Marginal Christianity

Friday, 10 November 2006 by Kim Fabricius 1. Karl Barth was a Reformed theologian. Sounds like a no-brainer. And, yes, fundamental motifs of Barth’s theology have a definite Reformed pedigree – e.g., the glory, majesty, and grace of God; the primacy of the Word in Holy Scripture; the polemic against idolatry; the doctrine of election; the relationship between gospel and law; sanctification. But for Barth, the Reformed tradition was not so much a body of doctrine as a habit of mind. Observe that Barth got himself up to speed with Reformed dogmatics only after he had become famous for his two editions of Romans and taken up a lectureship at Göttingen. His was a theologia reformata only as it was also a theologia semper reformanda . His conversations with his Reformed forefathers, while deferential, were always critical. And the doctrines he inherited he always re-worked with daring and imagination. 2. Karl Barth was an ecumenical theologian. While recognising that theology ...

A sermon by Kim Fabricius Ephesians 4:23-24: “The old you – get rid of it! Become a new you, living in a new way, God-shaped from the inside out, holy and true.” [My translation] This morning I want to suggest two things. First, that Christians don’t exist so that there can be a church, rather the church exists so that there can be Christians. And second, that Christians exist not simply so that there can be Christians, rather they exist to be the prototype of a new humanity. This is what baptism and discipleship are all about, a fundamental parting of the ways, which the New Testament speaks about in terms of re-birth, of death and resurrection, of putting off the old way of life and putting on the new – in short of committing yourself to becoming a new kind of human being . Still around in conventional church life is the Victorian notion that God has nothing more distinctive to tell us than to behave ourselves, but I can assure you that God is much more imaginative an...