I sincerely believe that my theological world has been made the better from engaging with theologians, professors, books, blogs, and other resources which have challenged me and constrained me. My suggestion is that if you have a theological position which you refuse to test, then it is not a position whatsoever. Further, if you cannot see another’s theological point because of your own, then you have no point. Karl Barth is a genius.
Mar 03 2010
Karl Barth on Theologians
Category: Quotes — Polycarp @ 11:59 am
“In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians” – Karl Barth
Tags: karl barth, theologians
Mar 01 2010
Karl Barth on Hell
Category: Reformation — Polycarp @ 11:59 am
“Should the teaching about hell be a part of the proclamation of the gospel? No, no, no! The proclamation of the gospel means, rather, the proclamation that Christ has defeated hell, that Christ suffered hell in our place, and that it has allowed for us to live with Christ and so to have hell behind us”
- Karl Barth (Gesamtausgabe, 25:111)
Continue reading “Karl Barth on Hell”
Tags: hell, karl barth, universalism
Feb 12 2010
Barth on Ideology
Category: Theology — Polycarp @ 11:59 am
[Ideology] comes about as [one] thinks he can and should ascribe to the presuppositions and sketches he has achieved by his remarkable ability, not just a provisional and transitory but a permanent normativity, not just one that is relative but one that is absolute, not just one that is human but one that is quasi-divine. His hypotheses become for him theses behind which he no longer ventures to go back with seeking, questioning, and researching. He thinks that they can be thought and formulated definitively as thoughts that are not merely useful but instrinsically true and therefore binding. His ideal becomes an idol. He thinks that he knows only unshakable principles and among them a basic principle in relation to which he must coordinate and develop them as a whole, combining them all, and with them his perceptions and concepts, into a system, making of his ideas an ideology. Here again the reins slip out of his hands. This creature of his, the ideology, seems to be so wonderfully glorious and exerts on him such a fascination that he thinks he should move and think and act more and more within its framework and under its direction, since salvation can be achieved only through the works of its law. This ideology becomes the object of his reflection, the backbone and norm of his disposition, the guiding star of his action. All his calculations, exertions, and efforts are now predestined by it. They roll towards its further confirmation and triumph like balls on a steep slope. Man’s whole loyalty is loyalty to the line demanded by it. He thinks that he possesses it, but in truth it already possesses him. In relation to it he is no longer the free man who thought he had found it in its glory and should help to put it on the throne. He now ventures to ask and answer only within its schema. He must now orient himself to it. He must represent it as its more or less authentic witness and go to work as its great or small priest and prophet. At root he no longer has anything of his own to say. He can only mouth the piece dictated to him as intelligibly as he can, and perhaps like a mere parrot. His own face threatens already to disappear behind the mask that he must wear as its representative. He already measures and evaluates others only from the standpoint of whether they are supporters of this ideology, or whether they might become such, or whether they might at least be useful to it even without their consent, or whether they must be fought as its enemies. Its glory has already become for him the solution not only to the personal problem of his own life but to each and all of the problems of the world.
~ Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV/4, Lecture Fragments, 225. (HT)
Tags: ideology, karl barth
Feb 04 2010
Barth – God was with us
Category: Theology — Polycarp @ 11:59 am
God was with us, with us His enemies, with us who were visited and smitten by His wrath. God was with us in all the reality and fulness with which He does what He does. He was with us as one of us. His Word became flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. His glory was seen here in the depths of our situation, and the full depths of our situation were disclosed for the first time when illumined then and there by the Lord’s glory, when in His Word He came down to the lowest parts of the earth (Eph 4:9), in order that there and in that way He might rob death of its power and bring life and immortality to light (2 Tim 1:10). This happened, as having happened conclusively, totally, and sufficiently. . . . This ‘God with us’ has happened. It has happened in human history and as a part of human history. Yet it has not happened as other parts of history usually happen. It does not need to be continued or completed. It does not point beyond itself or merely strive after a distant goal. It is incapable of any exegesis or even the slightest addition or subtraction. Its form cannot be changed. It has happened as a self-moved being in the stream of becoming. It has happened as completed event, fulfilled time, in the sea of the incomplete and changeable and self-changing.
~ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 115-16. (HT)
Tags: karl barth
Jan 15 2010
New Blog On Barth…with a little Bultmann
Category: Criticism — Polycarp @ 11:59 am
The late theologian Klaus Bockmuehl in his book The Unreal God of Modern Theology used the concept of radar to describe the battlefield of modern theology. Two giants, Rudolph Bultmann and Karl Barth, each had their own methods for flying sorties to drop leaflets of the truth of God to a needy humanity on earth. In order to be successful, each needed to evade the radar that hung over the world, that of modern secularism, lest they be shot down for suggesting people believe things not fit for the modern world–things like myth.
And Alan takes flight from there….
Tags: karl barth, rudolf bultmann
Oct 27 2009
Review: The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen Sermons with Commentary by William H. Willimon
Category: Book Review — Polycarp @ 6:43 pm
Click to Order
From Amazon:
Product Description
WJK is proud to present this special collection of fourteen of Karl Barth’s World War I-era sermons— the only English language collection of Barth sermons preached between 1917 and 1920 when he was a parish pastor in Safenwil, Switzerland. This volume offers a fascinating glimpse into Barth’s interpretation of Scripture during a time of great historical significance. Renowned preacher William H. Willimon provides expert commentary on the theological and homiletical substance of each selection and points to the many ways in which Barth’s early preaching can enrich the work of preachers today.
Tags: karl barth, preaching, sermons, westminster john knox, William Willimon
Oct 21 2009
The Origin of Karl Barth
Many factors lead to Barth’s radical break with liberal theology. Two, however, stand out as especially noteworthy. First, Barth found that liberal theology was useless in his weekly task of preaching the gospel to the people of Safenwil. As a result, he undertook a careful and painstaking study of the Scriptures and through it discovered “The Strange New World Within the Bible,” to employ the title of one of his earliest articles. In the Scriptures he found not human religion, not even the highest and best thoughts of pious people, but God’s Wod: “It’s not the right human thoughts about God which form the content of the Bible, but the right divine thoughts about men….”
Tags: karl barth, liberal theology, theologians
Sep 12 2009
In The Mail: Am I Predestined to be a Calvinist Edition?
Category: Book Review — Polycarp @ 12:00 am
The kind folks at Westminster-John Knox has flooded my mail box with four outstanding titles:
Continue reading “In The Mail: Am I Predestined to be a Calvinist Edition?”
Tags: Christian History, john calvin, karl barth, westminster john knox
Aug 20 2009
The Theological Declaration of Barmen
Category: Religion and Politics — Polycarp @ 2:59 pm
While reading an unrelated work, I came across the mention of this pre-WW2 document which tried to prevent the Christian Churches in Germany from becoming the tools of Adolf Hitler who spouted Christian rhetoric to suit his purposes. These pro-Nazi churches were noticeably nationalistic in tone, and quickly allied themselves with the ruling authorities, causing no small distress to those which sought the separation of Church and State.
Continue reading “The Theological Declaration of Barmen”
Tags: adolf hitler, church and state, confessing churches, germany, history, karl barth, martin luther, nazi, nazi germany, politics, religion, world war 2
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