Barth stands before us as the greatest theologian of the twentieth
century, yet the massive corpus of work which he left behind, the multi
volume Church Dogmatics, can seem daunting and formidable to readers
today. Fortunately his Dogmatics in Outline first published in English
in 1949, contains in brilliantly concentrated form even in shorthand,
the essential tenets of his thinking. Built around the assertions made
in the Apostles Creed the book consists of a series of reflections on
the foundation stones of Christian doctrine. Because Dogmatics in
Outline derives from very particular circumstances namely the lectures
Barth gave in war-shattered Germany in 1946, it has an urgency and a
compassion which lend the text a powerful simplicity. Despite its
brevity the book makes a tremendous impact, which in this new edition
will now be felt by a fresh generation of readers.