412 - Excerpts From Barth

Excerpts From Barth
The Strange New World Within The Bible

WE are to attempt an answer to the questions, "What is there within the Bible? What sort of house is it to which the Bible is the door? What sort of country is spread before our eyes when we throw the Bible open?"

We are with Abraham in Haran. We hear a call which commands: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, unto a land that I will show thee." We hear a promise: "I will make of thee a great nation. And Abraham believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness." What is the meaning of all this? We feel that there is something behind these words and experiences, but what?

We are with Moses in the wilderness. For forty years, he has been living among the sheep, doing penance for an over-hasty act. What change has come over him? We are not told; it is apparently not our concern. But suddenly there also comes to him a call: "Moses! Moses! ... I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt," and a simple assurance, "Certainly I will be with thee." Here again are words and experiences which seem at first to be nothing but riddles. We do not read anything like this either in the daily papers or in books. What is it that lies behind?...

What is there within the Bible? What is the significance of the remarkable line from Abraham to Christ? What of the chorus of prophets and apostles, and what is the burden of their song? What is the one truth that these voices evidently all desire to announce, each in its own tone, each in its own way? What lies between the strange statement, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," and the

This is a somewhat abbreviated version of one of Barth's earliest essays. It was originally given in 1916 as an address to Swiss pastors in the town of Leutwil. Programmatic and anticipatory, the essay is often quoted as characteristic of Barth's major theological emphasis. The essay first appeared in English in The Word of God and the Word of Man, edited and translated by Douglas Horton (Pilgrim Press, 1928). In 1958, the book was reprinted in the Harper & Row "Torchbook" series. Curiously, the original German title was simply "Die neue Welt in der Bibel." Horton added the word "Strange," a subtle but perhaps diversionary suggestion. Permission to reprint this excerpt has been granted by Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco.

To bridge the decades from his early theological efforts to Barth's later, mature thought, we append two additional excerpts. The first is taken from a letter by Barth to Japanese friends who proposed to celebrate his 70th birthday in 1956. (The translation is by Daniel L. Migliore, and the original can be found in Karl Barth, Offene Briefe 1945-1968 [Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, Vol. V]. Permission granted by Theologischer Verlag, Zurich.)

The second brief comment comes from the section on "Prayer" in Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, being the American lectures which Barth delivered in 1962 at the University of Chicago and at Princeton Theological Seminary (Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., 1963; permission granted by the publishers). Both comments relate to Barth's later views of what it means to "do" theology.

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equally strange cry of longing, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus"? What is behind all this?

It is a dangerous question. We might do better not to come too near this burning bush. For we are sure to betray what is-behind us! The Bible gives to everyone and to every era such answers as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more-high and divine content if it is high and divine content we seek; transitory and historical content, if it is transitory and historical content we seek; nothing whatever, if it is nothing whatever we seek. The hungry are satisfied by it, and to the satisfied, it is surfeiting before they have opened it. The question, "What is within the Bible?" has a mortifying way of converting itself in the opposing question, "Well, what are you looking for, and who are you, pray, who makes bold to look?"

In spite of all this danger of making embarrassing discoveries in ourselves, we must yet trust ourselves to ask our question. Moreover, we must trust ourselves to reach eagerly for an answer which is really much too large for us, for which we really are not yet ready, and of which we do not seem worthy, since it is a fruit which our own longing, striving, and inner labor have not planted. What this fruit, this answer is, is suggested by the title of my address: "Within the Bible, there is a new world, the world of God."

This answer is the same as that which came to the first martyr, Stephen: "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Neither by the earnestness of our belief nor by the depth and richness of our experience have we deserved the right to this answer. What I shall have to say about it will be only a small and unsatisfying part of it. We must openly confess that we are reaching far beyond ourselves. But that is just the point. If we wish to come to grips with the contents of the Bible, we must dare to reach far beyond ourselves. The Book admits of nothing less. For, besides giving to all of us what we rightly deserve-to one much, to another something, to a third nothing-it leaves us no rest whatever, if we are in earnest, when with our shortsighted eyes and awkward fingers we have found the answer in it that we deserve....

There is a river in the Bible that carries us away once we have entrusted our destiny to it-away from ourselves to the sea. The Holy Scriptures will interpret themselves in spite of all our human limitations. We need only dare to follow this drive, this spirit, this river, to grow out beyond ourselves toward the highest answer. This daring is faith; and we read the Bible rightly, not when we do so with false modesty, restraint, and attempted sobriety, for these are passive qualities, but when we read it in faith. And the invitation to dare and to reach toward the highest, even though we do not deserve it, is the expression of grace in the Bible. The Bible unfolds to us as we are met, guided, drawn on, and made to grow by the grace of God.

What is there within the Bible? History! The history of a remarkable, even unique, people; the history of powerful, intellectually vigorous

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personalities; the history of Christianity in its beginnings-a history of people and ideas in which those who consider themselves educated must be interested if for no other reason than because of its effects upon the: times following and the present time.

Now, one can content oneself for a time with this answer and find in it. many true and beautiful possibilities. The Bible is full of history, religious history, literary history, cultural history, world history, and. human history of every sort. A picture full of animation and color is unrolled before all who approach the Bible with open eyes.

But the pleasure is short-lived. The picture, on closer inspection, proves quite incomprehensible and flat, if it is meant only as history. The one who is looking for history or for stories will be glad, after a little, to turn from the Bible to the morning paper or to other books. For when we study history and amuse ourselves with stories, we are always wanting to know: "How did it all happen? How is it that one event follows another? What are the natural causes of things? Why did the people speak such words and live such lives?"

It is just at the most decisive points of its history that the Bible gives no answer to our "Why." Such is the case, indeed, not only with the Bible, but with all truly decisive persons and events of history. The greater a crisis, the less of an answer to our inquisitive "Why." And vice versa: the smaller a person or an era, the more the "historians" find to explain and establish. But the Bible meets the lover of history with silences quite unparalleled.

Why is it that the people of Israel did not perish in Egyptian bondage but remained a people, or rather, in the very deepest of their need, became one? Why? There was a reason! Why was it that Moses was able to create a law which for purity and humanity puts us moderns to shame? There was a reason! Why is it that Jeremiah stands there during the seige of Jerusalem with his message of doom, an enemy of the people, a man without a country? Why Jesus' heating of the sick? Why his messianic consciousness? Why the resurrection? Why does Saul become Paul? Why that other-worldly picture of Christ in the fourth Gospel? Why does John on the Isle of Patmos-ignoring the Roman Empire in its heyday-see the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband? There was a reason....

The Bible itself answers our eager "WHY" neither like a sphinx with a thousand arguments, deductions, and parallels, but says to us "the decisive cause is God. Because God lives, speaks, acts, there was a reason ... !"

To be sure, when we hear the word "God," it may at first seem the same as "there was a reason." In the leading articles of newspapers, one does not expect to have events explained by the fact that "God created," or "God spoke." When God enters, history for the while ceases to be, and there is nothing more to ask; for something wholly different and new begins-a history with its own distinct grounds, possibilities, and hypotheses.

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The paramount question is whether we have understanding for this different, new world, or good will enough to meditate and enter upon it inwardly. Do we desire the presence of "God"? Do we dare to go whither evidently we are being led? That means "faith." A new world projects itself into our old ordinary world. We may reject it. We may say, "It is nothing; this is imagination, madness, this God." But we may not deny nor prevent our being led by Bible "history" far out beyond what is elsewhere called history-into a new world, into the world of God.

We may also say that there is morality within the Bible. It is a collection of teachings and illustrations of virtue and human greatness. No one has ever yet seriously questioned the fact that, in their way, the people of the Bible were good, exemplary persons from whom we have an endless amount to learn. Whether we seek practical wisdom or lofty examples of a certain type of heroism, we find them here.

And, again, in the long run, we do not. Large parts of the Bible are almost useless to the school in its moral curriculum because they are lacking in just this wisdom and just these "good examples." The heroes of the Bible are to a certain degree quite respectable, but to serve as examples for the good, efficient, industrious, publicly educated, average citizen-then people like Samson, David, Amos, and Peter are very ill fitted.... The Bible is an embarrasment in school and foreign to it. How shall we find in the life and teaching of Jesus something to "do" in "practical life"? Is it not as if he wished to say to us at every step, "What interest have I in your 'practical life'? I have little to do with that. Follow after me, or let me go my way."

At certain crucial points, the Bible amazes us by its remarkable indifference to our conception of good and evil. Abraham, for instance, as the highest proof of his faith desires to sacrifice his son to God; Jacob wins the birthright by a refined deception of his blind father; Elijah slays the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal by the brook Kishon. Are these exactly praiseworthy examples?

And in how many phases of morality the Bible is grieviously wanting! How little fundamental information it offers in regard to the difficult questions of business life, marriage, civilization, and statecraft with which we have to struggle! To mention only a single problem, but to us today a mortal one, how unceremoniously and constantly war is waged in the Bible! Time and again, when this question comes up, the teacher or minister must resort to various kinds of extra-biblical material, because the New as well as the Old Testament almost completely breaks down at this point. Time and again, serious Christian people who seek "comfort" and "inspiration" in the midst of personal difficulties will quietly close their Bibles.... Time and again, the Bible gives us the impression that it contains no instructions, counsels, or examples whatsoever either for individuals or for nations and governments; and the impression is correct. It offers us not at all what we first seek in it.

Once more, we stand before this "other" new world which begins in the Bible. In it, the chief consideration is not the doings of humanity but the doings of God-not the various ways which we may take if we are

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people of good will, but the power out of which good will must first be created-not the unfolding and fruition of love as we may understand it, but the existence and outpouring of eternal love, of love as God understands it-not industry, honesty, and helpfulness as we may practice them in our old ordinary world, but the establishment and growth of a new world, the world in which God and God's morality, reign....

Let us seek our way out on still another side. Let us start with the proposition that in the Bible we have a revelation of true religion, of religion defined as what we are to think concerning God, how we are to find and how we are to conduct ourselves in God's presence-all that is included in what today we like to call "religious experience." The Bible as a "sourcebook of spirituality"-how much has been said and written upon this theme in recent years! And such the Bible is. It is a treasury of truth concerning the right relation of human creatures to the eternal and divine. But here, too, the same law holds: we have only to seek honestly and we shall make the plain discovery that there is something greater in the Bible than religion and piety. Here again, we have only a kind of crust which must be broken through.

We have all been troubled with the thought that there are so many kinds of Christianity in the world ..., all of them appealing with the same earnestness and zeal to the Bible. Each insists, Ours is the religion revealed in the Bible, or at least its most legitimate successor. And how is one to answer? Does it not require a generous bit of effrontery to say. "We Protestants, or we members of such and such a communion or denomination, are right, for such and such reasons; and all others are wrong?"...Or, shall we take the position that basically we are all right? Shall we dip our hands into that from which the spirit of the Bible silently turns away, the dish of tolerance which is more and more being, proclaimed? ...

Or may we all, jointly and severally, with our various views and various forms of religious experience, be-wrong? The fact is that we must seek our answer in this direction-"Yea, let God be true, but every one a liar." All religions may be found in the Bible, if one will have it so; but when we look closely, there are none at all. There is only-the "other," new, greater world! When we come to the Bible with our questions-"How shall I think of God and the universe? How arrive at the divine? How express myself?-it answers us, as it were, "My dear friend, these are your problems, you must not ask me! Whether it is better to hear mass or hear a sermon, whether the proper form of Christianity is to be discovered in the Salvation Army or in Christian Science, whether the better belief is that of old Rev. Dr. Smith or young Rev. Mr. Jones, whether your religion should be a religion of the understanding, of the will, or of the feelings, you can and must decide for yourself. If you do not care to enter upon my questions, you may, to be sure, find in me all sorts of arguments and quasi-arguments for one or another standpoint, but you will not then find what is really here." We

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shall find ourselves only in the midst of a vast human controversy and far, far away from reality, or what might become reality in our lives.

It is not right human thoughts about God that form the content of the Bible, but right divine thoughts about us. The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God, but what God says to us. Not how we find the way to God, but how God has sought and found the way to us. Not the right relation in which we must place ourselves, but the covenant which God has made with all who are Abraham's spiritual children and which has been sealed once and for all in Jesus Christ. It is this that is within the Bible. The word of God is within the Bible.

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A Letter to Japanese Friends

In all circumstances, theology is a beautiful, a joyful task. It may and should be that today also for you. I say this to you after I have tried to study theology for more than fifty years. When I began doing this as a young man, I was often worried and morose in my work. Later, I could see that if one grasps it rightly, one is led by theology to a place that-despite all difficulties and tiresome work that awaits one there-is a bright place. Here with all one's longing to see "face to face" (I Cor. 13:13) one can live-for oneself and for others. My dear Japanese friends, if you also find yourselves led to this bright place in your theological activity, then you have rightly understood me, and I think that your work also will be a sowing of living seed among both Christians and non-Christians of your land and people.

Theology, however, requires free persons. As a young theologian, I belonged to a "school." It was not a bad school; I still think gratefully of my former teachers. But I later had to free myself from their school not only because there were some things in their instruction which were not entirely right, but simply because it was a school. And now I would not want the result of my life to be the formation of a new school. I am in the habit here of telling everyone who will listen that I myself in any case am no "Barthian." The reason is that after having learned some things, I would like to remain free to continue to learn. You understand what I am saying to you: Concern yourself as little as possible with my name! Because there is only one interesting name, whereas the promotion of all other names can only lead to false bonds and can only provoke boring jealousy and obduracy in others. Do not take a single sentence from me untested. Instead, measure each of them by the Word of God who alone is true and who is judge and supreme teacher of us all. You understand me rightly if you allow yourselves to be led by what I say to what the Word of God says. Good theologians do not live in a house of ideas, principles, and methods. They stride through all such houses in order to come out again and again into the open. They remain on the way. They have the distant high mountains and the infinite sea of God before their eyes, and just for that reason and in closest proximity they surely also

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have their fellow human beings-the good and the evil, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the Christian and the non-Christian, the Eastern and the Western-to whom they may be witnesses in all modesty.

If you want to accompany me further in this joy and freedom, then everything is in order if you want to think in a friendly way on May 10 of the seventy-year-old man in Basel.

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On Theological Work

Theological work is distinguished from other kinds of work by the fact that anyone who desires to do this work cannot proceed by building with complete confidence on the foundation of questions that are already settled, results that are already achieved, or conclusions that are already arrived at. He cannot continue to build today in any way on foundations that were laid yesterday by himself, and he cannot live today in any way on the interest from a capital amassed yesterday. His only possible procedure every day, in fact every hour, is to begin anew at the beginning. And in this respect theological work can be exemplary for all intellectual work. Yesterday's memories can be comforting and encouraging for such work only if they are identical with the recollection that this work, even yesterday, had to begin at the beginning and it is to be hoped, actually began there. In theological science, continuation always means "beginning once again at the beginning."