ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development, context, and function of Karl Barth's eschatology from his liberal period to the dawn of the GD. His developing dialectical Ansatzpunkt entextualises the sense of crisis, recognition of which immediately undermines Torrance's implication of a Barth hovering over any cultural instantiation as purely hearer of the Word, one that ultimately leads him out of the recesses of a liberal 'embourgeoisment' of theology. Eschatology becomes central to the expression of the theological concerns, since, as he argues in 1924, the "Last things, as such, are not last things" in the sense of being relegated to theological appendices, or being primarily concerned with depicting figures and events of the remote future. Theological time-telling is an immensely more complex skill, however, and yet central to the business of Christian living. During the immediate years after the commencement of European military hostilities, the prevailing cultural and religious crises served to impel and nourish Barth's theological journeying.
