This study offers a new and original analysis of the problem of religious language. Taking as its starting point Karl Barth’s doctrine of analogy, it places this doctrine within the context of German Sprache and Rede philosophies and reveals the historical links between them and the work of the philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Drawing out the parallels between this work and Barth’s insights into the language of theology, it concludes that Barth’s doctrine of analogy is a theological reading of Derrida’s economy of différence. This important contemporary interpretation of Karl Barth reveals his closeness to postmodern thinking and underlines his relevance to current debates on the language of theology. It will be of interest to those studying both general questions of theology and language and the particular relationship between theology and postmodernism.

• A postmodern analysis of the language of theology

• A contemporary reading of Karl Barth

• An original comparison between Barth’s doctrine of analogy and Derrida’s economy of différance