DET

That’s right, gentle readers: another year has come and gone. This blog has been here for four years now. I started it going into my senior MDiv year, and now I’m entering my 4th PhD year. We’ve had some good times: we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, etc. Who knows what the future may bring? While it is easy to generate content when doing intensive reading, it is a bit harder to do so when doing intensive writing. With dissertation writing in full swing, I am now solidly in the later camp. All my professional attention is directed to one project, and few things catch my interest long enough for me to want to mention them here. So, this next year might be a bit dicey. We’ll just have to see how it goes. However, there is one flash of light in the darkness – and its quite a big flash at that. Of what do I speak? The 4th annual Karl Barth Blog Conference, of course! This year’s theme – for the umpteenth time – is “Karl Barth in Conversation with…” We’ve got a good set of papers line...

Sung-Sup Kim reviews David Gibson, Reading the Decree: Exegesis, Election and Christology in Calvin and Barth , T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2009). Be sure to go and read it .

As some of you know, I spent 3 1/2 weeks in June reading through Church Dogmatics 4 as preparation to begin work in earnest on my dissertation (which I began writing in earnest today: ~1000 words isn’t a bad start!). Here are some reflections on the experience. (1) Reading Barth (like Calvin) makes me want to read the Bible. This is about the highest praise one can give a theologian (as far as I’m concerned). (2) One of the things that drives in the direction of my point #1 is Barth’s own exegesis. Right now I’m thinking specifically of his OT work in CD 4.2 , and his exegesis of Job in CD 4.3.1 . And who can overlook § 59.1 in this regard? (3) Barth is incredibly repetitive. This is great if you’re dipping into one § and want to get a sense of the whole, but it is murder when you are trying to blitz through large tracks. It can easily become a tedious redundancy under such conditions. (4) Barth’s theology is beautiful, by which I mean, the architecture of his thought...

A very brief but compelling passage: Church Dogmatics 4.1, 748: Faith is at once the most wonderful and the simplest of things. In it a man opens his eyes and sees and accepts everything as it - objectively, really and ontologically - is. Faith is the simple discovery of the church which finds itself in the father's house and on the mother's lap.

Adam Neder did his PhD here at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was gone before I arrived. I have heard him talked about in the most glowing terms , and so it was with expectation that I picked up the published version of his dissertation, Participation with Christ (the Center for Barth Studies has published a review ). Weighing in at a tidy 92 pages (plus bibliography, endnotes, and index), this volume nevertheless packs some punch. His treatments are concise and to the point, which is always admirable. The following is from Neder’s discussion of Church Dogmatics 3.2. Adam Neder, Participation in Christ: An Entry into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics , Columbia Series in Reformed Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009): 33. “[H]istory occurs as a being in a state is encountered by a different kind of being and when the being thus encountered responds correspondingly with an action that is not within the range of its own inherent possibilities. The different ...