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PREFACE

I

In Göttingen Karl Barth gave secondary lectures on various New Testament books and passages (Ephesians, James, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 John, Philippians, Colossians, and the Sermon on the Mount).1 When he began to teach at Münster in 1925 and 1926, he offered John’s Gospel as a main course, rejoicing in the greater freedom he now had to teach dogmatics and New Testament exegesis. His secondary one-hour course was on eschatology.2 The lectures on John are unique in this regard: When he had only reached 1:12 a former student gave to Eduard Thurneysen the enthusiastic report that Barth was even giving some instruction in philology.3 Thurneysen passed on this verdict, commenting that Barth was now “in his tunnel,” and in reply Barth stated that he was indeed deep in the tunnel of John, for some unknown spirit was impelling him to write out everything twice, which made it all much more vivid. He liked the bit about philology. This naive impression arose out of the fact that now, as he ought to have done long ago in Aargau and had gradually learned to do at Göttingen, he was drawing his new wisdom from the Greek concordance.4 On January 17, 1926, Barth admitted to his friends that he had only reached ch. 4. People were cooperating enthusiastically, and if he now had a new smack of scholarship, this might be touching and encouraging but it did not avert his many fits of depression or his plans to retreat to a rural parish in Switzerland or something similar.5 Three days later he told Thurneysen that he everywhere reached much the same results in expounding John. The only thing that surprised him was that the serpent in the wilderness made less impression on his friend than on himself. This animal, or its lifting up, seemed to him to be of great eschatological significance.6 A most instructive letter is that which he sent to his brother Heinrich on January 30, 1926,7 in which he told him about the lectures but said that unfortunately he was only at ch. 6 and would not finish by a long way.8 He found it a most remarkable book. Often the whole room seemed to go round when he considered the ramifications of this chapter and found astonishing things that previous exegesis had missed. He thought it an advantage of theologians over philosophers that their studies are subject to canonical texts of this kind. He had no taste for the Johannine question or the answers to it. He constantly had his father’s exposition by him.9 His father thought it important that the son of Zebedee was the author, and if this was true, then the historical scandal was all the more unheard-of. It was odd that twenty or thirty years before this time people had not found it so, viewing it as settling rather than unsettling simply that an eyewitness had supposedly written all this. Barth did not know who it was, but he never ceased to be surprised at the fact.

In 1933, a year before his suspension, he was astonished to be asked to repeat the course at Bonn. This was due to a last-minute decision made on April 28 along with his colleague and neighbor, the New Testament scholar K. L. Schmidt, who, as Barth told the General Superintendent Stoltenhoff, had been forced to seek an academic permit for the semester, and had only just received permission to ask for the permit, as Barth told Karl Stoevesandt the next day. So in addition to his lectures on the history of Protestant theology, Barth offered the course on John, teaching fourteen hours a week in all.10 As he also told his brother Peter in a letter dated May 18, 1933, in addition he had two seminars in systematics and a homiletics class with 150 students,11 so that he was giving instruction in four disciplines. He also mentioned his venture in practical theology to Heinrich Scholz in a letter dated May 24, 1933. The description that Charlotte von Kirschbaum gave Thurneysen supplies the background of Barth’s activity; he was on a powderkeg (or in the lions’ den?). She expressed amazement that his course thus far had been so smooth and that efforts from outside (e.g., by the German Christians) had not hurt his good relations with the students. Every morning, after Schleiermacher, he gave his very important lectures on John to a large and attentive audience; members of the Stahlhelm and Nazis sat there in their uniforms (their caps on the walls), listening and taking notes. They were there in more or less equal numbers in the Calvin seminar and homiletics class as well, and heard things that really had very little to do with the Third Reich. From a letter of Charlotte von Kirschbaum to Barth’s mother we gather that he repeated unaltered the 1929 lectures on the history of theology, since he had no time to rewrite them, especially as he had to correct and dictate those on John’s Gospel.

II

The 1925/1926 lectures—Text A in this edition—are extant in a manuscript which Barth corrected and extensively revised in 1933 for Charlotte von Kirschbaum to type. The typescript—Text B—is the basis of the present volume. Differences that are more than stylistic are noted. Where A obviously makes better sense, it becomes the main text and B is given in the note. At times there might be slips in typing (as on p. 153). In the few instances of syntactical error or imperfection, the editor has emended the text, in which case the original is in the note, or he has supplied what is missing in brackets (as on p. 134). When appropriate, parts of quotations left out by Barth, or additions to quotations that he had made, are also in brackets (cf. p. 14 and p. 37).

The editor has added the biblical references in brackets. At times he has put more general allusions in footnotes (e.g., p. 140 and p. 146). Barth himself supplied all the other references. The editor has retained his common practice of putting these in parentheses when they are not part of the text.12 He has used ff. instead of Barth’s f., however, where there are more than two verses. Barth’s distinctive spelling has also been retained even when it is not in the typescript, but the punctuation has been brought into line with the rules adopted for the Gesamtausgabe.

In the footnotes—there are none in A or B—the editor has documented the differences between the two editions and supplied missing references for quotations. In the main the works used by Barth (and still in his library) are cited. The notes show where he drew on secondary sources. Only rarely (p. 128 n. 188) does the editor point to other works.

In A Barth makes rich use of underlining. Little of this is reproduced in B, and the editor has done some selective italicizing in accordance with Barth’s normal practice. To make for easier reading the editor has introduced breaks in what are often very long paragraphs. The dates of the lectures are indicated in the margin.13 When not supplied in the typescript they are put in brackets; markings in the typescript offer the necessary guidance.

Thanks are due to Hinrich Stoevesandt and his wife for their unselfish, critical, and very helpful assistance in preparing this edition and compiling the Index of Subjects. Hannelotte Reiffen of Bonn rendered good service in deciphering manuscript A in relation to B. The Hermeneutical Institute of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of the University of Tübingen helped to make the Greek parts of the typescript legible for the compositor.

Bad Neuheim, October 31, 1976

Walther Fürst