Eschatology and the existential register

Abstract

The real truth of God and man is valid when God and man are engaged in eye-to-eye and mouth-to-ear encounter. ( karl barth , Church Dogmatics iv /3.1, p. 458) Part of this chapter's work will be to introduce our third major interlocutor in developing a theodramatic view of history: Karl Barth. There are two important reasons for looking carefully at Karl Barth and his theology in relation to the Balthasarian paradigm of theodrama which has been a principle focus of attention in the book so far. The first is simply that Barth was interested in the same sorts of things that von Balthasar was: they had a mutual interest in a theodramatic reading of history, and this is one of the supreme reasons that Barth's influence on von Balthasar was as immense and seminal as it was. The second is that von Balthasar's main disagreements with Barth seem to parallel his struggle with the philosophical inheritance most powerfully embodied in Hegel. Indeed, when in his 1951 book he described Karl Barth as a theologian who had ‘gone a bit too far into the light’ ( Barth , p. 368/ET, p. 358), he readily acknowledged this to be an Hegelian failing on Barth's part.