Attending to the Sabbath: An Alternative Direction in Karl Barth's Theology of Prayer

Abstract

AbstractMost accounts of Karl Barth's theology of prayer focus on the active dimensions of prayer, as prioritized in the formal sections on prayer in the Church Dogmatics. This leads to the suspicion that Barth has little time for the contemplative and reflective dimensions of prayer. This article will complement the existing approaches by broadening the scope of inquiry from the formal prayer‐sections into other, less obvious areas of the Dogmatics to uncover an alternative, contemplative, direction in Barth's theology of prayer. It will suggest, therefore, that attending to his rich but often‐neglected account of the Sabbath affords the opportunity to begin the work of reassessing Barth's relation to the contemplative tradition.