Karl Barth: Dialectic Method
Karl Barth was the most significant Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. Through his single-minded determination on the priority of the Bible in the life of the church, he decisively shaped the course of twentieth-century Christian theology. He is not known as preacher or homiletician but as the dogmatician of the twentieth century.
He spent 12 years as a minister. This period was the formative period of his theological and ministerial life. In this period, he re constructed his view of theology.
For interpreting the text, he says;
Listen to my last piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis and do more exegesis. Keep to the Word, to the scripture that has been given to us.
The exegetical process of the…show more content… His understanding of God is attached from his attachment for Jesus. Bonheoffer’s theology was focused on Jesus. He could say: ‘If Jesus had not lived, then our life would be meaningless, in spite of all the other people whom we know and honour and love. Linking the identity of God so closely with the historical career of Jesus led Bonheoffer, at the height of the Second World War, to advocate the notion that God suffers, and that only a God who suffers in the light of people’s anguish is of any help to them. Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiousness makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering. Only the suffering God can help the suffering world.
Bonhoeffer was exposed as a devoted preacher and an important contributor to the theology of proclamation. The record of his lectures on homiletics to the Confessing Church seminary reveals three major ideas that dominated Bonheoffer’s thinking on preaching. Word, church and the World are the important emphases of Bonhoeffer. Each of these is important to his central emphasis on Christology.
Bonheoffer’s view of sermon is that the Christ is the Word of God who is present in sermon. He agrees with Luther on the idea of preaching. The Word of God exists both in Bible and in sermon but essentially in the latter. So according to him, preaching is also the Word of God. The proclaimed word is nothing less that Christ himself, walking through his congregation as the