Preface

Finally, it should be pointed out that in quoting Calvin’s French and Luther's German Barth modernizes the spelling. This edition accepts Barth's procedure without referring to the originals.

Barth's own distinctive style and spelling have been left untouched, though the punctuation has been quietly brought up to date, especially with the addition of commas, and any grammatically incomplete sentences have been completed in square brackets. Square brackets are also used when fuller biblical references are supplied. Barth’s spelling of names like Occam, Eckhardt, and Butzer has been left intact in the Swiss text, though modern forms are used in the notes. A striking difference is the use of Stahelin for the author of one of the Calvin biographies. Though this is the name on the title page of the work, Barth, who knew many members of this old Basel family, always used Staehelin, no other form being thinkable in Basel.

‘Underlinings in color are reproduced in the form of italics, but pencil underlinings, which were simply to make oral delivery easier, are ignored. As he often did, Barth wrote long passages with no paragraph breaks, and to make reading easier the editor has followed the usual practice of the Gesamtausgabe and provided additional breaks.

Acknowledgments

The course on Calvin was one of the first texts to be assigned when the Gesamtausgabe was planned in 1970. The Basel church historian Max Geiger was put in charge. But when he died in 1978 no advance work on the project was found among his papers. The work was then assigned to me, but unfortunately I could not do much about it until finishing my term as rector at Wuppertal in 1985. That is why this important piece of the theological history of the 20th century is ready for the press only on its 70th birthday.

There is every reason to be delighted and thankful that it has now reached this stage. It could not have done so without the intensive help of many others. Thanks go especially to Hinrich Stoevesandt, who as director of the Barth Archive kindly gave supervision and assistance in some of the technical matters, who in letters and conversations also helped with the research, bibliography, and references, and who finally supplied the index of subjects, not to speak of the encouragement he gave to persevere at decisive moments.