1927–1956

Barth and Bonhoeffer: christological concentration and the break with liberalism

Barth's principle: God's only Word to humanity is contained in Jesus Christ, and all God's actions pass through him; this excludes natural theology and determines all theology – Barth himself called it "christological concentration", his critics "christomonism". The consequences: God sees all people in Christ as forgiven, sin is known only from the Gospel and is a response to grace, and the incarnation did not happen because man sinned. Bonhoeffer, like Barth, broke with the liberal idea of a "religious a priori": the question "Who is Jesus Christ?" runs through all his works, and God reveals himself only in Jesus Christ. But he criticized Barth for making the Word epistemologically inaccessible to a concrete time, and stressed Christ's real presence in the church, and later in the world.