Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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than the customary order. What Jesus carried out in the remple was a revolution against the existing order. “There in the Temple, Jesus ignored the customary order with the fullness of the power of the Messiah. . . . Yes, Jesus carried out a revolution—when the divine appears in human form, there must always be a revolution against human order. Let us be drawn into this struggle. . . . Oh, if only we would awaken and want to become fighters!”112
In a sermon of February 23, 1913 Barth stresses Christian solidarity with the suffering of the world: “The misery of the world is your misery, its darkness is your darkness . . . We must acquire for ourselves that holy sense of solidarity which bears the suffering of the world in its heart, not in order to sigh and shake our heads over it, but rather to take it in hand so that it will be otherwise.”113 Barth also saw a clear connection between the social question and the question of militarism. Barth had served as the president of Blue Cross (a social service group ) ever since January 1912. Under his leadership, the “Blues” sometimes worked together with the “Reds” (i.e., socialists) in Safenwil.
In his “Dissenting View on Military Aircraft” (March 14, 1913),114 Barth distanced himself from the naïve pacifism of the socialists at that time. Against the patriotic sentiment that any expenditure for military aircraft means especially clear evidence of true love of fatherland, Barth (based on Matt 6:10 and Luke 11:2) regarded war as a criminal offense against humanity.115 War is War. “Military-expenditures are as such ‘horror before God.’”116 Barth also paid attention to the German Social Democratic Party. “I was well aware of August Bebel and old Liebknecht, and saw the prophetic cloud hovering over the German Social Democrats before it disappeared.”117
In his Easter sermon (March 23, 1913) Barth encouraged his congregation to become concerned about the battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil: “The message of Easter leads us to the boundary between two worlds. And on this boundary, a battle is raging. Two gigantic kingdoms are engaged in a war with one another . . . The world strives against God. But we cannot and we may not be mere spectators of this battle of which Easter speaks. We have to become partisan on one side or the other.”118
Soon after his wedding (on March 27, 1913), Barth prepared a lecture, “Belief in the Personal God” (delivered to the Aargau Pastors’ Association at Lenzburg on May 19).119 In Aargau Barth tried to reconcile his Marburg insights with his new socialist discoveries of the kingdom of God. In addition, in the sermon on May 4, 1913, he recognized the task for the pastor in the prophetic consciousness of Amos: “A prophet is, in all things, precisely the opposite of that which most people expect from a pastor these days and of that which most pastors have really been . . . The prophet is the employee of God. For him, it is a matter of indifference what people think of him and what they do to him . . . He knows that if he does his duty, they will be shocked by him and indignant . . . The prophet is the representative of the unaccustomed.”120 The kingdom of God does not stand in contrast to catastrophes and violent storms in revolution; rather they are in the service of it.
The importance of the lecture “Belief in the Personal God” lies in the fact that it demonstrates Barth’s early affinity toward the coexistence of dialectical thinking and analogical thinking. For Barth, personality and absoluteness are predicates of God in which religious experience becomes possible. The concept of personality lies between transcendentalism and psychology. In fact, just as transcendentalism refers to the infinite aspect of personality, psychology points to a concrete and finite aspect of personality. When viewed transcendentally, personality does not match with an absolute subject. Likewise if the concept of absoluteness were applied to a personal subject, the concept of personality would dissolve. Therefore absolute personality is nonsense. The only solution is to see two concepts in contradiction. God is an infinite Spirit. The problem of analogy comes out in Barth’s consideration of human personality and divine personality.121
For Barth, the analogical way of thinking is not based on the process of human ontological abstraction. This being the case, Feuerbach’s thesis—that the concept of God is the result of human projection—critiques religious experience. As Barth said, “We cannot find in the human personality an analogy to the real content of religious faith in God . . . A concept of God that results from projecting human self-awareness into the realm of the transcendent cannot latch on to the reality of God, or describe it exhaustively. Religion’s notion of God cannot be a projection from our side; it can only be the reflection of a fact that has been carried into us. This fact is the life in God which is granted to us through our association with history. This is the real religious experience; in it we possess God, and because of it we can speak of God.”122
The possibility of speaking of God comes out of the life in God, a reflection of a fact that has been created in us. Beginning on the divine side, analogical reflection is given to us through human association with history. Herein the anthropological approach to God is denied. Instead, Barth identifies the analogy of faith or the analogy of history for the first time. What is at stake here is that the motives of religious socialism and comprehensive universalism surface for the first time. The Ursprung of the analogy makes religious experience with God possible and justifies human speech about God. By way of dialectics and analogy we have God and can speak of God on the basis of them.
This Ursprung is formulated, in fact, not merely in a negative way but also in a positive way. The meaning of all negations is, from the start, the gaining of a theological position, namely, of a new beginning and starting point of thought. The intention of positive theology is also the intention of dialectical theology. Barth cites a formulation of Cohen to illustrate his point: “‘Non-grounding becomes the ground for grounding of the thought and the willed.’” That is, the critical a priori of Kant becomes a positive-theological apriori of God-thought. As Barth said, “to negate the grounding of the actual as such, that is to say, at the same time to affirm it. Negation of space and time is simultaneously master over them . . . It is the truth and validity of apriori which rests in itself, which proves itself here as the positive side of God-thought.”123
Already in 1914 Barth articulated a positive a priori not only in relation to the grounding of the thought and the willed, but also in relation to the grounding of the actual. In this dialectical framework, the concept of Ursprung is used so that the development of analogy becomes possible. The analogy of Ursprung stood before the conceptualization of the dialectics in Romans II, materially as well as temporarily. Analogy and dialectics can be co-originally set in the thought of Ursprung.
Barth’s thought of Ursprung by way of dialectics and analogy in 1914 can be seen later as a basis for the development of his socialistic theology in the Tambach lecture of 1919. In November 1913 Barth’s Sozipredigten (socialist sermons) caused five of six members of the church board to resign. “Newly elected were the Misters Hans Hilfiker, Wagner, Ernst Widmer, Artur Hüssy, Arnold Scheurmann, a moving company proprietor, and Ritschard, Mr. J. Schärer, School Property Administrator, was elected president.”124
In the sermons of 1913, we notice Barth’s strong preference for socialism in light of the kingdom of God. In a sermon dated 16 November, Barth addressed the socialists’ decision to retreat from the Landes church in Prussia: “The leader of this movement has made a declaration: We are for the religion, but against the state