It seems like so called progressive and exvangelical Christians present the world with a gushy-squishy God who just ‘loves,’ and nothing else. The theologians I follow most closely, namely Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance, along with others in the universe of theologians, likewise emphasize that God is love. Often progressive Christians are drawn to theologians like Barth et al., because he seems to present an emphasis on God that resonates with what they perceive as the good and the beautiful. Most of the Barthian Christians I know are in fact progressive Christians (PC); both theologically and socio-politically. In fact, for most, Barth serves as a gateway to more radical conceptions of ‘God is love’ than Barth actually offers (as some of these folks begin to realize when they actually read Barth for themselves). But the fact remains that Barth is often a mainstay theologian, at least in spirit, for the progressive Christian. My question is: is there a substantial causal correlation between this perception of Barth’s et al. conception of God as love, and the progressive politics and theology that so many progressive Christians (we might want to call them liberal Christians) operate with?

This really, in my mind, comes down to a question of ‘inclusiveness,’ and inclusiveness understood in a particular direction. I think the PC wants to believe in a certain instance of God’s bigness. What I mean is that the PC, as you listen to their logic, will often appeal to God’s all-encompassing compassion and grace. As you listen further, and start reading between the lines, you start to realize that they are now presenting a concept of God’s bigness and graciousness in abstraction from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; even as they continue to conflate this abstraction with the name of Jesus Christ. This is where they quickly depart from Barth’s conception of God as love and grace.

For Barth, God is the Judge judged. For Barth, there is no abstract conception of God’s bigness and graciousness. He is a full-frontal and flaming trintarian actualist. In other words, for Barth, there is nothing speculative or abstract about God; at least not for a genuine Christian understanding. For Barth, we can only conceive of God’s love, bigness, and graciousness as that comes to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ; the shed blood of Jesus Christ, in fact. What is, in the incarnation, for Barth, is who God is for us; there is no room for PC abstractive thinking about what and who God’s bigness includes. Surely, for Barth, all are included; just as sure as the eternal Son assumes humanity in the incarnation. But unlike the PC approach to God’s inclusiveness, Barth doggedly clamps off any other way for knowing God’s way except by way of looking at Jesus Christ. Notice how TF Torrance presses this in Barth’s theology:

Because Jesus Christ is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life, theological thought is limited and bounded and directed by this historical reality in whom we meet the Truth of God. That prohibits theological thought from wandering at will across open country, from straying over history in general or from occupying itself with some other history, rather than this concrete history in the centre of all history. Thus theological thought is distinguished from every empty conceptual thought, from every science of pure possibility, and from every kind of merely formal thinking, by being mastered and determined by the special history of Jesus Christ.[1]

The progressive Christian has no quarter in Barth’s theology. Barth’s God is inclusive, big, gracious, and for the world; the progressive’s conception of God is not grounded in the concrete history of God as given in the humanity of Jesus Christ.

The progressives would be better suited in looking for the God they’d prefer in such theologians as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Bultmann. Barth, as we know, worked against any notion of turn to the subject theology like we find in the romantic theology of Schleiermacher and the existentialist of Bultmann. But there is an explanation, theologically, for why so many PCs go off the rails in their conception of God and his inclusiveness; it is because they project from themselves, and more collectively, the cultural moment, and construct a conception of God in their desires and images. Exvangelicals, by and large, while good intentioned, don’t like the classical or biblical conception of God as Judge judged, and so embark on a life-long pursuit and project of constructing a God who is not bounded by the delimiting historical reality of God’s givenness in Jesus Christ.

The enigmatic thing to me is this: why are so many Barth scholars (like we find at Princeton) liberal and progressive? My current conclusion is that these scholars have elevated their school understanding of Barth’s theology, and then read that into, and in fact deployed that as their biblical hermeneutic. The emphasis in my conclusion should be placed on ‘school.’ These scholars, and the progressive Christians who follow them more popularly, are subject to the atmosphere they have devoted their lives to in the university setting. Such settings, as we all know, are rarified by air that blows with the spirit of Marx, Schleiermacher, and the idea that the human condition is an exalted reality. This somehow mixes, in the case of Barth scholars, with their reading of Barth, and somehow gets transposed into their understanding of God and all subsequent reality. It’s a rather complex thing when it comes to such Barth scholars; since Barth’s theology itself was intended to thwart this sort of ‘humanistic’ approach to reality. True, Barth wasn’t a North American evangelical (I mean he was known as the ‘Red Pastor’ after-all), but the lineaments of his theological project, in my view, militate against theologies that become conflated with the cultures at large; school or otherwise.

There is still the question that we started out with: is there a substantial causal correlation between this perception of Barth’s et al. conception of God as love, and the progressive politics and theology that so many progressive Christians (we might want to call them liberal Christians) operate with? No, I don’t think so. But then again, it depends on the cultures Barth is read within. Currently, in North America, and anglophone Barth studies in general, he is read from within school contexts that are progressive, liberal, and navel-gazing. So, Barth, in my view, and those who are in his wake, are guilty by association with professors and Christians who have been taken captive by their particular cultures rather than the God who invades and contradicts such cultures, in Jesus Christ.[2]

I still want to probe this question further, and not focus as much on Barth, but instead on the question of the relationship between understanding or emphasizing God as love, and the appropriation of progressive theologies and politics (like is there a causal/material connection, or is it more incidental?). More to come, at some point.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931, 196.

[2] I’m trying to win a popularity contest; can’t you tell?