"...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

Another reference to baptism

"If a man, the Church, Church proclamation and dogmatics think they can handle the Word and faith like capital at their disposal, they simply prove thereby that they have neither the Word nor faith. When we have them, we do not regard them as a possession but strain after them, hungering and thirsting, and for that reason blessed. The same is true of the possibility of knowledge of God's Word. When we know it, we expect to know it. The assurance of its affirmation is thus the assurance of its expectation - the expectation which rests on its previous presence, on the apprehended promise, or, as we can already say here, on received and believed baptism - but still the expectation." CD I.1, p225

First comment on baptism?

According to the index at least...

"Baptism was instituted for this reason, as a sign of this true and supreme power of God's Word. As a real act on man, as an act of sovereign disposition, it proclaims for its part that man belongs to the sphere of Christ's lordship prior to all his experiences and decisions. Even before he can take up an attitude to God, God has taken up an attitude to him. Whatever attitude he may adopt, it will be done within and on the ground of the attitude that God has adopted to him. If he believes, this will be just a confirmation of the fact that he has God's promise and is claimed, judged and blessed by God. If he does not believe, this again will not be a possibility he can freely choose. He will sin against God's Word. He will not show himself to be free, but unfree. He will not choose, but will be rejected. He will grasp, not a possibility, but an impossibility. In a Word, in his very unbelief he will be measured by the Word of God and smitten by its power. This preceding attitude of God to him will make his unbelief unbelief, his sin sin. Only in the sphere of grace is there faith and unbelief, righteousness and sin. Only through the power of God's Word are there the two categories, those who are saved and those who are lost." CD I.1, p154

Barth the Failure?

You guys will have to forgive me. I recently moved and my first volume of Church Dogmatics is still packed away somewhere, so as you can imagine, I'm going to be a bit behind. But I thought I'd offer this, a quote from Vol. 1 of Barth's The Gottingen Dogmatics, that I recently purchased. It's actually quoted from a letter that he wrote to his friend Eduard Thurneysen as Barth was about to quit his pastoral duties and recorded in Migliore's introduction:

"When Barth left his pastorate in Safenwil, Switzerland, in 1921 to take up his new academic post in Gottingen, Germany, he was not optimistic about his chances of success. He wrote to his friend Eduard Thurneysen: 'I dare not even think about having to lecture three or six or eight hours each week.' 'I just can't imagine myself in the situation and cannot think that I will be anything but a great failure.'"

I find that to be an utterly amazing confession.

Rudolf Otto's holy

"Whatever 'the holy' of Rudolf Otto may be, it certainly cannot be understood as the Word of God, for it is the numinous, and the numinous is the irrational, and the irrational can no longer be differentiated from an absolutised natural force. But everything depends on this differentiation if we are to understand the concept of the Word of God." CD I.1, p135