> > 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.

Barth: "Man's religion is simply an assumption and assertion...as such it is an activity that contradicts revelation...he does not believe. If he did, he would listen; but in religion he talks. If he did, he would accept a gift; but in religion he takes something for himself. If he did, he would let God himself intercede for God: but in religion he ventures to grasp at God."


As I said, religion itself is viewed as inherently futile and, yes, even "evil" activity, and only through the revelation of God does it become anything more. Human religion by itself is worthless, which is what I said in my earlier post.
>
> > 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.


My point? Only that Karl Barth is intolerant and presumptious, and that for those reasons I don't feel that his theological ideas are something to be trumpeted. Issachar called him one of his favorite theologians; he's not one of mine, and I presented several reasons why.

>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.

Barth: "At the end of the road we have to tread there is, of course, the promise to those who accept God's judgement, who let themselves be led beyond their unbelief. There is faith in this promise, and, in this faith, the presence and reality of the grace of God, which, of course, differentiates our religion, the Christian, from all others as the true religion."

Seems like a pretty blanket statement of the sole truth of Christianity to me. And while you're right that he doesn't directly assert that only Christians can be saved, it's a clear implication of his thought.


> 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.

Right. Barth thinks that God _could_ but he _hasn't_ -- and this is something Barth knows for certain, because it's his divine revelation. Barth is always going to be logically consistent because divine revelation is a trump card of a contradiction that'll defeat any argument, but that doesn't make him right. And the consequences of his views are unpalatable.
>
> > 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.

You've got me. "Serious" is an unfairly evaluative word, and that was a severe overstatement, especially since Barth wrote at the beginning of the century and most literature on pluralism is more recent. However...

>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.

...this is equally untrue. Read Willard Oxtoby, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, John Hick, or Paul Knitter for a basic overview of the question with a liberal tinge, and as far as I can tell most academic theology on the question is going in this same, pluralistic direction. So did Vatican II 40 years ago. Pluralism is well-defended, and certainly what I'm being taught as modern theology in many of my classes tends to regard Barth as a relic.
>

> > 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.

Yes, I understand this. I also disagree. My post was intended to be an assessment based on external values.
>
> > 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 deny that would certainly not limit the freedom of God. Barth argues that God could save people but doesn't -- he could equally well argue that God saves people but doesn't have to (isn't this the basic Christian idea anyway?)

Asserting one thing or another about a property of God, as Barth does again and again by asserting that God is explicitly a Christian God, does not limit God's freedom because it does not limit God's choice. Barth is concerned that God is supreme, but he's also concerned that God is a Christian God and no other sort. There's no reason he couldn't interpret divine revelation in another, more inclusive way, as theologians have done again and again since. But Barth seems untroubled by such questions, which is another reason I don't admire him.

>
> 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.

I would debate that allowing man to understand God means putting man above God -- but the essential point here is still going to be that I tend towards humanism. I'm not sure that a God I can't know fully is a God I want to know at all.

I feel like this is turning into a usenetty debate that's not entirely appropriate for this forum. Nevertheless, I hope this at least helps you to understand where I'm coming from, and why I don't necessarily think Barth should be held up as a paragon of Christian thought or virtue.

Tom
tmschm@wm.edu