Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 25:2 (May 1963)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Karl Barth: Theology and Church. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row. 1962. 358. $6.00.

The place which Karl Barth holds in the thinking of English-speaking theologians makes it inevitable that the earlier writings will eventually be translated into English to insure an even wider consumption. The volume before us comprises lectures translated by Louise Pettibone Smith, available to readers of German since 1928 in Die Theologie and die Kirche (Gesammelte VortrÄge 2). The lectures themselves date from 1920 to 1928, thus covering part of the formative years between the first commentary on Romans and the later systematic construction. Nothing radically new is offered, though we are given additional insight into the earlier forms of what has been a sustained criticism of the consciousness theologians and the static elements of Roman Catholicism.

What is new is the forty-eight page introduction contributed by T. F. Torrance. After taking due note of Barth’s personal attributes, and “how it all began”, Torrance proceeds to discuss the development of Barth’s theology in terms of its relation to culture (Barth exposed the assimilation of Christianity to culture with its romantic-idealist background), to the church (theology’s task is critical, to assure that the preaching of the church is in accordance with the Word of God), and to secular knowledge (though the problems may overlap, theology is in no way to be confused with philosophy or natural science).

“All the way through one can see struggling together his concern for a biblically grounded theology which he inherited from Calvin and his concern to think it out in the wealth of modern thought which he inherited from Schleiermacher” (p. 50). In this way, Torrance characterizes Barth’s labors in these years, surely no mean struggle. Torrance’s words at this point suggest a greater indebtedness to Calvin than to Schleiermacher; but his discussion reveals the reverse. Even when we grant that Barth did, indeed, sincerely criticize and try to avoid doing what Schleiermacher did in making theology something “thought out by man and thrust into the mouth of God” (p. 24), still we ask what has happened to the biblically-grounded theology of Calvin when we are told that revelation, or the Word of God, is not to be identified with history or anything in history (cf. “the enlightening influence upon Barth of Overbeck’s

critique of historical Christianity” (p. 50) in the volume’s first lecture, “Unsettled Questions for Theology Today (1920)”) or that revelation is not the communication of propositional ideas or concepts, which are to be distinguished from truth (p. 27). Calvin, who lived lon...

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