Repository | Book | Chapter

I open with a reading of Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Then I provide a close reading of the early work of Karl Barth and his friend, Eduard Thurneysen. Essentially, I argue that their thinking is determined by a series of issues and challenges concerning the role of self-consciousness and spontaneity that are derived from German Idealism. Importantly, their own constructive approach is shaped by a rigorous critique of all attempts to produce or rely on unified theories or worldviews. I argue that they develop a new understanding of theory and praxis as a response to the problems that they diagnose, although this produces a set of new challenges. The primary texts are Barth's Römerbrief II and Thurneysen's Dostoevsky, but I also examine letters and public lectures from the early period of "dialectical theology."

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-70793-8_5

Full citation: