This book examines the speculative core of Karl Barth's theology, reconsidering the relationship between theory and practice in Barth's thinking. The book provides a new interpretation of Barth's theology, and shows how a speculative understanding of theology is useful in today's intellectual climate.

This book uses Karl Barth’sDer Römerbrief(1922) as a prism through which to explore the role of religion and its interactions with cultural and political thought in the turbulent interwar period in Europe. One of the most influential books in twentieth-century protestant theology,Der Römerbrieffound Barth arguing that the crisis of the time was grounded in an even more profound crisis that pertained to the human condition as such. While much research has been conducted onDer Römerbrief, most of it has focused on the book’s explicit theology. The aim of the present volume is to mark the...