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No, Seriously: I Love Karl Barth

I've only read a little by him. Prayer. But if you do, you'll realize this is the type of non-Catholic you want to run into. He's warm, charitable, innovative, and passionate. This really does leap off the page at you.

Naturally, the grounding for some of his beliefs will not survive challenge. He is on one side of the gateway to biblical liberalism. I get that. He was most likely a universalist. He didn't understand the Catholic Church he rejected.

It's pretty obvious he is at least the most important non-Catholic theologian of the 20th century. You can find him at the heart of what we now know as evangelicalism. Somebody had to reply to the German higher criticism from pretty close to the inside.

I'm going to read his commentary on Romans. I'm justly intrigued. Judge away.
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Unknown said…
Would you really say Karl Barth was a more important non-Catholic theologian than C. S. Lewis? Would you consider Lewis's tone to "popular" to be real theology? Lewis has had a remarkable influence on pop-intellectuals of numerous Christian traditions. The signers of An Evangelical Manifesto describe themselves as "adherents of a 'mere Christianity'" lending weight to the idea that Lewis, too, is shaping the Evangelical movement.

But you raise a good point, I need to read more Barth.

P.S. What about G. K. Chesterton, the Anglican who penned Orthodoxy in 1908?
5:44 PM
Timothy R. Butler said…
I actually agree with one of your theological posts! Is that one of the horsemen of the apocalypse walking by? I'm not sure how much impact Barth has on Evangelicals, in particular -- I dare say many of them are scare of him -- but I'd posit Barth is the most influential theologian of the Twentieth Century without qualifiers. (He influenced a number of Catholic theologians, too, after all.)

Enjoy der Romerbrief!
8:19 PM
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