Spirit, it cannot evade but has to broach the real question, the problem of man’s questionability in his real life-situation. In this regard it is no less but more real philosophy than a non-Christian philosophy which betrays itself constantly by not staying with the question of man, but at some point, even if it be in a little apotheosis of the question, moving on to an answer, propounding a final reality in an absolutizing of thought or thinking or even thinking man, and thus pacifying both itself and man, so that instead of a philosophy it becomes a theology, albeit a pagan one. |
Christian philosophy, which starts by hearing God’s Word, can wait. It knows, as theology must also know, that the final reality cannot be posited by man as a means to answer himself and pacify himself. It sees that the egocentricity of all human attempts to posit a final reality is an error, or what theology would call a sin. Factually, of course, it is unable simply to get rid of the error, just as theology cannot get rid of the sin. Hence it cannot get by without a thesis, and as philosophical ethics it cannot get by without positive concepts such as goodness, value, purpose, duty, virtue, freedom, or idea. Without these it could only say nothing at all or pass over from self-reflection to proclamation, to theology (and then the “know thyself” would not be discussed as it ought to be). If, however, it performs its reflection in the form of self-reflection, as though the principle and reality of the good were man himself, or were in man himself, it realizes that this is not so, for it recognizes the limits of humanity and is thus aware that all such positings are provisional and relative and simply point to the good whose principle and reality are not really man and are not really in man. It takes and presents what is posited as a possible and not the real answer to man’s questions as to the goodness of his conduct and in so doing it is the science which first raises the question in all its seriousness. |
It cannot indeed view the good other than as obedience. An action is obedience, however, when its goodness obviously lies not in doing it or in doing it in a particular way but in doing what is commanded because it is commanded, only that being obedient ⌜which is done according to the command.⌝ It has perceived that that man is a liar and a ghost who by means of self-reflection, self-understanding, and self-responsibility wants to tell himself what is good. It is a summons to the real man who is addressed and contradicted in all the glory of his egocentricity, who may begin to speak but cannot finish, whose speech about himself can have truth only as broken speech, as a confession of its brokenness. It is a summons to the I which no longer thinks it can master the claim that encounters it, or that it can misuse this claim to strengthen itself—the last and greatest triumph of pagan philosophy—but which is set aside by this claim and only thus can find its true basis. It is a claim to responsibility in which man recognizes and confesses that he himself always falls short of what is required and is justified, not on account of his achievement, but only in the decision of obedience for him who requires it and for what is required. |
It is to be noted that philosophy cannot issue this summons by itself, representing and activating the reality of the Word and confronting the I of man with the Thou that lays this claim to him. Not even theology can do this, nor the proclaiming church, nor any man. Only God the Lord himself reads ethics in this sense ⌜and not either the philosopher or the theologian.⌝ Nor is it even the office of philosophical ethics to proclaim this reality as such. In this regard it differs from theological ethics. It shares with the church and theology the task of simply confronting man’s unprofitable and dangerous recollection of himself with the recollection of the wholly other who stands over against him, of pointing out that this wholly other himself speaks to man. For it, however, this wholly other cannot be God himself—it differs in this from the church and theology. Theology, of course, cannot proclaim the Word of God without recalling the neighbor, the brother, in whose claim upon us the Word of God comes to us. But one could not call this reminder the true task of theology. It is simply the great instrument that it uses when and so far as it is a matter of defining the Word of God as the Word that comes to us. This recollection, the changing of self-responsibility into responsibility to the Thou of the other man, is the true and concretely specific task of philosophy. To the extent that self-reflection, the “know thyself,” is at issue, the fellowman is the representative and bearer of the divine Logos who must call man away from all his dreams to reality.
Where the Word of God is heard, there this self-reflection takes place, and there the other man must be heard. His voice is the one that is missed in all pagan philosophy. Philosophy which will hear this word cannot possibly want to be a pagan theology positing ultimate reality. The claim of the fellowman, however, relates to God’s claim as possibility does to reality. The same Word of God is heard in both. In its reality the Word of God obviously cannot be the object of human self-reflection, but only the object of God’s self-revelation and therefore the object of faith and obedience, and in faith and obedience the object of proclamation. Men can only serve when and where God really speaks. But this human service is the possibility corresponding to the divine reality, posited with it, ⌜and grounded in it.⌝ Because the reality of the Word is not without this possibility, Christ is not without his church. Service of the Word is the human activity which is the essence of the church. The possibility of God’s Word coming to us is the fellowman who is commissioned by God and who serves his Word. This applies not merely to ecclesiastical office in the narrower sense but to the church as such. This is the new meaning, actualized in Christ, of the fellowman as brother and neighbor. The fellowman can bring God’s Word to us when God wills to speak his Word ⌜through him.⌝ We have to receive him because of this possibility. |
Philosophy cannot go beyond this possibility that is posited with the reality of God’s Word if it is not to go beyond the Word of God itself, if it is to be true to its own task, if it is not to become theology. It can no longer summon man to self-responsibility except as it teaches him to understand himself as standing in the responsibility which he owes to his fellowman when the latter is set before him as the bearer and representative of the divine Logos. That he is this belongs to another book and is not as self-evidently and directly true as Gogarten, for example, seems to assume.24 ⌜It becomes true whenever God causes it to become true.⌝ Philosophy can as little demonstrate the Thou that captures my I for God as theology can demonstrate the Word of God itself. Both can only bear witness, and the power of their witness is the power of the free God. Nevertheless, philosophy can bear witness when and so far as it has as its presupposition real knowledge of man, knowledge of the church, and knowledge of the fellowman who draws man to responsibility. With this presupposition it does not bear witness to the law but to the gospel and the grace which, of course, encloses the law. For it is grace if we have the fellowman who with his claim represents the divine claim, just as the law is also established hereby.
Undoubtedly we are on different levels of intellectual activity when theology speaks about God but not without reference to the brother, and philosophy speaks about the fellowman for God’s sake, when the reality of God’s Word on the one side and its possibility on the other side is the object of investigation, when the same Word of God is the theme here and the presupposition there. These differences are necessary differences in human conceptuality. As such they are rightly the principle of a sober distinction between theology and philosophy. But they are not more than that. They are not the principle of a distinction of rank and value. Philosophy is not ancillary to theology. With philosophy, theology can only want to be ancillary to the church and to Christ.
§3
The task of theological ethics is that of presenting the claiming of man by the Word of God. It has to depict (1) the event of the claiming as such and then its significance for man, i.e., (2) his claiming as God’s creature, (3) his claiming as a pardoned sinner, and (4) his claiming as an heir of the kingdom of God. Under 2–4 it must consider in each case (a) the uniqueness of the ethical standpoint, (b) the normative form of the noetic basis, (c) the decisive content of the ethical demand, and (d) the fulfilment of the ethical demand.
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