Barth, Karl (bärt), 1886–1968, Swiss Protestant theologian, one of the leading thinkers of 20th-century Protestantism. He helped to found the Confessing Church Confessing Church, Ger. Bekennende Kirche, German Protestant movement. It was founded in 1933 by Martin Niemoeller as the Pastors' Emergency League and was systematically opposed to the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church.
..... Click the link for more information. and his thinking formed the theological framework for the Barmen Declaration. He taught in Germany, where he early opposed the Nazi regime. In 1935 when he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, he was retired from his position at the Univ. of Bonn and deported to Switzerland. There he continued to expound his views, known as dialectical theology or theology of the word. Barth's primary object was to lead theology back to the principles of the Reformation (called neo-orthodoxy). For Barth, modern theology with its assent to science, immanent philosophy, and general culture and with its stress on feeling, was marked by indifference to the word of God and to the revelation of God in Jesus, which he thought should be the central concern of theology. In the confrontation between humanity and God, which was Barth's fundamental concern, the word of God and God's revelation in Jesus are the only means God has for Self-revelation; Barth argued that people must listen in an attitude of awe, trust, and obedience. This theological position is also related to those of Emil Brunner Brunner, Emil (ā`mēl br
..... Click the link for more information. , Friedrich Gogarten Gogarten, Friedrich, 1887–1968, German theologian. He was professor of theology at the Univ. of Jena from 1927 until 1933, when he began to teach at the Univ. of Göttingen.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Rudolf Bultmann, although Barth's position is the stricter. Barth's writings include The Epistle to the Romans (tr. 1933), The Word of God and the Word of Man (tr. 1928), Credo (tr. 1936), and Church Dogmatics (Vol. I-IV, tr. 1936–62).

Bibliography

See T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth (1966); R. E. Willis, The Ethics of Karl Barth (1971); E. Busch, Karl Barth (1976); G. W. Bromiley, An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (1981).

Barth, Karl

(born May 10, 1886, Basel, Switz.—died Dec. 9/10, 1968, Basel) Swiss theologian. He studied at the Universities of Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg, and in 1911–21 he was a pastor at Safenwil, Switz. The tragedy of World War I made him question the liberal theology of his teachers, rooted in post-Enlightenment ideas. With The Epistle to the Romans (1919) he inaugurated a radical turnaround in Protestant thought, initiating a trend toward neoorthodoxy. The work led to his appointment as professor at Göttingen (1921), Münster (1925), and Bonn (1930). He was a founder of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazi regime; when his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler cost him his chair at Bonn, he returned to Basel. He spoke at the opening of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and visited Rome following the Second Vatican Council.