I am a big fan of Dr. Karl Barth (1886–1968), a Swiss Calvinist theologian and former professor at Basel University but am equally frustrated by his writings. He broke with liberal theology and introduced dialectical theology (also called crisis or neo-orthodox theology) which stressed the paradoxical nature of divine truth. Barth stood up to Nazism and was primarily responsible for writing the Barmen Declaration which he personally mailed to Adolf Hitler. He was forced to resign his professorship at the University of Bonn in 1935 and returned to his native Switzerland where he resided until his death.
My frustration with Barth is his writing style: wordy. His magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, runs over six million words and 9,000 pages of systematic theology. He divided his writings into five volumes (Doctrine of the Word of God, the Doctrine of God, the Doctrine of Creation, the Doctrine of Reconciliation, and the Doctrine of Redemption). The fifth volume was never started, and the fourth volume only partially completed. Barth’s lengthy and repetitive writing style fogs his brilliant theological concepts. I prefer that he gets to the point because his writings limit access to his theology.
I am researching vocation and turned to Barth for his views. In Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation III.4 (Freedom in Limitation, Chapter XII, Section 56, T&T Clark International, G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance, Editors, 1960, pages 565–647), Barth details his vocation theology. He begins with a section titled, The Unique Opportunity, stating that vocation is related foremost to the calling of God. “For Christian theology the fact that man has a share in the whole of creation of God, in the cosmos and in history, can only be a dependent clause introducing the main sentence, namely, that in this way man is pointed directly to the grace of divine calling, that he is orientated on the covenant which God has made with man, that he is disposed for participation in the salvation history which proceeds from this covenant.”
This opportunity is unique because the eternal God calls finite humans “with the demand for prompt and immediate obedience. … How can we have seen that the limitation of our time is divinely ordained if we do not hear the call to awaken which is always to be heard when God is at work?” The New Testament ethics summons is for humans to grasp “today, at once, this very moment … as the unique opportunity presented to him, man is to become and to be a free man.”
Most people in our modern society define vocation as work or occupation. Barth harkens back to the original definition of vocation as the calling of God. “The command of God is what claims man, not his work, or his lovable or unlovable fellows, or history, or the cosmos.” This claim is “within the limits of his time and with the demand that he should satisfy it within these limits.”
Barth makes a clear distinction “between calling in the sense of vocation and calling as the divine summons.” The divine summons “is the imperative revelation and making known of the special, electing, differentiating will of God in His Word and command as given to man.” He defines vocation as “the essence of this earlier form, [prior to accepting the calling] the old thing which man already is, which he has behind him, or rather which he brings with him, as the new comes to him. His vocation, too, is wholly from God, but from God in the sense that as his Creator God has constituted him thus, and as his Lord He has thus preserved, accompanied, guided and ruled him.” Vocation is the earliest time when an individual recognizes God’s call and command.
Barth confirms that vocation is larger than simply a call to work. Man “will always live in widely different spheres if he receives the divine calling and is obedient to it. … The place of his responsibility, i.e., his vocation, is for every man a special one, just as the divine calling is for every man a special calling.”
Barth stresses vocation as a responsibility. The called are responsible to the commands of God, the caller. “He is always at one point in his life-process which even at its end is still a ‘becoming’ even though at its very beginning it is already a ‘perishing.’ It is here and in this way that the calling and therefore the command of God meet him, whether he notices the fact or not. This is the place of his responsibility. … To reflect on obedience to the command of God is to understand and prepare oneself now, at this moment, in obedience to the same command as it is to be heard now, for transition to the next moment. Now!”
