The Humanity of God - Karl Barth - Text PDF

KARL
BARTH
E
IUMANITY
OF
(i i )
Three essays revealing Karl Barth's present-
day theological posture.
KARL
BARTH
THE
HUMANITY
OF
GOD
Widely recognized as one o£ the most influen-
tial theological minds of this century, Karl Barth
turns his tremendous creative and critical powers
upon his past thinking and that of his forerun-
ners of the last century. Within these three essays,
he points to a change in direction which he be-
lieves theology must take —a change which is al-
ready foreshadowed in his recent writings.
No longer can this great theologian be judged
merely by his earlier position. He has progressed
and matured beyond the total revolt which once
characterized him. Now
with honesty and candor
he sets forth a corrective of his former views
while at the same time maintaining his faith in
the absolute lordship and pre-eminence of God.
Barth lays the cornerstone for his new evan-
gelical theology in the essay, The Humanity of
God. He recognizes that in his early teachings he
placed an over-emphasis upon the absolute "oth-
—
erness" of God an emphasis which he believed
necessary to counteract the liberal's faith in man.
(Continued on Back Flap)

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Barth
The humanity of God
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THE HUMANITY -OR-GOD
4-
KARL BARTH
THE
HUMANITY
OF GOD
JOHN KNOX PRESS

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-5479
Second printing i960
Originally published as three separate monographs in the Theologische

Studien series by Evangelischer verlag A. G., Zollikon-Zurich.
Evangelische Theologie rm 19. Jahrhmdert, translated by Thomas Wieser

Die Menscblichkeit Gottes, translated by John Newton Thomas
Das Qeschenk der Freiheit, translated by Thomas Wieser
Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, copyright 1946
and 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
© C. D. Deans i960
Printed in the United States of America
7234
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
The three essays by Karl Barth drawn together in this

volume speak very well for themselves. It may be useful,
however, to point out why they are being made available at
this time in English.
First of all, the essays contain a concise and recent treat-
ment of some of the central issues in Barth's theology, or for
that matter in any Christian theology. This is especially true
in the case of The Humanity of God and The Gift of Free-
dom which outline Barth's approach to Christology and to
ethics respectively. Both of these areas are treated by him
much more thoroughly in various parts of his Church Dog-
matics, but the sheer length of that work may rather limit its
reading audience even though it is now appearing in English.

Hence it is hoped that the publication of these shorter writings
make more widely accessible some of the basic emphases
will
in the recent and most mature form of Barth's theology.
In addition to the importance of their subject matter these
essays are significant in that they reflect a certain development
in Barth's thinking. The mere fact of this development needs
to be underscored. In America and in Britain, Barth's the-
ology is often understood and judged primarily on the basis
of some of his earlier writings available in English. It is
no longer possible, however, to think and speak responsibly
about him if one's knowledge is limited to the earlier writings.
The three essays published here illustrate in brief form both
the fact and the direction of the development in Barth's
thought.
The first of these essays, Evangelical Theology in the i pth
Century, reminds us that Barth has always had tremendous

6 THE HUMANITY OF GOD
respect for the past, and that he has worked out his own
theology in continuous dialogue with the Christian thinkers
of preceding ages. In particular, it presents a recent and con-
cise interpretation and appraisal by him of the theology
against which he and his colleagues revolted in the second
decade of our century. This retrospective view provides an
excellent introduction to the next essay, The Humanity of
God, in which Barth in 1956 looks back across some forty
years of his own theological work and appraises the reaction
against 19th-century liberal theology in which he himself
was the most distinguished leader. In undiminished apprecia-
tion of both the need and the nature of this revolt, Barth
sounds the call for a new change of direction in evangelical
theology, hardly, if at all, less radical than that which took
place just after the First World War. With honesty and
forthrightness he asserts the need for correction of the ex-
tremes to which he and his colleagues went in their early
development of the Theology of the Word. The key to this
new change he finds in a deeper understanding of Christology
and its implications. In the third essay, The Gift of Freedom,
Barth proposes an approach to evangelical ethics which pro-
ceeds from the fact that God has made man free by choosing
him to be His creature, partner, and child. He opposes ethics
which merely sets up rules to be applied in a given situation.
The purpose of evangelical ethics is to interpret not a set of
rules but the gift of freedom, and in particular the call to
human action which is implied in this gift.
John Newton Thomas
Thomas Wieser
CONTENTS
ESSAY ONE
Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century
Page 11
ESSAY TWO
The Humanity of God
Page 37
ESSAY THREE
The Gift of Freedom

Foundation of Evangelical Ethics
Page 69
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY
IN THE 19TH CENTURY
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY
IN THE 19TH CENTURY*
"Theology," in the literal sense, means the science and

doctrine of God. A
very precise definition of the Guristian
endeavor in this respect would really require the more com-
plex term "The-anthropology." For an abstract doctrine of
God has no place in the Christian realm, only a "doctrine of
God and of man," a doctrine of the commerce and commun-
ion between God and man.
"Evangelical" means informed by the gospel of Jesus
Christ, as heard afresh in the 16th-century Reformation by
direct return to Holy Scripture.
"Evangelical theology" must thus be understood as the
scienceand doctrine of the commerce and communion be-
tween God and man, informed by the gospel of Jesus Christ
as heard in Holy Scripture.
Evangelical theology according to this definition did exist
in the 19th century. As part of the "panorama" of this era,
along with much and
natural science and technology, history
and philosophy, and along with Roman
politics, literature, art
Catholic theology, this evangelical theology was present. My

task hereis to describe it briefly. I shall confine myself to
the German-speaking world. This is justified in that 19th-

century German theology was the signpost for theological
endeavor elsewhere. This pre-eminence may not last in-
definitely.
The 19th century is behind us. So also is the evangelical
* Address given by Karl Barth at the meeting of the Goethegesellschaft in
Hannover, January 8, 1957, and entitled "Panorama of a Century."

theology of that century. The breach separating us from the
19th century is perhaps more pronounced in the field of
theology than in any other academic discipline, although it
is nowhere absent. This is not to say that 19th-century the-
ology is to be dismissed. Such a procedure would be out of

order in any academic discipline, but most certainly in the-
ology. Theology belongs to the wider realm of the Christian
Church, ecumenical and universal, in space as well as in time.
In the Church there exists a community of concern that may
be endangered, but never cancelled out, by even the most
serious differences in approach. In the Church and hence in
theology the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy
mother," is valid, and this commandment remains binding on
the children even when they have left their parents' house. To
respect and sustain the ties that bind the present to the past, in
spite of deep breaches, is therefore imperative. Evangelical
theology of today has additional and for us more urgent tasks
than those of the 19th century. But the 19th century's tasks
remain for us, too. However different our approach, we can-
not and must not abandon these tasks of a bygone day. To do
so does not, I suppose, serve the purpose of any discipline; it
certainly does not serve theology well.
Let us begin with some summary remarks about the history
of evangelical theology in the 19th century.
There is hardly any doubt that the distinctive beginnings
of 19th-century theology coincide with the publication of
Schleiermacher's book On Religion, Speeches to Its Cultured
Despisers in 1799. Whoever wishes to know and to under-
stand this theology must read this little book with great care,
though it is by no means easily digested. It clearly shows the
breach separating the new theology at that time from both
17th-century Orthodoxy and 1 8th-century Enlightenment and
Pietism.
3
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE I9TH CENTURY 1
The course of the history of 19th-century- theology is fairly
obvious from there on, at least in its main In its under-

outline.
standing of Christian man, this theology was first animated

and nourished by Herder and the Romantics, as well as by
the religious and national awakening of the Napoleonic era.

Subsequently, it found its splendid foundation and means of
expression through speculative Idealism, through Hegel's ver-
sion of it in particular, even though it came to be subjected to
from this very source. Under the increasing
severe criticism
pressure of advancing positivism in the second half of the
—
century here the name of Albrecht Ritschl is to be remem-
—
bered theology retreated to the epistomology and ethics of
Kant rediscovered, and to an interpretation of Luther redis-
covered in the light of Kant. Finally, only a small realm re-
mained for the genuine religious experience of the individual.
Theology turned into philosophy of the history of religion in
general, and of the Christian religion in particular.
The 19th century also had its outsiders. I mention Johann
Christoph Blumhardt, Hermann Friedrich Kohlbriigge, Wil-
helm Lohe and, for the final years, the quite different Franz
Overbeck. Perhaps Johann Tobias Beck and Adolf Schlatter
should be included here. These outsiders fitted only partially
or not at all into the main development. Since they were
either overlooked or viewed with condescension by their con-
temporaries, they in no way halted or even interrupted the
main course. Kierkegaard in particular did not have the slight-
est influence on 19th-century theology, except, again, in the
case of a few individuals. True, there was a more conservative
element which was tied more strictly to the Bible and the tra-
ditional teachings of the Church; there was also a more pro-
gressive element, more liberal in its relationship to those
authorities; furthermore, there were between them a number
of thesôgies of mediation. But these elements were variations
i 4 THE HUMANITY OF GOD
within the same general trend. None of them broke up the

rather uniform picture even though there were occasional
violent clashes. Incidentally, the theological leadership came
undoubtedly from among the liberals. It was the liberals who
raised the questions and answered them in a way which was
characteristic for the century as a whole.
It may be much more difficult to come to an agreement as
to the eclipse of this theology. The year 1900 brought the

19th century to its chronological end and marked at the same
time a climax in the history of its theology: the publication of
Harnack's What Is Christianity? Due to this achievement,
19th-century theology continued to live for some time with
force and dignity almost unbroken, in spite of signs of dis-
solution.This made possible a shortlived and partial renais-
sance of Schleiermacher around 1910. The actual end of the
19th century as the "good old days" came for theology as for
everything else with the fateful year of 19 14. Accidentally or
not, a significant event took place during that very year. Ernst
Troeltsch, the well-known professor of systematic theology
and the leader of the then most modern school, gave up his
chair in theology for one in philosophy.One day in early
August 19 14 stands out in my personal memory as a black
day. Ninety-three German intellectuals impressed public opin-
ion by their proclamation in support of the war policy of
Wilhelm II and his counselors. Among these intellectuals I
discovered to my horror almost all of my theological teachers

whom I had greatly venerated. In despair over what this indi-
cated about the signs of the time suddenly realized that I
I
could not any longer follow either their ethics and dogmatics
or their understanding of the Bible and of history. For me at
least, 19th-century theology no longer held any For
future.
many, if not for most people, this theology did not become
again what it had been, once the waters of the flood descending
— 5
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IQTH CENTURY 1
upon us had somewhat receded. Everything has

at that time
its and style of the
time. Evangelical theology in the true spirit
19th century continued to exist and some vestiges still remain.
But in its former wholeness it is a cause which today is sig-
nificantly represented by only a few. This is not to say that
we do not owe it our most serious attention for our own sake
and for the sake of the future. But it remains true that the
history of this theology had its beginnings, its various peaks,
and then also its end.
One respectful statement must be added immediately at
this point. Time made it unusually difficult for this theology to
be developed and get a hearing, let alone to get accepted, be-
yond its own proper realm in the various Protestant churches.
Nineteenth-century theology was burdened with the heritage
of the 1 8th century. There was an all-pervasive rationalism
and a retreat of vital or would-be vital Christianity into un-
dergrounds of many kinds. These factors, coupled with the
emergence of obscure forms of religious fanaticism, led to a
kind of secularism probably more pointed than the much
praised or deplored secularism of today. In addition, theology
was measured against the impressive achievements and per-
sonalities of the so-called classical era of German culture,
philosophic and poetic; against the breathtaking political
movements of the war of liberation 18 13-15, followed by
the years of revolution and restoration, the foundation-laying
of the empires, and the subsequent repercussions of all these
events down to World War I. Above all, theology was meas-
ured against the all-embracing triumphs of the natural sci-
ences, of philosophy of history, of modern technology, as
well as against Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms, Gottfried
Keller and Theodor Fontane, Ibsen and Sudermann. What
—
did theology have to say to this century not to speak of the
shadow of Goethe and Bismarck and Friedrich Nietzsche
i6 THE HUMANITY OF GOD
with its many-sided interest busily and progressively occupied

elsewhere, to readers of the Gartenlaube, of the Daheim, and
later of the Kunstivart*who numbered among them the more
or less zealous Christians? What did this theology have to
offer to a man who gave no thought to eternity, surrounded
as he was by the riches of his time; who was firmly grounded
in unshakable self-assurance, as was the case with the average
man of the 19th century? Such a man would take notice of
theology only if and when it suited his own radical or reac-
tionary purposes, but he had so many objections to it that
his indifference occasionally turned into open aversion and
hostility. Whatever one may think of the presuppositions,
methods, and results of these 19th-century evangelical the-
ologians, it was an act of intellectual and, in the last analysis,
of spiritual steadfastness that they were not afraid to face
this modern man. They did so much more directly than their
Roman Catholic counterparts because they dared to expose
themselves to this climate as they carried through their work.
This achievement must be seen and acknowledged before we
disagree with these theologians and depart from their positions.
One must speak with equal reverence of the human and
scientific attitude of many if not all of the representatives of
this theology. From Schleiermacher and his melancholy friend
De Wette in Basel down to Richard Rothe, Isaak August
Dorner, Ferdinand Christian Baur, Hoffman and Frank of
Erlangen, Alexander Schweizer and Alois Emanuel Bieder-
mann in Zurich, to Martin Kaehler, Ludwig Ihmels, Adolf
von Harnack, Wilhelm Herrmann, and finally to the last great
liberal, Hermann Liidemann, who was driven from Holstein
—
and went to Beme what scholarly figures they were, each in
* Kunstwart, Gartenlaube, and Daheim were German weeklies or month-

lies for art and literature.
hisown way, educated and cultivated, well grounded and well

rounded! Those of us who knew some of them will know
what I mean when I say that from many of these persons there
emanated an unforgettable air of conscientiousness, of churchly
and spontaneous piety, of a peculiar combination of ethical
earnestness and academic dignity. All this exists today only
in weak imitations and as such might better not exist at all. I
say this in order to emphasize that in dealing with the the-
ologians of the 19th century, at least with the best among
them, we are faced with a type of person that merits our high-
est respect. This in itself is reason enough for our listening to
them even today. Another question is then certainly in order:
whether these theologians may not have been a little too
serious at being professors, taking themselves too seriously.
Serenity is not the strongest impression we gain from their
writings, and while several had a sense of humor it easily be-
came a trifle bilious when it was allowed to assert itself out-
side their private life. In contrast to their strong scientific self-
assurance, a silent anxiety and oppression seems to pervade
the physical and mental picture of more than one of them.
This should not be a reproach. We have lived through harder
times, have endured worse things than they did, and we are
thereby, strangely enough, made more free. We are removed
from certain battles and involvements in which they were
caught in the course of their opposition to and conversation
with their apparently sunny age. We can breathe more freely,
just because the air has become more raw. Modern man can
no longer impress us, as he impressed them, in the light of his
performances in this century. In the midst of so much happily
rambling and triumphant idealism, materialism, naturalism,
skepticism, and other so-called realisms, one can easily become
melancholy, and the evangelical theologians probably did as
well as they could at that time, both as persons and as scholars.
i8 THE HUMANITY OF GOD
I shall now turn to a necessarily sketchy survey of the most

important and significant problems 19th-century theology had
to face. Whatproblems were foremost in the minds of the
theologians during all phases of 19th-century development,
and how did they master them?
The key problem arose from the conviction that the guiding
principle of theology must be confrontation with the con-
temporary age and its various conceptions, self-understand-
ings, and self-evidences, its genuine and less genuine "move-
ments," its supposed or real progress. True, theology was also
at work in and for the Church; it was also concerned with
its own proper center, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith
responding to it; it was concerned with searching and explain-

ing the Scriptures as the document of this gospel, with the
history of the Church, founded and determined by this gospel,
with her doctrine and her life, with intellectual and systematic
formulation of Biblical truth, and with seeking and finding
new ways of proclaiming it. However, the theologians had
their eyes fixed on the world, and their thinking was neces-
sarily conditioned by this outlook. They wrestled with the
—
challenging issues of their times. Theology and this was its
—
strength exposed itself to the world, as its most outstanding
spokesmen and achievements demonstrate. Obviously theology
has always been to some extent open toward and related to
the world, consciously or unconsciously. It should be so. Re-
treats behind Chinese Walls never served theology well. It
must be engaged in conversation with the contemporary
world, whatever the means of the dialogue. Whoever denies
this may read Schleiermacher, De Wette, Richard Rothe, and
study the volumes of the Christliche Welt, edited by Martin
Rade! The lazy man may learn thereby what openminded-
ness is! In this respect evangelical theology of the 19th cen-
tury set an example never to be ignored in any vital theology.
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IOTH CENTURY 19
Theology, however, went overboard —

and this was its weak-
ness —insofar with the contemporary age was
as confrontation
its decisive and primary concern. This was true not only, as
happened so often, when it addressed the outside world ex

professo, in the form of so-called apologetics, but also when it
dealt with the questions most proper to itself. Theology never

failed to react,whether approvingly or disapprovingly, criti-
cally or uncritically, to impulses from outside, at times even
with extreme nervousness. This openness to the world meant
(1) that through the open windows and doors came so much
stimulation for thought and discussion that there was hardly
time or love or zeal left for the task to be accomplished within
the house itself. With all its energies captivated by the world,
19th-century theology achieved surprisingly little in terms of
a new and positive understanding of Christian truth and
truths in themselves, a primary necessity at all times. The
winds were enthusiastically welcomed and allowed to enter
freely through the outside doors. This meant (2) that not a
few doors inside were slammed which should have been kept
open as well. Nineteenth-century theology ascribed normative
character to the ideas of its environment. Consequently it was
forced to make reductions and oversimplifications, to indulge
in forgetfulness and carelessness, when it dealt with the ex-
citing and all-important matters of Christian understanding.
These developments were bound to threaten, indeed to under-
mine, both theology and the Church with impoverishment
and triviality. The outside winds brought not merely fresh
air, but also notoriously foul air. This meant (3) that fatal
errors blew in, were admitted, and made themselves at home.

These errors, far from being simply tolerated, enjoyed birth-
right, even authority. Countereff ects to be sure were not lack-
ing, but there was no fundamental agreement about the abso-
lute primacy of the positive tasks of theology in and for the
Church, over against the secondary tasks of relating to the

various philosophies of the times. Finally, we miss a certain
carefree and joyful confidence in the self-validation of the
basic concerns of theology, a trust that the most honest com-
merce with the world might best be assured when the theo-
logians, unheeding the favors or disfavors of this world, con-
fronted it with the results of theological research carried out
for its own sake. It did not enter their minds that respectable
dogmatics could be good apologetics. Man in the 19th century
might have taken the theologians more seriously if they them-
selves had not taken him so seriously. Even the best repre-
sentatives of this theology have never overcome this limita-
tion, in spite of their exemplary openness to the world. And
this was the key problem of 19th-century theology.
This general assumption of openness to the world led neces-
sarily to the specific assumption that theology could defend
its own cause only within the framework of a total view of
man, the universe, and God which could command universal

recognition. How could the theologians establish and preserve
the much-coveted contact with the contemporary world if
they did not speak from within one of the current philoso-
phies and world views, granted certain reservations and modi-
fications? The validity of the Christian message was at stake,
or more precisely the possibility of a voluntary but universal
acceptance of its validity. Theoretically, Protestantism has
always maintained that no outward or inward pressure can or
should be brought upon anyone to accept the Christian mes-
sage and with it the Christian faith. While this had often been
overlooked in practice by Protestantism in earlier centuries, it
had rightly become commonplace for the theologians of the

19th as well as the 18th century. Quite rightly these theo-
logians stressed the possibility of free response offered to all
men, including their contemporaries. We can only do justice

I
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE I9TH CENTURY J
to the fundamental significance of their efforts if we under-

stand them against the background of the missionary and
evangelistic concern which is characteristic of modern Chris-
tianity: the Christian obligation rediscovered in the 18th cen-
tury to call and invite all men, near and far, to the free accept-
ance of the validity of the message of Jesus Christ and thus to

faith in Him. So far, so good.
The theologians of the 19th century proceeded funda-
mentally along the lines of the 18th-century Christian En-
lightenment. Their particular venture became questionable,
however, they set out to prove the possibility of faith in its
as
relatedness to, and its conditioning by, the world views which
were normative for their contemporaries and even for them-
selves. More they tried to find that point of refer-
precisely,
ence in the world views where voluntary acceptance of the
Christian message and the Christian faith suggested themselves
more or less convincingly and were viewed at least as possi-
bilities. It is evident that for this purpose the theologians had
to make a particular world view their own and had to affirm

its validity. This was all the easier for them as acceptance of
a prevailing philosophy was precisely the presupposition for
their work. The world views changed in the course of the
century; but there were always theologians who went along,
more or less convinced, if not enthusiastic, and who started
the theological task afresh within the new framework.
In contrast to Enlightenment theology, the 19th-century
theologians focused their attention on one particular point in
relation to all the various world views of their time: man's
supposedly innate and essential capacity to "sense and taste
the infinite" as Schleiermacher said, or the "religious a priori"
as later affirmed by Troeltsch. There was scarcely a theo-
logian who did not also consider himself a professional philoso-
pher. These philosophers of religion, more or less faithful or so-
phisticated advocates of one of the current world views, were

busily working out a general epistomology, a system of meta-
physics and ethics focusing on this very capacity. In these
terms they sought to validate the potential for religion, includ-
ing the Christian faith. The great efforts undertaken in the
steps of Schleiermacher by men like De Wette, Biedermann,
Lipsius, Kaftan, and Liidemann were highly commendable.
And yet these efforts were surrounded by two questions
which we may find difficult to answer in the affirmative.
First: Were men prepared to take such lessons from the
theologians? Did they permit having world views sup-
their
plemented? Were they sensitive to man's openness toward
religion and the Christian faith, and desirous to make any use
of it? The revelation theology of Schelling during his later
years should not be forgotten at this point. And we must not
overlook that later philosophers like Lotze, Siebeck, Dilthey,
and Eucken actively shared in their own way in the work of
the theologians. But it was a bad omen that Goethe, in whose
name we are gathered here, either ignored or viewed with
displeasure what was happening. He disliked Schleiermacher's
Speeches, quite apart from their romantic garb. The same can
be said of Hegel, the other great master of the century.
The efforts of Schleiermacher and of his successors did not
acquire any significance for the broad mass of the "cultured"
to whom Schleiermacher had addressed himself so impressively
with his proof of the roots of religion in the structure of
man's spiritual life. The thinking of the awakening labor class
of the 19th century was even less influenced. The gratitude
showered upon the theologians by the "royal house of Austria"
was not really encouraging. If this does not necessarily speak
against the excellency of what these philosopher-theologians
did, it is yet a quite serious matter when compared with the
explicit intention of their work.
The second question is more serious. Could the Christian

message and the Christian faith be a subject for debate while
the validity of a general world view was presupposed? Is there
any proof that acceptance of a particular world view will
make Christianity generally accessible or even possible? Even
granted the existence of man's religious disposition, can the
Christian faith be called one of its expressions, in other words
a "religion"? Nineteenth-century evangelical theology as-
sumed that this was so. But it could not do so without sub-
jugating the Christian message and the Christian faith to that
interpretation and form by which Christianity could achieve
validity and general accessibility for the proponents of the
prevailing world view. The Christian faith had to be under-
stood as a "religion" if it was to be generally accepted as valid.
What if it resisted this classification? What if acceptance was
so eagerly sought that Christian faith ceased to be Christian
faith as soon as it was interpreted as "religion"? What if the
attempt to give it the "firm" basis actually removed the real
ground from under it? Nineteenth-century theology did not
raise these questions. One wonders,
therefore, whether its
most typical spokesmen were not primarily philosophers and
only secondarily theologians. This might explain the failure
of their missionary task at a deeper level. Was it possible to
win the "gentiles" for the Christian cause by first accepting
the "gentile" point of view, in order to commend to them the
Christian cause? Could this procedure impress the "gentiles"?
Would it not have been necessary first to be innocent as doves
in order to be wise as serpents?
Nineteenth-century theology worked on the general as-
sumption that relatedness to the world is its primary task and
on the specific assumption that there is a possibility for gen-
eral acceptance of the Christian faith. The result was that the
theologians, when they came to work on their proper task in
and for the Church, were more interested in the Christian

faith than in the Christian message. In terms of content they
were more interested in man's relationship to God than in
God's dealings with man, or, to quote the well-known term
of Melanchthon, more in the beneficia Christi than in Christ
Himself. This emphasis informed their interpretation of the
Bible, their positive or critical attitude toward the early
dogmas, and the confessions of the Reformation. It informed
their research in, and their exposition of, church history and
finally their own formulation of the Christian faith.The
interest of these theologians focused on the believing man in
his past and in his present, in his confrontation and association
with Jesus Christ. Theological discussion with the contempo-
rary world centered around the existence of the believing
man, and in philosophy of religion particularly around the
possibility of this existence. The prevailing interest in this
direction would not necessarily have been erroneous had it
been a matter of shift in tone and emphasis for serious and

pertinent reasons. The Bible speaks emphatically of the com-
merce of the believing Israelite and the believing Christian
with God and therefore of the believing man as such. How
else could it testify on behalf of Him who was very God and
very man? The theologians should not have hesitated so long
to appeal to Luther, especially the early Luther, and to the
early Melanchthon! And how much assistance and guidance
could they have received had they paid any attention to
Kierkegaard! There is no reason why the attempt of Christian
anthropocentrism should not be made, indeed ought not to be
made. There is certainly a place for legitimate Christian think-
ing starting from below and moving up, from man who is
taken hold of by God to God who takes hold of man. Let us
interpret this attempt by the 19th-century theologians in its
best light! Provided that it in no way claims to be exclusive

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IQTH CENTURY 2$
and absolute, one might well understand it as an attempt to

formulate a theology of the third article of the Apostles'
Creed, the Holy Spirit. If it had succeeded in this, 19th-
century theology could have irrevocably stressed once again
the fact that we cannot consider God's commerce with man
without concurrently considering man's commerce with God.
Theology is in reality not only the doctrine of God, but the
doctrine of God and man. Interpreted in this light, 19th-cen-
tury theology would not have forgotten or even suppressed,
but rather stressed, the fact that man's relation to God is based
on God's dealings with man, and not conversely. Starting
from below, as it were, with Christian man, it could and
should have struggled its way upward to an authentic expli-
cation of the Christian faith. It could and should have sought
increasingly to validate the Christian message as God's act
and word, the ground, object, and content of faith.
Hoffmann of Erlangen, a Lutheran, must have had such an
upswing in his mind when he made the daring attempt to
portray the movement from man to God in the whole Bible
and to get at the Scriptures as testimony of the divinely
initiated and governed history leading to the ultimate salvation
of man (Heilsgeschichte),^lt did this in terms of his self-
consciousness as a Christian. But insofar as Hoffmann's the-
ology was intended to be a theology of Christian self-under-
standing and not a theology of the Holy Spirit, it could not
break through the general trend of the century. This is true
in spite of the significance which this theology has for us even
today. The basic concern of evangelical theology could not
find a genuine expression in these terms. If only the need for
an approach from below had been genuine and had grown out
of a new examination of the authentic concerns of theology!
However, it unabashedly originated from borrowed presup-
positions. This movement of thought from man to God be-

came exclusive and absolute. Nineteenth-century theologians

spoke of "faith," and we do well to they meant
trust that
Christian faith. But their assumptions compelled them to
understand faith as the realization of one form of man's spirit-
ual life and self-awareness. The more serious they were in
this interpretation, the more the Christian faith appeared to
be a windowless monad, dependent on human feelings, knowl-
edge, and will. Like these, faith was supposed to be self-nur-
turing, self-governing, and self-sufficient. A
capacity for the
infinite within the finite, faith had no ground, object, or
content other than itself. It had no vis-a-vis. Faith as the
Christian's commerce with God could first and last be only
the Christian's commerce with himself. It could express only
itself, its own inner dialectics, in so many words and sentences.
How could the truth of the Christian gospel be asserted except

by understanding it and interpreting it as a statement, an
expression, a predicate, or a symbol of the Christian's inner
experience? Theology was still being penalized for accepting
the Renaissance discovery that man was the measure of all
things, including Christian things. On this ground the testi-
mony of Christian faith, however honest, and however richly

endowed with Biblical and Reformation recollections, could
only exist like a fish out of water. On thisground there was
no effective answer to be given to Feuerbach who eagerly
invoked Luther's sanction in support of his theory that state-
ments of the Christian faith, like those of all other religions,
are in reality statements of more or less profound human
needs and desires projected into the infinite. Christian dog-
matics was especially hard put during this period to raise any
interesting and provocative questions, and to provide vital
answers. By the time it had dealt with the philosophical pre-
suppositions and the historical-critical problems, its voice was
subdued and bare of enthusiasm. Was it at all worth the
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IOTH CENTURY 2f
trouble publicly to discuss a man's inner experiences even if
he was a Christian? Was

such a self-revelation on the basis
of self-knowledge at all possible? May not man be more
hidden from man, the Christian from other Christians, than
God is hidden from man? These questions, too, were among
those which 19th-century theology never raised because it
saw no problem in this direction.

However, theology could hardly improve its position among
the other academic disciplines, much long
as it so desired, as
as it could give as the reason for its merely
particular existence
a specific human self-understanding and expression. Another
consequence of this religious anthropocentrism was even
worse. It has already been said that when the Christian gospel
was changed into a statement, a religion, about Christian self-
awareness, the God was lost sight of who in His sovereignty
confronts man, calling him to account, and dealing with him
as Lord. This loss also blurred the sight horizontally. The
Christian was condemned to uncritical and irresponsible sub-
servience to the patterns, forces, and movements of human
history and civilization. Man's inner experience did not
provide a firm enough ground for resistance to these phe-
nomena. Deprived of a guiding principle man could turn any-
where. It was fatal for the evangelical Church and for Christi-
anity in the 19th century that theology in the last analysis
had nothing more to offer than the "human," the "religious,"
mystery and its noncommittal "statements," leaving the faith-
ful to whatever impressions and influences from outside
proved strongest.
How confused was the position of the evangelical Church
in regard to changing world views! How long did it take the
Church to become concerned about social questions, to take
socialism seriously, and with how much spiritual dilettantism
was this finally done! How naively did the Church subscribe
to political conservatism in the first half of the century and

in the second half to the preservation of the liberal bour-
geoisie, the growing nationalism and militarism! All this cer-
tainly not with ill will; but theologically the ship was without
a rudder. And he who in 1933 may still have been spellbound
by the theology of the 19th century was hopelessly con-
demned, save for a special intervention of grace, to bet on the
wrong horse in regard to national socialism and during the
clash between the Confessing Church and the German Chris-
tians who supported the new regime (Kirchenkampf) I .
mention these developments only as symptoms. As indications

of the situation brought about by the religious anthropocen-
trism of 19th-century theology they needed mentioning.
I would like to make some final remarks. Mindful of its
origins in Herder and the Romanticists, 19th-century theology
has given new emphasis and recognition to the essentially
historical nature of the Christian faith which sets Christianity
apart from other religions. This is the merit and achievement
is shaped by its relationship to
of this theology. Christian faith
the history which finds its central meaning in the name of
Jesus Christ. For this very reason Biblical exegesis and the
study of the history of the Church and its dogmas were bound
to become again urgent and distinctive tasks. The path to be
followed in this attempt to do justice to the historicity of
Christianity was irrevocably given by the presuppositions
upon which 19th-century theology operated. Its spokesmen
had no choice but to understand the Christian faith, in its
essence, as a series of historical phenomena: Christianity a
particular religion alongside other religions and in the context
of the general history of religions; past patterns and expres-
sions of Christianity; and finally the history which finds its
central meaning in the name of Jesus Christ, His person and
His life, the original phenomenon of faith so to speak, but
—
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IOTH CENTURY 29

never more than a historical phenomenon. The theologians
—
had to apprehend Him or should we say, to lay hold of
Him? — historically, that is in terms of the history of religions
and according to the historical-critical method prevailing at
that time. They had to approach the person and the life of
Jesus on the basis of the New Testament record, but they also
had to distinguish His own religion from that of His witnesses
and their environment. Furthermore, they had to establish
and to evaluate these corollary religious events, both in their
particular characteristics and in their relationship to the
original event of Jesus Christ. They had to trace the forms of
faith in the Church down through the centuries in their
variety and in their continuing development. Informed by the
results of this research, they had to ascertain the contemporary
form of Christian faith. In this historical-critical undertaking,
19th-century theology enjoyed without reservation the con-
frontation and the formal agreement with the conceptions
and ways of thought of the environment. Theology met the
test as a science, and brilliantly so in the life work of men
to again mention only a few—like Ferdinand Christian Baur,
Karl August von Hase, Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Adolf
Jiilicher, Adolf von Harnack, Karl Holl, Ernst Troeltsch; one
should also remember to give honor to Theodor Zahn, on the

conservative side. In the light of the general and of the spe-
cificassumptions of 19th-century theology, the historical de-
termination of the Christian faith became visible in the results
of the research of these men. These results were constantly
vacillating, contested, and subject to discussion, and some were
truly amazing and caused vexation or rejoicing, depending on
one's outlook. I remember for instance when I was a student
at Berne, Rudolf Steck, one of the very dignified last disciples
of the so-called Tubingen School, suggesting, ifnot teaching,
that not only several of the Pauline letters, but every one of
3« THE HUMANITY OF GOD
them, might be "false," might be products of the second

century. And we all know of the famous Life of Jesus by
David Friedrich Strauss who gave one of the strongest im-
pulses to the theological enterprise by prove the
his attempt to
mythical character of even the Christ phenomenon! Even in
the cautious and moderate research of the majority of the
scholars along the main roads there was curtailing, rationaliz-
ing, psychologizing, and demythologizing going on!
Important for the total picture, however, were not the
sometimes more radical, sometimes more conservative, results
of this research, but rather the fundamental questions which
were triumphantly bypassed. Was Jesus Christ really nothing
more than the original phenomenon of Christian faith? Was
He not to be comprehended as its ground, content, and object
—
on the basis of the first records the New Testament as well —
—
as of the later accounts those of the Church varied and —
conditioned by their time as they were? Was, therefore,
Christ's historical existence at all accessible to a research which
reached beyond the texts of the New Testament? What if the
structure of these texts disqualified them as a proper "source"
for use by neutral historical science? This question was per-
sistently raised by Martin Kaehler in the 19th century,
but it received no attention. Furthermore, were the theologians
not doomed to misread the New Testament texts in their
attempt at understanding them as documents of certain re-
ligious phenomena? Finally, with this purpose in mind could
they possibly expect to understand the documents of Church
history and of the history of doctrine? Was this endeavor
truly what it claimed to be, a genuinely historical one? Did
not the whole enterprise, from beginning to end, painfully
suffer from the fundamental mistake that, in the words of
Schleiermacher, productive theologizing was possible only
from a lofty place "above" Christianity? What if by talking
1
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE I9TH CENTURY 3
about Christianity as a religion these theologians had already-

ceased to speak of Christianity and hence were unable to
communicate the faith with authority to those on the outside?
What the only relevant way of speaking of Christianity
if
was from within? We

do not fail to pay due tribute to the
"historical-critical" theology for the valuable stimulation,
iUumination, and guidance it offered with regard to the Bible
and Church history. But it did so only insofar as it was not

merely a "historical-critical" method but was nolens volens
theology, above all insofar as its subject matter was powerful
enough to break through the questionable vehicles of 19th-
century research and speak for itself. Except for this fact,
since otherwise it was nothing more than "historical-critical"
research and doctrine, forsaken by God and the Spirit, 19th-
century theology would not have been able to offer any
Christian truth of importance and of historical relevancy. If it
had been allowed to run its full course, the Christian faith
would no longer have been subjected to the history which
finds its central meaning in the name of Jesus Christ. On the
contrary, this history would have become subjected to the
interpretation by the particular mode of Christian religion
which the theologians equated with the Christian faith.
A deplorable consequence must be mentioned with refer-
ence to Nineteenth-century theology appeared
this last point.
to the outside world mainly as history of religion. This may
have been the reason for the mutual indifference which ex-
isted, at least during the second half of the century, between
evangelical theology and Roman Catholic theology. It is de-
batable whether this indifference was an improvement over
the vivid and so much complained-about hostilities of earlier
times which at least indicated mutual interest. Roman Catholic
theology, too, underwent strange developments in the begin-
ning of the century, and these were in part strikingly similar
to those of Protestantism. However, in the era of Pius IX it
regained its peculiar balance through a far from exemplary

return to Thomism. Obviously evangelical theology, consid-
ered as a discipline of the history of religion,had no
choice but to interpret the conduct of its opponent as an
uncritical and unhistorical dealing with authority and hence
reminiscent of the Dark Ages. Conversely, Roman Catholic
theology had to condemn the endeavor of evangelical theology
as irresponsible surrender and secularization of the historical
A dialogue between these two
character of the Christian faith.
partners which would have gone beyond the shouting back
and forth of slogans was as impossible as a conversation be-
tween an elephant and a whale. The relationship did not even
take the form of meaningful polemics, let alone the willingness
to listen to one another, to learn from one another, to seek
and to maintain the ecumenical contacts within the limits of
the possible. Who among the evangelicals ever read Catholic
dogmatics —and which Roman Catholic ever looked into our
expositions of the faith, our "Glaubenslehren"'? No wonder
that both partners turned their backs on each other with the
gesture and the prayer of thanksgiving of the Pharisee in the
Temple. Could and should this go on? If history of religion
on our side (and Neo-Thomism on the other) was the last
word of wisdom, the indifference was bound to continue.
I am at the end. It has been my task to give a report on the
evangelical theology in the 19th century. Therefore, I was not
and I am not now under any obligation to tell you, or even to
indicate, how this history continued. It would be interesting
to hear what a wiser man than myself will have to say about
its development a hundred years from now. The history did
go on. There is even a certain continuity in spite of inevitable

discontinuity. I repeat: the 19th century is not to be dismissed,
nor is its theology. I could not follow the rule Be mortuis nihil
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY GST THE I9TH CENTURY 33
nisi bene (speak nothing but good of the dead) simply because
the theologians of that time are not dead. "In Him they all
have life," in the greatness and within the limitations in which
they once lived. Et lux perpetua lucet eis (and the eternal
light shines upon them) And thus they live, excitingly enough,
.
also for us. They will not cease to speak to us. And we cannot
cease to listen to them.
THE HUMANITY OF GOD
THE HUMANITY OF GOD*
The humanity of God! Rightly understood that is bound

to mean God's relation to and turning toward man . It signifies
the God who speaks with man in promise and command. It
represents G^s_exgtence, interc e ssion, and actiyjtxiox.rnan,
the intercourse GodTiolds with him, and the free grace in
which He wills to ê and is nothing other than the God of
man.
do not deceive myself when I assume that our
Surely I
theme today should suggest a change of directionf in the

thinking of evangelical theology. We are or ought now
to be engaged in this change, not in opposition to but none
the less in distinction from an earlier change. What began
forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not
so much the humanity of —
God as His deity a God absolutely
unique in His relation to man and the world, overpoweringly
lofty and distant, strange, yes even wholly other. Such was
the God with whom man jhas to do when he takes the name
of God upon his lips, whe$».'God encounters him, when he
enters into relation with God, We were confronted by the
mystery comparable only to the impenetrable darkness of
death, in which God veils Himself precisely when He unveils,
announces, and reveals Himself to man, and by the judgment
man must experience because God is gracious to him, because
He wills to be and is his God. What we discovered in the
change which occurred at that time was the majesty of the
•A lecture delivered at the meeting of the Swiss Reformed Ministers'

on September
Association in Aarau, 25th, 1956.
t German: Wendung.
crucified, so evident in its full horror, just asGriinewald saw

and depicted Him. We saw the finger of John the Baptist, by
the same artist, pointing with authority to this holy One: "He
must increase but I must decrease."
Unmistakably for us the humanity of God at that time
moved from the center to the periphery, from the emphasized
principal clause to the less emphasized subordinate clause. I
should indeed have been somewhat embarrassed if one had
—
invited me to speak on the humanity of God say in the year
1920, the year in which I stood up in this hall against my great
teacher, Adolf von Harnack. We should have suspected evil
implications in this topic. In any case we were not occupied
with it. That it is our subject for today and that I could not
refuse to say something on it is a symptom of the fact that
that earlier change of direction was not the last word. It could
not be. Similarly, the change in which we are now engaged
cannot be the last word. That, however, may become the
concern of another generation. Our problem is this: to derive
the knowledge of the humanity of God from the knowledge
of His deity.
Permit me to give my exposition of this theme first in the

form of a report. In a consideration of the earlier change
referred to above, a viewpoint regarding the urgent new task
of the succeeding period and of today will emerge.
The change of direction then made had a pronounced
criticaland polemic character. It came to completion gradually
when viewed in terms of time, but as a sudden conversion
when viewed in terms of content. It was a precipitous break
with the ruling theology of the time, a theology more or
less liberal — —
or even orthodox representing the climax of
a development which had successfully asserted itself for
THE HUMANITY OF GOD 39
two or three centuries, apparently incapable of being arrested.

We are called upon today to accord to that earlier theology,
and the entire development culminating in it, greater historical
justice than appeared to us possible and feasible in the violence
of the first break-off and clash. This is an easier task today than
it would have been earlier. However, even in the most un-

biased evaluation of its legitimate purpose and its unmistak-
able service, even in the most peaceful review of it, one cannot
hide the fact that it could no longer continue as it was. Modifi-
cation of the theological conception then normative through
new and at the same time older and original Christian knowl-
edge and ways of speaking proved unavoidable. Evangelical
theology almost all along the line, certainly in all its repre-
sentative forms and tendencies, had J^come religionistic,
anthropo centric, and in this sense humanisti cTfWRat I mean
to say is that an external and internal disposition and emotion
—
of man, namelyîs,_piety which might well be Christian
piety —had become its object of studylnd itsjheme. Around
this it revolved and seemed compelled to revolve without re-

lease. This was true of evangelical theology in its doctrine
of principles, in its presentation of the Christian past and its
practical understanding of the Christian present, in its ethics

and in that which perhaps was to be regarded as its dogmatics,
in the proclamation and instruction of the Church determined
by it—above all, however, in its interpretation of the. Bible.
What did it know and say of the deity of God?|jFor this
theology, to think about Godjn^^^^^LSZ^£^.G&ly
veiled fashion about man, more exactly about the religious,
the Christian religious manjjfo speak about God meant to
speak in an exalted tone but once again and more than ever
—
about this man his revelations and wonders, his faith and his
works. There is no question about it: here man was made great
at the cost of God—the divine God who is someone other
V
than man, who sovereim^_confronts him, who immovably

and unchangeably"" stands ovcr_against him as the LordjjCre-
;
ator, and Redeemer. gggorwHj£lEia^jS7r5"partner

in a history inau^nâ^ff^j|^.and in a dialogue ruled „b
Him was in danger or being reduced, along with this history
—
and this dialogue, to a pious notion to a mystical expression
and symbol of a current alternating between a man and his
own heights or depths. But whatever truth was gained in this
way could be only that of a monologue.
At this point some of us were appalled after we, along with
everyone else, had drained the different chalices of this the-
ology to the last drop. We
then concluded (from approxi-
mately the middle of the second decade of our century on)
that we could not side with it any longer. Why? Had the pious
man and the religion of whose history and presence we had
heard so many glorious things at the university and of which
we ourselves thereafter had tried to speak, become a matter of
question in our own person? Was it the encounter with social-
ism as interpreted by Kutter and Ragaz which opened our eyes
to the fact that God might actually be wholly other than the
God confined to xhe__xnusjx^ ell of the ChrjadandEsikdous
n
self-consciousness, and that as such He jnight act and speak?

Was it the suddenly~darkened outlook for the world, in con-
trast to thelong period of peace in our youth, which awak-
ened us to the fact that man's distress might be too jjreat for
a reference to his religious' potentiafit^^pj^vTa comforting
—
and prophetic word? Was it this has played a decisive role
for me personally —precisely the failure of the ethics of the
modern theology of the time, with the outbreak of the First
World War, which caused us to grow puzzled also about its
exegesis, its treatment of history, and its dogmatics? Or was
it, in a positive sense, the message of Blumhardt concerning
the Kingdom of God which, remarkably enough, was only
then becoming timely? Was it Kierkegaard, Dostoevski, Over-
beck, read as a commentary on thaFmessage, through which
we found ourselves compelled to look for and set sail to new
shores? Or was it something more fundamental than all that,
namely, the discovery that the theme of the Bible, contrary
to the critical and to the orthodox exegesis which we inher-
ited, certainlycould not be man's religion and religious moral-
ityand certainly not hk.own secret divinity? The stone wall
we first ran up against was that the theme of the Bible is the
deity of God, more exactly God's deity—God's independence
and particular character, not only in relation to the natural but
also to the spiritual cosmos; God's absolutely unique existence,
might, and initiative, above all, in His relation to man. Only
manner were we able to understand the voice of the

in this
Old and New Testaments. Only with this perspective did we
feel we could henceforth be theologians, and in particular,
preachers—ministers of the divine Word.
Were we right or wrong? We
were certainly right! Let one
read the doctrine of Troeltsch and Stephan! Let one read also
the dogmatics of Ludemann, in its way so solid, or even that
of Seeberg! If all that wasn't a blind alley! Beyond doubt
what was then in order was not some land of further shifting
around within the complex of inherited questions, as this was
finally attempted by Wobbermin, Schaeder, and Otto, but
rather a change of direction. The ship was threatening to run
aground; the moment was at hand to turn the rudder an angle
of exactly 1 80 degrees. And in view of what is to be said later,
let it immediately be stated: "That which is gone does not
return." Therefore there never could be a question of denying

or reversing that change. It was, however, later on and it is
today a question of "revision."* A
genuine revision in no way
* German: Retraktation, from the Latin, retractatio. Barth is thinking of
Augustine's Retractationes.
involves a subsequent retreat, but rather a new beginning and

attack in which what previously has been said is to be said
more than even better. If that which we then
ever, but now
thought we had discovered and brought forth was no last
word but one requiring a revision, it was none the less a true
word. As such it must remain, and still cannot be bypassed;
rather it constitutes the presupposition of that which must
be further considered today. He who may not have joined in
that earlier change of direction, who still may not be impressed
with the fact that God is God, would certainly not see what
is now to be said in addition as the true word concerning His
humanity.
In regard to the change which then took place one might
well have sung:
"See the moon in yonder sky?

*
'Tis only half that meets the eye."
It must now quite frankly be granted that we were at that

time only partially in the right, even in reference to the
theology which we from which we had to
inherited and
—
disengage ourselves partially right in the same sense in which
all preponderantly critical-polemic movements, attitudes, and
positions, however meaningful they may be, are usually only

partially in the right. What expressions we used —in part
taken over and in part newly invented! —
above all, the famous
"wholly other" breaking in upon us "perpendicularly from
above," the not less famous "infinite qualitative distinction"
between God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point,
and the tangent in which alone they must meet. "And as she
warbled, a thousand voices in the field sang it back."t [There
* From the hymn, "The Moon Has Risen," by Matthius Claudius.

+ Emmanuel Geibel.
was bold assurance that there is in the Bible only one
also the
theological interest, namely, that in God; that only one way
appears, namely, that from above downwards; that only one
message can be heard, namely, that of an immediate forgive-
ness of sins both in prospect
and in retrospect. The problem
was identified with man's sickness unto death; re-
of ethics
demption was viewed as consisting in the abolition of the
creatureliness of the creature, the swallowing of immanence
by transcendence, and in conformity with these the demand
for a faith like a spring into the abyss, and more of the like!
All this, however well it may have been meant and however
much it may
have mattered, was nevertheless said somewhat
—
severely and brutally, and moreover at least according to the
other side —in part heretically. How we cleared things away!
And we did almost nothing but clear away!Everything which
even remotely smacked of mysticism and morality, of pietism
and romanticism, or even of idealism, was suspected and
sharply interdicted or bracketed with reservations which
sounded actually prohibitive! What should really have been
only a sad and friendly smile was a derisive laugh!
^
Did not the whole thing frequently seem more like the
report of an enormous execution than the message of the
Resurrection, which was its real aim? {Was the impression of
many contemporaries wholly unfounded, who felt that the
final resultmight be to stand Schleiermacher on his head, that
is, to make God great for a change at the cost of
man?JWe,re
they wrong in thinking that actually not too much had been
won and that perhaps in the final analysis it was only a new
Titanism at work? Was it only obduracy when, beside the
many who to some extent listened with relief and accompa-
nied us, so many others preferred to shake their heads, non-
plused or — like Harnack at that time —even angry over such
an innovation? Was there not perhaps in their obduracy the
dark presentiment that, in the religionism, the anthropocen-

trism, the ill-fated humanism of the earlier theology, there
might have been something at work that" could not be given
up? Is it possible that, granted the unmistakable contestability,
even perversity of their position, the humanity of God did
not quite come into its rights in the manner in which we,
absorbed as we were in contemplation of the mighty deploy-
ment of Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job, lifted up
His deity on the candlestick?
Where did we really go astray? Where was and is the
starting point for the new change of direction? The shrewd
friend from another shore* has, as is well known, laid his
finger on the fact that at that time we worked almost exclu-
sively with the concept of diastasis, only seldom and inci-
dentally with the complementary concept of analogy. That
may be the case. But was not this formal principle merely a
symptom of a more deep-seated, essential infirmity in our
thinking and speaking at that time? I believe it consisted in the
fact that we were wrong exactly where we were right, that,
at first we did not know how to carry through with sufficient
care and thoroughness the new knowledge of the deity of
God which was so exciting both to us and to others. It was
certainly good and proper to return to it and to make it known
with greater power. Moreover, Master Calvin in particular
has given us more than wise guidance in this matter. The
allegation that we were teaching that God is everything and
man was bad. As a matter of fact, certain hymns of
nothing,
praise to humanism were at that time occasionally raised the —
Platonic in particular, in which Calvin was nurtured.
It is nevertheless true that it was pre-eminently the image
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Swiss Roman Catholic priest and author of
Karl Bartb: A Presentation and Interpretation of His Theology.
and concept of a "wholly other" that fascinated us and which

we, though not without examination, had dared to identify with
the deity of Him who in the Bible is called Yahweh-Kyrios.
We viewed this "wholly other" in isolation, abstracted and
absolutized, and set it over against man, this miserable wretch
—not to say boxed his ears with it —in such fashion that it
continually showed greater similarity to the deity of the God

God of Abraham,
of the philosophers than to the deity of the
Isaac,and Jacob. Was there not a threat that a stereotyped
image would arise again? What if the result of the new hymn
to the majesty of God should be a new confirmation of the
hopelessness of all human activity? What if it should issue in
a new autonomy of man and thus of se-
justification of the
cularism in the sense of the Lutheran doctrine of the two
kingdoms? That was the concern and the objection of Leon-
hard Ragaz. God forbid! We did not believe nor intend any
such thing.
But did it not appear to escape us by quite a distance that
the deity oLtheJiuz^GocQ-and we certainly wanted to deal
with Him—^pund meaning and its power only in the
its
context of His historyjnd of His dialogue with wândtiras

in His togetherness with man? jlndeed— and this istfie point
—
back of which we cannot go it is a matter of God's sovereign
togetherness with man, a togetherness grounded Hun" "and m
determined, delimited, and ordered through Him done". Only
in this way and in this context can it take place and be recog-
nized, It is a matter, however, of God's togetherness with
man. Who God is and what He is in His deity He proves and
reveals not in a vacuum as a divine being-for-Himself, but
precisely and authentically in the fact that He exists, speaks,
and acts as the partner of man, though of course as the abso-
He who does that is the living God.
lutely superior partneri
And the freedom in which He does that is His deity. It is the
.
deity which as such also h as the chjjacter_ofJmmamty In this r

.
and only in this form was — —

and still is our view of the deity
of God to be set in opposition to that earlier theology. There
must be positive acceptance and not unconsidered rejection
of the elements of truth, which one cannot possibly deny to
it even if one sees all its weaknesses, Itjs precisely God's deity
which, rightly understood, includes \as_humanity
II
How do we come to know that? What permits and requires

one
this statement? It is a Christological statement, or rather
grounded in and to be unfolded from T3iristology. A second
change of direction after that first one would have been
superfluous had we from the beginning possessed the presence
of mind to venture the whole inevitable counterthrow from
the Christological perspective and thus from the superior and
more exact standpoint of the central and entire witness of
Holy Scripture. Certainly in Jesus Christ, as He is attested in
Holy Scripture, we are
not dealing with man in the abstract:
not with the man who
is able with his modicum of religion
and religious morality to be sufficient unto himself without

God and thus himself to be God. But neither are we dealing
with God in the abstract: not with one who in His deity exists
only separated from man, distant and strange and thus a non-
human if not indeed an inhuman God .fln Je sus Christ there
js no man from God or of jG^Îromjoian.
isolation of
Him we encounter the history, the dialogue, in
Rather, in
which God and man meet together and are together^ the
reality of thecovenant mutually contracted, preservecC and
fulfilled by is in His one Person, as true
them.JJesus Christ
God, man's loyal partner, and as true man, God's. He is the
Lord humbled for communion with man and likewise the
Servant exalted to communion with God. He is the Word
spoken from the loftiest, most luminous transcendence and

likewise the Wordheard in the deepest, darkest immanence.
He is both, without their being confused but also without
their being divided; He is wholly the one and wholly thej
other. Thus in this oneness Jesus Christ is the. Mediator, th|j

Reconciler, between God and man. Thus He comes forward
toman on behalf of Go d calling for and awakening faith, love^
and hope, and to God on behalf of man, representing man,!
making and interceding. Thus He attests and
satisfaction
guarantees to man God's
free grace and at the same time at-
tests and guarantees to God man's free gratitude. Thus He
establishes in His Person the justice of God vis-a-vis man and
man before God. Thus He is in His Person
also the justice of
the covenant in its fullness, the Kingdom of heaven which is
at hand, in which God speaks and man hears, God gives and
man receives, God commands and man obeys, God's glory
shines in the heights and thence into the depths, and peace on
earth comes to pass among men in whom He is well pleased.
Moreover, exactly in this way Jesus Christ, as this Mediator
and Reconciler between God and man, is also the Revealer
of them both. We
do not need to engage in a free-ranging
investigation to seek out and construct who and what God
truly is, and who and what man truly is, but only to read the
truth about both where it resides, namely, in the fullness of
their togetherness, their covenant which proclaims itself in
Jesus Christ.
Who —
and what God is this is what in particular we have
to learn better and with more precision in the new change of
direction in the thinking and speaking of evangelical theology,
which has become necessary in the light of the earlier change.
But the question must be, who and what is God in Jesus
Christ, if we here today would push forward to a better
answer.
Beyond doubt God's deity is the first and fundamental fact

that strikes us when we look at the existence of Jesus Christ
as attested in the Holy Scripture. And God's deity in Jesus
Christ consists in the fact that God Himself in Him is the
subject speaks and acts with sovereignty. He is the free
who
One inwhom all freedom has its ground, its meaning, its
prototype. He is the initiator, founder, preserver, and fulfiller
of the covenant. He is the sovereign Lord of the amazing
relationship in which He becomes and is not only different
from man but also one with him. He is also the creator of him
who is His partner. He it is through whose faithfulness the
corresponding faithfulness of His partner is awakened and
takes place. The old Reformed Christology worked that out
especially clearly in its doctrine of the "hypostatic union":
God is on the throne. In the existence of Jesus Christ, the fact
that God speaks, gives, orders, comes absolutely first—that
man hears, receives, obeys, can and must only follow this
In Jesus Christ man's freedom is wholly enclosed in
first act.
the freedom~"ot God. Without thT'condescensTbn of. God

there would be no"exaltarion of man. As the Son of God and
not otherwise, Jesus Christ is the Son of Man. This sequence
is irreversible. God's independence, omnipotence, and eter-
nity, God's holiness and justice and thus God's deity, in its
original and proper form, is the power leading to this effective
and sequence in the existence of Jesus Christ: superior-
visible
ity preceding subordination. Thus we have here no universal
deity capable of being reached conceptually, but this concrete
<jdty—real and recognizable in the descent grounded in that
sequence and peculiar to the existence of Jesus Christ.
But here there is something even more concrete to be seen.
God's high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom ioxjoye.
The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself intfiat
superiority and subordination is manifestly also God's capacity
t&Jjerid jdjpjyiuKai^^to attach Himself to another and this

other to Himself to be toêj&£r^^
, placeln
that irreversible sequence, but in it is completely real. In that
sequence there arises and continues in Jesus Christ the highest
communion of God with man. .God's deity is thus no priso n
in_which He can exist only in androT Himsejjr.Jfc is rather
His freedom to be in and for Himself but also with and for
us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself to be wholly exalted
,
but also completely humble, not only almighty but also al-
mighty mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only judge
but also Himself the judged, not only man's eternal long but
alscTfus "Brother in time. And all that without in the slightest
forfeiting His deity! All that, rather, in the highest proof and
proclamation of His deity! He who does and manifestly can
do all that, He and no other is the living God. So constituted
isHis deity, the deity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. In Jesus Christ it is in this way operative and recogniz-
able. If He is the Word of Truth, then the truth of God is
exactly this and nothing else.
It is when we look at Jesus Christ that we know decisively

that
Would
Q°îm£^
Calvin had
that energeucluly pushed ahead on this
MiH»
point in his Christology, his doctrine of God, his teaching
about predestination, and then logically also in his ethics! His
Geneva would then not have become such a gloomy affair.
His letters would then not have contained so much bitterness.
It would then not be so easy to play a Heinrich Pestalozzi and,
among his contemporaries, a Sebastian Castellio off against
him. How could God's deity exclude His humanity, since it,
is God's freedom for love and thus His capacity to be not only
in the heights but also in the depths, not only great but also
small, not only in and for Himself but also with another dis-,
tinct from Him, and to offer Himself to him? In His deity!
5° THE HUMANITY OF GOD
there is enough, room, for communion with man. Moreover

God has and retains in His relation to this other one the un-
conditioned priority. It is His act. His is and remains the first
and decisive Word, His the initiative, His the leadership. How
could we see and say it otherwise when we look at J^sus^Christ
in, horn We., find mail, taken up. into. commuruomwilh _God?
No, God requires no exclusion of humanity] no non-human-
ity, not to speak of inhumanity, in t r to be truly God. But
we may and must, however, look further and recognize the
fact that actually His dwv .t/<\ v.; humanity in if ilf. This
,
is not the fatal Lutheran doctrine of the two natures and their
properties. On the contrary, the essential aim of this doctrine

isnot to be denied at this point but to be adopted. It would
be the false deity of a false God if in His deity His humanity
did not also immediately encounter us. Such false deities are
by Jesus Christ once for all made a laughingstock.jTn Him the
fact is once for all established that Godjodugsnot, exist without
man!]
It is as though God stands in need of another as His
not
partner, and in particular of man, in order to be truly God.
"What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of
man that thou dost care for him?" Why should God not also
be able, as eternal Love, to be sufficient unto Himself? In His
life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit He would in truth be no
lonesome, no egotistical God even without man, yes, even

without the whole created universe. And He must more than
—
ever be not for man; He could one even thinks He must —
rather be against him. But that is the mystery in which He
meets us in the existence of Jesus Christ. He wants in His
freedom actually not to be without man but with him and in
the same freedom not against him but for him, and that apart
from or even counter to what man deserves. He wants in fact
to be man's partner, his almighty and compassionate Saviour.
1
He chooses to give man the benefit of His power, which en-

compasses not only the high and the distant but also the deep
and the near, in order to maintain communion with him in the
realm guaranteed by His deity. He determines to love him, to
be his God, his Lord, his compassionate Preserver and Saviour
to eternal life, and to desire his praise and service.
In this divinely free volition and election, in this sovereign
decision (the ancients said, in His decree) God is
/ humm^His
free affirmation of man, His free concern for him, His free
substitution for him —this is God's humanity. We recognize
it where we also first recognize His deity.
exactly at the point
Is itnot true that in Jesus Christ, as He is attested in the Holy
Scripture, genuine deity includes in itself genuine humanity?
There is the father who cares for" his lost son, theKig who
does the same for his insolvent debtor, the Samaritan who
takes pity on the one who fell among robbers and in his
thoroughgoing act of compassion cares for him in a fashion
as unexpected as it is liberal. And this is the act of compassion
to which all these parables as parables of the Kingdom of
heaven refer. The very One who speaks in these parables
takes to His heart the weakness and the perversity, the help-
lessness and the misery, of the human race surrounding Him.
He does not despise men, but in an inconceivable manner
esteems them highly just as they are, takes them into His
heart and sets Himself in their place. He perceives that the
superior will of God, to which He wholly subordinates Him-
self, requires that He Himself for the human race,
sacrifice
and seeks His honor in doing this. In the mirror of this

humanity of Jesus Christ the humanity of God enclosed in
His deity reveals itself. Thus God is as He is. Thus He affirms
man. Thus He is concerned about him. Thus He stands up for
him. The God of Schleiermacher cannot show mercy. The
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can and does. If Jesus
Christ is the Word of Truth, the "mirror of thefatherly

heart of Go d,"* then Nietzsche's statement that man is some-
thing that must be overcome an impudent lie. Then the
is
truth of God is, as Titus 3:4 says, His loving-kindness and

nothing else.
Ill
We should not yet, however, have arrived at this insight in

the right way—in any case we should not yet have been
certain of it — if its content had not been evident along the
lines which all Christian thinking and speaking must follow.
The statement regarding God's humanity, the Immanuel, to
which we have advanced as a first step from the Christological
center, cannot but have the most far-reaching consequences.
These result from the fact that we are asked about the cor-
respondence —here the concept of analogy may come into its
right —of
our thinking and speaking with the humanity of
God. The most fundamental and important of these conse-
quences, though not all of them, must now be brought more
significantly to light.
From the fact that God is human in the sense described,

there follows first of all a quite definite distinction of man
as such. It a distinction of every being which bears the
is
human countenance. This includes the whole stock of those

capacities and possibilities which are in part common to man
and to other creatures, and in part peculiar to him, and like-
wise man's work and his productions. The acknowledgment
of this distinction has nothing to do with an optimistic judg-
ment of man. It is due him because he is the being whom God
willed to exalt as His covenant-partner, not otherwise. But
•Martin Luther.
just because God is human in this sense, it is actually due man

and may not be denied him through any pessimistic judgment,
whatever its basis. (On the basis of the eternal will of God we
have to think of every human being, even the (\c\Apst mnst- l
villainous or miserable, as one to whom Te<mg Christ is Brother

a nd God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this
assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we
have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does not know
it yet or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this
knowledge to him. On the basis of the knowledge of the

humanity of God no other attitude to any kind of fellow man
is possible. It is identical with the practical acknowledgment
of his human rights and his human dignity. To deny it to him

would be for us to renounce having Jesus Christ as Brother
and God as Father.
The distinction due to man as such through the humanity
of God, however, extends also to everything with which man
as man is endowed and equipped by God, his Creator. This
gift, his humanity, is not blotted out through the fall of man,
nor is its goodness diminished. |\l an is not elected to inter-

course with Go d because, by virtue of his hurnanity, he de-
s erved such prefere nce. He STelected through God's grace
alone.} He elected, however, as the being especially endowed
is
by God. This is manifest in his special bodily nature, in which

he of course has ever so much in common with plant and
animal, and also in the fact that he is a rationally thinking,
willing, and speaking being destined for responsible and spon-
taneous decision. Above all, however, it is shown in the fact
that from the beginning he is constituted, bound, and obli-
gated as a fellow man. God concerns Himself with, loves, and
calls him as this being in his particular totality. In bringing into
action his particular nature man, as this being, may and should
praise Him and be submissive to His grace in thankfulness. It
would not do even partially to cast suspicion upon, under-

value, or speak ill of his humanity, the gift of God, which
characterizes him as this being. We can meet God only within
the limits of humanity determined by Him. But in these limits
we may meet Him. He does not reject the human! Quite the
contrary! We must hold fast to this.
The man, however, goes still further. It
distinction of
extends itself indeed even to the particular human activity
based on his endowment, to what one is accustomed to call
human culture in its higher and lower levels. Whether as cre-
ators or as beneficiaries of culture, we all participate in it as
persons responsible for it. We can exercise no abstinence
toward it, even if we want to. But we should not ivant to do
that. Each of us has his place and his function in its history.
Certainly we must here consider the fact that the use of the
good gift of God and hence human activity with its great and
small results is compromised in the extreme through man's
perverted attitude toward God, toward his neighbor, and
toward himself. Certainly culture testifies clearly in history
and in the present to the fact that man is not good but rathej
a downright monsterj But even if one were in this respect the
ixiost melancholy skeptic, one could not in view of the —
humanity of God which is bestowed upon the man who is not
—
good or who is even monstrous say that culture speaks only
of the evil in man. What is culture in itself except the attempt
of man to be man and thus to hold the good gift of his human-
ity in honor and to put it to work? That in this attempt he
ever and again runs aground and even accomplishes the op-
posite is a problem in itself, but one which in no way alters
the fact that this attempt is inevitable. Above all, the fact
remains that the man who, either as the creator or as the bene-
ficiary, somehow participates in this attempt is the being who
interests God. Finally, it also remains true that God, as Creator
and Lord of man, is always free to produce even in human
activity and its results, in spite of the problems involved, para-

bles of His own eternal good will and actions. It is more than
ever true, then, that with regard to these no proud abstention
but only reverence, joy, and gratitude are appropriate.
We must affirm as a second consequence the fact that,

through the humanity of God, a quite definite theme is given
to theolooical gqkaxe in particular. Yes, along with pyramid
building, pre- and post-Kantian philosophy, classical poetry,
socialism, and theoretical and practical nuclear physics there
is also theological culture! Since God in His deity is human,
this culture must occupy itself neither with God in Himself

nor with man in himself but with the man-encountering God
and the God-encountering man and with their dialogue and
history, in which their communion takes place and comes to
its fuffillment. For this reason theology can think and speak
only as it looks at Jesus Christ and from the vantage point of

what He is. It cannot introduce Him. Neither can it bring
about that dialogue, history, and communion. It does not have
the disposition of these things. It is dependent upon the Holy
Scripture, according to which the covenant is in -full effect
and in which Jesus Christ witnesses to Himself. It hears this
witness. It trusts it and is satisfied with it.
Thus through all the centuries theology was, and also today
is, given its subject-matter— —
its theme and, along with this,
instruction in the scholarly and practical objectivity appropri-
ate to it. Theology must hold fast to this objectivity in its
exegesis; in its investigation, presentation, and interpretation
of the Christian past and present; in its dogmatics and ethics;
and in its preaching, instruction, and pastoral ministry. This
objectivity means that without allowing itself to be enticed
into error, either toward the right or the left, theology will
5(5 THE HUMANITY OF GOD
attempt to see, to understand, and to put into language the

intercourse of God with man in which there comes about
intercourse of man with God It means that theology will
.
deal with the word and act of the grace of God and the word
and act of the human gratitude challenged, awakened, and
nourished through it. The first will not be considered without
the second nor the second without the and both will
first,
be approached in the sequence, distinction, and unity given

by the deity and thus the humanity of God. When it stays
with this theme, it is also in its most modest form good—let
us say for once "cultivated" —theology.
Whether the theological existentialism of Rudolf Bultmann
and his followers, close to which we find ourselves here, car-
ries us further toward this objectivity which is indispensable
to good theology remains yet to be seen. It is not yet clear
whether and in what sense a genuine, concrete dialogue, his-
tory, and communion between God and man is there en-
visioned, or whether it is concerned merely with a repristina-
tion of the theology of the believing individual who reflects
on himself in solitude (this time on his reality and unreality)

and explicates himself. The fact that to date neither the people
of Israel nor the Christian community appears to have consti-
tutive meaning for this theology causes one concern. And
what can be the meaning of the "overcoming of the Subject-
Object-Scheme," recently proclaimed with such special en-
thusiasm, so long as it is not made clear and guaranteed that
this enterprise will not once more lead to the anthropocentric
myth and call into question anew the intercourse between
God man and thus the object of theology? Certainly
and
existentialism may have reminded us once again of the ele-
ments of truth in the old school by introducing once more
the thought that one cannot speak of God without speaking
of man. It is to be hoped that it will not lead us back into the
old error that one can speak of man without first, and very
concretely, having spoken of the living God.
A third consequence: God's humanity and the knowledge

of it calls for a definite attitude and alignment of Christian
theological thinking and speaking. It can never approach its
subject matter in a vacuum, never in mere theory. Theology

cannot fix upon, consider, and put into words any truths which
rest on or are —
moved by themselves neither an abstract truth
about Godnor about man nor about the intercourse between
God and man. It can never verify, reflect, or report in a
-monologue. Incidentally, let it be said that there is no theologi-
cal visual art. Since an event, the humanity of God does
it is
not permit itself to be fixed in an image.
In conformity with its object, the fundamental form of

theology is the prayer and the sermon. It can take only the
form of dialogue. Its presupposition and occasion consist in
the fact that the commerce between God and man indeed
concerns all men, in that in Him, namely, in Jesus Christ, the
most personal affairs of them all are treated and the life and
death of them all are decided. Hence they all must know
about Him in order to define their own attitude and to par-
ticipate in Him. Theology also presupposes that there are
— —
many many too many who do not yet or no longer or do
not rightly know (indeed, in some way all this applies to every
man) that it is necessary and imperative to proclaim to men,
to call them together, and to communicate. This is your con-
cern! Christian thinking revolves around God's Word of the
covenant of peace and likewise around the man who in some
way has not, or has not correctly, heard this Word, and to
whom it must therefore by all means be proclaimed. And
Christian speaking is both prayer to God and an address to
this man.
5« THE HUMANITY OF GOD
It is Kerygma, the herald's call, the message which invites
and summons, not to some sort of free-ranging speculation
but to special reflection upon faith and obedience, in which
man steps out of the mere "interest" of the spectator over into
genuine participation* and in which he recognizes his own
God in the deity of Jesus Christ as well as himself in His
humanity. The exegesis of form criticism has shown us that
all this is in the New Testament and that it is normative both
for the entire period following the resurrection of Jesus Christ
and for that period preceding His direct, universal, and
conclusive revelation. In the Kerygma man recognizes himself
asbeing under God's judgment and grace, as the receiver of
His promise and His command, and thus enters with his own
understanding, will, and heart into the reality of that inter-
course. Theological thinking and speaking indeed cannot
cause this to happen to him. Therefore it cannot have the
character of address alone; must also have the character of
it
prayer. For that reason it can be useful to him and therefore

precisely on the basis of this usefulness it must, comformably
to the humanity of God Himself, be carried on. Should it not
be carried out in this useful way, it would drop not only out
of its role but also out of its character; it would betray itself
so that, however "Christian" its content might be, it would
become profane thinking and speaking.
The question of language, about which one must speak in
reference to the so-called "outsiders," is not so burning today
as is asserted in various quarters. This is true in the first place
because, again thinking in terms of the humanity of God, we
cannot at all reckon in a serious way with real "outsiders,"
with a "world come of age," but only with a world which
* Barth engages in a German-Latin play on words: man steps out of the

mere "lnteress^ . . . into genuine "Inter-Esse."
regards itself as of age (and proves daily that it is precisely not
that). Thus the so-called "outsiders" are really only "insiders"
who have not yet understood and apprehended themselves as
such. On the other hand, even the most persuaded Christian,
in the final analysis, must and will recognize himself ever and
again as an "outsider." So there must then be no particular
language for insiders and outsiders. Both are contemporary
—
men-of-the-world all of us are. A
little "non-religious" lan-
guage from the street, the newspaper, literature, and, if one
is ambitious, from the philosopher may thus, for the sake of
communication, occasionally indeed be in order. However,
we should not become particularly concerned about this. A
of the language of Canaan, a little "revelation-positivism,"
little
can also be a good thing in addressing us all and, according to

my experience, in which I am certainly not alone, will often,
though not always, be still better understood even by the
oddest strangers. That is better than feeling compelled to
—
approach them like a "Jesuit in miniature," certainly no
—
sympathetic figure with some sort of gibberish, which, for
the moment, is modern. What we have to say to them and —
first to ourselves —
is a strange piece of news in any case. Let
us see to it that it really is the great piece of news the mes-—

sage of the eternal love of God directed to us men as we at
all times were, are, and shall be. Then we shall certainly be
very well understood by them, whatever they may or may
not do with it. He whose heart is really with God and there-
fore really with men may have faith that the Word of God, to
which he seeks to bear witness, will not return unto Him void.
A fourth consequence: the sense and sound of our word

must be fundamentally positive. Proclamation of the covenant
of God with men, announcement of the place which is once
for all opened and assigned to man in this covenant, the mes-
—
6o THE HUMANITY OF GOD
sage of —
Immanuel, the message of Christ this is the task. The
dialogue and encounter which are our theological theme
involve God's grace and man's gratitude. To open up again
the abyss closed in Jesus Christ cannot be our task. Man is
not good: that is indeed true and must once more be asserted.
God does not turn toward him without uttering in inexorable
sharpness a "No" to his transgression. Thus theology has no
choice but to put this into words within the framework
"No"
of its theme. However, must be the "No" which Jesus Christ
it
has taken upon Himself for us men, in order that it may no

longer affect us and that we may no longer place ourselves
under it. What takes place in God's humanity is, since it
includes that "No" in itself, the affirmation of man.
The direction of our word is given therewith. The man
with whom we have to do in ourselves and in others, although
a rebel, a sluggard, a hypocrite, is likewise the creature to
whom his Creator is faithful and not unfaithful. But there is
more: he is the being whom God has loved, loves, and will
still
love, because He has substituted Himself in Jesus Christ and

hasmade Himself the guarantee. "Jesus is the victor" and
"You men are gods": these two watchwords of Blumhardt
hold good! And with this explanation the statement that the
human may also be valid as an
spirit is naturally Christian
obstinately joyful proclamation. That is what we have to
testify to men in view of the humanism of God, irrespective
of the more or less dense godlessness of their humanism
everything else must be said only in the framework of this
statement and promise. Thus the bitterest indictments and
the most somber threats of judgment of the Old Testament
prophets are uttered only in the context of the history of the
covenant founded by Yahweh and faithfully preserved despite
all the unfaithfulness of Israel. Thus the Baptist's preaching
of repentance had its basis and meaning only in the Kingdom
THE HUMANITY OF GOD 6l
of heaven which was already at hand. Thus again certain

terrifying passages toward the end of John's Apocalypse find
their place and therewith their limits in its final words:
"Amen, come Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be
with all." The Word of God announced good news to the
poor, liberation to the imprisoned, sight to the blind, justifica-
tion and sanctification and even a call to service to sinners,
whether gross or refined. Consider what follows from that:
to uncover and expose misunderstandings as such is one thing;
to understand and to guide into understanding is another.
Hence, moral earnestness is a praiseworthy thing and the gift
of penetrating and perhaps witty analysis of the times, of the
situation, and of the soul is certainly a fine gift. But the task
of bringing the gospel to fight is more urgent than manifesting
that earnestness and bringing this gift into play. He to whom
this positive task is not absolutely the supreme task, who first
of all wants to shout at, bewilder, or laugh at men on account

of their folly and malice, had better remain silent altogether.
There is only one analogy to the humanity of God in this
respect, namely, the message of the great joy —which com-
forts but in so doing really judges —which is prepared for
man by God and which he in turn may have in God. "All my
springs are in you!" (Psalm 87: 7.)
Does this mean universalism? I wish here to make only
three short observations, in which one is to detect no position
which passes among us under this term.
for or against that
1 One should not surrender himself in any case to the panic
.
which this word seems to spread abroad, before informing

himself exactly concerning its possible sense or non-sense.
2. One should
at least be stimulated by the passage, Colos-
which admittedly states that God has determined
sians 1:19,
through His Son as His image and as the first-born of the
whole Creation to "reconcile all things (ta jtdvta) to himself,"
6z THE HUMANITY OF GOD
to consider whether the concept could not perhaps have a
good meaning. The same can be said of parallel passages.
3. One question should for a moment be asked, in view of
the "danger" with which one may see this concept gradually
surrounded. What of the "danger" of the eternally skeptical-
critical theologian who is ever and again suspiciously question-
ing, because fundamentally always legalistic
and therefore in
the main morosely gloomy? Is not his presence among us
currently more threatening than that of the unbecomingly
cheerful indifferentism or even antinomianism, to which one
with a certain understanding of universalism could in fact
deliver himself? This much is certain, that we have no theo-
logical right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of
God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty
is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had
seen before.
And now in conclusion still a fifth consequence: in the

knowledge of the humanity of God one must take seriously,
affirm, and thankfully acknowledge Christendom, the Church.
We must, each in his place, take part in its life and join in its
service. It was a part of the exaggerations of which we were
guilty in 1920 that we were able to see the theological rele-
vance of the Church only as a negative counterpart to the
Kingdom of God which we had then so happily rediscovered.
We wanted to interpret the form of the Church's doctrine, its
worship, its juridical order as "human, all too human," as
"not so important." We regarded all the earnestness or even
zeal devoted to them even injurious. In all
as superfluous or
this we approached the theory and practice of a spir-
at least
itual partisanship and an esoteric gnosticism.
It is now, in view of theactual and recurrent Roman temp-
tation, certainly not appropriate to silence or even to soften
the stress on the judgment beginning with the house of God

which, after all, runs through the entire Bible. It is likewise
inappropriate, in view of the ecclesiastical, confessional, and
—
on the whole traditional even clerical and hturgical resto- —
ration and reaction current in present-day Germany, which
perhaps one day may encroach upon our land. And it certainly
was and is no good undertaking to reverse the sequence
whereby event precedes institution, which is also established
by the entire Bible. We had and still have to see and to under-
stand, however, that the maintenance of this sequence and the
remembrance of that judgment must in no case result in
neglect or renunciation of our solidarity with the Church. The
word which is critical Church can be meaningful and
of the
—
fruitful only when it stems from insight I do not say too
—
much into the existence and function of the Church as neces-
sary for salvation. It must be spoken with the intention of serv-
ing her in her gathering together, her edification and mission.
The humanity of God is relevant to the old and the new
Israel, to the individual man who exists in his own place and
not in some sort of vacuum. Jesus Christ is the Head of His

body and only so is He also the Head of its members. The
acknowledgment of God's work accomplished in Him implies
that it has taken place for us and thus only in this way for me.
The Lord's Prayer is a w-prayer and only in this way also an
/-prayer. "We" are the Church. The Church is the particular
people, the congregation, or in Calvin's term, the company,
which through knowledge of the gracious God mani-
a bit of
and called as His
fest in Jesus Christ is constituted, appointed,
witness in the world. This knowledge is paltry indeed, but
because it is established by the Holy Spirit, it is unconquer-
able.
What is the existence of this particular people but the
reflection of the humanity of God, although it is admittedly
—

everywhere blurred and darkened and in its continuity all too
often interrupted? This turning of God to man calls out and
awakens some to worship, praise, and serve Him many of —
them for the time being as representative of others and as His
messengers to them. We should be inhuman where God is
human, we should be ashamed of Jesus Christ Himself, were

we willing to be ashamed of the Church. What Jesus Christ
is for God and for us, on earth and in time, He is as Lord of
this community, as King of this people, as Head of this body

and of all its members. He is all these with and in this incon-
spicuous, painfully divided, and otherwise very questionable
Christendom. He is all these with, among, and in the Christians
whom one can admire or even love only in the face of many
He is all these as the Reconciler and Re-
serious difficulties.
deemer of the whole world. He is all these, however, in the
strange communion of these strange saints. The Church is not
too mean a thing for Him but, for better or for worse,
sufficiently precious and worthy in His eyes to be entrusted
with His witnessing and thus His affairs in the world yes,
even Himself. So great is God's loving-kindness!
—
For this reason there is no private Christianity. For this
reason we cannot but take seriously, affirm, and love this
community in its peculiarity. While we cannot but view
critically in all details its assuredly —
human all too human
efforts for better knowledge and better confession, for its
meetings, its inner order, and its outward task, we must also
view them as seriously important. For this reason, too, theol-
ogy cannot be carried on in the private lighthouses of some
sort of merely personal discoveries and opinions. It can be
—
carried on only in the Church it can be put to work in all its
elements only in the context of the questioning and answering
of the Christian community and in the rigorous service of its
commission to all men. One must perhaps himself have had a
THE HUMANITY OF GOD <55
part in the life of the Church during a difficult period to know

that there are hours in its work, and its suffering
its struggle,
in which not less than everything can depend upon some
human, very human, iota or dot in its decisions and also in its
thinking and speaking. One will then approach more cau-
tiously the mood in which one sees only inconsequential
matters in the Church. In a really living Church there is per-
haps nothing inconsequential at all.
But however that may be, our "I believe in the Holy Spirit"
would be empty if it did not also include in a concrete, practi-
cal, and obligatory way the "I believe one Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church." We believe the Church as the place

where the crown of humanity, namely, man's fellow-human-
ity, may become visible in Christocratic brotherhood. More-
over, we believe it as the place where God's glory wills to

dwell upon earth, that is, where humanity—the humanity of
—
God wills to assume tangible form in time and here upon
earth. Here we recognize the humanity of God. Here we
delight in it. Here we celebrate and witness to it. Here we
glory in the Immanuel, just as He did who, as He looked at
the world, would not cast away the burden of the Church but
rather chose to take it upon Himself and bear it in the name
of all its members. "If God is for us, who is against us?"
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
FOUNDATION OF EVANGELICAL ETHICS
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
FOUNDATION OF EVANGELICAL ETHICS*
It is my task to discuss the gift of freedom, and to do so
with the foundation of evangelical ethics in view. Let me

anticipate the solution to the problem inherent in thistheme
in three summary propositions. The first describes the freedom
which God
Himself possesses; the second delineates it as the
gift bestowed by God upon man; the third relates the conse-
quences of these two to the problem of the foundation of
evangelical ethics.
First: God's freedom is His very oim. It is the sovereign
grace wherein God chooses to commit Himself to man.
Thereby God is Lord as man's God.
Secondly: Man's freedom is his as the gift of God. It is the
joy wherein man appropriates God's election. Thereby man
is God's creature, His partner, and His child as God's man.
Thirdly: Evangelical ethics is the reflection upon the divine
call to human action which is implied by the gift of freedom.
We begin by examining what man may know about God's

own freedom. Must I justify my starting with God's own
freedom rather than with anydiing else? Must I justify my
not beginning withman's innate or given freedom? I, too, have
heard the news thatwe can speak about God only by speaking
about man. I do not contest this claim. Rightly interpreted,
• Address given at a meeting of the Qesellschaft fur Evangelische Theo-

logie, Bielefeld, September 21, 1953.
it may be an expression of the true insight that God is not
without man. This means in our particular context that God's

own freedom must be recognized as freedom to be a partisan
for man.
Wemay not speak of God's own freedom apart from the
history of God's dealings with man. Man's God-given free-
dom, then, must be acknowledged from the very beginning.
But this claim, correctly understood, calls for a counterclaim.
We can speak about man only by speaking about God. This
generaTstatement is hardly disputed among Christian the-
ologians. There is, however, sharp disagreement as to the
priority of the two claims. It is my firm conviction that what
I have just called the counterclaim is the true claim and must
come first. Why deny priority to God in the realm of know-
ing when it is uncontested in the realm of being? If God is
the first reality, how can man be the first truth?

Those holding the opposite view go so far as to say that
the God-given freedom of man is, first offreedom of man
all,
from himself. But how does this bold statement prompt man
to begin as a thinker with himself as a starting point? Why,
of all concepts in Christian theology, should the concept of
God merely have the function of a boundary term? Why
should it connote only a vacuum to be filled at best with
subsequent and nonessential assertions about the ideal or his-
torical conditions ofhuman existence? Is it so self-evident that
man is intimately known to us, whereas God remains the great
and doubtful Unknown? Is it, then, a law of the Medes and
the Persians that our quest for God must proceed on the basis
of our supposed knowledge of man? Does not this freedom,
bestowed by God upon man and, as we shall discuss later,
specifically upon the Christian theologian, prompt man to
overcome this mental block and to think in a new perspective,
to think even exclusively in a new perspective? Is not this new
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
perspective mapped out man in God's revelation, showing

for
forth first and foremost God Himself, and in this way and
only then revealing man to himself? Where else can we learn
that freedom exists and what it is, except in confrontation with
God's own freedom offered to us as the source and measure
of all freedom? We
do not speculate beyond man nor do we
abandon him and his freedom by first mquiring about the One
who is man's God and about His own freedom. On the con-
trary, we then may seek and find true man and his true
freedom.
God's freedom is not merely unlimited possibility or formal
majesty and omnipotence, that is to say empty, naked sov-
ereignty. Nor is this true of the God-given freedom of man.
If we so misinterpret human freedom, it irreconcilably clashes
with divine freedom and becomes the false freedom of sin,
reducing man to a prisoner. God Himself, if conceived of as
unconditioned power, would be a demon and as such His own
prisoner. T n the, light "f His reve )atjnn, God is free in word
and deed; He is the source and measure of all freedom, insofar
as He is the Lord, cho osing and determining Himself first of
alL In His own freedom, as the source of human freedom,
God above all willed and determined Himself to be the Father
and the Son in the unity of the Spirit. This is not abstract
freedom. Nor is it the freedom of aloof isolation. Likewise,
man's God-given freedom is not to be sought and found in any
solitary detachment from God. In God's own freedom there
is encounter and communion; there is order and, conse-
quently, dominion and subordination; there is majesty and

humility, absolute authority and absolute obedience; there is
offer and response.
God's freedom is the freedom of the Father and the Son in
the unity of the Spirit. Again, man's freedom is a far cry from
the self-assertion of one or many solitary individuals. It has
in the world isacknowledge it in faith, to respond to
called to
it on it its hope and trust, and to proclaim it to
in love, to set
the world which belongs to this free God. It is the privilege
and the mission of the Christian community to acknowledge
and to confess the Gospel. By acknowledging and confessing
Jesus Christ as the creation and revelation of God's freedom,
this community is incorporated into the body of Christ and
becomes the earthly and historical form of His existence. He
is in its midst.
We do well to keep remembering that the existence
of the
Christian community, through works, is
its preaching and its
already an expression of man's God-given freedom. Let us
therefore respect the difference in perspective! The existence
of the Christian community in its faith, love, and hope, and in
its proclamation, is unmistakably part of the divinely inaugu-
rated Heilsgeschichte. It is part of
acknowledge
it insofar as to
and confess God's freedom an
freedom bestowed
is act of the
upon man in the course of this history. But it is and remains
an act of human freedom. The divine freedom was not initiated
in and by this act of human freedom. Nor is it accomplished
and somehow encompassed in it. Rather, God's freedom is
and remains above and beyond human freedom. Measured
against the act of divine freedom, the act of human free-
dom has its own beginning, own
its course, and its own
preliminary and relative ends. None of
these coincide or are
to be confounded with those of the Heilsgeschichte. It re-
mains the prerogative of the divbe freedom to set the end of
this history, the beginning of which it set also.
God's own
freedom and its realizations is the source and
object of every Christian act of recognition and confession.
It is sufficient that this human act takes place in the context
of the freedom of God to which it bears witness. Yahweh lives
and will live in solidarity, but not in identity, with Israel. The
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM 75
same holds true for Jesus Christ, the word and deed of God,
with regard to His community, to the task it has to perform
in response to the gift of freedom, and to its kerygmcc. The
head does not become the body and the body does not be-
come the head. The king does not become his own messenger,
and the messenger does not become king. It is sufficient that
the community be called into being, be created, protected,
and sustained by Jesus Christ, and that it may confess Him
who came into the world, is present now, and shall come in
glory. It may confess Him who was, is, and shall be the word
and deed of God's freedom and of His all-embracing loving-
kindness.
II
God in His own freedom bestows human freedom. Here

we must point to so-called natural freedom which constitutes
and characterizes human existence in its creatureliness, and to
the freedom of eternal life promised to man. Here, for once,
we must daringly include both in what is to be said about
Christian freedom. Christian freedom is divinely bestowed
upon man despite his sin, despite his existence in the flesh, and
despite his being threatened by death. "Natural freedom" and
"freedom promised" must, in any event, be understood on the
basis of "Christian freedom." This is because freedom is made
known to us by God as the "freedom of the Christian man."
Human freedom is the gift of God in the free outpouring of
His grace. To call a man free is to recognize that God has
given him freedom. Human freedom is enacted within history,
that history which leads to the ultimate salvation of man.
Human freedom never ceases to be the event wherein the free
God gives and man receives this gift. God freely makes Him-
self available to man by granting him the freedom he is meant
to have. Whatever the subsequent events of this history may
be,they take place within the context and under the judgment
of this divine act of mercy. Seen from the vantage point of
the free gift of the free God, the concept of unfree man is a
contradiction in itself. Unfree man is a creature of chaos, a
monster begotten by his own pride, his own laziness, his own
lies.
The concept of freedom as man's rightful claim and due is

equally contradictory and impossible. So is the thought of
man's acquiring freedom by earning it or buying it at any
price. The idea that man can conquer freedom as God's antag-
onist and defiantly wrench it from Him is untenable. Man has
no power. Nor does he get it by himself. His power
real will
lies and in appropriating God's gift. The event of
in receiving
man's freedom is the event of his thankfulness for the gift,
of his sense of responsibility as a receiver, of his loving care for
what is given him. It is his reverence before the free God
who accepts him as His partner without relinquishing His

sovereignty. This event alone is the event of freedom.
The freedom, however, involves more than being
gift of
offered one option among several. It involves more than being
asked a question, being presented with an opportunity, and
having a possibility opened up. The gift is total, unequivocal,
and irrevocable. It remains the gift of freedom even though it
may be turned into man's judgment if misunderstood or mis-
used. We are dealing with the gift of the free God. God does
not put man into the situation of Hercules at the crossroads.
The opposite is true. God frees man from this false situation.
He lifts him from appearance to reality. It is true that man's
God-given freedom is choice, decision, act. But it is genuine
choice; it is genuine decision and act in the right direction.
It would be
a strange freedom that would leave man neutral,
able equally to choose, decide, and act rightly or wrongly!
What kind of power would that be! Man becomes free and
is free by
choosing, deciding, and determining himself in ac-
cordance with the freedom of God. The source of man's
freedom is also its yardstick. Trying to escape from being in
accord with God's own freedom is not human freedom.
Rather, it is a compulsion wrought by powers of darkness or
by man's own helplessness. Sin as an alternative is not antici-
pated or included in the freedom given to man by God. Nor
can sin be explained and theoretically justified by this free-
dom. No excuse can be provided for sin. In human freedom
there is no room for sin by fiat. Sinful man is not free, he is
a captive, a slave. When genuine human freedom is realized,
inevitably the door to the "right" opens and the door to the
"left" is shut. This inevitability is what makes God's gift of
freedom so marvelous, and yet at the same time so terrifying.
As a gift of God, human freedom cannot contradict divine
freedom. This leads to certain limitations regarding human
freedom which are similar to those mentioned in our earlier at-
tempt to define the freedom of God. We
now make bold to
say:
(1)Human freedom as a gift of God does not allow
for any vague choices between various possibilities. The reign
of chance and ambiguity is excluded. For the free God Him-
self, the giver of man's freedom, is no blind accident, no
tyrant.He is the Lord, choosing and deterrnining Himself

unmistakably once and for .all. He is His own law.
(2) Human freedom
not realized in the solitary detach-
is
ment of an mdividualqiijsolaaaii from his fellow men. God is

a se (for Himself), but He is pro nobis (for us). For us! It is
true that He who man freedom because He is man's
gave
friend, is also pro me (for me) But I am not Man, I am only a
.
mm, and ram a man only in relation to my fellow men. Only

in encounter and in communion with them may I receive the
gift of freedom. God is pro me because He is pro nobis.
(3) Human freedom is only secondarily freedom from

limitations and threats. Primarily it is freedom for.
(4) Human freedom is not to be understood as freedom
to assert, to preserve, to justify and save oneself. God is pri-
marily free for; the Father is free for the Son, the Son for the
Father in the unity of the Spirit. The one God is free for man
as his Creator, as the Lord of the covenant, as the beginner
and perfecter of his history, his Heilsgeschichte. God says
"Yes." Only once this "Yes" is said, He also says "No."
Thereby He reveals Himself to be free from all that is alien
and hostile to His nature. Only once this "Yes" is said, is He
free for Himself and for His own glory. Human freedom
is freedom only within the limitations of God's own freedom.
And thus we can see that freedom is being joyful. Freedom
is the great gift, totally unmerited and wondrous beyond un-
derstanding. It awakens the receiver to true selfhood and new
life. It is from God, from the source of all goodness, an
a gift
ever-new token of His faithfulness and mercy. The gift is
unambiguous and cannot fail. Through this gift man who was
irretrievably separated and alienated from God is called into
discipleship. This is why freedom is joy! Certainly, man does
not five up to this freedom. Even worse, he fails in every re-
spect. It is true enough that he does not know any longer the
natural freedom which was bestowed upon him in creation;
he does not know as yet the ultimate freedom in store for
him at the completion of his journey, in the ultimate fulfill-
ment of his existence. It is true enough that man may presendy
know and enjoy this freedom through the abiding Spirit of
the Father and the Son only in spite of sin, flesh, and death;
in spite of the world, his earthly anxiety and his worldly na-
ture; and in spite of himself in his persistent temptation. This
however, does not prevent man from being enabled to know
and to live out this freedom in incomparable and inexhaustible
joy, limited as his own awareness may be. Some may not want
any part of it, and at times we
feel this way. But this does
all
not change anything. God's gift is there for all. It is poured

out at the beginning of our journey, at its destination, and
most certainly also in our present plight. Freedom is waiting
here and now to be received and lived out in joy, albeit a joy
that is not without travail.
Human freedom is the joy whereby man appropriates for
himself God's election. God has elected Himself in His Son
to be the God, Lord, Shepherd, Saviour, and Redeemer of
mankind. Through His own election He willed man to be
His creature, His partner, and His son. He, the God of the
community of men, and we, the community of men, His
Freedom is the joy whereby man acknowledges and
people!
confesses this divine election by willing, deciding, and de-
termining himself to be the echo and mirror of the divine act.
Each individual is called to this commitment in the midst of
the community of men, not as the first disciple but as a fol-
lower in the visible and invisible footsteps of many; not as the
only one but together with many known and unknown fel-
low Christians. He may by the comforting
be accompanied
help of several or by at least a few. He may be a rather sad
member of the rear guard or he may be way ahead of the
crowd where he is temporarily alone. He lives for himself, but
not only for himself. He is constantly in living relationship to
others, as a member of the people of God who appropriates
for himself God's election and is responsible for the brothers.
Each individual is called by his own name as a member of the
people of God. Each one is responsible for his relationship
with God and his fellow men. He is free because he chooses,
decides, and determines himself to be this person. His freedom
is the joy of that obedience which is given to him. This is a
daring venture whenever it is undertaken. A venture at one's

own risk and peril? Never! It is the venture of responsibility

in the presence of the Giver and the fellow receivers of the
gift —
past, present, and future. It is the venture of obedience
whereby man reflects in his own life God's offer and his own
response. This is the life of obedience, allowed for by man's
freedom: to will himself to be that member of God's house-
hold which God willed him to be.
Free man wills himself to be God's creature according to
that distinctive structure and limitation of his human nature
which sets man apart from all wants man
other beings. God
free together with his fellow men and the
in the greatness
misery, in the promise and the anxiety, in the richness and the
poverty of his humanity. True enough, man no longer knows
what it means to be truly human. Alienated from God, he is
alienated from himself and from his true nature. But God
does not cease to call and to claim this estranged creature for
His own. Likewise, man does not cease to be called and
claimed by God as this estranged creature. The gift of freedom
makes man free to be not more and not less than human.
Whatever God's other intentions for man may be, they
will always be a confirmation of his nature as a creature of God.
And whatever man may choose to do with his God-given
freedom, it always will have to be carried out within the
framework of human possibilities. If he cannot boast of his
human condition and achievement because they are a gift of
God, he need not be ashamed of them either. God does not
expect extraordinary accomplishments nor does he expect a
jaded or lazy response. He does, however, expect man to real-
ize in his life the divine intention of true humanity inherent in
the gift. Glorifying God and loving his neighbor are sure signs
of man's commitment.
God wants man to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants
him to be His partner. There is a causa Dei in the world. God
wants light, not darkness. wants cosmos, not chaos. He

He
wants peace, not disorder. He
wants man to administer and
to receive justice rather than to inflict and to suffer injustice.
He wants man to live according to the Spirit rather than ac-
cording to the flesh. He
wants man bound and pledged to
Him rather than to any other authority. He wants man to live
and not to die. Because He wills these things God is Lord,
Shepherd, and Redeemer of man, who in His holiness and
mercy meets His creature; who judges and forgives, rejects
and receives, condemns and This is not the place to de-
saves.
scribe the divine act of reconciliation even in its main outline.
It is enough to say that God's "Yes" and "No," spoken in His
act of reconciliation, is not proclaimed apart from man. Even
in this central act God declines to be alone, without man. God
insistson man's participation in His reconciling work. He
wants man, not as a secondary God, to be sure, but as a truly
free follower and co-worker, to repeat His divine "Yes" and
"No." This is the meaning of God's covenant with man. This
is the task man is called to fulfill when God enters into the
covenant relationship with him. This is the freedom of dis-
cipleship bestowed upon him.
The sovereign God alone saved man from the alienation
and depravity of which he was and still is guilty. He delivered
him from the imprisonment and slavery which was and still is
his human lot. In the death of Jesus Christ, perfect reconcilia-
tion,beyond any need for improvement or repetition, took
place once and for all. In His resurrection, and nowhere else,
as long as time God's act of reconciliation is unmistakably
lasts,
revealed. There no need whatsoever for this divine act to

is
be re-enacted by man in order to be efficacious. This is not to

say, however, that man is confined to the role of an approving
spectator. The gift of freedom becomes operative at this criti-
cal point. Man's freedom always remains human freedom and
is not to be confused with the divine freedom whereby God

in Jesus Christ took man's part.
Human freedom is the God-given freedom to obey. Faith is
the obedience of the pilgrim who has his vision and his trust
set upon God's free act of reconciliation. This obedience con-
firms and evinces the transition from sin to righteousness, from
the fiesh to the spirit, from the law to the sovereignty of the
living God, from death to life in the small and preliminary,
yet determined, steps of the daily journey. Love is the obedi-
ence of the witness who is summoned to announce this transi-
tion. The witness announces God's victorious deed, offered
to all his brothers and sisters far and nigh so that they might
greet it as their light. This obedience in love and faith is the
human response to the divine offer of justification, sanctifica-
tion, and calling in Jesus Christ.
Thus human freedom is freedom to respond with thanks-
giving. It is the freedom of the Christian man whom God
chooses to be His partner and whom He does not abandon.
God does not expect from man more than this gratitude, this
faith, and this love. Nor does He expect less, and He certainly
expects nothing else! For this service of thankful obedience,
God has set man free.
for this participation in the causa Dei,
God wants man to be His creature and His partner. Even
more, He wants him to be His child. God is not content with
man living as a reverent creature before Him, or as a grateful
partner alongside Him. He wants him to be a man with Him,
and to enjoy the glorious assurance of belonging to God. This
assurance points to man's future, his eternal life. But man as he
is here and now, cannot see himself enjoying this eternal re-
lationship.He cannot understand himself in this dimension,

not even in faith and love. Man bestowed with eternal life is
future man; he is the object of God's promise and of our hope.
And yet he is not devoid of reality. In God's free deed, in
Jesus Christ, man is God's child. But as long as man lives he

remains a pilgrim and a witness. He can only call on God from
afar and out of the depth, "Our Father ivho art in heaven.1"
He does not yet understand himself as the child who enjoys
the glorious assurance of belonging to the Father. For as yet
he is an enigma to himself, and his brothers and sisters in the
Christian community are enigmas to him as well. As yet his
eternal destination hidden and not revealed.
is
Even though man as he is here and now does not see or

understand himself as a child of God, the God-given freedom
breaks through in a new dimension, in a decisive and definitive
way. Man is free to call God "Our Father" here and now.
Man is free to see things from the standpoint of the beginning,
the revealed act of the free God in the here and now. He can
see his end in the ultimate revelation of God's act, his belong-
ing to Him in glory. Frustrated, yet comforted in the midst
of frustration, he will steadfastly look to the end. Human
freedom is to live, to suffer, and finally to die in this expecta-
tion. But before he dies, as long as the day lasts, man is free to
work, to rise after each fall, to labor and not to grow weary.
Whether or not we rise or tire depends on the use we make
of our freedom to look to the end. "Jesus, give me eyes, and
touch my eyes that they may serve,"* says a well-known
hymn. Man is free to bring his plea before God. In so doing
he is free to hope for the great light, the great vision that will
iUumine the world, the Church, his fellow man, and himself.
A Christian is one who makes use of this freedom to pray and
to live in the hope of the end which will be the revelation of
the beginning.
Ill
We now turn to the question of what these assumptions

* "Jesus, gib gesunde Augen, die was taugen, riihre meine Augen. an."
may teach us about the foundation of evangelical ethics. Al-
though we cannot elaborate on these foundations at this point,
we can at least give an outline.*
A man is one who chooses, decides, and determines
free
himself and who acts according to his thoughts, words, and
deeds. The course of his actions is a consequence of the na-
ture of his God-given freedom. It is therefore in order to use
interchangeably freedom and commandment. Man does the
good when he acts according to the imperative inherent in the
gift offreedom. He does the evil when he obeys a law that is
contrary to his freedom. But these definitions need to be
qualified.
Man's freedom as the directive and criterion for his actions
is the gift bestowed upon him in a historical event of the free
God's encounter with him. The giver does not retreat behind
his gift, nor the lawmaker behind the law, nor divine freedom
behind human freedom. It is God who determines how
human freedom becomes directive and criterion for human ac-
tion. Free man is subject to God's most concrete command, for
through this command human freedom takes on authorita-
tive form and the imperative whereby man is confronted
and measured becomes decisive. God is always man's Cre-
ator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. He wants man to be His
creature, His partner, and His child. What this means for each
of us here and there, today and tomorrow, is decided by the
free word of the free Lord in ever-renewed encounter between
God and an individual. Measured against the divine command-
— —
ment, man's action his ethos is found either good or evil.
If our interpretation of divine and human freedom is accepted,
these terms affirm the content and consequence of the impera-
* Those interested in a more detailed description may consult Church

Dogmatics, I, 2 (par. 22, sec. 3), II, 2 (par. 36-39), III, 4.
tive and the and concurrently exclude any arbitrary
criterion,
and accidental characteristics.
Ethics must be understood as the attempt, scientific or other-
wise, to cope with the question of good and evil in human
behavior.
Ethics according to our assumptions can only be evangeli-
The question of good and evil is never answered by
cal ethics.
man's pointing to the authoritative Word of God in terms of
a set of rules. It
is never discovered by man or imposed on the
selfand others as a code of good and evil actions, a sort of yard-

stick of what is good and evil. Holy Scripture defies being
forced into a set of rules; it is a mistake to use it as such.
The ethicist cannot take the place either of the free God or of
free man, even less of both together. His prescriptions in no
way prejudge either the divine imperative or human obedi-
ence.On what authority would he prescribe, even though he
quoted Bible verses, what a certain human being at a certain
time should do or not do? Any such pretense, though well
intended, is bound to lead astray. When the divine imperative
urges upon man here and now a decision on a course of ac-
tion, in harmony with the will of God, the ethicist will fail
man with even his most realistic prescriptions and leave him
utterly alone. Alas, he will be left alone not with God, but
rather with himself, with hisown conscience, with the kairos,
own judgment. In this realistic situation the choice
or with his
between good and evil is made. To offer ethical norms to man
in this predicament is to hold out a stone instead of bread.
If only ethics could reveal to man from the very beginning

that in wrestling with the problem of his good or evil actions
he is not confronted with his conscience, with the kairos, with
his own judgment, with any visible or invisible law of nature
or history, with any individual or social ideals, and, least of
all, with his own arbitrary will. If only ethics could tell him
that as a freeman he is confronted with the will, word, and

deed of the free God!
Ethics is a theory of human behavior. This does not speak
against the necessary ethical task. It merely emphasizes that
the ethical theory is not meant to provide man with a pro-
gram the implementation of which would be his life's goal.
Nor is it meant to present man with principles to be inter-
preted, applied, and put into practice. Ethics has to make clear
that every single step man takes involves a specific and direct
responsibility toward God whojreached outjor man in spe-
,
cific and dire c t encounter This responsibility

. is lived out in
obedience or disobedience, in good or evil, in confirmation

or in negation and loss of the gift of freedom. Ethics exists to
remind man of his confrontation with God, who is the light
illuminating all his actions. It must be man's guide in his dis-
cernment of the apparently unlimited possibilities and in his
choice of the only true one, existing either now or in the fu-
ture. It must be man's teacher of evangelical ethics as the ethics
of free grace.
Evangelical ethics will leave the pronouncement of uncon-
ditional imperatives to God. Its task is to emphasize the reality
and the conditioning of human life, lived in the light of the
divine imperative. This does not exclude the possibility of

conditional imperatives addressed in concrete situations by a
person to a brother. It is part of the risk of obedience involved
in the encounter and communion between Christian brothers,
and it is part of the risk of action according to the God-given
freedom, to be called to invite, even to urge, a brother to a

concrete action in a concrete situation, and to ask from him
a concrete decision. Man will do so with his eyes lifted up to
the living God who is also his brother's God. He will do so
with his mind set on human freedom given to his brother also.
If his courage is nourished by humility before God and his
fellow men, this attitude alone may justify such conditional
advice. He who takes the risk of counseling must be prepared
to be counseled in turn by his brother if there is need of it.
Such mutual counseling in a concrete situation is an event. It
is part of the ethos which is realized ethics.
It is only indirectly
or not at all a part of ethics proper. For ethics is theory and
not practice, though it is the theory about practice. Its main

problem is precisely the question of the ethos, of the right and
wrong, in human action. The ethos of the ethicist implies
that he refrain from attempting too much and becoming
thereby a lawmaker.
Ethics is reflection upon what man is required to do in and
with the gift of freedom. The ethicist should not want to

attempt too little either. He must want to realize his calling
and his talents. It is not enough to insist that human life is to
be lived under the divine imperative. Ethical reflection must
go further and ask the question to what extent this is so.
Neither the freedom of God's commandment nor that of
man's obedience is empty form. Human action takes place
at the point of contact between these two spheres of freedom.
Each of these is by its own content, tone, and
characterized
extent. Ethical reflection has to concentrate upon these. It has
to begin with the recognition that the free God is the free
man's Lord, Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer, and that free
man is God's creature, partner, and child. This insight will be
gained at the very source of Christian thinking, in Holy
Scripture, where ethical reflection will also renew, sharpen,
and correct its findings in continuous searching. In addition,
ethical reflection may and must consult the Christian com-
munity in its past and present history. It must do this in order
to be admonished, nourished, enriched, perhaps also stirred
and warned, by the use which the fathers and brethren made
and still are making of Christian freedom.
Therefore, ethics not without signposts in its attempt to

is
point to God's authoritative word of judgment. If it is based

on the knowledge of God and of man, it will receive its con-
tour. It will not point to a vacuum, but to the true God, the
real man, and the real encounter between them. The ethical
quest is and remains a quest and yet is not totally devoid of
fulfillment. Indirect as it may be, the quest is a witness to
God's concrete word. Ethical reflection may and must be
genuine search and genuine doctrine, genuine because true
ethics does not deprive God, its object, of His due power and
glory. It leaves the uttering of the essential and final word to
God Himself. But it does not shrink away from the prelim-
inary words which are necessary to focus man's wandering
thoughts on the one center where he, himself free, shall hear
the word of the free God, the commandment addressed to
him, the judgment falling upon him, and the promise waiting
for him.
IV
These short and general comments on the foundation of
evangelical ethics may suffice. Our discussion afterwards
might well center on the above remarks, so as not to get side-
tracked from the central theme by the additional, and perhaps
distracting, remarks I would now like to make. Indeed, before
concluding, I propose a short excursion into the field of ethics
proper, of what we call "special ethics." I shall take as my
starting point the above-described presuppositions. Other
speakers will lead you during the next few days to the main
points of interest in this vast field. We are gathered here under
the auspices of the "Gesellschaft fur evangelische Theologie"
(Society for Evangelical Theology). This is why I shall
choose, as an example and merely as an example, a small and
often neglected area: the ethics of theology itself and the

ethos of the free theologian.
Is not the free theologian also aman and as such a recipient
of the gift of freedom? Does not God address him, his think-
ing, speaking, and acting as well, when He gives man His
commandment in and with the gift of be
freedom? Let it
noted that according to truly evangelical teaching the term

"theologian" is not confined to the seminary professor, to
the theological student, or to the minister. It is meant for every
Christian whois mindful of the theological task entrusted to

the whole Christian congregation, and who is willing and able
to share in the common endeavor according to his own talents.
We are about to call it a day and are rather tired. I may, there-
fore, be excused for substituting some isolated remarks for a
systematic development of the problem. And because I belong
to the old guard today, I may be allowed to switch, at least
in feeling tone, from ethics to a sort of admonition. You may
be assured that there will be no deviations into imperatives of
any kind.
(1) A free theologian, free according to our definition, will
be found ready, willing, and able always to begin his thinking
at the beginning. This means his recognition of the resurrec-
tion of Jesus Christ as the directive for his reasoning. In his
reflections and statements he will always first proceed from
God's relationship to man and only then continue with man's
relationship to God. There is an abundance of serious, pious,
learned, and ingenious theological undertaking. But lacking
the sky-light and hence serenity, the theologian remains a
gloomy visitor upon an unpleasant
this earth of darkness,
instructor of his brethren, whose teaching, at best, compares
with the somber music of Beethoven and Brahms! The
thoughtful theologian who refuses to begin with God is bound
to begin with misery, individual and corporate, with the chaos
oo THE HUMANITY OF GOD
which threatens him and the world around him, with anxie-
tiesand problems. He will turn around in circles and end up
precisely where he started. Cut off from the fresh air, he
considers it to be his bounden duty not to let others breathe
fresh air either. Only the radical turnabout we have been
advocating here could rescue him. Nobody has accomplished
this turnabout once and forever. Man has been set free for this
very event, this act of obedience which calls for repetition
every day, every hour, whenever a new theological task pre-
sents itself. There is no reason for complaint about the im-
possibility of such a turnabout. True, this turnabout is not a
dialectical trick to be learned and then used merrily again and
again. Without the invocation, "Our Father, who art in
heaven!" this turnabout cannot take place. This is why it is
imperative to recognize the essence of theology as lying in

the liturgical action of adoration, thanksgiving, and petition.
The old saying, Lex ortmdi from being a
lex credendi, far
pious statement, one of the most profound descriptions of
is
the theological method. We

cannot do without this turnabout.
The free and true theologian lives from it. In the invocation, in
the giving of thanks, and in the petition, this turnabout is
realized and the theologian is allowed to live out the freedom

of thought which he enjoys as a child of God.
(2) A
free theologian starts steadily and happily with the
Bible. Here must be his starting point, but not because any old
or new orthodoxy knocked it into him; it is not a law but a
privilege to start with the Bible. It is his starting point not
because he abstains from reading and appreciating other godly
—
and worldly books not to forget the newspapers. He starts
with the Bible because in the Bible he learns about the free
God and free man, and as a disciple of the Bible he may him-
self become a witness to the divine and human freedom. He
does not start with a doctrine of the canon and of the verbal
inspiration of Holy Scripture. But he does begin, not without

inspiration, with daily searching of canonical writings. They
informed and still inform him. He listens to them. He studies
them in many ways, not despising the analytical, the historical-
critical method, in order to gain a better understanding.
There are two reasons why the analysis, including the so-
called "ascertained results" of historical-critical research, or
the so-called "exegetical findings," is not the starting point of
a free theologian. First, these results have a tendency to change

every thirty years and from one exegete to another, and are
thereby disqualified as a valid starting point. Secondly, analy-
sis of both Biblical and secular texts, even though a con-
ditio sine qua. non of attentive listening to their message, does

in no way guarantee and presuppose this act of listening. We
listen when we read and study synthetically. The free theo-
logian combines in one single act analysis and synthesis in his
reading and studies. This is meditation, the secret of which is,
again, adoration. The free theologian, taking the Bible as his
starting point, is led by the testimony of the Bible, or more
precisely by the origin, object, and content of this testimony.
Here Christ spoke to him, and he let Him speak, through the
medium of this testimony. Does this imply his speaking in
direct quotation and interpretation of Biblical texts and con-
Maybe often, maybe not always. The freedom bestowed
texts?
upon him by the origin, object, and content of the Biblical
testimony can and must be asserted through his attempt to
dunk and to relate in his own terms what he heard in the Bible.
As an from using one
illustration I refrained in this address
single direct quotation from the with the exception
Scriptures,
of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning. It is only right to
exercise this freedom earnestly and repeatedly. It is an excel-
lent yardstick for our knowing what we say when we quote
and interpret. In regard to church practice we may ask
whether this attempt should not be made consistendy in

sermons, as contrasted to Bible study. The freedom of theol-
ogy both freedom for exegesis and freedom for what we
is
call dogmatics. At least in his endeavor to sum up the content

of a book of the Bible or even the variety of Biblical testimo-
nies, the exegete embarks upon dogmatical thinking. Dogmatics
is the conscious and systematic account of the common under-
standing of all Biblical testimonies with due regard for their

variety. Only through a formidable misunderstanding can the
—
two functions of theology exegesis and dogmatics be set —
one against the other.
(3) A free theologian does not deny, nor is he ashamed of,
his indebtedness to a particular philosophy or ontology, to

ways of thought and speech. These may be traditional or a
bit original, old or new, coherent or incoherent. No one
speaks exclusively in Biblical terms. At least the combina-
tion of these terms, if not the meaning they assume in
his mind and in his mouth, are, willingly or not, of his own
making. The Biblical authors themselves, incidentally, far
from speaking a celestial language, spoke in many earthly
languages. This is why a free theologian, who is not even a
prophet or an apostle, will certainly not wish to dissociate
himself from his brethren in Church and world by his claim
to speak "as from heaven," "according to the gospel," or, if
this is synonymous for him, "according to Luther." If he does
speak with any such authority, his listeners must sense it with-
out his explicit affirmation. To speak God's word must be an
event and not the object of his assertion. Even then he speaks
from within his philosophical shell, speaks in his own cumber-
some vernacular which is certainly not identical with the
tongues of angels, although the angels may utilize him at times.
Three characteristics distinguish the free from the unfree
theologian. First, he is aware of his condition. Secondly, he
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
93
stands ready to submit the coherence of his concepts and
formulations to the coherence of the divine revelation and not
conversely. Thirdly, to mention the inevitable slogan, he is
a philosopher "as though he were not," and he has his ontol-
ogy "as though he had it not." A free theologian will not be
hindered by traditional conceptions
from thinking and speak-
ing in the direction from God to man, as affirmed at the outset
of this address. His ontology will be subject to criticism and
control by his theology, and not conversely. He will not
necessarily feel obligated to the philosophical kctiros, the latest
prevailing philosophy. The gratitude of the Royal House of
Austria will, in any event, not be showered upon him. And
who knows, he may be quite glad to resort at times to an older
philosophy, like the ill-famed "Subject-Object-Scheme." If
we visualize for a moment the ideal situation of the free
theologian, we may foresee the possibility not of theology
recognizing itself in any form of philosophy, but of free
philosophy recognizing itself in free theology. Yet the free
theologian knows very well that, like a poor wretch, he does
not live in this ideal situation.
(4) A free theologian thinks and speaks within the Church,

within the communion of saints, whose ordinary members
happen to be not just he and his closest theological friends.
In the Church there are confessions. Even in the Mennonite
Church there is a confession called after the small Swiss village
of Schleitheim! Why
should a free theologian not pay loving
respect to these confessions as guidance in reading, explaining,
and applying the Scriptures? True, he does not owe them the
freedom of thought and speech. He is not bound by them.
his
He them very carefully. He will be free to ex-
will listen to
press what they already have expressed, to express it better
if he has the talent to do so. He is equally free to acknowledge
their much better formulation of what he wants to say. He is

free, therefore, to say in his own terms what they already

have said.
In the Church there are fathers: father Luther, father Cal-
vin, other fathers. Whyshould a free theologian not be their
son and disciple? But why should he insist on complete agree-
ment with them? Whyshould he artificially reinterpret their
findings until Luther is in agreement with him and says what
he himself so badly wants to say? Why should he not respect
the freedom of the fathers and let them express their wisdom
and then learn from them what in his own freedom he may
and can learn from them?
In the Church there are also church governments. Here in
Germany they are even embodied in bishops. These have
power to speak their mighty word through pastoral letters
within the framework of their own theology which may not
always be infallible. They have also power to examine, per-
haps even to institute or destitute, certainly to recommend or
to withhold recommendation. Why should the free theo-
logian not at least tolerate them as they, in their mildness and
prudence, as a rule tolerate him? He will certainly not become
their spokesman and subordinate. Nor will he disdain the
acknowledgment that a leading church figure may think and
say at times the theologically right thing. He really does not
—or does he? —want to get a complex, to be misled into op-
position against the leadership of the Church and to feed upon
his hostility until it becomes the principle of his interpretation
of half, if not the whole, New Testament. More is at stake
than the pro and con of the confessions, of Luther and Calvin,
of the, alas, questionable church government. All this is only a
sectarian proand con. A
free theologian is not a man of a sect.
He thinks and he speaks his definite "Yes" or "No." He is a
man of action, not of reaction. His freedom is not primarily
"freedom from" but "freedom for." He bewares of becoming
THE GIFT OF FREEDOM
95
enmeshed a friend-foe relationship. The free theologian
in
loves positive tasks. The Christian community, its gather-
ing, nurture, and mission in the world, are at stake,
and the
free theologian knows this. He does his research and teach-
ing in and for the community, as one of its members entrusted
with this particular task and, hopefully, with the gift to carry
it through. Private Christianity is not Christianity at all.
Private theology is not free theology; it is not theology at all.
(5) A free theologian works in communication with other
He grants them the enjoyment of the same free-
theologians.
dom with which he is entrusted. Maybe he listens to them and
reads their books with only subdued joy, but at least he listens
to them and reads them. He knows that the selfsame problems
with which he is may be seen and dealt with in
preoccupied
a way from his own. Perhaps sincerity forbids him
different
from following or accompanying some of his fellow theologi-
ans. Perhaps he is forced to oppose and sharply contradict
many, if not most, of his co-workers. He is not afraid of the ra-
bies theologorum. But he refuses to part company with them,
not only personally and intellectually but, above all, spiritually,
just as he does not want to be dropped by them. He believes
in the forgiveness of both his theological sins and theirs, if
they are found guilty of some. He will not pose as the de-
tector and judge of their sins. Not yielding one iota where he
cannot responsibly do so, he continues to consider the divine
and human freedom in store for them. He waits for them and
asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable
theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on
whether or not we
are willing to wait for one another, per-
haps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes. Surely in
such forbearance we could dispense with the hard, bitter, and
contemptuous thoughts and statements about each other, with
the bittersweet book reviews and the mischievous footnotes
we throw at each and with whatever works of darkness
other,
there are! Is it minds that the concept of the
clear in our
"theological adversary" is profane and illegitimate? From my
experience I would say that the Anglo-Saxon theologians, the
fundamentalists probably notwithstanding, have a far better
grasp of what I would like to call the "freedom of communi-
cation" than we Continentals do. They certainly do not all
love each other overwhelmingly. But they treat each other as
fellow creatures. We
do not always act likewise. There is no
ground for believing ourselves justified because of our, per-
haps only illusionary, greater depth of thought.
These remarks need to be continued and drawn together
systematically. Just think of the important issue of the ex-
istence and the reflection of the free theologian in his relation-
ship to Roman Catholicism or to the prevailing political
climate! Completeness, however, has not been my goal here.
I merely wished to let a concrete example guide your reflec-
tion about the gift of freedom as the foundation of evangelical
ethics. Therefore, I break off and close with a Biblical quota-
tion in spite of what I said. It is an imperative, full of exegetical
and other implications. Many of us are likely to have it inter-
preted and applied more than once with other people in mind.
Today we are asked to hear it for ourselves, as theologians,
hopefully as free theologians: "Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excel-
lence, if there is anyttiing worthy of praise, think about these
things. . . . and the peace of God will be with you."
(Continued from Front Flap)
Now, he sees that the deity of God, rightly un-

derstood, includes His humanity. This is the
irrefutable gospel of God's acceptance of man
through Christ. "In Jesus Christ there is no iso-
lation of man from God or of God from man."

Thus a deeper understanding of Christology is a
clue to Barth's new theology.
In Evangelical Theology in the ipth Century
Barth examines the theology of liberalism against
which he and his fellows revolted. This essay
brings out the great respect he has for those
theological leaders of the past —a respect which
nevertheless does not blind him to what he con-
siders their glaring errors. He finds their attempts
to adapt Christian faith to current thought pat-
terns totally inconsistent with the nature of
Christianity, yet he still gives them credit for
recognizing the essentially historical nature of
the Christian faith.
In the last essay, The Gift of Freedom, Barth
deals with the practical problems of the Chris-
tian life. He finds the basis of evangelical ethics
in the overwhelming fact that God has made man
free and chosen man to be His child and a part-
ner in His work. Ethics, therefore, can never be a
set of rules; its function is "to make clear that
every single step man takes involves a specific and
direct responsibility toward God, who reached
out for man in specific and direct encounter."
JOHN KNOX PRESS, Richmond, Virginia

li iik im mi ii hii 111 mn 11 in
i
ii
P 124 693 38

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KARL

(Continued on Back Flap)

[MAT OCT 5- 1985

kansas city public library

on presentation of library card.

Please report lost cards and

change of residence promptly.

Card holders are responsible for

all books, records, films, pictures

or other library materials

checked out on their cards.

THE HUMANITY -OR-GOD

JOHN KNOX PRESS

Second printing i960

Originally published as three separate monographs in the Theologische

Evangelische Theologie rm 19. Jahrhmdert, translated by Thomas Wieser

Printed in the United States of America

The three essays by Karl Barth drawn together in this

reading audience even though it is now appearing in English.

Century, reminds us that Barth has always had tremendous

Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century

The Gift of Freedom

"Theology," in the literal sense, means the science and

Catholic theology, this evangelical theology was present. My

the German-speaking world. This is justified in that 19th-

* Address given by Karl Barth at the meeting of the Goethegesellschaft in

Hannover, January 8, 1957, and entitled "Panorama of a Century."

ology is to be dismissed. Such a procedure would be out of

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE I9TH CENTURY 1

The course of the history of 19th-century- theology is fairly

obvious from there on, at least in its main In its under-

standing of Christian man, this theology was first animated

the religious and national awakening of the Napoleonic era.

within the same general trend. None of them broke up the

to the eclipse of this theology. The year 1900 brought the

discovered to my horror almost all of my theological teachers

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE IQTH CENTURY 1

upon us had somewhat receded. Everything has

with its many-sided interest busily and progressively occupied

* Kunstwart, Gartenlaube, and Daheim were German weeklies or month-

hisown way, educated and cultivated, well grounded and well

I shall now turn to a necessarily sketchy survey of the most

responding to it; it was concerned with searching and explain-

Theology, however, went overboard —

happened so often, when it addressed the outside world ex

dealt with the questions most proper to itself. Theology never

errors blew in, were admitted, and made themselves at home.

Church, over against the secondary tasks of relating to the

man, the universe, and God which could command universal

had rightly become commonplace for the theologians of the

men, including their contemporaries. We can only do justice

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE I9TH CENTURY J

to the fundamental significance of their efforts if we under-

ance of the validity of the message of Jesus Christ and thus to

to make a particular world view their own and had to affirm