This book provides the first comprehensive examination of Karl Barth’s view of beauty. For over fifty years, scholars have assumed Barth recovered traditional belief in God’s beauty but refused to entertain any relationship between this and more familiar natural and artistic beauties. Hans Urs von Balthasar was the first to offer this interpretation, and his conclusion has been echoed ever since, rendering Barth’s view of beauty irrelevant to work in theological aesthetics. This volume continues the late-twentieth-century revision of Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth by arguing that this too is a significant misunderstanding of his theology. Andrew Dunstan demonstrates that, through an encounter with fatalistic forms of Reformed theology, Brunner’s charges that his dogmatics were irrelevant and medieval thought, Barth gradually developed an analogy of divine, ecclesial and worldly beauty with all the theological, christocentric and actualistic hallmarks of his previous forms of analogy. This not only yields valuable new insight into Barth’s view of analogy but also provides a much-needed foundation for a distinctively Protestant and post-Barthian approach to theological aesthetics.

"This book provides the first comprehensive examination of Karl Barth's view of beauty. For over fifty years scholars have assumed Barth recovered traditional belief in God's beauty but refused to entertain any relationship between this and more familiar natural and artistic beauties. Hans Urs von Balthasar was the first to offer this interpretation and his conclusion has been echoed ever since, rendering Barth's view of beauty irrelevant to work in theological aesthetics. This volume continues the late twentieth century revision of Balthasar's interpretation of Barth by arguing that this too is a significant misunderstanding of his theology. Andrew Dunstan demonstrates that, through an encounter with fatalistic forms of Reformed theology, Brunner's charges that his dogmatics were irrelevant and medieval thought, Barth gradually developed an analogy of divine, ecclesial and worldly beauty with all the theological, christocentric and actualistic hallmarks of his previous forms of analogy. This not only yields valuable new insight into Barth's view of analogy but also provides a much needed foundation for a distinctively Protestant and post-Barthian approach to theological aesthetics"--

Written in 1951 (with a second edition in 1961), this book takes its place within an impressive array of attempts to wrestle with Karl Barth's theology from a Catholic point of view. The book adopts the twofold strategy of presenting an exposition of "the whole of Barth's thought," while doing so for the purpose of a confessional dialogue among theologians. Not to be construed as an "Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth," Balthasar's effort is to provide a Catholic response which, though not "official", nonetheless seeks to express a common direction and movement within Catholicism. The Theology of Karl Barth shows how a rethinking of basic issues in fundamental theology-concerning the relation of nature and grace, philosophy and theology, the "analogy of being" and the "analogy of faith"-might lead to a rapprochement between the two great rivers of Christianity, without compromising the center of gravity of either. In the process the book makes a major contribution to renewed understanding of Christianity in a secularized modern world. Co-published with Communio Books. "This reflection by one of the century's great Catholic theologians on the theology of one of the century's great Protestant theologians is an example of ecumenical dialogue at its best. One finds here a sympathetic and at the same time faithfully Catholic discussion of the major issues surrounding Barth's christocentricity. The appearance of an unabridged English translation of this book could hardly be more timely for the current religious situation in North America." - David L. Schindler, Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology, John Paul II Institute "No one should think he can quickly dispose of questions posed here offhandedly. It was precisely because writers were in the habit during the time of the Reformation of theologizing with a hammer that the split in the Church became irreparable. And to work at overcoming this split means much effort. Only the patient need apply." - Hans Urs von Balthasar

Two of the most important theologians of the last century, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, one a Protestant and the other a Catholic, kept a lifelong friendship which also influenced their theological work. This book argues that it is von Balthasar's debate with Barth over the analogy of being which is to determine the shape of von Balthasar's subsequent theology.

`McCormack is master of this voluminous material. He is scrupulously at home in the intricate, dramatic background of Swiss socialist politics ...The result is a masterly study, often as compelling as its theme.' George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement `This meticulous and definitive study ... supersedes most previous interpretations.' Colin Gunton, Theological Book Review `it should quickly attain classic status. It is an exceptionally fine and erudite piece of work....The results of this painstaking attention to detail are truly ground-breaking. This is a major intellectual achievement, an interpretative act of great courage, and Barth studies will never look the same.' Graham Ward, Expository Times This book is a new, major intellectual biography of perhaps the most influential theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth. It offers the first full-scale revision of the well-known theologian Hans Urs Balthasar's seminal interpretation of Barth, which was first published in 1951. Drawing on a wealth of material, much of it unpublished during Barth's lifetime, as well as a thorough acquaintance with the best of recent German scholarship, Professor McCormack demonstrates that the fundamental decision which would control the whole of Barth's development - the turn to a new, critically realistic form of theological objectivism - was already made during the years in which Barth was at work on his first commentary on Romans. Professor McCormack further argues that the most significant subsequent decisions - both material and methodological - were made in Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics of 1924/5, and not later in the 1931 book on Anselm, as has often been alleged. Finally, he seeks to show that von Balthasar's description of a turn from dialectic to analogy, which provided the foundation for the neo-orthodox reading of Barth in the English-speaking world, fails to take seriously enough the extent to which dialectic remained a constitutive feature of Barth's outlook in the Church Dogmatics. This unique and important work provides not simply a fresh interpretation of Barth's development, but also a new paradigm for understanding the whole of Barth's theology.

Building on recent engagements with Barth in the area of theologies of religion, Karl Barth and Comparative Theology inaugurates a new conversation between Barth’s theology and comparative theology. Each essay brings Barth into conversation with theological claims from other religious traditions for the purpose of modeling deep learning across religious borders from a Barthian perspective. For each tradition, two Barth-influenced theologians offer focused engagements of Barth with the tradition’s respective themes and figures, and a response from a theologian from that tradition then follows. With these surprising and stirringly creative exchanges, Karl Barth and Comparative Theology promises to open up new trajectories for comparative theology. Contributors: Chris Boesel, Francis X. Clooney, Christian T. Collins Winn, Victor Ezigbo, James Farwell, Tim Hartman, S. Mark Heim, Paul Knitter, Pan-chiu Lai, Martha L. Moore-Keish, Peter Ochs, Marc Pugliese, Joshua Ralston, Anantanand Rambachan, Randi Rashkover, Kurt Richardson, Mun’im Sirry, John Sheveland, Nimi Wariboko

In this seminal volume, contemporary theologians revisit the theological ethics of Karl Barth as it bears on such topics as the moral significance of Jesus Christ, the Christian as ethical agent, the just war theory, the relationship between doctrines of the atonement and modern penal justice systems, the virtues and limits of democracy, and the difference between an economy of competition and possession and an economy of grace. Book jacket.