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‘The visible renewal of human life’: Barth's ethical assessment of the Reformed confessions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2024

Michael Allen Open the ORCID record for Michael Allen [Opens in a new window]
Michael Allen*
Affiliation:
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL, USA
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Email: mallen@rts.edu
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Abstract

Karl Barth's Theology of the Reformed Confessions characterised those catechetical texts as more ethical in orientation and more horizontal in focus than the corresponding Lutheran symbols. By examining both primary and secondary sources, this paper shows that while Barth legitimately illumines a key element of the Reformed witness regarding a connection between faith and life, his polemical eye may also distort his perspective on its distinctiveness, likely owing to contextual factors related to his self-fashioning a Reformed identity in his early academic service at the predominantly Lutheran University of Göttingen and alongside his colleague, Emanuel Hirsch.

Keywords

Karl BarthethicsLutheran theologyReformed confessionsReformed theology
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , First View , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Barth, Karl, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, eds. Guder, Darrell L. and Guder, Judith J. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), pp. 147–8Google Scholar.

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4 Ibid., p. 77.

5 Barth, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, pp. 147–8.

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16 Martin Bucer, Instruction in Christian Love, ed. Paul T. Fuhrmann (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1952), p. 42.

17 See Karl Barth, ‘Jesus Christus und die Soziale Bewegung’, in Karl Barth (ed.), Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1909–1914 (Zurich: TVZ, 1993), p. 405.

18 See Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 295–6 for citations from and analysis of this element in his correspondence with Thurneysen. The relevant letters appear as early as December 11, 1921 and run through the following year. See also Robert P. Erickson, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

19 Jens Holger Schjørring, Theologische Gewissensethik und politische Wirklichkeit: das Beispiel Eduard Geismars und Emanuel Hirschs (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1979). Cf. Erickson, Theologians under Hitler, p. 121, n. 2.

20 See Walter Buff, ‘Karl Barth und Emanuel Hirsch: Anmerkungen zu einem Briefwechsel’, in Hans Martin Müller (ed.), Christliche Wahrheit und neuzeitliches Denken: Zu Emanuel Hirschs Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Katzmann Verlag, 1984), pp. 15–26.

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23 Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, in LW 34, pp. 327–78.

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27 Barth, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, p. 87.

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