Credo
Overview
This important book, by the twentieth century’s preeminent Christian theologian, explains the Apostle’s Creed as a foundation of the Christian religion. More accessible than some of Karl Barth’s other works, it provides an entry point into the thinking of Barth for all readers. In the foreword, Robert McAffee Brown notes that “it is little short of amazing, reading Credo in light of the full Church Dogmatics, how much of the latter is here in nuce in this small book. The dissatisfaction with ‘natural theology,’ the centrality of Christology, the sheer ‘givenness’ of the gift of grace to the undeserving . . . these and other themes that Church Dogmatics spells out over hundreds of pages, confront us here in a paragraph, a page, a chapter, in such a way that we discover that for Barth the tasks of exegete and preacher, scholar and proclaimer, teacher and witness, are all combined in one vocation.”
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Key Features
- Featues a key title from Karl Barth
- Examines an important topic from a Reformed twentieth-century perspective
- Provides biblical exegesis combined with deep concern for theological orthodoxy'
Top Highlights
“The second frontier of the Credo and Dogmatics is very simply our actual human life” (Page 9)
“We recognise it as truth and within the human creaturely sphere we speak of fatherhood in truth, because God is in truth Father: already beforehand, in eternity—which means even apart from our existence and world. He is the eternal Father, He is that in Himself. It is as such that He is then Father for us and reveals Himself to us and is the incomparable prototype of all human creaturely fatherhood: ‘from whom every fatherhood (πᾶσα πατριά) in heaven and earth is named’ (Eph. 3:15).” (Page 24)
“The value of the Confession lies in the fact that when it was being formed the Church, in face of the ideas of the time, inquired into the decision of Holy Scripture, and in the Confession did not simply express its faith as such, but what in its faith it thought it heard as the judgment of the Holy Scripture in points of Church proclamation that had become doubtful. In the Credo the Church bows before that God Whom we did not seek and find—Who rather has sought and found us.” (Pages 6–7)
“Therefore it must not be said that the name ‘Father’ for God is a transference to God, figurative and not to be taken literally, of a human creaturely relationship, whereas Goďs essential being as God per se is not touched nor characterised by this name, nay, He is infinitely above being Father to us, indeed is something different altogether.” (Page 23)
“The third frontier is the frontier which separates eternity from time, the coming Kingdom of God from the present age, the eschaton from the hic et nunc.” (Page 10)
- Title: Credo
- Author: Karl Barth
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 2005
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Pages: 220
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Apostles’ Creed
- ISBNs: 9781597521192, 1597521191
- Resource ID: LLS:CREDO
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:59:51Z
Karl Barth (May 10, 1886–December 10, 1968) was a twentieth-century Swiss theologian in the Reformed tradition. A vigorous opponent of theological liberalism and modernism, he is sometimes called “the Father of Neo-Orthodoxy.”
Sample Pages from the Print Edition
Reviews
2 ratings
Joshua Steele
12/22/2022
Sean
11/25/2016
A series of his lectures originally published in 1935, this is an excellent and short preview (not summary) of his thought in the later Church Dogmatics. Note: While not a particularly difficult read, this is an academic work. Barth treats the Creed in Latin, and untranslated Latin vocabulary occurs frequently.
