of religious psychology, folklore, or church law, nor, even methodologically, can it be put side by side with that of church history. Its object cannot be the Christain life as such, which is good because of its conformity to God. Instead, to take up again the concepts of the first subsection, its theme is the correctness of the Christian’s Christianity, its validiy, origin, and worth. The goodness of human conduct can be sought only in the goodness of the Word addressed to man. We should be doing neither theology nor ethics if we related the question to dogmatics, and let it be determined in the same way as the theological authors adduced—a way which is at all events readily suggested by the unfortunate history of the problem.
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According to what is perhaps a more appropriate encyclopedic integration of ethics into theology, we find it best to answer the question by attempting an independent discussion of how and how far ethics really constitutes one of the tasks of theology.
We have defined theology as a presentation of the reality of the Word of God addressed to man. We have seen that this theme cannot be divided into the two themes of God and man and that theological ethics cannot be grounded in such a way that when enough has been said about what God has done for and to and in us we have then to speak about a second topic, namely, what we have to do. We do not reject this second question out of indifference to what it has in view but because, when it is put in this abstraction as a second question over against the first, we cannot take it seriously either as a theological question nor indeed, as we have seen, as an ethical question. Yet we have to deal more fully with what it has in view.
Within theology the concern of ethics obviously emerges in relation to dogmatics. Dogmatics is the science of the content of Christian preaching, i.e., of the relation of preaching to God’s revealed Word. The concern of dogmatics is that God’s Word be heard in Christian preaching. It thus presents the reality of God’s Word, not directly, but as it is reflected in the many ways that the word of pious man is moved by its theme, in the dogmatic dialectic whose intentional point of origin, relation, and goal is the reality of God’s Word. Since the human word of preaching is also directed to man, how can it ever lose sight of the reality of the Word which at every point must finally speak for itself, the reality which is really heard by man, which really addresses and claims and seizes him?—not just thinking man but existing man, man who even as he thinks lives and acts and is caught in the act of his being. Only the doer of the Word, i.e., the hearer who is grasped by God’s Word in the very act, is its true hearer. Because it is God’s Word to real man, and because real man is man caught at work, in the act of his being, he hears it44 in and not apart from his act, and not in any act, but in the life-act, the act of his existence, or he does not hear it at all. He does not hear it in the distraction, be it ever so profound and spiritual, in which he imagines that, while it may be true, it does not apply to him, the reference being to some other or others and not to himself. Other than in this actuality of the Word that is truly spoken and accepted dogmatics cannot at any point on its long way present its object, although many times it must apparently (but only apparently) go far astray from the concrete reality and situation of man. |
Necessarily this topic must be expressly dealt with at a specific point on the path of dogmatics, namely, where dogmatics as the doctrine of reconciliation in particular has also to say that the event of the reconciliation of sinful man by God and to God is a real event which is effected on this man as he is, that God’s grace comes to him. If anybody—and this would be very suspicious—has not noted it already in the rest of dogmatics, ⌜in the doctrine of God or creation or christology,⌝ then at the very latest he must pay regard to it here where it has a personal application, or all the rest is nonsense. The Word of God whose reality we are trying to describe is not just spoken but is spoken ⌜for you,⌝ to you. You cannot think or say or do anything, you cannot draw a single breath, without a decision of some kind being made in relation to the Word of God that is spoken to you. |
In dogmatics we give the name of sanctification to this claiming of man as such ⌜which is basically fulfilled in God’s revelation, attested to in holy scripture, and promulgated in Christian preaching.⌝ As we understand the Word not only as the Word of God, not only as the Word of our Creator, not only as the Word of His faithfulness and mercy, not only as the Word that calls and justifies us, and not only as the Word that establishes the church and promises our redemption, as we understand it—all this ought to be enough, one might think—expressly and emphatically as the sanctifying Word, we have the right to state that the reality of the Word of God embraces the reality of the man who receives it and therefore gives the Christian answer to the question of the goodness of human conduct.
Good means sanctified by God. This is how we may briefly formulate the answer, bluntly challenging the need for special ethics in theology as we recall the strong total content of the concept of sanctification. To remember not only the ethical character of dogmatics in general but also the express answer to the ethical question that is given in the doctrine of sanctification is to ensure that ethics is not possible as an independent discipline alongside dogmatics. Not just in general, but also in particular, the concern of ethics is a proper concern of dogmatics.
It would be inadvisable, however, simply to accept this assertion and not proceed further. The ethical question is obviously not just one question among many others but is in an eminent sense the question of human existence. As we will, we are. What we do, we are. Man does not exist and also act. He exists as he acts. His action, his stepping forth or appearance (existere), is his existence. The question whether and how far he acts rightly is thus none other than the question whether he exists rightly. If, then, ethics inquires into the goodness of human action and dogmatics both as a whole and in detail aims at the statement that human action is good in so far as God sanctifies it, this point of coincidence is of very special significance for both parts. Let us first leave it undecided what it might mean for an ethics that is not radically and naturally theological ethics that here in dogmatics it is confronted by theology, by the voice of the church. For dogmatics, at any rate, it cannot be a matter of indifference that here in the concern of ethics as its own proper concern it comes up against the question of human existence. It is not at all true—I cannot approve of this intrusion of Kierkegaard into theology as it may be seen, if I am right, in Bultmann45—that the question of human existence is as much the theme of theology and dogmatics too. The theme of theology and dogmatics is the Word of God, nothing else, but the Word of God is not merely the answer to the question of human existence but also its origin. The question of human good which transcends all psychology, custom, and law arises, and arises with such sinister urgency, and arises like any genuine question out of a secretly preceding answer, because the Word of God is spoken to man, because the Word of God lays claim to his life.
The theme of dogmatics is simply the Word of God, but the theme of the Word of God is simply human existence, life, or conduct. Obviously this can be for dogmatics no more than a relational point, one locus among others, from which it can move on in the agenda once it has dealt with it and has said what is to be said about the doctrine of sanctification. For on the fact that it really has this point of relation depends the whole answer to the question whether its presentation of the reality of the Word of God will differ from a metaphysics which, developed in the attitude of a spectator, and depicting a reality that is not heard existentially, that does not come home to man or claim him or make him responsible, cannot possibly be the reality of the Word of God no matter how rich or profound its content might be. If God be understood apart from the relation to our existence, then even though he be the triune God of Nicaea or the God so fully described by Luther and Calvin, he is not God but a human idol, a mere concept of God. |
Naturally it is not in our own power to give dogmatics this relation to the reality of man just as it is not in our own power to make dogmatics a depiction of the reality of the Word of God. God alone does these things at his own sovereign good pleasure. But here as everywhere it is fitting that theological scholarship should be ready to serve God as he wills. As dogmatics can and does take measures to guard at least to some degree against the distraction of human thought which is constantly trying to avoid paying attention
