Implications of Karl Barths Relational Anthropology For His Theology of Conversion

Implications of
Karl Barth's Relational Anthropology

for His
Theology of Conversion
A Thesis presented for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen
John Allen Yates

B.S. Auburn University,
Auburn, Ala.
M.Div. Covenant Theological
Seminary,
St. Louis, Missouri
M.A. University o f Alabama,
Tuscaloosa, Ala.
1996
UMI Number: U147954
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Thesis Declaration
This thesis has been composed solely by John A. Yates, the undersigned, and
has not been accepted in any previous application for a degree. The work o f research
and study for this thesis has been done solely by John A. Yates.
All verbatim
quotations from other works have been set o ff either by quotation marks or indented
and single-spaced as block quotations.
The sources o f those quotations have been
specifically acknowledged.
John A. Yates
Preface and Acknowledgments

It is a daunting task to pick up a volume of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and
try to read it. Having read a little, and having understood a little, it is disconcerting to
the novice when comments by brilliant theologians about Church Dogmatics sound
like they read a completely different book. Much of the difference may depend on
where one starts to read CD, since first impressions are easier to plant than to uproot.
Since my serious reading of Barth began with Evangelical Theology and volume IV o f
CD, my introduction to Barth involved the side of his theology most interested in the
workings o f the Holy Spirit in men and women. That has made a big difference in my
perception of Barth's theology.
Adding to the inherent problems of writing a Ph.D. thesis has been the lack of
consensus about the usage of English pronouns and some nouns in their reference to
persons. A large portion of educated readers no longer recognize the inclusive usage
of the singular masculine pronouns and the cognates of man. Striving to accommo
date this relatively new perspective in composition can provoke tedious grammatical
gymnastics or perhaps creativity. I have attempted the latter. The usefulness of the
generic he or man lies in its ability to provoke a picture in the reader's mind of some
particular, concrete person. I have found that using feminine pronouns generically in
the concrete examples (as in the aptitude with which the agent employs her skills of
knowing) increases the liveliness and concreteness of the picture. In the quotations I
preserve the usage of the authors. References to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
follow the uniform scriptural pattern of masculine pronoun gender.
Each chapter of the thesis begins with a quotation or two.
I have avoided
quoting Scripture there lest the reader suspect me of proof-texting. The purpose of
the quotations is to set a mood or a question in the words of master-writers for the
reader as she (see what I mean?) plunges into my less eloquent prose. I do not mean
to imply that the author quoted held the same opinions promoted in the chapter.
There are more people to thank than I could possibly list in so brief a space. I
would like to thank Barry and Cindy Thornton, Doug and Martha Maclver, Martha
Pettey, Mike Yates, Bruce Mason, and the trustees of the Susan Michelle Goshorn and
Amy Louise Steigerwald Memorial Scholarship Loan Fund of Central Presbyterian
Church (Baltimore) for financial assistance at the beginning of my postgraduate work.
My two advisors, Dr. C. Baxter Kruger and Prof. David A. S. Fergusson, have given
invaluable guidance and camaraderie. I owe Trevor Hart, Sam Clark, Robert Lucas,
Nathan Holstein, Keith Bodner, Woody Hingle, Thor Madsen, Ed Meadors, Bruce
Norquist, Scott Rodin, Jon Smoot, Iain Macritchie, Paul Dempster, Robert Macaskill,
and their wives and families deep gratitude for their friendship and hospitality, as well
as their theological input.
Woody Markert, Elizabeth Buffington, Geraldine Evans, and my mother have
helped greatly with the proofreading. Any remaining errors are my fault and not theirs.
My parents (Mr. and Mrs. Charles Yates) and brothers have supported me with
endless prayers and encouragement; and my brother Mike and his family provided a
year's room-and-toleration while I finished my writing.
I must especially mention the support and encouragement o f my maternal
grandmother, Johnnie Calhoun Givens (1907-1991), to whom this thesis is dedicated.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Personal Being:
An Introduction to Barth's Concept of Persons
I. Two alternate models of personal being
.....................
.....................
24
Chapter 3. Subject and Object in the Action of Faith

I. Looking for a pattern
II. Faith presupposes Christ's objective work for us.
III. Faith involves the whole person.
IV. Faith relates the whole person to Jesus Christ.
V. Seeking a model for the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
VI. Some Conclusions Regarding Faith
.....................
76
Chapter 4. Life in Communion

I. The threat of metaphysical annihilation
II. Difficulties of describing divine-human interaction
.....................
112
A. Closed (individualist) concepts of personhood

B. An open (relational) definition of personhood
II. Barth on personal being

A. Barth's model of personhood
B. Barth's Chalcedonian Pattern
C. A Relational Grammar of Personal Being
III. Further Implications: the Remainder of the Thesis

Chapter 2. Conversion and the Nature of Freedom
I. Personhood and freedom
A. Barth's theology of personhood forms the basis of his
theology of freedom. Five themes.
B. Philip Rosato's criticisms
II. The individualist's conversion by reason.

David Wells
III. Barth's theology of conversion derives from

his theology of freedom and personal being.
A. Conversion presupposes our personal freedom as its goal, not its source.
B. Barth's doctrine of conversion presupposes his doctrine of personal
freedom in its character. Formal and Material considerations.
IV. Summary
A. The necessity for mystery in theology.

B. A knowable mystery: the participant as knower
III. Life in Communion: Revelation in History, between

Persons, and in Experience
A. Barth's usage of event as a model for revelation: Francis Watson
B. Interpreting Revelation Relationally: Richard Muller
C. Revelation as a determinant of experience: Jurgen Moltmann
IV. Conclusions
Chapter 5. The Church as the Context of Conversion

I. The Church: Definition
II. Negative Perceptions about Barth
A.
B.
C.
D.
Aujhebung
Extra ecclesiam nulla sains
Taxonomies of Inter-faith Relations
Barth's Theology and the Proclamation of the Gospel
III. Barth on Natural Theology

A. Barth Defines Natural Theology
B. Knowledge of God and God's Revelation
C. Knowledge about God and Objective Knowledge
D. Lights extra muros ecclessiae and Culture
E. Points of Contact
F. Dialogue and Preaching the Gospel
Chapter 6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Abbreviations
Works by Barth:
CD 1/1,1/2, ..., I V /3
Church Dogmatics (with volume numbers)
CD l / l (T)....... ................. Church Dogmatics I. /, translated by G. T. Thomson, 1936.
CD 1/1 (B)..........................Church Dogmatics 1.1, 2nd edition, translated byGeoffrey
W. Bromiley, 1975.
Works by Other Authors:
AV
................ Authorized Version of the Bible
BAC
................... Being As Communion, J. D. Zizioulas
HCHI
................. Human Capacity and Human Incapacity, J. D. Zizioulas
QOG
................... The Question o f God, Heinz Zahrnt
SJT
................. Scottish Journal o f Theology
Chapter 1
Personal Being:
An Introduction to Barth's Concept o f Persons
0 Adorable Trinity! What hast Thou done for me? Thou hast made me the end of
all things, and all the end of me. I in all, and all in me. In every soul whom Thou
hast created, Thou hast given me the Similitude of Thyself to enjoy! Could my
desires have aspired imto such treasures? Could my wisdom have devised such
sublime enjoyments? Oh! Thou hast done more for us than we could ask or think.
1 praise and admire, and rejoice in Thee: who are infinitely infinite in all Thy
doings.
Thomas Traherne (1637-1674), Centuries,
1:69.
In other words, the I-you or interpersonal relation is, accordingly, not merely a
desirable state of affairs, as Buber would say, but is rather the very condition of
being and knowing and feeling in a human way.
-- Walker Percy (1916-1990), Signposts in a
Strange Land, p. 127.
Thesis: Barih adopts a relational (as contrasted with an individualist) model

ofpersonal being fo r his understanding both o f God and o f humanity.
Perhaps it is possible to assemble a theology after the manner of Euclid's
geometry, where the author presents a minimum of (more or less) obvious axioms
(Euclid only needed five) and definitions, and then proceeds to deduce volumes of
intricate conclusions that reveal a definite shape to the world being described in them.
We might have expected the theologian, like a painter, to start with a blank canvas,
giving reasons for choosing this canvas among all possible others, and then, like daubs
of paint, to apply precept upon precept, line upon line, ... here a little and there a
little.1 Thus we would see an ordered theological world growing bit by bit around the
theological verbal brush-strokes. Barth does not do this.2
Instead, he plunges us immediately into the hurly-burly o f a busy cosmos,
whose order and precept-laying was under way long before we entered. The feeling is
rather like stepping into the kitchen of a busy restaurant at the height of the dinner
hour, and having a tray thrust into our hands to be taken to table sixteen, and please
'Isaiah 28:13 (AV), italics in the original.

2Cf. T. F. Torrance's Analogy from Geometry and Physics, in Karl Barth, Biblical and
Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), pp. 148 f.
Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

hurry back to make another batch of coffee. We step into Church Dogmatics to find a
full-blown Church, which confesses God in its proclamation and in its task of
criticising and revising its speech about God,3 which is how Barth defines theology.
He makes no excuses for this Church or its confession or its God. There they are. Or
rather, here we are. Look around you, he says. Who are we? Where are we? What
are we doing? Let's not play games by pretending that we are anything other than the
Church who confesses God and criticizes and revises that confession. Let's get on with
it. Instead of reasoning abstractly or ex nihilo about how we got to be where we are,
he starts where we are, and will look later at how we got to be here.
Thus, from the beginning and throughout, Barth explicitly presupposes the
Church, its task of confession (which requires criticism and revision), and the God who
addresses that Church and whom the Church confesses. For the criterion by which the
Church criticizes and revises its confession is Jesus Christ, God in His gracious
revealing and reconciling address to man.4 In other words, from the beginning and
throughout, the components of Barth's theology always reach beyond themselves to
some other: God addresses Himself to men and women; the Church confesses God,
addressing its members and the world around; the members o f the Church receive the
address of God and the proclamation of the Word of God, and they bear witness to
others around them. Barth does not present static characters or structures that he later
puts into action, nor does he define persons (whether God or others) as beings unto
themselves who later relate to others. Persons have their being in their actions and in
their relations with others.5 Barth takes this pattern of subject-to-subject action seri
ously enough that he considers a doctrine of revelation to be incomplete until it takes
account o f the revealedness in the recipient of revelation.6 Therefore, if we are to
understand Barth's doctrine of revelation, or the rest of Church Dogmatics, for that
matter, we must also understand who and what Barth considers us to be when he says,
God reveals Himself to us. Thus we are faced with the problem o f recognizing what
model of personal being Barth uses in his theology.
3CD 1/1 (B), p. 3.

4CD l / l (B), p. 4.
5Barth does not say that God needs the creature. On the contrary, Barth contradicts such a notion,
but also says that God has otherness within Himself. That is (CD 1/1 (B), p. 355), The concept of the
revealed unity o f the revealed God, then does not exclude but rather includes a distinction (distinctio
or discretio) or order (<dispositio or oeconomia) in the essence of God. See esp. 9 The Triunity of
God, CD 1/1 (B), pp. 348 ff.
6See, e.g., 12.1 God as Redeemer, CD 1/1 (B), pp. 448 ff.

John Zizioulas describes7 two categories of models, which he calls closed and
open concepts of personhood. His descriptions are broad enough to allow different
theologians to specify the details in various ways, and yet the two categories remain
clearly distinct. After contrasting these two types of models of personal being, we will
go on to show that Barth consistently affirms an open (or relational) model of per
sonal being, and that he consistently rejects closed (or substantial, or individualist)
models.
I. Two alternate models of personhood
A. Closed (individualist) concepts of personhood
By a closed or individualist concept of personhood we mean one like that
used by the medieval scholastics in an attempt to speak of man as a substance
possessing certain qualities of its own and ... as a being with a certain potency inherent
in its nature.
Thus man's tendency to go beyond himself was understood as the
expression of this natural potency.8 Such a concept attempts to understand man by

looking introspectively at him either as an autonomous ethical agent (Tertullian, [the]
Antiochenes) or as the Ego of a psychological complex (Augustine) or as a substance
possessing certain potencies (Scholastics).9
These influences have produced in
Western thinking a concept of personhood that combines two basic components,

rational individuality on the one hand and psychological experience and
consciousness on the other.10
Thus the West tends to view the person as an
individual..., i.e., a unit endowed with intellectual, psychological and moral qualities
centred on the axis of consciousness. 11
This model of the person employs a technique of separation as its mode of
definition and examination, setting boundaries around the object of interest and then
looking inwards at the contents circumscribed by those boundaries. Zizioulas calls this
method a closed ontology and attributes it to classical Greek metaphysics, which is
7See Zizioulas, J. D., Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of
Personhood, SJT 28 (1975), abbreviated hereafter as HCHI; and Zizoulas, J. D., Being A s
Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, N. Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary
Press, 1985), abbreviated hereafter as BAG.
8Zizioulas HCHI, p. 404.
9Zizioulas HCHI, p. 405, italics his.
10Zizioulas HCHI, pp. 405 f., italics his. Zizioulas traces the former component to Boethius and
the latter to Augustine.

basically monistic in its approach to reality.12 That is, this way of thinking assumed
that every being had a nicely rounded-off nature which contained implicitly everything
that the being could ever have become ... What Greek thought could not have toler
ated ... would have been the idea that a being could become more perfect in its kind by
acquiring some characteristic which was not implicit in its nature before.13 This tech
nique of abstracting or separating the object from its surroundings results in a view of
the person as an individual, a word denoting both unity and separability. It treats
everything that the individual is as a quality possessed by or contained within the indi
vidual. It treats everything that the individual is not yet but might become as a capac
ity or potential, similarly possessed by or contained within the individual. AfiBrming
the integrity of such an individual, therefore, becomes a matter of preserving the
defining boundary that distinguishes her from all that she is not, maintaining it both
against invasion or violation from without and against decay from within.
This
technique operates with the assumption that we can establish and preserve the identity
of a person in an impervious, definite, unambiguous boundary.
This allows several consequent deductions to be made about the individual.
We take many of these to be common sense because we unconsciously work with this
Greek definition. For example, the person has her being prior to any relations with
others (i.e., a thing or person has to be before she can be in relation to something else).
Therefore, relations with other persons are an optional matter and not a matter of one's
being.
It allows the view that relationships consist o f the volition and action and
understanding of the participants, and that they do not have reality apart from such
volition and action and understanding. Such relations exist only to the extent that the
persons involved establish and maintain them. This allows the view that [kjnowledge
precedes love, and truth precedes communion. One can love only what one knows,
since love comes out of knowledge.14 This in turn makes love conditional upon the
conceptual acceptability, and therefore the conceptual control, of the other.
Theologically, this view of the person fails to make certain connections. The
image of God in us might be taken to consist in our rationality, our ability to choose
between alternative options, our consciousness and self-consciousness. But this fails

13See E. L. Mascall, The Openness o f Being: Natural Theology Today (Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1971), pp. 246 f. (also quoted by Zizioulas HCHI, p. 403, footnote 1). It was to
combat such a monistic description of the universe that Church Fathers (1) had to defend the doctrine
of creatio ex nihilo, and (2) affirmed the doctrine that Christ's two natures, divine and human, co
existed without confusion.
14Zizioulas BAC, p. 104, who attributes this view to Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. Ia Ilae 4.

to connect the doctrine of the Trinity or the doctrine of the two natures of Christ to the
image of God in man. In other words, it omits from our understanding o f the image
of God what we Christians view as central to who God is and it omits the central
elements of christology. Thus those who assume individualist views of personhood
may easily cease to see any immediate relevance of these doctrines and, therefore, of
the primary theological content of the first ecumenical church councils. Although such
thinkers may acknowledge the foundational importance o f these doctrines, the
doctrines can become abstract theological constructs, obscure to pastor and
parishioner alike.
Individualist views of personhood, because of their method of partitioning the
being of every person off from all else, also allow other partitionings to arise in our
thinking. Two such dichotomies that will meet us in the progress o f this thesis are the
split between subject and object, and the split between the ontic (matters of being) and
the noetic (matters of knowing). We will look more closely at subject and object in
Chapter 3, and at ontic and noetic later in this chapter.
In brief, the individualist
method of defining the person by isolation from all else parallels the assumption that
the inner person as knower and subject is separate from that which she tries to know
and so from objective reality. There follows immediately the problem of connecting
subject with object, of correlating the knower's knowing with the thing known.
The thread connecting all these ideas is the technique of separating the person
by some boundary from all else and defining the being (both actual and potential) of
the person strictly in terms of what lies within that boundary.15
B. An open (relational) definition of personhood
Zizioulas objects to the substantial model of personhood on the grounds that
the person can not be conceived in itself as a static entity, but only as it relates to. 16
He rejects the Greek presupposition of monism that defines a person from within
closed boundaries, and he affirms instead an openness of being. 17 Instead of starting
15Cf. David Braine's criticism of the materialist account of personhood (or consciousness, or the
self) in Braine, The Human Person: Animal and Spirit (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1992), pp. 23 ff., for making the same essential mistake that dualists make; namely, sup
posing that within any mind-involving state or going-on, we can separate out the mental, conscious
or experiential elem ent... as a state or going-on conceivable in mentalistic terms so as to be logically
independent o f physical statefs] and goings-on.
16Zizioulas HCHI, pp. 407 f., italics his. Here he cites works by M. Buber, J. Macmurray, W.
Pannenberg, and D. Jenkins as examples of theology that takes a relational view o f the person.

with the concepts of substance and attributes, Zizioulas begins with the concepts of
ekstasis and hypostasis.18 The fact that one is a person implies for that person
the ek-stasis of being, i.e. a movement towards communion which leads to a
transcendence of the boundaries of the self and thus to freedom. At the
same time ... the person in its ekstatic character reveals its being in a
catholic, i.e. integral and undivided way, and thus in its being ekstatic it
becomes hypo-static, i.e. the bearer of its nature in its totality.19
By combining these two aspects of personhood, Zizioulas intends to guard the integrity
and identity of the person against containment and division; otherwise, being falls into
an a-personal reality, defined and described like a mere substance, i.e. it becomes an
a-personal thing.20
Those accustomed to the closed model of the person may feel that such an
open model threatens the integrity and identity of the person instead of preserving it.
Does not the particular person disappear like a drop of water in such a sea of
openness? No; ekstasis is not the loss of the self but the transcendence of the self. It is
in communion that this being is itself and thus is at all. Thus communion does not
threaten personal particularity; it is constitutive of it.21 The persons who participate
in this communion do not disappear; rather, they grow.
The Fall does not destroy our personhood, but perverts it. We do not lose our
hypostasis or ekstasis, but they become twisted. Sin ... entered as idolatry, i.e. as an
ekstasis of communion with the created world alone,22 and so we participate in a rela
tionship with man or creation, but not with God. Sin further corrupts our being so that
we now experience ek-stasis (communion, relatedness) as apo-stasis (distance)
between person and nature,23 and hypo-stasis (particularity, uniqueness) as dia-stasis
(separateness and individuality).24 The other becomes now a threat to the self.25
18Zizioulas HCHI, p. 408, Ekstasis and hypostasis represent two basic aspects of Personhood,
italics his.
24Zizioulas HCHI, p. 425 footnote 1.
25Zizioulas refers (HCHI, p. 426) to Sartre'sdefinition of hell as other people. Cf. also C. S.
Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York:Macmillan Pub. Co.Inc., 1961), Letter XVIII,p. 81: The
whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and,

Knowledge ceases to be communion, becoming instead merely the gathering of infor
mation. Knowledge then gains priority over love,26 and this dichotomy between love
and knowledge implies a distance not only between person and nature but also between
thought and action within the human being.27
That is, the person becomes a
hypocrite.
This open concept of our being corresponds to an understanding of the nature
of freedom that differs from that entailed by the closed concept of personhood. Our
openness of being allows us to become
free o f the boundaries of the self. Because these boundaries render [a being]
subject to individualisation, comprehension, combination, definition, descrip
tion and use, such a being free from these boundaries is free, not in a moral
but in an ontological sense, i.e., in the way it is constituted and realised as a
being.28
Although Zizioulas does not enlarge upon his objection to each o f the abovementioned impositions, the general idea is that they involve our essential separation
from all others and our susceptibility to becoming an a-personal thing. Unlike such
apersonal things, That which ... makes a particular personal being be itself... is in the
final analysis communion, freedom and love,29 he argues.
Nor do we completely lose our freedom in our fallen state, although it, too, has
been perverted. Freedom's primary content is not the ethical problem of choice, but
remains the ontic content described above: communion, love, and transcendence of
the boundaries o f the self. But in our sin we have rejected communion-with-others
(ekstasis) and replaced it with distance-from-others (apostasis), so that we experience
freedom in the two extreme forms of a desire or capacity to destroy and a desire or
specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good, and your good is yours. What one
gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the
space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self
does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us it means the sucking of will
and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger. To be means to be in competition.
26Zizioulas admits (HCHI, p. 427) that the maxim, One can love only what one knows, since love
comes from knowledge, describes our fallen state. But he criticizes {ibid.) Thomas Aquinas for
taking this as normal and adopting it into metaphysical anthropology and, what is worse, as an
approach to Trinitarian theology.
28Zizioulas HCHI, pp. 409 f., italics his, my comments in brackets.

capacity to suffer.30 Consequently, in our fallen freedom we apparently have two ulti
mate possibilities: either to annihilate the given or to accept it,31 so that freedom
seems to force us to choose either slavery to God or self-destruction by ultimately
rejecting God. Zizioulas argues that
There is more than obedience, or rather something quite different from it,
that is needed to bring man to a state of existence in which freedom is not a
choice among many possibilities but a movement of love. This state
obviously can only be realised from outside human existence. The whole of
Christian doctrine ought to be precisely about this.32
The more is, o f course, Jesus Christ Himself. In Christ ... man not only
maintains his personhood but so fulfils it as to make it constitutive of his being in the
ultimate ontological sense which ... is implied in the notion of personhood and which
is to be found only in God.33 By restoring our true hypostasis and ekstasis to us,
Christ also restores our true freedom, which, as we have said, entails our communion
with God as well as with those around us and the created world in which we live.34
II. Barth on personal being
A. Barth's model of personhood
In CD II/1, 28, Barth returns to his characteristic habit o f casting our theo
logical vocabulary and concepts into the fire of revelation to re-forge them into faithful
tools for talking about God. As a result, his doctrine o f the Trinity determines his
anthropology, rather than vice versa. Specifically at issue here are the definitions of
love and person and how we can apply these words and concepts to God.
The One who (in His own way) loves us, who (in His own way) seeks and
creates fellowship between Himself and us, also informs us what a person is,
in that (in His own way! not as if we knew of ourselves what it is, but in such
a way that we now come to recognise it for the first time) He acts as a
person. The definition of a personthat is, a knowing, willing, acting I can
have the meaning only of a confession of the person of God declared in His
30Zizioulas derives this from Dostoevsky, see HCHI, pp. 429-430.

33Zizioulas HCHI, p. 437
34Cf. E. L. Mascall, The Openness o f Being, especially the chapter of the same title. Also, p. 248,
To be a finite being is to be open to the power and love of God, who, without annulling or removing
anything that he has given can always, if he sees fit, give more.

revelation, of the One who loves and who as such (loving in His own way) is
the person. ... Man is not a person, but he becomes one on the basis that he
is loved by God and can love God in return. Man finds what a person is when
he finds it in the person of God and his own being as a person in the gift of
fellowship afforded by God in person. He is then (in his own way as creature)
a person wholly and exclusively in the fellowship of Him who (in His way as
Creator) is it in Himself.35
Here we find Barth beginning his examination of personhood not by looking at us but
by looking at God. It is his doctrine of the Trinity that establishes for him what it
means to be a person, and there he finds that personhood is a matter o f fellowship and
communion and reciprocity. Instead of examining God's being in terms of a definition
of person derived from us, he defines person according to God's nature and there
fore according to trinitarian doctrine. Thus he discovers the nature o f person to be a
matter of fellowship. Because his doctrine of the Trinity means that person can only
be understood in terms of a relationship of love in action, his anthropology also can
only understand person in terms of a relationship of love in action.
This exemplifies Barth's theological method. In order to determine and define
what a person is, he has abandoned the substance-and-attributes pattern of describing a
thing that assumes a closed ontology and isolates an object in order to study it.
Instead he uses a method of analogy (analogia relationis) to show that our very being
as persons depends on a continuing history of fellowship. If the fact that God is with
us is a report about the being and life and act of God, then from the very outset it
stands in a relationship to our own being and life and acts. A report about ourselves is
included in that report about God.36 This method of analogy (analogia relationis)
replaces the individualist's technique of separation. Although God in His act of crea
tion brings into being that which is not God, Barth will not let us think of it as
separated from God, nor will he adopt a method of study that assumes such a
separation. Our being as persons does not rival God's being; rather, it means that God
35CD 11/1, p. 284. Cf. John Webster, Barth's Ethics o f Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), p. 18 (italics his), From first to last ... Barth is profoundly perturbed by one
of modernity's primary images of the human person: that of the self as a centre of judgment, creating
value by its acts of allegiance or choice, organising the moral world around its consciousness of itself
as the ethical fundamentum.
36CD IV /f p. 7. Hans Urs von Balthasar remarks in The Glory o f the Lord: A Theological
Aesthetics, Volume I, Seeing the Form (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982), p. 406, As Barth and
Sieworth stress, man is not an isolated soul which must work its way to reality by inferring it from
phenomena. Man always finds himself within the real, and the most real reality is the Thouhis
fellow-man and the God who created him and who is calling him.
Ch. 1: Personal Being: A n Introduction
10
engages us in His own love and fellowship, and therefore our being as persons depends
on and corresponds to His own being and activity in love and fellowship.
Since Barth asserts that only God is originally and properly person, his
anthropology analyzes our personal being as corresponding to God's. Just as 28 in
CD II/I constructs a relational understanding of God's personal being, CD III/2
likewise provides a relational (open) model of created personal being, and it excludes
all individualist (closed) views.37 After the initial section ( 43), which discusses how
to fit anthropology into dogmatics, the subsequent sections discuss, respectively, man
in relation to God, in relation to fellow-man, as relation of soul and body, and within
time.
The first subsection in each case discusses Jesus Christ.
This is relevant, not
because Jesus just reflects who we are, or because He is an ideal for us to copy, but
because our humanity is bound up in Him.
Barth refuses to define some neutral
humanity apart from Jesus, a humanity in which He participates under specific limita
tions and conditions, a humanity which we can seek and analyse in abstraction from
or otherwise than in His work.38 Instead, he defines humanity by looking at Jesus:
human nature is not a presupposition which is valid for Him too and controls and
explains Him, but His being as a man is as such that which posits and therefore reveals
and explains human nature with all its possibilities.39 Yet, at the same time, His
humanity implies that Jesus has to let His being, Himself, be prescribed ... by an alien
human being (that of His more near and distant fellows), and by the need and infinite
peril of this being. ... He is pleased to be nothing but the One who is supremely com
promised by all these, the Representative and Bearer of all the alien guilt and punish
ment from them to Him.40 That is, His humanity, which defines ours, is essentially
directed towards and determined by the needs of others.
37Cf. Stuart McLean, Humanity in the Thought o f Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981),
abbreviated hereafter as Humanity, and Stuart McLean, The Humanity of Man in Karl Barth's
Thought, SJT 28 (1975): 127-147, throughout this discussion. We focus on CD III/2 merely for con
venience because it contains Barth's anthropology. The reader should keep in mind that the relational
anthropology contained here runs throughout Church Dogmatics: see, for example, CD TV/1, pp. 750
f., Just as a man would not be a man in and for himself, in isolation from his fellow-men, so a Chris
tian would not be a Christian in and for himself, separated from the fellowship of the saints.
38CDIII/2, p. 59.
39CD I1I/2, p. 59.
40CD I I 1/2, pp. 214 f.

Thus when Barth describes Jesus as Man for other men,41 he does not refer
merely to an attitude that Jesus had or the intent with which Jesus does His work, as
though the Word of God could be sent forth and not bear fruit. Barth claims that
Jesus' humanity has the effect of binding all humankind to Himself, that the solidarity
with which Jesus binds Himself to His fellows is wholly real.42 His being is both
from and to His fellows, so that He is with them, and in this way man in His distinctive
sovereignty. If we see Him alone, we do not see Him at all.43 This is the rationale for
basing anthropology on christology. If Jesus Christ is not apart from us, then we are
not apart from Him. If His being is both from and to His fellows, then the being of
His fellows, our being, must correspondingly be both from and to Him. Our tie to
Jesus Christ is not primarily volitional or historical or moral: it is ontological. Prior to
any obligation or choice or tradition or knowledge on our part, we are bound to Him
in our being because of His being and action for us.
Having cleared the christological foundations for his anthropology in 44.1,
Barth uses 44.2 to examine methods of building the anthropology itself. The chris
tological foundation also dictates the criteria that Barth uses for discerning the nature
of humanity; specifically, it means that we
certainly cannot consider man as a self-enclosed reality, or as having a purely
general relation ad extra, to a part or the whole of the cosmos distinct from
God. We must understand him as open and related to God Himself. And we
shall interpret this relation to God ... as a necessary and constant determina
tion of his being, so that from the very outset there can be no question of an
understanding of man from which the idea of God is excluded.44
41As in the title of 45.1.

42CDIII/2, p. 211.
43CD 111/2, p. 216.
44CD III/2, p. 72. Barth highlights the importance of the christological foundation for this
connection between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man by his criticism (ibid., p. 73) of
Calvin's lack o f a basis for making the same connection.
Cf. Webster, p. 54, where he quotes Mathieu in J.-P. Sartre's The Age o f Reason (pp. 242 f.) to
provide an individualist view of personal being: He could do what he liked, no one had the right to
advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he brought them into being. ... He was
alone, enveloped in this monstrous silence, free and alone, without assistance and without excuse,
condemned to decide without support from any quarter, condemned for ever to be free. Webster then
goes on to comment, In a way the whole of the Dogmatics is an implicit response. ... More than
anything else, Barth strives to displace the deliberative consciousness from its sovereign place as the
moral fundamental (what Sartre calls free and alone).
11

The six points that Barth gives45 as these criteria require that we understand man's
being in its relation to God and not apart from that. He rejects all attempts to define
our being without its essential relation to God: Only a phantom man thinks that of
himself he can know himself. But we cannot believe that what this phantom man will
come to know will be real man. ... It is not merely arbitrary but unrewarding to try
even temporarily to set God aside in our search for man.46
Just as Barth refuses to isolate our humanity from God, he also refuses to iso
late it from other people. Our humanity is fellow-humanity.
If we see man in and for himself, and therefore without his fellows, we do not
see him at all. If we see him in opposition or even neutrality towards his fel
lows, we do not see him at all. ... A man without his fellows, or radically
neutral or opposed to his fellows, or under the impression that the co
existence of his fellows has only secondary significance, is a being which ipso
facto is fundamentally alien to the man Jesus and cannot have Him as
Deliverer and Saviour. ... Even the sinful man who denies his humanity and
... turns his back on his fellows ... acts contrary to his humanity ...47
This excludes all essentially individualist or closed models o f personal being. We may
not attempt to define a person first and then relate that person to others, and still be
working in Barth's terms. The being of any one person is a matter also of the being of
God and of every other person. Once Barth has made this point in 44 and 45, he
then goes on to discuss the unity of soul and body in 46. But delaying this discussion
until after outlining the determination of our being in our relations with God and our
fellow-humans resists the impression that soul and body as such constitute our being as
persons, apart from relationships. On the contrary, it is only as God's creatures and as
the product of intense communion between fellow-humans (our parents) that we
acquire soul and body in the first place. Being human is a being-with-others.48
45CD III/2, pp. 73 f. They are 1. that we must understand every human in light of the fact that
[Jesus] comes from God, and above all that God moves to him; 2. that every human must have his
being in a history which stands in a clear ... relationship to the divine deliverance enacted in the man
Jesus; 3. that the being of every man ... has its true determination in the glory of God; 4. that it is
essential [to every man] that as he exists God is over him as his Lord; 5. that the being of man
consists in the history in which God is active as man's Deliverer; and 6. that no one's being can be
understood apart from service to God.
46CDIII/2, pp. 75 f.
47CD 111/2, pp. 226 f.
48CZ) 7/7/2, pp. 243: The humanity of Jesus consists in His being for man. From the fact that this
example is binding in humanity generally there follows the broad definition that humanity absolutely,
the humanity of each and eveiy man, consists in the determination of man's being as a being with
12

The passages adduced from Barth's anthropology in CD III/2 demonstrate that
he affirmed a relational model of humanity and rejected all individualist models. We
can broaden this claim from humanity to personal being because Barth claims that
the model applies to God as well as to us.49 He claims that the essential relationality of
being human, i.e., our being as God's covenant partners and our relations with others
as fellow-humans, constitutes the imago Dei.50
God repeats in this relationship [with the creature] a d extra a relationship
proper to Himself in His inner divine essence. Entering into this relationship,
He makes a copy of Himself. ... There is in Him a co-existence, co-inherence
and reciprocity. God in Himself is not just simple, but in the simplicity of His
essence He is threefoldthe Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. ... And it
is this relationship in the inner divine being which is repeated and reflected in
God's eternal covenant with man as revealed and operative in time in the
humanity of Jesus.51
Describing the imago Dei as some set of attributes that can be predicated of particular
people would be a return to a substance-and-attributes model o f person as a form of
being-in-itself. It would be a return to the theological method o f separation. Instead,
Barth describes the imago Dei as a matter of relatedness. Just as the Trinity is a matter
of being-in-relation, so human personhood is a matter of being-in-relation.52 Thus the
imago Dei is not an attribute predicated of us, nor some substance deposited in us, nor
a faculty manipulable by us. It is the activity of God upholding us in relationship with
each other and with Him.
Our being as persons is an analogy of His being-in-
relationship.
This perspective is not new to CD III/2. CD 1/1 attributes the same co-existence, co-inherence and reciprocity to the inner being of God, and emphasizes it by
others, or rather with the other man. It is not as he is for himself but with others ... that he is
genuinely human, ... that he corresponds to his determination as God's covenant-partner, that he is the
being for which the man Jesus is, and therefore real man.
49Cf. 28.2 The Being of God as the One who Loves, CD II/1, pp. 212-291.
50Cf. McLean, Humanity, pp. 15 f., While traditional theology sees the image of God in man's
reason, will, individuality, or freedom, Barth understands it as constituting the dialogical/interactional
structure of man and man. This bi-polar reality is the essence o f our humanity.
51CD 111/2, pp. 218 f.
52See CD III/2, p. 220: There is an analogia relationis. The correspondence and similarity of
the two relationships consists in the fact that the freedom in which God posits Himself as the Father,
is posited by Himself as the Son and confirms Himself as the Holy Ghost, is the same freedom as that
in which He is the Creator of man, in which man may be His creature, and in which the Creatorcreature relationship is established by the Creator.
13
14

moving the discussion of the Trinity to the beginning of theology proper, rather than
working up to it after an extended discussion of the existence and attributes of God.
For us, then, being a person means being in relation,53 because that is what it means for
God, and we are made in His image.
B. Barth's Chalcedonian Pattern
George Hunsinger54 does not approach the topic of personal being as such so
directly as Zizioulas does. Instead, he develops a more general analysis of Barth's the
ology and method by distilling six thematic forms (Hunsinger calls them motifs55) that
pervade Barth's work, and then tracing their interrelations within Barth's theology.56
However, all these motifs come to bear on the question o f personal being when Barth
discusses divine-human interactions. O f especial interest is their bearing on conversion
and what Barth calls the new subject constituted by the Holy Spirit in that event. The
Christian, according to Barth, is a new person in Christ, and therefore this constitutes
the deepest reality of that person.
Barth's account of this new subjectivity in its
relation to God reveals how Barth perceives the nature of personal being.
Barth's view of this new subject, as Hunsinger interprets it, bears great
similarity to Zizioulas' outline of true relational being.
For example, conversion
initiates a communion in which both God and human beings are regarded as engaged
from the heart.57 This does not indicate merely deep emotional involvement: the
53Cf. McLean, Humanity, p. 23, For Barth, this relationship [i.e., between God and man]
constitutes the most essential aspect of man's being. ... Man is structurally and essentially, not secon
darily or accidentally, related to others. Man's individuality emerges from relationship with God
and other persons. Note that McLean uses the word individuality throughout his book to denote
the character and personality of a particular person, in contrast with Zizioulas' negative usage to
denote a being apart from others. McLean does not include the isolation in his usage that is so central
to Zizioulas' usage.
54George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape o f His Theology (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991).
55Readers of Church Dogmatics who have some acquaintance with these motifs, whether they get
it from Hunsinger or elsewhere, will have a clearer view of what Barth is tiying to accomplish. How
ever, I will not discuss them here. Listing them in some form brief and manageable enough to fit into
this introduction would thereby concentrate them into such abstraction as to render them incompre
hensible to tlie reader who does not already know them. Some of them will appear later in this paper,
with enough explanation to make clear their application to the point at hand. Beyond that, the reader
should refer to Hunsinger's book, preferably with large helpings of illustrative material from Church
Dogmatics.
56Hunsinger, p. 5.
57Hunsinger, p. 164.
Ch. 1: Personal Being: A n Introduction

total self-involvement58 of both God and His people with one another refers to their
entire being. Knowledge of God is not merely informational, but engages us as whole
persons.59 Again, Barth does not see the fellowship that has been initiated by
conversion as an activity that remains external to the selves involved in it; rather, it is
internal and essential (IV/2, 757). It involves the most inward and central
and decisive act of our heart (IV/1, 757), in which our existence cannot
continue to be alien to his but may become and be analogous (IV/2, 757). In
this fellowship God in Jesus Christ gives and imparts himself to us, entering
into us, binding us to Jesus Christ with intimacy and intensity (IV/3, 538,
539). By the power of the Holy Spirit, it thereby comes to pass not only that
we are in Christ, but that Christ is also in us (IV/3. 555).60
Further, this union with Christ is true, total, and indissoluble. ... Christ lives so fully
in the Christian, and the Christian so fully in Christ, that both may be said to exist
eccentrically centered, that is, on one another respectively (IV/3, 548).61
Nonetheless, the wholeness and distinctiveness of each partner in the relationship62
remains unimpaired.
In that distinction, Christ has complete priority to and
independence o f the Christian, and the Christian has complete subsequence to and
dependence on Christ.63
The latter three elements form what Hunsinger calls the Chalcedonian pat
tern in Barth's theology.64 He uses the terms Intimacy, Integrity, and Asymmetry,
respectively, for them. Together they make up a paradigm for all o f Barth's discussion
of relations between God and man. Considering Barth's christocentric method and
content, such a paradigm is only fitting, since these elements correspond to the
description by the Council of Chalcedon of the relation of Christ's divine nature to His
58Hunsinger, pp. 164 f.

60Hunsinger, p. 174, citing Church Dogmatics by part-volume and page numbers.
61Hunsinger, p. 174, again citing Church Dogmatics.
64Hunsinger pays a great deal of attention to the event of conversion, examining it by means of
this Chalcedonian pattern. His examination comes to a climax in Chapter 7, Double Agency as a
Test Case (pp. 185 ff.). The difference between my approach and his is that, while accepting his
work, I examine conversion as a variety of liberation.
15
16

human nature.65 This pattern determines Barth's treatment of God's sovereignty and
our freedom, and it allows him to attribute spontaneity to the Christian while also
attributing guidance and control to God in any given act of the Christian.
Many other schemes have been proposed for characterizing the acts of God and
humans and the relation of the two, attempting to resolve problems and paradoxes that
arise in the matter. Hunsinger mentions several of them, and he shows how Barth's
Chalcedonian pattern constitutes a denial of these other explanations while providing
an alternative to them. (1) The theme of intimacy, i.e., without separation or divi
sion, contradicts Pelagianism's proposal of independent human autonomy.
Barth
affirms human freedom, but the condition for its possibility in relation to God is found
not at all in human nature itself, but entirely in divine grace.66 (2) Integrity, i.e.,
without confusion or change, contradicts all determinism or monism. He excludes
all mechanistic explanations, such as result from strict concepts of cause-and-effect,
when he rejects the possibility of explanatory systematization, and the possibility of
this systematization is denied, because it can achieve only a formal or technical
coherence at the expense of a truly material coherence.67
(3) Asymmetry, i.e.,
complete in deity and complete in humanity, implying divine precedence and human
subsequence, denies that our fellowship with God has complementary sources both in
human action and divine action. The primary and overriding flaw is rather that [this
scheme renders] the divine and human capacities secretly identical (1/1, 200). The
divine capability as actualized in the event of fellowship is dialectically equated with a
65So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity (xc/tsiov xov auxov
sv 0 s o t t | t i Kai xsXerov xov aoxov ev av0pco7toxr|'u), tire same truly God and truly man (0sov
aXr|0co<;, k o u av0po7tov aA,x|0ooq xov aoxov), of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the
Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in
all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the
last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, tire virgin God-bearer, as regards Iris
humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, acknowledged in two natures which
undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation (sv 5oo ( [ i u c t b c t i v aauy'/oxcoq,
axpenxcoq, aSiaipsxraq, a%optaxorq yvco7ii^o(j.svov); at no point was tire difference between the
natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes
together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two
persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the
prophets taught from tire beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and
as tire creed of the fathers handed it down to us. From tire Definition of tire Faith produced by the
Council of Chalcedon (451 A. D.), as presented in Decrees o f the Ecumenical Councils: Volume
One, Nicaea I to Lateran V (Washington: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990),
edited by Norman P. Tanner, S. J., pp. 86 f.

capability inherent in the human creature (1/1. 199).68
17
Although concepts of
independent human autonomy, or some kind of monism, or dialectical identity are sim
pler than this counter-intuitive Chalcedonian paradigm, that does not disqualify it from
being a valid solution to the problem of divine-human interaction. Hunsinger applies it
as an internal criterion of Barth's coherence, and comes to the conclusion, The miracle
and mystery of double agency is thus understood to be patterned after the great miracle
and mystery of the Incarnation, in which the former finds its basis, limit, and final
hope.69
C. A Relational Grammar of Personal Being
This Chalcedonian pattern appears doubly in Gary Deddo's analysis70 of Barth's
Grammar of Personal Being in Relation, applying both to the form and the content of
personal relations.
Being a person takes the form of 1) unity71 with others. For Barth then, there
is a structural unity, oneness; a togetherness, fellowship and communion involved in
the Triune relations, the Christological relationship (of God with humankind and
humankind with God in Jesus Christ) and our relationships with one another72 This
is not a choice about unity. Our action, to be personal and therefore free, must take
account of this unity. Free personal action, therefore, does not threaten or attempt to
threaten this unity.
It also takes account of the particular nature of this unity, as
specified in the other two points of Distinction and Asymmetry.

2)
Our unity with God and with others does not diminish our distinction73 from
them within that communion, nor does our irreducible uniqueness and distinction con
flict with our essential unity with God.74 We are not to be confused with others, and
68Hunsinger, p. 217, citing Church Dogmatics.
70Gary Deddo, The Grammar of Barth's Theology of Personal Relations, Scottish Journal o f
Theology 74 (1994): 183-222.
71Deddo, pp. 185 ff.
72Deddo, p. 188.
74God and the human element are not two co-existing and co-operating factors. The human ele
ment is what God created. Only in the state of disobedience is it a factor standing over against God.
In the state of obedience it is service of God. Between God and true service of God there can be no
rivalry. Service of God does not have to be removed in order that God Himself may be honoured in it.
Where God is truly served, therewith no removal of the human element, with the full and essential
presence and operation of the human element in all its humanitythe willing and doing of God is not
just present as a first or second co-operating factor; it is present as the first and decisive tiling as
18
especially not with God. This distinction acknowledges the otherness of the other,
the freedom and independence of that other person from me, even though that other,
like myself, is a Thou.75 We must apply this principle concretely and particularly, not
just generally and abstractly; that is, we must be aware, not only of the other person's
otherness, but become aware of what exactly that otherness consists in, and then act
accordingly. The otherness of every particular person will be unique. With regard to
God, for example, it means that we are not God, nor do we become God, and we
therefore cannot do or be that which only God can do (e.g., judgment) or be. Thus
God's Word, and therefore His command, to us must rise externally.
3)
The ordered correspondence76 of personal relations means that these rela
tionships take place in an asymmetrical fashion and have a historical direction towards
the glory of God. Our relationship with God is reciprocal in the form of God's prece
dence and command, and our subsequence and obedience, as seen in the life o f Jesus.
This ordered correspondence of Jesus To his Father is the external manifestation of
the internal Triune relations which are also so ordered. In Christ the inner life of the
Triune God is revealed to be a history (in Barth's sense) of relationship o f Father and
Son in the Spirit.77 In godly human relationships we become mirrors for each other,
and the one comes to know the other and oneself by mirroring the other and seeing
him/herself in the mirror of the other.78
1.
The content of personal actions that occur in such relationships includes
personal and covenantal relating.19 With respect to God this means that we affirm
God's Lordship, conform to His action, and live exclusively for His glory in the free
dom and joy of serving Him. We are not passive bystanders, but actively participate in
communion with God, responding in heart-felt gratitude and faithfulness to Him. With
respect to the others around us, it means that we give ourselves to them in mutual
seeing, in mutual speech and hearing, providing mutual assistance, in a spirit of
gladness.
befits God the Creator and Lord. Without depriving the human element of its freedom, its earthly
substance, its humanity, without obliterating the human subject, or making its activity a purely
mechanical event, God is the subject from whom human action must receive its new and true name:
not just a title tacked on; no, the name which belongs to it as essentially and primarily as possible in
the full supremacy of the will of its Creator and Lord. CD 1/1 (B), pp. 94 f.
75Deddo, p. 192.
77Deddo, p. 194.
78Deddo, p. 195.
19
2. Consequently, our being, rather than a static entity or substance, is a matter

of dynamic and eschatological becoming.80 That is, what and who we are develops
toward a goal. We transcend ourselves and our being is tied to the being o f others,
after the manner of the Trinity: The Triune fellowship is an activity. This is what the
concept of perichoresis comes to represent, the involution and convolution of God in
himself and in his work, which is indeed his being as love.81 In this fellowship with
God and the men and women around us we are transformed towards our goal, becom
ing the children o f God in Christ, becoming sanctified and humanized. This becoming
demonstrates that our lives are lives of hope for the future, because we hope in God.
3. Finally, our being is a matter of self-transcendence ,82 Our lives unavoidably
connect with the lives of others, and personal being is open to others, growing and
becoming transformed by that openness, but without losing one's identity and unique
ness. We see this in a movement of God to man, in which, God transcends himself to
give himself to be known and enables us, by his Spirit, to transcend ourselves and
receive a knowledge of God.83 In particular, Jesus Christ brings together all human
kind with himself, and therefore with each other.
This transcendence reflects the
Father-Son relationship in God's own being. For our part, it means that true personal
being directs itself towards other persons, and especially towards God, in a movement
by which each self transcends itself by giving itself to others, growing and being trans
formed in the unity of this covenantal communion, but without losing uniqueness or
distinction.
III. Further Implications: the Remainder of the Thesis
The word conversion in Barth's theology has an ambiguity that we need to
disentangle.
The more fundamental and more difficult usage refers to the word
accomplished in Jesus Christ: In His death there took place the regeneration and con
version of man.84 In Him we have both our justification and sanctification, both our
regeneration and conversion. All this has been done and is in force. It does not need

81Deddo, p. 206, citing CD 1/1 (B), pp. 370-374, and CD II/1, p. 284..
82Deddo, pp. 212 ff. Deddo uses the phrase extension of one's self for the inclusion of others,
but this sounds so much like Screwtape's growth by absorption of the other (see above) that I prefer
the phrase self-transcendence.
83Deddo, p. 213.
*4CDIV/2, p. 291.
20
to be repeated or augmented.85 Although this claim may at first sound odd, especially
to those who are accustomed to thinking of conversion only in terms o f an individual's
decision, this claim results from the assertion that Christ's humanity determines ours
and that our humanity is bound up in His. We have already discussed the effects of
this christological statement on the content and method of Barth's anthropology.
Given this relation between Christ's humanity and ours, the death and resurrection of
Christ do not leave us untouched. The death and resurrection o f Christ change what
we are, whether we acknowledge it or not. Much of CD IV/1, 58.2, The Being of
Man in Jesus Christ, and 58.4, The Three Forms of the Doctrine of
Reconciliation, discuss this alteration of our being that Jesus Christ has accomplished
for us.
Barth tends to use the word vocation to refer to the initial event in which a
person is confronted by Jesus Christ and awakens to faith in Him and to the knowledge
of belonging to Him.86 But he also uses the word conversion for that event,
especially in CD IV/2, 66.4, The Awakening to Conversion.
Whereas Barth's first usage refers to the work of Jesus Christ on Golgotha for
all men and women, his second usage refers to the work o f the Holy Spirit in the his
tory of the particular Christian. Whereas the first event occurs once for all, the second
kind of conversion occurs again and again. The first kind of conversion changes our
being; the second kind changes our experience of that being.
The conversion that
occurred in Jesus Christ is the root and ground of the conversions that occur in the
histories of particular Christians, and it keeps them from being only so many disparate
and objectively unrelated subjective experiences. These are issues that will repeatedly
arise in the course of this paper. For now it is important that we see what the two dif
ferent usages are and how they are distinct and how related. This paper presupposes
the conversion accomplished by Jesus Christ in order to examine the particular conver
sions of Christians.
The word relational appears irritatingly often in this chapter and in the rest of
this thesis. The most likely alternatives, dialectical and dialogical, are no prettier,
and they come loaded with their own distractions through long association with Barth's
work. I use relational to emphasize a real bond that exists between us and God prior
to our awareness of it or activity regarding it, a bond whose actuality provides the pos
sibility of that awareness and activity. But the other words have advantages we should
85CD IV/2, p. 369.

86See, for example, all of 71, The Vocation of Man, especially 71.2, The Event of
Vocation.
21
Ch. I: Personal Being: An Introduction

not ignore. They characterize not only the content of Barth's theology, but the way
that he engages apparently opposing ideas with each other. Stuart McLean has said
that understanding this conversational dialectical-dialogical pattern is a key to Barth's
thought:
Barth still uses dialectical-dialogical language to describe the relationships
and actions, between God-man, man-man, and body-soul. ... In conversation
there is speaking and listening. There is separation of the speakers and hear
ers; yet, in the give-and-take of conversation, there is also union. In good
conversation an event takes place which can't be fully or adequately described
in cause-and-effect or linear language. Barth uses dialectical-dialogical lan
guage as the most appropriate to describe the event and the relational char
acter o f life in its differentiation and unity. ... [His] whole theology stands on
the assumption that this thinking reflects the structures of relationship
between God-man and man-man.87
The relational model of personal being that Barth adopts and his rejection of all
individualist models are reflected in the entire structure and content of Church
Dogmatics. We might account for much of the similarity between his treatments of
one topic and another by pointing to his broadly applied dialectical method.
But
theological method alone does not account for the material to which it is applied. If it
does not fit the realities to which Barth refers, then all his referring is useless, although
methodically consistent, hand waving.
More than consistent methods of approach
binds Church Dogmatics into a unity. It achieves what unity it has through its consis
tent reference to the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, that Jesus Christ is person, and
that we are persons, and that the latter is the image of the former all this mightily
shapes what Barth writes and the way he writes it.
Another pair of words (and their cognates) needs some clarification here.
Some writers oppose an ontic (ontological, ontology) category to a noetic one.
The first (from Greek cov, present participle of sivou, to be) refers to reality or being,
and the second (from Greek vouq, the mind or understanding) refers to ideas or
thought. The opposition between the words is meant to stress the distinction between
what a thing really is and what we think about it. In this paper we will use these words
in the light of this contrast, so that noetic will refer strictly to the ideas or concepts
within one's head. Since we have a non-physical side to our being, noetic might in
some contexts be thought to refer to the intellectual side of our being, and so a
87McLean, Humanity, pp. 12 f., italics his.
22
component of the ontic. However, we will not use it here to refer to what we are,
but only to what we think.
The nuances allowed for the word noetic become important when we distin
guish between individualist and relational models of personhood. If, as in the indi
vidualist model, relations between persons are a matter of the decisions of two parties
whose being precedes the decision, then the relationship does not constitute who these
parties are, but consists itself of the reciprocating decisions within the minds of the par
ties involved. In this case the relationship is a noetic entity.
The model does not
account for any reality between the persons, except as a projection of what is in their
heads beforehand. On the other hand, the relational model makes relations between
persons to have an ontic level underlying a noetic level: that is, relations between per
sons have a reality that precedes the understanding or active participation of the
persons involved, and which plays a part in constituting the being of those persons
prior to their awareness of it. When persons live in Christian love, they conform their
minds and understanding to who they really are, and thus transform their existence.88
The subsequent chapters of this thesis will examine the effects of the relational
model on Barth's theology of conversion.
freedom to conversion.
Chapter Two looks at the relation of
Specifically, it examines the nature of freedom entailed by
Barth's relational doctrine of personhood, and then it looks at the event of conversion
as a liberation that sets the convert into her proper freedom. Having been liberated
and empowered to have fellowship with God, the convert exercises faith as the
medium of that fellowship. Chapter Three examines the relational nature of that faith
and Barth's usage of subject and object terminology to describe it. The liberated and
empowered convert does not merely exercise faith abstractly or timelessly, but lives
her whole life in the context of that faith, thus weaving all of life into a tapestry of
human spirituality, a life with God. Many of Barth's critics deny that his theology
leaves open any place for human spirituality. Chapter Five demonstrates that Barth's
theology firmly established a place for human spirituality, a place integrated into the
whole o f his dogmatics and not just appended as an after-thought. All the chapters will
exhibit the influence of Barth's relational theology of personal being on each of these
other areas, and clarify misconceptions that have resulted from not taking that theology
into account. Much of the disagreement between Barth and several of his critics has
erupted from a difference in their understanding of what it means to be a person.
Further, because many of these critics do not realize that they use models of
88Cf. Rom. 12:2.

personhood that differ from Barth's, they often miss Barth's point, and they aim their
criticisms at a place where Barth is not standing.
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate a particular model of what it means to
be a person, and to demonstrate the effects it had on Barth's theology of conversion.
By moving through the chapters on the Church, faith, conversion, and Christian spiri
tuality, and by using this model as a lens for examining the content of those chapters, it
will become apparent that we can see Jesus and our neighbor and ourselves more
clearly by means of Barth's relational model of personhood than with the alternative
individualist habits of mind.
23
Chapter 2
Conversion and the Nature o f Freedom

If a man has no choice, how is it that so many men choose to do wrong? asked
Clementina.
In virtue of being slaves and stealing the choice, replied Malcolm.
You are playing with words, said Clementina.
If I am, at least I am not playing with things, returned Malcolm. If you like
it better, my lady, I will say that, in declaring he has no choice, the man with all his
soul chooses the good, recognizing it as the very necessity of his nature.
George MacDonald (1824-1905), The Marquis o f
Lossie, Ch. XLII.
Thesis: Barth's view offreedom derives from his theology o f personal being,
and his theology o f conversion derives from his view o f freedom. Because assump
tions about the nature o f freedom differ from theologian to theologian, critics o f
Barth who fa il to take those differences into account produce irrelevant or
unconvincing criticisms.
Barth uses several metaphors as conceptual frameworks for examining and
understanding conversion, the event where someone changes from being not a Chris
tian to being a Christian. They include awakening to faith, quickening to love, and
enlightening to hope, as well as the word conversion itself. In this chapter we look
at the event of conversion as a liberation, and at the way Barth uses the concept o f lib
eration to explain conversion. He does this explicitly in CD IV/3, 71.6 The Libera
tion of the Christian, but he also returns to the theme throughout Church Dogmatics.
Clifford Green finds freedom so strong a motif of Barth's work that he comments,
the center of Barth's theology is the freedom of God acting in love toward
humanity in Jesus Christ, which sets us free in all spheres o f life politics, art,
economics, science, and especially theology and churchfor a life of co
humanity and the praise of God.1
The importance of the theme of freedom, both ours and God's, in Barth's theology has
led Green to subtitle his book Theologian of Freedom, a title he judges more
Clifford Green, Karl Barth: Theologian o f Freedom (London: Collins Liturgical Publications,
1989), p. 11.
Ch. 2: Conversion and the Nature o f Freedom

appropriate to Barth's work than the more customary terms crisis or dialectical or
neo-orthodox.2
The motivation for studying conversion as a kind of liberation is twofold. In
the first place, because liberation as metaphor has different dynamics and associations
from those of awakening, or enlightenment, or other more common metaphors, it pro
vokes us to ask questions both of Barth and of conversion itself that we might over
look when using the other analogies. For example, it is a common mistake, both in
talking about conversion and about Barth, to speak chiefly in intellectual terms: How
much (or what) does one have to believe in order to be a Christian? Is the Spirit's
work in us ontic or merely noetic? Both questions can be useful, but, as they stand,
the first allows the assumption that intellectual assent to doctrine is the essence of
being a Christian; and the second allows the assumption that being and knowing (as
cognition) constitute separable categories covering all aspects of the work o f the Holy
Spirit. But examining conversion as a kind of liberation provokes some very construc
tive questions: What are we set free from? What are we liberated into? Who sets us
free, and how does he go about it? What are the goals of this liberation? What kind of
structure does this liberation have? What kind of relationship do we have with the
liberator?
These latter questions involve the personal dimension of liberation and free
dom, and they bring us to a second motive for looking at conversion as a liberation.
Conversion is an event involving persons in relation, and not puppets, nor mechanisms,
nor monads in isolation, nor chaos.
Questions of personal integrity and freedom,
therefore, underlie questions about the dynamics of conversion. If we are to discuss

how conversion happens, then we must take explicitly into account the nature of
human freedom. If theologians differ in their assumptions about that freedom, then
their consequent theologies of conversion and faith with also differ. If theologians do
not recognize that there are such differences, or take into account the implications of
those differences, then their discussions of each other's doctrines o f conversion must
almost necessarily go astray.
In the next chapter we will look at the convert's activity of faith and at its rela
tional nature. Although faith, as a gift of God, is a specific kind o f empowerment and
therefore an element of our liberation, we first look more generally at conversion and
the nature of the freedom into which God sets the convert. In this chapter we will
review Barth's theology of human freedom and demonstrate both its roots in his theol
2Green, p. 44.
25

ogy of personal being and the effects it has on his theology o f conversion.
26
It will
become obvious that different assumptions about the nature of freedom result in differ
ent assessments of conversion and its dynamics.
Criticisms of Barth's theology often do not take his views of personhood and
freedom into account, either to accept them or to justify alternative views. For Barth,
becoming a Christian means having been set free to live in a manner that was previ
ously impossible; specifically, it implies the freedom to live as a man or woman in com
munion with God and with one's neighbor. This theme of liberation runs through all o f
Barth's discussion of conversion, and understanding that theme is fundamentally impor
tant for making sense of his thought. All the elements of conversion set free the one
whom God turns to Himself in this event. If we do not understand that conversion is a
setting free, and understand how this particular setting free operates, then we will fun
damentally misconstrue the place and function in Barth's theology of all the other
moments (e.g., confrontation, justification, sanctification, vocation, faith, love, hope)
o f conversion.
In short, to understand Barth's theology of conversion, we need to
understand his theology o f personhood and of freedom and liberation.

This chapter proposes that Barth's understanding of freedom derives from his
theology of personal being. Further, his combined views on freedom and personal
being entail his theology of conversion.
Specifically, they entail that God, and He
alone, is the One who brings about conversion, and that in so doing He sets us into a
genuine and definite freedom.
In addition to demonstrating the effects o f those
presuppositions on Barth's theology of freedom, we will look at statements about con

version from other theologians and show that they presuppose some other theology of
freedom or of personal being.
I. Personhood and freedom.
A.
Barth's theology of personhood forms the basis of his theology of free
dom. Because of the formal connections of his theology of freedom to his theology of
personhood, the content of the former also depends on the content of the latter.
The formal presuppositions of Barth's theology of freedom include 1] that free
dom means the ability to be and act according to one's own choice, and 2] that the
choosing corresponds with who the chooser really is and with the actual circumstances
surrounding the choice.
Freedom means the ability to be and act as oneself, not
impeded by ignorance or folly, nor forced against one's wishes and better judgment,
nor deceived by lies or illusions, but clearsightedly, wholeheartedly, and joyfully.

This brings us to Barth's material presuppositions about the nature of the
chooser, and therefore to Barth's doctrine of personal being, which we have already
discussed in Chapter One.3 From this doctrine and from his formal presuppositions
about freedom he develops extensive and very specific notions about the nature o f our
true freedom. In this section of the chapter we will examine five of the basic themes of
Barth's theology of freedom and look at their derivation from his theology of person
hood. Those themes are 1] the superiority of freedom over force; 2] that freedom does
not have the nature of judgment; 3] that freedom, far from being inconsistent with
submission to God, requires it; 4] that our freedom has a definite form; and 5] that our
freedom is a matter of being able to act according to our own decision. The first three
principles seem to conflict with the last, and may appear somewhat counterintuitive. In
this section we will trace all of these principles to Barth's theology o f the person, and
we will see that they constitute a true freedom, upholding and affirming the integrity of
the person.
1] The superiority o f freedom over force'.
Let us start with Barth's theology of the person and work our way forward.
Personal communion takes the form of wholehearted, spontaneous, joyful self-giving.
This describes God's being and action as person,4 and therefore our being as persons,
first of all in our action towards God, and consequently in our action towards each
other in the communion into which God has put us by His covenant. Freedom is the
ability to be and act as ourselves, and that means the ability to give ourselves to God
and to those around us. If we lack the ability to engage in that self-giving, we are to
that extent not free. If something impedes or prevents us from engaging in that self
giving, we are to that extent not free. Freedom thus has both positive and negative
sides, respectively, ability and lack of impediment.
Because of the asymmetry of the relationship, man's self-giving depends on
God, as does all his being. God gives Himself to us by bringing us to participate in His
life with Him. We cannot achieve this ourselves, rather, He puts and upholds us in that
life, enabling us to participate fully, and protecting us from that which would hinder
from doing so. That enabling and protecting constitute liberation, and the result of it is
our freedom. Barth viewed our place in the covenant as our true home and not as
some alien, unnatural intrusion on humanity.
3The reader may remember that the form of that doctrine follows the Chalcedonian pattern, which
affirms the integrity o f the persons involved, the asymmetry of the Creator's relation with His creature,
and the unity of this fellowship among distinct persons.
aCDII/1,
pp. 284 ff.
27

Barth makes freedom materially and formally superior to force.
28
Materially,
God sets us free from that which enslaves, so that freedom from that enslavement is
like light in the darkness, dissolving and overcoming it. Formally, Barth claims that
freedom is the mode in which we live with God: liberation and not force is the mode
of God's work toward us, and the goal and pattern of God's commands is our freedom
to live with Him and each other. In other words, God submits His interests to ours by
humiliating Himself to exalt us, to achieve our freedom which is life with Him. It may
be appropriate to apply force to impersonal objects, like rocks and plants; but applying
force to persons is ultimately inappropriate because the action does not treat them as
persons.
God's command explicitly sets us free from such forces and compulsions
because His word both directs and empowers. In conversion, God does not force us;
rather, He frees us from the forces that bind us and enables us to live with Him. In
short, God's freedom overcomes force.
Barth's discussion of suicide5 illustrates this manifoldly. Not only is it a lack of
freedom and the assault o f forces and compulsions that, Barth claims, drive one to
suicide: it is the liberating word o f God that brings light to the almost-suicide in her
darkness and rescues her. Further, that word and command of God do not take the
form of one more compulsion, a stronger force that says, Thou must live; rather, it
takes the form of a liberation that says, Thou mayest live, removing the pressure and
darkness and assault and giving fellowship and light and space to breathe.
Perhaps behind the usual schemes o f an order o f decrees or an ordo salutis6
there lurks an Aristotelian assumption that every event must have its necessary and suf
ficient cause,7 and that therefore an event must happen if it is to happen at all. Since
this paper examines the particular event o f conversion, it looks at the related question
5See esp. CD III/4, pp. 400-408.
6On the ordo salutis, see, e.g., Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), pp. 415 If.; see also Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1978), especially Chapters XX Calling and XXI Justification:
e.g., XX. 17, The direct effect of such a calling is thus the regeneration of human nature; XX.28,
Faith is the direct effect of regeneration. For doubts about applying a strict cause-and-effect scheme
to human persons, see John Oman, Grace and Personality (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1925), especially Chapter VII Moral Personality, pp. 44 f f , where he says (p. 44), The quality of
life is the power to serve in some way, however vaguely, its own ends, and not merely to be moved,
like inanimate things, by impact from without: and a person must at least have this measure of selfdetermination.
7Colin Gunton, in The triune God and the freedom of the creature, mi essay in Karl Barth:
Centenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 56, says that the concept of
cause has not been adequately Christianised. We do not have to do here with tilings that interact as
part of some automatic cosmic machinery, but with a gracious mid personal divine accompanying of
the creature.

o f whether a given conversion was a result of irresistible grace or the choice of the
person's free will. Barth answers, Both and neither. God's grace is not irresistible in
the sense of some violating force that ignores our own wills and hearts and minds,
crushing them in its rush to achieve its own ends. On the other hand, it is irresistible in
the sense that when God sets us free, we are free indeed despite our protests before
hand and afterwards.
Again, we do not accomplish our own conversions precisely
because our wills are not free beforehand. But, on the other hand, God does not con
vert us without also setting our wills free to choose to ratify and approve what God
has done.
Thus we chase a phantasm if we seek, with the advocates o f divine
determinism, to trace an unbroken chain of causality from God to our conversion; or if

we seek, with the advocates of so-called free will, to make the convert's decision
one of the links in that chain. Barth associates dehumanizing force, mere compulsion,
not with God but with demons.8
Many other theologians affirm that God engages Himself in a personal relation
ship with us, and yet they continue to discuss the dynamics o f that relationship in terms
o f force or power. Clark Pinnock, wanting to escape the mistakes that ancient philoso
phy introduced into our ideas about God, says, The Trinity points to a relational
ontology in which God is more like a dynamic event than a simple substance and is
essentially relational.9 He also refers to the intimacy and penetration of God's
indwelling in the world10 and us in it. But it soon becomes apparent that power is the
controlling metaphor in Pinnock's analysis, so that our freedom is a matter of God's
self-limitation in the exercise of His power: God is a superior power who does not
cling to his right to dominate and control but who voluntarily gives creatures room to
flourish.
By inviting them to have dominion over the world, for example, God
willingly surrenders power and makes possible a partnership with the creature.11
The Lord of the universe has chosen to limit his power by delegating some to the
creature.12 The evil of the world can be seen as stemming primarily from the misuse
of freedom.13 In response to this evil, God does not overcome his enemies ... by
8CZ) IV/2, p. 578, We have to realise that a mere compulsion is basically evil and demonic.
9Clark Pinnock, Systematic Theology, Ch. 3 of The Openness o f God, ed. by Clark Pinnock
(Downers Grove, 111., U. S. A.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 108.
10Pinnock, Systematic Theology, p. 111.
13Pinnock, Systematic Theology, p. 117. Barth, by contrast, says of our proper freedom (CD
IV/2, p. 367), It is to be noted that there is no question of misuse only of use or non-use. This
29

forcing but by loving them.14 In this construct, God's power competes with the
power He has conceded to us.
Pinnock, like Barth, rejects the idea that God coerces us to turn to Him, but
this rejection would be more convincing had he not in the first place made power the
primary category for understanding God's activity. To say that God patiently waits
for the prodigal to return 15 describes God's patience admirably, but, left unbalanced, it
depicts God as no less static than do the Greek philosophies he rejected in the earlier
part of the book. Pinnock does talk about the form of power called persuasion16 and
about the power of God's love, which goes beyond persuasion, to deliver us from evil
and transform the wicked heart.17 But, by using power as the primary category o f
God's action towards us, Pinnock's reasoning reaches a dilemma: if God transforms
our hearts by the use of power, such a transformation seems to violate the freedom
that He gave us; and if He doesn't use that power, what is He doing beyond mere
persuasion? Pinnock's very laudable efforts to preserve the integrity of the creature
and the personal nature of God's interaction with humanity stumble over his decision to
use competitive power as the defining idea of that interaction.
Returning to Barth's version of liberation, we must also ask if it violates the
integrity of the person liberated? One's answer to that depends on the presupposed
view of who the person is whom God liberates. Barth presupposes that the person lib
erated is not any being-unto-herself, but that her being is a communion with other per
sons.
Given this starting point, we can only conclude that this liberation by God
restores the integrity which had been violated by sin and self-destruction.
Barth does apply the word compulsion to the event o f conversion.18 When
God liberates us, He compels us to be free.19 By this compulsion He sets us in a
freedom cannot be misused. If it is used at all it is used rightly. It can only be used rightly. But it
can be used or not used.
18See, e.g., CD IV/2, p. 578: It is true, of course, that it is by the omnipotence of God that he is
awakened to conversion and set in this movement. But the omnipotence of God is not a force which
works magically or mechanically and in relation to which man can be only an object, an alien body
which is either carried or impelled, like a spar of wood carried relentlessly downstream by a great
river. It is a matter of God's omnipotent mercy, of His Holy Spirit, and therefore of man's liberation,
and therefore of his conversion to being and action in the freedom which he is given by God. To be
sure, there is a compulsion. He must pass from a well-known past to a luture which is only just
opening up, to a land that I shall shew thee; from himself [as] tire old man to himself as a new man;
from his own death to his own true life. There is necessarily a compulsion. No question of a choice
30

larger space, He accompanies us there, and He enables us to live and participate in the
very counsels of God. Since conversion means that God puts us into communion with
Himself, it must also mean that God liberates us for that communion. This fits the
label compulsion only in the same sense that creation does; God achieves both, in
Barth's theology, on our behalf without our prior permission or agreement. The com
pulsion lies in the fact that the creature's freedom depends on God's prior action.
Without that action she could not have become free. She was made free prior to any
attitude she might have about the matter. In the blindness of her slavery she was not
competent to have a relevant opinion, but now that God has freed her, she is free: ...
the conversion of man is a decision of God for him which not only makes possible a
corresponding decision of man for God, the free act of his obedience, but makes this
act and obedience real, directly causing it to take place.20 God never obliterates or
overwhelms or displaces the one being converted, or reduces her to a divine effect.
The image of being dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God may have
its humorous applications, but we cannot accept it as simply and ultimately true. Any
such kicking and screaming is the last resistance of the darkness in the sinner that
knows itself about to be obliterated by the light. The believer is the new subject
which can no longer compete with God but can live only by Him and with Him and in
conformity with Himtorn away from godlessness by His grace and set in this
different status, the status of the knowledge of God, of love for Him, of obedience and
trust.21 If faith as wholly and utterly humility is not a self-chosen humility, neither
is it an enforced humility, ... a surrender which is imposed upon him by fate and
circumstances.22 On the contrary, It is a free decision but made with the genuine
can enter in. He is not merely set in, i.e., before a decision. He makes the decision, looking neither to
the right hand nor to the left, nor especially behind. But the compulsion is not a mere compulsion. It
is not abstract. It is not blind or deaf. We have to realise that a mere compulsion is basically evil and
demonic. The compulsion obeyed in conversion is not of this type. It is the compulsion of a permis
sion and ability which have been granted. It is that of the free man who as such can only exercise his
freedom. The omnipotence of God creates and effects in the man awakened to conversion a true
ability. He who previously vegetated to death under a hellish compulsion ... may now live wholly of
himself and be a man.
19See the summary of Barth's view of the gospel's effect in Thomas Smail, The Doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, an essay in Theology beyond Christendom: Essays on the Centenary o f the Birth o f Karl
Barth, May 10, 1886, ed. John Thompson (Allison Park, Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications, 1986),
p. 88, The gospel does not compel or overwhelm man from an objective standpoint outside himself; it
sets him free to make an authentic response to the God of grace who comes to him in it.
20CDIV/2, p. 579.
21CD 11/2, p. 327.
22CDIV/1, p. 620.
31

necessity of obedience. To put it the other way round, it is a necessary decision, but
made with the necessity of a genuine and therefore a free obedience.23
Thus Barth is very careful to distinguish the omnipotence of Gods mercy from
mere compulsion, the blind and deaf forces that crush instead of building up, that
push and shove instead of accompanying, that deceive instead of revealing, and darken
instead o f enlightening. Whereas God's liberation is like a good school, this force is
like a bad prison. This kind of force, and not God's covenant, is the intrusion on our
humanity. Force is not a proper element of personal interaction. Rather, it reduces
such interaction to the level of the mechanical, and its objects to puppets. It has noth
ing to do with giving oneself to others, or transcending the self. It tries to swallow its
objects as extensions of itself and to crush conflicting interests.
These are the forces God liberates us from in our conversion. God frees us
from hellish compulsion, and it has no power over the freedom into which God has set
us. This free obedience characterizes the Christian's life o f faith. This superiority of
freedom over force derives from God's action of putting us into communion with Him
self and maintaining us there. The relational model of the person and the concrete
covenantal acts of God toward us, both of which form the working assumptions of
Barth's soteriology, entail that superiority.
2] Freedom does not include a capacity fo r choosing between good and evil.
Although Barth agrees that freedom implies ability to make and implement
choices, he denies that our freedom involves any choice between good and evil. The
nature of our freedom depends on who we are and the nature o f the personal being we
participate in. Barth finds the model of this personal being in Jesus Christ, and conse
quently he also finds there the form and content of our freedom.
In the light of the relational nature of our being, and in the light o f the particu
lar covenant that God has established with humanity, Barth concludes that our freedom
is more than the ability to choose. Although freedom takes the form of choice, it also
has content as determined by our being and God's covenant.24 Barth refuses to treat
23Ibid.
24Cf. the distinction that C. Stephen Evans makes between formal and material freedom in
Salvation, Sin, and Human Freedom in Kierkegaard, chapter 9 in The Grace o f God, the Will o f
Man: A Case fo r Arminianism, ed. Clark Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1989), p. 185:
Formal freedom is the freedom of the w ill, which is the usual subject of philosophical inquiry. To
say that a person is free in the formal sense is to say that on some occasions he has the ability to
choose from more than one alternative. No causal chain determines that the person will choose one
inevitable outcome. Material freedom is the ability to be the kind of person God is calling an individ
ual to be. It is the ability of a person to choose what God wishes her to choose, in the manner God
wishes the choice to be made.
32

freedom as an empty and formal concept,25 and fills that form with the particular
concrete acts of God on our behalf in Jesus Christ. It is always a mistake to try to
establish or understand the assertion of the bondage of the will otherwise than christologically. ... As such, it has nothing to do with the battle between determinism and
indeterminism.26 Both determinism and indeterminism make the mistake of reasoning
abstractly, i.e., apart from the work of God for us in Jesus Christ, and so they remain
irrelevant and unhelpful. Barth, therefore, takes into account the concrete facts that
determine our situation and consequently give content to our proper freedom.
He takes into account the fact that God is the source of all good. For that rea
son only He can judge good from evil,27 and He has already done so.28 Further, he
takes into account the fact that God, who is the source of all good, has spoken to us.
Specifically, in these last days [He] has spoken to us in His Son (Heb. 1:2),29 Jesus
Christ. Barth rejects all discussion o f our freedom apart from these facts as abstract
and irrelevant. Reasoning in the light of them he comes to the following conclusions.
In His speaking to us, God shows Himself to be the source and criterion of
truth30 and goodness, and He makes Himself available to us.31 The freedom proper to
25See CD IV/2, p. 494: Freedom is not an empty and formal concept. It is one which is filled out
with a positive meaning. It does not speak only of a capacity. It speaks concretely of the fact that
man can be genuinely man as God who has given him this capacity can in His freedom be genuinely
God. The free man is the man who can be genuinely man in fellowship with God.
26CD IV/2, p. 494.
27CD 111/1, p. 261 f.: For the choice between good and evil, and the knowledge essential to this
choice, is a responsibility which is absolute both in scope and difficulty. In face of it man will always,
and necessarily, fail. ... Unlike God's, man's decision will be a decision for evil, destruction and
death: not because he is man, but because he is only man and not God; because the willing of good
and salvation and life as such is a concern of God which cannot be transferred to any other being. ...
It is impossible for any other being to occupy the position of God. In that position it can only perish.
... Placed there in its creatureliness, it cannot continue as a creature. ... Placed there, it can only
pronounce and execute its own sentence not because it is evil, but because God alone is good. ...
Even [God] cannot alter the fact that He alone is good; that He alone is competent to judge good and
evil; that every other being will necessarily fail in the attribute and function of judge, and thus
pronounce and execute sentence upon itself, because it is incapable of looking into the abyss of the
divine freedom, and is not participant in the divine wisdom and righteousness.
28See especially CD III/l, pp. 101-110 (Barth's commentary on Gen. 1:2) and CD IV/1, pp. 445458 (on man's attempt to be judge for himself).
29New American Standard Version, italics as in text.
30Cf. Zizioulas, Being A s Communion, p. 90, Truth lies beyond the choice between affirmation
and negation, and footnote 71 to this comment, The deeper meaning of this idea rests in detaching
truth from a fallen situation where choice imposes itself between the true and the false ... This is
essential for maintaining the identification of t ruth with God Himself, since God exists beyond the
possibility of choosing between the true and the false.
33
34

us is a matter of the ability and humility to recognize God's truth and goodness as such,
and to side with God without assuming ... a right of control. It is the freedom of the
creature ... to hold fellowship with the Creator ... in unassuming but conscious, spon
taneous and active assent to His divine decision.
... In making use of the freedom
given him, and therefore acknowledging the divine decision in the obedience of his
own, man undoubtedly participates in the wisdom and righteousness in which God
made His decision.
... It is not without man but with him ... that God is wise and
righteous, the sovereign Judge who judges rightly. This true union with man, this true
exaltation of the creature, is what God wills when He gives him freedom to obey.32
Barth understands human freedom as the opposite of self-centeredness,33 as a
matter of interpersonal relationship, involving the ability to transcend the self through
communion. It lies between persons, connecting them, rather than simply within a per
son, isolated from her connectedness with others. The freedom given to us, then, is a
freedom to be humble in the face of this address by our Father who gives us good
things. It is the freedom to look on God's proclamations and, without coercion,34 to
say Yes where He says Yes, and to say No where He says No, not because we con
struct and issue an independent judgment that happens to agree with His, but to echo
31See CD IV/1, pp. 100 f., And it is the essence of the freedom for which he is freed in Jesus
Christ that he is not alone, that he is not left to himself, that he is not directed to his own judgment,
that he must not be his own lord and master, or exist in himself imprisoned in his own arbitrariness
and self-sufficiency. ... Freedom means being in spontaneous and therefore willing agreement with
the sovereign freedom of God; and CD IV/1, p. 449, Man can only stand as God's witness on the
basis of the work which He Himself has done. ... He does that which is good and right, he acts in
order, as one who really is, when he regards that which God has chosen for him as self-evident and
indeed the only thing which is possible, when he accepts and is perfectly satisfied with this divine
choice without questioning the reasons for it, without trying to manipulate or verily or correct it, or to
ratify it by his own choice.
32C n iJ I/l, pp. 265 f.
33See CD III/4, pp. 477 f., Human life participates in the freedom of all God's creatures to the
extent that it does not have its aim in itself and cannot therefore be lived in self-concentration and
self-centredness, but only in a relationship which moves outwards and upwards to another. All God's
creatures exist in a relationship of this kind. None exists for itself. None is self-sufficient. None can
justify itself. None possesses meaning or purpose in itself. Each stands in need of another. Each
exists only as another stands in need of it.
34See, e.g., CD III/l, p. 264: The purpose of God in granting man freedom to obey is to verify as
such the obedience proposed in and with his creation, i.e. to confirm it, to actualise it in his own
decision. It is obvious that if this is His will God cannot compel man to obey; He cannot as it were
bring about his obedience mechanically. He would do this if He made obedience physically necessary
and disobedience physically impossible, if He made man in such a way as to be incapable of a decision
to obey. The existence of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the prohibition attached to
it, means that God ... has created [man] with the capacity for a confirmation and actualisation of his
obedience, for a personal decision to obey.

God's judgments precisely because they are His. Human freedom consists in the fact
that the man who stands thus before God who in his creation has determined him for
good is not only subject to this divine decision but can respect it in the form o f his own
decision. ... He expects and has made him capable of confirmation, of the obedience
of his own free will and act.35
God does not offer evil to us as a possible choice. Barth argues that those who
put us in the position of choosing between good and evil make good and evil at least
formally equivalent by making evil one of two options that God gives us. This contra
dicts God's own nature, it contradicts His determination of us to be His covenant part
ners, and it contradicts His self-determination to be our God.
Given that God does not give us that choice, Barth argues that in our attempts
to choose between good and evil, or obedience and disobedience, we contradict God,
who has already judged and spoken. Further, we judge God: trying to judge between
good and evil on our own, instead of submitting to God's word, amounts to an attempt
at looking over God's shoulder to see if He did it right. We have no standard by which
to measure either good or God except God Himself.36 Judging presupposes and claims
a disconnection from God that we do not have. He has put us into a covenantal rela
tionship with Himself, and not isolated us from Himself. Judgment implies control,
lordship. It requires knowledge of the right criteria for judging, ability to apply them,
and power to implement the judgment. Because only God is able to judge between
good and evil, because the creature as such is not and cannot be able so to judge, the
creature's incompetent attempt to judge cannot be free and can only lead to bondage
and destruction. Although we have no capacity of our own for judging, we can par
ticipate in God's judging by entering the way that He opens for us, the path of submis
sion and gratitude. When we put ourselves in the judge's seat we have rejected the
only true criterion of judgment, which is God Himself. Ascribing to us an independent
ability to judge means asserting an ability to recognize the good. But the good is not
good of itself. It derives its goodness from God. It is good as God made it and as He
upholds it, and in no other fashion.
Our futile effort to judge between good and evil assumes that we have some
third place to stand between good and evil, between obedience and disobedience. If,
as Barth argues, God has made us good and for Himself, and if God Himself is the
35CD III/1, p. 265.

36CD IV/1, p. 529: The world and man actually derive from and are ruled by the One who is not
merely the supreme but the true and primary Law-giver, not exlex but Himself lex, and therefore the
source and norm and limit of all leges."
35
36

criterion of what is good, then there is no such third place; much less may we assume
that God puts us there. He is not allotted a place midway between obedience and dis
obedience. His place is with and before the God who with his creation has chosen for
him, deciding between good and evil, salvation and perdition, life and death. No other
decision than that of obedience will correspond to this place ...
That he has freedom
to affirm this obedience has nothing to do with a temptation which overtakes him.37
In this futile effort we attempt to be our own judges, contradicting the fact that
God has already judged us in Christ.38 We try to make ourselves little lords and mas
ters,39 where God has made us His children: The kingdom o f freedom is not one in
which [the Christian] can act as lord. ... It is the house o f his Father, and he needs the
Father's guidance to act in it and therefore to be free.40 The essence of the Christian's
freedom is that he is not alone, that he is not left to himself, that he is not directed to
his own judgment, that he must not be his own lord and master, or exist in himself
imprisoned in his own arbitrariness and self-sufficiency.41 Each o f those things would
be a form of bondage. Being alone or left to oneself is bondage to self, it is inability to
transcend the self, and it is exclusion from God's fellowship. Being directed to our
own judgment means that we lack the wisdom of God. Being our own lord and master
we are at the mercy of that which we cannot master, forces of evil, our own appetites,
our ignorance. To be imprisoned in one's own arbitrariness and self-sufficiency would
be a form of insanity.42 Barth can say, Freedom means being in spontaneous and
therefore willing agreement with the sovereign freedom of God,43 because what God
wills is our good and our freedom. He knows the shape of both better than we, and so
He can direct us to both, whereas we cannot find either on our own. Specifically, since
37CDIII/1, p. 264.
38See the paragraph that begins on p. 449 of CD IV/1, But ... in his very desire for this knowl
edge, and therefore in the fact that he wants to be judge, man (1) completely misunderstands himself
and can only confuse and confound himself in this desire. See also CD IV/1, pp. 231-235 (Jesus
Christ was and is for us in that He took our place as our Judge) for Barth's treatment of the rever
sal in Jesus Christ of our usurpation of God's place as Judge.
39CD IV/1, 435: B u t... wanting to be lord instead of servant, man (1) finds himself in the sever
est error concerning himself.
40CDIV/1, p. 100.
41CD IV/1, pp. 100 f.
42See CD 111/4, p. 121, for Barth's remarks about the convulsions, pains and complications that
result from being ones own master.
43CD IV/1, p. 101.
37

our freedom is in Jesus Christ, we need Him as our guide into our freedom. And so
He gives us Himself.
We have our being in this covenantal relationship that God has established with
us, and therefore we truly exercise free choice in that we obey spontaneously and from
the heart. Our discussion has already touched on that, and it will do so again. But,
given our presupposed relational framework, the free choice of the creature does not
include a choice between obedience and disobedience, nor can it. The free and sponta
neous choice of the self-in-communion does not attempt to destroy itself by removing
itself from that communion; rather, it acts in the strength o f that communion.
3] Freedom, fa r from being inconsistent with submission to God, requires it.
Within the covenantal relationship in which God has created us, the asymmetry
of that relationship means that our wholehearted and joyful self-giving to Him takes
the shape of obedience to Him, just as God's self-giving to us meant His incarnation,
humiliation, and death on the cross. Obedience is the means by which we participate in
the freedom of God, in the same sense that a pilot can fly only by obeying the princi
ples of aerodynamics. Submission to God is not inconsistent with freedom.44 On the
contrary, human freedom requires submission to God: Freedom means being in a
spontaneous and therefore willing agreement with the sovereign freedom of God.45
Given Barth's assumptions about personal being, self-giving is not a threat to
the giver: rather, it is the expression of the self by which the self transcends itself.
Truly human action is connective, open. Actions that might seem to be self-destroying
or self-threatening according to some other scheme of personhood, enable the person
to express and transcend herself and broaden her freedom according to this scheme.
Conversely, actions that other schemes dictate in the interest o f self-preservation and
self-fulfillment result instead, according to Barth's theology, in the very confinement,
danger, and destruction they seek to avoid.
If holding back from God, as some
44See John Macken, The Autonomy Theme in the Church Dogmatics: Karl Barth and His Critics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), in which he gives a brief historical survey of the
concept of autonomy. For most of this survey (including Kant's philosophy), autonomy does not mean
absolute self-determination, but self-determination according to higher standards. Macken (pp. 11 ff.)
singles out Fichte as the one who identified autonomy with absolute self-determination.
45CD IV/1, p. 101. Cf. Hans Kting's description of Christian freedom in Justification: The
Doctrine o f Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, reissue (London: Burns & Oates, 1981), p. xxvi:
If man binds himself in faith alone to the one Absolute, to tire one true God, who is not identical with
any finite reality, then he becomes free in regard to all finite values, goods, powers, which preserve
their true that is, relative importance. Cf. also Osborn, Christian Faith as Personal Knowledge,
SJT 28 (1975), p. 125, The event of man's being caught up in the personal vision of God constitutes
him indeed the free, creative person Polanyi believes him to be.

Christian theologians claim, is an act of freedom, however regrettable, then their
appeal to submit to God amounts to an appeal to give one's freedom away.
Since God's Word arises externally to us, communion with God means that we
give heed to this external word. The asymmetry of our relationship means that in all
forms of this Word, imperative and vocative as well as indicative, our words and
actions depend on His. That is, we submit to God in all things and therefore obey
Him.46 Personal, and therefore free, action conforms to the particular asymmetry of
this relationship. That is, we are not God or even gods, so we obey.
But we are also not animals, so we do not obey mindlessly or dumbly, but with
our whole heart and gratefully. Not only is obedience necessary for freedom, but, as
John Macken contends, true freedom in our action is necessary for the action to be
obedience:
The core of Barth's doctrine o f autonomy lies in the assertion that obedience
would not be real if it were not exercised in freedom. Obedience if it is real
implies both an alien law and that this same law is also its own law.
Obedience, then, implies the fully free decision of the human subject of
dogmatics, a free decision in which theonomy finds its concrete and relative
form, because in this decision the human subject is tied to the work and action
of God that takes place in the Word of God. ... The only function of
heteronomy is to lead to autonomy, the subjective possibility of grasping the
Word of God.47
We are not plants or rocks, so we act obediently, and are not just acted upon. We are
men and women in covenant with God. Nor does this obedience and submission in any
sense degrade us: how can it, since it is the attitude and action of Jesus Christ towards
His Father?48 Rather, it exalts us, for by it we transcend our own wisdom and free
dom, and participate in the wisdom and freedom of God. We submit ourselves to God,
and therefore lift ourselves up to action appropriate to His adopted sons and daugh
ters, in the same power in which He has raised Jesus Christ from the dead and exalted
46See Gary Deddo, The Grammar of Barth's Theology of Personal Relations, p. 193.
47Macken, p. 34.
48See Jiirgen Moltmami's remarks in Creation, Covenant and Glory: A Conversation on Karl
Barth's Doctrine of Creation, chapter 3 of History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian
Theology (New York: Crossroads, 1992), on the dangers of reading this incarnational doctrine of
asymmetry into one's doctrine of the trinity: Barth was evidently convinced from an early stage that
order could exist only as superiority and subordination, (p. 135). He writes this in the context of
soul-body and male-female relations, and says (p. 138), It is not super- and subordination, but a
shared common life in fellowship that corresponds to the triune God and is the incarnate promise of
his kingdom.
38

Him to His right hand, namely, the Holy Spirit. It is action appropriate to being in
Christ and at the right hand of the Father in glory. How can this be any but truly free
action?
Conversely, obedience produces our freedom in God. The goal of the com
mand of God is to strengthen and illumine and bring into being this personal and cove
nantal communion. This principle leads Barth to choose freedom as the conceptual
framework for his ethics.49
As proof and illustration of the claim that our freedom lies in obedience to
God, Barth cites the case of Jesus Christ.50 In 66.2, The Sloth of Man, Barth
examines our sin in the four slothful forms of disobedience, unbelief, and ingratitude
to God,51 our isolation and seclusion and self-will and unwillingness towards our
neighbor,52 the disorder, discord and degeneration of our wholeness as soul and
body,53 and our fretfulness at the inevitable realisation that our existence is limited.54
Although our relationships with God and with our neighbor, our unity as soul and
body, and our existence in historical limitation might be considered contradictions of
our freedom, Barth shows throughout 66.2 that it is our refusal o f these conditions
that results in bondage to sin and misery. By contrast, Jesus Christ exhibits His free
dom in His obedience to God, in His care for His neighbor, in the unity of His soul and
body, and in the fact that He gave up His life to God and man.55 Here again we see
freedom as a matter of related being, and as the contradiction of isolation. Any view
o f human freedom that asserts or assumes a conflict between our freedom and our
obedience to God will have to argue that Jesus, in His obedience and self-giving, was
not free or that He is not the paradigm, the Author and Finisher, o f our freedom.
49Cf. all o f CD 111/4.

50C D 11/2, p. 605, In what Jesus does, everything is permission, freedom, spontaneity. The will
of God is His own will. To do it is the meat by which He lives. ... He is therefore free, the One who
is subject to the Law by His own volition. ... And this obedience of Jesus is the clear reflection of the
unity of the Father and the Son by the bond of the Spirit in the being of the eternal God Himself, who
is the fulness of all freedom.
Of Jesus Christ, Barth writes {CD IV/2, 409), It was and is His royal freedom to be as man the
perfect hearer of God; also {CD IV/2, 432), The royal freedom of this one man consists in the fact
that He is wholly the Fellow-man of us His fellows.
51In CD1V/2, pp. 409-432; quotation from p. 412.
52In CD IV/2, pp. 432-452; quotation from p. 433.
55CD IV/2, p. 467.
39

Nigel Biggar faults Barth's attempt to co-ordinate an account of God's sover
eignty with an account of human freedom. He expresses appreciation for Barth's point
that, apart from subordination to God, the human creature is oppressed by the
lordless powers.56 Nevertheless, in his estimation,
Barth seems to propose a form o f compatibilist account; namely, that human
beings are determined to choose freely what is right. This yields a notion of
human freedom that is more apparent than real, and it raises questions about
the graciousness of a grace that does not concede to the beloved the freedom
to turn away permanently. It is true, of course, that the freedom to reject the
liberating grace of God is the freedom to enter voluntarily into bondage. But
if the ultimate spiritual and moral commitments of human beings are to retain
their dignity and weight, then it is just such a paradoxical freedom that they
must possess.57
But this paradox arises because Biggar uses the dynamics o f freedom between peers
for his model of our freedom with regard to God. Friendship and romance have to be
established and upheld by the parties involved, and freedom in these forms of love
entails a certain freedom to turn away, in Biggar's phrase, from entering into those
relationships. But that is because (1) it is not in the nature of anyone's being to be the
close friend or lover of everyone else, and because (2) the turning away in Biggar's
model applies to the establishment of the relationship. According to the doctrine that
Barth adopts regarding personal being, however, (1) turning away from God also
amounts to a rejection of one's own personal being, since (2) the question is not
whether or not to establish a relationship, but how to respond to the real connection
that God has already established between Himself and us. To be out of communion
with God is to deny what one is, and so to love a lie. The one turning away from God
is in danger of being nailed to that lie.58
The freedom to turn away looks like a return to the empty formalist concept
of freedom as the simple fact that one chooses. Barth, instead, sees freedom as a kind
of spiritual health. He attributes to freedom the positive content o f power and capabil
56Nigel Biggar, The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993),
pp. 4 f.
57Biggar, pp. 5 f., italics his.
58The one who tries to evade the truth of Jesus is the one that Barth calls, The man of sin in his
fully developed form as a liar, CD IV/3.1, p. 462, and he goes on to say, The threat under which he
comes to stand and indeed places himself as he lies, is that he will be nailed to his lie, that he will be
treated seriously as a liar, that he will be granted and finally assigned to a life by mid in untruth as the
portion which he himself has chosen, a life which can only be a lost life. Later (p. 465) Barth says,
He stands under the threat and danger o f being damned.
40

ity, and not just the negative content of non-constraint. Consequently for Barth, free
dom means freedom for God. The opposite action, turning away from God, denotes
not freedom but its absence, a bondage to the denial of oneself. Since our own being is
wrapped up in our covenant partnership with God, turning away from God denotes
bondage to self-destruction as well as inability to affirm God. Anyone who is truly free
will not turn away from God. Whoever turns away from God indicates thereby both a
lack of power and continued slavery to the forces of destruction.
By way of parallel, we do not accuse a mother of withholding freedom from
her children if she teaches them to be well-mannered, well-educated, physically fit, and
socially adept. Granted, there is a certain freedom in being selfish, ignorant, slovenly,
and rude, but it is the sort of freedom that hinders more than it liberates. Some kinds
of behavior are symptoms, not of freedom, but its lack. We do not celebrate as free
the children who cannot get along with their peers or families, who retreat into them
selves instead of communicating with others. Instead we try to find what is wrong
and remedy it. Similarly, our own true freedom and health lies in a definite relationship
with God, and not in the indefinite position of choosing between well-being and
destruction. One could, whimsically, assert a freedom to eat dirt; but if one finds that
the possibility requires serious consideration, chances are that the asserted external
freedom of action simply amounts either to a loss of free access to better food, or a
loss of the internal freedom of sanity.
As derived from our nature as persons, freedom means freedom for being in
relation, and freedom from all that interferes with that being. Human freedom never
reverses these. If we could really reverse them, if we could escape being in relation or
gain contact with that which destroys such being, we would cease to be at all. Such
reversal would transform us into that which God has eternally rejected. The attempt to
achieve this reversal is our sin, and it puts us under the threat o f Hell and destruction.59
So-called freedom from God means freedom from the only source of the good, the
true, the right, and the beautiful. It does not confer any ability to re-constitute any of
these after one's own image.
4] Freedom has a definite form.
Our freedom has numerous insuperable limitations. For example, Barth bases
all of 56.1, The Unique Opportunity, on the fact that everyone's life begins at one
59See CD IV/3.1, p. 462: The man of sin in his fully developed form as a liar is the man who
goes forward to his condemnation. ... The threat under which he comes to stand and indeed places
himself as he lies, is that he will be nailed to his lie, that he will be treated seriously as a liar, that he
will be granted and finally assigned to a life by and in untruth as the portion which he himself has
chosen, a life which as such can only be a lost life, and can only be described as such.
41
42
point and ends at another, limited to the time between.
Other circumstances as
immovable as death lie between us and our desires. They limit and shape our freedom.
Despite these obvious external limits to our freedom, some theologians and
philosophers treat the freedom of the will as if it had no similar limitations of its own
and no definite shape.
John Webster detects in some writers the idea that moral
authority can only be attributed to a quasi-absolute consciousness, to an indeterminate

self, without constraints, characterised above all by an infinitely regressive interiority,
and he calls this idea moral Cartesianism.60 Along these lines, Colin Gunton cites
Iris Murdoch's complaint against post-Enlightenment conceptions of moral action and
reflection ... Murdoch says, Immense care is taken to picture the will as isolated. It is
essentially isolated from belief, from reason, from feeling, and yet is the essential centre
o f the self.
... What I am subjectively is a foot-loose, solitary, substanceless,
will.61 The simple fact and power of choice constitutes, according to this view, the
criterion and form of freedom.
The moral sense of freedom to which Western
philosophy has accustomed us, is satisfied with the simple power of choice: a man is
free who is able to choose one of the possibilities set before him.62
This Cartesian freedom quickly becomes unwieldy when we try to use it as the
framework of the choices and actions of persons. As Barth says, it specifies a form but
not any content.63 Once the choice is made, however, the definiteness o f that choice
conflicts with the Cartesian indefmiteness o f the next free choice. The agent's past
choices shape her and constrain her future choices.
John Zizioulas makes an even
more fundamental criticism of this account of freedom as choice among possibilities:

But this freedom is already bound by the necessity of these possibilities, and the
ultimate and most binding of these necessities for man is existence itself: how can a
man be considered absolutely free when he cannot do other than accept his
existence?64 Cartesian analyses of action and choice ignore the specific who that
acts and chooses. The existence of the agent has a specific shape and content. The
details of that shape and content have a decisive bearing on the perception and
understanding, on the deliberation and the will, on the acts and choices of the person.
60John Webster, Barth's Ethics o f Reconciliation, p. 54 f.

61Colin Gunton, The triune God, p. 58, quoting Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty o f Good
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 8, 16.
62Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 42.
63See Barth's discussion of liberum arbitrium in CD IV/2, pp. 493 ff.
64Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 42.

As he discusses ethics, Barth comprehensively takes the shape and content of
the chooser's life into account under the rubric of limitation. As John Webster points
out, limitation for Barth has the connotation o f definite or precise, and it does not
denote some otherwise good area of life that God has forbidden. The concreteness of
Barth's analysis of ethics and human volition stand in sharp contrast to the essential
isolation and indeterminacy of the chooser and his choice. Webster comments, Barth
severs the bond between moral authenticity and indeterminacy. To exist as a moral
being is to exist in a given shape, to act within certain limits. Those limits are not a set
of arbitrarily imposed barriers, closing off what are, in fact, genuine human possibili
ties. Rather, they are the form within which and as which the human moral agent may
exist, and outside which it is not meaningful to speak of good human conduct at all.65
He says further, Limitation, then, is not about deficiency, still less about some divine
force inhibiting legitimate human flourishing; it is rather the creature's quite specific
path to glory assigned and maintained by the ordering acts o f God.66 This limitation
does not mean that God squeezes us into a mold, but that He gives us backbone and
life and a definite time and place to live.
In one very restricted sense, Barth's theology could agree with Bruce Reichenbach's stipulation that a person is free only if, given a certain set of circumstances or
causal conditions, the person (to put it in the past tense) could have chosen and done
otherwise than he did.67 Certainly Barth affirms God does not physically restrain free
choices68 and denies that God employs mechanistic or magical forces to bend our
choice. Two huge difficulties with Reichenbach's definition are that it seems to imply
randomness of action, and it radically conflicts with the integrity, or at least continuity,
of the agent involved.
Precisely because we assume the definite and distinct and
known character o f the person acting, we also infer from some actions that the person
acting is not herself, or is not responsible, or is even insane or possessed. Lack of
constraint as an aspect of freedom to act as oneself requires that we agree with
Reichenbach that freedom means the person could have done otherwise. But integrity,
truly acting according to one's real being, means that the self who chooses and acts has
65Webster, p. 55, italics his.
66Webster, p. 72.
67Bruce R. Reichenbach, Freedom, Justice, and Moral Responsibility, chapter 15 in The Grace
o f God, the Will o f Man, ed. Clark Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1989), p. 286.
68See CD 111/1, p. 263: And it is true that, although the eating of the fruit of [this tree] ... is
naturally forbidden, it is not made physically impossible. Thus it is true that some play is given to
man, that freedom is ascribed to him. But his freedom is not, of course, a freedom of choice between
obedience and disobedience.
43

a definite character. Integrity means that the person is this, and is not that. Conse
quently, we must counter Reichenbach's definition by asserting that, given a certain
complete set of circumstances, and given all the alternative choices a person could
have made, she is free only if she would not have chosen anything other than what in
fact she did.
Barth's version of freedom will not look free under Cartesian presuppositions;
therefore, those who read Barth, especially those who also write about him, must
beware of reading him in terms of assumptions that he has rejected. Nonetheless, we
must be prepared to find that Barth's account of freedom lacks certain elements that
we have come to take for granted. It no longer attributes the free choice simply to the
chooser alone, because it denies that she is ever absolutely alone. It no longer attrib
utes to the chooser the competence for judgment, instead denying that she has any
such competence on her own. It no longer attributes to the chooser an unencumbered
or self-powered ability to choose.
It no longer places the chooser in a completely
unstructured field in which to pick his way.

On the other hand, Cartesian freedom does not look free or realistic under
Barth's presuppositions. It traps the self within itself. Consequently, the self must be
its own ultimate source of wisdom, judgment, and strength. Further, it ignores the real
circumstances that shape or inhibit our freedom, such as our own sinfulness, our spe
cific backgrounds, our lack of information, our abilities or inabilities in interpreting that
information, and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Barth's account of freedom,
by contrast, takes account of these circumstances. Those circumstances do limit our
freedom: we do not have the option of living without the circumstances o f our lives.
Barth maps those circumstances. Freedom in those circumstances is not the empty
form of choosing between this and that. It is a matter of the presence and activity of
God's Holy Spirit, empowering us to be ourselves, and so to transcend ourselves and
live in communion with God and our brothers and sisters.
5] Freedom is a matter o f being able to act according to one's own decision.
Again, as with the Cartesian accounts of freedom discussed above, it is very
easy here to glide over the content of the phrase, one's own, and merely concentrate
on decision. But freedom is not just a matter of being able to decide and act: it is a
matter of the one who is deciding. That is, freedom has these two components: (1)
being able to make a decision that truly accords with one's real being, empowered with
judgment and free from delusion; and (2) being able to act accordingly, empowered
with space and strength for action, and free from impediment.
44

As we have seen previously, the being of the one who chooses has a definite
content,69 which Barth finds christologically.70 We cannot rightly understand freedom
if we treat it as only a formal matter o f some abstract ability to choose. Freedom must
take account of the particular being of the chooser, specifically, that God has made us
His covenant partners and that our being is inconsistent with any view of being or
action that conflicts with that designation.71 It must also take account, therefore, of
such impediments to free choice as sin, insanity, and diabolic compulsion. Barth takes
account of these and, as a result, claims that the person acts freely when and only when
such action truly expresses the self who acts. Action inconsistent with the nature of
that person indicates either a constraint on that person or a deficit of ability to express
herself. The self whom we here consider is God's covenant partner, and can be defined
as such only because that is what God created her to be. Liberation thus means the
removal of impediments to the true self-expression that freedom allows, and it means
the restoration of the abilities proper to the person that allow her to express herself
freely.
On the other hand, Barth also claims that there are some choices that God does
not put before us. He does not commit to our hands the choice of whether or not to
be free. When we rejected our own freedom by disobedience to God we contradicted
a decision that He had made and had not consulted us about. As we have already seen,
we could not make this decision freely because we were not equipped for it, nor could
we be, since only God and no creature can judge between good and evil. Therefore He
69See such passages as CD III/l, pp. 229 f.: The creature does not exist casually. It does not
merely exist, but exist meaningfully. ... Creating it, God gives it meaning and necessity. Giving it
being and existence, He makes it the exponent of His intention, plan and order. ... Its creation as
such is its creation as a grateful being and for a grateful existence.; CD III/l, p. 186: Man can and
will always be man before God and among his fellows only as he is man in relationship to woman and
woman in relationship to man. And as he is one or the other he is man.; CD III/l, p. 197: God
willed to create man as a being corresponding to His own being in such a way that He Himself (even
if in His knowledge of Himself) is the original and prototype, and man the copy and imitation. See
also all of CD 111/2, and Stuart McLean's comments in Humanity in the Thought o f Karl Barth, e.g.,
on p. 23, Man is structurally and essentially, not secondarily or accidentally, related to others. One
can forget or ignore this reality, but in so doing man contradicts his humanity.
70See McLean, Humanity, p. 13, A fifth key is Barth's insistence on treating the part in relation
ship to and from the perspective of the whole. ... The lower reality, man, cannot be understood
outside the context of the higher reality, God, the God-man, Jesus Christ.
71See Colin Gunton, Immanence and Otherness: Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom in tire
Theology of Robert W. Jenson, Dialog (Minnesota) 30 (Winter, 1991), p. 22, Freedom is to be
found in the space in which persons can be themselves in relation with other persons. ... But, in trini
tarian terms, tire otherness is not the freedom of the individuala freedom/row others, as we so often
make it in tire Westbecause it is a freedom that is a function of relatedness: it is given and received,
because personal being is constituted by relatedness. Italics his.
45
46
did not commit this usurpation of His judgment to our hands, but forbade it and con
tinues to forbid it.
B.
Philip Rosato's criticisms of Barth entail a view of human freedom and
divine-human interaction that differs from Barth's.
Much o f the difference lies in
emphasis and balance, and it produces significant disagreement between the two theo
logians. Where Barth emphasizes one element more, Rosato sees a danger of over
powering the others; where Barth emphasizes an element less, Rosato says that he
ignores it.72 We will examine Rosato's view and show that Barth achieves a better
balance than Rosato and accounts better for the relevant issues.
Rosato, in his Improvisations on Barth's Spirit Theology,73 attempts to estab
lish a scheme for human choice and action that is neither absolute human autonomy
nor divine determinism.
He tries to steer between the two mistakes that G. C.
Berkouwer points out:

There is a great danger that our thinking will rationalize the necessity
of faith in its relationship to the completed work of Christ. On the one hand,
the necessity of faith and the warning against unbelief can lead to the rational
conclusion that faith is a component, even the decisive component of salva
tion. On the other hand, reaction to synergism can relativize the human deci
sion and thereby prejudice the seriousness and the simplicity with which
Scripture speaks about the necessity of faith.
... On the score of the second danger, ... the problems Barth raises
with respect to the ontological impossibility of unbelief are wholly foreign to
Reformation theology.74
He shares Berkouwer's assessment that Barth has leaned too far in the direction of
divine determinism, and that Barth, as a result, has trivialized the proclamation of
God's Word and man's response to it.75
72For example, he charges Barth with neglect of man's experience as the very locus where God
allows His dynamic being to be comprehended anew throughout history, Rosato, The Spirit As Lord:
The Pneumatology o f Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), p. 134; cf. also p. 133, Man's
freedom and man's reason are given scant attention by Barth since he declines to lend his
pneumatology an empirical basis by viewing the Spirit from below as the omnipresent Giver of life.
73The title of Part III of his book.
74G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph o f Grace in the Theology o f Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956), p. 274. Cf. also the response to Berkouwer's criticism of Barth's
supposed universalistic tendencies in Joseph D. Bettis, Is Karl Barth a Universalist? SJT 20 (Dec.
1967):423-436.

In his concern that Barth may have over-emphasized the place o f the Holy
Spirit in our lives, Rosato has tendered several Improvisations on Barth's theology in
an attempt to steer more safely between the twin dangers that Berkouwer mentions.
Although he does not allude to a Chalcedonian Pattern in his theology, such as Hunsinger detected in Barth's, we will use the three main principles o f that pattern (integrity,
intimacy, and asymmetry) as standards for evaluating his results.
a.) Rosato exhibits a strong concern for safeguarding human integrity in his
theology, i.e., maintaining that our actions and decisions are truly our own, that God's
approach to us does not overwhelm and annihilate us but leaves us space and ability to
be fully human. He rejects Barth's anthropology because it seems to deny man's deci
sions any significance, and it seems to be in danger of a thorough monism that makes
man out to be a puppet.76 Rosato wants instead a theology that sees man as a free
agent distinct from Jesus Christ and as a partner in the Father's encounters with him
through the Holy Spirit.77
To guard his anthropology against absolute divine determinism, Rosato says
that God gives us an inherent freedom when He creates us; and he guards against abso
lute human autonomy by attributing to human nature a God-ward inclination. Man is
ontologically oriented by the Spirit's creative work towards the full possession of the
Spiritus Redemptor who brings him to the explicit confession of Jesus as the Christ.78
The Spiritus Creator has created in us an obediential capacity79 that finds its fulfill
ment in redemption. Our ontic freedom, which is a gift o f the Holy Spirit, is essen
tially related to God. Rosato claims that this view of freedom, which he calls graced
human nature,
75In Barth's theology the triumph of grace makes vague the seriousness of the human decision,
just as the keragma is threatened with becoming a mere announcement without any vital exhortation,
Berkouwer, p. 279. Philip Rosato, p. 142, echoes this evaluation: Despite the good intentions which
underlie Barth's decision to strip man of those spiritual capabilities which his opponents may have
presented in too static or naturalistic terms, Barth in effect robs man of a genuine role in either
accepting or rejecting God's gracious activity on his behalf. Cf. also Emil Brunner's objection, in,
The Christian Doctrine o f God (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1949), p. 351 to Barth's doc
trine of election: ... the result is that the real decision only takes place in the objective sphere, and
not in the subjective sphere. Thus: the decision has been made in Jesus Christfor all men.
76Rosato frequently refers to the complaints of others in this regard. See, e.g., his reference
(Rosato, p. 132) to the frequent complaint that God is so dominant in Barth's theology that man is
reduced to a passive bystander.
77Rosato, p. 168, where he protests that Barth does not see this role as having salvific
importance.
78Rosato, p. 145. See also p. 144, man's inherent orientation to God.
79Rosato, p. 147.
47
does not automatically involve an idolatrous autonomy and indifference to the

christological origin and goal of every manifestation of grace. Rather, as the
experience of converts attests, there is invariably clear recollection that, while
the future believer was searching for meaning, initial seedlings of the grace
that was to bloom into acceptance of Christ were present both within his
being and in the persons and places surrounding him.80
Thus he acknowledges the Spirit's presence and activity all along the way to conver
sion and our relatedness to God in our origin, activity, and purpose. This anthropol
ogy also provides a theological foundation for understanding the universal scope of the
Holy Spirit's work. The Spiritus Redemptor is active throughout the world, in various
stages leading man to the full expression of the freedom which is rightfully his from
creation and which is searching for its fulfillment outside himself.81
Nature and grace complement each other in our conversion, as do the Holy
Spirit and the created spirit of man.82 The Holy Spirit conspires with man's freedom
by working subtly within his nature so that man is directed towards God from behind.
He also works by calling man outside himself to accept Jesus.83
But the freedom that Rosato attributes to us is a static freedom. He treats
freedom substantively as a commodity or thing residing within us, an ability or poten
tial; whereas Barth treats it adverbially regarding an activity that is directed outward.
Further, Rosato takes the formal view of freedom that Barth rejects.84
Whereas Barth ties freedom directly to an ability to live as God's covenant partners,
thus filling the concept of freedom with concrete content, Rosato holds back from
giving freedom any content, retaining the bare form of exercising choice. He com
ments, Barth is thus aware of the critique that his theocentric theology robs man of a
participatory role in divine providence, and does not respect the creature's authentic
80Rosato, p. 147.
81Rosato, p. 144.
82Rosato, p. 145.
83Rosato, p. 146.
84See CD IV/2, p. 494, But the freedom of man does not really consist ... in tire fact that, like
Hercules at tire cross-roads, he can will and decide. Nor does the bondage of tire will consist in the
fact that he is not able to do this.
Freedom is not air empty and formal concept. It is oire which is filled out with a positive mean
ing. It does not speak only of a capacity. It speaks concretely of the fact that man can be genuinely
man as God who has given him this capacity can in His freedom be genuinely God. The free man is
tire man who can be genuinely man in fellowship with God.
48

freedom to rebel against God or to cooperate with Him.85 In Rosato's construct our
action of choosing takes precedence over our relationship with God. Freedom means
our own application of reason to a decision that we make, and entails some distance
from the Holy Spirit and His influence. Thus Rosato protests that Barth's failure to
grant human history and human experience an independent role over against the God
who comes to man as the Spirit of love and helps to direct his course towards comple
tion, ultimately denies the role of human nature as the supremely necessary counterpart
to divine grace in the act of mediation which takes place when God's Spirit cooperates
with man. ... The trinitarian aspects of Barth's pneumatology lack the insight that the
free acts of the Spirit, as He brings God's own historical self-communication to
completion, are sparked by the equally free acts of man.86 So it is that Rosato asserts
a parity of our freedom and God's. This last quotation even suggests that God's free
dom is subordinate to ours, when Rosato says that the free acts of man spark the free
acts of the Spirit, so that it is man and not God who takes the initiative.
Rosato does not engage Barth's contention that freedom to rebel, to reject
God, is no freedom at all. He attributes freedom, rationality, ability to choose, to the
moral agent who is in the position of deciding between obedience and disobedience. If
this agent had the ability to see God (who is both our source and our goal, and the
Giver of all good) and the ability to live in communion with Him, would she be holding
back from that communion, from the obedience and faith that are our part of that
communion? If the rejection of God entails the rejection of our own well-being, our
own right-being, our own being at all, then whoever rejects God, or considers such
rejection as a seriously possible course of action, is not working with all her faculties
intact, and therefore is not free.
b.) Intimacy does not disappear completely from Rosato's pneumatology, but
he does remove it completely from certain areas of our being. Although he describes a
God-ward orientation in the core of our being to connect our freedom with God, his
anthropology is nonetheless dominated by a kind of human autonomy of will, a part of
us where God does not operate and over which He exercises no rule as Lord.87
85Rosalo, p. 200.
86Rosato, p. 139. This application of trinitarian theology to Barth's pneumatology omits the
insight that our participation in the inner life of the Trinity is by means of adoption and not nature.
87See, e.g., Rosato, p. 136: One therefore has to ask why Barth's trinitarian pneumatology is open
to the suspicion that it does not fully respect man's cooperation with the Spirit's liberating activity; p.
137: the God whom Christians confess as triune is the God who respects their independence; p.
139: This failure to grant human history and human experience an independent role over against the
God who comes to man as the Spirit of love and helps to direct his course towards completion, ulti
49

Perhaps Rosato sees this cooperative autonomy as the only alternative to monism, a
position he says that Barth approaches, and which he very rightly wants to avoid.88
To avoid monism, Rosato affirms a framework that distinguishes us from God
and at the same connects us to Him, namely, a universal concept of being in which to
situate the truth of revelation.89 But where Rosato describes Barth as rejecting the
category of being for the category of relation,90 it might be more accurate to say that
Barth has rejected the method of separation91 for the method of relation, and that he
assumes that our being is a matter of the latter and not the former. That is, Rosato
prefers to root man's being (and rationality and freedom and spirituality) within man as
a gift of creation.92 Rooting it in God, he says, is an unbiblical application of sola
gratia to the being of man itself and not simply to the act of faith.93 Where Barth
roots our spirituality in the activity of God's Spirit, Rosato sees a danger of erasing
man's spiritual nature altogether.94
Beyond asserting it, Rosato does not give an analysis or argument to support
his rejection of Barth's relational ontology. Further, this universal concept of being
does not avoid implying that our being is centrally a matter o f alienation from God,95
whether alienation-in-hostility or alienation-in-neutrality. Rosato writes as though God
has put us into some neutral place and then expects us to work our way to Him by
means of our own rationality.
On the contrary, Barth argues that the atonement
mately denies the role of human nature as the supremely necessaiy counterpart to divine grace in the
act of mediation which takes place when God's Spirit cooperates with man. Barth allows the Spirit
Himself, God's eternal mediating principle, to become the sole point of contact between God and man
in time as well, so that autonomous human actions lose their right to play even a subordinate part in
divine-human interaction; etpassim.
88See Rosato, p. 143: Barth's ontology of grace ... is dangerously tilted towards a monistic notion
of the Spirit. Barth preserves the undeniable spirituality of the Holy Spirit at the expense of erasing
man's spiritual nature altogether.
89Rosato, p. 154. The passage quoted here actually refers to Barth's repudiation of such a
universal concept, but tire context implies Rosato's affirmation of it.
90Rosato, p. 141.
91Which assumes that things are things-in-themselves first, and that relations to other things are
secondary to this.
92See Rosato's objections, p. 142, to Barth's assertion that man's spirituality is rooted outside
himself, but also the entire section The Free Interaction of Created and Uncreated Spirit, pp. 141148.
93Rosato, p. 141.
94Rosato, p. 143.
95Cf. Nigel Biggar's remark (Biggar, p. 5) that the modern history of the meaning of the word
freedom ... assumes that God and humanity are essentially at odds with one another.
50

accomplished in Jesus Christ reveals that God is not neutral towards us,96 and that we
cannot be neutral towards Him 97
c) Asymmetry is probably the point of the Chalcedonian pattern that most
clearly catches on the fabric of Rosato's improvisations. Rosato ignores the qualitative
distinctions between the Creator and the created, and then maintains that God ignores
the quantitative ones. For example, he says,
This failure to grant human history and human experience an independent role
over against the God who comes to man as the Spirit of love and helps to
direct his course towards completion, ultimately denies the role of human
nature as the supremely necessary counterpart to divine grace in the act of
mediation which takes place when God's Spirit cooperates with man. Barth
allows the Spirit Himself, God's eternal mediating principle, to become the
sole point of contact between God and man in time as well, so that autono
mous human actions lose their right to play even a subordinate part in divinehuman interaction. ... The trinitarian aspects of Barth's pneumatology lack
the insight that the free acts of the Spirit, as He brings God's own historical
self-communication to completion, are sparked by the equally free acts of
man.98
The improvisations of Chapters VII and VTII consistently view God and us as opera
tors who have equal rights in the business at hand, and who both have an inviolable
and independent wholeness that the other must not, or is unable to, transgress.
The autonomy of action that Rosato proposes requires a corresponding auton
omy of the mind99 which here takes the form of a highly effective and powerful human
rationality.100 God must work through and depend upon our reason to reach us.101
This in turn implies for Rosato that we have conceptual control over the means by
96CDIV/J, pp. 37-42.

97CDIV/1, pp. 42-44.
"Rosato, p. 139, emphasis mine.
"S ee, e.g., Rosato, p. 152: What is called for is a pneumatology which respects God's desire to
make the Christ-event known to all men through the Holy Spirit, but which also respects man's free
intellectual power as the means which the Holy Spirit wisely uses ...
emphasis mine.
100See, e.g., Rosato, p. 132: Since Spirit theology affords Barth the sole interpretative instrument
which can expose the validity of Christian revelation, it is the dominance of Barth's pneumatology
which causes him to neglect the role of human reason in coming to divine truth.
101John Thompson, in The Holy Spirit in the Theology o f Karl Barth (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick
Publications, 1991), p. 204, has noted Rosato's assumption that human reason is the place of entry of
the Spirit. See Rosato's protest (Rosato, p. 148) that the ontological aspects [of Barth's Spirit theol
ogy] overshadow [man's] reason; and (Rosato, p. 150) that Barth is guilty of substituting the Holy
Spirit for man's own reasoning ability.
51
52

which God approaches us and that we cooperate in our own redemption,102 a view
clearly at odds with all of Barth's theology.103 Rosato so carefully hedges human free
dom from God's encroachment that God actually becomes dependent on us.
For
example, he says,
One therefore has to ask why Barth's expressly trinitarian pneumatology is
open to the suspicion that it does not fully respect man's cooperation with the
Spirit's liberating activity.104
Since Barth clearly and extensively describes man's obedience and faith as a result o f
the Spirit's liberating activity,105 it would appear that Rosato asks here why Barth
doesn't say that man helps the Spirit produce his own liberation. Elsewhere he says,
Barth will not ascribe to man an independent nature capable o f knowing and embrac
ing the truth about God which it perceives.106 God has opened Himself up so that we
may and can know Him. But in Rosato's construct107 He doesn't definitely declare
Himself and claim us as His covenant partners; rather, He gives us the lever of an inde
pendent rationality and the fulcrum of a shared framework o f being to pry into the
knowledge of God and then come to our own conclusions.
Further, Rosato ignores human sinfulness.108 He does not allow for sin's per
version o f our reason, for its debilitating enslavement, or for its threat to our being.
Even though he doesn't leave us completely to our own rational resources, he does not
give the Spirit the role of clearly and definitely liberating our lives from the sin that
102Rosato, pp. 146 ff.

103See Rosato, p. 135: What accounts for Barth's understanding of the Trinity as a perfectly
united divine community from the very start and not as the Father's progressive series of gracious,
self-communicating actions outside Himself in the midst of history? ... More specifically, why does
Barth conceive the Holy Spirit as the divine mode who completes God's internal wholeness, rather
than as the divine mode who inaugurates and fulfills God's external disclosure of His being to man in
the act of historical revelation, as the term historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), with which Barth chooses
to designate the Spirit, would seem to imply? Such a definition as Rosato suggests here conceives
the Spirit completely in terms of history, making Him dependent on history, and thus on creation, for
His being. This reverses Barth's contention that creation depends on God, and not God on creation.
104Rosato, p. 136.
105See for example 68 The Holy Spirit and Christian Love, CD IV/2, pp. 727 ff., which Barth
begins with the summarizing statement, The Holy Spirit is the quickening power in which Jesus
Christ places a sinful man in His community and thus gives him the freedom ... to correspond to the
love in which God has drawn him to Himself and raised him up, overcoming his sloth and misery.
106Rosato, p. 154.
107Which takes man's own freedom over against God's Spirit seriously, Rosato, p. 145.
108For further analysis of Rosato's assumptions here, see John Thompson, pp. 197-211.
53
Jesus Christ clearly and definitely defeated on the cross. Yes, he says that the Spirit
conspires with man's freedom by working subtly within his nature so that man is
directed towards God from behind; He also works by calling man outside himself so
that he is brought to an eager acceptance of the uniquely Spirit-filled Jesus.109 But
while this takes some account of the Spirit's office as Paraclete, it ignores His
Lordship.
If we can assume that these three points are valid standards against which to
measure Rosato's theology, then they produce several counter-questions as responses
to his improvisations on Barth's theology. Has his concern for the integrity of human
persons produced a more balanced pneumatology than Barth's? Is grace no more than
an antidote to sin, so that we can ignore human sinfulness and its effects on our abili
ties
and
divide
compartments110?
nature
and
grace
into
two
separate
and
complementary
He seems to be striving to achieve a balance by dividing
responsibility between God and us, with the result that God is credited with setting up
a universe, a system of truth and rationality, and procedures whereby we must find our
way to God; and we, on the other hand, have the ability and responsibility for using the
universe, rationality, and any of the various procedures at hand for finding God.
Rosato says that Barth has not divided these responsibilities equitably, when in fact
Barth does not work along these lines at all.
Rosato's divergence from the Chalcedonian pattern stems from the same place
that he designates as the source of the faults in Barth's anthropology:
Thus, the
source of the disarray which induces Barth to present the human person as a passive
bystander to the Spirit's work within him lies not so much in Barth's pneumatology as it
does in his christology, which in the end determines his entire view of man. Behind the
controversy over analogia entis and analogia relationis is more than a protracted
interconfessional debate; it is a matter of whether the ex patre can to some extent be
seen apart from the filioque,ni Rosato treats Barth's view of a strong connection
between the Spirit and Jesus Christ as though it weakens the Spirit's role from what it
might be. Further, he treats the activity of Christ as though it were confined to a span
of thirty years and at a distance of two millennia. Given this, we should not be sur
prised that he perceives Barth's theology to describe the Spirit's activity as no more
109Rosato, p. 146.
110Rosato, p. 139, the role of human nature as the supremely necessary counterpart to divine
grace.
11 Rosato p. 144.

than informative112 and finds this to be unsatisfactory. He comments on the Church
Dogmatics that
the Pneuma is so obscured by Christ even in Barth's explicitly anthropological
pneumatology that He is deprived for all practical purposes of His proper
ontic function as the Father's creative power outside of Himself and His Son
and thus even beyond the incarnation and the Church. Such a statement is not
an heretical attempt to deny that Christian pneumatology is a study of the
Spirit of Christ, but it is an effort to underline the ontic and not merely noetic
import of the Spirit's activity in the entire world. The Spirit can maintain His
identity as the Spirit of Christ without working in every situation in an exclu
sively Christ-centered capacity.113
Corresponding to his desire to formulate a pneumatology that gives the Spirit a role
mediating the Father's love to all the world even beyond the incarnation and the
Church is Rosato's complaint that Barth's christology does not broaden the ontic
significance of his pneumatology but unnecessarily and unfortunately narrows it.114
Given the view that christology constricts pneumatology, we should fully expect that
Rosato's improvisations would diverge from Barth's Chalcedonian pattern, and that
such divergence might even be considered a measure of the success of such improvisa
tions.
Perhaps Rosato would object less to Barth's christological narrowness if
Barth did not seem to confine the continued presence and activity o f Jesus Christ to the
Church.115 Since the historical and cultural and geographical boundaries of the Church
and its influence contain the God of all the world, Rosato sees a place for reasoning
that the Spirit of God has at least some salvific presence ... in other religions and in
man's quest for religious meaning in general.116 But Rosato is very vague about this
salvific presence. Even if we say that the Spirit works through all the world in all
people, we have to take Jesus Christ and His work seriously. What do other religions
112This paper disagrees with that perception and discusses it later in this chapter.
113Rosalo, p. 165.
114Rosato, p. 166.
115CD IV/1, p. 661: The community is the earthly-historical form of existence of Jesus Christ
Himself. ... Jesus Christ also lives as the Crucified and Risen in a heavenly-historical form of exis
tence ... But He does not live only and exclusively in this form, enclosed within it. He does not live
only above human history on earth, addressing Himself to it only from above and from afar and from
without. He Himself lives in a special element of this history created and controlled by Him. ... This
particular element of human history ... is the Christian community.
116Rosato, p. 164.
54
55

have to do with the salvation that Jesus has accomplished?
What is a quest for
religious meaning, and what does it have to do with Jesus? Barth presupposes that
everyone needs an active part in covenantal relationship with the One God through
Jesus Christ in the power of the universally active Holy Spirit. This does not primarily
mean extensive information about details of the life that Jesus Christ led in Palestine,
but a real confrontation with the person. Abraham and Moses and King David, for
example, had the latter and little of the former.117 Rosato, while criticizing Barth for
being too reticent in describing the extent of the Spirit's activity in the world, makes
the opposite mistake of universalizing extent while losing content. The problem begins
to remind one o f the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says that our knowledge
of an electron's position and our knowledge of its energy vary inversely, so that if you
know one exactly then you know nothing at all about the other.
Rosato does not completely avoid giving the impression that the Spirit delivers
a bigger, more ultimate revelation of God than God's revelation of Himself in Jesus
Christ. His pneumatology tries to get around the theoretical difficulties caused by the
particularity of Jesus Christ, but he also loses thereby the concreteness of Barth's
pneumatology. If the Holy Spirit is the power whereby Jesus Christ confronts us today
in the late twentieth century, then all the Spirit's leading and working will center on
Jesus Christ. His salvific presence will be the presence, specifically and concretely, of
Jesus Christ. Rosato's improvisations do not take this into account.
H. The individualist's conversion by reason
The nature of conversion, i.e., the event of becoming one who engages in faith,
very naturally corresponds to the nature of faith. Since Barth sees faith as primarily a
personal relationship, and only then a matter of information, his doctrine of conversion
differs markedly from doctrines of those who adopt the Reformation's analysis of faith
(as notitia, assensus, fiducia) and then interpret it chiefly in terms of informational
knowledge. The reader should keep in mind that individualist models of the person
treat knowledge of other persons as information. Relational models of the person, by
contrast, treat knowledge of others as acquaintance or communion. Thus information
has its place in relational models, but a place subordinate to the communion.
117Cf. Calvin's remarks, Institutes, III.ii.32, about Naaman the Syrian (II Kings 5), Cornelius
(Acts 10), and the eunuch to whom Philip was brought (Acts 8).

David Wells explains118 conversion as follows:
Evangelical faith, as we have seen, is knowledge of, assent to, and trust in
Christ and God's promise of grace through him. Evangelical repentance is
turning from sin, now recognized as ruinous, to a new life o f following Christ
in righteousness, now embraced as the only hope of life. A person comes to
faith and repentance by coming to understand, believe, and perceive the appli
cation to himself or herself of the gospel message.119
Unlike Barth, Wells defines how we know and relate to Jesus by first looking at proc
esses of knowing and relating as they occur in the world around us, then formulating a
general rule of how we know, and finally importing this general rule of how we know
into the theological sphere for particular application there. According to that applica
tion, and as Wells explains the process of conversion in his book, we come to faith120
in Jesus by (1) acquiring an understanding of what Christianity says; (2) being
convicted by the Holy Spirit that these statements and claims are true and that we are
sinners, and being enabled by the Spirit to overcome the pressures o f unbelief121; (3)
perceiving that these statements and claims (which we now believe are generally true)
also apply specifically to us; and then (4),
knowing [ourselves] to be rebels and alienated from God, [we seek] in his
Christ forgiveness and acceptance and, having sought and trusted, [we are]
renewed by the Spirit and are impelled on to a life of truthfulness and love.122
118David F. Wells, Turning to God: Biblical Conversion in the Modern World (Exeter, U. K.:
The Paternoster Press / Grand Rapids, U. S. A.: Baker Book House, 1989). The Foreword indicates
the widespread acceptance of the views expressed in the book, saying on p. 9, This book is a report
and an interpretation of a consultation which was the second of two jointly planned by the Theological
Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Theological Working Group of the
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. See also the first report in that series, David Wells,
God the Evangelist: How the Holy Spirit Brings Men and Women to Faith (Exeter, U. K .: The
Paternoster Press / Grand Rapids, U. S. A.: Baker Book House, 1987), especially Chapter III, The
Gospel Made Effective, pp. 28-47.
119Ibid., p. 65.
120This four-part digest of Wells' scheme of conversion is largely derived from his summary on p.
65: Evangelical faith, as we have seen it, is knowledge of, assent to, and trust in Christ and God's
promise of grace through him. Evangelical repentance is turning from sin, now seen as ruinous, to a
new life of following Christ in righteousness, now embraced as the only hope of life. A person comes
to faith and repentance by coming to understand, believe, and perceive the application to himself or
herself of the gospel message.
121Ibid., p. 65.
122Ibid., p. 79. Contrast J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, 111., U. S. A.: InterVarsity
Press, 1973), pp. 34-36: What, then, does the activity of knowing God involve? ... first, listening to
God's word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting
56
57
Wells avoids the temptation to formulate a minimal catechism for the question, How
much knowledge is needed for conversion? by saying that the answer must be
formed functionally.123 We need enough knowledge to make us aware that we are
sinners, to show what Christ has done to remedy the situation, to see how the world
will look from within Christ, and enough to know what is asked of us as we believe
the gospel, and what will be required of us after we believe it.124 After these
guidelines he remarks,
Providing this knowledge not only establishes the basis fo r a relationship
with Christ but it also prevents evangelism from trading on misapprehension
or employing manipulative devices.125
While clear theological knowledge should indeed help to prevent these evangel
istic abuses, Wells ought to insist that such knowledge is based on our relationship
with Christ rather than the other way around.
Instead, the explanation here of
conversion makes us out to be the judges precisely where God has taken away our
incompetent usurpation of that function, precisely where He has made Christ to be
Judge.126 It bases our relationship with Christ upon ourselves, specifically on our
knowledge (surely a too fragile and undependable beast o f burden to carry so heavy a
load), and not in Christ Himself, who makes us His; and so it limits the reality of that
relationship to the extent of our understanding.
It makes conversion the result of
applying to ourselves our reflections upon theological axioms, instead of the result o f
being confronted by the Lord Jesus Christ.
It seems to make God a means of
God's nature and character, as His word and works reveal it; third, accepting His invitations, and
doing what He commands; fourth, recognising, and rejoicing in, the love that He has shown in thus
approaching one and drawing one into this divine fellowship p. 32. Packer in this book addresses
how one who is already a Christian engages in the activity of knowing God, rather than outlining the
process by which one has become a Christian; and his treatment accounts for our personal contact
with God more than does Wells' book: e.g., First, knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, as is
all direct acquaintance with personal beings. ... Second, knowing God is a matter of personal
involvement, in mind, will, and feeling. ... Then, third, knowing God is a matter of grace. It is a
relationship in which the initiative throughout is with God.
123Wells, Turning to God, p. 76.
124Ibid.
125Ibid., my italics. Cf. also on p. 58, The center of Christian faith is a relationship with God
through Jesus Christ that is based on understanding and believing the gospel.
126Cf. CD TV/1, pp. 231 ff., where Barth explains that Jesus Christ was and is for us in that He
took our place as our Judge.
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understanding theology or Scripture more clearly, instead of making theology and

Scripture means o f meeting and communing with God.
Similarly, on pp. 66-67 Wells discusses five conversion episodes in chapters 816 of Acts, all in terms of rational persuasion, making a judgment, and turning to
Christ on the basis of one's own judgment. Among these is St. Paul's conversion, dis
cussed in detail on pp. 49-58, concerning which he also remarks,
Paul already believed in the one God, accepted biblical revelation, under
stood its teaching on sin and the need for sacrifice, believed in God's judg
ment, and in some way anticipated a Messiah. This was not a small founda
tion upon which the gospel could rest!127
On the contrary, Saul's prior theology could in no way have been a foundation
for the gospel; it can only have been a stumbling block, preventing him from grasping
the gospel so long as he held to it. In the first place, it was seriously defective: How
could Saul's fierce version of monotheism, an anti-trinitarian belief in the one God,
be any sort of foundation for confessing the Son as God incarnate?
If we take
seriously that Jesus Christ was and is the one God incarnate; that He is the complete
Revelation of God towards which biblical revelation points; that in Him who takes our
sin we find God's abolition and rejection of sin; that He is the one true Sacrifice of
which the others were but shadows; and that this Man who is hanged accursed and
rejected upon a tree is the elect Son of David, the Messiah to whom Scripture points; if
we take all or any of these propositions seriously and then take seriously Saul's
sustained and violent opposition to Christians (and, according to Jesus' own words, his
opposition to Christ in those Christians and in the young Church), then we have to
reject the idea that his theology could be any such foundation.
In the second place, this theology consisted only o f a set of beliefs that Saul of
Tarsus held, and so did not constitute a reality beyond the scope of personal
theological affirmation. Wells summarizes the account of the conversion in Acts 9 as
follows:
Again, this was a man with a detailed knowledge o f Judaism and the Jewish
scriptures (9:1-2), an insider who was conversant with the beliefs of the early
Christians. It seems he had been moved by the martyrdom of Stephen (7:60)
and the Holy Spirit employed this and his knowledge of God's Word to bring
him to conviction and conversion.128
127Wells, Turning to God, p. 60.

l2SIbid., p. 66.
59
This summary of the account omits the event lying at the heart of Saul's conversion,
the central element explaining it, and the chief agent in it. Simply, Jesus met Saul on
that road. The account does not talk about the application o f detailed knowledge, or
about being moved or convicted; it says that Jesus knocked him over.
Saul's
acknowledgment, Lord, cannot rest here on his knowledge or on any aspect of his
faith, because Jesus Christ's self-presentation to Saul calls all of Saul's theology into
question.
We see him helpless on the ground, saying, Who are you, Lord,
confessing only ignorance and Lord. Without that acknowledgment he could only
have misunderstood. His acknowledgment, Lord, however, is accompanied by and
sets the context for knowledge that the Lord is the same Jesus whom Saul has been
persecuting. In the context of his continued acknowledgment he is given knowledge in
the form o f direction, Arise, and go into the city. Conversion means meeting Jesus,
being confronted by His reality, not just increasing the accuracy of a set of theological
affirmations.
Far from providing God with a foundation upon which the gospel
could rest, Saul's theology had to be shattered; it had to be killed and buried, as do all
aspects o f our humanity, so that God could raise it up again for St. Paul's use. He did
not simply forget all he had known, but it had to die to be resurrected.
To assert the priority of reality over our perception o f it, o f facts over proposi
tions about those facts, of Jesus Christ over our theology, does not deny the impor
tance of theology. If two people meet the same reality, then their descriptions o f it
ought to sound similar.
If two people both claim to know Joe Bloggs, but one
describes him as a tall, black-haired auto mechanic, and the other says that Joe Bloggs
is a ginger cat, we quickly conclude they are referring to two different objects by the
same name.
If my description of Jesus Christ diverges fundamentally from the
description given by the apostles and, following them, that o f the Church (for example,
if I deny the resurrection), then there is at least a prima facie case for thinking that we
are referring to two different objects by the same name.
By contrast with Wells' account, Barth's theology presents the process of con
version to faith in Jesus to be (1) that God sets us into an objective situation in Christ
of belonging to and being reconciled with Him prior to our knowledge of or response
to this work; and (2) that the Holy Spirit awakens us to the acknowledgment,
recognition, and confession of that situation. That is, he subordinates our perception
and understanding of the event to its prior reality. As we see in the next chapter, the
recognition (corresponding to Calvin's notitia, and to Wells' knowledge o f ... Christ)
is not preceded in time by acknowledgment; but acknowledgment, carrying recognition
60
with itself, has priority over it because true recognition depends upon that
acknowledgment. And that acknowledgment does not depend upon our recognition,
but only upon God's gift of itself. Otherwise our acknowledgment would be the result
of our judgment over God's presentation of Himself to us. Because we acknowledge
the lordship of Christ over us and our consequent discipleship under Christ, we are
able to perceive correctly and are moved to confess. No, this does not fit a general
epistemology, nor does it abstractly appeal to our intuition. It does, however, reflect
the Biblical description of conversion and of God's work, as Wells' presentation does
not.
HI. Barth's theology of conversion derives from his theology
of freedom and personal being.
We have examined several themes in Barth's theology of freedom and shown
their dependence on his assumptions about personal being. We now look at the com
bined effect of his understanding of freedom and personal being on his theology of
conversion.
Given those combined assumptions, Barth concludes that the event of
being set free can neither be chosen nor accomplished by its object. But the event of
liberation does produce true freedom in the one freed.
Conversion, which Barth also refers to as vocation, is the event in our exis
tence in which God sets us free.129 God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, now mani
fests in the history of each Christian the work He accomplished in the history of Jesus
Christ:130 in other words, Jesus Christ brought about our new creation, and the Holy
Spirit causes it to break out into the old creation by calling and liberating and
empowering us to live as disciples of Christ. With that preliminary understanding we
now look at the event and the One who acts in it, and at the freedom for us resulting
from His action.
A.
Conversion presupposes our personal freedom as its goal, not its
source. Thus conversion in Barth's doctrine, while it does not contradict the freedom
it leads to, has some features different from his doctrine of freedom. Perhaps the most
prominent difference is that God is the Subject of our conversion, whereas we our
129See CD IV/3, 71.6.

130See CD IV/2, p. 363: The Holy Spirit ... makes the power and lordship of the man Jesus ...
the presupposition which obtains here and now for us; and p. 365: Thus the work of the Holy Spirit
consists simply in the fact that it brings man back to his own beginning from which he lives and alone
can live. It does not burden him with any other ought than that of its liberating may.
61

selves are the subjects of our own free actions. Conversion as liberation requires a
Liberator. We do not thus arbitrarily impose an abstract relationship of liberation to
liberator on the material at hand, but take it from the concrete and particular actions
that God has accomplished in Jesus Christ for our benefit. The transition from non
freedom to freedom involves discontinuities as well as continuities in us, and therefore
requires that God span the gap between before and after.
God is the Subject of our conversion. More precisely, God the Holy Spirit
converts us by confronting us Himself in our own place and time, a meeting we could
never have brought about. This theme of God's here-and-now involvement with us
reflects Barth's motif of activism, which assumes God's active engagement with all His
creatures at all levels of their being and existence.
A more deistic or Pelagian or
mechanistic view of conversion would require a more static theological method and
would predicate attributes and capacities to men and women that they use to bring
about their own conversions.
Instead, the activism of Barth's method and content
excludes the conceptual confinement resulting from both indeterminism and determi
nism.
Barth, however, does not separate the Subject o f this action from the object.
Rather, in both his method and content, he maintains the unbreakable connection
between God and His creature in their irreducible distinction and integrity. When he
says in 16 that The one true God and Lord Himself, in the person of the Holy
Spirit, is His own state of revealedness for us,131 he indicates not only the depth to
which God Himself is personally involved with us, but also the complexity of that
involvement.
Barth identifies the subjective reality of revelation, and therefore the
source of our freedom for God, as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so we cannot
completely separate questions about our activity and being from questions about God's
activity. We are accustomed to investigate an object by isolating it to avoid confusing
it with other objects. This method presupposes that isolation establishes identity; that
is, we most clearly know what an object is and what it is like by separating it from
other objects.
We cannot expect to find any such method in Barth.132 While he
consistently and emphatically distinguishes us from God, he rejects the notion that we
can exist apart from our relationship with God, whether we know it or not; and there
fore any attempt to know ourselves at any level apart from that relationship, or, more
131CD 1/2, p. 204. This echoes what Barth had said in 12 (CD 1/1 (B), p. 449), that the Holy
Spirit is the subjective side in the event of revelation.
132Cf. Barth's remark, CDI/1 (B), p. 199, that the only competent witness in the matter of God's
confrontation is the man who stands in the event of real knowledge of the Word of God.
62
precisely, apart from the intimate and reciprocal communion which is the correct form
of that relationship, constructs a false image.133 Thus, even in the innermost aspects of
our being we find God worldng in, establishing, and freeing us.
To say that God converts us means it is He who puts us into the position of
faith, so that we find ourselves believing and knowing Jesus Christ and our salvation in
Him.134 We do not and cannot get ourselves into that position by our efforts or our
decisions or any other means. We could not choose faith without already having it.
God does not set conversion before us as one possibility among others, but as an
accomplishment He has achieved on our behalf. Barth often protests against the view
that conversion is primarily an achievement of our own decision.135 Yes, we do make
a decision: Between the being of the elect and his life as such there lies the event and
the decision of the reception of the promise.136 But this occurs after and because God
has brought us to Himself:
as Barth so graphically puts it, Faith is the simple
discovery of the child which finds itself in the father's house and on the mother's
lap.137 The Holy Spirit gives us faith and we exercise it.
Those who do not yet
believe are those to whom God has not yet given faith. Therefore, [a]ll that is possi
ble is a genuinely unlimited openness of the called in relation to the uncalled, an unlim
ited readiness to see in the aliens o f to-day the brothers of to-morrow.138
If we acquire faith by our own independent and autonomous choice, then faith
becomes the supreme and true and finally successful form of self-justification.139 By
contrast with that idea, Barth expounds the connection and relatedness to God that He
has established and maintains, and in which we acquire faith:
The Holy Spirit is the power in which Jesus Christ the Son o f God makes a
man ... genuinely free for this choice and therefore for faith. He is the power
in which the object o f faith [Jesus Christ] is also its origin and basis, so that
133See CD III/2, 46.2, pp. 344 f.: Since [man] owes it to God that he is and that he is man,
how can he be without God who gives him both? ... Man without God is not; he has neither being
nor existence. And man without God is not an object of knowledge. ... That man is not without God
has nothing to do with the religious convictions or behaviour in which he in some measure gives or
does not give honour to God.
134C D 11/2, p. 327: Faith is the opening of man for God as brought about by God Himself.
135See the discussion later in this chapter of Barth's rejection of the Hercules at the cross-roads
model of conversion.
136C D II/2, p. 321.
137CD IV/1, p. 748.
l3SCD IV/3, p. 494.
139CD IV/1, p. 617, where Barth says that is what faith is not.

faith can know and confess itself only as His work and gift, as the human
decision for this object, the human participation in it [i.e., in Jesus Christ]
which he makes in his own free act but which he can only receive ...140
Our faith does not establish a relationship with God, but derives from the relationship
that He has already established prior to our response. Barth describes faith as wholly
and utterly humility;141 not a self-chosen humility142 that is one option among many
others that the believer might equally well have chosen, but the humility of obedi
ence, which is not his own choice and invention. It is laid upon him. He is not
responsible for it.143 That is, faith accepts and perceives and proclaims a certain
objective situation, objective in the sense that it pertains regardless of any attitude
that the believer may have regarding it, and in the sense that it was brought about, not
by the believer, but by the object and source of that faith. Specifically, faith accepts
and perceives and proclaims that we belong to God, that He has given Himself to us,
and that He will not let us go.
Because God is the Subject of our conversion, there is necessarily some discon
tinuity in our understanding of the event in addition to the discontinuities in the event
itself. In 16 Barth divides the question of how someone becomes a Christian, how
man becomes a recipient of revelation, 144 into two components: how revelation comes
from Christ to the convert,145 and how this revelation then comes into the convert.146
He claims, however, that the transition from belief to unbelief is beyond our reckoning.
The actual shift from being a non-Christian to being a Christian is the province and
work of the Holy Spirit. Although we can look both backward and forward from this
event, the event itself is out of our sight. Just as the Holy Spirit Himself, and not some
process, accomplishes the transition, only the mystery of God in His work can fill the
conceptual gap in our analysis. Nonetheless, in our ignorance we can know that (1) it
is a person who works there; further, (2) it is God Himself who does this work, and
therefore (3) the transition (whether our own or someone else's) from being a nonChristian to being a Christian is out of our hands. This last point does not mean that
U0C D IV /l,p . 748.

u l C D IV /l,p . 618,
U2CD1V/1, p. 619.
U3CDIV/1, p. 620.
144C D 1/2, p. 222.
U5C D I/2, pp. 223-232.
U6CDI/2, pp. 232-242.
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64
we are merely passive or spectators. We exercise faith and proclaim the gospel; but
faith is a gift and endowment from the Holy Spirit that we have not obtained for our
selves. We have a new life, new freedom, new abilities, all o f which we use and none
of which we achieve. Having been given them, we appropriate and use them.
B.
Barth's doctrine of conversion presupposes his doctrine of personal
freedom in its character. The manner by which we are put into the position of faith
does not contradict the essentially free and personal character of that position, but
conforms to it.
Further, since we are concerned here concretely with freedom in
Christ, Barth constructs his doctrine of conversion in the light o f this freedom and not
as an abstraction, or some other proposed freedom.
1.
Formally, Barth rejects the approach of using some abstraction as the prin
ciple of freedom.
Freedom is not an empty and formal concept. It is one which is filled out
with a positive meaning. It does not speak only of a capacity. It speaks
concretely o f the fact that man can be genuinely man as God who has given
him this capacity can in His freedom be genuinely God.147
And although Barth's doctrine of freedom is consistent with the statement that
freedom is a matter of being able to act according to one's own decision (as we dis
cussed above), he does not use it as the controlling principle o f freedom. Using any
such abstract statement as the criterion or controlling principle of freedom contradicts
his theological method and ultimately its content.
Where we might expect to find some definition as the principle of freedom,
Barth refers instead to the Holy Spirit. That is, freedom is not simply a commodity
that the Holy Spirit supplies us; rather, He Himself is our freedom. Just as Truth ulti
mately is a Person148 and not merely a collection of propositions referring veridically to
a reality external to them, so Freedom is a Person, and not merely an ability to choose.
Even when he speaks of freedom as a capacity, as in the passage quoted above, the
power of this capacity refers only to the Holy Spirit:
The Holy Spirit is the quickening power in which Jesus Christ places a sinful
man in His community and thus gives him the freedom, in active self-giving
147CD IV/2, p. 494.

148See Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation (Carlisle,
U. K.: The Paternoster Press / Downers Grove, 111., U. S. A.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), especially the
section, Models of Truth, in chapter 9, pp. 293 ff.

to God and his fellows as God's witness, to correspond to the love in which
God has drawn him to Himself and raised him up, overcoming his sloth and
misery.149
The Holy Spirit is the power of this freedom, the power that constitutes this freedom.
The Holy Spirit is the power in which Jesus Christ the Son of God makes a man
free.150
We must also note, however, that although the Holy Spirit is our freedom,
Barth denies that our freedom is the Holy Spirit. That is, the Spirit sets us free, but He
also remains free.
In His activity on our behalf He defines and constitutes our
freedom, but our freedom does not define or constitute Him. He makes man free, but
He Himself remains free in relation to him: the Spirit of the Lord.151
In light of this formal move by Barth, within Barth's theology it is a contradic
tion in terms, in addition to being a contradiction of fact, to speak of freedom over
against the Spirit. 152 One could as well speak o f freedom over against personal free
dom, or truth over against the Word of God. To abstract freedom from the action
of the Holy Spirit is to move completely out of Barth's theological structure. The Holy
Spirit, in Barth's theology, is not so much another subject with whom we interact, but
the means (the power of God, therefore no less a Subject) by whom we interact with
God.
Just as the Spirit is our freedom, so He is our Liberator. Conversion thus cor
responds to freedom. When Barth refers to the Spirit's work in the title of 12.1,
God as Redeemer, he could just as well have titled it God the Liberator, since in
his section summary he defines the Redeemer as the Lord who sets us free.153 We
also see that Barth formally equates our freedom with the Holy Spirit when he says,
The space which the Holy Spirit makes outside the sinful being o f man which He
limits cannot be an empty space. He Himself fills it. For where the Spirit o f the Lord
is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17)the liberty for being on behalf of God and one's
149C D IV/2, p. 727, emphases mine.

150CD IV/1, p. 748.
m C D IV /l,p . 646.
152See Rosato's protest (p. 139) that Barth fails to grant human history and human experience an
independent role over against the God who comes to man as the Spirit of love and helps to direct his
course towards completion. See also his protest (p. 142) that in the end the human person possesses
no real freedom or proper identity of his own over against God's Spirit.
153C D //7 (B), p. 448.
65

brothers which the sinful man does not have as such, and the lack of which is the deep
est woe in which he finds himself plunged as a sinner.154
Conversely, the absence of the Spirit's action implies an absence of freedom.
Our freedom is not an attribute or property that we possess but is rather an activity of
the Holy Spirit with regard to us. Therefore we cannot have freedom apart from Him.
To speak of being apart from the Spirit is also to speak of being apart from our free
dom.155 Because Barth does not treat our freedom as some commodity that we pos
sess, it cannot act as a barrier or distance between us and the Spirit. Rather, our free
dom is a matter of the activity of the Spirit, and so it can only act as a medium of our
fellowship and unity with God.156
However, lest any conclude from Barth's remarks that he denies that non-Chris
tians have any freedom, we must return to his assertions that Man exists because he
has Spirit, and that man is not without God.157 There are no people who live at
some remove from God, or without the activity of God. Barth affirms the universal
presence and activity of God in creation and among and within all people.158 The dif
ference between the converted and the non-converted is not that the Spirit works in the
former but not the latter; the difference, rather, is that the Spirit, who works in both,
works differently in them.159 This does not imply that the non-converted has no free
dom at all, but only freedom as the Spirit constitutes her free. Because the Spirit has
l54CDIV/2, p. 530,
155C D 1/2, pp. 243 f., It is real in the Holy Spirit that we are free for God. And this settles the
fact that we are not free for God except in the Holy Spirit. ... It is God Himself who opens our eyes
and ears for Himself.
156This is an example of the motif of actualism that Hunsinger identified as one of Barth's
thought-forms (see Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, pp. 4, 30-32, et passim, and our discussion of
it in Chapter 2). Actualism here is Barth's alternative to what we might call substantialism, which
speaks in terms of self-located entities (substances) that have such-and-such properties belonging to
them. We see Barth's affirmation of actualism and rejection of substantialism as his theological form
again when he says (CD III/2, p. 348), From [God] man is, and his being and existence are. When
we say this, we do not describe a property of man. ... That man is from God and is grounded,
constituted and maintained by Him, is an event which is willed, decided and effected by God. It is
always on the basis of this act of God, and therefore not on the basis of a potency conceded to him by
God, nor of a kind of fixed relation of God to him, that man is.
157Both assertions from CD III/2, p. 344.
158C D III/2, p. 356, Spirit is, in the most general sense, the operation of God upon His creation,
and especially the movement of God towards man. Spirit is thus the principle of man's relation to
God, of man's fellowship with Him.
159CD 7/7/2, p. 359, As the elected and called and to that extent new man lives in the covenant
by the fact that God gives him His Spirit, the natural man also lives in the same way. The same Spirit
who is there the principle of his renewal, is here the principle of his creaturely reality.
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67
not (yet) liberated the non-converted into the freedom of fellowship with God, her
freedom remains (so far) limited to her creaturely being, which freedom and life the
Spirit also grants.
Again the Chalcedonian pattern appears in the way that Barth has shaped the
form of his theology. We have freedom to the extent of the Holy Spirit's liberating
activity, and in no way apart from that {intimacy). Yet the Holy Spirit remains Himself
and does not become our spirit, nor do we become God {integrity). Further, our free
dom is not something that we can generate, nor an attribute that belongs to us, but is
the continued activity of the Holy Spirit {asymmetry).
2.
Materially, Barth refers the content of our freedom to our being.
Abstractly, one could say that freedom means the ability to act according to who we
really are, or that it is a matter of being able to act according to one's own decision.
But both of these statements leave open the question of who we really are. Because
Barth does not leave that question open, but answers it concretely according to God's
work for us in Jesus Christ, our freedom is directly a matter of our relationship with
God. The free man is the man who can be genuinely man in fellowship with God. He
exercises and has this freedom, therefore, not in an indefinite but in a definite choice in
which he demonstrates this capacity.160
Barth looks to Jesus Christ to find the nature of our being. But Jesus Christ
has objectively reconciled us with God and thus has already objectively converted us to
God: In so far as He was and is and will be very man, the conversion of man to God
took place in Him, the turning and therefore the reconciliation o f all men, the fulfilment
of the covenant. 161 Our experience of conversion, therefore, becomes in Barth's the
ology the Holy Spirit's liberation and awakening and empowering to live according to
our objectively real being already established in Christ rather than in conflict with it.
Given Barth's understanding of freedom, it follows that the Holy Spirit's liberation,
which we here also call conversion, enables us to live according to our being as per
sons, whereas the unconverted live in contradiction of that being. In the context of
defining our humanity, Barth argues that by Spirit we have primarily and originally to
understand the movement of God towards man and therefore the principle o f human
relation to him and fellowship with Him, in which we do not have to do with man's
natural constitution but in some sense with his standing in covenant with God.162
l60CDIV/2, p. 494.
l6 lC D IV /l,p . 132.
162CD III/2, pp. 356 f. This is not to say that Barth understands the Holy Spirit entirely in terms
of His work of relating us to God (cf. 12.2, The Eternal Spirit, CD 1/1 (B), pp. 466 ff.), because in
68
That is, we do not possess our life as embodied soul, but depend for our lives upon this
action of the Spirit.163 Because this is the mode of our creaturely being, the Spirit
constitutes our capacity for being in relation to God, and therefore for being a person.
It is the Spirit who personalizes us, who awakens us to the meaning o f our personhood
at our conversion, and who empowers us to live freely as persons in relation to God.164
Our experience of conversion is the Holy Spirit's expression in our existence of
the conversion of our being that has already occurred in Jesus Christ. In other words,
the ontic work of the Holy Spirit is to link our existence with that of Jesus Christ and
with His work for us.165 It is by that linking that He brings healing into our existence
as persons. Personhood has been realised in Christ ... through the hypostatic union.
This ... is what should happen to every man in order that he himself may ... put on
Christ (according to Paul).166 Thus conversion is the revelation in us of Christ's
work fo r us.
By establishing this existential link with Christ the Holy Spirit
establishes us in the hypostasis and ekstasis that Christ has recreated and so constitutes
us a new being: He constitutes us a new subject.167 In other words, the Spirit
opens up our life to become relational.168
We emphasize here Barth's ontic language, in contrast with the noetic language
for which he is often criticized. In particular, Philip Rosato criticizes Barth's pneumatology for failing to attribute a creative and ontic function to the Holy Spirit.
He
claims that Barth casts the Holy Spirit in the role of God's own hermeneutics and
primarily the divine teacher who transmits the truth revealed by and embodied in
Christ,169 a much narrower function than that of the true mediator between objective
the context he has distinguished Spirit from the Holy Spirit by defining Spirit (CD III/2, p. 356) as
precisely the essence of God's operation in relation to His creature. Spirit is thus the powerful and
exclusive meeting initiated by God between creator and creature.
163See CD III/2, p. 359, Spirit is the event of the gift of life whose subject is God; and this event
must be continually repeated as God's act if man is to live.
164See CD III/2, p. 395, Man has Spirit, and through the Spirit is the soul of his body. This
means at least that, by reason of his creaturely being, he is capable of meeting God, of being a person
for and in relation to Him, and of being one as God is one.
165Cf. Zizioulas, HCHI, p. 435: Human nature in Christ recovers its ekstatic movement toward
God and has become a new creation in Christ, i.e. a nature which can have a hypostatic catholicity
in its reference to being.
166Zizioulas, HCHI, p. 442, italics his.
167See CD IV/1, pp. 749 ff.
168ZiziouIas, BAC, p. 112.
169Rosato, p. 133.

revelation and subjective faith.170 This assessment comes partly from a different view
of what is ontic and what is noetic, as we have previously discussed. Barth considers
faith, love, and hope to be alterations that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in our being
and existence171 and not just in our thinking, because these activities lie not simply
within us but within the fellowship that the Holy Spirit establishes between us and
God. Barth does not reduce the Holy Spirit to an informational conduit. Beyond and
prior to all teaching activities as such, the Spirit establishes in our existence the
relational ties that are ours in Christ. He creates for us and in us the gifts of faith,172
love,173 and hope, gifts that the Christian and not the Spirit exercises, but which the
Spirit and not the Christian creates.
Barth's description of the freedom that results from conversion is much more
positive than negative.174 That is, he concentrates on the new abilities and status and
activity with which the Spirit has endowed us more than he concentrates on the
encumbrances from which the Spirit separates us. We can see the biblical roots of his
view that freedom consists largely of enabling when he sorts the New Testament state
ments about the meaning and operation of the Holy Spirit into three groups:175 the
Spirit (1) guarantees our personal participation in revelation, (2) He gives us
instruction and guidance, and (3) He enables the language of Christians about Christ to
become testimony. Becoming and being a child of God is the material content of this
freedom that we have as a result of receiving the Holy Spirit. Thus, when we read
Barth's definition o f freedom as an ability or capacity or capability which is given to
man as the addressee of revelation and which makes him a real recipient of
170Rosato, p. 19.
171TV. B .: when Barth refers to the being of the new man in the form of faith, the being of man
in the form of Christian love, and the being of man [which] consists in Christian hope, (CD IV/1,
pp. 93, 99, 108, emphases mine) he has chosen his words deliberately and precisely, and in a manner
entirely consistent with his usage and perspective throughout Church Dogmatics.
172C D IV/1, p. 758, As we have seen, underlying it [faith] there is the presupposition of a creative
eventthe being and activity of Jesus Christ in the power of His Holy Spirit awakening man to faith.
173CD IV/2, pp. 778 : At this point we must be bold to make the direct equationthat the love
of God is the creative work of the Holy Spirit. ... The fact that human action becomes the reflection,
the creaturely similitude, of the divine can and must be described as the work of God's love and also
as the work of His Spirit.
174Barth, The Gift of Freedom, in The Humanity o f God (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox
Press, 1969), p. 78 (italics his): Human freedom is only secondarily freedom from limitations and
threats. Primarily it is freedom for. Cf. also Barth's criticism (CD IV/2, pp. 574 ff.) of Calvin's
curious over-emphasising of mortificatio at the expense of vivificatio.
175CDI/1 (B), pp. 453-456.
69

revelation,176 we need to keep in mind his discussion of our adoption177 as God's chil
dren, because this adoption specifies the abilities, capabilities, and capacities (i.e., the
freedom) that the Holy Spirit gives us. He tells us that the content o f the revelation
addressed to us is not mere information but God's total self-involvement with us.
Although Barth maintains that all his remarks about receiving the Spirit are
eschatological (i.e., related to what from our point of view is still in arrears for our
experience and thought 178), so that we are poor in ourselves, yet we are rich in God.
Barth claims that the Spirit establishes and preserves our room to live and
move, because He removes that which crowds us. He eliminates that which prevents
us from living freely as God's children. Barth does occasionally describe the Spirit's
work of liberation in negative terms, e.g., saying the Spirit disturbs our sleep in sin and
limits our being in sin.179 Positively, the Spirit not only provides space to live, He also
enables us to live in the space that He provides. He empowers us to do what we were
not able to do before: He reveals Jesus Christ to us,180 and our salvation in Him.181
He awakens us to faith, quickens us to love, and enlightens us to hope.182 He provides
instruction and guidance,183 He gives special gifts, and He enables us to hear and to
proclaim God's Word truly.184 He binds us to Christ185 so that we participate in Christ
176CD7/7 (B), p. 456.

111CD 1/1 (B), pp. 456-459.
178CD 1/1 (T), p. 531; (B), p. 464.
179CD IV/2, pp. 524 ff.
180CD IV/2, p. 323, Thus the Spirit who makes Christians Christians is the power of this revela
tion of Jesus Christ HimselfHis Spirit.
181 CD IV/1, p. 148, The Holy Spirit is the one eternal God in His particular power and will so to
be present to the creature in His being and activity, so to give Himself to it, that it can recognise and
embrace and experience Himself and His work and therefore the actuality and truth of its own situ
ation, that its eyes and ears and senses and reason and heart are open to Him and willing and ready
for Him.
182CD7F/7,p. 153.
183CD 7/7 (B), p. 454.
184CD 7/2, p. 751, That man really cannot really speak of God is only realised when it is known
that he really can really speak of God, because God Himself with his Word and Spirit steps forth ... to
make possible for man that which is not possible for him of himself.
185CD IV/2, p. 522, Barth, quoting Institutes o f the Christian Religion, agrees with Calvin that
the Holy Spirit is the bond (vinculum) by which Christ binds us effectively to Himself (1,1).
70
71

and, therefore, in the justification and the sanctification that He has accomplished for
us. In the power o f the Spirit, Jesus calls us to Himself.186
The Chalcedonian pattern also characterizes the material content of Barth's
doctrine of conversion. Accordingly, he rejects several frequently-used metaphors for
conversion, most notably force (any form of mechanism), magic (infusion with special
powers), and abstractly autonomous decision-making. As John Webster says, Barth
is at pains to point out that God's determination of human existence is not a factor
which has to be set alongside human self-determination in some sort o f coexistence or
synthesis of two equal or comparable powers.187
Instead o f putting God into
competition with His creation, Barth describes conversion as a liberation in which the
Holy Spirit works intimately within us, yet always distinct from us, and in precedence
before and over our own activity.188 Just as Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit,
was the one man who was free for communion with His Father, so also in our
conversion the Spirit sets us free for communion with the Father of Jesus Christ, who
has become our Father in Christ.
Just as our freedom is at all points due to the activity o f the Holy Spirit, so con
version as liberation must be due to His activity. Christians make their decisions to
follow Jesus Christ, not apart from the Holy Spirit, but in the Spirit's power; nor apart
from the Church as the body of believers, but as a result of the Church's proclama
tion.189
Barth rejects the idea that conversion is an event o f indeterminate,
independent, autonomous human decision.190 The whole idea of a possibility of faith

confronted by that of unbelief, the whole conception of man as a Hercules at the
crossroads able to choose between faith and sin (and therefore unbelief) is a pure illu-
186CD IV/3.2, p. 538, As Jesus Christ speaks with man in the power of the Holy Spirit, His voca
tion is vocatio efficax, i.e., effective to set man in fellowship with Himself.
187Wcbster, p. 35. Contrast Pinnock's analysis of freedom discussed earlier in this chapter.
188Although George Hunsinger uses the Chalcedonian pattern of intimacy, integrity, and asymme
try to understand divine-human double-agency, it also fits the event of conversion, which Barth
claims to have only God as its Subject.
189Barth remarks in CD III/4, pp. 575 f., that human existence within the limitations of one's
allotted time does not itself mean that one is a man who is called by God, a partner in His covenant,
a recipient and herald of the salvation accomplished by Him, a man in Christ. For this something
more is necessary: a special revelation of God in the special power of His Spirit; the service of the
community commissioned to proclaim this special revelation; and finally, in relation to this special
revelation, the special decision of repentance, faith and obedience on the part of the man himself.
190See Hunsinger, pp. 205 ff.

sion.191 Such an autonomous view of freedom presupposes some area of our being
and action in which God does not constrain us, thus giving it the character of freedom
from God.192 Barth rejects any such dualism or indeterminism that restricts the inti
macy and extent of God's redemption of us and communion with us, guaranteeing that
we may act according to what we are.
He characterizes our freedom as freedom
because o f God. This means every area of our being and action rests on God's prior
work of making room for us, where He defends us from that which He has rejected.
When we act true to ourselves, it is because God has enabled us so to act.
On the other hand, just as freedom is a matter of personal communion, so con
version as liberation is a personal and free event, not violating but establishing us as
persons. Therefore Barth rejects deterministic descriptions o f conversion that monistically reduce all our actions to God's actions. He rules out metaphors of magical or
mechanical193 forces to explain conversion, because these forces achieve their user's
aims by violating their object, treating people as objects and not as subjects, making us
the puppets o f a more powerful being. In Chalcedonian terms, monism (determinism)
wrongly confuses what dualism (indeterminism) wrongly separates. It reduces human
being and action to an extension of God's being and action.
Further, just as freedom has an asymmetric form, so does conversion when we
consider it as liberation. Consequently, Barth denies that we act as God's partners in
redemption.194 He treats redemption and grace not merely as an offer, but as an
endowment. God has accomplished our redemption and tells us about it. He does not
ask the Israelites if they want to be His people; rather, He informs them that they are,
He tells them how to live as His people, and He tells them the dangers of ignoring the
circumstances into which they, beyond their own choosing, have been put.
The divine decision is not made and cannot be made in him, in his spirit. It
can only be repeated. For how can he destroy himself as the old man, posit
himself as the new, and therefore free himself for the true freedom in which he
can believe? ... And how can the fact that he believes be anything meaner or
191C) IV/1, p. 746. Barth also refers to Hercules at the crossroads in CD II/1, p. 627, CD IV/1,
p. 616, CD IV/2, pp. 494, 495, and in Table Talk, p. 37.
192See the references to Cartesian freedom earlier in this chapter.
193Both determinism and indeterminism are formally mechanistic, although the manner of the
mechanism differs.
194By contrast, see Rosato's proposal (Rosato, p. 145) of a pneumatology in which man's spiri
tuality would ... be able to possess the relatively independent ontological function of probing towards
an encounter with God's Spirit on his own and of saying a free yes to God's Spirit when this privileged
encounter takes place.
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weaker or more doubtful than an absolute necessity, his most proper and
inward necessity, to obey which is not something strange but self-evident?195
Perhaps this last aspect of the Chalcedonian pattern, asymmetry, is the most
bothersome of the three to those who see freedom as the formal abstraction of choice.
In Barth's theology at least three features of conversion's asymmetry contradict our
ability to choose on our own.
The quotation above refers to one of them, a discontinuity of will. As we have
seen, conversion in Barth's theology is only secondarily a choice that we make.
Primarily it is an action of God putting us into the position of faith, and once we find
ourselves there we affirm that action as good: Faith is the simple discovery of the
child which finds itself in the father's house and on the mother's lap.196 The will
before conversion rejects God; the will after conversion affirms God. The Holy Spirit's
action connects the person before and after conversion, but our will does not.
A second feature of the asymmetry of our conversion, according to Barth's the
ology, is a discontinuity of reason. His rejection of natural theology includes his asser
tion that our reason cannot chart a path from unbelief to belief. Again, the Holy Spirit,
as the revealedness of God in us, connects the person before and after.
Third, even our analysis of the event of conversion is discontinuous. We know
that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us the transition from unbelief to belief, but that is
almost all we know about it. When Barth asks in 12.1, How do men come to say
[that Jesus is the Lord]?197 he does not answer by describing a process but by naming
a person, the Holy Spirit, who establishes and upholds us in communion with God.
The Spirit of God is God in His freedom to be present to the creature, and therefore
to create this relation [of the creature to God], and therefore to be the life of the crea
ture.198 Again, in 62.1 eight pages exhaust what he can find to say about the Spirit's
work of gathering people into the Church. He remarks, It is strange but true that fun
damentally and in general practice we cannot say more of the Holy Spirit and His work
than that He is the power in which Jesus Christ attests Himself, attests Himself effec
tively, creating in man response and obedience.199 Unable to produce any theological
analysis to stand between Christology and the doctrine o f justification (or
l95C D IV /l, p. 748.

l96CD IV/1, p. 748.
197CDJ/1 (B), p. 448.
198C D //i (B), p. 450.
199CD IV/1, p. 648.
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74

sanctification or calling) on the one hand, and the doctrine of the Church and of faith
(or love or hope) on the other, Barth can only declare that God Himselfconcretely,
the work and Word of the living Jesus Christ stands between the two.200
These discontinuities mean that God must come to our aid, and that we must
look to Him to supply what we cannot, both in the event of conversion and in our
understanding of it. Thus Barth has applied the theme o f asymmetry not only to the
particular doctrines of freedom and conversion, but also to the manner in which he
does theology at all.
IV. Summary and conclusions
Autonomy, or freedom, can have a wide variety of meanings, as John
Macken has shown in his historical survey.201 Why a theologian prefers one concept of
freedom over another very likely depends on presupposed notions o f how people are
related to each other (whether ontically, or merely socially or volitionally) and to the
purpose of our being and existence. The form of freedom in Barth's theology reflects
his statements about the nature of the person. Just as people are born into definite cir
cumstances and have a definite purpose, so also their freedom has a definite form. The
essence of freedom, therefore, is not the indeterminacy of a given choice, but the abil
ity to choose and live in the integrity of one's being, according to one's deepest pur
pose; in other words, it is the power to live as God's covenant partner, in communion
with God as one's heavenly Father and with all His other children as one's brothers and
sisters in Christ.
Conversion involves a decision one makes in the power of the Spirit's libera
tion. Having correct information or ideas at one's disposal is not enough. Nor does
anyone make this decision apart from Christ's particular self-revelation, or apart from
the proclamation of the Church. Conversion is a matter o f meeting Jesus Christ, of
hearing His voice above and beyond and in the proclamation of the gospel.
This
meeting will necessarily produce information and ideas, but they do not constitute the
meeting.
Conversely, we cannot ascribe the lack of conversion simply to ignorance.
Barth attributes the godless life of the uncalled, the non-elect, to an absence of the
Holy Spirit's work.202 This may look like he must conclude either with some double
200C D IV/1, pp. 649 f.
201Macken, pp. 1-19.
202See CD II/2, pp. 345 f. (italics his), To the distinction peculiar to the elect ... there
corresponds objectively their difference from other men. This difference is their calling. But their
75
scheme of election and rejection or with some scheme of universal salvation in Christ.
Instead, he leaves the question open. We find one clear example o f this in the final
three paragraphs of 70.3, The Condemnation of Man, where, after asking, Can we
count upon it or not that this threat will not finally be executed,203 Barth gives a
twofold response. First, if God does not finally execute this threat, then it can only be
a matter of the unexpected work of grace and its revelation on which we cannot
count.204 Barth firmly and explicitly rejects the formal pressure of a system to push
him into affirming apokatastasis, final universal reconciliation. But, second, he insists
that there is no good reason why we should forbid ourselves, or be forbidden, open
ness to the possibility ... that in the truth of [the reality of God and man in Jesus
Christ] there might be contained the super-abundant promise o f the final deliverance of
all men.205 He does not go on to speculate about the implications of these two out
comes.
Both universalism and the alternate problem of damnation by omission lie
beyond the scope of this paper. Barth does not consider that Scripture clarifies the
matter enough to do any more than leave it in the lap of God, which he does.
But even in this holding back from apparent completeness, Barth achieves in
his theology a goal more important theologically than systematic completeness. He re
directs us to God. This is not to say that a theology with more gaps is better than a
theology with fewer. It is to say that the question of salvation is for Barth a matter of
reconciliation and communion with God, and not a matter o f some God-ordained sys
tem grinding its predestined way to a result.
For our own salvation and for the
salvation of others we do not place our hope in any system; rather, [w]e put hope in
God as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ to be the hope of man.206
calling the work of the Holy Spiritis that by means of the community the election of Jesus Christ
may be proclaimed to them as their own election, and that they may be assured of their election by
faith in Jesus Christ, in whom it was brought about. This twofold possibility is the objective differ
ence between the elect and other men. ... Thus the difference of the elect from others, their isolation
and foreignness among them, is the witness to the truth.
But we caimot put this the other way round and say it of what distinguishes other men from the
elect. They lack this twofold possibility. They do not possess the Holy Spirit. ... To be without the
Holy Spirit, and therefore to live uncalled and godlessly, signifies an evil, perilous, but futile attempt
to live the life of one rejected by God.
2mCDIV/3.1, p. 477 f.
204Ibid.
205CD IV/3.1, pp. 477 fif.
206CDIII/4, p. 594.
Chapter 3
Subject and Object in the Action o f Faith

But since Christ has been so imparted to you with all his benefits that all his things
are made yours, that you are made a member of him, indeed one with him, his right
eousness overwhelms your sins; his salvation wipes out your condemnation; with his
worthiness he intercedes that your unworthiness may not come before God's sight.
Surely this is so: We ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from
him. Rather we ought to hold fast bravely with both hands to that fellowship by
which he has bound himself to us.
John Calvin (1509-1564), Institutes o f the
Christian Religion, HI.ii.24.
Thesis: Barth uses the language o f knowing and the language o f subject
and object to construct a theology o f faith that entails a relational model o f
personal being.
We have contrasted Barth's relational model of personhood with the more
common individualist model, and we have drawn out the implications of Barth's model
for the nature of human freedom. In brief, we have seen that if the nature of personal
being is relational, then the nature o f personal freedom is also relational, and we have
shown how Barth integrates this relational view of being and freedom in his doctrine of
conversion.
When we considered conversion as a liberation we only considered one active
Subject, namely, God.
We have seen that this liberation does not depend on our
actions or attitudes, but occurs in spite of them. But if Barth does not treat us as mere
puppets, as dumb stocks and stones that only receive action, he must also address the
nature of our actions regarding conversion. Just as liberation is God's action o f setting
us into our own place o f true freedom, so faith is our action of response to God's
liberation. Further, just as Barth's doctrine of liberation and freedom is thoroughly
relational, so he treats faith as an action that dynamically relates the subject of faith, us,
to the object of faith, Jesus Christ. Having looked in the preceding chapter at the lib
erating action of God in the life of the convert, we now look at the consequent action
of the convert whose life God has liberated into the discipleship of Jesus Christ.
I. Looking for a pattern
Faith is the believer's mode of communion with God. In relational models of
personal being, the connections between one person and another, particularly the con-
Ch. 3: Subject and Object in the Action o f Faith

nections between God and each man and woman, have their reality in God's making
prior to the response of the man or woman involved. God calls us to live according to
that reality. A life of faith affirms God's work in Jesus Christ, affirms who we are in
Christ, and affirms our being in relation with others: disbelief is the denial of that
reality.
Barth describes faith as a kind of knowing. We must carefully distinguish the
specific kind of knowing that faith is, however, because some models of knowing con
tradict the relational pattern of personal being that Barth's doctrine o f faith adopts. As
a kind of knowing, faith is more than a matter of concepts and cognition because it
actively relates persons to each other. Further, as a way of knowing, it does not fit the
same subject-grasps-object pattern that many models of knowledge assume. This does
not imply that Barth denies the existence of subjectivity or objectivity, or that he
reduces either to the other. Others have taken one of these roads. Barth has not. He
maintains that we are subjects, persons. He maintains that we are involved with a real
ity that is objective in the sense that it takes shape independently of us and prior to our
attitudes about it. But included in that external reality are other subjects. They are
objective to us in the preceding sense, but not objects that we can grasp and know
and comprehend like so many rocks.
They are not ultimately susceptible to our
manipulation and observation. Our knowledge of them cannot fit the subject-object
pattern which, like
the prevailing conception of science, based on the disjunction of subjectivity
and objectivity, seeks and must seek at all coststo eliminate from science
such passionate, personal, human appraisals of theories, or at least to mini
mize their function to that of a negligible by-play. For modern man has set up
as the ideal of knowledge the conception of natural science as a set o f state
ments which is objective in the sense that its substance is entirely determined
by observation ...1
This pattern does not fit our knowledge of other people, and it fits our knowledge of
Jesus Christ even less. A Christian doctrine of faith must conform to a pattern that
recognizes both the objectivity of Christ's work and the personal nature of our knowl
edge of that work. Barth's doctrine conforms to such a pattern.
Because Christ's objective work concerns persons, and because it is persons
who exercise faith, the understanding of what a person is will affect the construction of
M ichael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 15 f. Polanyi convincingly argues that even scientific knowledge of the
world around us does not fit this pattern, and that this prevailing conception of science is false.
77
78
a doctrine of faith. We will show that Barth's doctrine of faith presupposes a relational
model of the person, of the sort discussed in Chapter One. Consequently, he under
stands and describes faith as the believer's activity of knowing God as one person
knows another. We will also see that other theologians presuppose significantly differ
ent models of personhood, and that this presupposition, when left unexamined, pro
duces both disagreement with and misunderstanding of Barth's theology.
II. Faith presupposes Christs objective work for us.
Faith responds to God. Faith does not stand on its own. Christian faith refers
to something outside itself, beyond ourselves. This is why Barth rejects the practice of
Schleiermacher and his more or less loyal and consistent followers,2 who started
their theologies with the individual believer.
Following their approach, theology
could only be the self-interpretation of the pious Christian self-consciousness as such,

of the homo religiosus incurvatus in se.3 Barth, instead, begins his theology with the
God who tells us what He has done for us, then looks at what God has done, and only
then examines our place in this reality.
He claims that our faith presupposes and
responds to the real and objective work of Christ for us, which is there prior to any
thing we may think about it.
In particular, faith is the believer's response to the God with whom she finds
herself in communion. Faith thus presupposes the relationship with God into which
the believer has already been placed by Christ. Faith is the simple discovery of the
child which finds itself in the father's house and on the mother's lap.4 Faith is the
total positive relationship o f the man to the God who gives Himself to be known in His
Word.5 Faith is genuinely our own response, but a response within a communion, and
we find that the being and activity of that communion do not depend on our response
for their reality. Rather, our response presupposes the reality o f that communion in its
being and activity.
Objectivism: We find two distinct themes at work here. We cannot reduce
either of them to the other. George Hunsinger refers to these themes, or motifs, as
objectivism6 and personalism.7 The reader must keep both in mind throughout
2 CD IV/1, p. 153.
3 Ibid.
4 CD IV/I, p. 748.
5 CD II/l, p. 12.
6George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, especially pp. 35-39.
79
Barth's work (and this thesis) to avoid inaccurate, reductionist perceptions o f Barth's
intentions.8
Hunsinger says o f objectivism that it
has two important aspects. The one concerns knowledge of God, the other,
salvation in Christ. On the first, Barth was convinced that the knowledge of
God as confessed by faith is objective in the sense that its basis lies not in
human subjectivity but in God. ...
An important corollary ... was that God is revealed in God's unity and
entirety (II/1, 51-53). Nothing essential of God's identity ever needs to be
sought elsewhere, Barth argued, than in Jesus Christ. ...
... Just as God is ontologically present in Jesus Christ, so too is the human
race ontologically present in him in the sense that in and only in him is its own
true reality to be found. ... God's real presence to humanity in Jesus Christ
(revelational objectivism) is paralleled by humanity's real presence in Jesus
Christ to God (soteriological objectivism).9
Those who miss or ignore Barth's objectivism will necessarily produce corre
spondingly slanted interpretations of his theology. For example, when they examine
his theology of revelation or faith, they can easily conclude that Barth is not so differ
ent from Schleiermacher and his followers after all, another Enlightenment theolo
gian.10
Barth's vocabulary is heavy with knowledge-oriented words to describe our
participation in the objectively real relationship into which God has put us. But Barth
uses phrases like knowledge of God primarily to mean knowledge as relation, and
only secondarily knowledge as information.
That is, his theology describes a
fellowship and communion with God which God establishes and in which we
participate both cognitively and otherwise. And in our participation, as this commun
ion progresses, as God reveals Himself to us, we perceive and to some degree (but
only through a glass, darkly, I Cor. 13:12) we understand various aspects of who
God is and what He has done, and we think and speak about our perceptions and
7See Hunsinger, especially pp. 40-42.

8See, e.g., CDIV/4, pp. 18-30, for Barth's rejection of both christomonism and anthropomonism.
9Hunsinger, pp. 35-37.
10Alister McGrath judges him to be such in McGrath, Karl Barth and the Articuius iustificationis,"
Theologische Zeitschrift, 39 (1981):349-361. See also McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History o f the Chris
tian Doctrine o f Justification; Volume II: From 1500 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), pp. 170-183. His article Justification: Barth, Trent, and Kiing, Scottish
Journal o f Theology 34 (1981):517-529 also addresses related issues.

understanding. The reality of the communion, however, and our perception of it are
two different things.
But Barth's knowledge-oriented vocabulary does not mean that he was mostly
concerned with what goes on within people's heads. In his theology, revelation (as he
defines it, of course) completely governs the task of dogmatics, and it provides him
with a three-fold structure that he uses for developing his doctrine of the Trinity. He
consistently uses cognates of kennerf (to know, be acquainted with) for describing
the Christian's relationship with God, especially anerkennen (to acknowledge, appre
ciate, admit), erkennen (to recognize, perceive), and bekennen' (to confess,
avow). Two of his main metaphors for conversion (awakening and enlightening) have
heavy cognitive overtones. Such linguistic habits as these have led several reviewers to
write as though Barth painted conversion to be little more than a learning experience.
Alister McGrath defends Ernst Wolfs judgment that the Articulus iustifica
tionis is the center and boundary ( M itte und Creme' might also be translated hub and
rim) of Reformation Theology, with the application that all theology true to the Ref
ormation must start there and not seek to speculate beyond it. By contrast, McGrath
accuses Barth11 of being inclined to subordinate salvation itself to knowledge of
salvation.12
He acknowledges that when Barth abandoned his Christliche Dogmatik to start
afresh with Kirchliche Dogmatik he also shifted his method: it is now the fa c t, and
not the idea, of revelation which claims Barth's attention.13 That is, Barth shifted his
approach because basing theology on the idea of revelation would put a human
abstraction about revelation at the root of his work. Barth rejected such a method
because it surreptitiously gives our own ideas priority over what God has told us about
Himself. Instead of basing his theology on a human abstraction about revelation, Barth
grounds it on the concrete revelation that God has provided in Jesus Christ. But then
McGrath also asks,
Is the fact that God has spoken to man really what the Gospel is all about?
Has not Barth substituted divine revelation to sinful man where the divine
justification o f sinful man rightly belongs? In the present study, we propose
to demonstrate that Barth's treatment of the articulus iustificationis lends
considerable support to the thesis that Barth has merely grafted his soteriology, as expressed in IV /1, onto his theology of revelation without in any way
n Barth disputes W olf s judgment in CD IV/1, pp. 521 ff.

12Alister McGrath, Karl Barth and the Art. h i s t , p. 355.
13I b i d p. 350.
80
81
resolving the inherent contradictions posed to his theological method by the

epistemological assumptions which underlie it.14
McGrath here ignores what he previously noted, namely, Barth's attention to fact.
McGrath's question and thesis operate again on the level of an abstraction about
revelation.
They accuse Barth of substituting LDeus d ixif for the articulus
iustificationis. They accuse him of deriving a theology from the bare fact that God has
spoken, abstracted from the content of what God said.
Such a treatment by Barth
would contradict his repeated assertion that Christian theology must conform itself to
God's particular and concrete acts and not to our own a priori definitions and con
cepts. Such a treatment by Barth would make much of the fact that we have a Bible,
but it would never bother to open the Bible. Such a treatment by Barth in fact does
not exist. Deus d ixif for Barth pre-eminently means Jesus Christ. It is not an event,
much less a principle, that can be abstracted from Jesus Christ and still remain Deus
dixit in a Christian sense. Barth has not made the doctrine o f justification peripheral,
or grafted it onto his theology; rather, he has given it a place integral to the whole,
although not as center and boundary. No doctrine, either of justification or o f revela
tion, holds that position for Barth's theology. Only Jesus Christ Himself, not a formu
lated and therefore passive doctrine about revelation, but the powerful and active God
who reveals Himself, stands at its center and boundary.
McGrath's mistaken assessment results not only from a mistaken premiss (that
Barth's concerns are merely, or even primarily, epistemological), but also from faulty
reasoning. Referring to Barth's argument that,
The articulus stands et cadentis ecclesiae is not the doctrine of justification
as such, but its basis and culmination: the confession of Jesus Christ, in
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3); the
knowledge of His being and activity for us and to us and with us. ... If here,
as everywhere, we allow Christ to be the centre, the starting-point and the
finishing point, we have no reason to fear that there will be any lack of unity
and cohesion, and therefore of systematics in the best sense of the word,15
McGrath responds,
l4Ibid., p. 351.
l5C D IV /l, p. 527.
82

The correlation of the articulus iustificationis with Kenntnis and its cognates
is of the greatest significance, as it demonstrates that Barth is inclined to sub
ordinate salvation itself to knowledge of salvation.16
The success of McGrath's argument depends on a homonymy, specifically, an ambigu
ity in the way he uses the phrase articulus iustificationis
The question at hand is
whether the doctrine of justification is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.
That is, it is not a question of justification itself (something God has done, the iustificatio), but a question of how we describe that justification (something we formulate,
the articulus). Formally, it is a question about the place of one doctrine among others.
But he switches the meaning of the phrase in the quotation above: where Barth denies
that the doctrine of justification performs a central and limiting function in theology,
McGrath accuses him of questioning the content of that doctrine. McGrath effectively
accuses Barth of subordinating justification itself to our knowledge of it, or the
doctrine o f justification to a doctrine of knowledge.17 Barth does neither.
McGrath claims that Barth correlates the articulus iustificationis with knowl
edge (Kenntnis and its cognates)17 about salvation,18 and subordinates the former to
the latter. Barth does not even make this correlation, much less the subordination. He
never suggests that our concepts or understanding take precedence over the work of
God for us. Rather, in the passage that McGrath quotes, what Barth does is to corre
late a doctrine about God's work, the articulus iustificationis, with our communion
with (confession o f, knowledge o f ) Jesus Christ.
Barth's whole point, which
McGrath entirely misses, is that no doctrine can be the center and limit or hub and
rim of all other doctrines, because Jesus Christ Himself performs that function. Barth
subordinates the articulus iustificationis, a doctrine, not to another doctrine but to the
activity of communion with Jesus Christ. But even this activity of communion does
not have central place, because Jesus Christ Himself does. We must allow Christ to
be the centre, the starting-point and the finishing point.19 McGrath's claim, that Barth
puts an articulus revelationis into competition for the title of the Word of the
16McGrath, Karl Barth and the Art. iust.," p. 355.

17McGrath's complaint (ibid., p. 355) that Barth prefers 'kennen and its cognates where one would
expect terms such as Heil [salvation] or Versdhnung [atonement], stops short of recognizing that
Barth also prefers kennen (having an acquaintance with) and its cognates where he might have used
wissen (having information about) and its cognates. McGrath largely treats Barth's Kenntnis as a
Wissenschaft.
18McGrath says knowledge of salvation, but the context makes it clear that he means knowledge
about salvation, i.e., intellectual concepts.
l9C D IV /l, p. 528.

Gospel20 with the articulus iustificationis, clearly depends on a comparison that Barth
does not make. It further depends on the assumption that the articulus iustificationis
itself competes for that title. Barth insists that only Jesus Christ can hold that status.
Barth intends his dogmatics to point to something beyond doctrine, as faith points to
something beyond itself, namely, to Jesus Christ and our participation in Him. We can
see the nature of this participation in Barth's understanding of the nature of faith.
III. Faith involves the whole person.
Michael Polanyi claims that all knowing is personal. Discussing the manner in
which a subject apprehends or knows an object, he says,
I regard knowing as an active comprehension o f the things known, an
action that requires skill. Skilful knowing and doing is performed by subordi
nating a set of particulars, as clues or tools, to the shaping of a skilful
achievement ... Clues and tools are things used as such and not observed in
themselves. They are made to function as extensions of our bodily equipment
and this involves a certain change of our own being. Acts of comprehension
are to this extent irreversible, and also non-critical. For we cannot possess
any fixed framework within which the re-shaping of our hitherto fixed
framework could be critically tested.
Such is the personal participation of the knower in all acts of understand
ing. But this does not make our understanding subjective. Comprehension is
neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claim
ing universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of estab
lishing contact with a hidden reality; a contact that is defined as the condition
for anticipating an indeterminate range of yet unknown (and perhaps yet
inconceivable) true implications. It seems reasonable to describe this fusion
of the personal and the objective as Personal Knowledge.21
Thus Polanyi asserts both the knower's involvement in the act of knowing and the
objectivity of the knowledge. We cannot eliminate the person who knows from this
act of knowing. Acts of knowing cannot therefore be neutral, because they depend on
the subject's skills for knowing, and demand a commitment on the part of the
knower:
It is the act of commitment in its full structure that saves personal knowledge
from being merely subjective. Intellectual commitment is a responsible deci
sion, in submission to the compelling claims of what in good conscience I
20McGrath, Karl Barth and the A rt. iust.. p. 357.

2'Polanyi. Personal Knowledge, pp. vii-viii.
83

conceive to be true. It is an act of hope, striving to fulfil an obligation within
a personal situation for which I am not responsible and which therefore deter
mines my calling. This hope and this obligation are expressed in the universal
intent of personal knowledge.22
By breaking away from the old model of knowledge, which required an essen
tial detachment of the knower, Polanyi forces us to account for the knower's participa
tion with the object known.
The much more complex event in which the believer
knows Jesus Christ is such a participation. Both Barth and Polanyi address the problem
of dependable access and reference to the object of knowledge, within the context of
personal involvement.
Both claim that we can talk reasonably about an external
(objective) reality with which we are personally engaged.23

Hunsinger, who has described Barth's concern with objectivity, also defines
the motif that he call Barth's personalism:
Personalism is a motif governing the goal of the divine self
manifestation. God's objective self-manifestation in revelation and salvation
comes to the creature in the form of personal address. The creature is
encountered in such a way that it is affirmed, condemned, and made capable
of fellowship with God. Fellowship is the most intimate of engagements and
occurs in I-Thou terms. The creature is liberated for a relationship of love
and freedom with God and therefore also with its fellow creatures.24
The personalist motif shows up most obviously whenever Barth speaks in
terms of I-Thou relations. In Jesus Christ (objectivism), God establishes an
active, historical relationship with us (actualism), a relationship of love and
freedom, and thus a relationship of deepest intimacy (personalism). It is the
event of an I-Thou relationship. ... Objectivism is the condition which makes
personalism possible, and personalism is the goal which objectivism estab
lishes and entails.25
This personalism characterizes faith in Barth's doctrine because, for him, faith con
cerns primarily the reality of an encounter between Jesus Christ and a believer. Spe
cifically, it concerns the believer's side of that encounter. But even though faith is a
22Ib id , p. 65.
23See Robert T. Osborn, Christian Faith as Personal Knowledge, SJT 28 (1975), and his claim (p.
101) that Polanyi's epistemology ... is a most helpfnl hermeneutic for the understanding of Christian
experience.
24Hunsinger, p. 5.
25Hunsinger, p. 41.
84

form of knowledge,26 this knowing is of an intensely personal, and therefore rela
tional, nature.
IV. Faith relates the whole person to Jesus Christ.
Barth uses a knowledge-oriented vocabulary to describe a faith that means
meeting Jesus Christ. Christian faith is the gift of the meeting in which men become
free to hear the word of grace which God has spoken in Jesus Christ in such a way
that, in spite of all that contradicts it, they may once for all, exclusively and entirely,
hold to His promise and guidance. ... In Christian faith we are concerned quite deci
sively with a meeting.27 Faith is no mere accumulation of accurate theological
concepts, but our on-going response to Jesus Christ as He continually presents Himself
to us.28
Barth's three-part analysis of faith29 as acknowledgment (.Anerkennen), rec
ognition (Erkennen), and confession {Bekenneri) implies that faith has the nature of a
subjective response to an objective reality. By contrast, the words that McGrath wants
Barth to use, such as H eil and Versohnung, indicate the work of Christ which our faith
(as Barth also makes clear) presupposes, but they do not indicate either our response
to that work, or that it is not just Christ's work but Christ Himself to whom we
respond. Barth uses his knowledge-oriented vocabulary to indicate all three elements
from the direction of the believer: (1) the act of the believer (2) towards Jesus Christ
(3) in response to Jesus Christ's act toward the believer.
But the objective reality to which we respond is not merely an object, but
another person, Jesus Christ. He is not merely there like an object to be compre
hended; He is active, and He confronts and embraces us as His own. Thus faith has
the nature of a personal response to another personal reality.
26CD IV/l, p. 758, Faith is an acknowledgment, a recognition and a confession. As all these terms
indicate, it is a knowledge.
27Dogmatics in Outline (London: SCM Press, 1949), p. 15. Cf. p. 17, The Word of God's grace in
which He meets us is called Jesus Christ.
28Cf. John Webster, Barth's Ethics o f Reconciliation, p. 6, [N]o view of Barth is adequate which
construes his understanding of revelation as simply epistemological, in the sense of a deposit of
knowledge of essentially a- or pre-temporal states of affairs or divine acts. See also Webster's analy
sis, pp. 5 ff., of McGrath's interpretation of Barth.
29CDIV/1, 63.2, pp. 757-779.
85

Acknowledgment: Barth deliberately rejects the appeal of common sense and
reverses30 the first two elements in Calvin's analysis of faith (notitia, assensus, and
fiducia31) because the original order, in its common-sense concern for formal logic,
does not exhibit a proper theological concern for the specific natures of the subject
(us) and object (God) of faith and their concrete relationship as given in Holy Scrip
ture. Acknowledgment is the basic moment in the act of Christian faith.32 And,
although it is not without an attendant recognition of the object, yet our self-subordi
nation to Jesus Christ takes priority over the content of what we perceive about Him
and is the setting in which that perception takes place. It is because we know Jesus
Christ that we are able to know about Him; we do not come to know Him simply as a
result of having certain information about Him
Recognition, although more susceptible to merely psychological interpreta
tions, is also a relational aspect of faith. Here, too, faith orients itself to an external
object, with the specific character of conforming the believer's mind to that object.
What does it mean when I know that it is true, that it is actually the case, that Jesus
Christ is for me, that He takes my place, that I am the possession which He controls,
which He has controlled from all eternity, that He has died and risen again for me? ...
From this knowledge, from the recognition characterised by this knowledge, does there
not necessarily follow a total disturbance of my being, a radical decision in relation to
my situation vis a vis myself and the world?33 Recognition could be taken to focus on
what is going on within the believer only if we forget its object and the total distur
bance overflowing into results also external to the believer. Recognition unquestion
ably includes and emphasizes the cognitive side of faith, but Barth firmly and clearly
puts it within a deeper and broader event.34 Yes, faith involves events within the
30Again we see his theological method at work here. Although Calvin's structure is self-evidently
applicable to other objects of knowledge, Barth (here as elsewhere) questions the applicability of gen
eralities to theological work. Upon examination, he finds that we cannot generalize directly from our
manner of knowing other objects to our manner of knowing God.
31The only thing is that acknowledgment is much more than assensus and recognition than
notitia, CD IV /l, p. 759.
32CDIV/1, p. 760.
^ C D IV /l, pp. 766 f.
34Faith is a recognition only to the extent that recognition is included in that obedient and compli
ant taking cognisance, CD IV /l, p. 761.
86
87
believer's consciousness,35 but we cannot isolate these inner events from the commun
ion between him and Jesus Christ.
Barth's analysis does not exclude the possibility that elements of recognition
can precede acknowledgment.
The unbeliever may recognize that Jesus is Lord
without acknowledging Him as such, at least in the rudimentary form of saying, Here
is One to whom I owe submission but do not choose to give it.
But even this
recognition from the unbeliever is not the same as similar words from the believer:
The unbeliever does not know the Lord truly, else he would believe; and the believer
understands the words Lord and submit and owe and even I (and the realities to
which they refer) very differently from the unbeliever. Further, no amount o f analysis
by the unbeliever can of itself lead to belief. Although a believer may well have been
led to faith in Christ by reflecting on the claims of Christ and on the probabilities of
their truthfulness, those reflections alone do not account for the believer's eventual
faith. People in Christ's own day, who had a closer look at the events involved, and
who even saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, decided that they needed to kill Jesus
(John 11).
Confession constitutes the third element of a logical progression: acknowl
edgment concerns the primary area in which faith acts, namely, between the believer
and Jesus Christ; recognition stresses resultant activity within the believer, still oriented
to its external object; and confession again occurs between persons, directing us away
from ourselves both to God ('about whom we bear witness) and to those around us (to
whom we bear witness).
This revision of faith's structure, from notitia / assensus / fiducia to acknowl
edgment / recognition / confession, and especially the (logical, not temporal) priority
that Barth gives to acknowledgment over recognition, may appear vulnerable to the
criticism that Wolfhart Pannenberg makes regarding Paul Althaus' remarks on the rela
tionship of faith and knowledge.36 While they agree that faith is a gift of God, they
disagree concerning the connection that knowledge has with faith. Althaus asserts that
faith itself grounds and includes this knowledge or apprehension,37 and that the
35Taken alone, as an abstract knowledge of God and the world and even of Jesus Christ, it can only
be described as unimportant and even, as James 219 tells us, negative, a possibility or impossibility of
demonic being, CD IV /l, p. 765.
36Pannenberg in Basic Questions in Theology, Volume II, Chapter 2, Insight and Faith
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 28-45, responds to Paul Althaus' article, Offenbarung als
Geschichte und Glaube: Bemerkungen zu Wolfhart Pannenbergs Begriff der Offenbarung, Theologische Literaturzeitung 87 (1962): cols. 321-330.
37Pannenberg, p. 29, citing Althaus' article (col. 324); italics as in Pannenberg's citation.

knowledge that belongs to faith is first disclosed in believing reception of the mes
sage.38 Pannenberg answers that knowledge of the content of faith {notitia with
assensus) remains the logical presupposition of the trust which is based upon it.39 He
sees in Althaus' formula the implication that the decision o f faith is the ground of cer
tainty with regard to the content of faith, which abandons the founding of a faith
upon a truth outside myself ... in favor or a self-grounding of faith.40 If the
moment of decision becomes foundational for the structure of faith, then the bond with
truth outside myself ... is irretrievably lost.41 Can a similar response be made to
Barth? Does his asserted priority of acknowledgment over recognition imply a priority
of the believer's decision over knowledge o f the truth outside herself?
Barth escapes Pannenberg's criticism of Althaus because his analysis of faith
grounds faith in an external, objective reality even more clearly than Pannenberg does.
In the first place, the element(s) of decision or trust are not grounded on other subjec
tive processes. In saying that trust is grounded upon knowledge, Pannenberg relates
one cognitive process within the subject to another such process. The difficulty is how
to break out of this dualism that seems to separate faith as an activity within the Chris
tian from the reality that lies outside. Barth claims that the Holy Spirit bridges that
gap. We did not get ourselves into the orientation that we call faith; rather, the Holy
Spirit has put us there: the Christian is not in control. He simply finds himself in that
orientation. He accepts it. In it he sees and reaches out and grows beyond himself.42
Thus any decisions of faith that the Christian makes, any activities of faith in which the
Christian engages, have as their basis the relationship with Jesus Christ and the Chris
tian's cognition of that relationship. Barth claims that both the relationship and the
Christian's cognizance of it are the work of the Holy Spirit and not of the Christian.
Faith is not one formal possibility confronted by another formal possibility of unbelief,
both possibilities being empty until we make a decision. Our unbelief and the Holy
Spirit's gift of faith both have more solidity and power and actuality than that: Faith
makes the solid actuality of unbelief an impossibility. It sweeps it away. It replaces it
by itself. It does not build a bridge over the gulf. It closes it.43
38Pannenberg, p. 31, quoting Althaus' article.

39Pannenberg, p. 30.
42CD IV/L p. 744.
43CD IV/I, p. 746.

We can say with Pannenberg that trust is based on knowledge only if by
knowledge we mean more than subjective and abstract critical analysis. Knowledge
of Jesus Christ can properly refer only to the activity between two persons, in which
one person knows another. It does not properly refer to an activity within one person,
in which a knower reflects on certain concepts and assents to them. This is what Barth
protests against when he says, In all the so-called truths of faith we have to do with
the being and activity of the living God towards us, with Jesus Christ Himself, whom
faith cannot encounter with a basic neutrality, but only in the decision of obedience.
The idea of an abstract knowledge of this object... is one which has no substance.44
Pannenberg does not in this article reject the idea that the Holy Spirit works in
this way. True, he does say, An otherwise unconvincing message cannot attain the
power to convince simply by appealing to the Holy Spirit. The fact that the one who is
convinced by the message confesses that this apprehension was affected [s/c] in him by
the Holy Spirit must not be misunderstood as if the Spirit were taken to be the crite
rion of truth of the message. On the contrary, it is much more the assurance that one is
speaking in the power of the Holy Spirit that is itself in need of a criterion for its
credibility (I Cor. 12:1 f.), and this criterion is the testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ (I
Cor. 12:3), thus, the content of the message. The convincingness of the Christian mes
sage can stem only from its contents.45 Philip Rosato quotes this passage to support
his own claim that by substituting the Holy Spirit for man's own reasoning ability,
Barth misuses the biblical concept of the Spirit ... [As a result,] reason is engulfed in
faith; the Gospel alone grants intellect meaning. Man's mind on its own cannot yearn
for the Spirit of Christ whom it judges to be the fulfillment o f its graced potentiality
from creation.46 Pannenberg's point is that reference to the Holy Spirit does not add
anything to the content of the message, so that the preacher's claim of the Spirit's
endorsement does not make an otherwise unconvincing message more convincing.
Barth doesn't do that. Although Rosato rightly points out that Barth assesses human
powers of reasoning to be inadequate for bringing anyone to faith, this extract from
Pannenberg does not support Rosato's argument against that assessment. Pannenberg's
position is in fact closer to Barth's than to Rosato's here. Pannenberg says,
The illumination that is necessary in order to clear away the pre-judgments
standing in the way of unencumbered perception of the event that reveals God
44CD IV /l, p. 765,

45Pannenberg, pp. 34 f.
46Rosato, The Spirit A s Lord, p. 150.

thus, in the nature of the case, adds nothing substantive to the content of this
event or to the content of the message that reports about it and its meaning.
... In the context of what has been said, no special explanation is needed to
understand that even faith itself is effected by the Spirit, i.e., by the eschatological reality of new life that has appeared in Christ, of which the Christian
message speaks. This means nothing else than that the hearers of the message
really receive its content into themselves.47
With Pannenberg, Barth recognizes that the Holy Spirit has a lot of work to do clear
ing away our pre-judgments and giving us the freedom and ability to perceive God
aright. Barth and Pannenberg both, unlike Rosato, recognize that the sinner's ability to
reason needs profound correction by the Holy Spirit before the sinner can perceive
God aright.
But unlike both Rosato and Pannenberg, Barth clearly breaks away from the
Cartesian dualism dividing our reasoning from external reality. This is not a claim that
finitum non capcix infiniti, or even a claim that peccator non capax verbi Domini; it is
the question of how one person knows another, a question of how the self is con
fronted by and recognizes and relates to another self. Thus the differences between
Pannenberg and Barth amount to Barth's insistence on the centrality and necessity of
the Christian's encounter with the risen Christ. For Barth, faith is more than one per
son's mental processes, it is a matter of an active relationship between persons.
Specifically, it is the disciple's side of a continuous encounter with the risen Christ,
whom the disciple acknowledges and recognizes and confesses as Lord. Because faith
is the manner in which the Christian knows her Lord, it requires a real correspondence
and connection between the Christian as knower and Jesus Christ as known Lord. To
clarify what that correspondence and connection are, Barth will have to employ a
model of inter-personal knowing that does not succumb to Cartesian dualism.
V. Seeking a model for the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
Before examining directly Barth's model of the Holy Spirit's work in us, we will
look at Barth's pneumatology through the eyes of one of his critics, Philip Rosato. Our
purposes in doing so are to set up a foil for Barth, to establish for ourselves (with
Rosato's aid, but also at a distance from him) a series of questions to address to Barth,
and to trace along the way what a difference it makes when a reader works within
assumptions about the nature of personal being that differ from Barth's.
47Pannenberg, pp. 42 f.
90
91

Philip Rosato presupposes a different model of the person in his very
enlightening and useful analysis of Barth's pneumatology. Rosato sets the tone of his
study by looking at Barth's understanding of the Holy Spirit's work as Vermittlungsp rin zip A% He traces Barth's idea that theology needs a Vermittlungsprinzip, or mediat
ing principle, back to Liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Because it draws
on such diverse sources, he calls Barth's resulting pneumatology Idealist in form, but
Evangelical in content.49 That is, Barth thinks that the idea of a mediating principle
fits Scripture, but he also thought that those who first came up with the concept use it
wrongly. Liberal Protestantism attributes the role of mediating principle to our con
sciousness or self-understanding, and Roman Catholicism attributes it to the Church.
Barth affirms instead that the Holy Spirit is God's own self-mediation between the
unique event of Jesus Christ and its universal import for mankind.50 Barth's own
pneumatology is at its core a search for a theologically legitimate principle of
mediation at the center of Christian dogmatics at the point where the transition is
made between Christ and the Christian. Only the Holy Spirit, the divine mediator, can
validly serve this function.51
It is difficult to determine whether Rosato recognizes that Barth's concept of
the person is relational and not individualistic.
Broadly speaking, the criticism in
Chapters VII and VIII takes the individualist model for granted as exclusively valid,
whereas the earlier chapters summarize Barth's pneumatology in language ambiguous
enough to be interpreted either way. For example, when he says, Christians united in
community are in possession of a new ability not only to be addressees of God's objec
tive self-revelation, but also its real recipients,52 and that the believer has become the
recipient of a new capacity,53 how precisely or loosely he means possession and
capacity is not clear. Barth avoided such words. They make it seem that the event
of revelation is to some degree in our hands and under our control. They vest us with
independence over against the work of the Spirit, as contrasted with Barth's view that
these abilities and capacities reside primarily in the Holy Spirit and only derivatively in
us as the Spirit acts in us. On the other hand Rosato writes,
48Rosato, pp. 17-22.

49Rosato, p. 19.
50Rosato, p. 20.
5Rosato, p. 21.
52Rosato, p. 71.
53Rosato, p. 71.
92
Barth [agrees] that faith is essentially a relationship of a son to his Father and
that this relationship is one of complete dependence. ... Faith is surely a rela
tion to the Father which the Christian experiences as a real possession,54
and
Faith, the new way of being through the work of the Holy Spirit, is man's
anticipatory share in the fulfillment promised to him by God. The Holy Spirit
is God presently granting man an ontic part in His own being and making him
cognizant of this gift in the noetic sign of faith. By insisting that ontology,
pneumatology and eschatology are intrinsically related in the New Testament,
Barth intends to preclude any confusion of the revealed truths o f pneumatol
ogy with the abstract speculations of anthropology,55
and
there exists an ontological connection ..., totally independent of man's
noetic understanding of it, between Jesus Christ and humanity.56
These expositions of Barth, and the others like them, do not unequivocally imply either
model of personhood, nor do they clearly exclude either model.
In any case, Rosato's own theological method,
as exhibited in his
Improvisations in Chapters VII and VIII, either presupposes an individualist model

o f personhood or advocates it without adequate support. This is especially evident in
the way he maintains a clear separation and distance between the individual person and
all else. The integrity of the person in an individualist model can be guaranteed only by
preserving the boundary that divides her from all that she is not. She must therefore
have freedom over against God.57 Even though the Spirit's work originates this free
dom, this produces a being which must thenceforth remain external to, and inviolable
by, the Spirit, who can only accompany58 her or [drive her] towards [her] promised
participation in the Father's Kingdom.59 In this model God's sovereignty must either
54Rosato, p. 72.
55Rosato, p. 74.
56Rosato, p. 123.
57Rosato, p. 139.
58Therefore Rosato says, p. 139, that in Barth's pneumatology, Man's own actions which are
accompanied by the power or the Spirit are deprived ... of any mediating role.
59Rosato, p. 139.

compete with our full personhood or hold itself back.60 Thus Rosato complains that
Barth does not fully respect man's cooperation with the Spirit's liberating activity.61
Without such cooperation, the Spirit's activity can easily become an imposition on its
object. To prevent such apparent one-sidedness, Rosato's account has the Holy Spirit
manifest Himself through human potentialities so that man's search for God is fulfilled
when he meets the Spirit who graciously comes to him.62
Because Rosato presupposes this model, he can only understand faith as pri
marily and properly and originally a decision that we make. The model maintains an
inviolable boundary between the person and what is not the person. Sheltered by this
boundary, faith can only take the form of internal consent to external claims, given on
the basis o f criteria that the person internally possesses and controls. What is called
for is a pneumatology which respects God's desire to make the Christ-event known to
all men through the Holy Spirit, but which also respects man's free intellectual power
as the means which the Holy Spirit wisely uses to create the full manifestation of divine
truth which is most intense in Jesus Christ, while it still seeks for ontic reinforcement
until Christ returns.63 Rosato sees faith primarily as a decision we make with regard
to specific information. Where Barth insists that our freedom lies m the Spirit, Rosato
insists that we must finally have freedom from the Spirit.64 This means that faith must
have its origins in us, although Rosato does not say as much. Even though Rosato
proclaims it as essentially a relationship of a son to his Father,65 he vitiates the inher
ent asymmetry of sonship by making God and the believer to be peers in the process of
son-making. He aims at producing a theology in which man's spirituality would be
able to possess the relatively independent ontological function o f probing towards an
encounter with God's Spirit on his own and of saying a free yes to God's Spirit when
this privileged encounter takes place.66 In this scheme, instead of adopting us, the
Father adopts a program whereby we are allowed to adopt Him. Faith, our decision,
60Rosato, pp. 139 f., asserts of Barth's theology, Thus, for the sake of the Spirit's sovereignty, man
cannot be a free participant in the divine-human encounter which occurs in salvation histoiy.
61Rosato, p. 136.
62Rosato, p. 204, footnote 29. Rosato here attributes this view to The Greek Fathers (contrast
Zizioulas' understanding of those same fathers!), but it characterizes his own work.
63Rosato, p. 152.
64Rosato writes, p. 153, that Barth will not concede that man is created by God with a nature which
is open to the Spirit's proddings, but which is at the same time free to accept or reject God's immanent
spiritual activity on both a soteriological and an anthropological level.
65Rosato, p. 72.
66Rosato, p. 145.
93
94
inaugurates our sonship by independently accepting an offer that God has made, an
offer that we might equally well have rejected. Our decision produces the reality.
Correspondingly, God's activity of applying redemption to us comes chiefly
through His appeal to our reason. Our reason constitutes the only legitimate portal to
the person through that boundary which maintains the person's integrity: the Spirit
must be described as God's life-giving power who allows man to possess from the
beginning a rational nature so that he can be receptive to God's eschatological activity
and freely respond to it.67 The possibility of revelation depends on capacities lying
within and inherent to us, particularly our created rational ability to absorb, digest,
assess (according to criteria that we also control by our manipulation), and assent to
the claims that revelation makes. If man's intellectual faculties are seen as completely
darkened except for the light which the Holy Spirit brings with revelation, a denial of
revelation's very possibility is involved, since the ability of man to consent to the claims
on truth made by the person of Jesus, by the Scriptures and by Christian preaching
depends on whether he is able to judge the validity of these claims against the back
ground o f his prior comprehension of God.68
This passage exemplifies Rosato's consistent habit o f understanding revelation
to be a matter of transferring information from God to us.
Even though he says,
Revelation itself encompasses ... the self-unveiling of God to men,69 his theological
method only interprets God's self-unveiling in terms of His giving information about
Himself, and not as an event in which God gives us God. Thus he goes on to interpret
the title of CD 1/2, 17, The Revelation of God as the Aujhebung (usually translated
abolition, but also means suspension and elevation) of Religion to mean that
biblical revelation serves as the divine abolition of all human religion.70 Barth's point
in this title is not (as Rosato makes it) merely that the Bible contradicts all other con
cepts of religion, but that God Himself, present and active among us, puts to death all
our religious activity, including that which we derive from the Bible, and raises it (and
us) up again only in Jesus Christ. This act of God's self-giving, which includes but also
surpasses information-giving, is revelation as Barth sees it. God's self-giving results in
a real bond that is deeper than and prior to our conscious participation. Consequently
67Rosato, p. 153.
68Rosato, p. 149. This quotation provokes us to ask whether it is now Rosato who limits the activity
of the Holy Spirit to the noetic, whereas Barth acknowledges the Spirit's ontic activity of delivering to
the hearer an ability to understand tire Word of God proclaimed.
69Rosato, p. 50.
70Rosato, p. 77.

our own end of the relationship can be deeper than our awareness of it. But if revela
tion is a matter of giving and receiving only information about an external self, then we
remain closed off, examining the claims this external God makes. Whatever decision
we make, this other self has not penetrated to us, and we remain isolated with our
information and our judgments.
Beyond this kind of rational appeal, Rosato approves of the idea that the Spirit
conspires with man's freedom by working subtly within his nature so that man is
directed towards God from behind.71 This frees Rosato from limitation to a simply
rational model of God's approach to man, and even looks like an affirmation that the
Spirit genuinely penetrates the person, a transparent function o f the Spiritus Creator.
But Rosato does not elaborate further the Spirit's work in that regard, nor does he give
us ground for distinguishing the Spirit's direction from one more influence which the
person is free to ignore. The last, innermost boundary around the person is his deci
sion, and Rosato seems unwilling to let the Spirit penetrate there.
Because faith takes an internally generated form in Rosato's scheme, and
because it requires that the person be equipped with criteria by which to judge the reli
ability of external claims to truth, Rosato posits the Spiritus Creator as the One who
endows mankind with these criteria and the ability to apply them. He graces man with
an obediential capacity from creation so that his nature longs for and finds rest in the
saving work of the same Spirit who meets him as Redeemer and Lord.72 The Spiritus
Creator predisposes man's intellect to accept the truth which the Father reveals in
Israel and in Jesus Christ.73 Presumably the Spiritus Creator also gave man his rea
soning ability, but man now independently exercises this ability to judge the truthclaims of the Scriptures. Rosato complains that Barth substitutes the Holy Spirit for
man's own reasoning ability,74 and that his pneumatological restriction o f reason ...
dispossesses man of a relatively independent access to the truth.75
Because Rosato holds an individualist view of personhood, he misses the ontic
side of Barth's pneumatology.76 He refers again and again to Jesus Christ as the
71Rosato, p. 146, referring to an idea of John Haughey's.

72Rosato, p. 147.
73Rosato, p. 150.
74Rosato, p. 150.
75Rosato, p. 150.
76Conlrast Hans Kting, Justification, p. 85, The just man, despite tire simul peccator, is
ontologically different from the sinner. This clear teaching of Barth must not be overlooked. See
95

divine Ontic and to the Holy Spirit as the divine Noetic in Barth's theology: What
is objectively a new being for each and every man through Jesus Christ, the divine
Ontic, is confirmed by individual men through the Holy Spirit, the divine Noetic.77
Because Rosato understands revelation primarily in terms of transferring information,
because God appeals to man primarily through the latter's reason, he can only find an
epistemic dimension in Barth's analysis of the Holy Spirit's job of Vermittlungsprinzip.
He consequently charges Barth with denying the Holy Spirit any ontic function.
This charge comes directly from the difference between the individualist model
of the person and the relational model. When he says that the Spirit is deprived of an
independent contribution to the process of salvation and to the arrival of the eschaton
in the Church Dogmatics,78 I assume that by independent he means distinct or
proper or additional. For Barth, the Spirit does not surpass the work of Jesus
Christ but is fully bound to its primacy and unfailingly committed to its noetic appre
hension. As a result, the Spirit is purposely conceptualized as possessing from eternity
a purely noetic function.79 Christ Himself has in Barth's mind already redeemed
mankind ontically; the Spirit can do no more than noetically realize this achievement.
Thus the Spirit is incapable of adding any substantial gain to Christ's universal effi
cacy.80 Rosato perceives Barth as having backed himself into a comer by assuming
an ontic-noetic dichotomy,81 and he proposes as a solution to this problem that we
award the Spirit acting among men more than the task o f merely confirming on the
intellectual level what has been fully attained outside man on the real level. In other
words, the Spirit's universal presence before, during and beyond the Christ-event has
to be attributed an ontic validity which equals and illumines the ontic validity of Jesus
Christ, but which is not absorbed by the latter.82
From this last quotation we should note that Rosato equates noetic simply
with intellectual. He contrasts himself with Barth by saying that, beyond affirming
theological concepts, the Spirit works more universally beyond those instances [of the
Christ-event] but with an aim towards their occurrence and completion and not simply
also his discussion, p. 261, of the concrete and ontological [occurrence] in the subjective
appropriation of objective justification.
77Rosato, p. 124.
78Rosato, p. 158.
79Rosato, p. 161.
80Rosato, p. 164.
81Rosalo, p. 161.
82Rosato, pp. 161 f.
96

towards their recognition.83 But this is no contrast with Barth at all! As we shall see
below, and as we see in Chapters Two and Four, Barth does not reduce the Holy Spirit
to a sanctified conduit of divinely certified information. He affirms that the Holy Spirit
establishes and upholds our communion with God in Jesus Christ, that the Spirit sets
us free and empowers us to be and live as the sons and daughters of God. It is by
bringing this communion into existence on the earth that the Spirit works beyond
those instances [of the Christ-event] ... with an aim towards their occurrence and
completion and not simply their recognition84 in the lives o f those whom Christ has
confronted in the world. Barth does not at all limit the Spirit's work to intellectual
confirmation regarding past events. Such a perception of Barth ignores Barth's rela
tional view of these persons and the Spirit's relational manner and goals of working.
The subject-object framework presents Barth with problems when he uses it
to analyze faith in terms of a subject (the believer) knowing an object (God). He has
to re-shape it for his analysis because in its usual form it cannot contain or completely
account for the personal nature of the matter he is investigating.85 This reshaping turns
it into something else, a framework that has the same form as Zizioulas' model of personhood. When he presents the fully personal nature o f the Holy Spirit's work, the
usual subject-object framework has almost completely disappeared. The only elements
that it has in common with Barth's eventual model are that the words objective and
subjective refer respectively to something not in us or of our doing and something
in us that we do. The nature of subjectivity, the interaction o f subjects with each
other, and the interaction of subjects with the objective reality around them in Barth's
model all differ from the usual subject-object way of thinking.
The subject-and-object construct seems to be an apt tool for achieving at least
two of Barth's theological goals: he wants to make clear (1) that Christ accomplishes
His work for us prior to and apart from any attitude we may take concerning it; but
also (2) that we as subjects do act towards (by gaining knowledge of, believing in,
obeying, etc.) this reality which is external to us. This model does aptly distinguish us
from that which is not us.
But as a model of faith it fails because it does not conform to the nature of the
event of faith as Barth is trying to explain it. Polanyi affirms generally that there may
83Rosato, p. 162.
84Ibid
85Rosato also asks (p. 157), Is the objective-subjective dichotomy really appropriate to describe
the difference between Christ's mission on behalf of man's salvation and the Spirit's mission to this
same end?
97

be events in which we gain knowledge that cannot be understood in terms of the
learner as subject acting upon an object:
Throughout the usual compass of biology, we find this relation between
the observer and his subject: he is always critical o f it. But as our study,
ascending to higher levels, reaches that of man, criticism becomes mutual; the
subject of our study now criticizes us, just as we criticize it. Nor is this the
end of the progression: our subject may ascend still further and become our
master. We then become apprenticed to our subject and learn to accept its
criticism of ourselves.86
Barth asserts that our understanding of conversion, i.e., coming to faith, must take
account o f just such a progression because its object is in fact another Subject alto
gether beyond our reach and criticism. So when Barth nonetheless tries to analyze the
event of conversion as subjective revelation, he adopts thereby elements of a concep
tual construct that is bound to give him problems precisely because it accounts only for
one subject and that subject's control over the criticism of the perceived object. To be
true to the matter under study, Barth attempts to re-construct the model somewhat,
but even so it does not completely fit the events he uses it to describe, and this re
construction leads to some ambiguities.
When Barth asserts that Jesus Christ is the object of faith and that faith has the
nature of interpersonal relationship, he then asks how the believer as subject comes to
be engaged in this activity towards this object. Objectively, God meets us, calls us,
reveals Himself to us. How does it come about that we hear and follow? How do men
come to make the assertion that Jesus is Lord?87 Barth rejects mechanistic and magical
dynamics for the interaction between men and God, insisting that the interaction is per
sonal, and that both mechanistic and magical dynamics violate the personal nature of
the meeting, as well as being unscriptural.
Polanyi's theory of personal knowledge assumes that persons have what he
calls skills for knowing, clues and tools that we use as extensions o f ourselves for
making sense of the object to be known, as a surgeon uses a probe to gain knowledge
86Polanyi, Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. by Maijorie Grene (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 136. Contrast Philip Rosato's remark, p. 149, the ability of
man to consent to the claims on truth made by the person of Jesus, by the Scriptures and by Christian
preaching depends on whether he is able to judge the validity of these claims against the background
of his prior comprehension of God. As noted above, guarding against such a perspective led Barth to
give acknowledgment priority over recognition in faith.
87CD I/I, 12.1, God as the Redeemer concerns itself with this question and its answer in CD I/l
(B), pp. 448-466.
98

of the patient on the operating table, or as we use our bodily senses to gain knowledge
o f the world around us.
Two of the processes of knowing and learning that he
describes have some similarities to Christian conversion, namely, (1) how we change
our minds about something and (2) how we recognize that a given body is also another
person (or mind). For example, he attributes Copernicus' revolution in astronomy (i.e.,
the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric point of view for understanding planetary
orbits) to the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as
seen from the sun instead of the earth.88 Another process, recognizing mind in the
bodies of other persons around us, sounds rather more complicated:
At whatever level we consider a living being, the centre of its individuality is
real. For it is always something we ascertain by comprehending the coher
ence o f largely unspecifiable particulars, and which we yet expect to reveal
itself further by an indeterminate range of future manifestations. Thus the
criteria of reality are fulfilled. The human mind in particular is real in this
sense, and indeed more real than the lower centres o f individuality. For an
intelligent person's mind is expected to reveal itself over a far wider range of
indeterminate manifestations than the lower centres which control his growth
or appetitive action.89
In these instances o f knowledge-related activities the subjective person is the agent
more or less in control, and the effectiveness of the activities depends on the aptitude
with which the agent employs her skills of knowing.
But if these skills (like the surgeon's probes, or our eyes) upon which our
knowledge depends are corrupt (a broken probe; severe astigmatism), or extinct (a lost
probe; blindness), or inappropriate (neither the probe nor the eye can perceive sound
or taste), then proper knowing does not follow from them. In this connection, Polanyi
also talks about barriers to learning, which have their counterpart in barriers to conver
sion:
A hostile audience may in fact deliberately refuse to entertain novel concep
tions ... precisely because its members fear that once they have accepted this
88Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 3.

89Polanyi, Knowing and Being, pp. 135 f. Note that he claims that our recognition of what is real
consists in (1) comprehending the coherence of largely unspecifiable particulars, and (2) the expec
tation that this real thing will continue to manifest itself in ways that we could not have fully deter
mined from its past behavior. Note also the corollary that he deduces from these criteria, namely, that
tire mind is more real than physical growth or appetite.
99
100

framework they will be led to conclusions which theyrightly or
wronglyabhor.90
Our fundamental beliefs are continuously reconsidered in the course of such a
process [i.e., that of examining any topic], but only within the scope of their
own basic premisses.91
Similarly, Barth attributes to us no capacity of our own for gaining true knowl
edge of God, because, apart from His work in us, our clues and skills are corrupt or
lost or inappropriate.
Those who do not know God can have no such capacity
because, prior to His work in us, we both abhor the conclusions that faith in God must
lead to, and such a conclusion is beyond the scope of our basic premisses. Because the
Creator is beyond the reach of the creature, God has to bring about any encounter with
us if it is to happen at all (God's ontic absoluteness implies His noetic absoluteness);
and as sinners we flee such contact with God, erecting idols in His place to shield us
from Him, and wanting anything but an encounter with Him.
Therefore, if such an encounter is to happen, and if we are to respond posi
tively to God, then the encounter and the response have to be o f His making, while at
the same time the response must be truly ours. The making of that encounter and
response He accomplishes in Jesus Christ; making the response ours is the work of the
Holy Spirit. Just as Polanyi draws our attention to the person who shifts her own point
of view, so Barth puts a person behind the shift from unbelief to faith; but in the latter
case this person is God, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And just as the
person is an inarticulable mystery in Polanyi's scheme, so Barth runs up against unfa
thomable mystery as he tries to articulate the details of the Holy Spirit's work in us.
But this hardly fits the subject-object model at all, as we have so far seen it:
the putative subjects, we men and women, cannot control or manipulate or judge the
object, God, of which we would have knowledge; this object is instead a higher Sub
ject under whose judgment we fall, rather than the reverse; and we can have no true
knowledge of God while remaining detached from Him.
Therefore Barth, having
accepted questions put in terms of this model, must substantially re-work the model to
be able to use it. For Barth to be faithful to the theological matter at hand, he must
transform the subject criticizes object model into the God reveals Himself to us
model.

9 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 267.
101
1. The Object of our knowledge is Himself a Subject, indeed, the best possible
example of Polanyi's subject who has become our master and criticizes us. But mak
ing the studied object into the active subject still only turns the original model on its
head by saying that God knows us. We need a model with a two-way dynamic of
knowing, and a kind of knowing that is essentially personal and relational.92
2. To account for our knowledge of God, Barth must make two further
changes: (a) because the activity is God's, the original verb, criticizes, must become
reveals Himself; and (b) because of the barriers that keep us from gaining knowledge
on our own as listed above, God must work from within us as well as from without.
An objective revelation which does not penetrate to man, says Barth, ... is an idol
like all the rest.93 He also remarks,
There has simply never been a really correct dogmatics which expounded
objective revelation as such and in abstt'acto. Revelation is objective only in
its irruption into the subjective, in its redemptive objective assault upon
man.94
Further, he cites Calvin's remarks (in Instit. III. 1) to support his position:
The work of the Holy Spirit within us, by which He effects decisively and
comprehensively our oneness with Christ, is faith. And faith as the work of
the Holy Spirit is not a magical transformation. ... It is simply that we acquire
what we so much needan internus doctor, a teacher of the truth within
ourselves ,..95
This invasion of the subject (i.e., the believer) by the object (i.e., God), and
God's activity there as internal teacher, results in a fundamental ambiguity in the phrase
the subjective reality of revelation: it can mean, variously, the Spirit's being and
action as the revealedness of God within the believer, His work there of convicting the
believer; or it can refer to the believer's being and activity as a believer, or to her
encounter with and reception of God's revelation, i.e., of God Himself.
92See David K. Miell, Barth on Persons in Relationship: A Case for Further Reflection? SJT 42
(1989), p. 549, God cannot be known as long as this personal relationship is denied and a substitute
is sought in treating God as an object, no matter how much scientific or historical inquiry is done, no
matter how much the Bible is read.
93CD 1/2, p. 237.
94CD I/2, p. 239.
95CD I/2, p. 242.
102
3. Barth very carefully keeps this irruption into the subjective from confusing
us with God. Those who receive the Spirit cannot be confused with Jesus Christ, nor
is the Holy Spirit simply their spirit. The Holy Spirit is an internus doctor within us;
but He teaches us, which distinguishes Him from us. Faith is the gift and work of the
Holy Spirit within us; but we believe, acknowledge, recognize, surrender.
4. The fact that the simple subject-object framework cannot accommodate the
invasion o f the subject by the object necessarily leaves Barth with leaps96 or gaps
in his explanation. Great mystery confronts us, of course, if for no other reason than
that the working o f the Spirit within us is beyond our finding out, and He has seen fit
only to reveal limited aspects of it.
This work within us falls precisely where the
subject-object framework cannot help, since that framework's usefulness in large

measure depends on our ability to disentangle, if not to separate, the object from the
subject, and to put operations clearly in the hands of the one working upon the other.
The extensive overhauling that Barth gives to the subject-object framework
amounts to a basic rejection of its applicability to the phenomenon of faith. He needs
to describe multiple subjects who, on the one hand, cannot be separated from each
other, but who, on the other, retain their own unconfused identities.
The usual
subject-object framework is too simple to handle persons who know each other.
Nonetheless, the terms subject and object frequently recur in Barth's theol
ogy. In 63 (pp. 740 ff.) Barth's formal analysis of faith returns to terms of subject
and object. Functionally, faith is what makes a person a Christian. Formally, faith is a
subjective realization of its object. The object of Christian faith is Jesus Christ. But
Barth does not simply identify us as the subject of faith, because faith transforms the
subject, or, in his words, in faith takes place the constitution of the Christian subject, a
new and particular being of man.97 Barth has earlier admitted98 that he has little to
say about how the Spirit brings us to confess Jesus as Lord, because the New Testa
ment and the creed are silent on the matter. This leaves us with the task of clarifying
what Barth means by subject and object in a theology that rejects the subject-object
96 ... we have taken a leap in thought. We had been speaking of the divine sign-giving by whose
mediation revelation, or Jesus Christ, reaches man. We had previously intended to go on to speak of
the way in which revelation comes to man. And now we are suddenly speaking of men who are
already convinced, who by divine conviction have already discovered that they are brethren of the
Son, hearers and doers of the Word of God (CD 1/2, p. 232). Barth apparently uses the phrase,
previously intended, to indicate that he had expected his analysis along objective-subjective lines to
proceed without any such leap.
91CD IV/1, pp. 749 ff.
98In 62.1, pp. 648 ff.
103
framework (as so far discussed), and what he sees as the Holy Spirit's involvement in it
all. We have in the previous chapter examined the Holy Spirit's work as a kind of lib
eration into faith. We will now look at what that faith is and the manner in which
Barth relates us as subjects of faith to Jesus Christ as the object of our faith.
The terms objective and subjective in Barth's theology distinguish reali
ties that have their being independently of the Christian's understanding from those that
do not. Barth uses objective to refer to realities that have their being independently
o f the Christian's knowledge or experience or participation. Subjective correspond
ingly refers to realities that depend on or involve the Christian's conscious participation
to establish or uphold their being or existence. He does not imply by these words an
accompanying idea that they constitute two sealed compartments of reality, or that
they are two kinds of reality, but rather whether or not a given entity requires that per
son's conscious participation to exist. Thus faith, love, and hope are subjective reali
ties, having Jesus Christ as their object, whose atonement for us is an objective reality.
A subject is a person, and therefore one who exists in communion with others, and
therefore one who deliberates, knows, and experiences other subjects.
Distinguishing the objective from the subjective in this manner has two impor
tant consequences.
1.
It means that Barth can integrate these terms, thus defined, into a relational
structure of personal being. This is precisely what he does. His usage of the terms
objective and subjective does not dissever them into categories that cannot ulti
mately reach each other. Rather, Barth presents them as bound together by the power
of the Spirit who overcomes the boundary between me and not me. Individualist
concepts of persons are inconsistent with Barth's handling of objective and subjective
aspects of revelation. Barth's relational assumptions about the nature of our being
mean that objective and subjective realities do not remain detached from each other.
Jesus Christ, the objective reality of revelation, is God not only in Himself but also in
and among us ... as one of the realities that meet us. The reality of Jesus Christ ...
invariably asserts that God can cross the boundary between Himself and us; or
expressed in general terms, between His own existence and the existence o f that which
is not identical with Himself.99 God does not just make the leap from heaven to earth
in the incarnation, but in Jesus Christ He also makes the leap from His existence to
mine. At the same time, God does not lose His identity in this act of utter self-giving.
Barth does not recant his early emphasis on the otherness of God, for in the next
" C D 1/2, p. 31.
104
sentence o f the passage quoted above he reminds us that the boundary line between us
and God is unerasably strict: yet God can cross it and remain God. Nor do we lose
our identity with His act of penetration into our being. Barth does not say that we
cross that boundary, nor that God brings us across it. God enters inmost communion
with us, while He remains God and we remain ourselves, but all in communion.
As subjects we receive revelation and exercise faith. But again, God is in the
middle of this activity. Subjective revelation can consist only in the fact that objective
revelation ... comes to man and is recognised and acknowledged by man. And that is
the work of the Holy Spirit.100 The Holy Spirit is the power in which Jesus Christ
attests Himself, attests Himself effectively, creating in man response and obedience. ...
He is the power of Jesus Christ in which it takes place that there are men who can and
must find and see that He is theirs and they are His, that their history is genuinely
enclosed in His and His history is equally genuinely enclosed in theirs.101 If we try to
understand revelation and faith as if they were activities in which a subject grasps and
investigates or criticizes an object, then the grasping and criticism are reversed and
turned upon us. Or, if we try to view revelation and faith as if it were an event in
which one detached subject meets another detached subject, each making up her own
mind independently and calculating, Do I want to bring this other person into my
life? then we have posited a part o f the universe (my inner self) into which God may
not enter until I give permission, and Barth's account of faith looks like spiritual rape.
But Barth presupposes that God is already where we are, that He upholds that which is
our inner self. Therefore, His making Himself known there is not forcible entry, but
shedding light in the darkness of our hearts so that we may know His presence and
activity.
Given all this, we must understand Barth's doctrine o f faith in terms o f a
framework that will handle the activity of God's revelation, both objective and subjec
tive. We need to use a framework that acknowledges our faith to be the gift and work
of the Holy Spirit (and not the believer), but the activity of the believer (and not the
Spirit).
The problem of the objectivity of other men and women around us also appears
in the leap that revelation must make from the not-me to the me: If there is anything
like a really hard, impervious objectivity, it is in other men that it succeeds in making
itself known.102 But the objectivity of other people is not like the objectivity of a
100C D //2, p. 239.

w lC D IV /l, p. 648.
102CD I/2, p. 41.
105
rock, for there is nothing nearer or more familiar to man than just man. Nothing else
comes closer to us, is so constitutive for ourselves, as the other man in all his strange
ness and obscurity.103 Barth resolves the tension between the impervious objectivity
and the nearness by claiming that really and originally only Jesus Christ is man who is
flesh, and then derivatively and secondarily those who in faith are one flesh with Him.
Really and originally, therefore, flesh as the possibility o f the revelation of God is
entirely and emphatically the possibility of Jesus Christ Himself.104 That is, we must
construct our view of our own objectivity as recipients o f revelation, and the objectiv
ity of the revelation that is to be received (namely, Jesus Christ), in terms of our union
with Christ.
2.
It further means that we cannot simply equate objective with ontic, nor
subjective with noetic,105 if by noetic we refer simply to cognitive processes such

as thought and deliberation within an individual, as Rosato does. Subjective realities
and events, such as faith and love and hope, certainly have a cognitive dimension
according to Barth's usage; but faith and love and hope touch the entire existence of
the believer and thus go beyond the cognitive while always including it. Therefore
from God's side, and from God's side in a new way, which transcends their obscure
creaturely being, on the basis of the revelation which comes from God, there exist
men who in their existence are the subjective reality of revelation. The basis of it
all is the divine movement towards man in revelation. ... That is what makes men what
they are. ... That is why they themselves not only have but are the revelation in their
existence. O f course, it is only as recipients that they are the revelation. It is only in
subjective reality.
We cannot, therefore, confuse them with Jesus Christ.106 The
subjective reality of revelation here is not just the recipients' ideas that correspond to
assertions and claims that have been delivered to them. It is not just assent to a body
o f ideas, for that would merely be a having, whereas Barth says that this subjective
reality is what they are in their existence, i.e., as they live from day to day.
The
subjective reality of revelation is not merely the conviction that what they have been
103CD 1/2, p. 42.

104C D 1/2, p. 44.
105Those wishing to contradict this might cite CD IV/3, p. 213, where Barth discusses the distinc
tion between the ontic and noetic or objective and subjective elements in the intercourse between God
and man inaugurated and ordered in Jesus Christ. My response is that (1) the passage does not force
a strict identification of the pairs of terms, and (2) even if it did, it is the word noetic which must be
broadened to include more than cognitive processes, rather than reduce the word subjective to the
realm of the individual's mind.
106 CD 1/2, pp. 235 f., my emphasis.
106
told is true; it is, rather, the total existence of those so convinced. The subjective
reality of revelation consists in the fact that we have our being through Christ and in
the Church, that we are the recipients of the divine testimonies, and, as the real
recipients of them, the children of God. But the fact that we have this being is the
work of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore the Holy Spirit is the subjective reality of
revelation. 107 Thus Barth at the beginning of 16.2 summarizes what he has said in
16.1. The subjective reality of revelation is our existence as the children of God, and it
includes the knowledge that we are such, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. To
answer the problem of the subjective, the question how man becomes a recipient of
revelation,108 we must also answer what the content of this revelation is, of which we
become a recipient. But the content of revelation is not just information or assertions
or ideas, but rather God Himself,109 because, so far as Barth is concerned, revelation is
the event in which God meets us in our own place and time and gives Himself to us.
God is the Revealer, the Revelation (both content of and event of), and His own state
of Revealedness in us. Therefore, becoming a recipient of revelation means not just to
receive ideas, but to receive God Himself, and therefore to live accordingly.
To continue, The problem of the subjective, the question of how man becomes
a recipient of revelation, breaks up ... into an objective and a subjective question, (1)
How does revelation come from Christ to man? and (2) How, as such, does it come
into man? Barth answers, The first point we have to make is that in its subjective
reality God's revelation consists of definite signs of its objective reality which are given
by God.110 And the second: The revelation of God in its subjective reality consists
in the existence of men who have been led by God Himself to a certain conviction.111
The existence of these men and women, who have this specified conviction, encom
passes more than the convictions that they hold. For them it now takes on the central
meaning of life with Jesus Christ, a life that acknowledges and recognizes and con
fesses Him as Lord, a life obedient to His commands, a life that confidently expects
Him to redeem the today and the tomorrow, as well as all the yesterdays.
l07CDI/2, p. 242.
im C D I/2, p. 222.
109Cf., for example, CD II/1, pp. 261 f., The act of revelation as such carries with it the fact that
God has not withheld Himself from men as true being, but that He has given no less than Himself to
men ... Himself as tire Father in His own Son by the Holy Spirit.
u 0CD I/2, p. 223.
i n CDI/2, p. 232.
107
In 58 of CD IV/1 Barth describes the connection between the atonement ac

complished by Jesus Christ on the one hand, and the Holy Spirit's work for us in our
conversion on the other. In brief, Jesus Christ has changed our being, and the Holy
Spirit changes our activity (existence)112 so that our lives now conform to our being in
Christ (i.e., our true being) instead o f contradicting that being. Reviewing the accom
plishment o f Jesus Christ in the atonement, Barth states the effect that the atonement
has on who and what we are, specifically as subjects:
The meaning and purpose of the atonement made in Jesus Christ is that man
should not cease to be a subject in relation to God but that he should be main
tained as such, or rather ... that he should be newly created and grounded as
such from above. This creating and grounding o f a human subject which is
new in relation to God and therefore in itself is, in fact, the event of the
atonement made in Jesus Christ. ... In Him a new human subject was intro
duced, the true man beside and outside whom God does not know any other,
beside and outside whom there is no other ... By the grace o f God, therefore,
man is not nothing. He is God's man. He is accepted by God. He is recog
nised as himself a free subject, a subject who has been made free once and for
all by his restoration as the faithful covenant partner of God. ...
We underline the fact that it is a matter of a being of man. We can and
must experience and know thisthat is what makes a Christian a Christian.
But first of all, and in itself, and as the object of this experience and knowl
edge it is a being.113
To see those effects, Barth says, we must look at the Christian, for it is only there that
the change actually shows up.
The being of man reconciled with God in Jesus Christ is reflected in the exis
tence of the Christian. That is something we cannot say of others. ... The
being of man reconciled to God in Jesus Christ has three aspects which are
clearly different. We will first of all describe these under the three concepts
of faith and love and hope. We will then see how the being o f the new man
described in this way has its root and basis in Jesus Christ H im self... But in
the faith and love and hope o f the Christian that which is hidden in Jesus
Christ is known, that which is enclosed is opened, that which is laid up is dis
tributed and shared. ... They are put into this relationship to Him by the pres
112Contrast 28, The Being of God as the One who Loves in Freedom {CD II/1, pp. 257-321), in
which Barth defines the being of God in terms of His activity, namely, loving freely. In the case of
redeemed humanity, one could say that the Holy Spirit's work restores in us (although in this world
only provisionally) the unity of our being and activity.
l u CDIV/l, pp. 89 f.
108
ence and operation of the Holy Spirit. It is this relationship which is

described by the concepts of faith and love and hope.114
Here Barth begins to make a transition from talking about being to talking about exis
tence (or activity): the being of man reconciled to God in Jesus Christ has three
aspects that he describes under the concepts of faith and love and hope. But these
three headings are the subjective work in us of the Holy Spirit and not the objective
work of Jesus Christ for us in the atonement. Just as we have our new being in Him
and by Him and from Him, we also have it to Him in these three reciprocating and
relational activities, faith and love and hope. By these activities we live in conformity
with our being in Him, and therefore with our true being.
Beyond our examination of what Barth means by objective and subjective
we still have to show the form in which he sees all these elements interacting.
Barth's theology of faith takes a Chalcedonian form as we have described it
in the Introduction. We summarize here elements Barth's theology of faith, already
discussed, to illustrate that form.
i. Faith is bi-polar. It occurs between persons, and not simply within a believer,
because it has an object and basis (namely, Jesus Christ)115 external to the believer.
Although Barth uses a knowledge-oriented vocabulary, he does so in such a way as to
make plain that the knowledge involved is inter-personal acquaintance and not the
intellectual activity of an isolated individual. Further, his re-naming and re-ordering of
the elements of faith (from notitia, assensus, fiducia to acknowledgment, recognition,
confession) emphasize his rejection of intellectual individualism. Christian faith is an
activity that irreducibly involves two persons, the believer and Jesus Christ, and not
just the believer.
ii. Faith is an activity. In particular, it is an activity of communion between the
believer and Jesus Christ. It is not any static set of accumulated theological concepts,
or as such the activity of accumulating them. Although faith does seek and gain under
standing, it is the activity of knowing Jesus Christ, and not just an affirmed body of
statements about Jesus Christ. It is the mode in which we actively engage in commun
ion with Jesus Christ.116
U4CDIV/J, pp. 92 f.
n 5CD IV/1, pp. 743-748.
116CD IV/1, p. 758 (italics as in the original), [The act of faith is] the basic Christian act which,
when it takes place, is the act of the Christian life, the Christian act which embraces and controls all
individual acts and activities, permeating and determining them like the leaven of Mt. 1333.
109
iii. Faith is asymmetric. The believer is not the equal o f but is subordinate to
Jesus Christ, in whom she believes. Faith is wholly and utterly humility,117 but not
humiliation, since faith, while it is a necessity for man, and not something which he
can control, is still a matter of his free and, at bottom, joyful decision.118 And
because it is wholly and utterly humility it does not have the character o f a theologi
cal judgment made by the believer, but the believer's acceptance o f the judgment that
God has already made in Christ. The believer's self-subordination to Christ touches
both the believer and Christ, and not merely the believer, because Christ has touched
her.
iv. Faith is personal. It does not engage only the intelligence of the believer,
but directs the whole person of the believer towards another person, Jesus Christ.
Unless words like cognitive and noetic include humility, deference, submission, and
communion within their scope, then we cannot characterize faith as a merely cognitive
or noetic activity. In normal usage they seem more to emphasize such mental quanti
ties as information, ideas, intelligence, and such mental activities as assenting to ideas
or dissenting from them, calculating, deduction, induction, and contemplating. Words
like cognitive and noetic emphasize what lies within a person rather than between
persons. By contrast, faith in Barth's theology is thoroughly relational, an activity that
takes place between Jesus Christ and a believer. Faith is the humility of obedience. ...
Faith differs from any mere thinking and believing and knowing, or indeed from any
other trusting, in the fact that it is an obeying.119
v. Faith is an element of the believer's integrity. Barth's theology may give the
opposite impression at first, since he claims faith is the work o f the Holy Spirit in us
and not the product of our own rationality and judgment. How can this irruption of
the Spirit into our innermost being, and the resultant discontinuity of our rationality
and judgment, even be consistent with our integrity? The work o f the Spirit in us can
in part be compared to the work of a surgeon on the body o f a desperately sick patient.
Regarding the Christian's own understanding of his faith, Barth says, He can never
understand this in any way but that God has opened his eyes to this knowledge, that
God has made him free and ready for it, that a miracle has taken place in him. ... The
Holy Spirit is God in this His self-attestationGod in the power which quickens man
n l C D IV /l, p. 618.
n s C D lV /l, p. 620.
n 9C D IV /l, p. 620.
110

to this profitable and living knowledge of His action.120 The action of the Spirit gives
life, gives freedom, illuminates, makes ready. This is the restoration of integrity and
not the violation of it.
vi.
Faith requires intimacy. Specifically, it requires the mediation of the Holy
Spirit, not just in His corrective work of bringing us to faith, but also in order for us to
continue in it. He is the power of our life and freedom in Christ, and the power in
which Christ makes Himself present to us.121 Since faith involves the whole person,
this intimacy is complete and all-pervasive. But the intimate presence and activity does
not contradict our integrity, because He is the power in which our integrity is consti
tuted and upheld.122
These elements of Barth's theology of faith display the Chalcedonian pattern of
his thought. Our being as persons is a matter of relationship to God, and not a matter
of attributes that we have unto ourselves. Faith, likewise, is our mode of activity in
that relationship when we have been set free and empowered to live in it and to stop
living contrary to it. Consequently, we can correctly understand Barth's theology of
faith, as a description of the mode of our new life in Christ, only if we interpret it as a
relational phenomenon, and not just as an intellectual or individual one.
VI. Some Conclusions Regarding Faith
The activity that we call faith does not conform to the common subjectgrasps-object pattern of knowledge, if by knowledge we understand the enterprise of
acquiring, validating, and systematizing a body of information and concepts. Nor does
Barth attempt to explain it as such, but as a matter of one person communing with
another; specifically, he explains it as our communing with Christ. We acknowledge,
recognize, and confess Jesus Christ, not a body of beliefs, when we have faith in
Christ.
Barth used knowledge-oriented language to analyze faith.
We may, with
Alister McGrath, deplore this vocabulary; but one can label Barth's theology as an
inappropriate elevation of a doctrine of revelation only by ignoring the content of the
theology that Barth has built with that vocabulary.
By using such language Barth
engages the attention of readers who ask about knowledge and faith, and, in so doing,
he not only gives answers but reforms their assumptions about the nature of knowl
n o C D IV /l, p. 646.
121See 62.1, The Work of the Holy Spirit, CDIV/1, pp. 643-650.
122CD IV/1, p. 749, In die twofold relationship of faith to Jesus Christ, as faith is orientated and
based on Him as its object, there takes place in it the constitution of the Christian subject.
111
edge and faith. Having engaged our attention by accepting our questions, he redirects
it to where it ought to have been in the first place. Yes, he admits in the very fact of
writing that faith involves concepts; but he consistently affirms that this is but one
dimension among many within the much more complex matter of the communion of
persons. Barth says that faith is a form of knowledge. Yes, but it is a form of Kennen, not a form of Wissen; i.e., it is an acquaintance and meeting with a Person, not
just information or a theory about Him. And the object of this Kennen is not merely an
object but another subject, Jesus Christ.
Similarly, by his use and re-shaping and re-use of the subject-object framework,
Barth shows us what we can and cannot do with it. Since so many of us think in those
terms123 Barth has done us the service of using it where he can, and then demonstrat
ing that there are places we have to use other paradigms. Our meeting with Jesus can
not be explained within the subject-object framework any more than it can be explained
as a form of cognition. Those who assume that Barth uses that framework misinter
pret him badly. Instead of a subject-action-object (specifically, subject-grasps-object)
model, Barth adopts a clearly Chalcedonian and Trinitarian model of persons in a
communion of unity, integrity, and asymmetry. Faith in Jesus Christ is the Christian's
mode of living. Faith is the Christian's participation in communion with God the com
munion that is at the center of personal being.
123Cf. Polanyi's own efforts at re-shaping the framework throughout Personal Knowledge.
Chapter 4
Life in Communion
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881), The Marshes of
Glynn.
O my God, since Thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to Thy commands,
apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech Thee to grant me the grace to
continue in Thy presence; and to this end do Thou prosper me with Thy assistance,
receive all my words, and possess all my affections.
-- Brother Lawrence (c. 1605-1691), The
Practice o f the Presence o f God, Fourth
Conversation.
Thesis: Because o f his doctrine that persons have their being in relation,
Barth maintains the integrity o f a place fo r the action o f the believer as distinct from
the action o f God.
Barth's theology o f revelation provides a foundation fo r a
Christian understanding o f our experience o f God.

As Alan Torrance notes,1 some of Barth's critics claim he virtually eliminates
experience from theological consideration,2 while others claim Barth makes experience
the foundation of his theology.3 Neither claim is correct, but neither is entirely
baseless. We can reproduce either perception by emphasizing some portion of Barth's
Alan Torrance, Christian Experience and Divine Revelation in the Theologies of Friedrich
Schleiermacher and Karl Barth, essay in Christian Experience in Theology and Life: Papers read at
the 1984 Conference o f the Fellowship o f European Evangelical Theologians, edited by I. Howard
Marshall (Edinburgh: Rutherford House and Contributors, 1988), p. 107 n. 40, refers to remarks
about Barth in a pamphlet publicizing the conference in 1984 of the Fellowship of European
Evangelical Theologians (at which this paper was given), which claimed that Barth largely ignored
the relation between revelation and experience. For the opposite accusation he refers to the criticisms
of van Til, Clark, and Klooster, and quotes from Geoffrey Bromiley's remark, Introduction to the
Theology o f Karl Barth, p. 10., The notion that Barth is simply a theologian of experience (basically
a follower of Schleiermacher!) in the new form of existentialist subjectivity still lingers in many
theological circles.
2Barth faced these misunderstandings in his own day: to my regret I am continually having it
said that my occupation is to put revelation and faith from the believer's standpoint up in the clouds,
he says in CD 1/1 (B), p. 209, of Wobbermin's and Schaeder's criticisms.
3Cf. Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, p. 138, Although Barth plans to fashion an experientially based
trinitarian theology and in fact does commence with the Father's historical, self-revealing act in Jesus
Christ... italics mine.
Ch. 4: Life in Communion
113
exposition and taking it out of the context of balance and tension in which he writes it.
This may not be what these critics have done, but it is a very easy and disastrous path
to follow. Nonetheless, too much of Barth's writing conflicts, both directly and indi
rectly, with both of these claims to allow us to accept them.
O f these two opposite opinions, the more enduring one has been that Barth
neglects human experience and human spirituality in his theology.
Some readers of
Church Dogmatics get the impression that Karl Barth devotes the entire work to look
ing exclusively at Jesus Christ. Even when it seems that he may finally be addressing
the Christian's experience of God and knowledge of herself, we often find that Barth
has his sights not on us directly, but on Jesus Christ yet again.
Who is the man
justified before God? Who is the elect man? Whom has God rejected? What is faith,
love, hope, obedience, communion with God, or human freedom? Under all these
topics the reader may well want to find a clear reference to us who walk below heaven;
but in all these places Barth primarily refers to Jesus Christ and seems to ignore us.
This activism of Barth's content and method, relating every topic immediately to
Jesus, may give his readers the impression that God also ignores us, that Jesus Christ
so thoroughly takes our place as to leave us with no place at all. Are our actions made
superfluous? Does this presentation remove all meaning from our lives? Does this
presentation leave us out?
Some readers attribute Barth's neglect of human experience and his
christological concentration to his reaction against nineteenth-century Neo-Protestantism's focus on human spiritual experience and its relative neglect of Christ. Robert
Cushman considered that Barth reacted too harshly against the subjectivism of his day.
He thought that Barth's theology, as expressed in CD 1/1 and 1/2, tended to rob [man]
of his proper subjectivityhis depth and his freedom. If Schleiermacher put far too
great a stress upon man's spirituality, Barth, it may be, has so radically neglected it as
to make even man's redemption problematic.4
Given Barth's view of personhood, one would expect to find in his theology a
pattern of spirituality, a description of walking with God, that fits the Chalcedonian
pattern we have already seen. This is in fact what we find. In this chapter we will look
at the theological foundations Barth provides for Christian spirituality, and show that
4Robert Cushman, Karl Barth on the Holy Spirit, Religion in Life 24, no. 4 (1955), pp. 577 f.
According to the endnotes of the article, Cushman was responding to CD 1/1 (1932, ET 1936) and 1/2
(Cushman refers to the German edition, 1939), The Holy Ghost and the Christian Life (1929, ET
1938), The Knowledge o f God and the Service o f God (1938), and The Epistle to the Romans (1922,
ET 1932). The other references he notes are works of William Temple.
114
their Chalcedonian form does provide a sure place for our own existence in commun
ion with God.
This chapter will demonstrate that assumptions about the nature of personhood
radically influence the reader's interpretation of revelation and the centrality of Christ.
It will also show that Barth's doctrines of revelation and of the centrality of Christ
establish and do not destroy Christian spirituality. We contend that Barth has not,
even in the early volumes of Church Dogmatics, neglected our spirituality.
The
foundation and emphasis of his theology do not lie in human spirituality, so his
approach to human spirituality does not take the path that some o f his readers expect,
but he does not neglect it. Rather, Barth's work establishes a place for us and for our
life here and now in fellowship with God. Barth, as we have seen, understands our
conversion as God's action and not ours, applying Christ's finished work to our worldly
existence; and he understands our faith to be both our activity and a gift of the Holy
Spirit in Christ. These activities of God do not diminish but, rather, establish the place
and importance of human spirituality. The material of this fourth chapter thus depends
heavily on the preceding three chapters. Barth devotes so much attention to the work
of Jesus Christ because He has done this work and established this place for us, and we
may truly dwell in it. In its form and its content and even its observed emphases and
priorities this theology provides a starting point and a foundation for the understanding
and practice of Christian spirituality.
I. The threat of metaphysical annihilation:

apparent problems with determinism.
We begin by examining some protests that Barth undermines any theology of
Christian spirituality. In this examination we will look for faults in the assumptions
made by the critics as they criticize. Among other assumptions we will find that some
critics presuppose a closed / individualist theology of personhood of the sort that Barth
rejects.
We find evidence for this latter assumption in several ways.
Many of the
critics, as we will see, equate reveal with provide information concerning. They
tend to divide reality into two mutually exclusive categories, being and knowing. They
admit that a person's being and her knowing will undoubtedly have profound mutual
effects, but neither constitutes the other. If she knows another person, that knowing
does not constitute her being. These critics understand a person's being, rather, as
prior to any relationship that she may have to another. Before the relationship there
115
are the two reasoning, willing, feeling, perceiving, conscious entities who may come
into relationship, or not. If two persons establish a relationship, they do it on the basis
of knowledge about each other. Thus the relationship is not essential or primary either
to the being or to the knowing, but remains a third optional addendum.
We have
discussed this more fully in Chapter 1 as the closed / individualist view of personhood.
Readers who assume a viewpoint similar to this may protest that, according to
Barth, the Spirit's work only seems to be noetic, that He makes no substantial change
in us in His work of reconciliation and redemption. Barth seems to have reduced the
Holy Spirit to a spiritual conduit of information, and God remains distant and apart
from us. Further, the Holy Spirit seems to make converts by depositing information
and attitudes into people's minds apart from their consent or judgment. Does this not
violate our created nature as reasoning, perceiving, willing persons, and therefore vio
late our very being? Does this not threaten to turn us into puppets?
At the same time they may protest that Barth makes Christ to be our Substitute
so thoroughly as to leave no place for us. Barth does not allow a transformation of
our humanity, they say.
He does not allow justification, sanctification, life, to be
attributed to us, but only to Christ.

Oddly enough, Barth puts himself in danger of at least appearing to rob human
ity of its reality and significance by adopting a relational and incarnational theology.
We can find indications in several places of Zizioulas' exposition o f personal being that
this danger lies ahead. Zizioulas' remark that all creation can be saved thanks to its
recapitulation in the loving relationship between the Father and the Son5 can look
like a radical form o f replacement. When he finds the essence of baptism in the iden
tification of his hypostasis with the hypostasis of the Son of God,6 when he says that
every member of the Church becomes Christ and Church7 and notes that according
to the Fathers every baptized person becomes Christ,8 he provokes the reader to ask
where the distinctions lie amid so strong an identification. Taken apart from Zizioulas'
attention to the person as a concrete, unique and unrepeatable entity,9 those quota
tions may seem to confuse the believer with Christ. In short, Barth and Zizioulas find
the reality of the person in a relationship of communion with God, and originally in the
5Zizioulas, Being A s Communion (hereafter abbreviated /TIC), p. 49 n. 44.
6Zizioulas, BAC, p. 56.
7Zizioulas, BAC, p. 58.
8Zizioulas, BAC, p. 58 n 54.
9Zizioulas, BAC, p. 46. Cf. also the other places that he speaks of personal uniqueness, e.g., BAC
p. 106
116
communion of the Father with the Son in the bond of the Spirit. Because of this Barth
may appear, in the eyes of those holding to a closed / individualist doctrine of
personhood, to do away with our reality and significance altogether. No less does St.
Paul appear to do so when he says, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20, AV).
In light of this, it should be no surprise that we conflict with widespread per
ceptions o f Barth's theology when we claim that Barth's theology of conversion
accounts for genuine human freedom and spirituality. Some theologians say that Barth
so smothers the believer with God's attention as to leave no room for us. Has Barth so
overwhelmed the believer by God's determination of him that the believer loses his own
identity?
Robert Cushman, responding to the early volumes of Church Dogmatics,
protested that Barth has overwhelmed us with God and left us with nothing for our
selves except our sin and, therein, nothing wherewith to boast. So we are reduced to
Apostolic poverty indeed! 10 He wanted to find in Barth's theology a place for
something like newness of life in fellowship with the Father o f our Lord Jesus Christ.
But ... [Barth] will not allow the Holy Ghost to come to roost in human life in such a
way that his action and presence is manifest in the texture and shape o f historical per
sonality. 11 Cushman has the impression that Barth's theology has no place for our
communion with God, that, because man's existence is in time, the presence of God to
him in time is limited to a succession of momentary incidents registered in the events of
revelation. God is present to the human creature, only as-in-act not as-in-being. 12
The presuppositions behind this reading of Barth emerge when he considers
that Barth would reject Luther's remark, it is always necessary that the substance or
person itself be good before there can be any good works, and that good works follow
and proceed from the good person.13 He goes on to say, It is clear that for Barth the
work of the Holy Spirit is more nearly an event or succession of events in God's action
than any transformation of human existence.14 Perhaps the key word in this objection
is substance. Barth certainly denies that our justification or our sanctification inhere
10Robert Cushman, p. 573.
11Cushman, p. 574.
12Cushman, p. 575, italics his.
13Cushman, p. 576, quoting Martin Luther's Treatise on Christian Liberty (Muhlenberg Press,
1947), p. 271.
14Cushman, p. 576, italics his.
117
in us as the word substance might imply, or that we can properly see them by looking
for them within ourselves. They are in Christ, as are we, and we can find them and see
them only by looking at Christ. Given this and a closed / individualist view of person
hood (with its attendant assumption that our existence proceeds from what we are in
ourselves), one could conclude that Barth must deny any transformation of human
existence. But Barth does not hold to such a view of personhood.
Our being as
persons does not consist in some substance that God transforms; it is, rather, a matter
of communion. God engages us in communion with Himself, giving us Himself, and
thereby transforms our existence.
Cushman quotes several passages from St. Paul's epistles, concerning newness
of life, our reception of God's Spirit and His gifts, and our transformed existence. He
then comments, Such language, even if it is Scripture, must be thoroughly objection
able to Barth.15 On the contrary, such language is characteristic of Barth, and it has
the same tone and substance as Barth's own statement, The fact that God gives His
7tveupa to man or that man receives this 7i;veu|j,a implies that God comes to man, that
He discloses Himself to man and man to Himself, that He gives Himself to be experi
enced by man, that He awakens man to faith, that He enlightens him and equips him to
be a prophet or apostle, that He creates for Himself a community o f faith and procla
mation to which He imparts salvation with His promise, in which He binds men to
Himself and claims them for Himself, in short, in which He becomes theirs and makes
them His. 16 Barth presupposes that our being is a matter o f our relationship with
God, and not a matter of what we are in ourselves prior to such a relationship. His
account of God's self-giving to us and of our transformation by it will not satisfy the
reader who has not seen and accepted that presupposition.
Has Barth reduced soteriology to a christomonism, to a monologue in
Heaven? Some readers think that Barth's exposition o f God's decision and accom
plishment for us in eternity devaluates the here and now o f our own lives.
Philip
Rosato, for example, complains that there is a certain formalism in Barth's Spirit
theology; all is already worked out by the triune God; man appears to be a privileged
observer of a remote divine communion.17 He cites, among others, the accusation by
Heinz Zahrnt that Barth's theology implies that everything has happened in eternity in
15Cushman, p. 577.
l6C D I/l (B), p. 450.
17Rosato, p. 134.
118
the form of a monologue in heaven, 18 and so undercuts the reality or significance of

history.
It is true that Barth pays more attention to the past than to the future, more to
Jesus than to us, more to the already accomplished creation and reconciliation than to
the not-yet-fiilfilled redemption, salvation, and glorification o f mankind. It is true that
he gives eternity a kind of priority over history; but his critics are wrong to conclude
that this reduces history or the future to meaninglessness.
These conclusions often
come from examining Barth against a background of ideas that are, in fact, alien to his
thought, or from making mistakes about his conceptual framework. By tracing some
of the faults and merits in these analyses we will clarify the place of human spirituality
in his theology.
Heinz Zahrnt tends to make two kinds of errors in his examination of Barth.19
First, where Barth subordinates X to Y, Zahrnt accuses him of eliminating X
altogether. For example, Zahrnt says that the virgin birth is given such preponderance
[in Barth's theology] because it documents the total elimination of man.20 From the
way that he quotes Barth, one is inclined to agree. But a careful look at the complete
paragraph (in CD 1/2, p. 191) from which Zahrnt quotes will show that this interpreta
tion of it is not possible. Barth has said that the virgin Mary could only receive this
pregnancy and birth, and could in no way have been an agenf in the matter to bring this
on herself. By parallel, we can only receive salvation and cannot be agents of it. While
this openly declares man's utter dependency on God, it cannot reasonably be equated,
as Zahrnt claims, with the total elimination of man, unless he can persuade us that
receiving an action in which we have no agency effectively eliminates us.
Again,
Zahrnt sees21 in Barth a denial that history, suffering, and marriage have any meaning
or value of their own:
The same Barth who in his struggle against natural theology, with its general
concept of the divine, emphasises so strongly the concrete and historical fign lbid.
19Eberhard Htibncr, Monolog im Himmel? Zur Barth-Interpretation von Heinz Zahrnt, Evangelische Theologie 31 (Feb., 1971), p. 72, also says that Zahrnt's double rebuke (that Barth makes
salvation unhistorical and a monologue in heaven) is not so much the result of a genuine
analysis of Barth's doctrine of the Trinity as it is a defense of the central Lutheran dogma of Law
and Gospel, and the natural revelation which it contains, which Zahrnt saw endangered by Barth's
position (my translation).
20Heinz Zahrnt, The Question o f God: Protestant Theology in the Twentieth Century (London:
Collins, 1969), English translation R. A. Wilson, p. 93. Abbreviated hereafter as QOG.
2'Zahrnt. QOG, pp. 106 f.
119
ure of Jesus Christ, makes use of Jesus Christ in his analogical thought as a
universal and supra-temporal principle which can reveal to him the reality of
the whole universe with the result that the reality of the universe
evaporates.22
But for Barth to show whence the meaning and value of the world (with its history, its
sufferings, its births and deaths) derive, or to show the method whereby we espy that
meaning and value, is not at all to deny that meaning and value. Barth insists on the
meaning and value of these things (hence the goal of their redemption! hence ethics!),
but says that in addition their reality points to a greater reality in which they have their
basis.
Second, Zahrnfs criticism depends on the applicability of concepts that he
assumes Barth uses. It often turns out, however, that Barth works within a context of
ideas that differs from the context Zahrnt assumes. For example, he fears that Barth's
attention to heaven and eternity endangers history.
It is not Barth's christological concentration which is responsible for this theo
logical high flying, but the transference of this christological concentration
into heaven. He doubles as it were his christological concentration, concen
trating it on an operation within the Trinity. Thus the process of revelation is
reduced to a monologue conducted by God with himself as three persons, as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. ...
... But the question is whether in Barth it is still a matter o f an historical
process: does he present anything in history as still happeningl
For how can anything still happen when everything has already happened
in eternity?23
We can include this objection within another, more detailed criticism o f Barth's han
dling of time and eternity.
Richard Roberts24 examines Barth's understanding of time and eternity even
more closely than Zahrnt, and produces similar objections. Barth reinforced his early
emphasis on the crisis in which God confronts man by remarks like, That time is
nothing when measured by the standard of eternity, that all things are semblance when
measured by their origin and by their end, that we are sinners, and that we must
22Ibid.
23Zahrnt, QOG, pp. 112 f.
24Richard Roberts, Karl Barth's Doctrine of Time, an essay in A Theology on its Way?
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991).
120
die all these things ARE, even though the barrier be not for us the place of exit.25
Roberts refers to this passage in particular as illustrating the annihilation o f time by
eternity, and then says of the later Barth, It is by the positing of the act of God as a
dynamic, living basis of the unity of the Word of God that Barth strives to escape the
constant threat of a Platonic dissolution of time into eternity.26 Roberts echoes
Zahrnt's judgment, that by Barth's compression of election and rejection into the
elected and rejected Jesus Christ he shift[s] the fulcrum o f the divine action from
Jesus Christ's act in history to God's act in him in eternity, which makes the path to
salvation a merely noetic realization ... 27 If, however, the act of God in Christ is not
to remain unrelated to the human condition ..., then it must be expressed in adequate
temporal terms, not only in relation to the shared human temporality of ordinary life,
but also to the actual death and resurrection of the man Jesus Christ. Such an identity
and involvement cannot remain frozen within eternal election ... but must truly enter
time as it does in the story of the Gospels.28 In Roberts' judgment this difficulty
arises because Barth derives all the interpretive categories from the divine and eter
nal being of God, but he sees a way out if Barth will make an adequate conceptual
distinction of, and relation between, eternity and time.29
The substance of his objection to Barth's scheme has three points: (a) Barth's
account of the midpoint of time,30 which is the fulfillment of time, does not clearly
and convincingly present it as truly temporal, but makes it seem a purely theological
construction, in danger of being what H. Bouillard terms a dream;31 (b) Barth's
axiom that No time concept apart from that of revelation itself may be used calls into
question not merely anthropocentric sources of revealed knowledge of God but
natural knowledge of the natural world, as well as the legitimate existence of that
segment of humanity which does not affirm its reality in the humanity of Jesus Christ;32
25Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, translated from the sixth edition by Edwyn C. Hoskyns
(London: Oxford, 1933), p. 43, emphasis Barth's.
26Roberts, p. 18.
27Roberts, p. 32.
28Roberts, p. 33.
29Roberts, p. 34.
30Thus the real temporal pre-existence of Jesus Christ in prophecy and His real temporal post
existence in witness are identical with this once-for-all existence of His as the midpoint of time. The
midpoint of time which, after all, belongs to time is the fulfilment o f time. CD 1/2, p. 12.
31Roberts, p. 35.
32Roberts, pp. 35 f.
121
and (c) the conceptual structure in which Barth includes eternity and time is too vague
and ambiguous. The outcome of all this, claims Roberts, is that Time and eternity
conflict and eternity confronts and overcomes time. Grace has consumed nature and
regurgitates it in the form o f a natural theology derived from revelation, but such real
ity as is mediated through revelation remains the knowledge o f faith.33
We address the charges in reverse order.
(c) Roberts says, The contrast between the duration of the simultaneity of
past, present and future and the succession and division of past, present and future is
the only logical or conceptual distinction between eternity and time34 in Barth's con
struct Although this seems chiefly to aim at Barth's discussion in CD III/l, pp. 67-68,
it obviously does not fit the discussion of eternity CD 11/1, which is where Roberts says
that Barth's doctrine of time and eternity is most clearly expressed.35
In pages 608-640 of CD II/1 the difficulty of Barth's prose increases in propor
tion with its elegance. Amid the wonder that has apparently captivated him and which
he communicates to the reader, however, some structure does emerge to contrast eter
nity and time: for example, (1) time relates to God's outward acts, but eternity to His
inward acts (p. 609); (2) Eternity is God in the sense in which in Himself and in all
things God is simultaneous, but time is God's creation, or more correctly, a form of
His creation (p. 608); (3) the statement that God co-exists with our time cannot be
reversed so that we may not say that temporal things eternally co-exist with Him and
His eternity (p. 614); and (4) eternity is pre-temporal (pp. 621 ff.), supra-temporal
(pp. 623 ff.), and post temporal (pp. 629 ff.). Barth's comments about time and eter
nity do not exhaust the reality. They leave much room for further development, and
they seeks more to point the reader to God than to erect a well-defined but abstract
metaphysical system. But they do not deserve to be labeled vague and ambiguous.
Perhaps an even more important passage is 56.1, The Unique Opportunity,
in CD III/4. There Barth deals with the limitations of our lives, and specifically the
limitation of time as a fixed span between birth and death. The time in which we live
is our place. It may be a modest place, but it is ours.36 That span o f time derives its
importance from its finiteness and uniqueness. Nor may we despise nor contemn this
limitation, for God in Jesus Christ entered the limitation which in His wisdom He
33Roberts, p. 54.
34Roberts, p. 46, emphasis his.
35Roberts, p. 21.
36CZ) III/4, p. 579,
122
willed to give and has actually given man, [and] it was not for Him a pitiful portion but
a rich dowry full of meaning and promise.37 The reader may wish that Barth had
provided a more analytic, diagrammatic, even geometric description relating time with
eternity. But here again Barth has written in terms of the concrete instead of abstrac
tions.
He has produced an account that, instead of trying to give the reader a
conceptual overview of time and eternity, aims at helping the reader face her own mor
tality. Consequently, Barth opens a perspective of hope and assurance, of gratitude
and joy, on the matter of life and death in the presence of God.
I in my uniqueness have to do this one time with the unique God in relation to
whom everything is now decided concerning me, who in relation to this
now of mine finally decides concerning me with absolute competence and
authority. ... It is my passing opportunity. But in it I pass from Him to Him.
He awaits me at my end. I thus pass before Him and under His eyes. This
gives my transience its seriousness and responsibility.38
(b) The second criticism confuses the being of those who do not know Jesus
Christ as Lord with their understanding of their being.
Barth's remarks assert the
necessity of basing our concept of time on revelation, and thus imply the inaccuracy of
any concept of time not so derived. But the claim that this means that extra-theologi
cal humanity ... cannot legitimately exist in terms of Barth's strict presuppositions39
executes a non sequitur that confuses being with perception o f that being. Certainly
Barth allows that those who do not affirm their being nonetheless exist. He merely
asserts that they do not understand their own being.
(a) The first criticism seems to spring from a dislike of the word
transcendence. Where Barth has attempted to attribute more than the usual power
and significance to a particular point in time, Roberts judges that he has instead come
close to removing all power and significance from it. Barth has asserted that the reality
of the incarnation extends beyond its limited historical time-span to all of time and to
eternity, from which it derives. Roberts claims that this assertion casts doubt on the
temporality and reality of the event. But we can point this line of reasoning in the
opposite direction: if Barth claims that the mid-point of time has an eternal character
as well as a temporal one, and if Roberts finds that this claim is in danger of making
that mid-point a purely theological construction, then does it not follow that Roberts
37CD III/4, p. 571.

38CD HI/4, pp. 591 ff.
39Roberts, pp. 35 f.
123
considers eternity, or at least Barth's account of eternity, to be no more than a purely

theological construction?
Thus he underestimates the reality of eternity and the
reality Barth attributes to it.
Furthermore, this comes into direct conflict with his
second charge: an account of time so in danger of remaining a dream and a purely

theological construction has little power to illegitimate the existence o f those who are
unacquainted with it.
Roberts recognizes that Barth's method of theology consists not in an
extended or connected logic in which each proposition follows from the former, but in
a vertical logic whereby the validity of the cohering assertions is given by the quality
of the purported witness each makes to the divine being.40 That is, Barth's theology
resembles astronomy more than it does geometry by referring primarily to external
reality rather than to an internal system. But Roberts' analysis does not consistently
take account of this method. Despite his recognition of Barth's vertical logic he asks
for a structural scheme of time and eternity in terms of abstract concepts and an over
arching metaphysical construct, ignoring Barth's assertion that Eternity is God
Himself.41 Roberts' evaluation largely neglects this axiomatic assertion, even though
it plays so big a role in Barth's thought. Because the problem o f time and eternity
centers on Jesus Christ, what George Hunsinger says o f the problem o f Christ's
humanity and divinity applies also to the problem of time and eternity: The coexis
tence of these two sets of predicates (divine and human) in a single subject is, as Barth
understands it, the supreme mystery of the Christian faith. Its terms can be described,
but its occurrence defies, inevitably, explanation by means of some larger conceptual
pattern or scheme.42 Roberts' comments look very much like a demand for such a
larger conceptual pattern.
Hunsinger
derives
further
conceptual
help
from
the
Chalcedonian
understanding of perichoresis. Because the life which Jesus Christ lives is always an
eternal life, his past and present and future must not, Barth argues, be separated from
one another abstractly.
... That is, the (active) complex unity of eternity itself (and
therefore of Jesus Christ's eternal life) is conceived as perichoretic. ... Eternity is

conceived, in Barth's theology, as perichoretic not only in itself, but also in its
reception of history.43 Thus, although we experience time in a linear fashion and
40Roberts, p. 25.
41C D II1/2, p. 526, and throughout CD II/l, 31.3.
42Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, p. 237.
43Hunsinger, pp. 240 f.
124
perceive its linear structure, our own linear confinement does not also constrain the
Creator and Lord of time, nor may we conclude that time's structures are always and
only linear.
Roberts says that Barth sees eternity as the temporal plenum from which time
takes its reality.44 But we should not treat eternity as if it were in competition with
time rather than as the source of its reality.
Although Barth does not set up any
definitive, comprehensive structure for relating eternity and time, the phrase temporal
plenum45 applied to eternity suggests a picture of the acts o f God in time as a shallow
cross-section of the acts of God in eternity. That is, God's acts in time are His acts in
eternity, and therefore time is real because it derives from eternity, although time is too
shallow to contain His acts or display them in their fullness. Time does not contain or
condition or constrain God; rather, it is a medium that He creates as the matrix of His
actions ad extra: Time ... is the formal principle of His free activity outwards. Eter
nity is the principle of His freedom inwards.46 By deriving time as an aspect of crea
tion from God's creative and sustaining activity in eternity, this picture avoids Hunsinger's objections against imposing an alien larger conceptual pattern on time and
eternity.
Philip Rosato charges Barth with neglect of man's experience as the very
locus where God allows His dynamic being to be comprehended anew throughout his
tory.47 Rosato's wording often makes it difficult to tell whether he means that theol
ogy should be made relevant to our lives by deriving it from experience, or merely by
relating it to our experience in detail. Whichever is the case, he advocates a view of
freedom and of God that Barth definitely repudiates. These differences proceed from
their differing assumptions about the nature of personal being.
1)
Barth, as it seems to Rosato, has taken away any human role in our interac
tion with God. God is so dominant in Barth's theology that man is reduced to a pas
sive bystander.48 All is already worked out by the triune God; man appears to be a
44Roberts, p. 20.
45Which we can connect with Barth's statement (CD II/1, p. 617), True eternity includes this
possibility, the potentiality of time. True eternity has the power to take time to itself, this time, the
time of the Word and Son of God.
46CDII/1, p. 609.
47Rosato, p. 134.
48Rosato, p. 132. Other remarks include, p. 144, that Barth presents the human person as a
passive bystander to the Spirit's work within him; and on p. 139, the Spirit's economic role appears
to be a divine production played out on an essentially insignificant human stage.
125
privileged observer of a remote divine communion.49 Instead of addressing human

freedom50 and reason,51 the Spirit seems to annihilate them by His work in us.
Although Barth fully intends to respect the dynamic biblical notion of salvation
history52 and our place in it, Rosato considers that Barth ends up with a
pneumatomonism that robs our history and actions of any significance whatever.
By way of corrective, Rosato proposes suggests that the Holy Spirit gives us
the permanent gift of a graced human nature.53 Thus we have an autonomy of action
and a corresponding autonomy of the mind. But, as we have seen in the previous
chapter, this assumes an individualist view of persons, and treats our freedom as a sub
stance. From this starting point, Rosato's improvisations eventually end up ignoring
the difference between the freedom of God and the freedom o f the creature, and they
ignore human sinfulness.
To say that Barth neglects the role of human autonomy and the place of reason
is to misconstrue Barth's particular handling of both these issues. Barth has unmistak
ably subordinated both human autonomy and human reason to the action of God by
asserting their dependence on God's continual upholding and their susceptibility to His
work. But Barth does treat them as realities. Nor does he evacuate them of meaning
and significance, but he traces the source of their meaning and significance, and their
relationships with the other realities with which they have to do. This is what Rosato
mistakes as neglect. Human freedom and reason are not ultimate, but have a source, a
basis, and a context beyond themselves. This assertion, and Barth's development of its
details, constitute for Rosato a denial of significance.
2)
The protest that Barth removes all significance from human history and
Rosato's relatively synergistic response to restore that significance both derive from
assumptions about the nature of personal being and knowing. Rosato perceives Barth
as making a division between the creative, or ontic, and the revelatory, or noetic, in
God's work, and as identifying Jesus Christ exclusively with the former and the Holy
Spirit with the latter. In brief, Jesus Christ accomplishes the new creation, and the
Holy Spirit tells us about it. Since this dual structure seems to fit Barth's doctrine of
revelation and the Trinity, Rosato applies it to the rest of the Church Dogmatics. This
49Rosato, p. 134.
50Rosato, p. 139, The Spirit does not act to awaken human nature to its full freedom, but domi
nates over man because of His intradivine mandate.
51Rosato, p. 148 ff..
52Rosato, p. 135.
53Rosato, p. 147.
126
perception provokes objections to the formalism in Barth's Spirit theology.54 Barth

makes the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit so complete and effective in their
respective functions, Rosato objects, that Jesus Christ leaves the Holy Spirit no ontic
or creative role in our own histories;55 and the Spirit completely occupies the only
remaining role, that of the noetic or intellectual, so that we ourselves have no role at
all.56 In summary, God is so dominant in Barth's theology that man is reduced to a
passive bystander.57
Rosato traces this formalism to Barth's doctrine of the Trinity58 and its connec
tion with his doctrine of revelation.
Even within the Trinity, he claims, Barth has
reduced the Spirit's role to intradivine noetic functionary.59 The Spirit's work toward
creation keeps this pattern, affecting human intellect to the point of replacing it, and
Himself being their life and subjectivity, supplying for them their responses to God, and
making their own thought and freedom and life unnecessary.60
Given this division o f being and knowing between the Son and the Spirit, and
given the completeness of their work in their respective areas, one can plausibly argue
that Barth completely ignores human freedom and reason.61 In such a scheme these
faculties become unnecessary and irrelevant.
Since Rosato sees this ontic / noetic
54Rosato refers in several places to this formalism, see esp. pp. 135 f., 161-164.
55Cf. Rosato, p. 42, It is precisely the Holy Spirit who permits human faith to be analogous to the
ontic source of grace in the eternal and incarnate Word of God. As the divine Noetic, the Holy Spirit
forms a similarity in man's being to the divine Ontic, the being of Jesus Christ. At the noetic pole
there is faith, correspondence, redemption, knowledge; at the ontic pole there is revelation, being,
reconciliation, grace. The Spirit mediates between the two because He is the divine Noetic with all
the force of the divine Ontic. But see also p. 161: the Spirit is seen rather formalistically as the
divine Noetic whose function is to reaffirm on a universal scale the fully effective salvific work of the
divine Ontic, Jesus Christ.
56See, e.g., Rosato, p. 131: Anthropology is thus conceived as the work of the Spirit; man's
entire existence as well as his relationship to the God who longs to encounter him is the domain of
[the Spirit], ... In illumining man's mind, the Holy Spirit constitutes his true being; and p. 152,
Man's mind is circumvented as the divine Noetic performs His revelatory mission.
57Rosato, p. 132.
58Rosato, p. 136, The accusation of formalism in Barth's Spirit theology must be traced back to
his very concept of the Trinity itself.
59Rosato, p. 138, [T]he Spirit seems to be relegated primarily to the intradivine noetic function of
assenting to what the Father and the Son eternally decide.
60 See Rosato, p. 139, The Spirit's activity in creation seems to supplant that of man, and, The
Spirit's economic role appears to be a divine production played out on an essentially insignificant
human stage.
61See, e.g., Rosato, p. 132: Since Spirit theology affords Barth the sole interpretative instrument
which can expose the validity of Christian revelation, it is the dominance of Barth's pneumatology
which causes him to neglect the role of human reason in coming to divine truth.
127
scheme as fundamental to Barth's approach to theology, it is no wonder that he finds

Barth's pneumatology ultimately sterile, at once oppressive in anthropology62 and inef
fective in christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.63 According to this line of
reasoning, Barth leaves us no place for ourselves, for our own histories and struggles.
If Barth were consistent with the actualistic and eschatological intentions of his Spirit
theology, he would have presented the Spirit from the beginning as the total opening of
the Father and Son towards human history.64 If Barth intends to stress God's work in
history, why then does the Holy Spirit seem so remote from the anguish of worldoccurrence in the Church Dogmatics?65
The hard distinction that Rosato makes in his analysis of Barth's theology
between the ontic and the noetic, and his relegation of faith into the noetic category,
demonstrate that he works with a closed / individualist model of the person. His analy
sis fits a model that sees knowledge as a matter of information collected and affirmed
by the personal knower, and so it sees personal being as prior to knowledge. Similarly,
it sees being as prior to relationship because relationships like love and communion
depend on prior knowledge, a knowledge which an already-existent person begins by
gathering information about the other.66 Although he acknowledges that faith has the
dimension of a relationship,67 Rosato treats information (knowledge about God) as
more fundamental, as the foundation upon which we build a relationship with God. In
62See Rosato, p. 142, In the end the human person possesses no real freedom or proper identity of
his own over against God's Spirit... Barth deprives man of any inherent subjectivity or spirituality.
63See Rosato, p. 157, The Holy Spirit plays an inordinate part in Barth's theology of man, but an
inadequate one in his theology of Christ and the Church.
64Rosato, p. 139.
65Rosato, p. 136.
66See, e.g., Rosato, p. 149, The ability of man to consent to the claims on truth made by the per
son of Jesus, by the Scriptures and by Christian preaching depends on whether he is able to judge the
validity of these claims against the background of his prior comprehension of God. See also p. 145,
Man's spirituality would thus be able to possess the relatively ontological function of probing towards
an encounter with God's Spirit on his own and of saying a free yes to God's Spirit when this privileged
encounter takes place.
67Faith is not only a relationship to God; it is also a knowledge of God in the fullest sense. If
Barth's decidedly pneumatic understanding of faith as a relationship to God is his answer to the
subjective tendencies of Schleiermacher, his stress on the pneumatic ground of man's knowledge
about God is his answer to the natural theology of Catholicism. ... Barth makes it clear that man can
only know God through God's own Noetic. ... Through the Spirit the Father communicates to man
the ontic knowledge which He has of Himself in His Son. This is the central tenet of biblical
revelation. ... This movement from false towards true knowledge of God is not the product of any
innate human potentiality. It is the work of God's Spirit, God's own Noetic, who brings man to a new
metaphysical state by introducing him to Jesus Christ, God's ontic self-revelation, Rosato, p. 72,
emphasis mine.
128
Rosato's theology, a relationship between the knower and the known does not exist
prior to their decision to establish it. Rather, it is the result of their co-operation as
two opposite partners in building it.68 Freedom in this framework means the possibility
of choosing between alternatives, such as whether or not to engage in a relationship.69
Rosato also assumes that Barth works within these structures.
We have
already seen how he treats Barth's doctrine of revelation as if it described no more than
the transmission of divinely approved assertions.
For example, he appeals70 to
revelation's presupposition of an ability in man to discern that the truth of the Christevent is identical with the truth about God which he seeks naturally, as though Barth's
position shared this presupposition about revelation, when in fact Barth rejects it.
Perhaps the most important and pervasive evidence that he takes for granted Barth's
use of a closed / individualist model of personal being is Rosato's prominent use of the
dichotomy between being and knowing. Fie attributes that dichotomy to all of Church
Dogmatics, tracing its origin to Barth's formalistic doctrine of the Trinity.
It is easy to see how Rosato could get the impression that Barth's doctrine of
the Trinity formally assigns all ontic work to the Son and gives only a noetic function
to the Spirit. Since Barth's doctrine of revelation is central to his method, first as a
springboard to his doctrine of the Trinity and then as a standard reference throughout
Church Dogmatics, then presupposing that revelation has a merely noetic content
would lead the reader into the kind of rigid dichotomy that Rosato makes between the
ontic and the noetic.
Further, it leads one to assume that Barth assigns all ontic
functions to the Son and only the noetic functions to the Spirit.
But again, this
reasoning assumes a closed / individualist model of personal being, in which God's

communion with us in our own histories is only a noetic event. Barth does refer to
Jesus Christ as the objective reality of revelation, and to the Spirit as the subjective
reality of revelation.
But how the reader interprets that structure will depend on
whether she sees revelation primarily as God's communication to us of information

68See his claim that Barth denies the role of human nature as the supremely necessary counter
part to divine grace in the act of mediation which takes place when God's Spirit cooperates with man.
... The trinitarian aspects of Barth's pneumatology lack the insight that the free acts of the Spirit, as
He brings God's own historical self-communication to completion, are sparked by the equally free
acts of man, Rosato, p. 139, emphases mine.
69See, e.g., Rosato, p. 147, Man's ontic freedom is essentially related to God and objectively
meant for Him, but man can also reject this orientation and find it necessary to pray in trembling for a
new freedom from the Spirit who can encounter, transform and free him for Himself. See also p. 153,
Rosato protests that Barth will not concede that man is created by God with a nature ... which is ...
free to accept or reject God's immanent spiritual activity ...
70Rosato, p. 149.
129
about Himself, or as His communication of Himself to us. As plainly and as often as

Barth says the latter, the reader may still see only the former in Barth's doctrine.
Apparently Rosato does. The closed / individualist model of personal being underlying
Rosato's work only accounts for the exchange of information, and does not allow
communion to be an event in which one gives oneself away, in which the self tran
scends itself by giving itself to another.
As we have seen previously, Barth's vocabulary makes such an interpretation
plausible. Others use the vocabulary of knowledge, revelation, subjectivity, direction,
faith, and other such words to indicate information, the modes o f its acquisition, crite
ria for evaluating it, affirming it as true, rejecting it, and other cognitive quantities and
activities. The associated dynamics are those of the market place, where we might
hold or trade or give away some commodity, manipulating a substance that can be
contained. The container, in this case is the person, and this knowing requires only
one person, reducing others to sources or customers or objects of the commodity. But
Barth uses this vocabulary to indicate relationship, communion, the giving o f the whole
self by the self to another self who reciprocates. The dynamics are more those of the
marriage bed than the market place.
Barth specifically comments on the ontic content of an apparently noetic con
text in his discussion of the constitution of the Christian subject71 in 63.1 Faith and
its Object. On the one hand, faith as our act has no creative but only a cognitive
character. It does not alter anything.72 Yet in the event of faith something more than
a cognitive event occurs: Because the faith of this sinful man is directed on [Jesus
Christ] and effected by Him, the event of his faith is not merely cognitive as a human
act but it is also creative in character.73 Jesus Christ in the power o f the Holy Spirit
accomplishes this creative work, namely, the constituting of the Christian subject. To
paraphrase Barth, the human subject becomes and is the Christian subject only in the
action of faith, not on the basis of any creaturely character of faith as an action, but in
virtue of the fact that Jesus Christ is not only the object but also the basis o f this
faith.74 Barth clearly indicates that he considers faith to involve the ontic, creative
l l C D IV /l, pp. 749-757.

12CDIV/1, p. 751.
73CD IV/1, p. 753.
14CD IV/1, p. 749.
130
work of the Holy Spirit when he says that in this action [faith] there begins and takes
place a new and particular being of man.75
Barth does not share Rosato's view of personal being.
He asserts that our
knowledge about God rests on our relationship with God rather than the other way
round. Our relationship with God constitutes our being. Knowing God cannot be
divorced from loving God, but depends on it. Knowing God is not a matter of having
information about Him, whether gathered or revealed. It is, rather, a matter of loving
God also with our minds as a result o f having been brought into communion with Him.
Barth does not deny the being of those who do not know God, but claims that it is a
being that has been done away with in Christ, and that they are therefore in danger
because they live according to that annihilated being rather than according to the new
being created for them in Christ.
II. Difficulties of describing divine-human interaction
In addition to assuming a distinctively relational model of personal being unlike
that presupposed by many of his critics, Barth also uses theological methods that differ
from those o f his critics, and he rejects methods that others accept. In this section we
will examine the formal function of mystery in Barth's theology, and the manner
whereby we can know that mystery without undoing the mystery of that knowledge.
Connected with the nature of this specific mystery, and with the relational
nature of personal being, is the choice of viewpoint from the student examines the
object of study.
That is, we must also look at two standpoints for theological
discourse, namely, the participant's and the non-participating observer's. We will argue
that Barth's theology of personal being determines the kind of theology one can
legitimately do in either place, and that it further requires us to subordinate the
observer's theological discourse to the participant's.
A. The necessity for mystery as a theological category.
To understand, both fairly and critically, how the human and the divine interact
within Barth's theology, we need to take proper account of the essential place that
mystery and miracle hold in its form as well as in its content.
Miracle and mystery take an apparently traditional place in the content of
Barth's theology. He stalwartly maintains the doctrine of the Virgin conception of
Christ,76 the bodily resurrection of Christ,77 the mighty acts o f God in Israel's history,78
75CO IV/1, p. 749.
76See especially CD 1/2, 15.3, The Miracle of Christmas.
131
God's revelation of Himself to us,79 all as supernatural events; i.e., they are God's
actions in the world and are not explainable by worldly processes. He insists that God
still works in our world beyond our expectation or control or understanding.
But as offensive as some may find the all-pervasive supernaturalism in the con
tent of Barth's theology, even more difficult to grasp or accept is his use o f mystery as
the form of his theology. Even if the reader does not object to supernaturalism as
such, Barth's theology presents difficulties because he refuses to bind its content within
a closed system. We prefer to hear a body of knowledge explained in terms of princi
ples organizing that knowledge into a comprehensive system, giving us a sense of
wholeness into which we can integrate the parts. We approach the natural sciences
that way, and some theologians approach theology that way. Barth does not. He
leaves gaps in his explanations, refers his theology to a person rather than to a set of
principles, and refuses to confine the relationship between us and God within a system.
Thus mystery also has a place as the form of Barth's theology because he says that,
beyond the prominent pockets of mystery we call miracles, all o f theology must to a
certain extent remain an unexplained mystery. The mystery remains because the reality
to which theology points is not a system but a Person, Jesus Christ, whom we can and
do know, but can never comprehend or explain. We will take some time here to exam
ine and defend the presence o f mystery throughout the form of Barth's theology.
We have already noted some of the explanatory gaps in Church Dogmatics
where we might have hoped Barth would give a more detailed account of the Holy
Spirit's work. He defends the absence of the account we might have expected by say
ing the New Testament does not tell us how the Holy Spirit awakens the sinful hearts
of men to know Jesus.80 He points out a gap between our understanding of the one to
whom the message of the gospel comes and our understanding of that same hearer
who has become a believer,81 saying we know that the Holy Spirit Himself bridges that
gap, but nothing else about it. Besides his unwillingness to go beyond what the New
Testament (and, based on it, the creed) says, he has a habit o f treating the Spirit's work
as implicit in the present work of Christ in and among and with us. But beyond both of
these reasons, he recognizes that the nature and manner of the Holy Spirit's work tran
77Throughout, but see, e.g., CD III/2, pp. 442 IT.

78See, e.g., CDIV/3, pp. 53 ff.
79Throughout, but see especially 13 and 16.
WCDIV/1, pp. 649 f.
u CD 1/2, pp. 232 ff.
132
scend our ability to conceive or articulate them. As a result, Barth follows the Scrip
tures' example of giving us our spiritual daily bread instead of an exhaustive theological
blueprint, being more concerned to describe faithfully than to explain exhaustively or
speculatively.
This element of Barth's motivation necessarily places strictures on
Christian theological work.

While discussing the interplay of faith and grace, Hunsinger remarks, If grace
is unconditional, how can faith be necessary? If faith is necessary, how can grace be
unconditional? ... [We could resolve this into technical consistency] only at the two
fold cost of hermeneutical inadequacy and doctrinal incoherence within the larger web
of belief.82 This prompts Hunsinger to comment on a limit to our theological method
which he gives Barth the credit of recognizing:
The events of grace and faith can be conceptually redescribed in their com
plex interrelation, but not at all conceptually explained. The only relevant
explanation is why there can be no explanation. ... If an explanation of how
the events of grace and faith can and do occur in just this mode of relation
were possible, if the condition for the possibility of this mode of relation
could be specified without paradox, then it could only be by means of some
generally accessible analogy, system, or scheme. ... The explanation of why
there can be no explanation thus involves the perception that by definition
these events manifest themselves in, but do not ultimately arise from, the
order of created reality. They are rather to be seen as irruptions in the created
order of another and divine order by which the created order itself is relativ
ized, limited, and contained. This new and alien order is something which the
created order cannot control, whether conceptually or otherwise.83
We cannot even conceptually control this irruptive, alien order precisely because we
derive all our conceptual devices (e.g., our language, metaphors, concepts, perceptual
and cognitive frameworks) and our control of them from within the created order. If
the created order is relativized, limited, and contained by this divine order, then we
can only acquire true concepts of it by revelation from that same divine order, and,
even so, we will often run up against our own inability to refer to that divine order in a
clear and consistent and coherent manner.
But is Hunsinger's claim, that here we have paradox, a legitimate theological
maneuver? Has Barth tangled his theology so badly that the only way out is to invoke
83Hunsinger, pp. llO f.
133

paradox or mystery as a dens ex machina, claiming in effect, Since this is God's
work He can do anything He likes and we cannot expect to understand it?
It is a shallow theology that ties itself into a knot and then cries Mystery! as a
way of cutting itself loose. It is a shallow theology that cries Miracle! to bridge gaps
in our scientific understanding of the way the world works. It is a shallow theology
that sets up a god who is no more than a symbol for our ignorance or inability to think
clearly. But it is a shallow understanding of Christianity in general, or of Barth in par
ticular, that thinks this is the meaning of miracle and mystery, and thus cries Incoher
ence! Barth in particular and Christianity in general do not merely refer to the diffi
cult bits of theology as miracle and mystery. Rather, mystery and miracle accompany
and characterize every item and step in Christian theology. They are essential to the
form of Barth's method as well as to the content of his doctrine. In chapter 7 of his
book, Hunsinger looks at Barth's account of divine and human agency, and he shows
how gaps in explanation constitute a necessary part of Barth's theology. Those gaps
occur in places (human-divine interaction) and have natures (miracle and mystery)
predictable from Barth's axioms. But their existence, placement, and nature can only
be understood and rightly criticized according to Barth's own theological grammar,
and not according to some foreign theological grammar.
Polanyi provides a general justification for explanatory gaps occurring in
attempts like Barth's to describe objects that have a hierarchy of levels. This makes it
obvious that Hunsinger is not simply indulging in special pleading. Polanyi describes
the interaction of differing orders, like Hunsinger's divine and created, in his theory of
a stratified universe84 He uses the example of his watch to illustrate the distinction
between orders or strata, the lower stratum in this case being the materials used to
make the watch, and the upper being its mechanical purpose:
My watch tells me the time. ... [Its operational] principles cannot be defined
by the laws of nature. ... to understand a watch is to understand what it is for
and how it works. The laws of inanimate nature are indifferent to this pur
pose. They cannot determine the working of a watch, any more than the
chemistry or physics of printers' ink can determine the contents of a book.85
He further illustrates such a hierarchy of operations by five operational levels in the
production of a speech:
84Polanyi, The Logic of Tacit Inference, pp. 138-158 of Knowing and Being.
theory of a stratified universe occurs at the bottom of p. 155.
S5Ib id , p. 153.
The phrase
134
The principles of each level operate under the control of the next higher level.
The voice you produce is shaped into words by a vocabulary; a given vocabu
lary is shaped into sentences in accordance with grammar; and the sentences
are fitted into a style, which in its turn is made to convey the ideas o f the
composition. Thus every level is subject to dual control; first, by the laws
that apply to its elements in themselves, and, second, by the laws that control
the comprehensive entity formed by them.
Consequently, the operations of a higher level cannot be accounted for by
the laws governing its particulars forming the next lower level. You cannot
derive a vocabulary from phonetics; you cannot derive grammar from a
vocabulary; a correct use of grammar does not account for good style; and a
good style does not provide the content of a piece of prose.86
In all these examples the lower level can account neither for the production o f the
upper nor for the manner in which it functions. Just as the design o f the watch con
trols how metal bits are used in it, and the nature of metal does not control the design
of the watch, so we have no control over the Spirit's work in the created order. The
nature of metal does not predict nor explain nor account for the mechanism of a watch,
because the level of mechanism, with its implicit attribute of purpose, is higher than the
level of inanimate nature. Yet, at the same time, the higher level does not violate the
nature of the lower.
The operations and properties of any higher level cannot be
explained in terms of a lower level; the divine cannot be explained in terms of the cre
ated. Thus, when Hunsinger says that Miracle and mystery are central, not peripheral
to [Barth's] understanding87 of the interaction of divine and human agency, he is not
hiding behind convenient religious jargon, but expounding the grammar appropriate to
Barth's theology.
The rejection of mystery and the concomitant attempts to contain the interac
tion between God and His creation within a single explanatory system presuppose
some conceptual vantage point above the two orders that we are trying to systematize,
effectively reducing them to a common level. Consequently, they also assume that the
non-participating observer can perceive and understand God, humankind, and their
relationships more clearly and truly than can the participants. We proceed to refute
that assumption.
S6Ib id , pp. 154 f.

135
B. A Imowable mystery: the participant as knower

We cannot explain the higher order (God) in terms of the lower order (His
creation).
Nor can we ourselves, either really or conceptually, escape our created
order. Explanations subordinating God and man to an over-arching system are just
such attempts to escape the conceptual constraints of being a creature, and to ascend
some high tower that rises above both God and His creation to survey them. In more
general terms, the manner of an investigation must conform to the nature of the
investigator: we are creatures and must remain such.
But the manner of investigation must also match the object being investigated.
If we wish to study or describe the communion of God with His people, we must do it
from the viewpoint of the participants.88 One can gain an understanding of this com
munion only by participating in it, and one can describe it faithfully only from the
viewpoint of such participation. Knowledge of the object under study (i.e., of the
communion between God and His people) can only be acquired by participating in it.
Polanyi gives other examples of knowledge requiring the participation of the
knower. After describing skills (like a surgeon's use of a probe or riding a bicycle) and
connoisseurship (like tea-tasting) as kinds of knowledge that one gains by imitation
and practice, he summarizes:
In the exercise of skill and the practice of connoisseurship, the art of knowing
is seen to involve an intentional change of being: the pouring of ourselves
into the subsidiary awareness of particulars, which in the performance of skills
are instrumental to a skilful achievement, and which in the exercise o f con
noisseurship function as the elements of the observed comprehensive whole.89
A little later he remarks more generally,
The arts of doing and knowing, the valuation and the understanding of
meanings, are thus seen to be only different aspects of the act of extending
our person into the subsidiary awareness of particulars which compose a
whole. The inherent structure of this fundamental act o f personal knowing
makes us both necessarily participate in its shaping and acknowledge its
results with universal intent.
This is the prototype of intellectual
commitment.90
88Applied thoroughly, this means that Christian theology can only be written from the viewpoint
of faith. See CD 1/1, 1.
136
Polanyi makes a different point from mine, but he makes mine along the way. He
argues that all knowledge requires that the knower commit herself to a particular way
of thinking and live in it as closely as she lives in her own body.91 But in the examples
he uses, the knower did not and could not acquire her knowledge merely by observing
the participants. Whether she sought to know how to use a surgical probe or how to
distinguish good tea from mediocre, the only way she could know was to do. The only
way she could describe her knowing is from the viewpoint of the doer.
Christian
theology is such a body of knowledge. However useful the viewpoint of the observer
may be, if in its descriptions it does not also presuppose the understanding of the
participant, then it cannot understand, much less faithfully describe, the phenomenon of
communion with God. The Christian theologian who seeks to analyze this communion
need not necessarily abandon the observer's post altogether, but she must subordinate
it to that of the participant.
Thus the form of Barth's theology remains non-systematic because two of his
presuppositions prevent any systematizing that would exclude mystery from the form
of his theology.
1) He posits a divine level of being and acting that eludes our
description and comprehension, a level above our own over which we do not have
conceptual control and which we therefore cannot subordinate to any system. And 2)
he makes a person, Jesus Christ, and not any systematizing principle or body of ideas,
the primary reference of his theology.
Miracle and mystery are not mere black boxes with completely unknown inter
nal workings. First of all, we really know the God who is at work in these mysteries
and miracles because He has revealed and reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ.
Second, Hunsinger expounds what he calls The Chalcedonian Pattern92 of the
mystery of divine and human agency. This mystery is not some impenetrable blank in
our understanding; although the event of double agency cannot be deduced from any
principle, normalized by any law, or divested of its incomprehensibility by any concep
tual scheme,93 it can nonetheless be known in its occurrence. Its very incomprehen
91Personal knowledge in science commits us, passionately and far beyond our comprehension, to
a vision o f reality, Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 64. Compare the distinction here between
participatory knowledge and observational knowledge with the distinction that Robert A. Pyne makes
in Pyne, The Role of the Holy Spirit in Conversion, Biblioteca Sacra 150 (April-June 1993),
between an ability of articulating the terms of the gospel (p. 204), which unbelievers have, and one
of properly evaluating the gospel message (p. 215), which only the saved have, due to the effectual
calling of and conversion by the Holy Spirit (pp. 211 ff.). Pyne speaks of calling, conversion, and
illumination by the Holy Spirit, but does not mention what this has to do with participation in Christ.
92Hunsinger, pp. 185 et passim.
93Hunsinger, p. 197,
137
sibility falls into a pattern similar to the doctrine of the two natures of Christ as given
in phrases of the Chalcedonian formula. The mystery is not just some overpowering
darkness, but a specifiable event, a meeting with this Lord. We cannot master this
event either conceptually or actually, but we can know and describe it.
Third, Hunsinger makes a clear case that the concept o f coherence within a
theological system varies according to the system under consideration. As it would be
inappropriate to criticize a French novel for not adhering to rules of English syntax, so
it is inappropriate to criticize Barth's theology for not exhibiting characteristics o f a
philosophy he systematically rejects. Hunsinger tests Barth's theology for incoherence
according to the Chalcedonian framework that he has adopted, and concludes,
Coherence is thus shown to be a context-dependent rather than a contextneutral term for which the basic choice in theological construction is either to
adopt the logic of an explanatory system or to describe the logic of a specifi
able mystery or so all these matters would appear from within the frame
work of Karl Barth's theology.94
III. Life in Communion
If Barth presupposes a relational model of personal being, where in his theol
ogy do we find a place for human spirituality? From the first volume of Church Dog
matics throughout its course, Barth works from and expounds the premise that God
has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ. Readers have noted not only the centrality
of Jesus Christ, but also the centrality of the verb reveal. There have been complaints
about both. The centrality of Christ has bothered some readers because they believe
Barth has made Jesus Christ not only central but so all-pervasive as to leave no room
for us. Combined with the predominance of the verb reveal in Barth's theology, that
centrality leads some readers to protest that Barth reduces us to observers of a transac
tion worked out over our heads. Readers who assume an individualist model of personhood will find that Barth does not allow for the existence of some inviolable inner
sanctum of our will or being where God will not enter.
It is no wonder that, for
readers who take that starting point, Barth's scheme seems to do away with us
altogether by overpowering us with God. On the other hand, the reader who begins
with a relational model of personhood, as Barth does, will find no threat in Barth's
exposition of revelation and the centrality of Christ. Instead, it will be apparent that
Barth's doctrine of revelation and the centrality of Christ establish and do not destroy
Christian spirituality.
138

Generally, Barth orients all of his Church Dogmatics towards spirituality. He
says that proclamation is the goal of dogmatics, and therefore our experience of God is
to some extent the goal, but not the basis, of dogmatics. More precisely, he says,
Dogmatics is preparation for Church proclamation,95 and, What is under debate in
dogmatics is the Church's fundamental relation of obedience to its Lord in respect of
its proclamation.
... We pursue dogmatics because, constrained by the fact of the
Bible, we cannot shake off the question o f the obedience of Church proclamation. The
question of its obedience includes that of its truth. But the question of its truth can be
put only as the question o f its obedience. As the question o f its obedience it is the
question of dogma.96 God commissions the Church to proclaim His Word, He is
present in that proclamation, and His people hear Him. The purpose of dogmatics is to
serve that proclamation and, therefore, to serve the Church's experience of the
presence and knowledge of God.
By the event of our conversion God has introduced us to life in communion
with Him. Barth intends his Church Dogmatics to serve that communion.97 The topdown orientation of his theology, beginning with God and working his way to us,
undergirds his view that God has established and upholds our communion with Him. It
describes the place of communion that God has made for us, and it describes God's
activity of empowering us to live in that place with Him.
The activity of relating that is at the core of the relational views of personhood that we have discussed is the giving o f oneself to the object of our love. Our
communion with God takes the reciprocal form of God's revelation to us on the one
hand, and our faith and love and hope toward God on the other.
Again we must
emphasize that revelation means for Barth more than the efficient transmission of
authorized and accurate information:
it means that God Himself confronts us and
gives Himself to us. Revelation is God's act of entering into communion with us and
bringing us into communion with Himself.
A. Revelation as event: Francis Watson
Barth interprets conversion as such an event of revelation in the history o f each
Christian, an event wherein God first confronts her and initiates her discipleship as His
95C D 1/1 (B), p. 280.

96C D I/I (B), p. 274 f.
97See also CD I /l (B), p. 274, Dogma is the relation between the God who commands and the
man who obeys His command, the relation which takes place in the event of this commanding and
obeying.
139
witness, revealing Himself as her companion and Father, her Lord and Savior. Revela
tion is God's way of entering our lives and bringing us into His life. He does not
render us passive or treat us as puppets. Since in revelation He gives Himself to us,
we now have98 not only information, but a calling and the power o f His Holy Spirit to
fulfill it. He accompanies us, and we have fellowship with Him and with His children
in the power of His Spirit. Revelation means Immanuel, God with us. To say that He
enters our lives is another way of saying that he enters our histories. Thus revelation is
a matter of history, a matter of our own peculiar times and places and circumstances.
To indicate that the Word of God is not some timeless word, and that it does not stay
in a time of its own apart from us, but enters our time, Barth calls revelation an event.
Barth refers to revelation as an event to indicate that it involves and occurs in
our own histories. Francis Watson, however, objects99 that event does not entirely fit
a reality that is more like a continuing personal relationship.
Events, as Watson
describes them, have a rather point-like character, while revelation and personal rela
tionships have a more linear character.100 Although his argument underlines several
important interpersonal aspects of revelation that we must not abandon by forcing it
into the mold of any convenient metaphor, part of the problem is o f his own making.
The word event and the connotations he attributes to it can be understood anywhere
along a sliding scale o f intensity. Watson's article shows the danger o f interpreting
them, as one easily could, in such an extreme manner as to lose those important inter
personal aspects o f revelation. Upon examination of that article and Barth's applica
tion of the word event to revelation, we shall find that Barth is not guilty of such an
extreme application,101 although he lays himself open to that misunderstanding.
98The have in that sentence does not mean for Barth that we control some deposit, either of
information or power, vested in us. The electric light bulb has power if it shines, but it can be
misleading to put it that way, since current is not a predicate of the bulb as such. Saying our
knowledge is rather like saying our universe for Barth: the our here has very little of the
possessive about it. God is the primary Subject in our knowing or having power, and we are the
secondary.
"Francis Watson, Is Revelation an Event? Modem Theology 10, no. 4 (October 1994):383399.
100Watson, p. 390, Personal relationships are only conceivable within the linear time-process and
cannot be established by a series of momentary, disruptive interventions intersecting tire horizontal
line vertically from above.
101Watson acknowledges (p. 387) that, in using the event-model of revelation, Barth attempted
to highlight the interpersonal dimension that more recent theories have lost. Yet the interpretation of
revelation as an event is problematic if revelation is to be understood in the light of the analogy of
human interpersonal relations.
140

Watson defines event and then makes three specific objections to the event
model of revelation. He distinguishes an event as an especially prominent occurrence
which therefore arises out of the constant stream o f relatively insignificant occur
rences that constitutes our everyday experience, and demands our attention. (Every
day is occurrence-full, but not every day is eventful.)102 The Lisbon earthquake o f
1755 seems the sort of event Watson refers to here. As metaphor, the event model has
no inherently personal or relational meaning. His three objections to using the event as
model of revelation provide further detail of the event model's inadequacy for indicat
ing the personal and relational aspects of the essentially personal and relational encoun
ter that revelation is. The event model, he says, 1) suppresses the informational and
cognitive aspect o f personal encounter,103 2) it disrupts the normal flow of relatively
routinized and predictable occurrences,104 and 3) it bears connotations of immedi
acy f and so singles out and isolates individuals from their communal contexts. ... A
line is drawn between the participant and the non-participant in the event of revela
tion. 105 Watson claims 1) that, unlike events, divine self-revelation necessarily
includes an information or propositional component
2) that the disruptive charac
ter of events unnecessarily abandons the correlation between revelation and linear
time,107 and 3) that God's self-revelation does not isolate us from community, as the
association of immediacy attached to the term event would seem to imply. 108
Watson distinguishes event from occurrence more radically than necessary, not
to reject the event model altogether, but to show only that certain aspects of a par
ticular event-model of revelation are misleading.109 If he has such events as the
Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in mind (he mentions no specific examples), then certainly
God's self-revelation differs from such an event more or less as he has outlined in his
three points. Nonetheless we must respond to his objections with the following con
siderations: 1) God's self-revelation certainly includes information, and He enables us
to speak to others about this self-revelation by means of propositions.
102Watson, pp. 384 f.

103Watson, pp. 387 f.
104Watson, p. 389.
105Watson, pp. 390 f., italics his.
106Watson, p. 388, italics his.
107Watson, p. 390.
108Watson, p. 392.
109Watson, p. 393.
But the
141
propositions merely point to and do not constitute the Self who reveals Himself in that
revelation, and any information that we can encapsulate in such propositions is at best
tentative and provisional. Our witness to others, and so the propositions we use in that
witness, require the ministry of the Holy Spirit to be effective and to bear the truth that
we seek to convey. 2) Personal relationships, continuous and linear though they be,
yet disrupt, invade, intersect, and divert the smooth flow of one's personal existence.
Sometimes they interrupt more jarringly and sometimes less so. All this maintains cer
tain linear aspects of the relationship and its successive encounters, as Watson insists it
should. I agree with his claim that attributing only a punctiliar character to God's self
revelation involves the dualistic assumption that God is incapable o f participation in
linear time, an assumption incompatible with the doctrine o f the incarnation and indeed
with the entire biblical narrative.110 3) The immediacy that Watson attributes to
events does not distinguish them so clearly from personal relationship or revelation as
he claims. In the first place, events do distinguish participants from non-participants,
but so does revelation distinguish the Church from the world. Watson ignores the way
an event, even by his definition, draws together those who participate in it, as much as
it distinguishes them from the non-participants. In the second place, Watson's events
are as mediated, although by non-linguistic media, as revelation and personal
relationships are mediated by language. Inhabitants of Lisbon during its earthquake,
for example, experienced it through the media of their sensory apparatus, but also
through such media as their understanding of the wrath of God, the order o f the
universe, their concern for the lives of others, and their concern for property. We do
not experience or participate in events, as Watson defines them, without the mediation
of senses, concepts, and attitudes.
Some of Barth's remarks seem to warrant Watson's objections. For example,
when he says that the Word of God aims at us and smites us in our existence and
comes from the point outside and above us, 111 he does rather provoke the mental
image of God standing above our linear existence and aiming at it with a shotgun
loaded with pellets of revelation. In light of such passages we can see the need for
Watson's caution that we must be careful to relate revelation to the linearity of tempo
ral existence.112 But other passages clarify Barth's picture o f God's action vertically
intersecting our horizontal existence as intending to point to our lack of control over
n o Watson, p. 390.
i n C D I/l (B), pp. 141 f.

112Watson, p. 396.
142
His revelation. The Bible, by laying stress on the contingency and uniqueness of the
revelations recorded by it ... is simply saying that revelation comes vertically from
heaven. It befalls man with the same contingency with which, living in this specific
place at this specific time and in these specific circumstances he is this specific man at
this specific stage of his inner and outer life, the only difference being that this histori
cal contingency of his can still be surveyed and explained in all possible dimensions.113
Barth, while insisting that revelation happens in our lives, also insists that it happens
into our lives in a manner that we cannot fully survey or explain because it is the pres
ence of God with us.114 We had Pentecost in view when we called revelation an
event that from man's standpoint has dropped down vertically from heaven.115
As a whole, Barth's version of the event model of revelation does not fit the
somewhat cut-and-dried, extreme model to which Watson objects.
Granted, even
Barth's usage o f event as such is not intrinsically personal or relational. The passages
quoted demonstrate that he uses event to emphasize that revelation happens, that it
happens in our own lives, and that it happens beyond our ability to make it happen.
But in addition to all this, as Watson points out, revelation happens in a way that
relates persons to each other, and therefore it involves cognition, linear temporality,
and a mediated encounter. Consider the passages about event quoted from Church
Dogmatics in the previous paragraph in the light of the claim that Revelation in fact
does not differ from the person of Jesus Christ nor from the reconciliation
accomplished in Him.
To say revelation is to say The Word became flesh.116
Revelation, then, means the presence of Jesus in our own lives.
Revelation means
event, because the existence of Jesus is event, just as our own existence is event, in the
sense that Barth uses the word.
Barth's understanding of Jesus Christ as revelation fits the usage of event that
Watson sees in Barth.117 (1) Jesus Christ with us belongs to our own present. (2) We
cannot objectify Jesus Christ in any set of propositions. Although we can certainly
refer to Him by means o f propositions, only He can make Himself an object of our
knowledge. And (3) Jesus Christ, by entering our lives, certainly disrupts them from
outside our own linearity, not by being non-linear, but by taking us, and therefore our
U3C D I/l (B), pp. 329 f.
114CD 1/1 (B), p. 120, The God with us becomes actual for us hie et nunc as the promise
received and grasped in faith because it is illic et tunc a divine act.
n 5 C D I/l (B), p. 331.
U6CDI/1 (B), p. 119.
117Watson, p. 397, note 1.
143
temporally linear lives, into communion with Himself. But Barth's understanding of
Jesus Christ as revelation also fits the three elements that Watson notices are absent
from an abstract event model of revelation.
(1) Although Barth subordinates our cognition to the reality of the event, he
does not attempt to rid revelation of its cognitive and propositional dimension. His
analysis of faith, the phenomenon in us accompanying revelation to us, includes rec
ognition and confession.118 Insofar as we ourselves communicate by means of infor
mation in propositional form, recognition and confession must also be irreducibly
informational and propositional. But neither we nor Jesus Christ who reveals Himself
to us, neither our relationship with Jesus Christ nor our relationships with others, are
constituted of information and propositions. Revelation and faith, and the realities of
persons and their encounters and relationships, exceed any informational or proposi
tional dimensions. We can refer to these realities by means of information and propo
sitions, but reality does not consist of whatever it is possible for us to say about it.119
(2) Despite Barth's occasional lapse into turns of phrase that make God's
revelation look sporadic and non-temporal, his whole point in using the event model is
to affirm that Jesus Christ in His self-revelation enters our time to touch us. If Barth
can say, Revelation in fact does not differ from the person of Jesus Christ,120 then we
must interpret his use of the event model o f revelation in accord with his understanding
of the nature of Jesus Christ and His relationship and encounter with us. Revelation is
an event precisely because it is part of our linear temporal existence. Yes, it disrupts;
but it also grasps us in our inability to grasp it.121
(3) Revelation as event in Barth's model does not come to us unmediated, but
mediated by Scripture and by Church proclamation: The revealed Word of God we
know only from the Scripture adopted by Church proclamation or the proclamation of
the church based on Scripture.122 Revelation comes to us mediated by the humanity
118See 63.2 The Act of Faith CD1V/1, pp. 757 ff.

119Cf. CD 1/1 (B), p. 330, In the Bible revelation is a matter of impartation, of God's being
revealed, by which the existence of specific men in specific circumstances has been singled out in tire
sense that their experiences and concepts, even though they cannot grasp God ... can at least follow
Him and respond to Him.
m C D I/l (B), p. 119.
121 CD J/l (B), p. 109, It is not in our power to make this recollection [of God's past revelation],
not even in the form of our grasping at the Bible. Only when and as the Bible grasps at us, when we
are thus reminded, is this recollection achieved. ... This is God's decision and not ours, all this is
grace and not our work.
122CD 1/1 (B), p. 121.
144
of Christ : His form as a man is regarded and described rather as the concealing o f His
true being, and therefore this true being as the Son or Word of God is a hidden
being.123 The Bible, Church proclamation, and the humanity of Jesus Christ are all
media,124 and all are insufficient o f themselves for revelation. Revelation requires the
activity of the Holy Spirit125 in these media, else they do not reveal but conceal God.
Having investigated the propriety of using the word event to describe or
model revelation, we can conclude by agreeing with Francis Watson that the word,
used abstractly, does fall short in the three ways that he outlines. Barth, however, does
not commit the errors Watson warns against. His usage o f event as a model for reve
lation consistently acknowledges Jesus Christ as revelation, and therefore also as the
criterion of any model of revelation. Thus event as a model does not gain control
over the substance of his treatment of this interpersonal encounter. He uses the model
when it illustrates what he wants to illustrate, and then drops it for other models and
language if they are more appropriate.
B. Interpreting Revelation Relationally: Richard Muller
Barths doctrine of revelation primarily tells us that God has made and still
makes Himself to be our companion, and that He has established and still establishes us
as His companions, forming a divine-human communion that completely reshapes our
lives. We will look later at Barth's understanding of our active participation in that
communion.
Barth's theology of revelation does not merely provide a foundation for a theo
logical system, or authenticate a channel of dependable information from which to
construct that system. It develops a picture of who God is; it does not simply serve as
a theory to validate his epistemology. If we really want to understand revelation in
terms of its subject, i.e., God, then the first thing we have to realise is that this subject,
God, the Revealer, is identical with His act in revelation and also identical with its
effect. 126 That is, the fact that God reveals Himself, interpreted in the light of what
He says when He reveals Himself, tells us about who God is in Himself. O f course,
m C D IV /l, p. 163.
124Cf. CD II/l, p. 16, God is objectively immediate to Himself, but to us He is objectively
mediate. ... It is in, with and under the sign and veil of these other objects that we believe in God,
and know Him and pray to Him.
125CD IV/1, p. 163, It is as this man that He is the Messiah, ... the Word of God. But the fact
that He is this has to be called the mystery of His existence on this point the New Testament is quite
clear. The fact that He is this can be known only as He himself reveals it, only by His Holy Spirit.
l26C D I/l (B), p. 296.
145
Barth does not draw theological conclusions from the bare act of God's self-revelation
apart from the information provided in that action.127 But revelation as communion is
characteristic of God fro'm all eternity, and revelation is His action of communion with
us, of giving Himself to us, of being our God. It is not merely an activity that He
engages in from time to time, and that He abstains from at other times. Communion is
God's activity of being God.128
Barth can say that God is identical with His act in revelation because he pre
supposes a fundamentally relational character of God's being and because he uses the
word revelation to refer to God's act of confronting another and relating to that other
by self-giving. Revelation as self-giving characterizes God as God. In expounding the
phrase light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made in the NicaenoConstantinopolitan creed, Barth remarks, In the first instance the statements about the
distinction and unity in God are simply statements about revelation as the Church has
found it attested in Holy Scripture.
... We have here the concealed God and the
revealed God, and yet the concealed God is no other than the revealed God and vice
versa. ... We have to take revelation with such utter seriousness that in it as God's act
we must directly see God's being too.129
Because revelation in Barth's theology means self-giving and communion, it
does not do away with Christian spirituality or the need for it; rather, revelation as
God's act of giving Himself to us establishes the possibility and the practice of Chris
tian spirituality. God's communion with us and communication of Himself (and not
merely about Himself) to us provides for us the motivation,130 the opportunity,131 and
127This was a criticism but (Barth claims) a misunderstanding of Christian Dogmatics, which he
corrected in CD 1/1. See his comments on p. 296 of CD 1/1 (B).
128See CD 1/1 (B), p. 480, The intra-divine two-sided fellowship of the Spirit, which proceeds
from the Father and the Son, is the basis of the fact that there is in revelation a fellowship in which
not only is God there for man, but in very truth ... man is also there for God. Conversely, in this
fellowship in revelation which is created between God and man by the Holy Spirit there may be
discerned the fellowship in God Himself, tire eternal love of God.
n 9C D I/l (B), p. 428.
130See CD IV/2, p. 783, the Christian does what he may do, what he has the freedom to do, as
one who is loved by God. He loves; p. 789, When love brings about even a momentary change, the
quickening of the whole man beggars description; p. 790, Christian love is the response of love
based on the electing, purifying and creative love of God. It is thus love for God as the One by whom
the Christian is first loved.
131 See CD IV/2, pp. 794 fi, What is the meaning of love for God, for Jesus? It means that God,
Jesus, is so urgent and pressing that [the Christian] may and must yield to this constraint of love in
the experience of its glory, giving place to it, and taking it into account, in concrete thoughts and
words and works. And in this yielding he really gives himself to Him. And as he does so he acquires
good cause and reason continually to do so again.
146
the means132 of responding in kind. Barth's doctrine o f revelation should provoke, not
the question, What choice has God left to the objects of His revelation?, but the
question, How do I go about loving the God who has loved me so well? Barth also
answers this question in his sections on ethics and the Christian life, which can be
summed up as witness and prayer. God's act of revelation motivates us to respond,
and in His act He tells us what to do.
Not everyone, however, uses the word
revelation with such a relational connotation, nor does everyone realize that Barth
uses it so.
Richard Muller's review133 of Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics concentrates on
examining its roots in the work of other theologians rather than on giving a theological
assessment of it, although the latter is not entirely lacking. In sum, it highlights differ
ences between Barth's theology and that o f the post-Reformation Protestant orthodox
theologians (orthodox theologians like the Lutherans, Johann Gerhard, Abraham
Calov, and Johannes Quenstedt, or the Reformed, Jerome Zanchi, Johann Heinrich
Heidegger, and Barnhardus DeMoor134), and it traces his connections (largely meth
odological ones, but also theological) to Wilhelm Herrman and, through him, to
Albrecht Ritschl.
Running alongside the historical questions about Barth's theological associa
tions there is a question about the nature of revelation. Muller recognizes that Barth
does not want to identify revelation with a body of information but with an event, and
he uses this as the criterion for aligning Barth with Herrmann and Ritschl in opposition
to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant orthodoxy. But the way he uses this
criterion does not quite fit Barth's construct o f revelation as event.
We examined earlier some objections that Francis Watson raised concerning
the concept of revelation as event. The difficulty in the concept o f revelation as event
is that one's prior concept of event may involve significant aspects that do not really
apply to revelation. (Watson mentions three such aspects.) If we allow an a priori
concept of event to restrict what we mean by revelation, it may then act as a procrustean bed upon which we chop and stretch Barth's doctrine o f revelation, distorting it
132See CD IV/2, p. 791, It takes place by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit that small and
sinful man may love the great and holy God, responding to the divine self-offering with his own.
133Richard Muller, Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics (1924-1926): A Review and Assessment of
Volume One, Westminster Theological Journal 56 (1994): 115-132, referred to hereafter as
Review.
134Muller, Review, p. 115.
147
into some useless and unrecognizable form. This is the danger inherent in all meta
phors, and therefore in all language and ideas.
We defended Barth's particular use of event to model revelation, however, on
the grounds that he governs his use of the model, as he does with other models, by
referring it to Jesus Christ. That is, since Jesus Christ is the Revelation, we can only
apply an event model to revelation to the extent that we can derive it from the encoun
ter between Jesus Christ and the Christian. Thus, for example, revelation as event is a
historical happening and it occurs in our space and time. On the other hand, it is not
impersonal, which an event may be. Therefore, to understand Barth's use of the event
model of revelation, we must also understand that he uses it only as far as its ultimate
referent, Jesus Christ, allows.
Muller objects to Barth's model of revelation because it seems to him to com
promise the objectivity o f dogmatics. He criticizes Barth's account of revelation as an
event of personal encounter in that
the event of which Barth speaks is not precisely available to historical
examination as are other events,135
and he draws the conclusion,
Barth clearly attempted to move toward a more objective view of dogmatics
than that found in either Ritschl's or Hermann's theology. ... The result was a
position somewhat more objective than that of Ritschl and Hermann but not
nearly as objective as that of the older orthodoxy.136
Has Barth achieved the warmth and personal character so evident in his doctrine of
revelation only at the expense of surety or objectivity of dogma? In making the activ
ity of dogmatics more personal does Barth make it ultimately a matter of an individ
ual's experience, incommunicable and apart from others?137 No, he does not.
135Mullcr, Review, p. 130.

137C. Austin Miles' hymn, In the Garden (copyright, 1912, by Hall-Mack Co.; hymn 356 in The
Broadman Hymnal (Nashville: The Broadman Press, 1940), edited and compiled by B. B.
McKinney), describes the particular Christian's experience with Jesus and closes with the words,
And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; And the joy we share
as we tarry there, None other has ever known. Dr. Robert Rayburn of Covenant Theological
Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, used to comment on the irony in the congregational use of this hymn,
saying that it seemed odd to have a roomful of people singing to each other about an experience that
they also claimed was incommunicable.
148
1. Barth's account of revelation as an event in which Jesus Christ encounters

the Christian also demands a larger context in which that encounter takes place,
namely, the Church. The encounter occurs amid the witness to Jesus Christ borne by
Scripture, by the proclamation of the Church, and by the witness o f particular Chris
tians. Although that encounter is irreducibly personal and unique and particular, it is
also inextricably caught up in the corporate life of the Church. Barth's relational doc
trine of personal being, which we find operating throughout his theology, prevents
individualism from emerging here to make dogmatics as subjective as it might.
Although Barth describes revelation as personal and particular, it is also corporate and
not individualistic. It does not separate one participant or recipient from another but
binds them together, because it is the one Lord who unites them, integrating Christ's
brothers and sisters in their dogmatics as well as in their fellowship.
2. Because Barth's doctrine of revelation demands the context of the Church
for understanding the particular event, it also demands the norm of Scripture for
understanding the particular event, since Scripture is normative for the Church.
Scripture is therefore normative for dogmatics.138 According to Barth it is normative
because of God's action, both by bringing the prophets and apostles to write the
Scriptures in the first place, and then by bringing us to hear them. Muller expresses
doubt that Barth has preserved dogmatic objectivity in his emphasis on Jesus Christ as
Word and Word as event rather than the more traditional distinction between Christ as
Word incarnate and Scripture as Word written.139 But, although Barth does not
identify the Word of God as Scripture in the traditional manner,140 the difference
between Barth and the older orthodoxy is precisely the manner of that identification,
and not the presence or lack of it.141 Specifically, the older orthodoxy, as Muller
describes it, makes Word-of-God to be a property now inherent in Scripture as a
138See CD 1/2, p. 486, The Church can say anything at all about the event of God and man only
because something unique has taken place between God and [the prophets and apostles], and because
in what they wrote, or what was written by them, they confront us as living documents of that unique
event.
U0Ibid.,p. 122.
141See all of 19.2, Scripture as the Word of God, CD 1/2, pp. 473 ff. On p. 492 Barth
comments on the indirectness of the identity of revelation and tire Bible, emphasizing equally both
indirectness and identity. See also Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian
Religion, Volume 1, edited by Hannelotte Reifen, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Company,
1990), p. 216: God gives his revelation a suitable, relevant, and historical form, that is, an absolutely
factual form, that of the word of the prophets and apostles. He makes this human word his own Word
for all ages by his Spirit, who made the prophets prophets and the apostles apostles, ... who made
them the witnesses of his revelation. The record of this unique witness ... is the Bible.
149
result of God's past action, whereas Barth makes Word-of-God to be a present as

well as a past activity of God's that occurs regarding the Scriptures, an event both as
the prophets and apostles write it and as we read it. As Barth puts it,
To say the Word of God is to say the work of God. It is not to contemplate
a state or fact but to watch an event, and an event which is relevant to us, an
event which is an act of God, an act of God which rests on a free decision.142
By his more dynamic account of Scripture as the Word o f God Barth in no way
divorces Scripture from God's Word or from revelation, but he does prevent all inter
pretation that would divorce Scripture from God's continued activity. Muller's version
of the older orthodoxy does not prevent such an interpretation as clearly as Barth's
doctrine does.
3. We must take exception to Muller's understanding o f objectivity, insofar as
we can infer it from his comments on Barth's theology. When Muller posits historical
examination as a criterion for examining the event o f revelation, he seems to be
demanding that we grant authority over the event to third-party, nonparticipant
observers.
This subscribes to the traditional view of objective knowledge that
Polanyi refutes and replaces with personal knowledge, and which we examined
previously.
As we saw there, Barth and Polanyi both refuse to use the views of
$
assembled nonparticipant observers as criteria for the validity of the knowledge of

participants, or to give the former a priority or authority over the latter.143
4. Muller's understanding of revelation does not produce any more objectivity
for dogmatics than Barth's. Dogmatic activity in both models depends also on the sub
jective experience and views of the interpreter. The difference between Barth and the
older orthodoxy is not so much that the latter is more objective, but that its subjectivity
is more effectively hidden. If one puts revelation, inspiration, and the Bible into one
theological compartment, and then puts the experience of the particular Christian into
another, then the theologian's a priori concepts of objectivity and subjectivity partly
determine the development of the theological matter so divided. Barth, by contrast,
has allowed the theological matter to dictate the relation and dynamics and interplay of
subject and object (see Chapter 3 of this thesis). Proponents of the more traditional
142CD 1/2, p. 527. Cf. Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, p. 58 (Barth's emphasis): only in full action
is revelation revelation. ... To receive revelation is to be addressed by God.
143Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, p. 58: when revelation is seen from the standpoint of the
noninvolved spectator, then it amounts to nonrevelation.
150
compartmental method might well perceive Barth's doctrine as confusing subjective

areas of theology with objective ones.144
Although he discusses Barth's understanding of revelation as event, Muller still
treats it as an event whose primary function is to transmit information. He comments,
Significantly, Barth argues the subjective side of revelation with a citation
from Calvin that Christ's work of salvation remains useless and of no value to
us if Christ remains outside of us significantly because Calvin is not here
speaking of the understanding of revelation, as Barth is, but of the saving
appropriation of Christ's work.145
The title o f the sub-section of Gottingen Dogmatics to which Muller refers is Faith
and Obedience in the Doctrine of Revelation. Barth, contrary to Muller's analysis, is
not speaking of any merely intellectual understanding of God's revelation apart from
the saving appropriation of Christ's work. Faith and obedience to revelation are the
saving appropriation of Christ's work.
Revelation includes but is more than an
impartation of data: it is an act of personal encounter and communion. In faith and

obedience we respond to God's saving work in Christ, with our yes we respond to His
Yes. Someone might object that the remark of Calvin refers only to conversion and
not to the Christian's day-to-day experience.
The principle is the same, however,
because the Christian does continually what the new convert does for the first time:
that is, to respond to the presence of God in faith and obedience.
To turn the
quotation around, the work of Christ has become useful and valuable for us because
Christ has not remained outside o f us, because He has effectually united us to Himself
by the bond of the Holy Spirit.
Further, Muller mis-states Barth's attitude to the use o f propositions. He cites
a portion o f Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics, where Barth claims that giving dogmatics a
certain relation to preaching
avoids a misunderstanding that we do not find in the theology of the Refor
mation or o f the early church, namely, that dogmatics burdens the consciences
of Christians with propositions that they have to believe, or accept as true, if
144I do not here claim that Muller's article directly indicates that he practices this compartmental
approach to theology, but only that, if he does, it may partly explain his view of Barth's theology.
145Muller, Review, p. 130, referring to Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, p. 153, where Barth cites
Calvin, Institutes III. 1.1.
151
they are to be saveda possibility against which the whole zeal of especially
W. Herrmann's theology was directed.146
He says that Barth here asserts the historical claim that neither the Fathers nor the
Reformers understood dogma (or, we might add, revelation) as propositional truth to
be believed.147 But Barth neither says nor implies that at all. He simply makes a
similar distinction to the one that Muller himself elsewhere applauds the orthodox for
preserving in the delicate balance ... between intellectual acceptance of God's truth
revealed in and by the Word and faithful apprehension of Christ, the Word Incarnate,
as Savior. 148 Barth does not say (nor does he say that the Fathers or the Reformers
said) that dogma is not propositional truth, nor that those propositions are not to be
believed. He does say that dogmatics is a human activity149 and that dogma is a human
word150 about the Word of God. Salvation is a matter of relationship to God, and its
reality is prior to what we say about it. Faith is our response to the Word of God.
Dogma is after-the-fact human reflection on what God said. Surely Muller does not
wish to make intellectual acceptance of a human statement o f doctrine, even a wellexpressed and accurate one, to be a prerequisite of salvation rather than a product o f
it. Barth protests such a prerequisite on the grounds that The Word of God saves,
not faith. If dogma is made a norm for believers, ... then the relation is reversed, and
faith is stamped as a saving work. 151
146Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, Volume 1, p. 29, as quoted in Muller, Barth's Gottingen
Dogmatics," p. 121.
147Muller, Review, p. 121 f.
148Richard Muller, Christthe Revelation or the Revealer? Brunner and Reformed Orthodoxy
on the Doctrine of the Word of God, Journal o f the Evangelical Theological Society 26, no. 3
(September 1983), pp. 318 f. Referred to hereafter as Revelation or Revealer.
149See Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, Volume 1, p. 25, The action that comes into question is
Christian speaking, I emphasize, Christian speaking. ... Dogmatics is very specifically reflection on
this speaking with reference to the Word of God, namely, how far the Word of God is, or is meant to
be, identical with it. Italics his. Earlier (p. 7) he defined dogmatics as scientific reflection on the
Word of God, commenting (p. 8), The most fitting means to establish objective truth, the most
certain way to achieve coherence in knowledge, the freest critical norm, and the most logical
grounding o f all knowledge will in every field of science be the truth itself, which we do not have to
produce but which is given to us.
150See Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, Volume 1, p. 17, Dogma is a principle or viewpoint that is
born of God's Word and won from it. Over against the triune Word of God it is thus a second and
independent thing, a human word which lives only in relation to the first thing and which is thus
unquestionably secondary. ... In relation to its dogma, the church both rightly and necessarily
maintains a certain final reserve. T beg you, where I have not understood aright the scripture that I
treat of here, to help me to a better understanding, but from the same scripture, is Zwingli's plea ...
151Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, Volume 1, p. 30.
152
Muller also claims that Barth does not clearly distinguish the Revealer from the
revelation.152 Without explaining what he means by this claim, Muller refers153 the
reader to his article Christthe Revelation or the Revealer? Brunner and Reformed
Orthodoxy on the Doctrine of the Word of God, presumably to avoid repeating here
concerning Barth what he says in the earlier article about Brunner. Since he does not
specify which objections to Brunner's doctrine he has in mind here, we will look briefly
at the more prominent ones, and show that none of them apply to Barth.
1.
One protest that could be leveled against a distortion o f Barth's theology,
and which Muller does aim at Brunner's, is the claim, On the epistemological side of
the issue he implies that the enfleshment of the Word places the revelation of God
beyond words. 154 The difficulty here is what Muller means by beyond. If he refers
to a claim that we cannot in our words bear witness to God's revelation in Christ, then
this manifestly does not represent Barth's teaching. The innumerable texts regarding
the proclamation o f the Word155 contradict that idea. On the other hand, Barth does
say that what God reveals to us is Himself: God reveals Himself. He reveals Himself
through Himself. He reveals H im self 156 Barth never claims that this revelation of
the Word is without words. This is an implication of Muller's summary of Brunner's
doctrine, Jesus can be viewed as Revealer not in a prophetic sense but in a personal
senserather than a revelatory teacher he is a revelatory life. 157 Barth explicitly and
extensively contradicts such a view of revelation. He affirms that The Word of God
means originally and irrevocably that God speaks.158 Further, he says
Speaking stands in correlation to hearing, understanding and obeying.
Whatever problems may arise with regard to these terms through the fact that
our concern is here with God's speaking, and hence with the hearing, under
standing and obeying correlative to this speaking, ... we must certainly not
152Muller, Review, p. 122 f., Unlike Barth, [the Reformers and the orthodox] clearly
distinguished the Revealer from the revelation ...
153Muller, Review, p. 123, footnote 29.
154Muller, Revelation or Revealer, p. 316.
155See, for example, 4.1 The Word of God Preached {CD 1/1 (B), pp. 88-99), and all of
Chapter IV The Proclamation of the Church ( 22-24, CD 1/2, pp. 743-884).
156CD 1/1 (B), p. 296. Cf. Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, p. 87 (Barth's italics): The content o f
revelation is God alone, wholly God, God himself.
157Muller, Revelation or Revealer, p. 316, referring in turn to Brunner's Dogmatics 2.275.
158C D 1/1 (B), p. 133. In CD these words take the form o f a clause in a question, but a clause that
Barth affirms as tme. Cf. Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, 3.Ill, The Meaning of Deus Dixit, pp. 58
ff.
153
leave the level of these concepts of speaking, hearing, understanding and

obeying if we are not to set ourselves at some other place than where God's
Word is heard.159
But in this speaking we are not merely dealing with the transfer o f information, but
with God who reveals H im self to us in this speaking. In our proclamation of the Word
of God we also speak, but our words do not encapsulate the reality of which we speak.
Rather, they point to that reality, to God. Elsewhere, Barth says, The inconceivable
element in revelation ... is the fact of the Son of God who is the Lord in our midst.160
He may well say inconceivable, because we cannot capture the Son of God in our
concepts or words. Nonetheless, we may point to Him and bear faithful witness, and
He commands us to do so.
2. Muller objects to Brunner's conception of Christ's prophetic office on the
grounds that since in Brunner's system the prophet is a bearer of God's Word who
recognizes its source as other than himself, the Christ whose Person is the Word can
not rightly be called a prophet.161 This is a prejudicial and ad hoc definition of
prophet. The essence o f the prophet's office was not who the source of the message
was not but who the source was, namely, God. Further, the premise of the claim is not
true anyway, since the Christ whose Person is the Word points to the Father as His
source other than himself.162
3. In the Christological section of Brunner's system, ... only a tenuous and
subjectively apprehended witness conjoins Word of God with Scripture.163 However
true or false this may be of Brunner, it does not apply to Barth. On the contrary, he
affirms that the doctrine of inspiration will always have to describe the relation
between the Holy Spirit and the Bible in such a way that the whole reality of the unity
between the two is safeguarded no less than the fact that this unity is a free act of the
grace o f God, and therefore for us its content is always a promise.164 Unless we can
l59C D I/l (B), p. 135.

l60C D I/l (B), p. 409.
162See CD 111/2, p. 62: We cannot say that Jesus did not act in His own right, but in the name of
another, namely God. We can describe the work of the prophets and apostles in this way. The
position in regard to Jesus is both more complicated and more simple. He acts in the name of God,
and therefore in His own name. ... The saving work of deliverance and life is really the affair of God.
Whose else could it be?
164CD I/2, p. 514.
154
call the Holy Spirit a tenuous and subjectively apprehended witness, we must
exclude Barth from vulnerability to this accusation.
4.
Brunner's view of Christ as the Revelation, as Word so become flesh that he
no longer points beyond himself to the transcendent, coupled with Brunner's subjective
view of the apprehension o f God's Word in Scripture reinforces rather than surmounts
the Kantian noumenal-phenomenal rift. 165 Barth claims that God fully reveals Himself
in Christnot that we fully apprehend, but that the full reality of God is present when
Jesus Christ encounters us. Certainly God transcends our ability to grasp Him, which
is one of the points Barth makes in talking about the hiddenness of God in the incarna
tion.166 That is why we need the work of the Holy Spirit to unveil God in our com
munion with Him167 (or, in Muller's words, to surmount the Kantian noumenalphenomenal rift). Thus our apprehension of the Word of God when we read the
Scripture is a gift o f the Spirit.
The selection of points from Muller's article on Brunner has been uncomfort
ably arbitrary. He made other objections, but these four seemed to bear the weightiest
substance o f them. The difficulty in making any selection was that none of the objec
tions apply to Barth.
C. Revelation as a determinant of experience: Jurgen Moltmann
Jurgen Moltmann cites another danger in Barth's theology of revelation. If we
are to understand revelation as a completely top-down action, he says, then revelation
becomes a transcendental and one-sided event:
But if God-consciousness only comes into being at all because the Wholly
Other God reveals himself, then the Spirit of God is the being-revealed o f this
self-revelation, of God in us; and it remains for us just as inexperienceable,
hidden and other as God himself. In this case there is a permanent disconti
nuity between God's Spirit and the spirit of human beings. For then the Holy
Spirit is not a modality of our experience of God; it is a modality o f God's
revelation to us.168
I66See, e.g., CD II/1, p. 16, God is objectively immediate to Himself, but to us he is objectively
mediate. ... It is in, with and under the sign and veil of these other objects that we believe in God,
and know Him and pray to Him. The incarnation is such a sign and veil.
l67See CD IV/1. pp. 648-650. The Holy Spirit is the power of Jesus Christ in which it takes place
that there are men who can and must find and see that He is theirs and they are His, p. 648. Cf.
Barth, Gottingen Dogmatics, 7.II Conditions of the Subjective Possibility, pp. 174 If.
168Jiirgen Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1992), p. 5.
155
Further, because Barth links his eschatology,169 as Moltmann describes it, to God's
eternity rather than to the future of the new creation of all things, Moltmann con
cludes that
the Holy Spirit reveals nothing to human beings which they could see, hear,
smell, or taste, and so experience through their senses; on the contrary, it
reveals something which human beings can never experience: God's eternity
and the life which lies behind the frontier of death, as eternal life. ... As the
subjective reality o f God's self-revelation, the Holy Spirit remains entirely on
God's side, so it can never be experienced by human beings at all. Even the
faith which the Spirit effects does not know itself. It remains hidden and
inexperienceable to itself, so that the believer has to believe in his belief.
By setting up this antithesis between revelation and experience, Barth
merely replaced the theological immanentism which he complained about by a
theological transcendentalism.170
Thus the content of revelation and all the work of the Holy Spirit, even our own faith,
remain remote to us.
From this separation between the eternal and the temporal Moltmann infers that
the Spirit's function is reduced to an informative one:171
But if the regeneration and conversion of every individual has already been
brought about in Christ's vicarious death for all human beings, then the work
of the Holy Spirit can only be to bring men and women to the knowledge and
recognition o f this fact, which took place without them on their behalf.
Because the salvation of the world has been brought in Christ and is therefore
already existent, the work of the Holy Spirit can only be recognition of this
salvation.172
169Cf. also Moltmann's diagnosis, in Theology o f Hope: On the Ground and the Implications o f a
Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1967), p. 51, that Barth's thinking in
the 1920's came under the bane of the transcendental eschatology of Kant, in which the goal of
revelation is identical with its origin ... [so that] revelation and the eschaton coincide ... in the point
which is designated God's or man's se lf. Revelation ... of God is then the coming of the eternal to
man or the coming of man to himself, (p. 46, italics his). Moltmann's assesses this transcendental
eschatology thus (p. 47, italics his):
If the eschata are supra-sensible and as such beyond all
possibility of knowledge, then eschatological perspectives are in turn also completely irrelevant for the
knowledge o f the world of experience.
170Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 7.
171Cf. similar criticisms by Philip Rosato and others cited above.
172Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 150, italics his.
156
Referring to this kind of reduction, Moltmann says that both Barth and Otto Weber
really evade the question about the experience of the Holy Spirit.
For Barth this
experience is to be found wholly in knowledge of Christfor Weber wholly in expec

tation o f the future. 173
Shortly after giving this assessment of Barth and Weber, Moltmann describes
experiences of the Spirit for which a properly eschatological pneumatology ought to
account, with special emphasis on joy174 and peace.175 He also describes our life in the
Spirit more generally as discipleship of Jesus, with its implications both for opposition
by the world176 and for growth in faith.177
It must be conceded that, in the work that Moltmann cites,178 Barth provides
little if any evidence to contradict Moltmann's analysis, and that the resulting objec
tions and questions must be brought against it.
Even though Barth understands
eschatological in terms of God's promise,179 he explains that promise in the transcen

dental terms that seem to apply to our experience largely, if not entirely, as knowl
edge.180
But this one-sidedness does not characterize Barth's later work in the Church
Dogmatics. There, at least, Barth increasingly balances God's Wholly-Otherness with
His humanity, and he describes eternity as invading temporality rather than holding
173Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 152, italics his.

174Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 153 (italics his), The first experience we have to mention is
the experience of rapturous joy. When the Spirit of the resurrection is experienced, a person breathes
freely, and gets up, and lives with head held high, and walks upright, possessed by the indescribable
joy that finds expression in the Easter hymns.
175Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 154 (italics his), Peace is another experience of the Spirit in
our restless hearts: peace with God in Christ, because the love of God has been poured out in our
hearts through the Holy Spirit.
176Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 154, Life in the Spirit is always discipleship of Jesus, and
discipleship leads to conflict with the powers and the powerfiil of this world, and to the bearing of
the cross. Separation from the powers and compulsions of this world necessarily conduces to
solidarity with the victims of these powers and compulsions, and to intervention on their behalf.
177Moltmann, The Spirit o f Life, p. 155, Of course there is a growth in faith and a growth too in
the new life of the Spirit to which people area born again.
178Moltmann refers (The Spirit o f Life, pp. 6 ff.) to K. Barth and H. Barth, Zur Lehre vom
Heiligen Geist, Beiheft 1, Zwischen den Zeiten, Munich 1930. Karl Barth's contribution was printed
in English as The Holy Ghost and the Christian Life (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1938).
179Barth, The Holy Ghost and the Christian Life, p. 72, says that by eschatological he means
that God promises us something that is ultimate and future, italics his.
180Barth, The Holy Ghost and the Christian Life, pp. 80 ff., expounds that the Christian's life is
hid with Christ in God under the headings of conscience (as co-knowledge), gratitude, and
prayer.
157
aloof from it. In the context of this re-balanced approach, revelation no longer has the
form or function of the antithesis of experience; rather, revelation becomes the new
determining factor of the experience of those who have been called to be disciples of
Jesus Christ. We have already argued that the Holy Spirit's role is not merely an infor
mative one, but a role of integrating our lives into the fellowship o f the Father in Christ
Jesus. Further, Barth clearly points to the same experiences of the Spirit that Molt
mann mentions: joy,181 peace,182 discipleship,183 the opposition of the world,184 free
dom,185 and a new consciousness of solidarity with the oppressed, with the unsaved,
and with our Christian brothers and sisters.186 Barth callsthe Holy Spiritthe power
of the transition on which the New Testament counts when itlooksfrom the basis and
origin of its witness in Jesus Christ to its goal in the existence of Christians, a power
that is operative in the world, but not as one of its forces,187 and he characterizes this
power as light, liberation, knowledge, and peace. Finally, It is the power of humility,
of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, of fellowship, of prayer and confession,
of faith and hope and above all love.188
Barth describes grace as God's activity189 rather than as a God-given product
that becomes our property. He pays more attention to God's activity than to its effects
on us. But Barth does not completely evade dealing with our experiences of the Spirit.
From the beginning of Church Dogmatics he has made the theme of our fellowship
with God, and therefore our day-to-day experience, a major thread running through his
work. In 6.3, The Word of God and Experience,190 he has turned his attention
181See Barth's exposition of joy, CD JII/4, pp. 374-385, and its relation to the Holy Spirit, p. 379:
But we must consider carefully that real joy comes and is present like the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it is
really when the Holy Spirit conies and is present that one experiences true joy.
182C D IV/1, p. 15: Therefore our magnifying of God cannot seek and find and have its truth and
power in itself, but only in God, and therefore in that one Man in whom God is for us, who is our
peace and salvation.
183See 66.3 The Call to Discipleship, CD IV/2, pp. 533 ff.
184See 66.6 The Dignify of the Cross, CD IV/2, pp. 598 ff.
185See CD IV/2, p. 825, It is [the Holy Spirit] who cndowsfthe Christian] with the corresponding
abilities and freedoms and powers. See also all of 71.6 The Liberation of the Christian, CD IV/3,
pp. 647 ff.
186See CD IV/3, p. 340. See also 18.3 The Praise of God, CD 1/2, pp. 401 ff., which is Barth's
exegesis of Mk. 12:31, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
187CD IV/2, p. 320.
n s CDIV/2, p. 315.
189Cf. the motif Hunsinger calls actualism, as described earlier.
190CD I/1 (B), pp. 198 ff.
158
directly to the matter o f how revelation relates to experience. For those who experi
ence the Word of God (revelation), this Word has become a determining factor above
and behind their lives.191 Barth refuses to restrict this experience of the Word of God
out of or within any compartment of our existence, but says that it determines the
whole.
He casts the experience in terms of inter-personal relationship in some
detail.192 Here again he rejects the notion that the experience itself or the possibility
for it is a property of the one experiencing the Word of God; but that does not under
cut the fact that it is genuine experience of the Word of God.193 Revelation here is not
one more worldly phenomenon that we experience, but neither is it the antithesis of
experience that Moltmann interprets Barth to make it. Rather, it is the determinant of
experience. We still see the world around us, and we still do not see God; but revela
tion makes the world look different because we see it through our fellowship with God
in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.
Moltmann senses that Barth evades any dealings with our experiences of the
Spirit. There is also in some places the feeling that Barth leaves no place for us in his
theology. Barth himself senses that feeling, and he responds to it by pointing us back
again to Christ and our life and being in Him.194 Since the Holy Spirit is the power of
our life and being in Jesus Christ, Barth does develop a pneumatology that connects
anthropology with christology.
Moltmann has said, If the idea of self-revelation is not to change tacitly into an
expression for the God of Parminides, then it must have an open eye for the statements
of promise in the third article of the Creed.195 Alisdair Heron finds196 such an open
m C D I/l (B), p. 199.
192C D 1/1 (B), pp. 204-208. Moltmann disagrees, remarking (in Theology>o f Hope, p. 56), Self
revelation accordingly does not mean for Barth personalistic self-disclosure of God after the analogy
of the I-Thou relationship between men. God reveals himself in actual fact as somebody and
something for man, not as pure, absolute Thou. ... Thus in revealing something (his lordship) and
somebody (namely, himself in his Son), God reveals himself. But see McLean, The Humanity of
Man in Karl Barth's Thought, SJT 28 (1975), who claims, p. 146, that Barth posits an analogy
between the I-Thou form of humanity and the I-Thou form of God-man relationships.
193CD 1/1 (B), pp. 208 ff.
194After saying of conversion (CD IV/2, p. 582)) that properly it is an event only in [Jesus
Christ], that in the true sense He alone is engaged in conversion (ibid.), and that everything is
simple, true and clear when these statements [about conversion] are referred directly to Jesus Christ,
and only indirectly, as fulfilled and effectively realised in Him for us, to ourselves, (p. 583), Barth
acknowledges that the Christian may feel completely left out of all this. What remains, then, for
us? he asks. But the answer follows, Jesus Christ remains, and in and with Him everything, in and
with Him the whole reality and truth that God is for us and we for God, and therefore the whole power
of our conversion.
195Moltmann, Theology o f Hope, p. 58.
159
ness in Barth's later work, with which he contrasts the one-sidedness of earlier work,
and he declares that God's deity does not exclude, but includes His hum anity191
IV. Conclusion
The title of Barth's essay, The Humanity of God, can well serve as a banner
of his theology. Even his theology of revelation requires a thoroughly incarnational
interpretation. It obviously centers on God's revelation of Himself to us in Jesus Christ
as attested to us in Scripture; but Barth also describes revelation as a continuing activ
ity today that still centers on the humanity that God has assumed. When God acts
today and tomorrow to reveal Himself to us, He still does so in Jesus Christ in the
power o f the Holy Spirit. Just as the revelation in the event o f the incarnation operated
in historical terms, so does revelation today. Just as the incarnation was an extended
event of personal encounter that totally changed the lives o f those to whom He was
revealed as the Word of God, so revelation as event in our lives today is a matter of
personal encounter with God in our own space and time, affecting every aspect of our
lives. This is how Barth describes revelation.
Revelation, Deus dixit, functions as the fountainhead of theology for Barth.198
But the goal of his theology is Christian Spirituality. Barth's massive expositions of
prayer,199 o f proclamation,200 of baptism,201 and of the communion of the saints and
Christian life202 do not stand apart from the rest of his doctrine. They do not rest on
196Heron, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), p. 125.
197Barth, The Humanity of God, p. 49, italics his.
198See Moltmann's quotation of Barth, Dogmatics should begin with God said (Deus dixit), in
Theology o f Hope, p. 53. See also Alister McGrath, Karl Barth and the Articulus iustificationis, p.
349.
199See, e.g., Barth, Prayer According to the Catechisms o f the Reformation (Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1952), and 53 Freedom before God, CD I1I/4, pp. 47 ff. See also Lou Shapiro,
Karl Barth's Understanding of Prayer, Crux 24 (March 1988), in which he says (p. 30), For Barth,
the antithesis between theology and spirituality is a false one. Theology makes intelligible the inner
life of the Spirit, and this spirituality authenticates and interprets Christian doctrine.
200See, e.g., Barth, The Word o f God and the Word o f Man (New York: Harper and Brothers
Publishers, 1957); 3 Church Proclamation as the Material of Dogmatics, CD 1/1 (B), pp. 47 ff.;
4.1, The Word of God Preached, CD 1/1 (B), pp. 88 ff.; and all of Chapter IV, The Proclamation of
the Church (comprising 22, 23, and 24), CD 1/2, pp. 743 ff.
201See especially all of CD IV/4, comprising Baptism with the Holy Spirit (pp. 3 ff.) and
Baptism with Water (pp. 41 ff.).
202See, e.g., the application of the Word of God to the Christian life in each of the four volumes of
Church Dogmatics: 18 The Life of the Children of God, CD 1/2, pp. 362 ff.; Chapter VIII The
Command of God (comprising 36-39), CD 11/2, pp. 509 ff.; all of CD II1/4; the sections on the
160
clouds in the air, but on the foundation of Barth's doctrine o f God's revelation to us in
Jesus Christ. According to Barth's theology of revelation, God purposes by this reve
lation to establish and inaugurate fellowship with us and our fellowship with Him.203
Consequently, we ought not to interpret his doctrine o f revelation apart from this
acknowledged context and goal.
We have not here examined Barth's enormous contribution to the theology of
Christian spirituality in his writings concerning prayer, proclamation, baptism, or the
communion of the saints and the Christian life. The concern o f this chapter has been to
clear away the notion that a theology beginning with his doctrine of revelation cannot
properly or consistently arrive at those devotional writings. The concern o f this chap
ter has been to show that Barth generates his doctrine of revelation with his relational
views of personal being clearly in mind, with the result that he orients this doctrine
towards providing a firm foundation for Christian spirituality. This revelation, accord
ing to Barth, is God's act of coming to us:
He wills certainly to be God and He does not will that we should be God.
But He does not will to be God for Himself nor as God to be alone with Him
self. He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God. ... That He
is Godthe Godhead of Godconsists in the fact that He loves, and it is the
expression of His loving that He seeks and creates fellowship with us.204
work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community and in particular Christians ( 62-63 in CD IV/1,
67-68 in CD IV/2, 72-73 in CD IV/3); and all of CD TV/4.
203CD 1/2, pp. 362 f.: In the true manhood of the Son of God, all those who believe in Him are
taken up into unity with Him and into the unity of His body on earth. They become partakers by grace
of the divine sonship which is proper to Him by nature. That is the full meaning and content of the
revelation made in Jesus Christ as the Word of God by tire Holy Spirit.
204CZ> 11/1, pp. 274 f.
Chapter 5
The Church as the Context o f Conversion

Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which robbed and tore
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she selftruth and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travail we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, Thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court Thy mild dove,
Who is most true, and pleasing to Thee, then
When she is embraced and open to most men.
- John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet 18
Habere non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.
He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother.
- St. Cyprian (d. 258), De Catholicae Ecclesiae
Unitate, vi.
Thesis: Because o f his relational doctrine ofpersonal being, Barth's theology

o f the Church's proclamation entails dialogue with the world and critical response to
its cultural and religious traditions, in order to bear faithful witness to the one
revelation o f God in Jesus Christ, and in order to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Our discussion of conversion has thus far concentrated on the particular con
vert, although we have also shown how Barth roots the conversion o f each Christian in
the remaking of mankind that has occurred in Christ.1 Barth defines our humanity in
terms of Christ and His work, so that our personal being is derivative of Christ's. But,
just as this relates each particular conversion to Christ, so our common relation to
Christ relates all converts to each other. Barth does not restrict his doctrine of conver
sion to God's activity regarding the particular Christian.
Instead, his assumptions
about the relational nature of personal being lead him to develop his doctrine of
conversion also in terms o f the Church, the body of Christ, o f which the convert
becomes a member at conversion.
lCD IV/1, p. 132.
Ch. 5: The Church as the Context o f Conversion
162
Barth's relational personalism, however, is not the only factor shaping his doc
trine of conversion. We have already mentioned the christology that lies behind his
relation views of our being. We have also seen previously that conversion involves a
personal encounter between Jesus Christ and the convert. Critics often neglect this
personal element of Barth's theology, and as a result some critics have labeled his
rejection o f natural theology narrow and bigoted, and they have all but accused him of
being irrational.
In this chapter we will look at Barth's view of the Church's function in conver
sion, and we will tie these views to his relational doctrine of personal being. We will
also look at some critical objections to his views and at the shortcomings of those
objections. We will find that many critics have failed to take account of Barth's rela
tional doctrine of personal being, and we will see some differences that a presupposed
view of personal being can make.
I.
The Church as Context of Barth's Dogmatics
The Church as Presupposition

As he begins Church Dogmatics, Barth presupposes (among other things) the
Church in its function of proclaiming the Word of God, Jesus Christ.2 The Church is
not just the accumulated sum of all the particular Christians, who hear the Word of
God through the words of the prophets and apostles: As a whole it is more than its
gathered particulars because it is the body of Christ, all those men and women who
have become His disciples and who are therefore brothers and sisters o f each other.
Barth gives formal priority to the Church over the particular Christian in his doctrines
of election,3 conversion,4 and to some extent in his doctrine o f revelation.5 This does
not undo the importance o f the particular Christian.6 But in order to combat the
2C D I/l (B), p. 3
3 34, The Election of the Community, precedes and sets the context for 35, The Election of
the Individual.
4The section on the community in each part of CD IV precedes the corresponding section on the
Christian.
5We hear the Word of God in the prophets' and apostles' witness to the revelation that they
received as recorded in the Bible, and submit ourselves to it.
6There is no pro nobis [i.e., the Church] or propter nos homines which does not include in itself
and is not enclosed by the pro me, CD TV/1, p. 755. See also, Salvation is ascribed to the individual
in the existence of the community, and it is appropriated by the community in the existence of the
individuals of which it is composed, CD IV/I. p. 149.
163
individualism that often dominates the Western approach to these doctrines,7 Barth
emphasizes the community's formal priority to the individual as the context of the
individual's encounter with Christ, election, vocation, and fellowship. In particular, the
Church is the context of the individual's conversion.
Barth's relational view of personal being entails as much.
Our relationships
with God, with other men and women, and with the world in which we live have a
reality that precedes and transcends our understanding of it or consent to it. We do
not establish these relationships, nor does their reality consist in our upholding or
participation in them.
On the contrary, our own reality has its basis in them, they
establish us, and our participation in them means that we live according to what we
truly are. To try to live apart from them is to live in contradiction o f our own reality,
and is thus an attempt to live as something less than a person.
Therefore, to be
confronted by Christ, called to His discipleship, and to become a Christian means also
a real (although preliminary and incomplete) awakening to our true reality in commun
ion with Christ and with those around us.
In his doctrine of the Church Barth never abandons the uniqueness or impor
tance of the individual Christian, any more than the love of Christ for the Church as
His bride (Rev. 21:9 ff.) or His body (Eph. 1:23) diminishes His love for the Christian
as His friend (John 15: 13-15; also John 17, esp. v. 24) and brother (Rom. 8:29). Nor
does Barth reason that the very important distinctions of the Church from the world, or
the Christian from the non-Christian, contradict Christ's love for or activity towards the
non-Christian. Just as his view of the Christian's unity with Christ implies every Chris
tian's solidarity with every other Christian, so the incarnation propter nos homines et
propter nostram salutem in which Jesus Christ assumed fellow-humanity with every
man and woman means that the Christian shares that fellow-humanity with every man
7While giving a survey of the form and content of his doctrine of reconciliation (in 58), he con
trasts his intention to address the question of Christendom before that of the individual Christian
0CD IV/1, p. 149) with traditional approaches that are more individualist, commenting, It was an
intolerable truncation of the Christian message when the older Protestantism steered the whole doc
trine of the atonement and with it, ultimately, the whole of theology into the cul de sac of the
question of the individual experience of grace, CD IV/1, p. 150. See also the discursus in CD IV/1,
pp. 755 ff., concerning a balanced view of the individual Christian with the whole Church and all of
humanity. See also Barth's brief survey at CD 11/2, pp. 306 ff., of the development of individualism,
from Augustine's contributions in his Confessions to some of the 19th century forms. See also Barth's
conunents on pp. 310 f., ending with the remark, The particula veri of individualism is not cur
tailed but genuinely assured and honoured when we understand the election of tire individual as the
telos of the election of the community.
164
and woman.8 The solidarity of Christians with each other in the Church displays and
proclaims their solidarity as humans bought by Christ, and therefore their solidarity
with all humanity. Consequently, the Church's (and the Christian's) address to those
outside it cannot be an address to an alien being. In the power of the Holy Spirit it can
and ought to be Christ's own address to those who belong to Him. As the Church and
the Christian are the loci of Christ's special activity (inasmuch as the Church is the
earthly-historical form of existence of Jesus Christ Himself,9 and Christians are those
who have been especially empowered by the Holy Spirit to be His disciples10), so the
world (along with the Church and the individual Christian) is the object of His active
love and His loving activity. The Church has hope in its task o f proclaiming the Gos
pel to the surrounding world, because Jesus is present in the proclamation. Thus, in
the activity of the Holy Spirit, who is the power of Jesus Christ, the Church becomes
the context o f conversion.
The Church: Definition
Eberhard Busch cites the third thesis of the Barmen Declaration as Barth's
definition of the church:
The Christian Church is the community of brothers and sisters in which, in
Word and sacrament, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ acts in the present
as Lord. With both its faith and its obedience, with both its message and
order, it has to testily in the midst of the sinful world, as the Church of par
doned sinners, that it belongs to him alone and lives and may live by his com
fort and under his direction alone, in expectation of his appearing.11
8Tlie first thing is that Jesus Christ is, in fact, just for me, that I myself am just the subject for
whom He is. ... That is the newness of being, the new creation, the new birth of the Christian.
Everything else follows from this, especially the fact that, whatever may be the force of the basis and
validity of the pro me, it can never be a pro me in the abstract, but includes in itself and is enclosed by
the communal pro nobis and the even wider propter nos homines. CD IV/1, p. 755.
9CD IV/1, p. 661.
10See CD IV/1, p. 648, He is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, His power awakening man to a knowledge
of the God acting in Him. In this way He is the Spirit of God. In this way He is holy, and He makes
man holy; also {ibid.), He is the power of Jesus Christ in which it takes place that there are men
who can and must see that He is theirs and they are His; also {CD IV/2, p. 825), The Holy Spirit is
the quickening power which underlies, capacitates and actualises the act of the individual in the
Christian community in its totality, giving to it both its distinctive character and scope and also its
distinctive direction. It is He who awakens maneach one in the form and to the task which He
Himself allots to him. It is He who endows him with the corresponding abilities and freedoms and
powers.
11In Busch, Karl Barth's Understanding of the Church as Witness, Saint Luke's Journal o f The
ology (Sewanee, Tennessee) 33 (March 1990), p. 88; abbreviated hereafter, Church as Witness.
165
Even when we take into consideration the history (which Busch gives) of the changes
in its wording, this thesis still gives us an effective introduction to Barth's understand
ing of the Church as a community the meaning, work, and definition of which is to be
witness to its L o rd 12 All of Barth's discussion of the Church, throughout the Church
Dogmatics and elsewhere, is decisively determined by a strong understanding of the
word community and of the phrase Jesus acts as indicated by that Declaration:
But what is the being of the community ... which is hidden in its earthly and
historical form and therefore invisible or visible only to the special perception
of faith? The answer ... can only be: The community is the earthly-historical
form of existence of Jesus Christ ITimself. ... The Church is His body,
created and continually renewed by the awakening power of the Holy Spirit.13
George Hunsinger identifies what he calls actualism as one of the central
thought-forms that shape Barth's theology, and without a firm grasp on these thought
forms and their interactions we will not grasp Barth's intent.14 We can illustrate
Barth's actualism by tracing its appearance in his view o f what constitutes the
Church. On one level we can examine the Church much as we would examine any
other assembly o f people: It does exist openly in a very concrete form, a historical
phenomenon like any other. But what it is, the character, the truth of its existence in
space and time, is not a matter of a general but a very special visibility.15 That is, the
theology, moral code, social practices, liturgies, aesthetics, or any other such earthlyhistorical phenomena, however important they may be in their own places, do not in
fact constitute the Church. Jesus Christ does that.
While insisting on the reality of the Church's earthly-historical form, and call
ing the denial of this form docetic, Barth says that there is something else going on
which is not reducible to any earthly-historical form, namely, the activity of Jesus
Christ Himself within the Church. The ecclesial community is for him [Barth] the
12Ibid., p. 89, emphasis his.

13CD IV/1, pp. 660 f.
14Hunsinger calls these thought-forms motifs, and he defines actualism as the most distinctive
and perhaps the most difficult of the motifs. It is present whenever Barth speaks, as he continually
does, in the language of occurrence, happening, event, history, decisions, and act. At the most
general level it means that he thinks primarily in terms of events and relationships rather than
monadic or self-contained substances. So pervasive is this motif that Barth's whole theology might
well be described as a theology of active relations. God and humanity are both defined in fundamen
tally actualistic terms. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth (Oxford: O. U. P., 1991), p. 30.
l5CDIV/l, p. 654.
166
assembly of people who have become the witnesses of what God does and says and
who then give themselves witness to what they have themselves witnessed. Witnesses
are people who become fully part of an event not o f their own making by
acknowledging that event and, then, telling it to others in their own words.16 Thus
we must not mistake Barth as saying that the Church is the best or wisest of all human
institutions, or that we must submit to some particular human institution to gain
salvation. He says, rather, that the Church, despite its manifold faults and limitations,
is constituted of more than its earthly-historical form: it is constituted in that form, but
by God's action.
Barth's repeated emphasis on the Church as body and community and his
extensive exposition of credo unam ecclesiam17 remind us that the motif o f actualism
doesn't apply merely to particular Christians, but to those particular Christians in com
munity. Particular Christians have their being in relation with other Christians as well
as with God, and therefore they exist in community and not in isolation.
Without
devaluing or ignoring the activity o f Jesus Christ in the existence o f the particular
Christian, Barth consistently sets that activity within the broader activity of Jesus
Christ in the community.
Bearing witness is thus both the task of these people and the purpose for
which they assemble themselves (having been assembled by Christ) into a Church.
Barth put Church into the title of his magnum opus because he saw the Church as
the milieu of proclamation, to which all theology must direct its efforts.18 The Church
is the community chosen to proclaim God's Word by preaching and sacrament, in
which the event of contemporaneousness with Christ takes place. 19 That is, as the
Church proclaims the Gospel, as its members bear witness to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Himself is present in that proclamation and witness, confronting their hearers.
As
Busch says, To speak of human action here does not suffice. ... Christ's acting in the
present as Lord in the church becomes for Barth the mediation o f salvation. That
acting is what constitutes the church in the first and only place. And that mediation is
not accomplished by an office or by the human exercise of office; it is accomplished by
Christ acting in the present. Christ present is for Barth none other than the Holy Spirit,
whom Barth understands to be the self-attestation, self-presentation and self-imparting
16Busch, Church as Witness, p. 90.

17CDIV/1, pp. 668 ff.
18Carl F. Starkloff, Barth and Loyola on Communication of the Word of God, Scottish Journal
o f Theology 27 (May 1974), p. 148.
19'Ibid., p. 149, citing CDI/1 (Thomson translation), p. 59.
167
of Jesus.20 It is, therefore, not true to say: wherever the church is, there is Christ. It
is, however, the more true to say: wherever Christ is, there is the Church.21
Because it has the assigned task of bearing witness to Jesus Christ, and because
it is the place where Jesus mediates salvation, the Church must confront the world
around it with this witness. Barth views culture, not as separate from God and there
fore autonomous, but as in rebellion against God, and therefore to be confronted by
the Church with a faithful witness to Christ. Barth does not deny the value of culture,
only it has to pass through Death to life.22
II. Negative Perceptions about Barth
Even with the positive remarks23 that Barth makes in CD IV, many people (of
whom Peter Harrison24 lists several) see him as unremittingly negative towards culture,
and especially towards non-Christian religions. But this evaluation o f Barth in many
cases arises out of the critic's prior rejection (whether implicit25 or explicit26) o f the
doctrine that God has fully revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Others perhaps under
estimate Barth's openness to dialogue: Hans Kiing, for instance, (as quoted by Harri
son27) warns against the arrogant domination o f a religion claiming an exclusivist
20Busch, Church as Witness, p. 99 f.

2]Jbid, p. 100 f.
22John McConnachie, The Significance o f Karl Barth, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931) p.
258, who describes a three-fold relation between the Church and culture, pp. 260 ff. See also Palma,
Karl Barth's Theology o f Culture, Pittsburgh Theological Monographs (Allison Park, Pennsylvania:
Pickwick Publications, 1983), p. 10, The Word of God sets before all human cultural pursuits a
command to be obeyed and a task to be fiilfilled.
23See the discussion of these below.
24Peter Harrison, Karl Barth and the Nonchristian Religions, Journal o f Ecumenical Studies 23
no. 2 (Spring, 1986), p. 209.
25For example, Hugo Meynell, Towards a New Dialectic of Religions, Religious Studies, v. 18
(1982), pp. 417 431, examines principles of inter-religious dialogue as though he does not know
whether Jesus is God's revelation or not. While we must commend his irenic and very useful
approach to such dialogue, we must also recognize his fundamental assumption that our use of scien
tific method (the way p ar excellence of arriving at the truth about things, p. 417) can enable us to
gain knowledge of God. This in turn implies a doctrine of God that Barth gives reason for Christian
theologians to question.
26As with John Hick, Jesus and the World Religions, chapter 9 in The Myth o f God Incarnate,
ed. John Hick (London: SCM Press, 1977), p. 178) who says that the incarnational doctrine is not
indicative but expressive, not to assert a metaphysical fact but to express a valuation and evoke an atti
tude. Also, p. 181, But what we cannot say is that all who are saved are saved by Jesus of
Nazareth.
27Harrison, p. 209.
168
mission and despising freedom. This danger, although unintended, arises as a result
o f the dogmatic repression o f the problem o f religion by Karl Barth and 'dialectical
theology. 28 But on the next page he advocates that Christians respond to other relig
ions in a dialectical unity of recognition and rejection, which is exactly Barth's own
position. Too often, after looking at Barth's careful distinction between man's actions
in religion (including Christian religion) and God's act of revealing Himself in Christ,
readers have concluded, For the actual religions of the modern world (even, one sus
pects, for Christianity) he had little time.29 Peter Harrison correctly points out that
Barth was not writing a specific theology of religions, developing instead a theology
of religion.30 Perhaps the word translated into English should have been religiosity
instead o f religion, indicating men's inward attitudes about God rather than outward
cultural phenomena.
Others31 see a shift in Barth's theology from an earlier emphasis that was
mostly negative to a much more positive tone in his later work. For example, Emil
Brunner, upon the publication of CD III/2, heralded the arrival o f the new Barth.
The change of tone is certainly there, but this also accompanies a change of topic.
Barth has made the same positive remarks in the earlier volumes as in the later, and he
makes the same negative remarks in the later volumes as in the earlier; but the
proportion has changed because the later volumes concern topics that he has always
been positive about.32
In CD I and in No! (and practically everywhere else) Barth denies that we
can reach God by the application of our own resources, that Christian theology can
start anywhere but with Jesus Christ, and that we can argue anyone into the kingdom
by abandoning our Christian position. Yet it would be a mistake to deduce from this
that Barth advocated that preachers (whether foreign missionaries or otherwise) refuse
to understand and use the culture around them to reach their hearers. As early as 1925
28Hans Kiing, On Being a Christian (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Fount Paper
backs, 1978), p. I l l , italics his.
29Eric Sharpe, Faith M eets Faith: Some Christian Attitudes to Hinduism in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries (London: SCM, 1977), p. 89.
30Harrison, p. 208.
31E.g., Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology o f
Religions (London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 16; J. A. Veitch, Revelation and Religion in the Theology
of Karl Barth, Scottish Journal o f Theology 12 (Feb. 1971), pp. 20 f.; Peter Harrison, p. 220.
32Cf. Grover E. Foley's remark in The Catholic Critics of Karl Barth in Outline and Analysis,
Scottish Journal o f Theology 14, no. 2 (1961), p. 154, If there is a change in the Dogmatics, it is
only the increasingly positive emphasis that one can talk about man by talking about God in the soft
est of voices.
169
we find him maintaining his double thesis that the Gospel always challenges culture and
calls it into question, and yet that culture itself can in Christ be a witness to the prom
ise which was given man in the beginning.33
When Barth rejects using culture as a basis for our proclamation of the gospel,
many people have been deaf to his openness to using elements of culture as the means
of that proclamation. This is largely because they have concentrated on some elements
o f Barth's thought while ignoring others and over-simplifying his complex theology
into easy catch-phrases.
When Waldron Scott says that Barth considers the
missionary task to consist, not in dialog [sic] and supplementation, but in opposition
and supplantation,34 he not only leaves these words undefined, but omits to specify
what exactly opposes and supplants what.
Such a formula does little to distinguish
Barth from the Crusaders.

Many of Barth's critics35 lump his theology of mission with that of Hendrik
Kraemer, although some36 see Barth as more extreme than Kraemer in opposing and
supplanting other religions.
Alan Race comments, Undoubtedly the exclusivism
typified by Barth and Kraemer has dominated discussion of the problem [of Christian
ity's relation to other faiths] for the greater part of the last fifty years, at least since the
publication of Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World in 1938 37
Hans Kiing says, More and more theologians nowadays consider it a disaster that as a
result of the theological revolution after World War II and o f the influence o f Karl
Barth, Christian theology on the one side and the history of religion, the phenomenol
ogy of religion, and religious studies in general have gone their separate and often
mutually hostile ways.38
A ufhebu ng
One can easily understand how Barth's readers get such a negative impression.
The meaning behind such section titles as The Revelation o f God as the Abolition of
33Barth, Church and Culture, p. 343, in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings 19201928
(London: SCM Press Ltd., 1962).
34Waldron Scott, Karl Barth's Theology of Mission, Missiology: An International Review 3
(Apr., 1975), p. 217.
35E.g., Scott, p. 217; Race, pp. 10 f.; however, see also Eric Sharpe's demur in Sharpe, pp. 90 f.
36Including Alan Race and Kraemer himself (cf. Hendrik Kraemer, Religion and the Christian
Faith, (London: Lutterworth, 1956), pp. 182 ff.
37Race, p. 70.
38Hans Kiing, Christianity and the World Religions: Paths o f Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and
Buddhism (London: Collins, 1987), p. xv.
170
Religion and Religion as Unbelief becomes clear in reading the associated materials;
but the uncareful reader can carry away the convictions that Barth merely wants to
abolish non-Christian religions and that his part-section on True Religion is sheer
narrow-mindedness.39 Such verdicts, as Alan Race says, misrepresent his genuine
theological concern, which is, however, broader and more complex than Race's identi
fication of it as the defense of the sovereignty of God.40
The titles themselves require painstaking clarification. God's Revelation as the
Abolition of Religion is the notorious English translation o f Barth's ambiguous (and
equally notorious41) Gottes Offenbarung als Aufhebung der Religion.
Barth's
usages of all four nouns in the title are frequently misunderstood, almost more often
than they are understood correctly. We will examine what he means by Aufhebung
and Religion here; what he means by Offenbarung\ revelation, we have already
covered.
As Peter Harrison says, Aufhebung has a range of meanings in ordinary
usage, including connotations of both abolition and conservation. Furthermore,
Hegel, in his philosophy, gave the word a technical meaning which utilized its ambigu
ity. Perhaps in this context superseding is the best translation.
... Barth himself
defined the term in CD, 1/1, p. 132.42 There Barth writes about the event where God,
by His grace, elevates proclamation and the Bible to become the Word of God in
the threefold sense of that word: (1) elevated in the sense o f lifted upwards,
marked out, made visible and knowable ...; (2) elevated in the sense o f made
relative, circumscribed, so far as this event also signifies the limits of what
proclamation and the Bible can be in themselves or accomplish by themselves
...; and (3) raised in the sense of well elevated, safe, secured, so far as this
39Peter Harrison, p. 209, cites John Hick's accusation (made in Hick, Towards a Philosophy of
Religious Pluralism, Neue Zeitschrift f i r systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 22, no. 2
(1980), p. 132) against Barth of sublime bigotry and chauvinism. See also John MacQuarrie's
subscription to William Temple's assessment that Barth's rejection of natural theology was fanatical,
in Twentieth-Century Religious Thought: The Frontiers o f Philosophy and Theology, 1900-1980
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981), p. 335. We can see the widespread misperception of
Barth in Karen Armstrong, A History o f God: The 4000-Year Quest o f Judaism, Christianity and
Islam (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), p. 382, where she describes Barth's theology as the
worst of all worlds: experience is out; natural reason is out; the human mind is corrupt and untrust
worthy; and there is no possibility of learning from other faiths, since the Bible is the only valid reve
lation.
40Race, p. 14.
4IKraemer, p. 186, likens the title to a shockingly defiant declaration of war.
42Harrison, p. 208, footnote 3.
171
event is the confirmation and preservation, the fulfilment o f what proclama

tion and the Bible are in themselves and accomplish by themselves .. .43
Emil Brunner approximates Barth's idea of Aufhebung when he says that Jesus Christ
is both the Fulfillment of all religion and the Judgment on all religion. As the Fulfiller,
He is the Truth which these religions seek in vain. ... [But] He is also the Judgment
on all religion. Viewed in His light, all religious systems appear untrue, unbelieving,
and indeed godless.44
Even Barth's critics have recognized that Barth's usage of Aufhebung has lay
ers.45 Eric Sharpe acknowledges Barth's play upon the German word Aufhebung' to
speak of the Christian gospel as both the termination and the fulfilment (literally,
lifting up) of religion. But when he dismisses this as little more than a homiletical
device46 he does Barth an injustice and denies himself a key to understanding Barth's
intentions as exhibited by the structure of his development here: as the phrase Offenbarung als Aufhebung der Religion ends the sub-section on The Problem of Religion
in Theology, its two-fold meaning both summarizes that sub-section and introduces
the two-fold examination of the problem in its negative and positive aspects in
Religion as Unbelief and True Religion, respectively.
Thus, abolition is an
unfortunate and misleading English rendering of Barth's intentions. Suspension or

transcending would be better: but whatever word or phrase one uses, it must refer
the reader to both aspects of Barth's view of religion, and not just to the negative
side.47
But what is Barth talking about when he says religion? Generally we may
cite the following:
It is difficult to find any time or place when man was not aware of his duty
to offer worship to God or gods in the form of concrete cults ... The Veda to
the Indians, the Avesta to the Persians, the Triptaka to the Buddhists, the
Koran to its believers: are they not all bibles in exactly the same way as the
Old and New Testaments? ...
43CD 1/1 (T), p. 132. Cf. CDI/1 (B), pp. 117 f.
44Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine o f Faith and Knowledge
(London: SCM Press, 1947), pp. 270 f.
45Johannes Aagaard (in Revelation and Religion, Studia Theologica 14, 2 (1960): 148-185) con
trasts Kraemer's almost completely negative emphasis (pp. 160 ff.) with Barth's more balanced usage
of the term (pp. 165 ff.).
46Sharpe, p. 90.
47Cf. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Introduction to the Theology o f Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), p. 29, Barth undoubtedly has this double meaning in mind.
172
To allow that there is this whole world apart from and alongside
Christianity is to recognise that in His revelation God has actually entered a
sphere in which His own reality and possibility are encompassed by a sea of
more or less adequate, but at any rate fundamentally unmistakable, parallels
and analogies in human realities and possibilities. The revelation of God is
actually the presence of God and therefore the hiddenness of God in the
world of human religion. ... The problem of religion is simply a pointed
expression of the problem of man in his encounter and communion with
God.48
In the paragraph summarizing sub-section 17.1 Barth declares that the task of a
Christian doctrine of religions is so to order the concepts revelation and religion that
the connexion between the two can again be seen as identical with that event between
God and man in which God is God.49 For doctrine to be Christian, it must take reve
lation seriously. The fact that God has revealed Himself makes the problem o f religion
two-fold. Insofar as religion constitutes an attempt to supplant or contradict revelation
(and therefore God), revelation opposes and abolishes such religion.
As David
Lochhead says,
Barth is content to accept a broad definition of religion. ... What all these
definitions come down to, Barth argues, is an attempt to establish a relation
ship with God from the human side. We attempt to reach God through our
beliefs and practices or through some natural capacity that we have as humans
for relationship with God.
If that is what religion is, Barth argues, then we have to understand that
the Gospel places all religion under judgment.50
On the other hand, where God initiates fellowship with men and women, we
also call the form and content of their response religion. This is where we see God
elevate instead of abolish.
This is not to say that God lifts them up because they
respond properly: rather, they respond properly because God has enabled them to do
so, and thus he has lifted them up. In this action, God elevates their religion by making
it visible and knowable, by showing the limits of what it is in itself; and by making it
safe and secured in His confirmation.51
48CZ)//2, pp. 282 f.

49CD 1/2, p. 297.
50David Lochhead, The Dialogical Imperative: A Christian Reflection on Interfaith Encounter
(London: SCM Press, 1988), pp. 32-33.
51See reference above to CD 1/1 (T), p. 132; CD 1/1 (B), pp. 117 f.
173
This dual action, this abolition and elevation, is Barth's two-fold ordering of
the concepts revelation and religion,52 which he displays in sub-sections 17.2-3.
But by his identification of God's revelation with Jesus Christ, is Barth not
making a special plea for Christianity, surreptitiously equating Christianity with True
Religion? No. If by Christianity we mean (1) a specific body o f people (also known
as the church), or (2) actions taken by that body of people, or (3) beliefs and doc
trines held or proclaimed by that body of people, or even (4) what the Bible says,
then we cannot fairly accuse Barth of making any such surreptitious equation.
He
makes too clear a distinction between God's revelation in Jesus Christ and
Christianity as defined above for that.
Although the people o f Jesus Christ truly
know Him, they in no way confine His being or actions. Therefore the question arises
of whether He reveals Himself beyond the boundaries of Christianity: are there lights
extra muros ecclesiael We defer our general examination of this question for a brief
time, until we have looked at Barth's understanding of other religions and then his
view of culture, building up in this process of looking at particulars a fuller understand
ing of Barth's general view.
Considering all the confusion that 17 has caused, we need to eliminate some
o f the things it does not say. First of all, although Barth occasionally mentions other
religions in passing, it is for a very specific purpose at any given time, and not for pull
ing together a general comparison of Christianity with other religions. For example,
(1) Apart from and alongside Christianity there is ... (p. 281) makes the point that
religion is a pervasive if not universal genus of human activity, and that Christianity can
on that basis be seen as no more than one of its species among others; (2) The Veda
to the Indians, ... (p. 282) extends the parallel by showing that other religions have
their scriptures and claim to have been addressed by deities, so that piety is no exclu
sive mark of Christianity; and (3) he discusses Yodo-Shin and Yodo-Shin-Shu Bud
dhism (pp. 340-344) to strengthen and illustrate his assertion (p. 339) that the mys
tery of the truth of the Christian religion lies not in its doctrines of grace but in God's
action of grace; i.e., its truth is not in what it says but in what God does. These refer
ences illustrate how we should pursue theology within the Church; they do not directly
comment on how to address those outside the Church. As David Lochhead comments,
What Barth has to say here [in 17] has little to do with whether or how Christians
should relate to people of non-Christian traditions. What Barth addresses is the ques
52See J. A. Veitch's treatment of revelation's dialectical relationship to Religion, in Veitch, pp.

12-15.
174
tion of the significance of religion for theological method.53 How these points do
relate (indirectly) to other religions and the relation of Christians to the adherents of
such needs to be worked out carefully.
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
If Barth is not simply narrow-minded and bigoted against other religions, then
how can he affirm the saying,
extra ecclesiam nulla salusl
Certainly one could
expound extra ecclesiam nulla salus so as to claim that salvation has particular social
or institutional prerequisites. For example, one might use it to mean that we have to
take deliberate steps toward enlisting in the approved religious sect before God will
bestow salvation on us. If we start our reasoning by presupposing a definite group of
people who are outside the church, this maxim also excludes them from salvation. But
Barth does not use it this way. He expounds it,54 not with his eyes on those who are
(for now) extra ecclesiam, but on those who are saved. His exposition concentrates
on the contrapositive, Those who are saved are saved into the Church. O f course,
this must also imply that anyone who is still apart from the Church is not yet saved.
Nonetheless, the maxim leaves open the question of that individual's future salvation,
and therefore membership in the Church. Barth uses the phrase, not to exclude some
from salvation, but to specify for the saved the form of their election.
Barth does not, however, reduce extra ecclesiam nulla salus to the similar
extra Christum nulla salus.55 While he clearly affirms both claims, he nonetheless
makes two very different points by them. His three circles of election, in which the
election of the community is a mediate and mediating election,56 remain three and
do not collapse into two. The Church is not Jesus Christ, nor is it merely the total o f
individuals who belong to it. Barth uses the saying to avoid the individualism that
ignores the union of Christ's members with each other, and to emphasize our election
53Lochhead, p. 32.
54In CD II/2, pp. 195-205, See also CD 1/2, pp. 209-222, and p. 345. Cf. St. Cyprian (d. 258),
Letter 73, A d Jubajanum de hcereticis baptizandis, in paragraph 21 of which he makes the remark,
Salus extra ecclesiam non est"\ also quoted by St. Augustine (354-430), De Bapt. IV c.xvii 24.
55Otto Weber, Foundations o f Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1983), Volume 2, p. 477, seems to make this reduction, when he says The meaning of the
extrabiblical proposition that outside the Church there is no salvation can only be that outside of
Christ there is no salvation (Acts 4:12), italics his.
56See CD II/2, p. 196.
175
as His community. What is elected in Jesus Christ (His body) is the community
which has the twofold form of Israel and the Church.57
To reject the maxim would contradict the relational understanding of personal
being that Barth adopts, and which is reflected in his exposition of the unity of the
Church (Credo imam ecclesiam).58 The disunity of Christendom contradicts not only
the unity of the Church, but the unity of God.59 Nevertheless we are commanded to
start from this fact in our confession of the una ecclesia.60 Consequently, the Chris
tian in the midst of this disunity must take the concrete step of gathering to one of
these divided communions.61 Affirming extra ecclesiam nulla salus amid the obvious
fragmentation of our practice amounts to affirming the real (and not merely the nomi
nal) unity that believers have in Christ, despite the disunity of their actions. Rejecting
the maxim would deny that unity, fragmenting the body o f Christ into its individual
members.
Taxonomies of Inter-faith Relations
Taxonomies of inter-faith relations vary from author to author. In Christians
and Religious Pluralism Alan Race divides approaches to inter-faith relations into (1)
exclusivism (pp. 10-37), which counts the revelation in Jesus Christ as the sole crite
rion by which all religions, including Christianity, can be understood and evaluated62;
(2) inclusivism (pp. 38-69): On the one hand it accepts the spiritual power and depth
manifest in [other faiths], so that they can properly be called a locus of divine presence.
On the other hand, it rejects them as not being sufficient for salvation apart from
Christ, for Christ alone is savior. To be inclusive is to believe that all non-Christian
truth belongs ultimately to Christ and the way of discipleship which springs from
57CD 11/2, p. 199. See also CD 1/2, p. 211, And when we say Church, we do not mean merely
the inward and invisible coherence of those whom God in Christ calls His own, but also the outward
and visible coherence of those who have heard in time, and have confessed to their hearing, that in
Christ they are God's. The reception of revelation occurs within, not without, this twofold coherence.
5ZCDIV/1, pp. 668 ff.
59C D IV/1, p. 675, There is no doubt that to the extent that Christendom does consist of actually
different and opposing Churches, to that extent it denies practically what it confesses theoreti
callythe unity and singularity of God, of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit.
60CDIV/1, p. 679.
61CD IV /], p. 679. In the subsequent pages Barth suggests several concrete steps for pursuing
unity in the Church from the starting point of our necessary attachment to one or other of the
fragmented groups within Christendom.
62Race, p. 11.
176
him63; and (3) pluralism (pp. 70-105), which he only defines by calling it a range of
other possible options besides exclusivism and inclusivism as he has previously devel
oped them, and by referring to a string of theologians whose positions look less
restrictive than those two other options. He cites Barth as the extreme example of
exclusivism.
But a close look at CD IV/3, 69.2 will show that Barth fits all three of Race's
categories in ways that we cannot justifiably ignore. While Barth obviously counts
the revelation in Jesus Christ as the sole criterion for all o f truth and reality, he also
does not limit the being or action of Jesus Christ or His Spirit to the Church;64 and, like
the pluralist, he maintains that tolerance of other religions (in the sense of listening
carefully and sincerely to them) is a Christian theological necessity (contradicting
Race's perception of him65), if we take necessity to mean mandated by Christ,
although not necessary for salvation. Harrison also suggests that Barth can no
longer be numbered in the ranks of Christian exclusivists.66
David Lochhead's book, The Dialogical Imperative, gives an exceptionally
clear and accurate examination of Barth's attitudes to other faiths and their adherents.
Its analysis differs from Race's. His five categories are (1) The Ideology o f Isolation:
Light and Darkness (pp. 5-11), which sees adherents o f other faiths as walking in
ignorance for the most part, and the two groups have very little contact; (2) The Ide
ology of Hostility: The Other as Antichrist (pp. 12-17), which sees the other faiths as
evil and the relationship with them as a battle; (3) The Ideology of Competition: The
Fullness of Truth (pp. 18-22), which allows that another group may hold some (less
accurate) version of the truth, and whose goal is to show to the consumer (i.e., the
potential believer) that it is a superior variety of the same kind of thing as its rivals; (4)
The Ideology of Partnership: The Universal God (pp. 23-26), which says that differ
ent religions all lead to or aim at the same goal; and (5) Dialogue (passim). Lochhead
examines several different definitions of dialogue, including preparation for conver
sion, integration, negotiation, and activity, before advocating that we see dialogue not
so much as an activity among other activities but as a quality that needs to pervade all
63Race, p. 38.
64Contrary to the impression of Philip Rosato, for example, who says in The Spirit A s Lord, p.
148, that the narrower circumference of the Spirit's power in the Church keeps [Barth] from
examining the wider circumference of the Spirit's forceful prodding's in creation, history, and culture
which are also aimed at the consummation of all things in Christ.
65Race, p. 72.
66Harrison, p. 223.
111
our conversations and all our relationships (p. 76). In Ch. 13 he examines it as the
relationship of honesty and openness more than the activity of conversation (p. 77).
Lochhead classifies Barth's own relationship to non-Christian traditions ... as
one of isolation : i.e., Barth shows little or no knowledge or interest in other relig
ious traditions.67 Nonetheless, this limitation arises not from any principle that Barth
imposes on theology, but from limits in his own expertise and in the issues he in fact
does address. As Lochhead says, Barth's theology, in spite of Barth's isolation, does
affirm the possibility of the presence of God in other traditions. ... In principle, it is a
theology that is open to and affirming of any dialogue with the world. The question
Barth puts is whether the proposed dialogue is a faithful one.68
This evaluation of Barth's theology sharply contradicts the almost universally
held idea that his theology proclaimed only disjunction between Christianity and other
religions, and (as quoted earlier) that its missionary task approach could only consist,
not in dialogue and supplementation, but in opposition and supplantation.69 Dia
logue? Eric Sharpe accuses Barth not only of opposing it but of being forever unable
to enter into anything even remotely approaching a dialogue with men of other
faiths.70 Barth's gospel, divorced as it was from religion, was open to the criti
cism that it was lacking in intelligible content.71 Kraemer says that Barth's theology
keeps religion and the religions in their place, but it establishes no contact and no real
encounters, and it leaves no real room for the deeper question: has this whole busi
ness of religion anything to do with God, or has God anything to do with it?72 The
following discussion should justify Lochhead's view.
Barth's Theology and the Proclamation of the Gospel
While lamenting the meagreness of Barth's direct attention to the topic of mis
sions, Waldron Scott consoles himself and the reader that, nonetheless, the theme of
missions permeates his thought.73 Certainly the theme of Christian witness, which is
broader than and includes missions, permeates Barth's theology: from CD 1/1 (see pp.
67Lochhead, p. 33.
68Lochhead, p. 39. The emphasis is Lochhead's.
69Scott, p. 217.
70Sharpe, p. 89.
71Sharpe, p. 106.
72Kraemer, p. 193.
73Scott, p. 209. His article concentrates on CD IV/3 and sees CD IV/3, pp. 830-901, as constitut
ing Barth's missiology.
178
31 ff.), where he protests that natural theology is unfaithful witness, to his discussion
of baptism in CD IV/4, he presents the Christian's task as consisting in faithful and
obedient witness to our Lord Jesus Christ. We point to God's work in Him. This is
the fundamental purpose for which the Holy Spirit has awakened us to new life in Him.
The essence of their vocation is that God makes them His witnesses.
... In other
words, their calling means both that He reveals Himself in His action and also that he
summons them into the witness box as those who know. ... They are responsible for
addressing the message of God to His creatures.74
Those who object to Barth as too narrow claim that his theology leaves us with
no way of answering the dual question of How can we witness? and How shall we
witness? That is, if the non-Christian has no knowledge o f God, isn't any mutually
intelligible witness impossible? And if we may not employ some form of natural theol
ogy or look for any point of contact with our listeners, isn't any mutually intelligible
witness also forbidden? The way some writers have interpreted Barth leads the reader
to believe that the only sort of witness that he would approve is for a Christian to have
a sort of monologue with herself, but rather loudly, in the hope that the Holy Spirit will
perform whatever work that needs to be done to passing unbelievers who hear her.
Such a caricature of Barth's doctrine is plausible because it includes elements of his
doctrine; nonetheless, it is caricature because it distorts those elements and leaves
others out.
This distortion primarily results from failing to distinguish knowledge as infor
mation about God from knowledge as fellowship with God. Leslie Howard, for exam
ple, discussing the indigenization75 of the gospel on the mission field, claims that
theologians like Karl Barth and his mission interpreter, Hendrik Kraemer ... invented
a theory o f revelation and proclamation as total shock and disjunction with the world
and even common reason, such as to discourage any attempt at indigenization.76
When he discusses a segment of the church in Japan which latched on to the Barthian
revolution of the 1920s, he comments on Barth's intransigent opposition to Christian
74CD IV/3, pp. 575 f. See all of CD IV/3, 71.4 The Christian as Witness, pp. 554-614.
75Leslie Howard, The Expansion o f God (London: SCM Press, 1981). On p. 170 he defines
indigenization as the process of adapting the message and forms of any creed in ways more mean
ingful to a given environment, while distinguishing it from compromise. He gives St. Paul's use of
Greek terminology and showing favor towards certain Roman values as examples, and makes the
further distinction that [ijndigenization is not the same as accommodation or the syncretism by
which a religion loses its identity or effective meaning.
76Howard, p. 171.
179
cooperation with culture.77 By way of contrast, he notes that Brunner allowed that
natural theology existed (i.e., that God lights everyone that comes into the world and
that everyone may have some knowledge of God, however dim).78 Whether the
disjunction lies between the Barth of Romans19 and the Barth of Church Dogmatics,80
between Barth and Kraemer, or between Kraemer and Howard, what we see reflected
in Howard's remarks is not the theology of the Church Dogmatics. He attributes to
Barth a view of natural theology and of culture which in fact do not belong to Barth,
especially the later Barth. We will look at natural theology here, and culture later.
EDI. Barth on Natural Theology and Proclamation
From the beginning to the end of Church Dogmatics Barth holds to his rejec
tion of natural theology, i.e., the idea that the Church can or may derive her doctrine
from sources other than Jesus Christ. As late as CD IV/3 (first half), 69.1, amid his
investigation of the little lights of creation, he still insists that Jesus Christ as
attested to us in Holy Scripture is the one Word of God whom we must hear.81 Re
affirming what he had said at Barmen, he says, We reject the false doctrine that the
Church can and must, as the source of its proclamation, recognise other events and
powers, forms and truths, as the revelation of God outside and alongside this one
Word of God.82
In particular, note (1) that the source of the Church's proclamation is not a
document nor a doctrine nor anything that we can manipulate, but a person who is
77Howard, p. 221.
1%Ibid.
79But even here Barth sees Jesus Christ as the source of all truth, and therefore that all truth
reflects Jesus Christ, and so we should listen to what Jesus says to us through the surrounding culture.
His comments in The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford, 1968), pp. 117 f.: Jesus would not be
the Christ if figures like Abraham, Jeremiah, Socrates, Griinewald, Luther, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky
remained, contrasted with Him, merely figures of past history, and did not rather constitute in Him
one essential unity; if their positions were merely dissolved by the negation He proclaimed and were
not at the same time established. This is the question with which we are concerned. Jesus is estab
lished as the Christ, if His light is none other than the light of the Old Testament and of the whole
history of religion and of all history; if the miracle of Christmas be the advent of that light, for which
the whole world of nature and of men, the whole creation visible and invisible, waits as for its fulfil
ment.
80As early as CD 1/1 (B) (see especially pp. 53 56) Barth talks about light coming to us from
outside the walls of the church. On p. 60 he says, God may speak to us through Russian commu
nism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really
does.
81CD IV/3, p. 86.
S2Ibid.
180
beyond all our control, Jesus Christ. Therefore, that source is not the Holy Scriptures
as such, nor the decisions of the Church, nor any institutional authority, but Jesus
Christ, who is attested by the Holy Scriptures and proclaimed in the Church in the
power of the Spirit. And (2) we must remember that Barth speaks of revelation as an
event in which God acts toward us today. We are too apt to bind the meaning of the
phrase revelation in Jesus Christ with ties of time and space, limiting it to events in
first century Palestine, or to the reports of those events in Scripture. For Barth, such
revelation happens in every era and place when the living and active and present Jesus
Christ manifests Himself to His sheep, and they hear His voice and follow Him.
This position does not in any way deny the divine character of Holy Scriptures
or undermine their authority. It recognizes the insufficiency of our interpretation o f
any document, whatever its source and quality, as a basis o f the Church's proclamation.
It also recognizes our ability to twist the words of any document to achieve ungodly
ends. But most important, it recognizes that behind the Holy Scriptures stands the
One who gave them to us and to whom they point. It recognizes that this One is pre
sent and active with us in the power of His Holy Spirit to be, through the words of the
prophets and apostles, the source of our proclamation.
When Howard (above) refers to John 1:9 to justify his own version of natural
theology, he re-interprets the evangelist's assertion that Jesus was the true Light,
which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world (AV) to read every man
who cometh into the world is enlightened about God. But in context, the agent of
this enlightenment is the Light Himself, Jesus Christ. This light is not a conceptual
deposit vested in the minds of men, but a person, Jesus Christ, who communicates
Himself (and not just information) to us. Barth's dispute does not concern the social or
historic or geographic or religious conditions necessary for factually correct theology,
nor does it concern what individuals can or cannot articulate. What he claims is that
none of us can by our own efforts reach reliable concrete conclusions about God,
much less achieve personal contact with Him.
Barth Defines Natural Theology
Perhaps Barth's clearest definitions of natural theology are the following:
a knowledge of God given in and with the natural force of reason or to be
attained in its exercise ... By way of natural theology, apart from the Bible
and the Church, there can be attained only abstract impartations concerning
181
God's existence as the Supreme Being and Ruler of all things, and man's
responsibility towards Him.83
By natural theology I mean every (positive or negative) formulation o f a
system which claims to be theological, i.e. to interpret divine revelation,
whose subject, however, differs fundamentally from the revelation in Jesus
Christ and whose method therefore differs equally from the exposition of
Holy Scripture. ... [Brunner's counter-theses] representeven though nega
tively an abstract speculation concerning a something that is not identical
with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.84
By way of contrast to natural theology, Christian dogmatics presupposes Chris
tian faith, where faith is the determination of human action by the essence of the
Church, that is by Jesus Christ, by the gracious approach of God to man. ... Hence
dogmatics is quite impossible except as an act of faith, in the determination of human
action by listening to Jesus Christ and as obedience to Him.85 Natural theology lacks
not only the content of the information revealed in the Bible: it seeks to depend exclu
sively on the rational gifts of the theologian, who possesses the facts and controls the
hermeneutical mechanisms for understanding them:
natural theology usually deals
with its soi-disant data derived from reason, nature and history, i.e., as if one had them
pocketed, as if one had the knowledge of them from below one instead of always
behind and in front.86 Christian dogmatics addresses the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ: i.e., not merely a body of propositions about Him, but Jesus Christ Himself.
Although the method of this address, as Barth points out, is the exposition of Holy
Scripture, the object of this address is Jesus Christ.
Barth continually reminds us that in Christian dogmatics we have to do with the
person Jesus Christ; that He, and not any body of doctrine, not the proclamation of the
Church, and not even Holy Scripture, is the source and object of our faith; that our
task, therefore, consists in faithful witness to Him. The reason that Barth's theology
has no fundamental systematizing principle within it87 is that his theology denies the
propriety or possibility of such a principle. For theology to be Christian it must be
Jesus Christ Himself who is the thread running through it. Christian theology must
83CD IV/3,1, p. 117,

84No! in Natural Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), pp. 74 f., emphases his.
85C D 1/1 (B), p. 17.
86N oP , p. 77.
87Harrison, p. 212. Cf. Richard H. Roberts' remarks on Barth's vertical logic in Karl Barth's
Doctrine of Time, in A Theology on its Way?, p. 25.
182
concern itself more with referring each point to Jesus Christ than with referring its
points to other points for the sake of consistency. Arguments of consistency presup
pose some conceptual framework, whereas Jesus Christ resists being squeezed into any
such framework.
Natural theology's fault lies, not primarily in omitting certain facts about which
the Christian is better informed, but in attempting theological discourse while neglect
ing the reality about which it putatively speaks. For this reason Barth finds it simply
uninteresting. Although they hold no interest for him, Barth admits that natural theol
ogy produces some results. But they are only such abstract impartations as men
tioned above,88 obtained from the ambivalent voices of nature and conscience.89
Whatever results natural theology may have are too vague and undependable to profit
us. They can only distract.
Therefore Christian dogmatics cannot abandon either element of its under
standing of its task: (1) faithful and obedient witness to our present and active Lord
(2) by the exposition of Scripture. As soon as we try to bear witness to Jesus Christ
without reference to Scripture, or exposit Scripture apart from faith and obedience to
Jesus Christ, we have ceased to engage in Christian dogmatics.
Barth warned that theologians in the past have compromised Christian dogmat
ics when they lost sight of the presence and activity of Jesus Christ with and among
them, when they began to think of dogmatics as an activity that consisted only of their
accurate exegesis of the Bible. He complains that the particular doctrine of the inspira
tion of Scriptures that emerged after the Reformation was closely bound up with its
growing tolerance of natural theology: This new understanding o f biblical inspiration
meant simply that the statement that the Bible is the Word of God was now trans
formed ... from a statement about the free grace of God into a statement about the
nature of the Bible as exposed to human inquiry brought under human control. The
Bible as the Word of God surreptitiously became a part of the natural knowledge o f
God, i.e., of that knowledge of God which man can have without the free grace of
God, by his own power, and with direct insight and assurance.90 This kind of han
dling of Scripture is not exactly natural theology, but like natural theology its under
standing of dogmatics puts man in control. The book on which man operates may well
have a divine source, and so be inerrant, infallible, and inspired. But if we primarily
88See CD IV/3, p. 117.

S9Karl Barth: Letters, 1961-1968 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), p. 335.
90CD I/2, pp. 522 f.
183
relate our theological statements to our own systems rather than to Jesus Christ, or
treat Scriptural propositions apart from their reference to Him or our relationship with
Him, then our work becomes merely conceptual and not relational, and so it is no
longer faithful witness. We understand His work and sign [including the Bible] very
badly if we want to understand it as an object like other objects, and therefore to use it
as a sort of atlas of revelation from which we can read the being o f God without God
Himself speaking to us through it all in His act as the living Lord, according to His
grace.91
Thus the strength of Christian dogmatics, over against natural theology, is not
chiefly that it works with a body of revealed knowledge, i.e., with information from
an ultimately dependable source; but that its theological work is done in fellowship
with God:
In all these concepts natural means apart from Jesus Christ, apart from the
Son o f God who became also the Son of Man, who is called and is also Jesus
of Nazareth, who in His unity with Jesus of Nazareth has also human essence.
The antithesis to this natural is not in the first instance the concept of
revealed, but that of human nature ... once for all and definitively placed at
the side of the Father and in fellowship with Him.92
Knowledge of God and God's Revelation

Much of the conflict between Brunner and Barth resulted from the latter's use
of somewhat equivocal language.
One such equivocal phrase is the knowledge of
God, which Brunner in Nature and Grace uses93 chiefly to mean correct informa
tion about God, i.e., a certain psychological condition within a particular human;
whereas Barth refers94 thereby to the communion between God and that human.
Similarly, revelation for Brunner signifies either the event wherein factually correct
information is conveyed to someone, or to the information itself;95 but for Barth it is
91 CD II/1, p. 23.
92 CD IV/2, p. 101.
93Emil Brunner, Nature and Grace, in Natural Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), p. 20.
94Barth, No!, p. 82, Moreover, how can Brunner maintain that a real knowledge of the tme
God, however imperfect it may be (and what knowledge of God is not imperfect?) does not bring
salvation?
95Although Brunner says (Nature and Grace, p. 25) that the creation of the world is at the same
time a revelation, a self-communication of God, we can see that in the structure of the article this
statement functions to indicate a deposit of reliable information about God rather than the establish
ment of communion with God; or at least Brunner only develops the former aspect and not the latter:
184
God's act o f establishing communion. Barth96 can interpret Brunner to be saying that
real knowledge of God through creation does take place without revelation because
for Barth this knowledge is our personal access to God and revelation is God's act of
providing that access.
Not all the misinterpretation lies on Brunner's side. While Brunner explains
that his phrase capacity for revelation means the traces of his own nature which he
has expressed and shown in them,97 i.e., the ability to convey information, Barth
seems to confuse it with Brunner's earlier phrase capacity for words98 and so takes it
as a capacity that men have (whereas Brunner attributes it instead to nature), and so to
mean99 that man, as it were, works in concert with the grace which comes to him in
revelation.100
The element of Brunner's exposition which so offends Barth is that Brunner's
phrasing does not effectively shut the door to the idea that man o f himself retains abil
ity and means to gain access to God, and that those means constrain God (if only by
His self-limitation). For example, Brunner says that humanity and culture are not
simply to be dismissed as of no value from the point of view o f revelation. 101
Although God uses humanity and culture, they do not of themselves provide us any
means of attaining communion with God. On the other hand, God does use humanity
and culture (e.g., He uses our language), so Brunner is right to say that we may not
dismiss them; but their usefulness lies in God's use of them and not in their inherent
value or power.
The importance to Brunner of our rational ability emerges again in his defini
tion of the image o f God102 as the fact that man is a subject and his responsibility.
However, he later substitutes capacity for words for subject, enlarging the
nowhere does the Bible give any justification for the view that through the sin of man this percepti
bility of God in his works is destroyed, although it is adverselyaffected.
...Scripture clearly testifies
to the fact that knowledge of the law of God issomehow also knowledge of God {Ibid.,emphasis
mine).
96N o !, p. 81.
"Brunner, Nature and Grace, p. 27.

"Brunner, Nature and Grace, p. 23.
" No!, p. 80.
100See also Trevor Hart, A Capacity for Ambiguity? The Barth-Brunner debate Revised,
Tyndale Bulletin 44, no. 2 (1993):289-305; and Stephen Andrews, The Ambiguity of Capacity: A
Rejoinder to Trevor Hart, Tyndale Bulletin 45, no. 1 (1994): 169-179.
101Brunner, Nature and Grace, p. 22.
185
importance that our ability and our rationality have in his definition. What offends
Barth is this idea that some ability inherent in us and at our disposal constitutes a
stepping stone to knowledge of God, especially since Brunner later also claims this
ability to be necessary.103 If by this capacity for words he merely identifies an aspect
of the theatre of God's glory (Barth's phrase, see above) in us, then there is no con
flict; but it is not clear that this is his purpose.
Brunner says that it seems to me a queer kind of loyalty to Scripture to
demand that such a revelation [in creation] should not be acknowledged, in order that
the significance of biblical revelation should not be minimised. 104 Here Brunner mis
takes Barth. Barth's point is not that the Bible as such is special revelation, but that
Jesus Christ Himself (to whom the Bible points us) actively reveals Himself to us.
That is, revelation is an act which God does here and now, not something which was
finished when, long ago and far away, it produced a particular book.
It is not
something we can put our hands on, but the act in which God puts His hands on us.
Brunner is right that God reveals Himself in His creation: but this is God's act, not
ours and not that o f creation. Creation is the locus of that revelatory action, but it is
not the revealer.
Brunner treats us and not God as the agents of revelation. He treats both crea
tion and the Bible as texts to which we have access by our own efforts, from which, if
we apply the proper hermeneutics, we can derive knowledge o f God, i.e., more or
less correct information about God.
Barth uses knowledge of God in the Scriptural sense, meaning more than
information: it is communion with Him. Therefore only God can provide and uphold it
and we can only receive it. Revelation in the Scriptural sense is not an action removed
from us in space and time, but is the touch of God by which He turns us to Him. Yes,
both usually involve information; but neither can be reduced to information.
These different views of the nature of theological knowledge lie at the root of
the tension between Brunner and Barth (which erupts most fiercely in Natural Theol
ogy). For Brunner it is a matter of assembling factually correct propositions and theo
logical structures. His questions about natural theology investigate whether non-Chris
tians ever arrive at such factual accuracy. But even though Brunner uses the Christ
revealed in Scripture as his criterion, Barth is not especially interested (in 17 or in
No!) either in this method or its results. We do not gain access to God, nor can we
103See point 5, ibid., p. 31.

186
overcome our own rebellion against Him, by carrying any amount of technically accu
rate theology in our heads.
Further, by identifying knowledge of God with conceptual structures and
rationality, Brunner ignores God's relationship with infants and those with severe men
tal disabilities.105 Whereas defining the rationality of the infant at its mother's breast
would be extremely tricky, no one can dispute the reality o f the communion. Our fel
lowship with God goes deeper than any ability of ours to articulate it.
We must attribute part of the fault for these misunderstandings to Barth's ambi
guity and to his occasionally confusing use of language. For example, Brunner com
plains, in his review of CD 111/2, about Barth's application of the phrase ontological
impossibility to sin, since the phrase can only refer to something that cannot happen,
whereas sin obviously happens.106 Although Brunner later suggests a resolution107 he
has had to spend much time and energy on resolving a problem that lay in Barth's
articulation and not in his theology.
Nonetheless, we see in this same review, as emphasized by its title, Brunner's
surprise that Barth can say so many positive things about humanity,108 and so he claims
that this is a new Barth. Doubtless there is so much to digest in CD I that Barth's
few passing remarks about anthropology can slip by the reader unnoticed; but he dis
tinguishes his attack on the 19th century concept of religion in CD 1/2, 17, from any
attack on things human as such and in their proper place, at times affirming explicitly
what he calls human greatness.109
Unfortunately, Barth most often uses the phrase the knowledge of God with
out clearly distinguishing the fundamentally relational nature of the phrase from other
usages. Thus readers might assume that by this phrase he merely means correctly held
105Cf. Joan O'Donovan's critique of the ethical consequence of Brunner's shift of focus in Man
in the Image of God: The Disagreement between Barth and Brunner Reconsidered, SJT 39 (1986),
pp. 452 ff.
106Emil Brunner, The New Barth, Scottish Journal o f Theology 4 (1951), p. 129.
107Is this perhaps the reason why sin is called the ontological impossibility, something, that is to
say, not only contrary to man's determination but in fact impossible? In sin man apprehends some
thing that is made impossible for him and against which he is protected (p. 176), protected indeed by
the fact that all the time he has participated, not only in the creating Word of Jesus, but also in His
redeeming Word of Salvation. Brunner, The New Barth, p. 133, citing a page of CD III/2. Note
that, even if Brunner's understanding is right, we can still object that Barth is imprecise to call sin an
ontological impossibility. Even if sin reaches for something that is made impossible it is only the
goal of sin and not the act of sin that is impossible.
108Some o f which he itemizes, Brunner, The New Barth, pp. 123-124.
109E.g CD 1/2, pp. 300 ff., In the sphere of reverence before God, there must always be a place
for reverence for human greatness.
187
ideas about God, which loses the core of the content and purpose for which Barth
uses the phrase, and leads to fUrther misunderstandings of his theology. The knowl
edge of God might better have been translated knowing God, which carries the
notion of personal attachment along with the concepts that such a relationship
produces. That would make it more obvious that God is the Lord o f this event which
we call the knowledge of God,110 and that we are therefore wrong to think of such an
event as only a concept or information.111 Similarly, knowing the truth does not
mean that we assent to correct ideas but that we know God, who is the Truth.
The knowledge of God means the knowledge that faith has; and unless he
adds further modifications (see Knowledge about God and Objective Knowledge
below) Barth uses the phrase with that intent. Such knowledge can exist only where
faith (not credulity, or even bare assent) is pre-supposed, where the knower partici
pates in a total positive relationship ... to the God who gives Himself to be known in
His Word.112 To speak of some knowledge of God apart from such a relationship,
apart from such an act of turning to God, of opening up [one's] life to Him and of
surrendering to Him (ib id .) is to abandon Barth's usage.113
When Barth speaks of God's revelation he does not refer to a body o f ideas
about God, nor merely to something that God said once, and which we remember and
can possess and control; he refers, rather, to the actual events of God's speaking to us,
events in which again and again and yet again He invades our space and time to con
front us, so that we know Him and are thus placed in the truth.
God's revelation
does not mean first of all the Bible or what the Church says, but Jesus Christ114 present
and active here and now in the power of His Spirit.
110C D ///7, p. 67.

11^The knowledge of God is wholly and utterly His own readiness to be known by us, grounded in
His being and activity (CD 77/7, p. 66); the knowledge of God stands in contrast to all other human
cognition in that it always in fact coincides with some action of God (CD JI/1, p. 23).
i n C D II/l, p. 12.
113Cf. also the knowledge of God is the knowledge of faith (CD II/1, p. 12); knowledge of God
as knowledge of faith is in itself and of essential necessity obedience (CD II/I, P- 26); the knowl
edge of God can be understood only as the bestowal and reception of this free grace of God. And
finally, because in this act of His free grace God makes Himself object to us and makes us knowers of
Himself, the knowledge of this object cannot be fulfilled in neutrality, but only in our relationship to
this act, and therefore only in an act, the act which is the decision of obedience to Him (CD II/1, pp.
29 fi).
114For it is Jesus Christ who is God's revelation, CD 77/1, p. 73, my emphasis.
188
Thus Barth's remark that the rejection of natural theology is forced upon the
exegete by the creed (e.g., by the clause natus ex virgine) and by revelation115 is not
just an allusion to Brunner's rejection of the Virgin birth. By this remark Barth implies
that the knowledge of God is produced in us as the Lord Jesus was conceived in the
Virgin, i.e., in a manner above and beyond actions that can be explained in terms of
this world's forces, above and beyond the will and control of man, yet having effects
within this world: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become
the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were bom, not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13,
AV).
Knowledge about God and Objective Knowledge
Barth affirms that unbelievers do have knowledge about God. He puts neither
Christians nor non-Christians into a cognitive vacuum. Information aplenty they have
in common.
In On God's Ontic and Noetic Absoluteness116 Robert Brown suggests,
There are good reasons why one might well expect ... that an ontically absolute and
genuinely free being would be supremely knowable, including by natural reason
(p. 534). Brown indicates the kind of knowledge he has in mind when he says, There
is of course no question of a saving knowledge of God, which transforms the fallen
person into one entitled to a heavenly destiny (p. 547, emphasis his), and when he
seems to equate Barth's view of noetic absoluteness with the conviction that humans
cannot by their own powers know anything about God's nature, or even that God
exists (p. 545). These remarks apply to knowledge as information about God, but not
to knowledge as relationship with God.
Brown's argument collapses around that
distinction: on the one hand, God's freedom (ontic absoluteness) does imply that we
cannot put Him into a relationship with ourselves that involves mutual commitment; on
the other hand, Barth agrees that other aspects of God's ontic absoluteness imply that
unbelievers have some manner of information about God.
In his Shorter Commentary on Romans (see especially 1.18-3.20: God's Con
demnation of Man, pp. 24-41) Barth distinguishes knowledge as information about
God (which he calls objective knowledge) from knowledge as fellowship with God.
In this passage Paul refers to something the unbelieving Gentiles do not know, namely,
115N o !, p. 76.
11<5Robert Brown, On God's Ontic and Noetic Absoluteness:

Journal o f Theology 33 (1980):533-549.
A Critique of Barth, Scottish
189
that God has since the creation of the world been declaring and revealing himself to
them (p. 28). Although they do not know that God uses the world around them as a
witness to Himself, He does thus use it, objectively giving the them the opportunity
of knowing God, his invisible being, his eternal power and godhead (i b id f i.e., giv
ing them the opportunity to learn about Him through the witness of His creation.
And again, objectively speaking, they have always known him. In all that they have
known otherwise, God as the Creator of all things has always been, objectively speak
ing, the proper and real object o f their knowledge, exactly in the same sense as
undoubtedly the Jews in their Law were objectively dealing with God's revelation
(ibid.). Thus, the creation that lay before them provided information about God. But
because they interpreted it outside a relationship of faith and obedience to God, they
also could and did pervert it by opposing God. In spite o f their objective knowledge
o f God they have not rendered him the honour and the gratitude they owe him (p.
29). And all this describes information they knew to be correct, but which they dis
liked, and which they therefore manipulated to their better liking. Thus Barth affirms
that non-Christians have information about God that is accurate and important and
intelligible to Christian and non-Christian alike. Non-Christians, however, live in con
tradiction of it by perverting it, and their religions deny it. Simply having this informa
tion does them no good.
Nor does Paul preach to the Gentile unbelievers in order merely to provide
them with more. We do not become believers, disciples of Jesus Christ, by having a
certain amount of information in our heads. Rather,
When God gives Himself to us to be known in the truth of His self-knowledge
as the triune God, what happens is this. In one of His creatures, i.e., in a hap
pening in the sphere and time of the world created by Him, He is not only
pleased to be what He is in Himself and for Himself. In and for Himself He is
I, the eternal, original and incomparable I. ... But in His revelation God is
not only I. He is knownfrom the outside, for in an incomprehensible way
there is an outside in relation to Godas Thou and He. ... He also becomes
an object Himself for these objects created by Himself. There is therefore a
reciprocity of relationship between Him and these objects.117
It is in this personal encounter with God, and not in the construction of a theology,
however accurate, that one becomes a believer.
O f course, those who enter this fellowship with God in Jesus Christ will also
perceive facts about Him and be able, to some extent, to articulate to each other their
117CD II/1, pp. 57 f.
190
understanding of this fellowship and to recognize each other's descriptions. But if we

acknowledge that the reality of the fellowship has priority over our ability to articulate
the way we understand it, then we can also acknowledge that all Christians have an
imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ while they nonetheless have a genuine bond of
fellowship with Him.
We can therefore maintain that the Old Testament believers
knew Jesus,118 even though they had access to fewer historical details about Him:
Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad (John 8:56).
Thus the chief purpose of Paul's proclamation is to bear witness to the living
and active God. This goes beyond simply delivering more information,119 because Paul
expects that God Himself will confront Paul's listeners by means of Paul's words. In
Old Testament times, in Paul's day, and in ours, people become Christians because and
only because God confronts them. Although it would have been unfaithful of Paul to
proclaim the God of Jesus Christ apart from proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ, it is
not information about the details of names and places that his audience needs: they
need Jesus Christ Himself, who, in the power of His Holy Spirit, shows Himself to us
through the witness of Scripture and in the proclamation o f the Church.
Lights extra muros ecclessiae and Culture
Barth handles the question of knowledge about God by addressing a broader
question. If Jesus is the one Word of God, if He Himself is the Truth, then are there
other words of any sort that are true? If so, how are they related to Him? This ques
tion goes beyond theological statements as such to the relation between Jesus Christ
and all truth, beauty, and goodness. If we can say true things, even about the world
we live in (and we assume that we can), then what does Jesus Christ have to do with
this? Barth mainly focuses 69.2 120 on the problem o f true statements about God, but
his answer applies much more broadly to true statements about anything. Briefly, the
relationship between Jesus and all other true words (a) shows in their agreement with
Him, distinction from him, and their ultimate origin in Him;121 (b) we find such words
118See, e.g., CD II/1, pp. 60-61.

119Christians are not set apart by esoteric revelation, and the vocation of the Christian is not of
imparting truths to other men (Bettis, Theology in the Public Debate: Barth's Rejection of Natural
Theology and the Hermeneutical Problem, SJT 22 (1969), p. 397).
l20CDIV/3, pp. 110-165.
121C/9 IV/3, pp. 110 ff. Hans Kiing, Christianity and World Religions, pp. 30 and 271, notes
Barth's assertion that there are such other lights, but without Barths emphasis that they depend on
Jesus Christ as the one true light.
191
in the Bible, in the preaching of the Church, and in the world around the Church;122 (c)
such words must be tested by Scripture, by the creeds, and by their fruit;123 (d) we
must be ready to listen to God through extra-biblical words, but not treat them as
normative;124 and (e) they are part of God's created world, which is the theatre of
God's glory.125
Here we have no simple rejection of culture, but an explicit willingness to
receive it critically, to see and hear the world, finding God's self-declaration there, too.
Such an apparent turn-around demands another look at Barth's early section on The
Abolition o f Religion; and, looking there, we find that there is no turn-around after
all, because Barth was never saying the absolutely and simply negative things that
people thought. We find that God's Aufhebung of religion and of culture, and, indeed,
of our entire existence, first of all judges and abolishes in order that it may establish
and elevate.
Leslie Howard126 makes this mistake about Barth's attitude to culture. Barth
does refuse to base theology or the proclamation of the Gospel on culture: but this
does not imply that he rejected the idea of using aspects of culture to proclaim the
Gospel in such a way that those hearing can understand the content of that proclama
tion.127 A preacher who so radically rejected culture could not be the same man who
valued Mozart and Griinewald, tobacco and beer, good company and good conversa
tion, and used them as elements of his proclamation of the gospel,128 as Barth did.
Barth explicitly contradicts any such rejection. He affirms culture in a carefully quali
fied and christocentric way. Perhaps his dialectic and dynamic style throws off the
l22CD IV/3, pp. 113 ff.

123CD IV/3, pp. 125 ff.
124CD IV/3, pp. 130 ff.
n 5 CD lV /3, pp. 151 ff.
126See Howard, pp. 170-171, quoted above.
127Cf. Eric Sharpe, p. 106, where he remarks that Barth's gospel, divorced as it was from
religion, was open to the criticism that it was lacking in intelligible content.
128See John Hesselink, The Humanity of Karl Barth, Reformed Review 42 (Winter, 1988), pp.
140-145; Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, pp. 61-78 in Religion and Culture: Essays in
Honor o f Paid Tillich, ed. by Walter Leibrecht (London: SCM Press, 1959); Eberhard Busch, Karl
Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub
lishing Company, 1994); and the references to Mozart and Griinewald throughout CD.
192
reader who expects more abstract and simple answers.129 In the middle of 17, which
many readers take to be thoroughly negative towards religion, he says,
we have not to become Philistines or Christian iconoclasts in face of human
greatness as it meets us so strikingly in this very sphere o f religion. ... In the
sphere of reverence before God, there must always be a place for human
greatness. It does not lie under our judgment, but under the judgment of
God.130
Obviously we need to exercise great care in discerning Barth's distinctions and their
precise purposes.
When Barth says that Jesus Christ as attested to us in Holy Scripture is the
one Word of God whom we must hear,131 he does not mean that God only speaks
through the Bible. He does mean (as he develops in 69.2) that, wherever a true
word is spoken, it reflects the one true Word, Jesus Christ. It is because of the active
and continued work of Jesus Christ that, although not the Gospel, Mozart's music
signified rightly concerning God.132 No theologian who writes, as Barth did of
Mozart, At any rate we must assume that God had a special access to this human
being,133 believes that there exists only absolute disjunction between Jesus Christ and
culture, or that Jesus Christ is confined to the activity and proclamation of the Church.
Barth's comments elsewhere re-inforce Lochhead's point134 that 17 addressed
theological method and not an evaluation of non-Christian traditions, by distinguishing
the two issues in another context:
If God in Christ is governing the world, then we need no natural law [for
understanding historical issues]. We are bound to God's Word in the Church,
but God is not bound. Why should God not speak to Hammurabi?135
129Barth, Church and Culture, reprinted in Theology and Church (London: SCM, 1962), pp.
334-354, says, The Church will not see the coming of the kingdom in any human achievement, but it
will be alert for the signs which, perhaps in many cultural achievements, announce that the kingdom
approaches.
130C D //2, pp. 300 f.
m CDIV/3, p. 86.
132Palma, p. 47.
133Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, p. 64.
134Lochhead, p. 31.
135Barth, Karl Barth's Table Talk, recorded and edited by John D. Godsey (Edinburgh: Oliver and
Boyd, 1963), Scottish Journal o f Theology Occasional Papers No. 10, p. 83.
193
That is, faithfulness to God in our theological method requires that we be christocentric and biblical; but Jesus Christ works beyond the church. All truth is God's truth.
Points of Contact
Dialogue, whether religious or otherwise, almost inevitably requires that we
spend time clarifying what ideas and values we hold in common with the other partici
pants, finding where we differ, and evaluating the impact these agreements and differ
ences will have on the relationship. We often call the areas of agreement common
ground or points of contact. Therefore it comes as something o f a mystery that
Barth in places eschews points of contact and the search for them, not merely as
unnecessary, but as untheological and un-Christian. The following passages should
justify his position and his reasons for it. First we look at points of contact between
God and man, and then at the rather different points of contact between believers and
unbelievers.
Whether or not Barth correctly understood what other theologians meant by
the phrase, we can synthesize his own perception of what they meant by it, and thus
specify what he rejected.
He quotes Brunner's definition: self-evident knowledge
which man can have even as an unbeliever and which as such is taken up into his
believing. 136 But Barth objects by pointing to the conflict between revelation and
intrinsically godless reason 137 (which, presumably, includes so-called self-evident
knowledge).
Barth specifies the conditions under which talk about points of contact makes
good theological sense:
There can be no receiving of God's Word unless there is something common
to the speaking God and hearing man in this event, a similarity for all the dis
similarity implied by the distinction between God and man, a point of contact
between God and man, if we may now adopt this term too.
This point o f contact is what theological anthropology on the basis of Gen.
I27 calls the image o f God in man. In this connection we cannot ... [take]
this to refer to the humanity and personality which even sinful man retains
from creation, for the humanity and personality of sinful man cannot possibly
signify conformity to God, a point of contact for the Word of God.138
l36C D I/l (B), p. 27.

137CD 1/1 (B), p. 28.
138CZ)1/1 (B), p. 273.
194
Later he comments,
We have to think of man in the event of real faith as, so to speak, opened up
from above. From above, not from beneath!139
and,
Precisely when we describe both the conformity of man to God that takes
place in faith and also the point of contact for the Word o f God posited in this
conformity, not as an inborn or acquired property of man but only as the
work of the actual grace of God, our only final word at this point can be that
God acts on man in His Word.140
This point of contact is in God's power, not ours, and defined by faith, not unbelief.
God establishes real and active contact with us, but only by changing us from unbelief
to faith.
Barth seems to hold out very little hope for the success of seeking and using
points of contact between Christians and unbelievers. He comments in his Shorter
Commentary on Romans that the Gentiles had objective knowledge concerning God
but then threw it away, exchanging it for a lie, and he says that Paul
starts by referring to the best the Gentiles have, or claim to have: their relig
ion, which consists in one great confusion between the Creator and his crea
tures. If there is any position from which no bridge can possibly be built to
the Gospel, to the knowledge of the living God, then this is it! Human relig
ion, as radically distinguished from belief in God's revelation, always
originates and consists in this confusion: in the mistaken confidence in which
man wants to decide for himself who and what God is, which can only
produce this confusion, i.e. idolatry.141
Despite first appearances this does not mean that the Christian can only speak
contemptuously to the non-Christian. In fact, it means that the Christian and the nonChristian theologically have much in common: both depend on God's revelation, and
both are encumbered by religiously and culturally induced misperceptions o f God.
Therefore the Christian can say that his own attempts to understand God come under
the same judgment as the non-Christian's, that the only way to God is the way that
God makes for us and shows us. Our attempts at self-sufficiency, our confusion of the
139C>//i (B), p. 242.

U0C D 1/1 (B), p. 244.
141/1 Shorter Commentary on Romans (London: SCM, 1959), p. 29.
195
Creator with the creation, our thanklessness towards God are all condemned. All these
persist within the Church as well as without.
Barth does not exclude the critical search for and application of useful concepts
that the unbeliever already has; rather, he gives the constraints (and their theological
basis) within which such a program must work, and from which we can deduce some
principles by which God acts. Specifically, in 26.1 he discusses concepts that Chris
tians and non-Christians may appear to have in common, but in fact do not, and he
asserts that these concepts actually interfere with the non-Christian's understanding.
Discussing the concept of God's lordship, for example, he says,
The distinguishing mark of the lordship of God is this fact that He really is the
Lord over all things and therefore supremely over ourselves, the Lord over
our bodies and souls, the Lord over life and death. No idea that we can have
of lord or lordship will ever lead us to this idea, even though we extend it
infinitely. ... Can the ideas of lords and lordships even help us to know God?
Of themselves they can only hinder.142
This appears to argue against using any previous ideas our listeners may have had, and,
by implication, against using any earthly language. But Barth becomes clearer as he
goes on to discuss the concepts of creator and reconciler and redeemer:
Moreover, we have no analogy on the basis of which the nature and being
of God as Creator can be accessible to us. ... Creator means: creator ex
nihilo. But within the sphere o f the ideas possible to us, creator ex nihilo can
appear only as an absurdity. ... If we do know about God as the Creator, it is
... only because it has been given to us by Gods revelation to know Him, and
what we previously thought we knew about originators and causes is
contested and converted and transformed.143
Thus Barth begins to specify how our concepts correspond to God, and how earthly
language corresponds to God's revelation. He Himself is the proper content of these
terms: how could we know how to fill the terms aright before we meet the reality to
whom they refer? And so, by confronting us in our own place and time, God also con
tests and converts and transforms our concepts and language about Him. That is, we
may call God Creator, etc., not because our words are accurate, but l^peause God
gives Himself to us as the content of those words, while also directing" a s ^ s f o which
words we are to use.
142CDII/1, pp. 75 f.
143C D 11/1, pp. 76 f.
196
Along similar lines of reasoning, we argue that Barth's theology entails that we
must closely examine the language (and therefore the religious and cultural traditions)
o f our listeners for appropriate words to bear faithful witness to Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ enables His followers to find such appropriate words by giving them Himself as
the criterion for judging a word or phrase. And he enables the hearers of the gospel
when, above and beyond any words we could pronounce, He contests and converts
and transforms those words in their hearts, confronting the hearers with His grace, and
presenting Himself to them as the content of those words and as the object of the faith
which He instills in them.
Although Waldron Scott is in some senses right when he says that Barth
would surely allow that God arranges or permits the events o f human history, and the
culture manifestations as well, to prepare peoples for the coming o f the Word,144 we
have to be careful to identify the senses in which Barth certainly does not recognize
such preparation. We have already shown that concepts o f themselves do not lead to
relationship, and that they actually get in the way of understanding until God
transforms them and us. Nonetheless, I think Barth does not contradict the idea that
God sows the language and consciousness of a people with words and concepts
appropriate for being contested and converted and transformed by His self
revelation, as described in the previous paragraph. With certain cautions, his theology
can accommodate, for example, the thesis of Don Richardson that many ethnic groups
retain in their folklore legends about a sky-god whose worship they have abandoned,
which can be used to point them to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
which may even have originated in their primeval associations with the one true
God.145
Dialogue and Preaching the Gospel
Meynell proposes two principal steps for religious dialogue:
(1) to ferret out the putative facts on which each religious position depends,
making adequate allowance for the cultural backgrounds against which these
putative facts have been stated or assumed. When such allowance is made, an
enormous amount of prima facie disagreement may appear to be unreal. ...
(2) to examine how far it is more intelligent, reasonable and responsible to
144Scott, p. 223.
145Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts (Ventura, California: Regal Books, 1984), revised
edition. Cf. Calvin's remarks about Naaman the Syrian (II Kings 5), Cornelius (Acts 10), and the
eunuch to whom Philip was brought (Acts 8), Institutes, HI.ii.32.
197
assert these putative facts than their contradictories, when all the available
evidence, and all possible alternative views on the subject, are taken into
account. ...
It seems to me that the rationality of any belief, in the sense of there being
better reason to believe it than not to believe it, is in the long run a necessary
condition of its objectivity, in the sense of its having truth-conditions over and
above the subjective states or practical attitudes of the believer. Karl Barth
insisted on the objectivity of Christian belief in this sense, while repudiating its
justification in terms of rational principles which could be asserted and
defended independently of its truth.146
While these proposals attempt to achieve a very open and rational format for dialogue,
they only take account of a narrow aspect of religious faith, and they introduce a subtle
threat to the openness they seek to preserve. They demand that everything be explain
able in terms superior to the matter of faith being talked about. They assume that at
any disagreement, the parties can step back to some superior vantage point where they
do not disagree and from which they can proceed to wipe out all their differences; they
assume that the participants agree what rationality consists o f and what the proper
exercise of it is; and they assume that this scheme of rationality and objectivity (as
defined) provides access to the essence of the faiths being discussed. Meynell's scheme
is not so open as he would like, because it excludes those like Barth whose rationality
differs from his, and it excludes those whose ultimate criterion is not rationality at all.
Nor does it have a deep enough view of faith, treating it as reducible to a set of
propositions with which we agree or disagree.
While we can admit Meynell's kind of rationality as his own ultimate criterion
of proper theological procedure, we must reject its imposition on others who partici
pate in dialogue. In particular, we must resist its imposition on Barth, because, as
Lochhead says, ultimate criteria are always arbitrary and circular. If they were not
arbitrary and circular, they would not be ultimate. What Barth shows is that, when it
comes to the revelation of God, there are no criteria that do not beg the question.147
Barths opinion that [i]f God be God ... [then] God sets the ultimate criteria148 seems
more reasonable than Meynell's assumption of our own rational abilities.
While
Meynell does not admit such a limitation to his approach, there is similarly no reason
that Barth should concede Meynell's restrictions.
146Meynell, pp. 425 ff., italics his.

147Lochhead, p. 37.
148Lochhead, p. 37.
198
So what are we to do? A truly open and rational scheme of dialogue should be
able to accommodate those who, like Meynell and Barth, are rational and willing to
talk and listen.
It should include them whether or not they make some particular
rational scheme, or none at all, their ultimate criterion for theology. But if every par
ticipant in the dialogue has ultimate criteria that contradict the rationality o f the other
participants, what kind of dialogue can we have?
More generally, what kinds of
dialogue are there, and what are their goals? Lochhead, in The Dialogical Imperative,
helpfully discusses five views of dialogue.
1. Meynell would likely reject, as Lochhead does, the kind of dialogue that is
no more than a preparation for conversion149 because the sense of superiority inher
ent in this perspective makes it appear arrogant and insensitive. ... The perspective is
competitive, not dialogical, from the very start. 150 This is not to deny non-Christians
need Jesus. It does deny that we who know Jesus can in any sense control and dis
pense Him to others, as if He were bread or coin.
2. Parties who chiefly aim at eventual agreement on a theological position
might pursue dialogue as negotiation. 151 Despite the laudable goal of this model, a
truly open scheme o f dialogue must provide for amicable disagreement in all its stages,
lest high goals tempt participants to mistake an enforced uniformity for conscientious
agreement. But ought we to exclude those from dialogue who want to participate but
who do not agree with our starting point? Lochhead suggests not.
3. Dialogue as integration152 means that we listen deeply to other religious
traditions and thereby
come to see the world through other eyes. One comes to understand what
their categories are, how they relate to each other, how they relate to the
world. ... When that happens, we see things about ourselves and our faith
that we had not seen before. In all of that, we do not cease to be committed
and faithful members o f our own tradition.153
Meynell has not properly applied this to Barth's theology. But neither Meynell (who
wants to achieve agreement) nor Barth (who wants to bear faithful witness about Jesus
Christ to others) would be satisfied with stopping at this stage, since its goals are
149Lochhead, pp. 54-58.

150Lochhead, p. 58.
153Lochhead, pp. 69 f.
199
mostly one-sided: much as I may benefit from engaging in such dialogue, this view
describes nothing outside my own internal advantage.
4. In Dialogue as Activity154 Lochhead opens up productive ideas for
dialogue and what it means: it is not a two-way lecture; it is not so much a process of
sharing truth as it is of discovering it.155 We should not exclude people from dialogue
unless they exclude themselves.
5. Lochhead's final category provides an even deeper understanding of dia
logue, describing it as the relationship of honesty and openness more than the activity
of conversation.156 It does not demand the prior establishment of common ground. It
has no purpose beyond itself, because it treats the dialogue partner as one who is
loved for his or her own sake.157 To love one's neighbor as oneself is to be in a dia
logical relationship with one's neighbor. More specifically, the New Testament puts
the command in striking form: we are to love our neighbors as God has loved ws.158
Robin Boyd proposes the following neo-Barthian scheme for dialogue:
First, there would be great freedom and friendliness, and readiness not only
to speak but to listen. ...
Second, the primary topic of the dialogue would, on the Christian side, be
the sharing of the story, the history of Jesus. ... And of course there must
be total readiness not only to tell our story, but to listen attentively and with
complete openness to the story of our partner in dialogue. ... But we must
not sell ourselves short by being deflected, on our side, to any presentation
other than Christ, as we name the Name.
Thirdly, the dialogue would be scrupulously fair. ...
Lastly, Barth would be anxious to ensure that the parties fully understood
each other. , ..159
While allowing for the fullest exercise of reason in a free and mutual give and take
among the participants, this kind of dialogue also allows them the freedom of holding a
belief without having to earn by argumentation the right to hold it. It imposes no one's
criteria on anyone else. This dialogue, this articulated relationship of honesty and love

155Lochhead, p. 75.
156Lochhead, p. 77, emphasis his.
157Lochhead, p. 79.
158Lochhead, p. 80, emphasis his.
159Robin H. S. Boyd, A Barthian Theology of Interfaith Dialogue, Pacifica: Australian Theo
logical Studies 3 (Oct. 1990), p. 293.
200
and reciprocity, is its own criterion, its own justification, its own goal. Boyd also lists
some of its advantages over the approaches suggested by John Hick and Paul Knitter.
Perhaps the chief advantage is that the Christian does not have to abandon a Chalcedonian christology to engage in this kind of dialogue.
Like Barth, Boyd refuses to
accept uncritically the objectivity of the horizons of the universe o f discourse set out
by the modern world because the humanist assumption behind it severely restricts
free and objective inquiry.160
Bettis reminds us that in our dialogue with non-Christians (and even with other
Christians) we have freedom from pretensions to any supposed superiority that could
be derived from our theology.
The theologian does not enter the public forum
because the dialogue there needs him. On the contrary, he needs the dialogue. ... The
reason theology enters the public debate is because that is where it can best pursue its
own proper taskthe seeking of understanding. 161 We have already noted that Barth
posited, not revealed theology, but theology as an activity within our fellowship with
God, as the opposite of natural theology. When Bettis says, somewhat confusingly,
Barth denies that the Christian has access to any special information about God, 162
he means that non-Christians have access, if they want it, to as much Christian theo
logical information as Christians have. What we know, or think we know, about God
does not make us smarter or better people than non-Christians.163 We must not derive
our confidence in dialogue from some sense of being in possession of a theology, but
from a sense of being possessed by the Lord Jesus, whom we actually know, and
whose fellowship we can only haltingly articulate to those who do not yet know Him.
Because God has made us His witnesses, Christian actions of faith and obedience
respond to His prior actions toward us. But, as Busch says, this does not mean the
church could ever confront the world as God confronts it; confront it, in other words,
as God's representative, because there is a barrier against any adoption of an impe
rialistic posture on the part of Christianity towards non-Christian religions. 164
We have assembled a series of claims that point to an inevitable conclusion: (1)
Barth affirms in 69.2 that God speaks to us in all the world, i.e., that all truth is
160A remark about Barth in Bettis, Theology in the Public Debate, p. 402.
161Ib id , p. 403.
162Ib id , p. 396.
163Lochhead, p. 35, says, Barth is not attempting to assert triumphalistically the superiority of
Christianity over other religions. He is attempting to maintain that there is a genuine response to God
through the Gospel of Jesus Christ within the religious tradition we know as Christianity.
164Busch, Church as Witness, pp. 92 f.
201
God's truth. (2) He insists in 17 that God has judged our best Christian religious,
and hence theological, efforts and found them wanting. (3) Part o f the defect o f our
theology derives from uncritically or unconsciously or surreptitiously letting our
cultural and religious traditions wrongly influence our understanding of God and His
works. And (4) We are surrounded by cultural and religious thought-forms that differ
from our own.
It follows from all this that we ought at least to be open to the
possibility of using other religious and cultural points of view as a critique of our
articulation of theology, along the lines of Lochhead's dialogue as integration. Given
all this and the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, it should become clear
that Barth's theology entails an attitude much like Lochhead's Dialogical Imperative
and Boyd's program for neo-Barthian dialogue.
Boyd's proposed pattern of dialogue fits both Barth's theology and the nature
o f evangelical Christian witness as described by David Fergusson:
i. It claims finality only for a person and it avoids idolatry by identifying this
person as very God. ...
ii. The events which disclose the identity of Christ and which are narrated in
the gospels include most significantly the passion, crucifixion and resurrec
tion. These disclose the judgment of God upon human effort and achieve
ment, the forgiveness o f sin, and the triumph of redeeming love over evil. ...
iii. ... The mission of the Church is to bear witness through the power of the
Holy Spirit to the accomplished mission of Christ. ...
iv. A readiness to enter into dialogue with other faiths should not be seen as
the abrogation of Christian witness but rather as an appropriate manifestation
of it.165
Barth, as we have already seen, asserts that the task Christ has given us as His disciples
is to bear faithful witness of Him to the world around us. We tell others where we
have found living water and the bread of life, we tell them the story o f what Christ has
done for us, and we tell them that Jesus stands before them, too, demanding and
deserving their faith and obedience as the one Lord. What authentic speaking and
what theology demands, is not a description of the situation from some prescribed
position, but from one's own existential position:
The way I see it.166 Although
Barth does not address the question of dialogue as directly and explicitly as Boyd and
Bettis and Lochhead, the principles lying behind their thought also lie behind Barth's,
165David A. S. Fergusson, The Absoluteness of Christianity? Scottish Journal o f Religions

Studies XIII, no. 2 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 120 f.
166Bettis, Theology in the Public Debate, p. 393.
202
and a fair and thorough examination of his writing will show that his theology must
lead to an attitude about dialogue much like theirs.
IV. Conclusions
Barth's relational understanding of persons leads him to construct his doctrine
o f conversion in terms of the Church as well as the particular convert. By the action of
God in the Church and in its particular members, the Church and those members
become agents of conversion in the unbelieving world. By the power of God's Spirit in
them they proclaim the Gospel and they bear faithful witness to Christ. The motives of
this proclamation are love for Christ and love for one's neighbor. The forms o f this
proclamation and witness vary from circumstance to circumstance, but true dialogue
between Christian and non-Christian certainly fits Barth's theology. Christ's solidarity
with humanity implies the Christian's own solidarity with the non-Christian. While love
for Christ means that the Christian's witness must point faithfully to Christ, this also
means that Christians must ascribe no superiority to themselves, but only to Christ.
We have seen that Barth's critics have often interpreted Barth in terms of pre
suppositions alien to him. But, although Barth limits the scope o f his theology more
than we might like, he does not engage in the exclusionary practices often attributed to
him. Too often have his critics been satisfied to reject a caricature o f his theology.
Barth's theology compromises neither the faithfulness of its witness to Jesus
Christ nor the universal scope of its intended hearers. He does not compromise the
integrity of the proclaimer nor that of the hearer. Instead, he points out that our hope
of speaking or hearing truly lies not in ourselves, but in the Spirit o f our Lord, who is
Truth, and who is with us.
Chapter 6
Conclusion
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
John Donne (1572-1631), A Hymn to God the
Father.
More in this case points in two directions. There is more to Barth's doctrine
regarding personal being, conversion, the Church, faith, freedom, and Christian spiri
tuality than I have been able to pull into this thesis. The goal o f the thesis has been to
exhibit the human warmth, logical consistency, and alternative perspective resulting
from Barth's adoption of a relational doctrine of personal being.
The difficulty of
shifting from an individualist view to a relational view of personal being, as outlined in

Chapter One, is illustrated by the individualist, and to that extent irrelevant, objections
that various theologians have raised to Barth's theology. If this thesis has dissolved
those objections, then much of its goal has been accomplished.
In Chapter Two we examined the event of conversion as a kind of liberation.
We traced in some detail the implications of Barth's relational doctrine of personal
being for the meaning of freedom. Although some of the implications, such as the
principle that freedom requires obedience to God, may seem counter-intuitive, other
more intuitive corollaries of freedom, such as being able to act according to one's own
decision, appear in Barth's doctrine where some of his critics might not have expected
them. We saw that he emphasizes the positive side of freedom as power and ability
more than he does the negative side as the removal of impediment. We also showed
the connections of this theology of freedom with his theology o f conversion.
Chapter Three attacks the noetic view of faith, asserting that Barth's theology
views it as both noetic and ontic. According to Barth's theology, faith acts to connect
two persons, having both its basis and object outside the person exercising the faith.
Conversion, as the initiation of a life of faith, involves a thorough and radical change in
the existence (life) of the convert, according to Barth, and not just a change in the con
vert's mind. Conversion marks the believer's introduction into active communion with
God the Father in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit because this is the event in
which the Spirit has moved into the believer's life, granting the power and liberty to
engage in that communion.
Since faith is a kind of knowing, after the manner of
acquaintance between friends, we looked at the subject-grasps-object model o f know

ing, and found that it does not fit the personal and ontic nature o f faith.
Barth's
Ch. 6: Conclusion
204
description of faith, therefore, uses the terms subject and object in a manner con
forming to the doctrine of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ and their rela
tion to each other, according to the Chalcedonian definitions.
Chapter Four points us toward Barth's doctrine of Christian spirituality without
actually developing that doctrine. Specifically, it showed that Barth's doctrine o f reve
lation sets a foundation for his doctrine of our life in communion with Him. Several of
Barth's critics have noticed such an emphasis on Jesus Christ in his theology that they
saw a possibility of concluding that he left no place in his theology for us. Barth him
self saw that possibility and remarked on it. Some of his critics have reasoned that his
doctrine of revelation and his christology do not lead to a doctrine o f Christian life and
experience and spirituality. Barth's answer to that is the humanity of God, namely,
Jesus Christ, who does include us and makes a place for our life and experience and
spirituality, who makes Himself present to us in our own time and place by the power
of His Holy Spirit. Many of the objections of his critics presuppose an individualist
doctrine of personal being, and they do not address the fundamental difference
between that starting point and Barth's presupposed relational doctrine.
After we
looked at the place of mystery in the form of Barth's theology as well as its content, we
demonstrated that he uses revelation as having this-worldly historical effects,
specifically, personal and experiential effects. Barth wrote his doctrine of revelation to
clarify our understanding of the difference that revelation makes in our lives and in this
world, as well as to clarify its transcendent, other-worldly, divine origin.
Chapter Five looked at Barth's doctrine of the Church in its role as agent or
context of the conversion of particular persons to the discipleship of Jesus Christ. The
labels exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist take on significantly different colors in
the light of a relational doctrine of the persons involved in the proclaiming and hearing
of the Word of God. Because most of Barth's theology is an enterprise internal to the
Church (cf. the title Church Dogmatics), the reader finds relatively little material to
apply to the issue of inter-faith dialogue. One needs little or no response to the Vedas
or the Koran if one is discussing Christian doctrine with Christians, especially since
responding to the Bible, and to other Christians' responses to it, takes more time and
energy than one has. But because we Christians must also discuss our beliefs with
those who believe differently, and because Barth mostly omits this concern from his
theology, we must take great care in extrapolating what he has said into the gaps. In
Chapter Five we have examined these issues, and have concluded that Barth's theology
requires faithfulness to Jesus Christ in the form of expecting that He will speak through
Ch. 6: Conclusion
205
Christians to non-Christians, and through non-Christians to Christians. By that expec

tation we also confess Him as the Lord, the God-man, the Son of God.
The clause I have more occurs in a poem where Donne confesses his sin to
God the Father. More in that context means that he has not yet finished confessing.
It applies here to the dubious exercise of writing about the works o f others, so that the
author must ask for the forbearance (and in some cases the forgiveness) both of the
reader and those whose writings he has presumed to criticize. Writing about Barth
notoriously lacks the human warmth, the depth, the wit, and the excitement of his own
work. If this thesis has prompted or provoked the reader to more and better acquain
tance with Barth's works, then its author will be gratified. If it has encouraged the
reader to more and better acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ, then its author will
be delighted.
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Implications of Karl Barths Relational Anthropology For His Theology of Conversion

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Implications of Karl Barths Relational Anthropology For His Theology of Conversion

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Implications of

Karl Barth's Relational Anthropology

A Thesis presented for the degree of

John Allen Yates

UMI Number: U147954

All rights reserved

The sources o f those quotations have been

Preface and Acknowledgments

Chapter 3. Subject and Object in the Action of Faith

Chapter 4. Life in Communion

A. Closed (individualist) concepts of personhood

II. Barth on personal being

III. Further Implications: the Remainder of the Thesis

II. The individualist's conversion by reason.

III. Barth's theology of conversion derives from

A. The necessity for mystery in theology.

III. Life in Communion: Revelation in History, between

Chapter 5. The Church as the Context of Conversion

III. Barth on Natural Theology

Thesis: Barih adopts a relational (as contrasted with an individualist) model

'Isaiah 28:13 (AV), italics in the original.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

3CD 1/1 (B), p. 3.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Thus man's tendency to go beyond himself was understood as the

expression of this natural potency.8 Such a concept attempts to understand man by

These influences have produced in

Western thinking a concept of personhood that combines two basic components,

Thus the West tends to view the person as an

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

12Zizioulas HCHI, p. 403.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

In brief, the individualist

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

That is, the person becomes a

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

30Zizioulas derives this from Dostoevsky, see HCHI, pp. 429-430.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Ch. 1: Personal Being: A n Introduction

This is relevant, not

Barth refuses to define some neutral

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

41As in the title of 45.1.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Our being as persons is an analogy of His being-in-

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

Barth's account of this new subjectivity in its

For example, conversion

Ch. 1: Personal Being: A n Introduction

In that distinction, Christ has complete priority to and

58Hunsinger, pp. 164 f.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

(3) Asymmetry, i.e.,

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

It also takes account of the particular nature of this unity, as

specified in the other two points of Distinction and Asymmetry.

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

The ordered correspondence76 of personal relations means that these rela

The content of personal actions that occur in such relationships includes

Ch. 1: Personal Being: An Introduction

2. Consequently, our being, rather than a static entity or substance, is a matter