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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (May 17, 1962)
B ion in America THURSDAY, MAY 17. 1962 MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFOHD. OREGON Swiss Theologian Considered Greatest oPPresent Centtiry Br LOUIS CASSELS Dr. Karl Barth ol Basel, Switzerland, is a short, stooped man ot 76. He peers i-n at the world "Tk, through thick eye iiiiici and usually wears a small ff q u i z z i c a 1 ', .mil. W hgi cuuii me past u years, and scholars today re' fer to him matter-of-factly as the greatest theologian of this century and one of the greatest of all time, Dr. Barth has been In the United States for the past month. It is his first visit to this country. He delivered i series of lectures at the Uni versity of Chicago, and a ximilar series at Princeton Theological Seminary. Last week he was in Washington, D.C., for seminars at George Washington University and American University. In these talks, Dr. Barth has sought to summarize and clarify the main themes of the "evangelical theology1 which he has expounded in more than 200 books Some laymen who have heard him speak have come away wondering, "What's ao new about that?" Would Delight Barth The question would delight Dr. Barth. His purpose has never been to offer novel, modern interpretations of Christianity. What he has sought to do and in great measure, has succeeded in doing is to rescue theology from the by-ways of 19th Cen tury liberalism and bring It back to the broad high road of the Gospel. Where liberalism tended to focus on human experience, and to reason upward from man, nature and history to ward a concept of God, Dr. Barth took exactly the oppo site approach. He began where the prophets of ancient Israel began, with the Su preme Fact of a creating and sustaining God who is "wholly other" than man, who entirely transcends man's finite cosmos of time and space, and who can never be apprehended or under stood by His human creatures except as He chooses to re veal Himself to them. It is both presumptuous and futile, Dr. Barth said, for men to speculate about what God "ought" to be like, or in what manner he "should re veal himself. Man can only listen for God's own "Word" or self-e xpresslon. This "Word" requires no external validation; it authenticates it self because the God who speaks it is also present in human hearts, enabling men to respond in faith and love to truths which they could never reach with the short arms of logic. 'Word' Faithfully R.cord.d ' Much confusion about Dr. Barth's theology might be avoided by noting that he uses the term, "Word of God," in the same sense that it is used in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel namely, to connote the self-revealing activity of God in history. Dr. Barth believes that this sense, all of his books are Klamath Forester Plans Norway Trip Yreka - Forest Supervisor Charles A. Yates has an nounced that Thomas J. Smithberger, a forester on the Yioka staff of the Klamath National forest will leave soon to spend a year studying for estry in Norway. Smithbergcr has received a Fulbrighl Grant from the department of state for the academic year 1962-63 during which he will be affiliated with the Agricultural College of Norway and The Norwe gian Forest Research Institute at Vollebekk. The grant will be used by Smithbergcr to study Nor wegian methods of determin ing and predicting forest growth. Baker Reclamation Project Approved Washington - IITD - The House Reclamation subcom mittee Wednesday recom mended construction of the $8 million Baker Reclamation Project in Oregon. The subcommittee approved a bill by Rep. Al Ullman ID Ore .) to build Mason Dam on the Powder river south of Baker to provide irrigation facilities in the area. The bill was amended in line with an Interior Depart ment recommendations to al low exceptions from the 160 acre limitation on lands served with project water. The limit may be exceeded on lands of lower quality. The full Interior committee is expected to take up the bill next week. .Word of God" is faithfully recorded in the Bible, and his vigorous insistence on this point has given a mighty im petus to the modern revival of Biblical theology. But he is not a fundamentalist, and he has never subscribed to the fundamentalist view that the Bible itself is the literal and infallible word of God. To Dr. Barth, as to Martin Luther, the Bible's supreme importance stems from its testimony to Jesus Christ, ;the Word made flesh." Dr. Barth's theology is totally Christ-centered. In a commentaries on the basic fact that the transcendent, unknowable God has conde scended more men by "taking up humanity" in Christ, thus bridging the gulf between Creator and creature which could never have beef? crossed from the other side. He sharply disagrees with the theologians such as Ger many's Rudolph Bultmann who told that there are "mythological" elements in the New Testament. Barthian theology strongly affirms that the life, death and bodily resurrection of Christ 'were real events "in time and space." At the same time. Dr. Barth rejects any attempt to "prove" ehe historicity of the Resurrection. The methods of historical science, he says cannot go beyond Jhe testi mony of the "witnesses" which is recorded in the NCw Testament. "It was granted to them," says Dr. Barth,' "to hear the Word of God in its glory, as a pledge, promise, warning and consolation affecting all men." And they were sent into the world with a com mission "to attest Jesus as this Word of God to all men, Men are free to accept thtir testimony, or to reject it, says Dr. Barth. But if is sheer arrogance for any mod ern theologian to treat the Biblical witnesses "as thgagh he were better informed about the Word of God than they were." "Even the smallest, the strangest, the simplest, the obscurest among them has an incomparable advantage over even the most pious, scholarly and sagacious later theolo gian," he says, for these wit nesses experienced a "direct confrontation" with God huAa which is unique history. But modern man need only rely on blind trust in the Biblical witnesses to accept the good news they pro claimed. The same Holy Spirit which enabled the first Apostles to see and under stand the risen Christ stiy dwells "not only among men, but in them," and by the en lightening power of his ac tion, Christians of the 20th Century can be as certain as those of the First Century that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." AlttAigh Karl Barth has an encyclopedic knowledge of modern thought, and is recognized even among non Christian philosophers as one of the towering intellects of this or any other age, he has shown an increasing disposi tion oveithe years to avoid technical jargon in express ing his profound insights. "My experience has been," he said recently, "that if I simply repeat whmt the Bible says about God, the people undertsand. We clergymen should do this more often, I think." Although Dr. Barth once served as a parish minister, and still likes to think of him self as one, his only preaching these days is done in Swiss jails, which he visits regu larly. 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