Karl Barth and personalist philosophy: a critical appropriation

2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. McInroy
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Martin Buber ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
I And Thou

AbstractScholarship on Karl Barth's engagement with so-called ‘personalist philosophy’ has claimed that the following three sources exerted a significant influence on this aspect of Barth's thought: (1) the founders of an interdisciplinary society known as the ‘Patmos Circle’; (2) Barth's fellow dialectical theologians, Emil Brunner and Friedrich Gogarten; (3) Martin Buber, in particular his classic work, I and Thou. In spite of these assessments, however, I argue that Barth's initial stance towards personalism is actually best characterised as one of resistance and criticism. Specifically, I claim here that Barth undertakes a highly critical appropriation of personalism in which the categories of encounter (Begegnung), co-humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit) and the I–Thou relation (Ich–Du-Beziehung) are deeply criticised and recast in an explicitly theological – not philosophical – mould. When Barth does use personalist categories in his own theological anthropology – particularly in the Church Dogmatics, III/2 – he roots his notion of the human being as a ‘being in encounter’ in his christology and trinitarian theology, comprehensively restructuring personalist categories by placing them on a new foundation.

The Doctrine of Appropriation as an Interpretative Framework for Karl Barth's Pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-290
Author(s):  
Adam McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Although Karl Barth is widely recognised as the initiator of the renewal of trinitarian theology in the twentieth century, his theology of the Church Dogmatics has been strongly criticised for its inadequate account of the work of the Holy Spirit. This author argues that the putative weakness of Barth's pneumatology should be reconsidered in light of his doctrine of appropriation. Barth employs the doctrine of appropriation as a hermeneutical procedure, within his doctrine of the Trinity, for bringing to speech the persons of the Trinity in their inseparable distinctiveness. It is argued that the doctrine of appropriation provides a sound interpretative framework for his pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics.

“Non potest non peccare”: Karl Barth on original sin and the bondage of the will

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Shao Kai Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will

Summary This article offers an exposition of Karl Barth’s actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notions of original sin and the bondage of the will in § 60 and § 65 of Church Dogmatics IV/1–2. Barth redefines human nature as a total determination of the human being (Sein/Dasein) “from above” by the covenantal history of reconciliation. Human nature as such remains totally intact in the historical state of sin. The human being, however, is also determined “from below” by the Adamic world-history of total corruption. With this dialectical construal of sin and human nature, Barth redefines original sin as the radically sinful activities and decisions that determine the confinement of human beings to the historical condition of fallenness. Barth also challenges the famous Augustinian account of the bondage of the will to which original sin gives rise, and uses the present active indicative to express his actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notion of the bondage: “non potest non peccare”.

On patience: thinking with and beyond Karl Barth

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-298
Author(s):  
Paul Dafydd Jones
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
In Christ

AbstractThis article has three goals: (1) to provide a careful analysis of Barth's treatment of divine patience in Church Dogmatics II/1; (2) to show how Barth's thinking about divine patience helps to illumine his account of human being and human activity in later portions of the Church Dogmatics; and (3) to offer a series of constructive suggestions which connect Barth's theology with liberationist visions of human existence.With respect to Church Dogmatics II/1, I argue that Barth breaks with a number of earlier thinkers and focuses attention on God's exercise of patience, treating it as a key dimension of God's creative and providential work. This exercise of patience means, specifically, that God accords creatures their own integrity and a capacity for free action, tempers God's punishment of sin and, in Christ, fulfils but does not temporally close the covenant. My analysis of divine patience in II/1 then serves as an interpretative key for reading later volumes of the Dogmatics. It sets in vivid relief Barth's belief that Christ's fulfilment of the covenant, achieved through Christ's life, suffering, death and resurrection, is the condition of possibility for humans being able to act with genuine integrity and consequence in the created realm. I propose, too, that Barth develops his thinking about patience by emphasising the ‘pressure’ of the patient God's empowering command – a command which is a constant summons, directed towards each and every human being, to live freely into God's future through acts of gratitude, obedience and responsibility, and to play some part in bringing creation to its glorious end. Finally, I explore the convergence between certain aspects of the Church Dogmatics and anti-essentialist construals of the self in contemporary theology. I aim to identify points of connection between Barth and thinkers like Marcella Althaus-Reid, and I voice support for a style of scholarship which elides the distinction between ‘systematic’ and ‘liberationist’ modes of inquiry.

Karl Barth on Divine Command: A Jewish Response

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-483
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
Martin Buber ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Divine Command ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Real Contact ◽  
Living Tradition ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
A Current

Usually one does not include Karl Barth in contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. Unlike his Protestant theological contemporaries, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, there in no evidence that during his long theological career Barth had any real contact with Jewish thinkers. The only contemporary Jewish thinker whom he engages, to my knowledge, is Martin Buber, but in his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, Buber is discussed almost en passent and with a rather hurried dismissal. Barth's relations with Judaism are seriously complicated, but one gets the impression from reading what he says about Judaism that he is doing typology, engaging a type already created in his mind largely by Paul and those who followed in his path. He does not seem to be dealing with Judaism as a living tradition, indeed a current rival religious option to Christianity. After all, how can one engage Judaism as a living tradition, let alone as a current rival, if one has no serious contact with living Jews during the most productive years of one's thought? For that reason it would seem an engagement of Barth's thought by a contemporary Jewish theologian could only be, at most, an arcane academic exercise having no real Jewish significance.

scholarly journals Menslike behoeftes as sistematies-teologiese kernbegrip

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 964-985
Author(s):  
CJ Pauw
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wolfhart Pannenberg ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation

Human needs is not part of the traditional themes of systematic theology or even of theological anthropology.  This article argues that human needs is a core concept in systematic theology even though it has not been an explicit theme of systematic theology. The concept of human needs is essentially related to the content of systematic theology. Any articulation of the doctrine of creation, covenant or salvation is underpinned by a view of what human needs are. This article shows that the question of human needs is normally related to systematic theology by referring to the task of systematic theology and the different modes of discourse found in which systematic theology gives expression to this task. This article also suggest a method by which an implicit concept of human needs may be discovered and engaged critically. This is demonstrated by analysis of two designs of theological anthropology: Karl Barth’ s second part of the third volume of his Church Dogmatics and the fundamental-theological anthropology of Wolfhart Pannenberg. 

Neediness: the anthropology of Karl Barth

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Dorman
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Human Need ◽  
Christian Witness ◽  
Constitutive Element

AbstractThe article argues that Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics presents human ‘neediness’ as the constitutive element of his theological anthropology. Since this element has had little notice in Barth scholarship, the article focuses on describing the consistent reiteration of this theme in theologically substantive locations throughout the Dogmatics. It begins with Barth's observation that the emergence of humanity on the sixth day discloses humans to be ‘the neediest of all creation’. Barth elaborates the dimensions of human neediness in his discussion of ‘the readiness of humanity for God’, propounding the human need for God as the precondition of knowledge of God that is in actuality undercut by the sin that denies any such neediness. Barth thus describes a potential ‘blessed neediness’ and an actual ‘wretched neediness’ that together define the glory and the tragedy of all that is human, and which inform not only Barth's epistemology and hamartiology, but also his accounts of christology, forgiveness, redemption, worship and Christian witness.

scholarly journals Looking Back at the Evolution of James Cone’s Theological Anthropology: A Brief Commentary

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 596
Author(s):  
Sekhmet Ra Em Kht Maat
Keyword(s):  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Swiss German

Reverend Dr. James Hal Cone has unquestionably been a key architect in defining Black liberation theology. Trained in the Western theological tradition at Garrett Theological Seminary, Cone became an expert on the theology of Twentieth-century Swiss-German theologian Karl Barth. Cone’s study of Barth led to his 1965 doctoral dissertation, “The Doctrine of Man in the Theology of Karl Barth,” where he critically examined Barth’s Epistle to the Romans and Church Dogmatics. His contemporaries and more recent African American theologians and religious scholars have questioned the extent to which Karl Barth’s ideas shaped Cone’s Black theology. The purpose of this brief commentary is to review the major ideas in “The Doctrine of Man” and Black Theology and Black Power, his first book, to explore which theological concepts Cone borrows from Barth, if any, and how Cone utilizes them within his articulation of a Black theological anthropology and Black liberation theology.

A Secondary Point of Reference in Barth's Anthropology

1963 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Direct Equation ◽  
Point Of Reference

In twenty centuries theological anthropology has hardly seen a more revolutionary method than that proposed by Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics 111.2 of founding anthropology on Christology. At the outset, however, Barth makes clear that ‘there can be no question of a direct equation of human nature as we know it in ourselves with the human nature of Jesus, and therefore of a simple deduction of anthropology from Christology’. That is, Barth intends that the method of theological anthropology avoid monism.

“Like Son, Like Father”

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
David MacLachlan
Keyword(s):  
Important Influence ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Markus Barth’s book Die Taufe: Ein Sakrament? had an evident and important influence on the development of his father Karl Barth’s theological understanding of the nature and practice of Christian baptism. This essay explores that influence, considers its scope and significance, and suggests in the course of so doing that the relationship between the elder and the younger Barth is a notable factor in what led to the provocative theology of baptism at which Karl Barth arrived in the late, fragmentary volume of the Church Dogmatics.

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