Karl Barth

Karl Barth (1886-1968), an influential Swiss-born theologian, had a significant impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Barth (pronounced Bart) thought the study of religion, following the first world war, focused too much on man and not enough on God.  When he was seventy years old, he addressed a group of pastors and explained the concerns which changed the direction of his study:

 

There is no question about it:  here man was made great at the cost of God – the divine God who is someone other than man, who sovereignly confronts him, who immovably and unchangeably stands over against him as the Lord, Creator, and Redeemer….The stone wall we [young theologians] first ran up against was that the theme of the Bible is the deity of God, more exactly God’s deity – God’s independence and particular character…God’s absolutely unique existence, might, and initiative, above all, in His relation to man. 

 

To learn more about Barth, check out this Time Magazine article.