> > Barth in particular will tell you that God cannot be understood. [...] But I don't really feel like getting too far into Barth right now, unless, of course, somebody really wants me to.
>
> Darien? Pray tell, by all means. You know I want you to :-)

Okay. But you asked for it. ;-}

Karl Barth was a protestant minister in Germany during and leading up to the first World War. The War caused him to examine the beliefs he held, as they and those who tought them to him supported the Kaiser's war policy. So Barth ended up rebelling against the liberal theology of the turn of the century, and created a very conservative school of thought.

One of the fundamental tenets of Barthian theology is the concept of God being wholly other. Beyond the concept of God being different from man, this also includes the idea that God is *distant* from man. A prominent feature of liberal theology is that man can reach God and can come to know and understand God. Barth rejects this out of hand, saying that there is no path from man to God, and that the only way man can come to know God is for God to reveal Himself to man. Furthermore, God's revelation is by his own choosing, and man cannot ignore His message.

Barth's school, however, is dialectical theology. The dialectic assumes, to put it *extremely* briefly, that for every statement, the opposite is also true. Therefore, by revealing Himself to us. God masks Himself from our sight. This dialectic trick allows Barth's theology to cope brilliantly with the idea of God revealing himself through the person of Jesus Christ, while still maintaining the mysery and the unknowability of God. According to Barth, in this mystery can be found the true knowledge.

That's a fairly brief summary; if you want more details, I'll be glad to drag this out even longer! :-}

Dar "loves pretending he's smart" ien