Overview

The study of Karl Barth has generally been excluded from religious studies departments in favour of more liberal theologians such as Tillich. For many years, scholar Garrett Green has argued that there is no justification for this neglect. To support his theory that Barth can and should be studied as a religious theorist rather than just a theologian, Garrett Green presents a brand new translation of Chapter 17 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics prefaced by a detailed introduction to the text. This important new translation counters the idea that Barth rejected the notion of religion out of hand by correcting a number of errors in the original version that obscure Barth's central argument. In particular the crucial word, Aufhebung, in the title is translated here as sublimation rather than abolition. The translation will do better justice to the German original and will be more accessible to contemporary readers. Unlike the original version, all Greek, Latin and Hebrew citations are translated into English, and the NRSV is used for the Bible quotes rather than the King James. The translation is accompanied by a text by Garrett Green introducing the scholar and student to Barth as a religious theorist. The book concludes with appendices containing teaching materials and a summary of developed by the author in the classroom over years.

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9780567031082

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Reviews

'Barth's account of religion in the first volume of the Church Dogmatics has been subject to all manner of misunderstanding. This superb new translation not only catches the vigour and nuance of Barth's prose, but also helps liberate the text from some conventional misperceptions. With its substantial and perceptive introduction, setting what Barth has to say in relation to contemporary study of the nature of religion, this fresh translation presents a very different Barth, of interest to theologians and theorists of religion alike.' John Webster, Professor of Systematic Theology, King's College, University of Aberdeen 'Karl Barth has a reputation for being the implacable foe of religion, which he is said to have rejected in the name of Christ. Garrett Green explodes this simplistic view. He gives us a Barth who is a shrewd, critically sympathetic interpreter of the human phenomenon of religion. Just as important, he gives us a Barth in English who sounds like Barth in German: intellectually probing, rhetorically dazzling, spiritually profound. This book should be required reading in courses on religion and postmodernism.' Jospeh Mangina, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology

Author Information

Garrett Green is the Class of 1943 Professor of Religious Studies, Connecticut College, USA and the author of Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination: The Crisis of Interpretation at the End of Modernity (Cambridge University Press 2000).

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