BOOK REVIEW:
Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness. By Joseph L. Mangina. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. xiv + 208 pp. ISBN 0664228933.

Conversing with Barth. Edited by John C. McDowell and Mike Higton. Barth Studies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. xi + 234 pp. ISBN 0754605701. 

Those who teach courses on Karl Barth know how difficult it is to introduce students to his theology, especially his massive Church Dogmatics. While Church Dogmatics: A Selection (ed. Helmut Gollwitzer), Dogmatics in Outline, and Evangelical Theology: An Introduction provide a small taste of Barth, they are not quite the same thing as reading the massive volumes of the Dogmatics. Many teachers reluctantly conclude there is nothing else to do except have students “dive in” to those orange volumes, beginning perhaps with Barth’s discussion of the reality of God in II/1 or his discussion of reconciliation in IV/1. The problem, though, is that the fabric of the Dogmatics is tightly woven, and it is difficult to understand any one piece apart from some sense of the larger tapestry. Hence the need to provide students an “overview” of Barth. While there have been many attempts to “introduce” Barth’s theology, it does not lend itself easily to “summarization.” Even introductions that restrict themselves to the Dogmatics have not fared well. Recently, however, a few books have appeared that offer, if not a summary, at least an overview of or guidance through the Dogmatics. Eberhard Busch’s The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology (Eerdmans, 2004) is one such text, which will probably become the gold standard for some time to come, and now we have another—Joseph Mangina’s Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness.

In the first chapter Mangina briefly sketches Barth’s life and the structure of the Dogmatics. In the next five chapters he examines each of the four volumes of the Dogmatics—the doctrine of the Word of God, God, Creation, and Reconciliation. His goal is not so much a comprehensive summary of the Dogmatics as guidance and orientation to its major themes and topics. He does so by identifying what he thinks is Barth’s “basic move” in each volume. These are not so much fixed principles as they are Barth’s discernment of patterns inherent to Scripture, what Mangina describes as Barth’s “theological responses to divine moves,” moves which are “radical” in that they “unsettle some of our deepest assumptions about what the word ‘God’ means” (p. xii). For example, Barth’s basic move in Volume II, the doctrine of God, is “to affirm God’s sovereignty over human beings—a sovereignty concretely determined as grace or covenant fellowship” (p. 58). In his discussion of human beings in Volume III, Barth’s basic move is to describe the image of God not as a human capacity or attribute but as “the relation believers bear to the true man, Jesus Christ” (p. 88). By means of these basic moves Mangina is able to present the central themes in the Dogmatics’ four volumes without attempting the impossible task of summarizing everything Barth has to say.

Secondly, at the conclusion of each of his discussions of the four volumes Mangina brings Barth into conversation with a contemporary theologian. At the end of the chapter on revelation Barth’s dialogue partner is George Lindbeck and his proposal for a cultural-linguistic interpretation of Christian faith. In response to Barth’s description of God and election, Mangina goes to a Jewish voice, Michael Wyschogrod, to discuss Barth’s treatment of Israel and Judaism. The other interlocutors Mangina selects are Stanley Hauerwas, Robert Jenson, and Henri de Lubac.

Mangina’s accomplishments are twofold. He gives the reader a sense of the major theological themes in each volume of the Dogmatics, and he draws the reader into the dialogue between Barth and some of those theologians who have been deeply influenced by him. The reader is given at least an initial sense of what Barth is about and how he impinges on contemporary theology.

While these two tasks are executed with impressive clarity and dexterity, some readers will wonder about Mangina’s selection of conversation partners. Each is “friendly” toward Barth. The conversations might have been more interesting if he had chosen theologians more critical of Barth. Furthermore, Mangina may have written a book that is beyond the reach of many of those reading Barth for the first time. Approximately a fourth of each chapter is given to the dialogue between Barth and his interlocutors. Most students reading Barth for the first time are also probably reading Lindbeck, Wyschogrod, Hauerwas, Jenson, and de Lubac for the first time. Even though Mangina tries valiantly to describe each of their theological positions the reader who has not read them previously may be more confused than enlightened by the dialogue.

Conversing with Barth continues the attempt to bring Barth into conversation with contemporary theology. The editors, John McDowell and Mike Higton, have two goals for this volume which is in Ashgate’s “Barth Studies” series. They want to demonstrate, first, that Barth’s theology is not “isolationist,” not so constructed as to ward off inquiry, and, second, that it in fact rewards those who engage it in serious dialogue. They explore Barth’s openness to conversation by “asking how much his theology was developed in explicit conversations with figures in and beyond the Christian tradition,” and by asking “whether it can contribute to contemporary theological conversations without stifling them” (p. 8). To that end John Webster explores Barth’s Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century and concludes that, contrary to much popular opinion, “Barth is not so much an anti-historical theologian as a theological historian” (p. 22) who protests not against history but against positions that either identify God with historical processes or naturalize them, thereby excluding God from them.

The other ten essays engage Barth on issues related to culture, apologetics, the relation between justification and sanctification, exile and freedom, figural reading, evil and tragedy, the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, and war. In his Afterward, David Ford points out that “at least five of the chapters in this book have origins in doctoral dissertations” (p. 228), including Ford himself. Reading Barth is an excellent way to learn how to do theology. It is also true that the authors of these essays are, if we may use the dangerously vague term, “Barthians.” Given the aims of this volume, it does seem clear that while Barth was no theological isolationist, many Barthians may be. That is, the circle of those engaged in conversation with Barth has been restricted to Barthians. This volume would have been richer and more engaging if some of its authors had been critics of Barth. Is it really only Barthians who want to converse with Barth? 

George Stroup
Professor of Theology
Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, FALL 2006, VOL. 6, #2.