My Little Barth Project: First Impressions

First impressions from my little Barth project. I'm trying (but not alway succeeding) to read around 20 pages a day so I can finish Church Dogmatics (CD) in a year (this is not all I have to do in life). Right now, I'm about 25% through The Epistle to the Romans and nearing the end of the first volume of CD (I.1), "The Doctrine of the Word of God." The latter primarily covers the relationship of the Word of God to theology and the Trinity.

On Romans:
I am simultaneously reading Romans and CD, with priority going to the larger work. Looking back, this is probably not a good idea. For anyone interested in a similar project, I'd recommend starting and completing Romans before going on to CD. In the earlier parts, they overlap some in topic, and it's easy to get them confused. Romans is a much easier read and serves as a good introduction to Barth's thought. Be advised that is not anything remotely resembling an exegetical commentary; though he is faithful to the text, it is more of a vehicle for communicating his protest against modern liberal theology. The form of the work resembles a (very!) long sermon.

On CD:
First, some technical stuff: I never fully understood the purpose of this in my targeted study of later volumes, but the text is printed in two different sizes. The larger print is Barth's basic overall narrative; the smaller text is more advanced commentary that takes the place of footnotes. If one is interested in just a "casual" (ha!) reading, one can skip the smaller text entirely, and the uninterrupted narrative of the larger text flows smoothly. I am reading most the smaller text but trying not to spend too much time on it because of the next point.

I am reading the English translation, not the German original, which would take me forever and I don't have access to anyway. One irritating feature of this translation is that German is the ONLY language translated. (When Luther writes in German, it's translated; when his original is Latin, it is not.) There are huge untranslated Latin and Greek quotes throughout the work as well as a smattering of French. (Of course, they don't do this with Hebrew because of the difficulty in those days of typesetting its script.) I have studied both Latin and Greek but am rusty; also, I've only studied NT Greek, not its use in later church writings. This results in huge frequent speedbumps. If important, I work my way through them, but quite often I just skip them. It's also irritating to get slowed down by a Greek Bible verse thrown in just as an illustration, not for exegesis, and to have to pause for a minute before saying, “Oh yeah, that one.” Yes, I understand the value of reading originals, but THE WHOLE WORK IS A TRANSLATION; we're already missing out on the primary author. All this accomplishes is to make Barth less accessible to non-experts, a huge problem I will address later.

Now, on to the substance: Just starting CD, one is struck by Barth's brilliance; he truly does deserve to be considered one of the top theologians in the history of the church. Even if you don't agree with Barth, it is very instructive to see how he thinks. His mind takes different paths than theologians traditionally go, and he opens up whole news dimensions that we may never have considered before. Practically every page has a jewel on it.

This is not a dry, cold, analytic work; Barth's passion and fire come through strongly. It is a pity, but summaries of his work, including my own halting descriptions, fall far short of capturing the feel, tone, and depth of his thought. I would caution those who read a summary somewhere and think they understand Barth, even more those who read reactionary critiques and thereby rule him out as one of the acceptable "good guys." I have come across blatant misrepresentations in such works, and again, even if you disagree with him, he's still worth reading.

Barth deserves very careful reading. Some statements, if read hastily, can be construed very controversially; translation compounds this problem. For example, Barth has been accused of modalism, and statements I have read in later volumes would seem to confirm this; moreover, he's very fond of the word "mode." However, in reading his treatment of the Trinity in this volume, he directly addresses and rejects modalism (Sabellianism) and makes numerous statements totally incompatible with it. Until I encounter overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I will take him at his word on that issue.

One is struck by how highly contextual Barth's theology is. Often European (and American) theologies are viewed as “universal” theologies, and contextual theology is the special task of the developing world. However, Barth cannot be understood without knowledge of classical liberal theology, the European situation between the wars, and the history of protestant theology on the continent. While one finds his arguments highly persuasive, full commitment is checked by this recognition of contextualism, and one wonders whether Barth himself ever came to realize how this undermines his approach. Typical of German authors, he rarely takes the time to get the uninitiated up to speed on these issues.

Related to this, and while I have yet to commit to a position, Barth's arguments against natural theology are compelling; his discussion of the vestigium trinitatis (vestige/footprint/trace of the Trinity in nature--see, that wasn't so difficult) particularly illustrates the problem with it. Consequently, although traditional Calvinism disagrees with him on this point, to some extent his thought is the logical end of Calvinism's and Calvinism the natural home of his. Whether or not a responsible Arminian appropriation is possible remains to be seen.

My biggest criticism, one that I will repeat loudly and often, is that Herr Barth desperately needed an editor. Someone needed to intervene at the early stages, throw his first draft back at him, and say, "Cut a couple hundred pages out of this and then we'll talk." At this point some will protest, "But he's so brilliant! He need so many words to get his message across the way he wants! It's his style!" Yes, but the primary effect of this is to remove Barth from the reach of the vast majority of his potential audience. Very few people will actually take the time to work through so many thousands of pages; for goodness' sake, he has paragraphs that run three pages without a break. Theologians have a responsibility to be deep and to be detailed, but they also have a responsibility to share their work with the wider church. For that to occur, it must be accessible. Seven thousand pages and long passages of untranslated Greek and Latin do not constitute accessible.

Barth stumbles at this point. To 90%+ of people who would ask me what portions of his Dogmatics to read, I would recommend Emil Brunner's instead. Brunner is a far more disciplined writer and completes his systematic work in fewer pages than Barth's entire "Doctrine of the Word of God." For ministers in training, for beginning to intermediate students of theology, his work is far more accessible and therefore useful to the church.