The Epistle to the Romans by Karl BarthMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I stopped reading at about 150 pages, but will continue to use this book as a reference work as I exegete and engage the book of Romans in my ministry and in my theological development.
I so appreciate Barth's Christ-centered soteriology and his very OTHER, transcendent God. That said, I am struggling a bit with his seeming need to make salvation so esoteric that it smacks of an etheral form of Gnosticism. Of course, this is seen in other places where he works out his "dialectic theology" (and perhaps this theology finds it's rational end in Bultmann?). It seems erroneous to this reader that the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection would be so "other" as not to occur in time and space. I believe the Patristic Fathers and Magisterial Reformers would agree.
That said, Barth's Doctrine of God has greatly encouraged this reader in seeing the Triune God in much more of his majesty, and it is a mistake of many that Barth does not respect and try to do justice to both Holy Scriptures and a historic orthodoxy. That said, Barth's modernistic shaped Biblical Theology, could use a dose of humility and pause regarding those on whose shoulders he builds; those in the past that enable him to have a scriptural text or theology by which to begin his work.
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