Note on the Source Text

Beginning in February, 2009, T. & T. Clark International published a new “study edition” of Church Dogmatics in 31 soft-bound volumes.  This edition translates for the first time all the Greek and Latin passages in the excursus which now present more of a puzzle to students, who more commonly now lack fluency in the theological languages Barth and earlier generations regarded as basic tools.  The scholars (mostly at Princeton Theological Seminary) will provide numerous helps, and this new edition will publish the original alongside the English translation –hence the 31 volumes!

One of the advantages of this edition is that it clearly indicates the page number of the Bromiley & Torrance English edition, and in the English version I cite those page numbers, not the page numbers of the soft-bound “study edition.”

Those page numbers match the citations indicated in the Digital Karl Barth Library, published on the web by Alexander Street Press (now part of ProQuest) in association with Theologischer Verlag Zürich and Princeton Theological Seminary.  Unfortunately, that edition does not clearly distinguish by size of font the main text of Church Dogmatics and the smaller font of the excursus.  On the other hand, the Digital Karl Barth Library also publishes the original German Kirchliche Dogmatik (as well as the Gesamtausgabe and other documents).  In the German version of this blog, I cite KD rather than CD.

I began this blog reading the “original edition” (hardly original printings!) of Barth’s Church Dogmatics in English, authorized translation by G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936, etc.).  This version was then superceded by an edition reviewed by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, the “big black volumes” familiar from collections and libraries.  I have since continued with reading the study edition, and I am correcting (or have corrected) the page number citations.  Errors are bound to creep in (alas!) –if you detect one, please let me know.