moreteamorecats's review
5.0
I'd known they called the young Barth the "red pastor of Safenwil", involved with labor action there; and that he'd called for preachers to "read the Bible with one hand, the newspaper with the other". This book fills in those details and then some. It's a compiled volume, including both some early Barth on socialism and social action and several essays from the '70s prompted by Marquardt's argument that Barth's mature theology should be read through an anarcho-syndicalist lens.
From the whole, Barth emerges as an eclectic lefty, primarily concerned with God's sovereignty against both bourgeois and revolutionary ideologies but oriented toward oppressed people of all sorts. His reputation for political quietism is not unearned—he didn't talk politics with his students, for instance—but he did ask for the committed socialist Gollwitzer to succeed him at Basle, a request the board there denied! (Gollwitzer's essay is a volume highlight.) Hunsinger characterizes Barth as a curious combination of InterVarsity and the American Friends Service Committee, which is both plausible from my reading of him and (if I may say so) country I know exceedingly well.
For me, the most striking theological point in the book is the genealogical work showing that Barth's account of "love" and "freedom" as the divine attributes begins as his youthful description of an ideal socialist society. That's specific enough to teach, more so than simply saying Barth is looking for a theology adequate to praxis.
From the whole, Barth emerges as an eclectic lefty, primarily concerned with God's sovereignty against both bourgeois and revolutionary ideologies but oriented toward oppressed people of all sorts. His reputation for political quietism is not unearned—he didn't talk politics with his students, for instance—but he did ask for the committed socialist Gollwitzer to succeed him at Basle, a request the board there denied! (Gollwitzer's essay is a volume highlight.) Hunsinger characterizes Barth as a curious combination of InterVarsity and the American Friends Service Committee, which is both plausible from my reading of him and (if I may say so) country I know exceedingly well.
For me, the most striking theological point in the book is the genealogical work showing that Barth's account of "love" and "freedom" as the divine attributes begins as his youthful description of an ideal socialist society. That's specific enough to teach, more so than simply saying Barth is looking for a theology adequate to praxis.
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