Barth on Gratitude

In a 2001 Modern Theology article, Matthew Boulton points to the theme of gratitude in Barth’s theology. Gratitude is for Barth the “one but necessary thing which is proper to and is required of him with whom God has graciously entered into covenant.” It is the “genuine being of man,” and only the grateful man is “true man.” In the covenant of grace, man is enlisted as GOd’s “partner” in “gratitude”: “On the side of God it is only a matter of free grace and this in the form of benefit. For the other partner in the covenant to whom God turns in this grace, the only proper thing, but the thing which is unconditionally and inescapably demanded, is that he should be grateful.” More evocatively: “Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.” Thus, “only gratitude can correspond to grace, and this correspondence cannot fail. Its failure, ingratitude, is sin, transgression. Radically and basically all sin is simply ingratitude.” (Quotations from CD, 4.1.)