Not that I am necessarily worried about proving Barth’s orthodoxy to any of his critics, but this particular passage from his Church Dogmatics is rather striking in the way that it represents a very classical and orthodox view of God’s aseity. For anyone who thinks this is a rare excerpt from Barth, think again. For anyone who criticizes Barth’s theology, but has never read Barth for themselves; stop. For anyone who criticizes Barth’s theology, and they have read him; what’s wrong with you? Okay, I wasn’t intending for this to be an apologia for Barth’s theology, I simply wanted to share this, what I take to be, rich passage from Barth’s corpus. Not only is aseity touched upon, but so is the eternal generation of the Son (not an uncontroversial doctrine itself these days). Here’s Barth (pax vobiscum):

God’s Word means that God speaks. But this implies thirdly what one might call the purposive character of the Word of God. This might also be called its relatedness or pertinence, its character as address. In its form neither as proclamation, Holy Scripture, nor revelation do we know God’s Word as an entity that exists or could exist merely in and for itself. We know it only as a Word that is directed to us and applies to us. The fact that it is this is not, of course self-evident. It is not something one might deduce from a general concept of speech. It is so in fact, but it might not be. In the intertrinitarian life of God the eternal generation of the Son or Logos is, of course, the expression of God’s love, of His will not to be alone. But it does not follow from this that God could not be God without speaking to us. We undoubtedly understand God’s love for man, nor in the first instance for any reality distinct from Himself, only when we understand it as free and unmerited love not resting on any need. God would be no less God if He had created no world and no man. The existence of the world and our own existence are in no sense vital to God, not even as the object of His love. The eternal generation of the Son by the Father tells us first and supremely that God is not at all lonely even without the world and us. His love has its object in Himself. And so one cannot say that our existence as that of the recipients of God’s Word is constitutive for the concept of the Word. It could be no less what it is even without us. God could satisfy His love in Himself. For He is already an object to Himself and He is an object truly worthy of His love. God did not need to speak to us. What He says by Himself and to Himself from eternity to eternity would really be said just as well and even without our being there, as speech which for us would be eternal silence. Only when we are clear about this can we estimate what it means that God has actually, though not necessarily, created a world and us, that His love actually, though not necessarily, applies to us, that His Word has actually, though not necessarily, been spoken to us. The purposiveness we find in proclamation, the Bible and revelation is thus a free and actual purposiveness by no means essential to God Himself. We evaluate this purposiveness correctly only if we understand it as the reality of the love of the God who does not need us but who does not will to be without us, who has directed His regard specifically on us.[1]

What I have emboldened also gets us into the stuff of the so called “Barth Wars,” if you’re aware of the goings on there.

I just wanted to share this quote from Barth because I think it is rich and illustrative of Barth’s own trajectory and doctrine of God therein. We see Barth working with the basics of orthodoxy in this quote, but then characteristically expanding upon those from his Logocentric Word driven theological theologizing. We see the role that God’s Freedom plays in all of this, as Barth opines in the last clause about the purposiveness of God ‘who does not need us but who does not will to be without us.’ These are the types of riches we will continue to find in Barth’s theology. There is liveliness to the way he sees God, because he sees God not as a metaphysical monad, but as a personal Word for us in the face of Jesus Christ. So while we have all the necessary and component parts for a strict orthodoxy, we are given those, in Barth’s theology, not as abstract speculative parts, but as parts that come to us enfleshed in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

[1] Karl Barth, CD I/1, 137. [emboldening mine]