ABSTRACT
The work of Karl Barth, generally acknowledged to be one of the most significant theologians of the twentieth century, is sufficiently complex to have inspired a plethora of differing interpretations. One of the more contentious issues in this interpretive debate is the exact nature of Barth’s appropriation of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. Any interpreter’s assessment of Barth’s use of Kierkegaard has usually reflected that particular interpreter’s attitude toward Barth’s theology as a whole. For example, when liberal theologians have dismissed Barth as a reactionary Biblicist or a purveyor of a woefully traditionalist doctrinalism, Kierkegaard has often been cited as one of the baneful influences that inspired his conservatism. When other expositors have credited Barth with being the premier exemplar of neo-orthodoxy, defined as the suspicion of autonomous reason and human moral capacities, Kierkegaard has been applauded as one of the sources of Barth’s utter reliance upon revelation and grace. When a “postmodern” Barth has been valorized for practicing strategies of ironic indirection, Kierkegaard has been hailed as his rhetorical precursor. Other scholars, convinced of the uniqueness of Barth’s theological project, have emphasized the dissimilarities between Barth and Kierkegaard, construing Barth as an expositor of the objective patterns in the Gospel narratives, and Kierkegaard as an analyst of human subjectivity. This article will explore the factors in Barth’s use of Kierkegaard that make these divergent interpretations possible, and will attempt to evaluate the plausibility of each account of Barth’s complex relation to his Danish predecessor.
