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AN INTRODUCTION TO BARTH'S DOGMATICS FOR PREACHING by Arnold D. Come

AN INTRODUCTION TO BARTH'S DOGMATICS FOR PREACHING

By

Pub Date: Feb. 11th, 1963
Publisher: Westminster

Within a week two books by students of Karl Barth's are being published. The other Dr. Georges Casalis' Portrait of Karl Barth (see p. 94) a more personal assessment and at the same time an excellent introduction, while the Come book is a more specific approach to some of the distortions that have arisen in this country from the early acceptance of a Barthianism which Barth himself later challenged. This distortion grew because of the unavailability in English of Barth's later works. Today his greatest work, Dogmatics, is only partially available, in English. Dr. Come, whose books on the Ministry and the Holy Spirit have earned him a solid reputation, took a direct approach to this problem. He studied in Basel under Barth; he read the entire 7500 pages of Dogmatics, 5 volumes in the original German, and dares to summarize those pages in 15,000 words. His book includes the Table of Contents of Dogmatics and a long biography of Barth which he himself read and corrected. Dr. Come's enthusiasm for his great teacher is very evident; he is especially interested in a reassessment of the relationship between Barth and his distinguished pupil -- dissenter, Bultmann. This book has been written for preachers. It is full of homiletic material in its own right, and points to the inexhaustible mine which Dogmatics provides. At the same time students of philosophy and theology will be grateful for the summary of Barth's teaching, and for Dr. Come's wrestling with Barth's understanding of and apparent rejection of existentialism or any other natural philosophy. A definitive book which should sell to every preacher.