Breaking into the Broken World: Dr. W. Travis McMaken on Karl Barth

ONLINE ADVENT CLASS THIS DECEMBER
Advent is not only as a season of waiting, but also a call to confront a world in crisis.
This Advent season, join us for a unique four-week online class that dives deep into the Advent and Christmas sermons of some of the 20th century’s most provocative theologians: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann. Known collectively as contributors to the "theology of crisis," these thinkers wrestled with the significance of the Incarnation in a world marked by upheaval, uncertainty, and hope. The class is online, asyncronous, and donation-based, including 0.
What to Expect in the Class?
Each week, the flow of the class will include...
1. Watching the lecture and reading the accompanying pdf (if you have time).
2. Attending the livestream or watching the replay.
3. Engaging in discussion with the online group (if you choose).
Why are these theologians timely?
The "theologians of crisis," including Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann, emerged in response to the profound upheavals and existential crises of the early 20th century. Their theological reflections were shaped by world wars, economic depressions, political extremism, and the rapid modernization that destabilized many traditional values and beliefs. They understood the theologian’s task in a new way, no longer a steward of the dominant order but one subject to the destabilizing breakthrough of God’s coming. In their time there were a series of interlocking crises; an ethical and political crisis, a crisis of faith and meaning, a crisis of identity and human dignity, and ultimately the idolatrous hubris at the heart of modernity. It is here, in the shadow of these crises they prayed, “Come.” In the midst of a world at odds, the Word of God comes, for the incarnation is not a validation of the world as it is, but a confrontation, an interrupting Word of the God who has refused to be God without us, despite us.
The theology of crisis, then, was both a critique of complacent or human-centered religion and a call to see faith as something that confronts the darkest realities of human existence. These theologians proposed that, in times of crisis, it is precisely the unsettling, transcendent, and often paradoxical nature of the Christian faith-the belief in a God who meets humanity at the point of its need and finitude-that offers true hope and meaning. Their theology continues to resonate today, speaking to a world still grappling with social, economic, and existential crises.
www.OhGodWhatNow.net