Conclusion: Barth’s Dreams

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-264
Author(s):  
S. Mark Heim
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Kingdom Of Heaven ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Conversation Partner

This concluding chapter to the collection of experiments with Karl Barth and comparative theology explores the two great moments in Barth’s relationship to religions: critique of all religion as idolatry and affirmation that God is free to act in and through religions without restraint. Heim leads with reflection on how his own theological work has been shaped both by interreligious engagement and Barth’s confessional theology. He points out the particular usefulness of Barth’s critique of religion in a time when much recent scholarship has highlighted the problems with the history and use of that term. In addition, Barth is a valuable conversation partner for other religions because of his fierce commitment to the particularity of divine revelation. Late in life, Barth affirmed that God may employ a variety of “parables of the kingdom of heaven,” which opens the possibility that other religious traditions may work in this way. Heim concludes with the suggestion that the “first act of Barth’s insistence on God’s free choice and promise to be present to us in Christ (coupled with recognition that the Christian religion deserves no presumption of that presence) could be balanced by a second act that affirmed God’s freedom to be present and active without restriction.”

Karl Barth and Comparative Theology

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Protestant Theologian ◽  
Conversation Partner

In a world in which interreligious engagement is both more dangerous and more imperative than ever, and in which the category of “religion” itself has come under increasing scrutiny, the discipline of comparative theology has reemerged as a fruitful strategy that enables one to avoid the most egregious problems of the category of “religion” and to foster encounter between different traditions with attention to particularity. At the same time, in the past few years, scholars of Karl Barth have begun to bring this major twentieth-century Protestant theologian into conversation with religious pluralism. This volume seeks to bring these two scholarly developments together. Featuring contributions from a variety of scholars including Francis Clooney, Mark Heim, Paul Knitter, Anantanand Rambachan, and Randi Rashkover, the volume builds on recent engagements with Barth in the area of theologies of religion and opens a new conversation between Barth’s theology and comparative theology. The opening essay summarizes the intra-Christian conversation about how Barth’s theology can helpfully inform theology of religious pluralism. The bulk of the volume that follows features comparative theological experiments, bringing Barth’s theology into conversation with theological claims from other religious traditions for the purpose of modeling deep learning across religious borders from a Barthian perspective. For each tradition addressed in this volume, two Barth-influenced theologians offer focused engagements of Barth with themes and figures from another religious tradition, with a response from a theologian from that tradition itself. Scant attention has been given to Barth as a conversation partner in the discipline of comparative theology, and we seek to open up new trajectories for comparative theology with this unlikely interlocutor.

scholarly journals Christianity as “True Religion” According to Karl Barth’s Theologia Religionum: An intercultural Conversation with Selected Asian Christian Theologians

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
Benno Van Den Toren
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Theology Of Religions ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Critical Conversation ◽  
Historical Nature ◽  
The Way

This article orchestrates an intercultural theological conversation between Karl Barth’s theology of religions and selected Asian Christian theologians. The latter rightly stress that Barth’s criticism of religions is mainly concerned with Christian religion, although it does allow for the recognition of “other true lights.” Yet, insufficient attention is paid to the fact that Barth considers Christianity in particular “the true religion.” In critical conversation with these Asian reflections, it becomes clear that we need to move beyond Barth because (1) his Christocentrism neglects God’s presence as Creator and Spirit in other religious traditions, (2) Barth’s actualism does not allow him to properly distinguish between the word of God in the Christian Scriptures and in the “other lights,” and (3) this actualism stands in the way of a full recognition of the historical nature of revelation and salvation in Christ.

Teaching Interreligious Encounters

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religiously Affiliated ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Multidisciplinary Group ◽  
And Migration

Teaching Interreligious Encounters is a volume of essays that explores various issues related to practical and theoretical facets of teaching across multiple religious traditions, including comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism. This volume brings together an international, multireligious, and multidisciplinary group of scholars who address teaching interreligious encounters in a variety of teaching contexts: undergraduate and graduate, divinity schools and seminaries, secular and religiously affiliated, and traditional and online settings. This volume will be a unique and useful resource for those who encounter religious pluralism in their courses, a topic of pressing importance in our age of globalization and migration.

Revelation, Tradition, and Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Human History ◽  
Present Experience ◽  
Lower Case ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
In Christ

Tradition as process and as object needs to be understood in the light of divine revelation and the inspired Scripture. Primarily interpersonal or relational and secondarily propositional or cognitive, revelation involves a past fullness in Christ, a present experience, and a future, definitive consummation. As process, tradition is pre-given and always part of us, collective, richly polymorphous, sacramentally communicated through words and actions, often in tension with present experience, open to change or reform, and ending only with the close of human history. At the heart of innumerable traditions (plural and in lower case) is the Tradition (singular and in upper case), the risen Christ made present through the Holy Spirit, not an object we possess but a reality by which we are possessed. While they frequently overlap, ‘culture’ differs from tradition by not being so clearly an ‘action word’.

Karl Barth on Religion: A Study for Christians in Mission

1978 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-461
Author(s):  
Carl F. Starkloff
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Positive Input

Many feel Karl Barth has had his day, Father Starkloff disagrees. He feels a careful study of Barth's theory of religion, within the context of the search for “cultural sensitivity,” can be very rewarding. For it is Barth who reminds us that the central driving force of man's religious life is self-affirmation and self-insurance. Although a solid grasp of the phenomenology of religion is “essential to the training of all missionaries in order to overcome ‘adversaries' and for its positive input into the spiritual life,” the basic issue remains unchanged — the essence of God's unique and once-for-all disclosure and giving of himself to man in Christ.

scholarly journals Japanese Concepts of Angels: Analyzing Depictions of Celestial Beings in the shōjo Manga Kamikaze Kaitō Jeanne

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunja Sharbat Dar
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Shojo Manga ◽  
Insight Into

White wings, long hair, 'pure' faces: the appearance of angels frequently follows similar aesthetics connected to Christian imagery. Angels and Christian religion also are popular themes in manga, Japanese comics, often intermingled with Buddhist or Shinto notions. Since imagery in popular culture resonates and shapes vernacular and cultural perspectives, manga like Kamikaze Kaitō Jeanne (KKJ) provide an important insight into the conceptualization of angels in Japan. This article therefore analyzes the contrary role of angels in KKJ as the Other, the mysterious, serene one, while simultaneously angels are depicted as part of the circle of life every creature undergoes in Buddhist cosmology. Based on a visual hermeneutic approach, this article demonstrates how the intermix of both visual and religious traditions in Japan shape the depiction of angels in Japanese popcultural media.

What does it mean to call Karl Barth a ‘christocentric’ theologian?

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Cortez
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
In Christ

Karl Barth's interpreters often characterize him as a ‘christocentric’ theologian. This term, however, is subject to a variety of interpretations, ranging from the totalitarian and isolationist critiques of the ‘christomonist’ objection to the indeterminate and decentred approaches offered by various postmodern readings. The disparity between these two approaches suggests a level of ambiguity in the term that hinders its usefulness unless carefully qualified. Indeed, ‘centric’ terminology itself remains rather ambiguous until the substantive formal and material considerations that lie behind any given form of centricity are addressed. This article proposes to alleviate the ambiguity that has thus clouded the use of ‘christocentric’ as a description of Barth's theology by offering five formal and material qualifications; Barth's christocentricity must be understood in terms of (1) a veiling and unveiling of knowledge in Christ, (2) a methodological orientation, (3) a particular christology, (4) a trinitarian focus and (5) an affirmation of creaturely reality. Using these criteria, the article also argues that both the christomonistic and postmodern interpretations break down at certain points because they fail to appreciate fully these qualifications and thus the particular nature of Barth's christocentrism.

Hellenistic Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-197
Author(s):  
Christelle Fischer-Bovet
Keyword(s):  
Persian Empire ◽  
Monetary Policies ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Recent Scholarship

The incessant rivalries between the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid empires, the two largest empires issued from Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, generated an expansion and a growing complexity of their administration. Moving beyond past colonial approaches, recent scholarship points to their sustainability, as they were among the longer lasting empires in the eastern Ancient Mediterranean. Their institutions proved resilient, internal decay and revolts leading at times to reconstruction under the same dynasty. The capacity of these empires for war-making and state-making are compared, as well as their military and economic goals, including their different monetary policies. These empires were able to penetrate many aspects of their multicultural societies through their integration of segments of the local elites into their state machinery, which was facilitated by the central ideological figure of their kings, who supported and infiltrated local religious traditions, though perhaps less in the Seleucid case.

How to Do Comparative Theology

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Spiritual But Not Religious ◽  
Younger Generation

How To Do Comparative Theology contributes to the maturation of method in the field of comparative theological studies, learning across religious borders, by bringing together essays drawing on different Christian traditions of learning, Judaism and Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the wisdom of senior scholars, and also insights from a younger generation of scholars who have studied theology and religion in new ways, and are more attuned to the language of the “spiritual but not religious.” The essays in this volume show great diversity in method, and also—over and again and from many angles—coherence in intent, a commitment to one learning from the other, and a confidence that one’s home tradition benefits from fair and unhampered learning from other and very different spiritual and religious traditions. It therefore shows the diversity and coherence of comparative theology as an emerging discipline today.

Sin and Evil

2019 ◽  
pp. 353-372
Author(s):  
Günter Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Devil

This chapter reconstructs the context and argument of Karl Barth’s innovative account of human sin and evil. For a proper understanding of the shifts in Barth’s treatment of these core themes, some ‘default positions’ are briefly sketched. The chapter next describes the implications that attend a transference of the doctrine of sin from anthropology to Christology. This shift is not only epistemic, changing the basis on which sin is recognized and understood. It is also a significant conceptual move, with sin described as a specific posture towards the grace of God, manifest in Christ. The chapter also shows how Karl Barth resists the temptation to reduce the existence of evil to a manageable deficiency of creation, while avoiding any dramatization of the experience of evil. Barth construes evil (nothingness, das Nichtige) in light of God’s creation as an election, with nothingness being that which is rejected in the divine act of creation. Rejecting a personification of evil (i.e., the devil), Barth nonetheless emphasizes the agency of evil as that against which the sovereign God battles.

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