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Richard Wagner

(Leipzig, a Saxònia, 1813 – Venècia, 1883) fou un compositor d'òpera, director i teorista musical alemany.
Les seves composicions, particularment les darreres, són notables per llur textura contrapuntal, les harmonies riques i llur orquestració, i l'ús elaborat dels leitmofits: temes associats amb personatges o situacions específiques. El llenguatge musical cromàtic de Wagner va ser catalaístic pels desenvolupaments posteriors de la música clàssica europea, incloent-hi el cromatisme extrem i l'atonalitat. Va transformar el pensament musical per mitjà de la seva idea de Gesamtkunstwerk (obra d'art completa), personificada en el seu monumental cicle de quatre òperes Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). El seu concepte de leitmotif i de l'expressió integrada de la música va tenir una forta influència a gran part de la música de les pel·lícules del segle XX. Wagner fou i encara és un músic controvertible, tant per les seves innovacions musicals com per les seves opinions polítiques antisemites.

Joventut i primers estudis

La família de Wagner no estava gaire relacionada amb la música, però alguns dels seus avantpassats havien estat cantors apreciats pel seu talent musical. El seu pare, funcionari de la policia municipal, va morir sis mesos després del seu naixement. Al mes d'agost de l'any 1814, la seva mare, filla de forners, es torna a casar amb l'actor, pintor i poeta Ludwig Geyer que podria realment ser el verdader pare de Wagner. Geyer va morir alguns anys més tard, no sense haver transmès al jove Richard la seva passió pel teatre.
Molt s'ha escrit sobre els dos pares de Wagner. El que si és segur és que li provocà una certa crisi d'identitat provocada (entre d'altres coses) per l'absència d'una forta figura paterna i pel simple fet de que fins al seu ingrés a la universitat de Leipzig, el seu cognom fou Geyer.
La família Geyer es trasllada a Dresden l'any 1817 i Richard ingressa a l'escola del Vizehofkantor Carl Friedrich Schmidt. El 2 de desembre de 1822 es matricula a la Kreuzschule de Dresden, on rebé algunes lliçons de piano.

Després de traslladar-se el 1828 a la Nicolaischule de Leipzig va acabar la primera de les seves obres que s'ha conservat, Leubald (una amalgama surrealista de Shakespeare, Kleist i Goethe), que, a fi de proveir-la de música, el va impulsar a estudiar la teoria de la composició de Johann Bernhard Logier i la música de l'Egmont de Beethoven. A la tardor d'aquell any va començar a prendre classes secretes de teoria de l'harmonia amb Müller, compositor local i director, i el 16 de juny de 1830 va ingressar en la Thomasschule de Leipzig, on per un breu espai de temps va rebre lliçons de violí a càrrec d'un membre de l'orquestra de la Gewandhaus, Robert Sipp. Aviat descobreix Beethoven, al temps que en feia una transcripció per a piano de La Novena Simfonia, que acabava per la Pasqua de Resurrecció de 1831.

El 23 de febrer de 1831 es va matricular a la Universitat de Leipzig a fi d'estudiar música, i a la tardor d'aquell mateix any es va fer alumne del Thomaskantor Christian Theodor Weinlig, amb qui (segons Mein Leben, el seu diari personal) va estudiar contrapunt durant sis mesos.
Wagner vol transmetre d'una part el fet de ser autodidacte i d'altra les influències d'autors alemanys com Beethoven. Però sembla que la realitat, segons una carta recentment descoberta a Müller, mostra que la seva dependència de Müller va durar molt més del que es desprèn del relat autobiogràfic i la dedicatòria a Weinlig de la primera obra de Wagner publicada (la sonata per a piano en si bemoll, wwv 21) constitueix així mateix un indici que les lliçons de Weinlig van tenir major abast que el suggerit per Wagner i potser van anar més enllà de la fuga i el cànon, arribant fins a les formes de la sonata clàssica. D'altra banda, es tenen evidències de la influència d'obres com I Capuleti e I montecchi de Bellini que s'estrenava en aquells moments, dels arrangaments que feu de Haydn, o de que estudià les simfonies de Mozart almenys tant com les de Beethoven.

Primeres òperes i primer matrimoni (1832-1836)
Igual com altres moltes fites significatives en l'evolució de la vida de Wagner, els seus començaments com a compositor d'òperes es van veure marcats per una falsa arrencada.

El 1832 comença a composar l'òpera Die Hochzeit, però el texte no agrada a la seva germana Rosalie, actriu ben relacionada, i estripa el libretto. A finals del mateix any estrena primer a Praga, i després a Leipzig i a Würzburg, la seva simfonia en do, obtenint una càlida acollida. No va tornar a interpretar-se fins que Wagner la va reviure i revisar per a una execució privada al Teatre Fenice de Venècia el 25 de desembre de 1882 (va ser l'última obra que va dirigir).

Ràpidament es posa a treballar en una altra òpera Die Feen (Les Fades), en la que hi conserva algun personatge. El libretto, basat en la peça teatral de Carlo Gozzi La donna serpente, queda acabat el febrer del 1833. Wagner va escriure la partitura sencera a Würzburg, acabant-la el 6 de gener de 1834. Tanmateix, la seva autobiografia no esmenta el fet que després de la seva tornada a Leipzig el 21 de gener va revisar alguna de les seves parts. Les actuacions de la Schröder-Devrient com a cantant convidada a I Capuleti i I Montecchi de Bellini durant el mes de març, clarament van inspirar a Wagner la reescriptura no solament de la música sinó també del contingut dramàtic de l'ària d'Ada en l'acte II. L'òpera no s'estrena fins al cap de mig segle el 29 de juny de 1888.


Imatge de Riga al segle XIXEl 1834 comença una llarguíssima sèrie de viatges per Europa dirigint concerts i òperes a Magdeburg, Kaliningrad, Riga...aconseguint sortir d'alguns problemes pecuniaris. És en aquesta època (1836) que Wagner va escriure Das Liebesverbot (La proscripció de l'amor), òpera inspirada en una obra de William Shakespeare (Measure for measure). L'obra, que va ser acollida amb poc entusiasme, era una òpera còmica que glorificava la sensualitat italiana a costa de la mesquinesa d'esperit alemanya. Això lligava amb el fet de que Wagner fos partidari del moviment de la Jove Alemanya que era un difús conglomerat d'intel·lectuals, entre qui es comptaven Heinrich Laube i Theodor Mundt, amb idees que es dirigien contra l'estructura feudal d'Alemanya i a favor d'una classe mitjana liberal en ràpid ascens. També concordava amb el minvant interès de Wagner per Beethoven com a model de composicions purament instrumentals i la seva rèplica en un creixent entusiasme per França i Itàlia.

El 24 de novembre de 1836, Wagner es casa amb l'actriu Minna Planer. Tot i que en el seu diari diu que la seva relació es basava simplement en la seva frescor i en els seus instints maternals, no era sinó una veritat a mitges exagerada per la seva segona esposa (Cósima va escriure el text de Mein Leben al dictat de Wagner). A varies cartes es demostra que n'estava profundament enamorat i temerós de perdre-la.

Kaliningrad, Riga, París (1837-1842)
Des d'un principi el matromoni no va anar bé. Primer perd la feina, i al cap de dos mesos de ser nombrat director musical del teatre de Kaliningrad (1 d'abril de 1937), ella marxa a Dresden amb un home de negocis anomenat Dietrich. Va i torna del costat de Wagner varies vegades i fins i tot ella té una filla il·legítima, Natalie. Wagner es mostra molt gelós i exigint submisió a les seves cartes. Ell reconeix que no soportava el major èxit i reconeixement professional de la seva muller; de fet només composà obres menors en aquesta època.

La parella canvia de casa anant a Riga el juny de 1837, on Wagner fou cridat per ocupar també el lloc de director musical. Es passa un any fent arranjaments, reorquestrant i composant petites peces i, sobretot, dirigint òperes i concerts.


Retrat de Berlioz per Honoré Daumier, qui més va influenciar durant la seva estada a París.Però no el van renovar per la següent temporada (1938). Com que havia començat a treballar seriosament en el libretto i la música de Rienzi a l'estiu, va prendre la decisió d'aprendre francès i emprendre viatge a París, on confiava que la seva òpera seria acceptada en traducció francesa. També s'ha escrit que la parella estava crivellada de deutes i va haver de fugir de Riga per escapar als seus creditors

Durant la seva fugida, els va enganxar una tempesta que després inspiraria a Wagner L'Holandès errant o coneguda també com El vaixell fantasma, que els obliga a aturar-se a Londres. Al cap d'una setmana arriben a Paris.

La parella viu alguns anys a París on Richard es guanyava la seva vida reorquestrant les òperes d'altres compositors o bé fent de crític musical. Això li va permetre fer amistat amb els músics més importants de l'època: Berlioz, Liszt, Meyerbeer, entre d'altres. Sobretot el primer, del que en fa un estudi minuciós de la seva instrumentació després d'escoltar la simfonia dramàtica Roméo et Juliette.

A començaments de maig de 1840 Wagner va enviar al principal llibretista de Meyerbeer, Eugène Scribe, un esbós en prosa d'una nova òpera titulada Der fliegende Holländer (L'Holandès errant), pregant-lo el prengués en consideració per convertir-lo en un libretto. Volia estar preparat per una possible audició de l'Òpera de París. Ni l'audició ni l'encàrrec no van arribar mai, i Wagner es va rescabalar de les pèrdues venent, el 2 de juliol de 1841, a Léon Pillet, director de l'Òpera, l'esbós en francès de l'òpera, per 500 francs. (P. Foucher i B. H. Révoil van convertir l'esmentat esbós en un libretto que, sota el títol de Le Vaisseau-Fantôme (El vaixell fantasma), amb música de Pierre-Louis-Philippe Dietsch, futur director de Tannhäuser a París).

Malgrat això, Wagner va continuar treballant amb Rienzi acabant per complet la partitura el 19 de novembre de 1840. Amb l'ajuda d'alguns amics (entre ells la Schröder-Devrient) i una forta recomanació de Meyerbeer, va aconseguir, el juny de 1841, que l'obra fos acceptada per a la seva representació al Teatre de la Cort Real de Dresden. L'èxit el va esperonar a escriure el que li faltava de Der fliegende Holländer, que de nou amb un fort suport per part de Meyerbeer, el març de 1842 va ser acceptada per posar-se en escena en l'Hofoper de Berlín.

Dresden (1843-1849)

Dresden. Plaça del teatre a finals del segle XIXEl 7 d'abril de 1942 torna a Alemanya per dirigir Rienzi a Dresden, recollint un èxit tant considerable que es decideix posar en escena l'òpera que Wagner ja tenia acabada: L'holandès errant (2 de gener de 1843). Wagner s'instal·la, amb Minna, en aquesta ciutat on hi visqué sis anys, exercint amb energia el càrrec de director d'orquestra del gran teatre.

L'estiu de 1943 comença a escriure Tannhäuser per acabar-la l'abril de 1945 i estrenar-la el 19 d'octubre del mateix any. Sense gaire èxit en un principi però millorant després gràcies a alguns retocs i retallades. Amb un nou final es torna a representar el 1 d'agost de 1847.

Entre el 1846 i el 28 d'abril de 1848 composa Lohengrin.

El maig de 1848, va acabar un pla detallat Sobre l'organització d'un Teatre Nacional Alemany per al Regne de Saxònia. Els seus interessos artístics estaven fonent-se ràpidament amb una oberta activitat política: veia el teatre com el mirall d'una societat reaccionària que, primer, calia transformar si volia dur a terme els seus designis artístics. Quant major va ser el rebuig que van obtenir els seus plans de reforma teatral, major va arribar a ser la seva implicació en la política subversiva.


Mikhail Bakunin, al qui Wagner va rebre a DresdenFins que va conèixer el famós anarquista rus Mikhail Bakunin a l'estiu de 1848, i aviat va començar a publicar articles anònims enaltint la revolució i l'anarquia, encara que advocant alhora per la conservació de la monarquia. En els Estats alemanys independents de l'època, un moviment nacionalista començava a fer sentir la seva veu, reclamant més llibertats així com la unificació de la nació alemanya.

El descontentament popular contra el govern saxó, àmpliament estès, va aconseguir l'ebullició l'abril de 1849, quan el rei Frederic II de Saxònia va decidir dissoldre el parlament i rebutjar la nova constitució que el poble li presentava. El maig, una insurrecció - vaguament sostinguda per Wagner - va esclatar. La revolució naixent va ser ràpidament aixafada per les tropes saxones i prussianes i ordres d'arrest van ser practicades contra els revolucionaris.

El 16 de maig de 1849 es va emetre una ordre d'arrest contra Wagner, qui, amb l'ajuda de Franz Liszt va aconseguir fugir a Suïssa, romanent proscrit d'Alemanya durant els següents onze anys. No va tenir la mateixa sort Bakunin que en no aconseguir escapar-se va ser empresonat uns quants anys.


Exili (1849-1860)
Per consell de Liszt i amb el suport de Minna, que s'havia reunit amb el seu marit a Suïssa a començaments de setembre de 1849, Wagner va decidir provar fortuna una vegada més a París. Va partir cap a la capital francesa el 29 de gener de 1850. Al principi no li va ser fàcil decidir quin dels projectes operístics que tenia entre mans seria l'adequat per al gust francès, i finalment va elegir Wieland der Schmied. Després d'enamorar-se i viure tres mesos amb Jessie Laussot, que havia conegut en els llunyans temps de Dresden, torna amb Minna a Zuric.

Havent acabat Lohengrin abans de la insurrecció de Dresden, va sol·licitar al seu amic Franz Liszt que aquesta òpera fos interpretada en la seva absència. Liszt, un bon amic, va dirigir ell mateix la primera representació a Weimar, l'agost de 1850.

A Zuric, Wagner aviat es va atreure amics disposats a ajudar-lo econòmicament. El més important d'ells va ser el negociant en sedes Otto Wesendonck, que ajudava Wagner a sortir de greus crisis financeres provocades per l'acumulació de deutes. Les coses es van tornar més complexes a causa de la famosa passió que Wagner sentia cap a l'esposa de Wesendonck, Mathilde. Probablement mai no se sabrà fins a quin extrem van arribar les seves relacions.


Liszt pintat per Wilhelm von Kaulbach l'any 1856Mentre, acaba la partitura completa de Das Rheingold el 26 de setembre de 1854, comença la composició de Die Walküre, només amb la interrupció del seu compromís amb la Societat Filarmònica de Londres per dirigir vuit concerts de març a juny de 1855. Wagner va veure en aquesta oferta una oportunitat de que l'estrepitosa eterna cançó de la seva vida, el problema dels seus deutes, deixés de sonar.

Fins al 28 d'abril de 1857 Wagner no es va traslladar a la casa de camp propera a Zuric que li havia proporcionat Otto Wesendonck, on se suposava que el Parsifal havia estat escrit. Allà va ser on, el 9 d'agost, va interrompre el treball de Siegfried -havent finalitzat el segon esbós complet de l'acte II- per dedicar-se a Tristany i Isolda, l'esbós del qual en prosa havia començat el 20 d'agost. A part de la seva aventura amorosa amb Mathilde Wesendonck, hi havia dues raons més mundanes per escriure l'obra: els seus deutes i la negativa de Breitkopf i Härtel a publicar el Ring. Breitkopf va accedir posteriorment a editar Tristany, després que Wagner li assegurés que seria apte per a la seva representació en la majoria dels teatres alemanys.

La seva dona Minna, que havia apreciat poc les seves últimes òperes, s'enfonsava poc a poc en una profunda depressió. Tot això va ajudar a que Wagner caigués malalt amb una infecció a la pell, que va augmentar encara més la dificultat del seu treball.

La intercepció per part de Minna d'una carta dirigida a Mathilde portaria a Wagner (el 17 d'agost de 1958) a marxar a Venècia, on, en el Palazzo Giustinian, va acabar la partitura de l'acte II de Tristany en la seva totalitat el dia 18 de març de 1859. El 24 de març es va traslladar primer a Lucerna, on va acabar el Tristany, i després a París, a on va arribar el setembre amb la intenció de persuadir l'Opéra perquè muntés el Tannhäuser.

Una sèrie de jugades diplomàtiques que van culminar, l'11 de març, en una ordre de Napoleó III perquè Tannhäuser es posés a l'Òpera de París. Els diplomàtics amics de Wagner, entre ells l'ambaixador de Saxònia a París, baró von Seebach, van iniciar maniobres tendents a aconseguir una amnistia per a l'únic compositor alemany afavorit ara pels més alts poders de França. I ho van aconseguir. El 15 de juliol de 1860, Seebach va rebre una carta del baró von Beust, president del Consell de Ministres saxó i ministre d'Assumptes Exteriors, en virtut de la qual es concedia a Wagner lliure accés a Alemanya a excepció de Saxònia.


París, Viena, Biebrich (1860-1864)
Però Tannhäuser va ser retirada després de tres representacions, persones influents van voler aprofitar l'ocasió per expressar una velada protesta d'índole política contra la tendència proaustríaca de Napoleó III.

Viatja a Viena a la recerca de cantants per montar Tristan. La primera vegada que va sentir Lohengrin completa en un escenari va ser en ocasió d'un assaig en l'Òpera de Viena, l'11 de maig de 1861. El paper principal el cantava Aloys Ander, i Wagner immediatament ho va elegir per cantar Tristan. Un nombre d'intrigues van venir a complicar la situació, i el març de 1864 el projecte va quedar abandonat.


El castell de Biebrich. A aquesta ciutat Wagner hi composà Die Meistersinger von NürnbergEl 30 d'octubre de 1861, Wagner va suggerir al seu editor Franz Schott la idea d'una gran òpera còmica Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, per la qual podria rebre un avançament a fi de minvar els seus deutes acumulats. Wagner va llogar un apartament a Biebrich, un poble de la ribera del Rin, i va començar a treballar intensament en la composició de la música. Minna va anar a Biebrich i va romandre amb Wagner per espai de deu penosos dies, després dels quals es van separar per sempre.

Wagner va passar els següents dos anys de la seva vida deixant-se portar per un cert nombre d'aventures amoroses passatgeres i viatjant per donar concerts en els quals dirigia la seva pròpia música. El 12 de setembre de 1862 va dirigir Lohengrin a Frankfurt per primera vegada, i l'1 de novembre va dirigir l'estrena del preludi de Die Meistersinger en la Gewandhaus de Leipzig.

Va donar concerts similars a Praga, Budapest, Karlsruhe i Breslau, però l'única empresa que hauria de reportar-li verdaders guanys econòmics va ser una sèrie de concerts a Sant Petersburg i Moscou de febrer a abril de 1863. Tanmateix, els 12.000 marcs guanyats a la seva gira per Rússia es van esfumar aviat, i els deutes que va contreure el van enfrontar amb una seriosa amenaça d'empresonament.

Després d'una curta estància a Viena, el 3 de maig d'aquell mateix any va ser convocat a Munich per Lluís II, el nou rei de Baviera.


Munic, Tribschen (1864-1872)

El rei Lluís II de BavieraLa primera trobada entre Wagner i Lluís II va tenir lloc el 4 de maig de 1864 en la Residenz de Munic. Lluís, qui a l'edat de divuit anys havia succeït al seu pare Max II al tron de Baviera el mes de març d'aquell any, va consentir a saldar els deutes de Wagner i li va concedir una generosa pensió. Al llarg de la seva amistat (la qual, malgrat l'escàndol i la intriga, va durar fins a la mort de Wagner) Lluís va lliurar a Wagner un total de més de 500.000 marcs, i va recolzar el projecte del festival de Bayreuth amb un crèdit de 400.000 marcs que els hereus de Wagner van anar pagant mitjançant deducció d'una quota sobre drets d'autor.

Però la correspondència publicada entre Wagner i Lluís és, de per si, una prova de que ambdós amb prou feines es van entrevistar mai personalment, i el llenguatge teatral de les seves cartes constitueix un permanent recordatori de que la seva amistat va existir exclusivament en aquesta forma literària.

No és clar quan va entrar Wagner en relacions íntimes amb Cósima, filla de Franz Liszt i esposa del director d'orquestra i pianista Hans von Bülow. Sembla que el més probable és que la seva relació comencés l'estiu de 1864, quan, en absència del rei Lluís, Cósima va anar a veure Wagner sense el seu marit i va estar una setmana a Vila Pellet, a vores del llac Starnberg.


Ajuntament de Munic al segle XIXL'octubre de 1864 Wagner es va mudar a una casa nova i notòriament luxosa en la Briennerstrasse de Munic per acabar Ring. Aconsegueix que Bülow accedeixi al càrrec de Vorspieler des Königs, però aviat es va veure clar que el càrrec no era sinó una estratègia per portar Cósima prop seu.

La primera filla de Wagner, Isolda, va néixer el 10 d'abril de 1865, dia en què Hans von Bülow dirigia el primer assaig d'orquestra de Tristany i Isolda. Va ser inscrita en el registre com a filla legítima d'Hans i Cósima Bülow. De de cara a l'opinió pública, i per temor a posar en perill la bona voluntat de Ludwig, va tenir tanta importància per a Wagner la pretensió de legalitat, que en el baptisme d'Isolde es va obligar a actuar com a padrí de la seva pròpia filla.

Wagner va començar, el juliol de 1865, i a petició del rei Lluís, a dictar la seva autobiografia Mein Leben, però els rumors del seu adulteri amb Cósima, van forçar aquest a marxar de Munic el 10 de desembre de 1865.


El castell de Neuschwanstein, residència de Lluís IIDesprés de varies proves fallides en la recerca de nova residència i de rebre la notícia de la mort de Minna, el 15 d'abril de 1866 es trasllada Tribschen, una casa a Suïssa, amb vista al llac proper a Lucerna, on hauria de passar els seus pròxims sis anys. A Tribschen va acabar Die Meistersinger, el 24 d'octubre de 1867, i el 21 de juny de 1868 va tenir lloc la seva estrena a Munic, dia en que el rei Lluís va fer el pas sense precedents de permetre a Wagner que s'assegués al seu costat a la llotja real. Wagner estava modificant les seves antigues opinions progressistes en favor d'una visió reaccionària de la Deutschtum i de la supremacia alemanya.


Richard i Cosima WagnerEl 8 de novembre de 1868, trobant-se a Leipzig va conèixer el filòleg i filòsof Friedrich Nietzsche, que s'havia sentit aclaparat per les representacions que havia presenciat de Tristany i Die Meistersinger, havent-se convertit en un ardorós wagnerià. El maig de 1869, després de la seva designació per ocupar una càtedra a Basilea, va realitzar la primera de les seves vint-i-tres visites a Tribschen.

Cósima va visitar la casa per vegada primera el maig de 1866, i es va traslladar per viure en ella de forma permanent el 16 de novembre de 1868. A Tribschen va donar a llum els altres dos fills de Wagner, Eva i Siegfried. Poc després de divorciar-se d'Hans von Bülow es va casar amb Wagner, el 25 d'agost de 1870. El dia 1 de gener de 1869 començà el famós diari on els seus sentiments hi són escaços.


Cap al primer Festival de Bayreuth (1872-1876)

Festspielhaus a BayreuthL'escenari s'estava preparant per als quatre anys més actius de la seva vida. No només va supervisar la construcció de la Festspielhaus i de casa seva, Wahnfried -la primera i única llar del que hauria de ser propietari-, sinó que també va realitzar gires per Alemanya i Àustria a la recerca de cantants i tècnics i donant, així mateix, concerts a fi de recaptar fons per al projecte de Bayreuth. Acaba les partitures completes de Ring. Cerca i reuneix un grup de joves músics que veia com a futurs instructors i directors de la seva música.

Fins al 21 de novembre de 1874 no va acabar a la fi la partitura completa del Götterdämmerung, vint-i-sis anys després d'haver començat a crear el Ring el 1848.

Com sempre, el principal problema de Wagner era d'índole financera. Després que Lluís acudís en el seu auxili el 20 de febrer de 1874 amb un préstec de 216.152 marcs, Wagner encara va estimar oportú el sol·licitar ajuda financera a Berlín l'octubre de 1875, dirigint-se en va a l'emperador Guillem I de Prusia.

Les primeres representacions públiques del Ring com a cicle van tenir lloc entre el 13 i el 30 d'agost de 1876. A causa del seu desig de sentir el Ring en privat, el rei Lluís va assistir als assaigs generals celebrats entre el 6 i el 9 d'agost. Feia vuit anys que no havia vist Wagner.


Primers Festivals de Bayreuth (1876-1883)
Entre els assistents al festival de Bayreuth de 1876 s'explicaven no solament Lluís sinó també uns altres dos caps d'estat, Guillem I de Prusia i Pedro II del Brasil, així com molts altres membres distingits de l'aristocràcia. Però el festival és un desastre econòmic i el fan pensar fins i tot de marxar als Estats Units. El 31 de març de 1878, quan tot semblava perdut, el Tresor muniquès va firmar un contracte amb Wagner que entre altres coses estipulava la liquidació del deute pendent.


Imatge de Venècia, on hi passà els darrers dies de la seva vidaPer a les sensibilitats modernes, la connexió entre Parsifal i el to dels últims assaigs antisemites i antimodernistes de Wagner constitueix, si més no, una qüestió delicada. La gènesi de Parsifal, però, és inseparable de l'aventura amorosa que va mantenir amb Judith Gautier, filla de l'escriptor Théophile Gautier. Com l'amistat amb el rei Lluís, segurament va existir gràcies a la fortament estilitzada forma de les cartes de Wagner i en la futura imaginació dels seus biògrafs.

Després de les primeres setze representacions de Parsifal a la Festspielhaus per a les que el rei Lluís havia posat el cor i l'orquestra de l'Hoftheater de Munic a disposició del festival de Bayreuth, Wagner va tornar de nou a Itàlia, instal·lant la seva residència en el Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi de Venècia.

Tot es va veure interromput per la seva sobtada mort com a conseqüència d'un atac de cor el 13 de febrer de 1883.


Obra
[edita]
Òperes
A través de les seves obres i els seus assaigs teòrics, Wagner va exercir una gran influència en l'univers de la música lírica. Casant el teatre i la música per crear el drama musical, es va fer el defensor d'una nova concepció de l'òpera, en la qual l'orquestra ocupa una lloc almenys tan important com la dels cantants. L'expressivitat de l'orquestra és augmentada per l'ús del leitmotive (petits temes musicals d'una gran potència dramàtica que evoquen un personatge, un element de la intriga, un sentiment...), que, amb la seva evolució complexa, aclareixen la progressió del drama amb una riquesa infinita.

Contràriament a gairebé tots els altres compositors d'òperes, Wagner escrivia ell mateix els seus llibrets, prenent la majoria dels seus arguments de les llegendes i mitologies europees, sobretot germàniques. Degut a això, les seves obres aconseguyeixen una unitat profunda.


Juventut
Les noces (Die Hochzeit) (1832)
Les fades (Die Feen) (1834)
La prohibició d'estimar (Das Liebesverbot) (1836)
Rienzi (1842)

Primeres obres mestres
L'Holandès errant (Der fliegende Holländer) (1843)
Tannhäuser (1845)
Lohengrin (1850)

Maduresa
Tristany i Isolda (Tristan und Isolde) (1865) Obertura de Tristany i Isolda (?)
Els Mestres Cantors de Nüremberg (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) (1868)
La Tetralogia titulada L’Anell del Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen) , estrenada l’any 1876 i formada per:
L'or del Rin (Das Rheingold) (1869)
La Valquíria (Die Walküre) (1870)
Siegfrid (1871)
El crepuscle dels déus (Götterdämmerung) (1874)
Parsifal (1882)

Altres obres musicals
Fora de les seves òperes, Wagner ha composat relativament poca música: una sola simfonia (escrita a l'edat de 19 anys), algunes obertures, corals i peces per a piano. Entre aquestes obres, l'única que s'interpreta habitualment és l'Idil·li de Siegfried, una bonica obra de música de cambra escrita per a l'aniversari de la seva segona dona Cosima. L'Idil·li reuneix diversos motius de la tetralogia, encara que no en formi part.

Notem també la presència al catàleg d'un recull de lieder: Die Wesendonck Lieder. Aquests cants van ser dedicats a Mathilde Wesendonck.

Després d'haver acabat Parsifal, Wagner va tenir aparentment la intenció de girar-se cap a la composició de simfonies, però va morir sense haver escrit res d'important en aquest àmbit.

Les obertures i trossos orquestrals de les seves millors òperes són freqüentment interpretats com a peces per si mateixes, amb versions lleugerament modificades. Per exemple, la versió de concert de l'obertura de Tristany, escrita pel mateix Wagner, implica una pàgina suplementària que dirigeix la música cap a una verdadera conclusió.

Obtingut de "http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner"

Negli ultimi decenni le abitudini alimentari sono profondamente cambiate. Lo sviluppo dell'economia, i contatti con altre culture, i grandi mutamenti sociali, la spinta a raggiungere un più elevato tenore di vita, la diffusione della pubblicità hanno spostato l'attenzione dei consumatori, con maggior frequenza e in più larga misura, verso quei generi alimentari un tempo considerati elitari e pregiati.
La possibilità di nutrirsi con una maggiore varietà e abbondanza di cibi ha portato benefici ed alla scomparsa pressoché totale delle cosiddette carenze nutrizionali.
Invece la tendenza a mangiare più del necessario, anche come dimostrazione di status symbol, spesso accompagnata da squilibri fra i componenti della dieta, ha portato gli italiani ad essere più esposti ad altri gravi rischi:

infarto del miocardio
maggiore incidenza di obesità,
ipertensione,
arterosclerosi,
diabete.

Ciò si è verificato anche come conseguenza dell' abbandono della dieta tipicamente mediterranea, ora presa a modello di sana alimentazione, in altri paesi.
Il recupero di un adeguato comportamento alimentare si rende necessario per diminuire i rischi per la nostra salute ed evitando inutili sperperi.
Le necessità nutrizionali della popolazione media italiana suggerite, ad esempio, nei "Livelli di assunzione raccomandati di energia e nutrienti per gli italiani" (LARN), sono ormai generalmente soddisfatte.
Tenuto conto di ciò queste linee-guida intendono suggerire il modello dietetico tradizionale come quello che si dovrebbe seguire e come lo strumento per star bene mangiando meglio.

LA DIETA MEDITERRANEA con la collaborazione di Laura D'Addio, Eleonora Sacristano e Nello De Nicola
 
Una alimentazione equilibrata ha come obiettivo più benessere e più salute, senza tuttavia mortificare i sensi e il piacere della buona tavola. Queste linee-guida suggeriscono un modello di comportamento alimentare che potrà essere attuato facilmente rifacendosi alle più tipiche culture alimentari di un paese mediterraneo quale l'ltalia.
Questo tradizionale modello alimentare, ritenuto oggi in tutto il mondo uno dei più efficaci per star bene, è anche uno dei più vari che si conoscano e si basa principalmente sul consumo di alimenti di origine vegetale, come pane, pasta, frutta, ortaggi, olio d'oliva e moderati consumi di alimenti animali, latte, formaggi poco grassi, pesce, carni magre, come pollame e coniglio. Di conseguenza, per gli italiani seguire questi consigli può essere più agevole, in quanto rappresenta la conservazione o il recupero di abitudini tradizionali e culture regionali già note e familiari.
Le industrie devono tendere a produrre alimenti a minore densità energetica, a ridotto contenuto in grassi saturi, colesterolo e sale, ma, al tempo stesso, ricchi in nutrienti essenziali (come aminoacidi, vitamine e minerali) e più ricchi in amido e fibra.
Ciò va perseguito anche nell'ambito delle scelte e della preparazione degli pasti da parte dei sistemi di ristorazione collettiva come refezioni scolastiche, mense aziendali e ristoranti in genere. Anche in casa, inoltre, come nella ristorazione collettiva, è indispensabile osservare scrupolosamente le buone regole dell'igiene in tutte le fasi della preparazione, della conservazione e della distribuzione, per evitare il pericolo di infezioni e tossinfezioni di origine alimentare.

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
And when she gets there she knows if the stores are closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
And you know sometimes words have two meanings
In the tree by the brook there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven

Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking

Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forest will echo with laughter

And it makes me wonder
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen

Yes there are two paths you can go by
but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on

Your head is humming and it won't go because you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him
Dear lady can't you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
Woe oh oh oh oh oh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
And when she gets there she knows if the stores are closed
With a word she can get what she came for

And she's buying a stairway to heaven, uh uh uh


Led Zeppelin - Escalera al cielo

Hay una dama que asegura que todo lo que brilla es oro
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo
Y cuando ella consigue llegar allí sabe que si las tiendas están cerradas
Con solo una palabra ella puede obtener lo que vino a buscar

Woe oh oh oh oh
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo

Hay una señal en la pared pero ella quiere estar segura
Y vos sabes que a veces las palabras tienen dos significados
En el árbol por el riachuelo hay un pájaro que canta y dice
Que a veces todos nuestros pensamientos son un presentimiento

Woe oh oh oh oh
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo

Hay un sentimiento que me asalta cuando miro hacia el oeste
Y mi espíritu pugna por salir
En mis pensamientos he visto circulos de humo a través de los árboles
Y las voces de aquellos que están observando

Woe oh oh oh oh
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo

Y se musito que pronto, si nosotros llamamos a la melodía
Entonces el flautista nos llevará a razonar
Y un nuevo día amanecerá para aquellos que están de pie
Y el bosque hará eco de nuestras risas

Y me hace imaginarme que
Si hay bullicio en tu vallado
No estare alarmado ahora
Es solo la limpieza de primavera para la Reina de Mayo

Si hay dos caminos por donde puedas ir
Pero en la larga carrera
Aún hay tiempo para cambiar la ruta donde vas

Tu cabeza está zumbando y no se irá porque no sabes
Que el flautista te está llamando a que te unas a él
Querida, no puedes oír el viento soplar y tu sabías que
Tu escalera está en el viento susurrante

Y mientras nosotros seguimos bajo el camino
Nuestras sombras son mas grandes que nuestras almas
Allí camina una dama a quien todos conocemos
Y resplandece con una luz blanca y quiere mostrar
Como todo aún se convierte en oro
Y si tu escuchas muy atento
La melodía vendrá a ti al fin
Cuando todo sean uno y uno sea el todo
Ser una piedra y no para rodar
Woe oh oh oh oh
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo

Hay una dama que asegura que todo lo que brilla es oro
Y está comprando una escalera al cielo
Y cuando ella llega allí sabe si las tiendas están cerradas
Con solo una palabra ella puede obtener lo que vino a buscar

Y está comprando una escalera al cielo, uh uh uh

Una Navaja Suiza
abreviado SAK por sus siglas en inglés Swiss Army knife) es una herramienta multifuncional manual. En general, una Navaja Suiza contiene un cuchillo y varias herramientas más, como destornilladores y abrelatas. Estos accesorios se guardan dentro del mango de la navaja mediante un mecanismo que gira alrededor de un pivote. Existen varios diseños y tipos de Navaja Suiza, con diferentes combinaciones de herramientas para tareas específicas. El término Navaja Suiza se usa habitualmente como sinónimo de navaja de bolsillo, y también, algunas veces, se usa para describir una herramienta, especialmente una herramienta de software, que consiste en una colección de programas destacados.


Tabla de contenidos
1 Historia
1.1 Orígenes
1.2 Victorinox y Wenger
2 Fabricantes
3 Fama

Historia

Orígenes
En 1891, Karl Elsener, por aquel entonces propietario de una compañía que fabricaba equipamiento quirúrgico descubrió (para su consternación) que las navajas de bolsillo del ejército suizo estaban fabricadas en Alemania. Vejado, fundó la Asociación Suiza de Cuchilleros. Su propósito era simple: Cuchillos suizos para el ejército suizo.

Elsener comenzó a trabajar en lo que era el antecesor de la Navaja Suiza moderna, llamado "cuchillo del soldado". El original tenía un mango de madera (en comparación con el plástico y el metal que podemos ver hoy día) que incorporaba una cuchilla, un destornillador para el rifle (el rifle requería un destornillador para montarse y desmontarse, una tarea básica que tienen que hacer todos los soldados), un abrelatas para los víveres y un sacabocados para las sillas y arneses de cuero. Este cuchillo, ya impresionante, fue vendido al ejército suizo, pero Elsener no estaba satisfecho con su creación. En 1896, después de 5 años de duro trabajo, Elsener decidió poner las cuchillas en ambos lados del mango usando un resorte especial, permitiéndole usar el mismo resorte para todas las herramientas, una innovación increíble en aquel entonces. Esto permitió que Elsener pusiera dos características más a la navaja; agregó una segunda cuchilla y un sacacorchos.

Victorinox y Wenger
Elsener, a través de su compañía Victorinox, se hizo con todo el mercado hasta 1893, cuando la segunda industria cuchillera de Suiza, Paul Boechat y Cía estableció su sede en Delémont, en el cantón helvético de Jura, y comenzó a vender un producto similar. Esta compañía fue adquirida posteriormente por su entonces Director General, Theodore Wenger y cambió el nombre de la compañía a Wenger. En 1908 el gobierno suizo, con el deseo de prevenir un favoritismo regional del excedente de fabricación y crear un poco de competencias con el fin de bajar los precios, dividió el contrato con Victorinox y Wenger para que cada empresa le suministrase la mitad de productos. Por mutuo acuerdo, Wenger se anuncia como la navaja genuina del ejército suizo y Victorinox utiliza el término la navaja original del ejército suizo.

Sin embargo, el 26 de abril del 2005, Victorinox adquirió Wenger, dando así un vuelco al mercado de la navaja suiza para monopolizar, de nuevo, el suministro de navajas suizas. Sin embargo, Victorinox ha indicado que, de cara a las ventas, se mantendrán ambas marcas de fábrica intactas.

Fabricantes
Los dos fabricantes de navajas suizas, Victorinox y Wenger, cada año venden conjuntamente unas 50.000 navajas al ejército suizo. El resto de la producción se dedica a las exportaciones, sobre todo a Estados Unidos. Victorinox y Wenger SAKs se pueden distinguir inmediatamente por sus logotipos; la cruz de Victorinox está rodeada por un escudo con bilateral, mientras que la cruz de Wenger está rodeada por un cuadrado levemente redondeado con simetría cuadrateral.

Hay también hay otros fabricantes de navajas suizas que proporcionan una gran diversidad en lo que se refiere a calidad/precio.

Fama
La navaja suiza es característica de la serie de TV americana MacGyver, donde MacGyver a menudo improvisa con las herramientas necesarias para solucionar diferentes tipos de problemas. Él utiliza a menudo su SAK para construir mecanismos fuera lo común.

La navaja suiza también ha ha sido parodiada enprgramas de TV tales como Los Simpsons y la versión animada de The Tick, en la que una tropa ficticia del ejécito suizo lleva petate clasificador para cada tipo de navaja.

Enlaces externos (en inglés)

Victorinox web del fabricante.
Wenger web del fabricante.
sosakonline SOSAK es la Orden secreta de la navaja suiza, una comunidad de coleccionistas.
¿Es verdad que el ejército suizo usa navajas suizas? en The Straight Dope

Karl Barth (May 10, 1886–December 10, 1968) (pronounced Bart) was an influential Swiss Reformed Christian theologian. He was also a pastor and one of the leading thinkers in the neo-orthodox movement.

Contents

1 Early life and education
2 Epistle to the Romans
3 Barmen Declaration
4 Church Dogmatics
5 Later life
6 Theology
7 Barth and Liberals and Conservatives
8 Quotations
9 Writings by Karl Barth
9.1 The Church Dogmatics in English translation
10 External links

Early life and education
Born in Basel, Barth spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. Later he was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921-1925), Münster (1925-1930) and Bonn (1930-1935) (Germany). He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel (1935-1962).

Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Hermann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt and Søren Kierkegaard, and the impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck.

The most important catalyst was, however, his reaction to the support most of his liberal teachers had for German war aims. The 1914 "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals to the Civilized World"[1] carried the signature of his former teacher Adolf von Harnack. Barth believed that his teachers had been misled by a theology which tied God too closely to the finest, deepest expressions and experiences of cultured human beings, into claiming divine support for a war which they believed was waged in support of that culture, the initial experience of which appeared to increase people's love of and commitment to that culture. Much of Barth's thinking is also a direct response to the philosophy of Hegel and the theology of Schleiermacher.


Epistle to the Romans
In his commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (germ. Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922) Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions. Many theologians believe this work to be the most important theological treatise since Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers.

In the decade following the First World War, Barth was linked with a number of other theologians, actually very diverse in outlook, who had reacted against their teachers' liberalism, in a movement known as "Dialectical Theology" (germ. Dialektische Theologie). Other members of the movement included Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten.
Barmen Declaration

In 1934, as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with the Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration (germ. Barmer Erklärung) which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity—arguing that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus and resources to resist the influence of other 'lords'—such as the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. This was one of the founding documents of the Confessing Church and Barth was elected a member of its leadership council, the Bruderrat. He was forced to resign from his professorship at the university of Bonn for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler and returned to his native Switzerland, where he assumed a chair in systematic theology at the university of Basel. In the course of his appointment he was required to answer a routine question asked of all Swiss civil servants, whether he supported the national defence. His answer was, "Yes, especially on the northern border!" In 1938 he wrote a letter to a Czech colleague, Josef Hromádka, in which he declared that soldiers who fought against the Third Reich were serving a Christian cause.

Church Dogmatics
Barth's theology found its most sustained and compelling expression through his thirteen-volume magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics (germ. "Kirchliche Dogmatik"). Widely regarded as one of the most important theological works of all time, the Church Dogmatics represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Barth published the first part-volume of the Dogmatics in 1932 and continued working on it until his death in 1968, by which time it was 6 million words in length. Highly contextual, the volumes were written chronologically, beginning with Vol. I.1, and addressed political issues as well as questions raised by his students after lectures. Barth explores the whole of Christian doctrine, where necessary challenging and reinterpreting it so that every part of it points to the radical challenge of Jesus Christ, and the impossibility of tying God to human cultures, achievements or possessions. It was translated into English under the editorial leadership of T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley.

Later life
After the end of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice in support both of German penitence and of reconciliation with churches abroad. Together with Hans-Joachim Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement in 1947, which was a more concrete statement of German guilt and responsibility for the Third Reich and Second World War than the Stuttgart Declaration of 1945. In it, he made the point that the Church's willingness to side with anti-socialist and conservative forces had led to its susceptibility for National Socialist ideology. In the context of the developing Cold War, this controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in the West, who supported the CDU course of re-militarization, as well as by East German dissidents who believed that it did not sufficiently depict the dangers of Communism. In the 1950s, Barth sympathized with the peace movement and opposed German rearmament.

In 1962, Barth visited the USA, where he lectured at Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago. He was invited to be a guest at the Second Vatican Council, but could not attend due to illness.

Theology
A reporter once asked Barth if he could summarize what he had said in his lengthy Church Dogmatics. Barth thought for a moment and then said: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Barth tries to recover the Doctrine of the Trinity in theology from its putative loss in liberalism. His argument follows from the idea that God is the object of God’s own self-knowledge, and revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God who cannot be unveiled to humanity. Note here that the Bible is not the Revelation; rather, it points to revelation.
Barth and Liberals and Conservatives

Although Barth's theology rejected German Protestant Liberalism, his theology has not always found favour with those at the other end of the theological spectrum: conservatives, evangelicals and fundamentalists. His doctrine of the Word of God, for instance, does not proceed by arguing or proclaiming that the Bible must be uniformly historically and scientifically accurate, and then establishing other theological claims on that foundation. Some evangelical and fundamentalist critics have therefore tended to refer to Barth as "neo-orthodox" because, while his theology retains most or all of the tenets of Christianity, he is seen as rejecting the belief which is a linchpin of their theological system: biblical inerrancy. (For instance, it was for this belief that Barth was criticized most harshly by the conservative evangelical theologian, Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, who was a student of strident Barthian critic Dr. Cornelius Van Til.) Such critics regard proclaiming a rigorous Christian theology without basing that theology on a supporting text that is considered to be historically accurate as a separation of theological truth from historical truth; for his part, Barth would have argued that making claims about biblical inerrancy the foundation of theology is to take a foundation other than Jesus Christ, and that our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only properly emerge from consideration of what it means for it to be a true witness to the incarnate Word, Jesus.

The relationship between Barth, liberalism and fundamentalism goes far beyond the issue of inerrancy. From Barth's perspective, liberalism (with Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hegel as its leading exponents) is the divinization of human thinking. Some philosophical concepts become the false God, and the voice of the living God is blocked. This leads to the captivity of theology by human ideology. In Barth's theology, he emphasizes again and again that human concepts can never be considered as identical to God's revelation. In this aspect, Scripture is also written human language, expressing human concepts. It cannot be considered as identical to God's revelation. However, in His freedom and love, God truly reveals the Godself through human language and concepts. Thus he claims that Christ is truly presented in Scripture and the preaching of the church. Barth stands in the heritage of the Reformation in his wariness of the marriage between theology and philosophy.

Karl Barth on Revelation and God's Relationship to the World
Paul Cassell, 2005
 
In the first part of the twentieth century Karl Barth proposed a radical question to biblical interpreters and Christian theologians – What if God exists?  What if God really has revealed himself in the Christian revelation?  How would this change the way theology and interpretation should be approached?  As a result of what he perceived to be the “failure of the ethics of the modern theology of the time, with the outbreak of the First World War” (Barth 1960, p. 40), which he thought was caused by nineteenth-century theology’s preoccupation with anthropology, Barth set out to do theology from a ‘new’ vantage point, a vantage point that assumed “God is.” (Barth 1977, p. 257)

Barth was born in 1886 in Basel, Switzerland, the son of a professor of New Testament at Bern.  His theological education exposed him to the views of Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Hermann, and under these men he became interested in the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher.  Barth’s initial interest turned into opposition, however, as he increasingly questioned the value of liberal theology in the wake of the tragedy of the First World War.  Through the preaching of Moravian pastor Christoph Blumhart and his study of the book of Romans, Barth became convinced while pastoring that the key to vital preaching, theology, and the Christian life was the revelation of God in Christ and his Resurrection.  After accepting his first teaching post at Göttingen, Barth taught at Münster and then Bonn until he was expelled from the latter by the National Socialists in 1935 for refusing to pledge allegiance to Adolf Hitler.  He finished his career at the University of Basel, and died there in 1968. (Encyclopædia Britannica Online)

This essay addresses two themes central to Barth’s thought:  the authority of revelation, and God’s relation to the world. After introducing these themes I examine the role they play in Barth’s argument for the personhood of God.When Barth was seventy years old he gave a speech to a group of pastors in Switzerland.  The year was 1956, and his days of impact were mostly behind him.  Looking back on the theological climate he had inherited and what he and those around him had accomplished in the early 1910s and 20s, he offered the following assessment:

Evangelical theology…had become religionistic, anthropocentric, and in this sense humanistic.  What I mean to say is that an external and internal disposition and emotion of man, namely his piety – which might well be Christian piety – had become its object of study and its theme…What did it know and say of the deity of God?  For this theology, to think about God meant to think in a scarcely veiled fashion about man, more exactly about the religious, the Christian religious man….There is no question about it:  here man was made great at the cost of God – the divine God who is someone other than man, who sovereignly confronts him, who immovably and unchangeably stands over against him as the Lord, Creator, and Redeemer….The stone wall we [young theologians] first ran up against was that the theme of the Bible is the deity of God, more exactly God’s deity – God’s independence and particular character…God’s absolutely unique existence, might, and initiative, above all, in His relation to man.  Only in this manner were we able to understand the voice of the Old and New Testaments.  Only with this perspective did we feel we could henceforth be theologians, and in particular, preachers – ministers of the divine Word. (Barth 1977, p. 39-40)

What Barth maintained – which he boldly stated in his early text, The Epistle to the Romans – was that what mattered for Christian theology and practice was the revelation of a God who was completely Other to human beings. The theological climate that Barth grew up in had been dominated by the rise of historical criticism. At the time of the First World War biblical studies involved mostly the scientific study of the texts without any attempt to understand them, and particularly, without any attempt to understand them in the way in which the author intended to be understood. 

For example, if an author believed that he had been encountered by the living God in a profound, unique way, and that he was therefore authorized to speak about this God, then an interpreter who did not read the text with a corresponding understanding would be missing something absolutely crucial.  Barth’s fundamental criticism of the biblical interpreters of his time was not that they were attempting to be too ‘truthful’ about the text in their zeal for historical accuracy; but rather, that they were not being truthful enough.  “Though [an interpreter] may here and there follow his author, he does not feel bound to wrestle with the understanding of him, for the simple reason that he has never made up his mind to stand or fall with him.” (Barth 1933, p. 18)

Specifically, Barth thought that the writers of the New Testament texts took seriously the notion that they, as apostles or their followers, were entrusted with a “herald’s call,” an announcement from God to humanity.  Thus, the only way to engage these texts accurately was to stand inside this conviction.  To engage them under any other understanding would not be ultimately truthful to them.  If the interpreter did stand within the conviction that revelation was occurring through the announcement, she would soon realize that the unveiling of God meant other approaches to the text were invalid. 
Barth writes,
Because
Deus non est in genere [God is not a kind],
every theological method is to be rejected as untheological in which God’s self-revelation is apparently recognized, but in fact is subsumed beneath a higher term, whether that of truth, or that of divine revelation in general, or that of religion, or that of history, so that it now has to be interpreted in the light of this higher comprehensive idea….

With whatever earnestness and sincerity we may attempt to speak of the God who is embraced by such a system, in the last analysis we are not speaking of God but of the higher synthesis furnished by our controlling idea.  The absoluteness of God permits of no such systematizations. (Barth 1977, p. 311)

Thus for Barth the method of standing under the assumption of the writers as revealers of God would in fact release that fact into existence and would make obvious the revelatory nature of the texts. But Barth was not a closet fundamentalist; he did not believe that the truth of God was revealed by the texts as texts. 

For Barth, God reveals (note reveals, not revealed) himself once, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  That revelation is ongoing, continuous, permanent (Barth 1977, p. 262).  The biblical authors, and the texts they wrote, were and are only vehicles for that ongoing revelation.  Thus for Barth, historical criticism, while useful for discovering the history of the text as a text, is a demonstration of exactly the wrong method of trying to find God through the texts.  By making the texts the object of human study, historical criticism necessarily takes the human person outside the place required to experience the revelation of God.  This exemplifies Barth’s basic approach: 

human attempts to reach God must fail; the only way to succeed in reaching God would be to put oneself in the position of receiving revelation.

Barth contrasted his notion of revelation with another notion, that of human striving to know God, either through philosophy or religion.  For Barth, these strivings could not possibly reach the God who can only reveal himself.  In the end, the strivings of philosophy and religion only teach us about human beings, and not about God.  A few short quotes by Barth highlight this approach:
Thus we have here no universal deity capable of being reached conceptually, but this concrete deity – real and recognizable in the descent grounded in that sequence and peculiar to the existence of Jesus Christ. (Barth 1960, p. 48)

What does it mean to say that “God is”?  What or who “is” God?  If we want to answer this question legitimately and thoughtfully, we cannot for a moment turn our thoughts anywhere else than to God’s act in His revelation.” (Barth 1977, p. 261)

Philosophico-theological thinkers of the nineteenth century…were not capable of the insight that by the glorification of an absolute spirit they served a God who, measured by the biblical revelation, was alien, and who indeed, measured by the same standard, was not divine but created. (Barth 1977, p. 289)

What Barth is arguing is that Christian theology can – by taking seriously what the authors of texts believed they were doing, heralding the “Good News” – understand itself in terms of itself, and not in terms of “outside” influences.  In fact, Barth believed this was the only way that theology could be done.

Why did he think this was so?  It is helpful to investigate one of the absolutely crucial metaphors that Barth turned to again and again – the image of a tangent, i.e., a line touching a circle at only one point.  This image, Barth thought, captured the theological reality of God’s relation to the world.  Graphically:

The first detail worth noticing in this picture is that God is totally other, not in any way a part of or knowable apart from his choosing to make himself known. Second, all of humanity’s strivings about God are doomed to fail, since they are situated within a horizon that does not in any way include God. And third, God made and makes himself known in one point and in one point only – in the God/man, Jesus.

Barth used the analogy of a tangent many times, and even when he did not use it explicitly, one can feel it not far from the surface.  In reviewing the slogans he and his compatriots used in the heady days after the First World War, he wrote, “What expressions we used – in part taken over and in part newly invented! – above all, the famous ‘wholly other’ breaking in upon us ‘perpendicularly from above,’ the not less famous ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between

God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point, and the tangent in which alone they must meet.” (Barth 1960, p. 42)  In his early work, The Epistle to the Romans, he wrote, “In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.” (Barth 1933, p. 30)

Notice how this idea also lies just beneath the surface in the following excerpts from his writings:
What God is as God, the divine individuality and characteristics…is something which we shall encounter either at the place where God deals with us as Lord and Savior, or not at all. (Barth 1977, p. 261)

They changed the glory of the incorruptible – for an image of the corruptible.  That is to say, the understanding of what is characteristic of God was lost.  They had lost their knowledge of the crevasse, the polar zone, the desert barrier, which must be crossed if men are really to advance from corruption to incorruption.  The distance between God and man had no longer its essential, sharp, acid, and disintegrating ultimate significance. (Barth 1933, p. 49, bold original)

In all this mist the prime factor is provided by the illusion that it is possible for men to hold communication with the God or, at least, to enter into a covenant relationship with Him without miracle…apart from THE truth which lies beyond birth and death. (Barth 1933, p. 50)

God himself propounds the problem of God and answers it. (Barth 1933, p. 69)
The metaphor of the tangent shows that Barth specifically rejected both human spiritual experience and self-consciousness as a guide to God, and regarded both Christian and non-Christian religion as failed attempts to abide at the point of tangency.  The job of Christian community is a negative job only – to seek to be a “void” in which the Gospel reveals itself.  

Barth used the analogy of a crater in the earth:  a crater points away from itself towards the explosion or impact that caused it.  Similarly, the Christian Church should exist only as testimony to the God that formed it.  Otherwise, it falls into the trap of being ‘Christendom’ which negates the Gospel (Barth 1933, p. 36-7).  Non-Christian religion, though having pieces of

God given through God’s freedom, is confused and does not have the key to unite its palette of brush strokes into a unity – this is what the revelation of Jesus offers (Barth 1977, p. 317-9).  All of these missteps occur because human beings, while trying to remain safe under the “arc” of the circle of human life, try to reach out and touch God.  Only in the eternal present of the moment of Jesus Christ can the revelation of God occur, “the ‘Moment’ when men stand naked before God and are clothed upon by Him.” (Barth 1933, p. 111)

Barth uses these two ideas – the notion of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and the metaphor of a tangent – to talk about the personhood of God, a doctrine that Barth felt was given short shrift in the nineteenth century.  Barth argues at length that theology’s problem during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that it made the mistake of accepting the Enlightenment’s claim that “man is the measure of all things.”  Since the rationality of man was the theme of the Enlightenment, all other things – including God –had to find their place under that theme.  

Barth argues that the thought of God as infinite substance or Spirit – most definitely not as a person – permeated the philosophical theology of this period and was appealing because it made God perfect, yet perfectly safe to the all-knowing “I” of eighteenth-century man.

Yet the problem was, and always has been, that the God of the Bible addresses human beings as the I, and is heard by the ones who are addressed (Barth 1977, p. 267).  The God of revelation, revealed in Jesus Christ, is not an It or even a He, but always an I – always the supreme subject who addresses us as our Measurer.  Barth makes the interesting claim that in fact, we only know ourselves as we are addressed, as we are named, by this I.  “He is not the personified but the personifying person…What do we know of our own selfhood before God has given us His name and named us by our name? 

What do we know of what it means to say Thou before God has named us in this way…We are thinking and speaking only in feeble images and echoes of the person of God when we describe man as a person, as an individual.” (Barth 1977, p. 285)  God, in actuality, gives us the model of personhood; by being impacted by God, we become persons ourselves.

God’s personhood is most shown in his acting and in the fact that his acting creates fellowship.  It is the agency of creating fellowship that shows us what love is, and defines for us what a person is (Barth 1977, p. 284).  Doesn’t this create a logical tension with the idea that God is the impersonal absolute?  Isn’t “love” language just anthropomorphism applied to something that is beyond personhood?  Barth answers No.  He argues that the tension is not between two concepts – personhood and absoluteness – which we in fact know completely and can therefore
say, “Contradiction!” 

Neither concept is truly known except by a God who reveals himself as both love and as absolute.  “The (to us) inexplicable paradox of the nature of God is the fact that He is primarily and properly all that our terms seek to mean, and yet of themselves cannot mean…yet allowing and commanding us to put or concepts into the service of knowledge of him…It is the paradox of the combination of His grace and our lost condition, not the paradox of the combination of two for us logically irreconcilable concepts.” (Barth 1977, p. 287)

The sum of the issue is that the personhood of God – so intimately linked to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ witnessed to in the Bible – is the exemplar of what personhood is; without that revelation, our conceptions of personhood would be very different.  This perspective needed to be resuscitated from nineteenth-century theology because that theology was predicated not on revelation, but rather on the claim that human rationality – the transcendental ‘I’ of the human being – had the power to name all things as under its control. 

And anything under the control of our own ‘I’ could not be perfect, absolute personhood, but only perfect, absolute substance, something that was ultimately controllable.  This safe, perfect God of Spirit or Idea did not challenge or threaten. It is no wonder, according to Barth, that in contemplating the situation, Feuerbach concluded that Christians were guilty of the greatest idolatry for creating God in the image of Man (Barth 1977, p. 292).

Barth’s discussion of the personhood of God is representative of his larger attempt to reintroduce classical Christian concerns into the theological discussion.  The idea of revelation – the authoritative self-designation of God through Jesus Christ – became for Barth the lens through which he saw all historical and philosophical discussion as merely human activity that paled in comparison to the “Moment” when God touches humanity in love.  Barth’s task was to do two difficult things at once – to avoid the trap of confusing the texts of scripture with the revelation and truth of God, and yet to find a “pivot point” of authority that allows human beings to be lifted up into a new reality.

The question that might be asked of Barth is whether or not this is an ‘honest’ way of doing theology.  Is it valid to simply claim revelation as a brute fact, and that faith in revelation as such is the key to theology and the Christian life?  What about those who want a rationale for why they should accept the idea of revelation from God at all?  I think Barth would respond that the very nature of God requires the claim of revelation as brute fact, whether it is ‘legitimate’ by the standards of human rationality or not.  Judging the legitimacy of concepts of God by any human standard apart from received revelation is exactly what Barth opposed. 

These standards define God and the knowledge of God in human terms, and end up producing a safe, inconsequential and incorrect picture of God.  Whatever else these human standards might give us in theology, Barth argued that they do not give us the living God revealed in Jesus Christ. For Barth, evidence of whether this theological strategy is valid is found in the results such a strategy makes in the individual and the Church. 

A living God leaves an impact, and a Church vitally connected to such a living God should, like a crater, point not to itself or to a successful philosophical system, but to a living God.
 
Bibliography
Barth, K. (1933). The Epistle to the Romans. London, Oxford University Press.
Barth, K. (1960). The Humanity of God. Richmond, John Knox Press.
Barth, K. (1977). Church Dogmatics. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark.
“Barth, Karl.”  Encyclopædia Britannica Online.  Retrieved February 16, 2005. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=616
 
The Theology of Karl Barth
Derek Michaud, 2003
 
Universally recognized as among a very select few who have profoundly affected all of Christian theology, Karl Barth remains perhaps one of the least understood theologians of the modern period. An extremely voluminous writer, the sheer size of Barth’s corpus is intimidating. More significantly, his thought is dialectical and consequently does not proceed in a linear way. Rather, Barth’s theology oscillates back and forth from the radical discontinuity between God and creation (“no”) and the equally radical love of God for creation (“yes”).

Early Biography
Karl Barth was born in Basel, Switzerland, on May 10, 1886. His father, Fritz Barth, was a Swiss Reformed minister and professor of New Testament and early church history. From 1904 to 1909, Barth studied theology in Bern, Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg. He studied under Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann and was attracted to the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. From 1911 to 1921, Barth was a parish minister. In 1913, he married Nelly Hoffman, and together they had five children.

Career & Principal Works
In 1914, Europe ignited. Soon after the start of WWI, Barth was shocked when many of his teachers signed their allegiance to the war plans of the German government. Barth thought that their openness to culture (philosophy, history, and the sciences) had made them turn their backs on the gospel. Liberal theology failed to stand up against culture and it failed to reach Barth’s congregation in Safenwil. Disillusioned with the liberal theology of his youth Barth sought a completely new theological foundation by rereading scripture. By 1919, Barth’s research on Paul’s Letter to the Roman’s yielded the first edition (of six in the original German) of his Römerbrief (ET, The Epistle to the Romans).

The following two years of study (which included Overbeck, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen and Kierkegaard in addition to the Bible) lead to a lecture entitled “Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas” delivered in 1920. With the great liberal theologian, Harnack in attendance Barth proceeded to expound on his new appreciation for the wholly-otherness of God. In 1922, the second edition of Romans was published. This new edition, “divided the theological world into advocates and detractors” (Livingston 2000, 65).

Though largely rebuked by New Testament scholars Romans found acceptance among the younger generation of theologians including Brunner and Bultmann, who “saw Barth as fighting on two fronts, against both the psychologizing and historicizing of Christian faith” (Livingston 2000, 66). Barth’s commentary stresses the “otherness” of God and the importance therefore of revelation and salvation as acts of God, not humanity. Romans draws heavily on the existentialist philosophy of Kierkegaard, with his characteristic emphasis on the infinitely qualitative distinction between God and humanity.

Although Barth never earned a doctorate, Barth secured professorships at Göttingen, Münster, and Bonn (1922-1935). During his time as a professor, he sought to rid his theology of the last residue of natural theology. Barth sought “a theology that would stand on its own feet, so to speak, free of the support of other philosophical or anthropological sources” (Livingston 2000, 97). In 1927, Barth published a prolegomena to dogmatics, Die Christliche Dogmatik (Christian Dogmatics). After being reviewed as grounded in existentialist philosophy Barth decided to rewrite his Dogmatik, this time under the less autonomous title of Die kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics). This move toward unambiguously Church-oriented theology was anticipated by Barth’s Romans, but was, perhaps, confirmed and strengthened by his study of the medieval theology of Anslem.
In 1931 Barth published his Anslem: Fides Quarens Intellectum (Latin: Faith Seeking Understanding) in which he concurs with the great scholastic that theological knowledge is nothing but “an extension and explication of…the Credo of the Church” (Livingston 2000, 98). From this point on through the several volumes of the monumental Church Dogmatics, Barth’s method reflects this Anselmian approach. In contrast to liberal theologians, Barth’s method relies only on the beliefs of the Church rather than also drawing on philosophy, the sciences, and culture in general. In addition to the Bible, Barth draws on the ancient creeds of the Church.

In 1935, Barth wrote Credo, an exposition of the Apostle’s Creed, and only eight years later, his Confession de la Foi de l’Eglise elaborated on the same topic. Shortly after WWII, Barth published a series of lectures as Dogmatics in Outline, which again followed (more or less) the presentation of the Christian faith found in the Apostle’s Creed (Barth, 1949). In contrast to more conservative orthodox biblical positivists, Barth conceived of the task of theology as human reflection on what is given in scripture but only in so far as the Bible is endowed with grace (Livingston 2000, 98).

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Barth became a staunch opponent of the Nazis’ plans to use the German Church to legitimate their racist and idolatrous agenda. Reacting to the creation of the state-sponsored Evangelical Church of the German Nation, Barth wrote a pamphlet published in Theologische Existenz Heute in June of 1933. Perhaps most revealing of Barth’s character and commitment to God above all else is the fact that a copy of this pamphlet was sent by Barth to Hitler himself.

By the close of 1933, pastor Martin Niemöller was the leader of the Pastor’s Emergency League, an organization opposed to the so-called German Christians. Barth joined with Niemöller and this group soon formed the basis for the Confessing Church in Germany. In May of 1934, the first Confessing Synod of the German Evangelical Church was held in Barmen. Most notably the meeting produced the Barmen Declaration. Owing to Barth’s authorship, the declaration was a statement of theology applied to the current political and social situation.

In response to the idolatry promoted by the Nazi regime, “the declaration affirms the sovereignty of the Word of God in Jesus Christ” (Livingston 2000, 100). Furthermore, the Declaration condemns the racist policies of the government and calls for the independence of the Church. Importantly, the Barmen Declaration demonstrates Barth’s commitment to an “ethics wholly subservient to the Word of God” (Livingston 2000, 101). As Livingston notes, “Barth’s social ethics is an ethics of divine command and human obedience as these are apprehended in the hearing of the Word of God in the context of a concrete situation” (Livingston 2000, 101). Moreover, ethics is not for Barth the reduction of particularity to general principles or laws. Rather, one must discern God’s will in the concrete situation one finds themselves in and this theme is one that persists throughout Barth’s career (Barth, 1993, 11; Lovin 1984, 32-42).


Soon after the Declaration, Barth responded to Brunner’s defense of human capacity to receive natural revelation with his (in)famous “Nein!” For Barth, the deity of God and the reality of human sin mean that theology must start, proceed, and end with the self-revelation of God. Using natural theology, philosophy, or any of the sciences can lead only to anthropocentricism and idolatry (for a brief overview of the Barth-Brunner debate see McGrath 1997, 191-3). Although he would later qualify this kind of extreme separation between God and humanity, Barth always saw that theology could easily and dangerously become a mere tool of a thoroughly human agenda (Barth 1960).

In 1935, after refusing to pledge his allegiance to Hitler, Barth was dismissed from Bonn and settled in his native Basel. By the late 1930’s, Barth was completing the second volume of his Dogmatik. The theme continued to be that of God being known only through God’s self-disclosure. Church Dogmatics II includes extensive discussion of Barth’s idea, central to his ethics, that “God’s gift of freedom and obedience are one, because God’s command is given not as a demand but as a gracious offer” (Livingston 2000, 103).

Human beings must continuously receive from God the answers to their questions about right and wrong. Ethical principles as such do not exist for Barth. Instead, Barth places emphasis on the Word of God. Hence, Barth’s ethics may be called theological in a literal sense. Barth’s higher standard of the Word of God made him slow to take sides on many social issues because he could (rightly) criticize both “from above” as it where. Rather than take sides between capitalism and communism, for example, Barth saw them both as idolatrously materialistic and called for the Church to follow its own path of “reconstruction” (Livingston 2000, 103). Nuclear war, however, did receive strong disapproval by Barth in the 1950s (Livingston 2000, 104).

Barth remained at Basel where he taught and wrote extensively until his retirement in 1962. He continued to work on his magnum opus the Church Dogmatics from 1932 until shortly before he died in 1968.
Central Themes in Barth’s Theology
Many scholars debate the presence of methodological phases in Barth’s work. There are, however, prominent themes from the first edition of Romans to the end of his career. Chief among these consistencies is his dialectical approach (in the sense of “yes” and “no”). Where Hunsinger distills Barth to motifs based on content, this theme is mainly a formal observation but, an informative one nonetheless. (Hunsinger 1991 identifies six motifs in Barth, actualism, particularism, objectivism, personalism, realism, and rationalism and develops these at length.

For a brief review of Hunsinger’s argument, see Molnar.) Owing to his disillusion with the liberal theology of his youth, Barth sought to balance the two sides of God and the human. This “balancing act” is seen most clearly by contrasting his early emphasis on God, that is, God’s wholly-otherness and distance from humanity as well as the created world with his later emphasis on the humanity of God. It is important to notice, however, that this apparent change over time is one of emphasis only.

Beginning with his Romans Barth placed strong emphasis on the otherness of God. In contrast to the liberal theology he was taught by Harnack and Hermann, Barth saw that, “the Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men. Salvation comes to them from him [God], and because they are, as men, incapable of knowing him, they have no right to claim anything from him” (Barth 1968, 28; Cf. Church Dogmatics I/1). This dualism between God and the world had several prominent consequences for Barth’s understanding of doctrine including, in particular, revelation and interpretation of scripture (See McGrath 1997, 306-8 on Barth’s move to start his Church Dogmatics with the Trinity, reversing the order of Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre).

It is important to note that, as Torrance points out, the dualism at work in Barth does not imply the absence of an “active relation between God and the world” (Torrance 1995, 85). Rather, “Barth’s position rests upon an immense stress on the concrete activity of God in space and time, in creation as in redemption, and upon his refusal to accept that God’s power is limited by the weakness of human capacity or that the so-called natural reason can set any limits to God’s self-revelation to mankind” (Torrance 1995, 86).

In keeping with his distaste for natural theology Barth held theology to be, in contrast to the liberal theologians of his day (and today), a “science of the Church” (Barth 1995, 21-22; Church Dogmatics I/1, 1). Theology’s object of study is therefore the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, scripture, and the proclamation of the Church. Jesus Christ, as the inspiration for scripture and the Church, is the ground of the witness to God’s Word. Scripture and the Church’s proclamation are however human creations and activities and as such become the Word of God only by grace and through the power of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing special therefore about the language used in the Bible (per se) nor the skill of the preacher, for the Word of God comes to humanity from God alone by grace (Church Dogmatics I/1, 191-4).

Despite the recognition of scripture as a human book, it is through the grace of God and by the Holy Spirit also the revealed Word of God and therefore exegesis and interpretation of scripture are critical for Barth’s dogmatics. He discusses these at length in his Church Dogmatics (I/1; I/2). As a “science of the Church” dogmatics presupposes not the “objective” exegesis of the Romans but rather a completely interested “theological exegesis,” that is informed by the history of the Church’s hearing of God’s Word in scripture and hopes, through faith, to hear God’s Word themselves for their own time.

This “interested exegesis” is further developed in Church Dogmatics I/2 under the title of “Freedom under the Word of God” (695-740). Principally, Barth calls for the recognition of humanity’s relative standing with respect to God’s Word. Human beings, while not forbidden to bring to bear their tools of philosophy and critical exegesis, are always required to subordinate the text and the meanings found there to God’s self, who is always “other than” the words we humans use to express God’s will (Livingston 2000, 105-6). Barth’s formulation of exegesis and hermeneutics has lead to broad criticism but is perhaps as far as one can go while maintaining the wholly-other character of God and the reality of revelation from such a God.

As early as the second edition of Romans the reader can find traces of the profound connection between God and humanity fully elaborated only later (37-8, for example, speaks of God’s “no” being the ground of the “yes” of salvation). By 1956 Barth explicitly recognized that his early emphasis on God’s distinctiveness as wholly other had been (and remained) necessary to counter the immanence of nineteenth-century liberal theology but that it was incomplete. In his lecture, entitled “The Humanity of God” Barth acknowledged a correction that had developed in his Church Dogmatics to the radical otherness of Romans (Barth 1960, 37-65).

This shift in thought is often called Barth’s “Christological concentration” and involves the notion that God cannot be understood without Christ and, of course, Christ cannot be understood without humanity and vice versa. After 1935, all of Barth’s theology is focused on Christ. His doctrines of God, creation, election, anthropology, and reconciliation are all Christological (Livingston 2000, 107; Church Dogmatics passim). True to his dialectical pattern, Barth saw all of theology as concerned with the work of God in Jesus Christ.

As the ground, or source, and the goal of all creation, Christ is the model for humanity. Not only is Christ the revelation of God but he is also the source of human nature. Through Christ we learn our relationship to God and we receive the grace which God planned for us from the beginning (Barth 1960, 46-65; Church Dogmatics, I/2, 347; II/1, 319f; II/2, 4f, 94f; III/2, 160f; III/3, 186; IV/1, 3, 17f, 161-3). Moreover, since “Christ is the ground and goal of humanity,” evil and sin are not the final necessary fate of humanity (Livingston 2000, 107). Rather, although a human being may withdraw from relationship with God and therefore sin (idolatry), one is powerless to undo what Christ has done.

As the author of creation and salvation, Christ restores covenant with God, so all of creation lies in essentially positive relation to God. “That is the first and the last word of God” (Livingston 2000, 107). Barth therefore calls sin and evil an ontological impossibility (Church Dogmatics II/1, 503f; II/2, 165f; III/3, 353f). Evil and sin, though real, exist only relatively and transitorily for nothing can prevent God from receiving humanity with the divine “yes!” (Livingston 2000, 108).

Barth reconceived the Protestant doctrine of election. For him, God elected God’s self for suffering and death in Christ and elected humanity for eternal life, simultaneously condemning Christ and raising up humanity. Barth stops short, however, of proclaiming universal salvation. Rather, God has extended unlimited love to all and it is up to human beings to accept this through faith. Those who believe are saved and those who do not are damned. The saved have only one appropriate response to the charis of God and this is eucharista or thanksgiving (Barth 1993; Livingston 2000, 109; Church Dogmatics IV/2, 733-51; IV/3, 99-103).

As has been seen in this brief overview of important aspects of Barth’s dogmatics, his dialectical, yes/no, approach informs every aspect of his thought. It is therefore, perhaps, unfair to cast Barth as a theologian of judgment without also recognizing the important place given to grace and election. For Barth humanity is both radically not God and (even more) radically called to covenant with God.

Criticism and Influence
Barth’s theology has been widely criticized by many theologians. Beside the liberal Protestant reaction, his neo-orthodoxy has been criticized for not being open enough to non-Christians, ignoring culture, employing Biblicism, for the density of his writing, and the sheer size of his Church Dogmatics. It should be noted in regards to the first criticism that Barth is, on at least one occasion, just as critical of Christian religion (as opposed to faith) as he is of other religions (Church Dogmatics I/1, 280-300). Overall, however, the fundamental criticism of Barth’s theology boils down to a questioning of his (albeit somewhat qualified) dualism.

In terms of revelation, he is accused of denying any significant role for humanity in the reception of God’s Word (Bultmann, Brunner, Pannenberg). Criticism is this area would seem to ignore statements such as, “In Him the fact is once for all established that God does not exist without man” (Barth 1960, 50). Regarding history, he is said to have no place for the historical and supra-historical event of Jesus Christ to happen. In other words, salvation history happens for Barth neither entirely with God nor entirely (or perhaps at all in some respects) with humanity.

Concerning the relationship between the world and God, many have been critical of Barth because his dualism ignores the actions of humans and that he does not adequately account for the connection linking God and the world between revelatory events. Although these criticisms are not without merit, there is a strong tendency to take isolated statements of Barth’s and to extend them logically to a level of abstraction that he himself avoided while ignoring (due, perhaps, to the immensity of his work) the “balancing” statements he makes.

Barth’s positive influence can be felt in the current work of the so-called postliberal theologians. Among these are Hans Frei, George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, Ronald Theiman, William Placher, Kathryn Tanner, and Charles Ward. Barth’s continues to provide a negative influence for the work of theologians of correlation such as Paul Tillich, David Tracy, Hans Küng, Rosemary Ruether, and Schubert Ogden.

Barth’s theology reacted to the profound challenges of the twentieth-century. In light of the mass destruction of the World Wars, the Holocaust(s), and countless other tragedies, Barth’s call to know our collective place under heaven while not denying that we do in fact have a significant relationship to engage in with God seems to have been a crucial one. Moreover, as Robert McAfee Brown says in his foreword to Credo, “The reader has the privilege of disagreeing with Barth. He no longer has the privilege of ignoring him” (Barth 1962, xi).

Bibliography
Primary
Barth, Karl. 1936-1975. Church Dogmatics. [ET Kirchliche Dogmatik] Translated by T.H.L. Parker, W.B. Johnston, Harold Knight, and J.L.M. Haire. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and G.T. Thomson. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Barth, Karl. 1949 [1947]. Dogmatics in Outline. Translated by G.T. Thomson. New York: Philosophical Library.
Barth, Karl. 1960 [1956]. “The Humanity of God,” in The Humanity of God, 37-65. Trans. John Newman Thomas. Atlanta: John Knox Press.
Barth, Karl. 1962 [1935]. Credo. With a foreword by Robert McAfee Brown. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Barth, Karl. 1968 [1933]. The Epistle to the Romans. Translated from the 6th German edition [Römerbrief] by Edwyn C. Hoskyns. London; Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Barth, Karl. 1993. The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics. Translated by R. Birch Hoyle with a foreword by Robin W. Lovin. [1st English edition London: F. Muller, 1938] Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. 
Barth, Karl. 1995. “Theology” from God in Action [1936]. In The Christian Theology Reader, ed. Alister McGrath, 21-22. Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Secondary
Hunsinger, George. 1991. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Livingston, James C. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Sarah Coakley, and James H. Evans, Jr. 2000 [1997]. Modern Christian Thought Volume II: The Twentieth Century. 2nd edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lovin, Robin W. 1984. Christian Faith and Public Choice. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
McGrath, Alister. 1995. The Christian Theology Reader. Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
McGrath, Alister. 1997 [1994]. Christian Theology: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell.
Molnar, Paul D. "Review of How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60(4), 791-6.
Torrance, Thomas F. 1995. "The Ground and Grammar of Theology" [1980]. In The Christian Theology Reader, ed. Alister McGrath, 85-8. Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.


Karl Barth (1886-1968)
Zdravko Kujundzija, 1999
 
Karl Barth is widely regarded as one of the most influential Christian theologians. He is often acknowledged as the greatest Protestant theologian of this century. His major contribution was a radical change in the direction of theology from a 19th-century orientation toward progress to an orthodoxy that had to cope with the grim realities of the 20th century. His rejection of liberal theology led to an emphasis on the eschatological and supernatural in Christianity. He refused any synthesis between the church and culture, and emphasized the radical disjunction between God and human being.

Karl Barth was born in Basel, Switzerland, on May 10, 1886. He was raised in Bern where his father Fritz Barth, a Swiss Reformed minister and professor of New Testament and early church history, taught. From 1904 to 1909, Barth studied theology in Bern, Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg. At Berlin he took part in the liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack's seminar, and at Marburg he came under the influence of Wilhelm Herrmann and became interested in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Barth went into the parish ministry from 1911 to 1921 (first an assistant pastor in Geneva, then pastor to the working-class parish of Safenwil). In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffman, a talented violinist; they had five children. The 10 years in Safenwill were the formative period of his life. Here Barth experienced conversion from culture Christianity. Barth quickly noticed that he often preached to no more than a dozen parishioners. One day he visited a sick, elderly man in the parish. When Barth asked him to which church he belonged, the man responded resentfully: "Pastor, I've always been an honest man. I've never been to church, and I've never been in trouble with the police." Barth recognized that this man was representative of majority of people in that society with the same basic pattern of scant attendance at worship services and disinterest in church religion. In this context Barth was convinced to reconsider the "culture Christianity" represented by the liberal theology in which he had been trained.

It was in Safenwil during World War I that Barth reviewed his theology along with a neighboring pastor and student-friend, Eduard Thurneysen, who was experiencing a similar crisis. Barth was shocked at the conduct of his liberal teachers when they were confronted with the social and political situation of wartime Europe. He read the "Declaration of German Intellectuals," calling for loyalty to Kaiser and Vaterland. How could this happen?

It happened, he argued, because of a fatal alliance between Christian faith and cultural perience.
He began working through the problems posed by the war and the failure of liberal theology to account for such a dark episode in human history. He initiated a radical change in theology, stressing the "wholly otherness of God" over the anthropocentrism of 19th-century liberal theology. He questioned the liberal theology of his German teachers and its dependence on the rationalist, historicist, and dualist thought that stemmed from the Enlightenment. Barth believed that liberal theology had accommodated Christianity to modern culture, and it had to be changed.
Being aware that the theology which he had been taught gave him little to say to his congregation, Barth reviewed his philosophy and theology. Thus started a period of theological study, particularly of the Bible. He discovered in the Bible a "strange new world": the Bible was not about our religion or morality or history, but about the Kingdom of God. This biblical reality can be understood only by inhabiting it.

In 1916 Barth began a careful study of Paul's Letter to the Romans. The result of these efforts was his first major work, The Epistle to the Romans (First published in 1919 and then completely rewritten in 1922.), in which he contradicted the liberal theologians who considered Scripture little more than an account of human religious experience and who were concerned only with the historic personality of Christ. According to Paul, argues Barth, God condemns all human undertakings and saves only those people who trust not in themselves but solely in God. Barth argued that in Scripture we find "divine thoughts about men, not human thoughts about God." God is God and he has wrought our salvation.

Romans is a huge, breathless, exciting sermon rather than commentary. In it Barth reflect on what he would later call "the Godness of God." What God thinks about people is more important than what they thing about God. Human knowledge can lead us to a void, a longing and a dissatisfaction. God, the living God, had come to deliver confused, self-contradictory human beings like himself from their sin. In this book Barth stressed the discontinuity between the Christian message and the world. God is the wholly other, and known only in revelation. Human task is to reshape himself or herself to God's design, rather than the other way around.

This study brought him to the attention of theologians everywhere. The book divided the theological world of Germany and Switzerland into advocates and bitter detractors. This book initiated the revival of orthodox Protestantism based on the Bible. There were numerous younger theologians who saw in Barth's Romans an expression of their own theological program. Among those were Emil Brunner, Bultmann, George Merz and Friedrich Gogarten. In the fall of 1922, Barth, Thurneysen, Gogarten, and Merz started a journal entitled Zwischen den Zeiten (Between the Times) which was to be the organ of the new "theology of crisis". This journal played an important role in shaping German theology for the next decade, until it was discontinued in 1933.

The main characteristic of Barth's work, known as neoorthodoxy and crisis theology, is on the sinfulness of humanity, God's absolute transcendence, and the human inability to know God except through revelation. The critical nature of his theology came to be known as "dialectical theology," or "the theology of crisis". This initiated a trend toward neoorthodoxy in Protestant theology. The neoorthodoxy of Karl Barth reacted strongly against liberal Protestant neglect of historical revelation. He wanted to lead theology away from the influence of modern religious philosophy, with its emphasis on feeling and humanism, and back to the principles of the Reformation and the teachings of the Bible. He viewed the Bible, however, not as the actual revelation of God but as only the record of that revelation.

God's single revelation occurred in Jesus Christ. In short, Barth rejected two main lines of interest in Protestant theology of that time: historical criticism of the Bible and attempt to find justification for religious experience from philosophy and other sources. Barth saw in historical criticism great value on its own level, but it often led Christians to lessen the significance of the testimony of the apostolic community to Jesus as being based on faith and not on history. Theology which uses philosophy is always on the defensive and more anxious to accommodate the Christian faith to others than to pay attention to what the Bible really says.
On the basis of the publication of Romans (he had never earned a doctorate), Barth was appointed professor at the universities of Göttingen, Münster, and Bonn, successively.

In Göttingen he did an exhaustive study of the great Protestant scholastic theologians. In 1927 he wrote his first attempt at dogmatics, The Doctrine of the Word of God: Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics, in which he addressed the Word of God, divine revelation, the Trinity, Incarnation, and the Holy Spirit. It turned out to be a "false start." His engagement with epistemological issues made him dissatisfied with what he had done. He became aware that he was still working within a liberal, anthropocentric framework. When he moved to Bonn he war forced to rethink his whole theological method in order to avoid grounding his theology in an existential anthropology. His theology represented a significant break with his earlier dialectical thinking. In 1931 he produced his celebrated study of St. Anselm, Fides quaerens intellectum.

In the following year he published the first part of his Church Dogmatics. During this time Barth also wrote several small commentaries, expositions of the Apostles' Creed, and the Heidelberg and Geneva catechisms.

Barth was not only Protestantism's preeminent theologian, but a public figure. With the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933, Barth emerged as a leader of the church opposition, expressed in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. In April of 1933 the "Evangelical Church of the German Nation" was created and published the following guiding principles: "We see in race, folk and nation, orders of existence granted and entrusted to us by God. God's law for us is that we look to the preservation of these orders....In the mission to the Jews we perceive a grave danger to our nationality. It is the entrance gate for alien blood into our body politic....In particular, marriage between Germans and Jews is to be forbidden. We want an evangelical Church that is rooted in our nationhood." (Cited in Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church's Confession Under Hitler. Philadelphia, 1962, pp. 222-223)

Barth was one of the founders of the so-called Confessing church, which rejected Nazi nationalist ideology of "blood and soil" and the attempt to set up a "German Christian" church. In May of 1934 representatives of the Confessing church met at Barmen and out of that meeting came the Barmen Declaration, largely based on a draft that Barth had prepared. It expressed his conviction that the only way to resist the collapse of the church in Nazi Germany was to hold fast to true Christian doctrine, i.e., to affirm the sovereignty of the Word of God in Christ over against all idolatrous political ideologies. "Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine that the church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures, and truths as God's revelation…

We reject the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would belong not to Jesus Christ but to other lords, areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him."
Barth refused to take the oath of unconditional allegiance to Hitler which cost him his chair in Bonn in 1935. Barth's refusal to comply with an instruction by the rector of the University of Bonn to end each lecture with the German salute put a provisional end to Barth's professional career in Germany. Barth himself described why he refused to comply: "I have begun my lecture (in summer at seven o'clock, in winter at eight o'clock) for the past two and one-half years with a brief devotion consisting of the reading of two Bible verses and the singing of two or three verses of a hymn by all present. The introduction of the Hitler salute in this context would be out of place and diversionary." (Prolingheuer, Der Fall Karl Barth, 240: Letter to Rust 16 December 1933).

He returned to his native Basel where he remained until his death, December 10, 1968 at the age of 82. He continued to champion the cause of the Confessing Church, of the Jews, until the end of the war. After the war, Barth was invited back to Bonn, where he delivered the series of lectures published in 1947 as Dogmatics in Outline. He spoke at the opening meeting of the Conference of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), he visited Rome, a visit of which he wrote in Ad limina apostolorum. He was regular visitor to the prison in Basel (Deliverance to the Captives, 1959).

From 1932 to 1967 he worked on his Church Dogmatics, a multivolume work that was unfinished at his death. It consists of 13 parts in four volumes, running altogether to more than 9,000 pages. Although he changed some of his early positions, he continued to maintain that the task of theology is to unfold the revealed word attested in the Bible, and that there is no place for natural theology or the influence of non-Christian religions. His theology depended on a distinction between the Word (i.e., God's self-revelation as concretely manifested in Christ) and religion. Religion, according to Barth, is human attempt to grasp at God and is opposed to revelation, in which God has come to humans through Christ. "Religion is the enemy of faith." "Religion is human's attempt to enter into communion with God on his own terms."

Critique
Barth's theology was subjected to criticism during his life-time and in the following decades.
Some argue that he was too negative in his description of humankind and too narrow in limiting revelation to the biblical tradition, thus excluding the non-Christian religions.
Some accuse him of his intellectual narrowness. He took little interest in other disciplines and no interest at all in other religions.

The excessive biblicism. He claimed to accept the legitimacy of critical biblical scholarship, but he made practically no use of it.
The very size of the Dogmatics. Mascall said that it takes so much time to read this theologian of the word that no time is left to read the Word itself. His style if majestic, and difficult.
Quotations
"Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way."
"The best theology would need no advocates: it would prove itself."
“There is a notion that complete impartiality is the