Book Review posted: Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals

I have posted to academia.edu my book review of Mark Galli, Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals (Eerdmans, 2017): 176 pp., which appeared in Puritan Reformed Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 2019): 190-193 (read it here).

I also posted an audio version to sermonaudio.com (listen to it here).

JTR

Word Magazine 82: Review: Karl Barth and Evangelicals

Yesterday I recorded WM 82: Review: Karl Barth and Evangelicals (listen here). In this episode I offer a review and some responses to Mark Galli's new book: Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals (Eerdmans. 2017). Mark Galli is editor of Christianity Today. He provides a sympathetic review of Barth's life and thought. One of the more controversial aspects of Barth's life raised in the book concerns the nature of his relationship with his assistant Charlotte von Kirschbaum.

Image: Barth and von Kirschbaum

I have completed a written review of the book, which provided the ground for this audio review. Here is the last paragraph of the written review:

In the closing chapter of this engaging overview of Barth’s life and thought, Galli raises an interesting justification for Barth’s value for modern evangelicals. He notes that Barth’s theology made waves in the early twentieth century, because he challenged the Protestant liberalism of his day, epitomized in the theology of Schleiermacher (and his stress on feelings and experience) and Ritschl (and his stress on morality and ethics). What one finds today, says Galli, is “liberal” evangelicalism. “New evangelicalism” is just “a reincarnation of the theology of Schleiermacher” (141). So, Galli, concludes, Barth offers modern evangelicals “a theology that can prevent feeling and ethics from taking over and sabotaging the church’s mission” (146). I believe that Galli is largely on target in his suggestion of parallels between contemporary broad evangelicals and last generation’s Protestant liberalism. Where I would take exception would be in his suggestion that Barth’s theology is the proper treatment for what ails evangelicals. Rather than Barth, how about a dose of John Calvin or John Owen?

JTR

Book Note: W. Gary Crampton's "A Concise Theology of Karl Barth"

W. Gary Crampton, A Concise Theology of Karl Barth (Whitefield Media, 2012):  103 pp.

Karl Barth is considered by many to be the most important theologian of the twentieth century.  His massive, multi-volume Church Dogmatics continues to be read and studied.  Debate also continues as to whether Barth was a friend or foe for evangelicals and conservative Protestants.

Gary Crampton’s slim volume offers a concise summary, review, and analysis of the broad outlines of Barth’s thought.  He does so by reviewing Barth’s 1959 book Dogmatics in Outline, which offered a synopsis of his theology through an exposition of the Apostles' Creed.   In the end, Crampton offers the following conclusion:

Karl Barth was surely one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.  Much of what he taught was in line with biblical Christianity. His theological views are very profound, and well worth studying.  As we have noted, however, Dr. Barth championed a neo-orthodox theology that, in some parts, is clearly antithetical to Reformed orthodox doctrine.  When one denies that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant God-breathed truth of the God of Bible, he denies the authority of God Himself who speaks in Holy Scripture, and, therefore, his conversion must be highly suspect.  Neo-orthodoxy is not biblical Christianity, and if followed to its logical conclusions it will lead one away from the true teaching of the Word of God into an abyss of logical paradox and teachings which are not in accord with the Word of God (p. 88).

Crampton’s book closes with an appendix titled “The Neo-Orthodoxy of Donald Bloesch” (pp. 90-103)  which analyzes Bloesch’s efforts to find a supposed “middle ground” between Barth’s neo-orthodoxy and evangelical orthodoxy in his two-volume Essentials of Evangelical Theology.  Crampton argues that the result is a view of Scripture that is “errant and dangerous” (p. 93).  It leaves him “without an epistemological foundation upon which to base his theology” (p. 90) and “mired in skepticism” (p. 103).

Crampton’s A Concise Theology of Karl Barth is commended to any who desire an accessible introduction to Barth’s theology from a traditional, Reformed perspective.  It also provides a caution and warning against the appropriation of Barth’s theology among those who would hold a high, confessional view of Scripture.

Jeffrey T. Riddle, Pastor, Christ Reformed Baptist Church, Charlottesville, Virginia.

What does Paige Patterson have to do with Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

I am still working my way through Karl Barth’s From Rousseau to Ritschl, in which the neo-orthodox theologian surveys and critiques various Enlightenment figures and assesses their impact on modern theology.  I was struck in particular by his discussion of Rousseau, whom he calls “a kind of martyr to Pelagianism” (p. 106).  It was especially striking in light of the recent semi-Pelagian statement by self-styled SBC “traditionalists.”   One line in the statement, under its second article “The Sinfulness of Man,” states, “We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty before he has personally sinned.”

Oddly enough, this apparently puts these Southern Baptists in theological league with Rousseau.  Barth concludes that while the celebrated French thinker admitted that men succumb to occasional moral downfalls this “in no way alters the fact that man is fundamentally, essentially, and naturally good, and has remained so.  It is certainly true that his natural goodness does not preventing him from being less good.  But even while he is deteriorating his natural goodness remains.  Rousseau was a confirmed Pelagian, a declared opponent of the Church doctrine of original sin and no free will:  man can in fact be wicked and is wicked times without number; but he is never essentially wicked and need not be so.  He may well do evil but he is not evil.  The charge to be brought against man is relevant only in certain connexion, namely to his existence in society, which brings with it all the evil possibilities we have mentioned…..” (pp. 105-106).

The last part of that quotation is intriguing.  Barth notes that for Rousseau “sin” in not inherent in man (by original sin and total depravity) but is only due to man’s environment.   This calls to mind another line in the Southern Baptist statement which, while denying original sin, states, “every person inherits a nature and environment inclined toward sin” (also in “Article Two:  The Sinfulness of Man”).  Oddly enough, it seems that the “conservative” Southern Baptists who have embraced this “traditional” statement have actually embraced the humanistic, Pelagian anthropology of the Enlightenment.

JTR

Karl Barth on the Enlightenment

In my ongoing efforts better to understand how Enlightenment thinking affected Biblical and textual studies in the 19th century, I have been reading Karl Barth's From Rousseau to Ritschl (SCM Press, 1959).  Karl Adams famously described Barth's 1922 Romans Commentary and its critique of Enlightenment-influenced German Protestant liberalism as like "a bombshell on the playground of the theologians."  Though the conclusions Barth eventually reached in his neo-orthodox theology are far from orthodoxy, he does offer a compelling analysis and critique of how the Enlightenment undermined the traditional, Biblical, Christian worldview.  Michael Horton also spends a considerable amount of time in The Christian Faith, surveying and interacting with Barth.

Here are a couple clips of the precisely elocuting Barth from an old documentary for those who want to brush up on their theological German and see the man in action: