Es ist ein Genuss, John Frames Werk über die westliche Theologie- und Geistesgeschichte zu lesen. Es lohnt sich nur schon wegen der sorgfältigen Ausarbeitungen wie der zu Karl Barth (364-383). Dafür hat sich Frame hingesetzt und Barth nochmals gelesen. Seine Schlussfolgerung:
Barth is a master of the complicate sentence, which goes on and on, dangling subordinate clauses right and left. It is possible to argue a wide variety of interpretations from the Church Dogmatics. Almost any thesis about Barth can be supported somewhere in his writings, opposed from somewhere else. My own view of him is generally negative, but I confess that I can spend hours reading page after page of Barth and finding nothing wrong, and much that edifies me. Any interpreter of Barth is sure to find a critic who insists that the interpreter ‘doesn’t understand Barth,’ and who advances multiple quotations from Barth’s writings supporting the opposite thesis. So the secondary literature, favorable and unfavorable, is often passionately partisan.
… I have tried to hear Barth with fresh ears. But I have not come to view him more sympathetically. Essentially, I don’t recognize Barth’s theology as the gospel of Scripture. … Many would resist my inclusion of Barth in the school of liberal theology dating from Spinoza and Cherbury. Barth seems far too serious about the content of Scripture to be compared with such thinkers. ….
My theological evaluation of Barth, furthermore, is not a judgment of his heart. As I said, large amounts of Barth’s writings are edifying to me, and I think they would be edifying to anyone who loves Jesus. I have often asked whether his heart lies with his edifying observations or with his existentialized theology. It is possible that God did a work of grace in his heart, but when he tried to formulate his new thoughts into academic theological form he had to rely on his theological education, no matter how much he sought to rethink it.
John M. Frame. A History of Western Philosophy and Theology. P & R: Philippsburg, 2015. (366, 382-383).
Hier sind zwei weitere gewichtige Einschätzungen von Cornelius van Til (in der Zusammenfassung von Frame) und Georg Huntemann.
