CROSS THEOLOGY
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The Classical Theologia Crucis and Karl Barth's Modern Theology of the Cross
by New Zealand systematic theologian Rosalene Bradbury
A new book to be published by PICKWICK Publications, Wipf and Stock, in 2011.
PREFACE
This book began as a doctoral thesis, which was accepted by the University of Auckland in 2009. The work is presented in two parts. Part One identifies the shape and content of a system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross (theologia crucis) of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. It does so with reference to the system's classical formation in the period bracketed by the early church and the Reformation. In the hermeneutical light shed by that classical crucicentric system Part Two finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many familiar crucicentric characteristics, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes, and reasserts the classical system as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross.
The database for this investigation includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the Reformer Martin Luther— particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period.
In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross arise, a major methodological task in Part One being to bring these together systematically. The secondary literature also contains conflicting assessments as to Barth's crucicentric status, and an important methodological task in Part Two is to analyze why this disagreement occurs. (The evidence will be that misunderstanding the theology of the cross per se correlates with misunderstanding the theology of the cross in Barth.)
It appears then that to date the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined. To the extent that the present work now clarifies these matters it breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth is proposed.
