In important ways I think it safe to say that I am ‘Barthian,’ or at least After Barth in orientation; I have no problem identifying that. What is rather strange to me is how most the Barthians I know, when it comes to social issues, are mostly all on the progressive side of things; i.e. with reference to the political landscape. Indeed, it is over this issue, and not necessarily theological ones, that there has been rupture between me and most of these Barthians online. But what is it; is there something necessarily correlative between Barth’s theology and ethos that lends it to being ‘progressive’ politically? Yes, in Barth’s context he was known as the Red Pastor, and was a democratic socialist; but in his day, at least as far as social issues, that meant something different than what it means to be progressive or ‘democratic socialist’ in the 21^st century Anglophone context. Is there something inherent to Barth’s theology makes it prone towards being applied towards what has come to be called “progressive” when we are referring to the political dilemmas facing us today?

Personally, even as I intentionally situate myself After Barth theologically, on most social issues I lean pretty heavily ‘conservative.’ Now, that does not necessarily mean that I am a dyed-in-the-wool American Conservative, per se; but it does mean when it comes to issues like abortion, human sexuality, just war theory, and a cluster of other social loci that I am quite traditional (even ‘classical’). So, I find myself in a bit of a quandary, although I haven’t really lost sleep over it; but what do you think dearest reader, is there something in Barth’s theological oeuvre that you can see lending itself towards the progressive socio-politico platform as that has taken shape, in particular, in North America?

Let me give you what I think might lend Barth’s trajectory this way. Famously, as we all know by now, Barth is anti-natural theology. Indeed, we might even say that his passionate anti-natural theological approach was motivated precisely by socio-politico concerns; indeed, as those were thrust into his face, along with the rest of the world, by Hitler’s Nazi millenarian ambitions. Barth’s anti-natural theological impulses have what have now come to be called apocalyptic theological contours. In other words, for Barth, and those following, apocalyptic theology sees discontinuity between creation past, and creation new as that has been actualized in the event of incarnation of God in Christ and the resurrection. What this discontinuous understanding of history entails, embedded within a doctrine of creation as it is, is a world that is surreptitiously being impacted over and again, afresh and anew by God’s constant invasion of the world by the eschatological irruption of His life as that is made present through the Holy Spirit’s ministry. What this implies, towards helping us to understand why Barth’s theology might lend itself towards a progressive socio-politik, is that there is no ‘natural law,’ that there is nothing empirically stable in nature, and its history, that we can point to in order to establish absolute and universalizing norms when it comes to socio-political theory vis-à-vis state governments. I think this might be why some (if not most) on the Barth side align with what conservatives, and they themselves, would identify as ‘radical.’

There is a deconstructive seed built into Barth’s theology that like leaven spreads into various strata of social-political reality. But I am not of the mind that just because Barth’s mode, theologically, as one committed to reification and reformulation necessarily means that we must slide progressive socio-politically. We could just as easily, in keeping with Barth’s mode de jure, look to the ethical contours disclosed in Holy Scripture as that finds its reality in Christ, and see grace-hatched and apocalyptically-given ethical norms that end up sliding ‘conservative’ rather than progressive; and still be faithful to Barth’s theological impulses. But when I use the language of ‘conservative’ I don’t use it necessarily with reference to the sort of conservatism we see trotted about on FoxNews. When I refer to conservative, I mean how that has been applied to social issues classically; i.e. like with reference to human sexuality, abortion, and the sanctity of human life in general.

So, an interesting dilemma; if it is a dilemma. But something that I am confronted with, as I seek to think theologically After Barth, while at the same time retaining pretty traditional socio-political mores (without the aid of natural-law theory).