting-edge theologian who was bucking the theological establishment of the German universities, he again received an invitation to take up a post in Münster, Germany. While in Göttingen, Barth had contended with his Lutheran colleagues, but now in Münster, he was introduced to the intellectual and dogmatic challenges of the Roman Catholic professors teaching there. During this time, he increasingly understood that his task as a Reformed theologian was to engage, and indeed, counter, the Roman Catholic wing of Christian theology. The new context and the pushback he received from his Catholic colleagues convinced Barth that he needed to start his dogmatic project all over again—a task that he took up with vigor mixed with frustration. Most importantly for the so-called Christian Dogmatics in Outline (Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf ), which he began at Münster, Barth felt that he needed to bring his understanding of Jesus Christ even more into the center of his thinking. And so...
