The favorite distinction between individual and social ethics, which may be seen in varying degrees in Hofmann, Martensen, Haering, Kirn, and Mayer,13 may pass as possible and meaningful. (Schlatter in his Ethics, 1914, pp. 53f. had some noteworthy things to say against it, and it would hardly be commended to us by a good philosophical ethics.) In any case, however, one has to say that it carries with it the self-evident presupposition that Christian conduct is simply a special instance of conduct in general, so that if the correlation of individual and society is constitutive for the latter it must be for the former too. Similarly Schlatter’s derivation of Christian moral teaching from will, knowledge, feeling, and life, refreshing though it is alongside the rather arid dispositions of the Ritschlians, entails a simplistic adoption of what is perhaps a correct and perhaps also an arbitrary definition of human conduct as the schema for a presentation of Christian conduct.14 |
All these divisions and classifications are nontheological to the extent that according to the same methods (even presupposing that they are right) they could obviously apply just as well to a Buddhist, Socialist, or Anthroposophical ethics as to a Christian ethics when the same concepts are filled out in different ways. What we miss in them is a specific congruence with the specific matter at issue here, namely, the Christian understanding of the goodness of human conduct. To explain this do not things have to be said that cannot be said in the framework of a concept of human conduct in general? Is not a distinctive mode of understanding essential to this understanding? Are not severe truncations of this understanding unavoidable if we take it for granted, as is plainly done all the way from Schleiermacher to Schlatter, that we may enter and follow paths that can obviously lead us to other places too? Does there not avenge itself here the fateful distinction between ethics and dogmatics, the fateful shift of focus from God to man? |
If that distinction and shift are right, then in ethics man himself, or in this case the problem of human action, will have to be the measure of all things, the theme, and the framework within which the inquiry must take place. On this assumption it may and must be, as is clearly presupposed in those divisions and classifications, that man has to pose certain questions: How can he become and be a Christian? What does it mean to act as such? What is meant by Christian willing, knowing, and feeling? What does Christian conduct imply for human aspirations in life and culture, for society, state, and church, for marriage and family, for art and science, for work and recreation? Theological ethics supposedly has to answer these questions which are not raised responsibly in decision vis-à-vis the divine command that has really been issued. It supposedly has to say something to man when he himself can say the one thing that has to be said only with the act of his decision vis-à-vis the Word of God that has really come to him. At this point there can be no agreement.
Undoubtedly, as may abundantly be seen in the authors quoted, many profound, true, serious, and fruitful things, even things that call for decision, may be said in an ethics that replies in this way to man. But no less undoubtedly a basically untheological ethics which replies in this way to man throws a veil by its whole attitude over the true whence and whither of a theological ethics, over its relation to the Word of God which is really published—a veil which can only be regarded as impossible when the damage it does is perceived. Why should theological ethics accept the invitation to take up the position of a center of information on every possible subject? Why should it not put its own questions instead of having put to it from outside questions which theology does not really have to answer and concerning which it does not have, and out of its own resources obviously cannot fashion, any guarantee that philosophical ethics, to whose sphere of competence these questions plainly belong, can even acknowledge them to be correctly put? Why should it let itself be forced into the position and attitude of having to answer when even the most profound and true and serious and fruitful things it can produce are from the very first put on the wrong track and cannot be heard as a summons to decision, or can be heard as such only in spite of the untheological beginning? |
If, however, theology is fundamentally the science of Christian proclamation, then it does not have to reply to man’s questions in its statements but man himself is questioned by these statements. Its theme is God’s Word, not the Word of God that is claimed by man but the Word that claims him. It certainly claims man in the whole problem of his conduct. But the problem and the contribution that Christianity has to make to it cannot be the theme. It cannot let its questions be framed by the problem, just as it is a perversion if Christian proclamation does this. It cannot derive and divide them and achieve its basic concepts thus, unless it is content to be merely an inferior replica of philosophical ethics. Justice will be done to the special problem of Christian ethics which must occupy us here when we do not regard the Christian element as just a predicate but as the subject, as is appropriate in a discipline auxiliary to dogmatics; when we do not let human conduct as such be the center, the beginning, and the end of theological ethics, but allot this position instead to man’s claiming by the Word of God, to his sanctification, to God’s action in and on his own action.
2
If this determination of the way that lies ahead of us is right, the further question arises how we are to handle and structure in detail the task that is thereby set for us. A first step is fairly simply and self-evidently shown to be necessary. The Word of God must first be indicated and presented as the subject of the claiming of man, as the command that sanctifies him. We believe that in theological ethics we have to seek and find the goodness of human conduct in the event of an act of God himself toward man, namely, the act of his speech and self-revelation to him. Man does good acts when he acts as a hearer of God’s Word, and obedience is the good. Thus the good arises out of hearing and therefore out of the divine speaking. One may also put it in this way. Man does good acts when he is led by God to responsibility. To act in and out of responsibility to God is to act in a committed way. In this commitment the good is done. Thus the good arises out of responsibility and therefore out of the divine speaking to which man responds with his acts. One may also put it in this way. Man does good acts when he acts as a Christian. Theologically this means when he acts as one whom God encounters in his revelation in Christ through the Holy Spirit, so that his action takes place in this encounter or confrontation. To act in this confrontation is to act as one who is addressed. In this being addressed the good is done. Thus the good arises out of the encounter and therefore out of God’s speaking and the encounter in which the confrontation takes place. This is fundamentally the theological answer to the ethical question. Its characteristic feature is that in asking about the goodness of human conduct it understands man as one who is addressed by God and it thus points away from man to God and his speaking, or, more accurately, his commanding. The good in human conduct is its determination by the divine commanding. We shall have to consider more closely what this determination implies. But at all events a theological ethics can seek the good only in this determination of human conduct and therefore only in the divine commanding which produces it. It cannot seek it in human conduct itself and as such. Why not? For the moment we can only state the answer. The concept of the God who confronts man in absolute supremacy, the fact that God speaks to man and man is spoken to by him, is here taken so seriously that the question of the goodness of human conduct can be answered only with a reference to him who alone is good [cf. Mark 10:18], with an assertion of the absolute transcendence of him who is good, except that recognition that the God who alone is good is the one who commands, as an act relative to us and not as a transcendent being, means that his immanence, a highly actual immanence, is also perceived, and therewith, but only therewith, a positive answer to the ethical question is made possible. |
Thus the claiming and sanctifying of man by God, and therefore the goodness of his conduct, really lies in the reality of the divine commanding. How far this divine