Where the Word of God is heard, there this self-reflection takes place, and there the other man must be heard. His voice is the one that is missed in all pagan philosophy. Philosophy which will hear this word cannot possibly want to be a pagan theology positing ultimate reality. The claim of the fellowman, however, relates to God’s claim as possibility does to reality. The same Word of God is heard in both. In its reality the Word of God obviously cannot be the object of human self-reflection, but only the object of God’s self-revelation and therefore the object of faith and obedience, and in faith and obedience the object of proclamation. Men can only serve when and where God really speaks. But this human service is the possibility corresponding to the divine reality, posited with it, ⌜and grounded in it.⌝ Because the reality of the Word is not without this possibility, Christ is not without his church. Service of the Word is the human activity which is the essence of the church. The possibility of God’s Word coming to us is the fellowman who is commissioned by God and who serves his Word. This applies not merely to ecclesiastical office in the narrower sense but to the church as such. This is the new meaning, actualized in Christ, of the fellowman as brother and neighbor. The fellowman can bring God’s Word to us when God wills to speak his Word ⌜through him.⌝ We have to receive him because of this possibility. |
Philosophy cannot go beyond this possibility that is posited with the reality of God’s Word if it is not to go beyond the Word of God itself, if it is to be true to its own task, if it is not to become theology. It can no longer summon man to self-responsibility except as it teaches him to understand himself as standing in the responsibility which he owes to his fellowman when the latter is set before him as the bearer and representative of the divine Logos. That he is this belongs to another book and is not as self-evidently and directly true as Gogarten, for example, seems to assume.24 ⌜It becomes true whenever God causes it to become true.⌝ Philosophy can as little demonstrate the Thou that captures my I for God as theology can demonstrate the Word of God itself. Both can only bear witness, and the power of their witness is the power of the free God. Nevertheless, philosophy can bear witness when and so far as it has as its presupposition real knowledge of man, knowledge of the church, and knowledge of the fellowman who draws man to responsibility. With this presupposition it does not bear witness to the law but to the gospel and the grace which, of course, encloses the law. For it is grace if we have the fellowman who with his claim represents the divine claim, just as the law is also established hereby.
Undoubtedly we are on different levels of intellectual activity when theology speaks about God but not without reference to the brother, and philosophy speaks about the fellowman for God’s sake, when the reality of God’s Word on the one side and its possibility on the other side is the object of investigation, when the same Word of God is the theme here and the presupposition there. These differences are necessary differences in human conceptuality. As such they are rightly the principle of a sober distinction between theology and philosophy. But they are not more than that. They are not the principle of a distinction of rank and value. Philosophy is not ancillary to theology. With philosophy, theology can only want to be ancillary to the church and to Christ.
§3
The task of theological ethics is that of presenting the claiming of man by the Word of God. It has to depict (1) the event of the claiming as such and then its significance for man, i.e., (2) his claiming as God’s creature, (3) his claiming as a pardoned sinner, and (4) his claiming as an heir of the kingdom of God. Under 2–4 it must consider in each case (a) the uniqueness of the ethical standpoint, (b) the normative form of the noetic basis, (c) the decisive content of the ethical demand, and (d) the fulfilment of the ethical demand.
1
In relation to the results of the work to be done in theological ethics it is obviously not a matter of indifference that we should expressly discuss first the way in which questions are to be raised and answered. The matter of finding the right way or the right division is not just a formal one. Here as elsewhere it is no more and no less than the matter of finding the right basic concepts without which one may in some circumstances live well and happily but one cannot achieve a coherent thought and understanding when they are needed. Here as elsewhere, however, the criterion whether the concepts are right or not has to be that of appropriateness to the particular theme which seems to be at issue in theological ethics.
In the light of the conclusion reached in our first two sections we no longer need to explain but simply to state by way of demarcation what lines of inquiry and consequent divisions of theological ethics we must set aside.
On the basis of the relation that we have established between theological and philosophical ethics, we regard as useless all attempts to build the former on the latter or to derive it from it. Apart from the great classical example of Roman Catholic ethics, this is the way taken by W. Herrmann, O. Kirn, E. W. Mayer, G. Wünsch, at the start De Wette, and, in the form of express apologetics, T. Haering. It leads to a twofold division: e.g., 1. Natural Moral Life and Moral Thought, 2. Christian Moral Life (W. Herrmann);1 or 1. Ethical Principles, 2. Systematic Presentation of the Christian Moral Life (Kirn);2 or 1. Moral Philosophy, 2. Moral Teaching (Mayer);3 or 1. The Nature of Morals, 2. The Nature of Christian Morals (Wünsch).4 According to what has been said already we cannot approve either the methodological subordination of Christian morals to morals in general, the independence of morals in general alongside and over against Christian morals, or the assumed superiority of a theological moral teaching that draws from a special source. Hence we must reject this whole method. |
Looking back to what has been said about the relation between dogmatics and ethics we also cannot agree with ordinary theological ethics about the actual questions which usually underlie it either with or without a philosophical substructure. According to Schleiermacher’s ingenious conception theological ethics has to speak about the “purifying” action that takes place in the discipline of church and home and also in the state, about the “disseminating” action that takes place in marriage and both extensively and intensively in the church, and finally about the “representative” action that takes place in church worship, social life, art, and play.5 According to Hofmann it is a matter of the Christian disposition and its actualization in moral action in the relation to God, in the church, in the family, in the state, and in society.6 According to Herrmann it is a matter of the rise and development of the Christian life.7 According to Kirn it is a matter of the rise and development of Christian personality on the one hand and the practice of morality in society on the other.8 According to Haering it is a matter of the new life of the Christian as personality and of the Christian life in social circles.9 According to E. W. Mayer it is a matter of moral character, the nature of Christian conduct in the various forms of action and social life, its order and structure, and finally its result, the kingdom of God.10 According to Wünsch’s not wholly clear arrangement it is a matter (1) of the nature of God, (2) of the moral outcome of experience of God, (3) of Christian character, and (4) of some residual problems, among which Wünsch places the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount!11 An original and powerful approach is that of Schlatter, for whom the four Platonic virtues of justice, truth, happiness, and strength, related to the communion of will, knowledge, feeling, and life, constitute the schema of inquiry and presentation.12 |
We cannot go along here (even with Schlatter) because, as has been shown, there occurs a distinction between theology