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This article argues that the term “incommensurable” is a key indicator of Barth’s position that the difference between God and the world is a “pure difference” and therefore not a difference of any “kind” nor even a difference of “infinitely greater degree,” as possibly implied by the Fourth Lateran Council. Although this term is used prominently in his second Romans commentary, where it underscores the companion idea that God is “wholly other,” it also recurs at important points in Church Dogmatics, where it is more often presupposed than openly stated. The “Pure Difference Thesis” not only clarifies why Barth’s rejection of the analogia entis is logically necessary for him but also why he argues that any and all activity of God in the world is purely miraculous, as well as beyond ordinary human comprehension. A few examples of how the Pure Difference Thesis comes to bear in Barth’s theology are given: truth claims about God involve an extrinsic analogy of attribution as grounded entirely in the miracle of grace; sanctification in Christ cannot possibly be a matter of progressing by degrees; dialectical theology becomes a drastic matter of Aufhebung (negation and negation of the negation); and Christ’s atoning work on the cross is depicted in essentially “apocalyptic” terms.

In this chapter, four sets of coordinates are used to chart how Barth viewed ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacraments’ in Church Dogmatics. They are: (a) witness and mediation (with their objective and subjective poles); (b) instrumentalism and parallelism; (c) the relation of divine and human activity; and (d) the threefold office of Christ. These coordinates prove useful in analysing how Barth viewed Word and sacrament not only in the early volumes of Church Dogmatics, but also in volume IV, where he significantly changed his mind. It is shown that in discussing ‘sacrament’ and ‘sacraments’, Barth paid more attention to witness than mediation; that he tended towards instrumentalism rather than occasionalism (although not conclusively so); that he worked with a non-synergistic account of divine and human activity from the beginning of his dogmatics through to the end; and that he heavily emphasized Christ’s prophetic office over his royal office and—especially—over his priestly office.

Three types of Calvinism are distinguished: evangelical, revivalistic, and rationalistic. John Williamson Nevin represents the first type, Charles Finney the second, and Charles Hodge the third. Nevin appealed to the Heidelberg Catechism in his respective controversies with both Finney and Hodge. For Nevin the Heidelberg Catechism was a moderating influence that could serve as a bulwark against the more extreme Calvinistic tendencies that he set out to combat. By focusing on Nevin, the essay offers a snapshot of how the Heidelberg Catechism functioned in Reformed immigrant communities in America.

The essay asks whether the ‘necessity defense’ can be used to legitimate torture. By modifying the criteria so as to fit the case, it is argued that torture fails to meet the established norms of the historic just-war tradition, which also underlie international law. ‘Interrogational,’‘terroristic,’ and ‘demonic’ aspects of torture are distinguished along the way. It is concluded that torture admits no necessity by which it can be justified.

A new and “revisionist” reading would argue that the later Karl Barth saw the existence of the eternal Trinity not as the ground and presupposition, but as the consequence of God's pre-temporal decision of election. A more “traditionalist” reading, on the other hand, as defended by this essay, denies that proposition. The texts adduced by the revisionists, it is argued, fail to make their case. More plausible, alternative readings are offered, counter-evidence is marshaled, and the deleterious theological consequences of the revisionist alternative are spelled out. Barth could not have adopted it without contradicting his most basic convictions.

The essay suggests that three main approaches have been taken toward Christ's resurrection in recent theology. One view focuses on the question of existential meaningfulness. While it may or may not affirm the resurrection as a statement about Jesus' particular eternal destiny, it takes his resurrection primarily as a symbol of spiritual regeneration. A second view affirms precisely what the first rejects, namely, that Christ's resurrection is grounded in an actual historical occurrence. Knowledge of his resurrection is mediated by modern critical research and confirmed by it. Whether this mediation is necessary under the conditions of modernity or merely a matter of apologetic ground-clearing remains various within the type. Finally, there are those who argue that questions of meaningfulness and historicity, though important, are secondary, because determined by the nature of the resurrection event – which is necessarily unique in kind. Its meaningfulness and historicity are themselves correspondingly unique. Whereas the first type is seen as emphasizing transcendence at the expense of historicity, the second does the reverse by elevating historicity at the expense of transcendence. The mysterious conjunction of historicity and transcendence is what the third type regards as essential to understanding other relevant questions. The first type is represented by Schleiermacher, Bultmann and Tillich; the second by Pannenberg and Wright; the third by Moltmann, Frei and Barth.

‘All the gifts of God set forth in baptism,’ wrote John Calvin, ‘are found in Christ alone’ (Inst. IV.15.6). The baptismal gifts, for Calvin, were essentially three: forgiveness of sins, dying and rising with Christ, and communion with Christ himself (FV.15.1, 5, 6). They were ordered, however, in a particular way. Communion with Christ, Calvin considered, was in effect the one inestimable gift that included within itself the other two benefits of forgiveness and rising with Christ from the dead. Forgiveness and eternal life were thus inseparable from Christ's person and so from participatio Christi through our communion with him. Only by participating in Christ through communion could the divine gifts set forth in baptism be truly received. Any severing of these gifts from Christ himself would result only in empty abstractions. No spiritual gift—neither forgiveness nor eternal life nor any other divine benefit—was ever to be found alongside Christ or apart from him. Christ's saving benefits were inherent in his living person. Only in and with his person were they set forth and available to the church. Communion with Christ was thus bound up with Christ's person in his saving uniqueness. He himself and he alone, for Calvin and for the whole Reformation, was our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

During the last decade of his life (1959-1968), right up to the time of his death at age eighty-two, Karl Barth took part in an astonishing number of recorded conversations and interviews. Collected transcripts fill two large volumes in the Gesamtasugabe to form a total of more than one thousand pages. The second of the two volumes, Gespriiche 1964—1968, will be discussed here.

This article examines the relation of Christian baptism to the saving work of God in Christ. In critical conversation with the later work of Barth, the article argues that baptism, as visible word, both attests and mediates divine forgiveness. Consequently, baptism with water and baptism with the Holy Spirit are not to be bifurcated from each other. Believer’s baptism is the norm, although infant baptism is not excluded. Baptism exemplifies the koinonia of divine and human action without falling into synergism, and without appealing to inappropriate notions of causality.

Hell is a doctrine that has always had its uses. The range of those uses can be conveniently traced by examining a passage fromCold Comfort Farm, the comic novel by Stella Gibbons, first published in 1932. The novel is set in rural England during the third decade of the twentieth century, a time when automobiles were not entirely unknown but not yet widely in use. The scene to be examined involves Flora Poste and Amos Starkadder. Flora is a young, sophisticated woman who has gone to visit her relatives in the country, and Amos is her gray-haired, grizzled cousin, a Scotsman who lives on the farm with other kinfolk and who serves as a lay preacher in town at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. Flora accompanies Amos to a preaching service one evening. They arrive by horse and buggy, enter the hall, and take their seats. Flora sits in the back near the exit, Amos by the platform up front.

Doctrines of the atonement in Christian theology, as Marlin E. Miller has pointed out, ‘usually limit their concern to reconciliation with God and, at most, consider reconciliation with others a secondary consequence of reconciliation with God’. Too often, in other words, the vertical aspect of reconciliation is allowed to overshadow its horizontal aspect. The vertical aspect of the atonement as it pertains directly to God is often treated in isolation as if its ethical implications were of no great importance. The reverse defect, however, would also appear to be widespread. Christian ethics as we know it today often seems to proceed as if the atoning work of Christ were of little or no relevance to its deliberations on human affairs. The social or horizontal aspect of reconciliation thereby eclipses its vertical aspect. Yet if the cross of Christ is indeed the very center of the center of the Christian gospel, as the church has historically believed, then how can it fail to determine the substance of Christian ethics as well as that of Christian theology? Moreover, how can the centrality of the cross fail to orient them both in any attempt to specify their inner unity, order and differentiation?

Etude sur la pensee de deux theologiens contemporains concernant les aspects de la verite dans le discours theologique. Pour K.Barth, la verite de l'Evangile tient dans la participation personnelle du chretien a l'idee de Dieu. A cette conception on peut apporter l'objection de G.Lindbeck, qui consiste a affirmer que lorque l'engagement personnel est mediocre ou immoral, la verite ne peut etre atteinte. Il est necessaire de bien mettre en relation sa vie de chretien avec la parole de l'Evangile afin de connaitre positivement ce qu'elle signifie