Barth and Textuality

Abstract

“The growing awareness of the importance of texts in our day favors the intertextuality in which all texts interpret each other on the same level, rather than the intratextuality [Barth] in which one privileged text functions as the comprehensive interpretive framework. … A religion, especially a heavily textualized religion such as Christianity, can be expected to survive as long as its Scriptures are not ignored. It has no future except in its own intratextual world. One may hope that more and more Christian theologians, whether Protestant or Catholic, will soon get the message.”