Announcing the Third Annual Barth Blog Conference

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That’s right! DET is proud to announce that it will once again in 2009 host the internet’s premier blog conference on the work of 20th century Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth. The Barth Blog conferences held over the past two years (2007, 2008) have been engaging, enlightening, and – dare I say it – immensely fun affairs, and I trust that this third iteration will be as well.

Last year’s conference focused on reading Barth’s theology through the lens of Eberhard Jüngel’s God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. One topic to which discussion repeatedly returned was the question of natural theology. So, as I said in last year’s concluding post, “the theme of the 3rd Annual Karl Barth Blog Conference, coming in 2009, will be Karl Barth’s exegesis of Romans with special attention to Romans 1 and the question of natural theology,” and so it is.

As usual, I will be soliciting a few of the plenary posts from friends and colleagues who I know would have something to say about this topic and have the requisite expertise. But, anyone who is interested in taking part in the conference should feel free to e-mail me about contributing. My e-mail can be found elsewhere on this blog. In your e-mail, please include something about what you would want to write on and why you are qualified to do so. Once a schedule of plenary posts is established, I will make another announcement calling for responses. Who knows, I may even need to issue another independent call for plenary posts.

One final point: in years past the Barth Blog Conference has been held in June in the weeks leading up to the Barth Conference here at Princeton Theological Seminary. But, since June is far too close to the end of Spring semesters for comfort, and since I am usually involved in helping to organize the PTS Barth Conference, and because I am taking two qualifying exams in May, this year’s Barth Blog Conference will be held in late July or August.

To summarize: the 2009 Barth Blog Conference is coming. The topic is Barth’s exegesis of Romans and especially Romans 1 with reference to natural theology. The date is sometime in late July or August. E-mail with plenary post proposals.

Comments

Chris TerryNelson said…
This issue continues to haunt my theological imagination, and so I'm glad you picked this. I'm working on Romans 1:18-32 for the Paul and Karl class paper, so if it turns out to be helpful I can send it your way.
March 10, 2009 2:43 PM
W. Travis McMaken said…
I'll look forward to seeing your paper.
March 11, 2009 4:38 PM
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