Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts
Overview
Karl Barth’s life was a remarkable triumph. An authentic “church father” of the post-Reformation era, the Basel professor’s contributions to theology, the life of the church, and the world of culture and politics have been noted at length.
This work, however, presents extraordinary new information and insight based on his own correspondence and notes. What one finds in this work is Barth’s own running commentary on events and people from 1886 to 1968. Eberhard Busch opens up Barth’s perspective and presents chiefly Barth’s own words, making this volume endlessly fascinating and valuable. The brilliance, wit, and humanity of Barth shine through each page, as he is seen as son, brother, student, editor, friend, pastor, husband, father, soldier, teacher, theologian, church leader, political critic, polemicist, ecumenist, author, preacher, and music lover.
The towering theologian is here, but—more poignantly—Barth the human being shines through. An abundance of pictures accompanies the text—most of them appearing for the first time. Readers not familiar with the accomplishment of Karl Barth will learn to know both the man and his thought, while specialists will for the first time discern the figure behind the intellect.
Get Barth's Church Dogmatics, this title, and more with the Karl Barth Collection (49 vols.).
Key Features
- Featues a key title from Karl Barth
- Examines an important topic from a Reformed twentieth-century perspective
- Provides biblical exegesis combined with deep concern for theological orthodoxy'
Top Highlights
“Theology can float off into thin air or turn to stone, and worst of all it can become a caricature of itself.’179” (Page 244)
“The title of the lecture was ‘The Strange New World within the Bible’, and in it he argued that in the Bible we find something quite unexpected: not history, not morality, not religion but virtually a ‘new world’: ‘not the right human thoughts about God but the right divine thoughts about men’” (Page 101)
“I had to understand Jesus Christ and bring him from the periphery of my thought into the centre” (Page 173)
“During the summer semester, Barth continued to lecture on dogmatics, and studied ‘The Theology of the Formula of Concord’ in his seminar and Augustine’s Enchiridion in his discussion group.” (Page 245)
“The first Confessing Synod of the German Evangelical Church took place from 29–31 May 1934 in the Reformed church of Barmen-Gemarke.” (Pages 245–246)
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.
