Karl Barth and the Importance of Thinking Theologically within the Nicene Faith
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This article argues that if Catholic and Protestant theologians, prompted by the Holy Spirit, allowed their common faith in God as confessed in the Nicene Creed to shape their thinking and action, this could lead to more visible unity between them. Relying on Barth, the article suggests that the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church can be understood best in faith that allows the unique object of faith, namely God incarnate in Christ and active in his Spirit, to dictate one’s understanding. Such thinking will avoid the pluralist tendency to eviscerate Christ’s uniqueness and attempts to equate church unity with aspects of the church’s visible existence. These approaches tend to undermine the importance of faith in recognizing that such unity means union with Christ through the Spirit such that it cannot be equated with or perceived by examining only its historical existence in itself and in relation to other communities of faith.
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1
See John D. Godsey (ed.), Karl Barth’s Table Talk (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1962), p. 50.
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5
Godsey, p. 50.
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8
Godsey, pp. 50–1.
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15
Ibid., p. 385.
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16
Alan Torrance, ‘Jesus in Christian doctrine’, The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 200–1.
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17
Ibid., p. 201.
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22
See John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), ch. 9: ‘Jesus and the World Religions’, at p. 178.
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24
Ibid., p. 92.
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25
Ibid., pp. 92–93.
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26
Ibid., p. 93.
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28
Ibid., p. 97.
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30
See Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (New York: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 33, Paul D. Molnar, ‘Some Dogmatic Consequences of Paul F. Knitter’s Unitarian Theocentrism’, The Thomist, 55.3 (1991), pp. 449–95 and Molnar, Incarnation and Resurrection, p. 185.
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37
Ibid., p. 206.
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40
Ibid., p. 662.
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43
Ibid., p. 181.
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44
Ibid., p. 182.
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45
Ibid., p. 181.
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58
Ibid., pp. 4–5.
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59
Ibid., p. 6.
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60
Ibid., p. 12.
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62
Ibid., p. 6.
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63
Ibid., p. 12.
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64
Ibid., p. 15.
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66
Ibid., p. 652.
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68
Ibid., pp. 652–3.
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69
Ibid., p. 653.
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72
Ibid., p. 655.
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79
Ibid., p. 656.
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84
Ibid., p. 658.
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Karl Barth and the Importance of Thinking Theologically within the Nicene Faith
In: EcclesiologySearch for other papers by Paul D. Molnar in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This article argues that if Catholic and Protestant theologians, prompted by the Holy Spirit, allowed their common faith in God as confessed in the Nicene Creed to shape their thinking and action, this could lead to more visible unity between them. Relying on Barth, the article suggests that the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church can be understood best in faith that allows the unique object of faith, namely God incarnate in Christ and active in his Spirit, to dictate one’s understanding. Such thinking will avoid the pluralist tendency to eviscerate Christ’s uniqueness and attempts to equate church unity with aspects of the church’s visible existence. These approaches tend to undermine the importance of faith in recognizing that such unity means union with Christ through the Spirit such that it cannot be equated with or perceived by examining only its historical existence in itself and in relation to other communities of faith.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 399 | 63 | 10 |
| Full Text Views | 129 | 4 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 74 | 5 | 3 |
