From Church Dogmatics II/2: here Barth gives a few preliminary remarks before expounding his unique (and revolutionary) take on the Reformed doctrine of Election.
“Theology must begin with Jesus Christ, and not with general principles, however better, or, at any rate, more relevant and illuminating, they may appear to be: as though He were a continuation of the knowledge and Word of God, and not its root and origin, not indeed the very Word of God itself. Theology must also end with Him, and not with supposedly self-evident general conclusions from what is particularly enclosed and disclosed in Him: as though the fruits could be shaken from this tree; as though in the things of God there were anything general which we could know and designate in addition to and even independently of this particular. The obscurities and ambiguities of our way were illuminated in the measure that we held fast to that name and in the measure that we let Him be the first and the last, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture. Against all the imaginations and errors in which we seem to be so hopelessly entangled when we try to speak of God, God will indeed maintain Himself if we will only allow the name of Jesus Christ to be maintained in our thinking as the beginning and the end of all our thoughts…”[1]
If Christological and Trinitarian Theology do not function as the central paradigms through which all other Christian doctrines are seen and interpreted, Barth says, the Christian theological project is doomed from the start. Since, for Barth, Jesus Christ is the unique and perfect and fully-revealing event of God’s-revealing-of-Self, to speak and presuppose (as the rest of the Western theological tradition does) that there can be true, substantial, or good things said about God apart from what is revealed in Jesus Christ – like what is propounded in so called “natural revelation” – is to take the wheels off the theological vehicle at the very beginning of the race. While Barth definitely aligns himself more with the Eastern Christian spirit of theologizing in this regard, his relegation of God’s-revealing exclusively to the Logos of God (Jesus Christ) even further separates him from the wider Christian tradition. Nevertheless, Barth is correct (albeit with a few caveats as to the locus of where Christ is to be found and subsequently interpreted).
The way Barth distinguishes himself from most all other theological methodologies is by refusing to subject his theological reflection to the “general principles” of philosophy and the analytic tradition’s conceptual structures, generally. Theologians would do well to see that the general direction of theological reflection today – a decidedly “post-metaphysical” direction – is not (surprise!) the spawn of Satan, but in fact should be seen as the heart of the task of the first-millennium-Church’s enterprise. Post-metaphysical theology, though it is admittedly being interpreted and applied in harmful and unbiblical ways, presents a better and more promising direction for the theologians who would uphold the absolute validity and infallibility of the Scriptures (all of which speak of Jesus Christ). Karl Barth points us towards where theology should be heading all the time: Christ, Christ, Christ! Any conceptual or philosophical shackles that would keep Christ caged should be done away with, destroyed, and left to the ashes of history.
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 4-11.
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