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Barth backwards: reading the Church Dogmatics ‘from the end’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2018

Rob McDonald
Rob McDonald*
Affiliation:
Ridley Hall, Cambridge CB3 9HGrwm40@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article proposes a way of reading Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics backwards or ‘from the end’. Employing this method to explore The Doctrine of God and The Doctrine of the Word of God highlights two aspects of Barth's theology. The first is the importance of communion to Barth's account of the immanence and economy of God, especially in his understanding of God as the ‘Lord of Glory’. The second is Barth's careful balancing of christology and pneumatology across the first two volumes of the Dogmatics through the use of a chiastic structure that underpins his construal of divine election and his account of divine revelation.

Keywords

Karl BarthChurch DogmaticselectionHoly Spiritrevelation
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 379 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD), ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., 13 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75)Google Scholar; Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith, ed. McIntosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928)Google Scholar.

2 Jüngel, Eberhard, God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Belief of God in the Theology of Karl Barth, tr. Webster, John (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001)Google Scholar.

3 Wingren, Gustaf, Theology in Conflict: Nygren, Barth, Bultmann, tr. Whalstrom, Eric, (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1958)Google Scholar. Chapter 6 contains Wingren's critique of Barth's understanding of revelation.

4 Colin Gunton's debt to Jüngel can be discerned in Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (London: SCM Press, 2001 [1978]) while Rowan Williams’ appropriation of Wingren's critique can be found in his ‘Barth on the Triune God’, in Sykes, S. W. (ed.), Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Methods (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 147–93Google Scholar.

5 Williams, Rowan, ‘Word and Spirit’, in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 107–8Google Scholar.

6 For example, §12 ‘God the Holy Spirit’ is not only the conclusion to Barth's introductions to the three divine persons, it establishes a new perspective from which the reader is invited to review and reconfigure themes that have already been presented in the discussion of the Father and the Son. It is an ending that turns the reader back to the beginning. See CD I/1, pp. 448–89.

7 ‘. . . it cannot be denied that a reversal of the order is intrinsically possible. Indeed, once the correction [that Barth is proposing to the way the dogmatic tradition has approached the doctrine of election] has been made, it might even be advisable.’ CD II/2, p. 309.

8 CD II/1, p. 324.

9 CD IV/3.1, pp. 7–8.

10 CD II/2, p. 780.

11 Ibid.

12 §35 ‘The Election of the Individual’, CD II/2, pp. 306–506.

13 CD II/2, p. 321.

14 CD II/2, p. 306.

15 CD II/2, pp. 321–2.

16 CD II/2, p. 457–8.

17 CD II/2, p. 458.

18 Ibid.

19 §35.3 ‘The Determination of the Elect’, CD II/2, pp. 410–49.

20 CD II/2, p. 426.

21 CD II/2, p. 411.

22 Ibid.

23 CD II/2, p. 414.

24 Ibid.

25 §31.3 ‘The Eternity and the Glory of God’, CD II/1, pp. 608–77.

26 CD II/1, p. 641.

27 CD II/1, p. 670.

28 CD II/2, p. 411.

29 ‘The Knowledge of God’, CD II/1, pp. 3–254.

30 CD II/1, p. 253.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 CD II/1, p. 157.

34 CD I/1, 458.

35 Ibid., citing Rom 8:15.

36 CD II/2, p. 416.

37 CD II/2, pp. 348–9.

38 CD II/2, pp. 416–17.

39 CD II/2, p. 410.

40 When speaking of the Holy Spirit as God in us, with us and through us, Barth draws on the New Testament images of the Spirit as first-fruits, paraclete and tongues of fire respectively. See CD I/1, pp. 453–5.

41 CD II/2, p. 410 (emphasis added).

42 Augustine, De Trinitate, tr. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), 10.1.1, p. 287.

43 Barth, Karl, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at Göttingen, Winter Semester of 1923/24, tr. Bromiley, G. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), p. 278Google Scholar.