If you have an interest in theology, you should own Barth. Barth's dogmatic theology is loaded with engaging and provocative ideas, which will challenge you for years to come. Two characteristics that define Barth's theology are his emphasis on the person of Christ (Barth "works from Christ outward") and his insistence that ethics and theology cannot be separated. Barth taught that "theology is ethics," since knowing God entails doing his will.
Barth's theology was shaped by his experience of living and teaching in Germany during the rise of Nazism. By 1934, Barth had become a leader in the Confessing Church movement, which stood in courageous opposition to Nazism at a time when the German Protestant church had largely endorsed National Socialism. This stand cost him his professorship at Bonn University and he was forced to flee the country in 1935.
Barth has been called neo-orthodox, evangelical, and Reformed. Indeed, his views developed remarkably over his lifetime as he moved from a liberal position to one of dialectical theology (theology founded on paradoxes or tensions). Later in life, Barth abandoned the views of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolf Bultmann, and the liberal tradition. He argued that God was not made in man's image but is instead "Wholly Other."
Barth is probably best described as "ecumenical" since his work is read by Protestants and Roman Catholics, mainstream and evangelicals. Indeed, Barth was described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas, and his work continues to be a major influence on students, scholars and preachers today.
Additional Details
- Church Dogmatics (translated from the German Die Kirchliche Dogmatik)
- by Karl Barth
- series editors, Thomas F Torrance and Geoffrey Bromiley
- T&T Clark, 2008
How to Use Barth for Preaching or Teaching
My whole theology, you see, is fundamentally a theology for parsons. It grew out of my own situation when I had to preach and teach and counsel a little.
—Karl Barth
You may wonder how 14 vast tomes of theology could be useful for the weekly task of preparing a sermon. The fact is, Barth is a pastor's theologian. And both the print publisher and electronic publisher have worked to ensure that his voluminous writings can be easily accessed for practical use. The print publisher created a final index volume of the series, which provides excellent, practical aids to preaching. And the electronic edition from Logos Bible Software will introduce some additional features to assist preachers and teachers using this work.
Preaching a Text
Volume 5 is titled "Index, With Aids for the Preacher." Fortunately, the volume lives up to its name. In addition to the indices you'd expect—places, names, and Scripture references—Volume 5 devotes 287 pages to a lectionary that pairs suggested Scripture texts with excerpts from Church Dogmatics. For each Sunday of the year, the lectionary lists six or more suggested Scripture passages that could form the basis of a sermon. It then provides selections of Barth's exposition and commentary on those Scriptures, extracted from the other 13 volumes. The electronic edition will make it easy to jump to those excerpts, read the full context, and glean ideas that enhance, undergird and enrich your sermon.
As with any other Logos book, you will be able to search the 14-volume set for a given Bible reference or range of verses. You can even create a custom collection containing Church Dogmatics (and any other theologies you may own) and tell Passage Guide to search these works every time the report is run. This will turn up all the places Barth deals with the passage you're studying!
Preaching a Topic
If you preach topically, use the subject index to find a place where Barth addresses "discipleship" or "anxiety," for example. When you find his treatment of the subject you will also discover the Scriptural texts Barth uses to discuss the topic.
Praise for the Print Editions
[Barth] undoubtedly is one of the giants in the history of theology.—
Christianity Today
[There are at least three key ideas in [Barth's] early thought critical for his later writings. The first is the absolute transcendent sovereign God in contrast to sin-dominated mankind. Second is a dialectical theological method which poses truth as a series of paradoxes. For example, the infinite became the finite; eternity entered time; God became human. Such paradoxes create tension, in which one finds both a crisis and truth. The crisis, the third idea, involves humans. The individual discovers in the tension of the dialectic a crisis of existence, judgment, separation, belief/unbelief, acceptance/rejection of the ultimate truth of God concerning mankind as revealed in the Word.
—Biographical entries from Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
Life is short and Karl Barth is long.
—Henry Cocks
[Barth’s greatest influence was theological, with his emphasis on God’s sovereignty placing him firmly in the Reformed (Calvinistic) tradition. He differed radically from the mainstream of continental European theology, rejecting both its subjective emphasis on religious experience and the prevalent idea that Christian doctrine is subject to, or limited by, its historical origins. By reaffirming what Kierkegaard had called an 'infinite qualitative difference' between God and humankind, Barth rescued theology from captivity to anthropology—that is, he reasserted God’s reality and sovereignty over human knowledge or imagination.
—Who's Who in Christian History
[Future generations of theological students will have to reckon with Barth's work just as they have had to come to grips with Augustins, Aquinas, Calvin, and Schleiermacher...The chief merit of his work lies not in the doctrinal positions he has taken—though they are important—but in the challenge to a fresh hearing of God's Word in Scripture by all who are concerned for pure doctrine in the preaching of the church.
—Interpretation, 11.1, review of volume 1, part 2
…this volume is a mine of sensitive, Biblically illuminated insight into the problems of human life with which it deals. This is its greatest value for all readers, including those who are not theologians by passion or instinct.
—Theology Today, review of volume 3, part 4
…if you as a preacher or teacher of the Word open yourself to the theological depths of this preacher's theologian, your hearers will begin to notice the difference.
—Arnold B. Come, San Francisco Theological Seminary, Theology Today, review of volume 5
Electronic Books Included
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The Doctrine of the Word of God, Volume 1, Part 1
The Word of God as the Criterion of Dogmatics; The Revelation of God
528 pages |
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The Doctrine of the Word of God, Volume 1, Part 2
The Revelation of God; Holy Scripture: The Proclamation of the Church
928 pages |
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The Doctrine of God, Volume 2, Part 1
The Knowledge of God; The Reality of God
712 pages |
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The Doctrine of God, Volume 2, Part 2
The Election of God; The Command of God
832 pages |
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The Doctrine of Creation, Volume 3, Part 1
The Work of Creation
448 pages |
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The Doctrine of Creation, Volume 3, Part 2
The Creature
688 pages |
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The Doctrine of Creation, Volume 3, Part 3
The Creator and His Creature
560 pages |
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The Doctrine of Creation, Volume 3, Part 4
The Command of God the Creator
720 pages |
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The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Volume 4, Part 1
The Subject-Matter and Problems of the Doctrine of Reconciliation
816 pages |
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The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Volume 4, Part 2
Jesus Christ, the Servant as Lord
896 pages |
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The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Volume 4, Part 3.1
Jesus Christ, the True Witness
496 pages |
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The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Volume 4, Part 3.2
Jesus Christ, the True Witness
496 pages |
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The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Volume 4, Part 4
The Foundation of Christian Life
240 pages |
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Index, With Aids for the Preacher, Volume 5
576 pages |
About the Author
Excerpted from the Columbia Encyclopedia
Barth, Karl (bärt), 1886–1968, Swiss Protestant theologian, one of the leading thinkers of 20th-century Protestantism. He helped to found the Confessing Church and his thinking formed the theological framework for the Barmen Declaration. He taught in Germany, where he early opposed the Nazi regime. In 1935 when he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, he was retired from his position at the Univ. of Bonn and deported to Switzerland. There he continued to expound his views, known as dialectical theology or theology of the word.
Barth’s primary object was to lead theology back to the principles of the Reformation (called neo-orthodoxy). For Barth, modern theology with its assent to science, immanent philosophy, and general culture and with its stress on feeling, was marked by indifference to the word of God and to the revelation of God in Jesus, which he thought should be the central concern of theology.
In the confrontation between humanity and God, which was Barth’s fundamental concern, the word of God and God’s revelation in Christ are the only means God has for Self-revelation; Barth argued that people must listen in an attitude of awe, trust, and obedience. This theological position is also related to those of Emil Brunner, Friedrich Gogarten, and Rudolf Bultmann, although Barth’s position is the stricter.
Barth’s writings include The Epistle to the Romans (tr. 1933), The Word of God and the Word of Man (tr. 1928), Credo (tr. 1936), and Church Dogmatics (Vol. I-IV, tr. 1936–62).
Further Reading
See our blog post on Barth for a huge list of articles in Libronix about Barth and his Church Dogmatics.
Benefits of the Logos Bible Software Edition
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