then, I have directed myself out of general and theoretical inquiry to the very practical reality of my decision. In it, in my doing or not doing of what I should do, I see the unconditioned truth that saves or judges me, the truth of the good. In it the revelation of the command takes place. If a purely theoretical interest in practice is forbidden me, if I can ask only with this seriousness, then that is a witness that this revelation has in fact taken place.
d. We can now briefly investigate the seriousness of the question by means of the emphasis: “What shall we do?” When I as an individual put the ethical question in the plural, then if I mean what I obviously say I confess that by the responsibility which I have to accept in my decision I understand the measurement of my action by a claim that is not valid for me alone but universally valid. The crisis of the “what?”, the seriousness of the “ought,” the urgency of the deed would not be perceived and the whole question would clearly be something other than the ethical question if the “what shall we do?” were merely a rhetorical cloak for a secret “what shall I do?” For although the good, when it reveals itself, undoubtedly reveals itself to me, in the event of my conduct, not to a collective we, not in the form of a mass experience; although it undoubtedly comes to me questioning everything, making an imperious demand, pointing to the very next moment; although no other and no society can take from me my own responsibility, nevertheless I have no less indisputably failed to see and hear its presence if my ethical reflection does not take my real situation into account, if I am not fully clear that the individual element which is the goal and to which there is a summons, my naked existence, is again something that I do not have for myself alone but in fellowship with all men, and that the summons, even as it comes very directly and specifically to me, sets me materially in a series with all others, that it aims at me and reaches me not merely as this particular person but as man. A demand is made on me, not as a personality or individual, nor as a member of this or that natural or historical collective, but as man.
Otherwise there would again be the threat that I might view the good as being, this time from the distance of my particularity, of my isolated case; that I might protect my individuality against the crisis in face of which there can be no assured “this,” against the seriousness for which the seriousness of my own special case is not really a match and over against the urgency which can know no distinctions between some people and others. There would again be the threat that I might make a conditioned truth out of unconditioned truth—a truth conditioned by my personal distinctiveness, by the special concerns which distinguish me from others. That unconditioned truth comes to me in a distinctive way, as it really does come to me, does not mean that I may treat it as conditioned by my distinctiveness. If it comes to me, I may not hide behind my distinctiveness but must confess that I am one among many others, simply man, so that my question—mine—can only run: “What shall we do?”—yes, in all the singularity of my person and case: “What shall we do?” If I seriously ask thus, I bear witness in so doing that I have given up the least possibility of trying to see the good as being, even this last and perhaps the most dangerous because the most natural and apparently the most honorable concealment. The “we” points to the inescapable decision which I must take—a decision which even my distinctiveness and that of my special case do not enable me to evade. In the very distinctiveness of my special case the command comes to man. It determines the special element in my special practical situation, whereas the assertion of my distinctiveness can only be again abstraction and theory. If I know this, if I know that everything depends on my doing or nondoing and not on whether I am this or that person, then I ask seriously: “What shall we do?” and I say therewith that I really know the command issued to me, that it revealed to me.
§5
THE COMMAND AS THE COMMAND OF GOD
The truth of the good that reveals itself in our conduct is the truth of the concretely given command which as such is the command of God.
1
We have shown in §4 how it is and must be with the revelation or knowledge of the truth of the good if there is such a thing, if the question: “What shall we do?” is seriously meant and put in all its parts. If there is such a thing—?! So long as we ask generally and theoretically whether there is such a thing, we can in fact only ask hypothetically. But the hypothesis ventured here is the thesis of the original unconditioned truth which, since it can appear only on the surface of general hypothetical thinking, indicates the limit of this thinking and also its own superiority. Hence the question whether there is such a thing cannot be answered generally and theoretically because, if it exists, it is not a general theoretical truth. How can anything general and theoretical be said, then, about its revelation and knowledge? The universal validity of this revelation and knowledge is the universal validity of the task and proclamation of the church, of the church in which there should be agreement that this truth, as the unconditioned truth which alone is universally valid, is not general and theoretical but practical truth, and that its revelation and knowledge can and will become real only in the event of man’s action. If there is a truth of the good in this sense, its revelation and knowledge cannot be the result of our reflection. We have not found it, for what we find is conditioned truth, conditioned by ourselves and having neither the right to raise a claim to our existence nor the strength to enforce such a claim. No, it has found us. The point of ethical reflection, then, cannot be to try to find the truth of the good but to give an account of what it means that we are found by it, to give an account of the character of responsibility that our conduct will always have in face of it. The moment of reflection can be filled only by preparation for the moment of action that immediately follows. It has no independent worth—a point overlooked in all ethics oriented to a supposed being of the good. Its worth, the worth of all ethical theory, can lie only in its relation to the very next moment. The worth of any ethical theory can lie only in its relation to practice. It is there that revelation and knowledge of the good take place. It is there that the good is real as the crisis of our willing and doing, whether good or evil [cf. 2 Cor. 5:10]. It is there in our decision that the good finds us and is then also found by us as one finds a judge. Knowledge of the good is knowledge of the judge who, as we decide, declares salvation or perdition to be our eternal destiny. |
One must say the same thing in reverse or negatively. Knowledge of the good is the self-knowledge in which we see that in our reflection on the good which precedes decision we are not ourselves judges and are in no position, through a choice of this or that act preceding our decision, to pronounce judgment on ourselves or to bring about our own determination for salvation or perdition. The image of Hercules at the crossroads which often forms a model even for Christian morality is a pagan image for a pagan thing. It presupposes that man possesses a standard for the goodness of the commanded good and the badness of its opposite. The application of this standard is then the business that occupies the moment of reflection. But how in the world can we acquire such a standard if the goodness to be measured is that of unconditioned truth? Like Hercules at the crossroads we could obviously consider, measure, compare, and choose only if it were not a matter of the unconditioned truth of the good but of the conditioned truth which we have power to establish as such. If, however, it is a matter of the unconditioned truth of the good in what man does, then man is precisely not Hercules. When the good reveals itself in his conduct, whether it be good or bad, he knows that he himself has not measured and chosen but instead he has been measured and either chosen or rejected, that his existence has been placed and weighed on the scales. He then knows that he is not at all his own judge of virtue and vice but has found his judge in the good. How could he ever dream, then, of occupying a superior throne from which he might recognize and choose the good as the good? How could he ever reach such an exalted place? The worth and point of the ethical reflection that precedes decision cannot be the pagan and irreverent illusion of a free choice on the basis of “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” [Gen. 3:5], but rather a readiness to recognize the good in what is absolutely commanded us in the choice that takes place in our act, no
