Barth

What does “religion” mean? Great question! I’m writing my dissertation on Barth, Bonhoeffer, the Bible, and “religion.” However, getting clear on just what Barth and Bonhoeffer meant by “religion” is a huge challenge. It’s what I devoted my entire writing sample to examining, and I plan to devote an entire chapter of my dissertation to the topic. Neither Barth nor Bonhoeffer used the word “religion” in the way that we’re prone to use the word in everyday speech today. According to Merriam-Webster, “religion” means: ...

I’m trying to parse out the relevance of Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Scripture for making sense of the “Barth-Bonhoeffer relationship.” Specifically, I’m trying to, at the very least, add some biblical content and context to the ongoing debate over the relationship between Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s theological critiques of religion. As I put it in the “elevator pitch” for my dissertation proposal: Why does Bonhoeffer in prison, after adopting Barth’s theological critique of religion as idolatrous unbelief… ...

As I said in my previous post, “Interpretive Approaches to the Sermon on the Mount,” I’m working on how Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer read the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, when interpreting the Sermon on the Mount, the best place to start is at the beginning! This means beginning with the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1–12. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1–12) 1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ...

When it comes to the Barth-Bonhoeffer relationship, there is perhaps no greater conundrum than the meaning of what Bonhoeffer called Barth’s “Offenbarungspositivismus” (“positivism of revelation” or “revelatory positivism”) in his Letters and Papers from Prison (DBWE 8). Now, before we proceed, please note that Bonhoeffer meant something very particular by “religion” in his prison letters. For an overview of how Bonhoeffer and Barth differed on the meaning of “religion,” and what that means for how we interpret their theological critiques of religion, please see my essay: “To Be or Not To Be Religious: A Clarification of Karl Barth’s and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Divergence and Convergence Regarding Religion.” ...

If you’ve not yet consulted the Oxford Handbook series, you should! The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology is especially useful! I’m very excited because the Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth are both about to be released soon! I just wish they weren’t so expensive!

I really like the timelines of Bonhoeffer’s life that are available in The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and in Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. (Those last two links are Amazon affiliate links.) However, I’m having a much harder time finding comparable timelines for the life of Karl Barth. The information is all there, but there’s no comparable table/list of dates in either The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth or Busch’s Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. (Again, Amazon affiliate links.) ...

I’m narrowing my focus to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. Originally, my dissertation proposal cast a very wide net. I was going to have the following chapters: Introduction (5,000 words) Chapter 1: Creation and Fall (Genesis 1–3) (16,000 words) Chapter 2: The Prophets (16,000 words) Chapter 3: The Gospels (16,000 words) Chapter 4: The Epistle to the Romans (16,000 words) Chapter 5: Completing the Biblical Critique of Religion (16,000 words) Summary and Conclusion (5,000 words) However, after doing survey work, and spending most of the previous academic year working on Barth and Bonhoeffer’s reading of Genesis 1–3, I’ve decided to narrow my focus down to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. ...

> In short, if I am inhuman, I am also stupid and foolish and godless. The great crisis in which all worship and piety and adoration and prayer and theology constantly finds itself derives of course from the question whether and how far in these things we really have to do with the true and living God who reveals Himself in His Word, and not with an idol. But this question is decided concretely in practice by another one which is inseparable from it—whether and how far in these things we come before God together and not apart from and against one another. True Christianity cannot be a private Christianity, i.e., a rapacious Christianity. Inhumanity at once makes it a counterfeit Christianity. > > Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 442.

[Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics Original Publication Dates, courtesy of PostBarthian.com](https://postbarthian.com/2016/04/21/karl-barths-church-dogmatics-original-publication-dates/).If you’re trying to grasp the contours and contents of Karl Barth’s massive *[Church Dogmatics](https://www.logos.com/product/5758/barths-church-dogmatics),* it helps to have an outline! Here’s a helpful PDF version, with subheadings included, from Princeton’s [Center for Barth Studies](http://barth.ptsem.edu). [Barth\_Outline of Church Dogmatics](https://joshuapsteele.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barth_Outline-of-Church-Dogmatics.pdf)[Download](https://joshuapsteele.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barth_Outline-of-Church-Dogmatics.pdf)Below is a version that I’ve created from my Logos edition of *Church Dogmatics*. It’s the version found in the Index (CD V/1, 1–13). (Want to learn more about Karl Barth, but not quite ready to dive into the Church Dogmatics? Check out Keith Johnson’s extremely helpful The Essential Karl Barth: A Reader and Commentary [affiliate link].) ...

This summer, I’ve spent most of my reading/writing time working on a paper on Barth’s Römerbrief reading of Romans 10. This paper is for the 2019 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium, and it has taken way longer than I originally anticipated. Will I get to use this paper in my dissertation? I’m not sure. At first, I got excited, because, in my work on Genesis 1–3 last school year, I discovered some differences in how Barth and Bonhoeffer handled Genesis 1–3 vis-a-vis the subsequent history of Israel. Namely, while Barth takes care to work his way from Eden to the Church only after moving through the history of Israel and Jesus, Bonhoeffer jumps right from Eden to the Church via Christ. This difference in what I’m provisionally calling “Christological immediacy”—which is perhaps a confessional one that parallels some of the exegetical differences between Calvin and Luther—has me wondering whether Barth and Bonhoeffer differed in important ways on Israel. ...

UPDATE: Here is the paper that I gave at the 2019 Karl Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. INTRODUCTION: “GENTILES” = “WORLD” IS WORSE THAN “ISRAEL” = “CHURCH” On at least one level, Karl Barth’s Römerbrief reading of Romans 9–11 is supersessionist. In general, especially in the second edition, when Paul refers to “Israel” in Romans 9–11, Barth refers to the “Church.”[1] He replaces Israel with the Church. That’s supersessionism, case closed. Right? Well, yes and no. It has become increasingly common to at least mitigate or nuance the charge of supersessionism against Barth’s reading of Romans 9–11. Various scholars have broadly argued that, yes, Barth’s handling of Romans 9–11 at least leaves the door open for at least a certain kind of supersessionism, but, no, he wasn’t being quite as careless with Israel as it might initially seem.[2] By and large, I agree with these assessments. Barth should have said more about the actual people and history of Israel, but he wasn’t trying to merely displace Israel with the Church, as if the latter were superior and the former were forgotten. He was trying to bring Israel and the Church together in solidarity, in opposition to the arrogance of the Church. ...

I’m scheduled to give a paper on Karl Barth’s reading of Romans 9:30–10:21 in Der Römerbrief at the 2019 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at Princeton in August. Now, of course, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to give a paper at the colloquium. However, in hindsight, I don’t know why I thought giving a paper on chapter 10 of Barth’s Römerbrief was a good idea! Granted, I don’t have to solve all of the exegetical issues (of which there are many) in Romans 9:30–10:21. I just have to make some sense of what Barth thought about the passage. ...

(Here’s a PDF of this paper: STEELE_The Tree of Religion Barth and Bonhoeffer on the Tree of Knowledge.) Introduction The precise meaning of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (=TK) has long vexed interpreters of Genesis 2:4–3:24.[1] While the “tree of life” (=TL) is mentioned and alluded to throughout the Bible, the TK is explicitly mentioned by its full name just twice (Gen. 2:9, 17).[2] Nevertheless, because of the significant role that the TK plays in the narrative, both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth highlight the TK in their theological interpretations of Genesis 1–3. Furthermore, both theologians describe the TK and the knowledge of good and evil (=KGE) in ways that resemble their theological critiques of “religion” as an improper response to divine revelation. ...

Jesus Christ has gone into the far country in our stead, to bring us home to God!

John Webster’s essay, “Reading the Bible: The Example of Barth and Bonhoeffer” (pages 87–110 in Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics [Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark, 2001]) is, in large part, the inspiration for my doctoral dissertation. I’d like to share the three reflections/lessons Webster draws from the biblical work of Barth and Bonhoeffer. Wrapping up his essay, Webster claims that Neither Bonhoeffer nor Barth were wissenschaftlich theologians; both were practical or pastoral theologians of the church of Jesus Christ. . . . Both, in short, were members of the guild, so despised by Kant and most of his heirs, of biblical theologians. Pondering their work may give us cause to reflect on three matters (108–109). ...