This volume puts Barth and liberation theologies in critical and constructive conversation. With incisive essays from a range of noted scholars, it forges new connections between Barth's expansive corpus and the multifaceted world of Christian liberation theology. It shows how Barth and liberation theologians can help us to make sense of – and perhaps even to respond to – some of the most pressing issues of our day: race and racism in the United States; changing understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality; the ongoing degradation of the ecosphere; the relationship between faith, theological reflection, and the arts; the challenge of decolonizing Christian thought; and ecclesial and political life in the Global South.

This book offers a critical analysis and reinterpretation of Karl Barth's theology of culture—the least studied aspect of his work—revealing his significance for contemporary work in theology of culture by applying his approach to the study of popular culture and entertainment. Grounding the study in Barth's eschatology, which proves more amenable to secular culture than other models, DeCou shows that Barth's approach recognized that the freedom of theology is qualified by the freedom of the Word and the freedom of secular culture. Barth therefore offers a "middle way" for evaluating and analyzing culture and religious forms. This book thus opens up a new avenue of interpretation of Barth and applies the insights of Barth's theology in fresh ways to the structures of contemporary culture and its products.

Pittsburgh Theological Monograph - New Series General Editor - Dikran Y. Hadidian

From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1969) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as "the red pastor," was the primary author of the founding document of the Confessing Church, the Barmen Theological Declaration, and after 1945 protested the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Christiane Tietz compellingly explores the interactions between Barth's personal and political biography and his theology. Numerous newly-available documents offer insight into the lesser-known sides of Barth such as his long-term three-way relationship with his wife Nelly and his colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. This is an evocative portrait of a theologian who described himself as '"God's cheerful partisan"' who was honored as a prophet and a genial spirit, was feared as a critic, and shaped the theology of an entire century as no other thinker.

John Webster, one of the world's leading systematic theologians, published extensively on the nature and practice of Christian theology. This work marked a turning point in Webster's theological development and is his most substantial statement on the task of theology. It shows why theology matters and why its pursuit is a demanding but exhilarating venture. Previously unavailable in book form, this magisterial statement, now edited and critically introduced for the first time, presents Webster's legendary lectures to a wider readership. It contains an extensive introductory essay by Ivor Davidson.

In this creative and original book, Paul S. Chung interprets Karl Barth as a theologian of divine action. Chung appreciates Barth's dogmatic theology as both contextual and irregular, and he retrieves the neglected sides of Barth's thought with respect to political radicalism, Israel, natural theology, and religious pluralism.

Toward the end of his career, Karl Barth made the provocative statement that perhaps what Schleiermacher was up to was a “theology of the third-article” and that he anticipated in the future that a true third-article theology would appear. Many interpreters, of course, took that to indicate not only a change in Barth’s perception of Schleiermacher but also as a self-referential critique. The author investigates this claim, contesting the standard interpretations, and argues for a Barthian pneumatology—a doctrine of the Holy Spirit grounded in the scriptural witness and connected to the vital Christological and dialectical theology found in Barth’s project.

This reader from Karl Barth's multi-volume Church Dogmatics offers an introduction to the whole work, key readings in reasonable portions with introductions and provides helpful hints at secondary material. An ideal textbook for all beginners studying the work of one of the most important theologians of the last century.

In an era that oscillates regularly between nihilism and the erosion of moral vision, on the one hand, and pseudo-gnostic myths of self-apotheosis on the other, the classical Christian claim of human participation in the divine as the story of the transformation of human life in its physical, moral, spiritual, and eschatological dimensions takes on radical, counter-cultural color. It is an affirmation that offers hope and meaning for humanity secured by God’s participation in human life through Jesus Christ. The Christological ground of this claim is crucial to secure and animate the argument of this text. The author performs, in this, a retrieval of the Christological vision of the unification of the divine and the human in the single subject of Jesus Christ as the programmatic center point of human transformation and participation, articulated particularly by Cyril of Alexandria. The patristic pattern is used as a lens through which to examine and assess modern iterations—those of Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In this, the author provides a critical updating of this vital classical theme, annotating a vision of divine life opened up for created participation that can foster hope in the climes of contemporary life.