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.

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.

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.

Barth on Revelation

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. H. L. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Will ◽  
The University ◽  
Evangelical Theology ◽  
The Church

In 1938 and 1939 Karl Barth delivered the Gifford Lectures in the University of Aberdeen. According to the will of the founder, these lectures were established for the ‘promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing’ of the study of natural theology. But Barth was, as he made plain on receiving the invitation, ‘an avowed opponent of all natural theology’. Three years earlier he had fiercely attacked his former theological associate, Emil Brunner, on this same question. He had then said of natural theology: ‘It has to be rejected a limine—right at the outset. Only the theology and the church of the antichrist can profit from it. The Evangelical Church and Evangelical theology would only sicken and die of it.’ When therefore he was asked to give the Gifford Lectures he was in a quandary. The way in which he resolved the problem has usually been treated, half-humorously, as an ingenious piece of theological juggling. In fact, however, when we consider it in relation to his attitude to natural theology in his controversy with Brunner and to his treatment of it in Church Dogmatics II.I, on the knowledge of God, and indeed against the background of the whole of his life's work, we can see that in his solution of this difficulty there is simply the same attitude sharpened to a clear-cut issue. What he did was to jettison natural theology completely and give an exposition of its opposite, the theology of revelation.

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. 

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.

Freedom and Responsibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-184
Author(s):  
Thomas H. McCall ◽  
Keith D. Stanglin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

In Chapter 4, we survey how claims to knowledge of God were defended in the nineteenth-century Methodist context; we look both at the theological methods that were employed and how apologetic impulses functioned within those prolegomena. Turning to the doctrine of God, we trace some of the momentous changes that took place as Wesleyan theology wrestled with modern challenges in relation to its classical inheritance (especially in relation to classical doctrines of perfection, simplicity, aseity, immutability, and omniscience as well as Trinitarian theology). With regard to theological anthropology, we see how the major Methodist theologians wrestled not only with long-standing disputes (for example, the mind–body relation) but also with current debates (for example, race and ethnicity). We trace the Wesleyan debates (both internally, and against traditional Reformed theology as well as revisionism and modernism) over the doctrine of original sin.

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