The Joy of Being Dogmatic

Karl Barth
(1886 – 1968)

Theology
without
Compromise
 Science or Dogma?
• What does it mean to be
‘scientific’?
• What does it mean to be
‘dogmatic’?
• Are they compatible?
 Science or Dogma?
‘As a theological discipline, dogmatics is the
scientific test to which the Christian Church puts
herself regarding the language about God which is
peculiar to her.

. . . if theology allows itself to be called a science, it

cannot at the same time take over the obligation to submit
to measurement by the canons valid for the other sciences.’

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics

 Science or Dogma?
For medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, Christian
Theology
‘flows from founts recognized in the light of a higher
science, namely God’s very own which he shares with the
blessed. Hence, as harmony credits its principles which are
taken from arithmetic, so Christian theology takes on faith
its principles revealed by God.’
 Real Science
• Barth rejects the idea that modern
‘science’ and rationality is value-free and
objective. In fact it conceals an anti-
Christian ideology.
• The true science of dogmatics must rest
on principles which are God-given and
secure.
 Text
• Why does Barth think that theology
deserves the name of science?
• Why does he think most of what we call
science is ‘heathen’?
 Enlightenment Themes (1)
• Descartes: we start with the certainty of
our own existence and build knowledge on
that
• Kant: we need to recognise that we
actively shape the world, we are the ones
who make it knowable.
• Scientific Method: knowledge is based on
publicly available empirical evidence,
backed up by experimentation.
 Enlightenment Themes (2)
Consequences:
• Dualism: dividing the world between facts
and values; matter and spirit; knowledge
and faith
• Suspicion: questioning traditional
authorities and ‘superstition’
• Optimism: Human rationality can fuel
progress towards a better world
 Liberal Protestantism
• Accepts historical method, questions
traditional doctrines
• Accepts validity of modern science
• Belief in gradual evolution of religious
awareness
• Church part of wider ‘brotherhood of man’
• Historical figure of Jesus more important
than doctrines about him
 World War One
3 Oct. 1914 – 93 German intellectuals, among whom were
almost all of Barth’s university theological teachers, to the
scandalised Barth, signed a manifesto of support for Kaiser
Wilhelm II’s German expansionism. The manifesto
declared:

‘we believe that for European culture on the whole

Salvation rests on the victory which German ‘militarism’,
namely manly discipline, the faithfulness, the courage to
sacrifice, of the united and free German nation will
achieve.’
 Dialectical Theology
‘If I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what
Kierkegaard called the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’
between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as
possessing negative as well as positive significance: ‘God
is in heaven and thou art on earth’.

The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of

their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine.
The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men.’

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans

 Problems?
• If God is wholly other to human beings,
how can human beings speak of God?
• If we need a special revelation from God
to speak of God, doesn’t this undermine
the doctrine of creation – that we are
already made in God’s image?
• If revelation is historical, how can it avoid
the relativising effects of historical
criticism?
 The ‘German Christians’
‘We see in race, folk, and nation, orders of existence
granted and entrusted to us by God. God's law for us is that
we look to the preservation of these orders. Consequently,
miscegenation is to be opposed. ... faith in Christ does not
destroy one's race but deepens and sanctifies it.

In the person of the Fuhrer we behold the One sent from

God who places Germany in the presence of the Lord of
History.’

German Christian statements

The Cross and the Swastika
 Text
• On what basis does the Barmen
declaration reject Nazi ideology?
• What role is played by the ideas of
obedience, lordship and authority in this
rejection?
 Barmen (1)
The church in opposition to the world
• The Christian church is the community of
brethren in which, in Word and sacrament,
through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ acts in the
present as Lord. With both its faith and its
obedience, with both its message and its order,
it has to testify in the midst of the sinful world, as
the church of pardoned sinners, that it belongs
to him alone and lives and may live by his
comfort and under his direction alone, in
expectation of his appearing.
 Barmen (2)
• We reject the false doctrine that the
church could have permission to hand
over the form of its message and of its
order to whatever it itself might wish or to
the vicissitudes of the prevailing
ideological and political convictions of the
day.
 Religion is Unbelief
• All human religion is an attempt to grasp
God on the basis of our distorted and
sinful ideas and wills.
• Therefore all human religion is idolatry and
unbelief (including Christianity, where it is
not true to revelation).
• Can dialogue between religions be
possible on this basis?
 Religion is Unbelief 2
‘Revelation is God’s self-offering and self
manifestation. Revelation encounters man
on the presupposition and in confirmation of
the fact that man’s attempts to know God
from his own standpoint are wholly and
entirely futile.’
Church Dogmatics1/2, p. 301
 Religion is Unbelief 3
‘In religion man bolts and bars himself
against revelation by providing a substitute,
by taking away in advance the very thing
which was to be given by God . . .
Revelation does not link up with human
religion which is already present and
practised. It contradicts it . . . .’
Church Dogmatics1/2, p. 303
 The Fall
• Barth’s alternative to the liberalism and
nationalism he rejected depends on a
strong doctrine of the Fall, ie, that all
human striving after God apart from God’s
revelation is bound to be sinful and
destructive.
• Is this credible or justified? What
objections could be raised to it?
 Text
• What do you think the role of experience, history
and culture is in theology? Does Barth take them
seriously enough?
• Do we need Barth’s stress on the Fall and God’s
initiative to cure us of false optimism, and the
way we turn God into a projection of ourselves?
• How might Barth’s criticism of liberalism and
religion be countered? How fair is it to associate
liberalism with violence and war? Or other
religions with idolatry and rebellion?
 Barth and Fundamentalism
It is easy to caricature Barth as a fundamentalist.
Do not forget:
• For Barth revelation is an event, a transforming
encounter, not a static body of knowledge
• Barth’s theology is always worked out in conversation
with the thinkers and trends of his time
• Barth’s later work emphasises God’s (freely chosen)
solidarity with humankind in Christ.
• Dogmatics is Church Dogmatics. For Barth, theology is
always done in the context of the Church – the Bible
cannot be interpreted apart from that context.
 Church as Event
‘The church is when it takes place that God lets certain
people live as his servants, friends and children, the
witnesses of the reconciliation of the world with himself as it
has taken place in Jesus Christ, the preachers of the
victory which has been won in him over sin and suffering
and death, the heralds of his future revelation in which the
glory of the Creator will be declared to all creation as that of
his love and faithfulness and mercy.’

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics

 Church nothing in itself

‘This something which claims to be the church, and is

before us all in these manifestations, may well be only the
semblance of a church, in which human will and work,
although they allege that they are occasioned and
fashioned by God, are striving to express only themselves.
What is visible in all this is only a religious society.

It will always be in the revelation of God that the true

church is visible.’
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics
 Questions
• Is Barth’s theology just for insiders – for believers who
are already part of the Church? Why should anyone
outside the Church take it seriously?
• If the Church is as flawed as Barth says, why is it given
such a central role in his theology?
• Note the contemporary trend (Stanley Hauerwas,
Radical Orthodoxy) to pit the Church against secular
liberal society, and make it the necessary setting for
Christian truth and practice. Is this a welcome return to
an assertive theology – or a defensive retreat inwards in
the face of an indifferent world?
 The Word of God (1)
 The Word comes from God , not from us.
We can’t read it off our experience, or
reason our way to it. It is not the same as
the Bible, though the Bible contains and
bears witness to it

 ‘The Word of God as directed to us is first

of all such a word as we do not speak to
ourselves, as under no circumstances we
could ever speak to ourselves.’
 The Word of God (2)
 The Word is life and world changing.
It speaks to us, here now, in the
concrete situation we are in. It’s not
just abstract information about God.

 ‘the Word of God is, secondly, the

Word which aims at and touches us in
our existence.’
 The Word of God (3)
 The Word restores our connection with
God. Christ takes upon himself our
rejection of God, and overcomes it.

 ‘the Word of God is in the third place the

Word which has become and does
become necessary for the renewal of the
original relationship between us and Him.’
 The Word of God (4)
 The Word reveals God’s own nature
and self. It is personal. Christ is at the
heart of the Trinity, the essence of
God’s being. He’s not just a go-
between!

 ‘the Word of God is fourthly and

finally the Word by which God
announces himself to man’
 The Humanity of God
Without retracting his earlier stress on God’s
otherness and transcendence, Barth did
later wish to correct its imbalance. The
divinity of God must beheld together with
God’s decision to be together with humanity,
to make humanity, through Christ, his
covenant partner: ‘It is the divinity which as
such has also the character of humanity.’
 Concluding Thoughts
• Barth wrote of a revelation wholly unsullied by
human ideology. But his own theology was
shaped by the context and ideological conflicts
of his day.
• For Barth, the Word of God is utterly sovereign.
And yet it is most fully expressed in the historical
human life of Jesus.
• Are these contradictions? Or creative tensions?
 Barth in a Week
• http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2005/11/
church-dogmatics-in-week.html
• Selected readings and analysis compiled
by Benjamin Myers
• Do not plagiarise this!
• Do not plagiarise this!