Preface

“We went on to talk about his relations with Heinrich Scholz and the question of 'the scientific starting point' in theology which Scholz had early put to Barth, to which Barth had answered that the starting point he had adopted was the resurrection of Christ. The reason for that answer Barth had often given: it was from the perspective of the resurrection that the whole of the New Testament presentation of Christ is shaped, and it is still from the event of the resurrection that Jesus Christ and his being and action in his life and death penetrate to us, 'thus becoming truth in their reality, and as truth reality for the world' (Church Dogmatics, IV/3, p. 284). Then I ventured to say that unless that starting point was closely bound up with the incarnation, it might be only too easy, judging from many of our contemporaries and even some of his former students, to think of the resurrection after all in a rather docetic way, lacking concrete ontological reality. But at that remark, Barth leaned over to me and said with considerable force, which I shall never forget, 'Wohlverstanden, leibliche Auferstehung' – 'Mark well, bodily resurrection'. Karl Barth died at prayer in that room a few weeks later.” (pp. x-xi)