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4.0
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.ii.: The Doctrine of the Word of God (T & T Clark, 1956)
We are almost 1,250 pages into the monstrosity known as Church Dogmatics before Karl Barth actually addresses the topic of dogmatics. It's frustrating, but it's also kind of brilliant, because after 1,250 pages of setup, assuming you've lasted that far, you're really wondering when Barth is going to get down to brass tacks. Rest assured, he does.
It took me thirteen months, on and off, to bull my way through the nine-hundred-odd pages of the second half of the first volume of Church Dogmatics (and the first two volumes, remember, are just the introduction to the larger work!). Usually I take stock after I've been struggling with a book for twelve months and decide whether or not I'm going to defenestrate it with extreme prejudice. The list of books I've been reading on and off for over a year that I don't do that with is very small (I can count them on one hand). I.ii. is one of those books; the thought of abandoning it never even entered my mind. Why? Because despite Barth being a long-winded guy (to say the least) and some clumsiness in the translation here, and despite (or perhaps because of) my not being a Christian, I find Barth's declamation on how to be a preacher fascinating. As with the first book, I.ii. is a fine history lesson in many ways, as Barth takes innumerable side-jaunts into the thoughts of other contemporary theologians of his time, relates what he's saying to current events, et al. (Like the first volume, I.ii. was written during the early to mid-1930s in Germany; World War II buffs, even those with no interest in theology, will find some very interesting asides.) Barth is also a consummate logician, as long as you're willing to buy the spiritual aspects of what he's saying. Even if you're not, it's impossible to argue with the way he constructs his logic, in part because he's one of the only logicians I've ever read who actually traces every last line of thought, every contradiction, every tangent from a given point. It's inherently interesting not because of the subject matter—Barth could be declaiming on the right way to braise a pork roast as easily as he could on the right way to head up a church—but because of the way Barth presents his arguments. (There is evidence of this, actually. My favorite of Barth's book's is a brief monograph he wrote on the music of Mozart, and it is fascinating for the exact same reasons.) I realize that Barth is vertical-market, but even if you're not in the seminary, he's worth reading just to examine the structure of his logic (and, if you're so inclined, in a “know thy enemy” sort of way). ****
We are almost 1,250 pages into the monstrosity known as Church Dogmatics before Karl Barth actually addresses the topic of dogmatics. It's frustrating, but it's also kind of brilliant, because after 1,250 pages of setup, assuming you've lasted that far, you're really wondering when Barth is going to get down to brass tacks. Rest assured, he does.
It took me thirteen months, on and off, to bull my way through the nine-hundred-odd pages of the second half of the first volume of Church Dogmatics (and the first two volumes, remember, are just the introduction to the larger work!). Usually I take stock after I've been struggling with a book for twelve months and decide whether or not I'm going to defenestrate it with extreme prejudice. The list of books I've been reading on and off for over a year that I don't do that with is very small (I can count them on one hand). I.ii. is one of those books; the thought of abandoning it never even entered my mind. Why? Because despite Barth being a long-winded guy (to say the least) and some clumsiness in the translation here, and despite (or perhaps because of) my not being a Christian, I find Barth's declamation on how to be a preacher fascinating. As with the first book, I.ii. is a fine history lesson in many ways, as Barth takes innumerable side-jaunts into the thoughts of other contemporary theologians of his time, relates what he's saying to current events, et al. (Like the first volume, I.ii. was written during the early to mid-1930s in Germany; World War II buffs, even those with no interest in theology, will find some very interesting asides.) Barth is also a consummate logician, as long as you're willing to buy the spiritual aspects of what he's saying. Even if you're not, it's impossible to argue with the way he constructs his logic, in part because he's one of the only logicians I've ever read who actually traces every last line of thought, every contradiction, every tangent from a given point. It's inherently interesting not because of the subject matter—Barth could be declaiming on the right way to braise a pork roast as easily as he could on the right way to head up a church—but because of the way Barth presents his arguments. (There is evidence of this, actually. My favorite of Barth's book's is a brief monograph he wrote on the music of Mozart, and it is fascinating for the exact same reasons.) I realize that Barth is vertical-market, but even if you're not in the seminary, he's worth reading just to examine the structure of his logic (and, if you're so inclined, in a “know thy enemy” sort of way). ****
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