I don’t know how many fans of radical left-wing Protestant theology read this blog, but in case any do–or in case any might miraculously materialize–my friend Heather Ohaneson is teaching a course on the theology of Karl Barth for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research starting next Monday evening, September 11th, 6:30-9:30 ET. I took Heather’s course on the Book of Job earlier this year, and found it startling, illuminating, and fun. If you can say that of Job, I figure you can say it of Barth. (Barth was, by the way, an early influence on Alasdair MacIntyre, for any MacIntyreans out there. Apparently, Big Mac gave up on Barth after reading Hans Urs von Balthasar’s criticisms of him, or so he says. How else to grasp the esoterica of that dispute but to take this course?)
Heather is a great teacher, and the material is, shall we say, interesting. If you thought you understood what Protestantism was about before engaging with Barth, you might read a page or two or twenty of his work, and start to wonder. If you didn’t think you understood what Protestantism was about before you encountered him, well, you might end up doing much the same. A win-win!
For a more sober description of the course, see below. Use this link for all relevant information, and to register.
Karl Barth is the most influential, and perhaps most polemical, Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. Drawing deeply on Søren Kierkegaard’s fervent view of Christianity, Barth starkly criticizes theologians in the tradition of liberal Protestantism. At the same time, he is known as the “Red Pastor” who cares for the interests of his rural, blue-collar parishioners and rejects the collusion of the Christian faith with bourgeois life. Born in Switzerland and active in Germany, Barth authors the Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Church’s 1934 statement in opposition to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. His thirteen-volume work, Church Dogmatics, is a definitive contribution to the field of systematic theology, standing alongside the great works of Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Friedrich Schleiermacher in importance. In Church Dogmatics, he enquires into the nature of revelation, and formulates doctrines concerning election, creation, and the person of Christ. How can we understand Karl Barth’s theological project? What drove him, politically and theologically, to attack the assumptions of liberal Christianity; and what are the meaning and implications—religious, political, and ethical—of the “theocentric” point of view he promoted in its stead?
In this course, we will situate Barth in the long tradition of Christian thought, from the apostle Paul and the medieval apologist Anselm of Canterbury to the sixteenth-century Reformer Martin Luther and Barth’s contemporaries, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. By examining The Epistle to the Romans, Barth’s commentary on the New Testament Book of Romans, we will grapple with the contradictions of the Christ figure, the theological concept of grace, and God’s relation to history. We will then turn to the Church Dogmatics in Outline, an introduction to Barthian theology structured around the Apostles’ Creed. What does it mean to call God Father? How does the Holy Spirit relate to the unity of the universal Church? Engaging the short piece of the Barmen Declaration opens up questions of Jewish-Christian relations as well as Christian nationalism today. What might biblical, theological resources be for resisting assertions of Aryan power in twenty-first century America? Lastly, we will consider the reception of Barth’s ideas in contemporary discourse in areas such as Black, political, and womanist theology.
Policy of Truth 
Extremely tempting…
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Temptation, huh? Well, let the music be your master. Will you heed that master’s call?
Yeah, ignore the line about “Satan’s daughter.”
Not sure what Barth thought of Zeppelin, but only one way to find out, right?
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He’s the same as Roland Barthes, right?
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Yes, they’re structurally identical.
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Getting to this late as usual. Not a fan of radical left wing Protestant theology, but I do wish I knew more about Barth. I just have a vague idea in my head that rather than defend religion as Truth, Barth borrowed from postmodernist semantics to water down and confuse the nature of Truth. Maybe that’s not a fair take.
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I’m no expert on either Protestantism or Barth, and from what limited knowledge I have–I’ve read his Dogmatics in Outline and maybe half of his commentary on the Letter to the Romans–don’t find Barth’s thought very appealing. But I don’t think “borrowed from postmodernist semantics to water down and confuse the nature of Truth” is a fair or accurate summary.
My own summary: Barth is an orthodox Christian in the Lutheran tradition with a strongly Christ-centered theology; for Barth, Christ is our only means of access to God and our only route to salvation. What makes him “radical” is primarily his anti-liberal and anti-humanist orientation, and only secondarily his left-wing politics. In the couple of hundred pages of reading I’ve so far done, I would say that 100% of it is devoted to theology, and so far not a word to politics. But as far as I know, his left-wing politics involves an old-fashioned commitment to old-fashioned socialism. It has nothing to do with postmodernism.
What Barth opposes most radically is the sort of liberal-humanist Protestantism that I associate with, say, Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity. Compared with Barth, Locke comes across as a pagan. But Barth opposes liberal humanism in the name of Christian Truth, not a postmodern rejection of truth.
This essay captures Barth’s view pretty well:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/barthian-theology/
This is a sympathetic but more negative appraisal, from a Catholic (Thomist) perspective:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/06/karl-barths-failure
The best short read is Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline, which is about 150 pages long, and is as straightforward a summary as you could want.
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Thanks for the pointers! I’ll take a look and seek a better understanding.
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I didn’t express it well in my first comment, and my exposure to Barth is limited, but my instinctive distaste for Barth centers on his segregating religious truth and reason into two separate categories. This is what I meant by watering down the nature of truth. Maybe not a fair way to put it, but it jives with Mathew Rose’s main critique: “Barth yielded to modernity’s most pernicious idea, which took aim not at belief in the supernatural but at our rational capacity for knowledge of it. … He dissolved the classical synthesis of faith and reason, collapsing all theological understanding into an exercise of faith. Unable to appeal to truth besides Jesus Christ …”
Barth’s perspective is antithetical to Locke’s approach in The Reasonableness of Christianity, as you imply. For Locke (and for me) revelation is not something apart from reason, but rather reason and revealed truth were meant to be together, to complement and build on each other – both to understand the best way of life in this world and what God asks of us in preparation for the next.
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That I can definitely agree with. I agreed with Rose myself.
It’s interesting, but setting aside the instructor (who’s been reserved about stating her own views in class), most people in the class are Anglicans, but have a pronounced distaste for natural theology of either the Thomist or Lockean (or any other) variety. Defending it has fallen to me, of all people. That said, I’m enjoying the class.
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Thanks for sharing. It’s vital to hear all views. I went to seminary at a predominately conservative Calvinist lean, and let’s just say today I am more of an Arminian and messianic Jew.
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The Arrogant ignorance of Goyim, specifically on the mitzva of Moshiach. Just brain dead stupid. The Mitzva of Moshiach as defined by the opening Mishna of the 11th Chapter of Sanhedrin, together with its Gemara teaches: the Mitzva of Moshiach expressed through the baali t’shuva as a time oriented commandment based upon Moshe traveling to Egypt to take Israel out of Egyptian slavery.
Moshe, a baali t’shuva, argued with HaShem that HaShem send someone else! The vile ignorance of arrogance: Goyim who assume that the noise new-testament defines the mitzva of Moshiach. Xtian church (war criminals) attempt to equivocate their new-testament abomination as “ONE” with the T’NaCH. Which, their-after their avoda zarah replacement theology then attempts to replace the T’NaCH with the “blood libel” slander “OLD” testament narishkeit-bullshit.
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I’ve approved this comment, not because it deserves to be approved, but in the interests of transparency: I just want to make clear to you that when I get comments like this (including any response you give to what I’m saying right now), I delete them. This particular comment is vaguely on topic, but it’s unintelligible. In that respect, it’s no different from spam. If you want to post a comment on my blog, it has to make minimal sense. If it doesn’t, like this one, it gets trashed. Just so we’re clear, partner.
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Minimal sense. 2000+ years Xtians have declared that their counterfeit on par with Czarist “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” ie the new testament has a monopoly on defining the mitzva of messiah when Goyim in general and Xtian believers in particular, being brain dead stupid, do not know the difference between Jewish common law from Roman statute law. Their trash gospel counterfeit sames a broad brush declaration: “Goyim not under the law”. What a joke: Goyim under the law in every country they live in! What utterly pathetic morons.
Not under Jewish law then? Well Jewish law has this mitzva known as “Messiah” that so infatuates silly stupid Goyim. So Goyim write a new testament counterfeit, call it the new testament which their replacement theology refers to the Jewish scripture as “old testament” and poof abra Cadabra the noise new testament determines the “law” of messiah when Goyim are not under the law.
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