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Fully Alive: The Glory of God and the Human Creature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Theological Exegesis of Scripture is unavailable, but you can change that!

Numerous contemporary theologians depict divine glory as overwhelming to or competitive with human agency. In effect, this makes humanity a threat to God’s glory, and causes God’s glory to remain opaque to human enquiry and foreign to human life. Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar have avoided this tendency, instead depicting God’s glory as enabling people to participate in glorifying God....

Before making a start it would be good to give an initial brief indication of what Barth means by the ‘glory’ of God. At several points he gives a concise gloss or summary of what he intends. Early in the relevant section in II.1, he summarizes: God’s glory is God Himself in the truth and capacity and act in which He makes Himself known as God. This truth and capacity and act are the triumph, the very core, of His freedom. And at its core it is freedom to love.