BARTH, KARL
Publié le 22/02/2012
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BARTH, KARL (1886–1968), theologian; his commentary on the Epistle to
the Romans (1919) led fellow theologians to compare him with Martin Luther
(Pope Pius XII deemed him the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas).
Born in Basel to a professor of church history, he began studies at Berlin* with
Adolf von Harnack* and then pursued theology at Marburg under Wilhelm
Hermann and Hermann Cohen. During 1911–1921, while pastoring an industrial
parish in Switzerland, he became acutely aware of social injustice. Ever wrestling
with the polarities between God and man, he labored to distinguish his
social concern from his Christianity; when he finally joined the SPD in 1931,
he claimed that he was embracing the Republic, not socialism.
Appointed to Go¨ttingen's theological faculty in 1921, Barth went to Mu¨nster
in 1925 and to Bonn in 1930. Already ill at ease as a student with the relativism
and historicism practiced within Protestantism, he saw no paradox in his belief
in the absolute ‘‘otherness'' of God (a Kierkegaardian concept) and his passion
over the world's social misery; indeed, he believed that the two intersected in
the person of Jesus, the supreme medium between God and humanity. Voicing
concern over contemporary theology, he was wary of modern pretensions to
solve society's problems. A prophetic voice in the tradition of Calvin, he called
the church back to the Bible and its living foundation, Christ. His central message,
which gained wide acceptance, was fundamental to his Romans commentary—
a critique of idealism, romanticism, and religious socialism. Church
Dogmatics (1932–1959), which occupied him for thirty years, partially reconciled
him with institutional Christianity.
Barth was in the vanguard of the Protestant* struggle against Nazism. His
vocal criticism of Hitler's* treatment of Jews* overlapped with his Christcentered
perspective on life; it found substance in the 1934 Barman Declaration,
a document largely written by Barth and central to the Kirchenkampf against
the effort to control German Christianity. Although he was deprived in 1935 of
his chair at Bonn, his Christian stand gained him wide prestige. He returned to
Switzerland and taught systematic theology at Basel until 1962.
Liens utiles
- DOGMATIQUE Karl Barth (résumé)
- Barth, Karl Barth, Karl (1886-1968), théologien protestant suisse, considéré comme l'un des penseurs chrétiens les plus éminents du XXe siècle.
- Barth Karl , 1886-1968, né à Bâle, théologien protestant suisse d'expression allemande.
- Barth, Karl
- Barth (Karl)