Evangelical Theology/Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth:
Bazyn, Ken
What to do with Barth EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY AN INTRODUCTION Karl Barth Eerdmans, $5.95 paper, 224 pp. INTRODUCTION TO THE THEOLOGY OF KARL BARTH Geoffrey W. Bromiley Eerdmans, $7.95 paper, 248...
...However, when reading Barth or about him, I always feel awkward, as if meeting someone from another era, who lived before Einstein, Ayer, Freud, or Picasso...
...He reframes old, difficult-to-answer questions to his own advantage and still leaves us unsatisfied...
...Yet he does have a message for young evangelicals, especially in his surprises...
...He never gives us a how-to book to discern the Word...
...But we should be thankful for what we have.or what we have...
...Bromiley knows Barth well and is not uncritical...
...when the twentieth century is finished, there will still be thirteen imposing orange volumes published by T&T Clark sitting in every seminary library, when more faddish titles have come unglued and been discarded...
...He comments on Barth's structure, discusses segments Barth's critics frequently skim over and throughout provides textual references so the diligent reader can check for accuracy and go to the master himself for further light...
...I might, in addition, have wished for an exciting springboard into the Dogmatics , a more obvious highlighting of the seminal sections of Barth, a short bibliography of criticism of Barth at the end of each chapter and a topical index at the end of the book...
...To help clarify the evangelical swing to Barth, Eerdmans has published two significant new titles-a reprint of Barth's Evangelical Theology, originally published in 1963, and Geoffrey Bromiley's Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth...
...Bromiley has assigned himself a complicated, unenviable task, and though his style is dry and burdened with point-by-point breakdowns under many subdivisions, he has succeeded admirably...
...His is an outline others will certainly refer to...
...In addition, Barth is circular in his Christological obsession...
...His book is careful, methodical, and amazingly balanced...
...One never knows what to do with Barth...
...Ken Bazyn KARL BARTH is a twentieth century enigma-an "evangelical" scorned by many who claim that title, a political conservative who was concerned with the question of the Jews, an "existentialist" who harks back to the Word in scripture and the Word made flesh, a dogmatist who thought he was more of a scientist than a philosopher, a thinker who rejected natural theology and yet depended on it for a number of his distinctions...
...INTRODUCTION TO THE THEOLOGY OF KARL BARTH Geoffrey W. Bromiley Eerdmans, $7.95 paper, 248 pp...
...I'd like him to be more autobiographical and less objective, so we can see how his character affects his theology...
...And this, when the modern temper prefers the concise and pithy to the long and discursive, piecemeal ethics to protracted dogmatics...
...To introduce the Dogmatics, we have Fuller's church history professor,Geof-frey Bromiley, whose translation work on Barth and Kittel's TDNT have left so many of us in his debt...
...And no matter how hard you rail against Barth (and believe me I do...
...Furthermore, he calls us to Socratic doubt, to searching humility, and to immersion in historical theology...
...Despite years of criticism from his liberal rivals, despite movements (such as neo-orthodoxy, which he helped spawn) that have now moved far beyond him, Barth is once more in vogue- currently in places like Fuller Seminary in Pasadena and Calvin College in Grand Rapids...
Vol. 108 • January 1981 • No. 2
