Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung

Читать онлайн книгу.

Karl Barth - Paul S. Chung


Скачать книгу
alienated from the religious socialists. Barth was not regarded as a committed supporter of either Kutter or Ragaz. In coming to terms with Kutter, however, Barth was concerned more about holding for a period of tranquil growth than having time for organized activities. In addition, there occurred an emotional conflict between Ragaz and Barth. Barth wrote a review of Blumhradt’s Hausandachten (House Prayer) in an issue of Neue Wege with the title “Wait for the Kingdom of God.” In his review Barth expressed his critique of religious socialists with the following words: “Our dialectic has reached a dead end, and if we want to be healthy and strong we must begin all over again, not with our own actions, but quietly ‘waiting’ for God’s action.” Ragaz refused to publish it, regarding it as quietistic. This episode severed any contact between Barth and Ragaz. Barth mused, “Ragaz and I roared past one another like two express trains: he went out of the church, I went in.”235 Although Barth was alienated from religious socialism, he still served as a delegate to the SPS Party Congress in Bern (June 8, 1917).

      God as the New World in the Bible

      In his article “The Strange New World within the Bible” (“Die neue Welt in der Bibel”), which was delivered in the church at Lentwil in the autumn of 1916, Barth finds the Bible to be the canon of theological discourse on God, humans, and the world. In other words, the development of Barth’s theology results from the discovery of the new world in the Bible. The Bible is a witness to the new world in which Barth finds the being of God extra nos and speaks of the transcendence of God in a theologically positive way. Whoever wants to interpret the Bible must speak of the new world in it. Barth materializes concepts such as the absolute and the new from the standpoint of God in a biblical-theological manner. In the biblical discourse on the new world, Barth defines the Jenseits of the existing society as knowledge of God. The Bible qualifies a contrast between the human/relative and the absolute/divine as a verifiable position. The standpoint of God, which is to be shown in the Bible, is not the image of the individual-relative standpoint of humans, but the example toward which an explicit and univocal action of human being must orient itself.

      Given that Barth understood his lecture activity in connection with his parish work, we notice that Barth arranged the manuscript of a funeral sermon on Safenwil worker Arnold Hunzinker under his “Socialist Speeches.” In other words, for Barth, party and parish work belong together. His funeral sermon was published in the New Free Aargauer (on Monday, September 3, 1917), which was the official publication organ of the Aargau Social Democratic Party and of the cartel of workers’ unions. This sermon interpreted the socialist understanding of death and resurrection in the workers’ particular struggle against capitalism, in light of Barth’s theological subject matter. Here Barth accepted and applied the interpretation without contradiction.


Скачать книгу