ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the question of the theological necessity of scriptural interpretation and in the next on the character and limits of interpretation as an act of obedience by the reading church. It discusses the wider dogmatic context of Barth's explicitly hermeneutical material, beginning with a very brief account of the architecture of the first volume of the Church Dogmatics as a whole. The chapter shows how it is that Barth grounds the freedom of the church in the freedom of the Word. Dogmatics, Barth claims, investigates the agreement of the church's act with its being: Its basis is God's self-communication to sinful humanity, the divine Word which commissions and sanctifies the church's speech and symbolic action. The chapter explains that Barth's increasing investment in the Protestant scripture principle, as he began to deploy with greater confidence and nuance the dogmatic resources of the early Protestant theologians in describing the encounter with God in scripture.
