Knowledge of ourselves first requires a genuine knowledge of the One who created us. Without that outer reference point, there can be no genuine knowledge of the self. This was a key axiom of Calvin’s, as he wrote in his Institutes; and it is key for Barth as he developed his theological anthropology in the Church Dogmatics. The following is an excerpt from Barth’s CD III/2, where he is, indeed, doing the yeoman’s work of developing what he takes to be a genuinely Christian understanding of what the entailments are of what it means to be human. You will notice, as is typical of Barth’s approach, he does not attempt to think about an anthropology as the secular, and even many other Christian theologies attempt to do, from an abstract point of contact found in a pure nature. Instead, Barth grounds his thinking about the entailments of a biblical anthropology by grounding it in the frame of a radical theology of the Word (which is, and ought to be, a very Protestant thing to do). Notice what Barth writes:
On the other hand we have to remember—and this is what makes our problem so difficult—that any tenable distinction between man as created by God and the sinful determination of his being is possible only if his sinful nature, his perversion and corruption, is minimised. But if we consider man truly and seriously in the light of the Word of God, this is just what may not be done. His corruption is radical and total. It there is no sin in which man is not also the creature of God (although in contradiction with God and himself), so also there is no creaturely essence in which man is not seen at strife with God and therefore sinful. Therefore we do not have in any case any direct vision of a sinless being of man fulfilling its original determination. There is no point at which we are not brought up against that corruption and depravity. We must be on our guard against any desire to illuminate the darkness in which the true nature of man is shrouded by taking into account what we suppose we know about man in general and as such from other sources. It must be our aim to view him clearly in the light of the Word of God, and therefore as the sinner which he is in his confrontation with God. If we ask concerning his true nature, we must never lose sight for a moment of his degeneracy.[1]
It is interesting, isn’t it? . . . When an anthropology is developed in the light of the Word of God what comes to the fore is that humanity simpliciter is sinful, degenerate, a depraved soul. Even so, this isn’t what humanity was ultimately created for; just the opposite. But we must first come to terms with our dire situation, and this is what obtains when the Logos incarnandus (the Word to be incarnate) becomes the Logos incarnatus (the Word incarnate) in the assumptio carnis (assumption of flesh/humanity). The Word of God forces those with eyes to see and ears to hear to recognize that the end of our humanity, as it is, is the cross of Jesus Christ; but that this isn’t its ultimate end. The cross of Jesus only becomes the soil that the seed of his broken life is thrown into, in order that it might rise and ascend again in its glorified and victorious status. This is what Barth, and the New Testament witness is getting at. I think instead of calling this a theological anthropology it would be more apropos to call it a kerygmatic anthropology; viz. an anthropology that is funded by the ground supplied for it by the Good News! that Christ is risen, that He is risen indeed!
Let the reader understand: while Barth’s theology is often mistakenly taken as academic theology, in fact what it really is is proclamation theology (a theology that will preach).
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2 §43 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 25.