ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Richard Roberts' reading of Karl Barth, supported by that of Jurgen Moltmann. It also focuses on the account provided by G. C. Berkouwer; and the evaluation of Barth's pneumatology by Philip Rosato. The theme that pervades all of the studies is that Barth tends to subsume all reality and contingency within a christological matrix, so that they lose their existence. Barth's eschatology would thereby either formally permit no time for any future fulfilment, given its concentration on the revelational present; or materially require that the eschatological Future constitutes a 'noetic' or epistemic fulfilment of that which is already 'ontically' true of being in the present. The critics fail to appreciate the nature of Barth's christologically conceived actuality, and therefore also his presentation of provisionality. The comprehensive universality of the category of time means that the reality of revelation must be temporal if it is to be a reality accessible to humanity.
