Browsing by Subject "Karl Barth"
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Item Embargo Death Work: Prison Chaplaincy, Karl Barth, and Practicing Life in Prison(2023) Jobe, Sarah C.This is a book about life-in-death work, what the Christian tradition has often called salvation or atonement. How does the life, arrest, trial, conviction, execution, and release from state-supervision of Jesus Christ enact the salvation of the cosmos. How does that one carceral life-in-death link up with life in the face of prison death today? I have sought to answer these questions by taking my body in and out of prison as a prison chaplain while conversing with other prison chaplains, theologian Karl Barth, and the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. In the tradition of theological ethnography, this work brings together theological and biblical reflection with data from a two-year, collaborative ethnography on current and former prison chaplains. This is the first nation-wide study of prison chaplaincy based on an interview protocol rather than a survey, and it provides a wealth of narratives on the complexities of prison chaplaincy, an understudied profession. Karl Barth serves as a conversation partner throughout because he enters the witness box as one who knows and writes the incarcerated Christ, has been arrested and convicted himself, and practiced prison chaplaincy as a volunteer chaplain at Basel Prison from 1954-1964.As a practical soteriology, this work describes how prison chaplains follow the arc of Jesus’ life and work. Chaplains follow Jesus’ incarnation in their ministry of presence, embodying the way that Jesus’ prophetic work threatens social divisions and death-dealing authorities. They receive the same death-threats that Jesus received and bear the impact of prisons in their bodies, being made sin for the sake of salvation. They stand with Jesus and others in carceral death, and they participate in Jesus’ resurrected life-after-death, sometimes while still in prison and sometimes having been freed from it. The architecture of this book follows that story line – the arc of Jesus’ incarnation, prophetic ministry, arrest, death, and resurrection – what Christians confess to be the arc of salvation. That salvific scaffolding is then filled up with the narratives of chaplains – historically, from within this study, and from my own professional experiences. The words of chaplains become the eyewitness accounts to life-in-death work, i.e., to the texture of salvation.
Item Open Access Fatherless Church: Addressing the Issue of Father Absence Through Divorce in the American Church(2022) Reed, Ryan NicholasFatherlessness may be one of the most critical issues facing American society. With the increasing prevalence of divorce in the twentieth century, more and more children face the harsh reality of growing up without their father present at home. Divorce is the number one predictor and cause of father absence. The emotional, social, and spiritual repercussions of growing up with an absent father last long after childhood ends. In fact, many children experience the tumultuous consequences of divorce and fatherlessness throughout their entire lives. Yet, the scriptures reveal God as a “father to the fatherless” (Psalm 68:1, NIV). Thus, as Christ’s Body alive in the world, this issue beckons the church’s best and most intentional response.
This thesis seeks to prove its argument by referencing the wide body of research on this issue available through books, journals, magazine articles and social research data. Sociologists and researchers began widely investigating divorce and fatherlessness in the early 1970s after California Governor Ronald Reagan passed the first ‘no-fault’ divorce laws in 1969. Intended to correct the abuses of the ‘fault’ divorce law system, ‘no-fault’ divorce introduced a whole new set of complications that now plague American society, which among the many include father absence.
Yet, as “the living congregation of the living Lord Jesus Christ,” the church stands in a unique position to address this issue with authority and resolve. This endeavor calls both clergy and lay leaders, alike, who embody the threefold offices of Christ. Courageous leaders walking worthily of their calling (Ephesians 4:1) speak the truth in grace (prophetic), lead the broken and hurting into a life-giving relationship with Christ (priestly), and make a way for the reconciliation of relationships and the restoration of the family (kingly).
As leaders take on this monumental challenge, Design Thinking methodology specializes in finding solutions to complex and seemingly impossible societal challenges, such as divorce and fatherlessness. Design Thinking combined with Traditioned Innovation provides a framework for the church to honor and leverage the best of its history with a clearly defined, solution-based vision. These solutions, however, need practical implementation. This thesis closes with a brief presentation on a Logic Model to provide church leaders a way to execute on Design Thinking solutions toward maximum impact for the community and the Kingdom!
Item Open Access Karl Barth and the Beauty of God(2017) Helmich, Kurtis KyleABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the theme of beauty in the theology of Karl Barth and explores its fruitfulness for the practice of theology and two key areas of the Christian life. It offers a close, contextual reading of Barth’s seminal discussion of the theme, and pays particular attention to the historical sources and the theological rationale that inform his thinking. Most recent theological reflection on beauty has taken place under the auspices of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Anglican thought. Barth’s bold theological retrieval of beauty prompts us to reconsider the possibilities and limits of approaching beauty from a Reformed Protestant vantage point.
Barth introduces beauty as a secondary but nevertheless essential concept for understanding the attribute of divine glory. Briefly, beauty names the dimension of God’s character that evokes desire, gives pleasure, and rewards with enjoyment; it is therefore especially useful for speaking of the participatory dimension of humanity’s knowledge of God. The language of beauty speaks to the winsome ways by which God, for the sake of God’s own glory, enables human beings (subjectively) to perceive and to delight in the (objectively) radiant form of God’s being and action. It follows that a failure to account for divine beauty will produce a flawed perception of God and a distorted vision of the gospel.
In the lexicon of drumming and percussion, the rudiments are a set of basic sticking patterns that serve to foster musical fluency, enabling those who master them to play with a disciplined and creative freedom. I argue that the account of divine beauty Barth puts forward in Church Dogmatics II/1 should be analogously reckoned as a “rudimentary” theology of beauty. Under the terms of this musical metaphor, the four basic nodes or patterns of Barth’s thinking—he presents beauty as revelatory, biblical, perilous, and crucial—may conceivably be applied or “played” in a wider range of contexts, in conjunction with other doctrinal loci. Indeed, Barth himself was inclined to regard beauty as a theme deserving of further theological elaboration.
Barth’s distinctive way of conceptualizing the beauty of God was endorsed by Hans Urs von Balthasar, and thus came to play an important if indirect role in shaping the course of recent theological aesthetics. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to ask two questions: To what degree does Barth follow through on his own insights into beauty and the character of God? And to what extent are his insights fruitful in ways that Barth himself did not identify or anticipate? In response to the first question, my contention is that Barth develops his rudimentary theology most fully in relation to the human experience of joy, which I characterize as the affection that most closely corresponds to the beauty of God. I engage the second question by looking at the practice of Communion in light of Barth’s four rudiments, in order to test their constructive potential. Seen through this lens, the church’s meal appears as a vital and, in many Protestant churches, an underutilized resource for the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of spiritual and aesthetic formation.
This study of Barth’s theology of beauty points towards several conclusions. In relation to the task of interpreting Barth, I show that the scope of Barth’s rudimentary theology of beauty is not limited to the doctrine of God; rather, it informs and enriches his broader theological project. In terms of theological praxis, Barth’s habit of reaffirming key elements of the church’s tradition while also raising critical questions, commends itself as a viable model for engaging theologically with beauty without compromising core Protestant convictions. Finally, I argue that Barth’s resolutely theo-centric way of thinking about beauty has potentially wider ramifications than he himself perceived, particularly in relation to areas of theology or Christian practice where the language of beauty is already deeply woven into the fabric of scripture and tradition.
Item Open Access The History of Interpretation of Karl Barth’s Ecclesiology from 1927 to 2015(2016) Rowell, Andrew DaleThis dissertation investigates the interpretation of Karl Barth’s ecclesiology from 1927 through 2015. The history of interpretation of Karl Barth’s ecclesiology has never been attempted in such a comprehensive way as what is attempted in this dissertation. That is its basic contribution.
The primary argument of the dissertation is that Barth’s ecclesiology has been mischaracterized in five different ways. The investigation reveals that Karl Barth’s ecclesiology has thrilled and puzzled interpreters. They end up characterizing Barth in a largely appreciative way or dismissive way but in whatever way, it is reductive. When all the secondary literature is investigated it is revealed that Sacramental interpreters applaud the fierceness with which he defends the importance of the church in the midst of a confused world but are disturbed by what they perceive to be his lack of attention to the institutional church. Free Church interpreters gloat in his denunciation of infant baptism and his preference for congregational polity but wonder why he is not even more firmly congregationalist. Architectonic interpreters bask in the genius of his Trinitarian and Christological descriptions of the church but then criticize him when he does not hew to their elegant explanations. Actualistic interpreters, disenchanted with the institutional church, relish his attacks on religion in his early commentaries on Romans but ignore that he calls his magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics. Missionary interpreters trumpet his emphasis on witness but play down his obsessive denunciation of syncretism. When all of this is seen, it becomes clear that Barth’s ecclesiology defies easy characterization. The specific evidence for different characterizations are identified and analyzed in light of what Barth really said. Sometimes the characterizations are due to a misreading of what Barth was saying. Other times Barth’s interpreters have identified an isolated statement that Barth developed elsewhere more adequately. The great advantage of this close analysis is to convey the complexity and nuance of ecclesiology. Someone who generally shares Barth’s approach to ecclesiology may learn what objections may be posed by other church traditions. For people critical of Barth’s ecclesiology, they can more adequately weigh whether indeed their critiques are well-founded.
The secondary argument of the dissertation, impossible to prove, is that Karl Barth’s ecclesiology is reasonably solid ecclesiology. The dissertation seeks to take seriously the major accusations hurled at his ecclesiology and they are found wanting. The dissertation concludes with what Barth wanted the church to be—over against the five schools of interpretation—practicing, local, catholic, confessing, and witnessing.