Can evangelicals learn something from Karl Barth? And why not the reverse: Can Barth(ians) learn something from evangelicals? This volume about early (and some later) engagement between Barth and various European "Pietists" by his wise interpreter and biographer, Eberhard Busch, can help answer both questions. The Pietism here described is of a piece with today's evangelicalism with regard to spiritual rebirth, rigorous and joyful sanctification, and evangelistic passion. This 1978 work was carefully translated and helpfully introduced by Daniel Bloesch (no little influenced by his cousin, the notable theologian, Donald Bloesch), the translator adding an interesting appendix with a brief history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Pietism.
Donald Dayton, observing in his foreword later indications of Barth's greater sympathy for Pietism (a "sibling rivalry," xi), anticipates the development in their relationship that Busch has methodically tracked over six stages that run to Barth's death, although the bulk of the book is devoted to the early Barth's critique. While it is easy to get bogged down in the details, which are considerable, it is important to acknowledge the shifts but also the continuity in the exchange between Barth and his Pietist conversation partners of that period, not only for historical interest but also as they bear on the contemporary Barthian-evangelical dialogue.
The trajectory begins with the period of the early "liberal Barth" (1907–12), one not without Pietist influences in his family and appreciation for Tersteegen and Zinzendorf. It then moves to a second stage with Barth's first edition of his Epistle to the Romans (1919) and its sharp turn away from the day's theology as it was shaped by modernity, indeed including Pietism as itself a child of that era. Then comes a third stage marked by a significantly altered second edition of the Romans commentary (1922) that continues to 1930 with the critique of Pietism appearing against the background of an attack on human-centered religion, evoking, in turn, a sharp Pietist counter-critique. Next is a fourth stage (1933–34) that continued and deepened his criticism. Following that, a fifth stag,e "in which he shows a new appreciation for the central concern of the Pietists, summarized by the key terms conversion, new birth, spiritual awakening, sanctification and discipleship" (xiii), all this being reflected in volume IV/2 of Barth's Church Dogmatics (1955). While continuing to challenge organized Pietist movements in Europe, Barth's sixth stage was marked by an interest in a "theology of the Holy Spirit" with its obvious connection to Pietist/evangelical accents. Along the way, Busch does his own pro and con evaluation of Barth's criticism's of Pietism, as well as their responses to Barth. What a story!
Returning to our first question—what evangelicals can learn from Barth—we consider his major criticisms, as interpreted by Busch. They begin in his "liberal" period and continue in the first edition of the Romans commentary in which "individualism" becomes the target, Barth here linking Pietism with romanticism and rationalism as lacking an "organic" understanding of the growth of the kingdom of God, with its political (remembering his early interest in religious socialism in this period) and ecclesial implications, declaring the individual as inseparable from the matrix of the church. However, premised in the first edition, developed with sharpness in the second edition, and continuing throughout Barth's career is the fundamental challenge to the religious tendency of the period represented in views as different on the surface as the theology of Schleiermacher and the theology of Pietism. In this review we will concentrate on this critique as it bears on the questions at hand, although, as noted by Busch and Bloesch, Barth softened his earlier criticism and, indeed, later spoke more appreciatively of Pietism touching its faithful witness to sin and grace, its declared intention to not be conformed to the world, and the legitimacy of affect in faith as long as faith was not reduced to it.
Barth holds that the common problem of the church of modernity—liberal or conservative—is its anthropocentric "religion." The distance between God and human beings is dishonored by our attempt to take deity captive in human "experiences," institutions, and projects. Thus the claim to "possess" God in the experience of the new birth, associated with its claim to grow without interruption in the life of sanctification, fails to understand that Paul's confession of sin in Romans 7 applies to the believer as well as the unbeliever. Pietists need to learn from the Reformation's simul iustus et peccator—a believer is, at the same time, justified and sinner. For all that, Barth did not deny the importance of conversion and sanctification, and he credits the Pietists with refusal to conform to the world (parallel to the "ascetics") and for their attempt to take Scripture seriously. He sought to make a "dialectical" critique, challenging the focus on the "I, me, and mine" personal experience of salvation as the defining characteristic of a believer's relationship to Christ rather than the objective deed of God in Christ and the trusting faith of justification, itself always in need of confessing the persistence of sin in those who had been pardoned.
In his earlier criticism, the influence of Kierkegaard on Barth can be seen as he speaks of the "paradox" of faith, of the "impossible possibility" of being a Christian, wary of treating the Christian life as being "at one's disposal" (101) in our decisions and efforts and claims to unambiguous growth. While Barth acknowledges there is a clear difference between the "old man" and the "new man," he believes they cannot be divided into two tangible groups of human beings that are opposed to each other, as . . . "'Christians' are always called to repentance and the ‘unbelievers' are always called to hope" (101).
Busch believes that Barth's stress on the freedom of God plays a big role in his critique of Pietism, not wanting to tie God down to our claims.
The response to Barth by Pietists did acknowledge a kinship with some of his views—the holiness of God; his christocentricity; and his rejection of liberalism, romanticism, and rationalism. However, they questioned (1) his interpretation of their views; (2) his own faithfulness to Scripture, especially his apparent exclusive stress on the objectivity of Christ's work and lack of place for its subjective appropriation; (3) his contention that "all certainties, securities, tangible experiences, and comforts should be abandoned" (quoting the Pietist G. F. Nagel, 152); and (4) lack of evidence of his own conversion experience as being the source of many of his errors. Busch, in turn, questions much of this criticism, declaring that Barth's view is "dialectical" and "paradoxical," acknowledging the legitimacy of Christian experience, but not the Pietist interpretation of it. What they failed to see, says Busch, is Barth's early charge of the "Pharisaism of the tax collector" (167). Busch, however, has his own questions for Barth, as, for example, challenging his fairness to some Pietists who are willing to be self-critical. And he finds an openness to Pietist concerns as Barth continues his own theological journey, although the key questions remain.
Barth's critique of Pietism over time can be summarized in this way. Beware the dangers of (1) identifying a datable Christian emotive experience as the exclusive access to Christ's saving work; (2) identifying our acts of repentance and experience of new birth as "possessing" God; (3) inordinate focus on our personal, human piety such that the divine freedom and majesty are compromised and the objective deed of God in Christ is diminished; (4) being so taken with the affective aspect of Christian life and growth that their ambiguity is ignored, needing, therefore, the Reformation teaching of simul iustus et peccator—at the same time justified and sinner; (5) dividing the world too simplistically between the legions of light and the armies of darkness; and (6) ignoring the socio-political dimension of mission in the exclusive attention given by Pietists to its evangelistic dimension.
In turn, there are counter-criticisms to be made of Barth, some occurring in the exchange with him over the years by his interlocutors. We focus on those matters related to an experiential piety rather than going into a range of other questions. They cluster around Barth's stress on the divine sovereignty as it has to do with personal salvation. The issue was put well by evangelical Waldron Scott in his otherwise appreciative study of Barth's theology of mission. In supporting mission to the those who have not heard the gospel:
Barth seems to imply that the final motive is simply that all men may know their salvation. "This contrast between the Church's [knowledge] and the world's terrible ignorance is the motive . . . bridging the gap" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, 607). To the evangelical mind this seems terribly inadequate as motivation for mission. It is true that the salvation of all men has been provided for at Calvary. . . . The church moves out in mission not to inform men that they are saved, but that they can be saved as they fix their faith and hope in God (1 Peter 1:21).1
This raises the question of the meaning of justification for Barth: "Justification definitely means the sentence executed and revealed in Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection, the No and Yes with which God vindicates Himself in relation to covenant-breaking man" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 96).
While Barth repudiated the automatic universalism implied by Scott (Church Dogmatics IV/3/1, 478), his radical stress on the objective act of universal atonement and motivation for mission as sharing that knowledge do not do justice to the numerous passages in the New Testament that speak of the necessity of a personal confession of faith in Jesus Christ, a justifying faith made possible by saving grace. This is an evangelical witness that cannot be lost in whatever dialogue goes on with the theology of Karl Barth. While the debate about the proper and improper role of "experience" vis-a-vis the divine freedom and holiness was front and center in Barth's early (and later) encounter with Pietism, to the extent that the Pietists were making Waldron Scott's point, they were right in their criticism of Barth.
Another way to frame the issue is Busch's allusion to the finitum non capax infiniti stressed by the Reformed tradition (the finite is not capable of receiving the infinite) at work in the extreme in Barth's theology, and the finitum capax infiniti of others, including not only the Pietists around the issue of personal salvation but also the early Bonhoeffer regarding the nature of the church and sacraments (in his Act and Being). Interestingly, both used the same concept in criticizing Barth. The Pietists asserted Christ to be "haveable" in the conversion experience and Christian life, and Bonhoeffer declared Christ "haveable" in the church and sacraments, a Lutheran critique of Barth's actualist ecclesiology in which Barth conceives the church as an "event" that "becomes" when the divine freedom so chooses rather than God promising always to be present among the people gathered around Word and sacrament. While Barth's non capax caution must be honored (related as it surely was later to the struggle against "German Christianity" that took God captive in horrendous human political machinations, as well as in his earlier struggle against a human-centered Enlightenment religion), it must not be allowed to trump the biblical warrant for the assurance of the believer in personal salvation, nor the confidence in the unbroken relation of the Head to the body of Christ, regardless of the continuing sin in the lives of both believer and church. Christ is "haveable" by grace because so promised (the point of the Pietists and Bonhoeffer), but not haveable by human works and always afflicted by the fallenness of our experience—personal and ecclesial (Barth's proper critique). That is the kind of "dialectical" and "paradoxical" approach required of both.
For those who believe evangelicals have a worthy interlocutor in Karl Barth and want answers to the questions posed earlier, this is a book to read and digest.
