Church Dogmatics
Church Dogmatics (German: Kirchliche Dogmatik) is the four-volume theological summa and magnum opus of Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth and was published in thirteen books from 1932 to 1967. The fourth volume of the Church Dogmatics (CD) is unfinished, and only a fragment of the final part-volume was published, and the remaining lecture notes were published posthumously. The planned fifth volume was never written.
Academic significance[edit]
Widely regarded as one of the most important theological works of the century, it represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Barth published the Church Dogmatics I/1 (the first part-volume of the Dogmatics) in 1932 and continued working on it until his death in 1968, by which time it was 6 million words long in twelve part-volumes. The material published as the Church Dogmatics was originally delivered in lecture format to students at Bonn (1932) and then Basel (1935–1962), with his final incomplete volume (IV.4) produced in 1967 outside the realm of academia.[1]
Scope[edit]
Barth's original plan for the Church Dogmatics was as follows: "There would be [in addition to volume I.1] a second half-volume of pretty much the same size, completing the Prolegomena, the doctrine of Revelation. The second volume would contain the doctrine of God, the third the doctrine of Creation, the fourth the doctrine of Reconciliation, the fifth the doctrine of Redemption."[16] Barth died before writing any of the fifth volume. A complete outline of the Church Dogmatics can be found in the Barth installment of the Making of Modern Theology series.[17] The series was originally written in German and was later translated into English under the editorial leadership of T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley and many others.