Review: R. Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth

R. Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ix + 246pp. $99.95

In his Jena diary, Hegel writes: “In Swabia people say of something that took place long ago that it is so long since it happened that it can hardly be true any more. So Christ died for our sins so long ago that it can hardly be true any more.” It is precisely this problem—the distance between Christ and us, between the “there and then” and the “here and now”—which Karl Barth addresses in his doctrine of the resurrection, according to Dale Dawson’s fine analysis. Dawson argues that the resurrection is not only the “pivot point of Barth’s theological discourse” (7), but also an inexhaustibly rich doctrine which answers the problem of Lessing’s great ugly ditch. The resurrection ensures that Christ is not trapped within his pre-Easter history but is fully present to people of all times.

Read my full review online at the Center for Barth Studies.