Similarly he affirms the “Sabbath mysticism of Calvin.”^62 In his development of
experience of the Word of God, Barth declares that the person who is “claimed by the
Word of God” is “a participator in the reality of the Word” and that this rightly
introduces the “concept of mysticism.”^63 A few pages later Barth enlarges his
position, “[i]f we care to give the name of mystical thought to the thought of what is
Beyond all experience and which becomes visible at that moment, it is not worth
while objecting to the expression. So long as it remains clear--- what is so-called
mystical thinking often does not remain clear.”^64
While the previous paragraph reveals that Barth can be sympathetic to some
forms of highly qualified mysticism overall his indiscriminate usage of language and
failure to qualify his specific focus has earned him his bad reputation. Therefore,
according to McGinn, Barth “saw little good in mysticism.”^65 Clearly his disdain for
the term mysticism^66 and its comparison to agnostic philosophy^67 or “esoteric
atheism”^68 did not improve his cause. Further, Barth enumerates the major errors he
finds in mysticism including its tendency towards “world-renunciation,”^69 the use of
human “technique and craft” that seeks to reach a union with God apart from
Scripture,^70 “self-surrender and ultimately of absorption,”^71 and its apophatic or
(^62) Barth, CD III/4, 59. Elsewhere Barth employs Bernard only in brief illustrative
ways except for a cursory comment that Luther came to the very edge of mysticism as
Calvin did also “probably treading in the footsteps of Bernard.” (^63) Barth, CD I/1, 242. CD IV/3, 549.
(^64) Barth, CD I/1, 254.
(^65) McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, 269.
(^66) Barth, CD IV/2, 57.
(^67) Barth, CD I/2, 750.
(^68) Barth, CD I/2, 322.
(^69) Barth, CD IV/2, 545.
(^7071) Barth, CD III/4, 59.
Barth, CD I/2, 261.