William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963, pgs. 206.
Summary: Karl Barth (1886-1968) made a stringent effort to pull Christianity out of the liberal malaise caused by theological compromise with the Enlightenment tradition. The book contains a series of lectures given by Barth at the close of his academic life in Basel and then in the United States.
The book is divided up into four sections: the place of theology, theological existence, the threat to theology, and theological work. Each section is then subdivided into four chapters. It’s tightly organized and intentionally vague in some places while narrowly focused and defined at others.
Barth has recognized the dangers of Christians compromising with Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment (a.k.a. post-modernism) thought. The way he escapes the conclusions and corrosive effect of modernity is by grounding his theology in the existential experience of the theologian through the Spirit and the Word.
The Word is usefully vague for his purposes. It seems to be Jesus Christ himself who has participated in the giving of the Bible. The word of God or the Scriptures is the place where the theologian meets the Word of God through the Spirit. But the Bible is neither all of the Word of God or God’s perfect revelation to man.
The existential vagaries continue: “Faith is the special event that is constitutive for both Christians and theological existence. Faith is the event by which the wonderment, concern, and commitment that make the theologians a theologian are distinguished from all other occurrences which, in their own way, might be noteworthy and memorable or might be given the same designation” (100).
At the same time, when Barth’s goal of bridging between aspects of Enlightenment thought and that of the Bible requires a decisive break, we get Latin distinctions from scholastic theology: “the theologian will stick to the fact that the theologia archetypa and the theologia ektypa, as well as the theologia paradisiacal, or comprehensorum, and the theologia viatorum, are two different things, and that his problem and task can only be the latter, not the former of these concepts” (114).
Benefits/Detriments: The general tenor seems to be, Don’t like the church? Call it a “community?” Having trouble explaining why scientific humanists that control the academic institutions disagree with the historical accounts in the Bible? Trust the Word of God and the not all the word of God. Need to guard against the corrosive nature of modernity? Here’s a Latin distinction.
Mendelssohn is recorded as having complained to Kant about Jacobi’s critique of materialism that it was a “strange monster that sported Goethe for a head, Spinoza for a torso, and Lavater for feet” (Jacobi, Main Philosophical Writings, McGill-Queens’s University Press, 1994, pg 66). In Barth’s case we have a strange monster that sports Kierkegaard for a head, Erasmus for a torso, and anachronistically Billy Graham for feet.
As portrayed here the system is insufficient—especially its epistemology. Barth has insights about the Scriptures and the world that should be weighed, but the system is both too flabby and too distinct to be of any lasting value. I suppose one could maintain a relationship with Christ through this framework, but I am not sure of the point. It’s too strong to satisfy the academy and too weak to not be in jeopardy of disobeying Revelation 22:19.
Perhaps helpful for a mature Christian considering the vocation of professional theologian or for a student of historical theology.