Despite Karl Barth's lasting commitment to the Reformed tradition of John Calvin, it is the thought of Martin Luther that casts a long shadow over Barth's theology. As George Hunsinger points out, If we refocus the historical lens upon Barth and Luther, they can be seen to stand like bookends on the shelf of the modern age, with Luther standing at the beginning of what historians now call "early modernity" and Barth standing at its end. (2) Barth looked back for the sake of looking forward and in so doing engaged in intense study of Luther. Barth absorbed aspects of Luther's theology that allowed him to articulate Christian theology in deeper and more sophisticated ways over against modernity, which had through the course of the Enlightenment set the criteria for how we know what we know and thus how we articulate the sinner's relationship to Jesus Christ. As Hunsinger has noted, Barth "almost alone among modern theologians" granted "uncompromising precedence to the Reformation over modernity itself." He did not reject modernity, but he "refused to allow secular epistemologies to set the terms for the validity of the gospel." (3)
