Abstract
William Klempa, who passed away on March 4, 2017 (just days before this review was written), was Principal Emeritus of Presbyterian College in Montreal and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University. His previous work includes Exploring the Faith: Essays in the History and Theology of the Reformed Tradition (Clements Academic, 2011). His final book, A Unique Time of God, not only offers English translations of 13 of Karl Barth’s sermons preached at the beginning of World War I, it also provides the reader with a timeline showing how events unfolded as these sermons were preached as well as an excellent introduction that gives an account of Barth’s life and insightful reflections on the sermons.
Karl Barth (1886–1968) began his theological vocation as a pastor, preaching weekly for 12 years, first in Geneva (1909–1911) and then in Safenwil, Switzerland (1911–1921). The 13 sermons included in this book were preached from the pulpit in Safenwil when World War I first broke out in Europe. The sermons, which are listed by date and Scripture passage (Barth did not title his sermons) begin July 26, 1914 and end on November 1. Readers already familiar with Barth’s powerful, but verbose, style of writing in the Church Dogmatics may suspect these sermons will be plodding theological treatises. This, however, is not the case. Representing what Barth called “irregular dogmatics,” these sermons were written and delivered by a talented pastor and preacher. In reading them one senses the intimate connection between preacher and hearer that all good sermons should establish.
Barth’s homiletical style in these sermons is free-flowing. Many of them begin with a declarative sentence (“God has set us in the heavenly realm!” “All men and women stand under God’s will”), which sometimes relates immediately to the text, but other times refers to the war. Barth often likes to establish a rhythm of speech by repeating a phrase or idea. Other times he raises a set of brief, often critical, questions to which he responds. And, as Klempa points out, he had little patience with the use of illustrations; in these 13 sermons one finds only two.
According to Klempa, Barth believed that both “closeness to the text” and “closeness to life” were essential for a good sermon, and he later criticized his war sermons of 1914 for not being “sufficiently close to the text” (42). Klempa invites readers to decide for themselves whether Barth’s own assessment is true. For my part, I found some of the sermons were well grounded in the text, while others use a brief phrase within a text simply as a springboard to address the situation his parishioners now faced. The latter, to be sure, provide theological reflections on the context, but are not as biblically focused as one might expect. In reading these sermons, readers will, of course, be looking for Barth’s attitudes towards war and the Great War in particular. What one finds is fascinating, although not always easy to decipher. On the one hand, Barth states clearly that war is wrong and sinful and that “God does not will war” (64). On the other hand, one is sometimes left uncertain about Barth’s understanding of the relationship between special providence and war, such as when he says it is “a divine, gracious necessity, that we are now to be led on this dark road” (65). This ambiguity, however, is understandable; Barth seeks to negotiate the relationship between war and the will of God with theologically complex—as opposed to simplistic—reflection.
This book will appeal to anyone interested in Barth’s theology two years prior to his Romans commentary, but after he made the shift away from the liberal theology of his teachers. The book will also appeal to anyone interested in the history of preaching during times of crisis. In style and length (they were 40–45 minutes long when delivered), these sermons probably would not sustain the attention of contemporary churchgoers if preached today. But because they were written not as theological treatises, but to be delivered as proclamation during worship, they are easily read and fascinating to consider in light of Barth’s own historical context and in the midst of the crises that mark our context today.