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A painting of Karl Barth
2009-01-05 02:56:00 Speaking of Oliver Crisp, here’s a photo of the painting he made for me in Princeton. It will soon be hanging proudly on my study wall:
Rowan Williams: Christmas with Karl Barth
2008-12-21 23:51:00 Today’s Telegraph features a Christmas meditation by Rowan Williams, focusing on Karl Barth’s critique of “principle”:“What [Barth] was warning against was the temptation of unconditional loyalty to a system, a programme, a ‘cause’ which was essentially about ‘me and people like me’…. Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles…. Christmas doesn’t offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social programme. It’s a story – the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so that the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed…. That’s one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the ‘unprincipled’ God who values what others don’t notice, who relates to people we’d all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response.”
How to read Karl Barth: George Hunsinger's foreword to the German Edition
2008-10-20 16:07:00 A guest-post by George Hunsinger[This is the foreword to the new German translation of his book, How to Read Karl Barth – the German edition is titled Karl Barth lesen: Eine Einführung in sein theologisches Denken, and will be published next month by Neukirchener.]This book started out twenty years ago as my doctoral dissertation at Yale, written under the supervision of Hans W. Frei. I had already developed the idea of “motifs” as a way of introducing students to Barth. When I sat down to write my dissertation, I had expected to discuss them only briefly in the preface. As it turned out, however, the preface took over the work!Since then I have continued to read Barth and teach his theology on a regular basis. I have found that explaining these “motifs” still helps students to gain a better grasp of his theology and to read him without becoming discouraged by the difficulties. It is almost always better to read Barth than to read about him. But reading him, as everyone k...
How to read Karl Barth: advice from Bonhoeffer
2007-07-13 00:56:00 In 1931, when Bonhoeffer was leading a seminar at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he told his students: ?I do not see any other possible way for you to get into real contact with Barth?s thinking than by forgetting everything you have learnt before.? ?Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 3:111; cited in Mark R. Lindsay?s excellent new book, Barth, Israel, and Jesus: Karl Barth?s Theology of Israel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 20.
Translating Barth into German
2007-07-09 00:44:00 Several months ago, Bruce McCormack?s book on Barth?s development became the first English-language work on Barth to be translated into German: Theologische Dialektik und kritischer Realismus: Entstehung und Entwicklung von Karl Barths Theologie, 1909-1936 (TVZ, 2006).Now, George Hunsinger?s book on how to read Barth has also been translated into German: Karl Barth lessen: Eine Einfhrung in sein theologisches Denken (Neukirchener, 2007).So, which Barth scholar should be translated into German next? Cast your vote in the poll below:Take the pollFree Poll by Blog Flux
Matthias Gockel: Barth and Schleiermacher on the doctrine of election
2007-07-06 10:30:00 Matthias Gockel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election: A Systematic-Theological Comparison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 229 pp. (review copy courtesy of Oxford UP ? and there is also an online edition)The exact nature of Barth?s relationship to Schleiermacher is one of the most complex and far-reaching problems for historians of modern theology. Barth himself took pains to distance himself from Schleiermacher, and he insisted that his own theology represented a fundamental break with Schleiermacher?s thought. But Barth was often an unreliable interpreter of his own theology. And, misled by Barth?s own representation of his relationship to Schleiermacher, subsequent generations of interpreters have often presupposed an unbridgeable gulf between these two Reformed theologians.In this new book, Matthias Gockel offers a groundbreaking new evaluation of Barth?s relationship to Schleiermacher. Instead of painting with a broad brush, Gockel restricts his study t...
2007 Karl Barth Conference
2007-07-03 11:30:00 If, like me, you were at home last week feeling miserable when you should have been at the Karl Barth Conference, you?ll be glad to read David?s overview of some of the highlights. The conference theme was the relationship between Barth?s theology and American evangelicalism ? a fascinating and complex theme! Barth himself had little good to say about the more conservative side of American evangelicalism. When in 1961 he was asked to respond to criticisms by Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark and Fred Klooster (to be published in Christianity Today), he replied: ?The ? presupposition of a fruitful discussion between them and me would have to be that we are able to talk on a common plane. But these people have already had their so-called orthodoxy for a long time. They are closed to anything else, they will cling to it at all costs, and they can adopt toward me only the role of prosecuting attorneys, trying to establish whether what I represent agrees or disagrees with their orthodoxy, ...
Interpreting the past with Karl Barth
2007-06-23 14:36:00 The excellent Karl Barth Blog Conference has come to an end. Travis should be congratulated for conceiving and organising this project. He did a great job ? and, happily, he?s planning to organise a similar event next year.I?ve written a concluding post, which you can read here. And if you want to read the best part of the whole series, then be sure to check out David?s excellent discussion of Barth and Hegel.
Karl Barth blogging conference
2007-06-13 00:21:00 Travis is hosting the first Karl Barth Blog Conference (in anticipation of this year?s Princeton Barth Conference, which will commence later this month).The blog conference will focus on Barth?s great work on Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Each day (until 23 June), Travis will feature a guest-post on this work ? and I?ll be contributing some concluding reflections at the end.See the two initial posts ? and be sure to keep an eye on the series as it unfolds over the next couple of weeks. If you?ve got a theology blog, you might also consider adding a temporary widget to your sidebar (as I?ve done here).
The event of election
2007-06-06 00:19:00 ?What happened for us and to us at Golgotha and was revealed on Easter Day, that ? though it happened in time ? is our eternal election.??Karl Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1936), p. 17.
Barth's Grandeur
2007-06-01 23:42:00 David has posted my entry in his poetry contest ? this is adapted from Gerard Manley Hopkins? poem, ?God?s Grandeur?:Barth?s brain was charged with the grandeur of thought,It swirled out, like soap suds in the sink,It smeared reams of paper like the ooze of inkSpilt. Must we all then follow him? Generations adored, abhorred, or fought his thrall;Moltmann went beyond him, Pannenberg disproved him,Torrance hung awe-rapt on every word: and allOf us (brains small, confused and dim) cobble systems fat or slim. Yet for all this, God does not fling us off;He crouches at our systems? edge, peers hungrily through holes,Sneak-watching for the moment when we sigh and say?Oh, bugger! all these thoughts I can?t command? ?Then breathless as a madman or a child, God lunges,And tumbling floorward fall our thoughts, while we fall into ah! safe hands.
Barth in techno
2007-05-31 13:47:00 Ladies and gentlemen: Jon?s wonderful Karl Barth techno mix is now available on YouTube, together with a new film clip (the audio is from Barth?s American lectures). So if you need a good chuckle, be sure to head over and check out the Barthman?s Decklaration.
Karl Barth's birthday
2007-05-10 23:31:00 Jim celebrates Karl Barth?s birthday (10 May) with a nice post. He notes that Barth is now ?in heaven, listening to Mozart and being rightly corrected by Zwingli.? What more could anyone want?
Karl Barth and American evangelicalism
2007-04-25 23:36:00 In an insightful post, Chris Rice takes up Karl Barth?s critique of 19th-century theology as a guide for critiquing contemporary American evangelicalism.
R. Dale Dawson: The Resurrection in Karl Barth
2007-04-13 09:46:00 R. Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth (Barth Studies Series; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 246 pp. (review copy courtesy of Ashgate)In this latest addition to the Barth Studies Series, Dale Dawson offers the first full account of Karl Barth?s theology of resurrection. Dawson views the resurrection as ?the theological a priori? of Barth?s theology (p. 3), and he argues that the resurrection has ?radical systematic significance? for the whole structure of Barth?s thought (p. 12). Dawson thus traces Barth?s work on the resurrection from early Gttingen lectures through to the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics.One of the strongest parts of the study is the chapter on Barth?s 1924 exegetical lectures on The Resurrection of the Dead. In these early lectures, Barth engages in polemic against historicising approaches to the resurrection ? he insists, for instance, that the ?empty tomb? is irrelevant, and that there is no historical basis for belief in the resurrection. But Dawson ...
Karl Barth: God in Action
2006-12-11 04:21:02 Karl Barth, God in Action: Theological Addresses (1936; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 143 pp.The other day I mentioned the series of Barth reprints published by Wipf & Stock. Here?s another very nice one: God in Action. This volume offers several of Barth?s theological addresses, all of them first published as individual pamphlets in the Theologische Existenz Heute series during the early 1930s. The addresses were collected in an attempt to give an overall impression of the emerging shape of Barth?s theological work. Underlying all the addresses is an ecclesiological emphasis: thus there are chapters on revelation, the church, theology as a function of the church, the ministry of the Word of God, and the Christian as witness.The best part of the book is Chapter 2, simply entitled ?Theology.? Here, as in the Church Dogmatics, Barth describes theology as ?the fairest? of all the sciences, and as the science ?closest to human reality? (p. 39). As an academic discipline, theology ?is...
Karl Barth: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2006-12-08 22:18:01 For the past few years, Wipf & Stock Publishers have been producing attractive, affordable reprints of various out-of-print volumes by Karl Barth. They kindly sent me a couple of these reprints, one of which is:Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, foreword by John Updike, with a new foreword by Paul Louis Metzger (1986; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2003), 60 pp.Barth?s devotion to Mozart is well known. He began each day listening to Mozart; he included Mozart in the Church Dogmatics; and he remarked: ?if I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart and only then inquire after Augustine, St Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher? (p. 16). In fact, towards the end of his life Barth even experienced his first and only mystical vision: a vision of Mozart gazing at him benignly from the stage during a concert. (Hans Urs von Balthasar was very impressed by this vision!)In this little book ? originally published in 1956 in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mozart?s birth ?...
Karl Barth on capitalism
2006-12-02 16:06:02 ?Fundamentally, the command of God ? is self-evidently and in all circumstances a call for counter-movements on behalf of humanity and against its denial in any form ? and therefore a call for the championing of the weak against every kind of encroachment on the part of the strong. The Christian community has undoubtedly been too late in seeing this in face of the modern capitalistic development of the labour process, and it cannot escape some measure of responsibility for the injustice characteristic of this development?. The main task of Christianity in the West is ? to assert the command of God in face of [capitalism], and to keep to the ?left? in opposition to its champions, i.e., to confess that it is fundamentally on the side of the victims of this disorder and to espouse their cause.??Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4, p. 544 (KD III/4, pp. 624-25).
Karl Barth Society meeting
2006-11-13 10:09:02 Philip Ziegler has sent me the updated programme for this week?s meeting (in Washington, DC) of the Karl Barth Society of North America. I?m very disappointed that I won?t be there myself ? it looks like an excellent programme. For those of you who are be able to go, here are the full details: SESSION I: Friday 17 November, 4.00?6.30 pm (this session is listed as AM17-109 in the AAR Program and will be held in CC-101) Philip G. Ziegler: ?Taken Out of Context ? Freedom and Concreteness in the Theology of Wolf Krtke? Wolf Krtke: ?Barth on the Theology of the Religions? SESSION II: Saturday 18 November, 9.00?11.30 am (this session is listed as AM18-39 in the AAR Program and will be held in RW-Renaissance West B) Walter Lowe: ?Apocalyptic and Discipleship ? Explaining Christianity? George Hunsinger and Archie Spencer, with a response by David Bentley Hart: ?The Analogia Entis Makes a Come-Back ? David Bentley Hart?
Ten propositions on Karl Barth: theologian
2006-11-10 09:48:02 by Kim Fabricius1. Karl Barth was a Reformed theologian. Sounds like a no-brainer. And, yes, fundamental motifs of Barth?s theology have a definite Reformed pedigree ? e.g., the glory, majesty, and grace of God; the primacy of the Word in Holy Scripture; the polemic against idolatry; the doctrine of election; the relationship between gospel and law; sanctification. But for Barth, the Reformed tradition was not so much a body of doctrine as a habit of mind. Observe that Barth got himself up to speed with Reformed dogmatics only after he had become famous for his two editions of Romans and taken up a lectureship at Gttingen. His was a theologia reformata only as it was also a theologia semper reformanda. His conversations with his Reformed forefathers, while deferential, were always critical. And the doctrines he inherited he always re-worked with daring and imagination.2. Karl Barth was an ecumenical theologian. While recognising that theology is always confessional ? there is no Ar...
Interview with Meehyun Chung, recipient of the Karl Barth Pr
2006-10-24 09:30:02 As mentioned earlier, the Korean pastor and theologian Meehyun Chung recently became the first woman to receive the Karl Barth Prize. Meehyun Chung did her doctoral work in Basel on the relationship between Barth and Korean theology, and her dissertation was published as Karl Barth, Josef Lukl Hromdka, Korea (1995). She now works as head of the Women and Gender Project at Mission 21 in Basel. I caught up with her for an interview (translated here from German) about Barth, Korea, and women in the church. BM: Meehyun Chung, congratulations on receiving the prestigious Karl Barth Prize this year. MC: Thank you very much. BM: In your doctoral work, what were your own conclusions about the relationship between Karl Barth and Korean theology? MC: Most of the Protestant churches in Korea are Presbyterian. In reviewing the Swiss Reformation, Reformed identity and the development of Reformed tradition in Barth?s theology, I adopted the Barthian approach in the context of Korean the...
Karl Barth on peace and war
2006-10-08 13:39:02 ?The decisive contradiction of the kingdom of God against all concealed or blatant kingdoms of force is to be seen quite simply in the fact that it invalidates the whole friend-foe relationship between one human and another.... The disciples are told: ?Love your enemies!? (Matt. 5:44). This is the end of the whole friend-foe relationship, for when we love our enemy he ceases to be our enemy. It
Cheap dogmatics: Karl Barth
2006-10-04 13:09:02 I get quite a lot of emails from students who are reading Barth, and from people who are starting out on the expensive but happy journey of collecting Barth?s works.If you?re looking to buy volumes of the German edition of the Church Dogmatics, someone in Hamburg has just listed all 14 volumes on eBay, with bids starting at just a few dollars. That?s something you don?t see every day!
Karl Barth Prize: Meehyun Chung
2006-09-14 04:54:03 Meehyun Chung, a Korean theologian and pastor, has become the first woman to win the prestigious Karl Barth Prize. Established by the German Evangelical Church in 1986, the Prize (including 10,000 Euro) is normally awarded every two years. Meehyun Chung did her doctorate in Basel on the relationship between Barth and Korean theology, and her dissertation was later published as Karl Barth, Josef Lukl Hromdka, Korea (Berlin: Alektor-Verlag, 1995). An ordained Presbyterian minister, she now works for Mission 21 in Basel, as head of the Women and Gender Project. This Project aims to improve the position of women in the church and to increase awareness of gender equality. Other recipients of the Karl Barth Prize have included Eberhard Jngel (1988), Hans Kng (1992), Karl Cardinal Lehmann (1994), Bruce McCormack (1998), John de Gruchy (2000), Kurt Marti (2002), and Johannes Rau (2005).
Karl Barth and Bob Dylan
2006-08-07 02:36:02 Like all people of excellent taste, David Williamson has a soft spot for both Karl Barth and Bob Dylan. He has just posted a marvellous and moving discussion of Bob Dylan?s music, and he has also created a short (5-minute) film about Karl Barth and the women in his life.
Kurt Anders Richardson: Reading Karl Barth
2006-08-07 02:36:02 Many thanks to Baker Academic for sending me a review copy of Kurt Anders Richardson?s recent book, Reading Karl Barth: New Directions for North American Theology.In this book, Richardson brings Barth?s theology into dialogue with various aspects of contemporary theology, and he seeks to take up Barth?s thought as an instrument of theological and ecclesial reform. Although it is an uneven book, and although it is not structured as clearly as it might have been, Richardson has a fine instinct for interpreting Barth, and he understands clearly what is involved in reading the Church Dogmatics: ?To read the CD is more than a literary act or even a philosophical one; it is a religious act because Barth?s work is so fundamentally shaped by his testimony to the Word of God? (p. 12). To read Barth correctly, then, we must read him as a ?witness??and this will always mean to read him in relation to our own theological questions, ?to read him and then to move on? (p. 23).At the heart of Richa... |
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