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3.0
Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God (Scribner, 1936)
Depending on your point of view, Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics is either the greatest religious treatise, or the greatest piece of intellectual masturbation, of the twentieth century. Either way, you have to admit it's an enormously impressive achievement. Spanning just shy of nine thousand pages over the course of fourteen volumes, Church Dogmatics is the go-to reference when it comes to Protestant theology; no matter how obscure the point you want insight on, Barth has probably analyzed it straight into the ground and back out the other side. (I should note here that, for the first time, to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the current edition, T&T Clark are—finally!—releasing a paperback edition of Church Dogmatics. The page count will be smaller by two thousand, but the volume count is more than doubled. Riddle me that, Batman.)
Despite my not being a Christian—despite, in fact, my decided antipathy toward the Church—I have long wanted to read the Church Dogmatics, simply because Barth actually found nine thousand pages' worth of material to address as regards the Church. (Also because Barth is, when it comes down to it, a very good writer; his essay on Mozart is sure to be enjoyed by Christian and secular readers alike.) After a decade and a half of waffling on the idea, I decided to bite the bullet and sit down with volume one this year, and continue on through the series at the rate of one book a year (while noting the irony that if I'd started in 1993, I'd be done now). And, thus, we come to The Doctrine of the Word of God, the first volume (the preface, really) of Church Dogmatics, and why a heathen like me is sitting here getting ready to review it. I say “getting ready” despite that fact that I've already written three hundred odd words because, obviously, I haven't actually addressed the content of the book yet.
It's pretty obvious that over the course of nine thousand pages, Barth has all the room he could possibly need to delve as deeply into whatever subject he's got his teeth into at any given moment as he needs to. In this case (and I should mention that these five hundred seventy-five pages comprise Chapter One and the first half of Chapter Two), Barth is still getting warmed up. The first book is about how to approach dogmatics (which is, of course, the study of dogma), not dogmatics itself. The definition of dogmatics as it relates to the Church (the Lutheran Church in particular, naturally), how the definition of dogmatics in the Protestant Church differs from the definition of dogmatics in the Catholic Church, and what all this means with regards to how Barth will approach the subject for the nest eight thousand four hundred pages.
For those of you who feel the need to skim, Barth's translator, (the no doubt long-suffering) T. F. Torrance, notes that it's possible to simply read the bits that are printed in regular font and ignore the stuff printed in small font (since Barth will often go off on tangents running two of three pages, it seemed more confusing than it was worth, I guess, to try and make footnotes out of these passages). I, on the other hand, am here to tell you that if you don't read the fine print, you're going to miss out on all the fun this book has to offer. Yes, I did say, and mean, “fun”. For all that this project has an air of the dry and scholarly about it, when Barth hits his stride, he can be just as catty as Paris Hilton with a Swiss accent; back in the days before the Internet, printed exchanges of heated debate were not uncommon (there's a great example in Pick's book of criticism on Gerard Manley Hopkins' “The Windhover”); Barth, while writing the updated 1934 edition of the Dogmatics, was obviously embroiled in quite a few of these, and he often used these “diversion passages” (it's misleading to call them footnotes) to express his frustration that a particular critic didn't get what he was on about, expound on hos another dogmatist had missed the mark entirely on a particular point, or what have you. It's great stuff. We all know there are few things more fun to watch (though less fun to participate in) than a heated religious debate; I grant you, we're only getting one side here, but that doesn't make the schadenfreude any less delightful.
All that said, it is hard going; I ended up taking an extended break once I'd gotten about halfway through the book and coming back to it five months later, when I felt that I was ready to handle Barth's (or Torrance's, though having read any number of bad translations from Germanic languages—and one or two literal word-for-word translations of Barth—I have to say that Torrance did a damned fine job of making this book as readable as he could) long-winded, digressive style once again. This is not a book you'll be keeping by the window bench for light reading while you're gazing out at the tulip beds. Barth's goal was to create as definitive a religious reference as possible, and the style reflects that. So I can't really say that this is the kind of thing you're going to find yourself reading for pleasure...unless you're me, because obviously I'm doing just that. If you do decide to take the plunge with me, however, even if you're just as much a heathen as I am, reading something this huge is really its own reward. ***
Depending on your point of view, Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics is either the greatest religious treatise, or the greatest piece of intellectual masturbation, of the twentieth century. Either way, you have to admit it's an enormously impressive achievement. Spanning just shy of nine thousand pages over the course of fourteen volumes, Church Dogmatics is the go-to reference when it comes to Protestant theology; no matter how obscure the point you want insight on, Barth has probably analyzed it straight into the ground and back out the other side. (I should note here that, for the first time, to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the current edition, T&T Clark are—finally!—releasing a paperback edition of Church Dogmatics. The page count will be smaller by two thousand, but the volume count is more than doubled. Riddle me that, Batman.)
Despite my not being a Christian—despite, in fact, my decided antipathy toward the Church—I have long wanted to read the Church Dogmatics, simply because Barth actually found nine thousand pages' worth of material to address as regards the Church. (Also because Barth is, when it comes down to it, a very good writer; his essay on Mozart is sure to be enjoyed by Christian and secular readers alike.) After a decade and a half of waffling on the idea, I decided to bite the bullet and sit down with volume one this year, and continue on through the series at the rate of one book a year (while noting the irony that if I'd started in 1993, I'd be done now). And, thus, we come to The Doctrine of the Word of God, the first volume (the preface, really) of Church Dogmatics, and why a heathen like me is sitting here getting ready to review it. I say “getting ready” despite that fact that I've already written three hundred odd words because, obviously, I haven't actually addressed the content of the book yet.
It's pretty obvious that over the course of nine thousand pages, Barth has all the room he could possibly need to delve as deeply into whatever subject he's got his teeth into at any given moment as he needs to. In this case (and I should mention that these five hundred seventy-five pages comprise Chapter One and the first half of Chapter Two), Barth is still getting warmed up. The first book is about how to approach dogmatics (which is, of course, the study of dogma), not dogmatics itself. The definition of dogmatics as it relates to the Church (the Lutheran Church in particular, naturally), how the definition of dogmatics in the Protestant Church differs from the definition of dogmatics in the Catholic Church, and what all this means with regards to how Barth will approach the subject for the nest eight thousand four hundred pages.
For those of you who feel the need to skim, Barth's translator, (the no doubt long-suffering) T. F. Torrance, notes that it's possible to simply read the bits that are printed in regular font and ignore the stuff printed in small font (since Barth will often go off on tangents running two of three pages, it seemed more confusing than it was worth, I guess, to try and make footnotes out of these passages). I, on the other hand, am here to tell you that if you don't read the fine print, you're going to miss out on all the fun this book has to offer. Yes, I did say, and mean, “fun”. For all that this project has an air of the dry and scholarly about it, when Barth hits his stride, he can be just as catty as Paris Hilton with a Swiss accent; back in the days before the Internet, printed exchanges of heated debate were not uncommon (there's a great example in Pick's book of criticism on Gerard Manley Hopkins' “The Windhover”); Barth, while writing the updated 1934 edition of the Dogmatics, was obviously embroiled in quite a few of these, and he often used these “diversion passages” (it's misleading to call them footnotes) to express his frustration that a particular critic didn't get what he was on about, expound on hos another dogmatist had missed the mark entirely on a particular point, or what have you. It's great stuff. We all know there are few things more fun to watch (though less fun to participate in) than a heated religious debate; I grant you, we're only getting one side here, but that doesn't make the schadenfreude any less delightful.
All that said, it is hard going; I ended up taking an extended break once I'd gotten about halfway through the book and coming back to it five months later, when I felt that I was ready to handle Barth's (or Torrance's, though having read any number of bad translations from Germanic languages—and one or two literal word-for-word translations of Barth—I have to say that Torrance did a damned fine job of making this book as readable as he could) long-winded, digressive style once again. This is not a book you'll be keeping by the window bench for light reading while you're gazing out at the tulip beds. Barth's goal was to create as definitive a religious reference as possible, and the style reflects that. So I can't really say that this is the kind of thing you're going to find yourself reading for pleasure...unless you're me, because obviously I'm doing just that. If you do decide to take the plunge with me, however, even if you're just as much a heathen as I am, reading something this huge is really its own reward. ***
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