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       Karl Barth’s Theological Politics

      David Haddorff

      St. John’s University

      Writing an essay on Barth’s political thought presents the particular challenge of relating his politics to his theology as a whole. The crucial point is that one must generally begin with Barth’s theology before one ventures into a specific area of his thought, like politics. Failure to do this leads to both theological and political misrepresentations. The most common misreading is that Barth’s Christocentric theology (and rejection of natural theology) leads to an ambivalent and even bewildering view of theological politics. Such is the view of Will Herberg’s extensive essay, “The Social Philosophy of Karl Barth,” which was the original introduction to the 1960 printing of this book.1 Known best for his work in sociology of religion, Herberg appreciatively traces the development of Barth’s political thought from Der Römerbrief, whose ‘transcendent word’ breaks asunder all liberal utopian thought, to his defiance against Hitler’s regime and the formation of the Confessing church and the writing of the Barmen Declaration. Herberg rightly argues that it was Barth’s Christological conception of the state (and subsequent rejection of traditional Catholic and Protestant views of the state) that provided the substance of his theological critique of the Nazification of the state and church. Yet, for Herberg, Barth’s heroic stature during the German church struggle eviscerates after World War II against Soviet communism, when a different Barth emerges. The problem is, as Herberg sees is, that Barth uses his Christocentric view to reject the anti-communism of the 1950s, and instead drift toward a middle position ‘between East and West’, condemning German remilitarization and nuclear proliferation. In short, Barth’s theological politics—because it depends on Christology—remains ambiguous and confusing; Barth’s political ethics is relevant in the 1930s but not in the 1950s. It is Herberg’s essay that prompts John Howard Yoder to say that Barth’s political thought is a “continuing story rather than … an oscillation between ‘now you have an ethic’ and ‘now you don’t,’ an oscillation for which one cannot find a respectful explanation.”2 Yoder’s core argument against Herberg is that he misunderstands the later Barth because he misunderstands his theology as a whole, and its relation to the ongoing Evangelical tradition in theology. Yoder, in the 1960s–70s, was one of the first to adequately describe the internal consistency of Barth’s theological ethics, and its how it led to a particular yet open-ended political trajectory.

      Since Herberg’s essay there has been renewed interest in the political Barth. In addition to Yoder, a fresh view of the political Barth emerged in Europe, especially through the work of Frederich-Wilhelm Marquardt, who argued that Barth never really broke with socialism, but provided a new Christological foundation for socialism in the Church Dogmatics.3 Although generally rejected today, Marquardt’s thesis rightly presents Barth not as a non-political dogmatician, but as a theologian who politically engaged his own social-historical circumstances. More recently, in Against Hegemony, Timothy Gorringe continues this line of thinking, demonstrating how Barth’s dogmatics must be interpreted in response to the various hegemonies he confronted, including theological liberalism, Religious Socialism, Nazism, political nationalism, lassiez-faire capitalism, and both communism and anticommunism.4 Barth offers more than a No to hegemony, says Gorringe; he also offers the Yes of freedom and liberation grounded in the Word of God. Gorringe’s political reading of Barth as a kind of proto-liberation theologian remains one perspective, among many, that have emerged in the last decade exploring his theological ethics, including his political thought.5 Perhaps the most important book on Barth’s politics is Frank Jehle’s Against the Steam, which clearly presents a political Barth actively engaging politics throughout his life.6 The overall consensus is that he was political, and his thought remains important to this day.

      The way Barth addressed political issues always begins with his theological presumptions. In agreement with Alan Torrance, Barth’s thought is better seen as a kind of “theological politics” rather than the more popular term, “political theology.”7 Unlike many approaches of political theology that tend to speak about theology within a political framework (theology interpreted politically), Barth reverses this view and speaks about politics within a theological framework and its relationship to the church (politics interpreted theologically).8 Unlike Barth’s approach, political theology usually begins with a social-scientific analysis of the state and civil society (including the church), and then correlates theological belief or practice. Theology becomes an appendage to language of political science, sociology, or political philosophy. In contrast, Barth develops a political perspective based entirely upon God’s action in and through the revelation of the Word of God. His commitment to the Word of God led him to be a dialectical thinker moving between absolute Yes and No, between absolute positive or negative views of the state, between absolute Christian claims of the legitimacy of the state and anarchic denial of legitimacy, between Marxist socialism and free market capitalism, and between right-wing nationalism and left-wing revolutionary politics. Once these extreme ideologies are ruled out, Barth remains committed to a practical “non-ideological politics, strictly orientated toward political issues themselves.”9

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