The Grammar of Pneumatology in Barth and Rahner: A Reconsideration

The trinitarian theologies of Barth and Rahner have tended to be read as failing to overcome a pneumatological deficiency that characterizes Western theology, despite the importance of their thought to proponents of the contemporary trinitarian 'revival'. This article argues, however, that in fact their conceptualizations of the doctrine of the Trinity depend upon essential pneumatological themes: Barth's understanding of the Spirit as the subjective reality of revelation's effect, and Rahner's proposals concerning the gift of the Spirit in terms of uncreated grace and quasi-formal causality. These insights have been largely overlooked or misconstrued, not least because both Barth and Rahner deploy their pneumatologies in the course of polemical debates with their nineteenth-century predecessors. A fresh reading of these theologians yields a pneumatology that I characterize as a grammar of the construction of graced subjectivity.     

Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation

This essay engages in the debate in feminist theology over the adequacy of the category of kenosis for interpreting women's experience. It does so by looking at a particular exchange between two British theologians, Daphne Hampson and Sarah Coakley. The paper expands on Coakley's understanding of kenosis as "power–in–vulnerability", through an analysis of the trinitarian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Von Balthasar's trinitarian understanding of kenotic personhood is then correlated to situations of abuse in order to illustrate the adequacy of such an understanding toward accounting for the healing in abused victims. The final section will argue that feminist interests in otherness, specificity, diversity, uniqueness, relationality and embodiment require a trinitarian notion of kenosis as self–giving and receptivity.     

The Imago Dei and Election: Reading Genesis 1:26–28 and Old Testament Scholarship with Karl Barth

Abstract:  Barth's treatment of the imago dei within his interpretation of the Genesis creation story ( CD III/1) divides biblical scholars and dogmaticians. In an attempt to bridge the impasse Barth's relational interpretation is re-examined. A narrow focus on the small print exegesis of Genesis 1:26–28 has often led to Barth being misread. In contrast, attention is given to Barth's hermeneutical principles and his exegesis is placed within the wider context of his understanding of the creation story. Even in terms of his own hermeneutic Barth's reading of the imago is shown to be problematic. This hermeneutic can, however, be applied to provide a reading of the imago as a relationship to God and the world analogous to Israel's election. Such a reading is exegetically defensible and theologically suggestive.     

Body, Soul, and (Holy) Spirit: Karl Barth's Theological Framework for Understanding Human Ontology

Abstract:  Interpretations of Karl Barth's anthropological ontology are often characterized by significant disagreement as to whether it is best understood in essentially dualist or monist terms. Such arguments are misguided in that they miss the thrust of Barth's argument. This article will show that Barth's christological understanding of the mind–body relationship generates a number of important ontological implications, which can in turn serve as a basis for developing a christologically adequate mind/body theory, but that it does not provide the actual development of such a theory.     

Beruf and Berufung in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics: Toward a Subversive Klesiology

Abstract:   This article explores Karl Barth's understanding of calling in relation to vocation as found primarily within the Church Dogmatics . Its novel aspect resides in the methodological decision to read Barth's treatment of Berufung explicated in volume IV/3.2 in light of his critical distinction between Beruf and Berufung in volume III/4. Such a move is salutary considering the discursive nature of Barth's systematic thought progression within the Dogmatics , but it also offers much to explain the themes treated in the later volume, which do not fall specifically under the umbrella of vocation. Barth is not offering a doctrine of vocation ( Beruf ), but rather a doctrine of calling ( Berufung ), which brings implications residing in how one reads this section of the Dogmatics as well as in the possibility of constructing a theology of calling, an enterprise I call klesiology.     

Creative Reappropriation: Barth's Use of Calvin in the Münster Ethics (1928/29)

This article demonstrates Calvin's impact upon Barth's ethics through a close reading of Barth's MÏnster lectures on ethics. Already in these early lectures Barth insisted on the coherence of dogmatic and ethical reflection, and developed the basic structure and some characteristic themes of his mature ethical reflection in the Church Dogmatics . By showing the ways in which Barth was influenced by Calvin in these formative first ethics lectures the case is made that a thorough understanding of Calvin's theology is necessary for a correct appreciation of Barth's ethics and of his theology as a whole.     

Noah J. Toly and Daniel I. Block,eds. Keeping God's Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective

Abstract

Ted Peters rightly rejects, on biblical and theological grounds, the understanding of kenosis presumably endorsed by Niels Gregersen (and with him Jürgen Moltmann, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke) as divine withdrawal from creation (tsim tsum). That said, a second version of kenosis, one more consistent with Scripture and early patristic theology, meets Peters' criticism by presenting kenosis not as a creative withdrawal of divine power but as a self-negation on the part of God that results in the generation of created reality along with God's reappearance and presence in it, albeit in another form. This is the kenosis-plerosis model, one according to which God gives history its momentum and empowers finite beings as a consequence of God's own self-negation; this would make possible a way for Gregersen meaningfully to affirm God's action at higher levels of nature without violating nature's integrity, even though it does so in a heterodox way.     

Orthodoxy,Orthopraxis, and Orthopathy: Evaluating the Feminist Kenosis Debate

This study examines the feminist kenosis debate, tracing its development through Daphne Hampson, Sarah Coakley, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Carolyn Chau, Jennifer Newsome Martin and Anna Mercedes. Given the diversity of theologies put forth in this debate, it is necessary to have a method of evaluation. In order to do this, I will introduce the theology of Jon Sobrino to the feminist kenosis conversation. Sobrino's notions of orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy are essential tools for assessing different interpretations of kenosis and advancing an adequate theology of “self‐emptying.” This analysis leads to a proposal for a comprehensive feminist theological view of kenosis.     

Karl Barth on the Ascension: An Appreciation and Critique

This exposition of Barth's doctrine of the ascension in Volume IV of the Church Dogmatics –'one of the major works of ascension theology'– begins by highlighting some central themes in representative patristic and modern discussions of the ascension and then provides a close and critical reading of the Dogmatics . Of special interest are questions regarding Barth's understanding of the specificity of the Christ-event, the structure of his doctrine of reconciliation, the relation of ontology and soteriology, and the function of the doctrine of the ascension in a thoroughly a posteriori theology.     

Becoming No-Thing: Eckhart and Hegel on Identity and Difference

Abstract: My goal in this paper is to draw productively on Meister Eckhart's concept of the ‘no-thing’ in order to illuminate Hegel's ontotheological account of both human and divine kenosis. I advance the view that just as divine kenosis is understood as the outpouring of the divine which includes the death of Christ in its economic activity, human kenosis also requires an engagement with death, namely, a spiritual death to the finite. It is via this species of death which is a becoming ‘no-thing’ that the reconciliation between the human and the divine is disclosed as a unity that relies on the shared identity of the divine and the human while simultaneously respecting the integrity of both. Indeed, it is in and through their parallel activity of kenosis that finite and infinite being achieve their respective transcendence by necessarily engaging with the being of the other. Hence, Hegel's ontotheological work is not reducible to sheer immanentism as some scholars suggest, but instead upholds the genuine transcendence of the divine.     

Some Dogmatic Implications of Barth's Understanding of Ebionite and Docetic Christology

This article shows how Barth's understanding of Ebionite andDocetic Christology shaped his trinitarian theology and argues that theologianstoday should learn from Barth in order to avoid the pitfalls of groundingChrist's uniqueness either in experience or in an ideology instead of in Christ himself. The article exhibits how Barth's insights relate to the views of a number of prominent contemporary theologians, illustrating how thesetheologians, in varying ways, actually reach problematic conclusions preciselyto the extent that they do not actually begin their christological reflections with the fact that Jesus is the Son of God simply because he is.     

Before Analogy: Recovering Barth'sOntological Development

What is the nature of Barth's development over the 1920s? Barth himself understood this period as his "apprenticeship," and cites his 1931 book on Anselm as a significant juncture in moving beyond this stage in his thinking. Barth's emphasis upon both change and continuity lies at the heart of the discrepancy between two prominent interpreters of his theology, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Bruce McCormack. On the surface it appears as though their disagreement centers around Barth's employment of dialectic and analogy in his theology. However, our thesis is that this focus conceals the ontological strategies Barth's multifarious uses of analogy and dialectic always implied. Although McCormack is right to suggest that Balthasar's depiction of a shift from dialectic to analogy is inadequate, in the end McCormack's account of Barth's development over the 1920s conceals as much as it reveals. The following essay attempts to demonstrate the kinds of insights which can be made of the past accounts of Barth's development which focused on the transition from dialectic to analogy. Far from relegating these accounts to the sidelines, McCormack's work helps us see all the more clearly just what was at stake in figures like Balthasar's work. By looking past McCormack and Balthasar's respective periodizations of Barth's development, a clearer focus upon Barth's theological ontology can begin to take place.     

Pastoral Care of the Polis: Combative Discourse as Societal Enactment and the Need for Redemptive Discourse

In this article, I argue that political polarization is supported by combative discourse—a discourse that fosters hostility and division, closing off possibilities for understanding, agreement, cooperation or compromise. Combative discourse and resulting political polarization signify a societal enactment, which is a form of resistance to accountability, understanding, and change. From this analysis, I propose a pastoral response, redemptive discourse, which is founded on three Christian metaphors, namely imago dei, kenosis, and Kingdom of God.     

Speculating about Divinity? God's Immanent Life and Actualistic Ontology

This article argues that counterfactual statements concerning God's life in himself are both theologically informative and genuinely warranted by Karl Barth's notion of God's 'being-in-act' as presented in § 28.1 of the Church Dogmatics. To this end, the proposed reading aims to mitigate recent emphases on divine Entscheidung as the primary category for construing Barth's theological ontology. Without offering a resolution to alleged 'tensions' in Barth's doctrine of God, the author nevertheless suggests that there are good reasons to prefer certain streams of Barth's thought to others, with the notion of God's love offered as a test case.     

RETURNING BARTH TO ANSELM

This article focuses on Barth's explication of Anselm's Proslogion 2-4 in his book on Anselm and attempts to show how Anselm helped clarify for Barth the ontological nature of his own early theology, in particular what he meant by the "is" in his affirmation "God is God." Our contention is that Barth's continual pointing to Anselm's Fides Quaerens Intellectum as a vital key to his own theology should not be overlooked. In fact, we argue that only by returning Barth to Anselm in this way can we begin to understand more thoroughly one of the key contributions of Barth's theology generally and its potential relevance to contemporary onto-theological debates.     

The Twofold Assumption: A Response to Cole-Turner,Moritz, Peters and Peterson

Abstract

The article discusses points and perspectives offered by the four respondents to the R.J. Russell Fellow Lectures for 2013/14. Joshua M. Moritz and Ron Cole-Turner bring in new material from biblical and patristic traditions relevant for the proposal of deep incarnation. How does the concept of deep incarnation fare in relation to tradition and science? Ted Peters and Daniel J. Peterson raise questions about the compatibility between a compatibilist view of divine action and creaturely freedom on the one hand, and ideas of kenosis on the other. Which models of kenosis models are workable, and which forms of compatibilism?     

In Defence of Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity

Two common complaints against Barth's doctrine of the Trinity are here addressed. First it is argued that Barth's adoption of the term Seinsweise , or 'mode of being' to refer to the trinitarian persons is not in any way a departure from the traditional doctrine. Second, the suggestion that Barth's doctrine shifts over the course of the Dogmatics is examined and refuted.     

Karl Barth's 'Dialectical Catholicity': Sic et Non

This essay attempts to achieve three things. First, it brings to the foreground an important but largely forgotten conversation partner of Karl Barth's theology: Roman Catholicism, and sketches Barth's critical and constructive engagement of it from his teaching at the University of Muenster (1925–1930) to his late booklet "Ad Limina Apostolorum". Second, it argues that Barth's engagement of Roman Catholicism functions as a crucial moment of his "dialectical catholicity", through which he discursively applies his critical, reflexive principle of "genuine Protestantism". Third, the essay puts forth a critique of Barth's transcendental account of "genuine Protestantism" by drawing on Martin Luther's concrete, ecclesially embodied pneumatology.     

The Stranger as Sacrament: Karl Barth and the Ethics of Ecclesial Practice>

Recent theology has devoted attention to ecclesial practices as a matrix for ethical reflection. Barth stands in ambivalent relation to these developments. On the one hand, Barth urges consideration of the relation of church practice to the gospel of divine action; on the other, Barth's christocentric account of ethics might be corrected by an ethics of ecclesial practice. The ambivalence is explored in an interpretation of Barth's account of the ministry of the Christian community in Church Dogmatics IV/3 and of his treatment of love of one's neighbour in I/2.