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Karl Barth And The Development Of Christian Doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

It seems impossible to conceive of theology without some notion of progress. The Christian theologian is related to at least some of those who have preceded him, and his justification for writing at all must be a belief that he can say something better than they, whether this is conceived as saying the same things more intelligibly and authoritatively, or saying something that has not been said before. Interest must then centre not only in whether a theologian believes development to be possible, but also and chiefly in his conception of the character of that development. There may be a model of some kind in mind, or possibly a number of models, more or less successfully integrated. Whatever they are, they will be aids to a thinker's understanding of his place in history, of his relation to those events that he takes to be significant for this place, and of the reasons for the significance of those events.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1972

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References

page 171 note 1 Anselm: Fides Qyaerens Intellectum. Anselm‘s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, translated by Robertson, Ian W. (London, 1960).Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 e.g., op. cit., p. 11, Church Dogmatics II/1, translated by T. H. L. Parker et al. (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 4.

page 171 note 3 Anselm, p. 32; cf. p. 31.

page 171 note 4 op. cit., p. 32.

page 172 note 1 CD. II/1, p. 263; cf. II/1, 339–83, 406–23; R. W. Jenson, God after God: The God of the Past and of the Future as Seen in the work of Karl Barth (Indianapolis and New York, 1969), pp. 95–113; and E. Jüngel, GottesSein ist im Werden (Tübingen, 1966).

page 172 note 2 Especially important is Jenson's argument (op. cit., pp. 168–75) that Earth's trinitarian formulation is directed towards the past, and that its goal in the Holy Spirit ‘remains an occasional assertion’ (p. 173).

page 172 note 3 CD. I/1, p. 15.

page 172 note 4 loc. cit.

page 172 note 5 loc. cit.

page 173 note 1 op. cit., p. 16.

page 173 note 2 op. cit., p. 43.

page 173 note 3 op. cit., p. 304f.

page 173 note 4 op. cit., p. 308f.

page 173 note 5 op. cit., p. 315.

page 173 note 6 op. cit., p. 86.

page 174 note 1 op. cit., p. 322f.

page 174 note 2 op. cit., p. 334.

page 174 note 3 loc. cit.

page 175 note 1 Theology of Hope, translated by Leitch, James W. (London, 1967), pp. 45ff.Google Scholar

page 175 note 2 P. 57f.

page 175 note 3 See, e.g., CD. I/1, 373ff, for a stress on concrete historicity.

page 175 note 4 Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, translated by Collins, T.et al. (London, 1964), p. 107.Google Scholar

page 175 note 5 CD. I/11, 538.

page 176 note 1 op. cit., pp. 108ff. On p. 109, for example, he says that tradition ‘revolves around, in fact gravitates towards, Sacred Scripture …’.

page 176 note 2 op. cit., p. 540.

page 176 note 3 op. cit., p. 541.

page 176 note 4 op. cit., p. 542.

page 176 note 5 op. cit., p. 545.

page 176 note 6 op. cit., p. 577.

page 177 note 1 op. cit., p. 115.

page 177 note 2 op. cit., p. 579.

page 177 note 3 op. cit., p. 544.

page 177 note 4 op. cit., p. 580.

page 177 note 5 op. cit., p. 614.

page 177 note 6 op. cit., p. 606.

page 178 note 1 cf. Jenson's, R. W. analysis of the primitive Christian confession, ‘Jesus is Lord’. ‘When this sentence is unpacked, it reveals a set of assertions about Jesus’ future acts. That Jesus is “kurios”, “Lord”, means, in the summary language of the Creed, that ‘he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead“’ (The Knowledge of Things Hoped For [New York, 1969], p. 148).Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 16.7, ‘If I do not go …’. It is theologically forbidden that they should remain where they are.

page 179 note 2 e.g. the missions to Samaria, 8.15–17, and to Gentiles, 10.45.

page 179 note 3 I Cor. 13.12. Cf. Barth‘s point that dogma is an ‘eschatological concept’.

page 179 note 4 cf. I Cor. 3.I2ff.