Calvin & Barth

T. H. L. Parker said:

... to treat of Calvin now without taking into account both Barth's criticisms of Calvin and also the new light he has shed on many of Calvin's doctrines would be to label oneself as hopelessly archaic.

John Calvin (1975), p.viif

Oh well. "Hopelessly archaic", it is, then.

Church Dogmatics

Barth's Church Dogmatics appears to be available online.

Thanks to Philip Sumpter for the pointer.

Update: Ah, they seem to be requiring a password now. Shame.

The Big Event

According to Hans Frei:

No more crucial event has taken place in modern Protestant theology than Karl Barth's break with liberalism. It was the most significant single impetus to the subsequent generation's conception of its task.

PhD Diss., Yale, 1965, p.iii quoted in McGowan, Divine Spiration p62

Barth on Scripture smelling Fishy

I’ve been reading Stanley Fish, Is There A Text In This Class? and it strikes me that he shares with Barth a desire to hold on to the objectivity of the text (at least at times) but an emphasis on the moment of reception of the text by readers as the really meaningful moment, almost the time when the text “becomes” a Text. Barth could say something like that about the written Word of God.