Review Panel: Karl Barth and the Baptism Controversy: Illuminations from Conversations

In the later years of his life, Karl Barth came to reject the sacramental account of baptism as a means of grace that he had held throughout his academic career.87 This controversial dogmatic departure from the broad ecumenical norm was announced in Barth’s lectures in Basel in 1959–1960 and was accompanied by the equally controversial recommendation that the widespread practice of infant baptism should be discontinued. It is little wonder that Barth ruefully observed in his foreword to the published version of the lectures that his account would leave him “in the splendid isolation on the theological and ecclesial map” that he had occupied for almost fifty years.88 In the final years of his life, as his views on baptism became widely known, Barth was repeatedly questioned in settings both formal and informal about his position.

This article draws on the recently translated volumes of Barth in Conversation (the Conversations)89 to illuminate the ways in which Barth articulated and defended this nonsacramental doctrine of baptism in the 1960s. In a first section, the article articulates the main contours of Barth’s final thinking on baptism as presented in his 1959–1960 lectures in Basel and later published by Barth as a fragment of Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. In a second section, the ongoing articulation and subsequent defense of this teaching on baptism in the 1960s—as well as Barth’s reaction to church controversy—will be explored by way of the material presented in the Conversations. In a brief conclusion, the article will indicate some of the theological issues raised by Barth that remain relevant in current ecclesial conversations about baptism.