Introduction

This opening chapter introduces Karl Barth&s;s doctrine of providence in Church Dogmatics III/3, §49 by examining scholastic debates on occasionalism, mere conservation, and concursus . While some critics accuse Barth of denying genuine creaturely agency in favor of a christocentrism that collapses all action into divine causality, this chapter argues otherwise. The chapter locates Barth within the concurrentist scholastic tradition—represented by Thomas Aquinas and Francis Turretin—which affirms that God&s;s primary causality and creaturely secondary causality fully cooperate without negating one another. Barth rejects both occasionalism, which grants no genuine causal efficacy to creatures, and mere conservationism, which removes God&s;s immediate activity from natural processes. His distinctive contribution, however, goes beyond merely affirming concursus within this traditional threefold schema. In §49.4, he correlates this two-sided account of divine and creaturely action in providence with an equally two-sided account of how we come to know providence. Barth underscores the Christian practice of faith, obedience, and prayer as necessary conditions for rightly perceiving God&s;s accompanying in creation. His comprehensive correction of providence includes a self-reflexive treatment of concept use and norms, suggesting that our theological knowledge itself emerges through the same concursive pattern Barth finds at work in God&s;s governance of creation.