One of the small jobs I had during our wonderful church building renovation was to dispose of some old boxes of old books up in the loft. As I sorted through the books, I felt a certain sadness. Most of the books were religious books on topics of current interest during the 1950s and 1960s. These topics included the family, sexuality, poverty, and war. Although “cutting edge” at the time, they all deal with yesterday's problems and ideas. There were also many booklets and pamphlets from the old Evangelical and Reformed Church. Although useful at their time of publication, they are now only of historical interest. To me they (like my sermons) are “ephemera,” things of no lasting significance that are now only of interest to collectors and archivists. I was hoping to find Bible commentaries or perhaps an edition of Luther or Calvin's works. No such luck. I guess my predecessors took such works with them when they moved on.
However, I did find two books that have changed my life as a pastor and a Christian. They are “God's Search for Man” and “God in Action” by Karl Barth. Rev. Kenneth Wobbe, who signed and dated them December 5, 1938, originally owned both books. Kenneth Hensiek later stamped his name on the inside cover, and they were both finally signed by Ernest Jordan. Both are early works of Barth, the first a book of sermons and the second a collection of theological addresses. God bless Rev. Wobbe for leaving them here for me. If you are not familiar with Barth, Princeton Theological Seminary's Center for Barth Studies provides this brief biography.
Karl Barth (1886-1968), the Swiss-German professor and pastor, is regarded by many as a modern day “Church Father.” Barth's great contribution to theology, church, politics, and culture will take generations to appropriate and assess. As the principal author of “The Barmen Declaration,” he was the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the Protestant group that resisted the Third Reich. Among Barth's many books, sermons and essays, the multivolume Church Dogmatics -- a closely reasoned, eloquently stated argument in nearly ten thousand pages -- stands out as the crown of his achievement.
Based on reading Rev. Wobbe's two old books, I went to Kent Library and found two more books by Barth. They only whetted my appetite for Barth's masterpiece, his “Church Dogmatics.” Available in 14 and 31 volume editions, a set normally sells for hundreds of dollars. However, when I mentioned this to Dr. Kerry Wynn, he directed me to Christian Book Distributors, which is offering “Church Dogmatics,” in 14 Volumes for $99.99 a savings of 895.01 (90%) from the retail price of $995.00. I could not resist! After reading 165 of these ten thousand pages, I can see that I have made a good investment. I have to agree with those who say that “Church Dogmatics” is the most important theological work of the 20th century.
What is “Church Dogmatics?” According to Merriam Webster, dogmatics is “a branch of theology that seeks to interpret the dogmas of a religious faith.” What is dogma? “A doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church.” Part of Barth's appeal for me is that he calls his work “Evangelical Theology.” His immediate intention was to provide a sound theological basis for the German Evangelical (Protestant) Church. Barth wanted to bring together the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) churches into a single confessing church, even if they were to remain organizationally independent. Sounds like the good old Evangelical and Reformed Church to me!
Barth believed that the Church must constantly revise and recreate it's theology for its own time, rather than uncritically following the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. However, Barth also decisively rejects what he calls modernist Protestantism. Leading modernist theologians included Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Albert Schweitzer. I believe that modernism (also known as liberal Christianity, Christian socialism, and progressive Christianity) provides the intellectual foundation for post-modernist theology, liberation theology, feminist theology, and social justice theology. These are the predominate theologies of the United Church of Christ leadership and our seminaries. Although these fashionable theologies claim to have replaced modernism, I believe that in fact they are merely new forms of modernism and are subject to the same fundamental weakness that Barth identifies in modernism.
What is this fundamental weakness? It is a fundamental failure of faith in God. Modernism sees religion and theology as aspects of human experience. Knowledge of God is simply another form of human knowledge, fundamentally the same as scientific and philosophical knowledge. The flagship of modernist theology is historical/critical study of the Bible. In this approach the Bible is treated as a “text” that is subject to analysis by all available tools including history, archeology, physical and social science, and philosophy. The underlying assumption is that today's scholars are much more knowledgeable and enlightened than the prophets and apostles who wrote down our Holy Scriptures. The “higher criticism” disassembled the Bible into imagined sources that were supposedly written by fanciful authors and cobbled together by hypothetical editors. This has resulted in the absurd claims of the Jesus Seminar, where a committee of scholars votes on which statements of the Gospels were “actually” said by Jesus. Based on a series of arbitrary criteria they have concluded that there are only a about a dozen authentic statements of Jesus in the Bible.
Barth returns the focus where it belongs, on the Triune God. Modernism and its children are not Christian to the extent that they interpret Bible and the Church as part of a human reality, instead of “the acting of God himself.” The Church is a result of a divine action that cannot be understood or explained by any human category of knowledge, whether scientific, historical, or sociological. The Church is not a human institution such as a corporation, government, or nation. “The being of the Church is identical with Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ is the “free Lord” of the Church’s existence who is never “restricted and conditioned by certain concrete forms of the human understanding of His revelation and of the faith which grasps it.” Colossians 1:18 states this eloquently. “And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” Jesus is in charge!
Church dogmatics can only be seen and understood only in “the present moment of the speaking and hearing of Jesus Christ Himself, the divine creation of light in our hearts.” This means engaging the Bible not as a “text” to be deconstructed but as the Word of God that “is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:11-13) Barth is not a Biblical fundamentalist or literalist. However, in the Bible he sees the unique reflection of the power and mystery of our awesome Triune God. The Bible is the Good News that Jesus commissioned the Church to proclaim through preaching and administering sacraments. If we neglect this commission, we are no longer the true Church, the Body of Christ.
Barth embodies the values expressed in the constitution of our congregation: respect for Biblical authority and freedom of conscience. “Church Dogmatics” is the great gift of the German Evangelical Church to the universal Church. It is a tragedy that while Barth is increasingly influential in the Methodist, Mennonite, and Presbyterian circles, Barth's essential insights have been totally ignored by the leaders of the United Church of Christ. Starting in the 1930s, Barth worked tirelessly to rescue the Evangelical church from the heresy (false dogma) of modernism. In the 1960s, our denominational ancestors chose to ignore Barth's warnings. As a result, our seminaries have not provided a sound dogmatic foundation for our pastors and leaders. Even if our pastors and leaders are intelligent, well educated, and full of good intentions, without such a foundation they will labor in vain.
For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corinthians 3:11-15)
Barth quotes are from “Church Dogmatics, Volume I: The Doctrine of the Word of God”
Bible quotes are from New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2010 by Biblica
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