ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the theological motivations and consequences of Barth's decision to describe scriptural interpretation as an act of Christian obedience. It discusses the ingredient in Barth's dogmatic account of the act of scriptural interpretation: the complex engagement with Roman Catholicism and Protestant modernism; the characteristic prioritizing of exegesis over hermeneutical reflection. The chapter shows what sort of work the notion of obedience should perform in a theology of scriptural interpretation, in what directions it pulls us, and how it might be complemented by other terms. Both the church's interpretative responsibilities and its freedoms are grounded in the prior reality that the Bible is the witness to God's Word. And as such they are only secondary definitions of the church's obedience, which can only follow the basic confession that there is a Word of God for the church, which comes to the church in the Bible which witnesses to it.
