Challenging Bruce McCormack's paradigm of post-Kantian Barth scholarship, this book builds on the interpretative model that Sigurd Baark developed in 2018. This model interprets Barth's innovative adoption of an Anselmian mode of theological speculation, against the intellectual-historical background of the idealist tradition of speculative metaphysics that culminated in Hegel. This book argues that Barth adopted the Anselmian mode of speculation in which immediate self-identity between subject, object, and act is found in the triune God alone, while the speculative identity that enables human knowledge of God is none other than the identity between God-in-and-for-Godself and God-for-us. Exploring the nationalistic dimension of speculative metaphysics in 19th-century Germany, Tseng identifies this as an important aspect of the context of Barth's development of a Christocentric form of speculative theology.

Introduction Chapter 1: Sketching the Background: The Post-Kantian Paradigm Re-examinedChapter 2: Sketching the Background: Barth and the Intellectual History of Speculative TheologyChapter 3: Sketching the Contours: Actualistic Ontology and Speculative TheologyChapter 4: Painting the Portrait: The Christocentric Reorientation of Barth's Speculative Theology in 1936Chapter 5: Painting the Portrait: Barth's Christocentric Revision of Vestigium Trinitatis Speculation in 1938Chapter 6: Painting the Portrait: Solidifying the Basically Chalcedonian Form of Speculative Identity in 1942Chapter 7: Framing the Picture: Barth's Speculative Theology of Nationhood: Christocentric Reflections from 1936-1938ConclusionBibliographyIndex