ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Barth’s understanding of sin as sloth in CD IV/2, §60, ‘The Sloth and Misery of Man’. It pays close attention to the Swiss theologian’s actualistic renovation of the Augustinian doctrine of the bondage of the will, especially his replacement of the nominal infinitive – the famous posse – with the present active indicative: non potest non peccare. As Barth sees it, the nominal use of the infinitive ‘posse’ implies that the ability to choose between peccare and non peccare is a potentiality in the static nature of humankind. On this substantialist view, the ‘non posse non peccare’ suggests that it is the corruption of the natural faculty of the will that inevitably gives rise to actual sins. This view fails to speak of the bondage as the determination of the human being-in-sin by the actuality of the history of evil decisions and activities. Barth uses the present active indicative to express his actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notion of the libertas peccatorum: the bondage is not fatalistically predetermined by the corruption of human nature, but rather created by the ongoing actuality of sin. Sin and nature are two total determinations (totus-totus) of the human being.
