Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T15:28:09.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Barth or Bultmann?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

N. H. G. Robinson
Affiliation:
Late Professor of Systematic Theology, University of St Andrews

Extract

In his book on Karl Barth Professor T. F. Torrance spoke at one point of ‘the great watershed of modern theology’. ‘There are,’ he wrote,1 ‘two basic issues here. On the one hand, it is the very substance of the Christian faith that is at stake, and on the other hand, it is the fundamental nature of scientific method, in its critical and methodological renunciation of prior understanding, that is at stake. This is the great watershed of modern theology: either we take the one way or the other – there is no third alter native… one must go either in the direction taken by Barth or in the direction taken by Bultmann.’

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 275 note 1 Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology (London, 1962), pp. 206 f.Google Scholar

page 275 note 2 Ibid. p. 176.

page 276 note 1 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, vol. I (London, 1953), p. 12.Google Scholar

page 277 note 1 Torrance, T. F., Theological Science (London, 1969), pp. xiii, 84.Google Scholar

page 278 note 1 Barth, Karl, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (London, 1938), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 278 note 2 Schleiermacher, F., The Christian Faith, 2nd edn (English translation, Edinburgh, 1928), pp. 133 f.Google Scholar

page 280 note 1 Bultmann, R., Essays (London, 1955), D. 113; cf. p. 287Google Scholar and Bultmann, R., Faith and Under standing (London, 1969), pp. 132–7.Google Scholar

page 281 note 1 Torrance, Theological Science, p. 132.

page 281 note 2 Ibid. p. 24.

page 282 note 1 Ibid. pp. 322, 323, 325.

page 283 note 1 Torrance, Karl Barth, pp. 182, 176, 207, 182.

page 283 note 2 Torrance, Theological Science, p. 325.

page 285 note 1 Bultmann, R., Theology of the New Testament, vol. I (English translation, London, 1952), p. 269; Faith and Understanding, p. 315.Google Scholar

page 285 note 2 Bultmann, R., Faith and Understanding, pp. 133, 138.Google Scholar

page 285 note 3 Ibid. p. 139.

page 286 note 1 Religious Studies, 6 (1970), p. 133; cf. Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (London, 1949), p. 23.Google Scholar