Christiane Tietz studied Mathematics and Protestant Theology in Frankfurt/Main and Tübingen. She worked as assistant of Eberhard Jüngel and did her PhD with him on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Her PostDoc thesis was on a Christian concept of self-acceptance. She was awarded a Heisenberg Stipend by the German Research Foundation. From 2008 until 2013 she worked as Full Professor for Systematic Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Mainz/Germany. Since 2013 she has been Full Professor for Systematic Theology at the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich/Switzerland. She has been a visiting lecturer or research scholar in Cambridge, Chicago, Heidelberg, Jerusalem, New York, and Princeton. She is a member of the editorial board of numerous journals and book series, and a judge for the Karl Barth-Prize and a member of the Advisory Board of the Karl Barth-Foundation, Basel.

Victoria J. Barnett (Translator) was Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, from 2004 to 2019. She also served as General Editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition from 2004 to 2014. She is the author of For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest under Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999). She is the translator of several works, including Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses were Silent and Christiane Tietz, Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters.

• 1: "I Belong To Basel": 1886-1904


• Guildmaster, Pastors and Scholars: Barth's Ancestors


• A Strict Love for Truth and Christian Discipline: His Parents


• "A Great Great Joy": Childhood and Youth


• 2: "This Obscure Desire toward a Better Understanding": 1904-1909


• The Decision to Study Theology


• Student in Bern


• Wearing the Colors and Noncombative: In the Zofingia Association


• "Very Diligent and Quite Capable": Student in Berlin


• Once More in Bern and Then Tübingen


• Finally in Marburg


• His Work for Die Christliche Welt


• 3: "Stumbling Up the Steps to Calvin's Pulpit": 1909-1911


• Vicar in Geneva


• Quite Demanding: The First Confirmation Instruction


• Theologian in the Congregation


• "In Such a Dreadfully Pious Environment"


• A Daughter from a Good Home: The Engagement to Nelly Hoffmann


• Farewell to Geneva


• 4: "The Red Pastor": Safenwil, 1911-1921


• "This System of Employment Must Fall": Workers and Socialists


• A Theological Friendship: Eduard Thurneysen


• "The WorldWithout Gods": The First World War


• "An Open House": Family Life


• 5: "A Book for Those Who Were Also Concerned": The First Epistle to the Romans, 1919


• Human Religion and the Divine Word


• "Like a Bomb on the Playground of the Theologians"


• "Without Windows to the Kingdom of Heaven": The Tambach Lecture


• 6: "To Always Work Somewhat Faster": Göttingen 1921-1925


• From Swiss Pastor to German Professor


• "Unavoidable Nonsense of the Academic Business"


• "Almost Like a Buddy": Barth with His Students


• "Lively Combat": Emanuel Hirsch and Other Colleagues


• "Stranger from a Neutral Place": Karl Barth and the Germans


• 7: "Not a Stone Left Standing": The Second Version of the Epistle to the Romans, 1922


• A Critical Turn


• The new version of the Epistle to the Romans


• Critics and Admirers


• What is Dialectical Theology?


• Dialectical Traveling Companions: Brunner, Bultmann, Gogarten


• Fifteen Questions and Sixteen Answers: The Controversy with Harnack


• 8: "The Need for Thinking Further": Münster 1925-1930


• A Call and a Momentous Encounter


• Received with Joy, Departing in Discord


• In the Tunnel of the Semester


• Return to Bern?


• "The Church, the Church, the Church": Encounters with Catholicism


• Riding, House Music and Travel


• 9: A Troubled 'Ménage à Trois': Charlotte von Kirschbaum


• A Long-Guarded Secret


• "I Never Knew That There Could Be Something Like This"


• "A Certain Double Life"


• Three Under One Roof


• 10: "A Swissman in the Middle of Germany": Bonn 1930-1935


• Working on Theology


• The Humanity of God


• First Conflicts with German Nationalists: the Case of Günther Dehn


• Now's the Time for the Social Democrat Party: 1933


• Warnings to the Church and a Letter to Hitler


• 1933 as a Year of Crisis in the Barth Household


• The Theological Dimension of Barth's Relationship to Charlotte von Kirschbaum


• Attacks on the Swissman


• Against the "German greeting"


• The Break with his Dialectical Travelling Companions


• The Barmen Theological Declaration


• Suspension, Ban on Public Speaking, Dismissal


• 11: "We Who Can Still Speak": Basel 1935-1945


• Life Goes On: Professor in Basel


• International Honors and Lack of Appreciation


• Battle for the Confessing Church


• Anti-Appeasement: The Call to the Czechs to Resist


• The Political Responsibility of a Christian


• Church Struggle and Refugee Aid


• Ecumenical Silence at the Onset of the War


• Family Intrigues and Grief


• A Call for Military Resistance, and Swiss Censorship


• A Friend of the Germans, Nonetheless


• 12: "In Political Respects a Dubious Will-o'-the-Wisp": Basel 1945-1962


• War's End and the Declaration of Guilt


• Back to Bonn and, Once Again, State and Church Issues


• "God's Beloved Eastern Zone": Against Anti-Communism


• A Pacifist after All? Protest against Rearmament and Nuclear Weapons


• Yes to Ecumenism, but without the Catholics


• The Master with the Crumpled Tie


• The Discovery of Optimism in Prison


• Courage, Tempo, Purity, Peace: Confession to Mozart


• Children, Grandchildren, and the Rejection of His Desired Successor


• 13: "The White Whale": Church Dogmatics


• "A Conceptual Helix": Barth's Monumental Work


• The Threefold Form of the Word of God


• God's Three Modes of Being


• "God is" means "God loves"


• Whom God Elects


• What God Commands


• Why God Wants the Creation


• Nothingness and the Shadow Sides of Creation


• The Threefold Office of Christ and the Three Forms of Sin


• The Light Shines Where It Wishes


• The Baptism of Water and of the Spirit


• 14: "All Things Considered, A Little Tired": The Final Years, Basel 1962-1968


• "Fantastic": A Calvinist in the United States


• "Rules for Older people in Relation to Younger"


• "As If Deeply Veiled": Charlotte von Kirschbaum Must Move Out


• "Separated Brothers": In Conversation with Rome


• A Late Friendship with Carl Zuckmayer


• The Uncompleted Mammoth Work


• At the End of His Life Journey


• Epilogue


• Chronology


• Bibliography


• Index of Names


• Index of Subjects