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Hitler ordered that Russia be invaded in June 1941. While the Russians saw more than 4.5 million casualties, Hitler's forces were able to experience substantial gains before the year ended. Also, this was the period in which Hitler initiated the ‘final solution’ that resulted to the death of millions of Jews and gypsies in 1945. Soon, Germany found itself at war with the United States. Since an allied victory seemed impossible, Barth stopped his attempts at furthering the need for resistance to fascism as well as his endeavours to encourage the Christians in Norway and in Holland. It was during this period that Barth expressed what he thought of as the post-war period's special temptations. Barth's open lectures on theology were published as Dogmatics in Outline, and he was also able to compose volumes of his doctrine of creation and other addresses on the Church.

The four volumes of Church Dogmatics which entailed Barth's ideas regarding the notion of reconciliation were written during the period between 1951 and 1959. The fourth part, and the parts that have been unrevised that were written between 1959 and 1961, were then published as The Christian Life. This period marked the German ‘economic miracle’ in which Europe experienced recovery in terms of economy and industry and the standards of living were significantly improved across all countries of central Europe. As such, secularization brought about great impacts in the cultural movement as church attendance was in decline. The ‘end of ideology’ theory was initiated because of the affluence and technological development experienced. In this chapter, we look into how Barth furthered his theology through focusing on how a sense of freedom can be acquired if focus would shift back to religion and the Church.

In the Church Dogmatics, ‘revelation’ plays a central role owing to Karl Barth's endeavour to provide answers to the epistemological problematic arising from the Enlightenment and from the discrediting of Kulturprotestantismus. Before discussing revelation as a correlative concept, this chapter first looks at the functions that the category performs in the Church Dogmatics and then examines why revelation has these functions. Two issues are considered: What form and content does the category of revelation bestow on and receive from the two other categories of event and Trinity? Does the expression of the category of revelation lead us to think of God as one person or three persons? First, the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ernst Troeltsch in relation to which Barth's endeavour is to be understood is analysed. Secondly, those who perceive that the concept of revelation emerges from the Scriptures and those who reject such a perception are addressed. The correlative and hermeneutical functions of the category of revelation as God's self-interpretation are also discussed.

This chapter examines the agency behind the event of revelation, as set out in the Church Dogmatics. It explores problems surrounding personal divine agency and the question of intentionality. It discusses the category of act and the problematic surrounding a concept of special divine activity. It considers three contrasting understandings of the category of act to illustrate the diversity of the context in which Karl Barth's usage of the category functions. Johann Gottlieb Fichte contrasts ‘Action (pure, autonomous, absolutely initiatory action, grounded solely in itself), and extended matter.’ This understanding of action illustrates the separation of act language from substance language that arises from the abandonment of classical metaphysics as a result of the critique that emerged in the Enlightenment. Thomas Bonhoeffer's understanding of act remains within the post-Enlightenment view, but allows that an act may be said to be temporal in some sense, although he is careful to distinguish between act and being. Martin Heidegger challenges the assumptions of the Enlightenment, and implies that there is a parallel relation between act and being.

The being of God in the Church Dogmatics is characterized by the concepts of act, action, activity, and event, rather than by the language of substance. It is from Karl Barth's understanding that the God of the Bible is alive that he argues that ‘Act means being, and being can only mean act’. God's intentional, self-moved act, which is known in the event of revelation, is understood to be God's interpretation of himself and thus to be the interpretation of God's being. This chapter examines the concept of God's being-in-act in the Church Dogmatics and its ontological implications. First, it looks at the move towards a ‘new’ ontology by observing that action replaces substance language in the Church Dogmatics. It then reviews the concept of actus purus and the related question of the relationship between actuality and potentiality. The chapter concludes by asking if the event of God as stated by Barth may be interpreted as an act of relationality.

The different concepts of relationality that may be applied to the Godhead imply differing understandings of the concept of divine personhood. The notion of an event of communion that we are using as a controlling theological concept by which to analyse and interpret Karl Barth's notion of the triune Godhead in the Church Dogmatics is used by John Zizioulas to encapsulate the understanding of the divine personhood and relationality in the tradition of Byzantine Orthodoxy, which is to be traced to the Cappadocian fathers. This chapter examines two different models of divine relationality: first, the relationship between the Godhead and the creation, in particular the human creature, and second, any relationship that may be said to exist within the Godhead itself. These two models of divine relationality are by no means mutually exclusive. Indeed, it might be argued that any inner divine relationality almost necessitates an outer relationship with something other than the divine. When either of these two models of relationality is taken to an extreme, however, the implications for divine personhood are considerable.

Martin Heidegger identifies three presuppositions in relation to the question of being that the ancient world understood with regard to the category of being: the universality of the concept of being, that being is indefinable, and that the concept of being is self-evident. It is remarkable that ontological terminology in Christian theology uses words that were understood primarily in a materialistic sense in the ancient world. The word ousia officially comes into the vocabulary of the Church with the use of homoousios in the creed of the Council of Nicaea. Its use was contested at the Council as much for its materialistic overtones as for any other reason. Tertullian had used substantia when referring to the Godhead, which may be said to be the Latin equivalent of ousia. This chapter explores the category of being and the views of John Calvin and Karl Barth regarding divine action and fellowship. Barth's concept of being-in-act in the Church Dogmatics is also discussed, along with the question of being in the thought of John Zizioulas.

This chapter examines the question of being and the controlling concept of an event of communion in relation to the analysis of personhood. It assesses the category of communion in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity and looks at Karl Barth's ontological enterprise in the Church Dogmatics. This endeavour is pursued under three main headings: the ontology of relationality, hypostatic being, and relationality and being. The connections between personhood and the question of being are explored by looking at three major areas of Trinitarian doctrine: the understanding of the person of God the Father as the archē of the Godhead, and the asymmetric implications of this concept; the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the question of the Western understanding of this in terms of the filioque clause; and the understanding of the relations of the persons of the Trinity in terms of the concept of perichorēsis. The ontology of fellowship and the ontology of personhood are also considered.

As the previous chapter shows, Bonhoeffer describes Barth’s theology in philosophical‐theological terms, as an ‘act‐theology’. But understanding Bonhoeffer’s criticism of and alternative to Barth requires reckoning with the confessional‐theological aspect of Barth’s theology as well—Barth’s is a Reformed act‐theology. The task of this chapter is to recall, through an examination of the Göttingen Dogmatics, the Reformed character of Barth’s act‐theology in order to make clear what is at stake in Bonhoeffer’s correction of it. Barth argues that Lutheran thinking is complicit in blunting God’s transcendence; only Reformed thinking respects God’s transcendence. This sets the stage for the coming chapters, which present Bonhoeffer’s person‐theology as a Lutheran account of God’s transcendence in history.

This chapter traces the theology of the sacraments of perhaps the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, the Swiss Reformed theologian and pastor Karl Barth. Regarding Baptism and Eucharist as addressed in Barth’s magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, sacraments, along with preaching, are deemed the two primary ways the church proclaims Jesus Christ as the Word of God. Barth emphasizes sacraments as signs of the “secondary objectivity of God,” signs of receiving the self-giving God. While linking Christian baptism with the baptism of Jesus, fascinatingly, Barth eventually argues that baptism is not an actual sacrament. In fact, ultimately Barth actually denies any sacrament except Jesus Christ. Thus, when it comes to sacramental theology, Barth “acts as a healthy foil to those tempted to inflate the role of human institutions and practices.”

Barth moved to the theological faculty of Münster in 1925 where he had an easier relationship with his colleagues than in Göttingen. While at the beginning he again suffered under the burdens of teaching, he gradually came to enjoy it. In Münster, Barth began work on a new cycle on dogmatics and published it in 1927 as “Christian Dogmatics in Outline” considering it as “the attempt of a beginner in this area.” He made friends with many Catholics and met the Catholic philosopher of religion Erich Przywara for the first time. Barth traveled nationally and internationally for lectures which gave him a large following, which would subsequently become important for his role as a leading figure in the German Church Struggle.

After his retirement, Barth traveled for the first time to give lectures and public discussion in the United States, where the public interest was enormous. He also received several international honors, including an honorary doctorate from Sorbonne University. In September 1966, Barth traveled to Rome, where he met with the Curia and the Pope. Barth reconciled with Emil Brunner and became friends with the Catholic writer Carl Zuckmayer. During his final years, Barth experienced a steady decline in health. Charlotte von Kirschbaum developed dementia and in 1966 was moved to a clinic; after that the relationship between Karl and Nelly Barth eased. In 1967, Barth decided to end the work on his Church Dogmatics and published the fragments of CD IV/4. Barth died on December 10, 1968, in his sleep at his home in Basel.

Chapter 4 charts the transition between Barth’s earlier expositions of Paul and his engagement with Anselm by treating aspects of Barth’s dogmatic work from the 1920s. It begins by treating the common concern that Barth reduces Christian truth to a speculative abstraction; it then shows that Paul and Anselm come to be linked in Barth’s thinking because Barth supposes that a response to these concerns requires the development of an account of theological understanding that comports with the standpoint of Pauline faith. Barth comes to see that his account of Pauline faith requires a corresponding conception of theological understanding; he turns to Anselm to begin to develop a conception of this kind. His appropriation of Anselm in his 1927 Christliche Dogmatik sparked a debate regarding theological understanding that provides the backdrop against which his study of Anselm may be understood.