Karl Barth and Scripture at SBL
My current series of posts on the doctrine of Scripture is deeply influenced by Karl Barth. If you’re interested in Barth’s approach to Scripture, then you might like to get along to this year’s SBL seminar on “Christian Theology and the Bible.” Mike Bird recently told me that the theme of this seminar will be “Karl Barth and Theological Interpretation.” The papers include:
Douglad Hrink, “‘Words Spoken from the Deck of a Ship—As It Sinks’: Apocalyptic Exegesis and the Question of Israel in Barth’s Römerbrief (1922), chs 9-11”
Katherine Sonderegger, “The Doctrine of Inspiration and the Reliability of the Text in Barth”
Kathryn Greene McCreight, “Typology, Allegory and Plain Sense in Selections from the Church Dogmatics”
Joseph Mangina, “Barth and the Apocalypse”
I am interested in Karl Barth. What would you recommend I read first? I will be back to check.
Although there are lots of good introductions to Barth's theology, I think it would definitely be best to start with some of Barth's own books.
He has lots of shorter books which are very accessible. You could start with The Humanity of God (95 pp.), or Evangelical Theology (206 pp.), or God Here and Now (139 pp.; this one is available in a new and affordable Routledge paperback edition). These books are gripping and fairly easy to read, and they would give you a feel for some of Barth's main themes.
I think I will start with The Humanity of God. I tried to read Woman and the Salvation of the World by Paul Evdokimov and it makes no sense without Barth. We have a lot of books in our church library. It is a huge mess. Very hard to find anything. Perhaps I will take it on as a service to organize! I think I will call my priest.
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