A Heritage of Irrationalism
Christianity is rational because the God who made the Bible his
revelation declares that he is a rational Being of wisdom and understanding. He
created man in his own rational image; and these two rationalities, if they are
to communicate at all, must because of their nature communicate intelligibly.
Undoubtedly there exist religions of emotion and mysticism, non-
Christian religions they are; but let them remain silent, for
they have nothing to say, and any noise they make conveys no message. There are
also devout but confused minds who, combining elements of different sorts, are inconsistent
in their beliefs. Such minds, however refined and agreeable they may be personally,
should either hate the one and love the other. Ye cannot serve God and unintelligibility.
Christianity is rational and rationality requires verbal inspiration.
When God, the rational God, speaks to his creatures, he must, we insist, speak the
truth. His word cannot be false. Barth has tried to ridicule this requirement,
as if it gave some sort of control over God. The shoe is on the other foot. Notions
of God and practices of religion are subjected more easily to critical manipulation,
once Scriptural authority is sacrificed. To insist that God’s word cannot be false,
even to the jot and tittle, gives man no control over God; it is merely the expression
of God’s nature and man’s need. No rational ground what- ever can support the proposition
that God speaks falsities. Of course, a man of the Enlightenment, denying that God
spoke the Bible, might construct a religion of human invention; but the Bible claims
that its words are God’s true words, so that no theologian can be both Biblical
and rational if he rejects verbal inspiration.
The school to which Barth belongs, or at least the movement which
Barth initiated, has a heritage of irrationalism. Barth is probably the least irrational
of them all. Yet even Barth, in his great enthusiasm to proclaim the good news that
the Word became flesh, tends to forget that what became flesh and spoke in human
language was the word, the Logos, the infallible Reason of God.
- Gordon H. Clark, in Karl Barth's Theological Method, 1963, pp. 224f.
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