Theology Today - Vol 35, No. 4 - January 1979 - BOOK REVIEW - Church Dogmatics: Index Volume & Karl Barth: Preaching Through the Christian Year

499 - Church Dogmatics: Index Volume & Karl Barth: Preaching Through the Christian Year

Church Dogmatics: Index Volume
Translated by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance
Edinburgh, T.&.T. Clark, 1978. 552 pp. $10.40.

Karl Barth: Preaching Through the Christian Year
Edited by John McTavish and Harold Wells
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1978. 279 pp. $6.95.

The general Index to all thirteen volumes of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics has been in the making for a dozen years. One could hardly say that it has been awaited with bated breath. One might even ask who, in this non-theological age, will buy it?

500 - Church Dogmatics: Index Volume & Karl Barth: Preaching Through the Christian Year

I hope preachers and Bible teachers will buy a-ad use it. My own study of the Dogmatics led me to the conclusion that these constituencies would be the most appropriate and significant users of these vast tomes. But I had to admit that it would be difficult for them to do so. This Index will make it possible, largely because those who prepared it deliberately had this audience as their target, giving it the sub-title of "With Aids for the Preacher."

Barth scholars and researchers will certainly find it convenient to consult the indices of names and subjects all in one place rather than in each part volume, but even these are of limited value for anyone familiar with the whole Dogmatics. Of the 550 pages of this volume, however, these two indices take up only 78 pages. Then there are 171 pages which give a list of every Scripture passage referred to throughout the Dogmatics, with indication of the volume and page number where each reference may be found, and a specification of the more important and extensive scriptural expositions. But more than half of the entire Index (287 pages) provides the preacher with a lectionary, with at least six Scripture passages suggested as a basis for a sermon for each Sunday of the year, and-the real, substance of the book-some 800 extracts from Barth's exposition of these Scriptures, drawn from all thirteen volumes of the Dogmatics. Let me give some comments on their usefulness and limitations.

First, some negatives. Do not expect to, find sermon outlines in these extracts. Do not expect to glean flashy one-liners. Barth often is not even readable, let alone quotable. The best you can expect from these brief extracts is a stimulating idea or two. But most contemporary sermons would benefit greatly from just one stimulating idea. Do not expect to find much help on the Old Testament. Less than a fourth of the passages are from the Old Testament. But this is the fault of the lectionary, not of Barth. So when you are preaching on the Old Testament, check your text with the "Scripture References" at the beginning of the Index and see if there is a major treatment of it by Barth. For example, the lectionary has no reference to Job, but Barth gives a thirty-five page treatment of it in Vol. IV, 3.

This example indicates that the significant use of this Index for preaching does not lie within its own covers but is as a key to the richer veins of homiletical stimulation that lie hidden in the Dogmatics itself. Certainly the Index is worth the price just for the endless ideas that can be mined from its 800 extracts from the Dogmatics. But only the lazy and "fast food" preacher will be satisfied with this use of the Index.

The serious preacher or teacher of the Word will want to read in the larger context of each abstract. Also one should follow tip on the numerous references to other parts of the Dogmatics listed at the end of the abstracts. Obviously the compilers of the Index did not intend for us to limit ourselves to the abstracts. Another method would be to take a key term or theme in an abstract, took it up in the subject index, and

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read the key passages (those where page numbers have "ff." following them). For example, on p. 325 of the Index is an abstract about Mt. 14:22-34. In it Barth talks about "discipleship" and "anxiety". If you took up these terms in the subject index, you would find references to extended treatment of them, with enough ideas for a series of sermons on either topic.

Preachers often start with a topic and not a text. Here again the subject index can be used to find a key treatment in the Dogmatics, and you can be sure that you will always find a 'biblical base for Barth's treatment either in the text or an extended footnote. Or if you have a text of your own, you can find if it is treated in the abstracts of the Index by consulting a list of the lectionary's passages given at the end of the abstracts.

This more extensive use of the Index as a key to the whole Dogmatics, of course, assumes access to the whole. Very few preachers and teachers have such access. But surely six, pastors in a community could afford to buy two volumes each and pool their resources. Another tip: buy Vol. IV first and then Vol: III. Over half of the abstracts are from Vol. IV, and over a Fourth are from Vol. III. The compilers obviously found those volumes more homiletical. Is this because in Vol. III Barth finally had to develop, a doctrine of humanity and came up with his description of Jesus as "the humanity of God"?

In any case, if you as a preacher or teacher of the Word open yourself to the theological depths of this preacher's theologian, your hearers will begin to notice the difference. Surely some theological content would be preferable to the almost total tack of it in contemporary preaching.

I believe the preacher will find the Index volume more helpful than the other selection of passages from the Dogmatics entitled Karl Barth: Preaching Through the Christian Year edited by John McTavish and Harold Wells. The latter consists of forty-five topics, each with one extended passage from the Dogmatics, averaging six pages each, but as brief as one page and as long as nineteen pages. There is no index to the Scripture passages covered, and the "church year" curiously follows through the sequence of the Dogmatics from Vol. II:I to IV:3. The more extended quotations give a better taste of Barth's exegesis, but preaching week-in and week-out requires a more diversified resource, which the Index volume provides.

Arnold B. Come
San Francisco Theological Seminary
San Anselmo, California