Barth’s Reception of Nineteenth‐Century Exegesis and Theology in The Resurrection of the Dead

Abstract

AbstractIn the early 1920s Karl Barth was searching for historical resources in his own magisterial Protestant tradition that would enable constructive theological work outside the confines of nineteenth‐century neo‐Protestantism and its contemporary heirs. This article takes up his 1924 commentary on 1 Corinthians, centred on the fifteenth chapter, The Resurrection of the Dead, to examine the impact of such searching. It demonstrates that Barth, first, is sharply opposed to the framework for modern critical interpretation of the letter influentially established by F.C. Baur; second, finds an alternative to a mythological reading of 1 Corinthians 15 in the heilsgeschichtlich exegesis of J.C.K. von Hofmann; and, third, remains latently marked by the eschatology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. This shows another way in which Barth was creatively appropriating elements of the historical Protestant tradition at the same time as visibly breaking with others.