Laughing Last

In a chapter on “How to Be Theologically Funny,” Stanley Hauerwas (The Work of Theology) states his opinion that Barth was “‘naturally’ funny,” but immediately adds that this doesn’t really capture the deep role that humor plays in Barth: “his humor was also a reflection of the character of his theology” (244).

In his Ethics, unpublished during his lifetime, Barth “grounded humor in the eschatological character of the Christian faith, which means that it is incumbent on Christians to refuse to take the present with ultimate seriousness. Such a perspective elicits a ‘liberated laughter’ that ‘derives from the knowledge of our final position—in spite of appearances to the contrary—with present reality.’” Elsewhere, Barth wrote that “Humor arises when the contrast between our aeon is perceived and vitally sensed in what we do. Humor concerns the present as such with its strange connections and involvements. We cannot change the future into the present and the present into the future. We must persevere as best we can. We have humor when we can do this” (245).

Barth doesn’t deny “an appropriate seriousness,” but sees genuine humor as intimately connected with seriousness. Barth said, “Of humor . . . one may say that it is genuine when it is the child of suffering.” And suffering can open in humor only in eschatological perspective (246).

Barth was combative, but frequently used humor in combat. Hauerwas cites Barth’s response to the Dutch neo-Calvinist accusation that he was a monist: “Barth observes that it is one thing to criticize him, but they have gone too far because they have tried to offend Barth by disparagement of W. A. Mozart. Barth observes that, of course, ‘in so doing they have shown themselves to be men of stupid, cold and stony hearts to whom we need not listen’” (247). When Berkouwer published his more favorable book, Barth withdrew his blunt response, but added that the Dutch had nothing to fear from him as long as “they do not say any more unseemly things about Mozart” (247).

His affection for Mozart and for music in general is deeply linked with the humor of his theology. Hauerwas notes that “Barth’s objections to natural theology are well known, but it is quite interesting that one of his most profound concerns about natural theology is that too often work done in that name is ‘profoundly tedious and so unmusical.’” He criticized liberal theology for the “absence of laughter.” Grim theology was inhuman theology because “for Barth we are fundamentally animals who laugh” (246).