RELIGION AS INTERPRETATION OF LIFE: CONTEMPORARY GERMAN LIBERAL THEOLOGY OF ULRICH BARTH AND DIETRICH KORSCH
Abstract
This paper introduces and critically evaluates the thinking of two contemporary German Protestant systematic theologians Ulrich Barth and Dietrich Korsch. Both of them are the founders of the movement in the contemporary German-speaking Protestant theology which critically follows German Protestant liberalism of the nineteenth century and with varying intensity and argumentation distances itself from Karl Barth s Theology of Revelation by setting the general category of religion to the center of dogmatics.
The common accents of the thinking of both theologians are a positive evaluation of modernity, a reception of the theory of subjectivity of German idealism and its connection with the hermeneutical notion of interpretation, for which they constantly use the German word "Deutung" or "deuten".