> In fact, human religion is itself an evil institution.

Umm... no. Barth's belief is that it is evil if one becomes so focused on human religion he places it in the foreground, treating the religion as the end - as something divine itself - rather than as what it really is: an earthly organization.

> What this means is that any challenge to Christianity's uniqueness, whether intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, can be ignored by a good Christian. Devotees of other faiths live empirically good lives? Too bad; they're not Christians, and Christian revelation is the _only kind that counts_, which we know by the grace of God.

Yes. What's your point? That's not unique to Barth. For that matter, it's not unique to Christianity, either. Barth, you see, believes in double predestination; God decides who will be saved and who will not be saved. There is nothing man can do to influence this; Barth does not, actually, say that only Christians can be saved. In fact, Barth *does* say that, technically, God could elect to save *everyone,* Christians or not. He does not believe that God has done so, but to deny God the ability to do so would be to limit His freedom.

> In a world where most serious theology moved towards the idea that all religions shared a view of a single Divine, Barth, was moving in the other direction.

What? "Most serious theology?" Support that claim. I give you that that is blatantly not the case, and that, in fact, most *serious* theology, that is, most theology written by theologians and not by pop psychologists, was not at all headed in that direction. Pluralism is *still* an almost entirely unsupported position.

> It's circular logic -- which is sort of the point, as Barth wouldn't accept that human rationality is capable of judging his own beliefs.
That's because Barth, like most theologians not of the process theology school, believes that faith and reason are separate. Faith can't be proven through reason any more than a painting can be played on the violin - they're two different things.

> And he is perfectly willing to accept the consequence that many people who perfectly live a Christian ethic are to be damned.

Yes, because to deny that would be to limit the freedom of God. Above all, Barth's concern is the supremity of God - God is free to save or not to save whomever he chooses, for whatever reason he chooses.

To say that man has any power over God, including the power to reason to and understand God, is to put man above God. And, no, Barth's theology does not allow for that.