Taken seriously, the concept “Christian,” even when applied to theology, can be no more than a pointer to the testimony: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]. The Christianity of theology does not in any way rest upon itself but upon the revelation that is its theme. In this regard it should be remembered that the revelation is God himself. But God himself is our Lord from and by and to whom we are what we are. In an absolute sense we can have the way, the truth, and the life, the Christian element, only as and to the extent that it has us. “Not that I have already attained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” The one who speaks here is not a philosopher who, as we theologians like to think, has no knowledge as such of the joyful possession of salvation. It is the apostle of Jesus Christ who in Philippians 3:12 speaks thus of that joyful possession. It is thus that the possession takes place. Knowledge of God, as it takes place, is an absolute reality on its own, distinguished by the fact that it cannot be elucidated in any of the forms of human perception even though it always takes place in such forms. It itself apprehends man, not without human receptivity and even spontaneity, but precisely not in such a way that human receptivity and spontaneity take place on the same plane as its own action and might claim to be correlative with it, so that it would then make sense to talk of a religio-psychological circle, but rather in such a way that it can only be believed by man—the same apostle would rather talk of being known than of knowing [cf. Gal. 4:9]—and witness can then be given to it in obedience (“I believe and so I speak” [2 Cor. 4:13]). |
This is how it is with the Christianity of theology. To repeat our polemic against the Roman Catholic view, it is grace. Being identical with God’s Word and therefore with God himself, it is precisely not an instrument that is put in the hand of man. It can be real only in the reality of the act of the living and true God himself. Man can only bear witness to it in faith and obedience and the power of this witness is again that of God and not of man. Bearing witness to this reality of God which reveals itself and makes itself present to us is the office of the church and of theological science in the service of the church. Seen from above, its Christianity, its relation to God’s Word, is with God, while seen from below it stands in the faith and obedience of those who discharge this ministry. On both sides this means that the Christianity of theology is divinely certain but humanly uncertain. The Christianity of theological ethics lies, then, in the reality of God’s commanding, of God’s Word so far as it claims us men and finds our faith and obedience.
Theological ethics confesses God’s revelation in Christ through the Holy Spirit. In accordance with what has been said, this obviously does not refer to the content and form and religious fervor of any confessional formula. Nor is its Christianity guaranteed thereby. It cannot itself guarantee its own Christianity. It can only confess by its act its faith and obedience and its knowledge of God’s revelation. It can only bear witness to the Christian element. It does this when as theological ethics it presents the reality of the Word of God sanctifying and claiming man as God’s command. When it has done this which is its duty to do, then as a discipline auxiliary to dogmatics it must confess with all dogmatics that it is an unprofitable servant [cf. Luke 17:10]. The truth itself must then impress the seal of truth on its presentation. The Christian element must then speak for itself. But the truth is free and the Christian element is free, for the truth and the Christian element are not distinct from God. God, however, is the Lord who in the church and theology as well as his whole creation can be served only by those who are appropriated without being able to boast of having appropriated to themselves what is worth boasting about.
If we have first put theology in its proper place so far as its Christianity is concerned, it should not be hard to see that ⌜under the same conditions⌝ a Christian philosophy cannot be impossible. Again we do not seek its Christianity, or the Christian confession that we have expressly assigned to it in the thesis,20 in the content or form of fervor of a confessional formula. Indeed, we must explicitly say of philosophy in distinction from theology that if it is to be science in the strict sense it must fundamentally refrain from confessing whenever this possibility arises. We commend the celebrated passages in which even the sober Kant could not help preaching in his own way about the starry heavens above and the moral law within.21 But in such passages, even he, not to speak of someone like Fichte, transgresses the limits of philosophy. For the theme of philosophy in contrast to theology is not the Word of God that is to be proclaimed but thinking, willing, and feeling man that is to be understood. Philosophy would be guilty of shifting into another genre and neglecting its own proper function if more than very occasionally it were to become proclamation of the Christian element, which is the business of the church, and of theology within it. |
Philosophy is, of course, called to bear witness to Christian truth, which is truth itself. Nor is it called to do so, indeed, at a lower level than theology. Within the church there is no human activity that is not called to bear witness to Christian truth alongside the church’s proclamation, and again not at a lower level than this. All human action that has God’s Word as its presupposition is witness in this broader and no lesser sense. This applies to philosophy as a self-understanding of man in which man is not seen apart or in eminent abstraction from God’s Word, but in determination by it as the man who confronts and is apprehended and seized by its claim and promise; in which he is not seen and understood in general but specifically in the sphere of the church of pardoned sinners which has been instituted by Christ and is united in him; in which it is constantly noted that man belongs to God, not by nature and as a general truth, but on the basis of God’s manifested grace, and that in ethics he is thus to be measured by the standard of what is heard from God. A Christian philosophy of this kind will not have to utter a single statement of explicitly Christian content or speak any dogmatic or biblical word, just as Christian art does not have to produce only portrayals of Christ, oratorios, Christian novels, and the like. Knowing the witness of the Bible and dogma, it simply has to fashion its own statements according to the laws of its own subject, and in this way, with this indirectness, it will bear witness to the Christian element. It has a theme which expressly differs from that of theology. What is the theme of theology is for it merely (though what does merely mean here?) a presupposition. Yet this does not make it a secular discipline. A discipline is secular only to the extent that it departs from that knowledge. Theology itself can be secular. No discipline is secular that has that knowledge as its presupposition. |
One may well ask whether there can be a philosophy that shares with theology the latter’s final word. What are we to say to this question? Above all that on the basis of theology one has the right to put it only when it is directed with even greater sharpness to what is now called theology in our midst. There is Christian philosophy in the same sense as there is Christian theology, justified not by its works but by faith. The presence of Christianity in philosophy, too, is ultimately a question of the grace of God. Knowledge of the presupposition of a meaningful understanding of man by himself is in the last analysis a being known rather than a knowing and it again rests with God whether he will give the power of witness to the witness of a philosophy grounded in this knowledge. We are saying precisely the same thing when we call the presence of Christianity a question of faith and obedience. |
In relation to this side of the matter, to the human decision in which the grace of God can be seen, we may and must put to all philosophy the question whether it realizes how strongly “it is drawn into a deeper responsibility by the existence of the Christian revelation” (Knittermeyer, D. Phil. u. d. Chrt., p. 7), that “from the moment when a truth was proclaimed in Palestine which ousted the Greek Logos from its place of power in western culture and revealed a new salvation to man” it has been confronted by a force “of which we know that it has power over life and death and can kill off philosophy” (pp. 16f.). “The reality is now fundamentally different. World history is no longer world judgment by the idea but it stands in the reality of the Word which is proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and which means God and the neighbor” (p. 27). “In the place of man and reason comes Jesus Christ the Lord and the faith that frees” (p. 27), an experience which philosophy cannot evade “any more than the whole life of man can evade the experience that the Word of Jesus Christ is proclaimed as the Word of salvation” (pp. 30f.). “To be able to maintain the claim of philosophy at all it is necessary continually to relate it afresh to man in his real