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The Early Reception of Karl Barth's Theology in Britain: A Supplementary View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

D. Densil Morgan
D. Densil Morgan
Affiliation:
School of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG
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Extract

One of the axioms of modern church history in Britain is that whereas Anglo-Saxon thought was on the whole impervious to the appeal and achievement of Karl Barth, it was among the Scots alone that the Swiss theologian's theories found any real resonance and creative response. Stephen Sykes in a 1979 volume of studies in Barth's theological method, mentions the somewhat bewildered response to his publications in Britain and the United States between 1925 and the mid-1980s and goes on to say that ‘from now onwards it is in Scotland that Barth is taken with the greatest seriousness in the English speaking world’. In a later volume of centenary essays, R. H. Roberts traced the reception of the theology of Karl Barth ‘in the Anglo-Saxon world’ by quoting the evidence of such late 1920s and early 1930s figures as J. H. Morrison, John McConnachie, H. R. Mackintosh, Norman Porteous and A. J. MacDonald to claim that ‘it is clear from an early stage that enthusiasm for Barth's work … was primarily a Scottish attribute’. In another essay in the same volume, Colin Gunton contrasted the usual English attitude to Barth with that of theologians from other lands: ‘For the most part and despite exceptions’, he claimed, ‘the English find it difficult to come to terms with the theology of Karl Barth’, while in a companion volume Geoffrey Bromiley noted that this was hardly the case for theologians and pastors ‘in such diverse lands as Switzerland, Germany, France, Holland, Hungary, and Scotland’. Again and again, it is Scotland which is emphasised as being the place within the British Isles where Barth's ideals took root.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , November 2001 , pp. 504 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2001

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References

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33 University of Wales, Bangor, Ivor Oswy Davies MSS., ‘Karl Barth’, 3.

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35 ‘Mudiad Karl Barth’, Y Goleuad, 22 September 1937, 10.

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