Please remember Barth’s historical situation. He was writing within a Germany that had been taken over by the Nazis. Barth believed that much of the blame for this was due to liberal Christianity. In his estimation it had lost the ability to make any real difference. Thus Barth’s goal was to restore the proclamation of the Word, in a form in which the Word could judge all human activities. However he was still operating in a post-Enlightenment context, accepting critical methodologies. Thus he was trying to restore the substance of orthodoxy, but in a form that took into account modern thought. That’s why his orthodoxy has a lot of contact with Reformation theology but isn’t identical to conservative theology.
He’s not trying to hide liberalism behind conservative-sounding terms. Quite the contrary — he’s fighting against liberalism. It’s true that there are subtle differences throughout between him and conservatives. But there's nothing hidden about that fact.
Compounding the problem is his style. He is incredibly verbose. He refers to a wide variety of sources, ancient and modern. He does every topic to death. But if you read him, you’ll see that much of the time he’s preaching sermons. And quite commonly they are addressed specifically to the problems he saw in the Church in his time, and are often engaged in controversies from his time which you’d need a commentary to understand. The extreme verbosity gives much of the appearance of vagueness.
I’m not a Barthian. I find his ways of writing and his thought uncongenial. I think his treatment of liberal theology was misleading, and ended up damaging the Church. But before judging him you might want to be sure you understand what he was trying to do. Because I’m not a Barthian I’ll point you to people who are. Google turned up the following interesting paper from an evangelical point of view explaining the positives of what Barth was trying to do:
Karl Barth; Time For an Evangelical Reappraisal?. However the following paper agrees more closely with my observations from the little reading I’ve done of Barth:
http://theologyandpraxis.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/theology__praxis_presentation_1.doc.
Barth is well-known for seeing Scripture as a witness to God and God’s acts, and as a human creation. I think that is inevitable for someone operating in a world informed by the Enlightenment. What’s interesting is where he takes this. Obviously he agrees with liberalism in seeing the Bible as a human creation. But he also thinks liberal Christianity is a dead end. So what different path does he suggest. The difference is that despite being a human creation, the writers of the Bible were raised up by God to do their work. Thus, recognizing its humanity, we are still called to accept it and be judged by it.
Quoting from the second paper:
“For Barth, inspiration and inerrancy is a matter of miracle and mystery or paradox. He believed that the Protestant doctrine of verbal inspiration did “incalculable damage” and shifted revelation to a level that became “subject to human investigation and control” and he was also comfortable in affirming the fallibility and authority of the scriptures. It is a miracle that fallible human words become the Word of God like Jesus healing the blind and the sick. The authority of scripture does not come from a “contingent outcome of scientific or historical corroboration” but from faith; not from inerrancy but an embrace of the mystery or paradox of something both divine and human.”
I’m uninterested in arguing about inerrancy. People who assert it do so as a matter of faith. Because they reject evidence as a matter of principle, no discussion with them is useful. The interesting question for me is once we realize the human element in Scripture, what do we do with it. Much of liberal theology attempts to analyze Scripture in detail, figure out what “really happened” and use that. Barth would argue that this is a mistake, that Scripture comes from God, and despite its human nature, is still God’s Word to us. Calvin is known for using the Incarnation as an analogy for Scripture. It seems to me that Barth is doing the same.
(Just to be clear, Barth's primary opposition was not the folks who tried to figure out what really happened. It was to folks who in effect turned the Biblical message into abstract philosophy. That's one other possible reaction to the Enlightenment: to see the Bible as an early way of thinking about our place in the universe, and effectively replace it by existential philosophy or something like that. That was the approach Barth was most directly attacking.)
I don't accept this approach myself, but it’s still a serious alternative that people should understand.
