Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 122:486 (Apr 1965)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Justification: The Doctrine Of Karl Barth And A Catholic Reflection. By Hans Kung. (Translated by Thomas Collins, Edmund Tolk, and David Granskou). New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965. 332 pp. $7.00.

One of the great doctrines of Protestant faith emerging from the Reformation is the doctrine of justification by faith. In keeping with the present ecumenical trend in the Roman Catholic Church, the author of this volume, who is Dean of the Theological Faculty at the University of Tubingen, West Germany, and a leading young theologian in the Roman Catholic Church, attempts in this volume to establish the plausibility of harmonizing the Roman Catholic and the Protestant doctrine. To accomplish this purpose he provides an accurate analysis of the theology of justification as held by Karl Barth whom he regards as the leading evangelical theologian since Luther.

Barth himself recognizes this volume as an accurate study by providing the introduction.

Kung compares Barth’s doctrine of justification with that of the Council of Trent and attempts to prove that the Catholic doctrine is in many respects more Scriptural and Christ-centered than the theology of justification commonly held in Protestantism. Discussing point by point the Protestant concept of justification by faith alone apart from human merit, Kung attempts to demonstrate that Roman Catholic theology when properly understood does not differ vitally from the Protestant doctrine.

This work is a significant and important step in contemporary Roman Catholicism toward bridging the gap between Protestantism and Romanism in an effort to realize the ecumenical church.

Many readers will probably conclude, however, that the author, in spite of his brilliant treatment, is not facing fully the deep-seated differences in point of view between orthodox Protestantism and historic Roman Catholisism. While perhaps subscribing to justification by faith in theory, contemporary Roman Catholicism is nevertheless largely supporting the concept of salvation by religious works.

J. F. Walvoord

Portrait Of Karl Barth. By George Casalis. Garden City, N. Y.; Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. 115 pp. Paper, $.95.

This portrait is not merely a biographical sketch. Nor is it an x-ray picture for analysis and dissection. It is a friendly and sympathetic, yet evaluative, personality study in depth of the man and his

ministry. Few would dispute Casalis’ opinion that “not since Luther and Calvin has Protestantism had a single theologian of the stature and importance of Karl Barth” (p. 3). Despite Barth’s sta...

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