Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques
Edited by David Gibson and Daniel Strange
UK edition: Apollos, Nottingham, 2008, 416pp.
US edition: T&T Clark, New York, 2009, 408pp.
While reading this selection of essays, I’ve also been reading the prophet Jeremiah. Both are stretching, edifying and hard going, and yet it has struck me that both deal with theological disagreement—that is, dare I say, false teaching—in very different ways.
The ideas of Swiss-born Karl Barth (1886-1968; his name is pronounced ‘Bart’) have been, for some of us, the air we breathed at theological college and in our private reading. For others, his influence may have been there even without us knowing—for example, when we heard (or gave) sermons at church that were thoroughly Christ-centred, and yet lacked application and warning for the hearers—sermons that focused on the victory of Christ and yet avoided talking about any real expectation of hell for the unbelieving, or sermons that subtly shifted away from actually saying that we can trust the Bible as being the word of God. For the casual reader, Barth is an almost unassailable mountain—monumental, terse, and filled with paradoxes, interesting asides and exegetical insight. His language and ideas take you to the heights of the majesty of God, but the danger is you can read them and consider them as being more profound than the Bible—an improvement on the original. Depending on how you define ‘theologian’, Barth could be called the greatest theologian of the 20th century.
The scope of these 12 critical essays is broad, and includes Barth’s logic, historical theology, exegesis of Romans 9-11, view of the triune God and view of hell. (I would also have loved to see him pushed in other areas, like his view of the Old Testament and his thoughts on areas of Christian living like faith and repentance.) While not uniform, the collection gathers some of the best essays I have ever read on Barth. Several of them contain strong pleas for evangelicals to listen, engage and deal with what he wrote. So Mark Thompson, while pointing out the inadequacies of Barth’s view of Scripture as becoming the word of God rather than being the word of God, finished his argument with:
We can and must give Barth his unequivocal ‘No!’ at important points. Nevertheless, we can still thank God for the way this servant sought to honour his Lord and live under the authority of his Word. (p. 197)
Two contributions by Henri Blocher and Garry Williams were hard going, but particularly rewarding. Blocher’s analysis of Barth’s Christ-centred method takes you into the mind of the theologian: while Barth sought to put Christ at the centre, he failed to reach his goal, and therefore fell into the danger of putting a Christ-idea there, rather than the real Christ. Williams, dealing with the atonement, shows that while Barth was bold and courageous, he displaced Christ’s real involvement in human history. In addition, his thought lacked logical coherence and his ideas teetered on the edge of universalism.
The book’s stated aim is “to model courteous and critical engagement with Barth” without infatuation or caricature (pp. 15, 19), and this is what the essays deliver. But considering Barth’s influence, is that enough? If the conclusions that most of the contributors reached are true, the weight of those conclusions seemed to be lacking. There was a lot of light, but not much heat; most of the essays tended to frame Barth’s theology as being wonderful, but also inadequate or unsatisfactory, rather than pastorally dangerous.
From almost every angle, it is Barth’s view of election that is one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Barth’s innovation is that rather than people being elect, Christ is both the elect one and the rejected one. Therefore, all humanity is given a ‘yes’ in Christ that negates our ‘no’ towards God. While the arguments are complicated, it is not hard to see that the trajectory Barth’s theology follows leads to universalism (i.e. that all people will be saved). Oliver Crisp gives two options:
What Barth tells us about the nature of God’s electing (and reprobating) act can mean only one of two things: that his account is a species of necessary universalism after all, in which case no mere human is finally cut off from the presence of God in hell; or, that Barth’s account is inconsistent and that different strands of his thinking on this matter do not form a coherent whole. (p. 301)
So either Barth is teaching universalism or he just doesn’t make sense. Either way, he obscures future judgement and the urgency of repentance. All this was done in the name of the victory of grace and Christ-centredness. It is little wonder that Barth’s theology is popular.
I recommend anyone who has encountered Barth and been troubled or amazed by him to read these essays. Stretch yourself, remind yourself of the gospel and add your own exclamation marks! Let me also encourage you to read the book of Jeremiah: in it, the false prophets promised (or hoped for) “Peace, peace” when, for so many, there was none (Jer 6:14, 8:11). Sound familiar?
