God Here and Now

When is God most real to you—sometime in the remote past, in ancient scripture or in personal memory? In God Here and Now, Karl Barth insists the living God is not a relic or idea but an active presence breaking into our world today. Barth, one of the twentieth century’s most influential theologians, argues that the Christian message is about encounter: God is not an abstract principle but the incarnate Christ speaking here and now. For Barth, theology’s task is not to systematize God but to witness to this sudden, gracious event of revelation.

This collection of Barth’s mature essays—written from the 1930s to the 1950s—captures his central conviction: that all human attempts at reason, morality, or religion only find truth in Jesus Christ, the human face of God. Across topics from Scripture to church life, ethics to humanism, Barth weaves a single thread: God’s Word interrupts our words, calling us to faith, gratitude, and responsible action in history.

The Living Word Over Systems

Barth’s theology, shaped by his stand against nineteenth-century liberalism and Nazi ideology, resists reducing Christianity to moral ideals or human spirituality. He warns that theologians who treat God as a principle end up worshiping their own ideas. Real theology begins where we cease to control our subject. The truth is not a concept to be mastered but a person who masters us: Jesus Christ. He is the concrete Word of God—the one who became human, died, and rose again. This history, Barth insists, cannot be absorbed into any system, philosophy, or worldview; it must be confessed and proclaimed.

In the book’s introduction, George Hunsinger explains that Barth’s goal is to replace abstraction with concreteness: Jesus Christ’s life-history is the center of all revelation. To know God is to meet Christ crucified and risen. The Incarnation, Barth says, is “the humanism of God”: the startling moment when divine grace takes on human flesh. This theme not only redefines human dignity but also challenges every secular or religious system claiming to explain life apart from Christ.

The Church Between the Times

Barth envisions the church not as an institution guarding moral truths but as a living community gathered by the Word, existing “between the times”—between Christ’s resurrection and his final return. It exists by God’s continual speaking and our responsive hearing. When this conversation stops, the church becomes a “museum.” Its task is never self-preservation but renewal through the Word’s intrusion. Each time we forget this, Barth reminds us, grace will rouse us awake again, like a trumpet blast.

The church therefore lives from proclamation, not possession. Like a mail carrier delivering someone else’s letter, it bears a message it neither owns nor edits: the proclamation of God’s free grace in Christ. This radical humility—what Barth calls humilitas—is matched by joyful confidence (hilaritas): the cheer rooted in the certainty that God has already overcome sin, death, and hell in Jesus Christ.

The Word and the World

Barth’s essays move from proclamation to revelation, from the sovereignty of God’s Word to the church’s responsibility in the world. The Word of God, he declares, is sovereign—free to speak life, judgment, and renewal wherever it wills. No church, confession, or ideology can contain it. This Word is also exclusive: there are no rival truths standing alongside it, yet it is inclusive in scope—spoken for all people, for “the Jew and the pagan, the indifferent and the atheist.” In this paradox, Barth unites faith and humanism: God’s Word affirms human worth precisely because it judges all human pride.

In Chapters 3 and 4, Barth insists Scripture is more than a record; it is the present form of Christ’s lordship. The Bible’s authority lies in its witness to the Incarnation and its ongoing mediation of Christ’s presence. It is not a static foundation under theology but the living event of the Word encountering the hearer. For Barth, reading the Bible demands expectation: God’s voice may confront us again today through human words and histories.

Grace, Ethics, and the Human Condition

From revelation, Barth turns to grace and ethics. God’s free grace, he says, is not an attribute but God’s very self in action: “God Himself…is free grace.” Grace precedes and transcends all merit or religion; it calls us not to speculation but gratitude. Christian ethics, then, is “the work that begins in prayer and the prayer that ends in work.” Barth sees moral action as the human response to divine initiative—the echo of God’s grace in daily life. Every “good” act is gratitude enacted; every “evil” act, ingratitude.

The Humanism of God

In the final essay, written after a postwar conference on humanism, Barth addresses modernity’s confusion about what it means to be human. The true human being, he argues, is neither self-sufficient nor hopeless but “lost and rescued”—seen in the mirror of Jesus Christ. Any humanism that ignores both guilt and grace reduces man to an abstraction. Only God’s humanism, revealed in the incarnate Christ, shows us what being human truly means: to live in freedom, dependence, and hope before God.

Across these pages, Barth invites you to encounter the living God—not as idea or memory but as event. For every generation, every church, and every person, Christ stands before us as God’s definitive word: not long ago, not far away, but here and now.

When Karl Barth stood before a 1949 audience of secular intellectuals at Geneva’s "Rencontres Internationales" to discuss "A New Humanism," he shocked them by declaring that Christianity, too, was a kind of humanism—God’s humanism. Yet this, he quickly explained, was not a humanism built on man’s powers but on the Incarnation, the astounding moment when the Word became flesh. For Barth, this event once and for all defines who God is and what it means to be human.

God’s Freedom and Grace

Barth begins by rejecting every abstraction of God as "Reason," "Life," or "Limit." God is the triune Lord who freely chooses to be for humanity. His love is grace in motion—not something compelled by divine nature, but a sovereign decision to share life with his creatures. The marvel is that this happened once and for all in the human being Jesus Christ. In this one life, human and divine meet irrevocably. Jesus is not an example of generic humanity but its definition: true God and true man.

Barth contrasts this view with philosophies that locate human worth in reasoning, creativity, or self-transcendence. Those are only "possible truths"—not false, but subordinate. All self-understanding, he insists, must be comprehended "in connection with the fact that man exists from God and for God." Whenever humanity forgets this orientation, it becomes inhuman.

Human Existence as Relationship

Barth’s anthropology unfolds in relationships—vertical (with God) and horizontal (with others). No one, he claims, can exist as "I" without a "Thou." Human life mirrors God’s covenant life; we are human only in fellowship. Against the extremes of modern individualism and collectivism, Barth declares both false: we must defend "discipline in the face of Nietzsche and freedom in the face of Marx." True humanity thrives in free, responsible interdependence—each person loved and summoned by God.

Sin and Restoration

Still, Barth refuses sentimentality. Humanity, he writes, "does not exist in that freedom in which he was created." Sin is man’s attempt to exist without grace—to be "as God." Classical humanism ignored guilt and condemnation; modern existentialism still does. But in rejecting grace, humanity accuses and condemns itself. Only in Christ’s cross does God absorb this condemnation and answer it with forgiveness. The Incarnation is not simply a spiritual truth but an ontological rescue: God reclaims fallen humanity by becoming its victim and victor.

For Barth, this means humanity’s deepest identity is found, not in autonomy, but in being sustained by divine mercy. The human story ends not in nihilism but in gospel: “God’s kingdom, although not yet visible, has come already.” The only fitting response? Joy and gratitude. The Christian proclamation, Barth concludes, “forbids those who hear it to walk around with a doubting, unhappy face.”

In Barth’s second essay, written amid Europe’s dark 1939, he addresses fear and faith. Against the ‘god of this world’ who breeds anxiety, Barth proclaims Christ’s victory as the one true Word of God. The Christian’s calling is to hear and respond to this Word, a decision that encompasses one’s entire existence.

The Word that Overcomes All Powers

Barth portrays the sovereignty of God’s Word as Christ’s own person and work. The eternal Word became human not to compete with worldly powers but to unmask them as impostors. On the cross, this Word disarms the forces of sin, death, and fear. “On Golgotha, everything was accomplished,” he writes—our reconciliation, justification, and freedom.

Omnipotence, Exclusiveness, Freedom

Barth identifies three marks of the Word’s sovereignty. First is omnipotence: God’s Word is not an idea among others but the living power that upholds all things. Because it is creative, it guarantees hope even in chaos. Second is exclusiveness: there is “no second or third” Word of God. Christianity’s uniqueness lies not in arrogance but honesty—if God is who Christ is, no other revelation can stand as equal. Third is freedom: God speaks graciously, not mechanically. His Word binds and frees simultaneously, judging yet saving.

Faith as Decision

True faith, Barth argues, is never neutral. It is the human side of God’s act: a turning toward the Word that has already turned toward us. Borrowing from the Heidelberg Catechism, he defines faith as confessing, “that with body and soul, both in living and dying, I am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” This faith means trust amid uncertainty, participation in Christ’s sovereignty through obedience. To abstain from decision, Barth warns, is itself a decision—for unbelief. Faith is not a private feeling but a public courage to live as one captivated by the divine Word.

This essay thus links theology to action: every choice—political, moral, or spiritual—is a field in which Christ’s lordship must be acknowledged. “He who believes does not run away,” Barth writes; faith must become visible in the world God has already overcome.

In 1947, as Europe staggered from war, Barth reminded the church of its sole message: “God himself…is free grace.” This phrase, echoing the sixth thesis of the 1934 Barmen Declaration, became a manifesto for a church tempted by ideology and despair. Grace, for Barth, is not divine leniency or sentiment—it is the very being of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Grace as God’s Identity

Barth defines grace as God’s free choice to love humanity in Christ. “He is sufficient unto Himself,” yet chooses to be for us. God’s freedom is expressed not in detachment but in His descent into human weakness. This, Barth insists, is no secondary trait but the essence of deity. To proclaim grace is to proclaim the gospel of God himself.

The Freedom and Breadth of Grace

Because it is free, grace cannot be confined by human boundaries or church walls. It calls the church to humility—reminding it that its mission is not to regulate grace but to announce it. “We must reckon with the fact,” Barth writes, “that it can always be at work outside the walls of the Church.” He mocks the frightened theology that worries hell might be empty: “Strange Christianity, whose anxiety seems to be that God’s grace might prove too free!”

This freedom does not dissolve truth; it deepens responsibility. The church is commissioned to proclaim grace everywhere—even “in the midst of hell.” Like a trumpet blown by a stumbling player, the message itself carries its power, awakening sleepers to the miracle that “everything has been accomplished.”

Grace as Mission and Renewal

Grace thus founds both the church’s task and its freedom. Barth warns that when the church forgets this and turns grace into doctrine or politics, it falls asleep. But grace will not let it slumber long; it will “rouse us like a trumpet blast.” Every renewal in church history, he argues, begins when Christians rediscover this reality: we have nothing to proclaim but God’s free favor, and yet this is enough to make the world new.

What gives the Bible authority? For Barth, Scripture is not a sourcebook of doctrines but the living form of Christ’s presence. Its authority arises not from human validation but from the event in which it speaks to the church as God’s Word. In his twelve theses on the Bible, Barth redefines revelation around encounter rather than possession.

Scripture as Witness

Barth compares faith in Scripture to a child calling someone “mother”—the relationship itself is the testimony. The Bible’s significance lies in its witness to God’s acts in Christ, not as infallible history but as living proclamation. The prophetic and apostolic voices are the “visible form of Christ’s lordship,” binding the church to one Lord and one norm.

Authority as Event

Authority, he insists, must be experienced anew wherever Scripture summons, comforts, or admonishes a people. This is the “witness of the Holy Spirit”—not a magical inner certainty but the real event of the church hearing, obeying, and being renewed. The Bible authenticates itself when it is heard as Word, not when proven by theory. Its exposition, therefore, is no mere academic exercise but an act of expectation and prayer: God may speak again.

Barth warns against replacing Scripture’s authority with ecclesiastical hierarchy or modern subjectivism. Whether papal infallibility or liberal self-assurance, both lose the living confrontation between God and humanity. The Bible stands as the “curative guarantee” that this encounter remains real.

Freedom and Responsibility

Finally, Barth argues that the church’s unity, theology, and liberty all stand or fall with Scripture’s authority. Theology ceases to be theology when it does not live from the Bible’s witness; the church loses its freedom when it treats revelation as property. To read Scripture rightly, then, is to let it read us—to be summoned back into the living conversation between the crucified and risen Word and a world still hungry for truth.

What is the church? Barth answers: the living congregation of the living Lord. The church is not an institution, ideology, or state partner but a dynamic event—God’s Word gathering, renewing, and sending people into the world. In this essay (first delivered to the World Council of Churches’ 1948 assembly at Amsterdam), Barth insists that the church’s survival depends on continual reformation by the Word.

Essence as Event

The church “exists by happening.” Its essence is the event in which Christ gives himself to people and they respond in faith and obedience. This happens in Word and sacrament—Scripture, baptism, the Lord’s Supper—where the living Lord claims and renews his people. When separated from this event, the church becomes a corpse, “a museum of ghosts and moral laws.”

Threats and Temptations

Yet Barth is brutally honest about the church’s peril. Even while reciting confessions, it can drift into slumber, pride, or blindness—trusting doctrine, tradition, or political power rather than grace. Such a church, he warns, may appear vigorous yet be spiritually dead, “the blind leading the blind.” For Barth, division and lifeless unity alike signal a deeper mistake: forgetting that Christ alone sustains life.

Renewal and Polity

Preservation, for Barth, is synonymous with reformation. The church is renewed only by returning to its source in the living Word. Therefore its polity—how it organizes itself—must serve openness to this renewal. He rejects both papal hierarchy and bureaucratic Protestantism as structures that “entrust too much to men and too little to Christ.” Instead, Barth commends a congregational vision: the local worshipping community as the primary form of the church’s life, continually responsible before the Word, free to obey.

Such freedom is not disorder but reliance on the Spirit who “governs without governing.” When this happens, the church becomes truly catholic—not by uniformity but by living communion with others in service, faith, and hope.

Barth’s chapter on “Christian Ethics” distills his moral vision into one word: gratitude. Good human action, he says, is nothing more—and nothing less—than the thankful echo of God’s grace. Ethics begins not with human ideals but with hearing God’s call in Jesus Christ: “You have been told, O man, what is good.”

The Divine Imperative and Human Response

For Barth, divine grace creates ethical responsibility. God acts first; human conduct is the grateful “Amen.” Hence Christian ethics cannot start from reason or conscience alone—it starts from revelation. The indicative (“God has reconciled the world”) always precedes the imperative (“Therefore be reconciled”). Morality divorced from Christ degenerates into self-assertion; ethics grounded in grace becomes joy in obedience.

The Shape of the Good

Barth maps this ethic through seven patterns. To be good is to mirror God’s humility: to honor every person as neighbor, to live soberly yet hopefully, to trust where others despair, to act freely yet responsibly, to belong communally rather than individualistically, to serve others without domination, and to love God wholly without dividing life into sacred and secular parts. Each, he shows, is not a principle but a life formed by gratitude.

Thus Christian ethics is prayer turned outward—"the work that begins in prayer and the prayer that ends in work." Its perfection is not moral self-improvement but thankful participation in God’s redemptive life.

In Barth’s concluding chapter, written after the Geneva humanism conference, he reflects on why contemporary humanism feels hollow. Philosophers, scientists, and Marxists debated man’s dignity for ten days, yet none mentioned guilt or death. Barth saw this as the crisis of secular modernity: humanity wants meaning without acknowledging need. His answer—echoing the first essay—is that only the God who became human can reveal what it truly means to be human.

A Mirror for Humanity

Barth claims that in Jesus Christ, humanity sees itself truly for the first time. This mirror shows both “the depth of misery and the dignity of hope.” Every other vision—rationalist, existentialist, or communist—avoids one side or the other. The gospel alone holds both together: man is lost yet loved, guilty yet forgiven. Therefore, all talk of human progress or freedom divorced from divine grace becomes empty rhetoric.

Against Abstract Humanism

Barth argued that theologians should not compete with philosophical systems by proposing a “Christian humanism.” All “-isms” turn living faith into ideology. Instead, theology should proclaim God’s humanism—the joyful good news that divine love defines human worth. True humanism begins when pride ends: when humans accept that their glory lies in being creatures reconciled to their Creator.

At Geneva, Barth noted, others saw Christian exclusivity as tyranny. But what seems “exclusive” is actually inclusive grace: the message that every person, from believer to atheist, is embraced by the same incarnate Lord. The gospel’s sharpness—its demand for decision—is not oppression but liberation from indecision, the freedom to become truly human.

Barth closes with Christ’s name as the answer sought in every philosophy and politics: the one truly human one who stands “God here and now.” Humanity’s hope, he insists, lies not in self-perfection but in grateful participation in the divine friendship that has already made us whole.