ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Karl Barth's theological turn to the Particular: that is, Jesus Christ. It subsequently moves into a discussion of how Barth maintains a location of the present's temporality within an eschatological scheme characterised by the tension between actuality and provisionality. The resultant christological 'turn', first significantly expressed in the GD, sees Barth embark on a "radically Christocentric", to cite von Balthasar's description, or more especially a christologically focused trinitarian intellectual voyage. Eschatology, and the hope that it both generates and sustains, is thereby rooted in a christological context, a procedure that parallels Karl Rahner's important 1954 essay, 'The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions'. Barth's turn to the contingent, historical, concrete, and particular is being marked by an increased fear of generality. In human reflection, therefore, in its endless critical service of 'pure doctrine' for ecclesiastical proclamation, there can be no inerrant product or theological stabilisation.
