Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics for $99

Readers of this blog will be familiar with recent publishing developments around Barth's Church Dogmatics. I've already discussed the new 31-volume edition and the Logos digitisation, and I've also mentioned the astonishing and indispensable Digital Karl Barth Library. (Incidentally, I'm very pleased that my own institution has now activated a subscription to this database – current students can access it here.)

Anyway, it's very exciting to note another new development: T&T Clark have sold the publishing rights of the old 14-volume edition to Hendrickson. So Hendrickson will now be producing an affordable hardcover reprint of the Church Dogmatics: it's due for release in November, and it's currently selling for $99 through Christianbook.com. There's also a blog entry which answers various questions about this reprint.

So for all those of you who've felt dismayed and rebuffed by the high prices of the existing editions, this is a fantastic opportunity. Kudos to T&T Clark and Hendrickson for making this great work available to a much wider audience!

(Incidentally, if you've never understood why you should read Karl Barth, I refer you to the picture above: the man is on a postage stamp for heaven's sake! Read him!)

Best theology books of 2009

Over the next week I’ll post some roundups of the year’s highlights. Here’s my selection of the best (mainly theological) books of 2009:

• Theology: David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, 2 vols. (WJK)
• Biblical studies (NT): Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans)
• Biblical studies (OT): John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel's Life (IVP)
• Systematic theology: T. F. Torrance, Incarnation and Atonement (IVP)
• Essay collection (single author): John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Cascade)
• Essay collection (multi-author): Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea (eds), Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (Oxford UP)
• New edition: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 31 vols. (T&T Clark)
• Critical edition: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 12 (Fortress)
• Teaching resource: Eugene Rogers, The Holy Spirit: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Wiley-Blackwell)
• Reference work: Herman J. Selderhuis (ed.), The Calvin Handbook (Eerdmans)
• Translation: Elsie Ann McKee (trans.), Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition (Eerdmans)
• Theological history: John Witte Jr., The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered (Cambridge UP)
  
• Commentary: Douglas Harink, 1 & 2 Peter (Brazos)
• Journal issue: 25-year special issue of Modern Theology (Wiley-Blackwell)
• Essay: Sarah Coakley, "Is There a Future for Gender and Theology? On Gender, Contemplation, and the Systematic Task," Criterion 47:1 (2009)
• Political thought: John Gray, Gray's Anatomy (Allen Lane)
• Literary criticism: Annabel Patterson, Milton's Words (Oxford UP)
• Biography: Rupert Shortt, Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Eerdmans)
• Novel: Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Penguin)
• Children’s novel: Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant (Candlewick)
• And finally, the year's best theology book cover (T&T Clark; painting by Oliver Crisp):
  

On weird publishing mistakes

Speaking of books and publishing, I’m always pleased when I come across some weird and unaccountable publishing mishap in one of my books, some defect that sets it apart from the common herd. A notable example is the well-known Hauerwas and Willimon book, Resident Aliens (Abingdon 1989). My copy has the following pagination: 1-32, then 65-96, then 33-64, then 97-175. I have no idea how many copies were printed like this: perhaps I’ve got a Very Rare and Lucky Copy? Or perhaps a whole print-run came out like this?

In any case, pagination like this really adds to the element of surprise: you never quite know what’s coming next. And it’s perhaps a mark of the book’s tightly focused argument that it still reads pretty coherently when you cross that boundary from p. 32 to p. 65. If you lost concentration for a moment while reading, you might not even notice. The text reads: “What we call ‘freedom’ becomes the tyranny of our own desires. We are kept detached, strangers to one another as we go about fulfilling our needs and asserting our rights. The [page break] me. I must be true to myself. The more we can be free of parents, children, spouses, duties, the more free we will be to ‘be ourselves’…”

On beautiful book covers

They say you can't judge a book by its cover. By I think that's a very overrated sentiment. When I'm choosing a novel, for example, I always base my choice on two things: the cover, and the first page. In the publishing industry, a lot of care goes into producing covers that will attract the right kind of reader; that's why most crime thrillers, or historical fictions, or literary fictions, look recognisably similar. The cover design has its own genre. (The same is true with films. In the first instance, I always base my choice on the DVD cover.)

When it comes to covers, books published in other languages are of course a different story – that obstinately democratic white cardboard of the French, or the austere and humourless cloth of the Germans – but at the moment I'm talking only about English-language publishers.

Generally speaking, theology book covers tend to be nice and tasteful, if a little predictable. The diversity is certainly less pronounced than in philosophy. In the latter discipline, you have everything from the most spare, elegant simplicity (e.g. Kierkegaard's writings) to the most outrageously loud graffiti-art (e.g. the Continuum series). A while back, Evan pointed out a nice gallery of the various international editions of Harry Frankfurt's book, On Bullshit. It's an extremely fascinating series of images, depicting very different styles of cover design.

Getting back to theology, though: Eric has linked to this book, which I'd have to say is one of the most striking theology covers I've seen: a veritable feast for the eyes. The designer's website has images of their other book covers, including a stunning poetry series, a gorgeous milk cover, a sexy retro James Bond series, a Peter Carey series designed with tissue-paper, and – my favourite – a sumptuous Jules Verne series. It's not often you see covers like this – covers that are really works of art in their own right. (If I was a theology publisher, I'd be getting on to these guys: if you don't think covers make much of a difference, just look at the previous cover of The Story of God, and you'll know why you never heard of that book till now.)

There's also a nice Book Design Review blog, which features loads of cool book covers (including an annual shortlist of the year's best covers). One of the gems I discovered on that blog is the following book about Kafka – a cover that makes me twitch my antennae and grin from ear to ear:

Of course, for many years the Folio Society has been producing seductively lovely covers: they're so good that my wife and I have occasionally been lured into buying them, even though God knows we can't afford them. (Did we really need that full set of Jane Austen novels? Were the old paperbacks really so demeaning? Who knows, next time I have £175 burning a hole in my pocket I might even get their fabulous Moby-Dick edition.)

Finally, no post about book covers would be complete without mention of the South American publisher, Los Libros de Homero – they have a beautiful website, and their book covers are quite breathtaking. (I know the fellow who founded this publisher, and he's a true bibliophile, not a mere businessman: this makes all the difference.)

Oh, and I'm also very glad that Penguin Australia recently launched a new series of Popular Penguins, with those classy old retro covers. This is what paperbacks are all about. Plus, for the price of a single Folio Society volume, you could fill your entire house with groovy orange Penguins. Think about it.

Anyways, just to prove that not all cover designers are people of intelligence, sensitivity and creative genius, here's one of the worst covers you'll ever see – brace yourself...

Comparing the new Barth edition: print or digital?

Now that the new edition of Church Dogmatics is out, some folks have asked me to compare the print edition with the Logos digital edition (I’ve posted on both the print edition and the Logos edition – if you’re interested in the Logos edition, for a limited time you can also get a 25% discount via the F&T discount page).

Although I’m not normally a technophobe, I must admit I have generally resisted the use of digitised books (except in the case of journals, which I only ever read online). I suppose I’m too addicted to the sheer exquisite materiality of books –

a coil of slyly shifting scents,
a finger’s papery caress,
the rasping breathless flutter of the page,
sinking down deep in that delicious inkiness,
all smooth and slow and seeping.
Now spent and finished, but still there,
(this is no one night stand,
no quick embrace erased before the dawn,
no scribbled thank you on a pillow note)
occupying space, etched indelibly on your beechwood world,
a solid smiling thing, waiting dustily to outlive you,
to be at last discarded, lost, forgotten,
found again.

Sorry, I’m getting quite carried away... In any case, the new print edition of the CD is lovely. So it has come as a surprise to me to discover that I’ve actually started to prefer the Logos edition – at least for research and writing. It all started when they kindly sent me their new Mac engine: now, you can use Logos with a nice Mac aesthetic and functionality. So I’ve been using Barth’s CD in Logos for all my recent writing, and it has already started to feel indispensable.

Here are some of the reasons why it’s so good for research: unlike the new print edition, the Logos edition also displays the German pagination; when I hover over one of Barth’s many biblical references, there’s a pop-up of the relevant passage; when Barth cites a text like Calvin’s Institutes, his reference links directly to the passage in Calvin; when I double click on any word, Logos brings up a relevant text on that word (e.g. if I double-click the word “nominalism” in Barth’s text, it immediately brings up the extended Encyclopedia of Christianity entry on nominalism; or if I double-click a Greek word, it brings up the relevant TDNT entry); and when I cut and paste a passage into a Word doc, it automatically generates a footnote with the reference. These features are so nice, so intuitive, so useful that I already wonder how I ever managed without it. (The search capacity in the Logos edition is also very good, although it can’t really compete with the monumental search capacities of the big online Barth database: if your library can afford a subscription, this database is the Barth research tool par excellence.)

I love books. I’m still addicted to the physicality of the book, and committed to its ontological status as a non-virtual object. When I’m simply reading Barth for pleasure, I would always prefer to sit in a chair with a text that occupies physical space, an object that I can bend and smell and handle and scribble in; a vulnerable object, so easily damaged by rain or wine or coffee, yet strangely resilient nonetheless. But for research, I’ve really grown to love – and to depend on – the Logos edition.

And since I’ve been waxing eloquent about books, I’ll leave you with my favourite bibliophile photograph: a photo taken in 1940 of the bombed library at Holland House in Kensington, London. This is what libraries are all about (click the image to enlarge).

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics: the new 31-volume edition

I was delighted to find that the new edition of Barth’s Church Dogmatics arrived at our college library today. T&T Clark have done a splendid job on this new edition – the production quality really exceeded my expectations. The 31 volumes come in two handsome burgundy slipcases; the covers are bright and eye-catching but still sober and tasteful; the typeset is crisp and attractive; the original pagination is included in the margins; and I was especially pleased to see that the printers (at a time when the use of cheap paper is becoming all but ubiquitous) have used a very nice high-grade paper.

Kudos to T&T Clark for this very fine new edition! If you missed my review of the digitised Logos edition, you can also read it here. The print edition is available from Amazon, or (massively discounted) from Christianbook.com. So don’t just sit there: go and ask your librarian (or your spouse) to order a set! 

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics: the new edition

The most eagerly anticipated event of theological publishing is finally upon us: the release of the new edition of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics! The print edition should be available from T&T Clark by September – but the digital edition, published by Logos, will be released later this month.

Logos have kindly sent me an advance review copy of this digital edition, and I’ll be posting a full review shortly. In the mean time, however, you might want to consider ordering this at the special pre-publication price – until 14 April, you can get the digital edition for $499 (after 14 April, the digital edition will go for $699; and T&T Clark are predicting that their print edition will retail for $840).

In the digital edition, you can also do things like annotate Barth’s text and jump directly to the works which Barth cites (since it integrates with any other Libronix resources, e.g. the Scholar’s Gold library).

You can learn more about this edition here, or you can place an order here. It’s a very exciting new resource – stay tuned for a full review soon!

A plea for reprints

Some of the best and most important theological books are books that you’ll never own – either because they’ve gone out of print, or because they’ve never been available in an affordable edition. So here’s my heartfelt plea to our community of theological publishers: please give us more reprints! Here’s my own wishlist of six theological books which urgently need reprinting:

• Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World (Eerdmans) – undoubtedly one of the most important and ambitious dogmatic works since Barth’s CD, but it has never been issued as a paperback, and the few available hardcover copies are prohibitively expensive
• David F. Ford, Barth and God’s Story (Peter Lang) – in my opinion, this is one of the best books ever written on Barth’s theology (and, more generally, one of the best books on narrative theology); but it has long been out of print, and it’s virtually impossible to find even a used copy
• Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Labyrinth Press) – although this is a fundamental work in the history of modern theology, it is almost impossible to get a copy (there is one copy for sale here, if you can afford it!)
• Robert Jenson, Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (Fortress) – a unique, vivid and delightful sketch of Christian theology; I still regularly recommend this to people, even though it’s now difficult to obtain
• Hans Frei, The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth, 1909–1922: The Nature of Barth’s Break with Liberalism (unpublished) – Frei’s 1956 doctoral dissertation has never been published, but it’s a crucial text for the development of Yale-school narrative theology, and I’m sure it would sell like hotcakes if someone printed it.
• John Milbank, The Religious Dimension in The Thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) (2 vols.; Edwin Mellen) – I’m reading this at the moment; it’s a brilliant historical study, and an important work for understanding the later development of Milbank’s thought. Someone ought to publish this as an affordable, single-volume paperback.