Let me just say one more thing about Barth. William B. Evans over at his blog, The Ecclesial Calvinist, has picked up on what started online as a result of my posts (presumably) on Karl Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Evans is a Reformed theologian, and has written some helpful stuff, in particular, on union with Christ. I’ve had some spotty correspondence with him, here and there over the years; the first correspondence was some comments he made at my blog with reference to Karl Barth. I don’t remember exactly what the post was about, but he was respectfully telling me how he had early in his theological studies career been attracted to Barth; but then he realized Barth wasn’t for him, that Barth was just a “cool”-kid phase. In his comments he was trying to persuade me to move on, as I recall, and go onto bigger and more orthodox things. In his most recent post, at his blog, this one, he somewhat rehashes what I just communicated about his approach to Barth, and why he indeed moved away from him. He isn’t using the revelation[s] from the Tietz essay as a bludgeon to beat Barth around the ears with, but he is rightfully disturbed by it all.

I introduce you to Evans, and his post, because he has this way of characterizing folks who are attracted to Barth’s theology; it’s the same sentiment he communicated to me so many years ago. He writes:

I’ll also admit that I went through a phase in seminary when I thought Barth was “cool.” He is fun to read, especially as he interacts with so much of the Christian tradition.  But I found it necessary to move on, in large measure because I was finding his soteriology and ecclesiology to be less than helpful (more on this below).  Many of my graduate school professors had gone through (sometimes passionate) Barthian phases before moving leftward to other forms of theology.  One thing I had in common with my mostly liberal professors was distaste for Barth, though for somewhat different reasons.

The current preoccupation with Barth seems to be to some extent a “younger evangelical” phenomenon. Reasons are not terribly difficult to discern—fatigue with the older generation’s framing of issues, a desire for more interpretive “wiggle room” on certain matters, a concern to do greater justice to the humanity of Scripture, and so forth. In various ways Barth seems to some to provide a “third way” that avoids the pitfalls of both fundamentalism and liberalism.[1]

I’m not sure I fit into the “younger evangelical” crowd (I’m 43) that Evans references (probably), but I don’t fully agree with his characterization. I mean in some ways his characterization does fit some folks at a certain level I’d imagine, but my sole attraction to Karl Barth’s theology had to do not just with a “third way” or a via media, but with a brand-new way of thinking about election/reprobation and the doctrine of predestination. Without this type of reformulation in Barth’s theology I probably never would have been attracted to him. Does this fit into Evans’ characterization of “wiggle room?” Not for me. What Barth offered was a way to think about election/reprobation that was fully grounded in Jesus Christ; so that both election and reprobation were dual realities that could be singularly located in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ—i.e. he elected humanity for himself, and in his election of humanity he assumed our reprobate (fallen) status—giving us his elect status as sons and daughters of God by participating in his resurrected/recreated humanity by grace (something he had/has by nature).

It was this that hooked me to Barth’s theology (what you’ll find fully articulated in his CD II/2). But now, of course, I’ve been struggling to reconcile Barth’s theology with his chosen lifestyle (i.e. choosing to live a life with his “concubine,” Charlotte von Kirschbaum). For me this means that, as I’ve noted, I’ll be stepping back from Barth’s theology in direct ways (at least for the foreseeable future). But that does not mean there aren’t indirect ways to engage with his theology, and it is these ways that I have already been engaging with for longer than I have been with Barth’s theology; i.e. in other words, the way into Barth’s theology for me has always already been through his best English speaking student’s work, Thomas Torrance.

So I will continue to work with many of the “Barthian” categories, particularly revolving around the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ as that is a related doctrine to Barth’s reformulation of the classical understanding and grammar of election/reprobation and/or double predestination. Interestingly, in this vein, I just picked up a book (which I’ve been wanting to read for quite awhile—since it came out in 2016) entitled: Election, Barth, and the French Connection: How Pierre Maury Gave a “Decisive Impetus” to Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election. Pierre Maury was a Frenchman, and friend of Barth’s, who presented a paper in 1936 entitled Election and Faith at the Geneva Calvinist Congress. Here is what Barth wrote of this, as he later read the text of that address:

As long ago as 1936 Pierre Maury had delivered an address entitled “Election and Faith” on the occasion of the Geneva Calvinist Congress; that address, which appeared in the same year in the review Foi et Vie, was published in German in 1940 in the Theologische Studien series. Most of those present at the Calvinist Congress were neither prepared, nor apt to receive in their hearts, nor even just simply to register in their brains, what Pierre Maury was saying to them then. There were but few who had any idea of the implications of his thesis in the course of the years that followed, when preoccupations of a political nature loomed so large that they scarcely left time or energy for theological reflection of this sort. But I remember one person who read the text of that address with the greatest attention: myself! It so happened that in the autumn of the same year, 1936, I had to give a course of lectures on the subject of predestination (in Hungary). Pierre Maury and I had of course often spoken of this problem; nevertheless, his 1936 address at once made a profound impression on me. And when a few years later I had occasion to return to the subject in a wider context, I did not merely refer to Pierre Maury’s pamphlet, but stressed that it ought to be considered as one of the best contributions made towards the understanding of the problem. That is why, as I said at the time (CD II/2, 154f), Pierre Maury must be ranked with the rare theologians of the past who, because of the Christological basis of their doctrine, seem to me to have remained here on solid ground (such were Athanasius, Augustine, John Knox, and Johannes Coccejus). One can certainly say that it was he who contributed decisively to giving my thoughts on this point their fundamental orientation. Before I read his study, I had met no one who had dealt with the question so freshly and boldly.[2]

For me, it is good to come across resources like this, and realize that even prior to Barth reformulation of double predestination had already started to take place; Pierre Maury being a prime example of this type of work. Yes, Athanasius, and even Calvin (who Maury is glossing in much of his paper) offered the type of bedrock one would need to proceed as Maury and then as Barth did; and so it is exciting for me to think about pressing further into the antecedents of Barth’s theology itself (which of course Calvin and Athanasius et al. are prime suspects in such an endeavor and are people I’ve spent quite a bit of time with already).

Anyway, I just wanted to register what attracted me to Barth in the first place; it was a particular doctrinal locus. For an evangelical, such as myself, the only alternatives, grammatically offered, was the usual classical Calvinist and Arminian binary of how to navigate election and reprobation. I was never satisfied with that. So Barth and Torrance offered a way out of that whole penumbra by offering, in my view, an illumined way of thinking about a doctrine of election through the sunshine of God in Jesus Christ. Without this offering Barth would have never been on my radar to begin with; but with it, his theological reformulation, as it intensively settled on Jesus Christ, gave me great joy to involve myself in the theological endeavor.

 

[1] William B. Evans, Why I Still Don’t Much Care for Karl Barth, accessed 10-03-2017.

[2] Karl Barth, Basel, February 1957 in Simon Hattrell, ed., Election, Barth, and the French Connection: How Pierre Maury Gave a “Decisive Impetus” to Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), loc 765, 772 kindle.