Karl Barth: Life and Times 2, existentialism and Karl Barth, the Realm of Existentialism at DividingLine.com

Deprived of his chair at Bonn, he returned to Switzerland and from 1935 until his retirement in 1962 was professor at Basel, exercising a worldwide influence. During this period he worked on his Church Dogmatics (1932-67), a multivolume work of great richness that was unfinished at his death. Although he modified some of his early positions, he continued to maintain that theology is concerned only with unfolding the revealed word attested in the Bible and has no place for natural theology or the insights of non-Christian religions. He held that religion is humankind's attempt to grasp at God and is therefore diametrically opposed to revelation, in which God has come to humans through Christ.

Although Barth's uncompromising position was a great strength during the period of Nazi power, his views were increasingly subjected to criticism in the following decades. Some argue that he was too negative in his estimate of humankind and its reasoning powers and too narrow in limiting revelation to the biblical tradition, thus excluding the non-Christian religions. ---by John Macquarrie

Karl Barth: Life and Times 1, 2