Karl Barth

Karl Barth (1886-1968), Swiss Protestant theologian, widely regarded as one of the most notable Christian thinkers of the 20th century.

The son of the Swiss Reformed minister and New Testament scholar Fritz Barth, Karl Barth was born in Basel, May 10, 1886, and was reared in Bern, where his father taught. From 1904 to 1909, he studied theology at the universities of Bern, Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffman; they had five children. Barth held professorships successively at Göttingen and Münster universities from 1923 to 1930, when he was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Bonn. He opposed the Hitler regime in Germany and supported church-sponsored movements against National Socialism; he was the chief author of the Barmen Declaration, six articles that defined Christian opposition to National Socialist ideology and practice. In 1934 he was expelled from Bonn. Barth's further defiance led, the following year, to deportation to his native Switzerland, where he pursued his literary and teaching work at the University of Basel, enjoying a special extension beyond the usual retirement age of 70. He remained in Basel until his death, December 10, 1968.

The principal emphasis in Barth's work, known as neoorthodoxy and crisis theology, is on the sinfulness of humanity, God's absolute transcendence, and the human inability to know God except through revelation. His objective was to lead theology away from the influence of modern religious philosophy, with its emphasis on feeling and humanism, and back to the principles of the Reformation and the prophetic teachings of the Bible. He regarded the Bible, however, not as the actual revelation of God but as only the record of that revelation. For Barth, God's sole revelation of himself is in Jesus Christ. God is the “wholly other,” totally unlike humankind, who are utterly dependent on an encounter with the divine for any understanding of ultimate reality. Barth saw the task of the church as that of proclaiming the “good word” of God and as serving as the “place of encounter” between God and humankind. Barth regarded all human activity as being under the judgment of that encounter.

Barth left more than 600 writings. Among his better known works are Epistle to the Romans (1919; trans. 1933), The Word of God and the Word of Man (1924; trans. 1928), Credo (1935; trans. 1936), Evangelical Theology, an Introduction (1962; trans. 1963), and the monumental multivolume Church Dogmatics (1932-62; trans. 1936-62).