theology could be right in philosophy), just as it will itself decline tasks that are passed on to it by philosophy. It will not look on askance and bewail the omission of its own terminology when a philosophy of practical reason may perhaps in its own way, without ceasing to be philosophy, make fruitful instead of rejecting the superior knowledge that characterizes itself. At a single word this means the end of the glory of a theological standpoint that is safeguarded against philosophy, but theology with its direct link with the church can again draw alongside philosophy with its indirect link. If proposals for the division of roles aim at fixing the relation between a Christian theological ethics and a Christian philosophical ethics, then they might not be without importance as proposals and pointers. But the attitude of isolation, as though theology knew secrets which philosophy, to be serious philosophy, neither knows nor ought to know—this attitude must be abandoned no less than that of apologetics.
If all this and all apologetics is set aside, if theology as such relentlessly fulfills its office, then its independence is thereby ensured and demonstrated and it need not be concerned any more to assert it. If it is sure of its subject, the transcendent Word of God, it cannot be upset if the same Word of God is also in another way the subject of philosophy. The distinction that as a science of the church’s witness it sees it under the category of reality, while philosophy as the epitome of the science of man sees it and makes it a criterion under the category of possibility, has no more significance than the difference in the colors of professorial robes about which it is inappropriate to enter into a battle of prestige. The burden of diastasis is bearable if it is perceived that the true diastasis is not between theology and philosophy but between both of them and their genuine subject and that they themselves stand alongside one another in the church and must not basically or finally reproach one another. There is no place left at all for the game of Pharisee and publican with which theology finds compensation for its disparagement by worldly wisdom, or for the mysterious insistence on a special relation of theology to the good Lord, whereas only the categorical imperative remains for philosophy, for the rational man. That this should be eliminated is a not unimportant ethical presupposition for the success of theological or any other real ethics.
3
We have still to come to an understanding about a third possibility in the relation between theological and philosophical ethics—a possibility which we have not discussed so far but which historically and materially merits the closest attention before we strike out on our own. I have in mind the Roman Catholic view of the matter.
To anticipate, we must praise this view at least for seeing the error of the attitudes of apologetics and isolation and for successfully avoiding them, notwithstanding all the ambiguities on both sides, and even within the great ambivalence of the Roman Catholic system as such. One cannot fundamentally accuse this view16 of either handing over theology to a philosophy that is recognized as a supreme norm in and in spite of its secularity or of arrogantly and inopportunely setting theology at a distance from philosophy. Here philosophical morals—the human soul is by nature Christian—is resolutely claimed, not as theological, but as Christian morals. It is recognized as such. It is treated as in its own way an equal partner of theological morals, whose voice is to be heard and which is not for a moment to be neglected, although it is also not for a single moment to be given the precedence. |
Moral philosophy and moral theology are mutually related to one another, presuppose one another, and are always basically united in the person of the Roman Catholic theological ethicist, but in such a way that moral theology forms from the very first the fulcrum of the eccentric wheel and can never lose this position. The problem of the relation of the two sciences is solved by a simple but consistent establishment of two different but equally valid spheres of problems which necessarily follow one another in a specific order, moral philosophy being on the lower rung and moral theology on the upper. Willingly letting itself be taught by experience and history, moral philosophy perceives the basic principles of moral action with the light of natural reason. Yet while these are rational principles like the laws of logic, the imperative being rooted in the being of man as such, it still derives them from revelation, since they would otherwise be subject to error. Finding it to be man’s determination to glorify the Creator by his existence as a creature, and thereby to prepare himself for eternal felicity, it also finds the moral good that is to be done in the four Aristotelian virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Adapted to the rational nature of man, this is the relative good, relative, that is, to the absolute good of the divine essence which is the idea of the good. In contrast moral theology draws directly on scripture, tradition, and the source of the church’s living teaching office. It thus makes the elevation of fallen man to the order of grace its presupposition. Its task is to depict the supernatural morality which alone can actually lead man to this goal, to unfold the positive Christian moral law and its implied duties, and at the peak to develop the three theological virtues of faith, love, and hope. According to Roman Catholic teaching, grace is a higher element in life, differing from man’s natural state. Its effect is sanctification, the renewal of nature from the disruption of sin, and the elevation of nature to the mysterious image and likeness of God (Mausbach, Kult. d. Geg., II, p. 540).17 Grace does not destroy nature but annexes and perfects it. The law of the new covenant which regulates the renewal is understood from the very outset as an excellent parallel of the law of nature (p. 523). |
When faced with this construction, this bold union of Aristotle and Augustine (p. 527), which was undoubtedly intimated in the early church, developed in basic outline by Thomas Aquinas, and in the course of the centuries constantly refined by the Roman Catholic church, we do not have to compare it with the confusion of the corresponding Protestant conceptions and in this way be forced to acknowledge that it is a classical, and as, we might calmly say, one of the most grandiose achievements in this whole field. What we have to learn from it is perfectly clear. In model fashion it states (1) that the final and true presupposition of theological and philosophical ethics, seen from the standpoint of the former, has to be one and the same, namely, the knowledge of God; (2) that theological ethics cannot in any sense take its questions and answers from philosophical ethics, with which it has a common origin in the same answer of truth; (3) that it cannot recognize as ethics a philosophical ethics that either lacks or totally denies this presupposition, but in view of what will always be at least some remnants of the presupposition it must claim all ethics, not as theological, but as Christian ethics, recognizing and taking it seriously as ethics in accordance with its own presupposition; and (4) that there can be only a relative and methodological but not a material antithesis between theological ethics and a theological ethics based on this presupposition. This form and these main features of the Roman Catholic construction correspond so closely to the results of our own discussions in subsections 1 and 2 that we cannot but regard them as normative for what follows. |
Nevertheless there can also be no doubt that the same theses necessarily have a different sense for us from that which they have in Roman Catholicism. Between the Roman Catholic view and our own stands a difference in the concept of God, of man, of the sin of man, and of the grace which comes to him. On this basis the intention and the whole character of the definition of the relation between the two disciplines are materially very different for all the formal agreement. |
The Roman Catholic view of the mutual relation between moral philosophy and moral theology rests on the fundamental Roman Catholic conception of the harmony, rooted in the concept of being, between nature and supernature, nature and grace, reason and revelation, man and God. The order of obligation is built on the order of being, ethics on metaphysics, which forms the common presupposition of philosophy and theology. In spite of the fall, imitative human knowledge is fundamentally able to master true being, the supreme good, i.e., God, even though because of the fall it needs special illumination by revelation to keep it from error. The fall has so hampered the knowledge of God that usually it cannot arise without God’s grace, at least in any depth. But it has not made it impossible. There is still a relic of man’s relation by creation to God. Fundamentally, even in the state of sin, man can still
