Using the Barthian Method with Barth:
To Ask Some Questions after Hard Reading
In Total Pursuit of Understanding

I am about 30 pages into Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931 by Thomas F. Torrance [2000 (1962)]. This is the most informative book I have found about how one is to read Barth, which is to say in the same way he says he reads, wherein "...ruthless criticism is made the servant of his will to listen." (Torrance, ibid. , page 21.) In this, we are supposed to engage in "...through determined self-renunciation, courageous repentance and most severe-self criticism, before the face of the Word of God." (ibid., page 22.) Barth is thus said to be writing a theological "symphony," in which "...sheer creative power, his ability to produce something new" (ibid., page 23) is shown "...the depth and complexity and yet the sheer simplicity and beauty of this theology in which elements are brought together in a profound and fertile economy of insights which in other minds fall apart in a profound and fall apart into antagonistic positions or at best are only related to one another in some desperate artificial dialectic." (ibid.) In exactly this way we are to engage in "questioning" (ibid., page 19) in such a way as to avoid the faux pas of acting as though this teacher were being interrogated in such a way that the Professor "...were the disciple and the student were the teacher." (ibid., page 21.) Furthermore, we need to fathom the most in depth, profoundest interpretation of Barth, for "Barth is not a theologian one can criticise until one has really listened to him and grasped his work as a whole and discerned its place in the history of theology." (ibid., Preface.)

I think this is an almost-adequate understanding of Torrance's 'way' to read Barth. Accordingly, utterly in the non-malicious mode of the principle of charity to which I have alluded, I have loving questions-- to be answered either by Professor Torrance or Professor Barth. I realize that I have not read all of Barth in German; that would "set me back" probably close to $50,000 with skills at my well-started level for mastering these texts. IF the Barthian method is to always ask Professor Barth in a loving and non-tendentious way about those against whom he engages in "ruthless criticism" (ibid., page 19.) I do suppose the only answer I shall get is by reading the totality of Barth, though, in German-- more by far than the Bible and Creeds which are his ultimate authority; I need to criticize myself and repent if this sounds like the method of every self-aggrandizing and pedantic Professor I have met, who claims for a repetitive, obviously capricious opinion for any question says simply "you misunderstand my deep message; go out and buy all my books at such a cost, and read them until you can be loyal to God's Word and above all repent for your hardness of heart." So in a 'good stab' at heeding all these mandata, I think my mood shall slip into the interrogative.

Here are some beginning questions:

? "Why do I need to repent for any difficulty I have with your method and your content? Are you saying that I need to agree with you-- having the Word of God-- and that I have no truth/Word-of-God because I cannot get with your 'program' ?"

? "What kind of symphony is your opus? Why do I think this musically a theme-and-variations on a highly repetitive message? Why do I who majored (English) in composition find your writing highly redundant, saying the same message in the first lines and pages what seems to obtain in the Nth page written near 1968 (when you died, somewhat more than ten years before you visited Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA)?"

? "Why does the 'egg-shell'/first-understanding of your writings, Professor Barth, NOT differ very much from my first reading about you in September 1965, or my reading of Epistle to the Romans and Dogmatics in Outline some few months later?"

? "Why is there no biography or autobiography of your life, who lived very nearly to be octogenarian in fame; and who died about 40 years ago in continuous fame?"

? "Why do your Divine Revelations seem tacitly like every crackpot, fanatic, and psychotic with whom I have had encounter; is this result of that for which I need more self-criticism and repentance, for in the mode of the Muslim who 'witnessed' to me only on the condition that 'you agree' would the teaching continue?"

? "Why does your text on Romans as 'commentary' hardly at all seem 'loyal' to Paul, but rather more in the spirit of making-up-a-long-sermon-with-one-semi-valid-thesis?"

? "How is it science-- theological or otherwise, when you begin with the premise, 'Take my word for it" when not so with other theologues speaking theologically-- the Church Fathers, nor Aquinas, nor Anselm, nor Ockham, or any other preachers of truth who are not monomaniacs?"

? "If you find these questions tendentious and leading toward some hostile end, do the questions always have to be agreeable yet in 'ruthless criticism' in order that they might be framed for you (both of you, Barth and Torrance)?"

I know reasonably well that my 'answer' will consist of "you don't understand me yet; read on; buy my books and be loyal to me." But essentially the same questions have arisen since first bare exposure to Barth, Church Father. Whether he is the Authority for Evangelicals and Catholics means that for some reason agree with his content = "appeal to the masses," argumentum ad populum. This means an expensive reading-on with suggestion of the same message on about every page, more than any writer in my experience, of any persuasion, any profundity, any religion. Even Aquinas and Schleiermacher -- who wrote about as much as Barth-- demand that I read deeply every word of the opus in order to get the gist of a part/passage. But I shall do this reading, in German to the degree that I can, in order to effect "understanding the utterance of the utterer at least as well as the utterer on first hearing, and then better," a Schleiermacherian principle in which your Barthian excoriation of Schleiermacher disapproves, but which you demand-- loyalty-- for yourself.

Nor is it the case that I "don't believe the Bible": Holy Writ is tautological, axiomatic: I glean it for its every mystery. That you seem to be interested, Professor Barth, Professor Torrance, to have me without falsification possible to accord with you is a somewhat more-challenging task. I shall nevertheless in the principle of charity heed what you say and read-on.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Vespers
Day of St. Louis, King (Western Church)
Day of St. Bartholomew, Apostle (Orthodoxy)