ABSTRACT
Reflection on basic move in this chapter can begin with a familiar claim of theological anthropology: that human beings are created in the imago dei, the image of God. The image of God, in other words, is not a capacity that human beings possess, whether reason or morality or self-shaping agency. The chapter focuses on the larger logic of Karl Barth’s account of creation. On the one hand, creation points ahead to that which fulfils it; it is the ‘external basis of the covenant’. On the other hand, this relationship secures creation’s status as a divine gift, with an integrity all its own. Barth agrees that God’s act of creation eludes any attempt at straightforward description: we cannot capture the origin of history in historiographical terms. Thus Barth offers no theoretical resolution of the problem of divine and human freedom. Nor does he simply affirm both, resorting to easy talk about ‘paradox’.
