What is the main message of God Here and Now?

The main message of God Here and Now is a theological analysis of the nature and presence of God in our everyday lives.

How long does it take to read God Here and Now?

The reading time for God Here and Now varies depending on the reader's speed. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of God Here and Now?

Karl Barth is the author of God Here and Now.

Religion & Spirituality

God Here and Now Book Summary - God Here and Now Book explained in key points

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God Here and Now summary

Name: God Here and Now
Rating: 3.9 (169 reviews)
Author: Karl Barth

Karl Barth

Ruminations on the Tenets of Christian Belief

3.9 (169 ratings)

21 mins

Brief summary

God Here and Now by Karl Barth is a philosophical and theological exploration of the nature of God's relationship with humanity. Barth argues that God is a present and active force, constantly shaping and guiding our world.

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Christianity Theology

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God Here and Now
Summary of 5 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? A beginner’s guide to some of Karl Barth’s big ideas.

Many consider Karl Barth to be one of the most important Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. His writings have been characterized as brilliant and creative, and they continue to influence religious thinkers today. On the other hand, he’s also been deemed contradictory, verbose, and frustrating; his unfinished magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, has over 12,000 pages!

This Blink, though, looks at one of Barth’s much shorter works: God Here and Now, a collection of seven essays and addresses on the gospel, faith, grace, the Bible, the Church, ethics, and humanism. It attempts to distill his complex ruminations into a simple, clear message on what it means to meet God today. We had to look into the Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth occasionally to understand some of the ideas that Barth shares quite implicitly.

In this Blink, you’ll discover:

an exploration of God’s otherness;
how the Enlightenment challenged theology; and
the role revelation plays in Barth’s thought.

“God is the wholly other.”

Let’s start at the beginning. What is theology?

Look up the word in a dictionary and you’ll learn that it consists of two parts, both of which are Greek. The first is the noun theos, meaning “God.” Then there’s the suffix, “-logy,” which refers to a body of knowledge. Just as sociology is a body of knowledge about society, theology is a body of knowledge about God. There’s the first part of our answer.

But we can dig a bit deeper. The root of that “-logy” suffix is the Greek verb legein, meaning “to speak.” So there’s the second part of the answer: theology is the act of speaking about God.

And that’s pretty much how the Swiss theologian Karl Barth – the subject of this Blink – defined it. Theologians, he said, ought to talk about God. Ought, though, presupposes that one can talk about God. As a young man at the beginning of the twentieth century, Barth wasn’t at all sure that was possible. Why not? The long answer is, well, long. Unpacking it will take us to the heart of Barth’s theology – and the end of this Blink. But here’s the short version.

God, Barth insists, is der ganz Andere – “the wholly other.” God and humanity are entirely different, and the gap between us and the divine is a vast chasm. Simply put, God is heaven – and we are on Earth. We strive to know God, but God is the great unknown. God is neither a substance we can grasp with our worldly senses nor a metaphysical entity alongside other such entities. God stands outside everything because he is the origin of everything that isn’t God.

So where does that leave theology? As Barth saw it, lots of theologians had dodged the all-important question of how flawed humans can talk about a perfect, unknowable God. That dodge usually took one of two forms. They either fell back onto orthodoxy and argued that God was simply knowable through scripture, especially when it was interpreted by experts – theologians. Or they argued that humans had an innate capacity to understand God – a kind of spiritual sixth sense.

Barth rejected both those ideas. Scriptural orthodoxy, he thought, had been dealt a fatal blow by the Enlightenment. Of course, scripture was at the center of Christianity, but it wasn’t the hotline to God which many conservative believers claimed it to be. And as for that spiritual sixth sense – well, that suggested that it was humanity which reached out to God. For Barth, that was exactly the wrong way around. We’ll come back to that, though.

Let’s start, instead, by taking a closer look at how the Enlightenment challenged traditional Christianity and what Barth made of that challenge.

Immanuel Kant cast a long shadow over Protestant theology.

Thought is historical – it responds to ideas and problems that exist at certain times and in certain places. To understand a thinker like Barth, then, we have to recover the context in which he developed his ideas. And to do that we have to rewind back to the nineteenth century.

Barth was born in Switzerland in 1886. The Barth family was pious and philosophical. His father, Fritz, was a Calvinist theologian, and Karl grew up surrounded by conversations about the great religious debates of the day. In Protestant, German-speaking Europe, those debates were shaped by the legacy of Immanuel Kant, a philosopher whose name was synonymous with the Enlightenment. Kant’s work loomed over Protestant theology, and he was also a formative influence on Barth.

Barth accepted one of Kant’s most important ideas – and rejected the rest.

Modern theology, Barth said, started with Kant. What he meant was that theologians after Kant had to reckon with the German philosopher’s ideas.

So what was his legacy? Barth believed Kant had convincingly shown that God can’t be known like other things. That we can’t see, hear, feel, touch, or perceive God. Not because he is invisible or pure spirit, but because he is God. God is the subject – the active creator of all that exists. For that reason, he escapes our grasp and our attempts to make him into an object of knowledge.

Revelation makes the impossible possible.

Let’s stay with that sunset for a moment. Schleiermacher has just given us a vivid description of all the chemical and psychological processes that occurred in his body as he watched the sun set.

OK, Barth says, that’s also how I feel when I see a beautiful sunset. But where do those feelings come from? We could say that we all have an innate sun-consciousness which attunes us to the movements of that star. But isn’t it simpler, and truer, to simply state that the sun itself provoked that experience? Isn’t that what we actually mean to talk about?

God reveals himself in the here and now.

At this point, we can circle back to an idea we looked at earlier – the idea that Christianity contains a kernel of universal truth wrapped in a husk of arbitrary doctrine. That was Kant’s position, but it was also a position embraced by many Protestant theologians.

This idea holds that the truth of Christian doctrine can be expressed in many ways. Scripture is just one attempt to grasp such truths. The Bible, then, is a historical document – an attempt to translate universal truths into a language that certain people at a certain time could understand. That means there are other ways of expressing those truths – ways more suited to the rational modern world.

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What is God Here and Now about?

God Here and Now (1964) is a collection of addresses and essays that explore fundamental tenets of Christianity from a Protestant theologian’s point of view. Covering the gospel, faith, grace, the Bible, the Church, ethics, and humanism, it poses questions on what it means to meet God in today’s world.

God Here and Now Review

God Here and Now (1964) by Karl Barth is a thought-provoking exploration of the presence of God in everyday life. Here's why this book is worth a read:

It offers a profound understanding of the divine, providing readers with insights into the relevance and significance of God in our modern world.
Barth's theological expertise and deep insights into the nature of God make this book a valuable resource for those seeking a deeper understanding of spirituality.
With its engaging and accessible language, the book makes complex theological concepts digestible, ensuring an interesting and enlightening reading experience.

Who should read God Here and Now?

People curious about the perspective of a modern Protestant thinker
Christians who want to better understand and implement scripture
Anyone grappling with questions regarding faith, ethics, or humanism

About the Author

Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) was one of the most important religious thinkers of the twentieth century. His landmark works include The Epistle to the Romans and his unfinished four-volume Church Dogmatics. He’s also known for coauthoring “The Barmen Declaration” as part of the German Confessing Church – the Protestant group that opposed the Third Reich. Barth’s writings have been translated into multiple languages, and he was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1962.

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