Charlotte Kirschbaum was the Commie babe who bedded Barth in his own home, moving in shamelessly. Many Barthians claim she was a major contributor to the gaseous Church Dogmatics that Barth claimed as his own. Note the Church Growth parallels with adultery, apostasy, and plagiarism.
Karth Barth was so cute in his Swiss Army uniform – I had to post this photo for laughs. It looks like a scene from Laugh In.
My friend from Yale explored Barth’s love for Marxism and his known affinities with the red cause. Barth-Kirschbaum is the official theologian for Fuller Seminary, where most of the leaders of WELS, Missouri, the ELS, and ELCA have attended.
Here ve haff da luffly Barth family, Karl mit Charlotte, und Kinder, und Frau Barth way over on da outside right. Das machen me schniffle ein bischen. Zo touching und varm. Der kleine Hans hat two mommies – eine Hausfrau und eine va-va-voom Commie. [Translated into German to keep the caption G-rated.]
Carl Braaten, the son of missionaries, latched onto Leftist theologians, incorporating Barth-Kirschbaum and Tillich (another adulterer) into Lutheran theology. Barth’s $1,000 set now sells for $99. Tillich is a has-been, known chiefly for his promiscuity and sadistic fetishes.
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Note the catchy subtitle, which came from an orthodox Lutheran.
The UOJ dimwits use that phrase in all their essays attacking justification by faith. |
Carl Braaten, Justification, 1990:
We cannot hold a universalism of the unitarian kind. People are not too good to be damned. There is no necessity for God to save everybody nor to reject anyone. God is not bound by anything outside of himself. He is not bound to give the devil his due. If we take into account God’s love, he would have all to be saved. If we reckon with his freedom, he has the power to save whomsoever he pleases. This does not lead to a dogmatic universalism. But it does mean that we leave open the possibility that within the power of God’s freedom and love, all people may indeed be saved in the end. This follows as a possibility from the fact that God is free from all external factors in making up his mind. (p. 139)
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Then Why Evangelize? (heading, Braaten, p. 140)
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Barth’s doctrine is radically objective. [Bratten now quotes Barth-Kirschbaum verbatim.]
There is not one for whose sin and death he did not die, whose sin and death he did not remove and obliterate on the cross…There is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him…There is not one for whom he has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead. (Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, 638)
In the face of literally hundreds o fsuch beautiful passages, evangelicals understandably ask, Then what is the point of evangelism? If the heathen are already saved in Christ, and nothing more needs to be added, then where is the urgency in world evangelization? (Braaten, p. 140)
Universalism-Denying
The parallels with WELS, Jon Buchholz, Jay Webber, and Don Patterson are obvious. They deny they are Universalists while confessing the basics of Universalism. Texas WELS even featured an essay where someone read from the Universalist creed and said, “See – we are not Univesalists.” The truth hurts.
The language is borrowed the Halle’s Knapp, because Halle was pivotal in the transition from a Biblical Pietistic school to a Rationalistic university.
Earlier, Samuel Huber taught the same way, but the Wittenberg theologians crushed him like a bug. The same kind of Enthusiasm came back via Pietism, since that movement was allergic to orthodox confessions but overly fond of unionism. Spener was the first union theologian, but not the last.
UOJ makes anything possible (except rejection of UOJ). Take money from unrepentant adulterers? No problem? Plagiarize the false doctrine of Fuller Seminary? That is spoiling the Egyptians. Engage in child porn file swapping? You are forgiven because you are sorry you got caught again.
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From Wikipedia and George Hunsinger:
Relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum
When Barth first met Charlotte von Kirschbaum in 1924 he had already been married for 12 years to his wife, Nelly, with whom he had also had five children.[14] In 1929, von Kirschbaum, with Barth’s consent, moved into the Barth family household. This arrangement–described by one scholar as “convoluted, extremely painful for all concerned, yet not without integrity and joys”–lasted for 35 years.[15]
A kind of household of three relationship developed between Barth, von Kirschbaum and Barth’s wife, Nelly. The long-standing situation was not without its difficulties. “Lollo”,[16] as Barth called the 13-year-younger von Kirschbaum, once wrote to Barth’s sister Gertrud Lindt in 1935, where she expressed her concern about the precarious situation:
“The alienation between Karl and Nelly has reached a degree which could hardly increase. This has certainly become accentuated by my existence.”[17]
The relationship caused great offence among many of Barth’s friends, as well as his own mother.[18] Barth’s children suffered from the stress of the relationship.[18] Barth and von Kirschbaum took semester break vacations together.[18] While Nelly supplied the household and the children, von Kirschbaum and Barth shared an academic relationship. Barth has fallen victim to criticism for his relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum. One critic has written: “Part of any realistic response to the subject of Barth and von Kirschbaum must be anger.”[19] Hunsinger summarizes the influence of von Kirschbaum on Barth’s work: “As his unique student, critic, researcher, adviser, collaborator, companion, assistant, spokesperson, and confidant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was indispensable to him. He could not have been what he was, or have done what he did, without her.”
- ^ George Hunsinger’s review of S. Seliger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology.
- ^ Hunsinger
- ^ Eberhard Busch, Karl Barths Lebenslauf, München: Kaiser, 177ff.
- ^ Karl Barth: Gesamtausgabe, Teil V. Briefe. Karl Barth – Eduard Thurneysen: Briefwechsel Bd. 3, 1930–1935: einschließlich des Briefwechsels zwischen Charlotte von Kirschbaum und Eduard Thurneysen, eds. Caren Algner; Zürich: TVZ, Theologischer Verlag, 2000, p. 839.
- ^ a b c Busch, Karl Barths Lebenslauf, 199 = Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Fortress Press, 1976), 185-6.
- ^ S. Seliger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth; quoted in K. Sonderegger’s review.
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Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology
Department of Theology
102 Hodge Hall
Phone: 609.252.2114
Fax: 609.497.7728
Email: george.hunsinger@ptsem.edu
(Presbyterian)
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George Hunsinger is Princeton Theological Seminary’s Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology. He earned his B.D. from Harvard University Divinity School and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. He served as director of the Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies from 1997 to 2001. He has broad interests in the history and theology of the Reformed tradition and in “generous orthodoxy” as a way beyond the modern liberal/conservative impasse in theology and church. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he was a major contributor to the new Presbyterian catechism. He teaches courses on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed tradition, the theology of the Lord’s Supper, the theology of John Calvin, and classical and recent Reformed theology. He is the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
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George Hunsinger is an ordained Presbyterian minister and theologian. He is currently the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. Hunsinger was the director of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton from 1997 – 2001. Hunsinger received a BD from Harvard University Divinity School and an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University. His work has focused primarily on the theology of Karl Barth. Hunsinger was the recipient of the 2010 Karl Barth Prize and joins previous prize recipients Eberhard Jüngel, Hans Küng, John W. de Gruchy, Johannes Rau, Bruce McCormack, and others.
Hunsinger has also been associated with the postliberal movement and is an authoritative interpreter of Hans Frei. He has a long history of anti-war and human rights activism and is also an open critic of the war in Iraq. Since 2003 he has been active in the Ecumenical movement through the Faith and Order commission and recently completed a book on The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast, published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.
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Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth:
A Study in Biography and the History of Theology
Suzanne Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), viii + 206pp. $29.00
Reviewed by: George Hunsinger
When Charlotte von Kirschbaum first heard Karl Barth lecture in 1924, she was 24 years old, financially almost destitute, and in poor health. Deeply religious and a voracious reader with a keen interest in theology, she had already devoured Barth’s 1919 Römerbrief, at the recommendation of her pastor, shortly after it had appeared, and then avidly kept up with Barth’s work through the journal Zwischen den Zeiten. At a time when only a tiny fraction of the general population, virtually all male, went on for a university education, she had been trained for a career as a Krankenschwester or Protestant nurse. It was George Merz, her pastor, who first recognized her intellectual gifts. After guiding her through confirmation in the Lutheran church, Merz included her in the intellectual circle he had gathered around him in Munich, which included Thomas Mann. It was also Merz, by then editor of Zwischen den Zeiten and godfather to one of Barth’s children, who had taken her with him to that lecture, and who introduced her to Barth afterwards. Barth invited them both for a visit to his summer retreat, the Bergli, in the mountains overlooking Lake Zurich.
Merz and von Kirschbaum went to the Bergli that summer and returned the next. Von Kirschbaum made a very good impression. She was drawn into the circle of theological friends who spent their summers at the chalet. Pastor Eduard Thurneysen, Barth’s closest friend, and Gerty Pestalozzi, owner with her husband of the Bergli, took an interest in furthering her education. (Becoming a Krankenschwester had required no special academic training or higher degrees.) Ruedi Pestalozzi, Gerty’s husband and a wealthy businessman, paid for her to receive secretarial training, after which she became a welfare officer at Siemans, a large electronics firm in Nuremburg.
In October 1925 Barth switched university teaching appointments from Göttingen to Münster. His wife and family remained behind until a suitable residence could be found. In February 1926 von Kirschbaum visited Barth for a month in Münster, shortly before his family was to join him, but while he was still living alone. Barth’s situation at this time is worth noting. He was 39 years old, had been married to Nelly (then aged 32) for nearly 13 years, and had five young children. The marriage, not a particularly happy one, had by his own account left him feeling resigned to loneliness. After his parents had prevented him in 1910 from marrying Rösy Münger, whom he deeply loved and never forgot — and who died in 1925 — he had submitted in 1911 to an engagement and then in 1913 to a marriage, with Nelly, that had in essence been arranged by his mother. (Barth always carried a photograph of Rösy with him for the rest of his life, sometimes wept when looking at it, and would continue over the years to visit her grave.) Although we do not know exactly what happened between Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum in that fateful encounter of 1926, we do know that from that point on they were in love with each other, that Barth immediately gave her manuscript after manuscript for advice and correction, and that she committed herself henceforth to doing everything she possibly could to advance his theological work.
After spending a sabbatical at the Bergli in the summer term of 1929, with von Kirschbaum at his side as his aide, Barth announced in October that she would be moving into the family household to be a member of it. This arrangement — convoluted, extremely painful for all concerned, yet not without integrity and joys — lasted for nearly 35 years until 1964 when von Kirschbaum had to be admitted to a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease. These were exactly the years of Barth’s most productive intellectual life. As his unique student, critic, researcher, advisor, collaborator, companion, assistant, spokesperson, and confidant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was indispensable to him. He could not have been what he was, or have done what he did, without her.
The reverse would also seem to have been true. Von Kirschbaum was a strong, noble and unconventional woman who made her own choices and willingly bore their great costs. The costs of the arrangement with Barth were many, not least a total rejection by most of her own family, and a thousand constant humiliations from church, society, and the larger Barth clan (not excluding Barth’s mother, who eventually tempered her harsh disapproval). Many real exits opened up along the way (such as a proposal of marriage from the philosopher Heinrich Scholz), but she never took any of them. What she once wrote in particular to a friend would seem to hold true of her whole life: “It is very clear to me that Karl had to act in this way, and that comforts me whatever the consequences.” From her first encounter with his theology in her youth to the very end of her life, she felt gripped by a sense of the greatness of Barth’s contribution, an excitement that she once described simply with the words, “This is it!” During one of Barth’s last visits to her in the nursing home, she said, “We had some good times together, didn’t we?”
We may well wonder also where Nelly Barth was in the midst of all this. There is undoubtedly much we will never know. But we do know that in her own way she never ceased to believe in her husband and his work. We know that the two of them experienced a reconciliation after Charlotte departed the household, that she and Karl both visited her at the nursing home on Sundays, that she continued those visits after Karl died in 1968, and that when Charlotte herself died in 1975, Nelly honored Karl’s wishes by having Charlotte buried in the Barth family grave. Nelly herself died in 1976. Visitors to the Basel Hörnli cemetery today can see the names of all three together engraved one by one on the same stone.
The book by Suzanne Selinger is not the first to cover this territory, nor will it be the last. As a study in the history of theology, it succeeds reasonably well. The sections on how Barth and von Kirschbaum respectively viewed male/female relationships as bearing the image of God are interesting and worth reading. As a biographical study, however, the book seems less successful. The author seethes with so much resentment toward Karl Barth that as I closed the book I had an image of him as St. Sebastian. At the level of adjectives, he takes a lot of hits. Unfortunately, Charlotte von Kirschbaum fares little better. The author unwittingly undermines her purposes of sympathy and compassion — unless one can persuade oneself that it is not demeaning to scorn the life that Charlotte von Kirschbaum actually chose for herself and openly affirmed, as opposed to one that could not have been and never was.
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http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01824-0.html
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http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1465536?uid=3739536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=47698978832417
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