^{page 377 note 1} Barth, , The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Hopkins, Edwyn C. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 10 Google Scholar. References to Barth's commentary will generally be given parenthetically within the text.

Research for this essay was assisted by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies under a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a grant from the Emory University Research Committee.

^{page 379 note 2} Derrida is best known for his critique of western metaphysics. Less well known are his frequent reminders that one cannot simply choose to step outside that tradition. Of Hegel, specifically, he writes, ‘Misconstrued, treated lightly, Hegelianism only extends its historical domination, finally unfolding its immense enveloping resources without obstacle.’ (Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, Alan [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978], 251.Google Scholar) Cf. Barth, : ‘…it is as impossible to pass by Hegel as it is to pass by Kant.’ (Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History [Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1973], 396.)Google Scholar

The present essay is offered as a complement to Steven G. Smith's excellent study of the conceptual kinship between Barth and another contemporary French philosopher, Levinas, Emmanuel (Smith, The Argument to the Other: Reason Beyond Reason in the Thought of Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983 Google Scholar.]) Levinas, for his part, is clearly at grips with Hegel; see Derrida's essay on Levinas in Writing and Difference, 79–153.

^{page 379 note 3} Derrida, , Positions, trans. Bass, Alan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 26.Google Scholar

^{page 379 note 4} Those encountering Derrida for the first time may find it helpful to begin with the first two interviews in Positions, and then to consider, as an example of the deconstructive reading of a text, ‘Plato's Pharmacy’ in Derrida, , Disseminations, trans. Johnson, Barbara (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 61–171 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As regards the secondary literature, one might begin with Jonathan Culler's brief essay in Sturrock, John (ed.), Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 154–180 Google Scholar; and then proceed to the translator's preface to Derrida, , Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), ix–lxxxvii Google Scholar. Those approaching deconstruction from a background in twentieth-century English-language philosophy will find valuable assistance in Staten's, Henry Wittgenstein and Derrida (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

^{page 381 note 5} ‘Thus one could reconsider all the pairs of opposites on which philosophy is constructed and on which our discourse lives, not in order to see opposition erase itself but to see what indicates that each of the terms must appear as the différance of the other, as the other different and deferred in the economy of the same …’ Derrida, , Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 17 Google Scholar. Here as elsewhere there are striking parallels between Derrida and the later Wittgenstein; see Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida.

^{page 381 note 6} Of Grammatology, 1–26; cf. Dissemination, 84–94.

^{page 382 note 7} To give the discussion focus and a certain discipline, I propose to concentrate upon the first chapter of Barth's commentary, which announces many of the themes which are subsequently to be developed. A fuller discussion would consider the commentary at large, mindful of Barth's admonition that ‘Chs. I-XI must not be separated from Chs. XII-XV’ (viii).

^{page 382 note 8} References in square brackets are to the German text: Der Römerbrief (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1926)Google Scholar.

^{page 382 note 9} On the derridean notion of différance, see Positions, 7–11, cf. 24–29; Margins of Philosophy, 1–27.

^{page 383 note 10} Cf. 36: ‘The power of God stands neither at the side of nor above — supernatural! — these limited and limiting powers. … It can neither be substituted for them nor ranged with them, and, save with the greatest caution, it cannot even be compared with them’ (emphasis added). Barth's caution may be prompted in part by an awareness of the ironies and reversals delineated in Hegel's classic exposition of the dialectic of the master and the slave or bondsman; vid. Hegel, , Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). 111–119 Google Scholar; cf. Derrida, , Writing and Difference, 254–262 Google Scholar.

^{page 384 note 11} Margins of Philosophy, 38; cf. Writing and Difference, 6, 253; Ulmer, Gregory L., Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 38, 51.Google Scholar

^{page 385 note 12} 28, emphasis added.

^{page 386 note 13} Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, David F. and Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 219 Google Scholar. Barth stands firm on this principle even with regard to Christ: ‘Here is the necessary qualification. The vision of the New Day remains an indirect vision …’ (97).

^{page 386 note 14} 46. Cf. the remarkable affirmation that the ‘“infinite qualitative distinction”’ between God and the human ‘is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy’ (10, emphasis added.)

^{page 387 note 15} 53, emphasis added.

^{page 388 note 16} 40, emphasis added.

^{page 388 note 17} 40; see Moltmann, , The Crucified God, trans. Wilson, R. A. and Bowden, John (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 252–253.Google Scholar

^{page 389 note 18} Metz, Johann Baptist, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. Smith, David (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 56–58, 128–30.Google Scholar

^{page 390 note 19} As Barth puts it at one point, what the hidden things contradict is ‘the obvious experience of the senses’ (39). This is one line of thought contributing to Barth's mistrust of experience. Cf. 51: ‘They have wished to experience the known god of this world: well! they have experienced him.’ The prototype of unfaith is Pharaoh, whose experience of being ‘broken to pieces on God’ was oppositional indeed (43).

^{page 390 note 20} 43, emphasis added; cf. 48.

^{page 391 note 21} Cf. 36, quoted earlier: ‘The power of God stands neither at the side of nor above – supernatural! – these limited and limiting powers.’

^{page 393 note 22} Cf. Positions, 12.

^{page 393 note 23} ‘Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present. This interweaving results in each “element” — phoneme or grapheme — being constituted on the basis of the trace within it of the other elements of the chain or system.… Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent.’ (Derrida, Positions, 26.) As Derrida is frequently accused of making a ‘presence’ of absence, it is important to note that he adverts to this possibility and gives specific reasons for rejecting it: see Margins of Philosophy, 65–7; Spivak in On Grammawlogy, xvxvi; Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida, 53.

^{page 393 note 24} 33, cf. 36. The point invites comparison with the pattern of ‘something and — nothing, nothing and — something’ observed earlier.

^{page 393 note 25} 48; this provides a way of understanding the powerful, extended description of the ‘mist’, 49–51.