Last words

In the last few months of his life Karl Barth was on a radio program which was a bit like Desert Island Discs ("Music for a Guest – A radio Broadcast"). The transcript can be found in the book Final Testimonies.

Near the beginning of the program he states that "What I hear in Mozart is a final word about life insofar as this can be spoken by man". Therefore, perhaps it is appropriate that he ends the program with this brilliant paragraph about God's Word about life in Christ, and Mozart's music addressed to the Word.

Grace itself is only a provisional word. The last word that I have to say as a theologian or politician is not a concept like grace but a name: Jesus Christ. He is grace and he is the ultimate one beyond world and church and even theology. We cannot lay hold of him. But we have to do with him. And my own concern in my long life has been increasingly to emphasize this name and to say: "In him." There is no salvation but in this name. In him is grace. In him is the spur to work, warfare, and fellowship. In him is all that I have attempted in my life in weakness and folly. It is there in him. I suggest then that we finish with Mozart as a sacred composer. I myself have always been very fond of the little Missa Brevis in D Major, again by the young Mozart... I suggest that we play the conclusion: Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem: "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us, grant us thy peace". This is what we shall now hear.

Enjoy!