Report on Two Books ABOUT Barth--
More Work Establishing a Prolegomenon
To a Verstehenanalyse of Barthianism

It is "the midnight hour" here in this hovel. For the past few hours, I have been digesting a couple of books about Karl Barth. In the principle of charity, then with some after-burp, I shall precis these readings.

With the succession of new and more informatics about this theologue, my 'guess-o-logy' will probably come to be less and less pronounced, and by the time real Verstehen occurs, I wonder if from this understanding a project of concurrence will happen; or something else. There is coming to be some recognition that first-impressions have more than a modicum of validity, which impression for the purpose of the 'null' I pursue I wish to put aside or at least minimize until in the truly Schleiermacherian sense, I can permit myself real dogmatics about Barth's dogmatics.

The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, edited by John Webster (2000) is a collection of essays that summarize the life (cursorily) and theology (in much more detail) of Barth. Here in the collection of essays on these matters, I read that Barth's first objective is to preach the Word of God as Truth. In this particular work, my impression that Barth's approach to Dogmatics is of one who clearly sees this Truth, and is thus freed to expound. There is also confirmation that a kind of Barth1-- witnessed in Romerbrief-- and Barth2-- in the subsequent writings is a real pattern-- representing a twofold shift from modernism and then from Redephilosophie (say, homily) to credalism as revealed crypto-axiomatic Truth. Anselm, Dogmatics in Outline, and Kirchliche Dogmatik would thus be Barth2 creations.

In both this work, and the one I shall shortly introduce as another of tonight's readings, Barth is described as a kind of patriarch of 'postmodernism.' In the other work I read tonight in fact, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, by Graham Ward (1995), Barth is shown to have a fundamental aversion to the scientism of his mentor/professors from days in universities in Berlin and Marburg, and some complete identification of this scientific trend Barth equated the German theologians' support of the war effort in WWI with a humanism that left-God-out-of-the-equation. The the comparison between Barth and the work of Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva is further drawn here, but in every kind of fairness this seemed tendentious-- and it seemed to me that Barth's 'post-modernist' tendency was an effort to shun in an Evangelical way the force of fairly substantive readings re the etiological correlates of Bible and revelation.

Nevertheless, the charge 'you just do not understand this great existential thinker, Karl Barth' is progressively becoming more tenuous. I suppose that if "preaching" in my autobiograph would ever count for something more than an obligation for the church member to just endure-- not seldom with apparent 'digs'/pointed-reference by preachers to some 'bady' in the congregation-- then I could be a little more sympathetic to Barth's insistence that he has Truth he wishes to preach to me-- from the God of Gods, he says, with absolutely no doubts.

But the sermons I have heard-- and Epistle to Romans and Dogmatics in Outline would have to be included in this -- do NOT typically add much if anything to my faith-walk. Preachers including Barth seem to have in mind keeping some flock in moral check-- with the bludgeon of hard persuasion and passive-aggression and not-a-little name-calling. My walk in faith with near completeness has to endure the-preachers as something for which I must in so many words pay-tithe (if not more, your money and your life.)

But where I 'live and move and have my being' ( compare Acts 17:28), I need hand-to-hand combat with an Adversary who wants money at every turn, especially hush-money and dues of all types, enforced with a requirement for deference that is nauseating. But stoop I must-- to evil when I am trying to do my Psalter and love the Bible of petting-kitty-feeding-watering-kitty and someday (hoping I outlive) burying kitty in a solitude enforced with insults and the heavy hand of (criminal) justice with psychiatry good enough to handcuff me and whisk me to asylum for praying. Preachers are NEARLY ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to this floundering required, to get from Point A to Point B in the connect-the-dots of my thrown/flopped existence.

Barth's sermon in The Epistle to the Romans reminds me whelmingly of the raving sermons my hell-fire-damnation preacher maternal grandfather-- subject I trow but without checks to the same decompensatory psychoticism as I-- would issue against the sinners. The tone and the style and the repetitiveness compares quite effectively between "Crazy Sim's preachins" and what I have heard now ad nauseam from Barth. And Barth does not sound qualitatively a lot different than a huge number of Baptist-land evangelists in my life-experience, in fury fulminating from a pulpit that congregators must perforce say, "Preached us a good one again t'night, Brother Fumpy!"

Such preachers did have me with the rest of honors high school students in Florence (KY) Baptist Church forswear "Devil Monkey Evolution" when I was scoring at the 99.9%ile in science at the time-- and probably new more science than the broadcast engineer who televisioned this hellion's favorite Billy Graham Crusade. I HAVE come to appreciate Creed as the What-- as Barth would insist-- but with Frege I would stipulate that the A = A of Creed go with A = B of the Way:Truth:Life which is at least constructive for something-- not a moral repudiation of almost-everthing-but-saying-the-Word.

To a consummate level, science, which studies Hows and is nothing but the discipline of being factual-- can limn the behavior of Barth. The How of the What can then become apparent. If Barth would Word us in nothing but his superior knowledge from God, then I wonder whether his life, the A = B matches this meeting-of-God-with-Barth. In this way, books now at my attention -- Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth by Suzanne Selinger (1998) are beginning to suggest that the A = B of Barth's life is openable as a book, and thus read-- for truth or consequences.

In such a way too, I am inclined to wonder about such things as Karl Barth 'visiting' Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA about the turn of 1980-- when in fact he was supposed to have DIED on December 10, 1968 (the exact date of Thomas Merton's electrocution.) Was it the case that Barth was 'resurrected' for this visit to Louisville? Or is there some not-too-holy not-too-flattering -- but solvable -- mystery ahead with regard to the A = B of Barth and Barthians?

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. Stephen of Hungary (Roman Church)
Day of St. Diomedes, Martyr (Orthodoxy)