KARL BARTH
VOLUME III
THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION
PART 1
translators
J. W. EDWARDS
O. BUSSEY
H. KNIGHT
editors
G. W. BROMILEY
T. F. TORRANCE
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First edition copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 1958
First paperback edition copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 2004
Reprinted 2007
Authorised English translation of Die Kirchliche Dogmatik III:
Die Lehre von der Schöpfung 1
copyright © Evangelischer Verlag A.G., Zollikon–Zürich, 1945
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ISBN-10: | 0 567 09031 0 (hardback) |
| 0 567 05079 3 (paperback) |
ISBN-13: | 978 0 567 09031 7 (hardback) |
| 978 0 567 05079 3 (paperback) |
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Librar
In his exposition of the doctrine of God in Volume II, Barth showed that God cannot be known in abstracto*, but only in the overflow of His life and love to the creature. Turning now to the doctrine of creation in Volume III, he insists that creation cannot be known or interpreted by and for itself, i.e., apart from the knowledge of the divine election and salvation in Jesus Christ. In this doctrine, we are concerned with faith in God the Father, and His overflowing towards us fulfilled in the incarnation of the Son. Two guiding principles are thus given: first, that the creatureliness of the world is known only by acknowledgment of the revealed Word of God; and second, that creation and redemption are inseparably conjoined in the one work of grace. If creation comes first, it is no more a prelude than redemption an afterthought, for it is itself the actualisation of God’s grace. Creation is the outer and redemption the inner side of the one free and loving decision and action of God.
On God’s side, this means that the work of creation is not just the causing of creaturely existence but the creating and seeking of a distinct reality with which to share His life and glory. In this respect, the supreme problem of theology is not the existence of God, as natural theology supposes, but the independent existence of creaturely reality. This can be properly understood only in the incarnation of the Son, who in taking our existence reveals the meaning of the creature and the transcendent glory of the Creator, thus dispelling the evil dream of successive generations that human existence might be empty and meaningless.
On man’s side, it means that even creaturehood is an existence in grace, having its glory in the overflowing glory of God. The proper response is therefore gratitude, in which alone man lives a genuinely human life as a child of the heavenly ...
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About Church Dogmatics, Volume 3: The Doctrine of Creation, 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. |
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