Karl Barth on Baptism

Abstract

Some years ago Barth fell seriously ill, and no one, least of all he himself, dared hope that he would ever again be capable of adding another volume to the twelve volumes of his opus magnum, the Church Dogmatics, which had appeared from 1932 till 1962. After his remarkable recovery in autumn 1965, however, he has paid a visit to Rome in September 1966, the fruit of which was his highly instructive report Ad Limina Apostolorum (reviewed in SJT, vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 110f), and now he has presented us with another volume of his Church Dogmatics, though, for the reasons given in the Preface to K.D. IV.4, the latter had to be confined to a fraction of what Barth had originally hoped to achieve in that volume. To understand what follows, we must call to mind that Barth, treating ethics as an integral part of dogmatics, had dealt in his doctrine of God (C.D. II.2) with the command of God as an essential element in the very Being of God (general ethics). In his doctrine of creation (C.D. III.4) he had discussed the command (special ethics) of God the Creator. In his teaching on reconciliation he had so far expounded (C.D. IV. 1–3) the three aspects of Jesus Christ's work of reconciliation, namely His priestly work as the Lord (Son of God) who became a servant to accomplish the work of reconciliation, His kingly work as the servant (Son of Man) who became Lord and by His exaltation exalted man to fellowship with God, and His prophetic work as the Godman who as the Mediator of man's reconciliation with God is the Guarantor and Witness of that reconciliation.