standpoint as the standpoint and forgetting that when we speak about the command of life this is not the “what” of the command but only a specific, unavoidable, and generally valid modification of the “what.” This modification is clearly restricted, or needs to be supplemented, for (1) my own life is not what is commanded as such but only a component of what is commanded, (2) the reference is to my life as something commanded and not as something to which I have a claim, over which I have control, and of which I have an unequivocal concept, and (3) the life at issue belongs only secondarily to me but primarily and originally to God, by whose command I have to let myself be told how far it is in fact my own life. We shall have to speak about what this limitation of the concept means for our understanding of it. Apart from this limitation, however, it has also a positive side, and we must speak about this first. |
At this point we come up against the trends in philosophical ethics which are usually called hedonistic, utilitarian, and naturalistic, and which are characterized in modern times by the names of the English writers J.S. Mill and Herbert Spencer,2 the French writers Jean-Marie Guyau and Alfred Fouillée,3 and, in very different ways, the German writers F. Nietzsche, E. Haeckel, and A. Schweitzer.4 The feature common to all these thinkers is the orientation of ethics to the concept of life no matter whether they are thinking of physical or spiritual life, of individual or social life, of the will for life or reverence for life. I cannot see the relevance of the rigorism with which W. Herrmann5 would remove the affirmation of the necessity of life from ethics as a purely natural and therefore a premoral thought. On the other hand it is one of the advantages of the ethics of Schlatter that in the fourth part, under the title “power,” he can do justice to the concern of the ethical naturalists and accept it with all its implications.6 The man who is claimed by the moral command as the command of God does not begin only above the line that distinguishes him from a purely natural creature. Nor does his claiming by the command begin only here (and we must let ourselves be told this by the ethical naturalists). The danger of an elegant, a far too elegant distinction between moral and natural will and conduct is that man’s life, to the extent that in spite of all elegant ethics it is contantly lived below that line, is abandoned to a naturalistic ethics of chance and circumstance. We have to understand the command in its relation to real human action. But real human action, irrespective of its moral character, is always a life-act too. The fact that it is this must not be suppressed in determining what is ethical. The ethical has to be considered and evaluated in this respect as well. The command is given to us not only as the law that encounters us (we shall have to get to know it in this form in the third chapter) but also and already, as it meets us (and it always does), in the fact that we are, that we live. It meets us originally and inescapably because it comes up against our existence, because it comes home to us, so that we have no chance to deny it. This is the concern of ethical naturalism, which in my view should be fully adopted precisely by a theological ethics. |
We shall not, of course, follow ethical naturalism—nor A. Schweitzer, who has recently taken this direction in a very distinctive and impressive way—to the extent that we cannot set up and accept the necessity of life as the standpoint of ethics. No standpoint here must seek to be tyrannically the standpoint. We simply have standpoints in the plural, or components of what is commanded. It is in this regard, it seems to me, that a theological ethics must be rigorous and pitiless in relation to naturalism, and not, as in Herrmann, by protecting the concerns of idealism. One of the components is the necessity of life. In this respect we must pay heed to naturalism. But if it tries to press a naturalistic imperative on us as the command, we have to reply to it, too, that this is only one component or modification of the command. Problems arise in naturalistic ethics, such as the relation between egoism and altruism which is discussed a good deal by the English authors. Because of its one-sidedness, instructive naturalistic positions exist, e.g., that of Nietzsche, which make plain the limitation of the naturalistic standpoint, just as there are others which show that the spiritualistic moralism of Herrmann for its part can be only one word and not the word, the last word. The same will have to be said when beyond naturalism and spiritualism we shall have to speak in the fourth chapter about the eschatological significance of the command, about the command as the command of promise. All these limitations point to the fact that ethics, precisely as theological ethics, does not have to speak an ultimate word but only a series of penultimate words. As we shall now show, the necessity of life is one such penultimate word, one unavoidable and generally valid standpoint from which the command, because it is given to man, has to be understood.
2
What life is we know originally only as we know the fact of our own life. My knowledge of the life of my fellows, and, with different degrees of clarity, the life of animals and plants, not to speak of a real or supposed knowledge of the reality of life in general, is an analogous knowledge going back to my knowledge of my own life. In the strict and primary sense of the term, however, we do not, theologically speaking, know even our own life originally. We know it because God addresses us and acknowledges that we are alive. Four points are to be noted here which, together, give us a full concept of life.
1. As God addresses us, he acknowledges, and we are clearly and legitimately told, that we exist and that we are distinct from God. If we were nothing, or if conversely we were God, there would be no Word of God that comes to us, is spoken to us, and is heard by us. God’s Word as such constitutes our knowledge of the reality and autonomy (however understood) of our existence in distinction from the being of God. As God’s Word it also constitutes, of course, our knowledge of the absolute dependence in which we are real and autonomous in relation to God, the knowledge of the creatureliness of our existence. The reality and autonomy of our existence, understood with this caveat, is the simplest and most obvious meaning of the concept of life. To that extent the life that God ascribes to us by addressing us has a part in the concept of being. When we say that it has a part, we remember that being, and therefore life, belongs properly and originally to God alone, so that they are ours only by his goodness which allows us to take part in his life and being.
2. As God addresses, us, he acknowledges, and we are told, that each of us is somebody, this specific individual being. God’s Word does not presuppose only a reality distinct from God but also difference, distinctness, and individuality in this reality. God’s Word is, of course, a Word to all, but this means that it is a Word to the sum of all individuals and not to a totality, not to the reality that God has created and distinguishes from himself conceived of as a unity. God’s Word as such constitutes my knowledge of the autonomy of my existence in distinction not only from God but also from all else that seems to exist alongside me with the same autonomy. As God’s Word, of course, it constitutes also my knowledge of the relativity of the fact that I am this specific person. I am this, not in and by myself, not with a certainty which I can control, but through God and for God within the limits of the creature. The second thing that lies in the concept of life is, then, that life is something individual and specific. To that extent the life that God ascribes to us as he talks with us takes part in the concept of the individual. We say that it takes part in this, and remember that individuality, and therefore life, belong properly and originally to God alone, and belong to us only as a loan through his goodness, in virtue of which life outside him is real only through himself.
3. As God addresses us, he acknowledges, and we are told, that we exist in time, that we are caught up in the movement from a past through a present to a future. God’s Word presupposes that we exist in a succession of different moments. This means two things: first, that our existence is identical with itself in a flow of moments, and second, that our existence, identical with itself, moves in a flow of moments. A word spoken to us, whether it be understood by us as information, question, or command, presupposes the ability to accept, answer, and obey it, and therefore the ability at least to be the same in a before and after (e.g., the before of the question and the after of the answer) and to be the same in a before and after (e.g., in the before of the command and the after of obedience). God’s Word as such constitutes my knowledge of the reality of a movement in which I find myself, but as God’s Word
