Abstract
The translation and publication of these volumes of Karl Barth's theological ethics and his final correspondence should permanently lay to rest the criticism that has been made ever since he began to formulate his Church Dogmatics' over half a century ago. That criticism-that Barth's emphasis on the supernatural transcendence, exclusive finality, and unilateral efficacy of the Word of God makes it unnecessary and even impossible for him to construct a credible and viable ethic -has, of course, ignored his masterly discussion of ethics in CD 11,2 (general ethics) and CD III,4 (special ethics) where he clearly stipulates that the God who calls man2 through sovereign election is also the God who simultaneously commands him to obedience. The covenant of God with his creature, then, is intrinsically ethical; and since the covenant is created and extended to us by God alone, ethics belongs, not only to theological discourse, but even to the doctrine of God himself. Theological ethics is itself dogmatics, not an independent discipline alongside it. We obey only an academic necessity in treating it separately. Ethics, too, reflects on the Word of God as the transcendent meaning, theme, and bearer of Christian preaching in the form of criticism of the pious human word....Ethics is theological ethics to the extent that it sees the goodness of human conduct in the reality of the Word of God that sanctifies man (E, pp. 18-19). Yet,
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