Barth teaches that invocation names the central and basic Christian action. Invocation is not an abstract catchall, but a specification of that activity called forth by God’s reconciling act in Jesus Christ.2That is to say, Barth describes invocation as the
“general key” [allgemeinen Schlüssel] for “special” (Christian) ethics because he “understand[s] the command, ‘Call upon me’ (Ps. 50:15) to be the basic meaning of every divine command” and “invocation according to this command as the basic meaning of all human obedience.” Invocation is the sum total of reconciled human action: “What God permits humanity, what he expects, wills and requires of humanity, is a life of calling upon him.” As reconciliation is accomplished for all humanity, the command also is given to all humanity. Christian, however, designates those who recognize their accomplished reconciliation and obey this command: “This life of calling upon God will be a person’s Christian life: a life in freedom, conversion, faith, gratitude, and faithfulness” (ChrL, 44R [69]). Such a conception of Christian ethics is not foreign to Protestant theology, and Barth points out precedents in Calvin’sInstitutes
(III, 20), the Heidelberg Catechism (Qu. 116), and, especially, Luther, who taught that “[we] should and must pray if we are to be Christians” (ChrL, 44 [68]).3Barth does
acknowledge, however, several other possible rubrics for treating Christian ethics. ———————————
2. Note Barth’s cautions against ethics attempting to be more than a second- order reflection upon and aid to the first-order reality of the divine command and human response (ChrL, e.g., 7 [8]).
3. [The English text does not indicate that Barth is quoting Luther’s Larger Catechism (1529).] In light of Barth’s emphasis on how characteristically Protestant his decision is and the strong presence of prayer in Barth’s earlier discussions of ethics, Eberhard Jüngel’s descriptions of “[t]his way of handling the ethical problem” as “remarkable,” “so startling,” and “hardly foreseeable” appear to exaggerate the novelty—though these terms may be more appropriate in relation to ethics after Kant (Theological Essays, 164). While the centrality of invocation (understood chiefly in terms of asking or petition) is the result of a revision to the lecture material, this revision is very much a recapitulationof Barth’s earlier discussions of prayer—albeit with a new emphasis oninvocation [Anrufung]. For instance, see CDIII.3, especially 264–271 [299– 307], where Barth describes prayer as “the most intimate and effective form of Christian action[Tat].... Christian obedience in nuce.... primitive movement... the basis of all other activity.... the act of obedience par excellence... from which all other acts must spring,” and in relation to which “[a]ll other work comes far behind”; and CD
The options Barth considers and rejects—because invocationsays better what they want to say—are instructive for understanding Barth’s ethics of reconciliation. In the first instance, merely designating ethics Christianwill not do because the adjective is “hardworn, heavily freighted, and ambivalent” and Barth declines to fight the uphill battle required to give it his sense: “grounded in the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ and oriented to the effected [verwirklichte] justification, sanctification, and vocation of humanity in him” (ChrL, 37R [56]). Barth also rejects the “rich and beautiful and fruitful concept” of freedom, because 1) it was used often in the preceding chapters and Barth wants to avoid a “tyranny of concepts,” and, decisively, 2) it is inadequate to the subject at hand (ChrL, 37 [56–57]).4Likewise,repentanceattracts Barth’s consideration as
a description of “the conversion which is grounded, and has to be carried through in an awareness of the situation” that clearly points to the “radical and universal nature of the divine command, and of the human obedience for which it calls” (ChrL, 37 [57]). Yet, he passes by repentance—and the related, existentialist darling, decision—in search of a more fitting concept.5Faith demands attention as a possibility, but in addition to
fearing another tyrannical concept Barth judges faith to be too materially indeterminate (ChrL, 39r [60]).6Even better options are thanksgiving and faithfulness, as long as one
bears in mind that “[t]he faithfulness with which humans turn to Godisunlikethat with which God turnsto the humanto the point of nonrecognition” (ChrL, 42Rr[65]).7While
not necessarilywrong, Barth passes over all of these concepts. ———————————
4. Whether Barth escapes this tyranny is a fair question. Daniel Migliore’s observation seems accurate: “for Barth, prayer is the quintessential act of human freedom before God” (“Freedom to Pray: Karl Barth’s Theology of Prayer,” 96).
5. Repentance and conversion remain critical components of invocation. See
ET for Barth’s “existential” treatment of theology—by no means a simpleNein! to existentialism. In ET, conversion, not mere decision, plays a decisive role as “the turn of 180 degress that is required, not just once, but every day anew” (117).
6. Barth also hesitates to adopt this concept because he thinks that the existential influence and the Lutheran interpretation of Judaizing in Galatians and Romans have distorted it. While Barth judges faith to be an unsuitable “key concept” for ethics, it remains central to his thought as the name for “the fundamental relationship” at the center of theology (ET, 116); and he cautions that, “it must never be forgotten that there can be no other obedience than that of faith” (ChrL, 39 [60]).
7. Barth gives no reasons against thankfulness, and his outworking of invocation
reflects his unwillingness to abandon eucharistia as central to the ethic called forth by God the reconciler.
All the above concepts are deficient—and here the strength of invocation
emerges— in that they do not “express the fact that some human action[Handeln und
Tun] is at issue in the obedience which the gracious God commands of humans” (ChrL, 42Rr [65]). This, however, is exactly what is needed, because the ethics of reconciliation demand a concept indicating that “[w]hat God expects and wills from those in whose hearts he has caused the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ to shine is the action [Aktion] of obedience accomplished as their Christian life,” and not simply “a certain form of human life (which might well be construed passively) and the disposition or attitude corresponding to it” (ChrL, 42r
[65], referencing 2 Cor. 4:6). Reconciliation calls forth action, not only hearing, but doing as well. As John Webster has argued, in no way did “the intensity of [Barth’s] adherence to... the ontologically constitutive character of God’s action in and as Jesus Christ make serious consideration of human action superfluous, even, perhaps, a trespass on the sovereignty of grace” (Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation, 1), or cause him to “abandon[] any sense that the human subject is an ethical agent” (Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 11).8In his defense of Barth, Webster grasps that true
prayer involves doing, “not mere consent, not only a calling upon the strengths of another,” for prayer is “that which actualises the will and energies of the Christian and sets them upon a specific path” (Reconciliation, 211).9To those who would ask, “Only
prayer, then?” Barth replies,
Yes, only prayer! Have you ever really tried to cast all your cares before the Lord in fervent and insistent prayer? Not as a routine matter, but because the Lord is at hand? Have you ever (as you should) dared letting all your requests be known before God, praying as [Jesus Christ’s] brother, as his sister, as God’s child? Whoever has tried and done this knows that such prayer, nothing but prayer, includes vigilant, steady and effective action [Arbeit] (Deliverance to the Captives, 106–07r[GAI.12,102]).10
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8. Webster identifies Kant’s influential understanding of grace as “a morally subversive concept” as the reason Barth’s strenuous defense of the necessity and reality of human action is invisible to many readers (Reconciliation, 15).
9. That true human life involves doingby no means reflects a late development in Barth. SeeThe Word of God and the Word of Man, 141, an essay from 1922.
10. Frank Jehle notes that prayer is not atomistic or individualistic action in Barth’s thought because “To pray for someone or something means the most intensive participation possible” (Ever Against the Stream: The Politics of Karl Barth 1906–1968, 108).
The strength, then, ofinvocationis that it must be understood as a humanaction.
Moreover, the concept invocationrefers to a specific human action: action-in- reconciled-covenant. This is to say that the divine act of reconciliation precedes invocation, that the human action of invocation responds—or as Barth prefers,
corresponds—tobeing reconciled. For invocation is “distinctive to humanity as the partner of God in the covenant of grace established by him,” and as such “derive[s] and proceed[s] from the fulfilment of this covenant in Jesus Christ.” In light of the situation—being reconciled—established by divine action, the now-reconciled human “finds him- or herself empowered only by the free graceof God, so that in it he or she can use only this empowering—but also has no choice other than to make use of it.” Yet, just as reconciliation involves the exaltation of humanity, so too invocation will be “an authentically and specifically humanaction” done “according to the measure of one’s human capacity” (ChrL, 42Rr [65–66]).11 In fact, this action is not simply like
other human actions, for even in its particularity it has “central significance and import for all one’s other being and acts,” preceding, accompanying, and following them and bestowing upon them “meaning, direction, and character” (ChrL, 42r [66]). Again, just as reconciliation aims at the fellowshipof the reconciling God and reconciled humanity, in invocation reconciled humans are “wholly referred to the gracious God as their only helper in distress and the only source and giver of all good things,” but in this way “able to give active expression to their own willingness and readiness in relation to the gracious God” (ChrL, 42–43R [66]). For this reason, the one who calls upon the reconciling God will enter into prayer both humbly and confidently, “notas one worthy
to encounter God and answer him, ...[with] no thought of making oneself worthy,” but in “complete confidence, with no reservation, doubt, hesitation, or vacillation” in light of God’s initiative (ChrL, 43r [66–67]). Before turning our attention to the covenant
restored by the divine act of reconciliation, we attend briefly to the place of invocation within Barth’s understanding of ethics.
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11. Barth likens this very human action to “rising up and lying down, coming and going, eating and drinking, working and resting.”