The Crisis in Crisis Theology

Extract

When these two essays were written—in 1934—a climax was reached in what some have called the Theology of Crisis. For some time before that date it had been obvious that Brunner and Barth, the leading exponents of the school, had been drifting apart in their respective formulations of the doctrine of man, but the clear lines of their divergence were not defined till the publication of these essays. Both writers appear to have modified details of their teaching since 1934, but the radical disagreement remains. The essays, therefore, may be regarded as giving classic expression to two fundamentally opposed interpretations of the interaction of nature and Grace from a Protestant standpoint.

The disagreement is partly explained, but only partly, by temperament. Barth is a preacher, a prophet who thunders from the heights, often through obscuring clouds; he is a man of passion, impatient in his convictions. Brunner on his part is a teacher, much concerned with clarity in exposition, far more sensitive to difficulties, broader in his sympathies; but at times he lacks the intuitive genius of his opponent. While all this is important and a key to much they write and to some of their oppositions (for the one, by his very psychological constitution, is often the complement of the other), yet it is not the whole story. The problem raised in the essays is not susceptible of any such facile solution. There is a real divergence, a parting of the way which is fundamental for their theology.