Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 - December 10, 1968) was a Swiss Christian theologian, and one of a leading thinkers in the neo-orthodox movement. Numbers of modern Protestant theologiser count themselves to become (at least nominally) followers of either Barth, or even of his coeval, Paul Tillich.

Innate inside Basel, he spent his childhood years in Bern. From either 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. Late he was prof of theology in Bonn (Germany). He experienced to leave Germany within 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor around Basel.

Barth was originally trained within German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at a period of the First World War. His reaction was fed by many factors, including his commitment to the German & Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Herrmann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt, and a impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck. A first catalyst was, all the same, his reaction to the trend lines virtually all of his liberal teachers got for German war aims. Barth believed that his teachers experienced been misled by the theology which attached God too closely to the finest, deepest expressions and lives of cultured human beings, into claiming divine trend lines for a war which it believed was waged inside support of that culture, the initial own experience of which appeared to increase humans's love of & commitment thereto culture. Around his comment on The Epistle to the Romans (germ. Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written 2nd edition of 1922) Barth argued that the God world health organization is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God by having man cultures, accomplishment, or even possessions.

inside the decade resulting the total 1 Globe War, Barth was linked by having a number of more theologist, actually super diverse in outlook, world health organization experienced reacted against their teachers' liberalism, around the movement called "Dialectical Theology" (germ. Dialektische Theologie). More members of the movement involved Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten.

Inside 1934, when a Protestant Church attempted to came to terms by owning a Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration (germ. Barmer Erklärung) which rejected a influence of Nazism on German Christianity - arguing that the Church's allegiance to a God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus & resources to resist the influence of more 'lords' - like a German Führer, Adolf Hitler. This was one of a innovation documents of the Confessing Church and Barth was elected a member of its leadership council, a Bruderrat. He was forced to resign from either his chair at a university of Bonn for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler & returned to his native Switzerland, around which he assumed a chair in orderly theology at the university of Basel. In a course of his appointment he was compulsory to guide the routine wonder asked of a lot Swiss civil servants, whether he supported the national defence. His guide was, "Yes, especially on the northern border!" Within 1938 he wrote the letter to the Czech colleague, Josef Hromádka, where he declared that soldiers world health organization fought against the Third Reich were serving a Christian induce.

Fallowing a prevent of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice each inside trend lines of German penance & of reconciliation using churches overseas. Together by owning Hans-Joachim Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement in 1947, which was a further concrete statement of German guilt & responsibility for a Third Reich & 2nd Globe War than the Stuttgart Declaration of 1945. Inside it, he mass produced a point that a Church's willingness to side by having anti-socialist & conservative forces got led to its susceptibleness for Nazi ideology. In the context of the underdeveloped Cold War, this controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in a West, who supported the CDU course of re-militarization, besides when by East German contestant world health organization believed that it did non sufficiently depict a dangers of Communism. In a Fifties, Barth sympathized by owning the peace movement and opposed German rearmament.

Within 1962, Barth visited a United states, in which he lectured at a University of Chicago and Princeton Theological Seminary. He was invited to exist as a guest at the Second Vatican Council, but may not attend due to unwellness. Around late life, Barth wrote a massive Church Dogmatics (germ. Kirchliche Dogmatik) - bare at astir six million words by his demise within 1968. Barth explores a whole of Christian doctrine, where necessary challenging & reinterpreting it thus that each a portion of it points to a radical challenge of Jesus Christ, & the impossibility of ligature God to person cultures, accomplishment or even possessions. the functiwithin has been deeply influential on German-speaking & English-speaking theologiser, & has been partially responsible a revival of interest in traditional Christian school of thought amongst academic theologist.

Although Barth's theology was built in a rejection of German Protestant Liberalism, his theology has non universally detected favour by having people at the more prevent of the theological spectrum: conservativist, evangelicals & fundamentalists. His matured doctrine of a Word of God, e.g., doesn't proceed by arguing or even proclaiming that the Bible must be uniformly historically & scientifically exact, and so establishing more theological claims on it foundation. Occasionally evangelical and fundamentalist critics have so tended to refer to Barth when "neo-orthodox" because, while his theology retains virtually everthing or even all of the dogma of Christianity, he is seen as rejecting a belief which for the two occurs as lynchpin of the theological patterns: biblical inerrancy. (E.g., it was for this belief that Barth was criticized virtually all harshly per conservative evangelistic theologiser, Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer.) Such critics regard proclaiming a rigorous Christian theology without basing that theology on a supporting text that is considered to be historically accurate as a separation of theological truth from historical truth; for his part, Barth would have argued that making claims about biblical inerrancy the foundation of theology is to take a foundation other than Jesus Christ, and that our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only properly emerge from consideration of what it means for it to be a true witness to the incarnate Word, Jesus.

A relationship between Barth, liberalism & fundamentalism goes far beyond a issue of inerrancy. From either Barth's perspective, liberalism (by having Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hegel as its leading exponents) is the divinization of human intellection. A bit of philosophic conception get a treacherously God, & a voice of the dwelling God is blocked. This leads to the captivity of theology by mortal ideology. Around Barth's theology, he emphasizes again & again that human being construct may never exist when considered as monovular to God's revelation. In that aspect, Scripture is as well written man language, expressing human being construct. It can't exist when considered when monovular as God's revelation. Yet, around His freedom & love, God truly reveals a Godself across man language & construct. So he claims that Christ is truly presented around Scripture & a preaching of the church. Barth substitute the heritage of the Reformation inside his chariness of the marriage between theology & philosophy. Whether his sharply distinction between mortal construct & divine revelation is biblical or even philosophically healthy remains debatable.

Quote
"Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way."

"The best theology would need no advocates: it would prove itself."

Writings by Karl Barth
A Epistle to the Romans ISBN 0195002946 A Church Dogmatics ISBN 0567090434 Preaching Through the Christian Month ISBN 0802817254 God On this text & Now Evangelistic Theology: An Introduction" "Church & State"