The Divine No Containing the Yes: Barth's Experience and Crisis Theology

With Barth, there was a deep sense of celebrating the JUDGMENT OF GOD. There is a sense of being shaken to the core by a reality beyond us but somehow concerned with us. It was an awakening to sanity, a deep realization of our creatureliness, and a confession that we were not the "masters of our fate," nor free to command on the earth. For Barth, it was a profound experience of the Otherness of God and the reality of that otherness as something that could be experienced both in prayer, thought, and deed that changed his course in life, and changed the course of many in the 20th century through his influence.

And, in contrast to Nietzsche who took any signal that human beings were not the gods of the earth as movement against life, Barth received this message of judgment upon human arrogance and presumption with gladness. Having gotten used to standing on the shaky plank of human wisdom and learning, Barth rejoiced as the plank had broken and he found himself falling into the deep waters of God's grace. Waters chaotic and powerful, but waters that were commanded by the One who ruled wind and waves.

For Barth, God had unveiled the falseness and emptiness of human wisdom, presumption and confidence. And, to receive this judgment put a man or woman in a crisis of the soul, because there was no going back to a vision of life that was not broken, no going back to a world in which human learning and science would get us through.

I have almost always experienced God's judgment as redeeming, as good news. It may be hard, but it is real and restores life and a sense of reality. In my next post I am going to back up a little, and trace where I came from religiously before encountering this new word from Barth and the existentialists, especially Kierkegaard.