Barth and the divine perfections

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Sonderegger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
Radical Claim ◽  
Act And Being

AbstractColin Gunton advanced the radical claim that Christians have univocal knowledge of God. Just this, he said in Act and Being, was the fruit of Christ's ministry and passion. Now, was Gunton right to find this teaching in Karl Barth – or at least, as an implication of Barth's celebrated rejection of ‘hellenist metaphysics’? This article aims to answer this question by examining Gunton's own claim in Act and Being, followed by a closer inspection of Barth's analysis of the doctrine of analogy in a long excursus in Church Dogmatics II/1.Contrary to some readings of Barth, I find Barth to be remarkably well-informed about the sophisticated terms of contemporary Roman Catholic debate about analogy, including the work of G. Sohngen and E. Pryzwara. Barth's central objection to the doctrine of analogy in this section appears to be the doctrine's reckless division (in Barth's eyes) of the Being of God into a ‘bare’ God, the subject of natural knowledge, and the God of the Gospel, known in Jesus Christ. But such reckless abstraction cannot be laid at the feet of Roman theologians alone! Barth extensively examines, and finds wanting, J. A. Quenstedt's doctrine of analogy, and the knowledge of God it affords, all stripped, Barth charges, of the justifying grace of Jesus Christ. From these pieces, Barth builds his own ‘doctrine of similarity’, a complex and near-baroque account, which seeks to ground knowledge of God in the living act of his revelation and redemption of sinners. All this makes one tempted to say that Gunton must be wrong in his assessment either of univocal predication or of its roots in the theology of Karl Barth.But passages from the same volume of the Church Dogmatics make one second-guess that first conclusion. When Barth turns from his methodological sections in volume II/1 to the material depiction of the divine perfections, he appears to lay aside every hesitation and speak as directly, as plainly and, it seems, as ‘univocally’ as Gunton could ever desire. Some examples from the perfection of divine righteousness point to Barth's startling use of frank and direct human terms for God's own reality and his unembarrassed use of such terms to set out the very ‘heart of God’.Yet things are never quite what they seem in Barth. A brief comparison between Gunton's univocal predication and Barth's own use of christological predication reveals some fault-lines between the two, and an explanation, based on Barth's own doctrine of justification, is offered in its place.

God

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-226
Author(s):  
Katherine Sonderegger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
The One

Barth’s doctrine of God is revolutionary. It leaves behind many of the traditional elements of a doctrine of God—natural knowledge of God, comparative religious practice, and proofs—and puzzles over simplicity and immutability. In their place Barth installs a new maxim, that God demonstrates or ‘proves’ himself. The Bible is the record of that self-demonstration. The divine perfections emerge in dialectical pairs, each displaying the personal life of God as the ‘One who loves in freedom’. Language for God successfully names God when it speaks of Jesus Christ, the Holy One who exemplifies divine omnipotence, omniscience, grace, mercy, and patience. In this way, Barth carries out his programme of Christological concentration, even in the doctrine of God. This is a doctrine of God unlike any other, an unsettling and a glorious one.

Karl Barth’s Reception of Thomas Aquinas

2021 ◽  
pp. 467-482
Author(s):  
Kenneth Oakes
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Analogy Of Being ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Relationship

Four different pictures of Thomas Aquinas can be found in the works of Karl Barth: Thomas as representative of Roman Catholic theology; Thomas as forerunner to positions later adopted by the Reformers and the Reformed scholastics; Thomas as an ally in countering aspects of Roman Catholic theology that Barth deems problematic; and Thomas as a common doctor of the Church. Additionally, Barth agrees with Thomas on many issues regarding the Trinity, the doctrine of God, the relationship between God and the world, providence, and predestination, while he disagrees on with Thomas on issues related to the natural knowledge of God, the relationship between nature and grace, and the analogy of being. Barth’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ theology was influenced by Erik Peterson and Erich Przywara, and his main sources for understanding Thomas were the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae.

The Doctrine of Reconciliation: A Survey of Barth's Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/2

1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-85
Author(s):  
G. W. Bromiley
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
Present Part ◽  
The Common

IN the latest part-volume of the Church Dogmatics published in the autumn of 1955, Karl Barth has given us his second comprehensive survey of the doctrine of reconciliation. For the setting of this treatment within the whole, readers are referred to the synopsis of the first part-volume in a previous issue (Volume 8, Number 2, June 1955), or better still, to the English translation which is now available (cf. especially § 58, 4). Within this whole, the present part-volume deals with the common material under the general title of ‘Jesus Christ, the Servant as Lord’, and therefore from the standpoint of the kingly work of Christ. The volume consists of one long chapter (953 pages) within the Dogmatics, and is divided into five main sections. It is to be noted, incidentally, that in the rendering of Versöhnung in the main title of Volume IV the word ‘reconciliation’ has now been preferred to ‘atonement’, although the latter is often used where it agrees with the context.

Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth

1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Deegan
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Universal Rule

In this third part of volume III of his Dogmatics Barth sets forth the doctrine of divine providence as the objective and universal rule of God which establishes and encompasses but does not absorb the existence of the person or community which becomes the object of His preservation. Barth's steadfast aim has been to produce a theology dominated by its object, Jesus Christ. This part of the Dogmatics is no exception, for here he argues that the order of being and the order of knowledge start with the event of God's action in Christ. Hence he does not speak of a natural theology with an independent cosmological interest in the work of divine preservation, for he insists that Scripture is differently orientated. It does not witness simply to the highest being as first cause; it witnesses primarily to the Lord of history, the God of the Covenant. This means that the doctrine of providence does not become a Weltanschauung. What Barth says concerning this problem in C.D.III.3 should be read in conjunction with C.D.III.2, pp. 3ff. Because he affirms that the central concern of theology is the relation of God and man established in Jesus Christ he regards cosmology as a peripheral concern arid draws the line against attempts to integrate scientific views and theological interpretation into a comprehensive Weltanschauung. Yet he readily admits that the natural sciences which know their limits have their appropriate place in elucidating the nature of man against the background of creation.

Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV, 3: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 3

1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203
Author(s):  
G. W. Bromiley
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Length ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
The One

There is good hope that the present year will see the appearance of the English translation of IV, 3 of the Church Dogmatics, and with it the conclusion of the doctrinal treatment of the atonement1 and the publication of all the Dogmatik thus far available. Necessarily divided into two halves because of its great length, this third part is devoted to the prophetic work of Jesus Christ in reconciliation. It thus represents an original attempt on the part of the author to work out in detail a theme which has often been suggested in earlier theology, but which has never been given the treatment accorded to the priestly work on the one side or the kingly work on the other.

A Theology of Liberation in Barth's Church Dogmatics IV/3

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-176
Author(s):  
Jane A. Barter
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
John Webster ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Liberal Culture ◽  
The Ideal

In his Massey lectures, Charles Taylor offers an efficient critique of modernity's overarching concern with individual freedom: ‘In a flattened world, where the horizons of meaning become fainter, the ideal of self-determining freedom comes to exercise a more powerful attraction. It seems that significance can be conferred by choice, by making life an exercise in freedom, even when all other sources fail. Self-determining freedom is, in part, the default solution of the culture of authenticity, while at the same time it is its bane since it further intensifies anthropocentrism. But this… deeply subverts both the ideal of authenticity and the associated ethic of recognizing difference.’2 Similarly, for Karl Barth, the failure of liberalism is not simply its conceptual failure to represent God in aseity, but also its failure to provide a framework in which truly authentic human action could be imagined. As John Webster puts it: ‘Even at the furthest reaches of his protest against anthropocentric deduction of God to a function of human piety, consciousness or moral objects, Barth is attempting to safeguard not only the axiomatic divinity of God, but also the authenticity of the creature.’3 Liberal belief in the ostensive freedom of self-determining choice, unhampered by heteronomous authority, fails also to recognise the deep power of the implicit heteronomies of liberal culture. What is required, according to Barth, is a thoroughly theological exploration of human freedom: it is only within humanity's true horizon, which is the reconciling work of God through Jesus Christ, that true liberation can be experienced and pursued.

Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Chr. van Driel
Keyword(s):  
Internal Consistency ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Doctrine Of Election

Central to Barth's doctrine of election is the notion that Jesus Christ is the subject of election. This implies that Jesus Christ existed from all eternity. I discuss four possible interpretations of this proposition. I analyse these interpretations both in terms of their internal consistency and in terms of their consistency with Barth's overall proposal. Three of the four interpretations, defended by Emil Brunner, Cornelius Berkouwer, John Colwell and Bruce McCormack, I find wanting. With the fourth interpretation I lay my own cards on the table and argue that part of the problem lies in Barth's formulation itself. The context of Barth's saying that ‘Christ is the subject of election’ suggests that for Barth, Jesus Christ is not so much identical not with a subject, but with an act: the divine reaching out to that what is not God. This act establishes the act and object of election.

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