Church Dogmatics, Volume 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 1
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 first part of Church Dogmatics, Volume 4
- Examines the subject-matter and problems of the doctrine of reconciliation
- Investigates Jesus Christ as Lord and servant
Contents
- The Subject-Matter and Problems of the Doctrine of Reconciliation
- The Work of God the Reconciler
- The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Survey)
- Jesus Christ, the Lord as Servant
- The Obedience of the Son of God
- The Pride and Fall of Man
- The Justification of Man
- The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community
- The Holy Spirit and Christian Faith
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.
Product Details
- Title: Church Dogmatics, Volume 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 1
- Author: Karl Barth
- Editors: Thomas F. Torrance and Geoffrey Bromiley
- Publisher: T&T Clark International
- Publication Date: 2004
- Pages: 816
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
“As distinct from justification, and as its necessary consequence, this subjection of man to the divine direction is usually called sanctification. It is nothing other than the basic presupposition of all Christian ethics. Sanctification is the claiming of all human life and being and activity by the will of God for the active fulfilment of that will.” (Page 101)
“The subject-matter, origin and content of the message received and proclaimed by the Christian community is at its heart the free act of the faithfulness of God in which He takes the lost cause of man, who has denied Him as Creator and in so doing ruined himself as creature, and makes it His own in Jesus Christ, carrying it through to its goal and in that way maintaining and manifesting His own glory in the world.” (Page 3)
“The true God—if the man Jesus is the true God—is obedient.” (Page 164)
“He, the Creator, does not scorn to become a creature, a man like us, in order that as such He may bear and do what must be borne and done for our salvation. On the contrary, He finds and defends and vindicates His glory in doing it. Again, we see our own perversion and corruption, we see what is our offence and plight, in the fact that God (who never does anything unnecessary) can obviously be satisfied only by this supreme act, that only His own coming as man is sufficient to make good the evil which has been done. So dark is our situation that God Himself must enter and occupy it in order that it may be light. We cannot fully understand the Christian ‘God with us’ without the greatest astonishment at the glory of the divine grace and the greatest horror at our own plight.” (Page 13)