A Letter from Karl Barth

Dear Editor: Your friendly letter of July 23 – for which I thank you heartily – caused me real embarrassment. I opened it expecting that it would be an invitation to take part in a third series, to be published in 1959, on the theme “How My Mind Has Changed”; and to this I would (perhaps!) has contributed with pleasure, as I did to the 1939 and 1949 series. But it appears that you want something altogether different for 1959; namely, a preview of the future – a statement of what tasks and problems I would set myself if, in the light of my past experience, I were now beginning my work as theological teacher and writer. I gather from your letter that you have sent the same invitation to other well-known theologians of my generation, and that you intend to publish our assembled remarks on this theme in book form, for the benefit of today’s younger theologians.

What will these contemporaries of mine have to say to this invitation and plan? I cannot speak for them. But I must say that for my own part this project of yours leaves me non-plused, and so, however gladly I would serve you, I cannot agree to contribute to it.

To the best of my memory, at no stage in my theological career did I ever plan more than the immediate next steps. And these next steps grew inevitably out of the steps that I had already taken, and out of my impressions of the needs and possibilities latent in every new day and every new situation. As I see it now, my career has been a “succession of present moments.” I found myself – the man I had become up to that time, equipped with whatever knowledge I fancied I had acquired – always set suddenly before some biblical or historical or academic complex, some theme thrust upon me from outside, some immediate problem (for example a political one); in short, some new thing that I did not look for but that claimed me. Then I tried to stand up to this new thing as best I could. That was difficult enough, and so I never could think about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I have hardly ever had or carried out anything in the nature of a program. Rather my thinking and writing and speaking issued from my encounters with people, events and condition that flowed toward me with their questions and riddles. I discovered them – at first, the liberalism and socialism of the beginning of the century; or later, the text of the letter to the Romans; or still later, the theological tradition of the ancient and the Reformed church; or the German situation after 1933 or the Swiss situation after 1939. I discovered them; which is to say, these people, events, conditions burst upon me; they spoke to me, engaged my interest or compelled me to say something about them. I never planned to be, do or say this or that; I was, did or said this or that as the time for it came.

That is the way it has been with me – for twenty-five years now, and especially in working out the Church Dogmatics: from one semester to another, from one week to another. So with my other books, lectures, sermons. They are, as it were, tress of all kinds, big and little, that sprang up, grew and spread before me. Their existence did not depend on me; rather I had to watch over their development with all my attention. Or I might say that I feel like a man in a boat that I must row and steer diligently; but it swims in a steam I do not control. It glides along between ever new and often totally strange shores, carrying me toward the goals set for me, goals that I see and choose only when I approach them.

Whether God in the inscrutable wisdom of his providence destined and created me to be so unsystematic a theologian, or whether in my human confusion I have made myself such, who shall say? But one thing is sure: if you, dear sir, are of the opinion that (as you say in your letter) I have helped to bring about today’s theological situation and continue to shape it, then you must reckon with the fact that this is the manner in which I have made my contribution to contemporary theology. I prayed for my daily bread, received it and ate it, and let the next day take care of itself. I do not think that at this time of life I shall change my ways. And I do not think that anyone can expect of me more than I can accomplish in my own way during the years yet left me.

And now you will surely understand and not take it amiss that I cannot play along in the “symphony of the future” you plan – not with the first or second violins, nor with the flutes or the double basses, nor as the able man who presides over the great kettle drum. Why not? Certainly not because the future of theology in general (and so also of my own theology) does not interest me; otherwise I would not continue working, as I would like to do so as time and strength are granted me. But because now as in the past the present makes such claims on me that I can indulge in picturing the future only in passing dreams if at all – and because as concerns the future itself (if I did not prefer to remain silent) I should have something serious to say only when that future had become present.

Respectfully and expectantly I look forward to what the other members of the company of elders you have called on will spread out before us in the way of prognoses, programs and prospectuses. And I should rejoice if their comments proved of benefit to the young people who are coming into the field today. But I would have to be a different person, with a different way of life, if I were to produce even thirty – not to speak of 3,000! – sensible and useful words in this matter. All that I can really contribute to your enterprise is three English words – unoriginal and banal but responsible uttered: Wait and see!

With kindest regards and greetings,

Karl Barth

December 31, 1958.

Cited from The Christian Century Reader: Representative Articles, Editorials, & Poems, edited by Harold E. Fey & Margaret Frakes, (Manchester: Ayer Publishing, 1972), 102–5.