“Not a Stone Left Standing”

Karl Barth ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-152
Author(s):  
Christiane Tietz
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Dialectical Theology

In 1920, it became clear to Barth that in his Epistle to the Romans he had taken for granted that he knew something of God, and he concluded that he needed to rewrite the entire work. He now stressed even more that there is no passage from human beings to God. Even when God is revealed, God does not enter this world. God is known in Jesus Christ as the unknown God. Human faith is the impossible possibility. This new version drew widespread attention, both critical and supportive, in the theological world. The 1923 controversy between Barth and Harnack was representative of the critical reactions. Barth began to clarify his Dialectical Theology in several lectures. For a few years, Barth worked with several other theologians, esp. Brunner, Bultmann, Gogarten, Thurneysen. This work gave Dialectical Theology new prominence and impact.

Vulner-ability: A Systematic Theological Approach to an Ambivalent Term

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-415
Author(s):  
Miriam Leidinger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Jon Sobrino ◽  
Guiding Questions

Abstract The term vulnerability is en vogue, both in theology and in mission studies. This contribution systematically analyses the concept and phenomenon of vulnerability and discusses its different aspects; namely materiality and embodiment, pain and suffering, and resilience and resistance. From a Christian theological point of view, these aspects of vulnerability resonate with key theological questions that lead to a closer look at the Christologies of Jürgen Moltmann, Jon Sobrino, and Graham Ward. The guiding questions are: How can we speak about the vulnerable human being in his or her relationship to Jesus Christ, the Son of God made flesh? And how is it possible vice versa to speak about the incarnated God in light of the vulnerability of all human beings? Finally, the argument culminates in a plea for a vulnerable theology in a wounded world.

Responsibility and the Moral Subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-150
Author(s):  
Gerald McKenny
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Taking Responsibility

For Barth, responsibility is the characteristic feature of the human being as the hearer of God’s command. In its address to human beings, God’s command constitutes them as subjects who are answerable to it. Jesus Christ is the one to whom the command of God is addressed and who answers it; as such, he is the responsible subject on behalf of and in the place of other human beings. Yet in taking responsibility for other human beings in this way, God also makes them responsible—for being in their conduct those for whom God has taken responsibility. Insofar as God has taken responsibility for our responsibility, Barth rejects the tendency of modern responsibility to presume that everything is up to us. Yet insofar as God also makes us responsible, and thereby constitutes us as subjects, Barth retains another key feature of modern responsibility, which is its urgency. While answerability or accountability is the key aspect of responsibility, Barth also leaves room for the imputability of actions to agents and the liability of persons for the effects of their actions. One problem with Barth’s account of responsibility is that his insistence that we are constituted as responsible from outside ourselves, by God’s command, he leaves unclear how it is truly we who are responsible. Another problem is that if we are made responsible by the responsibility Jesus Christ has taken for us, it appears that only Christians know themselves to be responsible.

Teaching the Faith in Early Christianity: Divine and Human Agency

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-164
Author(s):  
Peter Gemeinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The present paper investigates the relationship between divine and human agency in teaching the Christian faith. While Christian education actually was conveyed by human beings (apostles, teachers, catechists, bishops), many authors claimed that the one and only teacher of Christianity is Jesus Christ, referring to Matt 23:8-9. By examining texts from the 2nd to the 5th century, different configurations of divine and human teaching are identified and discussed. The paper thereby highlights a crucial tension in Early and Late Antique Christianity relating to the possibilities and limitations of communicating the faith.

scholarly journals Rowan Williams

2018 ◽  
pp. 504-524
Author(s):  
Mike Higton
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
God's Love ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Church

Rowan Williams’s ecclesiology is shaped by his account of the spiritual life. He examines the transformation of human beings’ relationships to one another, driven by their encounter with God’s utterly gracious love in Jesus Christ. The church is the community of forgiven people generated by Christ’s resurrection. It is animated by its constant exposure to God’s love in Christ in word and sacrament. It is held to that exposure by its doctrinal discipline. It is a community in which members go on learning from one another how to go more deeply into that exposure. For Williams, the church’s commitment to unity and its commitment to truth go together: truth cannot be discovered without holding together in unity to learn from one another; and proper ecclesial unity is unity in this search for truth.

Biblical Metaphors for Corrective Emotional Relationships in Group Work

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-162
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Greggo
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mutual Exchange ◽  
Interpersonal Support ◽  
Emotional Relationships

Groups offer multiple opportunities for corrective emotional relationships that promote growth, healing and spiritual formation. The benefits of mutual exchange and emotional nurturance found in interpersonal support reflect human beings as imago dei with intentional fulfillment being found in the community of Jesus Christ. The construct of a corrective emotional relationship will be introduced in terms of the value and dynamics for healing as well as for spiritual refreshment and formation. Drawing on biblical metaphors from the Gospel of John, therelational benefits of interpersonal support are placed within a Christian framework. Group approaches offer specific advantages as a helping modality in Christian settings.

Baptism “Into Christ Jesus” and the Question of Universalism in Paul

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
J. Ross Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Universal Salvation ◽  
The One

AbstractThis essay adopts Paul’s occasional theological reflections on the concrete social practice of baptism as a vantage point from which to investigate the question of universalism in the apostle’s thought, examining passages from 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, and Colossians. In these texts, Paul variously conceptualizes salvation as incorporation into “the one body of Christ”; “the seed of Abraham”; “the children of God”; or “the new humanity,” whose representative is Christ, the last Adam. Despite the different metaphors, it is clear in each case that it is the singular identity of the man Jesus Christ that is determinative for the collective identity of redeemed humanity; it is precisely—and only—with respect to union with him that diverse human beings become “one.” The essay concludes by considering briefly the implications of Paul’s christologically determined anthropology for the question of universal salvation and for the idea of the enduring election of Israel as God’s peculiar possession.

Vulnerable Church in a Vulnerable World? Towards an Ecclesiology of Vulnerability

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Koopman
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Triune God ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay argues that the faithfulness of the church in a world with so many vulnerabilities entails that she acknowledges her own vulnerability and frailty. This ecclesial vulnerability is based in the vulnerability of the triune God to whom she witnesses, as well as in the vulnerability of human beings. On the basis of this trinitarian and anthropological vulnerability, suggestions are made regarding the nature, attitude, and public calling of the church. As witnesses and disciples of Jesus Christ, the church has a threefold presence in public life; namely, to be vulnerable prophets, priests, and royals. A vulnerable church is a faithful church, and therefore, a relevant church.

Christology

2019 ◽  
pp. 149-167
Author(s):  
Christiane Tietz
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Community ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Church

Christology stands at the centre of Bonhoeffer’s theology because God has revealed Godself in Jesus Christ and made himself approachable, though not manageable, for human beings. For Christians today, the encounter with Christ takes place in the church-community. It is Christ as the mediator between God and humankind that places Christians at a distance from the world, allowing them to engage with it critically. To live as a Christian means to follow Christ, yet today this is qualified differently than in the times of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

Creation

2019 ◽  
pp. 178-195
Author(s):  
Matthew Puffer
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Limited Role ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation is rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator. Apart from Christ’s mediation human beings cannot perceive God’s creation, because our postlapsarian world manifests only a fallen creation in which good and evil are confused and intermixed. Whereas Bonhoeffer in his student years affirmed a limited role for the orders of creation, his subsequent writings on the theology of creation can be read as a response to and reaction against the orders of creation. Although human beings have no unmediated access to knowledge of God’s creation, and know the world as fallen creation only through Christ’s redemption, in Christ they are empowered by the Spirit, incorporated into Christ’s body the church, and made a new creation. Only in light of the hoped-for eschatological fulfilment of the new creation may Christian theology speak of the beginning of God’s ways as Creator.

The Spirit

2019 ◽  
pp. 293-308
Author(s):  
Wolf Krötke
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The One ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter presents Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It demonstrates the way in which Barth’s pneumatology is anchored in his doctrine of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit is understood as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the One whose essence is love. But Barth can also speak of the Holy Spirit in such a way that it seems as if the Holy Spirit is identical to the work of the risen Jesus Christ and his ‘prophetic’ work. The reception of the pneumatology of Karl Barth thus confronts the task of relating these dimensions of Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit’s distinct work is preserved. For Barth, this work consists in enabling human beings to respond in faith, with their human possibilities and their freedom, to God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ. In this faith, the Holy Spirit incorporates human beings into the community of Jesus Christ—the community participates in the reconciling work of God in order to bear witness to God’s work to human beings, all of whom have been elected to ‘partnership’ with God. Barth also understood the ‘solidarity’ of the community with, and the advocacy of the community for, the non-believing world to be a nota ecclesiae (mark of the church). Further, to live from the Holy Spirit, according to Barth, is only possible in praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

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