What Am I Reading? John Drury on “The Resurrected God”

By -
John Drury is a friend of mine from Princeton Seminary who now teaches in the Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University. You can surf over to check out his biography, CV, and even a clip of him lecturing. If my memory serves me, his was the last dissertation defense that I attended while at Princeton (besides my own, that is). John is also a friend of the blog. He participated in the 2009 KBBC, and he has an essay on Barth and Wesley in Karl Barth in Conversation

In any case, his dissertation has now transformed itself into a book and been published in Fortress Press’s Emerging Scholars series. Here is the full citation:

John L. Drury, The Resurrected God: Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology of Easter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014).

I’ve been slowly working my way through Drury’s book in my spare time for the past few months, and when I finished it recently I wanted to make sure that I took a moment to share some of it with you all, gentle readers. This book is a careful close-reading of Barth’s account(s) of the resurrection in Church Dogmatics as organized around a twofold thesis: “my twofold thesis is that Barth (1) explicates the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection in terms of a unique Trinitarian grammar, and (2) grounds the event of Christ’s resurrection in the eternal triune being of God” (p. 10). The heart of the book, chapters three through five, explicate the resurrection’s trinitarian grammar and ground respectively in each of the part volumes of Church Dogmatics 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3.

Drury hews closely to his task of supplying a close reading, and so he does not use the body of his text to engage in debates with other secondary sources. Those are saved for relatively brief footnotes, but those footnotes where he does engage other readers are often valuable. One of the unique strengths of this volume, in my humble opinion, is the attention that Drury pays to the practical payoff of Barth’s doctrine of the resurrection. So to give you a taste of the book, I leave you with the following from pp. 117–19.
Barth’s Trinitarian theology of Christ’s arising accounts for the confidence with which Christians follow the risen Jesus in the power of his Spirit. Barth identifies this practical significance throughout §64.4. Three of these references are of special interest, because they appear at key turning points in Barth’s argument.

First, at the conclusion of his development of the Trinitarian grammar of Christ’s arising, Barth explains why it is necessary for him to press on to the ground of this event in God himself. It is necessary because otherwise we will likely treat this event as a myth rather than as the very pragmatics of God. . . . Barth indicates that the seriousness of our practice as disciples of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit depends on understanding that the triune God is at work in this transitional event. Therefore, Barth’s Trinitarian theology of Christ’s arising is intended not solely as a theoretical explanation of the ontological basis of our practice, but as a witness to God’s practice. . . . This precedence of the divine praxis means that we may practically participate in it with confidence.

Second, at the conclusion of his discussion of the eternal mediation of the Spirit, Barth draws the practical conclusion that, since the triune God is in himself history-in-partnership, our history-in-partnership with the risen Christ in the power of the Spirit is our participation in Godself. . . . Because our partnership with him is our participation in him, we can walk with confidence. . . .

Third, at the conclusion of his discussion of the eternal majesty of the Son, Barth highlights the assurance that follows from the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s work among us is trustworthy and true because he bears witness to the truth of God himself. . . . We may follow the Spirit’s direction confidently because the Spirit of the man Jesus is the very Spirit of God. Barth’s Trinitarian theology of Christ’s arising supports this confidence.
At the conclusion of his exposition of Barth’s doctrine of the resurrection, Drury returns to this issue of practical payoff and—in so doing—provides this nice sound bite: “The practical significance of Barth’s Trinitarian theology of Christ’s parousia, and in fact of his entire Trinitarian theology of Christ’s resurrection, is that the living Jesus Christ is with us. He is present and active, calling free human subjects to fellowship with him in the service of witness” (p. 172).

==================================

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

So, You Want To Read Karl Barth?

By -
Image
Every now and then I am asked for advice about studying Karl Barth. So, I thought that I would share some of my standard advice here. But, before I do that, let me just say that I am by no means a Barth expert as compared to the people whose books I will mention below. I would be thrilled to find myself in their league one day, but as of yet that remains a distant dream. Still, I have been reading Barth for long enough, and under the supervision of a number of the scholars that I will mention below, that I think I can provide a decent orientation. I have never read Karl Barth before. Which of his books should I read first? Barth’s most famous work is the monumental 13-volume Church Dogmatics . Reading the CD with understanding is not an easy thing, so you definitely do NOT want to start here. Luckily, there are two smaller works by Barth that serve as helpful introductions to his work. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction - Based on the lectures that Barth delivered duri
Keep reading

So You Want to Read….Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

By -
Image
"I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven." "The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community…may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door." "Since ethical thinking in terms of realms is overcome by faith in the revelation of the ultimate reality in Jesus Christ . . . there is no real Christian existence outside the reality of the world." "People who reject their bodies reject their existence before God the Creator." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Prelude Andreas Steinhoff [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons I envisioned having a lot of time for blogging this summer, but that simply has not been the case - the last month has been a crazy one, to say the least. For two weeks, I was working at a theology summer camp of sorts, the Duke Youth Academy, and s
Keep reading

2010 KBBC: Week 1, Day 5

By -
“You Wonder Where the Spirit Went”: Jenson and Barth on the Hiddenness of God By Peter Kline I am entering into a conversation that Jenson has already begun with Barth. In a constructive essay on the hiddenness of God (Jenson 2000), Jenson considers Barth’s position on the matter only to find it lacking. I want to explore why Jenson has problems with Barth on this issue, as well think critically about his constructive alternative. I will suggest that Jenson is only partly right in his diagnosis of Barth; he in fact overlooks the heart of Barth’s teaching on divine hiddenness. The reason is that he looks in the wrong place for Barth’s pneumatology. Jenson can’t find the Spirit in Barth not because the Spirit isn’t there, but because the Spirit is hidden . These considerations will open out into a comparison of Barth and Jenson on the logic of revelation. By “logic” I mean: what is discourse about God’s revealedness and hiddenness supposed to accomplish? Part I Jenson focuses his a
Keep reading

2010 KBBC: Week 3, Day 1

By -
On the Monstrosity of Christ : Karl Barth in Conversation with Slavoj Žižek & John Milbank By Paul Dafydd Jones For a while, I hoped to frame this conversation in terms of a dramatic interchange – something along the lines of “A Slovenian philosopher, a British theologian, and a Swiss dogmatician walk into a bar…” Alongside an eye-wateringly hip assemblage of cinematic references, literary allusions, and comedic scenes – my early favorites being when Barth imagines a young adult novel, entitled Are you there God? It’s me, Žižek , and when Milbank waxes poetic about the Twilight movies – I wanted to engage some topics that would likely receive attention, were the authors to meet for drinks. Primarily, I envisioned an intense discussion of the logos asarkos and the logos ensarkos , with Milbank talking up the former category, Barth emphasizing the latter, and Žižek asking whether recent debates are but symptoms of secret puzzle, embedded in the Church Dogmatics – a puzzle that
Keep reading

Karl Barth on Hell, the Devil, Demons, and Universalism – A Florilegium

By -
Image
You know, all the most interesting topics. Although Barth often confessed that he didn’t find these questions particularly interesting. At best they might draw sideways glances, as it were, as one travels the theological road. But I found a number of places in the records of Barth’s later conversations that I thought folks might find interesting, so I’ve collected them here. And if you aren’t familiar with the term “florilegium,” here you go ! All these texts are from the first volume of Barth in Conversation , with pages numbers given in parentheses along the way. As usual, italics are in the text and bold is mine. Hell “Now we come to hell. You shouldn’t laugh! There is nothing to laugh at! What does hell mean? I think hell means to be in the place where you are once fore all damned and lost without ceasing to exist, without losing the image of God, being what you are but being damned and lost, separated from God, whose creature you are, separated also from your neighbor, from
Keep reading