Book Review: "The Epistle to the Romans"

The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth, translated by Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford University Press, USA, 1968), paperback, 576 pages

While Karl Barth would later offer a more systematic theology in his Church Dogmatics, he first gave voice to his theological vision in his commentary on The Epistle to the Romans, first published in 1918 and then expanded and reissued five more times during the following ten years.  Translated from German into English in 1933, the work provided an intellectual foundation for the theological movement that eventually was described as Barthianism or Neo-Orthodoxy.

Barth's analysis of Romans is straightforward: Paul offered God's wisdom to his age and the same lessons are applicable to contemporary times.  However, the heart of Barth's interpretation is rather counter-intuitive: the apostle is writing to a depraved and fallen humanity that cannot fathom the transcendent God, so much of what can be understood, and must be understood, is negative (humans must come to understand what things they can never understand).  Barth insists on human inability to understand divine wisdom; worse, human institutions -- including the church -- try to promote flawed wisdom in place of God's teaching.

Amazingly, Barth, responding to 18th and 19th century theologians and Biblical scholars who advocated for a progressive Christianity that imagined a constructive role for human beings in elucidating and carrying out God's teaching, insisted on a theological position about divine power more stringent than even John Calvin's notable writing about the transcendent God.  God's power and wisdom are completely different and grander than anything that people can understand or appreciate; in fact, only through direct revelation (that is, the Bible) can human beings even begin to understand anything about God.

The consequence of this thinking -- and the central delicate interpretation that Barth must provide -- is that there is barely any difference between sin and non-sin, between faith and non-faith.  Given that sinful human beings are so fallen, so limited, and so ignorant, it is difficult to describe how mortals can act with any conception of good and evil that even approximates God's ultimate good and evil.  In some ways, it appears that awareness of this human limitation is what separates faithful Christians from others, in Barth's analysis.

As a rather unabashed Calvinist on most matters of divine transcendence, I can appreciate Barth's approach in some ways, but it consistently undervalues humanity in a way that seems to diverge from the description of human beings created in God's image (Genesis 1) and the way that Jesus consistently approaches and teaches people in the Gospels.  Still, the great gift for Christians of Barth's rigorous and persistent approach is the necessary reminder that our thinking is not God's thinking and we probably do not know even what we think we know, especially when we dare to speak of God.

With this in mind, it should be noted that reading Barth is not for the faint of heart or mind.  He often approaches subjects with a density of prose, including paragraphs that can run for pages.  Frankly, I also find that Barth is best read in small doses, lest one's eyes glaze over.  Still, this influential theological approach demands understanding, assessment, and likely adaptation by modern Christians.