In Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, Karl Barth provides his basic framework for outlining the nature and method of theology. A major part of this framework involves the use of analogies, or models, that faithfully repeat what God has said in his Word. I argue in this paper that such a model as “theology-is-food” encapsulates Barth’s vision for theology and enhances its conceptual clarity, concrete orientation, and practical method, toward more experiential engagement with God. In short, food helps make Barth’s evangelical theology more intimately intelligible, visceral, and practicable.
I first justify using food as a model for theology by locating it in Scripture. I then integrate this food model with Barth’s outline of theology as a modest, free, critical, and happy science, which corresponds to four food-informed practices of dependence, devotion, discernment, and delight. Drawing from these practices, I develop a necessary, universal, intimate, and communal method for theology that embraces Barth’s vision of wonder, concern, commitment, and faith.
Along with Barth’s Evangelical Theology, my research interacts with David Kaplan’s The Philosophy of Food, Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, D. A. Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited, Richard Foster’s Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of the Christian Faith, Beth Felker Jones’s Practicing Christian Doctrine, and Leon Kass’s The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature.