A number of people have devoted significant amounts of energy to show that Barth's commitment to the priority of divine action does not entail a concomitant refusal to attribute significance to human agency (John Webster's work on Barth's ethics comes immediately to mind). But today I came across John Flett's account of mission theologians who did read Barth in this way and who denied him any relevance for a theology of mission as a result (in his excellent book The Witness of God). Here is the most extreme version of the misreading:
'Barth is consumed, even obsessed, by the desire to suppress the least tendency to minimize or relativize God's activity, and to establish with relentless completeness that human activity or participation is totally non-existent in the whole story of salvation.'
Hendrik Kraemer, Religion and the Christian Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 192.
Wow. I would've espected better from Kraemer.
Posted by: Michael Westmoreland-White | Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 12:17 PM
Kraemer sounds profound but what does he mean? He would never be awarded the crystal for clear and plain English.
Posted by: stephen | Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 04:37 AM