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Theology is ethics: how Karl Barth sees the good life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2011
Abstract
Since Immanuel Kant, moral reasoning has been divorced from classical theology and reinscribed onto self-contained individuals. Shorn of theological particularities, modern ethics tries to identify behaviours to which every right-thinking person can assent. A basic premise of classical moral philosophy, however, was that if we know who we are and what our telos is, then we can have a good idea of how we ought to act. In his christology, Barth reappropriates this classical view of ethics and situates it christologically. Because Jesus’ human nature finds its being and telos in his divinity, Barth found an ethical pattern in the anhypostasis-enhypostasis doctrine. Restoring people to their proper place as creatures rather than Kantian demi-gods, Jesus shows us what it means to be truly human by being obedient to the Father. We cannot divinise individuals or the church, but the church exists enhypostatically. This anhypostatic-enhypostatic christological pattern orders our activities, making worship the first task of ethics. In prayer and in Sabbath keeping, Jesus shows us his utter dependence on God through supplication and rest. In these acts of worship, Christians act as they were created to act. We respond obediently to our Creator. But we also find an orientation towards other people in christology. Love of enemies has everything to do with the content and shape of God's command. It is involved in the telos of human life in being Christ-like.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011
References
1 Thus modern ethics requires some idea of right thinking, that is, it requires an orthodoxy which it presupposes but cannot name. Since it is unable to name this orthodoxy, it therefore cannot be accountable for its dogmatic status.
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5 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 30.
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20 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.3.5.
21 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.44.1. Deus est ipsum esse per se subsistens. . . . Relinquitur ergo quod omnia alia a Deo non sint suum esse, sed participant esse.
22 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2.104.3. Aquinas did not write any longer treatise or section in his great work, Summa Theologiae, on friendship. Yet references abound throughout the Summa to friendship.
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27 Barth, CD I/2, p. 188.
28 Ibid., p. 149.
29 Ibid., pp. 185–202; IV/2, p. 90.
30 At the same time, however, Barth states that ‘In Jesus Christ it is not merely one man, but the humanum of all men, which is posited and exalted as such to unity with God.’ CD IV/2, p. 49.
31 Barth, CD IV/2, p. 74.
32 Ibid., p. 72.
33 Ibid., pp. 27–8.
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37 Barth, CD I/2, p. 793.
38 Barth, Ethics, p. 56.
39 Barth, CD IV/2, p. 222.
40 Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good, p. 80.
41 Barth, CD IV/2, p. 271.
42 Barth, CD II/2, p. 30.
43 Marquardt, Friedrich-Wilhelm, Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich: Kaiser, 1972), p. 267Google Scholar. All translations from Marquardt are my own: ‘Er steuert auf eine Erweiterung und Ergänzung der christologischen Anhypostasie (der Anhypostasie der menschlichen Natur Jesu Christi) durch eine anthropologische Enhypostasie zu: der Enhypostasie der humanitas, der kollektiven “Gattung Mensch” in der Person des fleischgewordenen Wortes.’
44 Ibid. ‘Barth hat aber über diese bloß ekklesiologisch gefaßte Kollektivität immer hinausgedrängt. Die Adam-Christus-Typologie in Röm 5 war für ihn von Anfang an Anlaß zu einer über die ekklesiologische Betrachtung hinausführenden gattungsgeschichtlichen Interpretation.’
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47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., p. 113.
49 Stanley Hauerwas has also written about the dangers of starting from such an abstract christology. See Hauerwas, Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 72–6Google Scholar.
50 Barth, CD IV/2, p. 59.
51 Ibid., p. 60.
52 Ibid.
53 Barth, CD IV/1, p. 295.
54 Barth, CD II/2, p. 178.
55 Barth, CD III/3, p. 267.
56 Barth, Ethics, pp. 472–3.
57 Yoder, ‘Why Ecclesiology is Social Ethics’, p. 123.
58 See Barth, Ethics, pp. 474–5.
59 Ibid., pp. 53–4.
60 Barth, CD IV/2, p. 565.
61 Gunton, Colin, ‘The Triune God and the Freedom of the Creature’, in Sykes, Stephen (ed.), Karl Barth: Centenary Essays (New York: CUP, 1989), p. 51Google Scholar; italics in the original.
62 Barth, CD II/2, p. 563
63 Ibid., p. 567.
64 Ibid., p. 576.