Karl Barth (1886-1968): Theology of Revelation

For Karl Barth divine revelation is Christ and Christ alone. Apart from the revelation of God in Christ, mankind has no hope of in any way coming to a knowledge of divine reality. There are various themes connected to the development of this kind of a theology of revelation.

2.1. Propositional or Personal Revelation?

For Barth revelation is not proposition but personal. Revelation is not about creeds but of God himself. One is not called to confess the faith of the Church but called to believe and confess God Himself.[1] Revelation is not an objective something out there. It is something that happens.[2] To Barth, revelation is a concrete, not abstract, knowledge of God and man in the event brought about by the initiative of a sovereign God.[3] Only in the Incarnation does one encounter the Word of God as the Revelation of God himself. The knowledge of God is grounded in God himself, not in nature, history, or human words.

2.2. The Rejection of General Revelation and Natural Theology

According to Barth, there are two possible approaches to the knowledge of God: the anthropocentric approach and the Christo-centric approach. In the anthropo-centric approach that constitutes anthropological theology, man is the ‘centre and measure and goal of all things.’[4] Such theologies proceed from man towards God. Anthropological theology is religionistic and humanistic. Such anthropocentrism assumes that God can be known on the basis of a general revelation in creation, human history, or in the human consciousness.[5] This theologia naturalis is to Barth the very opposite of divine grace.[6] As a matter of fact, as a theology detached from the revelation in Jesus Christ, it is only profitable to the theology and the church of the antichrist.[7]

2.2.1. For Barth revelation is redemptive in nature. To know God is to be related to him in a salvific experience.[8] This kind of relationship can never be effected by recourse to a theology that is based on nature or history.

2.2.2. Secondly, Barth sees divine revelation as grounded in God himself and an act of grace. To think in terms of reason as able to discover for itself a revelation out there is to discredit the value of grace.

2.2.3. Finally, for Barth revelation as personal cannot be apart from an encounter with the Living God in Jesus Christ. As personal it can only be responded to in the person of Jesus Christ. Nature, obviously, has no personality; therefore, it cannot reveal God himself to man.

2.3. The Threefold Form of the Word of God

According to Barth, the Word of God is the Word preached, the Word written, and the Word revealed.

2.3.1. The Word Preached. To Barth, the Word of God is God Himself in the proclamation of the Church of Jesus Christ. The proclamation of the Church is pure doctrine, says he, when the human word spoken in it in confirmation of the biblical witness to revelation offers and creates obedience to the Word of God.[9] Preaching is the human attempt to humanly express divine revelation to contemporary men. For Barth, all such preaching must be subservient to the Word of God attested in Holy Scripture and to nothing else.

2.3.2. The Word Written. For Barth, since the biblical writers of the Old and New Testament are ‘called directly by the Word to be its hearers, and they are appointed for its communication and verification to other men,’ they occupy a place of special authority in the church. The Bible contains the testimony of the primary witnesses to God’s revelation; it itself is not the primary form of revelation. This human and fallible witness of the prophets and apostles becomes the Word of God to people by the continuing revelatory ministry of the Holy Spirit.[10]

2.3.3. The Revealed Word. For Barth, the primary form of revelation or the Word of God is the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. The Word of God, the Revelation of God, cannot be distinguished from the Person of Jesus Christ, neither can it be differentiated from the reconciliation that took place in Him. Thus, to say revelation is to say ‘The Word became flesh.’[11] Of course, the whole Word of God in Christ is to be seen in relation of the history of Israel to the history of Jesus Christ and vice versa. However, it is only in Jesus that one can encounter the true God.

2.4. Critique

2.4.1. Barth’s assumption regarding revelation as personal and not propositional leads to the encounter theory. If propositions are of no value, then only testimonies of encounter matter. However, if Barth proves to be wrong and propositions are also of value, then revelation cannot be limited to the testimonies of divine encounter. This assumption of Barth also leads to the discrediting of the Creation account, the account of the Fall, and events of which the writers themselves could not have been eyewitnesses, and therefore, such as could only be propositionally communicated. But this, Barth rejects. It must be understood, however, that the significance of Christ can only be rightly estimated with reference to several other propositions regarding the history of humanity, the condition of man, the need of salvation, and the eschatological direction of the world.

2.4.2. The distinguishing of the anthropological from the Christological gives a valuable insight into the epistemics of divine reality. Naturally, the anthropological begins with man and ends with man, as is manifest in popular mythology and nature deifying theologies. However, the revelation in Christ reconciles man to God for in Christ one meets not only the perfect man but also the true and living God. In Christ transcendent and immanent reality, immutable and mutable reality, infinite and finite reality, and necessary and contingent reality come into a harmonious unity in plurality. Thus, Christ is the anticipation of reason, the harmonizer of the heart, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

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[1] Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (tr. Grover Foley; Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963), p. 99
[2] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), p. 185
[3] David L. Mueller, Karl Barth (Texas: Word Books, Publisher, 1972), p. 62
[4] Ibid, p. 51
[5] Ibid, p. 86
[6] Ibid, p. 88
[7] Emil Brunner & Karl Barth, Natural Theology (London: Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press, 1946), pp. 74, 128
[8] Erickson, Christian Theology, p. 163
[9] Mueller, Karl Barth, p. 59
[10] Ibid, p. 57
[11] Ibid, p. 55

© Domenic Marbaniang, Theology of Revelation, 2006