In his lifetime, Karl Barth changed the whole pattern of twentieth-century religious thinking. No one has enjoyed a higher reputation or more lavish praise. For his early writings, he was called a prophet and compared with the Reformers and Kierkegaard; Pope Pius XII said that there had been nothing like his later thought since Thomas Aquinas. In his opposition to Nazism and his support for the German Confessing Church he was an inspiration to Christians...