DIETRICH BRAUN
Abbreviations
| Anfänge I | Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, Part I: Karl Barth, Heinrich Barth, Emil Brunner, ed. J. Moltmann (Theol. Bücherei 17), Munich 1962, 19662 |
| Anfänge II | Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, Part II: Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten, Eduard Thurneysen, ed. J. Moltmann (Theol. Bücherei 17), Munich 1963, 19672 |
| CA | Confession of Augsburg (1530), (T.G. Tappert, The Book of Concord, Philadelphia 1959, pp. 23ff.) |
| CChrL | Corpus Christianorum, series Latina |
| CR | Corpus Reformatorum |
| CSEL | Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum |
| CW | Die Christliche Welt |
| Denz. | H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum 30th ed., Freiburg 1955 |
| EA (o), e.1. | M. Luther, Werke (Erlangen Edition), 1826ff., rev. E.L. Enders, 1862ff., (opera) exegetica latina |
| EKG | Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch |
| Ges. Vorträge I | K. Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, Gesammelte Vorträge, Munich 1924 (ET: The Word of God and the Word of Man, London 1928) |
| GuV I–IV | R. Bultmann, Glaube und Verstehen, Gesammelte Aufsätze, vols. I–IV, Tübingen 1933–1965 (ET: Faith and Understanding, vol. I, London 1969) |
| Inst. | J. Calvin, Christianae Religionis Institutio 1559 |
| KD | K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1932ff. (ET: CD-Church Dogmatics, 195–96) |
| MPG | J.P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca |
| MPL | J.P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina |
| RGG3 | Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed. |
| WA | M. Luther, Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar Edition), 1883ff. |
| ZdZ | Zwischen den Zeiten |
| ZSTh | Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie |
| ZThK | Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche |
ETHICS I
Lectures at Summer Semesters at Münster (1928) and Bonn (1930)
Introduction
§1
Ethics as a theological discipline is the auxiliary science in which an answer is sought ⌜in the Word of God to the question of the goodness of human conduct. As a special elucidation of the doctrine of sanctification it is reflection on⌝1 how far the Word of God proclaimed and accepted in Christian preaching effects a definite claiming of man.
1
Ethics (from ēthos) is equivalent to morals (from mos). Both are the philosophy of customs (Sitten). The German Sitte (from the Old German situ) denotes a mode of human conduct, a constancy of human action. In general, then, ethics or morals is the philosophy, science, or discipline of modes of human conduct or constancies of human action. As generally defined in this way, however, ethics is not yet distinguished from three other sciences: 1. The psychology of the will investigates the natural constancies of human action; 2. the study of habits, the statistics of morality, or the history of culture enquires into the same constancies as they have achieved freedom and continue freely in history; and 3. the science of law studies them as they have received the guarantee and sanction of political society. Whenever the task of ethics is undertaken as a real task, however, it is understood as one that differs from the tasks of these other disciplines. |
Custom in the sense of the ethical or moral question is something other than the congruence of a mode of conduct with a discoverable natural law of human volition and action. Even the naive identification of natural law and moral law as this may be seen in Rousseau, L. Feuerbach, and E. Haeckel does not pretend merely to describe but also lays claim upon human volition and action.2 Among these three, and even more so among the true perfecters of ethical naturalism, M. Stirner and F. Nietzsche, this identification is a matter of passionate proclamation.3 One does not preach a natural law as the identity of natural and moral law was continually preached from Rousseau to Nietzsche. Where this is preached, identification in fact obviously means predication, which means that the distinction between the two is abandoned. |
Custom in the sense of the ethical question also differs from the congruence of human action with what is ordinarily called habit, i.e., with a more or less widespread usage. Though this congruence may exist to some degree, and though an ethical trend characterized by the names of Höffding and Paulsen4 has now and then nourished the identification of the two concepts, nevertheless no one has seriously attempted to dissolve moral philosophy in the study of custom or to contest that immoral customs on the one side and the moral breach of custom on the other are possibilities with which ethics has to reckon. |
Morality in the sense of the ethical question differs thirdly from congruence with existing state law or legislation. If state law with its palpable general validity is for Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) the most pregnant expression of the constancy of human action which ethics seeks;5 if morality according to H. Cohen may try to view itself as the power of legislation;6 and if an unending affinity between morality and law is the concept of many positivistic and idealistic ethicists, no one thus far has been able to establish a simple equation of ethics and jurisprudence. |
The ethical question would be at an end, or would not yet have begun, if we really tried and were able to unite it fully with the psychological, historical, and legal inquiries to which human action is also subject. The ethical question cannot in fact be asked without some attention being paid