The Word of God and the Word of Man

Summary

The Word of God and the Word of Man gathers the addresses with which a young Swiss village pastor broke with the theology of his teachers. Karl Barth was minister of the Reformed parish of Safenwil in Aargau from 1911 to 1921, preaching every Sunday to farmers and factory workers. In August 1914 he saw nearly all his German professors, Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann among them, endorse the Kaiser's war policy. If their theology could bless that, he concluded, something was wrong at its root, and he and his friend Eduard Thurneysen began to read the Bible again as if for the first time. The commentary on Romans (1919; rewritten 1922) was one result; these lectures, delivered between 1916 and 1923 and collected in German in 1924 as Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, are the other. The addresses circle a single conviction. Religion, morality, culture, and even the church are human activities; the Word of God is God's own act, and it comes as judgement on all of them before it comes as grace. In 'The Righteousness of God' Barth argues that the war exposed how human beings build a tower of Babel out of their own righteousness and call it God's. In 'The Strange New World within the Bible' he tells a congregation that Scripture is not a record of how pious people found God but of how God sought out people: not history, morality or religion, but a new world, the world of God. 'The Christian's Place in Society', given in 1919 to religious socialists at Tambach, unsettles hearers who hoped he would bless their programme; the kingdom of God, he insists, is neither a movement within society nor a revolt against it, though it judges and stirs both. The later lectures, written after Barth became a professor at Göttingen in 1921, turn to the minister's task. Speaking of God is the preacher's obligation and is beyond human power; theology must hold both facts together and give God the glory. The congregation, Barth says, comes on Sunday morning asking one question, whether it is true, and the sermon exists to answer from Scripture, not from the pastor's religious experience. The language is deliberately dialectical: yes and no, crisis and promise, the dead end that is also the beginning. The book matters historically as the first English door into 'dialectical theology' or the 'theology of crisis', translated by Douglas Horton in 1928. It also introduces positions Barth later revised, especially in the Church Dogmatics, where the stark negations give way to a fuller account of God's gracious humanity in Christ. Students should read these pieces as speeches, full of rhetorical overstatement, and test them against Scripture as Barth asks.

Plot or Argument

• The war and the righteousness of God (1916)

  Barth's lecture at Aarau describes the human conscience longing for God's righteousness and the way individuals, nations and churches substitute their own: moral effort, culture, the state, religion. The remedy is not a better programme but faith that lets God speak.

• Reading the Bible as God's world (1916-1920)

  'The Strange New World within the Bible' asks what is in Scripture and answers by successive denials: not history, not moral instruction, not religion, but the sovereign God and his new world. 'Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas' (Aarau, 1920) presses the point against historical-critical and pious reading alike, presenting the Bible as the witness to God's free and unsettling action.

• Tambach: the kingdom and society (1919)

  Invited by religious socialists, Barth refuses to identify the kingdom of God with socialism or with any other cause. He sketches a threefold relation in which the Christian affirms the world as creation, criticizes it in the light of the coming kingdom, and waits for God's own redemption, so that political hopes are taken seriously and relativized together.

• The problem of ethics and the preacher's dilemma (1922)

  'The Problem of Ethics Today' argues that the question 'What ought we to do?' drives every serious person to the limit of human possibility and therefore to God's grace. 'The Word of God and the Task of the Ministry' and 'The Need and Promise of Christian Preaching' set out the minister's dilemma, obliged to speak of God and unable to, and describe the way of dogmatics, of self-criticism and of dialectic, each of which fails unless God speaks.

• The Reformed church's teaching task (1923)

  The closing address to a Reformed assembly asks what doctrine such a church may still confess, arguing that Reformed confession must be bound to the Word of God rather than to inherited forms or to modern religious feeling.

Characters

• Karl Barth, author and speaker

  Swiss Reformed pastor at Safenwil (1911-1921), then professor at Göttingen; these addresses chart his move from liberal and religious-socialist theology to a theology of the Word.

• Eduard Thurneysen, friend and collaborator

  Neighbouring pastor whose correspondence and shared Bible study with Barth shaped the new direction; co-founder with him of the journal Zwischen den Zeiten.

• Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann, teachers

  Leading liberal theologians under whom Barth studied; their public support of German war aims in 1914 prompted his break with their school.

• Leonhard Ragaz and Hermann Kutter, religious socialists

  Swiss leaders of the movement that linked the kingdom of God with social reform; the Tambach address speaks to their German counterparts.

• Christoph Blumhardt, influence

  Württemberg pastor whose expectation of God's coming kingdom Barth admired and drew on in these years.

• Douglas Horton, translator

  American Congregationalist minister whose 1928 translation introduced Barth to English-speaking readers.

Lessons

• When the war tested theology

  Barth's turn began with a public event: respected Christian scholars endorsing a nation's war. He concluded that a theology which begins from human religious experience can be enlisted for any cause. The lesson for students is that ideas show their worth when tested by events, and that the church needs a Word not of its own making.

  • Why did the 1914 manifesto of German intellectuals shake Barth's confidence in his teachers?
  • Barth accuses his age of building a tower of Babel out of its own righteousness. What examples does he give, and do they persuade you?
  • Is it fair to judge a theology by the political choices of its defenders?

• Not our thoughts about God, but God's thoughts about us

  In 'The Strange New World within the Bible' Barth tells his congregation that Scripture is not chiefly a record of human religion or a handbook of morals but the account of God's search for humanity. The approach recovers Reformation emphases on the priority of God, though it also invites questions about how Barth relates the Bible's human words to the Word of God.

  • List the things Barth says the Bible is not. Why does he proceed by denials?
  • How would reading Abraham, Moses or Paul change if the main actor in each story is God?
  • Where might Barth's contrast between history and the 'new world' of God be overstated?

• Neither baptizing nor abandoning the world

  At Tambach in 1919 Barth disappointed religious socialists by refusing to equate the kingdom with their programme, while still taking social injustice seriously. His threefold pattern of affirming creation, criticizing the present, and hoping for God's redemption offers a way to think about Christian political engagement without idolatry or withdrawal.

  • Why does Barth refuse to call any human movement the kingdom of God?
  • Does his position risk making Christians passive? How does he guard against that?
  • Compare Barth's refusal at Tambach with his later role in drafting the Barmen Declaration (1934).

• The preacher's impossible duty

  Barth describes ministers as obliged to speak of God and unable to do so by their own powers, and he insists that this tension is the starting point of honest theology. The congregation wants to know whether what is preached is true; only God can make human words carry his Word, which humbles the preacher and dignifies the task.

  • What question, according to Barth, does a congregation bring on Sunday morning?
  • Barth examines three ways of theology: dogmatic, self-critical and dialectical. What does each get right, and why does each fall short?
  • How might this account of preaching shape the way a student listens to a sermon?

Context

The addresses come from the years between the outbreak of the First World War and the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, when the optimism of liberal Protestantism collapsed for many younger theologians. Barth, Thurneysen, Friedrich Gogarten and Emil Brunner formed what came to be called dialectical theology or the theology of crisis, launching the journal Zwischen den Zeiten in 1922-23. They drew on Paul, the Reformers, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Franz Overbeck and the Blumhardts against the tradition of Schleiermacher and Ritschl.

Composition

The pieces were delivered as lectures and sermon-like addresses in Switzerland and Germany between 1916 and 1923 (Aarau, Leutwil, Tambach, Wiesbaden, Elgersburg, Schulpforta and Emden among the venues), and collected as Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie in 1924. Douglas Horton's English translation was published in Boston by the Pilgrim Press in 1928 as The Word of God and the Word of Man and later reissued as a Harper Torchbook.

Reception

For many English-speaking readers this was the first encounter with Barth, years before the Church Dogmatics was translated. American and British reviewers debated whether the theology of crisis was a renewal of Reformation faith or an irrational retreat from culture. Barth's later Church Dogmatics and his 1956 lecture The Humanity of God revised the severity of these early addresses, and later readers such as Bonhoeffer criticized aspects of his doctrine of revelation even while depending on it.

Comparisons

• Letters and Papers from Prison

  Bonhoeffer, who learned much from Barth, wrote from prison in 1944 that Barth had been right to attack religion but had fallen into a 'positivism of revelation'; reading the early addresses shows the polemic against religion Bonhoeffer both inherited and pushed further.

• The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio)

  Luther's insistence against Erasmus that salvation is God's work and not human striving stands behind Barth's attack on human righteousness, though Barth applies it to modern culture, ethics and religion rather than to scholastic theology.

• Institutes of the Christian Religion

  Barth speaks as a Reformed minister and in the 1923 address asks what the Reformed confession requires now; Calvin's opening on the knowledge of God and of ourselves offers a measure for Barth's claim that God can be known only where he reveals himself.

• Either/Or

  Barth's early dialectic owes much to Kierkegaard's attack on comfortable Christendom and his 'infinite qualitative distinction' between God and humanity, though Barth later warned against building theology on Kierkegaard's individualism.

• Confessions

  Augustine narrates his own search and finds that God was seeking him all along; Barth makes the same reversal a principle of reading Scripture, but distrusts the appeal to inner religious experience that Augustine's form can invite.

Quotes

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Barth says the Bible is a 'strange new world' rather than a book of history, morals or religion. Choose one biblical narrative and write an essay testing whether his description fits it.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation at the 1919 Tambach conference between a religious socialist who wants the church to back his party and Barth, who refuses. Let each make his strongest case.

• Classroom

  Read a short sermon from your own church tradition and identify where it speaks of God's action and where it speaks of human religious effort; discuss what Barth would say about the balance.

Further Reading

• The Epistle to the Romans, Karl Barth

  The 1922 second edition, translated by Edwyn Hoskyns (1933), is the companion to these addresses.

• The Humanity of God, Karl Barth

  Barth's 1956 lecture reflecting on and qualifying the severity of his early theology.

• Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, Eberhard Busch

  Standard biography by Barth's last assistant, useful for the Safenwil and Göttingen years.

• Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, Bruce L. McCormack

  Detailed study of Barth's development from 1909 to 1936, including the lectures collected here.