Karl Barth in Conversation 3/4 http://www.geocities.com/johnnymcdowell/Barth_Course_Seminar4_Le... 1 of 6 11/13/2006 5:28 PM Karl Barth in Conversation 3/4 Dr. John C. McDowell Seminar 4 Lecture 4 Conversations and Conflict: Barth’s Nein to Emil Brunner Introduction Barth’s Theological Disruption of Conversation The point I have been trying to make over the previous sessions is that there is a very real sense in which the fruit of Barth’s theological labours can be read through a theologically articulated sense of conversational practice. It has also been repeatedly made clear that such a thesis would encounter serious opposition among those who have commented on the nature of Barth’ theology. While it was published in 1977, Clark Pinnock’s article (‘Karl Barth and Christian Apologetics’) is a useful indicator of one form of critique. Pinnock worries about the usefulness of Barth’s work for from the perspective of the task of the public articulation of the Christian rationale of the Christian witness to revelation. The problem here becomes one of rationally uncheckable claims to revelation, something that Bonhoeffer’s charge of "revelatory positivism" had earlier adverted to. According to Pinnock, a type of claim echoed by James Barr, The theologian and the atheist are engaged in a shouting match: one says, ‘Religion is man’s invention!’, the other ‘No, it’s not!’ Barth offers us no help in resolving the question of who is right. This, then, is "one of the most vulnerable points in his whole theological system, and exposes his entire work to repudiation by all who are not yet convinced by the Christian claims". According to one such as Richard Roberts, Barth has "become the entextualised, but no longer context-bound mouth of ‘God’", and therein has provided theology with its own ghettoised ‘breathing-space’ in protected isolation from public scrutiny. Pinnock echoes this conclusion when accusing Barth of inflating "a subjectivist balloon" that cannot be distinguished from "fantasy and dream": there is no indication where it touches reality, and so it is impossible to distinguish true revelation from false. Pinnock imagines ‘conversation’ (although it is not clear that this word is appropriate for depicting what Pinnock is hoping for) to begin at the end of the process of identifying what it is that constitutes Christian discipleship, or to be the means for – evangelism. Pinnock’s critical strategy, then, is less the suggestion that Barth needs to approach theology more ‘conversationally’, as the complaint that he makes the evangelistic practice of persuasion more difficult "in a pluralistic world with its competing truth claims" (but, of course, is a theological problem for Pinnock). While Roberts’ critique of Barth is both more radical and sophisticated, there is an important reason for