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God's definite command? Some theological thoughts on a puzzling theme in Barth's ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2022

Michael Bartholomaeus
Michael Bartholomaeus*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Ministry Practice, Tabor College, Adelaide, Australia
*
Email: mikebartholomaeus@gmail.com
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Abstract

One of the most puzzling features of Barth's ethics is the insistence that God's divine command encounters us so definitely and concretely that it simply requires immediate and unquestioning obedience. This article offers an interpretation of these comments by reading them through the framework of Barth's description of the secularity, one-sidedness and spirituality of God's Word in Church Dogmatics I/1. Such a reading suggests that Barth's comments are not promoting a foolproof and immediate way of adjudicating ethical quandaries but orient us to the commanding Lord who goes before us.

Keywords

Karl BarthcommandethicsWord of God
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 207 - 220
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD), 13 vols, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75), II/2, p. 663Google Scholar.

2 CD II/2, p. 704.

3 CD II/2, p. 665.

4 CD III/4, p. 12.

5 See e.g. Willis, Robert E., The Ethics of Karl Barth (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), pp. 183, 199, 439–41Google Scholar; Hays, Richard B., The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation (New York: HarperOne, 1996), pp. 228–30Google Scholar; Brettmann, Stephanie M., Theories of Justice: A Dialogue with Karol Wojtyla and Karl Barth (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2015), pp. 132–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Biggar, Nigel, ‘Karl Barth's Ethics Revisited’, in Migliore, D. L. (ed.), Commanding Grace: Studies in Karl Barth's Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), p. 30Google Scholar. See also Biggar, ‘Barth's Trinitarian Ethic’, in J. Webster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), p. 214. Cf. Biggar's attempt to understand God's command in terms of personal vocation in Biggar, The Hastening That Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 41–5.

7 Massmann, Alexander, Citizenship in Heaven and on Earth: Karl Barth's Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2015), p. 248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 251.

9 Ibid., p. 247.

10 For other attempts to explain what it might mean to know this definite divine command, see Johnson, William Stacy, The Mystery of God: Karl Barth and the Postmodern Foundations of Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), p. 163Google Scholar; Haddorff, David, Christian Ethics as Witness: Barth's Ethics for a World at Risk (Havertown: James Clarke, 2011), pp. 250–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 McKenny, Gerald, The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth's Moral Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2010), p. 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 282.

13 Paul T. Nimmo, ‘Reflections on The Analogy of Grace by Gerald McKenny’, Scottish Journal of Theology 68/1 (2015), p. 91.

14 McKenny, Gerald, ‘Response to Paul Nimmo’, Scottish Journal of Theology 68/1 (2015), p. 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See also McKenny, Gerald, ‘Ethics’, in Jones, P. D. and Nimmo, P. T. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth (Oxford: OUP, 2019), pp. 488–9Google Scholar.

16 Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Leicester: IVP, 1986), p. 87. See also James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective: Theology and Ethics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 33; Robin W. Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984), pp. 40–2; William Schweiker, Power, Value, and Conviction: Theological Ethics in a Postmodern Age (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 1998), pp. 168–9.

17 Hinrich Stoevesandt, ‘Die Grundspannung von Rechtfertigung und Heiligung bei Karl Barth’, in E. Dekker, M. C. Batenburg and D. H. J. Steenks (eds), Solidair en Solide: In Gesprek mit H. W. de Kniff (Kampen: Kok, 1997), p. 114.

18 Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman, ‘Barth and Modern Moral Philosophy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth, p. 523. See also Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman, ‘Reason After Revelation: Karl Barth on Divine Word and Human Words’, Modern Theology 33/1 (January 2017), pp. 92–115.

19 CD I/1, p. 163.

20 Ibid. The emphasis in this quote is Barth's own, as found in Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (hereafter KD), 13 vols (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1932–67), I/1, p. 169. I have restored Barth's original emphasis through the standard use of italics and noted this alteration by means of a reference to KD.

21 CD I/1, p. 164. KD I/1, p. 170.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 165.

24 Ibid., p. 166.

25 Ibid.

26 Barth emphasises this danger when he treats this topic again in CD II/1, although there it appears under his discussion of the secondary objectivity of God's Word.

27 CD I/1, p. 168.

28 Ibid. KD I/1, p. 175, rev.

29 CD II/2, p. 664.

30 Ibid., pp. 584–5.

31 Ibid., p. 709. This dynamic of the Spirit's gift through prophetic communication is insightfully expounded in William T. Barnett, ‘Blessed Interruption: On Pietism, Prophets, and the Life of Freedom beyond Autonomy’, The Covenant Quarterly (2011), p. 68.

32 CD II/2, p. 661. KD II/2, p. 737, rev.

33 CD II/2, p. 667. KD II/2, p. 744, rev.

34 While this is not a distinction Barth himself explicitly makes, something like this is necessary here to make sense of Barth's apparently contradictory claims. Without it, we are faced with Massmann's troubling solution to this tension, namely, that Barth reworked the hermeneutic of CD I/1 in response to how the German Christians handled Scripture, moving away from a more open sense of encounter with the text and towards the conclusion that, ‘in the self-imposition of God's word, there is no room for true human cooperation that involves interpretive judgment on the biblical text’. Massmann, Citizenship in Heaven, p. 247.

35 Woodard-Lehman, ‘Barth and Moral Philosophy’, p. 524.

36 It is just this mediating space that Jason Fout thinks is missing in Barth's account. See Jason A. Fout, Fully Alive: The Glory of God and the Human Creature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Theological Exegesis of Scripture (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 74–93.

37 See Paul T. Nimmo, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 33–5.

38 CD II/2, p. 706. KD II/2, p. 788.

39 CD II/2, p. 704.

40 Ibid., p. 705.

41 Ibid. KD II/2, p. 787, rev.

42 See Woodard-Lehman, ‘Reason After Revelation’, pp. 102–4.

43 CD II/2, p. 662. KD II/2, p. 738, rev.

44 For a discussion of this concept as it concerns Barth's handlings of apparently contradictory biblical texts, see George Hunsinger, ‘Introduction’, in G. Hunsinger (ed.), Thy Word Is Truth: Barth on Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. xv–xix.

45 CD I/1, p. 175.

46 Ibid., p. 174.

47 Ibid. KD I/1, p. 181, rev.

48 CD I/1, p. 175.

49 Karl Barth, ‘Fate and Idea in Theology’, in The Way of Theology in Karl Barth: Essays and Comments, ed. M. Rumscheidt, trans. G. Hunsinger (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1986), p. 35.

50 Ibid., p. 45.

51 Ibid., p. 40.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., p. 48.

54 CD I/1, p. 176. KD I/1, p. 183, rev.

55 See Matthew Rose, Ethics with Barth: God, Metaphysics and Morals (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 94.

56 CD II/2, p. 671.

57 Cf. John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: T&T Clark, 2016), pp. 65–6.

58 CD II/2, p. 707.

59 Ibid. KD II/2, p. 789, rev.

60 This question of whether or not God's command can be unambiguously heard has plagued interpretation of Barth's ethics, and even Nimmo has suggested that ‘this matter of the audibility and the intelligibility of the command of God cannot easily be settled, whether theoretically or phenomenologically, and the charge [referring to Gustafson's and Willis’ critiques of Barth's confidence that we are clearly confronted with definite divine commands] must consequently be left open’. Nimmo, Being in Action, p. 78.

61 CD I/1, p. 182. KD I/1, p. 190, rev.

62 CD I/1, p. 183.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., p. 184.

65 Ibid., p. 183.

66 Barth captures this well a little further along in his prolegomena: ‘To have the Holy Spirit is to let God rather than our having God be our confidence. It lies in the nature of God's revelation and reconciliation in time … that “having God” and our “having God” are two very different things, and that our redemption is not a relation which we can survey in its totality … In faith we can understand it only as it is posited by God. Faith is understanding it as posited and indeed fulfilled and consummated by God, but not by us, not in such a way that we may see ourselves in the being which corresponds to this fulfilment and consummation by God.’ CD I/1, p. 462. KD I/1, p. 485.

67 CD I/1, p. 185.

68 CD II/2, p. 603.

69 CD II/2, p. 639.

70 CD IV/2, p. 372.

71 Karl Barth, Gespräche 1963, ed. E. Busch (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005), pp. 78–9.

72 Ibid., pp. 82–3.