I received a bit of push-back on a recent post I did on Barth and his understanding of religion as “unbelief.” But let me expand further on where Barth is coming from, I think it will help provide some relief in regard to some misunderstanding relative to where he is coming from. When it comes to Barth it is always helpful to remember the broad strokes he is thinking from. Without keeping these strokes in mind, a prima facie reading of him (i.e. contextless) will inevitably lead many to read him wrongly; and this has happened!

In what we will read from Barth, it will become clear that his understanding of ‘religion’ is informed more broadly by his inchoate doctrine of election and his Christ concentration; both loci that are located in the so called scandal of particularity. We oughtn’t ever approach Barth without bearing his theory of revelation in mind, and how significant that is towards his development of theological conclusions. Again, for Barth, as we all know by now, the Centraldogma of all theological reflection is no other than, Jesus Christ. This is why even his understanding of religion, and the Church therein, is deconstructed and resurrected by God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; for Barth everything comes back to Jesus, and his place in the economy of God’s triune life, in and for us. With this in mind, let’s follow along with Barth as he helps us understand what he thinks ‘true religion’ is constituted by; for Barth, there can be no true religion outwith God’s Self-revelation; and there can be no Self-revelation without Jesus Christ. As such, if there is going to be a true religion, it must be grounded in Revelation; or more pointedly, it must be concentrated in the face of Jesus Christ. This, for Barth, is where true religion obtains; maybe this will help bring understanding in regard to Barth’s belief that all religion is unbelief: other than the true religion that is necessarily grounded in God’s Self-revelation in Christ.

The preceding expositions have established the fact that we can speak of “true” religion only in the sense in which we speak of a “justified sinner.”

Religion is never true in itself and as such. The revelation of God denies any religion is true, i.e., that it is in truth the knowledge and worship of God and the reconciliation of man with God. For as the self-offering and self-manifestation of God, as the work of peace which God Himself has concluded between Himself and man, revelation is the truth beside which there is no other truth, over against which there is only lying and wrong. If by the concept of a “true religion” we mean truth which belongs to religion in itself and as such, it is just as unattainable as a “good man,” if by goodness we mean something which man can achieve on his own initiative. No religion is true. It can only become true, i.e., according to that which purports to be and for which it is upheld. And it can become true only in the way in which man is justified, from without; i.e., not of its own nature and being, but only in virtue of a reckoning and adopting and separating which are foreign to its own nature and being, which are quite inconceivable from its own standpoint, which come to it quite apart from any qualifications or merits. Like justified man, religion is a creature of grace. Bur grace is the revelation of God. No religion can stand before it is a true religion. No man is righteous in its presence. It subjects us all to the judgment of death. But it can also call dead men to life and sinners to repentance. And similarly in the wider sphere where it shows all religion to be false it can also create true religion. The abolishing of religion by revelation need not mean only its negation: the judgment that religion is unbelief. Religion can just as well be exalted in revelation, even though the judgment still stands. It can be upheld by it and concealed in it. It can be justified by it, and—we must at once add—sanctified. Revelation can adopt religion and mark it off as true religion. And it not only can. How do we come to assert that it can, if it has not already done so? There is a true religion: just as there are justified sinners. If we abide strictly by that analogy—and we are dealing not merely with an analogy, but in a comprehensive sense with the thing itself—we need have no hesitation in saying that the Christian religion is the true religion.[1]

True Religion for Barth, as noted, is necessarily grounded in the particularity and scandal of God’s in-breaking Life in Jesus Christ. It’s not that Barth doesn’t see that there is a religion here and there—indeed, he sees them everywhere—it’s that Barth (as do I!) rejects constructing a notion of religion from religious phenomena and phenomenological reflection as such.

This should be of no surprise for anyone who knows Barth’s theology; he never veers from his principled commitment to allowing Jesus to regulate all of his theological conclusions in intensive fashion. And for me, this is why I cannot escape Barth; with his warts and all. Indeed, for Barth, as the passage above illustrates, there can be no true religion except for one that is alien and extra nos (‘outside of us’); one that is not something humans can manipulate and control, but a religion that comes from above and determines what it means to stand before God in His genuine freedom of graciousness and love.

With the above considered, it is upon these bases that Barth concludes that the only true religion is the Christian Religion. It is because Christ alone is the only way, truth, and life to God the Father; and it is because only therein, in the esse of God’s Triune Life (which is the esse of all reality) that true anything (inclusive of religion) obtains and finds inherent valuation before the living God of all life and reality.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2 §17: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 127-28.