Thursday, March 09, 2006

Remembering the Giant of Basel: Karl Barth and the Theology of the Word of God


No trip to Basel would be complete without a trek up Bruderholzallee to #26 where Barth spent his final years in Basel or up the hill a few hundred more feet to Bruderholzallee #42 where he conducted his famous English colloquia. Several of my theological teachers did just that in the 1960s. Even for those who do not entirely agree with Barth, one must admire the giant of 20th Century theology who labored so famously to overturn liberalism and man-centered theologies.

"We are not here and now excluded from the glory of God. But the form in which we are surrounded by it, and in which we participate in it, is the form of the Church, proclamation, faith, confession, theology, prayer....we may not be sad but glad to be in the Church, to hear the proclamation of the Word, to respond in faith to this proclamation of God, to confess this faith, seriously to present this profession in theology. We may be glad to pray. The whole energy of the awakening and calling of the creature to its destiny to give glory to God works itself out here and now wholly and utterly in the fact that the Church may be." (Church Dogmatics II/1: The Doctrine of God, p. 676)

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