Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth
by George Hunsinger
During the last decade of his life (1959-1968), right up to the time of
his death at age 82, Karl Barth took part in an astonishing number of
recorded conversations and interviews. Collected transcripts now filling two
large volumes in the Gesamtasugabe combine to form a total of more
than 1000 pages. The second of the two collections, Gespräche 1964-1968,
ed. Eberhard Busch (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1997), will be discussed
in this essay.
Although the conversations add little to our knowledge of Barth’s
theology in its basic contours, they are fascinating for at least two
reasons. First, they allow us to see Barth in action. We see him, for
example, as a careful listener who first makes sure that he understands the
question before launching into an answer. We also see him as a stickler for
precision who thoughtfully explains why he doesn’t like certain words like
realistisch, or protestantisch, or Toleranz. We see him
joking with an apparent twinkle in his eye, or retorting with critical
relish. Perhaps most unexpectedly, we see him as someone who has committed
vast amounts to memory. Not only are apt lines of poetry or literature
spontaneously quoted -- Goethe, Schiller, Fontane -- but also (to students
from Tübingen) a hefty block of material straight from the Greek New
Testament, not to mention a regular sprinkling of verses from hymns and
songs. Details like these convey a vivid sense of Barth’s humanity.
The conversations are also invaluable, because they allow Barth to
present his ideas in accessible form. Labyrinthine sentences, dialectical to
and fro, extensive thematic development -- all hallmarks of the Church
Dogmatics -- are necessarily at a minimum. Barth simply explains his
views in ordinary language. The result is reminiscent of Luther’s
"table-talk." What we get is something readers of Barth’s
weighty tomes might otherwise think scarcely imaginable -- conversational
theology.
An attempt will be made to survey these conversations in a way that is
reasonably comprehensive. Three headings will be used to collect ideas
scattered throughout the interviews:
ecumenical theology, doctrinal theology, and political theology. Although
Barth addressed a wide variety of audiences -- students, professors, clergy,
lay people, the general radio-listening or television-watching public --
little attempt will be made to keep track of them. For the sake of
simplicity, we will focus on Barth’s expressed views.
Ecumenical Theology
When these conversations took place, excitement was in the air about the
Second Vatican Council, which was nearing or had reached its conclusion.
Perhaps as much as 20% of this volume concerns how Barth sees breaking
developments within Roman Catholicism. At the same time other ecumenical
dialogue partners also come into view, most notably conservative
Protestants, liberal Protestants, and Jews.
Barth had always understood himself as an ecumenical theologian. "I
might claim in all modesty that my Church Dogmatics is neither a
Lutheran nor a Reformed dogmatics. Although I shouldn’t speak with my
mouth too full, I actually wrote it as an ecumenical dogmatics" (p.
14). He believed that internal unity had to occur within the major church
bodies before a larger unity would be possible. "First unity has to
come about for Protestants among themselves. Then in the Catholic church the
conservatives and the progressives will have to unite. And only then will we
be able to get any further" (p. 185). Besetting temptations of
ecumenical dialogue -- evasion, equivocation, compromise and the like --
would bring no real progress. Confessional differences had to be faced
openly and honestly. "It is . . . essential to acknowledge the
differences. Only when the differences are seen and overcome will a true
spiritual unity become possible" (p. 199). Above all, ecumenical
progress would depend on a fresh recovery of the Word. "What we really
need to have is preaching -- I’m talking about the Word --
yes, the Word of God, not on a paar with some sort of dogma, but the Word of
God’s free grace, for you and for me, for us all and for the whole world.
That’s what the ecumenical movement should be doing" (p. 217). To
overcome historic divisions in the church, Barth placed his hopes primarily
on the freedom of God’s Word in proclamation.
Indeed, what Barth found most interesting about Vatican II was not its
turn to the world, but its turn to the Word. "For me the most
interesting thing about the Council wasn’t that it opened itself up more
fully to the world and to the other churches than until now. No, the really
interesting thing was undoubtedly that the Council turned the church toward
the Word, toward the Word of the Gospel" (p. 216). Full
of untold promise, the renewed Catholic emphasis on the Word posed a healthy
challenge to the Protestant churches. "I often actually sense in
Catholicism," Barth said pointedly, "a stronger Christian life
than in the Protestant churches" (p. 199: cf. p. 353).
It occurs to me as something worth pondering that it could suddenly take
place that the first will be last and the last first, that suddenly from
Rome the doctrine of justification by faith alone will be proclaimed more
purely than in most Protestant churches. (p. 100)
One might well ask from time to time whether today the Catholics are not
more in tune with the Reformation than we are. . . . In any case it gives us
something to think about that today one can already converse with many
Catholics with far greater understanding than with certain Protestants. (p.
415)
In particular Barth enumerated five points that gave promise of an
"astonishing renewal" in Roman Catholicism after Vatican II.
1. The Bible has taken center stage and is recognized as the
witness to revelation.
2. Bound up with that is a concentration on Jesus Christ.
3. The church is now understood essentially as the people of God.
4. The genuine function of worship -- with preaching and the
eucharist as its two poles -- has again been placed on the lampstand.
5. A necessary and proper opening of the church to the other
confessions, to the religions and to the world has taken place at the
Council. (p. 324)
Barth’s new irenicism went so far that he even regularly retracted his
earlier famous or infamous remark about the analogia entis as the
invention of the Antichrist (pp. 17, 88-91, 142-44, 484-86). "It is now
no longer necessary to discuss this theory," he noted. "We are in
unity about what can be meant by it" (p. 337).
Barth was not unaware, of course, that historic stumbling blocks still
remained. The question of papal infallibility continued to be what it had
always been, a "great offence" (p. 105). The enormous role played
by Mariology, in which Mary’s significance almost reached that of Jesus,
was also a "great specific difficulty" (p. 193; cf p. 102). While
the Pope and Mary clearly posed the greatest problems, others could not be
ignored. Among them, Barth specifically mentioned the idea of the Roman
Catholic Church as the Incarnation’s prolongation, the church’s overly
juridical character, and above all its displacement of proclamation by the
sacraments (p. 192). "In Catholicism everything revolves a little too
much around the sacrament" (p. 192). Despite these predictable worries,
however, Barth’s attitude toward the Catholic renewal remained upbeat and
hopeful overall.
Conservative Protestantism, though much less prominent, also received
occasional notice from Barth, particularly with reference to the "No
Other Gospel" movement of the day. Against this tendency, Barth was
critical, urging that it was not enough merely to say the right thing --
"the crucified and risen Savior! the entire Scriptures! the whole
confession!" (p. 212). On the contrary, one had to say the right thing
in the right way. Doctrine and ethics must not be separated, he insisted,
especially when it came to grave social evils.
It is not enough only to say, "Jesus is risen," but then to
remain silent about the Vietnam War. . . . Don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t
side-stepped your direct question about whether Jesus is bodily risen. I
said Yes to that. But now everything depends on how that Yes gets
said.(p. 408).
Ethics without doctrine, for Barth, was nothing, but doctrine without
ethics was worse than nothing, serving to undercut the very truth it upheld.
At the same time, the Catholic renewal had made it all the more
imperative for Protestants to return to their own sources. "We have to
discover Luther and Calvin anew," said Barth, "without
becoming their prisoners" (p. 199). Taken together, Luther and Calvin
represented mutually complementary emphases of abiding theological
significance.
Luther and Calvin are constantly concerned about two great themes at
heart. Luther teaches the freedom of the Christian as someone who believes
in God’s Word. Calvin teaches the majesty of God, who gives the gift of
faith and obedience. These are the two poles, so to speak, of the
Reformation. Luther is more oriented toward humanity, and Calvin more toward
God. (p. 193)
Scripture and confession would remain little more than formal principles
unless Protestants could learn once again what Luther and Calvin both knew:
that the gospel is not something the church can ever control or possess, but
that it confronts the church -- both preacher and congregation alike -- as
something ever new (p. 213).
Conservative evangelical theology and modern liberal theology were, Barth
proposed, really siblings under the skin. Each in its own way represented a
regression to the errors of the 19th century. Having both of them in view,
he remarked: "I find it lamentable that in the church’s theology and
preaching, a relapse to the 19th century is everywhere evident" (p.
212). In particular, he noted that the theological left was really less
progressive than it supposed.
It isn’t just a matter of the Bultmann school. I view the whole
Bultmann school as a reversion to questions from the 19th century long since
left behind. Schleiermacher and Feuerbach are also again in the air. At the
time of the "Strauss affair" in Germany, people also spoke in this
way. And now these good people suppose -- I mean those on the
"left" -- that they are producing something highly modern, but in
essence it’s nothing new. Only they don’t know it. They haven’t
adequately studied the history of theology. Otherwise they wouldn’t act as
though a new era had dawned with their existentialism. It’s the same old
stuff in a new form. (p. 212)
Neither the left nor the right could adequately proclaim the gospel,
because neither knew how to uphold contemporary relevance and doctrinal
substance at the same time. Just as the left wanted relevance without
substance, so the right wanted substance without relevance -- the impasse of
the 19th century. "These two extremes," said Barth, ". . .
are for me a thing of the past. On both sides one must go forward instead of
always moving backwards" (p. 213; cf. p. 423).
Several interesting passages offer insight into Barth’s attitude toward
Judaism and Jews. As we now realize from Eberhard Busch’s massive
research, during the Hitler period Barth was far more actively engaged on
behalf of the Jews than was previously known. When asked about Rolf Hochhuth’s
play The Deputy, in which Pope Pius XII is censured for failing to
help the Jews, Barth replied that he had been so taken by seeing the play
that he then arranged to meet the author personally. He hoped a similar play
would be written about the failures of the Swiss. "Because in this area
we didn’t do any better than the Vatican, and we bear our share of
responsibility. Hence, no arrogance on our side!" (p. 201). The
so-called Jewish question, he suggested, was much more nearly a question
about Christians. "Today it is above all important that we grasp this:
that we all stem from the Jews. Christ was a Jew and so were all the people
who wrote the New Testament" (p. 207). A church that turns against the
Jews can only make itself impossible, for by that very token it has turned
against God.
The experience of the Jewish people with God, Barth believed, was of
great importance for the entire world. "In the Jews we have before us
right down to the present day a living Bible, so to speak, in a certain
form; but in any case there they are. They can’t be wiped out, just as the
Bible can’t be wiped out" (p. 208). Barth opposed efforts to
missionize the Jews, because it was a mistake to suppose that Jews needed to
be "converted." Just as Jesus stemmed from the Jewish people, so
the Jewish people were, whether they acknowledged it yet or not, "the
people of Jesus" (p. 208). Barth therefore did not, as has today become
increasingly fashionable, attempt to place Judaism and Christianity on
common ground by muffling christology while amplifying eschatology. He would
not emphasize common hope at the expense of christological disagreement.
"The Christian is not someone who looks only into the future for a
Messiah who has yet to come. On the contrary, the Christian also looks back
first to the Messiah who has already come. Then -- only on that basis, but
then really -- the Christian looks forward into the future for the coming
Messiah" (p. 308). Because of God’s promises and covenant with his
chosen people Israel, the church can never replace Israel but is rather
grafted into it to form a covenanted solidarity. "We are all so to
speak only an expanded people of Israel" (p. 422). God’s constant
faithfulness to Israel, whatever its obedience or disobedience to God, can
only bring hope to us all. "God keeps his promises, God helps this
people. This is something wonderful, this is a consolation" (p. 422).
Doctrinal Theology
Although many theological questions were posed by Barth’s
interlocutors, certain themes remained relatively untouched. Christ’s
resurrection emerged as a major topic, for example, yet little was asked of
Barth about Christ’s saving death. Again, although justification by faith
emerged in general terms, Barth’s remarkable doctrine of simul iustus
et peccator -- which he applied not only to justification, but also to
sanctification -- was not probed. Nor did anyone ask him about important
matters from his unfinished dogmatics. One would especially have liked to
hear him talk about the Lord’s Supper, for example, or about how he would
have approached the entire undeveloped doctrine of redemption. Nevertheless,
despite missed opportunities, the material that surfaced is as engaging as
it is copious.
Barth’s view of the sufficiency of Holy Scripture often came up, but
always in ways that were more nearly practical than doctrinal. Barth
expressed his growing concern about the neglect of Scripture in the life of
the community and the individual believer. "We need to take time again
for Scripture. . . . Gather around the table to study Scripture
together!" (p. 171). The hopes of ecumenical reunion rested on a deeper
encounter with Scripture by Protestants and Catholics alike. "And both
of us together need to learn to think more nearly on the basis of Scripture.
Yes, that can bind us together, and that alone" (p. 194). Bible reading
should follow the ancient pattern of lectio divina. "Every
believer needs to get used to reading continuous passages. . . . For me as a
theology professor, it is a daily duty. . . . One needs to accustom oneself
to reading the Bible" (p. 243). The frantic pace of modern life, he
observed, mitigates against meditation on the Word.
Today theologians are always travelling. Instead of their staying at
home, I fear that a great majority of them are out there sitting in cars, in
waiting rooms, in trains or in airports. When do they ever find time to read
the Bible? . . . What we really need today is almost a new pietism."
(p. 390)
Barth’s appreciation for the vitality of Scripture, he added, had grown
from his experience in the pastorate:
Here’s how it was for me. Not until I was working as a pastor did I
finally discover that the Bible is a good book. Yes, I had become a pastor
without knowing that it’s a really good, a really interesting, a really
worthwhile book, a book above all books. And then I learned it. And for me a
completely new existence began. (p. 432)
Following the lead of Luther and Calvin, Barth emphasized that the
central content of the Bible was not a system of doctrines, but Jesus Christ
himself (p. 424). He pressed this insight in new directions, however, when
he turned to hermeneutics. What he once stated in another connection applied
equally well to biblical interpretation: "And in particular one ought
not to resort too quickly to unity, synthesis and homogenizing" (p.
195). Premature closure had to be resisted, he argued, because the content
of the Bible could not be understood apart from its narrative unity. Just as
Barth had proposed that God’s being is in his act, and that Christ’s
person is in his work, so he also urged that the name of Jesus is
inseparable from the narrative in which it is embedded. This inextricability
of name and narrative demanded a particular sort of historical
understanding. The narrative of Jesus Christ provided the key as much to the
unity of scripture as also to the larger history of the world.
"I actually think on the basis of this history. And I see in this
history the key to all histories. For the history of Jesus Christ, whose
content is the covenant between God and humankind, is the beginning as well
as the end and goal of all things" (p. 165).
By understanding biblical narrative theologically -- and thus as a
"witness" rather than as a "report" -- Barth broke with
modernist preoccupations -- in particular, with historicist and rationalist
frameworks of interpretation. Establishing factuality behind the text was
just as uninteresting to him, theologically, as striving for some kind of
totalizing systematic coherence. His believed that a new conception was
needed of what counts as scriptural "unity," one that allows
various diverse themes to remain in tension. Biblical doctrines are held
together, as he saw it, not by a static logic, but dynamically and
dialectically through patterns of thinking grounded in the biblical
narratives. These narratives, which bear witness to the mysteries of divine
revelation, typically generate antithetical statements when they are
conceptually redescribed, but these antitheses are not best regarded as
"contradictions."
I would not say, contradiction! I would rather say, speaking by way of
juxtaposition, do you follow me? It involves now this and then that. . . .
This kind of thinking needs to be a narrative or historical thinking (ein
geschichtliches Denken). One may not think [in terms of a static logic].
(p. 272)
Antithetical modes of thought were built into central church doctrines,
Barth noted, for example, of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and of the
relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom, to name only a
few. Significantly, a conceptual resolution of such antitheses, however
tempting, always resulted in simplicity at the expense of adequacy, and in
extreme cases landed in heresy. An interpretive strategy of juxtaposition,
on the other hand, such as Barth proposed, would not privilege one existing
strand in scripture while drastically marginalizing another. It would allow
the various tensions to stand. It would in that way attempt to do better
justice to the whole range of scripture as it attested the whole counsel of
God. Barth’s proposal, evidenced perhaps more nearly in his exegetical
deliberations than in his theoretical remarks, amounted to a new
hermeneutical strategy, at least in explicitness and scope. He opted neither
for synthesizing the various diverse strands, nor for discarding one of
them, but for juxtaposition.
This brand of narrative thinking, Barth believed, was the fitting
hermeneutical response to divine revelation. For revelation was always the
unity of word and deed -- of actions in the form of speech, and of speech in
the form of actions. Barth explained:
The Word of God is the Word that is spoken by him in and with his
action. Act and Word belong together. God’s revelation never consists in
mute deeds. It is rather an act that as such speaks a Word to human beings.
Any theology that would separate God’s mighty deeds from his spoken Word
finally proves itself to be destructive of the Christian idea of revelation.
(p. 176)
As enacted speech or eloquent action, divine revelation has been shaped
by the Holy Spirit into apostolic narratives that are stablilzed in
scriptural testimony. Christ’s resurrection is the cardinal example.
What we see at stake in the resurrection is what we see in general with
everything in the Bible. It is a matter of reality, of history, which then
as such is Word. One may not abstract and say, it is only Word. On the
contrary, something takes place, and what takes place is something
that speaks. And that speaking itself is precisely the speaking of an
event. (p. 38)
The Holy Spirit by whom God’s deeds had been biblically inscribed was
the same Spirit by whom their meaning is imparted to faith. Revelation,
Barth emphasized, was "for all, but not all can grasp it. The Word of
God can only be understood through the power of the Spirit" (p. 176).
The living God continued to speak through Jesus Christ, God’s decisive
Word, as attested in scripture. "Yes, of course he speaks today. The
God who has spoken his decisive Word in Jesus Christ -- he is no dead God,
as today the fools say, but he is the living God, who also speaks
today" (p. 253).
The idea of freedom was a theme that especially distinguished Barth’s
account of both divine and human existence. At the highest level, God’s
sovereign freedom was secured by the doctrine of pre-temporal election.
Election was the pivot of freedom, so to speak, connecting God with
creation, eternity with time, and in particular the Holy Trinity with the
covenant of grace. God’s covenantal actions in history were grounded in
his prior act of self-determination from all eternity.
God’s action in time and history is a matter of miracle and mystery,
because everything he does and says here is free from all fortuitousness.
God always acts in freedom -- in his eternal freedom. Everything that takes
place here has taken place already in him. With everything there is this
divine ‘pre-’. (pp. 78-79)
The Holy Trinity, Barth explained, was no mere function of election.
Although for Barth election was indeed the self-determination of God, the
Trinity was prior to election and presupposed by it. Otherwise God would not
be God (and in particular God would not be the Trinity), except in relation
to the world. Although God does not will to be who he is without the world,
God does not need the world to be God. An interviewer wondered whether Barth
would still endorse what he had written back in 1932 in the first volume of
his dogmatics:
God would not be any the less God if he had created no world and no human
being. The existence of the world and our existence are in no sense
necessary to God’s essential being, not even as the object of his love. .
. . God is not at all lonely even without the world and us. His love has its
object in himself.
To which Barth replied: "Splendid, isn’t it!" (p. 286). The
event of pre-temporal election was an event within the being of the Holy
Trinity: "an eternal testament, carried out between the Father and the
Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. And that is an event, it is an enactment"
(p. 78). Barth noted that he had been criticized for defining predestination
not simply as an eternal divine action, but as "an action even within
the very being of God." Such criticism, he thought, missed the
significance of the doctrine of Trinity. "But to me the doctrine of the
Trinity is wonderful" (p. 78). To dispel all confusion, Barth
distinguished among the doctrines of reconciliation, election, and the
Trinity by ranking them. Election, he stated, was always election to
reconciliation -- that is, to justification, sanctification, and vocation.
Therefore, everything in the doctrine of reconciliation was but an
explication of the doctrine of election. In turn, the doctrine of election
was grounded in something beyond itself. "And behind the doctrine of
election stands the doctrine of the Trinity. That is the order. The doctrine
of the Trinity, election, and then sanctification, etc." (p. 293).
Within the Augustinian and Reformed traditions, Barth’s doctrine of
election was strongly revisionist. Predestination, Barth proposed, was not
God’s dreadful decree that determined the eternal destiny of the human
race by a separation of the "sheep" from the "goats." On
the contrary, grounded in the Holy Trinity, election was God’s eternal
self-determination not to be God without us, but rather to be God for us in
Jesus Christ. There is no depth in God in which he is not fully determined
by this gracious decision. In pretemporal election God has determined
himself to be God for us. The electing God is the God who speaks both a Yes
and No -- Yes to creation; No to sin, evil and death. In Christ, whose death
and resurrection embodied them both for our sakes, the No is overridden by
the Yes. This profound revision (perhaps Barth’s greatest contribution to
the history of doctrine) could not but have ramifications throughout the
whole of his theology. God’s free self-determination meant that divine
freedom was not arbitrary but wholly an expression of divine love (pp. 289,
267), that the gospel was not a message of rules and regulations but of
freedom (p. 259), and that election itself purposed to liberate humankind
from its bondage to sin and death for eternal life in communion with God.
The freedom of God was to be answered by responsible human freedom.
Everywhere I see the danger of unfreedom. I saw it in America, and then
in parting I said to them I hoped a theology of freedom would also arise in
America. That’s what I said to the Americans. I would say the same thing
to the Swiss if I had the chance, and also to the Germans if they would
still listen to me: The sovereign God’s freedom and the responsible human
being’s freedom! (p. 259)
The authority of God was none other than the authority of freedom, not of
compulsion or coercion. "The freedom of God is the authority that calls
us to freedom" (p. 399).
Human freedom before God was above all to be realized in prayer. Without
prayer the theological task would be impossible. "Without entering into
prayer one cannot think even the tiniest theological thought sensibly -- not
the tiniest!" (p. 83). In the Christian’s daily life, regular times
of prayer were just as necessary as spontaneous prayers of the moment (p.
244). At the heart of prayer was thanksgiving: "I believe that what is
really missing for us is that we aren’t sufficiently thankful for what God
gives us. . . . And I believe that the great sin is ingratitude" (p.
244). Because prayer was no substitute for action, the watchword was:
"Pray and work!" "Ora et labora!"
Ora! -- because by ourselves we can neither obtain faith nor love nor
understanding nor correct discernment. They become possible for us only as
we request them from free grace and so from God, who gives them. Labora! --
because these things are not served to us on a platter, but are constantly
to be gained afresh though sheer work. (p. 441)
One final theme may be noted. Throughout the interviews Barth’s
understanding of Christ’s resurrection was a recurring topic of interest.
An especially interesting exchange took place in an extensive conversation
with theology students from Tübingen (pp. 33-52). Curiously, however, one
theme never surfaced, even though for Barth it was perhaps the matter of
greatest "objective" significance. Unencumbered by modernist
arguments about "historicity" (whether pro or con), Barth proposed
that, ontically, the significant matter was not so much that the
resurrection event was "historical" as that Christ had been
elevated from time into an eternal mode of existence without losing his
essential temporality. Consequently, the risen Christ, in his saving
significance, was able to be the Contemporary of each and every human being,
in all times and places. In and through the living Christ, crucified and
risen, God related to the entire human race. God’s affirmation and
judgment of the human race in the life-history of Jesus Christ was the
beginning and end of all things.
When the question of "historicity" took center stage, however,
as it did with the Tübingen students, then, in effect, Barth would advance
the proposition that Christ’s resurrection was indeed a historical event,
and yet it was unlike any historical event that we know. Over against
theologians like Bultmann and Ebeling, Barth affirmed that, yes, Christ’s
resurrection was really a bodily event. It was really "spatio-temporal:"
"somatic, visible, audible, tangible" (p. 34). "It was a
matter of the same human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who had previously
been among them, and who was now seen in his glory" (p. 35). Over
against theologians like Pannenberg, on the other hand, Barth contended
that, no, modern critical methods of investigation are not germane to this
event in its essential uniqueness (p. 45). Poetic or even mythic elements
are ineffaceable from the biblical depiction, precisely because this event
is, by definition, a mysterious conjunction of historicity and transcendence
(pp. 46-47).
Barth rejected the search for the historical Jesus, because he did not
believe him to have been lost. "As if there were any other life of
Jesus than that of him who was raised at Easter!" (p. 36). The Easter
Jesus, as attested by the apostles, was the only Jesus there has ever been.
The living Jesus Christ! He himself, not an idea of him, but rather he
himself, whom they had known, but who was now revealed to them as the Lord
of life and death [cf. Rom. 14:9], and who as such now became the content of
their message. . . . (p. 37)
Therefore, when taken from a "post-critical" point of view, or
what is much the same thing, when taken with a sense of humor (p. 41), the
New Testament metaphor of the "forty days" cannot possibly be
improved upon. It is perfectly adequate to convey the "astonishing
reality" of Easter in all its "absolute uniqueness" (p. 43).
The Gospel of the "forty days" -- related first simply in the
sense of the New Testament -- is indeed identical with the Gospel itself. It
sums up each and every thing that the New Testament has to say. . . . But
this is not [merely], so to speak, a piece of the Gospel, a moment, but
rather this is the Gospel: "I live, and you shall live
also" (John 14:19) . . . -- that’s the Gospel. (p. 33)
Political Theology
Because of his outspoken political views and activities, Barth had always
been a "public intellectual" embroiled in controversy. This
description more or less persisted until the end of his life. When friends
gathered for the celebration of his 80th birthday, he reminded them of his
origins.
The reader of the Church Dogmatics certainly needs to know
that I come from religious socialism. And I originally pursued something
other than "church dogmatics" -- namely, lectures on bringing
factories to justice and on trade union problems -- and I also became a
member of the Swiss Socialist Party. And when I took part in these
activities, it somehow hung together with a particular discovery -- namely,
that the children of this world are often wiser than the children of light.
(p. 401)
Elsewhere he reminisced further about his early pastorate: "The
socialists were among the most avid listeners to my sermons, not because I
preached socialism, but because they knew I was the same man who was also
attempting to help them" (p. 506). By the late 1960s, however, times
had changed:
Today there are really no longer any genuine alternatives. No great
fundamental ideas seem to clash. I often feel at a loss about which party to
vote for, if at all. (p. 551)
Barth’s chastened attitude toward socialism emerged clearly in his long
conversation with the Marxist, Milan Machovec (pp. 311--19).
Nevertheless, Barth regarded certain political issues as urgent,
especially concerning militarism and world peace. Although the church would
be foolish to take a stand on every single issue of the day, he believed,
some matters called for political decision in the witness of faith. The
question of nuclear weapons weighed heavily on his conscience: "A practical
pacifism with the slogan "War -- never again!" is something that today
really ought to force itself on the church. Especially in view of the
development of nuclear weapons and the threat that all life might be
destroyed" (p. 179). In 1966 he listed four issues that posed a
political challenge to the church: rapprochement with the communist nations
of the Eastern bloc, protest against the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament,
and resistance to anti-Semitism (p. 219). It was not a good sign, he felt,
that on these urgent matters the church could not bring itself to clear
convictions (p. 220).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it may be noted that throughout these conversations Barth
often displayed a sense of sober realism combined with robust hope. For
example, he acknowledged that, humanly speaking, the prospects for the
Christian church did not seem particularly bright. Minority status would
seem to be its permanent worldly lot (pp. 307). Fundamentally, the number of
dedicated Christians had never been more than a few (p. 317). Nevertheless,
the church lives not by worldly prosperity but by its living Lord, who has
triumphed over sin and death, and he is present in the community as the Lord
of the entire world (p. 299).
It is not we who must care for the dear God, but he who cares for us. In
every respect we must take that into account, and live without anxiety on
that basis. He cares for us, and he cares for our church and our
communities. He sees to it that his truth does not fall to the ground, but
rather that it remains on the lampstand. (p. 426)
The last conversation to be transcribed took place on the telephone
between Barth and his life-long friend Eduard Thurneysen on the evening
before Barth died. Thurneysen jotted down what he remembered Barth had said
to him:
Yes, the world is dark! Only let us not lose heart! Never! . . . Let us
not lose hope for all human beings, for the whole world of the nations! God
will not allow us to fall, not one single one of us, nor all of us together!
Es wird regiert! (p. 562)
These were, in effect, Barth’s last words on earth, summing up the work
and convictions of a lifetime: "Es wird regiert!"
"There is nothing outside the governance of God!"