I just read Westminster/John Knox’s new Barth for Armchair Theologians. I expected not to like it, given my sharp theological differences with the author, John R. Franke (the inheritor of Stanley Grenz’s mantle as chief theologian of the postmodernist evangelical left). I was surprisingly impressed with the text of the book. Franke presents Barth’s views fairly, succinctly, and winsomely. As the book’s title claims, Franke makes Barth accessible to laypeople who want the gist of the theologian’s thought without reading all of the Dogmatics for themselves.
What revolted me was not any pomo-evangelical theology from Franke. It was instead the drawings W/JK commissioned to illustrate the text. I do not object to visual representations of Jesus. But the cartoon Jesus representations in this book cross every conceivable line. Jesus is pictured grinning from the cross, asking “Don’t I look dependable?” He stands grimacing between Friedrich Schleiermacher and a figure representing Enlightement scholarship. The cartoon Jesus looks down from the cross to a powdered wig philosopher and quips, “Your Enlightenment is killing me…again.” The representations of God the Father are even worse, a buffoonish white-bearded old man, who is seen looking over Barth’s shoulder as he writes.
Thankfully, unlike Muslims reacting to Danish cartoons of Mohammed, no one of us is going to riot over the cartoonization of Jesus and the Father. But shouldn’t we cringe when we see such ridicule from a Christian publisher? And shouldn’t we note the irony that such things appear in a volume explaining a theologian who insisted on the utter transcendence and majesty of the Deity?
I don’t agree with Karl Barth on many things. But, I suppose, if he were here he’d have the same reaction I do to the cartoons in this book that bears his name: Nein!
