Barth On the Essence of the Christian Life

Near the end of his instructive book, Karl Barth On the Christian Life: The Practical Knowledge of God, Barth scholar and theologian Joseph Mangina offers us an inside look at the theological development of Barth's thinking on the nature of the Christian life. As you may know, Barth's massive, voluminous Church Dogmatics remained unfinished. The last part of CD IV.4, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, represents only a fragment of what would have eventually been a fulsome treatment of Barth's 'ethics.'

Thankfully, CD IV.4 is not the only work we have from Barth's pen regarding the Christian life. Throughout the Church Dogmatics and his other occasional writings, Barth was sure to give us insightful, thick descriptions of what discipleship to Jesus Christ entails. But his concentrated work on this score can be found in two places specifically, that is, in the heretofore mentioned CD IV.4 and in a companion piece simply titled, The Christian Life. As Mangina notes, The Christian Life began as a set of lectures Barth delivered between 1959-1961, just before retiring from his long-held post at Basil. The adjacent material in CD IV.4 also originated in lecture form during the same time period. Combined, those lectures were meant to comprise part of the mature fruit of Barth's Doctrine of Reconciliation, thus bringing the entire Church Dogmatics to an unforgettable close. Though Barth's thought on Christian ethics was never 'complete' -- a sign of wisdom on his part, I think -- from the work that remains we are still able to get a good idea of Barth's theology of the baptized life. In what follows, I want to highlight a few important features of that theology as it is presented in Mangina's book.

What is the nature or essence of the Christian life? Is it faithfulness? Obedience to God's righteous command? Or it is holiness? Or perhaps love? While all of these overlapping words work to characterize the Christian life, does one of them stand out among the crowd? Or can one of these words alone carry the heavy load of being the essence of an entire way of being? If you give the question anything more than a cursory glance you might find it difficult to settle on just one answer.

Barth, Mangina tells us, had the same difficulty. One the one hand, "Barth's ethics in the Dogmatics as a whole is organized on a trinitarian principle," Mangina observes.

"The command of God encounters us as the Creator's address to creatures, as the Reconciler's address to forgiven sinners, and as the Redeemer's address to God's children and heirs. Reflecting this, each of the volumes on creation, reconciliation, and redemption was structured to conclude with a paragraph on special ethics." On the other hand, however, as Barth began to build-out his ethics of reconciliation, "he was confronted with a decision as to the organizing theme or principle of the volume" (p.170). According to Mangina, Barth considered a few common themes, such as "repentance," "faith," "thanksgiving," and "faithfulness." Regarding the last of these especially, Barth initially thought it would be the controlling center of his ethics, so he began to build a conceptual framework around it. After a brief gestation period, though, "faithfulness" was abandoned and Barth was back to the beginning.

Giving it more time, Barth finally placed invocation at the center of his ethical thought. "[T]he humble and resolute, the frightened and joyful invocation of the gracious God in gratitude, praise, and above all petition" (CL, 43; 172). Don't let the formality of the word invocation distract you. What Barth intends by using this word is nothing other than prayer. For Barth, then, the essence of the Christian life is vibrant, actionable prayer -- prayer that metabolizes faith for the gritty, dynamic work of loving God and neighbor. As Mangina says, "In praying, the human being realizes his or her creaturely freedom under the command of God" (p. 173).

Freedom made possible by prayer is freedom for the other: freedom for God, who alone is 'Wholly Other,' and freedom for our neighbors, who are other than us. Such other-centered freedom, then, is not isolating but reconciling. Reconciliation, therefore, is an act of justice. So: prayer is justice, especially when that prayer is for our enemies.

The Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet, ca. 1857-1859

Mangina describes Barth's relationship between prayer and ethics in two summary points.

• First, invocation serves as the orienting principle for the Christian life because the very act of invoking God's name in prayer assumes that it is indeed the whole person who is now standing in God's presence. This is an important point. One does not merely pray with one's mind or one's heart, forgetting all the rest; rather, when one prays, the entirety of their person -- mind, heart, soul, body -- stands Coram Deo ('in the face of God'). Unlike modernity, Barth's theological anthropology does not bifurcate the human person, positing head or heart, mind or body. To be human is to be an ensouled body. The two are distinguishable but inseparable. Lastly, by virtue of the fact that we stand Coram Deo in prayer, we in turn bear witness to the reality of God in Christ for our neighbor. Prayer as such is an ethical act.

• Second, one fundamental element to an intelligible moral life is constancy. Being of sound character and being duplicitous are antithetical in nature. Either one consititenly evinces virtue -- hence inviting us to say 'that person possess good character' -- or one consistently lives duplicitously, with occasional moments of right action -- although it's impossible to know with confidence either way on account of their being duplicitous. It cannot be both. Invocation, as both a communal and individual act, is concrete; thus it can be displayed over time and is indicative of the ongoing narrative of one's moral life and sanctification. It has the added effect, moreover, of making room for human passions and desires. Again, it is the whole person who stands Coram Deo. Without a zeal for God, according to Barth, the Christian life makes no sense.

I hope this brief sketch of the controlling theme of Barth's ethics has been helpful. Speaking personally, seeing Barth's perspective has changed my understanding of my own discipleship to Jesus as a matter of course. Prayer is a habit of being; it is not an occasional aside to my 20-minute devotional time. Barth taught me that, along with the Fathers.

Let me know what you think. Do you agree or disagree? If you think there is another center to the Christian life other than invocation, then please share it, and be sure to tell me why you think it is better. In another post, I plan to write about other aspects of Barth's ethics as they are found in Mangina's book. Stay tuned.