Religion, a term bandied around by many. It is a word people use frequently, but aren’t totally sure what they mean by it. It has a cultural context, informed by an “understood” or colloquial meaning that is probably fleeting for most. If we were to go out on the street and survey people, we’d get a variety of responses; probably having something to do with “organized religion,” versus “unorganized” (whatever that might mean). The Epistle of James speaks about a genuine and true religion; which is to pay attention to the poor and widows among us. In this sense, religion is seemingly given shape by a prior ethical demand that is met when the “religious” go and do. But what is it that gives the Christian religion its shape; is it primarily a ‘moral imperative?’ Should we, as Christians, refer to our ‘faith’ as ‘religion?’ Does religion itself contain an a priori commitment to a ‘before’ God; that is does religion inherently operate with a sense of humanity’s own capacity to approach God, whoever that God might be?

Karl Barth is critical of any form of ‘religion.’ He sees religion as unbelief, as an attempt by human communities to reach out to God from their own resource, context, and circumstance. As such, he sees God come in Christ as a contradiction to all religions, even Christian expressions. This, I think, is right! But rather than falling prey to the common evangelical refrain of: ‘it’s a relationship not a religion,’ Barth, unsurprisingly, focuses on God’s Self-revelation; he sees Godself as the contradiction to all forms of human attempts to reach Him from their own capaciousness. There is a subtlety to this that I think might be lost on various Christian traditions. I think it would be safe to say that Christians, of all expressions, in good-faith, believe that they are operating from a place of submission to God; that they aren’t engaging in “religious” behavior, per se. But I wonder if this is actually the case? I mean, when we think about theological methodology, is it the case that the Christian traditions, and the Christian Tradition actually operates in and from a place where they are actually committed to a mode that, de jure, is seeking God’s living voice (viva vox Dei) prior to elevating their own? Barth writes:

The image of God is always that reality of perception or thought in which man assumes and asserts something unique and ultimate and decisive either beyond or within his own existence, by which he believes himself to be posited or at least determined and conditioned. From the standpoint of revelation, man’s religion is simply an assumption and assertion of this kind, and as such it is an activity which contradicts revelation—contradicts it, because it is only through truth that truth can come to man. If man tries to grasp at truth of himself, he tries to grasp at it a priori. But in that case he does not do what he has to do when the truth comes to him. He does not believe. If he did, he would listen; but in religion he talks. If he did, he would accept a gift; but religion he takes something for himself. If he did, he would let God Himself intercede for God: but in religion he ventures to grasp at God. Because it is a grasping, religion is the contradiction of revelation, the concentrated expression of human unbelief, i.e., an attitude and activity which is directly opposed to faith. It is a feeble but defiant, an arrogant but hopeless, attempt to create something which man could do, but now cannot do, or can do only because and if God Himself creates it for him: the knowledge of the truth, the knowledge of God. We cannot, therefore, interpret the attempt as a harmonious co-operating of man with the revelation of God, as though religion were a kind of outstretched hand which is filled by God in His revelation. Again, we cannot say of the evident religious capacity of man that it is, so to speak, the general form of human knowledge, which acquires its true and proper content in the shape of revelation. On the contrary, we have here an exclusive contradiction. In religion man bolts and bars himself against revelation by providing a substitute, by taking away in advance the very thing which has to be given by God.

Non apprehendunt (Deum) qualem se offert, sed qualem pro temeritate fabricati sunt, imanginantur [They do not accept (God) as He offers Himself, but they imagine Him, rashly, to be as they have made him (Calvin, Instit. I, 4, 1)

He has, of course, the power to do this. But what he achieves and acquires in virtue of this power is never the knowledge of God as Lord and God. It is never the truth. It is a complete fiction, which has not only little but not relation to God. It is an anti-God who has first to be known as such and discarded when the truth comes to him. But it can be known as such, as a fiction, only as the truth does come to him.

Notitia Dei, quails hominibus restat, nihil aliud est, qualm horrenda idololatriae et superstitionum omnium scaturigo [The knowledge of God, as it is now among men, is nothing other than an abhorrent source of idolatry and all superstitions] (Calvin, Comm. on Jn. 3.6, C.R. 47, 57)

Revelation does not link up with a human religion which is already present and practised. It contradicts it, just as religion previously contradicted revelation. It displaces it, just as religion previously displaced revelation; just as faith cannot link up with a mistaken faith, but must contradict and displace it as unbelief, as an act of contradiction.[1]

We might say religion was invented the moment Eve reached down to pluck the forbidden fruit. The moment Eve and Adam plunged their teeth into that seductive produce human religion was seeded. It is only the invasion of God’s alien life in Christ wherein this root is dug out, and replaced with the seed of His life; it is here where religion is confronted, contradicted, and displaced with the only reality that can meet the human need for worship and purpose.

Barth’s critique of religion, if ever needed, is now! I write from the North American evangelical context. It feels as if we are so wayward from the living reality of God that we wouldn’t recognize Christ’s voice if it confronted us to our faces. If Barth ever needed an example of the sort of religion he is thinking of, then he needn’t look any further than the American evangelical church. She is awash in the grasping that Barth rightfully identifies as the definition of religion. The evangelical Church in America has lost her first love, and unless she is open to the Revelation of God in Christ she will never find her way back. But she has also lost the concept of Revelation; that concept in itself is ostensibly too deep for the evangelical mind these days. Kyrie eleison!

[1]Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2 §17: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 105-06.