3. As God addresses us, he acknowledges, and we are told, that we exist in time, that we are caught up in the movement from a past through a present to a future. God’s Word presupposes that we exist in a succession of different moments. This means two things: first, that our existence is identical with itself in a flow of moments, and second, that our existence, identical with itself, moves in a flow of moments. A word spoken to us, whether it be understood by us as information, question, or command, presupposes the ability to accept, answer, and obey it, and therefore the ability at least to be the same in a before and after (e.g., the before of the question and the after of the answer) and to be the same in a before and after (e.g., in the before of the command and the after of obedience). God’s Word as such constitutes my knowledge of the reality of a movement in which I find myself, but as God’s Word it again constitutes my knowledge of the secondary creaturely character of time and therefore of my movement too. The third thing in the concept of life, then, is that life means existing in time and to that extent the life that God ascribes to me takes part in the concepts of continuity and change. In saying that it takes part, we say that immutability and actuality are qualities of God in which again his goodness allows us to participate within the limits of our creaturely reality.
4. As God addresses us, he acknowledges, and we are told, that an originality, however limited, is proper to our existence. It is not just that we are the same in a movement, the same in a movement, but that we are the same, we are in movement. We are subjects of continuity and change. God’s Word cannot be directed to an individual being that is simply the channel or functioning organ of a movement that originates elsewhere. God’s Word acknowledges that, within whatever limits, we are the origin of our movement. God’s Word as such constitutes my knowledge of my autonomy in respect also of the continuity and change in which I find myself, my knowledge that is my continuity and change, although as God’s Word, of course, it also constitutes my knowledge of the dubiousness, of the secondary creaturely character, of my originality. The fourth thing, then, in the concept of life is that my life exists where the movement of something which exists through God begins in and with itself. To that extent the life that is ascribed to me participates in the concept of freedom. It participates, for original freedom that is subject to no reservation, i.e., aseity, belongs to God alone and is loaned to us by his goodness.
Thus far concerning the relevant understanding of life in the present context. That I am alive is certainly not the only thing that I know on the basis of its being ascribed to me by the facts of the Word of God that comes to me. Yet on the basis of this presupposition I do know also that I am alive, that I exist alongside God in unrepeatable distinction and individuality, in movement, in a movement which is a predicate of the subject I which the divine Thou encounters in the divine Word and which is finally compelled by this encounter to recognize itself and to take itself seriously as an I. All this stands in the brackets and under the caveat that the Word which ascribes this to us is God’s Word, so that my life is real only within the limits of the creature. It is a created life, created out of nothing, conditioned absolutely by God’s goodness. It is of doubtful reality when see in itself, even of illusory reality when seen in its unavoidable correlation with death. It is real only in relation to the Word. It is “upheld” by the Word (Heb. 1:3) which, being God’s Word, is the eternal Word that cannot be given the lie by death. In this bracket and under this caveat it is real life.
This life of mine is obviously placed in the command of God that is issued to me, whatever it may be. God’s command concerns my conduct, my action, my decision. Necessarily embraced in my decision is the fact that I live. As God wills something from me he commands—not only, of course, but also—that I live. What this means concretely is the content of the command which he himself determines, but which will always also mean life. Life is not in itself decision. But decision is also life, my life. Decision is not made apart from the substratum of a specific life-act. Because the command relates to my decision, I cannot abstract it from this life-act or this life-act from it. I cannot regard and treat the life-act as no more than neutral material for my decision. I must see my life itself as reached and affected by the command, in the sense that I also see my life-act as such set in the crisis of the command and realize that I myself am responsible for my life-act as such. |
Really to live is necessary and good, and is obedience to the Creator. The will to live is a good will. But this cannot be an unequivocal statement because the life that we accept and will is not the divine life but our own creaturely life. The will to live is a good will insofar as I will my life in the way that the Creator to whom it belongs would have it. This means already that my will is not good just because I will my life as such. It is good if I will my life as such in this particular relation, in obedience to the Will of God the Creator. Hence this specific relation relativizes the goodness of my will to live as such. It sets it in brackets and calls it into question. We shall be on guard, then, against thinking ⌜with the ethical naturalists⌝ that those forms of human action in which it is predominantly and blatantly concerned with the activation of the will to live are abstractly good acts and their opposites are bad acts. We can only say that in regard to such acts the question arises whether they are commanded or forbidden by the command of God the Creator, whether obedience or disobedience to the divine command may be seen in them, for in their way they obviously come under this command. In relation to no acts or modes of action have we any authority to identify the reality of the divine command and of obedience to God with them, or to deny this reality to them. They impress themselves upon us, however, as a likeness of this divine reality. They are obviously a subject for reflection and, if our action stands in question, they are an occasion for our readiness, for our readiness for the command of God that judges us to the extent that it is also the command of the Creator and therefore the command of life. |
Let us recall some of the forms of human action which may be regarded as a likeness of the reality of the command of the Creator, which force upon us the question of what is commanded precisely to the extent that what is divinely commanded is also our life, and which thus demand of us reflection, watchfulness, and readiness. Naturally it is not with any claim to fullness, but only by way of example, that we shall say what has to be said throughout the rest of the present lectures. Nor will it be with the intention of developing all the problems involved in these forms of human action, but only with that of hearing in relation to them the questions that result from the reality of the divine command as this is seen specifically as the command of the Creator. Nor—an urgent warning once and for all—should our interest focus on the unavoidable concretions or the equally unavoidable personally conditioned light in which they appear here, but solely and exclusively on the light of the command itself, which it is our task to see in the likeness when we have come to the point of trying to understand the command as the command that is directed to man.
My life-act takes place every moment in the factual unity of a double event which we usually call that of the soul and the body. Never in any connection do I live for myself and others except in the totality of my being as soul and body, although never also, of course, except in the differentiation of the two as well. Both apply here: there is neither one thing nor a third. That is, I am never in any respect only soul or only body, nor am I ever in the synthesis or unity of the two beyond their duality. Materialism and spiritualism, which try to understand man one-sidedly in terms of physis or psyche,