One Church in Christ
The Confessional Foundations of Ecclesiastical Unity in Karl Barth 1921–38
- Theology
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2023
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Publisher's Description
This book is devoted to understanding the confessional foundations of church unity in the earlier theology of Karl Barth. This book follows Barth's academic and ecclesiastical career from the years 1921 to 1938 as he moves from a nonconfessional pastor in Switzerland prior to his first teaching post in Gottingen to articulating, in his first volume of Church Dogmatics, the critical and essential authority of the church's confession in its public witness at the start of his final teaching post in Basel. During these years, each academic placement and public ecclesiastical assignment is crucial for understanding the development of Barth's confessional theology in order to make sense of his mature dogmatic understanding of the authority of the church's confession in CD I/2.
Endorsements (5)
“This is a careful and impressive study of Karl Barth’s early ecclesiology. It will be valuable to anyone with an interest in Barth’s theology, confessional theology, the unity of the church, or indeed Christian witness today.”
“In this informative and accessible work, Troy Onsager explores Karl Barth’s life and theology in the critical 1920s and 1930s, during which Barth schematizes the church’s confession of faith as ecumenical yet particular, defined yet provisional. Barth’s ‘confessional quadrilateral,’ as Onsager labels it, undergirds Barth’s prophetic opposition to Nazism and charts a promising way forward for the confessional identity of the church today.”
“Troy Onsager’s One Church in Christ is a remarkably clear exposition of Barth’s development as a confessional theologian in the formative decades of the 1920s and 1930s. It sets forth not only Barth’s understanding of the Reformed confessions of the past but also casts light upon Barth’s own confessional identity. Onsager’s book reveals Barth’s confessionalism as one that is both particular in character and ecumenical in aspiration and in turn points to Barth’s continuing relevance for the church’s present task of confession.”
“Troy Onsager’s book provides priceless insights into a largely unexplored area of Karl Barth’s theology. Barth’s understanding and use of Reformed confessional heritage has profound ramifications, not only for students of Barth’s theology but for the church of twenty-first-century America. Far from mere declarations of belief, Onsager shows how confessional standards can be used to unite the church and bring it to greater health and deeper faith. A profoundly needed study for our day.”
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