Initial Thoughts: Karl Barth on Romans

I just got a copy of Karl Barth's commentary on Romans (in English since I don't read German). I have read only the preface and his comments on Romans 6 so far, but wow. The intensity of his approach is refreshing in a world of boring Bible commentaries.

Barth's vehemence and veracity remind me of another philosopher-theologian whose words I have feasted upon: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (especially in God in Search of Man). Barth and Heschel both write with a seriousness about their subject matter, penetrating the deepest mystery of all: the Ineffable, Unknowable, Limitless Nature of God.

Regarding God, Barth would say we are not amazed enough. We make God out to be a man—a very large man, but only a man with higher capabilities than other men.

But regarding God as similar to human beings is a tragic error. We do not understand God properly from the ground up, by looking at his mere image—a human being—and deducing from the fragmentary image what the Origin and Truth behind all reality is like. Can we comprehend the sun by a few sparkles showing on the surface of a lake? Can we grasp the meaning of the universe with a set of binoculars? Setting a sub-atomic particle next to a red giant star does not even begin to approximate the difference between human beings and the Omnipotent.

God dwells in unapproachable light. An unknown writer of the 17th century wrote a book, The Cloud of Unknowing, discussing the incomprehensibility of God. We can only know him via love and faith, not reason. To Moses and the Israelites he appeared in a thick cloud, a cloud of unknowing. To Paul on the way to Damascus in Syria, Christ appeared and Paul was blinded. No one has seen God and lived.

Christ mediated God to us by taking on humanity. This was God lowering himself to be accessible to us. The Glory was veiled.

Now I bring up the ineffability of God because I was completely unprepared for this to be Barth's theme in a commentary on Romans. I started reading Barth’s commentary in Romans 6, because that is where I am currently mining for information and comprehension. Big mistake. It seemed as if I was reading in another language. I felt embarrassment and an inability to apprehend what he was saying.

Then I decided skipping the preface had been a bad decision. And I felt some relief when I read the preface because I discovered two things: Barth feels his writing is difficult to comprehend and many of his earliest critics accused him of being pedantic and unnecessarily philosophical. Barth’s response is wonderful:

For us neither the Epistle to the Romans, nor the present theological position, nor the present state of the world, nor the relation between God and the world, is simple. And he who is now concerned with truth must boldly acknowledge that he cannot be simple. In every direction human life is difficult and complicated.

Here is my inexpert take on the primary conundrum keeping Barth awake at night: how does the Ineffable become known to such meager beings as we are, bound by time and incapacitated by irrational passions? How can humans know the “Without End”? And Barth does not for a second think that this question slipped Paul’s mind. God’s ineffability stands behind every esoteric contemplation in his letters concerning the righteousness of God and the contradictions of God’s solutions.

The ultimate contradiction was expressed by Kierkegaard and Barth deeply feels the enigma:

. . . if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the “infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative and well as positive significance: “God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.” The relation between such a God and such a man, and the relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy. 

Barth believed Paul was uncommonly aware of the distance between human beings and God. Jewish reflection on divinity in Paul’s time exhibited a heightened awareness of the problem of God’s Infinite Nature and humanity’s limitations. Therefore, Paul was not describing in his letters a Man with some divine qualities who is a rescuing hero. Paul described the Infinite One clothing Unbounded Glory in finite form—Jesus Christ in his lowly condition on earth—unveiling himself to our limited perception and inviting us to partake in Eternity.

Barth’s commentary wrestles with the contradictions. Barth insists that the proper task of a commentary is not simply defining words, restating them in different words, and peppering them with some historical and literary parallels. Commentary is understanding the questions being asked and the answers being given. And commentary must be loyal to the author, giving the author the benefit of the doubt that they had carefully considered the questions and answers.

Barth understands the radicalness of Paul. I could not agree more with his saying:

Paulinism has stood always on the brink of heresy. This being so, it is strange how utterly harmless and unexceptional most commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans and most books about Paul are.

Paul departed from Jewish orthodoxy when he recognized that Jesus Christ is God. There were already Jewish speculations about "two powers in heaven," coming especially from Second Temple Literature reflecting on the Son of Man in Daniel and similar figures (Enoch, the Angel of Yahweh, Metatron, etc.). But Christ had unveiled a new truth: God inhabiting humanity in the person of Jesus and redeeming humanity from the inside.

Paul was already a heretic. And in many churches today, his ideas would get him in trouble with boards and voting members.

As Barth interprets Romans, the vast gulf between humanity and deity continually inform his commentary. Commenting, for example, on the phrase "power of God" from Romans 1:16-17, he says:

The Gospel of the Resurrection is the action, the supreme miracle, by which God, the unknown God dwelling in light unapproachable, the Holy One, Creator, and Redeemer, makes himself known: "What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you" (Acts 17:23). No divinity remaining on this side of the line of resurrection; no divinity which dwells in temples made with hands or which is served by the hands of man; no divinity which NEEDS ANYTHING, any human propaganda, can be God (Acts 17:24-25). God is the unknown God and, precisely because he is unknown, he bestows life and breath and all things. Therefore the power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men . . . The power of God is not the most exalted of observable forces, nor is it either their sum or their fount. Being completely different, it is the KRISIS of all power, that by which all power is measured, and by which it is pronounced to be both something and—nothing, nothing and—something. It is that which sets all these powers in motion and fashions their eternal rest.

There is no one and nothing like God. God can only be known by what he reveals and we apprehend by faith. God reveals God and that revelation is Christ. No one knows Jesus except by God speaking to them in their inner person via the Spirit. And Barth's wrestling with the text of Romans is all about that, about a great mind (Paul's) lit on fire by God to express the inexpressible in limiting words, but words that witness to the Word of God. Paul's words are not holy in and of themselves, but God uses them to do holy things in us.