God conceals Himself in revealing Himself

And, according to Barth, God does this concealing in revealing as he assumes the form of the humanitas Christi.

Some of the most thrilling passages in Church Dogmatics are found in the small print sections. Barth produced these to allow for more technical discussions, allowing the dogmatic presentation itself to stand apart so that non-theologians could read it in a connected way.

On pages 322,323 of the old T&T Clark edition that I am reading, Barth writes about how the humanity of Christ contains one of the hardest problems of Christology. Is the humanity of Christ as such revelation? Barth hints that God's reconciling action is the being of God in Christ. So, for example, His resurrection is not an operation proper to Christ's humanity.

Revealing was not ascribed to Christ's existence in the form of a man as such: "...Jesus did not become revelation to all who met Him but only to a few." This has to be understood as part of Barth's overall understanding of revelation. Any doubts about Barth's view on the humanity of Christ can probably be connected to doubts about his view of revelation.

Revelation

"Revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling, imparted to men, of the God who by nature cannot be unveiled to men. ...inscrutability, hiddenness, is of the very essence of Him who is called God in the Bible. ...this God by his grace, i.e., by His self-unveiling, says to everyone to whom it is imparted that of himself he could not do what is there done to him and for him. It is thus of the very nature of this God to be inscrutable to man. In saying this we naturally mean that in His revealed nature He is thus inscrutable. It is the Deus revelatus who is the Deus absconditus, the God to whom there is no path nor bridge, concerning whom we could not say nor have to say a single word if He did not of His own initiative meet us as the Deus revelatus." CD I.1,p320,321

We are being enriched

"Church Dogmatics is clearly a monumental work in which the place of Scripture in the church and in theology receives most careful attention from Barth. ... Anyone who reads this material is bound to be enriched."

Roger Nicole, in an essay called 'The Neo-Orthodox Reduction'.

Christ as the primary theme

I sense that paragraph 8 is where things start to heat up. Volume 1 is all about revelation. Barth makes this comment: "God reveals Himself as the Lord; in this statement we have summed up our understanding of the form and content of the biblical revelation." CD I.1,p314

And, further on the same page:

"Historically considered and stated the three questions answered in the Bible, that of revealer, revelation, and being revealed, do not have the same importance. The true theme of the biblical witness is the second of the concepts, God's action in His revelation, revelation in answer to the question what God does, and therefore the predicate in our statement. Within this theme the two other questions, materially no less important, are answered. Similarly the doctrine of the Trinity, when considered historically in its origin and development, is not equally interested in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here too the theme is primarily the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, the deity of Christ."

"...the basic presupposition..."

"In a dogmatics of the Christian Church we cannot speak correctly of God's nature and attributes unless it is presupposed that our reference is to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is the basic presupposition of God too is no obstacle to regarding it already as also and precisely the interpretation of revelation as such. Not as an exhaustive interpretation; to give that we should have to speak not only of the God who reveals Himself but also of the way He does it and the man to whom He does it, and we should thus stand in need of further anticipations from the area of specific doctrines; there are certain parts of christology and pneumatology that we should have to consider. What we do in fact gather from the doctrine of the Trinity is who the God is who reveals Himself, and this is why we present the doctrine here as an interpretation of revelation. ... When we say, then, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the interpretation of revelation or that revelation is the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity, we find revelation itself attested in Holy Scripture in such a way that in relation to this witness our understanding of revelation, or of the God who reveals Himself, must be the doctrine of the Trinity." CD I.1, p312

Protest

"The time has now come to lodge a protest in the name of purity and propriety against the corruption of theology which has now been in full swing so long and which has been brought about by trying to understand and treat it simply as a branch of the humanities in general. To give this protest inner justification more will be neeeded, of course, than phenomenological interest in the respecting of existing orders and categories or the jeolousy of an intellectual trade unionism insisting on its special rights. The formal need for the autonomy of theology can and should be pointed out, but one should not forget that the seriousness of the reference stands or falls with the attention that is actually paid to the witness of Holy Scripture and not just with speaking about it." CD I.1, p285

Union with Christ

"Neither in Augustine nor in Luther is there anything about a deification in faith in the sense of a changing of man's nature into the divine nature. What makes the expressions possible is the apprehensio Christi or habitatio Christi in nobis or unio hominis cum Christo that takes place in real faith according to the teaching of Gal.2:20. In emphasising this more than mystical and more than speculative principle that faith means union with what is believed, i.e., with Jesus Christ, Calvin did not lag in the least behind Luther nor either of them behind Augustine, Anselm, or Bernard of Clairvaux. Without this principle it is impossible to understand the Reformation doctrine of justification and faith. How it was distinguished from the idea of an essential deification of man in the Reformation period may be seen especially from Calvin's controversy with A.Osiander (Instit.,III,11,5f.); there can be no question of a mixtura Christi cum fidelibus." CD I.1,p240