ABSTRACT
Matters became even more pressing when war broke out in 1914, and each side claimed to be defending the cause of ‘God’ and ‘Christian civilization’. Karl Barth now found the equation of these two to be blasphemous. In the 1940s and 1950s, Barth became notorious for refusing to join the crusade against Communism — for example, criticizing the NATO decision to re-arm West Germany, and inveighing against Christian support of nuclear weapons. On 9 December, 1968, Barth worked for much of the day on a lecture he had been invited to deliver to an ecumenical group in Zürich. In that talk, he underscored the importance of listening to the great voices of Christian history. ‘Karl Barth’s break with liberalism’ is one of the most familiar phrases in all of modern Christian thought. Barth did break – and decisively — with the theology of his teachers.
