Perhaps only a few potential readers are interested enough in an essay titled “The Continuing Relevance of the Donatist Controversy” to begin reading it immediately (or ever). Others may be pleased to learn that only gradually will we make our way to thinking about the controversy that troubled . . . . Continue Reading »
Jennifer Rosner joins the podcast to discuss her new book, Healing the Schism: Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, and the New Jewish-Christian Encounter. Continue Reading »
I read R. R. Reno’s charitable words on Karl Barth with great interest (“Karl Barth,” May) and would like to offer my own remarks as a supplement. At the Protestant Theologicum in Tübingen (1974–5), I spent a year sharing an office with Reno’s mentor, Ronald Thiemann. Ron’s background . . . . Continue Reading »
No theologian has exercised a greater influence on me than Karl Barth. I first encountered his work while I was a student at Haverford College. In those years, I was smitten with Carl Jung and Paul Tillich, who fed my growing interest in matters spiritual. But Barth did not traffic in the soft . . . . Continue Reading »
Pandemic, lockdowns, shuttered churches, trillions spent, BLM protests turning violent, political rancor, hyper-partisan media, uproar after the election, a mob storming the Capitol: Strong tremors are shaking our society. If you’re like me, you’re feeling knocked off balance, and you’re . . . . Continue Reading »
We are all of us together suffering the consequences of Christian sin, so that we may all of us together receive mercy.
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The 500th anniversary of the Reformation sent me back to Luther and his debate with Erasmus. The two were among the most widely read authors in sixteenth-century Europe. In the early 1520s, they exchanged dueling treatises on free will. They raised recondite theological questions of biblical . . . . Continue Reading »
On April 8, 1966, a five-thousand-word cover story appeared in Time magazine, sending the country into a panic over a group of theologians few had heard of then and nobody remembers now. Paul van Buren, Thomas Altizer, and William Hamilton are forgotten. The cover, however, remains memorable. The . . . . Continue Reading »
When Harvey Cox was a student minister in Berlin in 1962, one year after the erection of the Wall, he was able to travel back and forth between East and West because he held an American passport. He thus became a courier for pastors and Christian laypeople on both sides of that divide and was . . . . Continue Reading »
BARTH'S LEGACY I am grateful to Phillip Cary for his admirable review of my book Reading Barth with Charity (April). I have only one demurral. I would simply like to enter a plea for greater historical consciousness. After all, it has not yet been fifty years since Barth’s death. It seems . . . . Continue Reading »
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