Karl Barth
- Lived
- 1886–1968
- Era
- Twentieth century and after
- Where
- Switzerland and Germany
- Tradition
- Reformed / Presbyterian
The Church Dogmatics, and the Barmen Declaration
A Swiss pastor whose commentary on Romans in 1919 broke the hold of liberal theology on the German-speaking churches, and who taught in Germany until the Nazi state expelled him in 1935 for refusing an unconditional oath to Hitler.
Why it matters
He was the principal author of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, the founding document of the Confessing Church, which stated that the church listens to Jesus Christ and to no other authority — the sharpest available refusal of a state claim on the churches. The Church Dogmatics ran to some six million words and was unfinished. He is usually reckoned the most important Protestant theologian since the Reformation, and his long relationship with his assistant Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who lived in his household, is part of the record.
In the record
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1948–2026 AD Rapprochement
Ecumenical dialogue
Barmen set the terms a church uses to refuse a state, and shaped the century after it
All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.