A New Impetus to the Theology of Religions from Karl Barth’s Thought

Attempts to discern Barth’s perspective on the relationship between world religions and Revelation are complicated by the fact that Barth speaks of “religion” almost solely in the context of the proclivity within the Christian Church to define and understand its faith in terms of human capacity for piety and receptivity of the divine. What then can be said of the possibility of Revelation in religions outside the Christian confession? Recognizing that “certain possibilities for adjudicating a theological problem which Barth himself abandoned” may still prove helpful in facilitating and developing this ongoing discussion, this paper examines passages that were deleted from Church Dogmatics in its final form, along with relevant insights from Barth’s other published works which concern themselves with the relationship of religions and Revelation, and the proper posture Christ disciples ought to take toward other worldviews, toward the “gods” and their followers. This paper reads in Barth the conviction that while all gods, all emulations and arrogations of the one God of Israel, are “nothing” insofar as they are subjective products of human imagination, their derivative and creaturely nature not only exerts power over their creators but also in its creatureliness may have some collateral value in testifying to the Revelation of God in Christ since these gods are conditioned by their birth into a world suffused with “little lights.” Accordingly, this paper concludes that, with the love that must attend Christ disciples’ interaction with all creatures, including the “gods,” Christianity in its proclamation of the true Word exposes falsity wherever it is recognized: within and without the Christian Church.