Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eberhard Busch is professor of systematic theology at the University of Goettingen in Germany.

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Barth

Abingdon Press

Chapter One

God is God." This is a core sentence from the book that first gained Barth notoriety and opposition but also applause far beyond the borders of his native Switzerland. In 1921, Barth was in his tenth year as pastor in the industrial village, Safenwil. This book, Der Römerbrief, is an exegesis of the apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans. The title is provocative because it indicates that Barth does not want to understand Paul but wants to understand who God is and what God says with Paul. The book is full of radical insights and subversive formulations. After hearing one of Barth's sermons, the young novelist Manfred Hausmann wrote, "I was gripped and uprooted, and then turned inside out ... I left the church as one who no longer knew where to go. Lightning had ... come down and struck me. I was staggering. Here was the revolution I had suspected all along."

Barth's insights launched what is called dialectical theology. It stood in contrast to previous theological lines—to liberal theology, as represented by his teachers Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann, as well as to its conservative counterpart, as represented by his teachers Adolf Schlatter and Theodor Haering. The expression dialectical theology is derived from its method of thinking in unresolved contrasts. As Barth explained in one of his lectures: we should talk about God, but we cannot talk about God; therefore, we have to say both of these things and give God the glory.

It is precisely within Barth's Römerbrief that we repeatedly come across this strange statement, God is God. This kind of phrase is called a tautology, that is, a sentence that looks like an explanation but really does not explain anything. For example, if I want to know what a candle is, I am not really helped if I am informed that a candle is a candle. Why then this sentence: "God is God"? What does it say about God and about Barth as a theologian?

In order to understand, we have to go back a little further. From 1909 to 1911, Barth was an assistant pastor in Geneva, where he preached most of his sermons from John Calvin's old pulpit. This, however, did not stop him from speaking out as a devout disciple of the neo-Protestantism of his time, which was fundamentally shaped by liberal theology. This theology held that its source was in the inherent religious capacities of human beings, not in God's revelation, which is given by the grace of God to real sinners. Barth continued to speak this way when he became the pastor in the village of Safenwil. From the beginning his speech was noticeably filled with a deep love for Jesus. "He was the greatest of all to whom it was given to reveal the mystery of life for others." But for Barth the meaning of this love is embedded in the thought world of neo-Protestantism, and his most important model for this was Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834).

His reliance on Schleiermacher is clear in his interpretation of the figure of this "Jesus." In one of his sermons, Barth says, "I openly admit that I ... would have no interest in Jesus" if we were to understand him "according to the formulas of old church doctrine." But it is not only the Jesus of church dogma but also the historical Jesus that is "not the foundation of our faith." "Faith does not mean to accept with your mind ... that everything you have heard is truth." To know who Jesus "really" is can only happen "by an experience." An "experience" in this case refers to an event along the lines of the verse by the seventeenth-century mystic Angelus Silesius: "If Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem yet not in you, then you would still be lost eternally." This is what Barth calls, along with Friedrich Schleiermacher, the "true" revelation.

But during these years, Barth suddenly began speaking about Jesus in a quite reserved way. Jesus is not God. He is "our way to the Father." Often when Barth referred to the experience of "the inner life of Jesus," he meant that "the same thing that happened in Jesus happens in us." Thus, "The power and life that you sense in him can become your power and life." And if we humble ourselves obediently we are then doing "the same that Jesus did and, together with him, we go from death to life." This is what took place in the first disciples of Jesus. On the "basis of their impression of Jesus' person and way, their own inner life" grew. And "as you attempt to go through your Good Fridays in his way, you will experience Easter with him."

But Barth's thinking, molded by liberal theology, began to change in Safenwil. It simply had to take a backseat to his work on the social problems people were facing there. Historically the village of Safenwil had belonged to an area once governed by the so-called gracious Lords of Bern. Unfortunately, these same lords took undue advantage of the people. The local pastors were also controlled by these lords and were under oath to serve them as collectors of tribute for Bern. The pastor served as a kind of village judge. Habitually, after the sermon, court was set up in church under a painting of the bear of Bern. Sluggards, grumblers, and single mothers were punished or put in a jail right beside the manse. Although the pastors certainly had to preach also, their sermons often only served as moral reinforcement of the system. This kind of governance was kept up until after Napoleon removed the Lords of Bern from their office and separated the area of Aargau from the canton of Bern. During Barth's time, however, two factory owners ruled Safenwil. The custom was that after reaching confirmation age (between fourteen and sixteen years old), boys and girls went to work in the factories. Both male and female workers worked more than twelve hours a day and earned hardly enough for a meager living.

One of the factory owners who had "donated" the manse thought that it was the role of the pastor to see to it that people were content with their fate and limited prospects. But this calculation did not quite work in Karl Barth's case. He was not the sort of pastor easily coerced, especially when the lives of his parishioners were involved. One of the factory owners even left the church and, since he did not want to miss out on religion, founded a religious club.

This new pastor was the first one in a long time who was on the side of the poor and oppressed. They did not call Barth "Pastor," but "Comrade Pastor." He lived with them in "solidarity," a word that he also began using in church. His opponents and detractors, however, called him "the red pastor" after he became a member of the Social Democratic Party, which was highly unusual for a pastor. Barth trained workers to fight for their rights by living in solidarity with one another, and he became an advocate for female factory workers, who were especially disadvantaged. In all this he kept in contact with Swiss "religious socialism" (Leonhard Ragaz, 1868–1945). In this movement, Christians became members of the socialistic party in their hope of God's promise to renew the whole world.

Yet, in all these activities, Barth did not neglect his task as verbi divini minister, that is, as servant of the Word of God, as it is still called today. He took his tasks so seriously, especially the task of preparing sermons every week, that the Bible began to speak to Barth anew. This was especially...