This session focuses on Barth's posthumous work, The Christian Life. It addresses the work's distinctive account of Christian witness, the "hallowing" of God's name, eschatology, human righteousness and unrighteousness, and related topics.
In The Christian Life, Karl Barth conceptualizes God’s future as an interruption of the present while also attesting its advanced presence as “first fruits” in the life of the community. This paper examines the tensions at play in these two conceptualities and demonstrates how Barth’s exposition of the petition for the hallowing of God’s name among those to whom God is presently both “known and unknown” participates in this tension. While acknowledging instabilities in Barth’s account, the paper argues that a productive tension between these two themes is vital to the fullness of Christian witness, mitigating against both quietism and triumphalism. Finally, the paper highlights certain dispositions appropriate to the Christian life this side of the eschaton, among them lament and humor.
This paper considers the dogmatic presuppositions that underpin Barth's commendation of "revolt." It reckons with the claim that the fulfillment of the covenant of grace does not mean the closure of that same covenant; it pays particular attention to "revolt" as a key element of an eschatological ethic that views disruptive political activity as integral to Christians' obligation to move forward to meet the coming Kingdom of God. This eschatological ethic, the paper suggests, is not merely consonant with the "moral ontology" of the Dogmatics. It expands Barth's ethical program in the context of the doctrine of reconciliation (and, by anticipation, redemption); and it does so in ways that disclose common ground between Barth and earlier advocates of the "social gospel.” In its conclusion, the paper notes that Barth's insistence that Christians become "comrades of the Kingdom" has acute contemporary significance in contexts beset by far-right extremism.