Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 12:2 (May 1950)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous

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WTJ 12:2 (May 50) p. 155

Reviews Of Books

Karl Barth: Dogmatics in Outline, translated by G. T. Thomson. New York: Philosophical Library. 1949. 155. $3.75.

At seven a.m. each morning, even before the wrecking engine has begun to smash away at the ruins in rebuilding the University of Bonn quadrangle, Karl Barth, back in 1946 from his Nazi exile, lectures before the grave and sober students of post-war Germany. His theme: The Apostles’ Creed. The setting alone would provoke interest in the content of these lectures, and it is quite evident that today’s most famous theologian has no need of a dramatic setting to gain attention for his works.

In the foreword Barth proffers a dialectical apology for the fact that the book is a “slightly polished and improved shorthand transcript” of extemporaneous lectures. That the customary precision is here and there not attained is a fault, he feels, which is also an advantage in that the looser form is perhaps more understandable and popular. Indeed, “The Christian Confession not only can stand, it even demands interpretation in such a key and tempo as you have here” (p. 8).

In any case the book is surely a concise and readable exposition of Barth’s views, and, while not reduced to the froth of current best-selling books on religion, is yet vastly more accessible to the average reader than such a work as The Doctrine of the Word of God.1 The style is simple, even somewhat genial: the bombast and staccato bark of the commentary on Romans2 is mellowed away, and to an extent that is remarkable, considering the spoken origin of the material, the dot and dash code of punctuation has disappeared in a text of completed and connected sentences.

No new departure is presented in the book. Barth himself declares that there is little that is not found in the two earlier commentaries on the creed (the Credo of 1935, and the Confession de la Foi de l’Église of 1943), and nothing that is not in the larger volumes of the Kirchliche Dogmatik (p. 7). This fact may bear emphasizing, since the vocabulary of the book may lead some to herald another stride in Barth’s alleged return to orthodoxy.

WTJ 12:2 (May 50) p. 156

It is not only Barth’s frankness that testifies to the consistency of this work with his other productions. The same motifs are developed, although the form of presentation is considerably simplified. It is apparent from this work as well as from the larger volumes that Barth’s thought is dialectical and non-evangelical. In this respect, however, the simplicity is somewhat deceiving. The casual reader who skips over...

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