Karl Barth on the 40th Anniversary of his Death

40 years ago today, sometime during the night Karl Barth passed away peacefully in the downstairs of his home. Barth's life and work is monumental and people the world over devote literally their whole life studying it. As such, I would be ill-advised summarizing it in any curt fashion. However, I believe Eberhard Busch's re-telling of Barth's final night serve as a good introduction to the man and his work. From Karl Barth - His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts:

On Monday 9 December he spent the day working on his lecture again (for a forum
of Catholic and Reformed Christians on the theme of 'Setting Out - Being
Converted - Confessing.' ed.) He was still at work in the evening when he
was interrupted by two telephone calls, about nine o'clock. One was from
his godson Ulrich Barth, to whom he quoted a verse from a hymn which spoke
comfortingly about the Christian hope. The other person who wanted to
speak to him so late at night was his friend Eduard Thurneysen, who had remained
faithful to him over sixty years. They talked about the gloomy world
situation. Then Barth said, 'But keep your chin up! Never mind! "He
will reign!"' When the telephone rang he had been writing a few sentences
of the draft for his lecture in which he was saying that in the church it is
always important to listen to the Fathers who have gone before in the
faith. For '"God is not a God of the dead but of the living." In him
they all live' - from the Apostles down to the Fathers of the day before
yesterday and of yesterday. Barth did not go back to the draft which he
had left in the middle of a sentence, but put it aside until the next day.
However, he did not live that long. He died peacefully some time in the
middle of the night. He lay there as though asleep, with his hands gently
folded from his evening prayers. So his wife found him the next morning,
while in the background a record was playing the Mozart with which she had
wanted to waken him.

Above all Barth was a person of prayer. This was a matter of personal piety but more so it is demonstrated in his own theological work, which as we see never ended. Theology is a matter of worship, reflection, and witness. He liberally borrowed from Anselm's famous dictum: fides intelectum - faith seeks to understand. Theology starts with God and how God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. The theologian responds in faith by testifying to how God who this God is in being, action, and being in action.