Joel D. S. Rasmussen

From Despair to Faith

Philosophy

“From Despair to Faith heralds a welcome development in the scholarship exploring the depths of Kierkegaard's relationship to the Christian spiritual tradition. Historically and theologically sensitive, Barnett's study of Kierkegaard's 'icons of faith' subtly serves as an important corrective to the many incomplete but persistent stereotypes of this challenging Christian thinker and equally shows him to be a spiritual author on the order of such enduring guides as John of the Cross and Johann Arndt.”

Karl Barth's Infralapsarian Theology

Theology

“Through a detailed study of the development of Karl Barth's theology against the background of the Lapsarian Controversy of the seventeenth century, Tseng shows that Barth's professed 'purified supralapsarianism' is in fact a transformed vision of Christology and predestination in which both infralapsarian and supralapsarian elements play an important role. Tseng's headline claim that Barth's mature view is best described (contra Barth himself) as 'basically infralapsarian' is and will no doubt remain controversial. Yet at the same time, his fine-grained presentation of Barth's Christological doctrine of election as a dialectical admixture of supra- and infralapsarian patterns of thinking builds a persuasive case and, moreover, models a hearty mode of theological inquiry that is refreshing in an era grown chary of dogmatic reflection.”