Perhaps the first of the selected pieces brings us closest to the heart of the matter. Jesus Christ is the foundation of the covenant, the community, the unbreakable relationship between God and man. Jesus Christ in his life and death bore and bore the sin of the world and the church.
Therefore, I too may live and die in the light of the righteousness and holiness of God, who defies all the errors of the world and the church. Jesus Christ did his work in the form of the history of his atoning life and death, which took place on behalf of the world and the church. I even gave the first speech there on the theme 'The confusion of the world and God's plan.
What is happening in the Roman Catholic Church is a late resurgence of the Reformation from the 16th century. I myself have always been very fond of the little Missa Brevis in D major, again by the young Mozart.
Final Testimonies by Karl Barth
Liberal Theology -- an Interview
And this further means that I must always be open — here we come, don't we, to what is usually meant by freedom. To be modest is not to be skeptical; it is to see that what one thinks and says also has limits. This awareness gives me inner peace, so that I don't think I always have to be right even though I definitely say what I say and think.
But both dogma and belief in revelation are usually considered to be the antithesis of such terms as liberal, free, and relative. I have really become so free that I can write dogmatics - which many people notice. But the crucial point is to be free from oneself and not to regard oneself as the center of the world and the source of all truth, but to keep a certain distance from oneself and to be able to move at this distance, not to put on protective armor.
You have told us to beware of all "isms" This brings us to another sphere that we touched on, that of politics. As a pastor in a village in Aargau – more than fifty years ago now – I was like that. The only thing I had to do was to take the left side again – because what I found in Göttingen had no whiff of freedom.
It is well known that you lost your chair at Bonn in 1935 because of your opposition to. To return to your socialism, if you will excuse another word ending in "ism". It is not to be supposed that you were a Marxist. If it is going to be used at all, I would prefer that, as in our discussion, it be used for a basic style, a.
For there are many other things about our theme which especially now need to be noted and explained.
Radio Sermons -- Catholic and Evangelical
Editor Eberhard Busch is pastor of Uerkheim, Switzerland and curator of the Karl Barth Archive in Basel. The question to be asked of the Reformed persuasion is whether they are really as free and as "reforming" as those of the good old days. In none, or hardly any, of the sermons I have heard, I do not recall noticing any of the demythologizing and existentializing of the New Testament characteristic of this school.
Mention might be made of a Dominican's sermon early last year in Lucerne – on the ambivalent theme: “Did Jesus die in vain?” – but this only reminds us that the school also flourished in its own way in Switzerland, even in Roman Catholic Switzerland. Despite Chapter VIII of the Church Constitution of Vatican II, I have heard no glorification of the Mother of God from the Roman Catholic side, only muted references to the authority of the Petrine office, and no direct emphasis at all on the merit of the Church. good job. And on the Reformed side there have been no allusions to the power and wiles of the devil who dwelt in Rome, and no emphasis on 'Here I stand; I can't do anything else.' Clearly, a number of things were said out of respect on both sides. for the fathers, but not in active attack or defense.
In this regard, I would find it better if the usual playing of seemingly or authentically serious music did not break the sequence by passing between the sermons, but instead rounded the two and thus created a natural transition in the rest of the Sunday morning program. . Why is not the Lord's Supper organized among us every Sunday in every church in the presence of the whole congregation? Even if the length of the sermons had to be shortened and also the inappropriate organ music.
In this way we would no longer comprehensively be the church of the Word -- of the Word that was not only speaking, but became flesh. On another occasion, I heard a preacher say at the beginning, without even announcing a text, that he was going to speak on "Psychology and Pastoral Care." In general, one can also say that even the most progressive Roman Catholics preach a little more law and detailed morality than is consistent with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is surely still too much of the bottom-up thinking that radically distorts preaching -- Thomistic among older Roman Catholics, Cartesian among many of the Reformed, and a strange mixture of the two among modern Roman Catholics.
Now it is not my purpose to sing the familiar song of praise.
Starting Out, Turning Round, Confessing
The distinguishing feature today of this one movement of the church, of its origins, its transformation and its confession, consists in the fact that in the contemporary church this takes place in many, but not in all confessions. But be that as it may, there is this one movement of the one church, in our case of the two confessions. There is then a resolute farewell to what is known, what is close, what has its own advantages, such as in the form of the well-known fleshpots of Egypt.
It is that of God's people who are still in slavery and yet now set free. The true and authentic beginning of the church is first of all an acceptance of the future and only then and therefore a denial of the past. In both narratives today we often hear a justifiable but empty denial -- empty because it is not filled with the affirmation of a better future.
If only God would tell them, or if they would let God tell them, and if they would then tell others what to replace the present set-up, then and only then would their activity have something authentic and credible to do with starting out of the church. The true and authentic beginning of the church will have to take place in an orderly manner. The former will unfortunately require that as much of the old as possible be taken with it.
Leaving the church should be a more or less disciplined event in which there are no winners and no losers. Has any nation ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have heard? However, one must carefully consider what is meant by this general backward movement of the church to see if it is a true and authentic turning around.
In the turning church, the saying is true that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. All live unto Him," from the apostles to the earlier and later fathers.
Epilogue by Eberhard Busch
He is the author of Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (SCM, Fortress, 1976). Feiner asked Barth if on the occasion of the ecumenical week of prayer (January 18, 1969) he would give a speech at a meeting of Roman Catholic and Reformed Christians at the Paulusakademie in Zurich. To make it sound less legal and more like an invitation and an event, he deliberately decided to put the title in verb nouns: “Starting Out, Turning.
He broke off the text in the middle of a sentence, hoping to finish the half-finished speech the next day. One or two words have been proposed in the present version where Barth left blanks.). But, again, the present text is incomplete in the sense that the last and shortest part was not written at all.
Therefore, it is not, as among many supporters and opponents of the papal encyclical Humani generis, the confession of different knowledge of nature and consciousness. It should not be done with self-affirmation, but in the mission that is essential for the church as such -- not with self-affirmation, because what is confessed in this confession remains a mystery to Christians themselves. The beginning, return and confession of the church is already an event in the power of the epiphany of Jesus Christ.
On the contrary, it itself makes the movement possible, because by manifesting what it is, it also manifests what we already are. It is the act of eucharist for the one-time giving and effective gift of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. If readers want it, they must faithfully read or re-read the volumes of Church Dogmatics.
They should read with special attention the fragment of Church Dogmatics IV, 4 onwards.