Karl Barth, Catholic Renewal and Vatican II

Bruce McCormack is Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA. Benjamin Dahlke is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Catholic Theology, University of Mainz, Germany.

‘Benjamin Dahlke's book concisely tells the previously unknown but nevertheless fascinating story of the intensive dialogue between Karl Barth and a rather varied group of German speaking Catholic colleagues. Parts of Barth's most attentive audience, it seems, came from a field that he himself looked upon with a curious mixture of suspicion, disdain and lively interest. Dahlke shows that conversing with Barth or criticizing his theology became one of the most striking phenomena of Catholic theology in search of reform from the 1930s to the 1960s. Dahlke's finely written book is in itself a history of Catholic theology on the way to Vatican II.' - Prof. Dr Leonhard Hell, University of Mainz, Germany

• Introduction 7; Chapter 1: 'Romans' - First Reactions to Karl Barth; Chapter 2: Anti-modern Modernity - The philosophical Presumtions of Dialectical Theology; Chapter 3: Early Ecumenism and Karl Barth; Chapter 4: 'Fides quaerens intellectum' - Barth's Anselm; Chapter 5: The Debate over the analogia entis; Chapter 6: The Contribution of Hans Urs von Balthasar to overcoming Neoscholasticism; Chapter 7: Establishing a relationship - Balthasar on Barth in the 1940th; Chapter 8: Transforming Catholicism - Balthasar's 'Karl Barth'; Chapter 9: Developing an own Theology - Balthasar beyond Barth; Conclusion.