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Karl Barth & Hans Urs von Balthasar: a critical engagement

Author:	Stephen D Wigley
Published By:	TandT Clark (London and New York)
Pages:	192
Price:	£60
ISBN:	978 0 5670 3191

Reviewed by Fr Luke Penkett.

Barth and Balthasar were two of the most outstanding theologians of the twentieth century, both of whom radically challenged what they perceived as wrong turns in each of their traditions, Reformed and Roman Catholic respectively. They met in the forties and became life-long friends, Balthasar engaging with and developing Barth’s theological teaching in his own writings, especially over the analogy of being.

In this publication of his thesis, Reverend Stephen Wigley, recently appointed Co-Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church and visiting lecturer and Trustee of St Michael’s College, Llandaff, empathically presents a thorough-going and coherent study of the nature of this engagement. Although by no means a new area of research, this author begins to explore how the work of Barth and Balthasar grew out of a specific historical context and was nurtured by a common involvement with the Bible and the Church Fathers, both East and West.

I should like to see Wigley’s own work a decade from now, when he himself will, perhaps, have deepened his own thinking and presented us with a book that has been allowed to expand outside the confines of a thesis, as indeed he does in his last chapter and postscript, which are not part of the original thesis.