Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin, 31, number 4, November 1938

Bulletin

COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY

An Interview With Professor Earl Barth
By Prof. Wm. C. Robinson

Published Quarterly at
Decatur, Ga.

Volume XXXI November, 1938 No. 4

Entered as Second Class Matter May 9, 1928, at the Postofflce at Decatur, Georgia,
Under the Act of August 24, 1912.

AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR KARL BARTH

By Prof. Wm. C. Robinson

[The interviewer spent the summer semester, April-July, 1938, as a student under
Professor Karl Barth at the University of Basel. During the several seminars, open-
evenings, and private interviews in which he participated during this period certain
of the matters herein touched upon came to light. As a result, the interviewer drew
up a series of questions, in some cases with answers or partial answers from these
earlier expressions and from Barth 's recent writings, and laid them before the Pro-
fessor on a Wednesday with the understanding that either questions or answers, or
both, might be modified in any way which he suggested. Accordingly the interview
which follows was completed on the following Saturday July 2, 1938 and Prof.
Barth gave his approval to plans for its publication in America.]

Professor Barth, you have been recently represented in America as
holding views different from those which I have found in your lectures
and recent books. These misapprehensions as to your position may be due
in part to earlier views which you no longer hold, or to ascribing to you
views held by other representatives of the so-called Crisis Theology. In
order to correct misunderstandings as to your present teaching, I wish to
avail myself of this privilege of asking you some questions.

REVELATION

Q. I understand from your Kirchliche Dogmatik that you have serious-
ly placed your theology under the authority of the Word of God and are
continuously striving to bring it into closer conformity therewith.

A. This has been my program and it must be executed more fully from
year to year. The Bible stands above our theology and the Lord Jesus
Christ above the Bible. The Reformed Faith is a faith continually re-
formed by the Word of God.

Q. Do you regard the revelation attested in Holy Scriptures as the
unique, sufficient, and exclusive revelation which God has given to us sin-
ful men?

A. Yes.

Q. Does this mean that our preaching is unconditionally bound to the
Holy Scripture and to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the theme thereof?

A. Yes. The Scripture is under all conditions more right and more im-
portant than the best and most necessary thing that we ourselves have said
or can yet say. (Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1.2.306.)

Q. Exception has been taken to "spiritual" exegesis.

A. I never use that term and I do not like it. There is one rule for all
exegesis, the text, the matter which is testified in each text; and it will not
be possible to introduce into the text what is not there. I cannot admit that
there is an historical and a spiritual exegesis.

Q. Do you hold that Jesus Christ is the theme of the Bible; and that
the Bible becomes the Word of God here and now by the free application
of the free grace of God, by the power of the living Christ, by the work
of the Holy Spirit in saving sinners?

A. Yes.

Q. Your colleague, Professor Thurneysen, in a recent seminar advised
students to study the commentaries of those who believed that Jesus Christ
was the theme of the Bible in particular the commentaries of Luther and

Calvin to discover the true exegesis of a passage. Would this be your
advice also?

A. Yes. Luther and Calvin were truer than most.

Q. What are the further conditions for the right interpretation of Scrip-
ture?

A. Only in the Church of the Word can the Bible be properly inter-
preted, and reciprocally, the true interpretation of the Bible makes the
Church of the Word. There is a similar reciprocity between the preaching
of the Word and the faith of the Triune God, so that Christians must put
the highest, the particularly Christian, the Trinitarian Christological
knowledge again at the peak of their affirmations, and view that as the
foundation of all their other affirmations (K.D. 1.2.136) .

ORIGINS

Q. In the recent meeting of your Dogmatische Sozietdt you indicated
that God had made all things good and that evil (sin) was not in the least
created by God. Does this mean that the creature is wholly the cause or
author of sin?

A. Wholly the author of sin. I do not like the term "cause," because

sin is a moral evil, and morals do not come under the category of science

but of personal relations.

(The thought here expressed is a desire for a theology which derives its form, ex-
pression or terminology as well as content from the Word rather than from philosophy
or science.)

Q. Does this also mean that sin is not a metaphysical necessity arising
from the creation, as such, or from time as such; but a moral evil which
is directed against God?

A. Yes.

Q. Would you describe sin as the transgression of the law of God?

A. Not primarily. Sin is first a protest against grace. There is no law
apart from grace. Of course, grace gives a law, but what makes sin con-
demnable is our resistance against His love, not against His command-
ments. The Gospel comes before the law and love before the claim.

Q. In America you have been described as agreeing with Brunner's
view that surrenders the historic Adam as one who was created in the
image of God and actually fell from that estate by sin, and that likewise
surrenders all relation of the human race to Adam and his Fall. How-
ever, in the Dogmatik you speak of Adam as not observing the ordinances
of Paradise, the limits of his creaturehood ; and further declare that Christ,
the guiltless One, suffered what Adam and what we in Adam have all de-
served. Wherein do you differ from the view which has been ascribed to
you in America?

A. The difference is that what Brunner calls Adam is for him only an
idea and no more the real man, and I am opposed to this way of dissolv-
ing the figure of Adam in an unreal way. Further, I agree with the state-
ment in Wollebius' Compendium that in this transaction Adam is not to be
considered as a private, but as a public person, and so as the parent, head
and root of the whole human race.

But Adam is an historical figure in another sense than the Christ. It is
not accidental that Christ came in the midst of human history, and that
His historical existence in time and space can be vindicated. What is said
of Adam is said in the form of a saga, or story, or tale; but it is not a
myth or fairy tale.

HISTORY

Q. You have been represented as holding to the contrast between the
historical and the super-historical, which some regard as characteristic of
Neo-Platonism. However, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik 1.2.64, you specifi-
cally reject the contrast between history and either Heilgeschichte, Uber-
geschichte, Urgeschichte, or any other qualified history, and insist that
history must be a predicate of revelation, not revelation a predicate of
history.

A. That is correct. I have not held to the contrast between history and

super-history for eleven years.

(Barth holds that the relation between Revelation and history is analagous to that
between the Divine and human natures in Christ.)

Q. If one approaches any point in the history of Jesus Christ from the
viewpoint of Revelation then that historical event will have such impor-
tance as the Revelation ascribes to it, will it not? So, for example, the
Cross of Christ has the historical significance the Revelation ascribes to it.

A. Yes.

Q. You do not then hold that such historical events in the life of Jesus
of Nazareth have no saving significance or importance?

A. No. I have never held that view. With Wollebius, I hold that God's
Providence doth not take away, but establisheth the second causes; accord-
ingly, the saving significance of Jesus necessarily carries with it the his-
torical events of His life. But in accord with the former question, we come
to these events by way of Revelation. By the testimony of the Holy Spirit,
these events have saving significance for us. It is not history as such that
is saving us, but God who is saving us when He is speaking to us through
the events of the Bible. There is always God in action. The Bible can re-
main closed to us and must remain closed without God's Spirit.

Q. Last fall when Professor Bultman advocated the view that the super-
historical was the only thing that matters, and that it made no difference
whether Jesus ever lived or not as an historical character, did not you and
your colleague, Prof. K. L. Schmidt, vigorously controvert this position?

A. Yes. Because of John 1:14. We must maintain the historical Christ,
not because we give particular value to historicity as such, but history
becomes important because the Word became flesh.

Q. Do you hold that faith was a necessary pre-condition on the part of
the disciples for seeing the risen Christ so that faith was first and the ap-
pearances second; or do you hold that whatever faith they had was so
shaken or shattered by the Crucifixion that it took the appearance of the
Risen Christ to those whom He had chosen to awaken faith in them, so
that the appearances were first and the faith second?

A. I hold the latter rather than the former view. However, I would em-

phasize that He did not appear to all, but to those whom He had chosen
and to whom His appearance and the work of the Holy Spirit would pro-
duce faith. It is not wise to separate faith and the object of faith.

Q. I understand then that you accept as actual and as significant facts
the Virgin Birth, the Death, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ?

A. Yes. All are of importance, but not all of equal importance.

(Barth does not ascribe as much importance to the Virgin Birth as he does to
the Resurrection; but he devotes a large section in the second book of the first vol-
ume of the Dogmatik to its defense, in which he ably answers the reasons which are
advanced for not accepting the Virgin Birth.)

Q. From reading your Dogmatik, one also gets the impression that you
accept the great facts of the eschatological hope such as the Return of
Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment, the new heavens and
the new earth as events that will occur. Is this correct?

A. Of course. These events will occur but eschatological events in dis-
tinction from apocalyptic are important also for our present life. The
whole contents of our faith are eschatological events, not only the latest
but also the first. All the doings of God are eschatological. Creation, the
Resurrection of Christ, the Work of the Holy Spirit not less than the Com-
ing Again of Christ.

Q. In an older volume you speak of the thousand-year Kingdom which
cannot be erased from the Bible. Is that still your position?

A. Yes. I am sure that it is not possible to reject it; but I do not see
my way clear to explain it. I think that it is a kingdom on earth, but
whether it is before or after Christ's Return, or before or after the final
judgment or other details, I cannot say.

REASON

Q. Do you regard the paradoxes or dialectics as applicable to God, or to
the Word of God, or do you regard Revelation as above these paradoxes?

A. I do not like the terms "paradox" or "dialectics," but we must say
that God is both above and in the paradox, for there is only one God in
Heaven and in Eternity and in Revelation. When we read there both of
His love and of His wrath, these are contradictory, a paradox. For us it
is a paradox, but what is a paradox for us exists truly in Him. We must
neither endanger His unity nor hold that there is a God behind His Reve-
lation of whom we can know. God does not divide Himself so that only
a part is revealed. God does not reveal Himself piecemeal (Stilckweise) ,
because He is not a piecemeal God. The whole Deity is comprehensible
to us, and the whole Deity is incomprehensible to us. God makes Himself
comprehensible to us in the Death and Resurrection of Christ; and yet it
is clear that He is incomprehensible to us there. In the revelation of God
there is an identity of revelation and of hiddenness. God dwells in light
inaccessible which no man can approach unto, and God is the light of the
world.

(Barth is opposed to Nominalism in theology and to progressive revelation.)

Q. Do you hold that the paradoxes as you use them present ultimate
contradictions, or is there complete coherence in God's perfect wisdom,
whether or not we can understand how certain things cohere?

A. \^~hy do you speak of my use of the paradoxes? I get the paradoxes

from the Bible. I have no desire to press them further than the Bible, and

I cannot say less than the Bible says. There is complete coherence in

God's perfect wisdom. But also in God the Triunity is as ultimate as the

Unity: the plentitude as the simplicity: the Herlichkeit as the Herr. and

there is no more ultimate Word.

(Barth first said the plurality is as ultimate as the unity, but withdrew the state-
ment as being too philosophical in form. )

Q. Do you hold that man's reason is so disabled by the Fall that he is
unable to build a foundation with his philosophy or natural religion on
which to erect Christian truth as a superstructure: and unable by his rea-
son to supplement the revelation made in the Word of God bv material
drawn from true or supposed revelations made by God in nature or in
blood, race, and soil: and further unable to form a rational connection-
point which can accept a logical presentation of the Gospel but that he
be saved by the event of God's grace, the presence of Jesus Christ, the
testimony of the Holy Spirit to the Word?

A. Yes. Material from our human nature and from race, blood, and
soil can be used, but only by God's grace.

Q. Does this mean that you hold man has no reason, or that reason is
sin: or do you acknowledge and use reason and thereby seek to under-
stand, formulate, and present the truth of God according to the analogy
of faith?

A. Reason is a good gift: by all means let us use it. especially today.
Tell the people of America that Karl Barth hopes to be a rational being.

Q. The theology of crisis has been represented as teaching that all of
God's things are ganz-andere. that there is no having nor possessing of the
things of God: that the revealing of God is by a riddle, a logical absurd-
ity. However, in your Dogmatik you speak of knowledge as a necessary
ingredient of Christian faith, and say that when the Church apprehends
the Bible on the Divine side, the certainty of her knowledge cannot stand
in question. Will you indicate which you do and which you do not hold
of these apparently different statements?

A. Ganz-andere is also one of the old patterns used twenty years ago
and not in use today. For the rest the contrast has not been properly
understood. It is between mastery and service. There is no having or
possessing of God as though we could control Him or take Him into our
service. But in the service of God. in the obedience of faith, we know.
There is no faith without knowledge.

Q. In an earlier volume you spoke of the certainty of eternal salvation
as a later accretion to Calvinism that had been over-emphasized. Do you
now hold that God freely gives a believer an assurance of eternal salva-
tion bv His Word and the testimony of the Holy Spirit?

A. More and more I emphasize the certainty of salvation, but it must
be a certainty of faith, not of experience. I do not say "there is" but that
'"He gives" a certainty of salvation.

Q. From your chapter The Christian Apprehension of Revelation I un-
derstand you to teach that the Theologv of the Word cannot become a

synthesis of human thinking, inclusive of science and philosophy and
offering a world and life view that will solve the political, economic, and
social problems of the day. Accordingly, would you find yourself in
agreement with the sentiment of one of our former teachers, "The Church
has a creed, she does not have opinions"? (Thornwell.)

A. Yes.

Q. However, this would not mean that the truth revealed in the Word
was not normative for a man in his every relationship in life, would it?

A. No.

Q. You would hold that a Christian was obligated to be honest in his
business; a statesman to recognize the authority of God's justice rather
than make national expediency ultimate; a philosophy to recognize the
Creator in his Philosophy?

A. Of course. I answered that question in my recent address at Liestal

by showing that right (civic and personal) rests not on natural or Roman

law, but on the Divine justification which the Church preaches.

(The Bekenntnissynode in the Barmen declaration "rejects the false doctrine which
says there are provinces of our lives in which we are to own, not Jesus Christ, but
some other Lord; in which we do not need justification and salvation through Him.")

THEOLOGY

Q. Is it correct to call yours a Christocentric theology?

A. No. I do not care for the centric words.

The Christological doctrine Christ as true God and true man may be
used as organizing principle for the Christian theology and as an analogy
by which to test other doctrines; but so may also other doctrines (in de-
pendence upon, not against, the Christological doctrine) be used as the
organizing principle, such as the doctrine of justification, of grace, of
adoption, of the Church, and of the sacraments.

Q. What are the main divisions of your own dogmatics?

A. The doctrine of the Word of God; the doctrine of God; the doctrine
of creation; the doctrine of reconciliation; and the doctrine of redemption.

Q. Is it true that so far from being a Modernist you have drawn lines
of separation from them? In your Dogmatik do you distinguish the
Church of the Word (inclusive of the Reformed, the Lutheran, and the
Anglican schools) as definitely from the modernistic Church of Neo-
Protestantism as you do from the Roman Catholic Church; and in the
Credo do you speak of the "liberals" as friends because you are unable to
call them brethren?

A. Yes. But insert a little point of interrogation. I am not quite sure
yet as to the position of the Anglicans.

INTERVIEWER'S CONCLUSION

In estimating a theologian one may consider his position, direction, and
attitude. As indicated below, the interviewer holds a somewhat different
position from Professor Barth. However, he rejoices in Barth's movement
in the Reformed direction; and even with reference to some doctrines in
which he does not regard Barth's present position as satisfactorily settled,
such as sanctification and inspiration, notes that Barth has projected a

further study in sanctification as a course for the ensuing semester, and
that he finds verbal inspiration in I Cor. ii:13, while his colleague,
Pfarrer W. Vischer, speaks of the Holy Spirit as the hidden author of
Holy Scripture. Barth's attitude toward the Church and her doctrines is
indicated by the title which he has chosen for his volumes on theology
Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatic).

Barth's approach to and consequently his formulation of theology is
different from our classical Calvinism. One ought neither to obscure the
distinctions between the two, nor to become so absorbed in these variations
as to overlook the great testimonies in which both concur.

For example, our approach has stressed the beginning; his, the end;
both affirm that God is the Alpha and the Omega. We take more the view-
point of God, the Creator; he, more that of God, the Redeemer; we both
worship the Triune God. We are more historical; he, more eschatological ;
in this day of battle we agree in the Christian Confession the Apostles'
Creed. We preach the Law and the Gospel; he, the Gospel and the Law;
we both proclaim justification by faith alone without abrogating either the
Law or the Gospel. Our Biblicism has issued from a higher doctrine of
inspiration ; his, from a deeper sense of the sufficiency yea, exclusiveness
for us of the Revelation attested in Holy Scripture; we both insist that
Christian preaching is the Church's faithful exposition of Scripture. Our
concern is more to maintain the Biblical faith against destructive criticism;
his, more to purge it from philosophical adulteration; we both testify to
the Lord Jesus Christ as the theme of the Bible and look to Him to own
that testimony by the power of the Holy Spirit. We hold that the Bible
is the Word of God; he, that by the free grace of God the Bible as ex-
pounded in the Church becomes the Word of God; both that, by His Word
and Spirit, Christ reveals to us the will of God for our salvation. We have
given human reason wider scope; he, perhaps more intensive exercise;
both agree that God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and that our
reason must be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

For the maintenance of His truth the Lord Jesus Christ is dependent
neither upon the one nor upon the other of us. "All flesh is as grass . . .
but the word of the Lord abideth forever." And yet by His grace He
raises up and uses witnesses to Himself who often differ greatly one from
another. One remembers that Athanasius welcomed the Neo-Orthodox even
when they did not agree with him in every particular, e. g., the use of
hypostasis. And one notices that the European Calvinistic Congresses are
graced by some of Barth's closest associates Peter Barth, G. T. Thomp-
son, W. Vischer. The way in which the Confessional Church of Germany
of which Barth is no insignificant factor has lifted the Christian Sym-
bol has strengthened the faith of many. It is a stimulus to observe how the
influence of Barth has turned the preaching of many back to the exposi-
tion of God's Word and the proclamation of the Gospel of the Apostles and
Reformers; and an inspiration to note the joy Barth shows in the unfold-
ing of Holy Scripture, particularly as it sets forth the Risen Christ and the
Christian hope.

8