The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth
Description:... "The study of Karl Barth in the English-speaking world has changed dramatically over the decades since his death in 1968. On one level, the stolid and distortive paradigm of neo-orthodoxy, which so often shaped the reception of Barth's work in Anglophone circles after the Second World War, is now a thing of the past. Barth is no longer credibly viewed as a ready advocate for old-school Protestant orthodoxy, much less as a redoubt for 'traditionalists' battling valiantly against the (supposed) liberalism, ethical anomie, corruption, and unbelief of a 'secular age' (Taylor 2007). Instead, Barth has come to be generally recognized as an admirably uncategorizable thinker, one whose work resists partisan co-option and serves as a vital resource for contemporary theological reflection. On another level, Barth's work has increasingly become an occasion for debate, and to such a degree that those who would classify certain theologies or instincts as 'Barthian' in orientation face a daunting challenge when it comes to explaining what this watchword means. To be sure, the distinctive features of Barth's theology stand in plain sight. Many inside and beyond the academy and churches are aware of his famed 'Christological concentration', his description of God as 'the One who loves in freedom', his reworking of traditional Reformed accounts of divine election, his stinging critique of 'religion', and his breathtakingly ambitious account of reconciliation-an account that remained tantalizingly incomplete and lacked the planned complementary account of redemption. Yet familiarity with Barth's work has been complicated, in a positive way, by the fact that scholars are now arguing about it with unprecedented vigour. The field of Barth studies has therefore become a wonderfully pluralistic and contested domain. It is home to heated debates over dogmatic issues, complex discussions regarding Barth's relationship to Christian and Jewish traditions and to modern and postmodern trajectories of thought, and a wide array of comparative, critical, and constructive ventures"--
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