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Mark DeVine
Delivered at the Annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Societ, Colorado Springs, CO (2001).
divided evangelicals into two camps in relation to the theology of Karl Barth—namely
friends or foes. Albert Mohler, now president of the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, further sub-divided evangelicals into three categories in his yet unpublished
Response. These two works bear witness to the inability of evangelicals, three decades
after Barth’s death in 1968, even to approach consensus regarding his theology. In this
paper I will suggest that Barth should not be regarded as an evangelical. His denial of
Biblical inerrancy alone must exclude him from the evangelical ranks. However, I will
contend that Barth’s theology can serve as a model for evangelical theology in certain
crucial aspects. I will also argue that ignorance and misunderstanding of Barth’s work
among evangelicals has led to inaccurate construals of his thinking and sad neglect of the
Barthian corpus. I will suggest that Barth be viewed by evangelicals as more friend than
foe, albeit with some serious blind spots. The chief purpose of my paper is to encourage
evangelicals to give Barth another look or perhaps, a first look before consigning him to
that contemptible class of dismissable and neglectable heretics one may and perhaps must
contradictory conclusions. In 1954 Cornelius Van Til virtually identified Barth as the
worst heretic in the history of the church: “No heresy that appeared at any of [the
councils of Nicea, Chalcedon, and Dort] was so deeply and ultimately destructive of the
gospel as is the theology of Barth.” 1 Few events frustrated Van Til more than the periodic
appearance of favorable assessments of Barth among evangelicals. The above quote was
prompted by evangelical praise for Barth’s affirmation of the virgin birth. Van Til’s
magazine, Donald Grey Barnhouse could gush “Barth is in the camp of the true
believers.” In 1986 J.I. Packer contended that Barth provided contemporary theology
being rigorously, radically, and ruthlessly biblical and his demand for interpretation that
Barth, perhaps Bernard Ramm could be viewed as Van Til’s evangelical opposite. In his
called for recognition of Barth’s theology as the best model for the future of evangelical
theology.3 Ramm’s subsequent writings confirm his deep and grateful dependence upon
Barth.
While Van Til and Ramm retained their respective views, Carl F. H. Henry’s
reception of Barth’s theology developed over time. In his 1969 address in a plenary
1
Cornelius Van Til, “Has Karl Barth become Orthodox?” Westminster Theological Journal 16(1954), p.
81.
2
J.I. Packer, “Theism for Our Time,” in God Who is Rich in Mercy ed. Peter T. O’Brien(Homebush
West, Australia: Lancer Books, 1986), p.10.
session of the Evangelical Theological Society, Henry identified Barth as part of the
problem, not the solution, to the ongoing effort by evangelicals to preserve the
1995 Henry found himself pointing others to Barth as a faithful champion of orthodox
Henry quotes Barth again and again against betrayals of the doctrine of justification by
This brief review of the vast range of evangelical opinion of Barth’s theology
only represents the tip of the iceberg. In certain cases contradictory readings of Barth can
be accounted for with some confidence. For example, it seems clear that Van Til ruled
unapologetically read Barth through the lense of his earliest writings despite Barth’s own
disavowal of many of those early views. Equally certain was Ramm’s insensitivity to
of Biblical accounts.
Barth drew fire from the left and from the right. The difficulty of understanding
Barth should not surprise us. The sheer volume of his output alone presents would-be
interpreters with a daunting task. Barth also stands as one of the most original theological
minds the church has ever produced. Add to the mix profound developments in Barth’s
3
Bernard Ramm, After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1983).
4
Carl F.H. Henry, “Justification by Ignorance: A Neo-Protestant Motif? JETS 1970.
5
Carl F.H. Henry, “Justification: A Doctrine in Crisis,” JETS 38/1 (March 1995) 57-65.
theology over the course of his career and the difficulties deepen. After critiquing Barth
negatively for several decades, following a personal encounter with Barth on his vist to
America in 1962, Carl Henry published an article entitled “The Enigma of Karl Barth”
The answer to the question is “yes!” Barth can be understood, but only with great
and sincere effort. Understanding of Barth will require that we first read him. Albert
Mohler has rightly noted that many evangelicals who worked hard to cast Barth as an
enemy of the gospel showed little evidence of having read him. Second, we must
recognize that Barth’s views do change dramatically over time, especially when we move
from the Barth of the Romerbrief to the Barth of the Church Dogmatics. Third, we must
let Barth say what he says and take it at face value. Thomas Torrance correctly
complained that Cornelius Van Til simply refused to believe it when Barth showed his
Still, even if Barth is understandable, is he worth our time. Does a cost benefit
analysis encourage the investment of time involved. A colleague of mine put it this
way—why pick through a hand full of bones for a tiny bite of catfish which then still
contains a bone or two—better to eat flounder. He’s got a point. But it is also true that
some of the church’s best teachers had glaring weaknesses and blind spots. I think
esspecially of the atrocious allegorizing of biblical texts of which Saint Augustine was
capable. I want to suggest that the effort to read Barth is worth it. But first I want to
entitled “Is Karl Barth A Universalist.” 6 Once again we note the difficulty of simply
comprehending Barth’s views, much less forming a critique. No one can read very far
into any volume of the Church Dogmatics without concluding that, yes obviously, Karl
Barth was a universalist. But, Barth repeatedly and pointedly denied the charge of
universalism. Barth rejected what he understood as the only two options for limiting the
Barth’s statements in CD 4/3 make it clear both that Barth believed it proper to pray and
hope for the salvation of the whole world but that to advance a doctrine of universal
salvation would be impossible. Dale Moody, the late Southern Baptist theologian, studied
with Barth in Basel. During a final meeting in Barth’s study, Barth said, “dear brother
Moody, I hope that if, in the end, God saves the the entire world, you will not be too
upset.”
however is pointedly against Calvin. Barth accepts Calvin’s identification of the glory of
God as the ultimate divine purpose in creation and redemption. But, he rejects Calvin’s
contention that the divine glory might display itself equally according to the divine
justice in the case of the reprobate and of the divine mercy in the case of the elect.
Barth’s celebrated Christomonism combined with a denial that the divine justice and
mercy oppose one another results in a doctrine of election more akin to single
predestination but with the possibility of the universal scope of salvation held out as at
least something for which we might hope. Barth, like any good calvinist, believes that
everyone for whom Christ died will be saved. Barth views Christ as the elect one,
in that it powerfully contends for the sovereignty of God and the gratuity of salvation.
Barth’s bent toward universalism emerged from the same conviction which also resulted
in salvation.
evangelicalism, it seems curious that Barth’s view would have been seen as any more
For reformed Christians, obedience to the missionary mandate derives from gratitude and
love to God for his grace, the desire of beloved children to please their heavenly father,
and love for those beloved by God whom God wills to reach through the witness of the
Church. Thus, as regards the preaching of the word and the missionary enterprise, it
would seem that Barth should be in no more trouble with evangelicals than our reformed
The real objection to Barth’s universalism for evangelicals must be the witness of
scripture. However, we evangelicals also should take seriously the rather formidable
biblical support Barth finds for the universalistic tendency at work within his theology.13
6
Joseph D. Bettis, “Is Karl Barth a Universalist?,” Scottish Journal of Theology 20 (1967) 423-426.
13
See, e.g., John. 12:32; Rom. 6:10, 11:32-36; Eph. 1:9-10; Col. 1:15-20; 1 John. 2:2. For Barth, the
biblical witness sets forth a combination of factors which come together to produce the universalistic bent
of his theology.. These are (1) the objective reconciliation of all for whom Christ died, (2) that Christ dies
At the same time, Barth acknowledges the biblical warnings of eternal damnation
together with the freedom of God in salvation and cites these factors as reasons for his
proclamation.14 Barth’s position is that the theologian has no prerogative either to affirm
Here I want to address what has become perhaps the most common criticism not
so much of Barth, but of neo-orthodoxy, with which Barth tends to be identified. I believe
that the term neo-orthodoxy is misleading and virtually useless in comprehending the
theology of Karl Barth. In any case, it is often noted that neo-orthodox theologians
contend that the revelation of God or the Word of God cannot be identified with Scripture
but that the Word or revelation can be found within the scriptures. This view applies to
once, for all, for the sins of the whole world (1 John. 2:2), (3) the conception of Jesus Christ as the first-
born of all creation, (4) the affirmation of true humanity as hidden in Christ, and (5) the understanding of
Christian hope as the unveiling of Jesus Christ which includes the manifestation of the children of God.
Once his distinctively high view of the freedom of God in the work of salvation is added to the above
theses, the justification for identifying Barth’s understanding as a universalistic “inertia” becomes clear. It
is an accumulation of factors which draws Barth toward the hope of universal redemption. It would seem
that reformed evangelicals must at least experience some unease in a cocksure denial of universal salvation
in face of the biblical affirmation that Christ died for the sins of the whole world (1 John. 2:2). At the same
time, Barth is confronted with clear biblical warnings of eternal damnation. In fact, just these biblical
witnesses, togethr with the same conviction of God’s freedom in salvation do give Barth pause, and are
identified by him as the cause of his refusal to accept universal salvation as a warrnted conclusion.
14
On the “peril” attending superficial critiques of Barth’s univrsalism, see R.A. Mohler, Barth, esp. pp.
177-185 and Joseph D. Bettis, “Is Karl Barth a Universalist?,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 20 (1967),
423-436. Cf. also CD 4:3, 477-478. For evidence of the tension Barth experiences in dealing with the
issue of the scope of salvation, note this statement: “The old theologians used to end their work with the
doctrines of the eternal blessendness and eternal damnation, and in this context to ask how the blessed feel
when they think of the damned. The answer was that the thought does not trouble them: on the contrary,
when they look at the damned they rejoice that God’s honor is so great. It would be better if we restrain
ourselves here and not sing with Dante the song of paradise, much less the more famous song of hell. If we
want to understand condemnation correctly, we must hold fast to the fact that all men (we too!) are his
enemies--but that we all go to meet the Judge who gave himself for us. It is true that he is the Judge; there
can be no doctrine of universal salvation. Nevertheless, he is the Judge whom we Christians may know.
Would it not be better in the time of grace in which we still live to proclaim to men this good news, to tell
them who our Judge is, rather than to reflect on whethr there is and eternal damnation?” Karl Barth,
Learning Jesus Christ through the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1964), p. 82.
true Protestant Liberals but not to Barth. There is no higher-critical separation of the
gospel kernel from the mythological husk in Barth as one finds in the writings of Adolph
Von Harnack and Rudolf Bultmann. Barth stands under the Scriptures not beside or
above them as the higher critics tended to do. In fact, Barth’s aversion to the pretentions
of the higher critics becomes obvious in his decades long correspondence with Bultmann.
What is true is that Barth distinguished between the Bible as a human book
susceptible to historical investigation and interpretation and the revelation of God itself
which the Bible may become according to the working of the Holy Spirit. What did Barth
mean by this? What he did not mean is that the Biblical witness depends upon either the
internal witness of the Holy Spirit or its reception by man to become true. What he did
mean was that genuine understanding of the word of God, genuine reception of the
efficacious” understanding. Like Calvin before him, when the words only touches the
brain, understanding has not been achieved. Only those who encounter salvifically the
One to whom the scriptures bear witness can be said to have benefited from revelation.
Barth conviction that God’s sovereignty extends to knowledge of himself caused him to
draw back from statements about the Bible which suggested general access to the
rvelation God. Ironically, similar concerns related to God’s sovereignty and freedom led
Barth to oppose liberal and higher critical views of scripture and inerrancy. For Barth,
both views suggested a kind of exalted position of man above the Bible from which the
former could deny its authority and the latter could pro it up. What inerrantists in
lose.
So, then, can Bath serve as a model for evangelical theology? I believe so, in certain
repsects.
the gospel and tended to account for most of what was wrong with moder theology
convictions or at least without sharing the capacity to articulate that experience in a form
Schleiermacher's formative initiation into the Christian community biased him against
Kant's exclusion of metaphysical referents from the knowable realm. Convinced that the
experience he enjoyed at Niesky and Barby held the clue both to the highest fulfillment
of human nature and to the secret of universal truth, Schleiermacher also welcomed
Kant's insistence that the mind was not competent to comprehend the whole of reality.
7
For what follows see my “Friendship and the Cradle of Liberalism: Revisiting the Moravian Roots of of
Schleiermacher’s Theology,” Churchman 112/4 (1998), 339-356.
Knowing nor a Doing, but a modification of feeling," He was bound to reject Kant's
comprehends the essential nature of the Christian self-consciousness most fully and in an
explicitly religious way. Doctrines then, odious to Kant in that they suggest
much as they are dethroned and domesticated. No longer should dogmas judge of true
faith. Instead, true faith will assess doctrines as attempts to give expression to the content
the explicit attempt to give expression to the content of the Christian self-conscousness.
Whenever doctrines stray beyond their descriptive function, they tend to obscure
and even undermine true faith rather than confirm and nurture faith. Schleiermacher's
fascinating dialogue Christmas Eve displays clearly his view of the danger posed to faith
Significantly, this Advent dialogue is set in a middle class German home quite
similar to those which would have hosted Schleiermacher's beloved salons. As various
guests arrive, the conversation gradually centers around the question of the virginal
conception of Jesus Christ and the broader question of the incarnation itself. The evening
is almost spoiled by the tense debating of the men who are bent upon an analytical search
8
Christian Faith, 5-12; Soliloquies, 20 n., 30-31.
9
Christian Faith, 76-93. See also Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline on the Study of
Theology, (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1966), . 67-68, 78-79.
for some conclusive understanding of those ancient events surrounding the birth of the
Christ child. At length, Ernestine, the hostess, and her young daughter, named
conspicuously, Sophie, rescue those gathered and salvage the spirit through music. The
evening ends with the entire cast singing Christmas hymns in unison around the piano as
Sophie plays and true Christian communion is achieved, not just without, but in spite of
Evangelical Liberal?
belongs to the ranks of evangelicals because, as with Luther, it was his own distinctively
Protestant consciousness which served as the basis of his theological inquiry. Still,
Schleiermacher was a liberal because "he did not consider himself tied to old expressions
theological program, the fascination of the church with the psychology of recovery and
to describe the actual events within the self-consciousness of his audience in order to win
10
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, (Richmond, VA:
John Knox, 1967).
11
G. P. Fisher first described Schleiermacher's theology in this way in his History of Christian
Doctrine (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1897), 512.
12
Gerrish, Prince of the Church, 32.
them to communion with the Savior as mediated by the church. Similarly today, many
pulpits relatively devoid of serious engagement with scriptural texts overflow with
exclamation "Aha!, that sounds exactly like me." Audiences act as competent judges
From his early twenties Schleiermacher could only receive dogmatic confessional
genuine piety, had to prove its viability according to its descriptive power in relation to
one's own faith. This meant that the doctrine of the Trinity, the vicarious atonement of
Jesus Christ, miracles, and virtually the whole of the Old Testament were either retained
uncomfortably or denied altogether. Today, the fascination with the psychologist's power
to describe experience seems to beg the question of truth in ways strikingly similar to
comprehend Christian conversion and spiritual growth apart from the community as the
necessary context for their genuine fulfillment. Having set forth his own general
understanding of communion as the very basis for Christian identity, doctrine was
special point of entry for Christian proclamation and outreach. Supposedly, the church is
now in a position to offer its own rich tradition and practice of community as the answer
to the current human search. Indeed, rich possibilities of communal intimacy are surely
afforded within the body of Christ. But does this fact warrant supposing that the church's
own promise of divinely-wrought community will easily mesh with human searching
without distortion.
theological nerve, some late twentieth century evangelicals may have more cause to blush
than would Friedrich Schleiermacher. However much he may have fallen short of his
aim, Schleiermacher did, after all, intend to ground Christian dogmatics upon its own
followed that the relative strength or weakness within the self-consciousness of the
piety.
dogmatic than say, that of Paul Tillich whose method of correlation assumed the burden
of discerning current ultimate questions before searching out an answer from the
Christian revelation. Schleiermcaher has the answer ready to hand, namely, the
heightening of the religious self-consciousness, the content of which is not open for
means of access to the unbelieving ear with little consideration of the spiritually
debilitating effects of sin or of the necessity for the work of the Holy Spirit to convict and
draw those who are being saved. Such apologetic efforts would seem to embrace an open
ended and distinctly more robust “turn to the subject” than did Schleiermacher. Where
Schleiermacher insisted upon identifying the "felt need" Christianity proposed to meet,
one hears today of a sovereign audience which churches must satisfy first in order to
prepare the way for receptivity to the gospel. One reads of Jesus Christ conceived as a
product to be marketed. In a curious irony, it would seem that some evangelicals may
It may well be that the same person who studied Schleiermacher with the greatest
care and even love rejected his work most aggressively and fundamentally. For Karl
Barth the fatal step for Schleiermacher and for that matter, for any theology worthy of the
name ‘Christian’ is the temptation to acknowledge some alien norm external to the
informs both theologizing and church leadership today may not involve so much a
turning to the subject per se, but simply the act of turning itself. Once Christian
13
Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, 15.
reflection lets itself become distracted from the one object of its witness, namely
God revealed in Jesus Christ according to the witness of Holy Scripture, the
intrusion of alien norms becomes inevitable. It matters not whether new tests of
Once Christian proclamation begins to take its epistemological cues from outside
the norma normans of Holy Scripture as the witness to God’s revelation, a lack of
dreams, hopes, and fantasies into the metaphysical realm. When this occurs,
anthropology replaces theology and, as Sidney Cave has put it so well, we “make our
poor experience the measure of what God is.” Unlike Schleiermacher, many today
seem oblivious to the erosion the church’s distinctive message as it becomes unwittingly
Schleiermacher’s mature theology turned out to be, the father of Modern theology
pursued his course with his eyes open. Having tasted of something he believed to be
universal and true in the rich religious milieu of Moravian piety, Schleiermacher plumbed
the depths of that experience, became its champion and spent himself in the quest to
14
See e.g., Michael Scott Horton ed., Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical
Church (Chicago: Moody, 1992); and Os Guiness & John Seel eds., No God But God (Chicago:
Moody, 1992).
Without denying the profundity and genuineness of Schleiermacher’s experience
among the Moravian’s, the practice of defending Christianity on the basis of its power to
evoke and express the content of the human religious self-consciousness reverses the
proper relation between dogmatics and apologetics. Schleiermacher’s quest fits nicely
with the search for a universally verifiable religion, but not with attempts to articulate a
“Christian” theology where doctrines not only express the faith of believers but also test
the appropriateness of appending the adjective “christian” at all. Barth was confident his
former partners at the embryonic stage of the so-called neo-orthodox movement had
theology.
Theology as Science
At age 75 Barth remained capable of such sweeping dismissals of apologetics. Why was
this so? What did Barth mean by “apologetics?” The words “external guarantees” offer a
clue. Barth parted company with most of the other so-called Neo-Orthodox and Neo-
Barth believed that virtually the whole of Protestant theology following Schleiermacher
Harnack, Bultmann, and Tillich in the twentieth century, protestant theology had,
15
Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), p. 15.
impressive the felt relevance of such efforts might turn out to be, for Barth, “one cannot
so-called “turn to the subject” becomes clear when we examine his understanding of
theology as a science. All sciences, according to Barth, pursue knowledge of some object
or some subject matter. True science concerns itself first of all with the apprehension of
the subject matter in question. Insofar as science remains true to itself, it also remains
true to its subject matter. Thus it will not allow itself to become distracted, diverted or
otherwise preoccupied with secondary concerns such as the potential cultural felt
relevance of its findings. Truth about the subject matter must govern all. Accordingly,
science submits itself to its subject matter as to the means of apprehending the knowledge
Jesus Christ through the witness of Holy scripture.” The uniqueness of its object
determines the means by which theology must do its work. God has given Himself to be
known by faith through the witness of Holy Scripture enabled by the ongoing work of
God the Holy Spirit. Thus, authentically scientific theology requires faith in the
theologian. The God whom theology wishes to know and of whom it wishes to speak
gives Himself to be known aright only to those who seek Him by faith. Scientific
theology will stand under Scripture, not beside or above it as the higher critics tended to
do. In his Epistle to the Romans, the so-called bombshell dropped into the playground of
the theologians, though Barth remained enamored with certain aspects of existentialist
16
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (N.P., Pilgrim Press, 1928), 195-196.
thinking (particularly with Kierkegaard) and his notion of theology as science had not yet
taken shape, even then Barth had rejected the pretentiousness of the still emerging higher
which he saw in Calvin—“how energetically Calvin, having first established what stands
in the text, sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls
which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and
the man of the sixteenth century hears. The conversation between the original record and
the reader moves round the subject-matter, until a distinction between yesterday and to-
day becomes impossible. If a man persuades himself that Calvin’s method can be
himself as one who has never worked upon the interpretation of scripture. 17
(re: Barth and Henry) Might one suggest that Barth rightly recognized the
inaccessability of the claims of the gospel to historical investigation and the danger of
would suggest that Henry presents an example of exactly the kind of captivity to
prolegomena Barth found unscientific. On the other hand Barth’s fierce protection of
theology’s independence from other sciences led to an impossible attempt to insulate the
historical claims of the faith from historical enquiry. Once the one insists that the events
recorded in Scripture occurred in space and time, which Barth does, the vulnerability of
Barth has been dubbed the last of the Church Fathers mainly because of the
breathtaking scope of his theological goals and the equally stunning breadth of his
17
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Edwyn C. Hoskyns, trans. (London: Oxford, 1933), p.7.
knowledge over a range of theological disciplines from biblical studies to historical
theology to philosophy and dogmatics. Ina day when the weaknesses of over
specialization seem obvious, I would suggest that Barth’s Church Dogmatics presents a
model for evangelicals in at least two respects. First Barth makes available, through the
famous excursuses in the CD, the exegetical foundations of his theological construction.
More so that any systematic theology of which I am aware, Barth’s invites the interpreter
Second, Barth interacts with the virtually the whole history of exegesis and
theology to an extent unparalleled in the history of the Church. He interacts with the East
as well as the West, with the Early Church, Medieval scholoasticism as well as 18th
century pietism. Barth gives attention both to the whole history of the development of
doctrine and to the voice of the global historic church in way that should make both