Review: Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed (Hunsinger)


This was a mixed bag. Given his credentials, Hunsinger is a surprisingly decent writer. My favorite essay of the bunch was his 95 theses on justification and sanctification. Hunsinger is no doubt a premier Barthian scholar, but in my opinion he is at his best when he is doing creative theology of his own as a gloss on Barth.

I am no Barth expert, but this book convinced me that, while Barth is a worthy interlocutor in may ways, he is primarily great because of his context and his response to it. Barth’s writing is, while oftentimes rather grandiose, not all that clear or precise. More often than not I found myself wondering why in particular a Barthian take on a theological topic was an improvement, and I found myself coming up short on answers.

This is probably not the best secondary introduction to Barth; it is too academic for that. If one is at least somewhat familiar with him, however, many of the essays here will be interesting—as above, I found the ones on soteriology especially good.

This was a mixed bag. Given his credentials, Hunsinger is a surprisingly decent writer. My favorite essay of the bunch was his 95 theses on justification and sanctification. Hunsinger is no doubt a premier Barthian scholar, but in my opinion he is at his best when he is doing creative theology of his own as a gloss on Barth.

I am no Barth expert, but this book convinced me that, while Barth is a worthy interlocutor in may ways, he is primarily great because of his context and his response to it. Barth’s writing is, while oftentimes rather grandiose, not all that clear or precise. More often than not I found myself wondering why in particular a Barthian take on a theological topic was an improvement, and I found myself coming up short on answers.

This is probably not the best secondary introduction to Barth; it is too academic for that. If one is at least somewhat familiar with him, however, many of the essays here will be interesting—as above, I found the ones on soteriology especially good.

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