There is something you should know about me: I really like Karl Barth. Barth (btw, silent “h” at the end, pronounce it just like the only son of Homer and Marge Simpson) was probably the most prolific theologian of the twentieth century. Want proof? Here’s the Barth shelf from my little library (right above the Thomas Aquinas shelf, my other hero).
All of those are by Barth. The black ones are all volumes of his Church Dogmatics (of which I still lack two volumes). I also have another half shelf of smaller works and German editions. Makes for some nice, light bedtime reading, let me tell you.
Barth gets overlooked sometimes because a lot of what he wrote is a pretty tough read, often made tougher still by less than helpful translations from the German. But even if you have never read his works (or even heard of him before now), you have likely read others who were heavily influenced by Barth. He stood up to the Nazis when few in the German church did and he helped push theology beyond the futile problems of modernity. He also has some smaller books that are easier to get into, like Evangelical Theology, Deliverance to the Captives, Dogmatics in Outline, and a little one called “The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life.”
I was using that book as a text in a theology course I was teaching at Lee University a few years back, when it suddenly fell out of print for about a year. Undaunted, I got a copy of the original German off of eBay (back when I still used eBay) and produced my own translation. Since I had used the book in a previous semester, I knew some of the questions that it brought up. To save myself some time and effort I addressed those questions as footnotes to the text.
Now I’m giving to you for free if you want it: Karl Barth’s The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life. Thanks to the help of my friend James Marler, you can download this in three ways: as a PDF (below), as an epub file (this link), or as a mobi file for Kindle (this link).
I hope you enjoy it; I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Peace,
Mike
PDF: The-Holy-Spirit-and-the-Christian-Life-Karl-Barth-Michael-Raburn
Mike Raburn 
Mike,
Thanks for the free book! Barth is a favorite of mine. I was introduced to Barth by another favorite of mine, Donald Bloesch. Don sat under Barth’s teaching which affords him a unique perspective on Barth. Again, thanks for the book.
Thanks, Michael, for the free book! You are way hardcore, man, to translate your own copy. I’m slowing making my way through it. The speed-reader in me wants to rush, but I’m doing my best to go slow and digest as I read. Thanks again!
“Jesus is Victor! Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Salvation” by Donald G. Bloesch is an essential read for those unfamiliar with or just beginning to read Barth. In the Foreword of the book Bloesch comments the reason he wrote the book was, “partly in order to counteract popular misunderstandings of Karl Barth’s theology and also partly to show how authentically modern Barth really is.” Another author who can be considered an accurate interpreter of Barth is Bernard Ramm.