The Most Important Insight of the Most Important Theologian of the Twentieth Century

When Karl Barth visited America for the first and only time in 1962, he was asked how he would summarise the millions of words he had published. He thought for a moment, and replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”

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More on Karl Barth from Christian History

“The gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths.” Karl Barth.

Barth, dismayed with the moral weakness of liberal theology, plunged into a study of the Bible, especially Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. He also visited Moravian preacher Christoph Frederick Blumhardt and came away with an overwhelming conviction about the victorious reality of Christ’s resurrection—which deeply influenced his theology.

Out of this emerged his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1919). He sounded themes that had been muted in liberal theology. Liberal theology had domesticated God into the patron saint of human institutions and values. Instead, Barth wrote of the “crisis,” that is, God’s judgment under which all the world stood; he pounded on the theme of God’s absolute sovereignty, of his complete freedom in initiating his revelation in Jesus Christ.

The first of six heavily revised editions followed in 1922. It rocked the theological community. Barth later wrote, “As I look back upon my course, I seem to myself as one who, ascending the dark staircase of a church tower and trying to steady himself, reached for the banister, but got hold of the bell rope instead. To his horror he had then to listen to what the great bell had sounded over him and not over him alone.

In 1931 he began the first book of his massive Church Dogmatics. It grew year by year out of his class lectures; though incomplete, it eventually filled four volumes in 12 parts, printed with 500 to 700 pages each. Many pastors in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, desperate for an antidote to liberalism, eagerly awaited the publication of each book.

Though Barth made it possible for theologians again to take the Bible seriously, American evangelicals have been skeptical of Barth because he refused to consider the written Word “infallible” (he believed only Jesus was). Nonetheless, he remains the most important theologian of the twentieth century.

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Comments

Anita says
November 3, 2011 at 7:17 pm

Sarah, More on Barth.
But you're right, the Dalai Lama is probably the best known religious thinker. He's very sane, shrewd and sensible too!
sarah elwell says
November 3, 2011 at 7:10 pm

Gosh, I've never heard of him! Always good to learn a new name 🙂 I would have voted the Dalai Lama the most important theologian, for the way he has spread his message of kindness and peace so far through the world, and backed it up with actions under extraordinary circumstances. But that's just my opinion and I guess I can't be considered very well informed, since I didn't even know who Karl Barth was! 🙂