Barth and Roman Catholic Theology

Abstract

Taking Barth’s doctrines of revelation and the Trinity as a starting point, this chapter places Barth’s thought primarily in conversation with Walter Kasper. It considers Kasper’s work as an attempt to integrate insights drawn from Barth and Karl Rahner, while placing their views within the wider context of post-Vatican II Roman Catholic theology, as well as the thinking of Hans Urs von Balthasar. By focusing on the different attitudes of Barth and Kasper to the analogia entis (analogy of being), the chapter proposes that the primary issue related to ecumenical unity that emerges concerns whether, and to what extent, contemporary theologians are willing to allow Jesus Christ himself to stand as the first and the final Word in all theological reflection.