288 - Church Dogmatics, Volume III, The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four

Church Dogmatics, Volume III,
The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four
By Karl Barth
Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1961. 50s.

For a certain type of mind, the type which is incurably concerned with the way ideas work out in practice, this volume-the last of those yet written to be translated-is the acid test and final elucidation of all Barth's Church Dogmatics. This is not because ethics first emerges here. Properly understood the whole of Barth's life and thought, from the earliest lectures in The Word of God and the Word of Man to his Doctrine of Reconciliation is ethical in character. It is concerned with the word of a living God which is also act, and with the faith of man which cannot be otherwise expressed than in the response of his whole being. His earliest proclamation of the otherness of God and the total crisis of man was inspired by what he called "precisely the failure of ethics of the modern theology of the time with the outbreak of the First World War, which caused us to grow puzzled also about its exegesis, its treatment of history, and its dogmatics" (The Humanity of God). His absolute denial of a way from man to God concerned not only natural theology but also the natural knowledge of the Good and the capacity to do it. Similarly his later discovery of the Christ, in whom all human existence is affirmed and built up, concerned not only revealed knowledge of God, but the whole realm of human relations directed, often in spite of itself, by the purposes of His reconciling grace. In the one emphasis as in the other, Barth has aroused furious controversy of which ethics was the center. His early attack was called dehumanizing, a degradation of man below any capacity to respond to grace; his later gospel was denounced as enthusiasm, as an " airplane view of life" not rooted in the real struggle of man with sin, and as a refusal to take the restraint of the Law seriously.

Before the appearance of this volume, however, these debates in the English-speaking world were doubly handicapped. The issue turned, firstly, on Barth's statement of his general ethics, in his essay "Gospel and Law" and in Church Dogmatics II/2 on "God's Commandment." Both of these are so radical in their theoretical restatement of the relation between the command of God and the gift of God, between law and grace, that critics naturally asked what had become of the crisis in ethics of which Barth's earlier writings were so full, and how, if at all, the new ethics differed in application from liberal perfectionism. For answer

289 - Church Dogmatics, Volume III, The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four

they turned to the occasional writings on politics and culture, especially those gathered in the volume Against the Stream, and were inevitably disappointed. These were tracts for the times, not deliberations on perennial human problems. They bore eloquent witness to the free responsibility and courage of the author, but not always to his wisdom and judgment. His way from general ethics to particular decisions was left obscure.

This is the gap which the present volume has at least partially filled. It concerns "special ethics," "the outworking and shaping of man's sanctification by the command of God in man's real action," and therefore the good which is real and recognizable in that action. Nothing of the freedom of human action under the all-inclusive sanctifying command of God is rescinded. But an effort is made to discern the form of this freedom, to show that it has a form which is not casuistry or natural law, and to explore the relations of man with man which flow from this liberating decision of God about man.

How successfully has Barth done this? The question falls naturally into two parts: (1) concerning the cogency of Barth's ethical judgments in themselves as the reader's conscience affirms or questions them; (2) concerning the role of Barth's particular theological approach in producing and refining these judgments.

With regard to the first of these, let it be said immediately that this volume is a mine of sensitive, Biblically illuminated insight into the problems of human life with which it deals. This is its greatest value for all readers, including those who are not theologians by passion or instinct. These problems are found better through the index than through the table of contents. Barth's own organization of the material-grouping here those ethics which he understands as especially related to creation under headings which speak of various forms of freedom-does not help the reader to recognize familiar landmarks on the ethical scene. But they are there in all their concreteness, among the following.

1. Ethics of sexuality, marriage, and family relations, with all the attendant problems of polygamy, divorce, romantic love, adultery, planned parenthood, authority, and discipline within the family circle which accompany it. For Barth these are all subordinate not to a social institution (marriage, or family), and certainly not to divinely sanctioned structures or principles, but to the proper understanding of two sets of relations-that of man with woman, and of parents with children. It is these relations within which the purpose of God for human life is to be sought. Nowhere in the English language are they more delicately and thoroughly explored than here.

290 - Church Dogmatics, Volume III, The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four

2. The ethics of cultures, peoples, races, and other such forms of human solidarity. Once again Barth submerges the institution, the collective concept, in the primary relationship involved, that of "near and distant neighbors." (The word "neighbor" was a happy invention of the translator to bring out the meaning of the German phrase Die Nahen und die Fernen). His political ethics is yet to be written. But the beginning made here is already strong medicine for nationalists, cultural idealists, and reverencers of the mystique of folk and tradition in any form. Barth is a Swiss patriot, but every such allegiance is rigorously subordinated to the relation with human beings as persons where alone God's commandment is to be found.

3. The ethics of life itself, its rights, its self-development, its joys, its powers, and its limits. Here Barth starts from the fact that life is a loan, given within certain limits, in a certain way-by personal address and calling-and for a certain time and purpose. It deserves such awesome respect because it is the presupposition of obedience, of service, of praise and rejoicing before God and other men. It is life which God has loaned to man, therefore he should live it to the hilt-its joys, its esthetic and cultural expressions, its power and its freedom. But its limits are set in that for and in which life is given.

In this context arises the collection of problems which surround the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." They are dealt with each in turn: suicide, homicide, abortion, euthanasia, killing in self-defense, capital punishment, and war. In each case the commandment is expounded, but in the light of "the exceptional case" which can never be a permitted exception but only a commanded one with its own conditions and responsibility for life in another way.

4. The ethics of work and rest, of service, calling, prayer, and confession. With this sphere of human freedom Barth's special ethics begin and end. They begin, contrary to all precedent, with rest and not with work, with confession and prayer and not with calling and service. It is the celebration of God's action which precedes all human action. "Freedom before God" is the presupposition of all other freedoms. But human action has its place first of all in service and in response to God's calling, which is acceptance as an opportunity of the limitation placed upon us in this life. This limitation may be a proper understanding of our own capacities or the particular social sphere of operation in which we find ourselves. In any case work is relativized before this calling. It is a fact of life, "man's active affirmation of his existence as a human creature," but its goodness depends on the ends it serves, its quality as service of the neighbor and co-operation with him, and the reflection which under girds it.

291 - Church Dogmatics, Volume III, The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four

In this context Barth has occasion to deal briefly with economic systems in their effect on work, the wrongness of work conceived as competition and conflict, the problem of useless or harmful work, and socialist efforts to replace such a labor system with co-operation for the common good.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it is indicative of both the breadth, the fresh perspective, and the careful detail of this volume's attention to those questions of man's life together which fall within its scope. Some will differ with Barth in detail at a number of points. This writer would like to have seen (1) more attention to the responsibility of parents to limit the procreation of offspring, and to the moral dilemma of population control; (2) a treatment of "the exceptional case" of war more aware of the circumstances in which, in today's world, war might break out; (3) clearer guidance on properly human work given the complexities of today's mixed economies where neither pure competition nor pure co operation prevails. But these concern discernment of social facts, not basic insight into the human situation. Most readers regardless of their theology will find the great bulk of Barth's thought in this book agree able, illuminating, and wise.

More controversy will arise around the question whether these insights arise out of Barth's theology as he claims, or whether despite all his protestations he imports after all elements of a natural moral reason which is not bound to Christ-elements which he uses with less effect because he does not accept the structure in which they are embedded. This question is likely to arise at two points:

First, with regard to "the exceptional case" when life must be taken, divorce commanded, suicide at least treated with mystery and respect, and other such situations. Here Barth recognizes in concreto the terrible power of sin and evil, and subjects it to the command of God. Does he do so adequately in his general ethics as well? Is the guilt which man incurs in the very act of responsible service to his neighbor clear enough in an ethical perspective which emphasizes so exclusively the priority of grace? Does Barth help the man who has some understanding of how much he needs forgiveness for whatever act he performs, however it may be commanded?

This is partly a question of emphasis. Barth is clear enough about the sinfulness of all men and their dependence on grace alone for their life. This is the source of his kindly humanity, his refusal to sit in judgment. He understands the life of freedom to be possible by faith alone, and in the knowledge that the action of God in Christ covers our failures and forgives our sins. But he will not admit that there is an ethic prior to this relation of being forgiven, that we can understand our sin apart from

292 - Church Dogmatics, Volume III, The Doctrine Of Creation, Part Four

Christ's revelation of it, or that there was a static condition in God's creation a structure of the law and of the common life-which only was set in redemptive motion afterward. It is not in the lightness with which he takes sin and evil, but in this subordination of all structures of being and law to the history of God's gracious purpose for man, and the hope therefore in whose light he sees moral reality, that Barth differs with his critics here.

Second, the question arises concerning the respect with which Barth treats the technical, secular knowledge in the context of which ethical choices arise. Others of his writings have shown that be is at best an amateur politician. This volume would indicate that his economics is imprecise as well, though he may have done better by the doctors whom be mentions in his preface when dealing with problems of euthanasia and abortion. In his doctrine of man (C.D. 111/2) he claims quite explicitly that secular man is capable, quite apart from knowing Christ, to discover "phenomena of the human," particular insights into human relations which are true and good. Indeed he claims there that in this relative secular search the Christian has, by virtue of his knowledge of God, no special noetic advantage. The question then arises of the proper interaction between theological insight and these secular insights, insofar as they make no pretensions to be a total world view, in determining the truth about God's command in the human situation. Here is where Barth does not help us as well as he might. His insights are soundest in those areas of the common life where the data are non-technical and available to general human experience. He remains a theologian who has taught us as no other of our age how to think and live without apology on the basis of the Biblical history in which we stand. Probably one should appreciate this theologian for what he is, listen carefully to the questions he asks, and act with the freedom he himself has proclaimed and demonstrated, in the particular secular sphere about which one or another of us is likely to know more than he.

Charles West
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey