In this first section we have to make it clear in what specific sense we have to deal with ethics in the sphere of theology.
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It is not self-evident that there is in theology a particular discipline which bears the name of ethics and addresses itself to the ethical task. It is not self-evident that in theology we have to pursue ethics as well as dogmatics. The question whether and in what sense this is to be established encyclopedically does not merely belong, as E. W. Mayer (Ethik, p. 192)7 rather disparagingly thinks, “to the ancient inventory of theological and ethical literature,” but as it is answered it is so significant for the character and direction of the handling of the discipline that we cannot avoid discussing it. We shall first learn and test the answers that have been given to the question in the past.
There has not always been theological ethics. It is true that in hints and directions on detailed and concrete problems, in exegetical and homiletical excursuses, at specific points in dogmatic investigations and presentations, the question of the goodness of human conduct has been raised and answered by theologians from the very first. ⌜Yet well into the second century there seem to have been obstacles to making this an independent question in theological thought and utterance. It is worth noting that one of the first from whom we have particular ethical tractates was the later Montanist Tertullian.8 And the author of the supposedly oldest Christian ēthika or collection of Christian rules of life was none other than the great theoretician and organizer of Eastern monasticism, Basil of Caesarea.⌝9 As a systematic work, kept separate from the development of the Christian creed, we may then mention Ambrose’s writing De officiis (c. 391).10 A feature of this is that in title, form, and content it is fairly close to the pagan classical model of Cicero. Another feature is that it offers direction not so much for the Christian as such and in general but rather for the future clergyman, so that we find in it (I, 73f.) such admonitions as that one should not dawdle along the street with the slowness of a transported idol nor rush along it with the speed of a startled deer. The presupposition on which an independent Christian ethics arose is obviously the concept of the possibility and reality of an evident human holiness, of a perfect Christian life which could be demanded from and ⌜realized by all Christians according to Tertullian and by the clergy and especially the monks according to Basil and Ambrose,⌝ and then of the need to describe this holiness and supply its norm. It is materially significant that in doing this there was a by no means arbitrary compulsion to follow the familiar channels of thought of Aristotle and Stoicism, ⌜a resultant phenomenon represented by the name of Gregory the Great, who could expressly work the four cardinal virtues of antiquity into his exposition of the Book of Job.⌝11 |
Medieval Christian ethics may be found in brief, not in a textbook, but in the famous rule of Benedict of Nursia (the end of the sixth century)12 or at the end of the Middle Ages in the Imitation of Christ ascribed to Thomas à Kempis.13 Even a comprehensive and purely scientific account of ethics such as one finds in the second part of the Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas under the title of “Human Acts in General and in Particular” unambiguously has its basis in Aristotle and its crown and true scope in the religious life in the narrowest sense of the term, namely, the life of the clergyman and the monk.14 The tendency to raise the ethical question independently is undoubtedly present in Thomas but in him, too, there still seem to be obstacles to doing this, for in fact he presented it within and not outside his dogmatics and in subordination to the dogmatic inquiry. |
Luther with his Sermon on Good Works (1520)15 could hardly be claimed as a reformation example of independent ethics; and Calvin’s strong interest in the ethical question did not prevent him from embodying in his dogmatics his discussions of the regenerative significance of the Holy Spirit and faith and of the law and obedience to it.16 ⌜From Melanchthon, it is true, we have two versions of a philosophical ethics (1538, 1550, Corp. Ref. 16),17 but in his case, too, the Loci leave us in no doubt as to the systematic place of theological ethics.⌝18
It was the followers of the reformers who began gradually to see things differently. The Lutheran Thomas Venatorius with his Three Books on Christian Virtue (1529)19 may be mentioned first. He belonged to Nuremberg, was obviously influenced by Andreas Osiander, and thus described faith as the love, power, and virtue imparted to man in Christ (W. Gass, II, 107).20 Calvinism became Puritanism on the fatal slope on which Lambert Danaeus in Geneva wrote his Three Books on Christian Ethics.21 The Lutheran George Calixt followed him with his Epitome of Moral Theology (1634).22 In the seventeenth century, the age of the Jesuits in the Roman Catholic church, the Pietists in the Protestant church, the coming of Cartesianism into philosophy with its rediscovery of the creative role of the human subject, and the development of the baroque in art with the Faustian fervor of its will to express itself, interest in Christian morality begins to acquire a new importance among Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians. ⌜The dogmaticians now protest what the reformers had taken for granted, namely, that theology is not just a theoretical but also a practical discipline, indeed, that it is even more practical than speculative (F. Turrettini, 1, 7, 15),23 and as the result of many discussions⌝ the distinction between dogmatic and moral theology begins to be gradually accepted. |
In the eighteenth century moral theology unmistakably took over the lead. In Schleiermacher we again find doctrinal and moral teaching brought into a certain balance and mutual relation, but it should not be overlooked that this took place in the framework and on the basis of a fundamentally superior discipline which Schleiermacher again calls ethics,24 a view which a hundred years later is confirmed and readopted with some modifications by W. Herrmann25 and E. Troeltsch.26 By means of some simple comparisons K.I. Nitzsch and later Martin Kähler and H.H. Wendt, also in the nineteenth century, renewed the attempt to integrate ethics into dogmatics after the pattern of Thomas and the reformers.27 More typical of the thrust of the age was the reverse attempt of R. Rothe, in accordance with his theory of the gradual disappearance of the church in the state, to swallow up dogmatics totally in ethics apart from assigning to it the miserable role of presenting a theology of the confessional writings.28 It has yet to be seen—I have in mind E. Hirsch on the one side29 and F. Gogarten and R. Bultmann on the other30—whether the renewal of interest in the ethical task and determination of theology resulting from the Kierkegaard renaissance of the last ten years will not finally work itself out in the direction of R. Rothe.31
So much, then, for our sketch of the history of the problem. For the relative newness of the independence of ethics in theology and the ensuing tendency to swallow up dogmatics in it points to a problem. Assuming that in some sense and context theology has to discuss the goodness of human conduct, is it appropriate or advisable to do this in the form of a separate discipline from dogmatics?
First, the negative accent which dogmatics acquires with this distinction, as though it did not deal also and precisely with the goodness of human conduct, could very well mean an emptying out of the task of dogmatics against which the latter ought to appeal in all earnest. It was an insidious move when already in the middle of the seventeenth century theologians began to speak of the two “parts” of theology: first the knowledge (agnitio)