One Hundred Years Later: Karl Barth's Lectures on the Theology of the Reformed Confessions

Karl Barth’s lectures on the Reformed Confessions were concluded nine months before launching his first version of dogmatics. In them, his relation to the reformed tradition was both deepened and clarified. The thesis of this paper is that Barth understood the confessions written prior to Calvin’s death in 1564 to be exercises in a form of dialectical theology which anticipated his own. Their theme was his: the God-ness of God in God’s self-revelation in Christ. A possible line of criticism is announced which asks how consistent they and he could be in supporting this theme when giving room (as both did) to the metaphysics of the ancients in their shared doctrine of the one God.