Karl Barth's doctrine of repentance

who?

Always in His Presence said:

who?

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Karl Barth, one of the major theologians of the 20th century.

I have read some of his work, but I have not read Church Dogmatics, so I am not knowledgeable enough to reply to the OP's query.

Always in His Presence said:

who?

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And I never head. of him. !!

And. the Greek word REPENT. //. METANOEO. is a verb. in. the AORIST TENSE. , in. the ACTIVE VOICE , Christ has His hand. in

Acts 2:38. , in. the IMPERIATIVE MOOD. which a COMMAND FOR Israel to REPENT in. the PLURAL. and receive

the GIFT of. the. HOLY SPIRIT. and be BAPTIZED (. THE GREEK WORD FOR WATER //. HYDOR IS NOT. IN. THE GREEK TEXT )

And only 3000 , SOULS were SAVED in. that instance !!

dan p

dms1972 said:

Anyone familiar with Barth enough to say where in his Dogmatics he talks about repentance

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Karl Barth’s doctrine of salvation centres on the person of Jesus Christ as both the electing God and the elected man, with salvation understood as a divine gift grounded in God’s self-determination to be God in this particular way (Church Dogmatics II/2, §32). Barth rejects any human contribution to salvation, including moral effort or religious achievement, emphasising instead that humanity is reconciled to God solely through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection (Church Dogmatics IV/1, §59). Regarding repentance, Barth does not treat it as a prerequisite for salvation but as a response to the reality of reconciliation already accomplished in Christ. In Church Dogmatics IV/2, §64.2, he writes that repentance is “the act in which man recognises and confesses that he is in the wrong before God,” yet this recognition is itself enabled by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. Thus, repentance is not a human initiative but a divinely prompted acknowledgment of the truth of one’s condition and the mercy already extended. Barth’s soteriology radically reorients traditional views by placing divine action at the centre, with human response—such as repentance—flowing from, rather than initiating, salvation.

dms1972 said:

Could you possibly explain the the tenses for me, I am not sure the meaning AORIST?

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And the AORIST. TENSE means is a simple Past tense and it correspomds. to our. past tense.

AND you can GOOGLE IT , but I have book called A MANUEL GRAMMER OF THE GREEK. NEW THEAMENT

by DANA. and MANTEY. and try a CHRISTIAN USED BOOK STORE and have brought a lot books by. ROBERT

C BROCK

that has NOTES , but he died many years ago , AND HAD. the opportunity. to visit his ASSEMBLY. in FLORIDA. and what a

TEACHER. and you can ask anything. an. be glad to help anytime. !!

And there is the PERFECT TENSE , Is a. present. results. is based on. a PAST ACT

The INDICATIVE MOOD. used to express Facts

the SUBJUNCATIVE MOOD , WHICH. ARE POSSIBILITIES. of thing that can HAPPEN

And the Imperative MOOD. to Express Commands

dan p

dms1972 said:

Could you possibly explain the the tenses for me, I am not sure the meaning AORIST?

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In Koine Greek, the aorist tense refers to a type of verbal aspect rather than a specific time frame, and it typically conveys a simple, undefined action—often viewed as a snapshot or whole event without regard to its duration or repetition. Unlike English past tense, which focuses on when something happened, the aorist in Greek highlights the nature of the action itself, commonly used to describe events that are complete or viewed as a single unit. One may understand that the aorist can appear in various moods—indicative, subjunctive, imperative—and while it often translates as past tense in the indicative mood, its true function is aspectual, not temporal.

Xeno.of.athens said:

Karl Barth’s doctrine of salvation centres on the person of Jesus Christ as both the electing God and the elected man, with salvation understood as a divine gift grounded in God’s self-determination to be God in this particular way (Church Dogmatics II/2, §32). Barth rejects any human contribution to salvation, including moral effort or religious achievement, emphasising instead that humanity is reconciled to God solely through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection (Church Dogmatics IV/1, §59). Regarding repentance, Barth does not treat it as a prerequisite for salvation but as a response to the reality of reconciliation already accomplished in Christ. In Church Dogmatics IV/2, §64.2, he writes that repentance is “the act in which man recognises and confesses that he is in the wrong before God,” yet this recognition is itself enabled by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. Thus, repentance is not a human initiative but a divinely prompted acknowledgment of the truth of one’s condition and the mercy already extended. Barth’s soteriology radically reorients traditional views by placing divine action at the centre, with human response—such as repentance—flowing from, rather than initiating, salvation.

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Thank you for the excellent, concise summary. It is much appreciated.

My chief objection to Barth on this and on other points is that unlike even John Calvin, he disregarded the role of tradition or church history in formulating his “neo-orthodox” Church Dogmatics.

As a member of a “paleo-Orthodox” church I would say was a futile exercise, because The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John of Damascus, written in the eighth century, covers the same ground as Church Dogmatics but does this in 75,000-100,000 words, slightly more if you include the entire Font of Knowledge including the Philosophical Canons and the heresiological treatises on Iconoclasm, Nestorianism, Islam and so on, whereas Church Dogmatics is around 6 million words long, in German, and will expand to more words in other languages which have less of a tendency to compound words together.

Indeed when you compare the length of Church Dogmatics to Calvin’s Institutes or the Summa, well, I really hope Dr. Barth was using a typewriter, because otherwise, ouch. Indeed the high cost of books likely contributed to the brevity of The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which was meant to convey in one volume material previously addressed only partially by different volumes such as De Incarnatione by St. Athanasius, the Conferences of St. John Cassian and so on, or in a less comprehensive manner, for example, by De Fide (On the Faith) by St. Epiphanios of Cyprus, which is a brief summation of Orthodox theology compared to the various heretical sects of the first, second, third and fourth centuries that he catalogued in the rest of his work, the Panarion* (Medicine Chest, or as I would translate it, First Aid Kit), of which De Fide is the coda.

Indeed I would argue that for Calvinists, Barth was reinventing the wheel versus the Institutes of John Calvin in the same way that for Roman Catholics, one could argue that later systematic theologies reinvented the wheel of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is not to say all new works of systematic or dogmatic theology are wrong; the early Church Fathers organize their thoughts in a manner which can be, as pointed out by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, alien to the modern reader, and thus somewhat disorienting, and obviously there is a need for volumes arranged in a modern manner, hence the still very concise works such as Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, a favorite of mine, or another favorite of mine, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.

That being said, I am grateful for one thing, and that is, that by starting from the Scriptural text alone, Karl Barth did manage, in 13 volumes, to validate several essential church doctrines and disprove certain false doctrines advocated by the Restorationists, yet also insofar as he and other Calvinists who did the same thing nonetheless disagree on certain key points, also managed to prove the need for tradition as means of ensuring harmony with the Apostolic Kerygma.

I would also like to thank my pious and excellent Roman Catholic friend @Xeno.of.athens for his useful and comprehensive replies to the OP, which were intelligent, concise and offered in a spirit of helpfulness.

*All of which would be regarded as heretical on CF.com, for they consist of incontrovertibly wrong belief systems like Manichaenism, Marcionism, Docetism, Valentinism,

dms1972 said:

Even at that length, it wasn't finished. There was supposed to be a fifth part on Redemption. I have a couple of the part volumes, but the whole of Church Dogmatics is incredibly daunting.

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Indeed, in this respect its similar to another magnum opus of computer science, the epic Art of Computer Programming by the Lutheran computer scientist and organist Donald Knuth, the difference being that the latter demonstrates in one set of volumes the basics of CS and is not a derivative work, and the unfinished final volume, Compiler Techniques, would have been superfluous, since another famous volume on Compilers wound up being the most exhaustive and definitive treatment of that subject (the so-called “Dragon Book”, the cover of which depicts a fearsome dragon in acknowledgement of how difficult compilers can be to write efficiently; conversely the leading book we have on operating systems is called “The Dinosaur Book” for the dinosaurs on its cover, which reflects the massive and unwieldy nature of operating systems (and perhaps also alludes to their origin on the giant mainframe computers of the late 1950s and early 1960s; mainframe computers are nicknamed “dinosaurs” and those datacenters and parts of datacenters that house them, which have to supply three phase power, a raised floor and other amenities not required even by midrange servers, are nicknamed “Dinosaur Pens). And indeed there was a type of cable used to connect together some particular IBM mainframes which was famed for its thickness, it was nicknamed a “Boa” and there were, hopefully apocryphal, stories of hapless computer operators being constricted within its metallic coils).

dms1972 said:

"Indeed, in this respect its similar to another magnum opus of computer science, the epic Art of Computer Programming by the Lutheran computer scientist and organist Karl Barth..."

I think you mean Donald Knuth? (i looked it up)

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Yes I did, embarrassing slip.