ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the significance of the historical lectures for an understanding of Barth's hermeneutics from two directions. First, through a close reading of ber die Aufgabe einer Geschichte der neueren Theologie', the chapter draws out the connections between Barth's historiographical claims and his reflections on biblical interpretation. The thesis pursued here is that Barth's theology of reading, when fleshed out in terms of the interpretation of modern theology, remains as ever a theology of the third article. But the accent here is placed on the credo ecclesiam rather than the credo remissionem peccatorum characteristic of his biblical hermeneutics from at least 1916 up through the early 1920s and beyond. Second, the chapter focuses on the main body of this text to analyze Barth's portrayal of what he calls the absolutism' of the eighteenth century and its relationship to Christian theology.
