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 to the Word, so it can take measures to guard at least to some degree against the same distraction when it wants to forget that we are dealing with the Word that is addressed to man. First, it can make some effort to resist this distraction ⌜by always avoiding all pure speculation and positively by constantly observing and emphasizing that all its statements bear the character of decision.⌝ Second, it will not fail to present the doctrine of sanctification with the emphasis it deserves, for here the question of the theme of the Word of God is a burning one. Third, it will do well to remember that it is a human work, and to recall the classical model of the transition from Romans 11 to Romans 12, and therefore not to insist that all that is necessary has been said, but rather to leave room precisely at this point for an auxiliary discipline which independently can take up the doctrine of sanctification again and in its own context work out all its implications. |
Recognition of the need for this auxiliary discipline entails a practical confession of humility on the part of theology which is most appropriate at this specific point. In actually saying again, as though it had not already said it, its own decisive word about the hearing of the Word, it acknowledges that its decisive word is not the decisive word. By this repetition it shows that precisely at this decisive point all theology is not a masterwork but at very best an associate work, so that there can be no question of a dogmatic system that is in itself an adequate presentation of this lofty subject. However good it may be, it has not spoken from heaven but on earth, and therefore it must say again what only God himself can have said once and for all. |
The theological encyclopedia knows auxiliary disciplines at other points as well and it may be shown that all of them imply a similar reservation of theology in relation to itself. Thus we find that Old Testament and New Testament introduction, the history of Near Eastern and Hellenistic religion, and Palestinian studies are all auxiliary to exegesis; liturgical and catechetic studies to homiletics; historical and confessional history to dogmatics; and church history to all three theological disciplines. |
Ethics is an auxiliary discipline of this kind in relation to dogmatics. There must be no change into another genre here. We have seen that this is the error in the usual distinction between dogmatics and ethics and we must