Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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knowing, of causes and of effects. Faith, according to Barth, is defined as “experience of God, unmediated consciousness of the presence and reality of the trans-human, trans-worldly and therefore simply superior power of life.”51 Faith itself is the “historical movement par excellence” actualizing and making our cultural consciousness historical. “It stands heterogeneously over against the cognitive apparatus which assesses validity in logic, ethics, and aesthetics. At the point of faith two problems intersect one another which lie on completely different planes . . . the problem of the I, of the individual person, of the individual life, and the problem of law-structured consciousness, human culture, and reason.”52 Through the moment of faith, “the abstract possibility of culture-consciousness is actualized, transformed into concrete reality.”53 Herein the old Kantian-Schleiermacherian opposition between religion and science is overcome; religion does not enter into competition with logic, ethics, and aesthetics; nor yet is it separated from them. Rather it actualizes and transforms culture-consciousness into concrete reality. Scientific consciousness, because of its abstractions from reality, is not competent to establish the connection to reality. As Marquardt rightly comments, “religion with its eschatological vigor can help society to achieve vitality and social-scientific consciousness to establish ‘a connection to reality.’ ”54
As far as faith activates and actualizes the culture-consciousness of the individual into a concrete reality, Christian faith has its peculiarity through the personality of Jesus. In the personality of Jesus, the experience of God is somehow historically conditioned and determined and has been present within human society. The historical Jesus becomes the resurrected, living Christ in the community of Christ. From this perspective, the problem of the relation of faith and history has no fundamental importance. Rather it can become questionable only for those who stand outside of the experience of faith akin to Troeltsch. However, for those who live in the experience of faith, Christ outside of us is equal to Christ in us, and history is equal to faith. Therefore, “faith and the historicity of culture become synonyms.”55 Christ’s righteousness becomes my righteousness; Christ’s piety becomes my piety. He becomes I.
Revelation becomes historical in that revelation as history becomes effective through faith. Divine revelation in history can be experienced in the present through faith rather than through historical investigation. This coinherence between history and faith provides the basis for Barth to establish a theological connection to reality and to justify theological praxis in it. From this perspective, faith cannot be undermined and threatened by historical investigation. It was Schleiermacher who revealed how faith could be born in the individual. Through Schleiermacher, Luther’s meaning becomes obvious. Through Schleiermacher’s intuition, justification, and election become a fact “in the feeling brought about by God.”56 The ground of faith is the personal, inner life of Jesus. Faith is, therefore, direct, living contact with the living Lord. As far as the ground of faith is the inner life of Jesus in terms of the inner experience, as far as faith rests on Jesus’s own consciousness of God, the work of artists and composers such as Michelangelo, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven (and including the work of numberless little ones who are bearers of Christ’s reality) could be regarded as sources of revelation alongside Paul. “Barth welcomes Luther’s ‘if you believe, you have’ and Melanchthon’s exclusive concentration on the ‘benefits of Christ’, along with the sayings of old Angelus Silesius ( ‘If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you. . . .’).”57
In Geneva Barth encountered the real poverty of the industrial working class. He paid visits to the impoverished and spent a great deal of time in relief work with the poor. As Barth says, “I knew as a student the fed-up indifference of bourgeois circles and the poverty in Geneva. I regarded at that time the social misery as a necessary fact of nature, under which faith was not simply to set forth a strong but impractical hope.—Something new was brought to me through Calvin’s idea of a city of God on earth, and it led me to the fact that Jesus has portrayed the kingdom of God as a state of complete love of God and brothers.”58 His reading of Calvin’s Institutes helped Barth to think more deeply about the relation between the kingdom of God and the world. Despite the fact that old orthodoxy was introduced and taught in caricatures at the universities when Barth had studied Calvin, he committed to relearning theology from the basics.59
Karl Barth and the Social Question in Safenwill
As Barth noted,
Although in Geneva I had still lived completely and utterly in the religious atmosphere which I brought with me from Marburg, and especially from the circle of the Christlcihe Welt and its friends, when I moved to the industrial village of Safenwil, my interest in theology as such had to step back noticeably into second place (even though it continued to be nourished by my eager reading in the Christliche Welt, the Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, and even in the works of Troeltsch, etc.) Because of the situation I found in my community, I became passionately involved with socialism and especially with the trade union movement.60
Barth’s posthumous manuscript, “Socialist Speeches,” makes it possible to understand variations in his relation to socialism, particularly in his practical relation to organized socialism and the social democratic party in Switzerland and socialistic International. The “Socialist Speeches” (later so named by Barth himself) is the title of a collection of some forty-three addresses that Barth delivered during his Safenwil period.61 Barth began his pastorate in Safenwil on May 1, 1911. Four and a half months later he began to give his first socialist speech at the meeting of the Laborers’ Society in Safenwil. The Laborers’ Society was the official name of the local group of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. Barth was not a member of the socialist party yet when he began his “Socialist Speeches.” These earliest “Socialist Speeches” were formulated word for word just like sermons, and they construct comprehensive texts written out in the passion and precision of his proclamation.62 Half of Barth’s pastoral time in Safenwil was the time of World War I and the October Revolution in Russia.
Karl Barth and the Social Movement for Jesus
In 1911 Barth became the pastor in Safenwil, Switzerland, an industrial and agricultural area in the canton of Aargau. The first phase for Barth’s socialism can be located from the beginning of his pastoral work till the outbreak of the First World War. Barth himself testified in a speech (“Evangelium und Sozialismus”) of his interest in a relation between the gospel and socialism, during a meeting of the Workers’ Association in Küngoldingen on February 1, 1914.
How have I come to combine the gospel with socialism? I was educated to judge human beings not according to their money value, and to take material misery of the others as a serious problem. As a student I came to know the jaded indifference of bourgeois circles and the poverty in Geneva. At that time I still regarded social misery as a necessary fact of nature, to which faith had to provide a strong but impractical hope.—Something new was brought to me by Calvin’s idea of ‘God’s city’ on earth, and it led me to the fact that Jesus has portrayed the kingdom of God as a state of complete love of God and love among brothers. –Through S. I was acquainted with socialism and I was driven to more exact reflection and the study of the matter. Since that time, I have considered socialist demands an important part of the application of the gospel. Certainly, I also believe that they cannot be realized without the gospel.63