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Ethnography is Dogmatics: Making Description Central to Systematic Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Nicholas Adams  and
Charles Elliott
Nicholas Adams
Affiliation:
Faculty of Divinity, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX
Charles Elliott
Affiliation:
Trinity Hall, Trinity Lane, Cambridge CB2 1TJ
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to suggest that dogmatic theology is best practised through description of the world. Its method is to marry two unlikely characters: Karl Bardi, Swiss Reformed theologian, and Michel Foucault, French atheist philosopher and historian. The thesis we propose can be presented directly. Barth is well known for insisting, in his ethics lectures in Münster and Bonn (1928/29 and 1930/31 respectively) and volume II of his Church Dogmatics, that ethics is dogmatics. Foucault famously rejected ethics which makes universal normative claims in favour of producing descriptions of historical phenomena and letting the reader make moral judgments accordingly. His method, we suggest, understands ethics as ethnography. We have taken these two ways of thinking together and excluded the middle term: ethics. This has yielded the abbreviated form: ethnography is dogmatics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , August 2000 , pp. 339 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2000

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References

1 Barth, Karl, Ethics (ed. Braun, D., tr. Bromiley, G. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), p. 3Google Scholar; Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 (ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 518Google Scholar. For a good account of the relationship between ethics and dogmatics in Barth see Jüngel, Eberhard, ‘Evangelium und Gesetz’ in Barth-Studien (Köln: Benziger, 1982), pp. 180–209Google Scholar. Jüngel shows how Barth reverses Luther's ‘law and gospel’ to ‘gospel and law’, and indicates that this reversal is a good summary for understanding why, in the relationship between dogmatics and ethics, dogmatics has priority, for Barth. Where Luther says law articulates tasks and gospel articulates promises, Barth insists both tasks and promises, law and gospel, must be taken together. Rather than the ‘proper difference’ (Luther) we should seek the ‘proper relation’ (Barth) between gospel and law, i.e. if ethics re ates to law, and dogmatics relates to gospel, then Barth's treatment of the relation between gospel and law illuminates his treatment of the relation between dogmatics and ethics. For discussion in English see especially Biggar, Nigel, The Hastening That Waits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gorringe, Timothy, Karl Barth Against Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 88–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jüngel, Eberhard, ‘Invocation of God as the Ethical Ground of Christian Action’ in Theological Essays I (ed. Webster, J., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 154–172Google Scholar; Webster, John, Barth's Moral Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998)Google Scholar. Happily, these works fully address the question of the relationship between divine and human action in Barth's work, and preclude the need to revisit this question here.

2 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Ethics (ed. Bethge, E., tr. Smith, N. Horton. London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 3Google Scholar. Note: the order of the articles edited by Bethge was revised in later editions. The page numbers here refer to the 1998 impression, which follows the order from the sixth German edition.

3 Ibid.

4 Barth, , Ethics, p. 7Google Scholar.

5 For an explicit acknowledgement of Bonhoeffer see Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics III/4 (ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F.. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), p. 4Google Scholar.

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9 Barth, Karl, The Christian Life (tr. Bromiley, G.. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981)Google Scholar.

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11 Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 23Google Scholar.

12 Jürgen Habermas has indicated these difficulties: see ‘The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault’ and ‘Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again’ in Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (tr. Lawrence, F.. Cambridge: Polity, 1987), pp. 238–293Google Scholar. Habermas shows how Foucault, like Heidegger, avoids making grand metaphysical claims about ‘Being’ or ‘History’; nonetheless, just as Heidegger claims substantial knowledge about ‘disclosure of being’ so Foucault claims reliable descriptions of ‘processes of change’, and these function in a quasi-metaphysical way. Habermas objects that Foucault is insufficiently genealogical about his own genealogical method and altogether too positive about the validity of his own practices. Furthermore, Foucault smudges the empirical-descriptive meaning of power with the transcendental meaning of power, allowing the second to be parasitic on the first. Similar objections can be discerned, with Foucault's implicit ‘ontology of violence’ more obviously in view, in Milbank's, John critique of Foucault in Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 286–294Google Scholar.

13 A similar concern (or lack of concern) characterises the superb defence of Foucault against Habermas by Bernstein, J. M. in Recovering Ethical Life (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 166Google Scholar.

14 Webster, John, Barth's Moral Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 4Google Scholar.

15 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Ministry of a Congregation’ in Christian Existence Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1988), pp. 111–131Google Scholar; Wells, Samuel, Transforming Fate into Destiny (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), pp. 135–140, 168–9Google Scholar; Cavenaugh, William, Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)Google Scholar.

16 For Kung's project see especially Küng, Hans, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (tr. Bowden, J.. London: SCM Press, 1997Google Scholar) and Küng, Hans (ed.), Yes to a Global Ethic (London: SCM Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

17 Hauerwas, Stanley, Sanctify Them in the Truth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 37Google Scholar.