David Guretzki - An Explorers Guide to Karl Barth

Theres no shortage of books on Karl Barth. If youve come here looking for the latest new insight or interpretation on the Swiss master, let me save you some time and disappointment by making it clear that this book was not written to make an original scholarly contribution to Barth studies. If thats what youre looking for, I would suggest you put the book down, back away, and keep looking...

However, if youre relatively unfamiliar with Karl Barth but want (voluntarily) to know more, or if youve been asked (involuntarily) to become familiar with him for a class or study group, then I hope this book will be of some assistance as you begin your study. Indeed, my primary objective in writing this book is to provide a guidea handbook of sortsexplicitly designed to help new explorers of Karl Barth to get quickly acclimatized to his thought.

Because Ive aimed this book at Barth beginners, Ive focused less on the technical debates scholars are having (although I do mention a few of those along the way) and instead have given readers the most important information they need to keep moving forward. Consequently, Ive also tried to keep the material as objective as possible (even if I know that it is finally impossible). Everyone has an opinion, and you, the reader, wont have a difficult time discerning that I am generally a fan of Barths contributions, even if I dont follow him every step of the way. (Barth would be disappointed anyway to find out that anyone followed him at every single point. Dialogue, debate, and difference of opinion kept things interesting for Barth.)

Alongside the primary objective of creating an introductory-level book on Barth, Ive tried to keep the prose light, tried to inject some occasional humor (though you will have to be the judge of whether theres anything humorous at all in this bookmy teenagers groan at my dad jokes, so I wont be too hurt if you groan, too), and tried to make the book as user friendly as possible.

Throughout this project, Ive kept the image of an explorers guide in mind. I find the metaphor helpful because of the way a good guide gives the traveler only enough information needed to enjoy the sights. Any guidebook that has vacationers spending more time reading it rather than enjoying the scenery is, in my mind, not a good guide. So, delicate balancing act that it has been, my goal is to produce something that readers can read as much or as little as they need in order to get them back to reading as much as they can from Barth himself. That means there is no need to read the book from start to finish, or even to read entire chapters. Read only what interests you or what is most pertinent in the moment. Then get back to reading Barth!

The book is divided into two parts. In part one, Getting to Know Karl Barth, I provide enough insight into the man and his work for you to be better prepared to read him with profit (as in intellectually and theologically, not financiallytheology doesnt have great prospects for that kind of profit). In this part, I outline a brief apologetic on why Barth is worth the effort, provide a brief biography of his life, give answers to some commonly asked questions about him, offer a glossary defining major ideas and persons that he interacted with, and then introduce readers to his life work through a tour of ten representative works carefully selected from the first couple of decades of his life.

In part two, Exploring the Church Dogmatics, the focus turns to Barths magnum opus. There I provide a primer on the nature and features of the work. I have also included an admittedly unusual chapter on how to use the Church Dogmatics for exegesis, for preaching, and for writing academic papers. This is followed by a chapter in which we take three paths through the Church Dogmatics for varying levels of interest, need, or time along with a brief commentary on the major themes and features of each part volume. In the last chapter, I provide a short annotated list of secondary sources and resources selected out of the mountain of secondary literature written on Barth. There are, after all, some texts that have more perennial or classic status that I believe readers should eventually read if they want to go further into the world of Barth studies.

I wish to thank several people who were instrumental in the production of this book. Thanks to David Congdon and the editorial staff at IVP for seeing the project as worthy in the first place and for encouraging me to get it done. Of course, I owe an ongoing debt of gratitude to my family for their love and support. My wife, Maureen, kept me writing at times when I didnt want to write, and my kids, Joey, Chiante, and Sierra, dont seem to be too damaged from the experience! Finally, I wish to thank all those people in the past decade who have been involved in the weekly Barth Reading Group at Briercrest College & Seminary in Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada. I think there have been about sixty to eighty participants over the yearsyou know who you are. Thanks for allowing me to be your guide and colearner in our journeys through Barths Church Dogmatics. It is to all of you, my fellow Karl Barth Reading Group pilgrims, that this book is dedicated.

To celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary, my wife and I decided to save up for a trip to Australia. In addition to seeing a travel agent, booking our tickets, and making sure we had vacation time booked, we also engaged in some planning on what we wanted to accomplish while we were traveling. We had only two weeks of vacation, and we wanted to make the best of it. So we bought a couple of those tourist guidebooks you see in the travel section at your local bookstore. It was exciting, and a bit overwhelming, to pore over all the opportunities! In the end, we embarked on our trip and enjoyed it immensely. But in the process we learned two vital lessons: first, two weeks is wholly insufficient to try to see Australia, and second, having those guidebooks saved us a lot of time in trying to figure out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do on our journey.

Its my hope that this book will serve a little bit like one of those guidebooksexcept that this one is designed to guide you on a journey through that continental land mass which I here awkwardly designate Karl Barths Theology. Newcomers to Karl Barth can find his cartload of books immensely intimidating, and so it is my goal to guide readers gently past some of the initial barriers that might discourage them from pressing on. In other words, I tried to write the book I wish I could have had in my first encounter with Barth. If only someone had tried to give me a basic understanding of what