No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Bultmann characterises Christian ethics as an ethics of ‘obedience’. By this he means to keep in the forefront the existentialist conception of man as an encountering being, one whose authentic, as well as inauthentic life is constituted by his response to the demands (and also the blessings) proffered him in the Now of his concrete situation. Since every concrete Now demands decision concerning his self-understanding, man is always confronted with an absolute either/or: to ‘obey’ or not.
page 115 note 1 JW, p. 84. (See list of abbreviations at end of article.)
page 115 note 2 TNT, I, p. 19.
page 116 note 1 TNT, I, pp. 11f.
page 116 note 2 JW, p. 70.
page 116 note 3 ibid., pp. 77–8.
page 116 note 4 HE, p. 46.
page 116 note 5 ONM, p. 44.
page 116 note 6 JW, p. 77.
page 117 note 1 Bultmann is well aware that ‘Among the rabbis too the principle is accepted that one may break the Sabbath in order to save a life’. However, he immediately plays down this fact: ‘But when we read with what casuistic rules the practical following of this principle is burdened, we see that the fundamental idea of the Jewish ethic, blind obedience, still dominates. The will of God is the formal authority of Scripture; ethic is therefore not distinguishable from law’ (JW, p. 70).
page 118 note 1 GV, I, p. 234.
page 118 note 2 Essays, p. 155.
page 118 note 3 JW, p. 85.
page 119 note 1 ibid., p. 88.
page 119 note 2 ibid., pp. 88f.
page 120 note 1 FU, p. 226.
page 120 note 2 FU, p. 228.
page 120 note 3 GV, I, pp. 231f.
page 121 note 1 Essays, p. 176; cf. also ibid., p. 13, and GV, I, p. 238.
page 121 note 2 EF, p. 109.
page 121 note 3 Quotes are from Sein und Zeit, P. 242.
page 121 note 4 EF, p. 110; quote is from S.u.Z., P. 250.
page 124 note 1 Bultmann expressly denies this interpretation. See TNT, I, p. 266f.
page 124 note 2 Cf. TNT, I, pp. 261f.
page 124 note 3 ‘How can the guilt of one man be expiated by the death of another who is sinless—if indeed one may speak of a sinless man at all? What primitive notions of guilt and righteousness does this imply? And what primitive idea of God?’ (KM, p. 7).
page 124 note 4 Cf. TNT, I, p. 263.
page 125 note 1 ibid., p. 262.
page 125 note 2 JW, p. 91.
page 125 note 3 ibid., p. 92.
page 126 note 1 HE, p. 98.
page 129 note 1 There is a remarkable parallel between the paternalism of casuistry, which attempts to save us from error in ethical judgment by making all the judgments ahead of time for us, and Bultmann's paternalism, which attempts to save us from legalism by removing ahead of time all temptation to it—that is, by doing away with authoritative ethical rules.
page 130 note 1 Is Bultmann an antinomian? Although he has a strong theoretical stake in evacuating ethical rules of what would ordinarily be called their ‘content’, he is, paradoxically, very careful not to draw the libertinist conclusion. ‘Who can fail to see that this law code is a real necessity for us and that without it our timid attempts to love God and neighbour could not really begin? For no one will suppose that in order to fulfil the will of God as Jesus understood it, he must become an anarchist’ (FU, p. 231). Bultmann has three ways of blunting this paradox. First, he constantly re-asserts the importance of the ‘demand’ of the law, though what he really means by this turns out to be a kind of formal essence: Do not be self-assertive. Second, he has a kind of blind and unexplained trust that what, in particular, one ought to do will be evident in the moment of encounter with the neighbor: ‘If a man really loves, he knows already what he has to do’ (JW, p. 94). And speaking of the man who has given up self-assertion, he says, ‘Such a man needs no particular rules for his conduct toward other men; his conduct is determined by renunciation of his own claim’ (ibid., p. 109). And third, he seems to fall back on the concept of ‘dialectic’: ‘Hence formal obedience to the law as such is no radical obedience, though of course true obedience can exist in fulfilment of the law’ (ibid., p. 92). That is, though the specific content of the demands of the law is irrelevant to authenticity, one nevertheless follows certain patterns of outward behavior in the mode of the dialectical ‘as if not’.
page 131 note 1 In other connexions it is, of course, right to call ‘dog’ a concept: for example to distinguish it, as a general term, from ‘Fido’ as a proper name.
page 132 note 1 Gospel and Law, The Relation of Faith and Ethics in Early Christianity, by Dodd, C. H. (Cambridge University Press, 1951).Google Scholar
page 133 note 1 GV, I, p. 233.
page 133 note 2 GV, I, p. 237.
page 134 note 1 G.V, I, p. 237.