In relation to the results of the work to be done in theological ethics it is obviously not a matter of indifference that we should expressly discuss first the way in which questions are to be raised and answered. The matter of finding the right way or the right division is not just a formal one. Here as elsewhere it is no more and no less than the matter of finding the right basic concepts without which one may in some circumstances live well and happily but one cannot achieve a coherent thought and understanding when they are needed. Here as elsewhere, however, the criterion whether the concepts are right or not has to be that of appropriateness to the particular theme which seems to be at issue in theological ethics.
In the light of the conclusion reached in our first two sections we no longer need to explain but simply to state by way of demarcation what lines of inquiry and consequent divisions of theological ethics we must set aside.
On the basis of the relation that we have established between theological and philosophical ethics, we regard as useless all attempts to build the former on the latter or to derive it from it. Apart from the great classical example of Roman Catholic ethics, this is the way taken by W. Herrmann, O. Kirn, E. W. Mayer, G. Wünsch, at the start De Wette, and, in the form of express apologetics, T. Haering. It leads to a twofold division: e.g., 1. Natural Moral Life and Moral Thought, 2. Christian Moral Life (W. Herrmann);1 or 1. Ethical Principles, 2. Systematic Presentation of the Christian Moral Life (Kirn);2 or 1. Moral Philosophy, 2. Moral Teaching (Mayer);3 or 1. The Nature of Morals, 2. The Nature of Christian Morals (Wünsch).4 According to what has been said already we cannot approve either the methodological subordination of Christian morals to morals in general, the independence of morals in general alongside and over against Christian morals, or the assumed superiority of a theological moral teaching that draws from a special source. Hence we must reject this whole method. |
Looking back to what has been said about the relation between dogmatics and ethics we also cannot agree with ordinary theological ethics about the actual questions which usually underlie it either with or without a philosophical substructure. According to Schleiermacher’s ingenious conception theological ethics has to speak about the “purifying” action that takes place in the discipline of church and home and also in the state, about the “disseminating” action that takes place in marriage and both extensively and intensively in the church, and finally about the “representative” action that takes place in church worship, social life, art, and play.5 According to Hofmann it is a matter of the Christian disposition and its actualization in moral action in the relation to God, in the church, in the family, in the state, and in society.6 According to Herrmann it is a matter of the rise and development of the Christian life.7 According to Kirn it is a matter of the rise and development of Christian personality on the one hand and the practice of morality in society on the other.8 According to Haering it is a matter of the new life of the Christian as personality and of the Christian life in social circles.9 According to E. W. Mayer it is a matter of moral character, the nature of Christian conduct in the various forms of action and social life, its order and structure, and finally its result, the kingdom of God.10 According to Wünsch’s not wholly clear arrangement it is a matter (1) of the nature of God, (2) of the moral outcome of experience of God, (3) of Christian character, and (4) of some residual problems, among which Wünsch places the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount!11 An original and powerful approach is that of Schlatter, for whom the four Platonic virtues of justice, truth, happiness, and strength, related to the communion of will, knowledge, feeling, and life, constitute the schema of inquiry and presentation.12 |
We cannot go along here (even with Schlatter) because, as has been shown, there occurs a distinction between theology and ethics and a shift of focus from God to man which we cannot endorse. Against all these divisions we have to bring the objection that they are derived from something other than the matter itself and that they are not therefore brought and applied to the matter to its advantage. Schleiermacher certainly makes an acute observation when he discerns elements of criticism, construction, and play in human conduct, but does this really grasp and describe Christian conduct as such? That the fact of the Christian life confronts us with the problem of its rise and development (Herrmann, Kirn), or with the antithesis of disposition and activity (Hofmann), is certainly true in its own place, but are these distinctions really denotative of the Christian life?
The favorite distinction between individual and social ethics, which may be seen in varying degrees in Hofmann, Martensen, Haering, Kirn, and Mayer,13 may pass as possible and meaningful. (Schlatter in his Ethics, 1914, pp. 53f. had some noteworthy things to say against it, and it would hardly be commended to us by a good philosophical ethics.) In any case, however, one has to say that it carries with it the self-evident presupposition that Christian conduct is simply a special instance of conduct in general, so that if the correlation of individual and society is constitutive for the latter it must be for the former too. Similarly Schlatter’s derivation of Christian moral teaching from will, knowledge, feeling, and life, refreshing though it is alongside the rather arid dispositions of the Ritschlians, entails a simplistic adoption of what is perhaps a correct and perhaps also an arbitrary definition of human conduct as the schema for a presentation of Christian conduct.14 |
All these divisions and classifications are nontheological to the extent that according to the same methods (even presupposing that they are right) they could obviously apply just as well to a Buddhist, Socialist, or Anthroposophical ethics as to a Christian ethics when the same concepts are filled out in different ways. What we miss in them is a specific congruence with the specific matter at issue here, namely, the Christian understanding of the goodness of human conduct. To explain this do not things have to be said that cannot be said in the framework of a concept of human conduct in general? Is not a distinctive mode of understanding essential to this understanding? Are not severe truncations of this understanding unavoidable if we take it for granted, as is plainly done all the way from Schleiermacher to Schlatter, that we may enter and follow paths that can obviously lead us to other places too? Does there not avenge itself here the fateful distinction between ethics and dogmatics, the fateful shift of focus from God to man? |
If that distinction and shift are right, then in ethics man himself, or in this case the problem of human action, will have to be the measure of all things, the theme, and the framework within which the inquiry must take place. On this assumption it may and must be, as is clearly presupposed in those divisions and classifications, that man has to pose certain questions: How can he become and be a Christian? What does it mean to act as such? What is meant by Christian willing, knowing, and feeling? What does Christian conduct imply for human aspirations in life and culture, for society, state, and church, for marriage and family, for art and science, for work and recreation? Theological ethics supposedly has to answer these questions which are not raised responsibly in decision vis-à-vis the divine command that has really been issued. It supposedly has to say something to man when he himself can say the one thing that has to be said only with the act of his decision vis-à-vis the Word of God that has really come to him. At this point there can be no agreement.
Undoubtedly, as may abundantly be seen in the authors quoted, many profound, true, serious, and fruitful things, even things that call for decision, may be said in an ethics that replies in this way to man. But no less undoubtedly a basically untheological ethics which replies in this way to man throws a veil by its whole attitude over the true whence and whither of a theological ethics, over its relation to the Word of God which is really published—a veil which can only be regarded as impossible when the damage it does is perceived. Why should theological ethics accept the invitation to take up the position of a center of information on every possible subject? Why should it not put its own questions instead of having put to it from outside questions which theology does not really have to answer and concerning which it does not have, and out of its own resources obviously cannot fashion, any guarantee that philosophical ethics, to whose sphere of competence these questions plainly belong, can even acknowledge them to be correctly put? Why should it let itself be forced into the position and attitude of having to answer when even the most profound and true and serious and fruitful things it can produce are from the very first put on the wrong track and
