Church Dogmatics (German : Kirchliche Dogmatik) is the four-volume theological summa and magnum opus of Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth, and was published in twelve part-volumes (spanning thirteen books) from 1932 to 1967. The fourth volume of the Church Dogmatics (CD) is unfinished, and only a fragment of the final part-volume was published, and the remaining lecture notes were published posthumously. The planned fifth volume was never written.
Widely regarded as one of the most important theological works of the century, it represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Barth published the Church Dogmatics I/1 (the first part-volume of the Dogmatics) in 1932 and continued working on it until his death in 1968, by which time it was 6 million words long in twelve part-volumes. The material published as the Church Dogmatics was originally delivered in lecture format to students at Bonn (1932) and then Basel (1935–1962), with his final incomplete volume (IV.4) produced in 1967 outside the realm of academia. [1]
The Church Dogmatics is divided into five volumes: the "Doctrine of the Word of God" (CD I), the "Doctrine of God" (CD II), the "Doctrine of Creation" (CD III), the unfinished "Doctrine of Reconciliation" (CD IV) and the unwritten "Doctrine of Redemption" (CD V). The five volumes of the Church Dogmatics were published as the following part-volumes:
Barth's original plan for the Church Dogmatics was as follows: "There would be [in addition to volume I.1] a second half-volume of pretty much the same size, completing the Prolegomena, the doctrine of Revelation. The second volume would contain the doctrine of God, the third the doctrine of Creation, the fourth the doctrine of Reconciliation, the fifth the doctrine of Redemption." [16] Barth died before writing any of the fifth volume. A complete outline of the Church Dogmatics can be found in the Barth installment of the Making of Modern Theology series. [17] The series was originally written in German and was later translated into English under the editorial leadership of T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley and many others.
Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian who is most well known for his landmark commentary The Epistle to the Romans (1921), his involvement in the Confessing Church, and authorship of the Barmen Declaration, and especially his unfinished five-volume theological summa the Church Dogmatics. Barth's influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on 20 April 1962.
The five solae of the Protestant Reformation are a foundational set of principles held by theologians and clergy to be central to the doctrine of salvation as taught by the Reformed branches of Protestantism. Each sola represents a key belief in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions in contradistinction to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. These Reformers claimed that the Catholic Church, especially its head, the Pope, had usurped divine attributes or qualities for the Church and its hierarchy.
In Christian theology, justification is God's righteous act of removing the condemnation, guilt, and penalty of sin, by grace, while, at the same time, declaring the ungodly to be righteous, through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice.
God the Father is a title given to God in various religions, most prominently in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first person of the Trinity, followed by the second person, God the Son, and the third person, God the Holy Spirit. Since the second century, Christian creeds included affirmation of belief in "God the Father (Almighty)", primarily as his capacity as "Father and creator of the universe".
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen. and is known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. Jürgen Moltmann is the husband of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, a notable feminist theologian. Jürgen Moltmann described his own theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he has described his own work as Post-Barthian. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, such as Duke University (1973), the University of Louvain in Belgium (1995), the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania (1996), the Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan (2002), the Nicaraguan Evangelical University (2002), and the University of Pretoria in South Africa (2017). Moltmann was selected to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1984–85, and was also the recipient of the 2000 University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and his universe. It also builds on biblical disciplines, church history, as well as biblical and historical theology. Systematic theology shares its systematic tasks with other disciplines such as constructive theology, dogmatics, ethics, apologetics, and philosophy of religion.
Albert Benjamin Simpson, also known as A. B. Simpson, was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical and Keswickian denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism.
Thomas Forsyth Torrance, commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian and minister. Torrance served for 27 years as professor of Christian dogmatics at New College, in the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his pioneering work in the study of science and theology, but he is equally respected for his work in systematic theology. While he wrote many books and articles advancing his own study of theology, he also edited the translation of several hundred theological writings into English from other languages, including the English translation of the thirteen-volume, six-million-word Church Dogmatics of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, as well as John Calvin's New Testament Commentaries. He was a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians.
Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–1996) was for years the leading theologian of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKN). He occupied the chair in systematic theology of the Faculty of Theology, Free University (VU) in Amsterdam.
Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889–1966) was a Swiss Reformed theologian. Along with Karl Barth, he is commonly associated with neo-orthodoxy or the dialectical theology movement.
Alan Torrance is professor of systematic theology at St Mary's College of the University of St Andrews. Previously he lectured at King's College London from 1993–1998, where he was also Director of the Research Institute in Systematic Theology. During this time he served as Senior Research Fellow at the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame. He previously lectured at Knox Theological Hall and the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Penal substitution is a theory of the atonement within Christian theology, which argues that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished (penalized) in the place of sinners (substitution), thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive sin. It developed with the Reformed tradition as a specific understanding of substitutionary atonement, where the substitutionary nature of Jesus' death is understood in the sense of a substitutionary punishment.
The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth is a set of ninety essays published between 1910 and 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago. It was initially published quarterly in twelve volumes, then republished in 1917 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles as a four-volume set. Baker Books reprinted all four volumes under two covers in 2003.
Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God. Christian universalism and the belief or hope in the universal reconciliation through Christ can even be understood as synonyms.
God in Christianity is seen as the eternal being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe God to be both transcendent and immanent. Christian teachings of the immanence and involvement of God and his love for humanity exclude the belief that God is of the same substance as the created universe but accept that God's divine nature was hypostatically united to human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, in an event known as the Incarnation.
John Bainbridge Webster (1955–2016) was an English Anglican priest and theologian writing in the area of systematic, historical, and moral theology. Born in Mansfield, England, on 20 June 1955, he was educated at the independent Bradford Grammar School and at the University of Cambridge. After a distinguished career, he died at his home in Scotland on 25 May 2016 at the age of 60. At the time of his death, he was the Chair of Divinity at St. Mary's College, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Karl Barth's views on Mary agreed with much Roman Catholic dogma but disagreed with the Catholic veneration of Mary. Barth, a leading 20th-century theologian, was a Reformed Protestant. Aware of the common dogmatic tradition of the early Church, Barth fully accepted the dogma of Mary as the Mother of God. Through Mary, Jesus belongs to the human race. Through Jesus, Mary is Mother of God.
The Christian doctrine of the Session of Christ or heavenly session says that Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven—the word "session" is an archaic noun meaning "sitting". Although the word formerly meant "the act of sitting down", its meaning is somewhat broader in current English usage, and is used to refer to a sitting for various reasons, such as a teaching session, or a court or council being in session. The New Testament also depicts Jesus as standing and walking in Heaven, but the Session of Christ has special theological significance because of its connection to the role of Christ as King. The Session of Christ is one of the doctrines specifically mentioned in the Apostles' Creed, where "sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty" immediately follows the statement of the Ascension.
Christian theology is the theology of Christian belief and practice.
The recapitulation theory of the atonement is a doctrine in Christian theology related to the meaning and effect of the death of Jesus Christ.
