The Obscurity of Barthianism

Roy L. Aldrich
[Roy L. Aldrich, President, Detroit Bible College, Detroit,
Visiting Bible Lecturer, Dallas Theological Seminary.]
Our idea of an unfair examination question would be to ask a student to
explain what Barth means by similarity in the following quotation: It is not a
relationship of either parity or disparity, but of similarity. This is what we think
and this is what we express as the true knowledge of God, although in faith we
still know and remember that everything that we know as similarity is not
identical with the similarity meant here. Yet we also know and remember, and
again in faith, that the similarity meant here is pleased to reflect itself in what we
know as similarity and call by this name, so that in our thinking and speaking
similarity becomes similar to the similarity posited in the true revelation of God
(to which it is, in itself, not similar) and we do not think and speak falsely but
rightly when we describe the relationship as one of similarity.
This is one sample from a vast theological system saturated with equally
unclear propositions and discussions. Critics of Barthianism have noted its
obscurity, but have failed to capitalize on this advantage. Surely this is a major
weakness. If the science of medicine was as obscure as Barthianism, no
physician would dare prescribe or operate. Theology deals with souls and
prescribes for eternity. Therefore, perspicuity is a valid test of good theology.
The fuzziness of Barthianism has been re-emphasized by Gordon H. Clarks
recent monograph, Karl Barths Theological Method. The purpose of this book
is to explain Barths methodnot his language or semantics. However, one has
only to read a page or two to discover that Clarks major problem seems to be
with Barths obscurity and lack of rationality.
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Gordon H. Clark is professor of philosophy at Butler University,

Indianapolis, Indiana. He is an evangelical scholar whose books and articles are
well known. His latest book, just mentioned, was selected for distribution to all
members of The Evangelical Theological Society. This background is mentioned
to show that Clarks failure to find clarity in Barths writings is not due to lack
of scholarship.
Professor Clarks problem with Barths language appears on almost every
page of his book. The following quotations are typical:
This sentence is singularly obscure.
There are several perplexities in this paragraph.
The third and last reason Barth gives for opposing Brunners concept of
apologetics is hardly less tangled than the second.
Barth seems to have changed questions in the middle of the stream.
If this is really Barths meaningand we cannot be sure because he does
not explain what he meanshe has indeed escaped the present criticism, but
only at the expense of asserting something false.

Barths position on unbelief is not clear.

This passage and the discussion it provokes are beset with difficulties. At
least three separate ideas seem to be merged, combined, or confounded.
But what is disastrous is that even if we accept Barths exegesis, it does not
prove the point he is trying to make.
The import of this passage is not clear. There are three possibilities.
This is extremely vague and completely unsatisfactory. It conveys nothing
suitable or exact.
But in spite of this explicit statement, there is so much that contradicts it, by
implication at least, that one must
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reflect on the possibility that Barth is inconsistent.

In another place Barth says, our words require a complete change of
meaning, even to the extent of becoming the very opposite in sense, if in their
application to God they are not to lead us astray. If therefore we say that God is
just, we must in order not to be led astray understand ourselves to mean that God
is unjust. Unfortunately, the phrase, God is unjust, is human language also, and
must be turned into its opposite, God is just, and we find ourselves on a merrygoround. This is irrationalism.
One wishes to know what an author is talking about. If the author uses a
common word, but confesses that he is not using it in the sense that other people
regularly carry in mind, and then declines to say what his sense is, keeping the
concept so fluid that it remains open not only to revision and restriction, but also
to reversal, the student has a hard time figuring out the meaning.
The concept of Gods self-objectification is obscure.
He has given us the confusing circularity of concentric circles; he stresses a
poorly defined event, a judgment unknown to everybody, an object of
perception that ceases to be such, and a commission whose terms remain
indistinct.
There is in the passage a certain amount of shifting between an objective
and a subjective point of view, and this is confusing.
It is perfectly clear from this passage that for Barth revelation cannot be
simply identified with the Bible; but how precisely they are related is not equally
clear.
Perhaps the confusion of the eleven pages on The Revealed Word of God
springs from two points. First, Barth does not really decide what revelation is.
Revelation in fact does not differ from the Person of Christ himself.
The second point derives from his clearer negation that
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the Bible is not revelation.

Barths third form of the Word solves nothing; it merely creates problems,
useless problems, insoluble problems.
The combination of rare exactitude with arithmetical error is another
instance of the two opposing and puzzling poles of Barths thought.

After this excursus Barth continues for some pages to describe Scripture as
the Word of God. Parts of his discussion are hard to understand.
These last two sentences are rhetorical questions, whose answers seem
obvious to Barth. To someone else the answers are either not obvious or
obviously the opposite of what Barth thinks.
Once again Barths ambiguity confuses the reader. This is very
puzzling.
Note how vague most of this is.
The result is that Barths theology is self-contradictory. He operates on the
basis of incompatible axioms, and against his hopes and aims arrives at an
untenable or irrational position.
The problem presented by Barths obscurity is noted by most of his critics.
Even the liberals agree with Clark and others at this point. James Bissett Pratt
writes: The strange and at times skeptical conclusions reached by
representatives of the New Supernaturalism are due to various influences. The
confusion of thought just discussed has certainly played its part. Possibly less
important but by no means a negligble source of odd results have been an
extraordinay appetite for paradox and a fondness for using familiar English
words in an unusual and, to most unwary readers, misleading sense. Hence the
delight that several writers of the school find in attributing to the same subject
contradictory predicates and in inventing new and ever more snappy paradoxes.
These are the firecrackers with which they celebrate their Declaration
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of Independence from the restrictions of reason.

In contrast to the obscurity of Barthianism is the directness and simplicity of
the Bible message. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and
gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading (Neh 8:8). The
sinful heart finds the precepts of the Bible difficult to obey, but not difficult to
understand.
Peter warns against false teachers who speak great swelling words of
vanity (2 Pet 2:18b). Williams translation says they are uttering arrogant
nonsense. It is high time to recognize that the characteristic obscurity of
Barthianism is not a mark of scholarship, but a sign of apostasy.
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1

1Multiple,

Bibliotheca Sacra, (Dallas, Texas: Dallas Theological Seminary (Electronic

edition by Galaxie Software)) 1999.