Ethics in Crisis: Interpreting Barth's Ethics
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Overview
Ethics in Crisis offers a constructive proposal for the shape of contemporary Christian ethics drawing on a new and persuasive interpretation of the ethics of Karl Barth. David Clough argues that Karl Barth's ethical thought remained defined by the theology of crisis that he set out in his 1922 commentary on Romans, and that his ethics must therefore be understood dialectically, caught in an unresolved tension between what theology must and cannot be. Showing that this understanding of Barth is a resource for contemporary constructive accounts of Christian ethics, Clough points to a way beyond the idolatry of ethical absolutism on the one hand, and the apostasy of ethical postmodernism on the other.Synopsis
When Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) sought the root of the crisis of German theology at the beginning of the 20th century in the face of the rise of Nazism, says Clough (ethics and systematic theology, St. John's College, Durham, England), he found it in the crisis of the possibility of theology in the face of a God who cannot be comprehended by people, and responded with dialectical theology. He argues that the same crisis underlies the crisis of theological ethics at the beginning of the 21st century in the face of postmodern uncertainty and fundamentalist certainty, and that Barth's response is illuminating for how people respond to this crisis. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR