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| Time magazine April 20, 1962 |
1962...
The year was 1962, Jackie Robinson would be the first African American elected to the hall of fame, the United States was testing nuclear weapons at the Nevada test site, President John F Kennedy, began a blockade of Cuba, the Beatles released their record "Please, Please Me", in the Stanley Cup the Toronto Maple Leafs would beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4 games to 2, the first US satellite will reach the moon, and the US steel industry would be forced to reduce prices. It was also the year that theologian Karl Barth would make the cover of Time magazine with his first visit to the United States.
Time would write about Barth "In the 20th century, no man has been a stronger witness to the continuing significance of Christ's death and Christ's return than the world's ranking Protestant theologian, Swiss-born Karl Barth (rhymes with heart). Barth knows that the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection are not coherent, but he refuses to make the mystery more palatable to human reason by suggesting–as did the great 19th century Theologian D.F. Strauss in his Life of Jesus, that the story of the crucifixion is a "myth." Instead, Barth argues that the subject of this unique event is God, not man; and only God can know the full truth of his own history. Man's only road to understanding of this divine history is through faith–faith in the reality and truth of what the Evangelists so incoherently described." p 59
Barth's trip would include a stop in Chicago where he took in an Edward Albee play and a visit to the coffeehouse-nightclub called "Second City". He received an honorary doctorate of divinity from the University of Chicago and would give five lectures on evangelical theology, which he would then repeat at Princeton Theological Seminary later in his trip. He would also make a stop to the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield.
In tribute to Karl Barth's theology, I have included a few excerpts from the Time magazine article, which I found was much like opening a time capsule, and did a fair job introducing Barthian theology to the reading American public of 1962.
On his writing style, lack of traction, and theology:
"In a way, this lack of a following is a tribute to the originality and individuality of Barth's accomplishments. His kind of God-thinking has been commonly called "neo-orthodoxy" and "theology of crisis"–label's Barth rejects, since they scarcely define it at all. Essentially, Barth is a Christological theologian, whose uniquely modern thought centers around ancient realities; faith, the Bible, the church. He has a philosopher's knowledge of philosophy, but unlike such contemporaries as Tillich or Bultmann, Barth is wary of restating the dogmas of the church in non-traditional language. His thought is complex, but he nonetheless writes of doctrine in prose that is not far removed from that of the pulpit. Above all, he writes of the mysterious history of Christ, Knowledge of God is knowledge of God through Christ. Faith is faith in Christ; the church is the Church of Christ; the Bible is the witness of Christ. Theologian Hans Frei of Yale calls him "a Christ-intoxiated man."" p60
On his Parish Ministry
"Faced with the problem of how to give meaningful sermons, Barth as a minister discovered that liberal theology of the universities held out no real message to the people. He also found that expression of Christian belief, in the mind of his rich parishioners was perfectly compatible with economic exploitation. Shocked by the low wages paid to Safenwil's textiles workers, Barth became an active socialist and earned the nickname the "Red Pastor" for his role in organizing unions, and for such deadpan japes as passing out free frankfurters to rich and poor alike on Christmas morning at the church." p60
On Epistle to the Romans
Published in 1918 and rewritten completely for the second edition in 1921, Barth's Epistles to the Romans, as Karl Adam a Roman Catholic put it, "fell like a bombshell on the playground of the theologians." Barth attacked the liberal assumption that the Bible expressed man's religious experience of God; instead he said, it contained God's Word to man. This God–the God of revelation –is a being "wholly other" than man, a God who shouts the divine No to all of man's efforts to reach him through inner emotion or reason…the only bridge to God is the one that God provides–the bridge of faith that can come too man only after he has recognized the futility of his own efforts to meet his Creator." p61
On the rise of the Third Reich
"…after Adolph Hitler established the Third Reich, Barth spoke out in anger against Naziism when it attempted to create new "German Christian" churches in which National Socialist political theories were given the same sanctity as theological dogma. "This was a nationalist heresy," he assays, "a confusion between God and the spirit of the German nation." He launched a new magazine to attack the 'heresy' and in 1934 wrote nearly all of the Barmen Declaration–an anti-Nazi protest that claimed the autonomy of the church from all temporal power. The declaration was signed by 200 leaders of German's Lutheran, Reformed, and Evangelical Unionist Churches." p61
On Infallibility of Scripture
"Barth accepts and welcomes scholarly criticism of the Bible, even when it shows the Scriptures to be full of errors and inconsistencies. He does not consider the Bible infallible, and he deplores orthodox Protestants who make it into "a paper pope." Nevertheless, the Bible testifies to God's Word, which is revealed to man through human speech. The words that the biblical writers use may not always be the appropriate ones, but they must be accepted as words elected by God. There can be, in Barth's view, no question of "disproving" the authority of the Scriptures, for the church today must take the "risk" of accepting the witness of the early Christians who established the canon of the Scriptures, and the Reformation fathers who revised it. God still speaks within the Bible; in the light of faith, the church and her theologians must listen and undertake the ever-unfinished task of finding out what He is saying." p62
On Temperance: (Barth quote)
"One may be a nonsmoker, abstainer and vegetarian, yet be called Adolph Hitler"
On Music
"If I ever go to heaven, I would first inquire about Mozart, and only then about Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin and Schleiermacher. "
On Prayer
"If we do not pray, we fail to realize that we are in the presence of God. God opens this road to us; he commands us to pray. Thus it is not possible to say, "I shall pray"or "I shall not pray" as if it were an act according to our own good pleasure"
On Resurrection
"Resurrection means not the continuation of life, but life's completion. "We shall be changed (1 Corinthians 15 )which does not mean that a quite different life begins, but that this "corruptible must put on incorruption." Then it will be manifest that "death is swallowed up in victory." That which is sown in dishonor and weakness will rise again in glory and power. the Christian hope does not lead us away from this life. It is the conquest of death, not a flight into the Beyond."
On Universal Salvation
In his Institutes, Calvin argued that God has already determined both those who will be saved at the Last Judgment and those who will suffer the eternal pangs of Hell. Barth says that this belief does not pay sufficient heed to the fact that Christ's death was intended for all men; Man's ultimate fate is shrouded in mystery, but Barth believers that Christ, the loving Judge could indeed reconcile all the world to the Father. "I do not preach universal salvation," Barth insists, "What I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment."
On Barth
"In person, Barth looks like a Hollywood type-cast of a German professor, right down to his scholar's stoop and his thick, dark-rimmed glasses planted far down on his nose. His conservative suits are usually rumpled and flecked with tobacco from the pipe that seldom is out of his mouth. Barth is a Calvinist but not a gloomy one; at home he speaks kindly to large dogs and small children (in guttural Swiss-German), displays a mellow, Dutch-uncle patience with puzzled students. In conversation Barth is full of wisecracks–some pleasantly pixy, some theologian-arch. once, asked by a stranger on the trolley car if he knew the great Karl Barth, he replied: 'Know him, I shave him very morning!" p64
"The mysteries of God's Word are hard ones–but they cannot be made more palatable to nonbelievers or to the lukewarm faithful by hiding them in the language formed by man's own wishful thinking. God speaks; man must listen." And Barth summons Goethe to warn the church:
Long, long ago the Truth was found,
A company of men it bound.
Grasp firmly then–that ancient Truth! Time 1962
