The question of revelation in Christian theology is finally no less than the question of theology's own ultimate source and norm, of the conditions for the possibility of theology itself as a human activity. Insofar as theology is a matter of engaging logos and Theos, articulate human reflection and God, the question of the route to and conditions for such an engagement naturally arises. To answer this question by appeal to the category of revelation is at least to point to the inherent contingency of the circumstance and the knowledge arising out of it. There could be no procedure less fitting in an essay on Barth than that of seeking to establish some general definition of 'revelation' in terms of which to venture forth. Yet to reveal too much too quickly of the particular sense which this term bears in Barth's theology would make for an untidy chapter in which everything happened at once. For now, then, concerns of style and structure encourage the unveiling only of this: something revealed is something disclosed or given to be known to someone which apart from the act of revealing would remain hidden, disguised and unknown.

However highly one values Barth's material contributions to theology, one could argue that his main significance lies not so much in what he contributed to the 'scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive Talk about God' (CD I/I, p. 3), but in the way in which he taught his readers to conceive the task of theology and its presuppositions and procedures. One could even claim that the presentation of Barth's theology and its continual revision is a consequence of the new conception of the task of theology which shapes his theological 'forms of thought'. What makes Barth's material contributions to theology so significant is that they are part of a new way of understanding the task of theology which can be most clearly seen by contrasting it to what was taken for granted in the 'forms of thought' of modernity and its theology. Today those 'forms of thought' are no longer taken for granted, neither in theology nor outside theology. This provides a new stimulus for engagement with Barth's understanding of theology, its development, its elaboration, its problems and its promises in a situation which is no longer self-consciously modern, but is characterized by an uneasy oscillation between seeing itself as postmodern and/or late modern.

ANTHROPOLOGY AS THE DOCTRINE OF THE ‘REAL MAN’

'The ontological determination of humanity is grounded in the fact that one man among all others is the man Jesus' (CD III/2, p. 132). Within the framework of a general human effort at understanding humanity, this principle of Karl Barth's theological anthropology is at first glance very provocative. For Barth, in fact, means that if we want to know who and what the human being is, we are not in the first place to look to ourselves. Nor are we to begin with what the empirical sciences say about the human being; nor are we to orient ourselves to the phenomena of human existence past and present in an attempt to interpret the experiences which are there expressed. All this, according to Barth, can and must be thoroughly considered, acknowledged, and brought to light. It is, however, unsuited for establishing theologically what it is that constitutes the essential character of the human. We are not to learn who and what the human is by observing human beings and their history in general, but rather to do so in the concrete human person to whom, according to Christian faith, God bound himself and entered into human history.

This principle of theological anthropology is particularly provocative today because it does not at first appear to show how it can be connected with what we already know generally about the human being. And without such a connection, all statements of theological anthropology are in danger of hanging isolated in space, simply incomprehensible outside of theological discourse. If this were to be the case then in the opinion of many, theological anthropology would gamble away a significant opportunity with which it is faced in a time shaped by secularism and atheism. This is the opportunity of being able to explain, even in our time, that precisely when human existence is at issue at least the question of God is unavoidable.

Karl Barth's approach to the doctrine of God is manifest materially in his discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, as also in the way in which he relates this doctrine to those of revelation, election, creation and reconciliation. To get to the heart of Barth's understanding of God, however, one is required to recognize its formal significance and, more specifically, the fact that his theology takes place within a church dogmatics. In contrast to so many major theological expositions in the history of thought, Barth refuses to treat the doctrine as if it had a self-contained locus within a 'systematic theology' or exposition of Christian doctrine. How Barth treats the doctrine of God and how he conceives the whole task of dogmatics are irreducibly interrelated. It is this interrelationship which constitutes perhaps the most distinctive facet of his whole approach and with which one must begin.

From beginning to end, Barth's Church Dogmatics is nothing other than a sustained meditation on the texts of Holy Scripture, in all the richness and diversity with which these texts elaborate their single theme: a divine-human action constitutive both of divine and of human being, a particular action that is nevertheless all-inclusive in its scope. There are, of course, many parts of the Church Dogmatics that practise an 'explicit' biblical interpretation or hermeneutics: from passing references to particular verses to extended expositions of whole chapters or books, from consideration of particular concepts such as 'witness' or 'saga' (or 'legend'), to the construction of what might be called an 'ontology' of Holy Scripture. This material can be roughly differentiated from other material where the biblical texts appear to be in the background, or are perhaps absent altogether. Yet to regard biblical interpretation as just one among a number of items on Barth's agenda would be to allow the seamless garment of his theology to be torn to pieces.

Christian theology of religions is an area within systematic theology that has lately undergone considerable development. The area has taken on greater definition in recent years as Christian communities throughout the world come to grips with a heightened awareness of other religious traditions, and with a growing desire on the part of Christians to pursue interreligious dialogue and other forms of positive engagement with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others.

Theologians practising this sub-speciality commonly address such questions as these: Are any of the teachings of other religious traditions true? How should judgments about this issue proceed? Do other religions point their adherents in the right direction? Can Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists be saved? Can they be saved by following the teachings of their religions? How should Christians relate to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others? Should they attempt to persuade non-Christians to become Christians? Should they engage in dialogue with the adherents of other religions? What purposes does such interreligious dialogue serve? Drawing upon a long and substantial tradition of inquiry about these issues within Christian doctrine and theology, the agenda of the theology of religions has taken on an increasingly systematic shape as more and more theologians within the Christian churches turn their attention to these questions.

In a letter written to Eberhard Bethge in 1968, Karl Barth reflected on how his political commitments did and did not emerge in his theological work. Noting that attention to these was not always prominent, Barth still referred to 'the direction I silently presupposed or only incidentally stressed: ethics - co-humanity - servant church - discipleship - socialism - peace movement - and, hand in hand with all that, politics'. In this chapter, I describe and develop some of the themes Barth mentioned. I will not make a case for the full coherence of these themes in Barth's mature theology because I am not sure that there is an account of this sort, i.e., of Barth's full-fledged and finished 'political ethics'. But my discussion will include a portrayal and an alignment of Barth's political ideas that display both how they might make sense together, and how they might yet exist in conflict or tension. Maybe that is enough to introduce and make clearer the 'direction' of which Barth speaks.

My study points out how Barth (1) affirmed both Christian political responsibility and its theologically required independence from political ideologies and ‘natural law’ approaches as such. Responsibility without independence leaves Christians captive to the ideologies and approaches, and hence unable politically to witness in freedom to God’s sovereign grace. In his understanding of the political order, Barth (2) often focused on the divinely ordained role of the state in protecting citizens from one another and guaranteeing the freedom of the church to preach the gospel. These safeguards are founded on the rule of law backed by threat of coercion.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is, as Adolf von Harnack once observed, the 'orphan doctrine' of Christian theology. Unlike the doctrine of the Trinity or the doctrine of Christ's person, it has never been stabilized by a conciliar decision of the church, although it is as vexing, contested and uncertain as any doctrine the church has ever known. An omen of things to come emerged as early as the Council of Nicaea (ad 325). Diverted by dissension over other questions, the council produced a creditable statement of the church's belief in God the Father, and especially of its belief in the deity of God the Son (which was, of course, the chief point at issue), but then closed rather weakly by stating its belief, 'and in the Holy Spirit' - with no further elaboration at all.

The deficiency was partly remedied by the ensuing Council of Constantinople (ad 381). Words were added to the Nicene Creed which have remained normative for the church ever since. The Holy Spirit in whom the church believes, the Creed now stated, is ‘the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets’. This statement, however slight, acknowledged the Holy Spirit’s full and unabridged deity, indicated something of the Spirit’s place within the Holy Trinity, and affirmed that the Spirit communicates God’s Word to us through select human intermediaries. Unaddressed, however, were many matters that would divide Christendom throughout its history right down to the present day. To speak only very generally, these were matters having to do with revelation and salvation, with ecclesiology, ministry and sacraments, with eschatology and society, with justification, sanctification and glorification, and above all, as perhaps the overarching issue, with the unity and distinction between the saving work of the Spirit and the saving work of Christ.

INTRODUCTION

Karl Barth is a systematic theologian in the respect that nothing written in one place is said without implicit or explicit reference to other theological themes. We shall therefore not understand him when he speaks of salvation if we fail to bear in mind something of what he has said about revelation and the Trinity, and above all the doctrine of election. While there may not be a single dogmatic 'centre', in the sense of a single organizing idea, to Barth's theology, there is an overall unity to his conception of God's action. It is that focus on action which supplies both the possibilities for, and the impassable limits of, any systematic theological construction. The realities of and limits to our knowledge of God's action provide the parameters for all human theological speech.

It is further the case that Barth fought a lifelong battle against what he called abstraction: the treatment of any topic out of relation to the fact that the divine action which provides the basis and possibility of theology is action in relation to the world. In Christ, God moves into free and loving relation with the world, particularly the human world, so that any theology that does not bear on ethics broadly conceived – that is to say, any theology without bearing on a life lived before God – is not Christian theology. This second feature in particular has a broad bearing on our topic. First, because Barth is an evangelical theologian – a theologian rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ – everything that he wrote, certainly in the Church Dogmatics, is concerned with salvation: with the end to which human life is directed.