3. The presupposition of theological ethics is to be found with I. A. Dorner and Hagenbach (Enzykl., p. 436) in the Spirit of God or Christ as the power that works in believers,9 or with Kirn (p. 3) in “the vital energy of the personality that is filled with the Spirit of God,” while the same authors find the presupposition of philosophical ethics in the moral or rational self-determination of man.10 According to Wünsch this ethics asks: “What must I do because the categorical imperative commands?” but theological ethics asks: “What must I do because God is?”11 |
4. The content of theological ethics may be found with Hagenbach (p. 435) in historically determined moral perceptions, especially in the personal divine-human manifestation of the life of the Redeemer, or with De Wette (p. 3f.) in positive laws,12 or with Kirn (p. 3) in the idea of the kingdom of God,13 whereas that of philosophical ethics is for Hagenbach the idea of moral personality which is valid for everyone who would be a rational being.14 ⌜According to I. A. Dorner the inner being, the individual personality, is the special stuff of theological ethics, whereas the universal side of ethics, social relations etc., are the special stuff of philosophical ethics (p. 22)⌝15 and so on. This is the position of diastasis. |
But is this not perhaps just as suspicious as the attitude of synthesis previously depicted? For what really happens under the sign of this ⌜more or less illuminating and⌝ ingenious antithesis? Again there obviously exists a double possibility. |
First, the intentional division of roles between the two partners is carried through seriously. The idea is that there is a serious theological ethics which in fact investigates only the conduct that arises under the rule of the Christian religious self-consciousness and in the sphere of the corresponding historical outlook, its norms being binding only for members of the church who are, of course, assumed to be believers in whom the Spirit of God is an effective force. There is also a serious philosophical ethics which can be traced back abstractly to reason and experience, which is satisfied with the idea of the moral whose final word is man’s self-determination, and which can make a claim as such to universal validity. |
We have two questions to put to this: (1) Can the theology of reason or experience or both together recognize an abstract content of truth, with universal validity, and then as theology, concerned equally abstractly with revelation or the expectorations of the religious self-consciousness, not worry about it any more but confidently commit it to its philosophical neighbor, “guarding its ancient traditions in dark caves like the condor,” as Christian Palmer mockingly put it (Die Moral d. Chrts., p. 18)? ⌜Is it really adequate as the doctrine of the cultivation of the individual personality?⌝ Is revelation the revelation of truth and the religious self-consciousness the consciousness of truth? Or are they something different, such as obscure sources of all kinds of religious notions which philosophy may confidently pass by and perhaps has to do so in a compact with theologians? Are they or are they not indispensable to the knowledge of truth? If theology is serious with its supposed knowledge of a whence and whither of all ethical questions and answers that is superior to all reason and empiricism, how can it take seriously a philosophy that lacks and even denies this knowledge? Instead of concluding with it a shameful peace should it not have the courage to call immoral a philosophical morality which is not just as much Christian morality as it is itself? |
We also ask (2) what happens if philosophy will not in the long run let itself be relegated to that airless sphere of the idea in which we theologians would like to put it? If it will not in the long run allow theologians to take from it the problem of actualization, of the concrete, of the factual situation of man, along with the problem of the transcendent presupposition of all actualization? Is it really part of the nature of philosophy that it usually takes evil, and therefore reconciliation, too lightly? (I. A. Dorner, p. 24)? If positivism and to a large extent Kantian idealism have left the sphere of this problem unoccupied, this does not prove by a long way that philosophy always does so. With what right may theologians forbid any crossing of the frontier presupposed in this antithesis? Or do they propose to greet philosophy on what they think is their own special territory with the attitude of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son? Do they secretly live by the fact that philosophy espouses the crassest Pelagianism and even atheism and by the desire that it will always be content with this so as not to make theology itself superfluous? These are the two questions that must be put to the first possibility. |
The second possibility is that the division of roles will not be meant so strictly. There is awareness here that all truth is enclosed in God’s Word and that whether it be rational or historical, secular or religious, ecclesiastical or social, it concerns theology and must be the theme of theology and cannot be accessible to philosophy either except through the same Word of God. Theology, then, does not refrain from speaking with the same universal validity as philosophy, and philosophy speaks as Christian philosophy. As a result theology loses the secret or open advantage with which it usually safeguards itself in that antithesis as though it were in a sanctuary from which philosophy is excluded. It will no longer pass on to philosophy tasks which it must itself reject as wrongly formulated, e.g., development of the false doctrine of the moral self-determination of man (as though what is wrong in theology could be right in philosophy), just as it will itself decline tasks that are passed on to it by philosophy. It will not look on askance and bewail the omission of its own terminology when a philosophy of practical reason may perhaps in its own way, without ceasing to be philosophy, make fruitful instead of rejecting the superior knowledge that characterizes itself. At a single word this means the end of the glory of a theological standpoint that is safeguarded against philosophy, but theology with its direct link with the church can again draw alongside philosophy with its indirect link. If proposals for the division of roles aim at fixing the relation between a Christian theological ethics and a Christian philosophical ethics, then they might not be without importance as proposals and pointers. But the attitude of isolation, as though theology knew secrets which philosophy, to be serious philosophy, neither knows nor ought to know—this attitude must be abandoned no less than that of apologetics.
If all this and all apologetics is set aside, if theology as such relentlessly fulfills its office, then its independence is thereby ensured and demonstrated and it need not be concerned any more to assert it. If it is sure of its subject, the transcendent Word of God, it cannot be upset if the same Word of God is also in another way the subject of philosophy. The distinction that as a science of the church’s witness it sees it under the category of reality, while philosophy as the epitome of the science of man sees it and makes it a criterion under the category of possibility, has no more significance than the difference in the colors of professorial robes about which it is inappropriate to enter into a battle of prestige. The burden of diastasis is bearable if it is perceived that the true diastasis is not between theology and philosophy but between both of them and their genuine subject and that they themselves stand alongside one another in the church and must not basically or finally reproach one another. There is no place left at all for the game of Pharisee and publican with which theology finds compensation for its disparagement by worldly wisdom, or for the mysterious insistence on a special relation of theology to the good Lord, whereas only the categorical imperative remains for philosophy, for the rational man. That this should be eliminated is a not unimportant ethical presupposition for the success of theological or any other real ethics.
3
We have still to come to an understanding about a third possibility in the relation between theological and philosophical ethics—a possibility which we have not discussed so far but which historically and materially merits the closest attention before we strike out on our own. I have in mind the Roman Catholic view of the matter.
To anticipate, we must praise this view at least for seeing the error of the attitudes of apologetics and isolation and for successfully