Good day Hivers and Book Clubbers,
Many people shudder at just hearing the word 'theology'. For agnostic or atheist people, it might seem a dusty, thoroughly irrelevant affair. For someone of a different faith, it might remind them of their opposition.
Though there is also a lot of theological struggle within a faith, or in the case of this book, even within a specific denomination.
Karl Barth (1886-1968) was one the most influential, and following that, divisive theologians of the 20th century. Raised as a reformed/Calvinist in Switzerland, his theology quickly became something else entirely. As his fame rose throughout the European Protestant world (mostly Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.), voices of opposition came up from all these countries.
One such voice is that of A. Janse (1890-1960), a self-taught theologian who was a schoolmaster in the Dutch south-western province of Zeeland. The book whose image is shown above 'A. Janse about Karl Barth' is a collection of articles and letters in Dutch, that was collected and published posthumously in 1987. Janse was clearly opposed to Barth's ideas, and the entire read of about 120 pages is an argumented polemic against what he sees as an attack on the established form(s) of Dutch Calvinism. To do a man's life work, in the case of Barth, justice in a short article is basically impossible, but I'm going to give it a try anyway.
A faith of crisis
As a young reverend, Barth was a harsh critic of the Reformed Church at the time, and he told that directly to his congregations. He detested the bourgeois trend that had developed within Western Christianity: relatively well-off people who were very content in their faith, going to church once a week, sometimes praying out of habit, sometimes reading the Bible, etc.
Barth was a proponent of a faith in crisis. In short, this means that man has to figurativelty stand 'naked before God', at his wits end, possibly even cursing God himself. The imagery of the cursing man standing naked before God was inspired, remarkably enough, by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Barth took many cues from contemporary novelists and philosophers.
It's hard to imagine how a man that curses God is somehow a better Christian, living closer to God, than someone that tries to live as good as he can. And on this point Barth's view is challenged by Janse (and almost all of Calvinism/Protestantism with him). Janse posits that keeping God's commandments as well as you can is a far better route to take, than being in a perpetual state of crisis, as Barth seems to prefer.
God's Word
This last point flows into another important one: the idea of the Bible as God's word, being the most authoritative source for Christian doctrine, since the time it has been written up to now, and into the future. This ideal is held by the vast majority of Protestantism, including all Calvinists. Yet Barth is, in my view, somewhat of a charismatic by implicitly denying this statement. Barth puts importance in the somewhat ethereal-sounding 'living Word', which can be at odds with the Bible, and relegates the Bible's importance. An unacceptable position to Janse, and one he criticises vehemently in one of the articles included in the book.
God's elect
A prominent part of (neo-)Calvinist thought is that of predestination: the idea that certain people are elect (chosen) as being part of God's people, and others are not. This, in turn, has led to Calvinist elect more or less separating themselves from 'the World', i.e. the non-elect. Abraham Kuyper, a prominent theologian in the late 19th century, put these ideas in practice by a form of societal separation, meaning: separate schools for Christians, seperate unions, separate universities, other organisations, etc. Janse is an active proponent of these ideas and ideals, himself being the leader of a local Christian primary school.
Barth opposed this by using a somewhat confusing formula of double-predestination, in which all of us are at the same time elect and non-elect. Calvinism, and the idea that some people are simply 'doomed from the start', is an unacceptable view for him. Following from this, it is also unacceptable to him that certain Christian groups would look to separate themselves from the sinful World. And one might seem to get why this is not that big a problem for Barth, if one recalls the notion that the man of 'faith in crisis' sounds like a purposefully sinning being.
Conclusion
I sincerely hope some parts of this made sense to you, the reader. I have a long way to go in the art of explaining theology concisely in a language that is not my mother tongue. There is a plethora of books about all aspects of Karl Barth's ideas, and if you're German, you might even consider reading his original works, although Janse posits that Barth's German prose can be very hard to decipher.
I'm looking to do more non-fiction book reviews on here in the future. If you like this type of content, let me know, and if you have questions or additions, they're always welcome. Until the next one,
-Pieternijmeijer
(Top image: book cover)
