Church dogmatics

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics.

The Church Dogmatics (abbreviated "KD") is the main work of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968). His close colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum also wrote larger parts .

The KD represents a dogmatics centered on Jesus Christ in all parts . With around 9,300 pages in 13 sub-volumes and an index volume, it is the most extensive theological work of the 20th century. The first partial volume (KD I / 1) appeared in 1932, the last (KD IV / 4) in 1967 as a fragment. Barth could no longer begin the planned last part (KD V) for redemption . Because of its size and the white heavy linen bindings, the KD was nicknamed " Moby-Dick " or "the white whale".

Emergence

Since his first commentary on the Romans (1919), Barth had had the experience that he wanted to say the same thing later, but that was precisely why he had to start all over, rethinking and reformulating this content. The result was the second, completely revised edition of his commentary on the Romans (1922), which founded Dialectical Theology . Since his appointment as professor for Reformed theology (1921), Barth had dealt extensively with the history of Christian theology, the early church creeds and the reformers . The first dogmatic drafts arose from his teaching activities: Teaching in the Christian Religion (1924/25) and The Christian Dogmatics in Draft (1927). Then he dealt with the ontological proof of God of Anselm of Canterbury in his book Fides quaerens intellectum (1931; "Faith, who seeks knowledge") . There he worked out that theology begins with the faith of the church ( ecclesia ) in Jesus Christ. From then on he renounced the ambiguous adjective "Christian" and replaced it with "ecclesiastical".

In the preface to the first volume of the KD (1932), Barth justified this change of name: dogmatics is "not a free, but rather one that is tied to the space of the church, and which is possible and meaningful here and there". He wrote the book for the fellowship of the church in order to differentiate the right theology from the current “untheology” of the German Christians , to explain their only possible starting point - Jesus Christ - and thus to serve the community of Jesus Christ. Barth cited the reason for the huge project: “In none of the ... areas I could simply follow a given church doctrine and theological tradition, but had to work from what I considered to be the right center (the Old and New Testament testimony of the person and the work of Jesus Christ) to think through and develop everything anew. "

As in his early dogmatic drafts, Barth placed a guiding principle in front of each chapter, which the following text unfolds. In extensive digressions in small print, which Charlotte von Kirschbaum often wrote, he dealt with Bible texts and theological tradition. The reproach made early on that Bible texts only served Barth to illustrate his finished dogmatic standpoint has been refuted with many passages in the KD: Barth often only came to a dogmatic position through biblical exegesis .

KD I / 1 was built in the immediate run-up to the so-called Church struggle , as a large part of the German Protestantism the Christian belief in the ideology of Nazism converge, the German Protestant Church after the leader principle a central, employed by the state and Adolf Hitler hearing Reich Bishop subject and Wanted to exclude Jewish Christians from the church analogously to the state Aryan paragraph . Barth saw this conflict as the result and provisional climax of a long mistaken development in Christian theology and wanted to correct it with the large-scale counter-draft of his KD and help overcome it in the long term.

structure

Publishing year Subband title chapter
1932 KD I / 1 The doctrine of the Word of God .
Prolegomena to Christian dogmatics		 1. The word of God as a criterion of dogmatics
2. The revelation of God
1938 KD I / 2 2. The Revelation of God (continued)
3. The Holy Scriptures
4. The Annunciation of the Church
1940 KD II / 1 The teaching of God 5. The knowledge of God
6. The reality of God
1942 KD II / 2 7. God's choice of grace
8. God's command
1945 KD III / 1 The doctrine of creation 9. The work of creation
1948 KD III / 2 10. The creature
1950 KD III / 3 11. The Creator and His Creation
1951 KD III / 4 12. The command of God the Creator
1953 KD IV / 1 The Doctrine of Reconciliation 13. The subject matter and problems of the Doctrine of Atonement
14. Jesus Christ, Lord as servant
1955 KD IV / 2 15. Jesus Christ, the servant as lord
1959 KD IV / 3 16. Jesus Christ, the true witness
1967 KD IV / 4
(fragment)		 Baptism as the foundation of Christian life
1976 KD IV / 4
(estate fragments)		 Christian life

As the conclusion of KD IV / 4, Barth planned explanations on the commandment of God the Reconciler, which, in addition to the doctrine of baptism he published as a fragment during Barth's lifetime , should also include a teaching on the Lord's Supper . The surviving sections of the estate have been published. The doctrine of redemption was laid out as KD V , which Barth no longer realized.

KD I: Doctrine of the Word of God

A reproduction of the crucifixion table on the Isenheim Altarpiece hung over Barth's desk. As John the Baptist points to Jesus Christ (cf. eg Mk 1,7–8  EU ), he started out from him as the center of faith and theology.

Triple shape

According to Barth, theology, speaking of God, presupposes that God has spoken, since only God himself can adequately speak of himself ( The Word of God as a task of theology , 1922). KD I / 1 unfolds what God's word is. It encounters people in three forms: as preaching in human preaching, as written text in the Bible, and as the person and work of Jesus Christ. This third figure is God's direct self-communication ( revelation ) to man, which carries and substantiates the mediate figures Bible and Sermon. In Jesus Christ, his incarnation, his words, deeds, his cross and his resurrection , God shows who and what he is: God-with-us ( Immanuel ) in the middle of human history as part of it.

The written Bible is a testimony to this self-revelation: It comes "from people who longed for, expected, hoped for and finally saw, heard and touched this God-with-us in Jesus Christ." Thus the Old Testament (OT; expectation) and the new belong Testament (NT; memory) indissolubly together. With this, Barth rejected any attempt to downgrade or abandon the OT as insignificant or subordinate to the Christian message. At the same time he ruled out the doctrine of verbal inspiration , which claims that the Bible is formally inerrancy ( biblicism ) or tries to prove its revelatory character. For Barth, the fact that people who are capable of error have written down the Bible shows that God communicates himself to real people who can read, hear and understand his word as such. This human tradition is and still really contains God's word because its content is Jesus Christ, the expected and remembered God-with-us. Because all biblical texts testify directly or indirectly to him, the church remains dependent on the Bible. These reserves precedence over all church tradition and teaching because they "than the original and legitimate witness to God's revelation of the word of God himself is " (KD I / 2, p 557). This is a belief that cannot be proven by text analysis. The sentence looks back on the experience and foresaw that God made these texts the word of God and will make them again through which people believe in him. That the Bible God's word is , so to own God's activity remains dependent and excludes any direct identification of certain Bible verses with God's word.

The church does not represent any communication or opinion, but has the mandate to proclaim God's own word given in the Bible. Human preaching can also become God's word, and that too remains God's own work and is not within any human power. The Church can dare to proclaim this “in memory of revelation that has happened and awaits coming”. Only God himself can make the Bible and the church proclamation his word and vouch for their truth. Jesus Christ is and remains the direct form of God's word.

Three ways of being

The trinity ceiling relief of the parish church Wuchzenhofen (Allgäu) focuses on God's actions, which are expressed by three people: God as the subject of revelation points to the Son, in whom he shows himself to the world. The Son holds the cross through which he has reconciled the world and thus, as the Holy Spirit, makes the answer of faith possible.

Who and what God is already developing KD I / 2. Since God can only be spoken of on the basis of his self-revelation in Jesus Christ, Barth begins with a doctrine of the Trinity . In doing so, he deviates from the division customary since Thomas Aquinas , following Greek metaphysics, first defining a general concept of God, and then referring to it the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. For Barth, the trinity is the answer to three questions:

  1. Who is the acting subject of revelation? - God as the revealer, called the " Father ".
  2. What does this subject do, through what and how does it reveal itself? - God becomes man in Jesus Christ, the “ Son ”.
  3. What is the effect of this revelation on to whom it comes? - That man recognizes God in Jesus Christ and responds to it with faith and obedience. This manifestation is and happens as the “ Holy Spirit ”.

This doctrine of the Trinity is thus the conceptual result of a reflection on Jesus Christ. Against the misunderstanding that it is a doctrine of the three gods , Barth emphasizes: Here one and the same God acts in three “modes of being”: the Father as Creator, the Son as Reconciler, the Holy Spirit as Redeemer. He is always completely himself.

Barth excluded Martin Luther's abstract "hidden God" , whose nature and will are opposed to the revealed God and who also works in events that are in contradiction to God's grace. In Jesus Christ, God shows himself entirely for who he is. However, this identity of form and content of the revelation is not simply indirect in the sense of an analogy of the terms, but doubly indirect [KD I / 1, 174]: The divine content cannot be conceptually defined at all, but only actually perceived in concrete situations. Because the worldly figure in a “cosmos in which sin rules” “does not correspond to the matter, but contradicts it” [KD I / 1, 172]. Against a direct knowledge of God, for example in the sense of an analogy of being, Barth delimits the prerequisite for knowledge of incarnation as an unnecessary ( contingent ) act. Therefore he adheres to the distinction between “God-in-himself” and “God-for-us”, which is also the basis of the traditional doctrine of the hidden God. However, Barth does not mean the terms objective, rather he specifies the conditions for an objective speech about God.

It is true that God's act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, like the coming redemption, is new compared to creation, but nothing foreign to God or contradicting his essence. For Barth, God's trinitarian nature can be summed up as a statement: “God is the one who loves in freedom ”. God is free because he needs nothing but himself; and God is love because he has always been in relationship. God is free to love and remains free in love. He does not need fellowship with humans to be God, and it is an end in itself. But he determines himself to love something completely different from himself. With this devotion God goes beyond himself and yet corresponds completely to his inner being, the freedom to love. Here Barth takes up the Reformation covenant theology : "God wants to be ours and he wants us to be his ... He doesn't want to be himself any other than by being so in this respect ." This self-determined love of God is conditional - and without any preconditions: a person does not have to bring anything with them to be worthy of them. God seeks and creates "community regardless of the already existing suitability and worthiness of the beloved". His love "always builds a bridge over an abyss": It is pure grace to which no one has a claim and which does not require approval, is not limited or conditioned by any reciprocity.

In this aseitas Dei , God's sovereignty is fundamentally preserved. Only in this way, according to Barth, can the gift of grace be measured. He therefore also criticizes Johannes Calvin's “pathos of distance” , a form of dignity that has been imputed to God and that requires humiliation in order to “exalt it” (KD II, p. 288, 339-350 and more often). The unconditional love of God is “ love for one's enemies ”, which enables and commands man to overcome enmity accordingly ( Mt 5,44  EU ).

"Religion is unbelief"

Story of the Good Samaritan : Two religious people forget their faith and love for their neighbor .

Section 17 of KD I / 2 ( God's revelation as the abolition of religion ) "summarizes Barth's criticism of religion of the 1700-year failure of Christianity, which was clearly visible in the failure of the Hitler dictatorship, in the sentence:" " Religion is unbelief ; Religion is a matter, one has to say: the matter of the ungodly man. "[KD I / 2, 327] This sentence should" also and above all affect ourselves as members of the Christian religion "[KD I / 2, 327] . Barth and von Kirschbaum refer to KD I / 2, 359f. to the criticism of religion in Ex 32.1–14  LUT and by Old Testament prophets ( Am 5,21f.  LUT , Jer 7,21f.  LUT ), as well as in KD I / 2, 327 on Martin Luther's rejection of a work righteousness :

“That's why human frumickeyt eyttel Gottis lesterung and the greatest sane that a man does. [...] Therefore, whoever does not want to gain grace through the blood of God, it is better for him to always look for Gotti's eyes. "

Religion can become an act of faith , but only because of God's gracious action.

“God's revelation in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the judging, but also the reconciling presence of God in the world of human religion, that is, in the area of ​​human attempts to justify and sanctify himself before a stubborn and unauthorized image of God. "

- [KD I / 2, 1st principle to § 17]

Barth explains that only God himself can speak of God. By exposing the non-gods produced by religious man as a denial of God, the judgment of the cross serves the liberation “from the ungodly ties of this world to free, grateful service to God's creatures” ( Barmer thesis II).

In natural theology , for Barth, only the human being is an issue, not God. Therefore, he refused to accept theologically to her question whether humans know God by itself can . He only stated: In fact , man did not know God, but killed him with Christ and forced him out of the world. With that he has delivered himself to eternal death. Only God himself could perform his incomprehensible act of grace once and for all in this negation. And only God himself can reveal this in the resurrection of his Son and has done that.

So - in the language of Jacques Derrida - human talk about God remains an unforeseeable event , the "impossible possibility" that only God's grace can create. Barth described the analogy of the old Protestant orthodoxy and Thomism as “ the invention of the Antichrist ” [KD I / 1, VIII], since they would bring God and the world to a common denominator of understanding. He recognizes that in this tradition, too, creatures only have things in common with him in dependence on God, to whom only absolute predications are assigned . He criticizes that she made “becoming a being” [KD II / 1, 261], a naturally existing analogy. Analogy, however, only occurs in the act of revelation and the responsive, God-induced knowledge in faith. It is only an analogy of belief, analogia fidei versus the analogia entis of traditional metaphysics. Barth summarizes his epistemology in the following sentence:

"God is known through God and through God alone."

- [KD II / 1, 47]
Meister Eckhart portal of the Erfurt Predigerkirche . "Barth's criticism also largely bypasses the mystical theology of the Middle Ages."

In addition to morality, Barth also criticizes mysticism as part of religion and “self-chosen holiness” [KD II / 2, 174]. He contrasts both of these as idealism with God's law, at least if it is represented as a closed worldview. So he criticizes Friedrich Schleiermacher , he represents ideals and norms without considering their exclusive origin in God. He distances himself from Albert Schweitzer's justification of ethics in mystical experience. He let "the will to live and the reverence for life coincide [...] That means a blurring of the difference between command and obedience, between God and man, which of course does not work." [Ethics I, 231] It is also deceptive a “kind of natural mysticism” [KD III / 4, 131] through the combination of religion and eros , as Walter Schubart saw as the goal in his book of the same name. Barth opposed such an exaggeration of eroticism, but at the same time also against discrimination: Man “ may be in the encounter between man and woman [...] So he does not need any ecstasy or enthusiasm, he does not need any mysticism or intoxication and no deification to make this determination come true. "[KD III / 4, 133]

Nevertheless, Barth recognizes a positive function of mysticism that is critical of religion and dogma. “Outside '”, for example in rites or images, she expects no “satisfaction of religious needs” [KD I / 2, 348], but is conservative towards institutions and needs dogmatics and ethics as material to be interpreted. Barth parallels the religious criticism of mysticism with the openly iconoclastic atheism . While this - more intensely than mysticism - denies God and his law, the latter also problematizes “the cosmos and the I” [KD I / 2, 351]. However, both are only an extreme, likewise revelatory, consequence of religion. As their end, they show that religion cannot satisfy human interests.

If mysticism is not understood as a human ability, that is, as religion, then it is “an indispensable determination of the Christian faith” [KD III / 4, 63f.]. According to Gal. 2.20  EU , Barth considers an identification and merging with Christ to be possible, which Emil Brunner rejected, since faith is not a mysticism. He differentiates against him: “Who would not agree to all of this in the main, even if he wanted to assert against an all too Swiss sobriety in favor of poor mysticism that the act of genuine faith sometimes took place in mystical processes of consciousness and also could and may perform. ”[No! Answer to Emil Brunner, 1934, 28]

KD II: Doctrine of God

Election

KD II, 2 unfolds God's “choice of grace” in Jesus Christ: Because God wants to turn to people as the one who loves freely, he has chosen a certain person to be the one in whom he becomes fully human, and with him the people, that is Human represents. According to Barth, this choice does not mean an arbitrary selection from the crowd of all people (and thus indirect rejection of all the rest), but just God's self-determined, unnecessary, unconditional dedication to community with all people. Jesus Christ is this electing God and chosen man at the same time. For the salvation of mankind, he gives himself up completely to this world and gives up “his own untouchedness by the ... world of evil ”. As a human being, Jesus Christ is chosen to live, die, and resurrect in covenant with this God . Thus, in the execution of this choice of grace, there is an exchange: As the Son, God chooses for himself rejection, betrayal, death sentence, execution and death on the cross. So he chooses what all people deserve who want to live without and against God. He chooses Jesus as the first person in whom God's covenant is carried out with all people. And this person in turn chooses God, keeps his covenant with us humans on his side and thus fulfills his destiny. In this human response to obedience of faith, God's election comes to its goal and realizes the being of all human beings. Because all people are included in these people, they are all freed from the rejection that should have hit them. God's choice of grace is therefore his freely chosen acceptance of the rejection of all people in order to free everyone from it. Man cannot undo this, “eternally made decision of God”, which is based on God's being, and cannot reverse it… ”He can“ hate God and be hated by God (he does and is!), But he can also be God's eternal in his hatred, victorious love does not turn into its opposite ... If he lets go of God, then God does not let go of him. "

With this core of his dogmatics, Barth took up the doctrine of predestination of theological tradition: Like the Reformers, Augustine of Hippo had already inferred from God's pure grace that man was incapable of wanting and choosing his salvation. Rather, God alone determines some people to believe in him and thus at the same time all others to damnation. Calvin had tightened this on the doctrine of the double predestination: God choose the one for salvation, the other for damnation, so that these two groups would be established from eternity. Man can never know the reason for this choice. This was actually intended as a relief from the agonizing uncertainty of what the individual could and must do for his or her salvation. Barth now radically reshaped this tradition by also teaching a double predestination, but centering and updating it entirely on Jesus Christ: He is the only one who simultaneously accomplishes the salvation of all of us, so not only gives eternal salvation to the believers, but also to the unbeliever. Barth does not start from a preconceived notion of God's grace, but rather from the cross and resurrection of this special, unique person: If he really died and was raised for everyone, then the turning point towards the salvation of everyone has already taken place there.

Critics often objected that Barth was basically teaching universal reconciliation ( apokatástasis pánton ). The church had rejected this more often than heresy (heresy), which contradicted the NT . Barth always replied with the refusal to make statements about the group and the number of those who were rescued. One can neither predict that all people will say yes to God in the end, nor rule out that God will not save them all in the end. One shouldn't expect everyone to be saved, but one should hope so. God who loves freedom in freedom owes man “no eternal patience and therefore salvation”. At the same time, in view of Jesus' vicarious death on the cross and his resurrection, there is “no right and no reason not to keep yourself open”.

Foundation of ethics

Jesus Christ reveals God as the one who loves freely and at the same time fulfills the destiny of men to choose this God for their part. That is why God's act of election (Gospel) for Barth also establishes God's command to all people. Because Jesus Christ fulfilled this commandment on behalf of all people, God's will for them can only be read from the actions of Jesus. That is why Barth rejects the separation of "doctrine of faith" and "moral doctrine", of dogmatics and ethics, which has been common in Protestant theology since the Enlightenment . Accordingly, KD II to IV contain detailed chapters on material ethics, which Barth results from God's historical action as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer in Jesus Christ. Because God's act of election has already included all people, whether they know it or not, His commandment is addressed to all people, Christians as well as non-Christians. For Barth there is therefore “no free action, that is, no action that is dispensed from the decision against God's command, no action that is neutral towards him”.

Barth's ethics systematized in the KD is described as "theological realism": It depicts "the reality in which God lives together with his people [...]". This has an eschatological dimension, it is the new reality of the coming kingdom of God , in contrast to the present world. It is therefore the task of ethics to highlight these breaks and contradictions. It is an example of Barth's “ Theology of Crisis ”.

Furthermore, Barth's ethics is in opposition to an epistemological fundamentalism , so does not derive any ethos, no Christian custom (Schleiermacher) logically from the certainties of faith. Rather, the reality of God is founded in the event of Jesus Christ and is shown in the entire history of God with man, in his sanctifying commandment. Ethics asks how to live in this story, not whether an ought follows from being.

“The command of God is the decision about the goodness of human action. As divine action, it precedes human action. It is only in the light of this by no means resting, but happening, by no means general, but highly special reality that theological ethics undertakes to give an answer to the ethical question. Your theory is simply the theory of this practice . "

- [KD II / 2, 609]

Ethics consists in “further testing of this […]“ tradition ”[…] of life with God, who is biblically attested.” The attachment to a - resistant - tradition does not mean isolation from external perspectives, but critical openness to the problems of World. This is particularly evident in the theses of the Barmer Theological Declaration , in the “liberation from godless bonds” and the resistance to all tendencies to force a “total order”. Barth worked "in the whole area of Protestant ethics," said the ethics of peace , of medical ethics and bioethics , the social ethics and work ethic , the business ethics and political ethics . He attached importance to the legal order to be guaranteed by the state . He often had access to key concepts such as freedom and human dignity that crossed other approaches . In doing so, he turned against the superimposition of the testimony of God's actions in history by reasons that contradict this tradition.

Ethical judgments do not follow directly from the testimony, but it has heuristic power for the perception of reality. So hope of eternal life follows from the resurrection of Jesus Christ . This destiny of man can only be expected from God. Belief in it prevents an absolutization of one's own life, a fight for life and death as well as resignation. Likewise, belief in the working of the Spirit of God in the individual prevents subjectivity from becoming absolutized . Barth already processes their different interpretations in his ethics - an "ethical human life that is subject to God's action ( subjectum ) " versus subjectivity as the (only) "medium of the constitution of human reality." Hans G. Ulrich therefore recognizes in Barths Ethics (and its entire theology) has a “unique intrinsic reflexivity ”: “The story of Christ remains the determining story that is lived on in the witness. It can only be pursued by exploring. This characterizes the procedure as scientific in the sense of a critical-exploratory practice that follows its "object" ".

KD III: Doctrine of Creation

Reason of creation

God is the creator of the world, it is God's creation: For Barth, this belief cannot be derived from the existence and nature of this world, but, like all statements about God, can only be said and justified from Jesus Christ. That is why his evangelical doctrine of creation does not provide a theory of the origin of the world and does not compete with the modern natural sciences . From the outset, its theme is different from the causality of the creation of the world, namely the question of God's intention with this world, as the story of Jesus Christ shows. With this, Barth rejected the tradition of natural theology: Even Greek metaphysics inferred from the general consideration of nature and the cosmos that something like God was the first cause of all beings or as the essence that pervades and connects all being. Roman Catholic scholasticism and Lutheran orthodoxy followed these attempts in different ways. Even the creationism builds a creator God into the scientifically recognizable causal chain of the development of the world and life. Barth broke radically with all such attempts since his commentaries on the Romans. He did not deal with the natural sciences in their field, but accepted as a given that the world itself gives no reference to anything like God and can be explained entirely without God.

With regard to Jesus Christ, however, according to Barth, the question can and must be asked: What is creation for, what does God intend to do with it? Barth's answer is: God created creation and man out of free love. Creation is the prerequisite for God to realize his intention to love his creature. The creature exists so that God can make a covenant with him. Creation is the outer ground of this covenant, it provides the space and equips it in which this covenant history takes place. God's covenant with the creature is the inner ground of creation: it was created from the start for this communion with God. God's covenant will precedes and underlies creation. Therefore no creature exists outside of this covenant will. Man's apostasy from God can neither question his covenant will, nor is this covenant will something secondary with which God reacted to man's fall. This original covenant will of God is not recognizable from creation itself, but only from the history of Jesus Christ and can be expressed from there.

God's creation aims at the covenant with man. Just as God is being-in-relationship, man also exists in relationships. God relates to his creature as it corresponds to his inner being: as the I that a you calls on and thus creates a relationship with him. This corresponds to the fact that being human also exists as a relationship between an I and a you. No human being was created to be alone, but to be in community with other people. For Barth, God's intention with man is particularly realized in the relationship between man and woman.

Suffering and sin

By creating creation for the covenant with the creature, God says an unconditional “yes” to this distinct reality. Part of the good, finite creation are therefore also its negative sides such as failure, grief, loss, old age and death. As difficult as it is to endure these dark sides of creation, one can still praise God for it, because in Jesus Christ he exposed himself to all this suffering and made it his own. For Barth, this truth appears even more clearly in art than in theology, especially in Sandro Botticelli and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [KD III / 3, 336–338]:

“With regard to the theodicy problem, Mozart had God's peace, which is higher than any praising, rebuking, critical or speculative reason. [...] He had just heard that and lets those who have ears to hear, except for this day, hear what we will see at the end of the day: the fate in context. "

In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756/1956 , Barth sees a “great free objectivity” as the reason for this attitude - the freedom from a fixation on the subjective condition in relation to a good and beautiful counterpart - and a “sovereignty of genuine service”.

On the other hand, God says “no” to everything that “according to his nature he does not want or create, which he could not tolerate as a reality different from himself”. Barth calls what has been excluded by God's act of creation “the nothing”. He contradicts the theological, especially the Lutheran tradition, which asked about the origin of evil or sin in God's good creation, traced it back, like good, to God's own action and therefore assumed a self-contradiction in God's inner being. Barth, on the other hand, maintains that God reveals himself completely in Jesus Christ: That is why what contradicts this self-revelation cannot be traced back to God's own will and work, but only to his unwillingness.

The futile is what God in Jesus Christ " challenged himself and made angry, what made him face it in order to overcome it by himself". For this, God " suffered death, namely this death, the death of a damned man, in order to strip death as the offender of his creator, death as the last enemy, of his power." God revealed this with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead ; this is the sum of the revelation event. The struggle with the nothing, its overcoming, elimination and settlement, is therefore "primarily and actually God's own business." God has already excluded the nothing with creation, but the creation has not negated the nothing. Because sin does not exist before God, it cannot acquire any ultimate meaning for God's creatures. Because reconciliation is not an accidental rescue operation by God, but rather the execution of his eternal choice of grace (KD II / 2). In this covenant of God with man, which was decided from the beginning, there is no place for sin as a resistance to the gracious God, it is only to be judged as a “fleeing shadow” or “belonging nowhere”.

The frequent accusation that he is playing down the real, historically vivid, destructive effect of sin, overlooked the fact that Barth does not consider nothingness to be of utmost importance in relation to God, but in relation to mankind. He describes it as an "aggressive enemy power" that uses God's creation and its inherently good downsides such as death and seizes it to destroy all life. What the NT described in the mythology of that time as devils and demons , Barth calls "masterless powers", pseudo-objective realities that become independent and dominate people. The fact that he described this power as “ontological impossibility” did not play down it, but rather made the groundlessness of its factual brutality, which cannot be justified, visible.

KD IV: Doctrine of Reconciliation

structure

Barth's Doctrine of Reconciliation (KD IV, 1–3) has a deliberately trinitarian structure both vertically (in the arrangement of chapters in each volume) and horizontally (in each of the three volumes in succession). Each part is structured in a parallel sequence from christological to anthropological to ecclesiological and soteriological chapters. It can therefore be read linearly from front to back or the related chapters of each part can be read one after the other.

KD IV / 1 KD IV / 2 KD IV / 3
The master as servant
( priestly office)		 The servant as master
( royal office)		 The true witness
( prophetic office)
God's care for people man's turn to God the self-revelation of both movements
Sin of pride Sin of indolence Sin of lies
justification Sanctification vocation
Collection of the community Building up the community Mission of the community
Faith love hope

Execution of Reconciliation

Barth's Christology (KD IV, 1–2) is a doctrine of reconciliation: It answers the question of who Jesus Christ is by developing and understanding what this person does. In doing so, Barth unconventionally links and updates the ancient church doctrine of two natures (Jesus Christ is true God and true man at the same time) with Calvin's three-office teaching (Jesus Christ is priest, king and prophet): The true being God is that Path of the Son of God “into a foreign land”, true human existence, the “homecoming” of the Son of Man to God. Both movements take place with one another in the person and work of Jesus Christ and can only be distinguished as different accents or aspects, not chronologically.

God's Son, the second person or mode of being of the Trinity, goes abroad by becoming human and thus exposing himself to the creatureliness (impermanence), wrongness and forlornness of human existence. He is the true God in that he performs this humiliation in obedience to God's reconciliation. His path leads to the cross: there this God took upon himself the judgment that people would have deserved. The true God is “the judge as the one judged in our place”. In his humiliation into the judicial death on the cross, he exercises his priestly office.

At the same time, on this path of the Son of God down to the cross, the person Jesus of Nazareth is raised to God. Already in the incarnation the Son of God receives the man Jesus and elevates him to the royal humanity; this reveals his resurrection and ascension. So from the beginning Jesus is “the new, the true, the royal, because he participates in the being and life, in the rule and deed of God, who honors and testifies to him”. By taking all people into his exaltation, he is the archetype of true human existence, which reveals the destiny of all people: to return home “into communion with God, into the relationship with his fellow human beings, into the order of his inner and outer existence, in the fullness of his time in which he was created, even more: in the presence and enjoyment of the salvation which he is destined to receive in his creation. "

As the true God humiliating himself on the cross and the true man exalted to the co-rule of God, Jesus Christ accomplishes the reconciliation. As his own witness, he reveals that this happened in him and thus exercises the prophetic office: As the “light of the world” he reveals God's truth to people, he lets them recognize this truth.

Barth assigns a figure of human sin to all three aspects of this reconciliation story of Jesus Christ : By accepting the judicial death on the cross, the Son of God justifies the human being without his intervention. In this way he reveals the arrogance with which man wants to be his own master, judge and helper. By exalting the human being Jesus to God and reigning with him as king, he exposes the indolence of “evil omission, lagging behind and failure”. By testifying to the truth of God's reconciliation with the world, the risen One exposes the lie that evades this testimony. Justification, sanctification and the calling of man to witness Jesus Christ overcome these forms of sin.

In contrast to traditional dogmatics, Barth does not describe sin beforehand, but in each case after the reconciliation process. Because what sin is, man cannot know from himself, precisely because he is a sinner. Only the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which condemn and overcome sin, reveal the essence of sin. Sin is only recognized as a forgiven sin through its forgiveness .

Barth's understanding of sin as the "nothingness" that has already been overcome, which is only revealed and reflected through the reconciliation work of Jesus Christ, is unique in the history of theology. He categorically ruled out defining and describing sin apart from the gospel. In doing so, he contradicted the Lutheran tradition of bringing people to the knowledge of sin through the accusing, judging and punishing “ law ” of God. The threat of God's wrath, according to Barth following Paul of Tarsus (cf. Rom 4 : 13–16  EU ), provokes and strengthens human self-justification. A theology that promotes this is itself a "work of sin" that misunderstands and misuses God's law. Only when people are free from the compulsion of self-justification and justify God's accusation do they really recognize their sin in retrospect.

Light theory

In KD IV / 3 Barth unfolds that “the light of Christ, which is the expression of his prophetic office, can also be found outside the church.” In the first volume he had already written: “God can get through Russian communism through a flute concert speaking to us through a flowering bush or through a dead dog. ”[KD I / 1, 55] However, then as at the end he stated that such other ways of speaking of God could not be the basis of Christian preaching. For Barth Jesus Christ is "the one , the only light of life ... there is no light of life apart from and next to His, apart from and beside the light that He is" [KD IV / 1, 95]. In the Bible, church and world there are other real revelations [KD IV / 3, 107] and words of great wisdom. Jesus Christ always shines in them. He reconciled all creation to himself on the cross, and his rulership encompasses more than the realm of the church. Words outside the church are only true if they are compatible with the Christian message, if they do not “deny the one light” [KD IV / 3, 111]. These lights are " refractions of the one light, are appearances of the one truth" [KD IV / 3, 173].

The reconciliation and salvation of the world takes place in such a way that God in Christ fulfills his covenant with the people of Israel and irrevocably affirms its universal salvation significance. For Barth, the whole salvation history of Israel and Judaism is therefore per se speaking, prophetic, forward-looking, and concerns all peoples. Israel is not only a witness of judgment and the distance from God (so Barth still in KD II / 2), but a witness of salvation for Christians and people from the peoples. That is why the reconciliation of the peoples with Israel has decisive priority for Barth: That would be the first necessary witness to Christ to the Church of all the world ( Ephesians 2.11ff.  EU ).

Without Judaism, the church cannot proclaim hope to the world: this is what Barth impressed on ecumenism in 1954 at the conference in Evanstown. Because the Jewish belief in the God of the liberation of slaves resists all metaphysical equations of the world and God: therein lies unrequited hope for all slaves. The special message of Israel is not “redemption” from the evil world through a worldless hereafter, but rather the liberation of this well-made world from all enslaving powers. For Barth, the dialogue with Judaism therefore had lasting priority over the general, but also necessary and illuminating, religious dialogue.

The ability of the world to develop into the kingdom of God cannot be discovered and identified in general, but only in unreserved trust in Christ's self-witness (the “power of the resurrection”, as Barth's expression for the Holy Spirit). God himself reveals them by becoming human. What resembles Christ in world events can never be verified “from outside”: That would be an apologetic confirmation of Christian truth through self-chosen general structural analogies (as with Rudolf Otto , Hans Waldenfels , Hans Küng and others). Rather, it has to be proven “outwardly”: through concrete following of Jesus also in relation to other religions. Because the one crucified for all human beings remains his own witness, his followers cannot assume a universally unifying truth of all religions in order to then identify their faith as their “highest” embodiment.

Rather, Barth viewed religions sociologically and phenomenologically , from the perspective of the social forces at work in them. Theologically he interpreted it as unbelief [KD I / 2, 327]; on the other hand, revelation takes place in people's lives “as something special in the field of the general, which is called religion.” Here the Christian religion is “peculiar, but not unique . ”[KD I / 2, 306]“ There is a true religion: exactly as there are justified sinners ”, and therefore Barth“ dares ”the sentence“ while listening to God's revelation ”:“ The Christian religion is the true one Religion "[KD I / 2, 357].

Bertold Klappert points out that other religions, but also profane world views and political drafts, can remind the church “from outside” of their own, forgotten message: In Marxism, for example, Barth found a memory of the resurrection of the dead, in democratic socialism of the just World order promised by God's prophets, in democracy to the freedom to which Christ liberates each individual, and in Buddhism to the “radical need for salvation” of religious people, whose ego constantly produces new images of God and man that pave the way for him to disguise already given redemption.

Because Jesus Christ alone as the “man for others” ( Dietrich Bonhoeffer ) is God's image , we can therefore live humanly and facing others. The church was therefore only worth as much for Barth as it opens up to the world and its needs and performs its “prophetic office”. She does not have to impose her belief in God's kingdom on others and for that very reason can testify to it in solidarity with them: by helping to build a just world order together with those of other beliefs, which allows everyone to achieve their human right . This global perspective has to hold on to confessional ecumenism and to warn where politics gives it up and betrays it. The witness to Christ, which corresponds to the vastness of the invisible rule of Jesus Christ, is still pending in Barth's sense.

Reception and theological-historical classification

Karl Barth is regarded as one of the great " church fathers of modern times" who shaped a new "theological era" and has a rich history of impact. With church dogmatics, he systematically developed his approach of a theology of crisis, which had arisen in the area of ​​the church and had grown “from parochial commitment” : With “amazing force” he preached repentance , set the word of God in opposition to the crisis phenomena of modernity , but also called out Gratitude and self-criticism in the Spirit of God. With this emphasis on the timeless truth of the proclamation and the salvation dimension of the Christian faith, against theoretical speculation, Barth is considered a representative of a kerygmatic theology .

In 2018, Werner Thiede saw an important update of the belief in the incarnation of God in the resistance to posthumanism through advancing digitization , "devotion to artificial intelligence and lethargic self-disclosure in the face of digital surveillance and legal and mental incapacitation structures ". Barth's dialectical theology could initiate and strengthen a new dialectic of the Enlightenment .

On the other hand, Thiede reminds us that in 1968, the year Barth died, a movement towards liberalism and esotericism became strong. Liberal theology , from which Barth had distanced himself, gained strong influence in more radical consequences directed against Barth's intentions. Even in the spirit of postmodernism , Barth's theology was often criticized or ignored. Nevertheless, Thiede identifies various impulses for a critical analysis of the present and for independent continuation of his path of thought.

Religion and belief

Dietrich Bonhoeffer with students in the spring of 1932

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was familiar with Church Dogmatics up to and including Volume II / 2; he acquired the latter part of the volume on his trip to Switzerland in the spring of 1942. In Advent 1943 he asked for KD II / 1 and II / 2 as Christmas reading in a letter from prison.

In his dissertation Act and Being from 1930 , he already adopted Barth's distinction between revelation and faith on the one hand, and religion on the other in the commentary on Romans. He rejected Ernst Troeltsch's justification of a "religious a priori ", which he defined as "a purely formal uranium plant of the created spirit or ego that enables and compels the absolute spirit to become aware of this". Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, like Barth, saw faith not as a human ability, but as grace: "Everything that relates to the personal appropriation of the fact of Christ is not a priori, but contingent action of God on people." He also generalized in his letters from imprisonment In 1944 the question of Jewish religious affiliation, relativized in Gal. 6.15  EU : “The Pauline question, whether the περιτομή [circumcision] is a condition of justification, in my opinion today means whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from περιτομή is also freedom from religion. "Like Barth, he turned against pious complacency:" While I am often afraid to mention the name of God to the religious - because it seems to me to sound wrong here and somehow I feel a little dishonest to myself (it is especially bad when the others start to speak in religious terminology, then I almost completely fall silent, and I feel somehow sultry and uncomfortable) - I can occasionally be quite calm and self-evident towards those who are not religious Calling God. "

He radicalized this openness in his question about religion-free Christianity beyond inwardness , conscience , awareness of sin and classical metaphysics . He wanted to respect the self-confidence and autonomy of the enlightened person and not speak of God "when human knowledge (sometimes due to laziness) is over or when human powers fail". Against such a deus ex machina at human limits he wanted to speak “of God in the middle, not in weaknesses but in strength, not in death and guilt, but in the life and good of man. At the borders it seems to me better to be silent and to leave the unsolvable unsolved. ”He criticized Barth for having“ given no concrete guidance in the non-religious interpretation of theological terms ”- such as“ repentance , justification, rebirth , sanctification ”- neither in dogmatics nor in ethics. This is where his limit lies and that is why his theology of revelation becomes positivistic , ' revelatory positivism ', as I put it. ”The Confessing Church - albeit turning away from Barth's approach -“ moved from positivism to restoration ”. Barth was negatively determined by liberal theology, and its question was not really taken up in this way, with the aim: “The maturity of the world is no longer an occasion for polemics and apologetics, but it is really better understood than it understands itself namely from the Gospel, from Christ. "

Liberal theology, experiential and left-wing Protestantism

Despite Barth's criticism of his teacher Adolf von Harnack and other liberal theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl and Ernst Troeltsch, the systematic theologian Matthias Heesch sees some similarities. For example, Barth does not interpret the reality of experience, culture and religion from this itself, but from the revelation of Christ. However, he takes all areas of human experience into consideration and, like Ritschl, accepts that the secular world is independent . Conversely, Harnack had the idea, close to Barth, of the sovereignty of the gospel over its inner historical figures, which also included an acceptance of dogmas in their historical context. Like Barth, he rejected a subjectivistic and experience-centered belief.

Dorothee Sölle (3rd from left) at the International Women's Peace Conference in Amsterdam, November 27, 1981

Matthias Heesch sees a “radical break” with Barth, but also Harnack and Troeltsch, from the late 1960s. Instead of limiting religious and secular experience by theological criteria, this has increasingly become the benchmark for theological work. Heesch cites the practical theologians Ernst Lange and Dorothee Sölle as examples, as representatives of a " left wing of the Barth School". Long expected Christians, especially pastors, to portray the religious and moral tradition through their own lives. Instead of a “certain substantiality” of the Bible and dogma that remained with Barth, the congregation largely took over the function of guaranteeing the conformity of church action with the written testimony. The “ process of considering a biblical text as relevant and the preacher's assessment of the situation” came to the fore. While for Lange Christ the transcendent specification of the process of Christian existence remained, for Sölle this is love, so that the process itself, as its initiator, is only believed to be Christ. The "dynamization of the objective dimension of faith" applied by Barth leads as a consequence to the abolition of religion in general. Sölle actually came up with a theology after the death of God , while Barth - also in contrast to Bonhoeffer - maintained that faith depends on religion for its inner-worldly realization.

While Lange and Sölle maintained their focus on Jesus Christ as the authoritative authority despite empirical tendencies, Heesch sees their successors up to the present day at risk of a “victory of liberalism in its most problematic form over Karl Barth's theology”. Also due to the inclusion of results from the human sciences , the liberal theological idea of ​​the worldliness of the world, adopted by Barth, had come to the fore. Theology and ecclesiastical statements have often adopted a “generally diffuse humanism ” or a more anthropological and socio-political function rather than a christological understanding of religion. “But the question remains to the theologians in the Ritschl area, then to Barth himself and finally to the spokesmen of left-wing Protestantism in the early Federal Republic, which Barth helped to shape, whether they failed to recognize the anti-Christian weight of modern secularism in such a way that they have misinterpreted this secularism as an acceptable set of conditions, if not as a possible positive form of Protestant existence in modern times. "

Meaning of the historical Jesus

Classical liberal theology, such as Adolf von Harnacks, placed the earthly Jesus at the center and saw “every Christology [as] a later construct” that had little in common with him. In 1977 John Hick saw the doctrine of the incarnation and the trinity as a mythological or poetic expression of the meaning of Jesus. Rudolf Bultmann also made a distinction between the Christ "according to the flesh" and "according to the spirit", but drew the opposite consequence. Since little is known about the historical Jesus , he only emphasized the message of the New Testament in his existential interpretation . "Bultmann did not want to look at history objectively, but rather to be drawn into a personal encounter with history."

In contrast to liberal theology, Barth was also not interested in the historical Jesus, but history as a history of salvation was decisive for him. Since incarnation means the “identification of God with man” and makes the path to him possible, Barth was “extremely important that the beyond became this world and that the non-representational became objective”. He therefore saw Bultmann's program of demythologizing as an oblivion of history and docetism .

In the exegetical sections of the KD, Barth and von Kirschbaum mostly used a synchronous interpretation method that was not interested in developing the text . In doing so, Barth recognized the historical-critical method in principle, but it could "only lead to the threshold beyond which scripture as God's word is clear in itself" [KD I / 2, 799]. Historical work on the text cannot be separated from dogmatic-theological examination. This aims at wisdom , thus at “a practical knowledge [...] which encompasses the whole existence of the human being” [Dogmatik im Grundriss 7 1947, 26]. In the second commentary to the Romans, Barth had demanded: “The historically critical should be more critical for me” [Preface, X]. On this basis, Christoph Raedel criticizes (and with reference to Michael Trowitzsch's Post-Critical Explanation of the Scriptures ) the claim that there is no alternative and warns of the power of the methodical. Biblical exegesis must "[give up] a safeguard through the method by which God is hermeneutically excluded in his manifestation " and the biblical text is viewed as rationally available. Instead of “letting social trends dictate the keywords for your own research and positioning”, it should, in Barth's sense, give “space for the unavailable work of the Holy Spirit”. Raedel therefore pleads for a diachronic canonical exegesis .

Conservative impact history

Hans Asmussen (center) 1968 in Kiel with Provost Bertold Kraft (left) and Bishop Friedrich Huebner (right)

A leading representative of the theologically and politically conservative orientation towards Karl Barth was Hans Asmussen . In 1934 he had co-authored the Barmen Theological Declaration, but in 1947 he rejected the Darmstadt Word . This current did not have a long-lasting effect and was absorbed in a decidedly Lutheran confessionalism , "partly also in a theology of the pragmatic preservation of the popular church status quo ."

Christian absoluteness and religious dialogue

Statue of the Oshun goddess in Oshogbo , Nigeria

Barth's approach to the unpredictable event of God's revelation in an individual, Jesus Christ, was often interpreted in the sense of an exclusive claim to truth by Christianity. Points of contact with Barth are sentences such as: “There is a true religion: just as there are justified sinners. [...] the Christian religion is the true religion. "[KD I / 2, 357] The systematic theologian Matthias Gockel, on the other hand, saw an emerging consensus in 2018 that precisely this approach" emphasizes the universal meaning of this event and [...] fundamentally includes openness to God's work outside the boundaries of the Christian religion. ”For only the person and work of Jesus Christ are God's direct self-communication. It defies any kind of appropriation by people, including the churches. Barth's criticism of religion is therefore initially directed at Christianity. It "transcends [...] the alternative of one's own ( self ) and foreign or other ( other ) in" religion "."

Gockel calls for “to think further with Barth beyond Barth”. He corrects: "There is" true "or" justified "belief." Because it is not religion as a belief system and institution that can be justified, but only a person within religion. Statements by Barth should be placed in the foreground "in which a trans-religious understanding of" mission "and" conversion "shines through". Barth emphasized in KD I / 2, 392 that he by no means wanted to privilege historically existing Christianity over other religions. In a conversation in 1960 he stated that coming to faith does not mean converting to Christianity. Gockel sees an important impetus for Barth's religious dialogue in the search for a common language "not from an apparently neutral, religious-scientific perspective", but rather based on the particulars and the reasons for understanding in their own tradition.

Philosophical and scientific-theoretical aspects

In 1989 Ernstpeter Maurer examined the inner logic of Barth's dogmatic doctrine of principles in KD I. In doing so, he developed a parallel "which becomes visible between Barth's conception of the biblical-ecclesiastical speech about God and the linguistic and scientific- philosophical tendencies of the more recent analytical philosophy ."

For Barth, the reality of the triune God preceded all conceptual thinking. The name of God cannot be classified under a general concept of the divine. Thus, God cannot be described by statements about facts , for example in the sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein's logical ideal language defined in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus . This tries to “reproduce the structure of the world ” in the sense of intensional semantics . An intention in the sense of an exhaustive definition can be assigned to a term. It gives “ necessary and sufficient conditions for whether an entity belongs to the extension of the concept or not. The extension [...] can therefore be represented as a function of the intention. ”A basic vocabulary of observation terms is distinguished from theoretical terms. The former would have a constant reference to reality for every speaker . Even if one “remains in the area of ​​intensional abstraction”, theories are also partially interpreted as calculi using the basic vocabulary , that is, related to reality. Maurer rejects this positivist view with reference to Hilary Putnam , since the reference of an alleged basic vocabulary also changes due to the introduction of new, such as physical laws.

Wittgenstein's later theory of language games , which is in contrast to this, sees Maurer as open to Barth's theology (without there being any mutual influence). She understands the connection between language and reality - or shape and content in Barth's language - not in the sense of a clear, definitive structure, but as a variety of linguistic processes. These are intertwined with extra-linguistic conditions in very different, open ways. This interweaving, in turn, is in contrast to the hermeneutic philosophy of language, which focuses on internal linguistic understanding . “The meaning of a word is its use in language.” On this basis, theology can be described as grammar . For Karl Barth, the connection and tension between dogmatic terms, such as justice and mercy, are important . These produce the grammatical sentences of dogmatics. They regulate the theological use of language, with reference to the Bible and as an aid to preaching. The divine content cannot be conceptually defined extensionally or intensionally, but the relation to reality in the sense of a paradigmatic reference arises by pointing to Jesus Christ.

In the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ ( Jn 1.14  EU ) the sinlessness of the Logos is not conceptually and systematically linked with Jesus as "bearer of the burden that man has to bear as a sinner" with his struggle with sin [KD I / 2, 171]. The incarnation of the word can only be characterized as a hypostatic union [KD I / 2, 175f.]. For theological language in general, too, it follows from this that its content cannot be detached from the form, but only shows itself in concrete situations through God's spirit: He is pneumatologically evident . "This hypostatic semantics thus corresponds to the grammatical link between language and reality as a heterogeneous relata in Wittgenstein's language games". “That is why - in contrast to theological statements - the name can represent the object 'precisely in its entire apparent emptiness' [KD I / 2, 13]." One has to learn a name and can give behavioristic testimony to its reference to the object. However, this cannot be further justified - there is a hermeneutical gap with regard to the “double indirect [KD I / 1, 174] identity of shape and content” .

Additional information

Work editions

  • Karl Barth: The Church Dogmatics. Theological Verlag, Zurich 1932–1967 (original edition in 14 volumes; out of print, only available in antiquarian versions)
  • Karl Barth: The Church Dogmatics. Study edition, 30 volumes and index volume. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-290-11634-4
  • Hinrich Stoevesandt, Michael Trowitzsch (ed.): Karl Barth: Unpublished texts on church dogmatics. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2014, ISBN 3-290-17669-X

literature

  • Christiane Tietz : "White Whale": The Church Dogmatics. In: Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth: A life in contradiction. Beck, Munich 2018, ISBN 3-406-72523-6 , pp. 369-390.
  • Juliane Katharina Schüz: Belief in Karl Barth's ›Kirchlicher Dogmatik‹: The anthropological form of belief between eccentricity and interpretation. De Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 3-11-056759-8 .
  • Michael Beintker (Ed.): Barth Handbook. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, ISBN 3-16-150077-6 .
  • Gerhard Bergner: For the sake of the matter: Karl Barth's interpretation of the Scriptures in Church Dogmatics. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 3-525-56445-7 .
  • George Hunsinger: Reading Karl Barth: an introduction to his theological thinking. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2009, ISBN 3-7887-2180-4 .
  • Caren Algner: Church dogmatics in practice. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-7887-2049-2 .
  • Hans-Wilhelm Pietz: The drama of the federal government. The dramatic way of thinking in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1998, ISBN 3-7887-1417-4 .
  • Bertold Klappert: Reconciliation and Liberation. Try to understand Karl Barth contextually. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994, ISBN 3-7887-1451-4 .
  • Eginhard Peter Meijering: From the church fathers to Karl Barth: The old church dogma in the 'church dogmatics'. Brill, Leiden 1993, ISBN 90-5063-126-6 .
  • Thies Gundlach : God's Self-Limitation and Human Autonomy: Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics as a Modernization Step in Protestant Theology. Peter Lang, Bern 1992, ISBN 3-631-45287-X .
  • Reinhard Krauss: God's revelation and human religion: an analysis of the concept of religion in Karl Barth's church dogmatics with special consideration of FDE Schleiermacher. Edwin Mellen Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7734-9560-6 .
  • Hans Theodor Goebel: From the free choice of God and man: Interpretation exercises on the 'analogy' according to Karl Barth's theory of election and concerns about its consequences. Peter Lang, 1990, ISBN 3-631-41706-3 .
  • Ernstpeter Maurer : Aspects of the philosophy of language in Karl Barth's «Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics». Peter Lang, 1989, ISBN 3-631-40579-0 .
  • Otto Bächli: The Old Testament in the church dogmatics by Karl Barth. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1987, ISBN 3-7887-0792-5 .
  • Walter Kreck : Basic decisions in Karl Barth's dogmatics. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1978, ISBN 3-7887-0550-7 .
  • Otto Weber : Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. Introductory report on volumes I / 1 to IV / 3.2. With an addendum by Hans-Joachim Kraus to Volume IV, 4. (1950ff.) 8th edition, Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1977.
  • Wilfried Härle : Being and grace: the ontology in Karl Barth's church dogmatics. De Gruyter, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-11-005706-9 .
  • Walter Feurich (ed.): Karl Barth: Clarification and effect. On the prehistory of "Church Dogmatics" and on the church struggle. Union Verlag, Berlin 1966.
  • Erich Klamroth, Fritz Buri, Hans Georg Fritzsche: Christianity and the world views: at the same time an introduction to the church dogmatics of Karl Barth from a predominantly apologetic point of view. Publisher H. Reich, 1962.

Web links

Commons : Ecclesiastical dogmatics  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, pp. 369–371 and 512, fn. 1.
  2. ^ Suzanne Selinger: Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A biographical and theological history study. Theological Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-290-17242-2 , p. 27
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Huber: Consequences of Christian Freedom: Ethics and Theory of the Church in the Horizon of the Barmen Theological Declaration. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1983, ISBN 3-7887-0731-3 , p. 40; Matthias Haudel: Doctrine of God: The meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity for theology, church and world. 2nd edition, UTB, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 3-8252-4970-0 , pp. 143f.
  4. ↑ Alexander Dölecke: Timeline of life and work. In: Michael Beintker (Ed.): Barth Handbuch , Tübingen 2016, pp. 469–474
  5. ^ Karl Barth:  The Church Dogmatics . Study edition. Register tape. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 1993.
  6. ↑ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, p. 369f.
  7. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth. Munich 2018, pp. 371–374
  8. ↑ a b c Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth. Munich 2018, pp. 374–377, 444 note 92
  9. ^ Ernstpeter Maurer: Aspects of the philosophy of language in Karl Barth's «Prolegomena zur Kirchliche Dogmatik» . Peter Lang, 1989, pp. 34, 99, 134f., 357
  10. ^ The Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth (1932–1968). Mail order bookshop for Protestant theology, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  11. ^ A b c d e Matthias Gockel: Karl Barth's revelatory theological approach in the context of today's pluralistic theology of religion . In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 81–85
  12. ↑ Martin Luther , Sermon on 1 Petr. 1, 18f, 1523. Quoted from KD I / 2, 327
  13. ^ A b c Nicolaus Klimek: The term "mysticism" in Karl Barth's theology . Paderborn 1990, pp. 100-107
  14. ↑ Jacques Derrida: A certain impossible way to speak of the event . Merve, Berlin 2003, pp. 33, 60. ISBN 978-3-88396-187-3
  15. ↑ Ulrich Beuttler: Radical Theology of Revelation: Karl Barth and the postmodern phenomenology and hermeneutics. In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 51–67
  16. ↑ Nicolaus Klimek: The term “mysticism” in Karl Barth's theology . Paderborn 1990, p. 252
  17. ↑ Nicolaus Klimek: The term “mysticism” in Karl Barth's theology . Paderborn 1990, pp. 132-134
  18. ↑ a b c Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, pp. 378–381
  19. ^ Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, p. 381f.
  20. ↑ a b c d e Hans G. Ulrich: Karl Barths Ethik - Review and Outlook. In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 157–172
  21. ↑ a b c Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, p. 382f.
  22. ↑ a b c Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, p. 384f.
  23. ↑ Eberhard Busch: III. Embossing - 3. Music. In: Michael Beintker (Ed.): Barth Handbook. Tübingen 2016, pp. 171–176
  24. ↑ a b c d Wolf Krötke: Sin and nothing. In: Michael Beintker (Ed.): Barth Handbook. Tübingen 2016, pp. 342–347
  25. ↑ Michael Weinrich: Architecture of the Doctrine of Reconciliation. In: Michael Beintker (Ed.): Barth Handbuch , Tübingen 2016, pp. 347–354
  26. ↑ a b c d e f Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth , Munich 2018, pp. 386–388
  27. ^ A b Christiane Tietz: Karl Barth . Munich 2018, p. 388f.
  28. ↑ a b c Bertold Klappert: God's revelation and human experience. Fields of experience of Karl Barth's theory of reconciliation. In: Bertold Klappert: Reconciliation and Liberation , Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994, pp. 3–52, especially pp. 42–50
  29. ↑ a b c d Werner Thiede: Foreword by the editor . In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death, 2018, pp. 5–8
  30. ^ A b c d e Matthias Heesch: Did liberal theology defeat Karl Barth? In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death, 2018, pp. 193–218
  31. ↑ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Act and Being . Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (DBW) 2, p. 52. Quoted and referred to Barth in Christian Gremmels u. a. (Ed.): Resistance and Surrender: Letters and Notes from Detention. Complete Edition with introduction, note and comments , Gütersloh 2011 = DBW 8, Gütersloh 1998, ISBN 978-3-579-07141-1 , p. 403 note 11
  32. ↑ a b c DBW 8, Gütersloh 1998, pp. 406–408., With note 22
  33. ↑ DBW 8, p. 416
  34. ↑ a b Like the liberal theologians Alfred Ritschl and Ernst Troeltsch, Barth is rooted in neo-Kantianism and therefore has an anti-historical tendency that Bonhoeffer criticizes. Like Barth for genuinely theological reasons, he wants to interpret the secular world from its own tendencies. For Barth, however, analogous forms of thought become possible due to the Revelation of Christ, such as the justification of law. Bonhoeffer also considers this to be revelatory positivism. Their conceptions of maturity or (not explicitly called by Barth) the worldliness of the world therefore differ. Matthias Heesch: Did liberal theology defeat Karl Barth? In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death, 2018, notes 53 and 70
  35. ^ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Resistance and Surrender: Letters and Notes from Detention. Gütersloh 2011 = DBW 8, ISBN 978-3-579-07141-1 , p. 481f.
  36. ^ A b Hans Schwarz : Barth's Christology and Liberal Deconstruction of the Present. In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 189–191
  37. ↑ Christoph Raedel: Barth's understanding of writing and the historical-critical method in the crisis. In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death , 2018, pp. 121–126, 133–136
  38. ^ Matthias Heesch: Has liberal theology defeated Karl Barth? In: Werner Thiede (Hg.): Karl Barths Theologie der Kris heute. Transfer attempts on the 50th anniversary of death, 2018, p. 216, note 99
  39. ^ Ernstpeter Maurer: Philosophical aspects of language in Karl Barth's «Prolegomena zur Kirchliche Dogmatik» , 1989, pp. 11-29
  40. ↑ a b c Ernstpeter Maurer: Philosophical aspects of language in Karl Barth's «Prolegomena zur Kirchlichen Dogmatik» , 1989, pp. 11–29, 133ff., 158ff., 212f.
  41. ↑ Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations , Frankfurt a. M. 1971, § 43
  42. ↑ Ernstpeter Maurer: Philosophical aspects of language in Karl Barth's «Prolegomena zur Kirchlichen Dogmatik» , 1989, pp. 53–60, Glossary ANHYPOSTASIE und SEMANTISCHE BZW. HERMENEUTIC GAP, p. 355