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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Thirteen years ago Will Herberg described the work and influence of Karl Barth in the following way:
Karl Barth is, beyond all doubt, the master theologian of our age. Wherever, in the past generation, men have reflected deeply on the ultimate problems of life and faith, they have done so in a way that bears the unmistakable mark of the intellectual revolution let loose by this Swiss thinker in the years immediately following the first world war…. If any man has ever put his sign on the thinking of his time, it is Karl Barth, the father of the ‘dialectical theology’.
page 287 note 1 Herberg, Will, ‘The Social Philosophy of Karl Barth’, preface to Community, State, and Church by Barth, Karl (Glouster, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), p. 11.Google Scholar
page 289 note 1 Marquardt, Friedrich-Wilhelm, Theologie und Sozialismus (Miinchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1972).Google Scholar
page 289 note 2 Where does one look for confirmation of the political import of Barth's theology, to say nothing of its socialist thrust? The explicit political writings are too often written off as ‘occasional’. And within the Church Dogmatics it is mainly a question of perspective rather than specific statement. There are, however, places to begin: Paul Lehmann has compiled a ‘little list’ of basic sources for Barth's ‘theology of permanent revolution’.
‘1. The analysis of the role of revolution in a Christ-centred history under “the great negative possibility” of submission in the commentary on Romans 12:21–13:7;
2. The freedom of God for man and of man for God in an experienced movement from reality to possibility, centered in God's human presence in Jesus Christ and forming and transforming history as a predicate of revelation (KD.Ia, 14);
3. The priority of election over creation, of people over things, of a chosen people over a random people, whose vocation among all peoples is the overcoming of history within history (KD, II/2, 33–34).
4. Co-humanity is the basic form of humanity and people are being formed and fulfilled in their humanity in the reality and power of Jesus' relation to God and to man. In this reality and power, people are able to be for one another as well as with one another in a shared and fulfilled humanity (KD, III/2, 45);
5. God is more certain than anything in creation and all things are instrumental to his human and humanizing presence in the world (KD, III/1, 41);
6. The principalities and powers of this world have no ultimacy. They are radically instrumental to God's human and humanizing presence and activity in the world (KD, III/3, 49, 50);
7. The claim of God is the operational reality of his presence and activity in the world. The Law is the form of the Gospel which means that patterns and structures of human relatedness in the world are never established in themselves and never self-justifying but instrumental to human reality and human fulfillment (KD, III/4);
8. The inhumanity of man to man has been shattered and reconciliation, posed as the humanizing style of human life in the humiliation and exaltation of one human being whose living, dying, and living again is the prototype and prospect of what humanity is to be. He makes the struggle to be human that doing of the will of God on earth as it is in heaven (KD, IV, 1);
9. There is an experimental community in the world, called and sent as the spearhead of that shaping of all men into the human reality, fulfillment and joy which God in Christ has begun and is carrying through towards that new heaven and new earth in which difference is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, the humanity of humanity is real and complete and God is everything to everyone (KD, IV/2, IV/3).
Lehmann, Paul, ‘Karl Barth, Theologian of Permanent Revolution’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, xxviii, no. 1 (Fall, 1972), p. 79Google Scholar. Cf. also: Gabriel Vahanian, ‘Karl Barth as Theologian of Culture’, Union Seminary Review, loc.cit,; John W. Deschner, ‘Karl Barth as Political Activist’, Union Seminary Review, loc. cit.; Gollwitzer, Helmut, The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion, trans. Cairns, David (New York: Scribner's, 1962)Google Scholar; Gollwitzer, Helmut, ‘Reich Gottes und Sozialismus bei Karl Barth’, Theologische Existenz heute, Nr. 169 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1972)Google Scholar. Each of the above contains additional bibliographical information.
page 292 note 1 II/2, 535.
page 292 note 2 ibid., 587.
page 292 note 3 IV/1, 434ff.
page 294 note 1 IV/1,446.
page 294 note 2 ibid., 449.
page 295 note 1 IV/1,451.
page 296 note 1 Cf.supra, p. 8.
page 296 note 2 II/1, 503–506.
page 299 note 1 Herberg, op. cit., pp. 54f
page 300 note 1 Christian Century, LXXXVI (Dec. 31, 1969), pp. 1662–1667.Google Scholar
page 300 note 2 Niebuhr, Reinhold, ‘Barth's East German Letter’, Christian Century, LXXVI, no. 6 (11 Feb. 1959), pp. 167–168.Google Scholar
page 301 note 1 Christian Century, LXXVII (11 May 1960), p.571.Google Scholar
page 302 note 1 Cf. Note, 1 p. 348.
page 302 note 2 Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).Google Scholar
page 304 note 1 ‘Karl Barth's Own Words: Excerpts from the Swiss theologian's letter to an East German pastor, with translation, subtitles and introduction by Rose Marie Oswald Barth’, Christian Century, LXXVI, no. 12 (25 March 1959), pp. 352–355.Google Scholar
page 304 note 2 ibid.