Barth’s pages appear fearsome and off-putting for many contemporary readers. His conventions differ from most North American academic writing, and the appearance of pages-long paragraphs with no indentations takes some getting used to.
Each Barth section (ennumerated with the § and given a bold-face title) is headed by a short paragraph in bold-face which indicates the topic of the section in language similar to that of the Reformed confessions such as the Confessio helvetica posterior or Second Helvetic (=Swiss) Confession (1562-1564).
Every section is divided into at least two subsections. Each subsection is then indicated by upper-case Roman numerals (I. and II.) and a subsection title. Within each subsection long paragraphs may or may not be numbered. Barth is careful writer, so that if a paragraph bearing 1. should appear, it will always be followed by a 2.
The long paragraphs of each subsection –some can spill over several pages– are often broken up by so-called excursus or small-print paragraphs. These excursus –beloved by Barth scholars– serve a variety of purposes. They are also studded with Greek and Latin quotations and obscure bibliographical references. Note: Unfortunately, the online Digital Karl Barth Library does not distinguish by font-size between paragraph and excursus –so reference has to be made to the printed edition.
Some excursus are brief, but more require most of a page, or several pages.
The brief excursus are really no more than extended footnotes, because Church Dogmatics contains no footnotes or end-notes, and even the indexes at the back of each volume are quite spare (Biblical quotations; names; subjects). Frequently Barth cites in support Latin- or Greek-language patristic authors (usually in the original), Luther, Calvin, other older authors, and confessional documents. Occasionally Barth will note a modern agreement or disagreement, sometimes with acerbic comment. Sometimes Barth cites no one but simply expands on a point in more colloquial language, a sort of digressive monologue.
The long excursus function in a variety of ways. Some are really extended footnotes, finding warrant, agreement, or expansion in the classical Reformers such as Luther, Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Calvin, and tracing positions through later Protestant “scholastic” writers such as Quenstedt, Hollaz, or Heppe. Others trace disagreements with modernist Protestants such as Schleiermacher, Troeltsch, and Barth’s own teachers such as Adolf von Harnack, and Wilhelm Herrmann. Others trace disagreements with contemporary such as Friedrich Gogarten (and other dialectical theologians) or contemporary liberals such as Georg Wobbermin (now comparatively obscure).
Occasionally an excursus is almost an independent essay, either supplementing or correcting a view or line of thinking Barth previously expressed in other works. For example, when inquiring into the knowability of the Word of God, and how the concepts of “Word of God” and “Faith” are related, Barth undertakes a seven-page excursus (I/1/263-270) on St. Anselm’s Proslogion, extending to St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and the origins and legitimacy of the distinction fides quae creditur and fides qua creditur. In this excursus, Barth brings to fruition the real point of his separate book Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931). In contemporary North American scholarship such an excursus could easily be published as an extended note.
Excursus can include text in Greek, Latin, or translated modern languages. Barth will often quote New Testament Scripture in Greek, but Hebrew Scriptures in translation. Patristic-age authors and documents usually appear in Latin or Greek, and later European writers in Latin, or if in the vernacular, usually in translation, although occasionally Calvin’s commentaries or sermons appear in the original French. Luther’s German writings are translated, but his Latin writings seldom. Writings in Syriac, Old Slavonic, or lesser widely-known modern European languages (such as Danish) are always translated. (Rather little scholarship on Syriac-language Christianity was then available to Barth, sadly.)
This linguistic variety and variability in practice can make tracking Barth’s cited antecedents –or disagreements– particularly challenging. Another challenge comes with the extremely abbreviated bibliographical citations. Barth assumed that such references could be found in a good theological seminar library in a University such as Basel or Bonn. CR universally stands for Corpus Reformatorum, the encyclopedic compendium of Reformation writings now found only in research libraries; Luther is cited in the Weimar edition (W). Other titles are abbreviated usually with original date of publication, and numbers of parts, paragraphs, or pages. A full bibliographical directory of Barth’s abbreviations which point to fuller descriptions can be found at the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Barth Literature Search Project maintained by Princeton Seminary and the Protestantse Theologische Universiteit in Groningen and Amsterdam.