Karl Barth is widely regarded as the most important Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. He called the church back from a theology that began with human experience to one that begins with God's own word in Jesus Christ.
He was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 10 May 1886, the son of a Reformed pastor and theologian. He studied at Bern, Berlin and Marburg under the leading liberal theologians of the day, and from 1911 to 1921 was pastor of the village of Safenwil, where he was drawn into the struggles of local workers.
The Epistle to the Romans
The First World War shook him deeply: many of his teachers publicly supported the German war aims. Turning back to the Bible, he wrote a commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans (1919, entirely rewritten in 1922) that stressed God as "wholly other" and judged all human religion. It made him famous and led to professorships at Göttingen, Münster and Bonn.
Against the Nazi state
When Hitler came to power Barth became a leader of the Confessing Church, which resisted the Nazi takeover of German Protestantism. He was the main author of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which confessed Jesus Christ as "the one Word of God" whom the church must obey, against any other lord. Refusing to swear an unconditional oath to Hitler, he was dismissed from Bonn in 1935 and returned to Basel, where he taught until 1962.
Church Dogmatics
His life's work was the Church Dogmatics, published from 1932 until his death and left unfinished at thirteen large part-volumes. Centred on Christ, it treats revelation, God, creation and reconciliation, and is notable for its doctrine of election: that in Jesus Christ God has chosen humanity for himself.
Barth preached regularly in Basel's prison and was a lifelong lover of Mozart. He died in Basel on 10 December 1968.