How to Read Karl Barth with Charity

IFor almost a decade now, a dispute over the doctrines of Election and the Trinity has occupied Anglophone interpreters of Karl Barth.After the publication of a volume featuring the main contenders 1 and an essay written in the spirit of dialogue, 2 one might have hoped for a respectful mutual acknowledgment without rapprochement.A recent book 3 puts such hopes on hold.In order to assess the book, we should remember that Barth hardly qualifies as a traditionalist theologian.From early on, he expresses doubts about prevalent intellectual and cultural assumptions.His biblically oriented dissent from Liberal Theology does not imply the call 'Back to...!' but entails rather a self-critical approach in regard to one's own doctrinal presuppositions.While the magisterial Church Dogmatics (CD) carefully listens to voices from the past, it does not engage in the promulgation of "revealed truths".For Barth, church doctrine by means of human words defines and thus 'limits' the truth of God's own Word, which remains above the dogma 'as the heavens are above the earth' (CD I/1, 266; further citations are given by volume and page).The 'real results' of dogmatic theology, 'even if they occur in the form of most positive statements, can themselves only be new questions [about the relation] between what the Church seems to proclaim and the Bible seems to / want proclaimed' (I/1, 268-269, rev.).Doctrinal reflection is an 'open inquiry' 4 into the relation between proclamation, Scripture, and revelation.The revisionary character of Barth's theology comes to the fore in his doctrine of election (CD II/2).The preface announces that here he 'had to leave the framework of theological tradition to an even greater extent than in the first part of the doctrine of God' in CD II/1; due to his meditation on the biblical texts he was 'driven irresistibly to 1

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