In Our Time - Karl Barth

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Karl Barth (1886 - 1968) rejected the liberal theology of his time which, he argued, used the Bible and religion to help humans understand themselves rather than prepare them to open themselves to divine revelation. Barth's aim was to put God and especially Christ at the centre of Christianity. He was alarmed by what he saw as the dangers in a natural theology where God might be found in a rainbow or an opera by Wagner; for if you were open to finding God in German culture, you could also be open to accepting Hitler as God’s gift as many Germans did. Barth openly refused to accept Hitler's role in the Church in the 1930s on these theological grounds as well as moral, for which he was forced to leave Germany for his native Switzerland.WithStephen Plant Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of CambridgeChristiane Tietz Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of ZurichAnd Tom Greggs Marischal Professor of Divinity at the University of AberdeenProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Karl Barth, God Here and Now (Routledge, 2003)Karl Barth (trans. G. T. Thomson), Dogmatics in Outline (SCM Press, 1966)Eberhard Busch (trans. John Bowden), Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand Rapids, 1994)George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford University Press, 1993)Joseph L. Mangina, Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness (Routledge, 2004)Paul T. Nimmo, Karl Barth: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2013)Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2021)John Webster, Karl Barth: Outstanding Christian Thinkers (Continuum, 2004)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the program. Hello, Carl Bart, 1886 to 1968,

was one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, some say for the past few hundred years, putting God and especially Christ at the centre of Christianity. He rejected the mainstream liberal theology of his time, which he held used God as a means to understand humanity, and he saw danger in natural theology where you might feel your experience in God in a rainbow or an opera by Wagner. For he thought, if you find God in German culture,

it was a small step to accepting Hitler as God's gift too, as many Germans did, but Bart steadfastly did not, for which he was banned for. public life. We meet to discuss the ideas of Carl Bard are Stephen Plant, Dean and Runcifellow at Trinity Hall University of Cambridge, Christiana Teach, Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Zurich, and Tom Greggs, Marshall Professor of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen. Coming to you first, Tom Greggs. Bart was born in Switzerland. What role did religion play in his childhood? Bart and his family were members of the Swiss Reformed Church, a particular

type of Protestant church, but particularly important is the cultural identity of that church in relation to the city in which he was born and where he would later be a professor, Basel. Basel had a very particular feel, a very particular identity as a city. Bart was very proud of coming from Basel. And if one were to walk around Basel, one would find the name Sartorius and Bart attached to almost all of the churches there. Sartorius being his mother's maiden name and Bart, his father's. name. Bart's mother, Anna Sartorius, came from a line of clergy. In fact, her grandfather was a rather

disgraced clergyman who was sacked for drunkenness from being a minister and went on instead to become a professor of literature. She instilled in Bart a respect for pietism. She would in fact sing to him songs from Basel, pietistic choruses that children would engage in singing, which became very important for Bart because in them, Bart said that he felt that those things that had happened long ago in dim and distant Israel, Palestine, became live to him like an event that was taking place here and now in Basel. His mother was quite a fierce and vivacious lady, who was very concerned that her children should be brought up in a proper manner as young Christian men and women. Though Bart rebelled against that quite a lot and used to get into scraps and fights. His

Father Fritzbart was a minister and went on to be a professor, a professor in Byrne. He was a member of the positivist group within the Swiss Reformed Church, what we might translate roughly within an English-speaking language culture as being the evangelical group, although he was very open-minded. Bart took up work in an industrial town and created a stir there. What was that? He was nicknamed the Red Pastor, having been trained in theology in the liberal school. in Germany. He found himself in a position where he had very little, in fact, to be able to say to his congregation.

Rather infamously, Bart said the first book that ever moved him was Kant's critique of practical reason, which is a strange book to move anybody, it seems, and he wasn't sure how, therefore, to deal with pastoral concerns. As a result, when he arrived in Saffanville in 1911, he became involved in the Social Democratic Party and the Workers' Union, and in that context addressed them and took the side of the workers, often over and against the side of the factory owners. He was very concerned about the way in which their lives were governed by earning a pittance that they could hardly live on. And this led him to be in considerable conflict

with the owners of the two textile factories in the village. Thank you very much. Christianitat, I dare say we'll return to this, but what was understood by the term liberal theology in Batute? A liberal theology was a broad movement in theology from 1800 on, which reflected on modernity and the Enlightenment. They stressed certain aspects in terms of Christianity. One aspect was the freedom of the individual, it would mean that the individual chooses which parts of faith it would like to accept and which part it would think to be correct and therefore it would criticize the church tradition,

which should criticize the church hierarchy. It's only what the individual thinks is important for him or her is what is acceptable. Another aspect of liberal theology was historicism. So the idea that only what can be historically proven can be true. Therefore, they had a look at the biblical texts from historical view and would analyze certain layers of the text, where we would say, well, who was the author of this sentence

and who was the author of that sentence? And therefore they would say the biblical texts are so far away from us today. They don't speak to us anymore. And it's important that we stress this distance. One other aspect might be that liberal theology was in fact strongly tied to the middle class in Germany. So it was not a movement for the labor workers like Tom just stressed. It was a movement more for the intellectuals within the society. And it was a movement and it grew quite – it was something that he felt he had to combat,

at the very beginning he did not at all because it was actually part of it when he studied theology he went to the large figures of liberal theology so adolf von haemak or william herman or martin rader and at the end of his studies he felt he is actually a liberal theologian so but at the end of his studies felt that the bible is a historical text which doesn't differ from any other richest text that you should only believe in those aspects of faith which you personally think are true And then he started criticizing liberal theology only after the experience of the beginning of World War I. Did liberal theology go further than what was written in the Bible? Was it something you could experience in different ways alongside or outside the Bible?

Sure. What you said precisely at the beginning, that they felt that you could also experience the divine or the transcendent somewhere else in the forest or when the sun is rising or setting. So they were actually searching for religious experience elsewhere and not only focus to this traditional old outdated book. Or in music and art and literature. Especially, yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Stephen Plant, in those earlier, were there any key events that made him step back from liberal theology? The obvious answer to that question is the start of the First World War. So as Thomas said, Bart began his ministry in Saffanville in 1911. And one of the triggers for his readjustment theologically was that he was preaching week by week and found very quickly in his own mind that the content of his sermons was inadequate for the task of ministering to the people of the village. He felt that liberal theology didn't provide him with the kind of resources with which to challenge and develop his consequences. congregation. So there was a pastoral reason which lay behind some of his change of thought. But the big political event was the start of the First World War. And at the beginning of the First World War,

very shortly after, within a month actually, a manifesto was issued by German academics, which is known as the manifesto of the 93. It was composed by academics, big cultural figures, composers, poets, novelists, scientists, all of whom produce this manuscript. in support of the German war effort. The Germans had by that stage had overrun much of Belgium and had effectively destroyed Lervin, or Lévin, the city. And the intellectuals who signed this manifesto defended their actions and said that reports were exaggerated. Now, among the academics who signed the manifesto were a number of BART's previous liberal teachers, and two in particular caught his eye, Adolf von Harnack, who had taught him in Berlin,

and Wilhelm Herman, who taught him in Marburg, and these were really the two leading figures in his intellectual formation up to the beginning of his ministry, and he felt that their support of the German war effort was an indicator of the moral and theological bankruptcy of liberal theology. And he stood against that. He was very good at carving out his own position, whatever the majority was saying,

or in whatever direction, the mood of the time. or the thought of the time went. Yes, I mean, you hit upon an important aspect of Bart, which is his willingness to engage in complex arguments. In one such exchange with a former colleague, a Swiss reformed colleague called Emil Brunner, he prefaces a book opposing Brunner by saying, I don't like controversy, I have no liking for it, I'd much rather live in harmony with everybody.

But the truth is not to be trifled with. and he felt that where a big issue presented itself, it was incumbent on a serious thinker to engage with it. Let's come to his work on St Paul's letter to the Romans. Can you tell us why that attracted his attention so intensely? He started to work on it in 1916. He had a very good colleague and friend who he'd known since childhood called Edvard Tournison, who was minister in a neighbouring village.

And the two of them had long conversations. and by 1916 they had between them come to the conclusion that the Bible was being misread by many theologians. They discovered what they called the strange new world in the Bible. They basically thought that you got what you went looking for in the Bible. If you went looking for history, you found history. If you went looking for a morality, you found a morality. But what they wanted to do was to turn to the Bible and to meet God there. God was the content of revelation.

It wasn't a history of religious experience or a text which gave you a moral outlook. Instead, you should read the Bible as a place where you encountered God as a living agent. And this led him to begin work on Romans. Romans, of course, is the, together with Galatians, one of the two letters by Paul, which are really foundational, particularly, I would say, for Protestant theology, It's where Martin Luther looked for the insight that salvation was by faith alone. And Bart, I think, turns to it partly to rethink the foundations of Protestant theology after 100 years where he felt theology had been lost in the thickets of liberal theology.

I'd still like, let's dig a bit further, Tom, if we can, about this letter. Bart's works on St. Paul's letter. Why is it so very important to him? Bart described the publication of the letter to the Romans as being akin to an experience he had as a child of going up a bell tower in the middle of the night and reaching out for a rope for support, thinking it was the handrail and instead pulling it to discover it was the bell and waking everybody up in the village. And I think there's two ways in which Bart's commentary to the Romans has profoundly influenced both theology and philosophy and culture more broadly. Theologically, as Stephen was saying, Bart discovers in Romans not just the words of St. Paul, but what he wants to find is an account of the way in which God speaks about humanity. So rather than this being about human speech about God,

Bart becomes concerned about what is God saying to humans. And if you like, what it becomes is a theological cultural critique of German liberalism, high German culture, the idea of their being. being some continuity between high culture and God. Why, well, in the context that he's writing, the war has been the end point of all of this and supported by theologians, but also because Bart, in his rejection of natural theology,

sees that no institution, whether the church or religion or the state or the city, is in continuity with God. But philosophically and more broadly speaking, Bart's not only interested in the question of what Paul says and understanding what Paul is talking about, but he also becomes interested in the question of how to think with St. Paul. And that's a shift in hermeneutics in the way that we understand texts.

So he is concerned with the question of clarification of what Paul's saying, but he wants to know what it means today. And this is a long time before something like read a response through. Christiana, can I turn to you? What's your response to this? I agree to the importance of Bart's letter to the Romans. I think in the historical calls, context, Bart's idea was that if human beings cannot help each other anymore because the war

had shown that no cultural, no human endeavor is successful, you need hope from elsewhere. And this is where Bart says, well, this is only God. We cannot get hope from any human tax. We can only get hope from God, which has the consequence that he would also say, and this idea I actually lied, no human idea about God can really reach God. You can only recognize God if God reveals God's self. So it's a turnaround actually of theological recognition theory.

Usually you would say, well, if you want to know something about God, you think about transcendence, you think about the boundaries which you should transgress to understand what the transcendent is. And I would say this doesn't lead to anywhere. It leads only to your own ideas of God. Like Feuerbach, for example, explained it in the 19th century.

And he would say because God is so different, no human idea, no human path can lead us to God. The only way how we can know something about God is that God reveals God's self. And this would mean that you have to listen to the word of God or to listen to the places where God reveals himself, which Christians would say is Jesus Christ. Not to make up your own mind, but just listen to God's own word from God. Thank you very much. Stephen Plant. Bath's major work was to be his church dogmatics running into millions of six. Six million words. What's the background for that work?

When Bart completed his commentary on Romans, it was so successful in terms of its publicity and becoming well known in Germany. Why do you think that was? Because it was a new voice. It was essentially something that needed to be said that there was a receptive audience for something revolutionary, particularly in the generation of those returning from the trenches. And he seemed, I think, to strike a nerve, a cultural nerve. Anyway, he was given a job on the back of it as an honorary professor at the University of Göttingen. This was a very Lutheran faculty, and he was appointed as an adjunct professor in reformed theology. That's the style of theology that looks to Calvin and Zwingli and Buster and others, more associated with France and Switzerland and Germany. And he began teaching his way through the classics of reformed theology.

and for a while that was satisfactory. He had imposter syndrome effectively. He hadn't even got a PhD by the time they appointed him. So he felt the need to teach himself theology by teaching theology to others. And he was also lecturing in certain New Testament texts like Ephesians and the first chapters of John's Gospel. But eventually he reached the point when he realized that having taught what other people said, he was now at the stage when if he was going to be honest as a theologian, he had to find a way of saying what he thought. In other words, to step beyond description to creative or constructive theology.

So having tried twice to write a constructive systematic theology, he abandoned both projects, hit the reset button, and started again with the church dogmatics. Tom Greggs, which it was a bit too, six million, was a bit too much. us to take on. Can you pick out a couple of the main ideas? Yeah, it's almost impossible to reduce this to a couple of ideas, but if I were to have a go, I think the aliveness of God would be one of the really key things. What does you mean by that? That God is God, not to be captured in an essence or an institution, but that God is deeply personal, that whenever Bart speaks about God, it's about encounter activity. There's a dynamism and a freedom in God's life.

Does he see God? Does he figure God? In what sense do you mean necessarily? Well, does you see a presence of some sort? No, he's actually very skeptical of religious experience, in part because he thinks that religious experience is a way of allowing all kinds of things like natural theology and the state governance of religion in. He's really rather concerned about the fact that God encounters us and it usually leads us to recognize our own unworthiness and to fall back on God's grace. So the encounter is normally done in scripture through the activity. of the Spirit, although he famously said you could find God in a dead dog. It's about God's freedom to encounter you in this moment. Alongside that, I...

Do you find that very confusing or enlightening? I find it rather enlightening because I think what he's trying to do is to say that God is God, that we can't think about God simply as another great big thing in the world. There has to be an infinite qualitative difference. So God's apart from the world? God is apart from the world, even as God is in the world. So parts of understanding of the nature of God is always that God has complete freedom and sovereignty over who God is and how God meets us. So God can meet us in a flute concerto or a piece of Mozart as with sort of high liberal culture or a dead dog. Because it's not actually because of the thing in creation.

That isn't a means by which to meet God. It's not the institution or the form. It's about the activity of God reaching humanity. God in Bart's account is always on the move. God is moving towards creation, into creation, as this other. What part did humans play in this? Did he think humans were not really human? Yeah, so whereas most theology begins,

this would have been my second point about what's important in church dogmatics, whereas most theology tends to begin with the idea that we know what God is, we have some concept of what we mean by God, and we have some concept of what we mean by a human being, and Jesus Christ is both God and a human being. Bart says, no, actually, we don't know. who God is, and we don't know what a human being is, but we know that Jesus is both God and a human being. How do we know that? Through the faith of the church, through the resurrection, the teachings of the

church, that if you are going to be a Christian, he sees the lordship of Jesus Christ as the most fundamental thing that you can ever speak about. So that's his Christocentrism, his centrality of Christ. And for him, sin isn't a kind of added extra that you kind of carry on your back. It's a diminishment of your humanity. So for Bart, whereas traditionally theology might have talked about divinization, about the idea of becoming like God, Bart says no, Jesus teaches us how to become human beings, that there is a humanization that takes place. We become human in the likeness of Christ. Thank you. Christianity, he didn't write this uned. He had a secretary, Charlotte von Cushba, who was not unlike a second wife in some ways. What was her role in him? What was her role in

his work. He met her and he fell in love with her while he was married but then later on he started to hire her as his secretary so because he felt that he could talk with her about his theological ideas

so they had a very intense theological exchange and he felt that he could discuss his theological ideas with her and he asked her to type his manuscript he decided his manuscripts to her she collected a quote to which she would later on relate,

she would answer letters which he got on his behalf. And in many points in his life he said, without her work, I couldn't have done what I was able to do because she supported me so strongly, not only in terms of collecting material or technical support, but also in how she has accompanied me. So he felt he has had somebody really at his side to help him. He wanted to divorce his wife, but she didn't want to divorce.

He felt that he should be faithful to his wife because he married her, and therefore he felt I could only divorce if my wife agrees. But his wife only very shortly said we should do that. And therefore he said, no, I cannot divorce her, because I have to be somehow faithful to my oath, which I swore to my wife. Sometimes there had been some rumor that a lot of Kershpom actually wrote the long excursuses in the church dogmatics, historical excursuses, exegocerxes, and they felt that it's not Bart who did that. But when you go to the archives and have a look at the excursuses which are still in handwriting, and it's always Bart's handwriting. And it doesn't make sense to assume that she wrote them and Bart then wrote them with his own hand. And then afterwards she typed it.

So you could say she prepared the material, but Bart himself wrote those long excurses in the church dogmatics. Stephen, Stephen Bland. Christiana is absolutely right that Bart is completely clear. that he could not have done what he did without her assistance. They basically worked in neighbouring offices. They spent from 8 in the morning till 6 at night in each other's company. They travelled together when he went to give lectures in France or the Netherlands or Scotland and so on. So she was part of the family life.

They met in 25, 1925, and she moved into the family home in 1929, having learned Latin, having learned Greek, having learned shorthand. in order to support him in his work. So effectively, Bart had a household that was geared to supporting him in the big project he was undertaking, a wife who ran the household and looked after the smaller children and a partner and colleague in Charlotte von Kierschbaum. Without labouring it at all. How did this go down? It was a source of deep pain for all three parties.

There were certainly periods of equilibrium when they came to a working, a kind of working relationship. But it was a long-standing abiding source of pain for all three parties and also for friends and family who found it very perplexing, but really the two women involved sacrifice the most. Charlotte von Kierch-Brown's mother disowned her. She gave up a huge amount. You would have come in?

Tom. Just to say that, I think there's been very much speculative. about the relationship. I think the overwhelming feeling for anybody that knows any of the details is that the circumstance was just deeply tragic and painful for all involved.

And the more that I reflect on it, the more that the word tragedy seems appropriate to describe what happens. Right. At that time, switching our course here, back to you, Stephen.

There seemed to be threatening a merger between the church and Nazism. Now, most people went along with that, if you can explain how they went along with it, But Bart was one of the few who absolutely stood against it. In 1933, when Hitler was appointed a Reich Chancellor by the President of Germany, he immediately moved to quash all possible avenues of opposition.

He struck a Reich concordat with the Roman Catholic Church, which neutered Catholic opposition. And he wanted to do the same with the Protestant churches, but they were vastly more complicated. You didn't have a national church at that stage. So what he wanted to do was to collapse the 28 or so regional churches. These were all independent institutions. And Hitler had the idea that he could collapse them into a single Protestant church

with a single Reich bishop who would be supportive of the Nazi cause. And actually he made very quick progress to that end. The churches voted with Hitler and moved to have a single church, elected a Reich bishop and so on. And then the Reich Bishop, for better and for worse, as it turned out, was completely incompetent and a deeply problematic vain figure. And the movement which had led the churches to that point effectively collapsed. And at that point, an opposition movement emerged. And Bart became an important theological voice. Now, he was in a difficult position because he was Swiss rather than German and everybody understood that he therefore

was at one remove. But in 1934, when this new movement called the Confessing Church was trying to identify itself and come to a conclusion about who it was, he and two other theologians or representatives of the churches were asked to draft a theological statement. They called it a declaration to distinguish it from a theological confession. And the problem they had was that the regional churches had been squabbling for 400 years between Lutherans and reformed and for those churches which are united and had not found a way to agree. So how were they supposed to agree? Well, these three men met for two days in May and they drew up something called the Barman Declaration, which was a theological statement with six theses, around which

these different churches could come together. The first thesis is a good example of them all. It starts with a biblical quotation, which is something. everybody could recognize, and then it said that Jesus Christ is the one word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death, and then it went on to say, we reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths as God's revelation. They steered well clear of politics, but you can hear from that, if you say Jesus Christ is the one lord of the church, you're effectively setting yourself apart from the view that Hitler as Führ was also a kind of lord.

Thank you. Tom, Tom Greggs. His rejection of Hitler was moral and very an outstandingly brave at the time. He stood to lose a lot in various ways, but he stuck to his guns. How did his theology support his position? I think two ways. One is that this rejection of any line of content, between God and anything within culture. So his rejection of natural theology was absolutely key there. You can't find God in a particular form of the state. So you can't find God in Nazism? You can't find God in Nazism.

You can't find God in the Nazi church, which was created. There's no line of continuity there. So nothing can be given that imprimatal. But also secondly, he's so concerned that point about Jesus Christ being central, that Jesus, if you want to know what God is like for Bart, look at the manger, look at the cross, look at the fact that this is Jewish flesh. And that particularism, that particularity was so key for Bard

that you couldn't have this Fiora concept because it bore no resemblance to the Lordship of Christ. Christian, how did Bart behave during the Second World War throughout? I mean, we know he's against Hitler and he won't take the Earth of Allegiance. Can you give us some more examples? He had left Germany actually in 1935, so when the war started he was in Switzerland back in his hometown in Basel. He has been appointed professor there. He criticized Hitler's system and he felt that the Western powers should destroy Hitler and the entire system, not Germany, but Hitler and his system.

But was not a pacifist. So in several talks, he called his fellow Swiss people to resist even militarily against. against Hitler. He said, peace at any pride with Hitler doesn't work. You have to resist this tyrant because he thinks he is a second God. But also himself volunteered for military service in arms. They wanted to put him into a health company, but he said, no, I don't want, I would like to take up arms. He didn't have to shoot because Switzerland was not occupied by the Germans. But he told the Swiss people, you should not stick with your idea of neutrality, or you better put, you should understand it differently.

Neutrality against Hitler is to stress freedom and justice, which means to oppose Hitler. So if you want to be neutral as Switzerland, you have to oppose him because otherwise neutrality would support Hitler. What I like about him is that at the end of the war, Bart argued that the Swiss, it was clear that the Germans are going to lose, he said that the Swiss owed the Germans to show them only what forgiveness means. and after the war he quickly went to Germany and said to the Germans, he didn't talk to them about forgiveness, he talked to them about you should confess you sin and you should repent. I find this fascinating that he says to one side,

you should show what forgiveness meant, but to the Germans, you should truly repent because you missed the goal by walking behind Hitler. It was absolutely horrible what you did. Tom, Tom, Gregs. It's worth noting as well that although Bart was in Switzerland from 1935, this was because he was expelled from Germany and expelled from his teaching post

for refusing to take the Hitler oath. But in fact, Germany dragged its heels a little bit because Bart was such a famous figure that they were nervous that it would cause increased outcry internationally should they take a strong stance against him. And the matter, in fact, even got to Hitler. He made the personal call

about whether Bart should continue in his professorship or not. So Bart's fame as a theologian had considerable impact on the way in which Germany dealt with this and meant that he was somebody that they wanted to take very seriously. Just a second. Was he being criticised at this time, Bart, and if so, by whom? Well, the German Christians, the non... All those people who'd signed the oath.

All the people who'd signed the oath did. Lots of people were trying to persuade him to do it, almost with his fingers crossed, to say that there might be means of signing it. he was prepared, he said to sign it, if he added the words as far as my conscience as a Christian will allow, all of this was rejected. So there were people that were concerned because they felt that he being present in Germany could have made more of an impact. And really he was setting himself up in a very fierce way to clash with Hitler and to clash with the Reich. Steemann planned.

He was also a thorn in the flesh of the Swiss because he spoke against Swiss neutrality. or at least the interpretation of Swiss neutrality that the Swiss were undertaking. And as a consequence of that, some of his writings were censored by the Swiss government. You thought Swiss neutrality helped Germany? Yes, which indeed some of the... So the story clever that suggests it may have done.

But he also had his phone bugged. His connections to Germany was so good that in order to gather intelligence, the Swiss Secret Service tapped his phone for the better part of two years. We've talked about Charlotte von Kishbaum. Does that affect the way that, Christiana, does that affect the way that Barth is seen now? Especially in certain parts of the US readers of Bart, they would feel you cannot read Bart anymore because of this private triangle relationship.

He is not a good Christian. He is not a good theologian and you should reject him because he is not moral. I really have my difficulties with this strict rejection, if I may say this, mainly for two reasons. Why do we criticize a person's love life more strictly than, for example, how much time he has for his children, or how responsible he uses his money or how she reacts to the ecological crisis? That's one aspect, and the other one is I as a reader cannot delegate the judgment about the value of a theological work to the author and his morality. It's my responsibility as a reader to judge the value of the thoughts of a person with regard to these thoughts. So it's my responsibility to receive thoughts responsibly.

So it's been damaging to his reputation, not to put a final point on it. During his lifetime, it was something of an open secret. When he travelled, he travelled with Charlotte von Kierschbaum and people appreciated that she had a very important role. for him, but it never really came to the surface as an issue which people felt was particularly controversial. It was too much respect for him as the key theological figure. And I think after his death, the story again wasn't very widely known until the publication in 1980s and 1990s of two books about the relationship, including one by Susan Selinger, a biography of Charlotte on Kirshbaum, which was very sensitively done, but which brought it to a wider audience.

I don't therefore think it's had a huge impact until very recently. Maybe I should add that for me it was always moving that Bard himself throughout his life, through his family and his friends always was aware that this is guilt and that he was guilty that he didn't find a better solution to this constellation. And this always impressed me. that he didn't say, well, that's okay, don't matter about that, it's okay that I do it. He felt that this was the largest guild in his biography that he didn't find a better solution. And they really tried to find a better one.

Stephen, Stephen Plann, can you tell us what his legacy is now thought to be? I would say that Bart is really a theologian's theologian in the sense that those of us who are in the trade of being professional theologians would find it hard to say. say there was a more important theologian in the 20th century, and arguably few theologians since the Reformation who've been as creative, who've been as prolific, who've been as innovative as he has proved to be. And to that extent... Can we give us one of his innovations? Well, if you contrast him, for example, with somebody a bit more than the century earlier, Schleimer. Schlemerker's great doctrinal work, the Christian faith, puts the doctrine of

Trinity right at the very end and Schleimacher says at the end of his Christian faith, look, Christians have written about the Trinity, so I feel I should, but really it's a bit embarrassing. So I'm going to put it at the end where it can't do much damage. Bart puts the doctrine of Trinity front and centre in his church dogmatics to make the point that the only God that we can know is the God who gives himself to be known and this is how he does it. So he put the Trinity back on the map in a way that it hadn't been. and pretty much every theologian since the second half of the 20th century has gone back to thinking that Trinitarian forms of thought, Trinitarian theology, is so central to Christian identity that it can't be neglected. Would you write a comment on that?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right, and it runs down the road of the fact that Bart's always concerned with the particularity, that you seek God where God is to be found, and God is to be found in the places that he reveals himself. So Jesus Christ indeed is even the means by which we begin to understand the Trinity. That's once we understand that Jesus Christ is God, then we have to begin to let that determine the way that we think about God rather than the other way around. And I think that's a very radical set of thoughts. In some ways it's deeply modern. It's deeply modern in that he's looking at the effects. He's looking at what we can know. he's not speculating on some scholastic way,

but he reads that revelation all the way down. So it's not just that we see this and it teaches us something about God. This teaches us everything. So Bart famously says, for example, that the Christian God is a humble God. Why? Because Jesus Christ in his life reveals humility. It's not simply the man Jesus. This tells us who God is.

And Bart, towards the end of his life, writes a really interesting little pamphlet called the humanity of God and says we spend too much time talking about the divinity of human beings. What we need to discover is the profound humanity that God has a humanity that we see in the perfect humanity of Christ. Christianity, what will your summary be? For me, the most interesting thing is that he would say theology is about God. It's not about human beings at the first place. It's first about God and then about God who is the Holy Other, but who comes close. to human beings.

There's a certain movement which he's trying to describe. God is different from the world, which we have stressed quite strongly, but it's not a God who stays far away. He comes close to human beings in Jesus Christ. And from that point, or he is about his reform,

which means about stresses that God makes a covenant with human beings, and human beings cannot escape that government. It doesn't matter how human beings react to that covenant. God is faithful to that covenant and sticks with human beings no matter what is happening,

which I find. is strongly a reformational, a thought of the reformers from the 16th century, that the relationship between God and human beings is grounded in God and not in what human beings do or don't do. And the interesting thing is that from this move that God comes close to human beings, the differences between human beings are not relevant anymore in regard to this great difference between God and human beings. So what we do when we are living in our society,

who make differences between each other and we say this one is more important than that one and Bart's theology actually levels human beings on one level because the difference between human beings and God is so big that this difference between us doesn't make any... It's not relevant anymore in that regard. Stephen, you want to say something.

So the day when Bart died, a number of telegrams flooded into his widow of commiseration. They included the head of the state of Germany. They included the head of the Social Democratic Party, head of state in Switzerland, his regional head of state, patriarch in Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and so on. So his public reputation was vast. He was known politically. Where he's much more difficult to say that he's had an impact is curiously in the life of the churches. And that's partly because he can't be aligned with the liberal wing of the church because of his steadfast opposition to liberal theology.

and he's not easy to align with the conservative wing of the church because his account of key doctrinal issues like his understanding of the authority of scripture is at one remove from what many conservative evangelicals would regard as appropriate. So his reputation is strong academically and publicly was strong at the point he died. Curiously, I would say his influence on the churches is much less. Finally. Some of that I think is because, Bart thinks in a dialectical way.

One of the reasons why he's very difficult to understand is that he thinks that when we're dealing with God, we're always dealing with two things. So as God unveils himself, he does it in a veiled form. For example, God in God's otherness, God in God's transcendence, is the presence of God that we have with us. He works with this constant set of dialectical tensions

because God can't be captured sufficiently in human language or ideas. So what we're doing very often is having these two contrary ideas, which need to be held together in tension. Well, finally, then how does you know God is God? Through faith, through, I mean, I think Bart is very influenced by Soren Kirkagor, that in the end it's a leap of faith. He does believe that having made that leap of faith,

we will begin to read the world differently, and we might see little lights of the light of God elsewhere in creation, but it will always be a leap into the unknown. Well, thank you. Thank you very much to Christiana Tietz, Stephen Plant, at Tom Greggs, and to our studio engineer Andrew Garrett. Next week, it's Rome in the first century with Tiberius, how he became emperor after Augustus,

and why he backed Caligula to succeed him. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What would you like to have said that you feel you didn't get time to say? Well, in terms of the reception, I think it's fascinating that so many pastors afterwards, many theology students actually went to Basel to study with Bard,

and for generations, theology students and pastors felt that Bart's theology is a theology which can really help them in their daily life. So it's not only theology for the academy, it's a theology which is practically in terms of preaching, in terms of accompanying human beings through their life. They felt it's really very concrete theology which can give hope and can free people. So I think you can say this about many theologians

that their theology is really academic theology, that the theology has really relevance in persons' lives and that's really truthful about theology. Tom. Picking up on what Christiana is saying, I think there's just an immense joyfulness about reading church dogmatics. it's written in beautiful German.

It's an absolutely heartwarming and fascinating read with moments on almost every page where one feels excited by this new direction that he's setting. But I think one thing that is easy to miss with Barty who is so often pitted in opposition against somebody, it's easy to miss the fact that he was a deeply warm, humane, worldly, urban, funny man. Part of his identity as somebody from Basel was about appropriating this kind of Basel culture, the sense of humour that they have there, almost like we might talk about people from Liverpool where I'm from or from Newcastle having a particular sense of humour, a particular culture.

And there's lots of stories about Bart's warmth. I mean, people flock to him. Bonhofer, Dietrich Bonhofer, the martyr in the Second World War, famously said that having been absolutely captivated by Bart writing, the man was even better in person. He was jovial, he was quite humble about his own work. He would say at points, you know, the angels laugh at old Carl as he tries to produce even more words describing the indescribable. And he could be very witty at moments. There's a famous story, for example, of him bumping into somebody

and that person realizing that his name was Bart. And they said, do you know the famous professor? from Basel, Carl Bart, to which he replied, know him, I shave him every morning. Or a story about when he gave a sermon and the professor of astronomy from the university came over to him and said, Professor Bart, that's all very interesting.

But at the end of the day, Christianity can just be summed up with the words, do unto others as you would be done by. To which Bart replied, well, sir, I'm afraid that my view of astronomy is that it can be summed up with the words, twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. So there was a pleasant about the man.

And I think that that worldliness of him, the non-partisanship, the preparedness to listen, lots of that came from his father. His father had been a student of Nietzsche, even though he was in the evangelical wing of his own church. He'd remained on very good terms with lots of people from the liberal wing. He wasn't able to be pinned down very easily, very open to different ideas, different personalities and that made him a deeply attractive person to work with. Stephen, the one idea I wish I had said more about really was to do with the content of the church dogmatics, which is obviously his magnum opus, his great work. And I think what strikes

me about it is that the early emphasis in Bart's theology on the freedom of God, that he's free from the natural order that he's free from being bound in the text of the Bible and free from what the churches say about him. The other side of that coin is that for Bart, God is free for humanity. And that emphasis on God's inner personality, if you like, his inner being, being designed to love humanity is, I think, the central idea of the church dogmatics.

The other thing I wondered if we, you know, it would have been nice to have covered a little bit more was Bart's public persona after the end of the Second World War, particularly in relation to the conflicts of the Cold War as they began to unfold. He was often tried, you know, many people tried to draw him in to criticizing communism and the socialists states in the way that he had once criticized the fascist political regimes. And he steadfastly refused to do that. He felt that he needed to provide instead support for Christians in those countries.

And I think, I would say with some naivity was, prepared to accept the perspective of Christians in those countries who spoke positively about the states and their relationship with the state? Just to pick up on what Stephen was saying about the church dogmatics, this freedom from, in order to be free for creation and humanity, the thing that I find most captivating in the church dogmatics is that salvation no longer is something that God does. Grace is not simply something that God does. It's the very nature of who, God is. So Bart doesn't have this notion of God in God's own life separate from the world. God

because of God's eternity. God's eternity for Bart is his presence to all time perfectly. So God is deeply gracious, deeply loving in the whole of his being. Christian? If I may add one more aspect which I find important about Bart is that he was really a brave man. So from not only during the National Socialism, very early he started. started fighting with people when he disagreed, publicly or individually, and he always felt he has to stand for his conviction, and he didn't hide behind others but fought for that. I think only because of that, he could later on do it in such a situation like a national socialism.

Is there any way in which what he was saying applied to other religions? He writes... For him, did God exist in other religions around the world? He writes very little about other religions except Judaism. He thinks, he writes about it a little bit in terms of a section of the church dogmatics on Christian missions in which he says it's improper to act in a superior way to other religions. You have to be respectful. You have to convert if you're going to convert by making Christianity attractive rather than by condemning the views of others. But he didn't honestly know people of other faiths personally. An exception is Judaism. He thought that Israel and the church, were effectively siblings in the same family. And he thought that eventually these siblings would be reconciled.

He says that Israel and the church are effectively both God's people. There's a sense in which, as well for Bart, I think, his account of salvation and the nature of God removes this idea that you would be subject to some judgment by an arbitrary God outside. So, I mean, my suspicion is he's some kind of universalist. He famously said he didn't teach it, but he didn't not teach it as a doctrine. So, you know, everybody in the end will be found by God and God's love. So that's the principal concern that he has. In terms of religions themselves, I mean, early in his career, he writes this famous section of Christ as the abolition or the sublimation of religion, where he says that religion is. is our attempt to justify ourselves before an arbitrary concept of God for us to get to God.

But the statement in that isn't to heighten Christianity. What he actually says is that Christians are the worst of all in that relation because they had Jesus Christ and they made a religion of it. At the end of his career, he softens a bit. Why is it bad to make a religion of Christ? Why is it bad to? Because what we're doing is not finding ourselves in a situation where we can encounter God in God's freedom and love reaching to us, but instead we're creating constructs, institutions where we think there's some

degree of continuity. It's a bit like for him building the Tower of Babel. We're trying to reach up to God in our religion rather than accept the God who lovingly reaches down to us. It's making Christianity a system of thought rather than an encounter with a living saviour, with a living person. But towards the end, he softens a bit, doesn't he? I mean, he has this idea at the end of Jesus Christ as the light of the world in which he says, for all little sparks of light that we see within the world, actually tell us something about Christ. And he talks about secular parables of the kingdom,

that there might be stories, parables, that somehow can care with Christianity and with Jesus Christ. There was a paragraph for Bart is a long section, you know, 100, 200 pages. There was a part of church dogmatics, the big work called God and the gods, which he deleted and had been removed. So he did address it, or did think about addressing it,

but in the end, I think, realized that he actually couldn't think his way around that entirely in the right way. So he pulled it out. Christiana, what would you like to say about this? I think it's correct to say that Bart criticizes religion, but at the same time he's aware that religion is necessary. So the church institution is necessary. He would say you cannot believe in God, in the Christian God, at least, if there wouldn't be any church

where people would tell that story about the Christian God and where they would meet and where they would read the Christian Bible because this is his emphasis was on this from the Christian perspective God can be found in Jesus Christ therefore you have to talk about

Jesus Christ you have to sing songs about Jesus Christ you have to preach about Christ so it's not about the individual can realize Christianity you need a church, you need the institution which of course has to relativize itself in terms of we are not God, God is elsewhere, but you need the practice of religion in the church and some focus on Jesus Christ.

Can I ask a final question? Have we any evidence of what Hitler thought of him? He wrote, Karl Barts, in the run-up to the Barman Declaration, wrote a treatise called Theological Existence Today, and he sent it to Hitler. having written in the front cover, hoping that Hitler would read it. After all the debacle of the end of Berlin and the fall of the Nazi regime, a researcher found a copy of it unopened and the pages uncut in the National Archives.

So Hitler, I think, blanked him. I mean, he knew about him because of the refusal to swear the oath and found him a thorn in the flesh. For Hitler, I think the difficulty was that if you tried to take down this hugely public, important intellectual of the very top level, what would that say about his own regime and what he was doing? So Hitler was concerned, I think, that we don't draw too much attention to Bart's rejection. So he sort of got away with it for a little while, actually. It was only 18 months, two years after, that really when Hitler felt secure, Bart got pushed out.

But you could add that when there was this process again, Bart, because he didn't swear, the oath, Hitler wanted to see the law documents. So he asked for the, I don't know how to say it's in English. He wanted to see the process documents. So he was interested in the process, which was led against bars because it didn't swear the oath. Well, thank you. Thank you all very much again. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.

Hello, I'm Kersie Wark and this is the reunion. reflecting on a shared news event, a cultural moment, or just the experience of all being there at the same time and the same place. I just started doing that voice to Armando. When he was stressed. Nervous breakdown, nervous. We all started challenging. It just became this mean thing.

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