KARL BARTH
VOLUME II
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD
PART 1
translators
T. H. L. PARKER
W. B. JOHNSTON
HAROLD KNIGHT
J. L. M. HAIRE
editors
G. W. BROMILEY
T. F. TORRANCE
| A Continuum imprint | ||
The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX, UK |
| 15 East 26th Street New York 10010 USA |
First edition copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 1957
First paperback edition copyright © T&T Clark International, 2004
Authorised English translation of Die Kirchliche Dogmatik II:
Die Lehre von Gott 1
copyright © Evangelischer Verlag A.G., Zollikon–Zürich, 1940
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of T&T Clark International
ISBN | 0 567 09021 3 (hardback) |
| 0 567 05169 2 (paperback) |
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
With this volume Barth passes from the introduction to dogmatics to its content, beginning with two massive volumes on the doctrine of God. Here we have the basis upon which the whole of Barth’s teaching rests, for, as he says in this half-volume, the whole of revelation is summed up in the statement that “God is.” This is particularly worth noting by those who think that Barth merely resolves all doctrine, and not least the doctrine of God, into Christology.
This half-volume is devoted to two chapters on “The Knowledge of God” and “The Reality of God.” In the first chapter Barth insists that our knowledge of God is grounded in the action of God, in which He objectifies Himself to us, and meets us on our own plane as a Subject calling for a corresponding action on our part in the obedience of faith. Barth draws a valuable distinction here between God’s primary objectivity which is never abstracted from His own self-giving, and God’s secondary objectivity in the sign-world used by His self-revelation to man. He speaks of this as “a sacramental objectivity.” The real basis and essence of this sacramental reality of His revelation is to be found in the human nature of Jesus Christ. It is here for the first time that we really get anything like an “epistemology” from Barth, and we get it here because the possibility of knowledge of God cannot be discussed apart from the actuality of our knowledge of Him. In other words, we can only understand how God is knowable from the way in which He actually gives Himself to be known. Hence, a true epistemology can be derived only from the actual unfolding of the content of the Word of God, and therefore might best come at the end rather than at the beginning of our dogmatics.
In this part of the work we have a searching and profound examination of the main theses of Natural and Roman Theology, in respect of the distinction between the possibility and the actuality of our knowledge of God, ...
|
About Church Dogmatics, Volume 2: The Doctrine of God, Part 1Karl Barth, who lived from 1886–1968, was perhaps the most influential theologian of the 20th century. Church Dogmatics, Barth’s monumental life-work that consists of more than 6 million words, was written over the span of 35 years. In it, Barth covers in depth the great doctrines of the Word of God, God, Creation and Reconciliation. He made it his task “to take all that has been said before and to think it through once more and freshly to articulate it anew as a theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.” 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. |
| Support Info | chrchdog2p1 |