A summary of Karl Barth's theology

I. Names of his theology

Dialectical Theology
It is due to the use of the affirmation and counter-affirmation method. For Barth, it is the intention to mediate between the opposition.
between denial and affirmation, between thesis and antithesis, so that the resulting synthesis arises. But this does not
it must be philosophical musings of no account —alien to the gospel— but rather it is an analogy taken from
the doctrine of justification. In fact, the opposing relationship between denial and affirmation constitutes a
formal parallelism with the Lutheran doctrine of man as being, at the same time, "justified" and "sinner". In
Barth, the relationship with God is broken, the only way to reconnect God with man is through the paradox: the
incarnation, where 2 are 1: Christ, man and God; it is there that dialogue with man opens.

Theology of the Crisis

Barth tried to repudiate much of classical liberalism. The First World War and its horrors (crisis) helped.
to shake up their dreamed world. Barth's theological masters joined others in declaring their support for Germany.
These had been unmasked as masters of a religion born from a culture and tied to a culture.

Liberalism made God something immanent to the world. Barth, in opposition to this, spoke of God only as the
"Totally Another." The subjectivism of liberalism in the 19th century had placed man in the place of God. Barth
he exclaimed, "Let God be God, and not man." Liberalism had exalted the cultured use of religion. Liberalism
he built theology on the basis of ethics. Barth wanted to build ethics on the basis of theology.

Barth marks a break with modern theology, which was anthropological and ontological (confusing God with being).
In a positive sense, it is an opening towards a new paradigm (this paradigm and the modern one are incommensurable.
for they do not understand each other). Theology must start from revelation and not from man.

3. NEO ORTHODOXY
Because in some sense, it goes back to the reformers, to Calvin and Luther, but re-edits their points (Conn would not be of...
agreement with this statement).

4. THEOLOGY OF THE WORD

For Barth, theology was mistaken with cultural liberalism by taking the center of the church as a parameter.
To do theology. Barth says that one must start from the Word of God, contained in the Bible. In his work, Barth...
It refers to the Word of God in three senses:

a. The Revealed Word: It is about the immediate revelation of God, which has been transmitted by the prophets and the
apostles. The Bible thus constitutes a means of that immediate testimony of the prophets and the apostles.

b. The Written Word: The concrete form of this revelation is the Bible as the remembrance of what once happened.
For Barth, however, the Bible itself is not free of errors (Barth remained faithful to biblical criticism), but
it is only about the human transmission of the first testimonies. The Bible is, therefore, 'the concrete means by which
the Church remembers the event of the revelation of God.

c. The Proclaimed Word: The word of God is the proclaimed word. Human discourse about God is the same
time the very discourse of God himself. God comes to the word in language. By coming to the human word,
remains tied to the limitations and errors of human language.

II. REPRESENTATIVE ELEMENTS OF BARTHIAN THEOLOGY

The revelation
According to Barth, it is 'a perpendicular that comes from above' and cannot be equated with the best intuitions of
man. It is an event in which God takes the initiative. It is also said that revelation cannot be equated with
the Bible. The Bible and its claims are testimonies, signs, indicators of revelation. According to Barth, equating the
The Bible with the Word of God is "an objectification and materialization of the revelation."

The heart of revelation, of the Word of God, is Jesus Christ. In fact, Barth insists so much on this that he refuses to
to recognize the existence of any other revelation aside from Christ. The history of revelation and the history of the
salvation comes to be the same story.

2. SOTERIOLOGY AND CHRISTOLOGY

a. The reconciliation
In Barth's Christ, God revealed that He did not want to let man exist in sin. For this reason, Barth insists that
we should never mention sin unless we immediately add that sin has been defeated,
forgotten, and overcome in Jesus, the chosen one. The reconciliation between God and man is achieved through the event
of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God himself, that is, the God who humbles himself. In his freedom, God crosses the
open abyss and shows that He is truly the Lord. God "commits His own existence as
God. Barth does not want to admit the humiliation of the man Jesus. According to Barth, to say that humiliation refers to the
man is a mere tautology. "What sense would there be in talking about man as humiliated? This is something natural in
the man. But to say that God humbles himself, according to Barth, is to understand the true meaning of Jesus Christ,
like God himself.

b. The humiliation and exaltation of Christ

Barth refuses to accept the traditional idea of the two states in Christ, the humiliation of Christ and his exaltation as
one after the other in chronological order. Jesus as God humbled himself, and Jesus as man was
exalted. For Barth, saying that exaltation as a state refers to God is also mere tautology. What sense
Can one speak of God as exalted? This is natural in God. According to Barth, "In Christ humanity is
exalted humanity, just as Divinity is humbled Divinity. And humanity is exalted with the humiliation of
the Divinity.

c. The cross and the resurrection

For Barth, there are two events: the cross and the resurrection, but they should not be explained through proofs.

Barth frames the cross within revelation. On the cross, God Himself judges the sin of man and substitutes us.
Jesus is the judge who is judged in our place. The resurrection had nothing to do with humans, it is a
decision that belongs exclusively to God. In the glory of the risen Christ, the glory of man is revealed
restored.

d. The choice

One of the most discussed traits of the neo-orthodoxy has been its ambiguity regarding the possibility of salvation
universal. Jesus is not only the Elector, but also the Chosen One. Jesus is indeed also the only Chosen One. And in Christ,
all men are condemned. Barth rejects the classical concept of double predestination, the idea of a
choice regarding people. It admits that not all men live like the elect, and that some live as such
only partially. However, the responsibility of the church is to proclaim such men who have been chosen
in Christ, and that as a consequence they must live as chosen ones.
 Karl Barth: Theology in the transition to postmodernity
A Protestant fought in the World Council of Churches.
In the early 1900s, Barth pursued his theology studies in various places in Germany. In 1919, his book 'The Epistle
to the Romans” positioned him as a celebrated theologian in the German linguistic field. He teaches at the university of
Basel. In 1948 he participated in Amsterdam in the First World Conference of Churches, there he learned that in the
Scientific theology had to have something like ecumenism. But the Pope of Rome did not participate in that assembly.
ecumenical, with which Barth made his deep critiques, to the point of seeing no room for them in the liberations
of said meeting.

2. CRITIQUE OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.

Barth's criticism of Catholicism had deeper theological roots and dated back further in time. Its center
of Munster activity: there was Catholic dogmatism present, in that place he studied Thomas intensely.
Aquino and Anselmo, and it was right there where he invited a Catholic theologian, the Jesuit, Erich, to participate in a seminar.
Przywara. This Catholic theologian affirmed Karl Barth in his theology, criticizing the Catholic Church, by claiming
to seize the revelation of God by willfully arranging grace without allowing God to be God or man
Come on, man. Roman Catholicism is a challenge to the Protestant church like Lottulo Barth, who
it aims for a Protestantism centered on its evangelical cause. This means: the world is the world, man is
Man, God is God and reconciliation is only through Jesus Christ. Interestingly, Catholic theology began to have in
account to Barth.

3. ATTEMPT TO APPROACH FROM THE CATHOLIC SIDE.

It was another theologian, a disciple of Przywara, named Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wrote the book that would open to the
Catholic theology the path of interior approach to Barth's theology. This Catholic theologian was fascinated by the
Barth's interpretation of predestination, an interpretation that suppresses the Augustinian-Calvinist dualism.
to convert it into a Christian universalism that makes one think of Origen: the center that is Christ seeks a mult-
unity of redemption. A Christocentrism that would now also enable a new definition of faith and
knowledge, nature and grace, damnation and salvation for both Protestants and Catholics alike.
Barth in the 'Dogmatics' writes: 'I consider the analogy to be the invention of the antichrist and I think that it causes the reason for…'
She cannot be Catholic. Only the controversy that she sees in the leveling analogy of God is understood.
man, the anti-Christian par excellence." Barth protests against Roman Catholicism that placed on the same level as
God and man establishing a reciprocity between God and man, nature and grace, reason and faith, philosopher and
theology.

Barth fights against the liberal neo-Protestantism that only takes man as the point of orientation.
religious, to the pious man and not to God and his revelation. Due to that equality between God and man, does not
German Protestant Christians considered Nazism as a kind of new revelation, and
Did they come to see in Adolf Hitler a new Luther, even a new Jesus Christ?

For Barth, the danger that a Christian natural theology posed in the political realm was evident.

4. ECUMENICAL CONSENSUS
Since the times of the Reformation and the Council of Trent, it has been considered the basic impediment for a
approach of Protestants and Catholics to the doctrine of justification of sin.

In the matter of justification, Catholics insist that the granting of salvation to the believer does not depend on
the human condition. Lutherans insist that justification is not limited to the individual forgiveness of sins.
The message of justification, in its capacity as a decisive development of the center of the gospel, must be discussed.
discussion again and again, regarding how it grounds Christian freedom in relation to the conditions imposed by the law
to receive salvation.
When Barth replaced the title 'Christian Dogmatics' with 'Dogmatics of the Church', he highlighted that the
dogma cannot be a free science but linked to the realm of the Church and in it possible and full of meaning.

The ecumenical consensus became difficult when the issue of the structure of the organization was addressed.
practical politics of the church.

5. THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

This council had a great impact on Barth, due to the double paradigm shift (the integration of the paradigm of
the Reformation and modernity in the Catholic Church and theology.

The council included many important points for the reformers, (from the reevaluation of the Bible, of the
preaching of the laity, even the use of the vernacular language in the liturgy), and for modernity, (freedom of faith,
of conscience and of religion, tolerance and ecumenical approach, new attitude towards the Jews, towards the great
religions, and in general to the secular world). Barth began to marvel at the mobility that seemed to contrast with a
prolonged stagnation of Protestantism.

6. WHY THE PARADIGM OF MODERNITY IS WORTHY OF CRITICISM

Where should Barth be situated in the history of theology?

Barth is the initiator of a postmodern paradigm of theology. This means that those who despise Barth,
that he is the main initiator of theology that was already taking shape at that time. And for those who venerate him, without
critical spirit, Barth is the initiator, but he did not bring such a paradigm to its fullness. After the First World War,
Barth went from a modern paradigm to a deep crisis. Personal theology thus evolved into a theology
from the crisis, which in 1918 with the fall of the German Empire, with the cessation of territorial princes as heads of the
Church, with the United States stepping on European soil, with the Russian revolution, and the social unrest in Germany
it took on a dramatic backdrop.

7. INITIATOR OF THE POSTMODERN THEOLOGICAL PARADIGM

Barth mobilized after the war like no one else, the critical force of faith and demanded programmatically,
starting from the Epistle to the Romans the turn towards a theology of the word, often referred to as theology of the
dialectics. And that meant going back to before Schleiermacher, but also advancing beyond Schleiermacher:

· Leave modern anthropocentrism and move towards a new geocentrism.

· Leave the historical-psychological self-interpretation of the religious man, and theology as cultural science and
historical, and advancing to the very word of God, documented in the Bible, towards the revelation, the kingdom, and the action of
God.

· Leave the religious discourse on the concept of God and move forward in preaching the word.

· Leave religiosity and move towards Christian faith.

· Leaving man's religious need to approach God, who is the 'completely different,' revealed only
in Jesus Christ.

His theology has seen more clearly than others - with theological criticism of ideology - the despotic forces -
destructions of the rationality of the modern age have relativized the imperialism that reason had thrown
illustrated and confronted the self-security of the modern subject with its own self-deceptions; in summary: its theology
perceived before others the 'dialectic of enlightenment', and took on the task of illustrating the Enlightenment. To the liberal dissolution
of the Christian in the generally human or historical, Barth opposes a new Christological concentration of the
salvation in Christ. Barth's theologically radical new commitment showed its political strength against the
Nazi pseudo-religion, in 1934, at the Barmen Synod, with the clear profession of faith in Jesus Christ, as the sole word.
from God, alongside which other events and powers, figures cannot be admitted as 'divine revelation.'
and truths.
HIS THEOLOGY:
Biblical texts are not simple documents of philological-historical research, but make possible the
meeting with the 'totally different'; the perfectly human testimonies of the Bible contain the word of
God, whom man can recognize, obey, and profess publicly.

What is required of man goes beyond merely observing and interpreting with objectivity a faith that is always one.
risky business: what is at stake is salvation or condemnation.

The mission of the Church is to speak in society without making concessions and through human words of the
preaching, of that word of God that man can confidently accept again and again.

Both the preaching and the dogmatics of the church must focus entirely on Jesus Christ, in whom, for the
believers, not only spoke and acted as an exemplary 'good man', but God Himself; Jesus Christ is the decisive criterion of
all discourse about God and man.

8 INITIATOR OF THE POSTMODERN THEOLOGICAL PARADIGM

In his first class of dogmatism, Barth takes a step back, a step not certainly without criticism, but
it is shocking to the dogmas that were the subject of controversy in the modern era, regarding the Trinity and the virgin birth, even to
the descent of hell and the ascent to heaven: not only did it return to the orthodoxy of early Protestantism but
also to medieval scholasticism and to the patristics of the ancient church.
Barth has a conviction: "I believe in order to understand". For him, faith is a priority in everything, according to him, the Christian from the
principles that give a leap to the thing itself. It should not seek to understand first, in order to believe afterwards, as
Schleiermacher opines, rather the opposite, he first believes and then investigates the possibilities of that faith.
understand it.

Faith is defined by him as knowledge and acceptance of the word of Christ, which, however, is identified
Very soon with the Christian creed, with the profession of faith that has become over the course of a long history. This is the position.
Barth, based on Anselm, states that: starting from the truth that God exists, who is a being with three persons, that
He became a man, now we just have to reflect on to what extent this is true.

The word of God is God Himself in His revelation. For He reveals Himself as the Lord and that means, according to Scripture,
for the concept of revelation, that God himself is in intact unity, but also in intact difference, is the
revealing, the revelation and being-revealed, or in biblical terms: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

9 THE PERMANENT CHALLENGE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY

We must reflect and ask, therefore:

· If God's creation is no longer a kind of funnel for God's grace, which fell vertically.
from above. If God's creation, in the late Barth, can be fully accepted even as a good work of
God, to the point of writing four volumes of the dogmatics about her.

· If God, seen from a theological-objective perspective, is undoubtedly at the beginning of all things and thus
it constantly maintains the primacy. Why would it not be theologically and methodologically allowed to start with the
questions and needs of today's men, to start with them, asking about God, since the order of being and
Isn't knowing merely identical?

· If for the Christian the biblical message is undisputed above all discourse about God, why does it have to depend on
from the Bible all discourse about God?

· And if the negative statements of the Bible about error, darkness, lies, sin, are seen as an invitation to
the conversion why it is necessary to silence, the fact that God is the God of all men and as such is close,
In such a way to non-Christians as well?
Finally, Barth referred the doctrine of reconciliation through Jesus Christ as the light of the world. "Jesus Christ is the
sole light, the only light of life.” But alongside that “light,” there are also “other lights,” and alongside that “word,” there are “other
true words.” Nevertheless, in the face of all empiricism, the other lights are merely reflections of the one light that
it is Jesus Christ, sustain Kung.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kung; Hans. Great Christian Thinkers. A Brief Introduction to Theology. Editorial Trota: Madrid, 1995.
Pp. 181 -212.
 CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY
1. CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY Introduction Prof. P. Atanasio I. Yanes-Fernández GBU

2. WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY? - Contemporary theology is partly defined as a reaction to the

extreme liberal trends typical of the 19th century and the critical studies within the framework of biblical philology that
They accompanied.- It responds to the need to provide a solution to the theoretical-practical problem of the relationship of Christianity.
with the political-social dimension of man and with the contemporary context of open societies after the crisis
of modern Eurocentrism, in the midst of globalization and the post-humanist self-awareness of the 20th century.

3. ASSUMPTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY - Assumptions that precipitate the 'Copernican turn' of the
teología de Barth:1. Idealismo racionalista de la Escuela de Tübingen.2. Historicismo y extremo critcismo bíblico de la
liberal theology, which resulted in the total disarmament of the sacred tradition. 3. Crisis of the paradigms of
European humanism and progressive secularization of Western society with loss of the sense of the eschatological
from the Christian faith. - Since the Renaissance and the Western Enlightenment, the lasting imprint of the
autonomy of critical reason in all that is modern.- Kant systematized the trust of modern man in the
the capacity of reason to deal with everything material and its inability to engage with what goes beyond.

4. RELIGIOUS BUDGETS OF MODERN THOUGHT AND THEIR IMPORTANCE IN THE FORMATION OF

CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY - It is undeniable that there is a set of religious assumptions that shape
the thought of modern man.- In the Middle Ages, Western Latin theology was organized around the
ideas of 'nature' and 'grace.' The root of this concept of 'nature' was essentially Hellenic, based on the notion of
nature as proposed in Aristotle. The assumption of this notion of 'nature' was not the biblical concept.
of a world created subjected to its Creator, but rather that of a semi-autonomous substructure of 'causes
seconds,” which used the Greek duality of “for mater ia” with a new guise, albeit modified
with new demands.

5. RELIGIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN THOUGHT AND THEIR IMPORTANCE IN THE SHAPING OF THE
CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY - In the affirmation of the impossibility of real participation of man in the 'energies
"created by God", the medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas had "emancipated" natural man from grace.
supernatural.- In this theological intellectualism, the emancipatory possibility of human reason is already outlined,
so much so that rational knowledge of the divine, even though based on Revelation, is possible, and is granted to the
man not as "grace" of God, but as a result of his own cognitive nature.

6. ENLIGHTENMENT HUMANISM AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION IN THEOLOGY - Kant and the Enlightenment made that
emancipation more than a simple arrangement. - For the first time in Western civilization, nature and
grace in a consistent, elaborate, and self-aware manner. In the religious thought of modern man
The grace has disappeared, replaced in its place by the category 'freedom.' - This constitutes the fundamental support both
from the idealist theology of Tübingen as well as from the liberal theological school, with Harnack as its greatest exponent.

7. PHILOSOPHY AS RATIONAL THEOLOGY G. W. F. HEGEL (1770-1831) "This religious attitude produced a valuable...
very elevated of all the capacities of man, above all of human reason as the ultimate author, as
ultimate criterion of truth. Hegel is the maximum exponent of this intensively Platonic Aristotelian vein of
modern thought. H. Conn

8. STARTING POINT OF CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY - Contemporary theology properly has as

departure point in the year 1919, in a church in Switzerland, south of the border with Germany. KARL BARTH(1886-
1968) - The initial announcement of a new theological era for the West was Karl Barth's commentary on Paul's letter.
to the Romans, in 1919.

9. WHAT DID BARTH SAY? - Barth's comment on Romans attempted to repudiate his former critical teachers.
Liberals.- Liberalism and theological rationalism come to convert God into an object of critical judgment, along with
The Bible and the textual tradition of the Church. - Barth, consciously or unconsciously orienting himself to the roots of the
Eastern patristic spirituality - something that, although in another sense, will also make P. T. Chardin open.
opposition to the theology of the esse of Thomas Aquinas-, spoke of God only as the 'Totally Other', and of the Kingdom of
God as a eschatological reality above all human effort and will.
10. WHAT DID BARTH SAY? - Barth carried out the necessary 'return' to Revelation, to the Deusabsconditus, and to the mystery.
as a principle and foundation of the relationship between man and God and of all possible theology. The subjectivism of
liberalism in the 19th century had placed man in the place of God. Barth exclaimed: 'Let God be God, and not
man.

11. DIALECTICAL METHOD IN BARTH Barth's commentary also 'introduced' a 'new method' to approach the
theological knowledge: the dialectic. What was recognized as a "new method" has been the way in which from the
local experience, which is essentially an 'apophatic theology', since Dionysius the Areopagite, has faced the
mysterious reality of God. The very name 'dialectical theology' soon became associated with thought.
by Barth, although the method itself was taken from the writings of the existentialist philosopher S. Kierkegaard.

12. THE PRESENCE OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY IN BARTH - The relativization of the event persists in Barth.
history of incarnation and resurrection, in the style of the entire German idealist tradition. "Although the ideas of
Barth represent, to a certain extent, a revolt against classical liberalism, in a sense more
Deep down, Van Til is very right to call his ideas 'the new modernism.' Barth maintains the point of view
liberal critique of the Scripture." (H. Conn).- The infallibility of the Scripture is one of the crucial differences between
naturalism and Christianity, and Barth's position clearly places him in the naturalistic-liberal territory.

13. THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY - The theology of the 20th century focuses on eschatology as
pressing theme of theological thought, with special emphasis on the relationship between the eschatological and history in general.
Some of the main eschatological theories that occupied theological thought in the 20th century, and that, due to their
importance and variety, can be considered paradigms of the responses of contemporary lateology to this
The issues are the following: 1. A. Schweitzer: the 'consequent eschatology' and the future coming of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God as already realized in the event of Pentecost: C. H. Dodd.

14. THE ESCHATOLOGICAL IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY. Effort of mediation between the two extreme positions.
previous: "The inaugurated eschatology" by Florovsky. Or: Cullman, J. Jeremias, W.G. Kümmel, etc. 5. The "end of the
times
Balthasar: The 'Kingdom of God' as the transformation of history into the infinite Love of God.

15. THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 'WORLD' AND TRANSCENDENCE: RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS THE WORLD
AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. LIBERATION THEOLOGY. - As a theological-ecclesiological phenomenon that facilitated its
emergence, Vatican Council II appears and its call and implementation of openness to the world in which the Church
it must act as a Sacrament of Salvation. In the face of the concrete reality of violence and the exploitation of enormous
masses of human beings, who are enslaved in the production of raw materials or in the selfish satisfaction of
personal desires, the Gospel resonates with a strong voice the Beatitudes that Jesus proclaimed to his disciples
and to the whole world, as a manifesto of justice that reconsiders the phenomenon of poverty in the modern world
in the context of the eschatological urgency for the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

16. RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS THE WORLD AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION. "What is
the original experience and intuition from which Liberation Theology emerges? It was none other than the experience
the daily reality of the unfair poverty in which millions of Latin American brothers are forced to live. And in this
experience and from it, the emphatic word of the God of Moses and Jesus: this situation is not in accordance with His
will, but contrary to it." Roberto Oliveros

17. LIBERATION THEOLOGY: FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES - Among the essential principles that define the
Liberation Theology can refer to, among others: 1. Option for the poor and victims of social injustice.
as "favorites of Christ". 2. Affirmation of God's immanence and commitment to the world and its justice as
the beginning of the establishment of the Kingdom, through His Son Jesus Christ. 3. It is not possible for the Church in our time
to speak of the redemption of the human race, of the Kingdom of God, and of eternal life, if one does not first commit to
the cause of the poor and the oppressed, giving testimony that it truly bears the love of Christ.
18. KARL RAHNER (1904-1984) - The foundation of Rahner's theology constitutes a kind of
transcendental anthropology. It is based on the principle that all human beings have a consciousness of God.
latent within the frameworks of the limits of their knowledge and their freedom as finite beings. - 'Grace' is a
constitutive element of both the 'objective reality of revelation' (the proclaimed Word) and of the 'principle
subject of Listening" (through the Spirit). In "grace" God shows us His essentially condition
merciful, beyond the human sense of justice and the duality of 'crime' and 'punishment'. The Cross and the
The resurrection of Christ is an event based on the infinite grace of God.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR (1905-1988): AUTHENTIC FAITH AS AN EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S LOVE
The hidden God can only be understood through Christ and His Cross if one understands the surrender of God.
incarnate until death as an expression of the Amortotal that constitutes an ontological foundation of God. From this
Mode, lafe, when it is authentic and mature, is a personal and collective response to love that was emptied for everyone and each
one.

20. AUTHENTIC FAITH AS AN EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S LOVE "Even when unity in faith may not be possible, unity
In love, anything is always possible.” H. U. Von Balthasar

21. PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN (1881-1955): THE EVOLUTIONARY CHRIST Christology in Teilhard de Chardin is
based on the possibility of reconciling traditional theology that teaches the unity without confusion of the Divine
and the human in the Person of Christ, with the teaching of modern science that speaks to us of the progressive synthesis
of the cosmic elements in a common corpus of phenomena inextricably linked through an evolution of
millions of years and governed by basic universal principles.

22. HOMINIZATION-HUMANIZATION-CHRISTIFICATION P. T. de Chardin speaks of three fundamental phenomena: 1. The

"Hominization", or the appearance of man as such on Earth. 2. "Humanization", the creation of a way
of personal existence of consciousness and higher reality, in which the opposition and contradiction between the individual and
collective disappear and the full reconciliation with the whole of creation is experienced as an essential way of being.
The 'Cristification', which is nothing but the fullness of the process of Humanization and cosmic-biological desynthesis, the full
identification between matter and spirit, between evolution and eternity, between individual and collectivity, achieved in the
Person of Christ, who identifies with the Omega Point of universal convergence of Science.

23. HANS KüNG AND GLOBAL ETHICS - Küng bases his ethical theology on the principle -essentially neo-Kantian- of
the possibility of a universal ethic that governs human practice as a 'practical reason'. 'There will be no world peace
Without peace among religions, there will be no peace among religions without dialogue between religions." - Promotes dialogue
interreligious about the principle of the existence of these fundamental ethical principles common to humanity,
that should be used as a basis to initiate processes of rapprochement and mutual knowledge that lead to peace
worldwide.

24. PETROS BASILIADIS: THE CONTEMPORARY ECUMENICAL CONSCIOUSNESS - This Orthodox Greek theologian advocates for a
new understanding of Christology and the Pneumatology of the Church. - The incarnation of the Logos of God, and his work
salvation, rather than dividing humanity into 'saved' and 'condemned', produces an essential opening in the
historical continuum leading humanity to the awakening of common spiritual principles and of the
will of commitment to truth. - Therefore, the Theologian sees the way paved towards what he calls a
theology of religions, which exposes the essential-universal to the human religious spirit based on
recognition of a single God creator of all things, without making the specific differences of each disappear
tradition.

25. ORTHODOX ESCHATOLOGY AND THE 'CONTEMPORARY' NATURE OF ITS SPIRITUAL RELEVANCE AS 'ESCHATOLOGY
LITURGICAL-MYSTERICAL" Orthodox theology is "contemporary" in that its doctrine proposes a method of
essentially valid spiritual transformation for today's man. Orthodoxy places special emphasis on the
mysterious life of the Church, where liturgical praxis becomes a "chronotope" in which it is "pre-cursed", in the
order of the mystical-symbolic, the full restoration of man and creation in Christ. The incarnation of the Logos
and His redemptive operation extends to all that exists at any time, because "by Him all was made".
made" (Jn. 1:4), and He who has been the Creator of the whole is also the Redeemer of the whole, and because, when
To become a true man, Christ assumes within Himself the essential attributes that determine and govern physical existence.
of the 'material' world.

26. ORTHODOX ESCHATOLOGY AND THE 'CONTEMPORARY' NATURE OF ITS SPIRITUAL RELEVANCE AS 'ESCHATOLOGY'
LITURGICAL-MYSTERIOUS "she reveals to me her presence" they shine with light "the ones overshadowed: alone"
The command of darkness: Now let him bless the togetherness of the nations.
Creation is recognized as free, the children of light previously immersed in darkness: only the master of the shadows...
lament: now praise at this moment the inheritance of the Nations the cause, those that were once lying subdued.
the Theophany
CURRENT CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY
I INTRODUCTION:

THE WHY AND THE FOR WHAT OF CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY IN THE SITUATION
CURRENT

In this analysis, we briefly consider three facts regarding why

and for what of Contemporary Theology, they are: the anthropological aspect, the debate of
reason and revelation, and the rescue of the social sciences in biblical studies.
We will also talk about the influence of contemporary theology in our days,
starting from some of the most outstanding theologians of the previous century.

FIRST OF ALL, Contemporary Theology contemplates the shift from theocentric to

the anthropocentric by exalting reason and giving credit to subjectivity (that is, to the subject
within the story).
This approach, although it does not disregard God, places Him on the same level as man.
God and man are two co-equals, on the same plane of horizontal relationship; one and the other
they can be studied as any other object is studied.
This cannot be called a success of Liberal Theology, as I would argue.
widely Karl Barth in his dialectical theology[1]for "God is the Totally Other,"
that cannot be reduced to an object of study.
But while Liberal Theology fails in its rational reductionism, leaving in a
second plan the role of revelation, nevertheless, when proposing the historical method-
critic rescues the scientific value of exegesis and biblical hermeneutics, proposing a
"ascending theology" against the more orthodox "descending theology"; with which it obtains
a new reading of biblical stories, for example, of creation, the image of the
man, soteriology and eschatology, among others.

SECONDLY, and expanding on the above, the role of these two must be considered.
opposites: REASON VERSUS REVELATION and what it implies for theology
contemporary. It is well known that Liberal Theology almost deified reason in the same
point that philosophy in Europe made with the advent of Cartesianism, the
Kantianism and Heiderianism. Reason became not only for philosophy, but
also for Liberal Theology in the only scientific and objective way to explain the
"fact-God". As long as theology could not be explained apart from the revelation of God,
it would fall into a mystical experience only.

The basic tenets of liberal theology also involve integrating the church into the
culture and above all secularizing the mythological contents of Christianity (which,
consequently, it implied demystifying them), namely, all those contents of
Christian faith (for example, the accounts of miraculous events that clearly dispute
against the iron laws of natural sciences) that are unacceptable for a
modern man with a certain degree of education and culture. With this in mind, theology
as a science, it would not be reliable if it solely appealed to revelation, ignoring the
method of a science. This is what Liberal Theology rescues for biblical exegesis,
through the scholarly works of Protestant theologians like Frederich Schleiermacher,
J. Wellhausen, R. Bultmann, K. Barth, P. Tillich, among others. Liberal Theology
suspicion of the traditional, of the orthodox, to return to the path of research
scientific in biblical studies and let the results of these findings speak in favor
or against what has been said so far. In this regard, it would be good to remember that
the paths of theology in contrast to those of philosophy, or any other
science, they shouldn't have to rival, if hermeneutics is properly respected in each
context. That is to say, science and faith should not always oppose each other; they should not be in conflict.

The Bible only explains the story of man's salvation and in that sense
meets those spiritual needs, while other sciences respond to
other initiatives and there is no reason to pretend that they go hand in hand, as their purposes are
very different. The Bible does not provide answers to all of human beings' questions,
it doesn't say anything, for example, about AIDS, intergalactic travel, cloning, or others
aspects that medicine, physics, astronomy, or genetics would address. The
theology must respond to all this not through an extreme biblicism, but through
from a correct exegesis and hermeneutics in its context, allowing science to speak
What she has to say, for God watches over her too.

THIRDLY, we consider the contribution of contemporary theology to be necessary in

modern critical studies of the Bible by rescuing social sciences, above all, the
humanities. Here lies one of its greatest achievements. Since the German theologian Friedrich
Schilermacher, arriving at Bultmann, Barth, Tillich, and Rhanner, among others, both Catholics
As Protestants, theology, as a science, has seen accelerated progress. That is, it has
developed deeper research methods, has subjected the accounts to criticism
biblical from the documentary hypothesis[2]by Julius Wellhausen (although in many
revalidated). For example, the Pentateuch with the accounts of creation, of the patriarchal era
and from the conquest, they have been discussed in light of their different literary genres and sources
of composition (Jahwist J, Elohist E, Deuteronomist D, and Priestly P); the
The composition of the gospels in the NT has also been a subject of study, arguing that the
influence of the drafting communities on their final purposes. These facts have
driven the deepening of the study of biblical languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic)
and have proposed new methods (the historical-critical, for example) for the exercise
exegetical, building the hermeneutical bridges in order to update the message and
to bring it to the center of modern debate, without falling into pure biblicism.

II WHY THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY IS IMPORTANT

CONTEMPORARY
A. First moment: Contribution of biblical exegesis from Friedrich Schleiermacher to
At the end of the 19th century, several significant contributions gave rise to the central theses of F.
Schleiermacher in contemporary theology. Here the most important ones are highlighted:

With F. Schleiermacher (1768-1834), an important period for exegesis begins.

19th century biblical that will be fundamental in the field of biblical hermeneutics
modern. Schleiermacher develops the sources of the gospels and although he does not propose the
synoptic thesis, it develops. It suggests that other sources should be sought before the
gospels. Until Griesbach it had been said that Matthew was the first gospel, but
Schleiermacher said that it is not necessarily (he thought it was really Mark).
foundation in the works of Wilke and Weisse to affirm this, but who completes the
The synoptic triad is itself. This debate regarding the sources of the gospels is
it expands and will last about 70 more years. Schliermacher is known for his work
hermeneutic, achieving a synthesis of revelation with a critical interpretation in the
that lives. It says that "religion can only be well understood if it is observed, not in
general, but in the specific and living religions, that is, in the religions
positives: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
dialogue with philosophy, with art, and with literature. Its great contribution to Theology
The systematic approach consisted of putting Theology in dialogue with other sciences. It poses a
interreligious and ecumenical dialogue - on this it is a pioneer - It engages in interreligious dialogue.
from the human perspective, not from beliefs. Not starting from the difference but from what is
common, from the discourse of fraternity. Its modern Christology goes beyond Jesiology.
from the Enlightenment.

2. After F. Schleiermacher, there are other authors such as Lévi-Strauss (1835) and Ernest
Renán (1863). Strauss (initiator and most outstanding author in the study of The lives of
Jesus, of the historical Jesus, speaks of the need to revolutionize theology. Who was he?
Jesus? It is said that he was a devout Jew who, after being baptized by the Baptist,
convention that he was the Messiah. He believed that the disciples, due to their love for Christ,
they invented miracles ('miracles are myths invented by them').
Renán, for his part, complemented Strauss. He starts to delve into biblical criticism,
developing some methods of textual analysis, and writes his work The Path of Science. His
Religion is science. It deals with interpreting the lives of Jesus. It proposes a study of the
Bible from the Hegelian perspective, inspired by his teacher F.C. Baur. He had
proposed the Hegelian method: Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, for the study of the Bible. With the
Renan's work and that of other authors in the 19th century, on "The Lives of Jesus", leads to
to say that Jesus gradually sees himself as the Messiah, as he takes on
awareness of his divinity. Renan has been criticized for his comments claiming that
limitations of the Semitic mindset. He claimed that the Semitic mind was limited by
dogmatism and that it lacked a cosmopolitan conception of civilization.
After Renan came Albert Schweitzer, he writes A History of the Research on
the life of Jesus. There he tries to make a critical assessment of the life of Jesus. He says that the
The interpretation of the historical Jesus must be made from the eschatological key. One must
focus on the kingdom of God to understand the purpose of Jesus' life. Thus He manifested His
break with the theological liberalism that had prevailed in Germany throughout the century
XIX, by making Jesus a prophet convinced of the reality of a Kingdom of God that
was at the doors.

B. Second moment: The twentieth century: Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

With the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a separation between the Church and the
State. Between the religious and the political. The laicization and secularization of the State occurs.
Marx would argue that "beliefs in man take away autonomy. When it is
"Abolished religion, man will achieve freedom." And it is then that philosophers like
Kant, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Heidegger will raise the necessary atheism in the
history.

Kant will talk about 'maturity'. A man must be an adult when he is

autonomous in their way of thinking. It transfers the autonomy of the individual to the autonomy of
society. Society should make decisions not based on myths or beliefs but on
conviction of principles. Society is not adult because it has not freed itself from the childhood of
Religion. Feuerbach (1872), considered the intellectual father of humanism.
contemporary atheism, also known as anthropological atheism, considered that the
immortality is a human creation and constitutes the basic germ of anthropology of
the religion.

Nietzsche (1844-1900) defends the idea that traditional values represented by the
Christianity subjects the weaker individuals to a 'slave morality' or 'herd morality',
that provoke in them nothing more than a state of resignation and conformity towards everything.
what happens around him. For him, those values need to disappear for the
let others appear who represent their prototype of the ideal man, to which he himself
called Übermensch. It fights the morality imposed by religions and promotes a morality
that emerges from the depths of people.

This Übermensch does not believe in the things that religions promise after death, he
he only believes in what is real and in what he can see. For his part, Martin Heidegger (1927), the
existentialist philosopher, argued that the primary mission of all philosophy is to clarify "the
sense of being," which means "to be." One of its fundamental postulates is that in the
human being "existence precedes essence" (Sartre), that is, there is no
human nature that determines individuals, but rather it is their actions that
determine who they are, as well as the meaning of their lives.

Existentialism defends that the individual is free and wholly responsible for their actions.
This incites in the human being the creation of an ethics of individual responsibility,
set apart from any external belief system. In some ideas, Heidegger continues
close to Nietzsche. But although these philosophers led society through the field of
reason, atheism and existentialism, World War II would cause, in a certain
measure, such thoughts will deepen further. Theology was silenced by a
time, and seen with some skepticism.
The rise of Liberal Theology and the emergence of the historical-critical method of the Bible
linked to the 'era of reason' in which the aforementioned philosophers stood out, era
the emergence of a renewed Protestant Theology is necessary, capable of speaking to the
needs of the time. For this reason, Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth, Rudolf
Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer will try to provide an answer to the apparent
silence of God in the midst of the pains of two world wars. They will try to generate
civil processes, processes of social transformation, civil resistance that legitimize the
the role of theology and explain the problem of theodicy in an apparently
out of control.

If reason had not been able to provide a satisfactory answer to man's actions against
the man in the midst of war, if distancing oneself from God and theology had led to the
man through paths of destruction and loss of hope, the renewed theology in the
Word should be put back at the forefront of the controversy between faith and reason to
give an explanation of the misery of man and not so much of the silence of God. The way
it would be again the hope that the gospel brings, through the peace that is announced there,
to a world that turns its back on God and enthrones reason. The defense of faith must be
above any man's petty interest against man.

The grace of God must be understood as costly grace, which had a very high cost in the
death of Jesus for the sins of the world and that it cannot be the object of simple study
scientific without social changes. It is in that sense that Bonhoeffer's voice rises to
question the role of the Christian and that of the theologian and minister in a society in crisis. With
Bonhoeffer is going to recover the social and political role of the Church.

C Third moment. From Karl Barth to 1970: Paul Tillich, Gustavo Gutiérrez

K. Barth would also influence those processes from the neo-orthodox perspective.
denouncing the insignificant role that the Protestant Church is playing in the
allow oneself to remain in the rigidity and fear that the era of reason has imposed upon him
the criticisms that liberal theology has left him. He is going to rescue the value of the study of the
Bible in the preaching of the truth; the place that the Protestant church should have in front
to social problems and the need to reclaim the place that corresponds to it as
bearer of the truth.

The Protestant church should not accommodate itself to the ebb and flow of government regimes like the
Hitlerian but must denounce the atrocities of this and continue on the defined path of
kingdom of God. But Barth's attempt to show the relevance of the gospel and the
the transcendence of God (with the idea of God as the Totally Other) was questioned
also by Emil Brunner, who saw Barth as very concerned about his theology
transcendental without it reaching the true transformative role in society.
In his opinion, it was a theology that did not respond to or address the real demands or that
it did not connect with the social issue, that is, as if it had been left without
context. Perhaps at this point is where another disciple of Bart, the theologian Paul Tillich[3],
will speak more decisively in favor of a theology in context. It will say that the
Theology is built in context. Every theological system must first affirm the truth.
of the Christian message, and then, contextualize or update it for each new generation.
The update (the practical experience) requires the Christian's commitment to God and
with society. But for that commitment or that update of the message to happen
Cristiano, it is necessary to first have a clear affirmation of that message (the truth of
the doctrine).
If theology remains on only one of those two paths, the path of affirmation or the path of
just an update, all we have is a kind of fundamentalism. Tillich
he says that Theology must be pertinent and relevant, that it transcends historically, that
dialogue with culture, which knows how to update the truth in each generation. Tillich was leaving
approaching, surely, the need that theology has to address social reality
from the practice, and in this sense, new problems had arisen from the
post-war, the need to respond to social evils without neglecting value
the kerygma of the gospel, that was Tillich's great success: to combine theory with praxis.

Subsequently, new movements were finding - perhaps in the gospel - other

experiential experiences of faith more in line with a social feeling of denunciation of the
injustice. Amidst the miseries of wars and the economic problems that have arisen
plus hunger, diseases and epidemics, labor imbalances, and the lack of
job opportunities that will uphold men and women in their social condition, the
theology should focus on meeting those urgent needs first. Perhaps that is why
the movement of Liberation Theology (distinct from Liberal Theology) found
a fertile ground for its expression.

A theologian like Gustavo Gutiérrez[4]I saw two moments or acts in theology.

important that respond to these needs. He believed that theology should be done
first of all (first act) from social commitment, life of faith and praxis. He supported
that theology starts from the experience and reality of the context, not the other way around. Jesus
he made an exegesis of reality first and presented the truth to the people at the same time
It carried the message. In other words, the path of theological work is built on the
practice of love. As a second act, it proposes critical reflection. It is, in my opinion, a
type of 'ascending' theology.

III FINAL REFLECTION: WHERE SHOULD THE DISCOURSE GO?

TODAY'S THEOLOGY AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHURCH?

In the current moment of globalization and concentration of power in a few hands, the
Theology would have to respond vehemently to social injustices arising from
these neoliberal economic concepts. However, the theological work of many
churches, both Protestant and Catholic, have focused on selfish aspirations of
a few leaders who have concentrated religious power and wealth for themselves
economic at the expense of their gray. Current theology should respond to that vision.
materialistic and secularist, again, with the truths of the kingdom of God. Few are
the kingdom of God is appealing because it doesn't offer much, it is not very visible, it demands
a lot and gives little, but it is the means by which God has chosen for men to be able to
to achieve justice and peace, for the kingdom of God is, first of all, spiritual, not
material (Ro 14:17: "for the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, peace and
joy in the Holy Spirit

Without this spiritual proclamation of the truth of the gospel, expressed by Jesus in
terms of love for God, dedication and service to others, each person will be building
"his own kingdom," but not that of Christ. I consider, from Tillich's perspective, that
it is relevant to return to the field of affirming the truth of the Christian message that,
undoubtedly, it will result in the commitment (or update) in the
transformation of the individual. In the present of our Colombian society, neither this nor
the other is being done well. There is not much affirmation of the truth, there is more of
negotiations of the truth at the expense of personal interests, and little or almost nothing of
commitment to that same truth and what it implies in social terms.

The situation of violence, death, injustice, and corruption in the country clearly shows
that the kingdom of God is not being preached as it should be, and that seemingly, when
It is preached, people do not understand. And they don't understand because it is not biblically presented.
because there is no sound doctrine (II Tim 4:3; Ti 1:9). Deep insights cannot be expected.
individual and social changes, as long as there is no reason that surpasses greed
personal; as long as the believer is not driven by love for Jesus Christ and motivated by
seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, each one will be thinking about how
to take advantage of God and the Church to build "his own kingdom", distorting the
biblical message while minimizing Christian ethics and morals.

The theological task of the Church, in general, must involve more preaching, more prayer, and
more social commitment that balances theological positions such as those proposed by
Tillich and Gutiérrez, where theology recovers its place in a secularized society,
eager for truths that are co-responsible with a good testimony among believers. In that
In this sense, theology must respond to the social ills of contemporary times.
recovering the critical-scientific study of the Bible, proposed by liberal theology
applied to the social sciences, among others, providing new tools for the
biblical exegesis and responding not from the desk, simply, but from practice
social and fiercely defending the central truth of the gospel as the school does
conservative theology. That theology today is more an affirmation of the Christian message and
more updates on the same, these seem to be the most urgent tasks of the church
modern, and it is also what the world of Christianity would expect.

[1]A brief excerpt of dialectical theology can be quickly consulted.

Unable to access the provided URL for translation.
Dialectical theology rises against the historical and rationalist progressivism of the
liberal theology and affirms the impossibility of a humanist, cultural theology and
accommodating to contemporary interests. According to Barth's proposal, theology
dialectics follow the same reasoning that Hegel reformulated in philosophy (Thesis-Antithesis-
Synthesis). According to Barth, the epithet "dialectical" obeys to:

Thesis: We are theologians and, as such, we must speak of God.

Antithesis: But we are men and, as such, we cannot speak of God.

Summary: We must do both things, and our 'duty' (Sollen) and our 'inability'
They must honor God.