This blog is organized as a running commentary on my reading of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. It is neither systematic, scholarly, nor complete. I hope that I may make not unintelligent comments, but I’m trained as a church historian, not as a systematic theologian. I began to write this blog in 2008; it was then published on Typepad and was moved to WordPress in 2019.
Barth is not an author read lightly or quickly, and some sections require re-reading and further reflection. This may be a very slow-growing blog.
Comments will be arranged according to the divisions of Church Dogmatics in its part-volumes and section numbers (with the section-sign §). I am reading the volumes in order, but because the blog format lists articles (posts) with most recent first, the reader will have to page down to reach comments on the sections or subsections which occur earlier in the text. For this reason, each article will be displayed as an excerpt, to save tedious scrolling to the bottom of the list.
The Excursus section addresses particular concerns or aspects of Barth’s text. The section is named after the comments in smaller print that occur through Church Dogmatics, in which Barth addresses contemporaneous scholarship and concerns and responds to his critics.