Since I have a few spare moments to read again I have decided to give Barth’s Evangelical Theology another attempt. Ironically, I was not prepared to engage with Barth until after battling it out with Brunner. For those of you that are not aware, these two had significant disagreements about one another’s theology.

Barth, in the beginning of this short book, attempts to sketch what theology is or, more importantly, what the object of theology is. Barth uses “God” to refer to that object which is “our highest desire”. I’ve heard this spun a bit differently in my previous evangelical experiences, but I think Barth makes the point clear.

There is no man who does not have his own gods or gods as the object of his highest desire and trust, or as the basis of his deepest loyalty and commitment.

This isn’t meant to be slanderous or a personal attack directed toward *theists. Barth is merely defining the term god and its possible referents (is that right?). Think of it as more of an abstraction or generalization that can be applied to everyone. Barth gives us examples of what suchs gods may look like.

Such an alternative object might be “nature”, creativity, or an unconscious and amorphous will to life. It might also be “reason”, progress or even a redeeming nothingness into which man would be destined to disappear. Even such apparently “godless” ideologies are theologies.

It is a good starting point for understanding what theology’s aim or object is. It is the study of, reflection upon those things that we elevate to the divine (whether legitimately or illegitimately is another story!) However, once you select your god object things change just a bit. Barth’s aim is to speak of the God of the Gospel. And the goal of this study is to:

..to apprehend, to understand and to speak of the God of the Gospel, in the midst of the variety of all other theologies and (without any value-judgment being implied) in distinction from them. This is the God who reveals himself in the Gospel, who himself speaks to men and acts among and upon them. Wherever he becomes the object of human science, both it source and its norm, there is evangelical theology.

– Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology (Eerdmans, 1963) 3-6.