Karl Barth and Oscar Cullmann on Their Theological Vocation: I On Systematic Theology

Abstract

Attempting to account to mýself how I actually came into the field of systematic theology requires reaching back to my sixteenth year, to the confirmation instruction I experienced at that time. It was extraordinary in its own way. I learned then, for example, that very dubious undertakings are involved in the five medieval proofs for the existence of God and in the later orthodox theory of the literal inspiration of the Bible. Much more important, however, I learned that it would be a fine and excellent thing not only to identify and to affirm the great articles of the Christian confession of faith but also to understand them from inside out. On the eve of my confirmaton day I boldly resolved to become a theologian, perhaps not so much with the thought of preaching, cure of souls and the like, but rather in the hope of realising in the course of this study some substantial understanding of a confession of faith of which I had only a vague apprehension. As yet I knew nothing of Anselm and his programme of fides quaerens intellectum and therefore also nothing of what I was undertaking as ‘theology’ in general or even of what ‘systematic’ theology was in particular. Upon entering the University, the theoretical and practical philosophy of Kant together with Schleiermacher's analysis of religion and faith became my guiding stars. To the prevailing tendency of about 1910 among the younger followers of Albrecht Ritschl I attached myself with passable conviction.