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The Political Theology and Ethics of Karl Barth

出版	Regent College, 2011
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=R1gejwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋"This thesis is designed to synthesize, explicate, and critically examine Karl Barth's theology of politics and political ethics, as he embodied them in his own life and writing. Because Barth wrote no single extended treatise on political matters, but rather engaged with them throughout his life, this is accomplished by examining his five decades of political activity along with the political writing he produced during that time, including pamphlets, personal and public letters, minor essays, interviews, public discussions, speeches, official declarations, sermons, and, of course, the major doctrines and the minor excurses of the Church Dogmatics. Along the way, we have tried to note how Barth's thought changed or not through the years, depending on the particular challenges facing society and the church. Chapter one reviews Barth's heavy involvement in political affairs. It sets in the background several critical voices who conclude that Barth's theology of politics is either non-existent or incapable of leading to responsible political action, and sets in the foreground Barth's actualistic ontology that undergirds his own political action and his demand that the church be involved in political action. After this, we follow Barth from his days as the "red pastor" of Safenwil, Switzerland, to his defiance of National Socialism in World War II to his appeal for theological and political sanity during the Cold War between East and West. Chapter two and three follow a common methodological course, which Barth himself follows in each volume of the Church Dogmatics, from the indicatives of theology to the imperatives of political activity. Thus we synthesize and explain the most significant theological doctrines that shaped Barth's understanding of politics before we turn to see the implications of those doctrines in his political action and counsel. In chapter two we explore Barth's decision to follow the method of modern political philosophy, beginning at least with Hobbes, which moves from fundamental anthropology to political structures. Barth follows this method, but replaces the atomistic individual of modernity with a christocentric anthropology of co-humanity. This, along with his understanding that God is one who ever descends to care for the vulnerable, led him to endorse democracy, socialism, social justice, and the state's responsibility to be an enculturing force that fosters social goods and cultivates mutual responsibility among its citizens. In chapter three we explore Barth's theology of sin as das Nichtige and the political authorities as Christ's external, relative, and provisional response to it. We see that Barth describes political authorities as a postlapsarian, remedial ordinance of God that is authorized to use force to diminish the most deleterious social effects of chaos and disorder caused by sin. In addition, we will criticize Barth's conclusion that the state is necessarily religiously neutral, and suggest that his non-political doctrine of the ascension, in contrast to the theology of the ascension developed by Oliver O'Donovan, may have contributed to Barth's final judgment on this topic. Finally, in the conclusion, we will briefly evaluate the ways in which Barth's theology of politics and political ethics may continue to lead and support the church's actioin in our own time, and the ways in which we might justifiably demur from his eloquent witness and counsel.