Tag: Anthropology

As I continue on with my linear read through of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics I have come across a small print section in CD III/3 §50, 30 wherein Barth is engaging with a doctrine of nothingness/sin. In this particular section he is commiserating with that Teutonic, Leibniz’s understanding on such matters. Without providing the necessary context I am simply going to drop some of my reflection on this following: Leibniz’s anthropology, according to Barth’s reading, was highly monistic in regard to what it means to be human vis a vis God’s perfections. Indeed, a rather dreary prospect for the Eschaton….

I put together the following some time ago, and only had it saved as a draft here on the blog. I thought I would publish it now. I actually don’t even recall who my interlocutor is anymore; maybe he’ll see this and remind me. I shared the following passage on Facebook and X, from John Baillie, as cited by TF Torrance in his book: Theological Science. The fact is that no true knowledge, no valid act of perceiving or thinking, can be explained by beginning from the human end—whether it be my perception of the number of peas in a…

Knowledge of ourselves first requires a genuine knowledge of the One who created us. Without that outer reference point, there can be no genuine knowledge of the self. This was a key axiom of Calvin’s, as he wrote in his Institutes; and it is key for Barth as he developed his theological anthropology in the Church Dogmatics. The following is an excerpt from Barth’s CD III/2, where he is, indeed, doing the yeoman’s work of developing what he takes to be a genuinely Christian understanding of what the entailments are of what it means to be human. You will notice,…