Divine Action and Human Action

Abstract

Throughout his work, Barth is determined to consider human action in relation to divine action, and not in itself. This determination poses three questions. First, can Barth make human action intelligible as the agent’s own action? Second, does he leave human action unstable, lacking anything that secures its continuity throughout its engagements with divine action? Third, is the agent who encounters divine action a fully and genuinely human agent with the full range of agential capacities? Barth adequately answers all three questions, but it is unclear that he can answer any of them in a fully satisfactory way without the notion of habits as persistent tendencies of action. Without such a notion, Barth cannot account for morally good action as a persistent tendency enabled by grace—that is, as virtue. This limitation limits the plausibility of this theological ethics.