COMMAND AND HISTORY IN THE ETHICS OF KARL BARTH William Werpehowski ABSTRACT Barth’s ethics of divine command are often criticized for failing to account for various crucial features of human moral agency. Gustafson’s charge that Barth is an “intuitionist” suggests that no determinate reasons can be offered by an agent for actions performed out of obedience to the command of God. Hauer- ‘was claims that Barth cannot make place in his ethics for the ideas of “charac- ter” and “growth.” Implicit in these criticisms is the proposal that the Barthian self is unable to express itself as shaped through a history, which would provide an explanation of the changes that take place in and through the actions of a continuous subject. Following an analysis of the relevant features of Barth's methods of theological ethics, the author argues that Barth meets these criti- cisms through his description of the way in which agents have their being in a “history of relationship with God.” There have appeared in the contemporary literature of Christian ethics a number of criticisms of Karl Barth's “ethics of divine command.” These crit- icisms claim, in effect, that Barth’s theory of ethics cannot account for cer- tain important features of human moral agency. I want to address these criti- cisms, with special reference to the representative complaints and questions ‘of James Gustafson and Stanley Hauerwas. I will suggest throughout this es- say that these complaints are established on readings of Barth which are too restrictive both with respect to the portions of the ethical writings considered or emphasized, and with respect to the general style of interpreting those and other of his writings. I hope that in doing this I will supply, albeit perhaps too cryptically, a basis upon which we may understand Barth more fairly and, I suspect, more provocatively. 1. THE CRITICISMS In Gustafson’s (1975: 156-157) judgment, Barth’s ethics of command, treated as part of the Doctrine of God in the Church Dogmatics, “short- circuits the rational processes” of moral agents in its commendation of a “passive conformity of human activity to God’s activity.” The moral agent is called upon merely to accept obediently God’s determination in his com- 298 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth — 299 mand. To the extent that he considers human agency at all, Barth proposes a moral epistemology of “intuitionism” or “instant discernment,” rather than commending the acquisition of moral knowledge through “rational infer- ence from religious belief.” The intuitionism is grounded upon Barth's “oc- casionalism” which “emphasizes the uniqueness of each moment of serious moral choice in contrast to a view that emphasizes the persistent, perduring order of moral life and the continuities of human experience” (Gustafson, 1978: 71, 73-74). The stress on the uniqueness of the moment of moral decision-making reflects Barth’s belief that autonomous human reason can- not attain real knowledge of a moral order to the universe. Since humanity is so dependent on the command of God, who has graciously chosen in the election of Jesus Christ to be for humanity in covenant partnership, it is dif- ficult to find a place for reasons for action in the moral lives of human be- ings. “Radical occasionalism in theological ethics is based upon the premise that God’s ‘freedom’, while bound to his choice, still might erupt in actions that could not be anticipated by the exercise of human rational capacities” (Gustafson, 1975: 160). The autonomy of the moral agent is thus compro- mised, and the possibilities for moral discourse between Christians and non- Christians are jeopardized, Hauerwas’s (1975: 220) complaint is that Barth's “command-obedience model” tends to characterize God’s determination of persons’ moral lives strictly in terms of discrete acts, excluding an account of an ongoing dialectic of growth-in-continuity, a “deepening of the selfs determination through the testing of [one’s] current posture against [one’s] central orientation and loyalty.” This idea of “deepening” or growth-in-continuity poorly fits an eth- ical context which allows only the consideration of isolated decisions and acts wherein the individual conforms in the moment to God's gracious acti ity. Although Barth does recognize the importance of “growth” and “deepen- ing” in his treatment of Christian existence, he is unable to demonstrate how it can be effected, given the overriding emphasis on command and decision (Hauerwas, 1975: 176).! This inability to handle what I have called “growth- in-continuity” and what Hauerwas calls “deepening” points to Barth’s prior failure to make a place for the idea of character in his theological ethics. Character for Hauerwas (1975: 11) is “the qualification of a man’s self. agency through his beliefs, intentions, and actions, by which a man acquires a moral history befitting his nature as a self-determining being.” This criti- cism relates to Gustafson’s in that “our character is dependent on the fact that we are disposed to have a range of reasons for our actions rather than others, for it is by having reasons and forming our actions accordingly that our character is at once formed and revealed” (Hauerwas, 1975: 115, empha- sis mine). Reasons for action, character, and growth-in-continuity or “deep- ening” are, therefore, notions that mutually imply one another. Barth's al- leged failure to account for any would entail a failure to account for all, Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.300 The Journal of Religious Ethics ‘What appears to lie behind both criticisms is an interpretation of Barth's view of the person as a “free self undetermined by its phenomenal history,” a self which is understood “not so much from its past to its present as the end- product of a historical life-process, but as a being with radical freedom, with discontinuities between moments, events, and decisions” (Gustafson, 1968: 93-94). According to this interpretation, there is no view of the self “in a continuous relation between Christ and man that is naturally interpreted”; the “transformation” of the believer is not a “transformation of experiences and the life-process” (Gustafson, 1968: 96, second emphasis mine). What links this interpretation to the specific criticisms, then, is the claim that the Barthian self is unable to express itself as shaped through a history. This history, as such, would provide an explanation of the changes that take place in and through the actions of a continuous subject (Danto, 1965: 233 266). As self-identical or continuous, i.e., maintaining an identity over time, the subject can be seen to have something like what Hauerwas calls “charac- ter,” a central orientation or loyalty. As changed, but still retaining that cen- tral orientation, the subject can be understood to have effected the “deepen- ing” which I have been cailing “growth-in-continuity.” And as changing, the subject would seem to require a “range of reasons” through which the change may take place in personal actions. This historical vision of the self appears, therefore, to be necessary to account for those essential and interre- lated components of human moral agency: the giving of reasons for one’s ac- tions, growth-in continuity, and character. 1. BARTH AND THE LOGIC OF DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS 1 want to argue that Barth can and does account for these components, and that he does so with a view of the self's “personal history” which does not in any significant way deny the force of his language about “obeying di- vine commands.” In order to understand how he does that, we need first 10 consider in some detail the way in which Barth conceives of the business of theology generally, and how that conception governs his approach to theo- logical ethics. ‘My point of departure is the following statement by Hans Frei (1978: 45): Barth was about the business of conceptual description: He took the classical themes of communal Christian language moulded by the Bible, tradition and constant usage in worship, practice, instruction and controversy, and he re- stated or redescribed them, rather than evolving arguments on their behalf. It was of the utmost importance to him that this communal language, especially its biblical fons er origo, had an integnty of uts own: It was irreducible. For Barth, this description of Christian linguistic activity, an activity pos- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 301 sessing its own sources and concerning a very particular fe/os, has a logic pe- culiar to itself, and simply cannot be “resolved” without remainder into a de- scription of some autonomous and generally conceived “human” linguistic activity. The proper job of the theologian is to take “fixed points of doctrine” and formulate from them the resolution of a postulated “unknown” point of doctrine, making use of nothing other than the elucidation of the fixed points themselves and formal principles such as the law of non-contradiction (Barth, 1962: 55). Now it is in the light of this insight about Barth’s task of conceptual description that we can apprehend the logic of Barth’s ethics of divine command. The following points are directly important. First, Barth seeks to locate the doctrine of divine command contextually. ‘The notion of command finds its meaning within the framework of what he calls the “Whence?” and the “Whither?” of theological ethics, i.e., the sover- ign grace of the electing God in Jesus Christ and the radical need of his re- bellious creature. Given these “fixed points of doctrine,” Barth's description of the divine command as absolutely binding follows accordingly. Arguing from the doctrine of election 0 its implications for ethics, Barth (CD, 11/2: 535) is able to say that the question of obedience to the electing God’s com- mand must coincide absolutely with the problem of human behavior in its totality. God has chosen the person before all creation to be his covenant partner; the a quo and ad quem of the person's activity must, therefore, be nothing other than God himself, and there can be no human action which does not stand under the divine command. Barth's (CD, 11/2: $32f.) criticism of Roman Catholic ethical method at least partially arises out of concerns which his task of conceptual location, generates. The problem with this method, Barth tells us, is that the “great distraction” of a metaphysics of being makes it impossible for the God of Roman Catholic thought truly to command. The linking of the person to a principle of being, which grounds the imperative nature of morality, is a mis- take because this “disposition” of the person is conceived as independent of the event of election; it is properly the person's in that it concerns a meta- physical principle which is logically independent of the world of divine grace revealed in and by Jesus Christ. On such a presupposition, the doctrine of di- vine command cannot be an implication of the doctrine of election, and thereby, according to Barth, cannot accommodate an understanding of God's command as total gift and total demand. It follows that any theologi- cal ethical account which coherently preserves this crucial feature, the bind- ing power of God's complete graciousness, cannot involve the “acceptance of independent principles which compromise the theonomy of human exis- tence and action” (Barth, CD, 11/2: 527). This criticism, whether or not we agree with it, usefully displays Barth’s careful attention to the appropriate location of the idea of divine command within a context of other related Christian concepts. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.302 The Journal of Religious Ethics Second, Barth dialectically specifies the meaning of concepts central to his ethics of divine command through further specification of the concepts which locate it appropriately. In so doing, he will tend to use ordinary words in a peculiar but coherent way by assimilating them to his conceptual ‘scheme. That is, he “reforms” or “annexes” these terms. We can see how he ‘does so by considering Barth’s careful elaboration of the “Whence?” and the “whither?” of theological ethics. The electing God, the “Whence?” of theological ethics, is the radically free One whose being is the singular act of love, But Barth's (CD, 11/1: 257- 321) elucidation of the key words in that description is itself intended in part to transform our intuitions about their meaning. God's freedom (and, ac- cordingly, his freedom as commander) is more than the freedom in his tran- Seendence to be creator ex nihilo and the Lord over life and death. God is also free in his immanence so to indwell the other that he does not withdraw his presence from creaturely existence in a way which transcends all putative human correlations (Barth, CD, I1/1: 313-314). That is, Jesus Christ is the “meaning, norm, and goal” of all the ways in which God exercises his free- dom regarding his creation, By deciding for God, the person has definitely decided nor to be obedient to power as power (Barth, CD, 11/2: 553). But Barth (CD, I1/2: 554-565) denies that God claims the person because the person understands him to be the “essence of the good,” objectively or sub- jectively considered. God claims our obedience, rather, because of what he has done for us in Jesus Christ, because he is the God “in whom we may be- lieve.” Heis the God who, in his saving act, has refused the creature the pos- sibility of having an attitude of reserve toward his act, by making impossible all autonomous human appeals to freedom, weakness, or self-understanding, It is in the light of God's graciousness alone that he claims authority over the person. The content of the divine claim, then, is simply that the person should reflect God’s action in his or her own action, accepting God’s action as right (Barth, CD, 11/2: 575). Now all of this reforms our intuitions about the divine command accord- ingly. The command takes on the character of a permission and a liberation. It stirs human power to action in its form of “divine refreshment” (Barth, CD, 11/2: $79). [tis on the basis of this permission, moreover, that the sérin- gency of the command displays itself distinctively. Its absolutely binding quality derives from its graciousness (Barth, CD, 11/2: 596-597). Barth's de- tailed treatment of the “Whence?” of theological ethics thus gives a particu- lar and peculiar meaning to what “commanding” and “obeying” are. Using Barth’s (CD, 1/2: 518-525) formulation, we can say that he “annexes” terms: such as “command” and “obedience,” albeit legally, and puts them to a use determined by reflection which is bound in principle to the narrative depic- tion of the history of God’s dealings with humanity in Jesus Christ. The sense of these terms, so bound, is irreducible to any other sense generated by or in any other depicted world of discourse and activity. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethucs of Karl Barth 303 Moreover, if we carefully analyze Barth’s nuanced discussion of the “Whither?” of theological ethics, the rebellious creature needful of divine grace, we recognize that the method of “reformation” or “annexation” 1s di- rectly relevant to the problem of reconciling the ethics of command with the ethics of reasons, character, and growth-in-continuity. In his theological an- thropology Barth makes the twofold assertion that persons have their being in a pattern of action, and that that pattern, as it is constitutive of “real man,” is a particular sort of history—a history of relationship with God in Christ: The new and other which God 1s directly for the man Jesus, Jesus Himself 1s for all other men, and therefore He is the basis which makes their being history, a being which is transcended in 1s limitations from without and transcends its Iumuation outwards. Man 1s what he is as a creature, as the man Jesus, and in him God Himself, moves towards him, and as he moves towards the man Jesus and therefore towards God. (Barth, CD, 11/2: 159) The person is nothing before or behind or alongside this history —he or she is this history as it takes place. I noted earlier that the idea of “history” is piv- otal for Gustafson and Hauerwas in that it establishes the descriptive basis for a theory of personal existence which can accommodate three significant components of moral agency: reasons for action, character, and growth-in- continuity. But Barth retains a “reformed” notion of history, and juxtaposes it with the seemingly incompatible (and also reformed) category of com- mand. We want now to ask how he can hold history and concrete obedience to concrete command together. We can see the beginnings of an answer in Barth's (CD, 11/2: 647) discussion of what I call growth-in-continuity. In this answer, he is remarkably consistent in providing a description of growth which has its intelligibility within the logic of Christian concepts, and not outside of it: The principle of necessary repetition and renewal, and not a law of stability, is the law of the spiritual growth and continuity of our life. It is when we observe this law that we practice perseverance n the biblical meaning of the term, a per severance corresponding to the steadfastness of God Himself, which does not signify the suspension, but the continuing and indestructible possession and use of this freedom. Thope that much of the meaning of this passage will be unraveled by the end of the essay. But at least now we comprehend the shape our interpretive un- ravelling must take. Our responsibility in reading Barth’s ethics is first and always to try to make sense of “annexed” or “reformed” notions such as “command,” “history,” and “continuity.” This will require looking at these concepts in their appropriate contexts, and analyzing how each borders and qualifies the others. One of the problems with Gustafson’s and Hauerwas’s analyses of Barth’s ethics is their refusal to perform precisely this hermeneu- tic task. Although they do at times show an awareness of its importance, Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.304 The Journal of Religious Ethics they stop short of actually confronting the problems of mutual reconcilia- tion of concepts as Barth himself wishes to pose them.? il. BARTH AND THE EVERYDAY WORLD Yet the critic of Barth's ethics might still be unsatisfied, for to speak of, conceptual relations and their mutual modification and specification is not yet to talk about the everyday world which we all share; and this, it might be argued, Barth simply does not do. We may imagine the critic arguing as fol- lows: “Granting your point about conceptual description and Barth's inter- est in the depiction of a peculiarly Christian world of discourse and activity, I still must protest over the splendid isolation of that world. No matter how the depiction takes place, we are left with commands that assault us explo- sively, and which, as such, cannot be reconciled with situations in the world in which we generally find ourselves; we are left with an idea of personal his- tory which has its basis in a relationship with God, with no structures of the everyday interposing themselves so as to show us how that history can ever possibly be our history. Barth's conceptual description does indeed depict a world, but it is a world entirely alien to our everyday world.” But this critic may not have read Barth carefully enough; for he or she has overlooked Barth’s attempts to commend the Christian world as the one world which we all do in fact share.’ To be sure, Barth does not show how Christian concepts “really signify” this or that non-Christian everyday reality; he wants (0 say both that the world of Christian discourse is “descriptively accessible” and that “the appropriate ruled language use for the description of that world is irreducibly its own” (Frei, 1978: 46). Instead, Barth demonstrates the con- gruence between the Christian world and the “everyday” simply by locating the latter within the former in and through his description of the former. In this way, he avoids the perspective by which Christian faith is viewed system- atically as one interpretation of the “world” (understood as an independent Thing-in-Itself) among others (on “alternative conceptual frameworks,” see Davidson, 1973-4, and Rorty, 1972). Barth shows how the divine command coheres with the manifest everyday world in at least three ways. First, he explicitly addresses mistaken interpre- tations of the command which would, if they were correct, count against co- herence. So Barth (CD, I11/4: 15) clearly denies that the theory of the divine command amounts “in practice to a direction to let oneself be governed from ‘moment to moment and situation to situation by a kind of direct and partic- ular divine inspiration and guidance, and to prepare oneself, to make and keep oneself fit and ready, for the reception of such guidance, perhaps by ‘quiet times’ or similar exercises.” He also makes the point that the divine command is in many respects just like any other command, but with an im- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 305 Portant difference. All commands in the everyday world, including divine commands, ask us a question, demand our acceptance with a categorical se- niousness, and aim at corresponding decisions of will. The difference is that the divine commang liberates us and grants us permission as it confronts u: Commands of the everyday which bring as well “the granting of a very de! nite freedom” are the commands of God incarnate in and with the everyday (Barth, CD, I1/2: 584-585), Second, Barth, anxious to deny claims about the opacity of revelation, Places his description of the command as part of a history of a relationship with Christ in a comprehensible context. This history is, in fact, a history constituted by two overlapping histories, those of the creature and of God in the enactment of the covenant of grace. The command “is an event which forms a particular step in the nexus of the history of divine grace, and which in fact can be understood only in this context” (Barth, CD, 1/2: 681). As a history essentially governed and determined by the election of Jesus Christ, the history of the obedient creature is placed within the framework of God's own “self-qualification,” concretely revealed in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. They represent “the delimitation of the sphere in which the life of the divine community will be fulfilled under the control of the Holy Spirit” (Barth, CD, 11/2: 699). In addition to this limitation, the command, according to Barth (CD, II/2: 717f.), will always ultimately af- firm and never ultimately deny the unity of oneself with one’s fellows, as well as the unification proper to oneself. Most important, the history of rela- tionship is tied concretely to the divine commands attested in Holy Scrip- ture, The concrete invitation is freely and actively to conform one’s personal history or “narrative” to the “narratives” of the creatures portrayed in Scrip- ture, who themselves are depicted as constituted by a history of relationship with God. One is not only to ally oneself with them formally, in the aware- ness of having been given a commission, but one must also, in one’s different time and situation, make the command and the mission given to them one’s own, “not as something new and special, but as the renewal and confirma- tion of the task laid upon them” (Barth, CD, II/2: 706). Theological ethics is grounded in biblical ethics which, in turn, has as its grounding principle the understanding of the narrative shape and unity of the whole of the biblical witness. Barth thus relates the divine command to a rather straightforward and readily accessible account of the Christian life and of the mode of Chris- tian ethical inquiry. Third, Barth's (CD, III/4: 595-647) discussion of vocation extends the logic of the divine command to include the “givens” of our life— our age, our special situation, our personal aptitudes, and our specific “field of ordinary everyday activity.” Vocation as “the place of responsibility,” as “the rerminus 4 quo of alll recognition and fulfillment of the command,” is a base from which the “newness” of the divine command cannot ultimately depart, Our Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.306 The Journal of Religious Ethics responsibility before God is described in a way, therefore, which allows a critical assimilation of our everyday situations to the theory of the divine command.‘ IV. ANSWERING THE CRITICISMS ‘We are now in a position to address the specific criticisms of Barth's ethics mentioned earlier. In doing so, we ought to keep in mind the origin and the g0al of our investigation. The origin is my interpretation of Barth’s methods of theological ethics. The goal is answering the question of whether or not Barth meets the criticisms through a coherent proposal about the historical character of moral agency. More specifically, we want to ask if Barth’s idea of a history of relationship with God can coherently include that everyday “historical” dimension which explains the changes that take place in and through the actions of a continuous subject. My lengthy discussion of intui- tionism will anticipate in many ways the shorter treatment of character and growth-in-continuity. A. Reasons and Instant Discernment ‘Two related points are contained in the charge that Barth’s ethics are “in- tuitionist.” One is that knowledge of what ought to be done is immediate, is ‘a matter of “instant discernment” in the moral situation. The other is that no determinate reasons can be offered by the agent for an action, outside of claiming that the action is right because commanded by God, or that the ac- tion is right because, in some unspecific way, it is a reflection of God's gra- cious action. It appears to follow, according to this “intuitionism,” that one’s ast action has no relevance to one’s present action; one always stands be- fore the command anew, being determined by that command alone.* Barth's (CD, 11/2: 631-661) claims concerning “the sovereignty of the di- vine decision” may be thought to support the intuitionist interpretation of is ethics of divine command. He insists that the agent must always have a “complete openness” to the command of God, since one’s past pattern of ac- tion does not in itself place one in harmony with God's decision about a pres- ent action. Not to ask seriously in every situation what it is we ought to do is to be complacent about ourselves and our works; it is to deny our need to be confirmed by God at every moment. “We can never look back upon a genu- ine previous conversion and instruction without its necessarily compelling us to be more serious than ever in our present circumstances, to prepare our- selves for fuller openness to truth, to inquire more searchingly than ever be- fore: What ought we to do?” (Barth, CD, 11/2: 647). Barth (CD, 11/2: 651) is also concerned to stress the alien quality of the “ought” in his discussion of Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 307 criteria for “the genuineness of our preparation for our encounter with the divine command,” The command owes its authority and power not to our approval but always and only to itself. The validity of the ought ‘must consist in the fact that the very question of its validity is quite outside the sphere of my own thinking and feeling; that I can no longer entertain the idea of making sure of its authority and power by seeking its basts in what I myself have understood or seen or felt or experienced; that 1 can no longer considet how it may best be proved or demonstrated. But these remarks do not require the intuitionist interpretation to be intel- ligible. Concerning the relativization of past moral decisions and the de- mand always to ask anew, I note that a claim about the way we are to pre- pare for our encounter with the divine command is not identical to a claim about the nature or mechanism of the “hearing” itself. Past decisions are, moreover, irrelevant to the hearing of the command, on the terms of Barth’s commendations, only to the degree that reliance upon them points to a de- nial of the person's absolute need for God’s absolute gift, and to an affirma- tion that the continuity of one’s own past actions with the present determines the rightness of the present action. For Barth (CD, 11/2: 646), “It is not the effacement but the questioning of all our previous answers which takes place when we begin to put seriously the What? of the ethical question.” The defender of the intuitionist interpretation, however, will hardly be satisfied with our tiny rejoinder; for he or she wants and need to argue that Barth denies that there is any discernible or describable link between any- thing we know or can think about before the hearing of the command, save some overbroad and unhelpful generalization about God’s graciousness, and the hearing of the command itself. Nothing, so the interpretation goes, that we have felt or understood or experienced can be of any help to us in the final instance of hearing. Rational processes are “short-circuited” in the event of hearing the command itself, since the hearing believer cannot enter- tain the idea of making sure of the command’s authority or power by seeking its basis in anything which he or she has seen or felt or experienced. But in claiming that the validity of the command is alien to us, Barth is simply saying that human “moral” sensibilities cannot be considered autono- mously, independent of the revelation of God’s gracious command. Those sensibilities or capacities are by no means negated, however; they are simply given their proper (subordinate) role. Barth (CD, 11/2: 200f.) does in fact af- firm in his theological anthropology that human “capacities” can be Chris- tianly affirmed as real symptoms of the really human, so long as such capac- ities are not given any neutral and independent status. To say that we must not address the divine command as something which we need to validate, given our autonomous understanding, is not to say that we are unable to ap- prehend through a theonomous understanding and judgment that command Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.308 The Journal of Religious Ethics of the gracious God which applies to our situation and which is deemed by the theonomous conscience to claim one precisely because it is already vali- dated outside of oneself. Nor is that to say that human beings as obedient creatures cannot understand and provide an explanation for the action com- manded in terms of a reason that would display the salient features which make this command the divine command. We need to elaborate here. Barth understands the “basic validating norm” of the Christian system of practical justification to be something like the proposition: “We ought to do what God commands, because God com- mands it” (for the idea of a “basic validating norm,” see Little and Twiss, 1978: 97-122).* All right actions are ultimately justified by this norm. But the God whose command we are to obey does not, as we have already seen, claim our obedience because of his power, as such and abstractly considered. He claims our obedience through the singular and unrepeatable event of his gracious election of persons in Jesus Christ. Since the command is the com- mand of ¢his God, the only appropriate response is unqualified obedience. But precisely because the command is the command of the gracious God who has revealed himself to his creation in Jesus Christ, our acceptance of the command as the divine command may include an understanding of it in terms of God's graciousness as he has revealed it to us (see Quinn, 1978: 16). Neither social utility nor the categorical imperative nor the sum of pleasure over pain makes what God commands the right thing to do; the command is, again, its own authority. But our acceptance of and assent to this or that ‘command as being the command of the gracious and electing God may well depend on material conditions which mark the command distinctively. Those conditions, which qualify our assent to the claim that a particular command js of divine origin, do not have their source in the reflections of autonomous human reason, to be sure; the conditions with which God’s creation has to work in confronting the ethical question would have to be those based in Scripture. These conditions would help us to understand the ways in which our unqualified obedience is obedience to the living God in Jesus Christ. They would also be the basis for the reasons we would give to explain why this or that particular action is believed to be the divinely required action. 1 submit that Barth’s theology allows for such divinely revealed condi- tions, which provide in turn for the sort of epistemological connection which is denied by the defenders of the intuitionist interpretation. The conditions are to be found in Barth's descriptions of the horizontal quality of the divine command and of the “spheres” in which God's horizontal activity always takes place. The vertical dimension of a particular command must always in- tersect the horizontal, the “constancy and continuity” of the divine com- mand which “persists in all the differentiations of individual cases” (Barth, CD, I11/4; 17). This continuity is the “form peculiar to all ethical events as such, irrespective of their singularity and uniqueness.” The horizontal di- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 309 mension thus provides us with a formed reference to the ethical event. “Spe- cial ethics” is, then, a commentary on the history of relationship between God and persons as it is depicted in Scripture and ordered through the theo- logical /oci of creation, reconciliation, and redemption; it is a commentary which situates particular ethical events in the broader divinely initiated pat- tern of action within which the events themselves may be understood and made concrete. The history in which God is Creator, Reconciler, and Re- deemer, and in which the person is a creature, accepted in grace and sharing in promise, 1s “the reality in which the ethical event takes place, to which we look from the event, and from which we must look back to the event to see it in its concreteness” (Barth, CD, 11/4: 28). For Barth, moreover, the histori- cally articulated and differentiated reality which is the ethical event involves not only reference to the histories of relationship narrated in Scripture, but also reference to the history of relationship between God commanding now and the person obediently hearing now. Hence, Barth includes a discussion of vocation or “the place of responsibility” in his ethics of the Doctrine of Creation. The individual's life-story is to be seen as overlapping with those of Jesus’ disciples and, accordingly, with that of Jesus Christ himself, In any case, knowledge of the spheres of divine activity discerned in Scripture pro- vides “knowledge of the character which is always peculiar to this event, and of the standards which are a/ways valid in the decisions made in it.” These standards serve as “an instructional preparation for the ethical event” (Barth, CD, 11/4: 18, emphasis mine). It is important to recognize that Barth's theory of the spheres both makes possible and demands a description of God’s activity which is liable in princi- ple to extensive specification. The existence of relevant differences between projected situations (“relevance” being determined always with respect to theological/Christological considerations) may point out to us that abor- tion, for example, is commanded; this is possible even though a “definite No” must be a presupposition of any Christian consideration of abortion (Barth, CD, I11/4: 415ff.). Barth is committed to making his descriptions of the ethical situations ever more concrete through specification and further specification of the spheres of God’s activity. This requirement is simply a correlate in theological ethics to Barth’s claims in the realm of dogmatic theology about the concrete nature of God’s (electing) freedom vis-a-vis his creation.” But the defender of the intuitionist interpretation might still be uncon- vinced about the plausibility or the coherence of my alternative ant intuitionist reading. Reflecting on Barth's assertion that knowledge of the spheres is an “instructional preparation for the ethical event,” he or she might cite Barth’s (CD, I11/4: 31) claim that even the “ideal case” of full knowledge of the spheres gives no answer to the question of what is commanded (even though the question “gains a sharpness in which the question almost ac- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.310 ‘The Journal of Religious Ethics quires the character of an answer”). Some qualitative epistemological gap still seems to be assumed. The critic might also want to know how Barth imagines he can reconcile the assertion that there is a “definite connection” between different ethical events and their corresponding commands in the history of grace with an emphasis on the “singularity and uniqueness” of the ethical event the resolution of which cannot be anticipated. The critic might hold that adherence to Barth’s theory of the spheres results in a moral theory where moral action guides are inferred from religious beliefs. But this is a model which Barth clearly wants to avoid, as is evidenced in his attack on ca- suistical ethics and in his insistence that the “mystery of the ethical event” be preserved. So in the face of Barth’s analysis of the horizontal dimension of the divine command, the defender of the intuitionist interpretation can re- spond in one of three ways: 1) Barth is an intuitionist; he cannot account for the movement in human moral reflection from knowledge of the spheres to knowledge of the command; 2) Barth is a pseudo-intuitionist; in his theory of the spheres he in fact adopts a model of rational inference from belief; 3) Barth simply contradicts himself, and it is impossible to discover what he ‘means at all when he writes about the divine command. All of these responses are wrong. Barth's ethics can be consistently inter- preted in such a way that requires no commitment on his part either to intui- tionism or to the model of rationally inferring moral prescriptions from reli- giously grounded beliefs. 1 will suggest the direction this reconstruction takes by showing how Barth retains the mystery of the ethical event without Joss to the seriousness of his remarks about the instruction which knowledge of the spheres brings. T have noted already that Barth conceives the being of “real man” to be the pattern of action constituted by the history of relationship between that person and God in Jesus Christ. How does this idea of “history” relate to the problem of the “ethical event”? One way in which that event has an “histori- cal quality” is that particular hearings of the divine command can be under- stood after the fact but can never be definutely anticipated before the fact. In addition, what constitutes the movement between “before” and “after” is a faithful and responsible activity of asking after the command, an activity which Barth comprehends to be part of a lived history of relationship with God. The post facto “understanding,” to elaborate, is not unlike the under- standing which one attains when one is “following” a story. One is “pulled along” towards “a promised yet always open conclusion, across any number of contingent, surprising events, but always on the understanding that these will not divert us hopelessly from the vaguely promised end” (Gallie, 1968: 64-65). As in understanding appropriate to a story, however, the knowledge and understanding of the divine command does not appear ex ruhilo: for “al most every incident in a story requires, as a necessary condition of its intelli- ibility, its acceptability, some indication of the kind of event or context Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ettucs of Karl Barth 311 which occasioned or evoked it, or, at the very least, made it possible” (Gal- lie, 1968: 26). Although the hearing cannot be definitely anticipated, further- more, the commanded act may be explained in terms of reasons; for the agent realizes that he or she is determined by a continuity of grace, that he or she belongs completely to Jesus Christ, that, therefore, his or her “vocation” and destiny are implicated in and with God's history, and that the speci spheres of divine activity have as a whole a “pattern quality” leading to a particular sort of consummation. The agent can understand the meaning of his or her action (i.e., the answer to the question “What are you doing?”) only in the light of the historical context of relationship with God in Christ. The agent can also explain the action (i.e., give an answer to the question “Why are you doing that?”), as obedience to a divine command, in terms of @ reason which describes where God has placed and is now sending him or her. This meaning and explanation, grounded in the sort of understanding appropriate to following a story, can be imparted to a spectator. Lewis White Beck (1975: 86, 89) aptly summarizes the sort of view I have in mind: The spectator sees the sense, meaning, or purpose of the action, which is adum- brated in the synecdochic perception he has of the action as an episode in a larger story that includes bits and pieces of the actor's history, his situation, and idiosyncratic orientation. . . . Given a complete picture of the world as it ap- Pears to him (an admuttedly unattainable knowledge), the reasons given for his Actions are reasons that could be as truly given for anyone just like him in a world just like his. But how does Barth make this historical character of the relationship with God intelligible? If we can’t understand that, then we certainly cannot un- derstand how it might leave a place for understanding and explaining di- vinely required actions. In the context of ethics, Barth answers this question by describing how the creature is to understand his or her right action as cor- relating analogically with God's action, as it has been revealed to His crea- tion. Thus does Barth show how the normative Christian life-story is ac- tively involved with the story of the loving and gracious God. For example, Barth’s (CD, 1V/2: 801) characterization of Christian love for neighbor as “interposition” derives from his belief that the act of love must be “an an- swer and correspondence, an imitation of the love of God.” The act of love 1s a “self-giving which reflects and therefore guarantees to the other the love of God and the freedom to love him” (Barth, CD, 1V/2: 820). This love in analogical correlation is, therefore, also and especially an act of witness to the divine love. So although the ultimate justification for performing this or that loving act is God’s command that it be done, the meaning and the expla- nation of the act are perspicuous to the agent. In performing acts of love and kindness, the agent understands himself or herself to be glorifying God by reflecting the divine love in his or her own. One knows what one is doing in Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.312 The Journal of Religious Ethics this obedient reflection, in this witness and service. The agent is also able in principle to explain, making use of analogical correlation in the description of the spheres of God’s present activity, why he or she accepts this or that particular action as that which the loving God has required (see Ramsey 1968: 120-135 for a proposal about Christian normative metaethics which ex- ploits the theme of analogical correlation). The moral agent is therefore able to specify features of his or her action which, by making primary reference to God's action, display the shape obe- dience is to take. The recognition of the spheres of God’s activity in their im- pinging upon and making concrete this ethical event involving these particu- lar circumstances and requiring ‘his particular person's obedience serves as the basis for understanding and explanation. Precisely this activity of recog- ition, I would say, is part of what it means to live one’s life as a history of relationship with God. The features we are considering are never to be con- sidered in themselves as dictating the course of future ethical decisions. One ‘must in each case ask after the command anew. But an understanding of the particular ways in which one has more or less successfully reflected God's ac- tivity in the past, as they bear more or less of a resemblance to the present possibilities for obedience, will contribute to the new discovery of new requirements. Barth still can avoid a model of rational inference from belief here be- cause he insists that the history in which persons are constituted is the history of a relationship, wherein the agent can find no “neutral ground” from which to stand above the sovereign decision of God and abstractly infer moral propositions from religious propositions. The model of rational infer- ence abstracts claims or beliefs about God from the relationship to God him- self as revealed in Jesus Christ.’ Beliefs as such and apart from relatedness never become, and must never be considered as, the source for judgments about good and evil. The precise criticism which Barth levels against cas tical ethics confirms this interpretation. Casuistry violates the integrity of the ethical event because it removes or distances one from the historical rela- tionship, leading instead to a mode of decision-making which negates the creaturely freedom to be truly obedient, If an action means not only to choose or realize this or that, but also to choose or realize oneself in this or that, as Barth claims, then an action performed in obedience to God must also be the agent’s self-offering to God 1n such obedience. But casuistry, for Barth (CD, Il1/4: 13-14), destroys the freedom of this obedience by inter- posing between the gracious commander and the obedient “living sacrifice” that is the creature an “interpretation and application . . - of a universal moral truth fixed and proclaimed with supreme arbitrariness.” Not only what God will command him to do here and how, but also what he himself must choose and realise here and now, is supplemented by this other Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 313 and alien thing which is neither of God nor of himself. He may now judge him- self by this pattern. . . . In this process he himself necessarily has no place. He 38 not asked whether he himself participates or whether he could not or would. not have done otherwise. “Practical casuistry,” in contrast, seeks to hear the command of God through an involved activity of faithful attention to the “formed reference” of the ethical event, and not merely through a process of ratiocination ab- stracted from and independent of that involved creaturely activity, As an account of how the Christian discovers what he or she ought to do, the model of rational inference from belief in and of itself prescinds from the relational historical context of the ethical event, and is thereby descrip- tively inappropriate. Within the relational historical context, as we have seen, processes of examining and comprehending the spheres of God’s activ- ity are absolutely indispensable. 1 do not interpret Barth to say that the spheres and their broad normative implications are unintelligible outside of the self-consciousness of standing in relationship to God in Christ; nor do I interpret him to say that the nonbeliever has no epistemic access to the de- scription of “hearing the command” in that relational context. Barth is only saying that the Christian's activity of discovering what God requires of him or her must be described in a certain way. Of course, that description, for Barth, is normative for Christian performance; Christians who are to be de- termined by the divine command must seek that determination appropri ately. But this belief, as far as I can see, commits one to nothing more than the conviction that Christians are to be themselves in their moral reckonings, This emphasis on relationship with God is also related to one of the most challenging aspects of Barth’s ethics, the “mystery of the ethical event”; for Barth wants to talk about a real hearing of the command of God. His ac- count of this real hearing (which is as such still “refracted in the prism of our own life and understanding”) deals both with a description of the logic of the concepts of theological ethics and with a description of the logic of one’s coming to hear the command, But for Barth the latter 1s materially tied to the former, and is not in any way given systematic prominence over the for- mer. The process of coming to hear the command requires, on the creature's side, no understanding outside that of the logic of the concepts which have to do with God’s command. Alll that matters is that the agent “ask seriously.” To ask seriously means to ask with the realization of the sovereignty of the divine decision, which must depend, in turn, on the knowledge of what God graciously has done for us in Jesus Christ. It means not to depend upon our past decisions or past pattern of action, not to attend to what we want or de- sire, not to understand ourselves apart from our determination in Jesus Christ, and not to abstract ourselves from a living history of relationship in which we are implicated at every moment of our lives (Barth, CD, II/2: 645~ Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.314 The Journal of Religious Ethics 661). If we ask, that is, in such a way that our asking reflects our understand- ing of the Whence? and Whither? of theological ethics, then, according to Barth (CD, 11/2: 648-649), “in the very fact that we desire this knowledge, what we are and will and do and do not do will be directed by the command of God and obedient to it and sanctified by it—and the more profoundly, the more seriously our question implies our realisation of the sovereignty of the divine decision.” Another way of putting this is to say that we are con- cretely and actively concerned with God and his command when we properly situate our own personal life-story at his disposal, having it determined com- pletely by the story of what he has done for us. If we truly understand what we are asking and why we are asking it, then the command will be ours for the hearing. ‘We must remember that this asking is concrete. The situation which poses the ethical question is historically differentiated and articulated. In our ask- ing after the command, we look to the biblical witness for the spheres and for the commands to which we, in our own time and place, are subject. Our “ethical reflection” consists in our attempt to discover how particularly to in- stantiate our commission to glorify God. So long as we “ask seriously,” our ethical reflection need not be in vain. The mystery of the ethical event lies in this possibility of real hearing. Casuistry denies that mystery, for Barth, pre- cisely because it reflects a misapprehension of what it means to ask of God, “What ought we to do?” and betrays an ignorance of the historical context of relatedness which establishes the meaning of the question. My argument only shows that Barth is not an intuitionist, and that he need not resort to a model of rational inference as such to avoid intuition- ism. The history of relationship model gives him the room to avoid both ex- tremes. Whether or not this historical and theonomously relational concep- tion of theological ethics can found a workable “Christian ethic” or “ethical method” is another question. The coherence of putatively inconsistent claims is all that concerns me at this point. B. Growth-in-Continuity ‘The foundations for a response to Hauerwas’s criticisms about growth-in- continuity have already been established. We start, as does Barth, with the continuity of God’s action for persons in the election of Jesus Christ, a con- tinuity affirmed through creation, reconciliation, and redemption. The hu- man correlate to this divine work could be described in terms of persons’ temporal and provisional realizations of the purpose and meaning of human life, the glorification of God, It is in this analogical correlate that we may find a broadly considered idea of “character,” a central orientation or loyalty which distinctively qualifies a person’s agency through time. This idea can be made more specific in the context of the work of reconciliation. Barth de- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 315 scribes the effect of sanctification as making the sanctified “disturbed sin- ners” who are pointed in a particular direction. The response to the call of Jesus has the paradoxical quality of self-denial; it is the annulment of an ex- isting relationship of obedience and loyalty in favor of a new orientation wherein one stands before Jesus Christ, one’s Lord and Savior (Barth, CD, 1V/2: 539). This character makes for continuity of purpose and action; the continuity is constituted by that pattern of action which displays the enact- ment of the intentions of disturbed sinners who desire to belong wholly to Jesus Christ and who freely will to be obedient to him (for a discussion of character relating to the Doctrine of Creation, see Barth, CD, II1/4: 389). Then what of growth-in-continuity? For Barth, such growth is a possibil- ity for the Christian only as it reflects “repetition and renewal.” This simply means that growth involves the reaffirmation of oneself in one’s present hearing of the command as one who belongs to God. There 1s growth (a deepening of the selfs determination through the testing of one’s current Posture against one’s central orientation and loyalty) in that in the new ethi- cal event one has the opportunity to apprehend more deeply who God is and what he has done. “To live a holy life is to be raised and driven with increas- ing definiteness from the center of the revealed truth (that God is for the per- son and the person for God] and therefore to live in conversion with growing sincerity, depth, and precision” (Barth, CD, IV/2: 566). This conversion is a “falling out with oneself,” the outcome of which is an existence simul justus et peccator. But in the recognition that this is really the quality of one’s exis- tence as one lives it in and through decision and action, one is able ever more concretely to learn how that existence is claimed by the gracious God. A more specific example of what such growth amounts to is provided by Barth when he discusses the dignity of the cross which the Christian is called upon to bear. When, in the midst of hardship and grief, one is thrown back upon God in utter dependence, one may become more deeply aware of the way in which one's existence is constituted, and of where allegiance must always lie. Not only in the bearing of the cross, but in all faithful Christian action, there is, for Barth, the possibility for an enrichment of comprehension of oneself as living in a relationship with God. This enrichment or growth-in- continuity is necessarily a repetition of conversion and a renewal of commit- ‘ment in new circumstances; for in ethical action the Christian agent must genuinely realize oneself as well as realize this or that state of affairs in the world. Each concrete action brings with it a new possibility for the self- denial which is the Christian's self-expression. This possibility is also “new” with respect to what one did with oneself in one’s immediately prior action. Every action of Christian self-expression and self-understanding itself cre- ates, for Barth (CD, I11/4: 5), “a new condition and possibility” for further self-expression and deeper self-understanding. The Christian must continu- ally rediscover and reaffirm oneself as belonging to God in each ethical en- Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.316 The Journal of Religious Ethics counter; moreover, owing to the abiding “place of responsibility” from which one stands to hear the command, the Christian’s growth in repetition and renewal is a real “growth-in-continuity.” In every case there will be a continuity, a positive relationship, between what God has caused man to be and become as Creator and Lord and what He will now have of him, The special intention with which He now calls him 1s directed to this being especially determined by God Himself. Therefore, although man cannot simply read off God’s command from what he has so far been and be- ‘come on the basis of the creation and providence of God, yet in that which God wills of him according to His command he will recognize hunself as the one he already has been and become by the will of the same God. To the new divine choice which meets him in the command of God he will have to bring mm his own choice, not a blind obedience devoid of understanding, but an obedience which sees and understands. That he specifically is meant and called will not be un- knowable to him but knowable. He will find the new purpose of God for him sketched at least in the limitation already given him by the same God. He will thus be able at least to orientate himself by what he has already been and be- come as he 1s all ears for what is now, today, demanded of him. (Barth, CD, TII/4: 596) It should be clear by now that Barth’s ethics do not fall to the criticisms of Gustafson and Hauerwas in the name of moral agency.'® This is just a less in- teresting way of saying that Barth incorporates a conception of “history” which grounds reasons for action, character, and growth-in-continuity in his category of “history of relationship with God.” The everyday conception of history, remember, explains the changes through self-expressing actions of a continuous subject. As continuous, Barth's Christian person stands loyal to the cause of Jesus Christ. As changed through his or her actions, he or she comes to a deeper self-understanding through a deeper understanding of God’s plans for him or her. And as changing, he or she approaches concrete ethical events armed with a range of theonomous reasons which help to frame and limit the possibilities of obedient action. All the conditions are met for characterizing the Christian as one who does indeed express oneself through one’s history. This history has an incarnational quality, in that the extraordinary history of relationship with God is manifested in and through the everyday history of self-expression, rather than having it manifested at the “limit” or “boundary” of the everyday (on this last point in its relation to “realistic narrative,” see Frei, 1974: 1-16). ¥. CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY: A FINAL WORD Ihave spoken only about individual Christians. This was necessary to re- strict my attention to the relevant problems of moral agency. I do not want Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethucs of Karl Barth 317 to give the impression that Barth’s writings on the Christian community have no relevance to his ethics. On the contrary, it is my belief that they are of pri- mary importance. | also believe that my interpretation of Barth lends itself to analysis of the nature and functions of the Christian community. As a community of belief, it is the place where Christian character is developed and nurtured. As a community of interpretation, it is the place where nor- mative reasons are forged through reflection on God’s activity on behalf of persons. And as a community of witness and service, it is the place where character is deepened, where self-understanding is enhanced through self- denial. So my remarks lead naturally to a Christian ethical focus on the com- munity of belief. But I will follow that lead at another time.'! NOTES 1. Hauerwas's criticism of Barth 1s extremely qualified. But it is important to consider tt, since, as I shall argue, the interpretive basis of whatever criticism there 1s 1s questionable, 2. Hence Hauerwas (1975: 140-141, 144-146, and especially 174-176) recognizes that Barth wants to make room in his anthropology for the idea of character, but does not allow for any reconciliation of this idea with Barth's “command-obedience model.” Gustafson (1968: 37ff.) appears at times to acknowledge that the method of “reformation” or “annexation” of concepts is relevant to Barth's ethies; but Gustaf- son sull too swiftly denies that Barth's anthropology can consistently include the idea of a personal history. 3. We can say that Barth indicates two things simultaneously in his “description or redescription of the temporal world of eternal grace”: “(I) that this world isa world with its own linguistic integrity—much as a literary art work 1s a consistent world in Ms own right, one that we have only under a depiction, under its particular depiction. and not any other, and certamly not m pre-linguistic immediacy or experience without depiction; but (2) that unlike any other depicted world, itis the one common world in. which we all live and move and have our being” (Frei, 1978: 45). 4. I therefore would disagree with Willis’s (1971: 99) criticism that “Barth has al- lowed his view of the empirical context within which the event of God’s command and ‘man’s response occurs to be delimited by the ontological context and event of the to- tal movement of God outward from himself in creation, reconciliation, and redemp- ton.” I assume that Wills means to say here that the manifest world of the everyday 4s somehow excluded, at least in part, by the ontological context. 5. This “intuitionsm” approaches Frankena’s (1973: 23) category of act- deontologism, which “presents a kind of method for determining what is right, namely, by becoming clear about the facts in the case and then forming a judgment about what is to be done, either by some kind of ‘intuition’... or by a ‘decision’ of, the kind that existentialists talk about. Act-deontologism, however, offers no crite- ‘non or guiding principle, but at most only rules of thumb.” Insofar as some unhelp- fully broad norm, isolated and as such, is applied to a situation, e.g., conformity to Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.318 The Journal of Religious Ethics God's graciousness, the moral theory resembles what Frankena (1973: 57) calls act- agapism: “we are to tell what we should do in a particular situation simply by getting clear about the facts of that situation and then asking what is the loving or most lov- ing thing to do in it. In other words, we are to apply the law of love directly and sepa- rately in each case with which we are confronted.” 6. Ihave tried elsewhere to consider this facet of Barth’s ethics in relation to the philosophical criticisms normally associated with Plato and Kant (Werpehowski, 1981). { should only say here that I do not believe that these criticisms count decisively against Barth’s ethics of divine command, 7. To say that Barth is so committed is not to say that he execuies his comm ment appropriately all of the tume. I note two characteristic errors or lapses in his ap- plied theological ethics: 1) Barth will often specify “relevant differences” between situations without explaining specifically how the differences are relevant Christolog- tcally considered; 2) sometimes Barth will make theological ethical claims based on an abstract conception of God's freedom, For example, Yoder (1970: 64-67) fairly sug- gests that Barth's commitment to the possibihty of an exception to the divine “No” as- serted against Christian participation in war seems to be based more on a conception of God’s inscrutability than upon an understanding of his concrete freedom (from. which latter understanding theocentric reasons for action may be brought forth by obedient persons). We must acknowledge these genuine failures of Barth but its im- portant to realize that our criticisms can readily be formulated within a theological ethical framework which Barth would support. To the extent that one wishes to pul sue the project of criticizing Barth “in his own name,” Yoder’s generally fine study may be read with profit 1 should add that, as 1 understand him, Barth's account of the spheres of God's concrete activity precludes the possibilty that action A is right in situation X, by God’s command, while the same action is wrong, by God’s command, in situation Y, ‘which situation 1s similar in all (Christologically) relevant respects, So Barth makes no room for building “a priori exceptions” to “general rules” into his theory of theologt- cal ethics. “Exceptions” must be grounded concretely (1.¢., Christologically) in terms of what it is that God 1s doing in the world. Yoder (1970: 65, 68n.) sometimes misiead- ingly proposes that Barth’s practical Failures stem from his making theoretical allow- ance for such a priori exceptions. 8. The precise status of the model of “rational inference from belief” is not en- turely clear. On the one hand, Gustafson (1975: 160) sees the process to involve dis- cerning “what the dynamic of God's presence and purposes are.” This seems to deny distancing from the relationship to God. On the other hand, Gustafson (1975: 163- 164) affirms that in the process “the theologian moves from the particular Christian beliefs to a statement of their moral import 1n a more universal language. . . . Chnis- tuan ethics (in terms not only of action-gurding principles, but also in terms of yustifi- cation for these) can in large measure be converted into ‘natural’ or ‘rational’ ethics.” These remarks contradict Barth’s conception of theological ethics. Gustafson feels he needs to commend this “conversion” in part on theological grounds. “Since the intention of the divine power for human well-being is universal im scope, the historically particular medium through which that power 1s clarified for Christians also has universal significance.” What Christians learn about human well- being applies to non-Christians as well, and that must be made clear to the latter through an argument showing that the event of Jesus Christ “sheds light on principles Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth 319 and values that other serious moral persons also perceive and also ought to adhere to." This sequence of moral authority seems to subordinate Christian ethics to some extremely vague and putatively neutral idea of what “serious moral persons” ought to beheve, Barth, in contrast, subordinates all general ethical inquiry to Christian ethical imquiry, while at the same time 1) welcoming clarificatory contributions from the sub- ordinated inquiry, and 2) preserving the relevance of “the Church” for “the world” through principles that are grounded in the revelation of Jesus Christ (e.g., that cohu- manity is the basic form of humanity, that there may be “correspondences” to the Kingdom of God 1n the secular political realm, etc.). This relevance can be main- tamed without loss of theocentricity, and avoids Gustafson’s ambiguous category of “general human moral experience.” The Christian strategy with so-called “serious moral” nonbelievers would then be to confront their moral sensibilities with a set of beliefs which is not “converted” to theirs, but which is, mstead, the key to the under- standing of their beliefs as “serious” in the first place. From that point forward, moral discussion may fruitfully proceed. 9. Its therefore not surprising to find Barth insisting that the Sabbath com- ‘mandment explains all the other of God’s commandments. “By demanding man’s ab- stention and resting from his own works, 1t explains that the commanding God who has created man and enabled and commissioned him to do his own work is the God Who 1s gracious to man in Jesus Christ. Thus it points him away from everything that he himself can will and achieve and back to what God is for him and will do for him” (Barth, CD, 11/4: 53). The Sabbath commandment thus 1s a reminder of the Whence? and the Whither? of theological ethics. 10. I should note, however, that Hauerwas's (1977) more recent work on the rela- uonship of “narrative” to theological ethics demonstrates a real openness to the inter- pretation of Barth which am offering here. 11. I would like to thank Stanley Hauerwas, George Hunsinger, Gene Outka, and Paul Ramsey for their careful and extensive criticisms of earlier versions of this essay. | read one such version at the annual meeung of the Karl Barth Society of North America in June, 1979, and I am grateful to the members of that society, especially Edward Hueneman, Robert Jenson, Paul Lehmann, and Christopher Morse, for their help and encouragement. My friends and colleagues, Paul Nelson and Edmund N. Santurn, have made numerous important critical and clarificatory suggestions +h L have tried to incorporate. Finally, 1 owe my greatest debt of gratitude to Hans Frei, whose own work on Barth inspired this essay, and whose quiet support and nu- anced criticisms were indispensable. REFERENCES Barth, Karl CD — Church Dogmaties. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark LTD, 1962 Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum. New Yor! ‘Company. Beck, Lewis White 1975 The Actor and the Spectator. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. World Publishing Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.320 The Journal of Religious Ethics Danto, Arthur 1965 Analytical Philosophy of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, Donald 1973 | “On the very idea of a conceptual scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of -4 the American Philosophical Association: 5-20. Frankena, William 1973 Ethics, Second edition, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Fret, Hans W 1974 The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven and London: Yale Univer- sity Press. 1978 Review of Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth. His Life from Letters and Auto- biographical Texts. The Virginia Seminary Journal 30 (July): 42-46. Gallie, W. B. 1968 Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. New York: Schocken Books. Gustafson, James 1968 Christ and the Moral Life. New York: Harper & Row. 1975. Can Ethucs Be Christian? Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1978 Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethucs. Chicago: The University of Chi- cago Press. Hauerwas, Stanley 1975. Character and the Christian Life. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. 1977 Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Little, David and Twiss, Sumner B. 1978 Comparative Religious Ethics. New York: Harper & Row. Quinn, Philip 1978 Divine Commands and Moral Requirements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramsey, Paul 1968 “The case of the curious exception.” Pp. 67-135 in Gene H. Outka and Paul Ramsey (eds.), Norm and Context in Christan Ethics. New York: Charles Seribner’s Sons. Rorty, Richard 1972 “The world well lost.” Journal of Philosophy 69: 649-666, Willis, Robert E. 1971 The Ethics of Karl Barth, Leiden: E. J. Brill. Werpehowski, William 1981 “Divine commands and philosophical dilemmas: the case of Karl Barth.” Dialog 20 (Winter):20-25. Yoder, John Howard 1970 Karl Barth and the Problem of War. New York: Abmgdon Press. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.