The Introduction (KD I/1, VI-XII)

Barth's forward, written in August of 32, is informative for his whole project. It's clear that all the way to the last volume, we have to read it in light of what he says to us about it at the beginning of the first volume.

Important is his own admission of how much he had to learn. Even to rewrite the "first book", that is, to start this project as a suggested continuation of his draft, he notes that he wanted to say the same thing as before, but couldn't say it in the same manner. Reading the KD is reading the process of Barth growing as a theologian, just as it is the process of the reader growing as a theologian by interacting with Barth's thought.

Barth introduces dogmatics, even in the forward, as a science bound to the church; never a free science. In fact, for Barth, it is only possible here. He can't hold back from his project in describing and justifying his project, and the content of §1 begins to show already in the forward. But the forward itself is dogmatics, and not merely an introduction.

It is here that we see the famous sentence on his opinion of the analogia entis, and some surprising comments which already give us the characteristic Barthian tone about the accusations against him. Barth replies to the accusation that he's a scholastic, a cryptocatholic, and, satired from him, that church history appears not to have begun for him in 1517 with the assertion that he's just gonna say what he said already once more, and this time more clearly - he's sure of his position - after all, the connection between reformation and ancient church, between trinitiy, christology, and the Bible, and (implicit) Barth's theological connection to the theological history of all of christian history wasn't his "malicious invention".

Barth closes by laying out his plan for the entire project, in short sentences - which he notes was by the wish of the publisher. Would he have done it otherwise? We can't know.

Interesting also, is the request at the very end - Barth asks us as readers to just believe him, that he knows where he wants to go with this. We aren't to wait and see, and we aren't to assume he's running into the sand, but we can go ahead and look at each part as a part of a coherent whole. It may be first evident later, but this is the result of great amounts of thought, of study, and of prayerful, church, dogmatics.