Judgment as Grace: Moral Discernment, Beauty, and Analogy in Karl Barth

This paper examines judgment in the Reformed tradition through a constructive engagement with the theology of Karl Barth, focusing on the relation between divine judgment, grace, and moral discernment in the Church Dogmatics. While Barth is often read as radically restricting human judgment in light of God’s sovereign judgment, I argue that his mature theology reconstitutes judgment as a grace-shaped practice of analogical discernment. Divine judgment, enacted in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to grace but is itself a mode of grace that summons human response. Drawing on Barth’s doctrine of analogy (analogia fidei) and theology of glory, the paper engages Andrew Dunstan’s interpretation of Barth’s theological aesthetics to show how divine beauty forms human judgment perceptually and ethically. Against readings influenced by Hans Urs von Balthasar, it argues that Barth allows a chastened acknowledgment of creaturely beauty as an aid to moral discernment.