CREDO
BY
KARL BARTH
WITH A FOREWORD BY
ROBERT McAFEE BROWN
Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W 8th Ave, Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
Credo
By Barth, Karl
Copyright©1962 Theologischer Verlag Zurich
ISBN: 1-59752-119-1
EISBN: 978-1-4982-7072-4
Publication date 3/10/2005
Previously published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962
Copyright© of the German original version
Theologischer Verlag Zurich
This book is a translation from the German edition
Karl Barth’s Credo: Die Hauptprobleme der Dogmatik, dargestellt im Anschluss an das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis.
16 Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universitat Utrecht im Februar und Marz 1935. Munchen 1935
1935!
TO THE MINISTERS
HANS ASMUSSEN
HERMANN HESSE
KARL IMMER
MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
HEINRICH VOGEL
IN MEMORY OF ALL WHO
STOOD
STAND
AND WILL STAND
FOREWORD
ROBERT McAFEE BROWN
Professor of Religion in the Special Programs in Humanities, Stanford University
CAN a book originally published in 1935 fairly represent the author’s point of view over a quarter of a century later? Particularly can this be so when the author in question is Karl Barth, a man who has gone through a long and radical theological pilgrimage?
When one glances over the course of Barth’s pilgrimage, one notes certain milestones along the way, certain points at which the path shifted in a new and decisively different direction. There is the original Epistle to the Romans of 1919, wholly re-written in 1922, replete with references to Kierkegaard, existentialism, the “totally other” and “the infinitely qualitative distinction between God and man.” There is the Christliche Dogmatik of 1927, in which Barth set forth a whole theological program to be elaborated in future volumes. This venture was halted almost as soon as it was underway, for in 1931 appeared a decisive volume, a work on Anselm, in which Barth re-thought the nature of the theological task in the light of the Anselmic credo ut intelligam. The result was that the Christliche Dogmatik was scrapped, and rewritten with a new title, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics), the first volume appearing in 1932. From this point on, Barth has pursued a generally consistent course. As successive volumes of the Church Dogmatics have appeared (and at this moment there are twelve, with at least two more promised), the shift, if there has been one, has only been toward what one of Barth’s critics refers to as a greater and greater “Christological concentration.”
In other words, the main lines of Barth’s theological position had been secured by 1932, three years before the appearance of Credo. The latter is not, therefore, a “transition” volume, of interest only to those who wish to trace stages in Barth’s development. While Barth would certainly say some things differently today (retracting, no doubt, his words about Sacraments in the closing pages) it is little short of amazing, reading Credo retrospectively in the light of the full Church Dogmatics, how much of the latter is here in nuce in this small book. The dissatisfaction with “natural theology,” the centrality of Christology, the sheer “givenness” of the gift of grace to the undeserving, the recognition that we cannot really see the enormity of sin until we have been captured by the vastness of grace, the Christian life as the life of gratitude in response to the greatness of what God has done, the glad certainty that in Christ sin and death have truly been conquered and that a new situation is therefore always before us—these and other themes that the Church Dogmatics spells out over hundreds of pages, confront us here in a paragraph, a page, a chapter, in such a way that we discover that for Barth the tasks of exegete and preacher, scholar and proclaimer, teacher and witness, are all combined in one vocation.
That there is particular urgency behind these lectures is made clear by the date. They were given when the shadow of Hitler had already fallen across Europe. Evil days were ahead. Right conviction was important as a basis for right action, and Barth felt, properly, that wrong conviction could lead to wrong action. Then as now, reflection upon an historic utterance of the faith was not an evasion of the present, but a means of arming one’s self to live responsibly in the present.
The reader has the privilege of disagreeing with Barth. He no longer has the privilege of ignoring him.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
THIS book is more simple and popular than some of Karl Barth’s other works. It can be understood by, and it certainly has a message for, every member of the Church. Unfortunately the most difficult part of the book comes at the beginning. It is because I do not want the general reader to lay down the book after the first few pages, that I transgress the translator’s rule neither to be seen nor heard, and write this note. I suggest to the general reader that, in his first reading of the book, he start with the Fifth Chapter. Perhaps Karl Barth would be shocked if he knew that I was making such a suggestion, and yet I am not so sure. For him faith begins with Jesus Christ. The reader who starts with the Fifth Chapter, therefore, not only misses some difficult hurdles, but he begins where faith begins.
Though I have used the words “simple” and “popular” I do not mean that CREDO will be found as easy to read as the newspaper leader that we skim at the breakfast table. But it is worth a little pains, for it is a statement, by the Church’s greatest living thinker, of the faith of the Church. In twenty years Karl Barth has, in God’s providence, changed the whole direction of the Church’s thought. Every part of the Church of Christ throughout the whole world is to-day wrestling with the questions raised by him. But many who are discussing these questions and quoting Barth’s name have the weirdest ideas as to what Barth stands for. This book will show that he is neither the iconoclast nor the spinner of daring speculative theories that some people imagine him to be, but that he is before all else a “Doctor of the Holy Scriptures”. He has brought the Church back to the Word of God. If people must have a label for his theology, let them call it, not the “Dialectic Theology,” not the “Theology of Crisis,” but the Theology of the Word.
This note is for “the man in the pew,” whom I want to encourage to read this book. Ministers and other specialists in theology will need no encouragement, but, beginning at the beginning, will, I am sure, find
