1919–1932

Barth and Dialectical Theology: The Revolt against Immanence

Disillusioned with liberalism by the First World War, Barth in The Epistle to the Romans (1919; 2nd ed. 1922) proposed a theology of discontinuity between the human and the divine – the "infinite qualitative distinction" between time and eternity, in Kierkegaard's phrase; it was called "dialectical theology," "theology of crisis," and later "neo-orthodoxy." In the 1920s Barth parted ways with Gogarten and Bultmann, who insisted on an existential dialectic. His study of Anselm (Fides Quaerens Intellectum, 1931) convinced him to seek the "logic of faith" and to abandon philosophy as an instrument of theology; in 1932 the first volume of the Church Dogmatics appeared. Barth rejected natural theology, which also led to a break with Brunner.