Pray, Read, Think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiv53v31eRA Prayer, in the traditional sense, has always involved two struggles for me. The first is the common struggle of a wandering mind, that is no doubt familiar to all of us. As we pray, random thoughts creep in, and sometimes crowd out, the inner life of prayer. The solution to that is practice and …

Scripture-Bearers

I’ve been reading Karl Barth as part of my on again, off again process of re-reading the Church Dogmatics. As he does throughout the CD, he is busy taking his old teachers to task. They had wandered too far from the biblical text, and Barth was calling the church back to the text. The generation …

Sorry, but We’re Back to the “Works” Question

Well dang! Here we are back at the works question. I knew this was a possibility when I wrote last week’s essay because Reformed folks do get twitchy about works. Fortunately, my Reformed friends are kind enough to email me directly rather than put the really inflammatory stuff (like “works”) into the comments. In brief, …

Barth on Law and Gospel

As I have mentioned within the last month, I am reading Karl Barth’s university lectures on Ephesians. This is “early Barth,” since the lectures were given in 1919-1921. “Early Barth” and “late Barth” are important to distinguish because early Barth was part of a school of thought called Dialectical Theology, a primarily Lutheran movement that …

Some Thoughts about Grace and Peace

Karl Barth, in his 1921-1922 university lectures on the book of Ephesians spends the first several lectures on the opening few verses of the book. Last week I took a deep dive into his surprisingly non-Reformed understanding of “faithful” (v 1). This is a place where he aligns with the ancient church rather than the …

Faith as Human Behavior

About fifteen years ago (although I just discovered it) Karl Barth’s lectures on Ephesians were published in English translation as part of a doctoral dissertation by Ross Wright (found here). In the third and fourth lecture he discusses the word “faithful” (“To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus” (1:1b). …

Christ as Theoretical Construct Rather Than Person

Since I've gotten back to the first half part of vol. 4 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and have been posting about it, a friend sent me a note pointing me in the direction of Adam Neder's book, Participation in Christ: An Entry Into Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. Since both Eastern Orthodoxy and Adam Neder …

The Innocent Righteousness of Works

Too often a dispute has unintended consequences. In theology nearly all disputes are not between right and wrong, but rather an over- or under-emphasis that leads to error. Heresy (broadly understood) is not a matter of being wrong, it is a matter of being only almost right. But when sides are taken and battle lines …

God’s No is also God’s Yes

In my rereading of Church Dogmatics, by Karl Barth, I’ve arrived at IV/1 §61, “Justification.” My first time through CD was back in the late 80s and early 90s, when I was a newly minted Presbyterian pastor. I underlined frequently and made a number of marginal notes in this section. I was clearly impressed with …

Anselm: Some Further Thoughts

I got some push back on my previous Anselm post. So first, let me clarify what I did and didn't say. What I did say is that Anselm is unfairly disparaged, especially among the Orthodox for all the theological sins of the West. I did not say that his doctrine of salvation was adequate. I …