The Analogy of Grace

The Analogy of Grace
Author: Gerald McKenny
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2010-03-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191614874

Once considered inimical to ethics, Karl Barth's theology is now rightly recognized for the central role ethics plays in it. But can Barth be safely placed in the mainstream tradition of Christian moral theology or does he offer a challenge to the latter? Gerald McKenny argues that the claim that God not only establishes the good from eternity but also brings it about in time is of fundamental importance to Barth's mature ethics. The good confronts us from the site of its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, who has accomplished it in our place. The result is a vision of the moral life as a human analogy to God's grace, a vision which contrasts with the bourgeois vision of the moral life as an expression of human capability. Barth's moral theology is presented here as the attempt to reorder ethical thought and practice in light of this fundamental claim. This lucid and well-argued study is the most comprehensive treatment of Barth's ethics to date, offering a thorough account of the development of Barth's ethical thought and a wide-ranging analysis of its chief concepts and arguments. McKenny explains why certain widespread assumptions about Barth's moral theology are mistaken and explores the rich, complex, and often surprising ways in which Barth's position engages the traditions of Christian ethics and modern continental moral thought. Above all, McKenny shows why Barth's moral theology deserves our attention in spite of, or rather because of, its uneasy fit in the mainstream tradition of Christian moral theology.

Commanding Grace

Commanding Grace
Author: Daniel L. Migliore
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2010-08-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802865704

In this seminal volume, contemporary theologians revisit the theological ethics of Karl Barth as it bears on such topics as the moral significance of Jesus Christ, the Christian as ethical agent, the just war theory, the relationship between doctrines of the atonement and modern penal justice systems, the virtues and limits of democracy, and the difference between an economy of competition and possession and an economy of grace. Book jacket.

Karl Barth and Christian Ethics

Karl Barth and Christian Ethics
Author: Professor William Werpehowski
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2014-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1409438759

This critical study of Karl Barth's Christian theological ethics discusses Barth's controversial and characteristically misunderstood ethics of divine command. The surprising relation of his 'divine command ethics' to contemporary 'narrative theology' and 'virtue ethics' and specific moral themes concerning bonds between parents and children, the nature of truth telling, and the meaning of Christian love of God and neighbour are all discussed. This book reveals Barth's richness, depth and insight, and places his work in constructive connection with salient themes in both Catholic and Protestant ethics.

Ethics

Ethics
Author: Karl Barth
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498270735

Originally published in German in an edition edited by Dietrich Braun, Karl Barth's Ethics is at last available in English. This volume, containing lectures given as courses at the University at Munster in 1928 and 1929, represents Barth's first systematic attempt at a theological account of Christian ethics. Although composed over fifty years ago, just prior to Barth's thirty-year devotion to Church Dogmatics, many of its themes, problems, and conclusions are astonishingly relevant today (his critique of competitiveness and of technology, for example). While this work is concerned with the foundations of ethics, it also reveals Barth's highly practical interest in ethics and his special concern to avoid legalism and yet to maintain a structured divine command. Barth's ethics are arranged on a Trinitarian basis, dealing in succession with the command of God the Creator (life), the command of God the Reconciler (law), and the command of God the Redeemer (promise).

Barth's Moral Theology

Barth's Moral Theology
Author: John Webster
Publisher: T&T Clark
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Christian ethics
ISBN: 9780567089601

John Webster shows how Karl Barth's work as a whole should be regarded as a moral theology. He opens with a study of Barth's ethical thinking in key writings from the period of his break with theological liberalism, and then highlights the moral anthropology set out in his lectures on ethics from the end of the 1920s. He studies the themes of original sin, hope and freedom in Barth's Church Dogmatics, illustrating Barth's concern to prove that divine grace shapes and restores human agency. He explores the theme of the missionary activity of the church in relation to Barth's remarkable treatment of the prophetic office of Christ. He also draws a contrast between the moral anthropology of Barth and Luther.

Ethics with Barth: God, Metaphysics and Morals

Ethics with Barth: God, Metaphysics and Morals
Author: Matthew Rose
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317141105

Although interest in the theology of Karl Barth is greater today than at any time since his death, Barth's moral thought continues to be widely misunderstood. This groundbreaking study of the twentieth-century's most important Christian thinker offers the first treatment of Barth's ethics from a Roman Catholic perspective. Focusing particularly on Barth's 'ethics of creation' in the Church Dogmatics, Rose reclaims Barth from a number of misinterpretations and presents Barth's account of the good life within his distinctively Christian metaphysics. Among the most provocative of Rose's claims is that Barth sees the Christian life as guided by reason and nature, an interpretation that finds Barth in conversation with ancient and medieval ethical theories about the nature of human happiness. A significant contribution to Barth studies and current debates in contemporary Christian theology, Ethics with Barth sheds valuable light on the connection between metaphysics and ethics, the trinitarian dimensions of Christian moral thought, the nature of the divine good, the role of Christian philosophy, Barth's conception of moral reasoning, and his views on eudaimonism and the natural law.

Karl Barth's Moral Thought

Karl Barth's Moral Thought
Author: Gerald McKenny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2021
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192845527

Does theological ethics articulate moral norms with the assistance of moral philosophy? Or does it leave that task to moral philosophy alone while it describes a distinctively Christian way of acting or form of life? These questions lie at the very heart of theological ethics as a discipline. Karl Barth's theological ethics makes a strong case for the first alternative. Karl Barth's Moral Thought follows Barth's efforts to present God's grace as a moral norm in his treatments of divine commands, moral reasoning, responsibility, and agency. It shows how Barth's conviction that grace is the norm of human action generates problems for his ethics at nearly every turn, as it involves a moral good that confronts human beings from outside rather than perfecting them as the kind of creature they are. Yet it defends Barth's insistence on the right of theology to articulate moral norms, and it shows how Barth may lead theological ethics to exercise that right in a more compelling way than he did.

Being in Action

Being in Action
Author: Paul T. Nimmo
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2011-02-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567195414

This book investigates the way in which the 'actualistic ontology' - i.e., the fact that God and human agents are beings-in-act in a covenant relationship - that underlies the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth affects his conception of ethical agency. It analyses this effect along three paths of inquiry: knowing what is right (the noetic dimension), doing what is right (the ontic dimension), and achieving what is right (the telic dimension). The first section of the book explores the discipline of theological ethics as Barth construes it, both in its theoretical status and in its actual practice. In the second section, the ontological import of ethical agency for Barth is considered in relation to the divine action and the divine command. The final section of the book examines the teleological purpose envisaged in this theological ethics in terms of participation, witness, and glorification. At each stage of the book, the strong interconnectedness of theological ethics and actualistic ontology in the Church Dogmatics is drawn out. The resultant appreciation of the actualistic dimension which underlies the theological ethics of Karl Barth feeds into a fruitful engagement with a variety of critiques of Barth's conception of ethical agency. It is demonstrated that resources can be found within this actualistic ontology to answer some of the diverse criticisms, and that attempts to revise Barth's theological ethics at the margins would have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for his whole theological project.

Christian Ethics as Witness

Christian Ethics as Witness
Author: David Haddorff
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0227903021

Christian ethics is less a system of principles, rules, or even virtues, and more of a free and open-ended responsible witness to God's gracious action to be with and for others and the world. Postmodernity has left us with the risky uncertainty of knowing and doing the good. It also leaves us with the global risks of political violence and terrorism, economic globalization and financial crisis, and environmental destruction and global climate change. How should Christians respond to these problems? Thisbook creatively explores how Christian ethics is best understood as a witness to God's action, thereby providing the ethical framework for addressing the various problematic social issues that put our world at risk. Haddorff develops the notion of witness through a detailed study of Karl Barth's theological ethics. Barth, he argues, provides a language enabling us to know what a Christian ethics of witness actually looks like in both theory and in practice. In correspondence to God's gracious action, Christians remain free to think and act in faith, hope, and love in respondence to their unique circumstances, even in a world at risk. In their witness, Christians remain confident that God has not abandoned the world but loves and cares for its future.