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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In his posthumously published work, The Responsible Self, H. Niebuhr raises certain objections against the ethics of Karl Barth. Without holding any particular brief for Barth's formulations, I wish to examine those objections with some care, for I believe that one of the crucial points in Barth's thought that is criticised, the relation between Gospel and Law (and the understanding of Law that emerges from it), actually displays a striking congeniality to Niebuhr's own development of the concept of responsibility. The clue to this congeniality lies in seeing that Barth's understanding of the relation of Gospel and Law to man's moral life necessitates the formulation of an act-rather than a rule-deontology. When this important distinction is observed and applied to Barth's position, it results in precisely the same emphasis on response that Niebuhr sets forth in his later ethical thought.
page 279 note 1 The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 60, 101, 126Google Scholar. Actually, in terms of the criticism Niebuhr directs against Barth, it would be more precise to identify Barth's position as a species of rule-deontology. Niebuhr specifies only deontology and deontological theories generally, without distinguishing between rule- and act-deontological theories. That distinction is important, however, for I believe that Barth's position is properly identified as one embodying an act-deontology. The distinction between act- and rule-deontological theories is drawn by Frankena, William K. in his book, Ethics, in the Foundations of Philosophy Series, Elizabeth, and Beardsley, Monroe, eds. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 15f, 21–25.Google Scholar
page 280 note 1 The Responsible Self, p. 53f.
page 280 note 2 ibid., p. 56.
page 280 note 3 ibid. Niebuhr makes it clear that ‘the idea of the moral life as the responsible life’ offers only ‘a key—not the key—to the understanding of that Biblical ethos which represents the historic norm of the Christian life’ (ibid., p. 65). He also seeks to move beyond an approach to man's existence and the moral life that makes use of the symbol of man the doer or maker within the framework of a teleological reading of human action. I have not considered this approach here because it seems to me that Barth's view of human ethical activity is not teleological, despite his willingness to describe the embracing activity of God in its movement from creation to redemption along teleological lines. Within the context of human action, teleology is replaced by the ingression of man's real (eschatological) future (already posited and determined at an ontological level in Jesus Christ) into his present, and the accompanying necessity this entails for immediate response and activity.
page 280 note 4 ibid., p. 56.
page 280 note 5 ibid.
page 281 note 1 ibid.
page 281 note 2 ibid.
page 281 note 3 ibid., p. 61.
page 281 note 4 ibid., p. 65.
page 282 note 1 ibid., p. 57.
page 282 note 2 ibid., p. 158.
page 282 note 3 ibid., p. 66; cf. p. 130f.
page 283 note 1 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zürich: A. G. Zollikon, 1955–1959), II /2 p. 567Google Scholar. Cf. IV/2, p. 605f. Future references to the Dogmatik will be cited as ‘K.D.’, followed by the appropriate volume and page number.
page 284 note 1 München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1956. Published as number 50 in the series, Theologische Existenz Heute. This monograph appeared just a decade after the publication (in German) of II/2 of the Dogmatik, where the unity between Gospel and Law is sounded at the outset of Barth's initial development of ethics as the command of God. It may be assumed, therefore, that it constitutes his considered position on the matter.
page 284 note 2 ‘The Word of God is the one “Word of Truth”, the Word of the “Father of Lights, in whom there is no alteration or change between light and darkness” …. The opposition of Gospel and Law indeed denotes, as regards the scripture, a duality. It can even denote a discontinuity. More important than their duality or discontinuity, however, is the harmony between them in the one Word of this Father.’ Evangelium und Gesetz, p. 6.
page 284 note 3 ibid., p. 5. Cf. K.D., I/2, p. 343.
page 284 note 4 K.D., I/2, p. 423.
page 284 note 5 Evangelium und Gesetz, p. 7.
page 284 note 6 ibid., p. 10f. Cf. K.D. I/1, p. 342; II/1, p. 432; II/2, p. 624; IV/1, p. 56.
page 285 note 1 ‘Jesus Christ—not an empty Logos, but Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, the child born in Bethlehem, the man put to death at Golgotha and resurrected in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, the man of this history, is the unity of both, is both wholly and together. He is the promise and the command, the Gospel and the Law, the consolation of God to man and the claim of God upon man. That he is both of these as God's Word spoken in his Word, as God's Word which has become Word, is his own possession as the eternal Son of God prior to us. He is, accordingly, the preexistent Deus pro nobis.’ K.D., IV/1, p. 56.
page 285 note 2 K.D., II/1, p. 267.
page 285 note 3 For Barth, the sum of revelation is given in the statement, ‘God reveals himself as the Lord.’ K.D., I/1, p. 323.
page 285 note 4 Evangelium und Gesetz, p. 23.
page 285 note 5 ibid., pp. 21, 24.
page 286 note 1 ibid., p. 18f. Cf. K.D., II/1, p. 393. The judgment imposed by the Law is not, however, a momentary reality marking man's initial encounter with grace. Within theological ethics understood as the command of God, it plays a persistent role. Indeed, relative to the other dimensions of the command (claim, decision), it is given a kind of priority by Barth.
page 286 note 2 Evangelium und Gesetz, pp. 15f, 30.
page 286 note 3 K.D., III/2, p. 367.
page 286 note 4 K.D., IV/2, p. 668f; I/2, p. 312.
page 287 note 1 K.D., IV/2, p. 44.
page 287 note 2 K.D., I/2, p. 338f.
page 287 note 3 K.D., II/2, p. 627.
page 287 note 4 ibid.
page 287 note 5 ibid., p. 656.
page 288 note 1 Cf. Barth's criticism of the latter, historicising tendency, which occurred as an aspect of the older Federal theology. K.D., IV/1, pp. 57ff.
page 289 note 1 It is clear from this that the notion of obedience is for Barth as much an indicative as an imperative term. The significance of Law for man's authentic humanity is not new to the Dogmatik. In his 1926 essay, ‘Church and Culture’, Barth stated: ‘That command is merely taken and lifted out of the sphere of wishing, of choice, and is made the actual, the divine command. The command revives the promise which from the creation lies dormant in the law of nature; the law of nature is given, just because of the promise, necessity … Sanctification, election for God, doing the will of God, is always in content being human. Men are to become men, not more than men; but also not less.’ In Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, trans. Smith, Louise P. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 346.Google Scholar
page 290 note 1 The Responsible Self, p. 56.
page 279 note 2 The importance of the concept of unity in Barth's analysis emerges clearly in his general statement of ethics as the command of God. Cf. K.D., II/2, Par. 38, Part 3, ‘The Goodness of the Divine Decision’.