Abstract
Barth’s theological ethics is a version of divine command ethics. However, it is a highly unusual version. Its premise is that the Word of God—the revelation and work of God’s grace to human beings in Jesus Christ—is also the command of God, that gospel is also law. What God commands, therefore, is that human beings confirm in their conduct what they already are by virtue of God’s grace to them. Human beings confirm grace in their conduct by performing actions that correspond to grace, so that the moral life is lived as a human analogy to divine grace. The problem with Barth’s divine command ethics is that the claim that grace is the norm of human action fails to do justice to human beings as creatures. For Barth, God’s resolution from eternity to be gracious to human beings and God’s realization of this eternal resolution in time determines human beings as creatures, not just as those who have fallen into sin. It follows that the human creature exists for the actualization of grace, not grace for the perfection of the creature.
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