Andy Rowell

Category: Karl Barth

  • The Digital Karl Barth Library search support ticket

    Dear Alexander Street,

    I am having mixed results doing word searches in The Digital Karl Barth Library. I thought I would do a simple search and document the steps in order to demonstrate why it is confusing and discouraging.  

    For example, if I go into Advanced Search and search for: Bonhoeffer. 

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    I specify Language of Edition as: English. 

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    It gives me 11 results where this word is found. 

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     Let’s click on that second result Doctrine of Reconciliation, Vol. 2.  What is odd is that you do NOT see “Bonhoeffer” in the text. 

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    However, if you do click the #3,4,5,6,7 matches, you do see Bonhoeffer result. Those work correctly!  

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    So, where are the first two matches? 
    And when you hover over all of the matches it shows the Page Number as NA. 

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    This makes it hard to find the references without the page number. 
    Also, note that when you click on the 3rd match, it does NOT highlight Bonhoeffer in the text. But when you click on the other matches, it does highlight Bonhoeffer in the text in blue.  

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    I am also doing searches with German but I just wanted to identify the inconsistencies and confusion in just one search. 
    I also did not mention that often a document takes 30 seconds to load. 
    Thank you for looking into this. 
    Andy

    Background:

    • I used the previous “legacy” platform extensively for my dissertation but they have created a new platform.
    • Many people are having trouble. See the thread at:
    https://twitter.com/kaitdugan/status/1323300923511316481
    • My hope is the above will help others who are also having trouble so that we can pinpoint the problems and hopefully advocate so they can be solved.

  • Why the theology doctorate and why ecclesiology is practical

    I am continuing to work away at my dissertation. As of tonight, it stands at 92,085 words (303 pages in Microsoft Word). The dissertation only needs to be 80-100 K words but I have lots of revising to do. I think the product (likely a book a few years from now) will be both a significant contribution to the literature surrounding Karl Barth's ecclesiology as well as an excellent entry point for people interested in the theology of the church. In the dissertation, I explore how Barth's understanding of the church has been understood across the ecclesial spectrum from Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholic to Lutheran to Anglican to Reformed to Methodist to Mennonite to Baptist.

    "But why do this?" you may ask, "Why spend what will be six years of doctoral work at Duke (coursework, languages, exams, dissertation, etc.) when you could have been 'doing ministry'?"

    "Well," I answer, "My hope is that I will be able to assist people in ministry for decades to come because of this time given to study."

    "But," you say, sputtering, "Ecclesiology? Ecclesiology?!"

    Good question. When I say "ecclesiology," I am referring to something that provides insight into very "practical" questions, in particular, the questions that pop up almost every day in ministry, "What are we supposed to be doing? How are we to prioritize and think about the infinite demands and needs in front of us?"

    Some people have a go-to answer, "What we need is . . ." and then they say, "excellence" or "the sacramental" or "to be missional" or "the spiritual disciplines" or "social justice" or "community." But most of us sense it must be all or at least many of those things. But that just puts us back to where we started: "How much of each of these things? How do we prioritize how we spend our time in ministry?"

    The immediate Sunday school answer is "Look in the Bible!" and that is largely right. The trick is to read it all, digest it all, and synthesize it all, and run our conclusions past others in the church to screen out idiosyncratic interpreterations that might accidentally lead us over the cliff into cult, scandal, and abuse. The good news: this is "theology" and we are all allowed to, even supposed to do it. We get to do it–reading, thinking, praying, talking! Woo-hoo! All Christians are to be theologians–that is, trying to understand what God is telling us. The bad news is it is a big task–it takes awhile to read the whole Bible, digest it, and make sense of it and mull over all of it with other Christians. The nice thing about academic theologians like Karl Barth is that they offer us their take, a suggested preliminary synthesis. The good theologians don't expect us to swallow it whole. They instead want us to be like the Bereans who examined the Scriptures every day to see if what they heard was true (Acts 17:11).

    Back to our practical question of "What do we do?!" Again, it is useful and primary to go to the Scriptures but as we do we might want to keep in mind Barth's suggestion that what we might find when we look in the Bible is an emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the primary actor, or the most important active participant. This conviction is suggested in Barth's titles for his sections on the church in the Church Dogmatics: "The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Church-Community," "The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Church-Community" and "The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Church-Community." In other words, Barth thinks, as he reads the Scriptures and how others have read the Scriptures throughout church history, that it is pretty important to remember that what we do really pales in comparison to what the Spirit does. This is not to denigrate human action but just to keep it in perspective. It is the Holy Spirit who brings together the church, edifies it, and sends it. It is only on a subordinate level that we help. Now that might strike you as just nitpicky semantics. You reluctantly grant, "Ok, ok, I'll try to preface my statements, discipline my speech, with the phrase  'as far as the Holy Spirit moves' but I still don't see how that helps me know what to do!"

    But we have made some progress already modifying our practical "ecclesiology" question from "As church ministry people, what are we supposed to do given the infinite demands and options?!" to "I wonder what the Holy Spirit is doing. How is the Spirit gathering, upbuilding, and sending the people of God?" Again, you may suspect that this still does not get us anywhere. Worse, you are right to worry that someone might get the idea that we are talking about some sort of mystical "sensing" of what the Spirit is doing that will lead us to do all sorts of wacky stuff that our glands (which we thought were the Spirit) told us to do. No, instead, the Holy Spirit is not just doing random "feel good" things. As I mentioned, Barth organizes his comments around the Spirit's gathering, upbuilding, and sending of the church-community. It is useful to think of the Spirit of Jesus Christ doing what Jesus did in the Gospels with his disciples: gathering them (that is, calling them), upbuilding them (that is, teaching them), and sending them. Of course there is more content that fills out this gathering, upbuilding, sending outline: Barth goes on to emphasize that what, rather who, people are gathered to is Jesus Christ ("where two or three are gathered in my name"); that upbuilding has to do with service; and sending has to do with witness. Again, I am just sketching a few key themes in ecclesiology but I think this brief glimpse demonstrates that the muddle of possible tasks and initiatives in ministry might find some better, wiser, more biblical, formulation than the buzzwords listed above: excellence, sacramental, etc.

    My modest contention here is that whatever "practical" ministry questions you lob at ecclesiology, ecclesiology has some useful material to toss back. If you ask about affinity-based youth ministry vs. intergenerational worship services, ecclesiology will ask you to consider whether the sending is being undervalued for the sake of upbuilding or vice-versa. If you ask about a study that shows people like cathedral churches more than mall-like ones, ecclesiology will suggest reflection on what it means to witness. If you ask about: Godly Play vs. Group Publishing curriculum; church planting vs. megachurches; topical sermons vs. expository ones; Chris Tomlin vs. the Book of Common Prayer; short-term missions trips vs. microfinance; ecclesiology will suggest biblical texts and considerations, along with analogous situations in church history, all of which may help (if the Spirit wills!) bring truth and love to the situation. I look forward to, Lord willing, decades of those conversations–that the church might be built up–for the world.

    This is just a little informal splash of an explanation why I think ecclesiology is practical which also gets at why I am doing this theology doctorate.

    "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants." (1 Cor 3:5). A good life that.

    There are lots of other posts about Karl Barth and Ecclesiology under those categories on the blog and in lots of tweets saved on the blog at the Twitter category. 

  • A comment on Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Douglas Campbell, and Pauline Soteriology

    I'm writing a bit on Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in my dissertation right now and saw Douglas Campbell referring to the two theologians in passing in the comments of a post entitled Douglas Campbell’s “Rereading” of Paul at Larry Hurtado's blog about Pauline soteriology. I just thought I would add some theological reflection to their exegetical discussion there. Hurtado and Campbell debate in the comments some of the features of Campbell's big book The Deliverance of God (which I have referred to in the past). 

    Campbell writes,"And it may be that Paul and his opponent agree on quite a bit in Rom 1 in any case (I think they do); but Paul doesn’t want to put this material up front, so to speak. And that’s a critical difference–as big as the difference between Barth and Brunner, or between Athanasius and Arius."

    Here's my comment: Barth and Brunner are indeed interesting to compare because they are indeed so close on so many matters. John W. Hart writes in his conclusion of his book on Barth and Brunner,

    "It is the thesis of this book that Barth and Brunner represent fundamentally different ways of doing theology. This thesis is maintained despite the fact that, viewed within the context of the history of theology, it would be difficult to find any theologian closer to Barth than Brunner, or closer to Brunner than Barth” John W. Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner: The Formation and Dissolution of a Theological Alliance, 1916-1936 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 218.

    Brunner's zeal to be missionally, ethically, and philosophically relevant to the world and Holy Spirit-led worries Barth. Brunner was interested in what was contemporary: he loved the parachurch Oxford Group Movement and was deeply concerned about communism and thought personalism was extremely insightful (Emil Brunner, “Toward a Missionary Theology,” Christian Century 66, no. 27 (1949): 817-818). Barth’s famous angry “Nein!” to Brunner was explicitly about natural theology but in particular about the warm reception Brunner’s “point of contact” theology was getting from German-Christian (Nazi) theologians (Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth (Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, (1956) 2002), 67.). My project deals with Barth’s ecclesiology. Barth's ecclesiology is quite similar to Brunner’s at first glance. They were both Swiss Reformed church theologians–advocates of the importance of the local church and decried Roman Catholic “clericalism.” But again Barth felt that Brunner’s “being led by the Spirit” was naive and foolish–that thinking about such practical matters as church and mission demanded far more discipline.

    Here is the contours of the Brunner-Barth debate regarding Pauline soteriology: Hart reports, “Brunner argues that his understanding of Law-Gospel is truly Pauline and Calvinist–the Law is the tutor from the Gospel (‘this point-of-connection (Beziehungspunkt) [cannot be] surrendered’) and only subsequent to faith does one correctly see the Gospel in the Law” (Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner, p.79). Whereas, Barth says “Brunner’s opposition between Law and Gospel is too harshly Kantian: ‘Is not the Law also revelation, not only punishment and opposition?’ (Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner, p.78).

    I hear Campbell arguing for the Barthian side–questioning whether the ostensible Romans 1-3 presentation is the normative definitive ordering of all gospel presentation: presentation of Law then conviction of sin then experience of faith. The Oxford Group Movement, which Brunner loved, used this approach: testimonies of how people were gripped by sin then were changed by faith in the work of Christ (Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner, p.178). Barth and Campbell want to hold together more closely Jesus’s person and work so that Jesus’ life (as depicted in the Gospels and alluded to in Paul and elsewhere) matters. For Campbell the Jesus story contains Pneumatological, Participatory, Martyrological, and Eschatological components (“PPME”). Barth says that Jesus Christ is the Lord as Servant (IV/1) and the Servant as Lord (IV/2).

    The problem with Brunner and those who place all this emphasis on the Law and Sin, says Barth, is that his framework gives humanity too much credit and relegates God to some minor bit player who gets brought in when there is a problem. God is just the cleaner-upper-guy, Mr. Fix-it, the Stain-Master, the Spot-Remover. What is interesting, thinks Brunner, is philosophical trends like personalism, new initiatives like the Oxford Group Movement, and political developments like communism; the church and theology must catch up to what is going on and try to fix it. Barth and Campbell think that what the Triune God is up to is more interesting, more definitive. The question is whether human beings will “correspond” (Barth), “participate” (Campbell) with God. I’m grateful for the work of the New Testament scholars doing the difficult exegetical work to see whether Barth and Campbell over-read this emphasis into the texts but I think these are at least some of the theological issues at stake.