Barth/Bart - all the same to me

Today I had a seminar about Karl Barth (pronounced ‘Bart’, as in Simpson – he was German), for which I read some very interesting stuff – most notably, his commentary on Romans from 1933.

As a Christian interpreter of the Bible, he was in a rather difficult situation, feeling somewhat out of place in both the University and the church. I feel somewhat similar for much of the time.

University Theology departments in Barth’s day were into historical criticism, which looked for the historical circumstances that gave rise to the production of the biblical texts. It was largely uninterested in questions of truth or meaning – only questions of history: did this happen? Why did people write it down? What purposes was the writer (and any who modified the work after its original conception) writing/changing it for?

Partly in response to this, many Christian adopted a view of biblical authority based on its ‘inerrancy’ – simply, there are no errors in the Bible, as though it dropped from the sky, Special Delivery from the mind of God into those who wrote it (though this is a little crude). Cue lots of ‘all Scripture is God-breathed etc’ from Timothy (I think).

I have experienced the views of lots of academics on the side of the historical critics, and even more on the side of the inerrantists. I agree with neither, and neither did Barth.

I quote an analyst of Barth’s legacy:

‘[for Barth] Scriptures are not in and of themselves the Word of God, but they bear witness to the Word that always lies on a horizon beyond themselves… Thus… biblical authority does not reside in any inherent property the texts supposedly possess (eg, inerrancy) but in the nique function they perform in the life of the church.’

This is called ‘functional authority’ – the texts have authority not because of their essential nature, but because of their ability to point to God who is the truth, made known in Christ.

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Turning to Barth himself, he received much criticism from historical critics who saw him as smuggling in Christian principles to his readings of the texts, and finding nothing wrong with the teachings of Paul in Romans. They call this ‘Biblicism’.

Returning to his view of Scripture as pointing towards God, rather than possessing authority in and of itself, Barth replies in a beautiful way:

‘When I am named ‘biblicist’, all that can rightly be proved against me is that I am prejudiced in supposing the Bible to be a good book, and that I hold it to be profitable for [people] to take its conceptions at least as seriously as they take their own.’

As someone who has great difficulty with many Christians’ view of Scripture as a simple answer book, I like Barth very much. I find a lot of Christians are rather naïve when it comes to interpreting the Bible, and his views offer a means of opening oneself to and participating in the drama of interpretation that seems to be wanting in a lot of churches.

Anyway, if anyone reads Barth’s ‘Church Dogmatics’ (about 40 volumes I think), there’s a cream tea in it. Or any of it, to be honest (which would be more than I).