1

Karl Barth’s Dialectical Christology: the Person of Jesus Christ

Billy Jang (Mail Box #160)

Among the full of the historical consciousness and liberal theology in the early
twentieth century, Karl Barth’s Christology as neo-orthodoxy bravely stood up against liberal
theologians such as Schleiermacher and Ritschl who developed the humanistic Christology
which depicts Jesus as a moral and ethic person. While Schleiermacher’s Christology as a
low Christology sees Jesus as exemplary, Barth’s Christology as a high Christology views
Jesus as fully God and fully man.1

As Karl Barth’s theology is Christocentric, God’s election of Jesus Christ is the

starting point of everything, and everything must be explained and revealed in the light of
Jesus Christ. Therefore Barth’s Christology stands at the foundation to his theology in his
entire eleven-volume Church Dogmatics:

A church dogmatics must, of course, be christologically determined as a whole and in all its
parts, as surely as the revealed Word of God, attested by Holy Scripture and proclaimed by
the Church, is its one and only criterion, and as surely as this revealed Word is identical with
Jesus Christ. If dogmatics cannot regard itself and cause itself to be regarded as fundamentally
Christology, it has assuredly succumbed to some alien sway and it already on the verge of
losing its character as church dogmatics.2

In order to understand Barth’s Christology, we need to clarify who Jesus Christ is to

Barth. Barth rejects the separation between Christ’s person and work which can cause the
abstract discussion of Christ’s person.3 Barth views Christ as Geschichte which is
distinguished from Historie: while Historie is the actual events of the past, Geschichte is “the
meaning and relevance of past events for our lives today.”4 Barth’s Christ as Geschichte is
the act of revelation which means that the whole being of God is actually revealed in the man

1
Oliver D. Crisp, Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2013), 59.
2
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1/2, (T & T. Clark, 1956), 123.
3
CD 4/1, 123-125.
4
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christology: A Global Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 120.
 2

Jesus.5 So Barth’s Christ as truly God and truly man is a concrete concept to get involved in
our lives through the specific works of Christ.

In this paper I will focus on Barth’s understanding on the person of Christ in the
distinction but union of the divinity and humanity with mentioning about the work of Christ
as the actuality of Christ’s being which confirms the person of Christ. Here I will more
emphasize on the unity of the two natures as the hypostatic union. Furthermore I would like
to evaluate Barth’s dialectical Christology with some controversies related to the
Alexandrian-Antiochian dilemma, so that I could argue that his Christology is neither
Alexandrian nor Antiochian.

Doctrine on the Person of Jesus Christ

Karl Barth’s Christology basically follows Chalcedonian Christology which views

Jesus Christ as one person in human and divine natures without separation or division and
without confusion or change. In this sense, it is necessary to examine how Barth clarifies the
divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ as well as how he demonstrates the two natures within
one person Jesus Christ for his holistic understanding of the person of Christ.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ

Barth states that “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God Himself, as God His Father is
God Himself.”6 “The reality of Jesus Christ is that God Himself in person is actively present
in the flesh. God Himself in person is the Subject of a real human being and acting.”7 So as
Jesus Christ is identical with God, Jesus Christ’s divinity as the essence of God is his inherent
nature and is identical with the divinity of God. Furthermore Barth argues that the divinity of
Jesus Christ as the Son of God is qualitatively different from the being of all other humans
and nature, describing that His divinity is “that which distinguishes His being and its nature
from the being and nature of man, and of all other reality distinct from God, with an absolute
(and infinitely qualitative) distinction.”8 Christ’s divinity as his inherent nature which the

5
Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.,
1974), 29.
6
CD 1/1, 474.
7
CD 1/2, 151.
8
CD 4/2, 61.
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Father and the Holy Spirit share in common is different from the divinity of the Bible and
proclamation as the forms of revelation which is that God speaks through them; their divinity
come from the relation to God in revelation, not from its inherent nature: the divinity of Jesus
Christ is “that which Jesus Christ has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the
Son of God.”9 Barth finds the proof of Christ’s divinity through the ontological approach to
Jesus Christ as the second person of the triune God.
Within the doctrine of the trinity, Barth identifies God’s essence with God’s act, as he
presents, “This essence of God which is seen in His revealed name is His being and therefore
His act as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”10 It means that the Trinitarian act of God is identical
with the essence of God which is also Christ’s being. Therefore it is important to
acknowledge the relation of God’s act to Christ’s divinity. Barth explains about two aspects
of God’s act—God’s inner-trinitarian act of being, his act ad intra, and his act outside
himself, ad extra—which are identical with the two moments in the Christ’s divinity: as
God’s act ad intra as the first moment of the Christ’s divinity is the act as the perfect
communion within God the Father and God the Son, God’s act ad extra as the second
moment of the Christ’s divinity is the act as God’s loving fellowship with humans for his
revelation to them and reconciliation with them.11 Barth continues to describe that the first
moment in Christ’s divinity “is a matter of the mystery of the inner being of God as the being
of the Son in relation to the Father,” while the second moment “is a matter of the mystery of
His deity in His work ad extra, in His presence in the world.”12
Therefore the divinity of Christ results from the his intrinsic status as the second
person of God in the perfect fellowship within the Trinity as well as the divine work of the
Son of God who obeys to become a man as the self-revelation of God for the reconciliation
between God and man and, of course, vice versa. As the divinity of Jesus Christ is more
obvious than his humanity in Barth’s Christology, now I want to move to Christ’s humanity. I
will talk about the divinity little bit more when I argue the hypostatic union of Christ’s two
natures and evaluate his Christology in dealing with its Alexandrian tendency.

The Humanity of Jesus Christ

9
Ibid.
10
CD 2/1, 273.
11
Charles T. Waldrop, "Karl Barth's concept of the divinity of Jesus Christ." Harvard Theological Review 74,
no. 3 (July 1981): 253.
12
CD 4/1, 177.
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Barth is very sure with the divinity of Jesus Christ due to his own inherent and
intrinsic nature as the Son God and his divine work to reveal God’s deity. However Barth
seems to have more challenges to argue about the complexity of the humanity of Jesus Christ,
because Christ’s humanity is fallen like us but at the same time sinless unlike us. Barth
frankly confesses about the mystery of Christ’s being: “the being of Jesus Christ as Lord, as
King, as Son of Man, as true man, is a hidden being.”13
In the doctrine of the Christ’s election, Barth wants to say that Jesus Christ freely
obeyed to the Father to be the elected man and acted as the representative of humanity for the
election of the human beings to volitionally fulfill the will of God:
Of Jesus Christ we know nothing more surely and definitely than this—that in free obedience
to His Father He elected to be man, and as man, to do the will of God. If God elects us too,
then it is in and with this election of Jesus Christ. . . . It is in him that the eternal election
becomes immediately and directly the promise of our own election as it is enacted in time.14
Barth makes sure that the humanity of Christ is a very crucial element of the God’s salvation
history for the humankind. The only sinless man Jesus Christ should be a mediator for the
reconciliation between the holy God and the fallen man.
The anhypostasis and enhypostasis of the human nature is a decisive concept to
approach to Barth’s notion on the humanity of Christ as Barth adopts the traditional concept
of Christ’s anhypostasis and enhypostasis to explain Christ’s humanity: “the human nature of
Christ has no hypostasis of its own but subsists in the divine person of hypostasis of the Son
of God.”15 These two opposite concepts seem irreconcilable, but with the conflicting terms
Barth tries to examine the ambiguity of Christ’s humanity. Barth agrees with this doctrine
and argues that Christ’s humanity is “anhypostatic in itself but enhypostatic in its union with
the person of the Logos”16:
This individual in which the human nature is embodied has never existed as such. The
humanity of Christ (although it is body and soul, although it is Individuum) is nothing
subsistent or real in itself. It did not, for example, exist before its union with the Logos . . .
The human nature of Christ has no personality of its own; it is anhypostatos . . . Or, positively

13
CD 4/2, 285.
14
CD 2/2, 156-6.
15
Uwe Michael Lang, "Anhypostatos-Enhypostatos: Church Fathers, Protestant Orthodoxy and Karl Barth."
The Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (October 1998): 630.
16
Richard A. Muller, "Directions in the study of Barth's Christology." The Westminster Theological Journal 48,
no. 1 (1986 1986): 125.
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expressed, it is enhypostatos; it has personality, subsistence, reality, only in its union with the
Logos of God.17
Christ’s humanity as anhypostasis, to Barth, seems merely functional in revealing the Son of
God, but Barth goes beyond the anhypostasis and extends into the enhypostasis to disclose
the fuller meaning of Christ’s humanity. The human nature which has no independent
existence can have its existence only in the Son of God according to the doctrine of the
anhypostasis and enhypostasis.18 It means that Barth doesn’t reject the humanity of Christ as
one of his authentic natures, but he maintains that the humanity of Jesus Christ lacks its own
human existence or being.19 The existence of Christ’s humanity is conditionally explained.
McCormack argues that the human nature has “its being and existence grounded in the
Person of the Logos” because the human nature “was created especially for this Subject (the
Logos) to be His own.”20 It isn’t easy to understand the full humanity of Jesus Christ while
the Son of God is the Subject of his being and acting, however “Barth would refer us in this
respect to the witness of Holy Scripture and regard this difficulty as part of the mystery of the
Incarnation.”21
In sum, Barth adamantly admits the full humanity of Jesus Christ as the human
representative for God’s will in the history. Christ’s humanity should be understood in its
relation to his divinity because Jesus Christ is the truly God and truly man. So we must
examine how Barth develops the person of Jesus Christ in the union of the divinity and
humanity, which can give us his most insightful concept on who Jesus is.

The Hypostatic Union

As the doctrine of reconciliation is the foundation of Barth’s Christology, Barth’s
concept on the person of Christ is most clearly clarified in his work, as well as Christ’s
divinity is most fully identified in his humanity.22 Therefore God’s deity and humanity cannot
be separate but should be understood as their union. Barth basically follows Chalcedonian
Christology that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, human and divine natures, without
separation or division and without confusion or change, so that Barth argues that the

17
Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. i, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 90.
18
Herbert Hartwell, The Theology of Karl Barth (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co, 1964), 79.
19
CD 1/2, 164 f.
20
Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development
1909-1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 362.
21
Hartwell, 79.
22
Muller, 128.
 6

characteristic of Christ’s two natures is distinctive but interdependent and harmonious, the
enigma of the divine-human nature within one person Jesus.
His humanity is in closest correspondence with His divinity. It mirrors and reflects it.
Conversely, His divinity has its correspondence and image in the humanity in which it is
mirrored. At this point, therefore, there is similarity. Each is to be recognized in the other.
Thus even the life of the man Jesus stands under a twofold determination. But there is a
harmony between the two. As he is for God, so He is for man; and as He is for man, so He is
for God.23
Each nature of Jesus Christ is authentic itself, but the two natures harmoniously work
together as the inseparable twosome in one person of Christ.
Barth rejects a dualistic perspective to divide two different natures, arguing that we
should avoid the abstract concept of Jesus and take a historical perspective on the hypostatic
union of the two natures of Christ:
Nor are abstractions possible to the one who know Jesus Christ. There is no place for a
dualistic thinking which divides the divine and human, but only for a historical [thinking],
which at every point, in and with the humiliation and exaltation of the one Son of God and
Son of Man, in and with His being as servant and Lord, is ready to accompany the event of
the union of His divine and human essence.24
Jesus Christ simultaneously humbled in his divinity and exalted in his humanity: “As God he
was humbled to take our place, and as man he is exalted on our behalf.”25 His humiliation and
exaltation are not two events happening one by one, rather both are “involved in appropriate
measure at the same time all through the incarnate life of Christ.”26 To Barth, the two states
of Christ are deeply intertwined: “the exaltation of the Son of Man includes in itself the
humiliation of the Son of God, so that Jesus Christ is already exalted in his humiliation and
humiliated in His exaltation.”27 Focusing on Christ’s kingship on the cross, Jeremy R. Treat
defends Barth’s understanding of Christ’s two states by rejecting the “linear view of
exaltation after humiliation” as well as by arguing that “the states are best understood as
exaltation in humiliation within the broader progression of exaltation through humiliation.”28

23
CD 3/2, 216.
24
CD 4/2, 115.
25
CD 4/1, 141.
26
Thomas Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, ed. Robert Walker (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2009), 210.
27
CD 4/2, 250.
28
Crisp, 97.
 7

Now we need to look closer to the concept of Barth’s incarnation. Barth demonstrates
that the incarnation should be understood in the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and
human natures:
Barth assures us that God does not cease to be God in the incarnation. Jesus is authentically
human only as the Son of God. The Son did not give up being God by becoming man, but at
the same time, as man he was not omnipotent and eternal but limited in time and space. The
incarnation shows us that for God it is just as natural to be lowly as to be exalted.29
Even though the humanity of Jesus is the limited status, Barth sharply points out that God
doesn’t give up His Deity; rather God puts aside a desire to be exalted as the mighty and
eternal God by voluntarily hiding and humbling Himself within the fleshly situation of the
incarnation. So Barth’s concept of the incarnation is the dynamically interactive locus of
Christ’s divinity and humanity.
Barth continues to argue that the incarnation as the humiliation of the Son of God also
includes the exaltation of man Jesus Christ: “the Son of God becomes identical with the man
Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore unites human essence with this divine essence, and therefore
exalts the human into fellowship with the divine: the act of God in which He humbles
Himself to exalt man.”30 In the being of Jesus Christ as the true God and true man, there is
the one action of God that is the two movements of humiliation and exaltation; it means that
the two movements are not the two incidental acts but the two mutual aspects of one action.31
Barth regards the humiliation and exaltation as “the actuality of the being of Jesus Christ as
very God and very man,” and he continues to state, “We cannot, therefore, ascribe to Jesus
Christ two natures and then quite independently two states. But we have to explain in mutual
relationship to one another what Jesus Christ is as very God and very man and what takes
place as the divine work of atonement in his humiliation and exaltation.”32 The humiliation
of the Son of God and the exaltation of the Son of man don’t imply “a being in the particular
form of a state” but “the twofold action of Jesus Christ, the actuality of his work.”33 These
two contrasting states, to Barth, are not the static but dynamic expression for the conundrum
of the incarnation, in which the two movements disclose the two natures in one person of
Christ through the works of the God-man.

29
Kärkkäinen, 114.
30
CD 4/2, 107.
31
John Thompson, Christ in Perspective: Christological Perspectives in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand
Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1978), 11.
32
CD 4/1, 133-134.
33
Ibid., 133.
 8

Barth describes that the self-emptying, kenosis, as an act of obedience is the mutual
matter between God and man:

If, then, God is in Christ, if what the man Jesus does is God’s own work, this aspect of the
self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ as an act of obedience cannot be alien to God.
But in this case we have to see here the other and inner side of the mystery of the divine
nature of Christ and therefore of the nature of the one true God—that He Himself is also able
and free to render obedience.34

The kenosis is not only the historical moment of God’s self-emptying but also the ongoing
life of Jesus Christ, which is the work of both the Son of God and the man Jesus through the
act of the voluntary obedience. So Barth’s kenosis entails the process of the union of the
humanity and divinity. The self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ is “the
renunciation or self-deprivation of His being in the form of God alone, assuming the form of
a servant without detracting from His being in the form of God,” not “a temporary diminution,
let alone cessation, of His divine attributes.”35 The incarnation doesn’t have any loss of the
divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, but rather, through the incarnation, the two natures in
one person of Jesus accentuate each other and make each other more shining and harmonious
in the hypostatic union.

Barth takes the dialectical strategy of juxtaposition to argue the concept of the
hypostatic union which has been defined as the communication of attributes; however Barth
goes further to describe the hypostatic union as the communication f actions or operations,
because the hypostatic union, to him, is not an abstract concept but a concrete one as a
historical event.36 Barth doesn’t want to see Jesus Christ as an abstract being but as concrete
human being in history: “He acts as God when He acts as a human being, and as a human
being when He acts as God.”37 Barth’s concept of the person of Christ becomes concrete by
juxtaposing His actions to avoid the abstraction of the doctrine of Jesus Christ: “It was God
who went into the far country, and it is the human creature who returns home. Both took
place in the one Jesus Christ. . . . It is not . . . a matter of two different and successive actions,
but of a single action in . . . the being and history of the one Jesus Christ.”38 Barth also uses
the juxtaposition of Christ’s two different modes in the New Testament, the Son of God and
34
Ibid., 193.
35
Hartwell, 81.
36
Edward T. Oaks, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christology (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2011), 347.
37
CD 4/2, 115.
38
Ibid., 21.
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Jesus of Nazareth, to explain the mystery of the incarnation.39 To Barth, the term “Son of
God” means “the Son of God was Jesus of Nazareth," and the term “Son of man” does “Jesus
of Nazareth is the Son of God.”40 Even though there is a contradiction between two idioms
due to their different emphasis, Barth aptly depicts the incomprehensible incarnation: “It is
impossible to listen at one and the same time to the two statements that Jesus of Nazareth is
the Son of God, and that the Son of God is Jesus of Nazareth. One hears either the one or the
other or one hears nothing. When one is heard, the other can be heard only indirectly, in
faith.”41

So far we have been observed Barth’s doctrine on the person of Jesus Christ; we
acknowledged the distinction of Christ’s divinity and humanity individually, and we realized
the mystery of the unity of his divinity and humanity as the hypostatic union in one person of
Christ as the God-man. Christ as the Son of God and the Son of Man at the same time: “no
less than the unity in which as man He is the Son of God, and as the Son of God man.”42 Now
I want to turn into the evaluation on Barth’s dialectical Christology with some controversies
related to the Alexandrian and Antiochian tendencies.

Assessment on Alexandrian-Antiochian Dilemma

Barth’s Christology takes the Chalcedonian concept of two natures in one person, the
unity but distinction of the divinity and humanity within one person Jesus Christ. As he
dialectically uses Alexandrian and Antiochian idioms, his Christology has been accused of
being docetic/Alexandrian or Nestorian/Antiochian; more criticism on Barth’s Alexandrian
inclination than his Antiochian. While Docetism as the extreme Alexandrian tendency
maintains that “Jesus assumed only an apparent, not a real, body,”43 and Nestorianism as the
extreme Antiochian tendency argues that Jesus is a person who has two different natures,
human and divine, not a unified person.44
First, I would like to simply examine the Barth’s Antiochian character in Barth’s
Christology. Antiochian theologian Theodore insists that Jesus as a complete human person is

39
George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000),
135.
40
Hunsinger, 141.
41
CD 1/1, 180.
42
CD 4/2, 49.
43
Oaks, 123.
44
Ibid., 137-138.
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divine only because of his relation to God and his role as the mediator of God’s revelation;
therefore his divinity doesn’t belong to himself but only to God.45 So if Barth’s Christology is
regarded as Nestorian or Antiochian, its criticism is on the deficiency of Christ’s inherent
divinity.46 Barth argues that the man Jesus Christ is one of the creaturely forms of God’s
revelation like the Bible and preaching: “We are reminded of that by the homogeneity of
preaching and sacrament. We are reminded of that by the verbal nature of Holy Scripture. We
are reminded of that finally and most of all by the corporeality of the man Jesus Christ.”47
These forms are not divine intrinsically but “can reveal God only through God’s power and
decision, not through their own power.”48 It causes that Jesus as the creaturely form doesn’t
have the intrinsic divinity.
However Barth argues that the form of revelation cannot be separated from the
content of the revelation, regarding the content as divine and the form as human:
Its content cannot be abstracted from this form. There is here no question of any possibility of
distinguishing content and form, and regarding the content as divine and necessary, the form
as human and accidental; the former as the essence, the latter as the historical appearance of
revelation.49
In other words, the man Jesus Christ as the creaturely form of God’s revelation should be
understood only within the content of the revelation. Therefore the logic to accuse Barth’s
Christology of being Antiochian is not plausible. Barth really rejects the division between the
divine essence and the human nature of Christ and just wants to demonstrate the distinctive
role of the human appearance of Jesus as the form of revelation.
Secondly, I want to deal with the Alexandrian character in Barth’s Christology.
Alexandrian interpretation claims that Jesus Christ as the eternal Logos, the second “person”
of the trinity, is divine by nature.50 So if Barth’s Christology is regarded as docetic or
Alexandrian, its critique is on the deficiency of Christ’s complete humanity.51 Waldrop
claims that Barth’s concept is Alexandrian rather than Antiochian because Jesus Christ has
divinity as his own intrinsic being and adds humanity “through his own free decision,”
furthermore even most of Antiochian factors in Barth’s doctrine fit in an Alexandrian

45
Richard A. Norris, Manhood and Christ, A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1963), 215-216.
46
Hunsinger, 135.
47
CD 1/1, 151.
48
Waldrop, 244.
49
CD 1/1, 448.
50
Waldrop, 241.
51
Hunsinger, 134.
 11

structure. 52 Waldrop argues that Barth’s doctrine of the incarnation is Alexandrian because
the man Jesus’ existence is identical with God’s existence, so that not man but God is the
Subject of the human nature, concluding that “it is possible to understand Barth’s treatment
of the relation between God and the human nature, the union of the two natures, and the
coordination of the divine and human aspects of the work of Christ in an Alexandrian
manner.”53
According to Hans Boersma, Barth’s strong rejection of the Roman Catholic doctrine
of the analogia entis is the reference of Barth’s Alexandrian position.54 Roman Catholic
theology focuses on the analogy of being, rejecting that “there is no being without God’s
gracious act in Jesus Christ.”55 The Catholic theologian Przywara argues that the analogia
entis is “a validation of natural theology whereby humanity derives its being from God” and
that humans can know God through their own being.56 Barth argues against the analogia
entis as "the invention of the anti-Christ" in the preface of his Church Dogmatics.57 In “Fate
and Idea in Theology,” Barth explains about analogía entis: “Everything that is exists as
mere creature in greatest dissimilarity to the Creator, yet by having being it exists in greatest
similarity to the Creator. That is what is meant by analogía entis.”58 Instead of the analogía
entis, Barth develops the analogía entis within an analogia fidei: “We have to think of man
in the event of real faith as, so to speak, opened up from above.”59 Therefore our being is
actualized by our faith on Jesus Christ who is the self-revelation of God, and the knowledge
of God is gained only by God’s act in Jesus Christ. The analogia fidei as the connection
between God and man is “the ongoing event of God’s self-revelation.”60 Boersma explicitly
concludes that “a dynamic view of the person of Jesus Christ as event” regards both the
Antiochian and the Alexandrian interpretation as inadequate because both of them avoid “the
relational aspects of God’s being” as well as “distinguish between his being and his act.”61

52
Waldrop, 259.
53
Charles T. Waldrop, Karl Barth's Christology: Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Amsterdam/Berlin/New
York: Mouton, 1984), 120.
54
Hans Boersma, "Alexandrian or Antiochian: A dilemma in Barth's Christology," The Westminster Theological
Journal 52, no. 2 (September 1990): 265.
55
Ibid., 267.
56
Ethan McCarthy, "Karl Barth and the analogia entis." Trinity Journal 32, no. 1 (2011 2011): 116.
57
CD 1/1, x.
58
Karl Barth, "Fate and Idea in Theology," in The Way of Theology in Karl Barth: Essays and Comments, ed. H.
Martin Rumscheidt (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1986), 33.
59
CD 1/1, 278.
60
McCarthy, 116.
61
Boersma, 267.
 12

Barth’s doctrine of anhypostasis has been criticized because of its rejecting the true
humanity of Jesus and its docetic tendency, so that it seems to be the evidence to sustain
Barth’s Alexandrian interpretation on Christ’s humanity. However Barth argues, “It rests
simply upon a misunderstanding of the Latin term impersonalitas used occasionally for
anhypostasis.”62 Thompson defends Barth’s argument by stating that the early Church
writings didn’t say the lack of personality or individuality of Christ’s human nature but
maintained the existence of Christ’s humanity only in the Word or Son.63 In terms of the
doctrine of anhypostasis and enhypostasis, Barth really wants to emphasize the unique unity
of God and man in Jesus Christ, which doesn’t means that they as dual beings exist side by
side but means that the Son of God as true God is true man in Jesus Christ.64 “What is added
to the Word in his incarnation is not a second reality alongside of him, but his own work
upon himself, which actually consists in this, that he assumed human existence.”65 What I
want to point out here is not the fact that God is the Subject of a Christ’s humanity but rather
the mystery that Jesus Christ is one person in the divinity and humanity as the hypostatic
union.
Christ’s humanity as anhypostasis but enhypostasis is neither the Alexandrian nor the
Antiochian but Chalcedonian because the humanity should be understood not as its own
independent existence but as the union with the person of the Logos. Barth takes
Chalcedonian Christology as the starting point and deliberately uses an Alexandrian idiom
here and an Antiochian idiom there.66 It means that Barth develops his unique theology with
the Alexandrian and Antiochian idioms. Hunsinger argues that Barth’s Christology is
different from Alexandrian and Antiochian Christologies because “these two alternatives,
each in its own way, tend to resolve the incarnation mystery into something more nearly
conceivable on the basis of ordinary experience and history.”67
Barth’s Christology is dialectical in describing the person of Christ by overlapping
Alexandrian and Antiochian idioms. Barth’s intention is not to merely focus on either one of
two interpretations but rather to do his best in demonstrating the incomprehensible mystery
of the person of Jesus Christ in two natures.
(Total Words: 5069)

62
CD 1/2, 164.
63
Thompson, 28.
64
Ibid., 28-29.
65
CD 1/2, 150.
66
Oaks, 345.
67
Hunsinger, 136.
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