Karl Barth and Oneness Pentecostals

yes let me uh I'll give you an overview and then give you a practical reason why I had this particular discussion but Carl Bart as you stated was a Swiss Theologian he also studied and taught in Germany uh for many years because he was german-speaking Swiss uh and he was reformed so he really became I think both Catholics and Protestants would say he was probably the most well-known Theologian of the 20th century he wrote a massive uh theology Systematic Theology

yes that was most of his well yes he he actually started writing that I think in the 20s through the 60s is when I think he finally he actually never finished but he stopped when he got too old so I think the 20s through the 60s was the peak but what made him so significant uh is that before his time the leading theologians had gone into more liberal theology denying the deity of Christ the Virgin birth the resurrection of Jesus Christ so on so he uh theologically brought protestantism back to a more conservative view not completely conservative the way way evangelicals would teach today but it's often labeled Neo Orthodoxy because he tried to use Theology and human reasoning to reaffirm some of the cality of scripture especially the true deity of H of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God and especially the Bible as teaching truth about God so he kind of made it um credible for people to to be conservative Believers of the Bible mainly in the Protestant context but he had enormous influence over Catholics and Protestants alike now you know he's been gone so many years that people are kind of drifting away from that and maybe uh don't think of him as highly or as important as it maybe you know 20 years ago or 30 years ago but he did have a tremendous influence in a whole generation of Scholars another thing that was significant he took a strong stand against the Nazis in in Germany before World War II and indeed had to flee but where the German church as a whole was compromising uh he took a firm stand against it so he's well known for that uh very strong uncompromising stand uh in a very crucial time at risk of his own life so but more practically I was introduced to Bart when I was a college student taking religion classes in the 70s and I really I immediately saw here's a major Theologian that makes some comments that are very similar to what Wess people say although it doesn't appear that Bart ever had an encounter with Wess Theology and he also made some statements are incompatible with much a popular trinitarianism now on the scholarly level his comments are not surprising but on a popular level he destroys many trinitarian arguments that are used against us um and so from a you know from years ago I was intrigued by Bart so in my history of Christian doctrine volume three I dedicated a section to him particularly on especially on his discussion of water baptism because he does something very interesting he's not the same as us but he says if you had to say from the Bible what was the most basic formula the minimum formula that you would want for baptism he said you should baptized into Jesus Christ or you could say into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ so then he asked the question so what about Father Son and Holy Spirit he said well really this is a Formula that's centered on Jesus because when you say father you look you're speaking of God planning for the future when you say the Holy Spirit you're speaking of God working in our lives but when you say son you're saying God's Plan of Salvation so father Son and Holy Spirit everything focuses on the son on Jesus Christ So when you say father Son and Holy Spirit it's really a roundabout way of bringing you to Jesus Christ uh and so then he has the next question so which formula should we use of course here's where he deviates from us but that discussion up until then sounds amazingly like Oneness theology right uh which of course when trinitarians attack us we say well probably your best known Theologian says we're on the right track so but then when he gets to the application you can see where he's different he says well we can't really say which formula was more used or better whatever but he said in the interest of ecumenical Unity since everybody uses it we need to use the expanded formula so it's not about what is more biblical or what is more original it's about what makes for peace and Harmony today and of course that's where you can see the difference between Oneness Theology and Protestant Catholic theology we are restorationists we will always say go back to the original go back to the New Testament go back to the apostolic church so I included a discussion there then when I wrote my doctoral thesis the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ I had a section on BART as well and I looked more at his doctrine of God so here's a couple things he says first of all he says he is trinitarian but he didn't doesn't like the name persons because he says if you think a person in the normal sense of the word is a self-conscious person that would be tritheism if God is three persons with three centers of Consciousness you no longer have the one God of the Bible you have tritheism which is exactly what we say and there are trinitarian theologians who say three siners of Consciousness he says they're wrong that that's not true trinitarianism that's not true biblical Doctrine the next thing he says is that the act so he preferred to say modes of being which laid him open to the charge of modalism uh he rejected modalism as he understood it because he thought that meant uh God is wearing different masks and so he didn't like that of course we are often accused of being motivs but we don't like that idea of three mask either but we would say just like Bart God is not one being hidden behind three different Mass God is revealed in the one person of Jesus Christ which was Bart's main interest so Bart says the doct of the Trinity is not a firstorder Doctrine it's not a Biblical doctr it's not in the Bible as such but it is our attempt to explain the Bible so he more or less is saying you don't have to confess the Trinity as such because that is a second order human created explanation of what the Bible is trying to say he said if you want to go to the core of what is the do of Trinity trying to do he said it's trying to show that Jesus reveals God so for him to be a trinitarian the main point was to say Jesus reveals god well of course that's what we're saying you know so I I sometimes have joke if I was going to be a trinitarian I would be Bart's kind of trinitarian because he makes all the same points that we make of course obviously I don't think we need the concept of the Trinity or the label of Trinity because I do think it it does lead us astray but repeatedly Bart says God is one personal being he's not three centers of Consciousness and if you think that then you're a trieus and he makes so he makes some statements that most trinitarians would be uncomfortable with I'll just read just a few of them he said the one God is revealed to us absolutely in Jesus Christ then he says God italicize is found in Jesus because in fact Jesus himself cannot be found has any other than God God is found in Jesus italicized because in fact he is not found anywhere else but in Jesus God Wills to be God solely in Jesus Christ God is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is God we know God in Jesus Christ alone and in Jesus Christ we know the one God to reconcile the world to himself God in Jesus Christ became a man and so he says the Son of God is God giving himself and on and on he goes in these different phrases that would be very compatible with Oneness Theology and would actually critique many trinitarians who would not be willing to make these these same statements so where this really came home you know I'd already I'd already used Bart so in my doctoral thesis I Chapter 7: Scholarly and practical use said you know uh cuz I'm writing to Outsiders I'm writing to the scholarly Community I'm saying if you want to understand my explanation and my thesis about Paul's christology what did Paul view you about Christ if if you're coming from a trinitarian perspective Carl Barton might be a good way of you know looking starting from there but going into what Paul was actually saying um because Bart strips off many of the common trinitarian arguments and says they're not valid um so where this really came home and why I put this in my book anchor points is I'm a member of the society for Pentecostal studies which is primarily mostly trinitarian Scholars but they work in Pentecostal studies and so one of the um members had presented um a paper that said he was raised in a Oneness church but as a young man he started studying Carl Bart and Carl Bart convinced him to become a trinitarian so became a trinitarian minister so he's writing this whole paper of saying you know if you one these people really studied Carl Bart you might be a trinitarian too so I was asked to respond to that and I said well you know I read I've read all 13 volumes of Paul of Bart's church dogmatics and by the way I don't necessarily recommend them unless you really want to spend significant chunk of your life doing that because it there's a lot of amazing stuff that I I have personally benefited from in my thinking and preaching and writing some Concepts but you have to weigh through so much uh verbage and a lot of it is redundant a lot of it is confusing he goes his method is not just straightforward one two 3 4 but he'll make a point and circle back three or four or five different times in different ways so you're reading the same thing over and over and over in different words that's his method of trying to teach you so he's brilliant but uh it is definitely uh something you have to Wade through a lot uh of of words to get to what he's trying to say anyway so I wrote a response to say well you know I read B two but he didn't make me a trinitarian he made me a better Oneness person because he reinforced some key points that I always thought uh and he interpreted some scriptures uh in a way that one his people off to do for example um in Philippians 2 the name that's above every name Bart basically says it's the name of Jesus and uh John 1:1 in the beginning was the word the word was with God the Word was God Bart interprets that in a way that's very compatible with Oneness theology uh so um you know it's just amazing to me I'll just the right hand of God is not a physical position uh but it's uh John 1:1 I said the the word was with God means the word belongs to God God and is god um so um 2 Corinthians 3:17 the Lord is that Spirit he says the Lord Jesus Christ is that Spirit um so over and over again key passages that we interpret uh Colossians 2:9 God is you know that Colossians 2:9 in him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily so Bart says what this means is God is himself this man Jesus Christ so over and over again key passages that Oneness people use to support the Oneness Doctrine trinitarians come up with another explanation that kind of you know try to Waters it down time and time again bar chooses the Oneness interpretation so you wonder how he can remain a trinitarian maybe if he had ever encountered Oneness and especially had a theological discussion he might have found himself more um compatible with it and and so I kind of say tongue and cheek there was a a scholar named Kenneth Gil who was trying to look at both Oneness and Trinity and so he was trying to find a meeting ground he's and he said well the Oneness people they believe in the trinity in the sense they believe Father Son and Holy Spirit so he says they have a Oneness view of the Trinity well obviously we wouldn't say that either but what he was trying to say is they have a onest explanation of the Father Son and Holy Spirit Well that phrase intrigues me I thought well if if Bart had ever had a theological discussion of Oneness maybe he would have a Oneness view of the Trinity so in in summary I find Bart helpful because he's a top rate scholar recognized by everyone as as the preeminent Theologian of the 20th century and yet many of his key statements support Oneness Theology and many of his key statements are opposed to popular trinitarian theology today so on the scholarly level obviously we go by scripture not by Carl Bart or anybody else so in one sense we don't care what Carl Bart believes but if you're ever talking in the scholarly Community or to maybe a Protestant minister or someone who's knowledgeable they have these various objections and concerns it's possible to use Carl BART to say you know in essence the some of the top scholarship in the world has supported key points that we try to make today and so we what we're doing is actually very credible and reasonable when you study it carefully so I find it to be helpful in dialoging those kind of circles and I find it personally rewarding because it reaffirms some of the things that I believe based on my study of scripture