I mentioned a few weeks back now that I have been reading Commanding Grace, an edited collection of papers from the 2008 US Karl Barth conference. In my last, brief, post I hinted that the collection is really good, and that I was unearthing some absolute gems. The variety of subjects and the level of concrete engagement with Barth on issues of central importance to Christian ethics is really encouraging and exciting. One particularly brilliant essay I have read and re-read is Jesse Couenhoven 's Karl Barth's Conception(s) of Human and Divine Freedom(s) pp.239-255. The main concern of this essay, as the title suggests, is the question of how Barth's conception of divine freedom is related to his conception of human freedom, if at all. It is important to note that it is a conceptual problem that concerns Couenhoven here. He is not asking how divine freedom and human freedom actually relate, not primarily at least, but how Barth's conceptual exploration of each is relat