Church Dogmatics, Volume 2: The Doctrine of God, Part 2

by Karl Barth; Geoffrey William Bromiley; Thomas F. Torrance

Publisher:

T&T Clark

, 2004

Overview

Described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas, the Swiss pastor and theologian, Karl Barth, continues to be a major influence on students, scholars, and preachers today. Barth’s theology found its expression mainly through his closely reasoned 14-part magnum opus, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik. Having taken over 30 years to write, the Church Dogmatics is regarded as one of the most important theological works of all time, and represents the pinnacle of Barth’s achievement as a theologian.

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Key Features

• Provides a translation of Karl Barth’s second part of Church Dogmatics, Volume 2
• Examines the doctrine of election
• Covers the importance of God’s commands

Contents

• The Election of God
  • The Problem of a Correct Doctrine of the Election of Grace
  • The Election of Jesus Christ
  • The Election of the Community
  • The Election of the Individual
• The Command of God
  • Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God
  • The Command as the Claim of God
  • The Command as the Decision of God
  • The Command as the Judgment of God

Praise for the Print Edition

[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

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

Product Details

• Title: Church Dogmatics, Volume 2: The Doctrine of God, Part 2
• Author: Karl Barth
• Editors: Thomas F. Torrance and Geoffrey Bromiley
• Publisher: T&T Clark International
• Publication Date: 2004
• Pages: 832

About Karl Barth

Karl Barth (1886–1968), a Swiss Protestant theologian and pastor, was one of the leading thinkers of twentieth-century theology, described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. He helped to found the Confessing Church and his thinking formed the theological framework for the Barmen Declaration. He taught in Germany, where he 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 University of Bonn and deported to Switzerland. There he continued to write and develop his theology.

Barth’s work and influence resulted in the formation of what came to be known as 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.

Contents

Top Highlights

“We have emphasised three points (we shall have to treat them more fully in detail) common to all conceptions of the doctrine: the freedom of God, the mystery of God, and the righteousness of God in His election of grace.” (Page 24)

“The Word as such is before and above all created realities. It stands completely outside the series of created things. It precedes all being and all time. It is like God Himself.” (Page 95)

“To designate the object of this ‘other’ election we choose the concept of the community because it covers the reality both of Israel and of the Church.” (Page 196)

“Who is the Elect? He is always the one who ‘was dead and is alive again,’ who ‘was lost and is found’ (Lk. 15:24). That the elected man Jesus had to suffer and die means no more and no less than that in becoming man God makes Himself responsible for man who became His enemy, and that He takes upon Himself all the consequences of man’s action—his rejection and his death. This is what is involved in the self-giving of God. This is the radicalness of His grace.” (Page 124)

“And the other is that God elected man, this man. God’s decision and ordination concerned this man. He predestinated His own Son to existence as the son of David. He decreed that His Word should be sounded forth in the world of man. And so it was this man, the same, Jesus Christ, who was in the beginning with God. The divine will took on a form and concretion in and with which God was no longer alone with Himself, but this man Jesus Christ was taken up into the will of God and made a new object of the divine decree, distinct from God. To the election of Jesus Christ there belongs, then, elected man as well as the electing God.” (Page 162)

Product Details

• Title: Church Dogmatics, Volume 2: The Doctrine of God, Part 2
• Authors: Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, Thomas F. Torrance
• Series: Barth’s Church Dogmatics
• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Print Publication Date: 2004
• Logos Release Date: 2008
• Era: era:modern
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Theology, doctrinal
• ISBNs: 9780567051790, 056705179X
• Resource ID: LLS:CHRCHDOG2P2
• Resource Type: Systematic Theology
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:19:33Z