Karl Barth (1886-1968), the Swiss Reformed professor and pastor, was once described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. His great contribution to theology, church, and culture will take generations to appropriate and assess. As the principal author of The Barmen Declaration, he was the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the Protestant group that resisted the Third Reich. Among Barth's many books, sermons and essays, the multivolume Church Dogmatics -- a closely reasoned, eloquently stated argument in nearly ten thousand pages -- stands out as the crown of his achievement.