Karl Barth

Reading Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord is a very great pleasure. His carefully argued and measured theology draws on the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas in original and fruitful ways. As a lover of the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, I must confess that my enjoyment was occasionally tempered with suffering—but, shall we say, only in the lower parts of my soul.
    Among the many things I appreciate in this book is Fr. White’s love of patristic and medieval sources. Following his guide, St. Thomas Aquinas, he combines precision with breadth of knowledge and depth of thought. Further, like St. Thomas’s generous reading of manifold sources, Fr. White makes frequent irenic gestures. I am thinking in particular of the emphasis on the filial mode of Christ’s obedience throughout, plus the gentle reading of Barth’s treatment of obedience and the end of chapter 8 on the death of Christ.
He and I share many points of agreement, almost too many to mention: the enduring importance of Chalcedonian Christological metaphysics; a suspicion of liberal historicism; and an opposition to theological anachronisms, in which the Person of Christ is interpreted according to contemporary mores rather than through revelation. I will expand on two areas of particular agreement (on analogy and on the Son’s obedience), before raising a question concerning the Beatific Vision, and then recording some criticisms regarding soteriology (specifically, regarding Christ’s abandonment and descent).

In this essay the integralist tendency in theological anthropology underlying the universalist tendency in eschatology is explored. Hence, there are certain eschatological implications to one's position on the question of the natural desire to see God. I begin by analyzing the nature-grace relationship in Hans Urs von Balthasar, a proponent of "subjunctive universalism," and proceed to propose Bernard Lonergan's tertia via between integralism and dualism as a more sophisticated and nuanced way forward. Finally, I pair Lonergan's position on the question with Jacques Maritain's in order to clarify the eschatological possibilities that follow most coherently from such an understanding of the nature-grace relationship.Secularization and the Entweltlichung of the Church

Although the long-standing debate about the meaning of hilastērion in Rom. 3.25 has led to no consensus, readings are nearly always either (1) metaphorical (hilastērion as place of atonement/expiation) or (2) metonymic (hilastērion as a means of atonement/ expiation). However, in many Second Temple Jewish texts, the word refers to a place of divine revelation. Proposing a fresh semantic typology of the word’s usage, this article argues that there is no unambiguous metonymic usage of the word, and that references to atonement in Lev. 16 are secondary to the revelatory function of the 'mercy seat'. Attending to overlooked intertextual complexities, it suggests that the hilastērion was the site where God promised to reveal the definitive interpretation of his law. The revelatory function of the hilastērion possesses prima facie plausibility as a reading of Rom. 3.21-26, which is driven by the theme of God's self-revelation in Jesus.

"Indeed the mystery of Christ runs the risk of being disbelieved precisely because it is so incredibly wonderful."-- Cyril, the Pillar of Faith

The concept and doctrine of kenosis as it was expounded in the writings of Origen, Athanasius and Cyril in Alexandria, as with the early Desert Fathers. It was later included in a commentary by Gregory of Nyssa, and Hilary of Poitiers. Maximus the Confessor, a student of Origen calls it "an eternal movement of love." The kenosis of Christ was thus depicted in terms of these Trinitarian theologians.

This kenotic action whereby the gift of God was understood as the operation of love within the Trinity, the abandoning of one to the other; and salvation issued from a participation within this intra-Trinitarian procession made possible through the incarnation of Christ, the revelation of the true image of God the Father, revealed by all. We are deified and redeemed through the economy of love, distinctive nature of which is to give in a continuing act of kenosis.

Origen, De Princip., 1.II.8
But since He is called by the apostle not only the brightness of His glory, but also the express figure of His person or subsistence, it does not seem idle to inquire how there can be said to be another figure of that person besides the person of God Himself, whatever be the meaning of person and subsistence. Consider, then, whether the Son of God, seeing He is His Word and Wisdom, and alone knows the Father, and reveals Him to whom He will (to those who are capable of receiving His word and wisdom), may not, in regard of this very point of making God to be understood and acknowledg- ed, be called the figure of His person and subsistence; that is, when that Wisdom, which desires to make known to others the means by which God is acknowledged and understood by them, describes Himself first of all.

It may by so doing be called the express figure of the person of God. In order, however, to arrive at a fuller understanding of the manner in which the Savior is the figure of the person or subsistence of God, let us take an instance, which, although it does not describe the subject of which we are treating either fully or appropriately, may never-theless be seen to be employed for this purpose only, to show that the Son of God, who was in the form of God, divesting Himself (of His glory), makes it His object, by this very divesting of Himself, to demonstrate to us the fullness of His deity. For instance, suppose that there were a statue of so enormous a size as to fill the whole world, which on that account could be seen by no one; and that another statue were formed altogether resembling it in the shape of the limbs.

And in the features of the countenance, and in form and material, but without the same immensity of size, so that those who were unable to behold the one of enormous proportions, should, on seeing the latter, acknowledge that they had seen the former, because it preserved all the features of its limbs and countenance, and even the very form and material, so closely, as to be altogether not distinguishable from it; by some such similitude, the Son of God, divesting Himself of His equality with the Father. Showing to us the way to the knowledge of Him, is made the express image of His person: so that we, who were unable to look upon the glory of that marvelous light when placed in the greatness of His Godhead.

May, by His being revealed to us in brightness, has the means of beholding the divine light by looking upon the brightness. This comparison, of course, of statues, as belonging to material things, is employed for no other purpose than to show that the Son of God, though placed in the very insignificant form of a human body, in consequence of the resemblance of His works and power to the Father, showed that there was in Him an immense and invisible greatness, inasmuch as He said to His disciples, "He who sees Me, sees the Father also;" and, "I and the Father are one." And to these belong also the similar expression, "The Father is in Me, and I in the Father." 

Athanasius, God became Man
The philosophers of Athanasius’ time viewed God as being a static entity who by His very nature could not change nor experience suffering. Athanasius argues for Christ as the incarnate Logos through tackling of the Platonic notions of God where the attributes of immutability and impassibility are paramount.  In order to argue for the divinity of Christ, he had to have a strong defense against these notions. Athanasius asserts that the incarnation of Christ is a physical indwelling of the divine being of Christ in the body of Jesus and not an individual that only shows up that way.

Athanasius indicates that there is a purposeful lived experience in the Logos coming into humanity since humanity has forgotten who God is, accordingly every work of Jesus during his earthly ministry was acted to bring humanity into a revelation of the providence of God. Human race has made created things into objects of monolateral idolatrous  worship, through enchanted irrationality, that could not recognize God. Christ being the visible icon of the invisible God points the Father in His works. 

Athanasius confirms that although the Word dwells fully in Jesus human body and did have some acquired human limitations, none of which has reduced His divine person. Athanasius uses the notion of hunger to portray this. He declares that although Jesus Christ got hungry during His mundane life, He did not abstain from it because Christ being God would not be defeated by death through hunger. Similarly, theologians portray that Christ would be subdued by sickness as evidently confirmed by His miracles, demonstrating  that Christ divine power over all ills.

It is fair to conclude that His divine nature protected Him from being susceptible to sickness. It is evident that Athanasius attempts to be confirm the nature of any  limitations the Logos allows Himself to experience for the sake of human redemption, “Any physical weakness experienced by Jesus must be voluntarily assumed by the Word himself and not imposed upon Him against his own will." Athanasius asserts that if Christ experienced suffering for whatever reason, it is because He has allowed Himself to do so and not because it occurred for reasons outside of His control.

Those above notions express Athanasius elaboration on Kenosis in  as pouring Himself out, explained to Pagan philosophers. C.S. Lewis wrote, "When I first opened his "De Incarnatione verbi Dei," I soon discovered by a very simple test that I was reading a masterpiece. . . only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity. Every page I read confirmed this impression. His approach to the Miracles is badly needed today, for it is the final answer to those who object to them as arbitrary and violations of the laws of nature 

Cyril's Theology of the Divine Kenosis, by Paul Gavrilyuk
Having briefly surveyed various inadequate approaches to the Nestorian controversy, the author shows that the protection of the unqualified divine impassibility from being compromised by any involvement in suffering was at the heart of Theodore’s and and Nestorius’ christology. Nestorians charged Cyril with being an advocate of theopatheia. In response, Cyril developed a doctrine of God’s appropriation of human suffering and insisted upon the divine self-emptying in the incarnation.

Kenotic Economy, Balthasar to Barth 
It is this abandonment in love which characterises kenosis that Balthasar's theology, as its economy, both preserve the condition for the possibility of ego emptying theology in its core, that "there is only one way to approach the Trinitarian life in God: manifested in divine perichoresis as God's kenosis in the theology of the covenant — and thence in the theology of the Cross — feeling our way back into the eternal mystery. 

'This primary kenosis makes possible all other kenotic movement of God into the world; being simply its consequences. Here comes Karl Barth's understanding of kenosis, God's freedom to love is a self-giving not a giving up. The doctrine of kenosis outlines, then, the giving of the gift of life; a giving that cannot be given if the giving is not part of an economy that includes reception.

We owe to Karl Barth's masterful treatment of the doctrine of reconciliation in the fourth volume of the Church Dogmatics a sketch that is at once beautifully clear and remarkably comprehensive. It is not without shortcomings, however. This paper contains in seminal form some of the ideas developed further (and somewhat differently) in Ascension Theology and Theological Negotiations.

This was a research paper for a course entitled Feminist and Multicultural Theologies. I unpack what gender complementarianism is, examine its history, and compare it to how Scripture and earlier Christian Tradition understood gender. This allows me to establish that gender complementarianism is a recent innovation in secular and Christian thinking about gender, and that it can be described as a "trajectory" from Scripture and Tradition on gender, influenced by social, ideological, and intellectual developments in secular societies. I then pursue a critique of gender complementarianism, arguing that it is an "unsatisfactory trajectory" because it has troubling implications for orthodox theology, is not borne out by empirical experience and observation, and has harmful effects on human beings and societies and on ethical development.

This work is concerned with some basic problems which historical criticism poses to biblical interpretation. The first chapter deals with historical criticism in relation to problems of the text’s historical distance and contemporary significance. Certain key figures from the field of philosophical hermeneutics are briefly introduced (Schleiermacher, Gadamer, Hirsch, Ricoeur), but attention is also paid to the ways how historical criticism was actually practiced (Wellhausen, Mowinckel). It is maintained that historical criticism is a tool in interpretation and does not impede possible appropriation of the text by those who read it with deep affection.

The second chapter faces historical criticism as a theological problem, which has become most apparent in the inerrantist milieu and which was more or less successfully answered by canonical approaches. A special attention is given to the canonical approach of Brevard Childs, which is understood against the backdrop of Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God and Frei’s view of biblical narratives. A special attention is given to distinction between approaches of Brevard Childs and James Sanders. It is maintained that Sanders’ canonical criticism provides better interpretive platform, because it wants to address the needs of contemporary interpretive communities through a self-aware historical critical enterprise.

The third chapter takes up the problem of violence in the book of Joshua and the problem of theological meaning of the exodus story. Biblical theological insights of James Sanders, James Barr, and Walter Brueggemann are applied. An eye is kept also on Pixley-Levenson debate and it is maintained that traditions of the exodus and conquest must be understood together as literary devices which invite communities of faith to freedom. As a result of the present research, historical criticism is presented as a hermeneutical tool which can help to rescue text’s significance for the contemporary communities of believers.

In this article, I reconsider the relation between revelation and prophetic political witness by means of a critical correlation between George Hunsinger's retrieval of Karl Barth's "Chalcedonian imagination" and the defense of verbal testimony (śabda) by the contemporary Hindu theologian Anantanand Rambachan. A high, Word-centered political theology offers a serious challenge to comparative theologies that decenter revelation or render it subservient to liberative praxis. It may also, however, be read to open the possibility for interreligious collaboration with Hindus and others who, like Rambachan, similarly ground political action in the continual re-apprehension of scriptural testimony in the historical present.

O presente artigo trabalha a questão do fenômeno religioso no início do século XX mostrando sua realidade e apontando caminhos para o dado fenômeno nos dias atuais. O século XX, logo em seu início, levantou questionamentos no campo antropológico devido a fatos, entre eles a Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918), que modificaram a humanidade como um todo. O fenômeno religioso, nesse aspecto, também sofreu questionamentos, pois uma realidade essencialmente cristã não conseguiu livrar o continente europeu do caos. Karl Barth (1886-1968), teólogo alemão, foi um daqueles que ajudou a pensar a questão religiosa neste período histórico, possibilitando que uma de suas obras, Carta aos romanos (1918), abordasse aspectos não somente religiosos, como também culturais, políticos e sociais. A manifestação religiosa do homem aparece como característica essencial e, contando com a graça divina, o reestabelecimento da ordem e da ligação entre criatura e criador é novamente possível. A filosofia também oferece contribuições para esta análise: Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) estrutura uma preleção, “Introdução à Fenomenologia da Religião”, na qual lança mão do conceito experiência fática da vida. Tudo isso contribui para a autenticidade do fenômeno religioso e para justificar a existência humana, mesmo porque é parte integrante dela.

In the most wide-ranging history of phenomenology since Herbert Spiegelberg’s The Phenomenological Movement over fifty years ago, Baring uncovers a new and unexpected force―Catholic intellectuals―behind the growth of phenomenology in the early twentieth century, and makes the case for the movement’s catalytic intellectual and social impact.

Of all modern schools of thought, phenomenology has the strongest claim to the mantle of “continental” philosophy. In the first half of the twentieth century, phenomenology expanded from a few German towns into a movement spanning Europe. Edward Baring shows that credit for this prodigious growth goes to a surprising group of early enthusiasts: Catholic intellectuals. Placing phenomenology in historical context, Baring reveals the enduring influence of Catholicism in twentieth-century intellectual thought.

Converts to the Real argues that Catholic scholars allied with phenomenology because they thought it mapped a path out of modern idealism―which they associated with Protestantism and secularization―and back to Catholic metaphysics. Seeing in this unfulfilled promise a bridge to Europe’s secular academy, Catholics set to work extending phenomenology’s reach, writing many of the first phenomenological publications in languages other than German and organizing the first international conferences on phenomenology. The Church even helped rescue Edmund Husserl’s papers from Nazi Germany in 1938. But phenomenology proved to be an unreliable ally, and in debates over its meaning and development, Catholic intellectuals contemplated the ways it might threaten the faith. As a result, Catholics showed that phenomenology could be useful for secular projects, and encouraged its adoption by the philosophical establishment in countries across Europe and beyond.

Baring traces the resonances of these Catholic debates in postwar Europe. From existentialism, through the phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to the speculative realism of the present, European thought bears the mark of Catholicism, the original continental philosophy.

Christians have long understood grace both as a declaration of acceptance and as a power that transforms. This article illumines two theses while investigating the relationship between these understandings of grace in Luther, Calvin, and Barth's development of the law/gospel dialectic and the doctrines of justification and sanctification. First, though each theologian makes use of both understandings of grace, each also tends to emphasize one over the other. The unity and tension within and between these perspectives help to show that while both pictures are of the greatest importance for each other and cannot be separated, they also exist in tension, as long as they are worked out in the lives of sinners. Second, the author claims that the positions of Luther and Barth are more alike than is generally recognized.

Any theory of the atonement is fundamentally shaped by one's view of the identity of Christ. Depending on how one thinks of his person and nature will determine how one thinks of the cross. In this essay, I will explain the person of Christ and how that shapes the event of the atonement.

From youth to retirement and from Romans to Final Testimonies, Karl Barth's biography and writings bear witness both to an uncommon interest in war and to war's considerable influence upon his theological development. This chapter considers the arguments of CD III/4 after necessarily brief observations regarding a selection of Barth's extensive earlier writings on war. Although far from exhaustive, the chapter survey aims to contextualize the critical role that war plays in shaping Barth's practical theology of peace. What disturbed Barth most in the early days of World War I was "how God's name is now bandied around and drawn into the sinful, impassioned activity of humankind, as if God were one of the old warrior gods to whom our heathen ancestors appealed." The two decades between world wars brought significant professional transitions for Barth. Barth's theology calls not for winning but for witness.

Der am Institut für Evangelische Theologie der Universität Osnabrück lehrende Systematiker Gregor Etzelmüller (E.) legt eine theologische Anthropologie vor, die ihren interdisziplinären Sitz im Leben im Heidelberger Marsilius-Projekt "Verkörperung als Paradigma einer evolutionären Kulturanthropologie" hat.

Demythologisering en existentialistische interpretatie van het Nieuwe Testament De relevantie van de theologie van Rudolf Bultmann voor vandaag door Marcel van der Bolt-Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was een van de meest invloedrijke nieuwtestamentici van de twintigste eeuw. Zijn hermeneutiek van het Nieuwe Testament is van grote betekenis geweest voor de systematische theologie. Bultmann is met name bekend geworden om zijn theorie van demythologisering. Hiermee wilde hij het evangelie toegankelijk maken voor de moderne mens en een antwoord geven op de vraag naar de zin van de menselijke existentie. Voor Bultmann betekende dit afscheid nemen van de historiciteit van eeuwenoude waarheden. Is zijn theologie daarom per definitie irrelevant voor diegene die daar juist grote waarde aan hechten? Of moeten we dieper kijken en brengt zijn theologie ook inzichten naar voren die ons beeld van het evangelie juist zouden kunnen verruimen?

Theologians seeking to respond to the ecological crisis seldom turn to the theology of Karl Barth as a resource. In fact, some suggest that his doctrine of God is too monarchical and leads to unnecessary hierarchies between God and humans, or between humans and the rest of nature. This article counters this trend and begins a dialogue with Barth, especially on the place of non-human nature in his thought. While agreeing with the substance of Barth's theology, it is argued a number of critical additions and revisions are appropriate, especially concerning his doctrine of election. The article first briefly outlines Barth's doctrine of election and then, second, examines various New Testament passages on election and non-human nature. This second section will examine the prologue of John's Gospel, Colossians 1:15-20 and Romans 8:18-23. As key texts in Barth's exposition, it will be noted how he passes over important connections between election and nature found in them. Guided by the green exegesis of Richard Bauckham, it will be argued that nature is not merely the stage for the drama between God and humanity but that it is also an object of God's election and thereby participates in reconciliation and redemption. The third part of the article suggests various points of commensurability, correction and addition to Barth's theology arising from the biblical material examined. This includes points concerning theological epistemology, the atonement, anthropology and the theology of nature. For example, Romans 8 suggests that creation groans in anticipation of redemption. Barth's view of the cross, especially the Son's taking up of human suffering, is extended to suggest that the cross is God's way of identifying with the suffering of nature and its anticipation of redemption, and not just human sin and salvation. The most important revision, however, is to be made to Barth's doctrine of election. It may be summarised as follows: in Jesus Christ, God elects the Christian community and individuals for salvation within the community of creation. The article concludes by suggesting areas of dialogue with other types of ecotheology, especially ecofeminist forms.

Prezentăm în textul de față câteva aspecte ale antropologiei teologului protestant Karl Barth (1886-1968), pe care le-am considerat a fi mai importante. Antropologia lui Barth trebuie pusă în legătură cu gândirea sa teologică, o gândire amplă și complexă, formată în cadrul teologiei protestante a sec. al XIX-lea și al XX-lea. Totodată, ar trebui amintit, de la bun început, faptul că antropologia sa este caracterizată, după părerea noastră, de o lipsă a cunoașterii temeinice a gândirii patristice a primelor veacuri creștine, în special cea a Părinților Răsăriteni, precum și de o lipsă a cunoașterii vieții și spiritualității Bisericii Răsăritului, care a formulat și păstrat cu sfințenie, de-a lungul veacurilor, învățătura creștină referitoare la persoana umană.

A few years ago, WWJD was all the rage in Christian circles. What would Jesus do? was the question, so I asked the follow-up - About what? What would be so important for Jesus to do today?

Of course, everyone has an idea - that's the whole point of doing a christology (making Jesus our contemporary to justify our behaviors as if Jesus were offering commentary on our world today). It almost sound silly to put it that way, but that's what theology is - silly sometimes.

And everyone serious has/had an opinion about what Jesus would do today and about what - including H. Richard Niebuhr and Karl Barth to Albert Schweitzer and Friedrich Schleiermacher (to name a few classic heavyweights). And I had to name them because this paper is a lecture I gave at Elmhurst College (the home of Niebuhr papers and once-upon-a-time college president Reinhold Niebuhr himself.

It's among several pieces I put together while exploring the possibility of doing (another) christology - this time with some contemporary seriousness (see the questions about Jesus' gender, for example, suggested toward the close of the lecture).

People (students, that is... and students are people too)  loved it - but publishers wouldn't give me a second look. Their loss...

According to Bruce McCormack, the greatest contribution of Karl Barth to the development of Christian theology is his doctrine of election. 1 McCormack's optimistic appraisal of Barth's doctrine of election is not universally shared, however, with a number of interpreters expressing serious concern about Barth's construction of the doctrine. 2 Evangelical concerns focus on three prime issues: the degree to which Barth's presentation of election is Scriptural, the abiding concern that his doctrine leads inexorably to universalism, and the sense that his construal of the divine-human relation evacuates human agency of genuine meaning.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings, Martin Luther is ubiquitous. Too often, however, Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism has been set aside with much less argumentative work than is appropriate in light of his sustained engagement with Luther. As a result, Luther remains a largely untouched hermeneutic key in Bonhoeffer interpretation. In Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther, Michael P. DeJonge presents Bonhoeffer's Lutheran theology of justification focused on the interpersonal presence of Christ in word, sacrament, and church. The bridge between this theology and Bonhoeffer's ethical-political reflections is his two-kingdoms thinking. Arguing that the widespread failure to connect Bonhoeffer with the Lutheran two-kingdoms tradition has presented a serious obstacle in interpretation, DeJonge shows how this tradition informs Bonhoeffer's reflections on war and peace, as well as his understanding of resistance to political authority. In all of this, DeJonge argues that an appreciation of Luther's ubiquity in Bonhoeffer's corpus sheds light on his thinking, lends it coherence, and makes sense of otherwise difficult interpretive problems. What might otherwise appear as disparate, even contradictory moments or themes in Bonhoeffer's theology can often be read in terms of a consistent commitment to a basic Lutheran theological framework deployed according to dramatically changing circumstances.

Table of Contents
0. Introduction: An Argument for Bonhoeffer Interpretation
-Taking Luther’s Ubiquity Seriously
-What is ‘Lutheran’? Issues of Definition and Method
-Arguing for the Lutheran Character of Bonhoeffer’s Thinking

1. On the Way toward Christocentrism
--Karl Holl: Luther’s Religion of Conscience
--Christ or the Conscience?
--Conscience against Conscience
--Meager Christology
--Justification as the Unconditional, Effective Word of Christ’s Personal Presence as the Church

2. Christology in Conversation with Barth and the Lutheran Tradition
-Once more, Barth and Bonhoeffer on whether the Finite is Capable of the Infinite
-The History and Pre-History of the (in)capax Phrases
---This Man Is God
---This Is My Body
---The Finite is Capable of the Infinite
-Barth’s Rejection of the capax and the Majestic Genus
---The Finite is Not Capable of the Infinite
---The Common Actualization of Divine and Human Essences in Christ
-“The is may not be interpreted any further”: Bonhoeffer’s Christology

3. Caricatures of the Two Kingdoms
-Denials of Bonhoeffer’s Two-Kingdoms Thinking
-From Luther’s Two Kingdoms to the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms
---The Two Kingdoms in Luther’s Theology
---Church and State from a Lutheran Confessional Perspective
---Church and State in Confessional Comparison
---The Twentieth-Century Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms
---Troeltsch and the Niebuhrs

4. The Twofold Form of Christ: Bonhoeffer’s Two-Kingdoms Thinking
-Early Two-Kingdoms Thinking
---“The Nature of the Church”
---“Lectures on Christology”
---“Thy Kingdom Come!”
---“The Church and the Jewish Question”
-The Two Kingdoms in Discipleship
-Late Two-Kingdoms Thinking
---“Protestantism without Reformation”
---“Heritage and Decay”
---Green, Rasmussen, Hauerwas
---“Ultimate and Penultimate Things”

5. Anabaptists and Peace
-Bonhoeffer’s Non-Commitment to Nonviolence
-The Doubly Curious Association of Bonhoeffer with Anabaptism through Yoder
---Yoder on Bonhoeffer
---Bonhoeffer on Anabaptists
-Bonhoeffer on Peace
--Peace and Preservation
--Orders of Preservation
--The Sermon on the Mount as Concrete Commandment
-Peace in Bonhoeffer and Anabaptists
-Interpreting Bonhoeffer on Peace
-Ecumenical Lutheranism and Lutheran Ecumenism

6. Lutheran Resistance Resources
-Luther to Hitler
-Lutheran Subservience and Bonhoeffer’s Resistance
-Luther on Resistance to Authority
-The Interims, Flacius, and the Magdeburg Confession
-Formula of Concord X
-Bonhoeffer and Lutheran Resistance Resources

7. Struggle and Resistance
-Resistance through the Confession of the Ecumenical Church
---Status confessionis
---Threats to the Gospel from outside: The State that Disregards its Mandate
---Threats to the Gospel from Inside: Heretical Legalism
---Confession, ‘the Jews,’ and Race
-Resistance through the Suffering Obedience of the Discipleship Community
---The Second Battle of the Church Struggle
---Cheap and Costly Grace
---Justification
-Resistance through the Responsible Action of the Individual
---Between Compromise and Radicalism
---Active Resistance
-Conclusion: A Lutheran Theology in Accord with Reality

Through an analysis of the Scriptural treatment of usury, a constructive theological analysis of the question of the friend-enemy distinction as a political category, its relationship to a Christian conception of universalism as determined by being in Christ, and the nature of faithful citizenship is forged. This essay argues that usury is a paradigmatic instance of the friend-enemy distinction as defined by Carl Schmitt and as such is primarily a political act. The article closes by analysing Schmitt's reading of Jesus’ commandment to love enemies and suggests that after Christ, the friend-enemy distinction ceases to be political and becomes missiological instead. The implication of this missiological conception is then related back to the on-going question of usury.

Abstract:
Filling a gap in the study of ecclesiology by addressing ecclesiological method,
this paper examines the work of Scottish theologian Thomas Forsyth Torrance specifically with the World Council of Churches. Modern ecclesiologies fail to provide a robust definition of the Church’s nature due to their lack of a robust ecclesiological method resulting in an anemic understanding of the Church’s nature and significance. In this paper, I argue that the ecclesiological method of T.F. Torrance can overcome this problem by understanding the Church kata physin, that is according to nature.

Er zijn veel redenen waarom geloven in God niet overtuigend is. Hoe kan God nou goed zijn terwijl er zoveel kwaad is? En wat te denken van de Bijbel; er zijn toch zoveel heilige boeken? En een intuïtie dat God bestaat, dat is biologisch goed te verklaren.

In dit boek bespreekt theoloog Marinus de Jong 21 van deze redenen. Maar niet om te laten zien dat ze niet waar zijn. Ook niet om te concluderen dat geloven in God onzinnig is. Hij gaat op zoek naar hoe deze redenen ons helpen om onze gedachten over de ongrijpbare God te scherpen. Dat hij een God is die steeds weer aan onze beelden ontsnapt en zich niet laat vangen in onze overtuigingen.

Inclusief verwerkingsvragen en verdere lees- en kijksuggesties.

Se Deus é todo poderoso, onisciente e todo bom, por que ele permite a existência do mal? Se não vem dele, então de onde vem? O problema do mal tem sido o principal empecilho para a crença de diversas pessoas, no decorrer da história, em alguma divindade. Contudo, desde a Primeira Grande Guerra, a pergunta não é mais essa. A derradeira questão, agora, é a respeito do mal radical: como pode um homem capaz de atrocidades como Auschiwitz dividir a mesma natureza do homem que condena Auschiwitz? Se a resposta ao problema de Epicuro é uma teodiceia, então a resposta ao problema da contemporaneidade é uma antropodiceia, pois tira Deus do julgamento e coloca a humanidade no lugar de júri, juiz e ré.

Nesse artigo, procuraremos, primeiro, estabelecer um breve panorama do surgimento da antropodiceia nos idos da Segunda Grande Guerra e no seu desenvolvimento que, conforme compreendemos, alcançou seu ápice teórico na teologia radical do pósguerra. Após esse panorama, tentaremos encontrar esboços de uma resposta da obra de J.R.R. Tolkien, com um foco específico em O Senhor dos Anéis.

In leading academic publications, Oxford theologian Andrew Moore has systematically developed new objections to natural theology based on Karl Barth's methodological arguments, historical considerations as well as theological considerations related to Scriptural passages such as Romans 1:18ff, the noetic effects of sin, whether natural theology leads to the God who has revealed himself in Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, and attitudes such as humility and self-denial. I demonstrate the inadequacy of his methodological and historical arguments and show that the numerous Scriptural passages cited by Moore do not really support his objections, and that Moore neglects other passages (e.g. Acts 14:15-17, 17:22-31) which contradict his arguments. I defend the value of natural theology as the first of a two-step approach which (1) shows that there is a Creator God (2) shows that this God has revealed himself in Christ.