Human Being

This chapter analyses Barth’s thinking about the human being in the second edition of Romans and in multiple volumes of the Church Dogmatics. It does so under the headings of ‘encounter’, ‘election’, ‘freedom’, and ‘community’. Its principal objective is to demonstrate that Barth’s emphatic affirmation of God’s priority and sovereignty is not exclusive, but rather the presupposition, of an expansive and nuanced account of human being and action. Close attention is paid to Barth’s vivid sense that human action enriches the covenant of grace—a covenant fulfilled by Christ’s saving work, and held temporally and spatially ‘open’ for the Spirit-led action of human beings.