Church Dogmatics, Volume 3: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 4
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 fourth part of Church Dogmatics, Volume 3
- Examines ethics as a task of the doctrine of creation
- Explores freedom before God, in fellowship, for life, and in limitation
Contents
- The Command of God the Creator
- Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation
- The Problem of Special Ethics
- God the Creator as Commander
- Freedom before God
- The Holy Day
- Confession
- Prayer
- Freedom in Fellowship
- Man and Woman
- Parents and Children
- Near and Distant Neighbors
- Freedom for Life
- Respect for Life
- The Protection of Life
- The Active Life
- Freedom in Limitation
- The Unique Opportunity
- Vocation
- Honor
- Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation
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
…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
Product Details
- Title: Church Dogmatics, Volume 3: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 4
- Author: Karl Barth
- Editors: Thomas F. Torrance and Geoffrey Bromiley
- Publisher: T&T Clark International
- Publication Date: 2004
- Pages: 720
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.
Top Highlights
“Prayer is the aspect of the praise of God which is directed only towards God, and to this extent it is strictly its inward aspect. This is true of both personal and common prayer. Prayer as a demonstration of faith, as disguised preaching, as an instrument of edification, is obviously not prayer at all. Prayer is not prayer if it is addressed to anyone else but God.” (Page 88)
“A second reason for understanding prayer definitively as request is to be found in the fact that only in this way is there any safeguard that the real man comes before God in prayer. In prayer—and this is why it is commanded—all masks and camouflages may and must fall away.” (Page 98)
“The task of theological ethics is to understand the Word of God as the command of God. Its fundamental, simplest and comprehensive answer to the ethical problem is that man’s action is good in so far as it is sanctified by the Word of God which as such is also the command of God.” (Page 4)
“In all circumstances prayer is also a matter of man’s responsibility before God, a responsibility fulfilled in the particular form that man has recourse to God in prayer and encounters Him as one who prays, because God wills to see and have him before Him as this praying man and therefore as a free man. But he who really prays to God has something to say to Him and dares to say it, not because he can, but because he is invited and summoned to do so, because God who has spoken to man expects man in return to speak with Him.” (Pages 89–90)
“So, then, an action done in obedience to God cannot consist only in carrying out something that God wishes, but in man’s offering himself to God in so doing. Casuistry destroys the freedom of this obedience. It openly interposes something other and alien between the command of God and the man who is called to obey Him.” (Page 13)
- Title: Church Dogmatics, Volume 3: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 4
- 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: 9780567051097, 0567051099
- Resource ID: LLS:CHRCHDOG3P4
- Resource Type: Systematic Theology
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:19:37Z