We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.
Karl Barth, b. Basel, Switzerland, May 10, 1886, d. Dec. 9, 1968, is considered by some the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century and possibly the greatest since the Reformation. More than anyone else, Barth inspired and led the renaissance of theology that took place from about 1920 to 1950. He studied at the universities of Bern, Berlin, Tubingen, and Marburg and held pastorates in Switzerland between 1909 and 1921. During this time, he became known as a radical critic both of the prevailing liberal theology and of the social order. Liberal theology, Barth believed, had accommodated Christianity to modern culture. The crisis of World War I was in part a symptom of this unholy alliance. In his famous commentary on Romans (1919), Barth stressed the discontinuity between the Christian message and the world. God is the wholly other; he is known only in his revelation; he is not the patron saint of culture, but its judge.
Between 1921 and 1935, Barth held professorships at Gottingen, Munster, and Bonn. He engaged in controversy with Adolf von Harnack, holding that the latter's scientific theology is only a preliminary to the true task of theology, which is identical with that of preaching. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, Barth emerged as a leader of the church opposition to Nazi control, expressed in the Barmen Declaration of 1934.
Karl Barth: Life and Times 1, 2
