Giving Thanks for the Gift of Life: Karl Barth on Gratitude to God for One’s Own Life

Abstract

This essay considers Karl Barth’s conception of gratitude to God, and the significance of being grateful for one’s own life within his doctrine of creation. I argue that Barth’s account of gratitude authorizes an affirmation of one’s own life that avoids the trappings of the egoistic self-love that he vociferously opposed. Additionally, I consider whether and how Barth’s conception of gratitude for our lives demands cheerfulness, or whether it adequately leaves room for the type of sobriety and lament that Beethoven exemplifies in his “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity.”