Barth on grace and revelation

" Grace means that God expresses Himself before man, declaring himself as the truth in his existence. It means that He causes himself to be perceived by this one who is not his equal, who is merely His creature, and who has willfully closed his eyes and ears and heart to him. It means the free revelation of God. This takes place in the life of Jesus Christ. In this life it is a matter of God’s unmerited good-pleasure, of His free grace, and therefore his free word to humanity."[1]








[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV.3.1 §69. Trans. G.W. Bromiley (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 78

Kuyper Conference 2010

This Wednesday I will be heading over to Princeton Seminary for the Kuyper Conference with a couple of my seminary colleagues. I am very excited for some of the papers that will be presented as well as some of the speakers. George Harinck will be speaking on Common Grace in Europe and Kees van der Kooi (whom I am very excited to see present), will be presenting on the concept of culture in Kuyper Bavinck and Barth. There will be three Fuller seminary students presenting as well. Bob Covolo is presenting on Amos Yong's contribution to a Kuyperian Pneumatology of religions, Cory Willson is presenting on what the Dutch Reformed tradition can learn from the Talmud's anthropology, and Jen Rosner is presenting on Hans Rosenzweig and the path to redemption. There are going to be some exciting papers and I am looking very much forward to it. Look for some of these paper's to be published in the forthcoming Kuyper Center Review.

Question about a Barth article

Does anyone know if Karl Barth's essay The Church, which appears in God in Action, is a translation of his earlier essay entitled Die Kirche Jesu Christi, which originally appeared in Theologische Existenz Heute, 5? I'd appreciate any help on this. Thanks

more to come

The last four weeks of my life have been crazy. The end of my quarter was filled with research and more research. I finished my final paper and feel good about my end product--although I still need to do some more editing to clean up some small errors. I will resume posting shortly. Peace

Post 8: The Particularity of Grace

Here is the Abstract for the paper that I will be submitting for my seminar. I would love any feedback or suggestions that you might have. And thanks to Dr. Adam Neder for his helpful suggestions.

The Particularity of Grace and the Common Work of the Spirit:

Karl Barth in Conversation with Herman Bavinck

            The goal of this essay is to closely examine the relationship of grace and revelation to Jesus Christ in Karl Barth's theology. I will not provide a comprehensive account of grace and revelation in Barth’s theology, but rather a more narrow account highlighting their relationship to Christ. I will then place Barth in conversation with the great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck. My reasons for doing so are as follows. Although Bavinck presents the relationship of grace and revelation to Christ much more loosely than does Barth, particularly in his doctrines of common grace and general revelation, Bavinck nevertheless develops these two doctrines christologically. My aim is to show that although Barth and Bavinck are often considered to be opponents, they are in fact quite similar. Both of their theologies are fundamentally christological.  I will then examine Bavinck's doctrines of common grace and general revelation.  I will conclude by showing that Barth and Bavinck's respective theologies converge in their christological pneumatologies.