Showing posts with label Enlightenment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enlightenment. Show all posts

Monday, April 02, 2012

Karl Barth on the Enlightenment

In my ongoing efforts better to understand how Enlightenment thinking affected Biblical and textual studies in the 19th century, I have been reading Karl Barth's From Rousseau to Ritschl (SCM Press, 1959).  Karl Adams famously described Barth's 1922 Romans Commentary and its critique of Enlightenment-influenced German Protestant liberalism as like "a bombshell on the playground of the theologians."  Though the conclusions Barth eventually reached in his neo-orthodox theology are far from orthodoxy, he does offer a compelling analysis and critique of how the Enlightenment undermined the traditional, Biblical, Christian worldview.  Michael Horton also spends a considerable amount of time in The Christian Faith, surveying and interacting with Barth.
Here are a couple clips of the precisely elocuting Barth from an old documentary for those who want to brush up on their theological German and see the man in action: