Karl Barth

I am currently reading a selection of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics edited by Helmut Gollwitzer. Growing up in conservative evangelical circles and reading the materials of that tradition tend to (or at least have in my case) produce a stigmatizing effect towards Barth and his writings. The term "neo-orthodox" is thrown around without much if any explanation, and it seems to be used almost simultaneously with "liberalism." However, with this negative connotation firmly entrenched in the minds of most evanglicals, it seems that very few have actually read Barth. This has been true for me at least, and I believe that I am greatly benefiting from having taken steps to remedy this. I have found Barth's writings to be filled profound insight and a fresh and invigorating passion for the Church, the Gospel, and most importantly, for the centrality of Jesus Christ in all things. Certainly, his view of scriptural authority and his tendency to dismiss all natural and philosophical understandings of God as certain paths to idolatry, are both disturbing aspects in his writings. However, it appears to me at least that these mistakes are made a consequence of attempting to make the revelation of Christ the most central reality of the human experience. While this does not necessitate or excuse the misunderstanding of the authority of the written Word of God or the truths about the general revelation of Himself therein, I am certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and to receive the blessing of wisdom that are contained in so much of what I have read to this point.

Here is a small sample of what I have been enjoying:

" It [the Christian community] cannot approve nor tolerate the way and ways of the world. It has to indicate a very different path. On the other hand, its decisive task is not to confront men with this objection, criticism and negation, nor with a programme, plan or law in the performance of which men must abandon that great attempt to live without God, counterbalancing it by the opposite attempt to return to God and with His help to make everything better. This is what the Synagogue does. This is what Freemasonary does. This is what Moral Rearmament does. But this is not what the Church of Jesus Christ does. It has no right to make proposals to men as though they could now help, justify, sanctify and glorify themselves more thoroughly and successfully than hitherto. It cannot set before them any better men, any sinless men, any innocent men, and men who escape the confusion and sorrow of the world. It has no such men to hold out as examples to follow, as though others had only to imitate them to extricate themselves from the quagmire and hell in which they live...No, its great and simple but very different commission is that of declaring to them the kingdom of God, and not therefore a means to help them to do something, but the one truth that God has already begun to do something for them and that He will also complete it in spite of their opposition, outbidding all the attempts which spring from this opposition, overlooking and bypassing all their perversity and futility."

I could keep quoting for pages (this quote continues with some amazing stuff about the "divine Yes"), but time and space constraints will force me to leave you something to be read on your own.