ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Karl Barth's eschatology of actuality and provisionality in relation to the theme of Christ's threefold parousia. Good reading, or interaction between interpreter and text, should entail a recogntion of 'otherness' of the text confronting one as "an unexpected claim to truth", and which then places one's pre-understanding at risk of contradiction and transfiguring. Something much more subtle is taking place which makes Barth's treatment of hope, and thereby also his discussion of eschatological completion, much more interesting. Christ's Prophetic work is revelation's disclosure of the reconciliatory completion, the unveiling of that which is a once-for-all fact in Jesus Christ, and which needs no supplementation or amplification. However, Philip Rosato's subsequent mistake lies in his misunderstanding of the nature of Barth's eschatological noetic, and therefore misreads the nature of eschatological provisionality. Consequently, the critics' version of Barth's Future misreads the significance of his noetic discourse, and therein also his treatment of the temporality of eschatological completion-provisionality.
