Karl Barth facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Karl Barth
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German stamp, showing Karl Barth
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| Born | May 10, 1886 |
| Died | December 10, 1968 (aged 82) Basel, Switzerland
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| Occupation | Theologian, author |
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Notable work
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The Epistle to the Romans Church Dogmatics |
| Spouse(s) |
Nelly Hoffmann
(m. 1913) |
| Children | Franziska, Markus, Christoph, Matthias and Hans Jakob |
| Theological work | |
| Tradition or movement | Reformed Neo-Orthodoxy |
| Notable ideas | Dialectical theology analogia fidei |
Karl Barth (1886/05/10 – 1968/12/10) was a Swiss Reformed theologian who is often regarded as the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. He was heavily involved in the authorship of the anti-Nazi Barmen declaration in 1934. His influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on April 20, 1962.
He was one of the most prolific and influential theologians of the twentieth century. His most famous works are his The Epistle to the Romans, which marked a clear break from his earlier thinking, and his massive thirteen-volume work Church Dogmatics, one of the largest works of systematic theology ever written.
Contents
Early life and education
Karl Barth was born on 10 May 1886, in Basel, Switzerland, to Johann Friedrich "Fritz" Barth (1852–1912) and Anna Katharina (Sartorius) Barth (1863–1938). Fritz Barth was a theology professor and pastor. Karl began his student career at the University of Bern, and then transferred to the University of Berlin to study under Adolf von Harnack, and then transferred briefly to the University of Tübingen before finally in Marburg to study under Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922).
Career
Barth's pastoral career began in the rural Swiss town of Safenwil, where he was known as the "Red Pastor from Safenwil". There he became increasingly disillusioned with the liberal Christianity in which he had been trained. This led him to write the first edition of his The Epistle to the Romans (a.k.a. Romans I), published in 1919, in which he resolved to read the New Testament differently.
Barth was deported from Germany in 1935 after he refused to sign (without modification) the Oath of Loyalty to Adolf Hitler and went back to Switzerland and became a professor in Basel (1935–1962).
Barth influenced many significant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who supported the Confessing Church, and Jürgen Moltmann, Helmut Gollwitzer, James H. Cone, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Thomas F. Torrance, Hans Küng, and also Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacques Ellul, and novelists such as Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, and Miklós Szentkuthy.
Among many other areas, Barth has also had a profound influence on modern Christian ethics, influencing the work of ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Jacques Ellul and Oliver O'Donovan.
Later life
After the end of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice in support both of German penitence and of reconciliation with churches abroad. Together with Hans Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement in 1947 – a more concrete statement of German guilt and responsibility for Nazi Germany and the Second World War than the 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. In it, he made the point that the Church's willingness to side with anti-socialist and conservative forces had led to its susceptibility to Nazi ideology. In the context of the developing Cold War, that controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in the West who supported the CDU course of re-militarization, as well as by East German dissidents who believed that it did not sufficiently depict the dangers of Communism. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950. In the 1950s, Barth sympathized with the peace movement and opposed German rearmament.
Death
Barth died on 10 December 1968, at his home in Basel, Switzerland.
Personal life
In 1913 Barth married Nelly Hoffmann, a talented violinist. They had a daughter and four sons, two of whom were Biblical scholars and theologians Markus (6 October 1915 – 1 July 1994) and Christoph Barth (1917–1986). Later Karl Barth was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921–1925), Münster (1925–1930) and Bonn (1930–1935), in Germany. While serving at Göttingen he met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who became his long-time secretary and assistant; she played a large role in the writing of his epic, the Church Dogmatics.
Center for Barth Studies
Princeton Theological Seminary, where Barth lectured in 1962, houses the Center for Barth Studies, which is dedicated to supporting scholarship related to the life and theology of Karl Barth. The Barth Center was established in 1997 and sponsors seminars, conferences, and other events. It also holds the Karl Barth Research Collection, the largest in the world, which contains nearly all of Barth's works in English and German, several first editions of his works, and an original handwritten manuscript by Barth.
Images for kids
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1984 West German postage stamp commemorating the Barmen Declaration's 50th. anniversary
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Karl Barth's Kirchliche Dogmatik: The original 'white whale' edition of the Church Dogmatics from Barth's study that features a custom binding from the publisher.
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Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics in English translation
See also
In Spanish: Karl Barth para niños
