Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

228 Pages·1979·19.7 MB·English

by  Karl Barth

Karl Barth
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Translated by Grover Foley
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids Michigan
Copyright ® 1963 by Karl Barth
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Evangelical Theology: An Introduction was translated from the
German te;yit,Einfuhrung in die evangelische Theologie,
published by EVZ-Verlag, Zurich.
First American edition published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
This edition published 1979 through special arrangement with TVZ
Verlag, Zurich by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503.
The first five lectures of this volume were delivered under
the auspices of the Divinity School, the University of
Chicago, and were "The Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures of
1962” at the Princeton Theological Seminary,
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Barth, Karl, 1886-1968.
Evangelical theology.
TVanslation of Einfiihrung in die evangelische Theologie.
"The first five lectures of this volume were delivered under
the auspices of the Divinity School, the University of Chicago,
and were The Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures of 1962’
at the Princeton Theological Seminary.”
Reprint of the 1st ed. published by Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, New York.
1. Theology, Doctrinal — Introductions. I. Title
[BT65.B313 1979] 230 79-16735
ISBN 0-8028-1819-6
FOREWORD TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
Some weeks after I had concluded in Basel the writing
and delivering of these lectures—and with them my
academic career—I had the opportunity of shaking the
dust of, Basel from my feet and boarding an airplane
which carried me from there in a high arch over Ger¬
many, Scotland, Greenland, and the icy wilderness of
Labrador. In but a few hours it brought me, for the first
time, to Chicago, into the very heart of that altogether
different land which Europeans liked earlier to call, not
without justification, ‘The new world,^^
The present work, Evangelical Theology: An Intro¬
duction, will now appear in the United States in the
English language. I delivered the first five of these lec¬
tures in Chicago and Princeton, and the first one also in
Richmond and San Francisco, using an English manu¬
script which had been carefully prepared by Grover
Foley (who likewise translated the whole book) and
which was then again and again revised by my son
Markus and myself.
I am happy now to be able to add a few somewhat per¬
sonal words of remembrance, greetings, and thanks to
the many old and new friends and brothers, both fa¬
miliar and unfamiliar, whom I met during my stay in
America. I was everywhere received and lodged by them
in pleasant surroundings and with great hospitality,
and they also heard and questioned me with great dili¬
gence and attention.
“How do you like that strange place called the United
States?” This is what I was asked by a dusky theological
colleague (not a Roman Catholic this time, but a literally
black colleague) with a subtle smile, soon after my ar¬
rival in Chicago. Similar questions about my “impres-
vi Foreword to the American Edition
sions'’ of America have often been addressed to me by
others (and occasionally even in public). I haye always
answered somewhat evasively. Even in Washington,
where I had the opportunity of spending an interesting
evening with a group of younger men who stood near to
the President, I prudently offered only certain questions
and no ''statements.” Most certainly, I will not write an
article on "America,” much less a book, for if I know one
thing about America, after having spent seven weeks
in that "strange place” (and then only in ten of its fifty
states) and having opened my eyes and ears as widely
as possible, it is certainly this: that I know all too little
about America to be able to speak competently about it.
In fact, I did have "impressions,” but I could actually
summarize them only with the one word, "fantastic”—a
word which, by the way, plays a remarkable role in one
of Tennessee Williams' dramas that I saw during my stay
in New York. And I would have to reproduce these im¬
pressions in similar language (if I had the spirit and
means of non-objective art at my command). Yes, "fan¬
tastic” is the word for all that: the numberless streams,
plains, hills, and mountains between the two oceans,
and the whole landscape over which we flew in all direc¬
tions or through which we hurried by automobile; the
wilderness of Arizona, the Grand Canyon (where I had
good reasons for refraining from making the descent),
the bay of San Francisco together with the Golden Gate
bridge; Chicago and New York with their gigantic
buildings, with their incoming and outgoing highways
filled with the continuous gleaming motion of innumer¬
able cars, with their swarms of individuals of all lands,
races, occupations, and endeavors; the strange unity as
well as contrast of humanity in the East, West, and
South of the continent; the thorough organization and
standardization (to a certain extent competing with
divine providence) of all life, including that of the
Foreword to the American Edition vii
Church and even of theological science; the pertinent,
but also sometimes rather impertinent, curiosity and
descriptive art of the American journalist. .. ! For me it
was also ''fantastic'' to see the thousands who streamed
to my lectures and to my public discussions in Chicago
and Princeton, and also to see myself suddenly engulfed
by such an avalanche of "publicity," to which I was
quite unaccustomed. ("Advertising helps it happen" I
read in great letters on a billboard at the side of an
American highway.)
While in America I experienced a few things which,
although not of primary importance, were very signifi¬
cant to me. My little book of sermons from the Basel
prison, now also translated into English, won me en¬
trance into three great American prisons. There, along
with some quite bad aspects, I saw many hopeful signs,
and I had the very best impressions of the intentions of
the directors and chaplains of these houses. The unfor¬
gettable hymnal greetings which I received in these
places from the Church choirs, mostly composed of Ne¬
groes, were as powerful as they were impressive! China¬
town in San Francisco was also unforgettable, as was a
guided stroll through the somewhat ill-famed East Har¬
lem in the northern part of Manhattan Island. But my
unquenchable historical curiosity led me also to visit a
whole series, though by no means all, of the sites of the
American Civil War. I had already long before acquired
from afar a literary interest in its events and personali¬
ties. Now informed eagerly and precisely in detail by
older and younger experts, I obtained a vivid and endur¬
ing picture of what was done, undone, and, above all, suf¬
fered by the blue "Yankees" and the gray "Rebels" under
the leadership of their more or less gifted generals on the
broad fields (nowadays cared for in the main quite ap¬
propriately) at Manassas-Bull Run, Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville, and, above all, Gettysburg, and the sur-
viii Foreword to the American Edition
roundings of Richmond. And it was only natural that I
could not omit devoting, in front of his impressive monu¬
ment in Washington, a serious ''minute of silence'' to
Abraham Lincoln, ^e greatest and, from first to last, the
decisive „man in that American period of heroisnL_a^
terror. (According to a promise ihade to me, his complete
works are soon supposed to make this small house of
mine in Basel smaller still and my knowledge of the
Am.erican past greater still.)
Parenthetically, how does that old history, now just
a hundred years past, concern me? I could say in re¬
ply (once again somewhat evasively) that there was
once another D.D. and professor of systematic theology
whose opinion was that this history eminently con¬
cerned him. His name was R. L. Dabney, a professor in
Richmond and later in Austin, Texas who, moreover,
also left behind a work of dogmatics. During the Civil
War, Dabi^ waa^lipt only a chaplain but thj_chief, Qf
staff of the famous Rebel General Stonewall Jacl^on^
who in his own right was a strict Presbyterian, a deacon
of the Church of Lexington, Virginia, and a conductor
of Sunday school and prayer hours! There are really
"more things in heaven and earth.. I
On the other hand, I also had the opportunity of gain¬
ing certain special impressions of the American present
in the form of all sorts of human encounters, though I
dare not construct any precise image from them. (Thou
shalt make no image, no abstraction, including none of
the American, the Swiss, the German, etc.!) For hours
or even whole evenings I sat together with businessmen,
actors, Talmud-Jews, journalists, Roman Catholic the¬
ologians, and even with a small group of real live Com¬
munists. Strangely enough I only once met with a large
group of preachers, but naturally I encountered indi¬
vidual professors and students of a whole series of the¬
ological faculties and seminaries. I was with Billy