This book, the first of two volumes, seeks to challenge the prevailing view in the historiography of 20th century theology — that Karl Barth was a leading representative of a “neo-orthodoxy” which was dominant between 1930 and 1960. It lays the foundation for a revision through a genetic-historical interpretation of Barth’s theological development. It argues that the “turn” to a “neo-orthodox” form of theology that was believed to have occurred with the Church Dogmatics in 1931-32 never took place. Subsequent to his break with “liberalism” in 1915, Barth became and remained a critically realistic dialectical theologian.
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The Chalcedonian Definition of 451 never completely resolved one of the critical issues at the heart of Christianity: the unity of the 'person' of Christ. In this eagerly-awaited volume - the result of deep and sustained reflection - distinguished theologian Bruce Lindley McCormack examines the reasons for this philosophical and theological failure. His book serves as a critical history that traces modern attempts at resolution of this problem, from the nineteenth-century Lutheran emphasis on Kenoticism (or the 'self-emptying' of the Son in order to be receptive to the will of the Father) to post-Barthian efforts that evade the issue by collapsing the second person of the Trinity into the human Jesus - thereby rejecting altogether the logic of the classical 'two-natures' Christology. McCormack shows how New Testament Christologies both limit and authorize ontological reflection, and in so doing offers a distinctively Reformed version of Kenoticism. Proposing a new and bold divine ontology, with a convincing basis in Christology, he persuasively argues that the unity of the 'person' is in fact guaranteed by the Son's act of taking into his 'being' the lived existence of Jesus.
I would like to begin by expressing gratitude to Edwin van Driel for creating the conditions which make possible a genuine debate on the issues raised by my essay in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. I have, of course, long been aware of Paul Molnar's (shall we say?) rather vigorous rejection of the position I took in that essay on the question of the logical relation of election to the triunity of God in Barth's ‘mature’ theology – i.e. subsequent to publishing his revised doctrine of election in CD II/2. If I have kept silence this long, it has not been without good reason. I was unwilling to respond to Molnar for two reasons. First, in his criticisms of my views, Molnar failed to engage the one point which would have been decisive for launching a serious ‘debate’, i.e. he made no attempt to explain the meaning of Barth's thesis that Jesus Christ is the subject of election or to show how his own reading of Barth is not called into question by that thesis. He simply set it aside as (apparently) unworthy of discussion and chose instead to merely insist on his own reading. It should go without saying that no real ‘debate’ can take place when the evidence brought forth to support a new proposal is passed over in silence. Less important was the second reason.
Barth’s critique of Romans marked his first major effort to explain his new theology. He sought to establish an eschatologically conditioned theological realism which would overcome every attempt to ground theology in the human subject. He wanted to speak of a knowledge of God grounded in itself alone, place God’s reconciling activity in Christ beyond the reach of historical investigation, and faith beyond the reach of psychological investigation.
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