Note: because of the graphics used in this article, select the "wide screen resolution" button to display it properly (of the six buttons at the top right, it's the second one from the left). When all treasures are tried, Truth is the fairest.
Let laymen learn it, for the lettered know it;
Truth is the dearest of the treasures of the living.
(Piers Plowman, 134-136) Karl Barth, Meister Dialectician, speaks for himself in plain English:
"I myself am also a liberal –
and perhaps even more liberal
than those who call themselves liberals." Karl Barth (Leuzte Zeugnisse, 1969, p. 33f., 27, quoted in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, translated by John Bowden, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976, p. 469.)
"To the new theology, the usefulness of a symbol is in direct proporation to its obscurity. There is connotation, as the word god, but there is no definition. The secret of the strength of neoorthodoxy is that these religious symbols with a connotation of personality give an illusion of meaning, and as a consequence it appears to be more optimisitic than secular existentialism." Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There, IVP, 1968.
Text version: Dr. Henry and Word, Inc, have graciously granted the Bulletin permission to publish this excerpt from Henry's forthcoming auobiography, tentatively titled. Confessions of a Theologian.
When Karl Barth came to America for a few lectures at University of Chicago Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, George Washington University made a belated effort to bring him to the nation's capital. Barth was weary; but he volunteered to come for an hour's question-answer dialogue. The university invited 200 religious leaders to a luncheon honoring Barth, at which guests were invited to stand, identify themselves, and pose a question. A Jesuit scholar from either Catholic University or Georgetown voiced the first question. Aware that the initial queries often set the mood for all subsequent discussion, I asked the next question. Identifying myself as "Carl Henry, editor of Christianity Today" I continued: "The question, Dr. Barth, concerns the historical factuality of the resurrection of Jesus." I pointed to the press table and noted the presence of leading religion editors or reporters representing the United Press, Religious News Service, Washington Post, Washington Star and other media. If these journalists had their present duties in the time of Jesus, I asked, was the resurrection of such a nature that covering some aspect of it would have fallen into their area of responsibility "Was it news," I asked, "in the sense that the man in the street understands news?"
Barth became angry. Pointing at me, and recalling my identification, he asked: "Did you say Christianity Today or Christianity Yesterday!" The audience—largely nonevangelical professors and clergy—roared with delight. When encountered unexpectedly in this way, one often reaches for a scripture verse. So I replied, assuredly out of biblical context, "Yesterday, today, and forever." When further laughter subsided, Barth took up the challenge: "And what of the virgin birth? Would the photographers come and take pictures of it?" he asked. Jesus, he continued, appeared only to believers and not to the world. Barth correlated the reality of the resurrection only with personal faith.
Later, UPI religion reporter Lou Cassels remarked, "We got Barth's 'Nein!'" For Barth, the resurrection of Jesus did not. occur in the kind of history accessible to historians. Religious News Service and other media echoed my "encounter with Barth." But at the end of the hour Barth added a gracious apology. He was not fully happy, he said, with the way he had responded to some questions, and particularly about the way he had referred to Christianity Today. Some years later when Barth wrote his Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, he commented in the preface that he could go neither the way of Christian Century nor the way of Christianity Today.
TSF Bulletin, May June 1986, p. 19
 Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it. Pascal, Pensees (863) It has been widely reported that Karl Barth was like a demigod of personal warmth and charisma. One example of these many testimonials to Barth's greatness is told by E.J. Carnell in his Christian Century (June 6, 1962) article proposing that Barth was only an "inconsistent evangelical" not an "inconsistent liberal" (although we have already seen above that Barth called himself a liberal). We are told that Bath "radiated irresistible charm as a person" (p. 714). Carnell quotes (in agreement with) a journalist that "Merely to watch Karl Barth walk into the auditorium is a religious experience" (p. 714). He also quotes J. Pelikan to claim that Barth was on the level of the church fathers. Despite being placed on this level, remarkably, Carnell also states that Barth's doctrinal inconsistency is compensated for by his "Christian graciousness." For a church father, this is a rather generous orthodoxy to allow him. Indeed, when did personal graciousness ever take precedence over doctrinal consistency for the orthodox?
Carnell concluded by stating that his debt to Karl Barth is "beyond repayment," and thus he is "utterly ashamed" of the fundies (like Van til) who were attacking Barth. Carnell even claims he had "physical pain" when he read about these attacks. He also strongly condemned these fundies for judging Barth.
Barth also told Carnell that the Devil is only an "impossible possibility." I suppose he was being unkind to the Devil here(?), though it might be (re)read as his "personal graciousness." CAN YOU TELL WHEN A FACE IS LYING?
To get a personal flavor of Barth's "personal graciousness", read his not-so-kind- letter below to the mean and nasty Mr. Schaeffer, who I understand was trying to correctly understand Barth's ideas for his own teaching about Barth's influence in Switzerland. I can only state, from much hearsay, that if Schaeffer was in any way unkind or obnoxious to Barth, as suggested in Barth's letter, then it would have been very much out-of-character for Schaeffer who was internationally known for his compassion and gentleness towards all. Schaeffer's reply follows. 
text version: Dear Mr. Schaeffer!
I acknowledge receipt of your letter from August 28, and of your paper "The new modernism". The same day your friend J. Oliver Buswell wrote to me from New-York, enclosing a review (The Bible today p. 261 s.) "Karl Barth’s Theology". I see: the things you think of me are approximatively of the same kind as those I found in the book of van Til on the same subject. And I see: you and your friends have chosen to cultivate a type of theology, who consists in a kind of criminology; you are living from the repudiation and discrimination of every and every fellow-creature, whose conception is not entirely (numerically!) identical with your own views and statements. You are "walking on the solid rock of truth". We others, poor sinners, are not. I am not. My case has been found out to be hopeless. The jury has spoken, the verdict is proclaimed, the accused has been hanged by the neck till he was dead this very morning.
Well, well! Have it your own way: it is your affair, and in doing, speaking, writing as you do, you may shoulder your own responsibilities. You may re-pudiate my life-work "as a whole," You may call me names (such as: cheating, vague, non-historic, not interested in thruth and so on and on! ) You may continue to do your "detective" -work in America, in the Netherlands, in Finland and everywhere and decry me as the most dangerous heretic. Why not? perhaps the Lord has told you to do so.
But why and to what purpose do you wish further conversation? The heretic has been burnt and buried for good, Why on earth will you waste your time (and his time!) with more talk between you and him? Dear sir, you said, that you are feeling your-selves nearer to the "old-modernists" and to the Roman-catholics than to me and to men like me, Just as you like! But why then not try the effectivness of your "apologetics" in some exercises with these "old modernists" or with these Roman-Catholics - both of whom you, will find quite great a lot here in Switzerland and everywhere? Why bother your-selves anymore about the man in Basel, whom you have finished off so splendidly and so totally?
Rejoice, dear Mr. Schaeffer (and you calling your-selves "fundamentalists" all over the world)! Rejoice and go on to believe in your "logics" (as in the fourth article of your creed !) and in your-selves as in the only true "bible-believing" people! Shout so loudly as you can! But, pray, allow me, to let you alone. "Conversations are possible between open-minded people. Your paper and the review of your friend Buswell reveals the fact of your decision to close your window-shutters, I do not know how to deal with a man who comes to see and to speak to me in the quality of a detective-inspector or with the beheavior of a missionary who goes to convert a heathen. No, thanks!
Yours sincerly, Karl Barth Excuse my bad English. I am not accustomed to write in your language. I am sending a copy of this letter to Rev. Buswell!
Francis Schaeffer's reply below: 
text version: October 17th, 1950 Dear Dr. Barth, Thank you for your letter of September 3rd. I would have written to you more quickly but my wife has been ill. As she has done all my secretarial work since we have been in Europe I have not been able to write. I was surprised at the tone of your letter. It seems to me that we should expect to take such difference as you and we have seriously. On the other hand we should be desirous enough of knowing the truth of God to be able to sit down and discuss our differences openly and without minimizing those differdnces. It is still my hope that I may have the privilege of talking to you further about these things some day in the future. I am sure before God that the position which we maintain is that which is right before the Lord and I would wish nothing better than to see you come to the acceptance of this same position before Him. Cordially yours, Francis A. Schaeffer , October 17th, 1950
A (very) brief summary of main ideas in Barth’s system(oops!): from my “Open Letter to the BTS board of Directors” on this site at
Open Letter to the Board of Biblical Seminary - God is wholly transcendent: Totally Other.
- God can only be known in paradox: rationally Inapprehensible.
- God is “free” from all created reality, even free from His own being and decrees.
- God is only “knowable” subjectively: as Subject, never Object.
- Revelation is Christ, not the Bible: revelation is only existential encounter (Geschichte).
- Revelation is not propositional: only an existential encounter of crisis leads to “faith.”
- The Bible is only a human witness: it is the error-filled word of man about the existentially encountered Word of God. Jesus himself was not free of sin as a man.
Though Barth affirmed many cardinal orthodox doctrines, his revision of their essential meaning leaves his teaching more insidiously harmful than those (like Bultmann) who did not so readily employ orthodox terminology. Though Barth is sometimes said to have rescued the Christian faith from Modernism (Liberalism), his reconstruction is, in the main, unorthodox.
For a good taste of the confusion that could flow from Barth’s mind and pen:
“If you ask about God and if I am really to tell about him, dialectic is all that can be expected from me. . . . Neither my affirmation nor my denial lays claim to being God’s truth. Neither one is more than a witness to that truth which stands in the center, between every Yes and No. And therefore I have never affirmed without denying and never denied without affirming, for neither affirmation nor denial can be final. If my witness to the final answer you are seeking does not satisfy you, I am sorry. It may be that my witness to it is not yet sufficiently clear, that is, that I have not limited the Yes by the No and the No by the Yes incisively enough to set aside all misunderstanding – incisively enough to let you see that nothing is left except that upon which the Yes and the No, and the No and the Yes, depend. But it may also be that your refusal of my answer arises from your not having really asked your question, from your not having asked about God – for otherwise we should understand each other.'[15] 
Lost in Liars and Truthtellers Town, you are in real trouble. You need to ask directions from a Truthteller, but how can you tell who is a Truthteller? You stop a group of three women and ask if they are Truthtellers. The first says, “Two of us are Truthtellers.” The second says, “Only one of us is a Truthteller.” And the third one chimes in, “The last woman who spoke is telling the truth.” Well, who was or were Truthtellers? [source unknown]
Answer: none |
What is Neo-orthodoxy II (Barthism: Religion of the Unknown God) 
