Theologian · Contemporary
Karl Barth
1886–1968 · Dialectical theology (neo-orthodoxy)
Swiss Reformed pastor and professor; author of the Barmen Declaration against the “German Christians” (1934); the theologian with whom Balthasar, Przywara, Küng and Ratzinger argued most; visited Rome after the Council in 1966.
His commentary on Romans (1919, 1922) fell “like a bomb on the playground of the theologians,” ending liberal Protestantism's confidence in religious experience; the thirteen volumes of the Church Dogmatics then rebuilt Reformed theology on the Word of God alone, with Christ as the elect and reprobate man, and no natural knowledge of God at all. He called the analogy of being “the invention of Antichrist” and the one reason not to become a Catholic.
Why he matters: The greatest Protestant theologian since Calvin and the most serious interlocutor Catholic theology has had from that side; Balthasar's “The Theology of Karl Barth” turned his Christocentrism toward Rome, and Küng's “Justification” argued that on that doctrine Barth and Trent agree. A Reformed reader who takes this test meets him on natural theology, Scripture and the sacraments.
Where to be careful
The rejection of natural theology contradicts Dei Filius (reason can know God from creation); sola scriptura and a merely symbolic view of baptism remain; his doctrine of election tends toward a universalism he would not affirm. Catholics should learn from his Christocentrism and his resistance to the state.
Reading
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Dogmatics in OutlineKarl Barth · The Church Dogmatics in a hundred and fifty pages, lectured in the ruins of Bonn.
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The Epistle to the RomansKarl Barth · The second edition; the bomb.
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The Theology of Karl BarthHans Urs von Balthasar · The Catholic reply that Barth himself called the best book about him.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.