The Swiss Calvinist Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a giant among
theologians. He stands securely with the likes of St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,
John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and Friedrich Schleiermacher as one of the
greatest theologians of all time. He is known for his critique and rejection of
theological liberalism as voiced in his commentary on St Paul’s epistle to the
Romans which, according to one commentator, ‘dropped like a bombshell on the
playground of theologians’ (Karl Adam). His critique of religion represents a key-theme
of his commentary on the epistle to the Romans. According to Barth, ‘It was the
Church, not the world, which crucified Christ’.[1] This idea could very well have influenced the early 21st century "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus" movement made popular by Jefferson Bethke's viral poem on YouTube. Barth is also known for his role in the Confessing Church, his opposition to
Nazism, his theological involvement in formulating the Barmen Declaration, and for
his multivolume but unfinished Church Dogmatics. His fame was
sufficiently noted in his lifetime when he appeared on the cover of Time
Magazine for the 20th April 1962. Barth has exercised a decisive
influence on modern theology during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Notable thinkers indebted to his theology include Dietrich Bonhoffer, Jürgen
Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thomas F. Torrance, and Reinhold Niebuhr among
many others. He has been described as the father of ‘neo-orthodoxy’, though he
would repudiate the title, which itself suggests a return to orthodox theology
of Calvin and the Reformers as opposed to the inventions of theological
liberalism.
Barth was born into a Swiss
theologically-minded family and himself influenced by the liberal theology of
his day and age, particularly as it found expression in the thought of Adolf
von Harnack, Wilhelm Herrmann, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. He worked briefly
writing as a journalist for Die Christliche Welt (The Christian
World) and served as an assistant pastor in Geneva before becoming pastor at
Safenwil in the Aargau from 1911 to 1921. Confronted by the challenges of his
congregation and pastoral ministry, Barth became increasingly disillusioned
with the liberal theology of his time and increasing turned to Scripture itself
for answers. This eventually led to his publication of a commentary on the
epistle to the Romans which jaw-shatteringly broke with the liberalism of his university
professors. Its return to the Protestant principle of Scripture alone (sola
Scriptura) as the normative source of Christian theology was decisive. For
some time, Barth taught theology in Göttingen and Münster and was a key figure in
the emerging ‘dialectical theology’ movement, sometimes known as a theology of ‘crisis’.
This theology was deeply influenced by an emerging cultural and religious
backlash against liberal theology. After moving to Bonn, Barth became
increasing involved in politics, especially in opposition to Adolf Hitler, and
was the primary hand behind the Barmen Declaration penned in 1934. This
document stood in opposition to Nazism and confessed allegiance to none but
Christ and Scripture. He was subsequently dismissed from his post and took up
an appointment at his native Basel where he remained for the rest of his life and
where he continued working on his Church Dogmatics published over
several years between 1932–67.
This article will explore Karl
Barth’s theology and ethics as developed in their early stages of his life and
career in his study of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Readers would be mistaken
to assume that this is merely a commentary on Pauline theology or the text of
Romans itself, for it is much more than this. It is a complete reformulation of
orthodox theology for the 20th century. Barth recommends studying
the epistle to the Romans in the light of a ‘wide reading of contemporary
secular literature – especially of newspapers’ – it is therefore a theology at
once orthodox and yet wholly relevant to its time and prescient in anticipating
the concerns of theology as it developed into the 21st century.
Barth’s design in his study of Paul’s epistle is to explore the various
theological and ethical subjects raised by the apostle. This includes Paul’s
view of Holy Scripture as divine revelation, the nature of God as utterly
transcendent or ‘Wholly Other’, the doctrine of justification by faith alone as
developed by Luther and Calvin, the representation of humanity in Adam and
Christ respectively, the distinction between flesh and spirit in Pauline
theology, the doctrine of double predestination and election in Christ, and the
ethical and political implications of the epistle as a whole.
The Epistle to the Romans
In his preface to the first edition of The Epistle to the
Romans, Barth explores the relationship between the historical-critical
method and the traditional view of Scripture as the inspired Word of God.
According to Barth, ‘The historical-critical method of Biblical investigation
has its rightful place: it is concerned with the preparation of the
intelligence – and this can never be superfluous. But were I driven to choose
between it and the venerable doctrine of Inspiration, I should without
hesitation adopt the latter, which has a broader, deeper, more important
justification’.[2] Barth
does not deny the importance of an historical-critical method in reading
Scripture, but neither does he demur the ‘venerable doctrine of Inspiration’.
There is a sense in which Barth is ready to fully engage with the findings of
higher criticism while also maintaining a belief that revelation is a word from
God. The opening sentences view Paul as an ‘emissary’, a ‘minister’, a ‘servant’
who brings a word from another world: ‘the essential theme of his mission is
not within him but above him – unapproachably distant and unutterably strange’.[3]
This is the idea of transcendence in Barth. God stands above the writer of this
epistle – an apostle nonetheless – as he stands above us all, and that infinitely
so.
According to Barth, the Gospel is
a word from another world. It comes to us from the unutterable transcendence of
God. It is from beyond the world of space and time. ‘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.
Salvation comes to them from Him, because they are, as men, incapable of
knowing Him … The Gospel is … the Word which since it is ever new, must ever be
received with a renewed fear and trembling’.[4]
Human beings by nature are incapable of knowing God. This is because of their finitude
and moral rebellion against their Creator. If God is to be known, he must
reveal himself and humankind must receive Him with ‘fear and trembling’. These
are words which echo Philippians 2:12 (‘work out your salvation with fear and
trembling’) and which the Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
chose as the title for his book Fear and Trembling published in 1843. The
point at which eternity meets time, in which God becomes man, is Jesus Christ.
For Karl Barth, ‘The name Jesus defines an historical occurrence and marks the
point where the unknown world cuts the known world’.[5]
God steps down in Christ to redeem us.
The law, for Barth, reveals a God
who is ‘wholly other’ – one who is infinite, eternal, and unchanging in his
being, the same yesterday, today, and forever. His judgement inaugurates the
beginning of the end. And the one who saves is also the one who created the
world:
The judgement of God is the end
of history, not the beginning of a new, a second, epoch. By it history is not
prolonged, but done away with … the end is also the goal; the Redeemer is also
the Creator; He that judgeth is also He that restoreth all things … what is new
is also the deepest truth of what was old … the final subjection to the wrath
of God is faith in His righteousness; and then God is known as the Unknown God.
As such, He is precisely no ‘thing-in-itself’, no metaphysical substance in the
midst of other substances, no second, other Stranger, side by side with those
whose existence is independent of Him. On the contrary, He is the eternal, pure
Origin of all things. As their non-existence, He is their true being. God is
love.[6]
God is not ‘the-thing-in-itself’ – he transcends even our
conception of ultimate reality. If we peer beyond the veil of time, we do not
find a second substance whom we call God. For He is beyond metaphysics, beyond
space, and beyond time. He is the everlasting God, the One who created all
things out of nothing and into nothing. God himself is the ground of true
being. Authentic existence is found in Him alone. And here is the secret at the
heart of Barth’s dogmatics: God is love.
Barth quotes Luther on the
paradox of justification: ‘Here therefore is the sermon of sermons and the
wisdom of heaven; in order that we may believe that our righteousness and
salvation and comfort come to us from outside; in order that we may believe
that, though in us dwells naught but sin and unrighteousness and folly, we are
nevertheless, acceptable before God, righteous and holy and wise’.[7]
Justification for Luther comes from without, rather than within. It is
God-given, rather than manmade. It reveals the depth of our depravity and sheer
grace of God who accepts us in Christ for his mercy’s sake. For Luther, it is
an alien righteousness and a forensic declaration that we are just in the sight
of a holy and righteous God. With Luther, Barth sees the righteousness of God
as the sovereign and royal demonstration of his absolute power. This
righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel – supremely in Christ – and is
one of the principal articles of the Protestant faith. Indeed, according to
Lutheran and Reformed theologians, justification was the article on which the
Church stands or falls (justificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis
ecclesiae).
Barth argues that we stand before
God by faith alone and this before the cross: ‘The cross stands, and must
always stand, between us and God. The cross is the bridge which creates a chasm
and the promise which sounds a warning. We can never escape the paradox of
faith, nor can it ever be removed. By faith only – sola fide – does
mankind stand before God and is moved by Him’.[8]
It is faith alone which justifies the sinner. This is known as the Reformed
principle of sola fide. Notice that it is not faith plus works,
but faith alone. The sinner clings to the cross of Christ. He comes for
cleansing and for clothing in an alien righteousness. He helplessly looks for
grace before the face of God. Abraham believed God – the emphasis being on
faith in God himself. ‘Beyond the line
of death is God, the Sustainer Himself unsustained, substantial but without
substance, known in his unknowableness, showing mercy in His unapproachable
holiness, demanding the obedient recognition of his authority’.[9]
We know God by way of negation. We say what he is not and recognise that there
is in Kierkegaardian terminology an infinite qualitative distinction between us and God. God is infinite (not bound by space), eternal (not bound by
time), and immutable (not subject to change). Barth here builds on what
is known as apophatic theology or the via negativa, often associated
with mystical theology, which itself aims at the vision of God and mystical
union with Christ. For Barth, ‘God is pure negation’.[10]
In other words, Barth approaches God by saying what he is not. According to
Barth, God is wholly other. He is utterly transcendent. He is above space,
time, and eternity. He is beyond being itself. And it is faith in just such an unknown
God – a existential leap into the unknown – that justifies and redeems.
At the heart of the Gospel is the
work of Christ for us. ‘Christ died for us. For us – that is, in
so far as by His death we recognise the law of our own dying; in so far as His
death is the place where atonement with God takes place … and where we, who
have rejected our Creator return to His love; and in so far as in His death the
paradox of the righteousness and the identity of His holy wrath and his
forgiving mercy becomes for us – the Truth’.[11]
We find in Christ atonement and redemption. The place where God’s wrath is
resolved and his mercy overflows to the vilest offender. What exactly does it
mean to be justified by God? And who are the justified? They are those who have
been brought under the protection of divine justice and those whom He has
claimed as his own Kingdom people. They receive forgiveness and freedom in Christ.
As Barth says, we are those ‘who have been lifted up into the air, so that we
have no standing place except the protection of God – we are they who have been
reconciled to God; we are they who have peace with Him’.[12]
Those who are justified live a life of love in response to God. They have no
choice but to love Him in return. ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John
4:19).
Barth contrasts the difference
between those in their respective federal heads: ‘If a man be in Adam,
he is an old, fallen, imprisoned, creature: if he be in Christ, he is a
creature, new, reconciled, and redeemed … There he dies, here he enters into
life … Say, in Adam: then the old was and is and shall be, and the new
was not and is not and shall not be. Say, in Christ: then the old has
passed away, and the new is come into being’.[13]
For Barth, this contrast is realised eschatologically: ‘Here the old and
visible world encounters judgement unto death, and the new and invisible world
encounters judgement unto life’.[14]
You cannot experience life without first tasting death. Those who were once in
Adam – who had tasted death – know life in Christ. According to Barth, ‘There
is no discovery of God in Christ, no entering into life, except men be exposed
in Adam as fallen from God and under the judgement of death. But we cannot stop
here: there is falling from God in Adam, no judgement of death visible to us,
except at the point where we are reconciled to God in Christ and assured of
life’.[15]
Only those in Christ are conscious of the previous fallenness in Adam. ‘Men
live in death, and die in life’.[16]
This however is not an endless cyclical process, but a linear teleological one.
Christ ultimately has the victory. ‘He is not merely the second, but the last
Adam … There can be no return movement from the righteousness of Christ to the
fall of Adam’.[17]
For Barth, this life which comes from death is the power and theme of the
Gospel. Ultimately, this power is realised in the Good News of the Gospel and
the Resurrection of Christ.
Barth questions the traditional
view of an historical Adam. According to Barth, Adam does not have any
existence in the domain of history or psychology as modern historians and
psychologists would view the matter. Adam is merely a type of the second Adam, Christ.
He exists only in his shadow. He does not have a separate, actual existence in
himself. The Genesis account is essentially a myth invested with theological
significance. In Barth’s own words, ‘It is evident that neither he nor the
Christ risen and appointed to the life of God, the Christ of whom he is the
projection, can be ‘historical’ figures … What Adam was before he became mortal
and what Christ was after He ceased to be mortal … is therefore by definition
non-historical. It follows then of necessity that the entrance of sin into the
world through Adam is in no strict sense an historical or psychological
happening’.[18]
We cannot know what perfect man was originally in Garden in much the same sense
as we cannot know what the risen Christ was like as he appeared to the
disciples – both are beyond our actual experiences. The point is not Adam as
such, but Adam’s sin. ‘We see all men doing what Adam did, and then suffering
as Adam suffered. We see men sin, and then die’.[19]
We see Adam in sinners of lost humanity, and this is the man we must overcome
in Christ.
But God holds out arms of grace
to welcome lost humanity: ‘Men, though fallen, are not in His sight lost. He is
merciful and wonderful. He is the God who gives the gift of grace. It is
therefore wholly congruous that the grace of God should abound to the
many … God appears here as Creator and Redeemer, as the Giver of Life and of
all good gifts. In the one man, Jesus Christ, what was invisible becomes
visible: in Him God utters His “Yes”’.[20]
Jesus Christ is God’s ‘Yes’ to humanity. Grace is the unmerited, undeserved
favour of God in Christ. Life and good gifts are found only in Him. If Adam is the old subject, the ego of this
fallen world, then Christ is the ego of the world to come. ‘This ego receives
and bears and reveals the divine justification and election – This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.[21]
The revelation of the Resurrected Christ is also a non-historical and
unobservable event from our perspective – and even from the perspective of the
apostles who never actually saw the resurrection take place. Resurrection is a
timeless, transcendent, eternity (see Romans 6:9). Once raised, Christ is forever
raised and seated at the right hand of God.
Grace, however, does not mean we
have liberty to sin or to present our religion as our own righteousness before God.
In fact, grace brings us into a conflict with sin and death. The words of the
Apostle Paul reminds us of this fact: ‘What shall we say then? Shall we continue
in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin,
live any longer therein?’ (Romans 6: 1–2). Once captured by the grace of God, we
must live before him in righteousness. In the words of Karl Barth:
Grace is the krisis from death to
life. Death is therefore at once the absolute demand and the absolute power of
obedience over against sin. No tension or polarity is possible between grace
and sin; there can be no adjustment or equilibrium or even temporary compromise
between them. As men under grace, we cannot admit or allow grace and sin to be
two alternative possibilities or necessities, each with its own rights and properties.
For this reason, the Gospel of Christ is a shattering disturbance, an assault
which brings everything into question. For this reason, nothing is so meaningless
as the attempt to construct a religion out of the Gospel, and to set it as one
human possibility in the midst of others. Since Schleiermacher, this attempt
has been undertaken more consciously than ever before in Protestant theology – and
it is the betrayal of Christ. The man under grace is engaged
unconditionally in a conflict. This conflict is a war of life and death, a war
in which there can be no armistice, no agreement – and no peace.[22]
Here Barth attempts to recover an orthodox perspective on
sin and grace and offers a critique of Schleiermacher and Protestant liberalism
in general. He throws down the gauntlet to the liberal ideology of his day and
offers in its place a theology of crisis. From a Barthian perspective, we must
kill sin, or it will kill us. Small wonder Barth’s theology was said to have
dropped like a bombshell in the playground of theologians! His critique of
liberalism and the attempt to make a religion out of the Gospel was cutting
edge at the time of writing. It spoke directly into the post-Schleiermacherian situation
and challenged liberal theology to self-reflection and critique – a crisis from
which it has never fully recovered.
Barth argues that our
righteousness or that which makes us right with God is found in Jesus Christ: ‘The
righteousness of God in Jesus Christ is a possession which breaks through this
twilight, bringing the knowledge which sets even human existence ablaze’.[23]
There is something brilliant about the righteousness of Christ. It sets ablaze,
purifies, and beautifies the sinner. It is an alien righteousness in that it
belongs to Christ, though it is considered as belonging to us by faith. The
infinite distance between the Creator and the creature is bridged by the
righteousness of God in Christ:
The revelation and observation –
of the Unknown God – whereby men know themselves to be known and begotten by
Him whom they are not; by Him with whom they have no continuity or connection;
to whom there runs no road or bridge along which they can pass; who is the Creator
and their Primal Origin – this revelation and observation in so far as He
reveals Himself and allows us to perceive Him as Father, makes impossibility
possible. It is grace.[24]
In the Gospel, God is not merely revealed as Creator and
Primal Origin, but as Father. He is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and he is our Father by way of adoption. We are considered to be
children of God. It makes the impossible, possible. It reveals God as our
heavenly Father. It reveals his eternal ‘yes’ to lost humanity in Christ.
Barth suggests that being
justified ‘in Christ’ has an eschatological dynamic as the believer anticipates
the New Jerusalem: ‘Thus related, apprehended, seen, and recognised, we become
aware of the impetuous roaring of heaven, as it were a mighty rushing wind,
which fills all the house … we see the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven … and know that we – are in Christ Jesus.
Comprehended in the dissolution of the man of this world, which is revealed in
Jesus as the Christ, we are established as new men and pass from death to life.
This is the meaning of the words – in Christ Jesus’.[25]
To be justified means that there is no sentence of death against those that are
in Christ Jesus. They have passed from death to life. And in the face of Jesus
Christ shines all the glory of God. According to Barth,
God is Personality: He is One,
Unique, and Particular – and therefore He is Eternal and Omnipotent. To Him the
human historical Jesus bears witness. But Jesus is the Christ: that is to say,
the particularity of God is illuminated by His existentiality. Therefore, in
spite of all believing and unbelieving historicism and psychologizing, we
encounter in Jesus the scandal of an eternal revelation of that which Abraham
and Plato had indeed already seen … In Jesus, and precisely in Him, the Love of
God breaks through all historical and psychological analysis … Because God is
eternal and omnipotent, He is unique and once-for-all. To this, Jesus, the
Christ, the eternal Christ, bears witness … God sends Him.[26]
For Barth, the Triune God is One. He is an absolute person – eternal
and omnipotent. The historical Jesus bears witness to this eternal, absolute
person. But Jesus is also the Messiah (the Christ) and God is especially
revealed in Him as Christ. Barth includes Plato and Greek Philosophy along with
Abraham and Jewish redemptive history. Both in their own unique ways speak of
God and the Logos. Historical and psychological criticism may have reduced
Jesus to mere a sentimental phenomenon within the heart of the believer, but
for Barth the love of God breaks through the attempts of liberal theology to
reduce the person of Christ to history or psychology. The love of God in Christ
is everything. And God the Father sends Him – the Christ, the Son – into this
world to redeem us.
Barth carefully distinguishes
between the Pauline terms ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’. He argues that in this life we cannot
distinguish between those who are in the flesh and those who are in the spirit.
The Church, as St Augustine argued, is a mixed body of sinners and saints.
‘Should someone claim that he is competent to distinguish between those in
the flesh and those in the Spirit, he thereby proclaims himself to
be undoubtedly in the flesh’.[27]
This was the error of the Donatists who attempted to collate a pure body of
saints as the manifestation of the Church. The distinction between flesh and
spirit go back to God’s eternal purpose in predestination: ‘In time, it has
already been decided that we are all in the flesh; in eternity is had already
been decided that we are all in the Spirit. We are rejected in the flesh,
but elected in the Spirit. In the world of time and of men and things we
are condemned, but in the Kingdom of God we are justified. Here we are in
death, there we are in life’.[28]
We are all either reprobate in the world or elect in the kingdom of God – there
is no middle ground. Christ is supremely chosen by God and all those
found in Him are beloved children of God in the Holy Spirit. In his Church
Dogmatics, Barth argues that ‘Jesus Christ was the choice or election of
God … He was the election of God’s grace towards man. He was the election of
God’s covenant with man’.[29]
Those in Christ are elect and assured of God’s grace towards them. He utters
His ‘yes’ towards them in Christ.
Those who love God have been
called according to his eternal purpose. Election stands at the back of his
love for us. In the words of Karl Barth, ‘The Unknown, the Invisible, the
Eternal, is He that hath called you; and as such ye love Him’.[30]
It is fitting for created beings to love their Creator who is beyond all
comprehension, sight, and things temporal. He is the object of their love and
has called them – chosen them – according to his perfect purposes. ‘Men are
therefore foreordained by God, because they are known of him: If any man
love God, the same is known of him (1 Cor. viii. 3)’.[31]
God has foreordained in his eternal purpose to ‘know’ us – that is, to love us.
His love stands at the back of the whole work of redemption. The reason God
gave his only Son was because he loved us in Him. The contrast between our love
for him and his love for us is a wide as the ocean:
When the door opens and the light
of Christ exposes us as we are, who can be justified? How vast is the gulf
which separates us from the love of Christ? How incommensurable is the love of
God displayed in His death compared with the tiny spark of our love! How
immense is the contrast between the tribulation of the life we have to live and
the divine, eternal, glorious Future which we behold and believe and encounter
in Him![32]
Our love pales into insignificance in the light of God’s
love for us. We are swallowed up in God and lost in Christ. We are utterly
consumed by the extravagance of his love for us. The doctrine of election is
also the doctrine of God’s love. When we seek to pry any further or ask why has
God so willed? We find nothing but love – an infinite, boundless, and
bottomless ocean. ‘We love because He first loved us’ (1 John 4:19).
Barth argues that God is
qualitatively distinct from humanity. He is, to use his famous term, ‘wholly Other’.
He transcends being and time itself. He is radically different from us. He is
the Creator, and we are the created. This Creator-creature distinction is a
hallmark of classical Reformed theology and is adapted by Barth to say that God
should not be identified with anything we can know or experience in the world.
He created this world out of nothing; not out of himself. The world is not God.
You are not God. You are not made of God-stuff. You are a creature. God is
Creator. And this very God speaks with utter authority. When he says ‘Halt’, we
must stop. When he says ‘Advance’, we must go forward. He is the First and the
Last, the Unknown, the Lord, the Creator, the Redeemer – the living God. And He
is revealed supremely in the Gospel of Christ. ‘In the Gospel, in the Message
of Salvation of Jesus Christ, this Hidden, Living God has revealed Himself, as
He is’.[33]
Jesus Christ is the highest and fullest revelation of God himself. He was with
God in the beginning and all things were made by and through Him. He is the
infinite, eternal, and unchanging Son; forever blessed of the Father. In his
face shines all the glory of the Godhead.
Barth argues that this same Gospel
was revealed to Israel under the Old Covenant in toto. ‘Nothing that men
can say or know of the Gospel is ‘new’; for everything which they possess is identical
with what Israel possessed of old. Historically, and when it is treated as the negation
of divine revelation, the New Testament seems to be no more than a clearly
drawn, carefully distilled epitome of the Old Testament’.[34]
This suggests a high view of the Old Testament in Barthian theology – something
which his opponents often deny Barthians as having altogether. The entire substance of the Gospel is found as
much in the Old Testament as in the New – and this is full possession of the
Christ. According to Barth, ‘If it is a matter of being Israelites, of possessing
the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the fathers, the giving of the law, the
service of God, the promises, and Christ according to the flesh, does not the
Church possess precisely all this? Is there anything we can possess more than
the whole fullness of the Old Testament?’[35]
In other words, the church stands on the shoulders of giants. And this is not
merely true of Biblical history, but also of Church history. We build on what
has gone before us. We are one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church – against
which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Barth was not concerned to establish
new teachings or new doctrines. He saw himself as returning to orthodoxy post-liberalism
– building on the old within the context of the 20th century.
Barth turns his attention to the
doctrine of double predestination as taught in Romans chapter nine. Traditional
Calvinism has argued that election refers to two categories of people: the
elect and the reprobate. There is an invisible line drawn between these two
categories of people eternally separated from one another by God’s sovereign
choice. For Barth, this somewhat misconstrues the Scriptural doctrine of
election. According to Barth, election refers principally to the person of Christ.
He is the one whom God chooses, and all are chosen in him as their covenantal
head. He is both the object and the subject of election. He is both the
electing God and the elect man of God. Election is God’s eternal ‘yes’ to
humanity in Christ. It is God’s decision to be ‘for us’ rather than ‘against
us’. According to Barth, elect and reprobate do not represent two categories of
being, but rather one entity in the mind of God – those who are subject to
God’s condemnation of sin, but also those whom he accepts in Christ. Barth
develops a Christocentric understanding of double predestination in a dialectical
approach to the subject. Christ is both the object of election and reprobation.
He is both God’s ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. He suffered rejection and God-forsakenness at
the cross in order that lost humanity might participate in his election and
become children of God – and if children, then heirs – heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ Jesus (Romans 8:17).
For Barth, the twelfth
to fifteenth chapters of Romans consider the problem of ethics, politics, and
application of the epistle to human behaviour. According to Barth, ‘human
behaviour must inevitably be disturbed by the thought of God … If our thinking
is not to be pseudo-thinking, we must think about life; for such a thinking is
a thinking about God’.[36]
Barth’s theology is not divorced from its application in reality – the here and
now. It takes into consideration ‘life’ and adopts a dialectically approach to
the problem of ethics. The ethical problem of ‘what shall we do?’ or ‘how then
shall we live?’ bring us in relation to the ‘other’. Referring to Soren
Kierkegaard, Barth argues that our neighbour – the ‘other’ with whom we have to
do – is ‘every man. A man is not thy neighbour because he differs from others,
or because in his difference he in some way resembles thee. A neighbour is that
man who is like unto thee before God. And this likeness belongs to all men
unconditionally’.[37]
Our love towards our neighbour should be rooted and grounded in our love
towards God:
Worship, it is true, represents
love towards God; it represents the existential action of men which is directed
towards the unsearchable majesty of God. But worship can only represent
existential love only in so far as it is significantly engaged in the
corresponding love of men which is the parable of the love towards God. Love of
men is in itself trivial and temporal; as the parable of the Wholly Other, it
is, however, of supreme significance … As the love of men towards men, agape is
the answer of the man who under grace is directed towards the unsearchable God.
Agape is the concrete analogue of election.[38]
If our love towards men is not grounded in our love towards
and worship of the Triune God, then it is not true love at all. It is as Barth
says, ‘trivial and temporal’. If, however, our love is rooted and grounded in
that which is Wholly Other, then it is a love of infinite and eternal
proportions. It is the evidence of our election in Christ. Grace compels us
towards agape. It compels us to love God and in him all whom God has created to
coinhabit this world with us. Love is the fulfilment of the law (Romans 13:8–10).
Recommended Reading
Bromiley, Geoffrey W., Introduction to the Theology of
Karl Barth (Edinburgh, 1979).
Burnett, Richard (ed.), The Westminster Handbook to Karl
Barth (Louisville, Kentucky, 2013).
Busch, Eberhard, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and
Autobiographical Texts (London, 1975).
Franke, John R., Barth for Armchair Theologians (Louisville,
Kentucky, 2006).
Jones, Paul Dafydd and Paul T. Nimmo, The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth (Oxford, 2019).
Morgan, Densil D., The SPCK Introduction to Karl Barth
(London, 2010).
Morrison, Stephen D., Karl Barth in Plain English (Columbus,
OH, 2017).
Tietz, Christiane, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (Oxford,
2021).
Tseng, Shao Kai, Karl Barth: Great Thinkers
(Phillipsburg, NJ, 2021).
Webster, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl
Barth (Cambridge, 2000).
Webster, John, Karl Barth (Outstanding Christian Thinkers) (London and New York, 2000).
[1]
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London, 1933), p. 389.
[2]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 1.
[3] Barth,
The Epistle to the Romans, p. 27.
[4]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 28.
[5]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 29.
[6]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 77–78.
[7]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 93.
[8]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 112.
[9]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 120.
[10]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 141.
[11] Barth,
The Epistle to the Romans, p. 160.
[12]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 163.
[13]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 165.
[14]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 165.
[15]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 165.
[16]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 165.
[17]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 166.
[18]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 171.
[19]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 172.
[20]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 180.
[21]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 181.
[22]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 225. Emphasis my own.
[23]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 227.
[24]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 227.
[25]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 272.
[26]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 276–77.
[27]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 284.
[28]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 284. Emphasis my own.
[29]
Barth, CD II/2:101–2.
[30]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 323.
[31]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 324.
[32]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 328.
[33]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 331.
[34]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 338.
[35]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 339.
[36]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 424–25.
[37]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 442.
[38]
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 452.