This short volume, which emerged from the Karl Barth centenary year in
1986, brings together a collection of essays which makes an important
contribution to Barth interpretation. Few would dispute the fact that
Karl Barth is one of the great figures of twentieth-century theology,
and two decades after his death he continues to fascinate those who
study the field and his own thought in the magisterial, unfinished
Church Dogmatics. Yet while his impact and influence upon modern
theology has been great, Barth has been subject, too, to suspicion and
sometimes to fierce opposition. The contributors to this book examine
and refute some of the more simplistic reasons why the thought of Karl
Barth has had a somewhat limited appeal in modern English-language
theology. Writing form a variety of ecclesiastical persuasions,
Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholic, the authors seek to
demonstrate at a fundamental level the continuing important of some of
Barth's major concerns. Collectively the essays constitute a positive
introduction to Barth, to his place in the history of the philosophy of
religion, as a constructive theologian, as a Churchman and in specific
relation to the modern history of English-language theology.
