To understand things in this way is our first task. It will logically take the form of three questions concerning the occurrence, the context, and the significance or force of this commanding. This is the totally different material which in our first chapter must replace the doctrine of philosophical principles so beloved in modern theological ethics.
Obviously, however, this can be only the foundation, the general thesis. How shall we then proceed? When the reality of the divine commanding is presupposed, it has to be made clear how far this commanding applies to man, how far the divine decision about man takes place. The question suggests itself whether, when justice is done in the foundation to the concern for a theocentric orientation of ethics, it might not be appropriate to adopt as a framework for the necessary detailed demonstration one of the schematisms already mentioned, e.g., individual and social ethics, or the rise and development of the Christian life, or will, knowledge, and feeling. Might it not be in place to pick up the concept of personality and character on the one side, or sociological concepts on the other, as empty vessels into which the Christian element is to be poured? Might not the task of theological ethics have to be sought in a Christian illumination of the human microcosm and macrocosm, in a Christian answer to the questions of human life? If it is only a rather headstrong concern for a strictly theological orientation that stands in our way, or if it is in the interests of an attainable clarity to do so, why should we not yield, or at least be able to yield, and put our further questions in terms of the concept of man, especially if the possibilities of putting them in terms of the sanctifying Word of God seem to be already exhausted? But this is not at all the case. |
It is no mere matter of formal interest in a theocentric theology. If it were, then we could take a different course as Schaeder has long since shown that he can do.15 The simple question is whether theological ethics would really act even in the interests of man and his questions about life if it were to give up its birthright and abandon the standpoint which it has the task of making fruitful in the field of ethics. If it has rightly understood itself and its principle, the sanctifying Word of God understood as event, can it wrest the word from this Word and begin to speak about the Word in all kinds of applications? Must it not take seriously the fact that this Word itself will see to its application and above all that it wills to be heard to the very last? So far as their Christian illumination is concerned, will not personality and science and the state and any other conceivable area of human action fare much better if we give the word to the Word, if we let things work themselves out naturally in these areas as the Word is allowed to speak according to its own logic? It cannot serve the cause of clarity if we begin with the concept of the divine command and then try to continue with thoughts about the individual and society or the unrolling of a psychological schema or the variation of a table of Christian duties and virtues. For our basis of ethics can hardly serve as a basis for this, and the concept of the divine command as the basis of ethics can only be obscured by entry upon divergent paths of this kind. Nor are we compelled to take such paths as though we had said all that can be said about the Word of God when we have asserted its actuality. So far we have not even approached its content, so how can we have said all that there is to say about it? Precisely in relation to man, the theme of our present investigation, does it not have a specific and very rich content in virtue of which it may perhaps grasp and comprehend the whole problem of human conduct in a much more powerful and profound way than if we venture to move on to those applications and illuminations with the help of an alien schematism attached to it?—a content that we have simply to allow to speak if we are to come in the easiest and most appropriate way to the path that is needed for a perspicuous and truly exhaustive presentation of our theme. |
What, then, does God’s Word say? It is the Word of the divine creation, the divine reconciliation, and the divine redemption. One may also say that it reveals the kingdom of Christ the Lord as that of nature, grace, and glory. One may also say that it speaks to us about our determination for God, about the event of our relation to God, and about the goal of our fulfillment in God. These are not accidentally or arbitrarily chosen standpoints. As may be seen, they are the great orientation points of the whole course of Christian dogmatics. To build on them in an auxiliary discipline like ethics, which deals with the whole and recapitulates the whole, obviously makes sense. On the basis and presupposition of the development of the concept of God, which might be a better parallel for our first chapter of ethics than dogmatic prolegomena, dogmatics shows (1) how God the Lord is the Creator of all that is not himself and therefore [the Lord] of man, the epitome of all that he himself [is] not. It regards the world and man from the standpoint of this original divine lordship which is understood to be original and therefore absolutely superior to man’s own being. It shows (2) how God the Lord is the Reconciler of man, the God of the convenant whose faithfulness cannot be broken but only set in a clearer light by man’s unfaithfulness, whose majesty in face of man’s sin proves itself to be all the more powerful as grace. It thus sees man from the standpoint of this divine lordship which is maintained in spite of the reality of man. It sees him in the paradox of one who has fallen but is still upheld, who is an enemy but is still loved, who is a rebel and yet still a servant. It shows (3) how God the Lord is the Redeemer of man, the First who is also the Last, whose kingdom comes, the kingdom of the rift that has been bridged, of the new heaven and the new earth, of glory. It thus views man eschatologically, i.e., from the standpoint of this eternal divine lordship that has been promised and fulfilled to man as one who lives in time, who waits and hastens onward within a positive limit that is full of hope, who is both overshadowed by death as the removal of everything in this world and also illumined by the resurrection of the dead in which everything will be made new. It is only in appearance that we are indicating herewith three parts or steps of truth or knowledge. For in reality, just as in the doctrine of the divine triunity, which is the secret root of this order, here, too, the one total thing is said three times, and Jesus Christ, who is the very Word of God, stands at the controlling center of the thought of reconciliation, and is thus also the presupposition and quintessence of the thought of creation and the thought of redemption.
We are obviously in no position, however, to waive this threefold movement of our Christian knowledge or to state this thrice-determined Christian truth in a single word. The one Word is God’s own Word which we cannot speak but can only hear spoken to us. And what we hear is threefold. This is why we cannot make of it a system. If it were a system, we should have to be able to trace it back to one word. A system has a central point or cardinal statement from which all the rest can be deduced. The reality of God’s Word is, of course, the central point on which everything turns here. We, however, have no word for this reality. Naturally we can and must recognize it as such but we have only words relating to it and not a word for it. ⌜Exclusive of the statement “God is the Lord,”⌝ these words are creation, reconciliation, and redemption. They do not denote a system but a way. We have certainly not sought this way but found it with unfathomable contingency