THE QUESTION OF NATURE AND GRACE IN KARL BARTH: HUMANITY AS CREATURE AND AS COVENANT-PARTNER

Oakes emphasizes that in a recent two-part article appearing in Modern Theology, John R. Betz undertakes an impressive defense of the aesthetics of Erich Przywara's analogia entis against a valorization of the sublime within modern and postmodern philosophy and theology. According to him, Betz is to be commended for his attentive presentation of a theologian who is as unread as he is misunderstood. Additionally, a defense of Przywara against the accusations of Karl Barth and others runs throughout the second part of the article. Both Przywara and Betz charge that Barth, in stark contrast to Roman Catholicism, maintains the doctrine of God's sole causality, a doctrine which can only lead to the evaporation of creation.