A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

A History of Christian Doctrine
publication was Church Dogmatics (1932-64). It was the
most comprehensive theological work of the century, with
twenty-one volumes in English.
Barth emphasized the “otherness” of God and the
“strange new world” of the Bible. In other words, God is
so different from us that we could never learn about Him
simply by human reason. Rationalism is insufficient to
establish religion. Rather, we must learn about God by
revelation, and God’s Word is His revelation to us. Thus,
the basis of Christianity is revelation, not reason.
Clearly, Barth rejected the central tenet of
Liberalism—the idea that we can approach God and construct
religion through rationalism. He fell short of going
back completely to earlier Protestant orthodoxy, however,
because he did not fully uphold the infallibility of the
Bible and he employed the methods of higher criticism,
with its denial of the Bible’s literal accuracy.
He avoided the apparent conflict between his emphasis
on biblical revelation and his failure to uphold biblical
infallibility by stressing that God uses the Bible to speak
to us individually when we encounter Him personally.
Instead of viewing the Bible as the absolute Word of God,
he said it “becomes” the Word of God when humans
encounter God. The objective statements of Scripture,
then, are not as important as what the Bible means to us
subjectively. Here he built upon the existential philosophy
of Kierkegaard even while rejecting Liberalism itself.
Barth proclaimed the sovereignty of God. God is in
control of the world. We cannot remake God in our
image, for God is who He is.
In contrast to Liberalism, Barth emphasized the sinfulness
of humanity. Because of their sinfulness, humans
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