In this hefty volume, Paul S. Chung tackles one of the most intriguing and difficult issues in Barth studies: the relationship between Barth's theological beliefs and Barth's political convictions. Chung's principal concern is to promote a distinctive ‘contextual-hermeneutical and historical-genetic’ (p. 24) approach to Barth's theology. This approach is constantly attentive to the political contexts in which Barth wrote and in which Barth sought to intervene, yet eschews reductionistic modes of analysis. As such, while Chung argues that Barth's theology never lacks for political significance, he supposes that the objective fact of God's self-sufficient reality and self-disclosive activity – not an idiosyncratic set of political convictions, nor a contingent array of political circumstances – grounds and directs the Swiss theologian's writing. Chung's supplementary concern is to bring Barth's (politicised) theology into conversation with contemporary reflection. To this end, the book includes discussions of gender, Israel, Barth's relationship with Luther, liberation theology and religious pluralism.

The first five chapters of the book follow Barth's career in the 1910s, 1920s and early 1930s. Chung offers lengthy examinations of Barth's theology and activism in Safenwil, the first and second editions of Der Römerbrief, important occasional pieces (especially the Tambach lecture of 1919, ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’), and work produced in Göttingen and Münster. Barth's intellectual biography is often ably handled in these chapters, and Chung's attention to the political import of Barth's writing is very much welcome – not least because, the efforts of some interpreters notwithstanding, much English-language scholarship continues to dissociate Barth's dogmatics and Barth's advocacy of democratic socialism. Chung's basic interpretative stance, if I understand it correctly, entails a revision of the perspective advanced by Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt in Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (1972). On the one hand, Chung rejects the suggestion that Barth's theology was generated and shaped by socialist convictions. Marquardt was right to connect Barth's politics and Barth's theology, but wrong in his assessment of their relationship; Barth consistently thought von Gott aus, not von Feuerbach und Marx aus. On the other hand, Chung retains a Marquardtian sensibility, and some of Marquardt's key insights play a leading role in his analysis. For instance: Barth's early writing ‘attempted to see the “left” of socialism grounded in the “above” of God’ (p. 69); the ‘new world in the Bible, the new world of God, implies the revolutionary overthrow of the existing bourgeois society’ (p. 111); Romans I advocates a divine revolution that is also a social critique and a ‘praxis of liberation’ (p. 146); and Romans II urges a ‘politics of protest against the existing social order’ (p. 212). Even the stabilisation of Barth's thought in the 1920s and early 1930s should be understood in terms of a politically orientated perspective. Barth's interest in Protestant scholasticism and, more concretely, his deepened grasp of the incarnation relate to a theological perspective defined by its ‘radical, questioning character’ (p. 279) and its demand for political engagement and struggle.

Subsequent chapters deal mainly with the Church Dogmatics, albeit in a somewhat ad hoc way and, regrettably, with less attention to the context in which Barth wrote. After some useful remarks on Barth's opposition to the ‘German Christians’, his rejection of Nazi ideology and his response to Emil Brunner's Natur und Gnade, chapter 6 considers Barth's understanding of covenant, creation, the analogia fidei and the all-encompassing activity of Jesus Christ. Chapter 7 tackles the relatively neglected issue of Barth's relationship to Martin Luther, focusing particularly on Barth's appropriation of the enhypostasis/anhypostasis distinction, the theology of the cross, Jesus’ Jewishness and the assumptio carnis. Chung's appropriation of claims initially advanced by Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt continues; like Marquardt, for instance, he discerns an elective affinity between Barth's understanding of the humanity of Christ and Feuerbach's construal of the human species (Gattung). Chapter 8 engages the difficult question of Barth's understanding of Israel and Judaism, again with a Marquardtian twist: Chung contends that, for Barth, ‘the objectivity of God’ means ‘a real revolution of all life-connections’ (p. 393). Chapter 9 offers some general reflections on the relationship between Barth's work, democratic socialism and liberation theology. Finally, by way of conclusion and emphasising Barth's commitment to an open-ended, revisable dogmatics, Chung considers Barth's possible contribution to discussions about religious pluralism.

Certainly, the political dimensions of Barth's theology are an important area for research, and Chung's book offers some useful observations. The analysis of the first edition of Der Römerbrief is particularly intriguing, as is Chung's treatment of the Barth–Brunner debate; equally, the claim that Barth's emphasis on God's self-sufficient reality has as its complement ‘a persistent de-assuring of theology’ (p. 282) seems on target. More generally, I am sympathetic to Chung's willingness to engage Marquardt's instructive (but, admittedly, flawed) attempt to coordinate Barth's dogmatics with his socialist convictions, while also looking towards the relevance of Barth for Christian theology today. It seems likely that scholarship that thinks with and beyond Barth will be increasingly important in the twenty-first century; it is to Chung's credit that he combines close textual and historical analysis with a constructive agenda.

With that said, as a whole this book does not succeed. I would identify four particular problems. First, Chung's analysis is sometimes patchy, digressive and difficult to follow. While many chapters provide lengthy summaries of Barth's writing, interwoven with some keen insights, they often sprawl and lack coherence. Chung's handling of certain issues, moreover, strikes me as questionable. His treatment of ‘dialectic’ and ‘analogy’, for instance, seems incomplete, and the consideration of Barth on gender does not convince. Second, the text suffers from the absence of an orderly exposition of the Church Dogmatics. Chung supposes, I think, that an analysis of Barth's theology in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s provides the interpretative leverage needed to uncover the political dimensions of Barth's later theology. This may well be a fair supposition. However, without the support of a rigorous examination of key themes and motifs in the Dogmatics, Chung's remarks on the political dimensions of Barth's magnum opus seem overly speculative; all too often, suggestive gestures appear in place of assured interpretative judgements. Third, I worry that Chung does not reckon with the political dimensions of Barth's christology. It does not seem sufficient, to my mind, to reprise and modestly to expand Marquardt's claims about the assumptio humanum. More needful is an in-depth examination of Barth's christology – and, of course, Barth's sophisticated appropriation of the munus triplex – as it relates to a politically vibrant theological anthropology and ecclesiology. Fourth and finally, Chung avoids one of the most difficult issues when it comes to understanding the political dimensions of Barth's theology. To wit: how does one gauge the political import of a text like the Church Dogmatics when, for the most part, this text studiously avoids explicit political commentary? How does one make sense of a style of writing that, while committed to doing theology ‘as though nothing had happened’ (Theologische Existenz Heute!), quickly impresses upon the reader the need for political action on behalf of the downcast and marginalised? To my knowledge, no author provides a satisfactory answer to questions such as these; indeed, the issue of Barth's rhetoric and its intended political effects remain under-investigated. Nonetheless, the issue is urgent, both for Barth studies and for an academy prone to drive a wedge between systematic and liberationist modes of theological reflection.

In sum, while I applaud Chung's scholarly instincts and commend certain dimensions of his book, I found this work lacking in many respects. Those looking to appreciate the political dimensions of Barth's theology for the first time will profit from it, but those hoping for a substantial advance in scholarship may well come away disappointed.