It has been over nine decades since Karl Barth coined the term “theological existence". In an impassioned pamphlet, he expressed to the German church and to the German theologians of 1933 that all that was at stake now was to do theology, and nothing but theology; that it was all-important now to speak about God and to be obedient to nothing but this task: to let the one God of the Old and New Testament be the only Lord. In the precarious political circumstances of those days, this should define the attitude of the church; it should also be the personal responsibility, theologically and professionally, of every theologian, and their all-embracing “drive”. (And what Christian is not a theologian?)
Some thirty years later, Barth used the term “theological existence” again, this time in his valedictory lectures at the University of Basel. The focus was now on the faith life of the theologian. What drives us to be a theologian at all times, to be fully invested in the matter of theology? His answer: wonder, concern, commitment. This personal commitment of every theologian to the subject of theology – God himself, and the divine Word – is the great presupposition of Barth's theology, without always making it explicit. It seems worthwhile to examine this presupposition more extensively.
In an era, in which a theological existence in the academy and in society no longer has an obvious voice – and in a time when church and politics have a complicated, polarised relationship – it seems worthwhile to return to the fundamental question: what does a theological existence mean today? What does it require of church leadership, and of theological education?
