Dialectics of Discipleship, The: Karl Barth, Sanctification and Theological Ethics (T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics)

Interrogating Barth’s discipleship-shaped vision of sanctification, this book investigates both Lutheran and Calvinian source material to develop an account that differs markedly from other Lutheran and Calvinist perspectives. Highlighting the robustly theological and Christ-centred character of Barth’s account, Chris Swann demonstrates that, far from merely valorising human activity, Barth advances an understanding of human moral agency, action, and suffering that is real but relative to the agency of God in Christ to which it corresponds analogously. With a focus on the role the image of discipleship plays in giving conceptual structure and shape to Barth’s distinctive account of the correspondence between divine agency and sanctified human agency, this book evaluates the ramifications of his discipleship-shaped vision of sanctification. In doing this, it gives special attention to Barth’s own personal mixed record with regard to Christian discipleship. Ultimately, Swann retrieves a number of important resources for contemporary theological ethics from Barth’s theology of discipleship.

Chris Swann is Director of Training for City to City Australia as well as adjunct lecturer in Ministry and Practice at Ridley College, Australia

Brian Brock is a Reader in Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Susan F. Parsons is editor of Studies of Christian Ethics, the journal of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics.