Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom in the Face of Fascism
Explorations in Barth’s Neo-orthodoxy and the Revolution of God
This substack, in large part, is the substance of the final seminar paper I prepared for a semester postgraduate studies’ course in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town in 1989. I was starting my Master of Arts programme with a selection of six full courses to complete over an eighteen month period. This specific course was entitled: ‘Christian Studies: The Enlightenment to the Present.’
My first seminar paper, “The Religion of Reason,” can be accessed here: https://rogerarendse.substack.com/p/the-religion-of-reason
Between the first and final seminar papers, I produced essays on a range of other Enlightenment thinkers and themes: Kant (1724-1804) on ‘Critical Idealism;’ Schleiermacher (1768-1834) on ‘Romanticism,’ ‘The New Liberal Hermeneutics,’ and ‘Christian Faith;’ Hegel (1770-1831) on ‘Idealism;’ Kierkegaard (1813-1855) on ‘Existentialism;’ Feuerbach (1804-1872) and Marx (1818-1883) on ‘Historical Materialism;’ Ritschl (1822-1889) on ‘the Jesus of History’ and ‘the Kingdom of God;’ and Harnack (1851-1930) on ‘The End of an Era.’ Some of these may be revisited at a future time.
Neo-orthodoxy in brief socio-historical context
Neo-orthodoxy was more than a reaction to liberal Protestant theology in the early 20th century. It became a theological movement that breathed new life into what is aptly described as a “dessicated humanism, almost empty of otherworldly content.” (Come: p43)
Two prophetic voices among many others were raised in significant protest against liberal Protestantism, namely Karl Barth in Europe and Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States of America. Their critiques of liberal theology was evidenced in two books respectively, Barth’s editions of Der Romerbrief (1919, 1921) and Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). Each book represents the characteristic themes of orthodoxy, as well as its divergent emphases which are adequately summarised by Godsey (1987:360) in his treatment of ‘Neo-orthodoxy.’ Niebuhr’s important essay, “Ten Years That Shook My World” (1939) centres on his theological realism as a meaningful alternative to both theological liberalism and traditional orthodoxy (1966:317).
This substack will focus exclusively on Karl Barth, the theologian par excellence in the first half of the 20th century. Barth’s phenomenal contribution to the theological world was made all the more interesting (and complex) by his own shifts in theological paradigms from an earlier Barth who heralds an epistemological break with 19th century liberal theology in Der Romerbrief, and the later Barth with a more developed Christological emphasis in his Humanity of God (1956).
We centre our treatment of Barth on his early years which extends to about 1931. Firstly, we describe his initial break with 19th century liberal theology and evaluates the significance of his own dialectical theology and his early shift to a Theology of the Word. Secondly, we critically discuss the implications of Barth’s earlier stresses, namely the theological understanding of ‘the revolution of God. (cf. Villa Vicencio 1988:45).
Der Romerbrief: The break with 19th century liberal theology
From his early student (1906-1909) and pastoral (1909-1915) years, Barth imbibed Ritschlian theology, more particularly that form shaped by Wilhelm Herrmann under whom he studied at Marburg (1908-1909). For the inquiring Barth, liberal theology overcame ‘dry orthodoxy’ and accommodated his early attraction to and participation in the Swiss Christian Social Movement. Liberal theology asserted the ethical dimensions of God’s eschatological Kingdom and the necessary emphasis on the Kingdom’s historical character which Christian orthodoxy and Christian piety had neglected (cf. Come:32).
However, tension soon emerged between Barth’s acquired liberal theology and his earlier thorough Reformed upbringing and theological education under his father, Fritz Barth (1906-1907). Intensifying disillusionment with liberal theology grew with Barth’s own feelings of inadequacy Sunday after Sunday when he preached in the Reformed Church of Safenwil. He felt that what he preached was ‘a word of man’ rather than ‘the Word of God.’
This theological crisis which faced Barth within the liberal theological tradition reached a peak in ‘the black day’ of August 1914 when 93 German intellectuals, including many of Barth’s former professors (like Wilhelm Herrmann) signed their support for the war policy of Kaizer Wilhelm II (Barth: 1966:21). He was convinced that the error of liberal ethics implied also the error of liberal theology itself.
The 1st edition of Der Romerbrief (1919) shifted theology from its captivity to an anthropology back to the Reformed stress on the sovereignty and centrality of God as revealed in the Bible. In Der Romerbrief, Barth found the joyful stress on life in God as a gift made possible for people of all ages and which overcomes human depravity, but also negates all human pride.
However, it was the 2nd edition of Der Romerbrief (1921) which was the celebrated “bombshell in the playground of theologians” (1966:25) and which shook the early 20th century theological world to its foundation. Most significant here was Barth’s rediscovery of the Kierkegaardian stress on the “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and humanity and between time and eternity. This marked more truly the onset of his ‘dialectic’ or ‘crisis’ theology. It emphasised, in contrast to liberal theology, the radical discontinuity between the divine and the human. Moreover, it reintroduced the neglected stress on the transcendence of God which led critics of Barth to accuse him of undermining divine immanence. But Barth clearly did not deny divine immanence as we come to see most definitively in his ‘maturer’ theology, especially his more radical stress on the incarnation of Jesus Christ (Church Dogmatics I.2 and Humanity of God). Barth’s early intention was rather to destroy what he saw as the false foundation of a natural theology on which the whole edifice of liberal theology had been erected. In Barth’s view, this false foundation had ill-equipped liberal theology for the particular crises of World War I, and which had also tragically prepared the way for later fascism.
Barth’s emphasis was on the wholly otherness of God. His negation of the whole of human history as the vehicle of God’s revelation was a radical attempt to liberate God from any control or manipulation by humanity. He wished to restate the objective reality of God beyond any natural, existential or philosophical apprehension of this reality. God could not be known ‘from below’ as liberal theology had assumed, but only ‘from above’ as God freely chose to reveal Himself. Therefore, Barth’s dialectic did not entail a denial of ‘the human’ or of ‘history.’ Rather, this was “the dialectic between the Creator and the sinful creature” (Barth 1966:27). The later Christology of Barth clearly reflects the full character of his dialectic which “although it begins as a dialectic of relationship, it changes to a dialectics of movement, the great movement from God’s NO to the YES of God which is spoken to man in Jesus Christ.” (1966:27).
Barth’s rediscovery of Anselm in his Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931)
This rediscovery reflects most clearly the new theological method which Barth introduced in his Church Dogmatics (1932) in distinction from the latest existential philosophical influence still evidenced in his earlier Christian Dogmatics (1927). Here, more directly, is Barth’s shift from the ‘the theology of crisis’ to ‘a theology of the Word.’ The theological starting point of a “faith in quest of understanding” asserts Barth’s affirmation of analogia fidei (analogy of faith) and his decisive break with any analogia entis (analogy of being).
In his earlier shaping of a ‘theology of the Word,’ Barth struggled especially with the epistemological problem – the problem of speaking of God as the Object of human knowledge. Barth’s stress was on God rather than humanity. God is known through God and through God alone (Come:51). In this the Bible had become a fresh discovery for Barth. Against the liberals, he argued that “the Bible…is primarily concerned not with man’s view of God but God’s view of man, not with religion but with revelation, not with how man finds God, but how God has sought and found men.” (Barth 1966:22). Here Barth was as critical of ‘religion’ as was Feuerbach and Marx. However, in sharp contradistinction to the atheism of these men, Barth ‘returned’ God to the centre of theology. In his own context, Barth’s theology was a definitive rejection of “Feuerbach’s reduction of theology to anthropology, and in separating God from humankind, Barth affirmed a God greater than the best idea of God humankind could either project or approximate.” (Villa Vicencio 1988:49), Barth had succeeded in opening up a new way in which the Christian faith could be understood.
In his own discovery of “the strange new world within the Bible,” Barth can all too easily be accused of betraying the historical-critical study of the Bible. But for Barth faith was very much related to historical context and human experience. However, faith’s starting point was not in these arenas (against liberal theology) but in God. He insisted early on that “the modern historical-critical method of investigation of the Bible has its rightful place, in so far as it is concerned with a preparation of the intelligence…but confesses that his entire energy has been directed toward seeing through and beyond the historical (das Historische) into the spirit of the Bible which is Eternal Spirit.” (Barth 1966:28).
Barth’s ‘Revolution of God’ – it’s earlier formulation
Barth’ early dialectical theology did not imply a denial of God’s activity in history. In his later Final Testimonies, Barth insisted that his rediscovery of “the strange new world of the Bible” had affirmed the social and historical implications of theology which “was never a private affair. Its theme is God for the world, God for man, heaven for earth. This means that my theology always had a strong political side, explicit and implicit.” (in Villa Vicencio 1988:46).
And despite his own theology of revolution providing a sharp critique of the socialist programme in the light of “the material failure of the socialist cause” (1988:48) in the early 20th century, Barth always retained a strong antagonism to capitalism in favour of socialism (1988:47). This was because the latter more dynamically and passionately embraced a commitment to the poor. And Barth would insist that “God stands at every time unconditionally and passionately on this side and only on this side: always against those who have rights and for those from whom they are robbed and taken away.” (Church Dogmatics II 1957:386, in 1988:54).
For Barth, the rediscovery of the God of the Bible, the free God, implied not only a critique of any anthropology (in the guise of a theology), but also the rejection of any absolutist model for human revolution. The God revealed in “the strange new world of the Bible” was neither the God who is under the control of the ruling class, nor the God who is absolutely connected with the political struggle of the oppressed. At this point, Barth can easily be accused on two opposite accounts, namely of “quietism” or “anarchy.” (Villa Vicencio 1988:45).
However, the distinctiveness of Barth’s “revolution of God” was that it introduced into sharp focus the eschatological dimension of divine judgement on all human revolutions. At the heart of the weakness of such human revolutions (as the socialist revolution of early 20th century Europe) was its failure to interpret the human sinful condition radically enough. In the tradition of neo-orthodoxy, Barth defined “sin as a rebellion against God caused by the abuse of human freedom rather than a result of human ignorance or failure to curb natural impulses” as liberal theology tended to stress. (Godsey 1987:362). Yet it was precisely at the point of God’s decisive and unqualified NO to all human revolutions that the more radical emphasis on God’s own “permanent revolution” became all the more strikingly significant within Barth’s context. (Villa Vicencio 1988:45). “In this context, his deabsolutising of the revolution and his relativising of impetuous activism are shaped by his commitment to ensure that all political action remains human in what is all too often a dehumanising struggle.” (1988:56). In contrast, “the revolution of God brings something really new, something which actually transforms the existing order from the ground up.” (Jungel: 102).
What was most pertinent in Barth’s theology of revolution at the time was the strong shift from the priority of human action to the apriori act of God in human history. This is not to confuse God totally with God’s activity per se. Rather it is to recognise that it is primarily and provisionally through God’s acts that a reference to God is seen, and through which in God’s grace God reveals Himself to humanity (cf. Church Dogmatics I.1, 1932:373).
But through the appropriation of the one act of God in the moment of our history – “the theological moment” (Villa Vicencio 1988:50) – we encounter the God in the future (Church Dogmatics I.1, 1932:375). God’s revolution declares that God is committed to acting in our Kairos, to liberate, but always to go on liberating until that “eschatological moment.” (1988:56) when true freedom and justice will become the absolute divine reality amidst our human reality.
Rather than “quietism” or “reactionism” therefore, the revolution of God recaptures the stress on the radical grace of God. In so doing, as in Barth’s context so in our own, it “both radicalises and deabsolutises Marx’s revolutionary theory. “ (Villa Vicencio 1988:56).
Re-reading Barth in the context of rising 21st century fascism
Now more than three decades, I come back to re-reading Karl Barth for a time when the dark and ugly face of fascism is being seen once again in the Global arena. In truth, fascism has never really disappeared, merely went underground for a time in different guises, and which for a while seemed to hide its nefarious agendas and perpetrators.
For many of us, the years of the Covid pandemania unmasked the Global fascist project, alive and well on planet earth! We, with eyes to see, witnessed most brazenly the collusion of individuals and groups of elites in service of their totalitarian, transhumanist technocracy!
This was indeed the dawning of a Global Kairos Moment!
Will we heed the call, seize the moment, and join in the revolution of God?
This is a Kairos Moment! This is a strange season! Like you, I feel the range of ambiguous emotions, Thoughts of all kinds float across my mind, My heart knows first-hand the inner throbbing of unspoken impulses, My body rides this crazy rollercoaster of human tensions. My whole being lives out the daily paradoxes, As they permeate time and spaces everywhere. Our country grapples with the pandemic crises, I have this uncomfortable sense That no-one really knows anything for sure, We are at the beck and call of uncertainties, Juggling the unknowns and the knowns, Dropping and picking up meaning where we can, As we traverse time and spaces everywhere. There are suspicions of power-plays at work, Curiosity sits side by side with rising cynicism, Compassion is on display in many places, Even as the volatility of protest mounts, I sense a restless revolution frothing up, From the deep underbelly of gross inequality, As we wait out these times in spaces everywhere. This is a Kairos moment! The lock down of a deep, debilitating crisis Also calls us into seen and unseen opportunity; Will we drown under the weight of our collective despairs? Or will we rise up with true Ubuntu courage and resolve? The ground beneath our feet shakes with uneasy expectation, As we dare to awaken to this time in this place, right now. © Roger Arendse -20200422 (written on the 27th day of lockdown in South Africa)
NOW, is no longer the time for Compliance with Fascist power-grabs!
NOW is the time for “considered non-violent disobedience!”
Let us rise up locally and globally, and say NO to the anti-God, anti-human forces of transhumanist technocracy, and YES to the permanent revolution of God.
Compliance I want to be honest with you; Often, when the threat of uncertainty presses in, My body and mind find themselves In a visceral acquiescence; There is a larger shutdown of reason, And the restless rise of mixed emotion, There is the compulsion to protect myself and be safe, The reliance on known securities, As a defence against necessary courage; I feel an equivocation, and then A drawing into a vulnerable shell of compliance; These have been uncertain times, Long and filled with the ready yielding to rules, Sharpened by the daily rhetoric of what is for the good, The enforcement of this lock down Has carried me along day by day, On familiar and unfamiliar pathways, There has been this uneasy social compact, Taking me to the rough edges of my knowing, Daily, I’ve felt the twisting roller-coaster ride of dis-ease, Exposing me to the soft spots of my being, And there has been a thinning of veils of my submission. Compliance has had its many blessings for sure, Recently though, I am struggling to trust this ‘rule of law’. I’m alarmed by the greedy energy of its demands, Wrapped up in uttered and written regulations of control, I feel their deep bites into the fragility of my humanity, My constitutional dignity and rights seeping away, I feel more and more tied down in clamps of tighter obligation, There is a confusing shaking of my ground of being, I find myself wrestling the bullying of my free choice, Now, I’m forced to breathe in the stale air of a dark curfew, As I experience a bolder lock-down of any recalcitrance, Unquestioning citizenship has become the new standard. I want to trust you with this. I will not suffer indefinitely these excessive calls, Many of them ring hollow and feel haunted Under these layered covers of what is deemed best science. I will not rest forever obedient in its grip, I will discern for myself what is good and best, For the wounded whole and not just the part, I join in with a mounting chorus of dissent, I hear voices rising up from the depths of pain and suffering, They call from the dirty belly of our gross inequality, Now is the time for considered non-violent disobedience. © Roger Arendse – 20200430
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Select Bibliography
Barth, K. 1932 Church Dogmatics I.1., ‘The Doctrine of the Word of God,’ ed. G. Bromley and T.Torrance, tr. by G.B. Bromiley, 1975, Edinburgh: T & T Clark
1960 Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, tr. by Ian. W. Robertson, 1st ed. London: SCM Press Ltd.
1966 How I Changed My Mind, introduced and epilogue by J.D. Godsey, Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press.
Come, A. An Introductin to Barth’s Dogmatics for Preachers, Philadelphia: The Westminister Press
Godsey, J.D. 1987 “Neoorthodoxy.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol.10, ed. Mircea Eliade, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, pp. 360-364.
Jungel, E. Karl Barth, a Theological Legacy, tr. by G.E. Paul, Philadelphia: The Westminister Press.
Niebuhr, R. 1966 “Ten Years that Shook the World.” In Sources of the American Mind, Vol. II, Loren Bariz, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Villa Vicencio, C. 1988 On Reading Karl Barth in South Africa, Grand Rapids: Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company