Karl Barth

Abstract Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth lived remarkably parallel lives. Both became disillusioned with the nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism they had inherited, but they took their departure from liberalism in different directions. Niebuhr’s focus on social ethics gave him an interest in the ethical implications of Barth’s theology, but Barth’s approach to dogmatics led him to be less interested in Niebuhr’s approach to ethics and apologetic theology. Commentators have often assumed that Niebuhr and Barth were engaged in answering a common question, such that we could adjudicate who was right and who was wrong, but the relationship between their projects is more complicated. Niebuhr focused on immanent criticism of the dogmas of a secular age, seeking to demonstrate how these ways of thinking could not sufficiently account for the challenges and aspirations of human nature and destiny. Eschewing this apologetic approach, Barth pursued the task of dogmatics as a human response to God’s revelation and as an ongoing test of the Church’s proclamation. Niebuhr and Barth were engaged in differing projects, which because of their distinct goals, can be seen as complementary.