Explain and critique the place Karl Barth gives to Christology in his system of theology

Around the year 2000, I started studying theology part-time. The following is a paper I wrote on Karl Barth and for which I received a reasonable assessment. It doesn’t represent any significant theological understanding on my part, but it does show how wide and long is the road to obtaining any knowledge of God.

NOTE: I’ve since come to understand that Barth did not believe that the Bible is inerrant. For me, the Bible is without error and, for a considered perspective, I can recommend reading the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy.

Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) emphasised the priority of revelation and its focus upon Jesus Christ. The terms neo-orthodoxy and dialectical theology are associated with him.

What distinguished Barth from his contemporaries was that he rejected much of the theological base in which he was schooled and turned back to the Reformers.

He revisited the Chalcedonian Christological formula and developed a Christology not unlike Calvin’s but with intriguing and sometimes radical variations.

Barth reassessed many if not all areas of his theology particularly the questions of Christ’s humanity and deity as well as the thorny issue of election. Revelation, too, became a significant point and brought Barth to consider God’s transcendence and humanity’s dependence on Him for any revelation.

In fleshing out his conclusions, Barth wrote in a dialectical fashion that confused many and led to misrepresentations of his thinking in some areas such as the Trinity and Election.

Schooled in Old Liberal theology and then confronted by World War 1, Karl Barth began a process that became for him a revisiting of his whole theology. As he re-worked his theological method, Barth’s view of Christ took centre-stage in a stream of thinking that widely impacted Christian academia and beyond. Christianity had become too anthropocentric in Barth’s view and was more a reflection of secular humanism because of the influence of Schleiermacher and Heidegger. It was in reaction to this and in combination with his inner turmoil Barth began to see things less in terms of human values and experiences. ¹

Traditional theology had separated the person and work of Christ; the person was related to the incarnation and the work seen in the offices of prophet, priest and king. Barth believed that premise separated what the Bible revealed as inseparable and saw the reality of Christ and His work centred in God’s act of reconciliation.²

Erickson says Barth’s is a Christology from above where the Church’s proclamation of Christ is the basis of understanding Him.³ His Christology is related to his view of revelation as well and his understanding that believers are the real contemporaries of Jesus, not the eyewitnesses.⁴

Barth believed that the Church should not try build a “tower of Babel” in the belief that such a connection was possible with God’s help. Instead, the hope of the Church rested on God being for men.⁵ So that when a preacher stood up to speak having first prepared in a meticulous manner with due reverence to God, there occurred a miracle by which God spoke through the words of the speaker.⁶ This was a variation of his 1927 position in which from this “miracle”, Barth sought to deduce the nature of the word of God. He later reflected on the problems of this approach saying he was, “on the way to a real anthropology in 1927”.⁷

As Barth developed his theology, some said it was full of revisions and discontinuities linked to his dialectical approach.⁸ In contrast, Berkouwer said Barth’s theology was concrete, self-applying and had practical implications for ethics.⁹

Chalcedonian method:

In the process of revisiting reformation theology to see if it offered the basis of a better approach, Barth turned to the Chalcedonian Christological formula.¹⁰

It was the formal declaration at the Council of Chalcedon in 451AD that Jesus Christ was to be regarded as both human and divine. The council answered the controversies that Apollinarianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism raised in describing the person of Christ.

Also, McCormack describes a turning point in Barth’s thinking in 1924 when he embraced the anhypostatic-enhypostatic model in that his basic orientation moved towards the revelation-event on the basis of God’s self-revelation in Christ. He could then move from an eschatological to a Christological grounding that led to his later modified views of election.¹¹

Barth’s adherence to the Chalcedonian principles is highlighted in his 1929 work, Fate and Idea in Theology, in which he wrote, “Theology will really be theology when from beginning to end it is Christology”. In any Christology, the person and the work of Christ mutually imply each other.¹² In Chalcedonian Christology, Christ’s two natures _ deity and humanity _ are seen as internal to His person.¹³ It will see Him as one person in two natures, complete in deity and humanity. And it will hold that when these two natures meet in Christ, they do so without separation or division and yet also without confusion or change.¹⁴

Barth is said to better represent the essentials of Chalcedonian Christology than the Alexandrian and Antiochian viewpoints.¹⁵ Barth acknowledged the traditional conception of the incarnation, personalised the saving significance of Christ’s death and contemporised the consequences of His resurrection while holding that Christianity means revelation.¹⁶

As well, Barth believed no symmetry was possible between the two natures that met in Christ; Christ’s deity was deity, whereas his humanity was merely humanity.¹⁷ Despite Barth’s fully elaborated Chalcedonian Christology, he has been accused of holding widely varying positions. ¹⁸

Barth was seen as a realist who set up his theological position and declared it to be the only one worth defending and in doing so was basically saying that reasoning had to be done his way because any other way was flawed.¹⁹ Barth declared that all knowledge of God was exclusively determined by and dependent upon the knowledge of Jesus Christ.²⁰ Therefore, there were no Christian themes independent of Christology, and the Church had to insist on this in its message to the world.²¹ This drew an accusation that Barth did not expound a doctrine of biblical inspiration because he did not want to restrict the understanding of Christ solely to the Bible.²² Ward questioned whether Barth’s Christology matched the demands he made of it in areas such as the incarnation which Barth saw as the meaning of and the hermeneutic for understanding all language.²³

Ward argued that the incarnation of the Word in words was not a particular event as Barth saw it and led to a problem for him in trying to bring together a Christology and a theology of language.²⁴

Election:

In addressing election, Barth did not see it as being located in the doctrine of salvation as John Calvin did, but as part of the doctrine of God.²⁵

This insight enabled Barth to explain that it was God’s electing to be for humanity _ Christ was the electing God and the elected Man. ²⁶ Barth rejected the Reformed doctrine of separating humanity into two groups (the elect and the lost) and instead saw predestination as God acting in an ongoing manner electing and rejecting throughout history.²⁷ Christ had to face rejection and death so that God could take the punishment for man’s sins. God had to place judgment upon Himself, rejecting Himself as a result of man’s sin. He saved man from the punishment that he deserved, and placed it upon Himself. Since man was now redeemed, he was now “elected … for eternal life”. Barth saw Biblical evidence for this in Luke 9:35, “And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son. Hear Him’!” and also Isaiah 42:1, where the pre-incarnate Christ is referred to as God’s Elect One. ²⁸

Despite being accused of Universalism, Barth rejected the idea while still insisting there is no-one for whom He did not die and therefore in that redemptive work upon the Cross hangs the potential for everyone’s election.²⁹

Incarnation:

God enacted His saving history in the incarnation in the meeting of two natures in Christ. His deity and humanity were never static but rather in a state of being in that process of being.³⁰ This thesis was seen as an illustration of how Barth’s Chalcedonian Christology was traditional yet innovative at the same time.³¹

In answer to the Old Liberal reconstruction of Jesus as the incarnation of God in all men carried up to its superlative degree, Barth talked instead of downward movement from God to man.³² Through the incarnation God is revealed and therefore only through the incarnation can God be truly known. Any other place searched in order to know God would only turn up an idol. As the Being of God enfleshed, Jesus Christ was the mediator of our knowledge, the gateway to understanding God.³³ In answer to attacks on the virgin birth by Brunner and others, Barth vigorously defended it as well as upholding the historicity and resurrection of Christ against Bultmann’s moves to demythologise Jesus.³⁴

Trinity, dialectics:

Barth said that of every possible doctrine or concept of revelation, the Trinity was what distinguished the Christian doctrine of God as Christian.³⁵

The doctrine of the Trinity referred truly to God because, when he accepted it, Barth saw himself standing clearly before the second person in God, the Son.³⁶ Christ’s human nature was a creation of the Triune God, to be the vessel of the Revealer and the self-revealing Person of God.³⁷ Christ was the God-man, the presence of God’s grace and condescension, the revelation of God and Emmanuel.³⁸ In Christ, God was manifested as Lord, not by adoption or personification, but by his reconciling self-revelation of God.³⁹

Instead of the concept of Person, Barth used the term mode of subsistence in which the oneness of God was differentiated in that the three different modes of being were distinguished.⁴⁰ While some said Barth had an economic view of the Trinity, others saw it tainted by modalism and therefore not an orthodox view.

For Wilson, Barth believed in a Trinity, but doubted whether he believed in an orthodox view of the Trinity because Barth said that the Holy Spirit was an encounter with God because it was not clearly spoken of in the scriptures.⁴¹ This, said Wilson, indicated that Barth did not consider the doctrine of the Trinity as being a biblical doctrine.⁴²

This reading of Barth’s position, said Hunsinger, came from a misunderstanding of his reasoning because Barth wanted readers to grasp the concept that they had to read his theology dialectically.⁴³ But in his dialectical thinking, Barth was seen as being confused because he treated revelation only as a possibility when it was one of three necessary starting points for theology along with faith and obedience. ⁴⁴

Some even saw a shift in Barth from dialectic to analogy while yet others saw that analogy played a part early in his thinking as well.⁴⁵

Revelation:

Barth emphasised God’s absolute transcendence, and the human inability to know God except through revelation with an objective to lead theology away from the influence of modern religious philosophy with its emphasis on feeling and humanism, and back to the principles of the Reformation and the prophetic teachings of the Bible.⁴⁶

Barth rejected historicist and rationalist frameworks of interpretation and instead yearned for a scriptural unity that allowed for diverse themes to remain in tension in the continual playing out of his dialectical approach.⁴⁷ Barth opposed the idea that theology should develop a deposit of doctrines. ⁴⁸ Biblical doctrines were held together not by a static logic, but dynamically and dialectically through patterns of thinking grounded in the biblical narratives.⁴⁹ Barth could not arrive at an insight of the Father by what Jesus said about Him because He is not just the Father, because the Son glorifies the Father and because the Spirit is the Father’s eternal presence.⁵⁰ God had to reveal Himself in man because only there could He be both hidden and manifest. ⁵¹ Barth also counsels against trying to know and say everything at once but rather to go to the source (Jesus) and to drink. In that moment (in the drinking), Jesus shows us the Father, because Jesus looks unconditionally at God.⁵² Therefore, what is not the revelation of the Son is not revelation.⁵³

Barth sees what was recorded and written about Jesus’s life as the vehicle by which revelation occurs.⁵⁴

Conclusion:

Christology has been defined as the study of Christ, of His human nature and divine nature. Karl Barth gives Christology the central theme in his theology, which highlighted his journey from the Old Liberal school to what is now termed the neo-orthodox view.

Hans Urs von Balthasar described Barth’s theology as an hourglass in that everything flowed through the mid-point that is Jesus Christ.⁵⁵ As Barth developed his view of Christ, there came from that a realisation that Jesus Christ is God revealed to us. In understanding Christ as fully God and fully man, Barth revisited his whole theological understanding.

It is said that from his ground-breaking reflections on the deity of God in the Epistle to the Romans (1919) to his to his doctrinal reflections in the Church Dogmatics (1932-1967), that Barth changed the way a generation confronted the task of theology.⁵⁶

Barth aimed to reflect in his theology what some see in Scripture as a tension between God’s wrath and grace and His humanity and deity in Christ. It is a stimulating and useful tool with which to work.