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His first major work, Der Römerbrief (1919; The Epistle to the Romans), established his position as a notable theologian with a new and arresting message about the sheer Godness of God and the unlimited range of his grace. Barth's style was vividly lit up by brilliant similes and turns of phrase and by irrepressible humour. The first of six heavily revised editions followed in 1922. The critical and explosive nature of his theology came to be known as "dialectical theology," or "the theology of crisis"; it initiated a trend toward neoorthodoxy in Protestant theology.

On the basis of this publication, Barth in 1921 was appointed professor of Reformed theology at the University of Göttingen; he was later appointed to chairs at Münster (1925) and Bonn (1930). In Göttingen he began an exhaustive study of the great Protestant scholastic theologians as well as the Church Fathers as the basis for his lectures on instruction in the Christian religion. While at Münster he gave a course of lectures on Die protestantische Theologie im 19.Jahrhundert (Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century), which he was to enlarge and revise at Bonn but was not able to publish until 1947. It was also at Münster that he wrote his first attempt at dogmatics, Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes; Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik (1927; The Doctrine of the Word of God: Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics), in which his characteristic account of the Word of God, divine revelation, and the Trinity, Incarnation, and the Holy Spirit were clearly adumbrated. However, his engagement with epistemological issues made him dissatisfied with what he had done, so that when he moved to Bonn he rethought the problem of theological method in critical discussion with the philosopher of science Heinrich Scholz. It was in this connection that he produced his celebrated study of St. Anselm, Fides quaerens intellectum (1931).

Karl Barth: Years in Germany 1, 2