I once wrote a post distinguishing Barth’s notion of Christocentrism from Calvin’s, and how that implicated, for one thing, the way Barth and Calvin, respectively, interpreted Scripture. As noted in that post, Barth’s Christocentric hermeneutic can be identified as ‘intensively and principially Christocentric.’ What that means is that for Barth Jesus Christ is the sum total of all that we read in Holy Scripture; whether that is in the first eleven chapters of I Chronicles, or in the Gospel of John. All of Scripture, for Barth, so to speak, is in-breathed with the face of Christ shining through on every page; this is the intensive aspect, the Christ concentration that dominates Barth’s approach to all things theological, and Scriptural. To illustrate this aspect further, Barth writes:

The Bible says all sorts of things, certainly; but in all this multiplicity and variety, it says in truth only one thing—just this: the name of Jesus Christ, concealed under the name Israel in the Old Testament, revealed under His own name in the New Testament, which therefore can be understood only as it has understood itself, as a commentary on the Old Testament. The Bible becomes clear when it is clear that it says this one thing: that it proclaims the name of Jesus Christ and therefore proclaims God in His richness and mercy, and man in his need and helplessness, yet living on what God’s mercy has given and will give him. The Bible remains dark to us if we do not hear in it this sovereign name, and if, therefore, we think we perceive God and man in some other relation than the one determined once for all by this name. Interpretation stands in the service of the clarity which the Bible as God’s Word makes for itself; and we can properly interpret the Bible, in whole or part, only when we perceive and show that what it says is said from the point of view of that concealed and revealed name of Jesus Christ, and therefore in testimony to grace of which we as men stand in need, of which as men we are incapable and of which we are made participants by God.[1]

It is Jesus Christ, for Barth, wherein Scripture’s light is refracted and thus has the capacity to speak powerfully into the life of the Church, and all those participating in its life as that is grounded in Jesus Christ. Without Jesus, for Barth, the Bible makes no sense; it has no meaning, or telos; it has nothing holding together all its variegated parts. Just as with all of creation, so with Scripture as an aspect of that creation, it all remains fragmented and aloof without its concrete grounding in the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. So, for Barth, to attempt to read Scripture from some “critical” or distanciated vantage point, from say a higher critical angle, or history of religions, or some other fangled naturalist vista, will not lead the interpreter to the whole of Scripture’s meaning; it will only, from those angles, have the ability to reflect back the wit of the interpreter’s self-projection into the text—as if this can hold the world of the canon together (sounds pretty arrogant to me).

To help illustrate just how intense Barth is, in regard to seeing the dominance of Jesus Christ as the center of Holy Scripture’s coherence, let’s read a bit further with him. Here, the context comes prior to what we just read from Barth, and it has to do with a discussion on human freedom as that is derived from the freedom of God’s Word described, and even prescribed in the events of salvation history. You will notice just how significant participation with Christ is for our freedom to be considered genuine freedom as that is derivative of the freedom the Word of God or Jesus Christ as the eternal Logos has always already shared with the Father for us. Barth writes:

The events of faith in our own life can, in fact, be none other than the birth, passion, death, ascension and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the exodus of Israel from Egypt, its journey through the desert, its entrance into the land of Canaan, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost and the mission of the apostles to the heathen. Every verse in the Bible is virtually a concrete faith-event in my own life. Whether this is actually the case, whether with my own life I have been present at this or that event here testified to me, this and this alone is what I am asked by the Word of God which bears witness to me of God’s revelation in and through all of this, and in every single verse of Scripture.[2]

We can see just how pervasive this Christ concentration is for Barth. Our very lives are circumscribed by Christ’s in every aspect; circumscribed to the point that it isn’t just the event of the cross where the Christian is present and participant, but the whole of the salvation outworking as that starts in Genesis 1.1, and narrativally concludes in Revelation 22. It is this complex that God has entangled us into just as He has freely chosen to entangle Himself with us in the assumption of our humanity in Jesus Christ. In this assumption God makes Himself known, and in this we come to have capacity to know God as He truly is; only insofar as we see ourselves in the history of His life for us, afresh and anew, in the events He accomplished for us, and continues to build into us as we push further into ineffable reality of who He is for us.

For Barth the Answer is always Jesus, no matter what the question. The Apostle Paul agrees with Barth. Jesus Christ agrees with Barth (I have all the necessary proof texts loaded if needed). Most importantly the Father bears witness to His dearly beloved Son by gifting us the Holy Spirit whose ministry it is to bear witness to and magnify the name of Jesus Christ. It is this theological motif, this theological beachhead that dominates the theologizing of Karl Barth; for good or for ill (but for Good!). Some want to object to Barth’s overemphasis on Christ as the only gateway for knowing God (see Machen); they want to present us with a priori avenues for conceiving of God. Natural theology for various traditions in the history of interpretation is the way many theologians would have us go in regard to knowing God and godness (I even think of Sonderegger, and her critique of Barth in her ST v1). But this is erroneous, and asks us to go beyond the Word of God in order to know God. Barth repudiated that via, as do I. I commend to you the sort of Christ concentration Barth operated with throughout his whole career as a theologian and Christian. It is one that I have gotten lost in, and one that I intend on being lost in for all eternity.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 §21: The Doctrine of the Word of God (London/New York: T&T Clark, Continuum Imprint, 2009), 268.

[2] Ibid., 256-57.