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Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 - December 10, 1968) was a Swiss Christian theologian.
Born in Basel, he spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. Later he was professor of theology in Bonn (Germany). He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel.
Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Herrmann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt, and the impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck. The most important catalyst was, however, his reaction to the support for the German war aims of most of his liberal teachers. Barth believed that his teachers had been misled by a theology which tied God too closely to the finest, deepest expressions and experiences of cultured human beings, into claiming divine support for a war which they believed was waged in support of that culture, the initial experience of which appeared to increase people's love of and commitment to that culture. In his commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (germ. Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922) Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions.
In the decade following the First World War, Barth was linked with a number of other theologians, actually very diverse in outlook, who had reacted against their teachers' liberalism, in a movement known as "Dialectical Theology" (germ. Dialektische Theologie). Other members of the movement included Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten.
In the run-up to the Second World War, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration (germ. Barmer Erklärung) which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity - arguing that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus and resources to resist the influence of other 'lords' - such as the German Führer, Adolf Hitler.
In later life, Barth wrote the massive Church Dogmatics (germ. Kirchliche Dogmatik) - unfinished at about six million words by his death in 1968. Barth explores the whole of Christian doctrine, where necessary challenging and reinterpreting it so that every part of it points to the radical challenge of Jesus Christ, and the impossibility of tying God to human cultures, achievements or possessions. The work has been deeply influential on German-speaking and English-speaking theologians, and has been partly responsible for a revival of interest in traditional Christian doctrine amongst academic theologians.
Barth's theology assumes a certain amount of the tenets of liberal Christianity, most notably the assumption that the Bible is not historically and scientifically accurate. Barth has been called by fundamentalist Christianity a "neo-Orthodox" because, while his theology retains most or all of the tenets of Christianity, he rejects Biblical inerrancy. His reconciliation of having a rigorous Christian theology without a supporting text that was considered to be historically accurate was to separate theological truth from historical truth. It is arguably for this belief that Barth has been criticized the most harshly by more conservative Christians such as the late Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer.
The relationship between Barth, liberalism and fundamentalism goes far beyond the issue of inerrancy. From Barth's perspective, liberalism (with Schleiermacher and Hegel as its leading exponents) is the divinization of human thinking. Some philosophical concepts become the false God, and the voice of the living God is blocked. This leads to the captivity of theology by human ideology. In Barth's theology, he emphasizes again and again that human concepts can never be considered as identical to God's revelation. In this aspect, Scripture is also written human language, expressing human concepts. It cannot be considered as identical as God's revelation. However, in His freedom and love, God truly reveals the Godself through human language and concepts. Thus he claims that Christ is truly presented in Scripture and the preaching of the church. Barth stands in the heritage of the Reformation in his weariness of the marriage between theology and philosophy. Whether his sharp distinction between human concepts and divine revelation is biblical or philosophically sound remains debatable.
Quote
"Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way."
Writings by Karl Barth
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