Abdruck der in die Edition (s. oben, S. 73–77) aufgenommenen Passagen aus dem Original-Artikel von Miner B. Stearns, erschienen in: Bibliotheca Sacra, Jg. 106, Nr. 421 (Jan.–Mar. 1949), S. 196–199 📖.

A Conservative Interviews Barth

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I told him that I had been keenly interested in his theology but should like to ask a few questions so as to clarify some points. He readily assented. So I began with a question about his use and interpretation of the word historical and quoted his comment on Romans 6 where he refers to the resurrection of Christ as «the non-historical event kat’ exochēn.»1 Professor Barth first of all assured me that his works that I had read so far were for the most part twenty years old and did not represent his present thought. He suggested that the best summary of his views at present is to be found in the work Dogmatik im Grundriss (1947), which contains his lectures at the University of Bonn for the summer of 1946.2 Then he gave me an explanation of his use of the word historical which was very enlightening – which, indeed, completely nullifies much of my criticism on this point. I feel, therefore, that I owe it to the professor to publish a correction without delay. In the German language there are two different words which are both translated in English by «historical,» but which have widely different meanings. This phenomenon has given rise to the misunderstanding of Barth’s theology in both English and French. The word geschichtlich means «historical» in the ordinarily accepted sense of an |434 event that actually took place. And Barth rightly believes that the resurrection of Christ was geschichtlich. The term historisch, however, means that which is scientifically verifiable by historians and hence «historical» in a technical and scientific sense. Admittedly, the resurrection of Christ is not an event that can be scientifically proved at this late date to the satisfaction of all historians. If it were possible, they would all have to believe it.

After some friendly discussion of the World Council and other matters, I bluntly put to Professor Barth a question which seems of great importance to me and on which I wanted his frank opinion so as not to misjudge him. I asked, Do you believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible? His reply was, Yes and No. He went on to explain that he meant this: the Bible is, like Christ, a union of the divine and the human. On the human side the Bible may and does contain errors. Yet we have no right on this account to discard or reject any of it. We must accept it all. I told him in reply that I believed the Bible to be infallible in the original documents, though of course I did not accept a mechanical or dictation theory of inspiration any more than he would. I mentioned some of the archaeological confirmations of the Bible and the recent discovery of the very ancient manuscript of Isaiah.3 But he warned me earnestly not to make my faith in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures to depend on any such external proofs, and I assured him it did not but that of course I was happy for any historical confirmation purely for the sake of others. On the other hand, while I agreed with the professor about the similarity between Christ and the Bible I insisted that Christ’s humanity was not sinful or imperfect, but only subject to normal human limitations. To my surprise he quoted 2 Corinthians 5:21 in answer – «He hath made him to be sin for us.» I replied that this did not mean that Christ became sin, much less that He became a sinner. He immediately turned to his Greek Testament to verify my statement that the Greek verbs in the first and second parts of the verse were quite different, that is, Christ was made sin for us but we become the righteousness of God in Him. […] Above all I insisted that Christ was made sin for us only on the cross and not before, in which Professor Barth did not agree. As further proof of his |435 position he cited John 1:14, «The Word was made flesh,» and affirmed that the word flesh always has an evil ethical meaning in the Bible. I of course replied that I was sure it frequently meant merely the human body as such.

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