Commanding Grace: Studies in Karl Barth's Ethics

The quality of recent books on Barth's moral theology, as I have indicated elsehwere with reference to Gerald McKenny's latest offering, is high. As well as McKenny, I have been occupying myself with a new volume of collected essays, edited by Daniel Migliore, entitled Commanding Grace: Studies in Karl Barth's Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). The volume is the published papers of the 2008 Karl Barth Conference, held at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA. I have so far only given light reading to several of the chapters, and must return to them in coming weeks with a more serious eye to the detail of the arguments presented (not least because I'm reviewing it for Theology journal), but thus far I have been enlivened by what I've read and the quality of engagement (positive and negative) with Barth's thought.

The papers are offered by a host of international scholars, from across theological disciplines, both male and female, and are equally varied in their approaches to Barth's moral theology. Standard issues such as interpretation and reception are addressed before the volume moves to consider issues for ethical reflection including war and democracy, justice, economics, and human agency and freedom. The essays are largely paired around these themes. The essays are topped and tailed by helpful contributions from the Editor.

The contributors are: Nigel Biggar; John R Bowlin; Todd V Cioffi; Jesse Couenhoven; Timothy Gorringe; Eric Gregory; David Haddorff; Christopher RJ Holmes; Danile Migliore; Paul T Nimmo; Katherine Sonderegger; Kathryn Tanner; and William Werpehowski.

As time goes by I hope to comment further. For now I'll just encourage you to get a copy and read it if you can.

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Paul Nimmo on Schleiermacher

Once again it's been a while since I blogged anything, but I thought I would flag-up this clip from the increasingly successful Modern Theology Timeline created by Tim Hull at St John's College Nottingham, UK. This is a recent interview Tim did with the Edinburgh based scholar Paul Nimmo on Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a really good interview, and will go a long way to rehabilitating FDES for those who mis-read Barth and reject him outright. Happy watching!

When religion stops us seeing clearly...

I spent a few minutes after morning prayer on Saturday wandering around the church building, enjoying the silence. I also had a look at the stained glass windows - most of which are Victorian. It's something I don't get to do very often because I'm too busy. My favourite window in our church building is very recent, only three years old, and is a brightly coloured rendition of Jesus welcoming children to himself. It is in the baptistry, an appropriate place for welcoming children into the family of God. I discovered another window today too, which I've never really noticed before - something that surprised me because ours is not an overly large building. It is a large plain window, with clear glass. You can see straight through it to the outside world: across the grave yard to the A-road that runs through the middle of the parish, and on to the homes beyond. I stood for a while watching people heading to the shops, the saturday morning traffic held up by the changing

Humble Confidence: The Appropriate Theological Attitude

I've just got round to reading January's International Journal of Systematic Theology (IJST). I really look forward to it coming in the post: it is the universal problem of research-students-who-are-within a-few-months-of-submission that we become so engrossed in the topic at hand (in my case Karl Barth) that other things pass us by. So, IJST affords me the opportunity to lift my head from the Barthian-pit and read a few other things and have those bits of my mind that remember what it was like to read freely in any area of systematics re-enlivened (avoiding the Barth essays within the journal...for now). Normally I skip over the editorials and head for the articles, but last night I read Steve Holmes' editorial for the January edition. In it Holmes, senior lecturer in Systematic Theology at St Andrews University, considers with what attitude the discipline of theology must engage with other academic disciplines. He outlines two, before settling on the third.

Michael J. Leyden

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