Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal
Overview
Karl Barth and his legacy have dominated theological circles for the past 30 years. In this volume George Hunsinger, a world leading Barth scholar, makes a provocative contribution to an ongoing debate concerning Bruce McCormack’s reading of Barth’s trinitarian theology and doctrine of election. Hunsinger challenges this interpretation, demonstrating that there is no major break in Barth’s thought between the earlier and the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics. Hunsinger also uses Barth’s theology as a springboard to discuss fundamental issues for anyone working in Christology or trinitarian theology. This text is a valuable resource for professors and students of systematic theology, scholars, and readers of Barth.
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Get Barth’s lesser-known works and Eberhard Busch’s biography in the Life and Select Works of Karl Barth (19 vols.) collection.
- Addresses a key debate in Barthian studies
- Examines Bruce McCormack’s understanding of Barth’s doctrines of election and the Trinity
- Demonstrates that there is no major break in Barth’s thought between his early and later works
- Grace and Being: The Charter Document
- Seek God Where He May Be Found: An Important Exchange
- Interlude
- Being in Action: The Question of God’s Historicity
- Two Disputed Points: The Obedience of the Son and Classical Theism
- Revisionism Scaled Back: A Partial Dissent
Top Highlights
“Where revisionists and traditionalists part ways is over the nature of that decision. For the revisionists it was the pretemporal decision of election, whereas for the traditionalists it was God’s prior generation of the Son by the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” (Pages 9–10)
“As a consequence, Barth would have harbored no intention to construct a thoroughly actualistic concept of God’s being if that meant God’s being was merely a consequence of God’s actions, as required by prior ontological commitments.” (Page 4)
“Professor McCormack’s statement means that he has to explain who (or what) this beingless ‘God’ is prior to election and the Trinity, something I think that he has never successfully done.” (Page 7)
“God’s being was always in his activity, not over and above it.” (Page 9)
“Contrary to the revisionist claim, it is not God’s pretemporal decision of election that makes the divine Logos ‘determinate.’ Because the antecedent eternal Trinity is already determinate in itself, the eternal divine Logos is also determinate within it.” (Pages 11–12)
Reading Barth with Charity not only shows readers what Karl Barth did—and did not—have to say about the Trinity and election but also instructs them in the wider tradition of Christian reflection on God. I would not be surprised if it turned out to be a modern classic.
—Joe Mangina, professor of theology, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
Presents a careful and deliberate analysis of Barth’s Church Dogmatics and stresses that for Barth, God is the one who loves in freedom. Hunsinger argues convincingly that God’s relation to the world stands in correspondence to and is a repetition of God’s Trinity.
—Christiane Tietz, professor, University of Zurich, Switzerland
George Hunsinger has been in the front ranks of the traditionalist reading of Karl Barth over against revisionist interpretations. In this masterful book, he gives us a spirited, rigorous, and comprehensive presentation of the traditionalist tenet that Barth considered God’s antecedent trinitarian perfection to be the ground for the divine acts of creation and election. The brilliance of this account extends beyond internal Barthian debates and illumines crucial issues in contemporary Christology and trinitarian theology.
—Khaled Anatolios, professor of historical theology, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry
- Title: Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal
- Author: George Hunsinger
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2015
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Barth, Karl, 1886-1968; Trinity; Election (Theology)
- ISBNs: 9781441221940, 9780801095313, 1441221948, 080109531X
- Resource ID: LLS:RDNGBRTHCHRTY
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:35:57Z