With one foot in the world of Scripture and another in the contemporary world, Karl Barth was both a modern and a confessional theologian. The intersection of these two worlds makes him a fruitful dialogue partner for thinking creatively about what it means to be faithful to Jesus Christ today. In this collection of essays both old and new, Kimlyn Bender explores Barth's understanding of Christ, church and world in conversation with American evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, Reinhard Hütter, Adolf von Harnack, Bart Ehrman and Baptists, among others. Along the way he also engages the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Bender's penetrating analysis of modern theology sheds light on both the task of theology and the witness of the church.