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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N T H E O L O G IC A L E T H IC S

General Editor
N IG E L B IG G A R
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N T H E O L O G IC A L E T H IC S

General Editor
Nigel Biggar

The series presents discussions on topics of general concern to Christian Ethics,

as it is currently taught in universities and colleges, at the level demanded by a
serious student. The volumes will not be specialized monographs nor general
introductions or surveys. They aim to make a contribution worthy of notice in
its own right but also focused in such a way as to provide a suitable starting-­
point for orientation.
The titles include studies in important contributors to the Christian Tradition
of moral thought; explorations of current moral and social questions; and
discussions of central concepts in Christian moral and political thought.
Authors treat their topics in a way that will show the relevance of the Christian
tradition, but with openness to neighboring traditions of thought which have
entered into dialog with it.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Karl Barth’s
Moral Thought
G E R A L D Mc K E N N Y

1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

1
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© Gerald McKenny 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Preface

This book presents Karl Barth’s theological ethics as an account of morally

good action. For Barth, the norm of human action is the command of God
(Chapter 1). Barth understands the command of God as a moral norm,
which for him, following the neo-­Kantian school of philosophy with which
he was familiar, means that it poses to human action the decisive question
of its validity; in doing so, it relates to moral philosophy, which also poses
this question (Chapter 2). Because the command of God is a moral norm,
theological ethics, as the doctrine of the command of God, is a “scientific”
(wissenschaftlicher) account of morally good action. As such, it answers
questions posed to any divine command theory: How does God’s command
determine the good of human action? Why are we bound to accept what it
determines (Chapter 3)? It also shows how God’s commands are rationally
intelligible and in what sense we can know them, reason about them, and
hold each other accountable with regard to them (Chapters 4 and 5). Finally,
it shows how the human subject or agent who is addressed by God’s com-
mands is a moral subject or agent (Chapters 6 and 7).
Why does it matter to read Barth’s theological ethics as an account of
morally good action, or indeed to read Barth’s theological ethics at all? The
answer to the first question begins with a difficulty many readers have with
Barth’s ethics. In his Church Dogmatics, Barth appears to introduce theolog-
ical ethics by setting it apart from all other ethics and demanding, as the
price for understanding it, the renunciation of all other conceptions of eth-
ics. The reader, it seems, is asked to relinquish all that is familiar and to
submit to Barth’s determination of what ethics is. That this is so seems to
follow from Barth’s understanding of the norm of human action as a
revealed norm that is inaccessible to reason. The norm of human action for
Barth is the command of God, but the command of God itself is the Word
of God. And the Word of God is the revelation and work of God’s grace to
human beings in Jesus Christ. The norm, then, is God’s grace in Jesus Christ
(gospel) addressed to human beings as a command to confirm grace in their
conduct (law). Human beings are to become in their own action what they
already are by the action of God’s grace. It is unclear whether or in what
sense the command of God, so understood, is a moral norm, at least as
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

vi Preface

moral norms are typically understood in moral philosophy. Accordingly, it

seems reasonable to suppose that Barth’s theological ethics is concerned
with something other than that which concerns moral philosophy—that it
is not an account of morally good action in the same sense as the latter is
but is intended as an alternative to it. And if this is so, it seems that we must
indeed relinquish what we know about ethics from other sources in order to
understand Barth’s ethics.
In fact, Barth’s theological ethics is not moral philosophy, and Barth
introduces the former by distinguishing it quite radically from the latter.
However, the relationship between the two disciplines—and thus between
his conception of ethics and more familiar conceptions—is more complex
than the radical distinction between them suggests. Barth holds that theo-
logical ethics and moral philosophy operate with the same formal concep-
tion of moral norms.1 Remarkably, he even insists that, in the last analysis,
they share the same moral content.2 Far from an alternative to moral philos-
ophy, Barth’s theological ethics is what he thinks moral philosophy would
look like if it, too, acknowledged the grace of God in Jesus Christ as the
norm of human action. It matters to read Barth’s theological ethics in this
way, namely, as an account of morally good action, because it is only when it
is read in this way that both its strangeness and its familiarity with respect
to standard conceptions of what ethics is can be appreciated. Barth does not
ask us to relinquish our conceptions of what ethics is; he instead invites us
to consider how these conceptions are re-­positioned by theological ethics
when the norm of human action is taken to be God’s grace to human beings
in Jesus Christ.
This re-­positioning of moral philosophy by theological ethics brings us to
the second question: Why does it matter to read Barth’s theological ethics at
all? A brief and admittedly oversimplified historical narrative of theological
ethics will facilitate an answer to this question. Until the modern period
there was no need to qualify the term “ethics” by the term “theological.”
Moral norms were taken to be rational, and thus accessible to reason, but it
was assumed that, due to sin and creaturely limitations, revelation was nec-
essary to clarify them, specify them, and direct them to the ultimate end of
human beings. For Aquinas and Calvin, for example, theology had the task
of articulating moral norms by drawing on a conception of rational moral
law to interpret Scripture and on Scripture to unfold the content of the

1 CD II/2, pp. 513–15. 2 CD II/2, p. 527.

 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Preface vii

rational moral law.3 By the eighteenth century, however, philosophical

approaches to ethics that were independent of theology had taken hold.
Then as now, these approaches were not necessarily independent of
Christian faith, and they often affirmed the necessity of belief in God. What
they did not affirm was the need for revelation to clarify or specify moral
norms. Kant is central to this development, not because of his allegedly rad-
ical departure from tradition but because of his subtle revision of it. In con-
tinuity with tradition, Kant argued that moral reason requires a historical
faith such as Christianity, with its Scripture and ecclesiastical statutes.
However, this faith is needed not to clarify or specify a moral law that is
obscure to us in our sinful nature but to render the moral law perceptible to
us in our sensuous nature. To ensure that it is the moral law, and not a per-
version of it, that is rendered perceptible, the philosopher interprets
Scripture in accordance with the rational moral law. But Scripture for its
part does not play any role in unfolding the content of that law. Reason is
sufficient for its articulation; historical faith merely renders it recognizable.
With no role for revelation in the articulation of the moral law, philosophy
can proceed with this task independently of theology, which is reduced to
establishing the reliability of Scripture, and with it the ecclesiastical faith
based on it, as a historical vehicle for the promotion and propagation of the
moral law.4
The distinctive enterprise of theological ethics that arose in the nine-
teenth century in Germany assigned itself the task of reclaiming ethics, or
rather something of it, for theology, on the premise that, contra Kant, his-
torical faith has its own proper ethical content which moral philosophy
either makes or leaves room for. Schleiermacher was influential in setting
the pattern for this program by envisioning theological ethics as a comple-
ment to an independent philosophical ethics. From the standpoint of theo-
logical ethics at least, both it and philosophical ethics were taken to be
necessary to a full account of the moral life, and each was taken to be legiti-
mate on its own terms.5 Within these parameters, Schleiermacher’s succes-
sors exhibited a range of opinions on what exactly each enterprise was and

3 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica i-­ii, q. 99, art. 2, ad 2; q. 100, arts. 1, 3, 11; and
John Calvin, ICR 2.8.1–50, 4.20.16.
4 See Immanuel Kant, RWB, pp. 112–22 (6:102–14); and Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties,
7:36–48.
5 See Friedrich Schleiermacher, Selections from Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics,
ed. and tr. by James M. Brandt (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), pp. 19f. and
32–6; and Schleiermacher, Introduction to Christian Ethics, translated by John C. Shelley
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), pp. 41–4.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

viii Preface

how the two related to one another. But the two enterprises were typically
regarded as complementary, with philosophical ethics articulating formal
or universal aspects of morality and allotting or at least allowing theological
ethics its role of articulating a particular or historically embedded way of
acting or form of life.
Barth’s break with this complementarian approach is decisive. He baldly
asserts that “in a scientific form [in wissenschaftlicher Gestalt] there is only
one ethics, theological ethics.”6 Insofar as for Barth the Word of God is also
the command of God, there is no human action that is not claimed by the
Word of God from the outset. And insofar as theology is by definition the
scientific attestation of the Word of God, there is no discipline of ethics that
is independent of theology. On this view, other approaches to ethics, and in
particular, moral philosophy, are legitimate only insofar as they too bear
witness, albeit implicitly, to the norm (namely, the Word of God as God’s
command) theological ethics attests explicitly. In a kind of reversal of Kant,
Barth insists that theological ethics has the task of articulating the norm to
which both it and moral philosophy are accountable. At the same time,
because moral philosophy has to do with the same norm, albeit only implic-
itly, theological ethics is permitted and indeed obligated to avail itself of the
assistance moral philosophy offers it in its explicit articulation of the norm.
In short, it matters to read Barth’s theological ethics because the role of
articulating moral norms matters to theology, and because Barth reclaims
this role. In a context in which philosophy has declared its independence of
theology, Barth’s theological ethics reformulates the traditional position in
which theology articulates the norm of human conduct with the necessary
assistance of philosophy. It offers a bold alternative to the complementarian
approach of Schleiermacher and his successors, rejecting the positioning of
theological ethics by moral philosophy while recognizing the legitimacy of
the latter and demanding ongoing engagement with it. The complementar-
ian solution had succeeded in claiming a place for theological ethics, but at
the price of yielding its prerogative to articulate moral norms to moral phi-
losophy and constituting itself as something other than an account of mor-
ally good action. Theological ethics became instead the description of a
particularly Christian way of acting or form of life or an account of how
moral norms conceptually articulated by moral philosophy are concretely
actualized in a Christian way of acting or form of life. To the extent that the

6 CD II/2, p. 542/KD II/2, p. 603 [emphases in German original].

 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Preface ix

claim of moral philosophy to independence of theology is unlikely to be

reversed and the complementarian solution to that claim is likely to remain
unsatisfactory, Barth’s reclamation of a traditional role for theology in the
articulation of moral norms claims the attention of everyone who considers
theological ethics a worthwhile enterprise.
However, Barth’s alternative to the complementarian solution is not the
only live option today. There are at least two competing options. One option
begins by insisting that there is no ethics that is not qualified by an adjec-
tive. On this view, moral philosophy, too, occupies a particular place, and
theological ethics therefore stands at no relative disadvantage with respect
to it. Because every form of ethics is qualified by its location, theological
ethics can occupy its own proper place, which is the church, in the confi-
dence that it cannot be positioned by any other discipline, including moral
philosophy.7 Once these points are acknowledged, theological ethics and
moral philosophy can engage one another on non-­ hegemonic terms.
Another option is to formulate a Christian moral philosophy according to
which the perfection of natural moral capacities that are initially under-
stood in philosophical terms is ultimately to be understood in theological
terms, as conformity to Christ that is brought about by divine grace.8 With
respect to the first of these options, Barth’s theological ethics can claim the
advantage of recognizing the universality of philosophical ethics at a formal
level, on which the moral norm is understood, in neo-­Kantian terms, as the
question of the good posed to human action. It thereby accepts moral phi-
losophy on its own terms, at least insofar as it takes itself to be a formal
inquiry, as it did in the neo-­Kantian tradition with which Barth was famil-
iar, while it also allows for, and indeed requires, a constant engagement of
theological ethics with moral philosophy, insofar as the claim that the com-
mand of God is a moral norm presupposes a formal concept of the moral
norm as such. With respect to the second option, Barth’s theological ethics
can claim the advantage of allowing theological ethics as a distinctive
account of morally good action to stand on its own feet from the beginning

7 Stanley Hauerwas is the foremost exponent of this option. See Stanley Hauerwas, The
Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1983).
8 The foremost exponent of this option is Jennifer Herdt. See Jennifer A. Herdt, Putting on
Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); and
Herdt, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2019).
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

x Preface

of its account of morally good or right action and all the way through, albeit
never in isolation from moral philosophy.
At the same time, Barth’s theological ethics, and thus his account of mor-
ally good action, stands or falls on the viability of his claim that the norm of
human action is the grace of God to human beings in Jesus Christ. If the
claim that grace is the norm of human action is defensible, Barth’s account
of morally good action is a plausible alternative to the complementarian
solution and a promising option for theological ethics today. If it is not
defensible, theological ethics today will have to consider other alternatives
to the complementarian solution. This book argues that this claim poses
problems for Barth’s account of morally good action at nearly every junc-
ture. Its verdict is that while these problems do not invalidate Barth’s theo-
logical ethics, they do render it implausible. Nevertheless, the Conclusion to
the book proposes that its implausibility is not a reason for those who seek
direction for theological ethics today to ignore Barth’s ethics. For not only
does Barth offer one of the great answers to the question of how theology
should proceed in light of the claim of moral philosophy to independence
of theology. He also points the way to a more compelling answer than the
one he offered.
This book continues the focus of my earlier book on Barth’s claim that
God’s grace to human beings in Jesus Christ is the norm of human action.9
That book defended the claim as a salutary one, arguing that it enabled
theological ethics to resist the reduction of the good to human moral
achievements while also affirming the genuinely human character of life
lived in confirmation of grace. It commended Barth’s effort to formulate
moral concepts as theological concepts, arguing that he had returned ethics
to its proper place in dogmatics while also affirming the priority of the ethi-
cal. And on both counts it understood Barth’s ethics as a complex negation-­
within-­affirmation of modernity that serves as a model for theological
ethics today.
In contrast, this book holds that Barth was equally concerned to formu-
late theological concepts as moral concepts, presenting dogmatics as ethics.
It argues that his effort to do so failed due to insuperable problems with the
claim that grace is a moral norm. And it suggests that rather than taking
Barth’s engagement with modernity as its model, theological ethics would
do better to retrieve an approach to moral norms that Barth and his

9 Gerald McKenny, The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010).
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Preface xi

modern predecessors had left behind. Yet this book also credits Barth with
making the first move of the retrieval by reasserting the prerogative of the-
ology to articulate moral norms with the assistance of philosophy. In the
end, the retrieval may lead theological ethics away from Barth. But without
him it may never have been undertaken in the first place.
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Acknowledgments

This book owes much to the individuals, institutions, and publishers that
have supported it and have provided occasions for me to present portions of
it. Special gratitude is due to Tom Perridge, an extraordinary editor whose
frequent words of encouragement over several years motivated me to per-
sist with the project, and to Nigel Biggar, who was willing to consider
another volume on Barth’s ethics for the Oxford Studies in Theological
Ethics series, which had already been graced by his own landmark study.
Gratitude is due also for the opportunities provided by the University of
Koblenz-­Landau Conference on The Ethics of Responsibility, the University
of Chicago Divinity School Religion and Ethics Workshop, the Princeton
Theological Seminary Annual Barth Conference, the University of St
Andrews Ethics Seminar, the Karl Barth Society of North America, the
University of Aberdeen Conference on The Freedom of a Christian Ethicist,
and the University of Notre Dame Moral Theology Colloquium. I am grateful
to Jürgen Boomgaarden, Brian Brock, Layne Hancock, George Hunsinger,
Michael Le Chevallier, Martin Leiner, Michael Mawson, Bruce McCormack,
William Schweiker, Daniel Strand, and Alan Torrance for these opportunities
and to the members of the audiences whose questions and comments are too
many to recall but too considerable not to mention. I am also grateful to the
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. for permission to include in this book, as
Chapter 7, a revised version of “‘Freed by God for God’: Divine Action and
Human Action in Karl Barth’s Evangelical Theology and Other Late Works,” in
Karl Barth and the Making of Evangelical Theology: A Fifty-­Year Perspective,
edited by Clifford B. Anderson and Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2015), pp. 119–38. In this connection it is also appropriate to
acknowledge prior versions of material in this volume that has now been
substantially rewritten. An earlier version of the Introduction and first two
sections of Chapter 1 was published under the title of “Ethics” in The Oxford
Handbook of Karl Barth, edited by Paul Daffyd Jones and Paul T. Nimmo
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 482–95. An ancestral version of
Chapter 6 may be found in “Karl Barth’s Concept of Responsibility,” in ‘Kein
Mensch, der der Verantwortung entgehen könnte’. Verantwortungsethik in
theologischer, philosophischer und religionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive,
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

xiv Acknowledgments

edited by Jürgen Boomgaarden and Martin Leiner (Herder-­Verlag, 2014),

pp. 67–93.
Gratitude is due as well to many people who have influenced the argu-
ments and interpretations of Barth that appear in this book. Layne Hancock
(who also prepared the index), Jimmy Haring, Jennifer Herdt, and Frederick
Simmons graciously read and commented on portions of the manuscript in
progress, and the final version benefited from their wise suggestions. The
book has also benefited from conversations with Matthew Anderson, Neil
Arner, Jesse Couenhoven, Carl Friesen, John Hare, George Hunsinger,
Willie James Jennings, Cambria Kaltwasser, Joseph Lim, Bruce McCormack,
Paul Nimmo, Jean Porter, Frederick Simmons, Jeffrey Skaff, Hans Ulrich,
William Werpehowski, Andrea White, and Derek Woodard-­Lehman. I also
mention with gratitude the two anonymous Oxford University Press refer-
ees who carefully and thoughtfully read the penultimate version of the
manuscript. I should not neglect to invoke in this connection the standard
proviso that all remaining defects and deficiencies are to be charged to my
account.
Karl Barth’s Moral Thought is my second book on Barth’s ethics, and I
owe it to the reader to explain why I was not content to allow my first book,
The Analogy of Grace, to stand as my final word on the topic. One reason is
that, like any author, I regretted my failures of omission. Why had I not
provided a full account of the command of God in Barth’s ethics, as John
Hare gently asked me, or of Barth’s concept of responsibility? I am pleased
to report that this book has filled these gaping lacunae. But omissions alone
would not have necessitated another volume. A more adequate reason for
undertaking a second inquiry concerns an imbalance I now perceive in the
first one. In my determination to correct what I saw as a tendency in
Protestant thought and church life, whether on the right or the left, for ethi-
cal convictions to develop independently of theology and then to subject
theology to themselves, I focused in the first book on Barth’s re-­inscription
of ethics in dogmatics. Yet ethics can be carried out from within dogmatics
only to the extent that dogmatics is capable of taking the form of ethics—a
capability which the first book simply presupposed. The viability of this
return move, from dogmatics to ethics, is the focus of this book, which thus
redresses the imbalance left by the first book. Striking the balance on such a
crucial aspect of Barth’s ethics seems to me to be a sufficient reason for con-
tributing another book to the topic. However, the major reason for not
remaining content with the first book is that in the ten or so years since its
publication I have changed my mind on the viability of the fundamental
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Acknowledgments xv

claim of Barth’s ethics, which is that God’s grace in Jesus Christ is the norm
of human action. The Analogy of Grace endorsed this claim as a promising
one for theological ethics today. In contrast, Karl Barth’s Moral Thought
shows how this claim poses problems for Barth’s ethics at every turn and
concludes that it should not be taken up by the field today. This reassess-
ment implicates not only Barth’s ethics, but also his theology more gener-
ally, and it affects not only the interpretation of his ethics but also its
significance for the field of theological ethics, as he called it, or Christian
ethics or moral theology, as it is more commonly called today. It seemed,
therefore, to call for another book, and my final debt of gratitude is to the
University of Notre Dame for providing the intellectual and material setting
in which I have been able to devote a not insignificant portion of two
decades to the study of Barth’s ethics.
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Contents

Abbreviations xix
1. Karl Barth’s Theological Ethics 1
2. The Command of God as a Moral Norm 25
3. The Command of God as a Morally Binding Norm 52
4. The Continuity of God’s Commands 78
5. Hearing God’s Command 108
6. Responsibility and the Moral Subject 126
7. Divine Action and Human Action 151
Conclusion 174

Bibliography 189
Index 195
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 24/06/21, SPi

Abbreviations

CCCC Karl Barth. “The Christian Community and the Civil Community.” In
Barth, Community, State and Church: Three Essays by Karl Barth with an
Introduction by David Haddorff. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2004.
CD Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics, volumes I–IV. Edited by Geoffrey
M. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–69.
CL Karl Barth. The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV/4, Lecture Fragments.
Translated by Geoffrey M. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981.
E Karl Barth. Ethics. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. New York: Seabury
Press, 1981.
EET Karl Barth, Einführung in die evangelische Theologie. Zürich: Evangelischer
Verlag Zürich, 1962.
ET Karl Barth. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Translated by Grover
Foley. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963.
GF Karl Barth. “The Gift of Freedom.” In Karl Barth, The Humanity of God.
Translated by Thomas Wieser. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1960, pp. 69–96.
GL “Gospel and Law.” In Community, State, and Church: Three Essays by Karl
Barth with a New Introduction by David Haddorff (Eugene: Wipf and
Stock, 2004.
ICR John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill
and translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Library of Christian Classics, vol.
XX. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.
KD Karl Barth. Die kirchliche Dogmatik, vier Bände. Zollikon-­
Zürich:
Evangelischer Verlag Zürich, 1945–67.
PD Karl Barth. “Political Decisions in the Unity of Faith.” In Karl Barth,
Against the Stream: Shorter Post-­War Writings, 1946–52. Edited and trans-
lated by Ronald Gregor Smith. London: SCM Press, 1954, pp. 147–64.
PET “The Problem of Ethics Today, 1922.” In Barth, The Word of God and
Theology. Translated by Amy Marga. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2011.
PTNC Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background
and History. London: SCM Press, 1972.
RWB Immanuel Kant. Religion with the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other
Writings, 2nd edition. Edited and translated by Allen Wood and George di
Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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 An air pilot and the field of broken wings

NERVE ENOUGH
By Richard Howells Watkins

The time was when the T. M. O. Transportation Co. occupied a proud

position in the latest infant industry—aerial passenger carrying.
The T., who was Jim Tyler; the M., Burt Minster; and the O.,
Delevan O’Connell, each had a plane of his own. The company
leased a field on the edge of a sizable little city and erected hangars.
No less than three mechanics labored to keep the ships in the air.
The three partners had a bank account and a growing clientele
among the more progressive members of the community. They had
carried doctors to patients, ministers to congregations and judges to
court. Yes, undoubtedly the T. M. O. Transportation Co. was the peer
of any aeronautical outfit in the country.
As Del O’Connell put it, in one of his prophetic moods—
“The day will come when T. M. O. means as much in this country
as C. O. D.”
That was rather strong, perhaps too strong, for not three days
later, quite without reason, Del’s motor threw a connecting rod clean
through the crankcase. In the consequent forced landing in a pasture
some distance from the field, he cracked two struts of his landing
carriage in a successful effort to save the wings.
 FALLS THREE THOUSAND FEET;
LIVES
was what the morning paper shouted to the city at large, and the
growing clientele shriveled like a violet on a griddle, and the bank
account was not slow in following it. Of course Del O’Connell hadn’t
fallen an inch; he had merely glided down without motor; but how are
you going to explain that to a headline-reading public. It worried him,
however, that the cracking of two struts should split their little
business to its foundations. And he prophesied no more.
At last the T. M. O. Transportation Co. loaded itself into the two
good ships remaining, left two of the mechanics behind and departed
for fresh fields.
At another town, smaller than the first, they had pitched their tents
and taken a field—by the month. The hard work of building up
reputation in a business generally considered the apex of the risky
was begun again. They carried hundreds of passengers in safety.
Not once did one of the pilots yield to the desire for a jazz ride and
tailspin a ship or even roll it over once or twice. The strict
aeronautical aristocrats consider such antics in commercial flying
equivalent to the employment of a puller-in outside the store in the
retail clothing business.
Prospects were good, though the company was not yet
prosperous. Then, one morning when Burt Minster took off alone to
test-hop his ship, he banked a bit too much just after leaving the
ground and came down in a side-slip that completely washed out his
plane and left him in the wreckage with a split ear and a bad
headache.
That reduced the T. M. O. Transportation Co.’s assets to Jim
Tyler’s ancient training-ship. They moved on, minus the last
mechanic. They were no longer an organization with a fixed base, a
reputation and a bank. They had descended in the world to the low
estate of gipsy fliers, winging hither and yon, picking up such
business as presented itself and landing in more cornfields than in
airdromes.
Yes, they learned about flying from those cornfields—more than a
pilot will ever know who always has four hundred yards or so of
neatly groomed turf in front of him to set his ship down on, but it
didn’t help their self-esteem any.
And in Burt Minster’s big head grew the conviction that if he
hadn’t side-slipped his bus in that silly way, the company wouldn’t
have dropped so low in the scale. He had made them aeronautical
hoboes.
The day arrived when an offer came from the Baychester Fair for
a stunt-flying, wing-walking, parachute-dropping exhibition. The three
partners grasped it eagerly. Stunting a ship, walking around on wings
and fuselage with a desert of space under you and dropping
overboard with only thin silk between you and the next world are all
hazardous propositions, but not nearly so hazardous as consistently
going without food. It was hard on their pride, of course, for they
remembered the time, only days behind them, when no money
would have tempted them to descend so low as to indulge in thrillers
to drag a crowd into a fair grounds. They were—had been—in the
transportation, not the Desperate Desmond, business.
The contract was couched in terms that permitted them to kill
themselves without incurring the animosity of one Jenkins, manager
of the fair, provided that they did it in a spectacular and public
manner. In return for this concession, they extracted sufficient cash
from Jenkins to buy two parachutes and three square meals.
And here they were, in an old shack within the mile track of the
Baychester Fair Grounds on the evening before opening day, with
discord rampant in their ranks, and threatening to blow the company
into its three component parts.
At one end of the rickety table sat Delevan O’Connell, a slender,
animated young man. His wiry body was so short that he was
compelled to lean forward on his elbows in order to raise his angry
blue eyes above the two brand new parachute packs on the table
and focus them on the big form of Burt Minster. Burt scowled back at
him.
“Oh, shut your traps, both of you,” growled Jim Tyler, bestowing
an impartial glare on his two partners. “What difference does it make
which of you does the first jump?”
 The gist of the trouble was this: Both O’Connell and Minster felt
responsible for the straits in which the company found itself, and
therefore each man aspired to go over the side in the new
parachutes. Now a chute jump is nothing much; but when you
haven’t made one before, and haven’t even a man alongside you
who has and knows something about the sensation and the harness,
it is somewhat lacking in dullness.
Delevan O’Connell was swift to answer Jim Tyler’s question.
Already the discussion had gotten well within the bounds of plain
speaking.
“It makes this much difference,” he snapped, keeping his eyes
fixed on Burt, although he spoke to Jim. “The first jump must not be
botched.”
“And therefore you must make it!” exclaimed Burt Minster, with a
great laugh.
Del O’Connell flared up.
“I can not have this outfit broken up because this great oaf lacks a
little nerve at the crucial moment.”
Burt Minster leaned backward in his chair to give his chest room
for the discharge of another roar of mirth.
“Why, you poor insect, you, I’m only about twice your size, but
I’ve three times your grit, at least.”
Jim Tyler thumped Del O’Connell on the back in time to halt the
fiery little man’s response.
“It isn’t nerve but nerves that both of you have,” he asserted
emphatically. “You’re both worried about those crashed ships, and
you both want to take the first risk, in consequence.”
The truth does not belong in an argument. This theory of their
conduct was drowned in a combined shout of protest, but Del
O’Connell was a bit faster on the tongue than Burt.

“I’ll make that first jump; I’ve got to!” he cried, springing to his feet
and thumping a quick fist on the parachute packs. “You can’t trust
this fellow, and if he bungles it, we’re gone!”
 “I’ll not bungle it,” retorted Burt Minster stubbornly. “And as for
nerve, I’ve more nerve than he has language, which is some.”
Jim Tyler slumped wearily against the side wall of the shack and
waited for the argument to subside.
“I stand ready to prove you a liar in any way you want to pick,”
Del O’Connell declared heatedly.
Burt Minster did not answer at once. His face reddened at the
challenge, but his eyes, as they dwelt upon the parachutes, were
merely thoughtful. Jim Tyler plunged into the lull.
“Since none of us has ever gone over, perhaps we’d better
rehearse a jump this evening, before we try it on the crowd,” he
suggested, in the hope that action would halt dissension.
But Burt Minster had by no means given up the controversy. He
had merely been planning.
“This Jenkins who is running the fair intimated to-day that he
might raise the ante if we pulled something particularly spectacular
the first day,” he said slowly. “And we need the money, if we’re ever
to get back where we started. Well, I have a scheme that’ll settle this
nerve question once and for all, and give us a big lift toward buying
another plane as well.”
“Out with it, then,” snapped Del O’Connell. “I’m willin’ already.”
Burt Minster laid a hand on the parachute packs.
“We have two of them, and we planned that the jumper should
wear both, as is customary. Well, instead of that, we’ll both jump, you
and I, at the same time.”
“And what would that prove?” snorted Del.
“I’m not through yet,” Burt rebuked him. “We’ll announce the thing
as a race to earth, the man landing first winning. You see, you don’t
have to pull the rip-cord that opens the parachute the minute you
leave the ship. You can fall free—an army expert fell almost two
thousand feet before he opened his ’chute—”
Del O’Connell’s eyes glinted.
“’Tis not a bad idea at all,” he admitted, and looked upon Burt
Minster with less rancor. “I like it fine.”
“Wait a minute,” interposed Jim Tyler. “You mean you’ll both jump,
and let yourselves fall a quarter of a mile or more? Why, that’s the
craziest—”
“And the man who pulls his rip-cord last wins, for he’ll land first,”
Del O’Connell explained. “As good a test of nerve as ever I heard
of.”
“Well, you can fly yourselves, then, for I’ll not have a hand in it,”
Jim Tyler announced firmly. “It isn’t necessary for you two to kill
yourselves to prove you’re fools. I’ll believe it now.”
His statement made no impression on his partners. This was no
sudden quarrel. Each, feeling guilty, was consequently touchy, and
doggedly set on doing his utmost to retrieve their misfortunes. And
from this attitude it was only a short step, in the ragged state of their
nerves, to an open conflict over the issue of courage—or any other
issue about which they could contend.
“Well, Jim,” said Burt Minster at last, as Tyler continued to stand
his ground unswervingly, “there’s another plane here at the fair, you
know. That fellow will take us both up if you won’t.”
Jim Tyler gave in at that, for he saw that his opposition to the plan
was only making them more eager to try it. Secretly he nursed the
hope that next day would bring them back to rational behavior.

But the opening hour of the fair found them still fixed in their resolve
to carry on perhaps the strangest duel of nerve that had ever been
devised. The three partners kept apart, since talk only led to
acrimony, and each at his post of observation watched the crowds
gathering.
They came in battered tin automobiles, and they came on foot,
and they came in ancient horse-drawn vehicles, from Baychester
County and from the county across the Baychester River which
flowed past the Fair Grounds. Jim Tyler’s airworn but still airworthy
Burgess training-plane was the center of a milling mob, for
Baychester was not so sophisticated as some of its neighbors, and a
flying machine was still an object of doubt and an object of awe. The
ropes about it strained under the pressure of the curious, and the
voices of the guards who reinforced the ropes grew hoarse and
querulous. And word of the race to the ground through the thin air
spread through the murmuring crowds.
 The time of the flight came.
“Now boys, be sure and give us a good treat,” Jenkins, a stout,
harassed, badge-encrusted gentleman instructed, as he bustled up
to the shack wherein the partners had come together again.
“You’ll get it,” returned Burt Minster grimly.
“Two of them,” promised Del O’Connell, buckling the harness of
his ’chute about him, and taking a final glance at the dangling rip-
cord and the ring attached to it.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” the official declared, and dashed
away.
At the plane the three men waited, while space for a takeoff in the
infield was cleared of spectators. Jim Tyler warmed up his motor,
and then, throttling down, left the cockpit and confronted his
partners.
“If you’re set on going through with this fool thing I suppose I’ll
have to stand by,” he said briefly. “Where are you jumping from—
wing or cockpit?”
“Since we’re not pulling the rip-cords at once we might as well
jump from the cockpit,” said O’Connell. “You can signal to us better
from there and it will look more spectacular.”
“That suits me,” replied Burt Minster curtly.
“I won’t be able to get this bus up over six or seven thousand feet
with the weight of three men in her,” Jim calculated. “Suppose we
make it five thousand, to be sure?”
“A mile is plenty, since it’s going to be a sprint,” Del O’Connell
said, with a chuckle. “Though of course,” he added, looking sideways
at Minster, “one of us may not do much sprinting.”
“Speak for yourself,” growled the other man. “You’ll probably
starve to death before you get to the ground.”
“Remember, when I turn and put up five fingers, get ready,” Tyler
broke in hastily. “And when I nod, jump! One from each side. And
jump hard, so you’ll clear the tail.”
“Right,” assented Del O’Connell eagerly, and Burt Minster nodded
agreement.
The infield was clear at last. With a final glance at the fastenings
of their harness and the rip-cords that would release the parachutes,
the two men silently climbed into the rear cockpit. They wedged
themselves into the narrow seat. Then both turned automatically and
studied the direction and force of the wind, as revealed by the
whipping flags on the grandstand.
Jim Tyler gave the ship the throttle. Bouncing and lurching, it
charged into the wind, the propeller flickering as it cut the air and
flung it back upon the tense faces of pilot and ’chute jumpers. Far
across the infield the plane raced. Finally the wings took the burden
from the rubber-tired wheels. The ship, with a final jolt, parted
company with the ground, hung poised above the grass, and began
its upward climb.
Though it was an old story to them, the two men in the rear
cockpit looked downward, each upon his side, and the plane climbed
in great circles above the fair ground below. The green of the
countryside prevailed, but the brown of the oval racetrack cut
through it, and just outside this ellipse was a speckled band of many
indistinguishable colors that is the indication of people in masses.
Beyond that, behind the cigar-box grandstand, stretched a tightly
packed section of black and gray-black, where the automobiles of
the crowd were parked. Booths and buildings, gay with bunting,
displayed their tiny square outlines in regular patterns around the
ground.
And then, as the plane rose higher, the fair grounds contracted
until they were a mere detail of the landscape below—the great
green and brown squares and oblongs, with larger irregular patches
of woodland, interspersed here and there by tracts of well-watered
pasture land, of a lush green. Across it all, as if dividing all the world
into two parts, ran the almost straight course of the Baychester river.
Del O’Connell and Burt Minster at just the same time turned their
attention from the earth to the back of Jim Tyler’s head. They were
approaching their mark and both sensed it, although there was no
altimeter in their compartment.
The motor labored on, and both men thrust feet out straight, and
moved shoulders tentatively, as if to drive away any incipient
stiffness that might hinder action in that one swift leap into space.
Both were entirely at home in the air, as seamen are at home on the
water, but neither had ever gone out, deserting their craft for the
impalpable element in which it swam.
Suddenly Jim Tyler turned a grim face toward the rear cockpit and
raised his left hand, with fingers outstretched. Five thousand! For an
instant little Del O’Connell and big Burt Minster turned and looked at
each other. Determination was imprinted in the lines of both
countenances, and together they squirmed to their feet in that
cramped compartment, standing full in the buffeting stream of air
flung back by the whirling propeller. Del O’Connell, with an agile
twist, got one foot up on the rim of the cockpit and gripped the edge
with both his hands. His head turned forward, and his eyes fixed
themselves on the stern face of the pilot.

Burt, a little slower, slung a foot over his side of the machine, and
with one hand fumbled for the ripcord and dangling ring at the end of
it. Tyler nodded.
Del O’Connell, with a quick spring, brought his other foot up out of
the cockpit and, clinging with his hands, crouched on the edge of the
fuselage. His legs bent more sharply for the leap that would carry
him far out into space.
But just then the eyes of Jim Tyler caught a sudden flash of white
from the pack on Del’s back. The next instant the great silken
parachute whipped out of its confining envelop. Del’s rip-cord had
fouled on something inside the cockpit, and his eager jump to the rim
had jerked it.
The great spread of cloth billowed open instantly and whisked
backward in the grip of the wind. For just an instant Del, entirely
unconscious of what had occurred, held his place on the fuselage.
Then, like a stone from a catapult, he was whipped off his feet and
flung toward the tail of the racing plane.
The open parachute swept into the tail assembly. The
tremendous force of the wind ripped it from skirt to vent as it caught.
Shroud lines parted like threads. Then the silken cloth wrapped itself
about elevators, and several of the shrouds that did not snap
became entangled over the point of the balance of the rudder.
 O’Connell’s whirling body struck the tail of the machine. Then it
swept past, dropping out into space. But the remaining shroud lines
were securely held by the rudder. O’Connell’s fall was checked by a
bone-jarring jerk. His body dangled below the tail of the plane,
swaying in the rush of the wind.
The plane wavered in the air, its flying speed dropping fast under
the resistance of the silken cloth whipping backward from the tail
assembly, and the drag of the man’s body swinging behind. Jim Tyler
opened the throttle full, and thrust the stick forward for a steep glide.
The elevators responded. They had been unhurt by the lashing
parachute. The nose of the plane turned earthward; its speed
increased.
The sudden catastrophe had come before Burt Minster had gone
over the side. He drew back in the cockpit and stared over at the
figure of Del O’Connell, dragging behind the plane by the precarious
strength of a few unsevered shroud lines. As he watched, he caught
sight of the white face of his partner, and saw that O’Connell, dazed
by the suddenness of the accident and his whip-like snap from the
cockpit, was just coming to a realization of what had occurred.
Jim Tyler turned and stared backward, too, and then the eyes of
Jim and Burt met. Speech was impossible in the fury of the motor’s
roar, but their eyes appealed to each other for help—for some way
out. The plane was diving sharply earthward; to check that dive
meant losing control of the ship; not to check it meant to crash at
terrific speed into the ground. There was no way of getting O’Connell
back into the ship; that was utterly impossible.
That communion of eyes lasted but a brief second; then both men
turned despairingly to the doomed man trailing behind the plunging
plane. They, too, were doomed in that headlong dash, but somehow
their plight seemed as nothing compared to his.
O’Connell had not lost his senses. They perceived that with both
hands he was fumbling, working at his right hip. Even as they
watched, his hand went to his left side in the same peculiar
movement. Then they comprehended.
O’Connell was unbuckling his harness. Already he had unclasped
the snap buckles that fastened the heavy webbing straps about his
thighs; now but one more buckle remained—the one across his
chest. He did not look toward the plane; his whole attention was
absorbed in his task, exceedingly difficult in that lashing wind,
dangling there in space at the end of the cords. But in an instant he
would no longer be dangling. The ship would be saved—at a price.
Jim Tyler watched, paralyzed by the horrible fascination of the
thing. In another instant O’Connell would have cast himself off from
the plane—and from life. His dry throat framed at last an inarticulate
sound of protest at the sight of that sacrifice. The wind swept it away
unheard.
Burt Minster, too, was watching. The breast buckle came apart.
Del O’Connell was free of the harness. He hung there by his hands,
and his face turned briefly toward them. A strained, twisted grin was
on it.

A pain shot through Jim Tyler’s shoulder; it was a blow from Burt
Minster’s heavy fist. The big man was squatting on top of the
fuselage.
“Right turn!”
His voice blared in the pilot’s ear, audible even above the thunder
of the motor. Jim obeyed automatically. The plane swerved sharply
to the right.
As the machine swung around, O’Connell’s body whipped
sidewise, no longer directly behind and below the tail. In that instant
Burt Minster leaped out into the air, all the strength of his powerful
muscles concentrated in the thrust of his legs. His body, its
momentum aided by the rush of air, shot through space. He crashed
like a plunging bull into the lean, small body of Del O’Connell.
The two men dropped together as the long arms of Burt wrapped
themselves about his partner.
The plane disappeared instantly from their view; they plunged
downward in a free drop, locked together, face to face. Air was all
about them; the thunder of the machine died away in their ears.
Beneath, the countryside was slowly expanding, opening up before
them like a magically blossoming flower.
“R-r-r-r-rip-cord!” roared Burt Minster. His own arms tightened
their clutch on Del O’Connell until the little man’s breath was
squeezed out of his chest. But even before Burt had spoken the
quick right hand of Del was wriggling downward, between Burt’s
shoulder and his own, toward the release ring. He found it. He
pulled.
Burt Minster’s breath followed Del O’Connell’s out of his body as
an iron band tightened across his breast; his thighs were squeezed
as if a boa had wrapped his constricting merciless folds about them.
Del felt a repetition of that shock that had hurled him from the
fuselage.
Burt emitted a sound, half expiration, half grunt. His parachute
had opened.
It spread above them like a shield. The country below ceased its
eerie expansion. Burt Minster’s grip about Del O’Connell’s chest
relaxed slightly, and the smaller man breathed again—deep, lung-
distending mouthfuls of sweet air. There was no longer any rush of
wind or roar of motor; nothing but a gentle, lulling sway from side to
side under that great canopy of silk.
Burt Minster spoke first.
“These things are supposed to handle up to four hundred pounds,
so I guess we’re all right,” he remarked, with an effort at a casual
tone.
Del blinked.
“If you’ll loosen up on those arms of yours, I’ll be able to get a grip
myself,” he answered. They adjusted their positions, and Del took
some of his weight from his hands by fastening his belt about Burt’s
harness. They continued to drift downward. The sudden cessation of
hubbub and speed made this gentle movement dreamlike.
Del O’Connell cleared his throat—and cleared it again. Finally he
muttered:
“That stuff about nerve, Burt—I’m a liar of the first water. Nerve?
You’re nothing else.”
“I saw what you were doing, yourself,” mumbled Burt Minster,
equally shamefaced and uncomfortable. “That certainly took guts,
Del.”
“I’m glad to be out of that mess,” said Del fervently. “Look! Here
comes Jim!”
 Jim it was, and he was not above but below them. He was
climbing fast, and it was plain to see that he had complete control of
the ship. As they craned their necks toward the ascending plane he
banked sharply, and went circling under them, waving his hand
toward the tail. Nothing but a few tatters of silk and several shroud
lines trailed from the control surfaces of the tail assembly. Jim had
dived his encumbrance into ribbons.
With the plane whistling around them, they were wafted
downward almost directly over the fair grounds. A gentle wind was
drifting them toward it, for Jim had calculated well before signaling
for the jump. The earth was coming upward now with greater speed,
as their horizon drew in upon them. No longer could they survey half
the county.
Legs dangling, they waited. Past the eastern end of the racetrack
they drifted, and then, suddenly, the ground thudded up against their
feet, and down they went in a heap together. The parachute slipped
sideways, and lay billowing on the ground.
“We finished together, Del. It’s a dead heat,” said Burt Minster,
climbing to his feet and lifting the smaller man with him.
“Dead enough,” answered Del O’Connell emphatically. “But I’ve a
hunch this last little stunt has broken our run of bad luck, Burt. See!
Here comes Jenkins on the run, and I’m crashed if he hasn’t got his
checkbook in his hand!”

THE END

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 30,

1925 issue of Adventure magazine.
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NERVE
ENOUGH ***

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