It s no secret that all theology occurs within a broader historical narrative wich both shapes theology and influences its trajectory. This is especially true with karl Barth.
While all theologians shoudl be understood within their historical context, Barth is unique in being the first theologian who posited his ideas in the aftermath of theology's destruction by the onslaught of the Enlightenment, Modernity, two world wars and the intial tremors of the fault lines buried deep within Christendom.
People who are familiar with barth are probably well acquainted with Barth's major works such as The Epistle to the Romans or the >em>Church Dogmatics. Yet, in many ways this book Protestant Theology in the Ninteenth Century is as important, for it provides the intellectual groundwork and engagment upon which Barth built his response to the German protestant liberalism in which he was reared, and which so thoroughly dominated his intellectual context.
In this seminal critique of Enlightenment and later liberal thinkers, Barth critiques prominent figures such as Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, as well as equally as important but less well know figures such as Lessing and Feuerbach. No Barth library is complete without this basic groundwork of Barth's critique of his predecessors.
