The Command of God as a Morally Binding Norm

Abstract

As a version of divine command ethics, Barth’s theological ethics answers the two fundamental questions posed to every divine command ethics, namely, how is it that God’s command determines the good of human action, and why is it that human beings must accept what God determines as good? Barth’s answer to both question is that in Jesus Christ, God both poses the question of the good to human beings and answers it in their place. In him, God’s goodness both confronts other human beings as the norm of their goodness and fulfills that norm in their place. It therefore determines the good of human action insofar as Jesus Christ is the human being who takes the place of other human beings. And other human beings must accept what God thereby determines as their good because—again, insofar as Jesus Christ has taken their place—their good is already a reality in him, in whom they exist as the human beings they are. The problem is that while the grace of God in Jesus Christ is the genuinely human good of other human beings insofar as they exist in Jesus Christ, it is, precisely as grace, a good that constitutes them from outside and not a good that fulfills them as the kind of creature they are.