… This means that in spite of all his undeniable efforts to move away from Pietism, Barth was clearly too closely attached to it to be able to attack the innermost bastion of Pietism held by his reviewers. In the following section we will elaborate on the decisive point where he was still closely attached to Pietism in spite of everything.”
-Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists, trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2004), 65.
This is probably another reason I have so resonated with Barth over the years. My background, of course!, as an evangelical in North America, is indeed, Pietistic. But Pietism, of a certain ilk, has some “Enlightened” problems; particularly, as that involves a turn to the subject (a navel-gazing spirituality). And yet, Pietism, insofar that it thinks of God as Father of the Son in the bond of love by the Holy Spirit, it is this kind of trinitarian Pietism that indeed has the right relational (and catholic) focus. I think Barth operates with this type of trinitarian Pietism, as I also attempt to.