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The Word of God as Possibility and Philosophical Ethics
A self-aware theology which bears strongly in mind its objective and scientific nature will be the very last to set itself its own task in such a way as to deny all other sciences, to view them as impossible, or even to discredit them as less valuable, and to condemn them from its own standpoint to a mere appearance of existence under the suspicion of pagan ungodliness. Theology does not really need to safeguard its own rank among the other sciences by a frenzied posture of absoluteness or by allotting to the others roles which it regards as less valuable in relation to its own. If Paul in Philippians 3:4ff. regarded all else as refuse in order that he might win Christ, it should be recalled that he did not say this against the usual intellectual arrogance of the children of the world but against the much more dangerous spiritual arrogance of Pharisaism. He certainly did not want to replace Jewish Pharisaism by a Christian and, more specifically, a theological Pharisaism. A theology that is set on its own feet can unreservedly acknowledge the justification and even the equal justification of other sciences. Human thought is necessarily shown its limits by the particular object of theology, by the Word of God. It is [reminded] how conditioned it is. It is thus liberated from the illusion of self-justification. It is also fundamentally liberated for an understanding of other tasks whose objects cannot be compared with this object, the object of theology, but which as human tasks, set for men by other spheres of human ends alongside the church, are to be tackled by men with the same seriousness and in the same weakness as theology displays in discharging its own office, so that they do not really fall behind the task of theology in worth. God’s Word does at any rate tell man also that he is a man, i.e., that he is a creature committed to different human ends and as a thinker to different objects. He who has learned from God’s Word what hard, the very hardest, objectivity is, cannot possibly—according to the principle that he who is faithful in big things will also be faithful in little things [cf. Luke 16:10]—fail to take other objects seriously, and no less so even though this object cannot be mentioned in the same breath with them. |
This recognition of nontheological sciences by theology cannot extend only to the positive sciences. If it lies in the nature of the human search for truth that in contrast to the positive, object-oriented sciences which are demanded by the various ends of human life, there should also be the disinterested self-reflection and self-understanding of thinking man without an object, namely, philosophy, theology will say, not last of all but first of all, that this is there by fundamental right. Or is theology to let itself be overtaken by natural and historical science in perceiving that man, who inquires into objective truth in the positive sciences, must always become a primary question to himself? Will not the seriousness of “know thyself,” which stands at the beginning of philosophy, be especially and with a very different urgency perceived by this positive science, in which man is confronted by God’s Word, than in those in which commitment to the object is accompanied by forgetfulness that knowledge without knowledge of knowledge is no knowledge? How can this be forgotten in theology with its commitment to this object and how can philosophy not be recognized and even demanded by it? |
Naturally it is a very definite philosophy, not that of a particular school or tendency, but one determined by its presupposition, that will be demanded by theology and acknowledged by it to be justified, to be equally justified. We have already said that the concept of a Christian philosophy, like that of a Christian theology, cannot be determined by any special material principle or any special epistemological principle or any special fervor—otherwise the Christian element in it would again be understood as a possibility at man’s disposal. It can be determined absolutely only by the knowledge of the Christian element, the Word of God, that precedes its self-reflection (which always in itself observes the limits of humanity). Its self-reflection will always be determined by this knowledge. This type of philosophy, no matter what philosophical school it might follow, will be distinguished primarily from every non-Christian philosophy by its awareness that in practicing that reflection it cannot say the last word that solves the question of man but that the question can be put in merely penultimate words only after and as the last word has been and is spoken. On the presupposition of the answer that has been given, not by theology or the church but by God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, it cannot evade but has to broach the real question, the problem of man’s questionability in his real life-situation. In this regard it is no less but more real philosophy than a non-Christian philosophy which betrays itself constantly by not staying with the question of man, but at some point, even if it be in a little apotheosis of the question, moving on to an answer, propounding a final reality in an absolutizing of thought or thinking or even thinking man, and thus pacifying both itself and man, so that instead of a philosophy it becomes a theology, albeit a pagan one. |
Christian philosophy, which starts by hearing God’s Word, can wait. It knows, as theology must also know, that the final reality cannot be posited by man as a means to answer himself and pacify himself. It sees that the egocentricity of all human attempts to posit a final reality is an error, or what theology would call a sin. Factually, of course, it is unable simply to get rid of the error, just as theology cannot get rid of the sin. Hence it cannot get by without a thesis, and as philosophical ethics it cannot get by without positive concepts such as goodness, value, purpose, duty, virtue, freedom, or idea. Without these it could only say nothing at all or pass over from self-reflection to proclamation, to theology (and then the “know thyself” would not be discussed as it ought to be). If, however, it performs its reflection in the form of self-reflection, as though the principle and reality of the good were man himself, or were in man himself, it realizes that this is not so, for it recognizes the limits of humanity and is thus aware that all such positings are provisional and relative and simply point to the good whose principle and reality are not really man and are not really in man. It takes and presents what is posited as a possible and not the real answer to man’s questions as to the goodness of his conduct and in so doing it is the science which first raises the question in all its seriousness. |
It cannot indeed view the good other than as obedience. An action is obedience, however, when its goodness obviously lies not in doing it or in doing it in a particular way but in doing what is commanded because it is commanded, only that being obedient ⌜which is done according to the command.⌝ It has perceived that that man is a liar and a ghost who by means of self-reflection, self-understanding, and self-responsibility wants to tell himself what is good. It is a summons to the real man who is addressed and contradicted in all the glory of his egocentricity, who may begin to speak but cannot finish, whose speech about himself can have truth only as broken speech, as a confession of its brokenness. It is a summons to the I which no longer thinks it can master the claim that encounters it, or that it can misuse this claim to strengthen itself—the last and greatest triumph of pagan philosophy—but which is set aside by this claim and only thus can find its true basis. It is a claim to responsibility in which man recognizes and confesses that he himself always falls short of what is required and is justified, not on account of his achievement, but only in the decision of obedience for him who requires it and for what is required. |
It is to be noted that philosophy cannot issue this summons by itself, representing and activating the reality of the Word and confronting the I of man with the Thou that lays this claim to him. Not even theology can do this, nor the proclaiming church, nor any man. Only God the Lord himself reads ethics in this sense ⌜and not either the philosopher or the theologian.⌝ Nor is it even the office of philosophical ethics to proclaim this reality as such. In this regard it differs from theological ethics. It shares with the church and theology the task of simply confronting man’s unprofitable and dangerous recollection of himself with the recollection of