must safeguard ourselves. Alongside apologetics, there has commended itself to theology, in the attempt to maintain its own existence, the method of isolation, diastasis rather than synthesis. This does not come alone, but forms a kind of expansion, continuation, and crowning of apologetics in much the same way as war is the continuation of politics with other means. In spite of apologetics, theology has never so fully lost its recollection of the uniqueness of its task and activity that it does not somewhere suddenly rediscover its self-awareness, that the proof of the philosophical basis of its task and activity is not in some way completed in the proof of its independence, its distinction, its special character as compared with the task and activity of the philosopher. What is thought to be the need to give an account to philosophy would have succeeded all too well if its result were that theological ethics ceases to be something other than philosophical ethics. It obviously cannot lead to this, as it came close to doing in, e.g., W. Herrmann,5 but when the theologian has validated himself to the philosopher, he must now for good or ill show also at some point that he is not a superfluous figure, a mere alter ego of the philosopher. With some fervor a little superiority is now maintained in relation to the philosopher, a little extra and better knowledge, and some attempt is made to define this. To this extent we have to do here with a second attitude of theological ethics that differs from the first. Covered by the linkages, theological ethics must and will demonstrate its uniqueness, particularity, and independence. What needs to be said in this regard may be summed up in four trains of thought. |
1. With E. W. Mayer (p. 191) the so-called Christian religious consciousness may be laid down as the source of theological ethics and with F. Schleiermacher its task may be defined as the description of the mode of action that arises out of the dominion of the self-consciousness with a Christian determination (Chr. Sitte, p. 33). Instead of the Christian religious consciousess De Wette (Lehrbuch, p. 2), Kirn (Grundr. d. E., p. 2),6 and Wünsch (Theolog. Erh., p. 64) can also speak of revelation. In contrast, De Wette, I. A. Dorner (Chr. Sittenlehre, p. 21),7 and E. W. Mayer name reason as the source of philosophical ethics, Kirn names experience, and Wünsch names reason and empirical experience. In all these cases what is obviously meant is not the self-consciousness with a Christian determination. |
2. The place of theological morals, as Schleiermacher in particular sharply emphasizes (pp. 33f.), is the church understood as the fellowship of those who share a Christian disposition. The ethical subject of theological ethics according to Wünsch (loc. cit.) is the man who has been born again by conversion and to whom the knowledge of God has been imparted by illumination. Hence according to Schleiermacher (p. 29) theological ethics lacks a “universal historical tendency.” Its relation to philosophical ethics is to be defined as follows: What Christian morality requires is binding only for Christians; philosophical ethics makes a general claim, for it seeks to be binding for everyone who can raise himself up to perception of the philosophical principles from which it derives (p. 2). According to Wünsch the ethical subject of philosophical ethics is the rational man.8 |
3. The presupposition of theological ethics is to be found with I. A. Dorner and Hagenbach (Enzykl., p. 436) in the Spirit of God or Christ as the power that works in believers,9 or with Kirn (p. 3) in “the vital energy of the personality that is filled with the Spirit of God,” while the same authors find the presupposition of philosophical ethics in the moral or rational self-determination of man.10 According to Wünsch this ethics asks: “What must I do because the categorical imperative commands?” but theological ethics asks: “What must I do because God is?”11 |
4. The content of theological ethics may be found with Hagenbach (p. 435) in historically determined moral perceptions, especially in the personal divine-human manifestation of the life of the Redeemer, or with De Wette (p. 3f.) in positive laws,12 or with Kirn (p. 3) in the idea of the kingdom of God,13 whereas that of philosophical ethics is for Hagenbach the idea of moral personality which is valid for everyone who would be a rational being.14 ⌜According to I. A. Dorner the inner being, the individual personality, is the special stuff of theological ethics, whereas the universal side of ethics, social relations etc., are the special stuff of philosophical ethics (p. 22)⌝15 and so on. This is the position of diastasis. |
But is this not perhaps just as suspicious as the attitude of synthesis previously depicted? For what really happens under the sign of this ⌜more or less illuminating and⌝ ingenious antithesis? Again there obviously exists a double possibility. |
First, the intentional division of roles between the two partners is carried through seriously. The idea is that there is a serious theological ethics which in fact investigates only the conduct that arises under the rule of the Christian religious self-consciousness and in the sphere of the corresponding historical outlook, its norms being binding only for members of the church who are, of course, assumed to be believers in whom the Spirit of God is an effective force. There is also a serious philosophical ethics which can be traced back abstractly to reason and experience, which is satisfied with the idea of the moral whose final word is man’s self-determination, and which can make a claim as such to universal validity. |
We have two questions to put to this: (1) Can the theology of reason or experience or both together recognize an abstract content of truth, with universal validity, and then as theology, concerned equally abstractly with revelation or the expectorations of the religious self-consciousness, not worry about it any more but confidently commit it to its philosophical neighbor, “guarding its ancient traditions in dark caves like the condor,” as Christian Palmer mockingly put it (Die Moral d. Chrts., p. 18)? ⌜Is it really adequate as the doctrine of the cultivation of the individual personality?⌝ Is revelation the revelation of truth and the religious self-consciousness the consciousness of truth? Or are they something different, such as obscure sources of all kinds of religious notions which philosophy may confidently pass by and perhaps has to do so in a compact with theologians? Are they or are they not indispensable to the knowledge of truth? If theology is serious with its supposed knowledge of a whence and whither of all ethical questions and answers that is superior to all reason and empiricism, how can it take seriously a philosophy that lacks and even denies this knowledge? Instead of concluding with it a shameful peace should it not have the courage to call immoral a philosophical morality which is not just as much Christian morality as it is itself? |
We also ask (2) what happens if philosophy will not in the long run let itself be relegated to that airless sphere of the idea in which we theologians would like to put it? If it will not in the long run allow theologians to take from it the problem of actualization, of the concrete, of the factual situation of man, along with the problem of the transcendent presupposition of all actualization? Is it really part of the nature of philosophy that it usually takes evil, and therefore reconciliation, too lightly? (I. A. Dorner, p. 24)? If positivism and to a large extent Kantian idealism have left the sphere of this problem unoccupied, this does not prove by a long way that philosophy always does so. With what right may theologians forbid any crossing of the frontier presupposed in this antithesis? Or do they propose to greet philosophy on what they think is their own special territory with the attitude of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son? Do they secretly live by the fact that philosophy espouses the crassest Pelagianism and even atheism and by the desire that it will always be content with this so as not to make theology itself superfluous? These are the two questions that must be put to the first possibility. |
The second possibility is that the division of roles will not be meant so strictly. There is awareness here that all truth is enclosed in God’s Word and that whether it be rational or historical, secular or religious, ecclesiastical or social, it concerns theology and must be the theme of theology and cannot be accessible to philosophy either except through the same Word of God. Theology, then, does not refrain from speaking with the same universal validity as philosophy, and philosophy speaks as Christian philosophy. As a result theology loses the secret or open advantage with which it usually safeguards itself in that antithesis as though it were in a sanctuary from which philosophy is excluded. It will no longer pass on to philosophy tasks which it must itself reject as wrongly formulated, e.g., development of the false doctrine of the moral self-determination of man (as though
