Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §38.1 "The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision" pp. 631-661

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §38 states: "As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the sovereign, definite and good decision concerning the character of our actions—the decision from which we derive, under which we stand and to which we continually move."

In paragraph §38 ("The Command as the Decision of God") and subsection §38.1 ("The Sovereignty of the Divine Decision"), Barth begins by reminding us that the command of God is more than can be described just in terms of the idea of a claim. It is of course the decision of God. In issuing this command, we are reminded that the claim on our whole being comes to us graciously in the Jesus Christ.

That God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ is the divine decision about our whole being, what we do and do not do. This is the will of God for us. In virtue of this will He has taken the initiative from all eternity and in the heart of time, making Himself responsible for our relationship to Him and participation in His glory. This is His will for us at every moment of our lives. The divine command is the witness to this will. It requires our obedience, i.e., that we should live in this surrender to God which He both wills and effects. It requires the witness of our will and actions as the praise of His great love (632).

We have been, are and will be observed and weighed. This is established by the fact that God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ. This fact is the starting-point of all the ways and works of God and our own starting-point. Because this is God’s decision for us, it is also God’s decision concerning us—the primal decision to which all our own decisions are subjected. And the command of God, which is the witness to His grace, is as such a witness to the infallible criterion whether we walk in light or darkness, whether we stand or fall. Because God wills to have us as His own, and already has us in virtue of His command, He also knows how He will have us and already has us. As He is our Lord by reason of His command, He is also the Law by which we stand or fall (633).

The command of God is a sovereign decision upon us. Of course, this sovereignty does not eliminate our own human decisions. There is still freedom in our own decisions. But what this means is that even our own free decisions relate back the sovereign divine decision of the command of God.

It is, therefore, a genuinely serious and relevant question which faces us when, in the light of the presence of the divine command, we are confronted by the fact that our life consists in a continuous series of decisions which we have to make and execute. This is why we have necessarily to examine the direction of our way both as a whole and in its particular turns and sections, to scrutinise the nature of the choice which is now before us in its integral connexion with past and future choices. How will it be with us in this choice of ours, if, as we make it, God too will choose, deciding the character of our choice, whether it is good or bad, obedience or disobedience? The command is there. It is always according to its relationship to this that our choice will be good or bad, that we shall be obedient or disobedient. God will decide this. He has decided it from all eternity, and at the heart of time, in the person of Jesus Christ (634).

To be sure, the decision of God is always as superior to ours—whatever this may be—as eternity is to time, as His holy and righteous knowing and willing is to our sinful and perverse willing and knowing. To be sure, we will not be our own judges when we make our decision, but will stand under the judgment of God, executing it ourselves. And the same is true of the self-examination in which we approach our next decision. But again and again, it is to our own free decisions that the divine decision about good and evil refers. It is they as such which are pleasing or displeasing to God, which are a praising or blaspheming of His love, and by which we ourselves are the executors of this divine decision (635).

In a small print section on pp. 636-641, Barth visits an interesting discussion on the NT group of words δόκιμος, δοκιμή, δοκιμάζειν (approved, provenness, to prove) as he discusses the relationship between our responsibility towards the divine decision and the command of God. In the end, he concludes that the word "responsibility" best sums up this relationship.

It is the idea of responsibility which gives us the most exact definition of the human situation in face of the absolute transcendence of the divine judgment. We live in responsibility, which means that our being and willing, what we do and what we do not do, is a continuous answer to the Word of God spoken to us as a command. It takes place always in a relationship to the norm which confronts and transcends us in the divine command. It is continually subject to an enquiry concerning its correspondence with this norm. It is always an answer to this enquiry. Man does not belong to himself. He does not exist in a vacuum. He is not given over to the caprice of an alien power, nor to his own self-will. He may or may not know and will it, but because Jesus Christ as very God and very man is the beginning of all the ways and works of God, man is inseparably linked with God and confronted by Him (641).

As Barth contends, the idea of responsibility, rightly understood, is known only to Christian ethics (642). And the idea of responsibility shows us what is meant by moral reflection (643). It is the examination of what we are and will and do and do not do, of the mutual relationship between the command of God and our existence (643).

In a longish section, Barth explores the question: what ought we to do? Each part of the phrase, what, ought, we, to do provides a point for analysis for Barth as he explores our responsibility. At the end of the section, Barth reminds us that this question emerges from Acts 2:37ff. There, in its original context, it was a question directed to Peter and the other apostles by those who heard Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. He reminds us that taking responsibility is really about making sure that we are asking God the question what ought we to do?

It is as well to remind ourselves, at the conclusion of this analysis, that the question: What ought we to do?, is the question which was put to Peter and the other apostles (Ac. 2:37f.) by those who heard Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. This means that, although we ourselves have to ask it, we must not ask it of ourselves. We must ask it of God, of the God who has revealed Himself to us and has given us the witnesses of His revelation. It is a question which is put by Holy Scripture, and therefore we must put it to Holy Scripture as the witness to God’s revelation. That the sovereign decision of God confronts us and our decisions objectively in Jesus Christ is, as we have seen, the supreme criterion of all ethical reflection. But Jesus Christ cannot be separated from His apostles, from the whole witness which underlies the community of God in the form of Israel, and then of the Christian Church. We hear Him as we hear His witnesses. It is in their testimony that the divine command is always to be sought and will always be found as the sovereign divine decision. We must not be surprised, then, if—in very different forms—we are always given what is in fact the one answer: “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (661).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §37.3 "The Form of the Divine Claim" pp. 583-630

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §37 states: "As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the claim which, when it is made, has power over us, demanding that in all we do we admit that what God does is right, and requiring that we give our free obedience to this demand."

In paragraph §37 ("The Command as the Claim of God") and subsection §37.3 ("The Form of the Divine Claim"), Barth begins by explaining what he means by the form of the divine claim.

By the form of the divine claim we understand the form and manner in which the command of God meets man, in which it imparts itself to him, in which it becomes—and it is this special concept which must now be elucidated and explained—a claim upon him Our present question is how man—corresponding to the basis and content of the command of God—becomes its addressee and recipient (583).

He then asks what distinguishes the form of the divine claim from other claims. He answers in this way - it differs by being a claim of permission and liberation:

The form by which the command of God is distinguished from all other commands, the special form which is its secret even in the guise of another command, consists in the fact that it is permission—the granting of a very definite freedom. We know who it is that orders here, and what it is that makes this ordering peremptory. It is the God in whom we may believe as the Lord who is gracious to us—gracious in the sense that He gave Himself for us in order that we might live before Him and with Him in peace and joy. And we know what it is that is ordered. We have to live as those who accept as right what God does for us (585).

In other words, the command of God sets humanity free and the command of God permits.

No matter in what guise the command of God meets us, in accordance with its basis and context, it will always set us free along a definite line. It will not compel man, but burst open the door of the compulsion under which he has been living. It will not meet him with mistrust but with trust. It will not appeal to his fear but to his courage. It will instil courage, and not fear into him. This is the case because the command, as we have seen, is itself the form of the grace of God, the intervention of the God who has taken the curse from us to draw us to Himself—the easy yoke and the light burden of Christ, which as such are not to be exchanged for any other yoke or burden, and the assumption of which is in every sense our quickening and refreshing (586).

Even when the "do this" or "do not do this" of God "harasses" the sinner, the command has the form of a liberating Word, and in this way, is inextricably linked with the gospel of God:

Do this, because in so doing you may make it true that your rejection has been rejected in the death of Jesus on the cross, that for His sake your sin has been forgiven. Do this, because in Jesus Christ you have been born anew in the image of God. Do it in the freedom to which you have been chosen and called, because in this freedom you may do this, and can do only this. For this, and not for any other reason, do it. You may do it. And: Do not do this—not because you again hear an outer or inner voice which seeks to make it doubtful or dreadful for you, not because there is any power in heaven or on earth to prevent or spoil or for some reason forbid it. No, but: Do not do this, because it would be a continuation of the fall of Adam, because it would not correspond to the grace addressed to you but contradict it, because you would have to do it as the captive which you certainly are not, because you, the free man, are exempted from the necessity of doing it—really exempted by the fact that you have been made righteous and glorious in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that you have actually been cut off by Him from this very possibility. This is how the command of God speaks (587).

The command is only the form of the Gospel of God, in virtue of which—not in and by ourselves, but in and by Jesus Christ—we are free. This is what characterises the command of God, distinguishing it from all other commands, not just relatively but absolutely, with the distinction of heaven over earth (588).

Barth reviews the scriptural evidence for these claims in a small print section of pp. 588-593. Under other claim we exist as sinner in bondage, these are our pseudo-Lords and pseudo-tyrrants, and yet under the command of God we receive real freedom, truth, and permission (593ff). What is exposed in this freedom is that we are our own lords, and our permissiveness is a kind of tyranny that is finally overcome with the gospel comes. The true freedom and joy we receive in Jesus Christ overcomes the anxiety and fear of self-lordship and permissiveness (589-602).

The command of God comes in Jesus Christ and brings obligation without legalism and gives permission without license.

Obligation—the obligation of the real command—means permission. That was the first point. But the second is that permission—the permission which is the proper inmost form of the divine command—also means obligation. The New Testament passages in which this emerges have all led us close to the point where we can see the decisive reason for this, and for having to state it in this way and not differently. We must now consider this point if our two propositions are to stand. What we have to describe as the form of the divine claim and to defend against a legalism which as such would rather amount to lawlessness is not an ethical principle which is distinguished from others by its attempt to identify authority with freedom. If equal justice is to be done on both sides, the propositions that the right obligation is the true permission, and the right permission the true obligation, cannot possibly be deduced from a general concept of command, even of God’s command. If the two propositions are to be brought together and related, as it were, in a vacuum, and something intelligible is to result, then necessarily either the conception of obligation or that of permission will become so flabby that either the one or the other loses its proper seriousness, the result being either an obligation limited by the permission or inversely a permission limited by the obligation. To identify authority and freedom is impossible as such. The reality of the form of the divine command, in which it demands as permission and is the Law as Gospel, is something which is in principle incomprehensible. Definition and construction in principle lead inevitably either to legalism on the one hand or to lawlessness on the other (602).

It is important to note that the permission and obligation of the command is revealed and operative in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is spiritual.

A further result, however, is that the unity of authority and freedom which characterises the form of the divine command as opposed to all others, is revealed and present to us as a promise and only as such, and therefore only in faith. The propositions of Christian ethics are propositions of Christian dogmatics. This means that as with all the other propositions of dogmatics the truth in them is contained and lies in the Word of God, that it can be known only in the Word of God, and must again and again be sought and caught in the Word of God and therefore in faith. Their truth is spiritual truth, i.e., truth which is revealed and operative in the presence and work of the Holy Spirit (603).

It is also fulfilled and take place in Jesus Christ (605). In that ways, the nature of the command of God is also personal, it meets us in the person of Jesus Christ (607). For that reason the command of God demands a personal decision of us!

The obedience which the command of God demands of man is his decision for Jesus Christ. In each individual decision it is a special form, a repetition and confirmation of this decision (609).

The command of God is “personal” because it claims our obedience in relation to this definite person, Jesus Christ (609).

But in virtue of its personal character, understood in this way, the divine command demands a genuine decision. No other command can do this. All other commands claim us in definite relationships, for definite attitudes and actions. In other respects they leave us neutral. It is only with this limitation that even other persons can claim us for themselves. Of course, the command of God itself challenges me with a limitation of this kind. The command of God requires that I should do this and not do that. But within this limitation it is distinguished from other commands by the fact that in itself it is unlimited, that in and with all its individual demands it demands myself—myself for Jesus, my subordination to this name and its law (609-610).

The command of God is eternal because its demand binds us to Jesus, and, doing that, it secretly fills every moment of our life. There is no end to the question as to our relation to this person. It is always being put to us afresh. When did we not live in the illusion that we belong to ourselves? When was it not necessary for us to be called out of this illusion and to be reminded that we belong to Jesus? As well for us that the demand of the command of God does actually have the force of this summons, and that it does not actually come to a full stop! If it did not continually re-emerge there would really be for us only lost time, lost life. For in face of it, when and where would we not find ourselves failing, retreating, deviating from the straight course of repeating and confirming the decision that it demands ? But the command does not fail. It continually puts itself to us in this form. In this form it binds us to the eternal will of God and therefore to His saving grace. It has all the constancy of the divine faithfulness in contrast to our unfaithfulness. We never dare lose sight of this mark of the form which the divine command takes that as our bond to the person of Jesus it spans the whole of the time granted to us in a continual present (612-613).

Barth closes with a long small print section (613-630) in which he looks closely at the story of the rich young ruler in order to stress this final and decisive Christological determination of the form of the divine command.

The narrative describes very fully the form of the divine claim. It shows that the demand of the living divine command made in the person of Jesus aims at the genuine, joyous and sustained decision of man for this person and therefore at the fulfilment of the one entire will of God. It shows this negatively in the figure of the rich man who was unequal to this demand, and positively in the disciples of Jesus who have become obedient to it (613).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §37.2 "The Content of the Divine Claim" pp. 566-583

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §37 states: "As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the claim which, when it is made, has power over us, demanding that in all we do we admit that what God does is right, and requiring that we give our free obedience to this demand."

In paragraph §37 ("The Command as the Claim of God") and subsection §37.2 ("The Basis of the Divine Claim"), Barth begins by orienting us to the content of the divine claim.

We now ask what it is that God wills from and for us when He claims us? We cannot stop at the affirmation that God claims us for Himself. This is quite true. But as the basis and right of this truth had first to be clarified, it must now be explained what is meant by saying that God claims us, that we should live as those who are claimed by God. For what would it mean to “be claimed by God” if man could decide and control according to his own calculation and opinion where and in what he was to find the divine claim? (566)

Perhaps it will come as no surprise at this point in Barth's systematics, but not only does Jesus Christ constitute the basis of the divine claim, he also rules its content.

According to what has been said above, it is the God in whom we may believe, the gracious God, God in Jesus Christ, who controls the content of the claim addressed to us. From first to last the content of the divine claim follows from the fact that this God has every basis for His claim and every right to it. As His command has no other basis and no other right, so also it has no other content than that which is given with this basis and right. The content of the divine claim which derives from this source, and is already present there, is secure against our caprice (566).

Barth contends that Jesus Christ rules the content of the divine claim via grace, which has teleological power (566) Meaning, it has an aim. As it is actualized and revealed in His covenant with humanity, the goal of the restoration of humanity to the divine likeness and to fellowship with God in eternity (566ff). And Jesus is what gives this process power.

But the Son of God has, in fact, entered into flesh, and in Him the grace of God has become the grace of the real man. This is what we mean when we say that it has been actualised and revealed, that the covenant between God and man has been established. But if it is established, this means that man is jolted and impelled by the aim and goal of a future determined for him. Grace is the movement and direction of man in accordance with his determination. It does not, therefore, find man in vain, but in order to act on him in its determined way. It is when a man is found in this way by the grace of God that he comes under the claim of God. And this claim of God can only be the judgment upon him that His grace will and must have its right in relation to him, its course in his life. It is this τέλος which prevails. The τέλος which man himself has set for himself as a child of Adam is invalid, and all other τέλη of his existence can only be subordinated to this. His behaviour must be a behaviour actuated and directed by this impulsion. Starting out from this basic divine decision about him, he is not his own master in any of his own decisions. Every single thing which he will do or omit to do is predetermined by this basic divine decision. In its very singularity it will always bear the character of a human confirmation of this basic divine decision (567).

The concrete form of this teleological power of grace is the person of Jesus Christ Himself. We have seen how the basis and right of the divine claim are revealed in the obedience of the man Jesus Christ—the will of the heavenly Father who has turned to man in pure kindness. But as He is obedient to this will of God, Jesus also shows what it is that God rightly wills of us. The basic divine decision concerning man is embodied in Jesus. The determination in which man is directed to his promised future, and set in motion towards this future, is given in Him. Jesus Himself is the impulsion of all men to eternal life. He Himself is the claim which God has made and continually makes upon all men (567).

Obedience to God always means that we become and are continually obedient to Jesus (568).

Not only is true obedience that which is obedience to Jesus Christ, this is also discipleship!

The decisive New Testament term in this connexion is that of following. “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example (ὑπογραμμός), that ye should follow his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be” (Jn. 12:26). The term is filled out in certain passages. According to Mt. 10:38, to follow Jesus is to “take up one’s cross”; according to Mt. 16:24, it is to “deny oneself”; according to Mt. 19:27, “to leave all”; according to the account (in Lk. 9:57f.) of the three who wanted to follow Jesus, and evidently could not, and therefore did not genuinely want to do so, the radicalism of the necessary turning to Him and away from everything else; according to the context of 1 Pet. 2:21f., to suffer persecution without returning evil for evil but rather requiting evil with good (569).

When the disciples of Jesus are constituted His disciples by the command: Follow Me, the simple but incommensurable meaning is that they are to be with Him, to abide with Him, to accompany Him on His ways wherever they may lead. Why? Well, obviously in the first instance only to be there, to hear what He says and see what He does, and therefore to be His ear-witnesses and eye-witnesses. No other meaning is possible even where, as in Mt. 4:25 and many other places, it is applied even to those whose attachment to Jesus is more occasional and transitory. In every case “following” means simply to be there, to be with Jesus, in His proximity. This simple “being there” has for their existence all the consequences which are given in the more concrete explanations. There is assumed in it an obligation which loosens and limits and disturbs all the other relationships in which they might otherwise stand, all their ties with men, things and circumstances. By it they are tested and sifted (570).

As Barth notes, it is not possible to be with Jesus and not be living in the commands and content of the divine claim. Also, just as Jesus Christ is the teleological power of grace, so too the community of God's people is the teleological power of God's grace as God's people carry the divine grace and divine command to all people.

Thanks to the wisdom and omnipotence of divine grace, Jesus never exists alone and for Himself, but always as the first-born among many brethren, as the prophesied King of Israel, as the revealed Head of His community. It is not of their own means and merit, but by Him and from Him, as His people, that those who belong to Him are bearers of the grace of God for all men and therefore of the divine claim on all men (571).

So, what is the aim of God's grace in the divine claim?

The concern in the divine claim is that man’s action should become and be always that of those who accept God’s action as right (575).

Meaning, we are to correspond to God's grace and with our actions give an account to this grace (576). Of course, this is not to say that conformity to this grace means equality, God is not making us a second Christ (577). This is not an abolition of the "infinite qualitative difference" between God and humanity.

But conformity to this grace does mean some important things. First, it means that we accept the gracious action of God as right (579).

But the required conformity with the grace of God is this. His action must be determined by the fact that he accepts the gracious action of God as right. This, or something just as simple and apparently sterile and non-committal, is the best possible expression to describe the content of the divine claim. We might perhaps substitute for “accept as right” some such phrase as “acquiesce in” or “respect” or “allow to stand” or “adhere to.” The crux of the matter is that we should understand the Law as “spiritual” (Rom. 7:14), or as “the law of the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2), that is, as the form of grace and the Gospel, and therefore in the simplicity, indeed the “lightness,” of its demand and fulfilment (579).

“To accept as right” means to lay aside all hostility to God’s action—as if we were injured or humiliated by it, as if we had to guard and defend ourselves against it, as if there were some important interests which inclination or even duty compelled us to defend against it. “To accept as right” means again to lay aside all indifference to what God does, or non-participation in it—as if we knew nothing of it, as if it were no concern of ours, as if He did it for Himself, or for   p 580  all kinds of others, as if He did not do it for us, for me, as if we, I, were not affected and determined by what He does. “To accept as right” means finally to lay aside all one’s superiority and self-will in regard to God’s action—as if alongside and apart from it we could acquiesce in and accept all kinds of other things as right, as if in our action we could choose again between orientation by this or that authority, as if acceptance of God’s gracious action as right did not mean that we were bound to this authority, to this norm, and free only in obedience to it (579-580).

Second, conformity to God's grace means that we recognize that we do not belong to ourselves.

What are we to do? We are to accept as right, and to live as those who accept as right the fact that they do not belong to themselves, that they therefore do not have their life in their own hands and at their own disposal, that they are made a divine possession in Jesus Christ (580).

Finally, conformity to God's grace means that we acknowledge the rightness of God's mercy and righeousness.

What are we to do? We are to accept it as right that God never meets us except compassionately, except as the One who comes to the help of our misery, except apart from and against our deserts, except in such a way as to disclose that what we have deserved is death (581).

What are we to do? We are to accept it as right that God is our righteousness. Beyond our physical and spiritual delights and desires, beyond our bondage to earth and titanic strivings, beyond our faults and virtues, beyond our good and evil works, He is always our righteousness (582).

Barth summarizes this section in this way:

We can sum it all up by saying that what God wants of us and all men is that we should believe in Jesus Christ. Not that we should believe like Jesus Christ—that aspect is better left on one side seeing that He is God and we are only men—but that we should believe in Jesus Christ, in the gracious action of God actualised and revealed in Him. The essence of faith is simply to accept as right what God does, to do everything and all things on the presupposition that God’s action is accepted as right. That is why it can and must be said of faith that in and by it we are righteous before God. In the last resort, the apostles had only one answer to the question: “What are men to do?” This was simply that they should believe, believe in Jesus Christ. All the answers of theological ethics to the same question can only paraphrase and confirm the imperative: “Seek those things which are above, where Christ is.” (583).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §37.1 "The Basis of the Divine Claim" pp. 552-565

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §37 states: "As God is gracious to us in Jesus Christ, His command is the claim which, when it is made, has power over us, demanding that in all we do we admit that what God does is right, and requiring that we give our free obedience to this demand."

In paragraph §37 ("The Command as the Claim of God") and subsection §37.1 ("The Basis of the Divine Claim"), Barth begins with a discussion of the basis of God's claim.

Why has God a title to man, and therefore a claim on him? What is the source of His power over him? Why has man to obey Him? Why God, and not any other authority? That God has a claim, the claim, on man, that the command under which man’s action stands is, in fact, the command of God, that first and last it orders us to cleave to God, is something which, if it is established as true in itself, is necessarily distinguished epistemologically from all other opposing assertions by the fact that this Why? is met by an overwhelming Therefore (552).

Barth then asks a question: "what is it, then, that directs and binds a man, not to any other authority, but to God? He begins by answering the question negatively in three ways, i.e., giving us three answers that he thinks are unsatisfactory.

First, it is not divine power as power that binds us to His authority (552-554).

Second, it is not because God is the eternal essence of the good (554). This is true, but it is not what binds us to his authority.

Third, it is not because God is the all-sufficient good who we select as our supreme good (555-556). This is not what binds us to his authority.

Instead, Barth finds what binds us to the authority of God, that which has a claim on us, is Jesus Christ.

All this is actual in Jesus Christ. The Law is completely enclosed in the Gospel. It is not a second thing alongside and beyond the Gospel. It is not a foreign element which precedes or only follows it. It is the claim which is addressed to us by the Gospel itself and as such, the Gospel in so far as it has the form of a claim addressed to us, the Gospel which we cannot really hear except as we obey it. For Jesus Christ is the basis on which we may believe in God, the Word in which dwell the light and force to move us to this event. He Himself is the Gospel. He Himself is the resolve and the execution of the essential will in which God willed to give Himself to us. The grace of God, of the God in whom we may believe, is this. In Jesus Christ the eternal Word became flesh. Without ceasing to be who He is in Himself, God became as one of us. He assumed our humanity into His deity. Although it was darkened and destroyed by our sins, and under sentence of death, He took it up into Himself in an indissoluble unconfused unity. He did not do this because of its strength or dignity or any other qualification. He did it only because of His own good-pleasure, His incomprehensible compassion (557-558).

The promise of the true repentance which He has performed for us is not something which has still to be fulfilled, something outstanding. It has already been fulfilled. It was not in vain that in Jesus Christ God adopted and assumed this flesh of ours which was under sentence of death. In so doing, He really accomplished both His own and our justification and glorification. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as it has already been accomplished, we sinners are already revealed as the righteous who may live by their faith. Death could not hold Him, and therefore it cannot hold us. His life (and His life is our life) had necessarily to swallow up death, and it did swallow it up. In the midst of death we have in Him no future but that of resurrection and eternal life. The grace of this God decides and has already decided concerning our human existence. What does it mean to be a man now that this decision has been reached by the grace of God? It obviously means to be one who stands and walks and lives and dies within the fact that God is gracious to him, that He has made him His own. It obviously means to be one for whom God has intervened in this way, with whom He has dealt in this way. It obviously means to be one for whose human existence Jesus Christ Himself stands before God according to the will, in the name, and by the commission of God, in all the wisdom and the fulness of the might of God—so stands before God that he is completely covered by Him, completely destroyed both in his weakness and in his self-will, completely offered as a living sacrifice, but in this way made completely holy and completely glorious (558-559).

And now we can answer the question of the basis and justice of the claim which is addressed to us and objectively to all men. It is the claim of the God in whom we may believe, of the God who is constituted our Lord and demands our obedience in and with the fact that He is gracious to us in Jesus Christ (559).

And Jesus is not only the basis of the divine claim, He is a supreme example for us.

What we find in the case of the man Jesus is a valid model for the general relationship of man to the will of God. When God wills something from and for man, when man’s will is claimed by God, there can be no question of an arbitrary and purposeless control which God can exercise just because He is God and therefore superior to man. On the contrary, what God wills from and for man stands or falls with, and is revealed and revealed only in, what the same God will do and has already done for us and in us. Jesus is obedient to God as the Father in heaven, as the One who wills our salvation and in and with our salvation His own glory. And as the Father in heaven, as the One who wills our salvation, God is the Lord of all of us in His Son Jesus Christ, and He wills that we should be obedient to Him. The grace of God had to be resolved upon in heaven, and actualised and declared on earth, in order that we should be summoned from the irreverence and rebelliousness of Adam to respect towards God, attention to His Word, and fulfilment of His will. When grace is actualised and revealed, it always means that the Law is established (562).

Barth concludes this section with the reminder that what God has commanded, God has also fulfilled, particularly in Jesus Christ. In that way, God has a right to make a claim upon us.

He has spoken of the good by doing it; He has spoken of Himself by delivering Himself up for us. It is in this that He is God. This is His majesty. This is how He maintains and proves His authority over man. The Law is valid because God Himself is the doer of the Law, because God orders and only orders on the basis of the fact that He Himself has given and realised and fulfilled what He orders. The Law is valid because in Jesus Christ God encompasses us on all sides and holds His hand over us. It is valid because, in becoming man in Jesus Christ, God has claimed for Himself our human freedom. It is valid because, once God has Himself become man for us in Jesus Christ, there is no longer any excuse for our human weakness. It is valid because we can no longer confuse the divine good manifested in Jesus Christ with the good which we fancy we ourselves are and have. That is why the God to whom we may refer has authority in contrast to all other gods. That is why He is the real basis of the ethical claim made by Him. That is why He has the right to claim man for Himself (565).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §36.2 "The Way of Theological Ethics" pp. 543-551

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §36 states: "As the doctrine of God’s command, ethics interprets the Law as the form of the Gospel, i.e., as the sanctincation which comes to man through the electing God. Because Jesus Christ is the holy God and sanctified man in One, it has its basis in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Because the God who claims man for Himself makes Himself originally responsible for him, it forms part of the doctrine of God. Its function is to bear primary witness to the grace of God in so far as this is the saving engagement and commitment of man."

In paragraph §36 ("Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God") and subsection §36.2 ("The Way of Theological Ethics"), Barth deals with the nature of theological ethics. He begins with a reminder that the nature of theological ethics is rooted in the election of God, and more particularly, in the doctrine of God Himself.

It is the Christian doctrine of God, or, more exactly, the knowledge of the electing grace of God in Jesus Christ, which decides the nature and aim of theological ethics, of ethics as an element of Church dogmatics. It has its basis, therefore, in the doctrine of God Himself. For the God who claims man makes Himself originally responsible for man. The fact that He gives man His command, that He subjects man to His command, means that He makes Himself responsible not only for its authority but also for its fulfilment. Therefore we do not speak completely about God Himself if we do not go on at once to speak also about His command. But it is the Christian doctrine of God, or, more exactly, the knowledge of the electing grace of God in Jesus Christ, which also decides the special way of theological ethics, the special form of its enquiry and reply, the attainment of its fundamental principles (543).

Barth begins with a negative reflection - what the nature of theological ethics is not. It is not a general philosophical ethics.

In view of this matter, we must first refuse to follow all those attempts at theological ethics which start from the assumption that it is to be built on, or to proceed from, a general human ethics, a “philosophical” ethics. In the relationship between the command of God and the ethical problem, as we have defined it in its main features, there is not a universal moral element autonomously confronting the Christian. It is, therefore, quite out of the question methodically to subordinate the latter to the former, to build it on, or to derive it from, it (543).

Also, theological ethics is primarily concerned with human life or human orientation rather the command of God (543-544). He reviews objections to this claim by other ethicists in a small print section of pp. 544-546.

But again, in view of the matter in mind, we shall have to cut ourselves free from all those deductions and classifications which start from the presupposition that while dogmatics has to do with God and faith in Him, the concern of ethics is with man and his life. This distinction usually avenges itself at once, for the distinctive Whence? and Whither? of theological ethics are smothered by the various questions man as such has to put and would like to see answered in relation to the shaping of his life. These questions of human life replace the command of God as the proper theme, the framework of all thinking on the subject (543-544).

Barth then turns to a more positive reflection on the nature of theological ethics. First, the nature of theological ethics rests upon and presents the Word of God, which he contends purchases and has a claim upon humanity.

If we ask first concerning the basis of ethics, the first task which obviously confronts us is to understand and present the Word of God as the subject which claims us. It is to understand and present the Word of God in its character as the command which sanctifies man. This basis will be our particular concern in this final chapter of the doctrine of God. The goodness of human action consists in the goodness with which God acts toward man. But God deals with man through His Word. His Word is the sum and plenitude of all good, because God Himself is good. Therefore man does good in so far as he hears the Word of God and acts as a hearer of this Word. In this action as a hearer he is obedient. Why is obedience good? Because it derives from hearing, because it is the action of a hearer, namely, of the hearer of the Word of God. It is good because the divine address is good, because God Himself is good (546).

He then moves to show that theological ethics has a task of showing God's good action towards humanity, which means God's claim, decision, and judgement is upon humanity.

Man does good in so far as his action is Christian. A Christian is one who knows that God has accepted him in Jesus Christ, that a decision has been made concerning him in Jesus Christ as the eternal Word of God, and that he has been called into covenant with Him by Jesus Christ as the Word of God spoken in time. When he knows this, when he is “judged” by God through confrontation and fellowship with Jesus Christ, his action, too, becomes a “judged” action. It is in the fact that it is “judged” that its goodness consists. Therefore its goodness derives from this confrontation and fellowship. His action is good because the divine address which is an eternal and temporal event in Jesus Christ is good, because God Himself is good. In its simplest and most basic expression this is the theological answer to the ethical question. This is the sum and substance of theological ethics. The characteristic feature of the theological answer to the ethical problem is that—although it also answers the question of the goodness of human action—it understands man from the very outset as addressed by God, so that in regard to the goodness of his action it can only point away from man to what God says, to God Himself (547).

Barth also contends that the command of God is an event. This is such an important on-going theme in the work of Barth. In the sanctifying command of God we understand God Himself as an acting God.

The first thing that theological ethics has to show, and to develop as a basic and all-comprehensive truth, is the fact and extent that this command of God is an event. This is the specific ethico-dogmatic task as it now confronts us within the framework of the doctrine of God. We cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that by the ruling principle of theological ethics, by the sanctifying command of God—corresponding to the fact that we do not know God Himself otherwise than as acting God—we have to understand a divine action, and therefore an event—not a reality which is, but a reality which occurs. Not to see it in this way is not to see it at all. It is not seen when we try to see it from the safe shelter of a general theory. It is not seen when we think we see a being and then ask whether and to what extent we can derive from this being this or that obligation. The proposition: “There is a command of God,” is quite inadequate as a description of what concerns us. 

For we should naturally have to weigh against it the denial: No, “there is” no command of God. What “there is” is not as such the command of God. But the core of the matter is that God gives His command, that he gives Himself to be our Commander. God’s command, God Himself, gives Himself to be known. And as He does so, He is heard. Man is made responsible. He is brought into that confrontation and fellowship with Jesus Christ. And his action acquires that determination. The command of God is the decision about the goodness of human action. As the divine action it precedes human action. It is only on the basis of this reality, which is not in any sense static but active, not in any sense general but supremely particular, that theological ethics has to make answer to the ethical question. Its theory is simply the theory of this practice. It is because this practice occurs, because theological ethics cannot escape noticing this practice, in the contemplation of this practice, that theological ethics fashions its concepts. The same practice of the Word of God forms the basis of the Christian Church. It is in view of it that there is faith and obedience in the Church. It is in view of it that all theology has its legitimacy and its necessity. It is as God gives man His command, as He gives Himself to man to be his Commander, that God claims him for Himself, that He makes His decision concerning him and executes His judgment upon him. It is as He does this that He sanctifies him, and the good (which is God Himself) enters into the realm of human existence. To understand the command of God as this claim and decision and judgment will therefore be the first task to which we must address ourselves in the present context (548).

Barth will develop this more fully later in the Church Dogmatics in a three-fold way:

Once this foundation has been laid, in later sections of the Church Dogmatics we shall have to show in detail to what extent this divine command is actually directed to man. Even as His command, the Word of God is the Word of His truth and reality in the act of creation, in the act of reconciliation and in the act of redemption. Or we might put it in this way, that it reveals the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ as the kingdom of nature, the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory. Or we might say that it manifests the pre-temporal, cotemporal and post-temporal eternity of God. Or, alternatively, it speaks to us about our determination for God, our relationship to Him and the goal of our perfection in Him. As the command of God, too, His Word has this threefold meaning and content. The concept of the command of God includes the concepts: the command of God the Creator, the command of God the Reconciler and the command of God the Redeemer. The three concepts are identical with the fundamental concepts of dogmatics which it is the task of theological ethics to explain and recapitulate in their ethical content (549).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §36.1 "The Command of God and the Ethical Problem" pp. 509-542

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §36 states: "As the doctrine of God’s command, ethics interprets the Law as the form of the Gospel, i.e., as the sanctincation which comes to man through the electing God. Because Jesus Christ is the holy God and sanctified man in One, it has its basis in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Because the God who claims man for Himself makes Himself originally responsible for him, it forms part of the doctrine of God. Its function is to bear primary witness to the grace of God in so far as this is the saving engagement and commitment of man."

In paragraph §36 ("Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of God") and subsection §36.1 ("The Command of God and the Ethical Problem"), Barth begins by reminding us that the covenant of grace between God and humanity has two implications. First, it implies divine election. Secondly, it implies divine command.

In the true Christian concept of the covenant of God with man the doctrine of the divine election of grace is the first element, and the doctrine of the divine command is the second. It is only in this concept of the covenant that the concept of God can itself find completion (509).

This dual foundation, election and ethics, is then dealt with under the doctrine of God in Barth's systematics. God wills something for humanity (election), and He wills something from Him (command) (509-510). But doesn't the divine command overrule God's grace? Such that it becomes all about our obedience? No. God's grace is a ruling grace. The one word of God is both gospel and law.

To answer this question cannot, then, impose any limitation upon the knowledge of the absolute authority of God’s grace. There can be no question, therefore, of having to speak of anything other than the Gospel. What we have to establish is that the being and essence and activity of God as the Lord of the covenant between Himself and man include a relationship to the being and essence and activity of man. It is as He makes Himself responsible for man that God makes man, too, responsible. Ruling grace is commanding grace. The Gospel itself has the form and fashion of the Law. The one Word of God is both Gospel and Law. It is not Law by itself and independent of the Gospel. But it is also not Gospel without Law. In its content, it is Gospel; in its form and fashion, it is Law. It is first Gospel and then Law. It is the Gospel which contains and encloses the Law as the ark of the covenant the tables of Sinai. But it is both Gospel and Law. The one Word of God which is the revelation and work of His grace is also Law. That is, it is a prior decision concerning man’s self-determination. It is the claiming of his freedom. It regulates and judges the use that is made of this freedom. As the one Word of God, which is the revelation and work of His grace, disposes of man, it is also the impulse directing him to a future that is in keeping with this “disposing.” As the one Word of God which is the revelation and work of His grace reaches us, its aim is that our being and action should be conformed to His. “Be ye (literally, ye shall be) therefore perfect (literally, directed to your objective), even as (i.e., corresponding to it in creaturely-human fashion as) your Father which is in heaven is perfect (directed to His objective)” (Mt. 5:48). The truth of the evangelical indicative means that the full stop with which it concludes becomes an exclamation mark. It becomes itself an imperative. The concept of the covenant between God and man concluded in Jesus Christ is not exhausted in the doctrine of the divine election of grace. The election itself and as such demands that it be understood as God’s command directed to man; as the sanctification or claiming which comes to elected man from the electing God in the fact that when God turns to Him and gives Himself to him He becomes his Commander (511-512).

Barth argues that ethics belongs not just to dogmatics, but under the doctrine of God. In this way, Barth primary aim in writing about ethics is to help his readers recognize the revolutionary claim of God upon their lives.

This makes it plain that ethics belongs not only to dogmatics in general but to the doctrine of God. This is something which ought to have been apparent for some time. For who can possibly see what is meant by the knowledge of God, His divine being, His divine perfections, the election of His grace, without an awareness at every point of the demand which is put to man by the fact that this God is his God, the God of man? (512).

Barth puts it boldly and bluntly:

...the dogmatics of the Christian Church, and basically the Christian doctrine of God, is ethics,” and doctrine is “the answer to the ethical question” (II/ 2: 515). 

For Barth, therefore, the whole theological enterprise can be seen as driven by the need to answer questions of ethics, and theology is sterile unless it informs us about how to live. Of course, sinful humanity would like nothing more than to be the arbiter of what is good or evil. This is many ways is reflected in the history of ethical thought. But this is not possible.

Before he was, before the world was, God drew him to Himself when he destined him to obedience to His command. But, strangely enough, it is just because of this that the impossible—sin—presses so insistently. For man is not content simply to be the answer to this question by the grace of God. He wants to be like God. He wants to know of himself (as God does) what is good and evil. He therefore wants to give this answer himself and of himself. So, then, as a result and in prolongation of the fall, we have “ethics,” or, rather, the multifarious ethical systems, the attempted human answers to the ethical question. But this question can be solved only as it was originally put—by the grace of God, by the fact that this allows man actually to be the answer (517).

When the ethical thinker who starts out from that general conception encounters the attestation of the command of God in the Christian doctrine of God, he finds himself precipitated into a strange world because he is confronted by an enigmatic knowledge of the Whence? and Whither? of all ethical enquiry and reply. This violates at its nerve centre what usually passes for ethical reflection and explanation. As we cannot disguise this in relation to the doctrine of God, it is something which we can only have or not have. It presupposes a fundamental decision which, described in the categories of revelation and faith, undoubtedly means an unprecedented demand, if not worse. The problem of ethics generally—the law or good or value which it seeks as a standard by which human action and modes of action are to be measured, and according to which they are to be performed, the problem of the truth and knowledge of the good—is no problem at all in the ethics immanent in the Christian conception of God, in the doctrine of the command of God. For in virtue of the fact that the command of God is the form of His electing grace, it is the starting-point of every ethical question and answer. It is the starting-point which is already given and to that extent presupposed and certain in itself, so that it can never be surpassed or compromised from any quarter (519).

We cannot do ethics in a vacuum. Barth rejects three different ways of "doing" ethics. First, would be the mistake of having an apologetic discussion with general ethics, a move recommended by some bright lights in the tradition, for example, Schleiermacher (522). To concede to such a discussion is to  abandon the premise that theological ethics is rooted in the doctrine of God and dogmatics.

The second mistake would be to allow an isolation of theological ethics from philosophical ethics - a kind of "two spheres" approach. This approach would impose a restriction on theological ethics that is not warranted or appropriate.

But the temptation which comes from the opposition to theological ethics might take a very different form, or one that is apparently very different. The desired adjustment to general ethical thinking and language can be undertaken in the form of a proper isolation of theological ethics from the former, of a suitable allocation of roles to the two. The attempt can be made to show that, whatever may be the interconnexion between them, there is a twofold ethical inquiry, let us say, a “theological” and a “philosophical,” which touch and limit but do not abolish each other. By an ultimately friendly demarcation of the difference between the two, the special task of theological ethics can be defined and preserved, and an attempt made to assure its formal compatibility with that of ethics generally (524-525).

What we have to ask in relation to this view is whether theology can seriously contemplate two things. First, can it really be restricted in this way to a sphere which is no doubt remarkably distinguished by the concepts of religion, revelation, Church, grace, Spirit, etc., but which is characterised as a very narrow and rather obscure sphere by its isolation from the sphere of reason, experience and human self-determination? And secondly, can it really ascribe to reason, experience, human self-determination, etc., an independent content of truth, an autonomous dignity and authority, which in its own preoccupation with revelation and the outpourings of Christian self-consciousness it can safely leave on one side? To put the question differently: Is God’s revelation revelation of the truth, or is it only the source of certain religious ideas and obligations, alongside which there are very different ones in other spheres? Outside and alongside the kingdom of Jesus Christ are there other respectable kingdoms? Can and should theology of all things be content to speak, not with universal validity, but only esoterically? Is it, or is it not, serious in its alleged knowledge of a Whence? and Whither? of all ethical enquiry and reply which are superior to all reason, experience and self-determination? (526).

The third mistake would be to too tightly coordinate the relationship between theological ethics and general ethics, i.e. moral philosophy and moral theology, (for example, in the way that Roman Catholicism has). The ultimate problem with such an approach is that one's ethics begin, rather than with God in Jesus Christ, but in a metaphysics of being, and because of this the framework of the command of the grace of God as the content of theological ethics cannot have the status which properly belongs to it.

For this Roman Catholic co-ordination of moral philosophy and moral theology is based on the basic view of the harmony which is achieved in the concept of being between nature and super-nature, reason and revelation, man and God. And it is quite impossible to see how in this basic view grace can really emerge as grace and the command as command. According to this view, the fall does not alter the fact that man’s imitative knowledge is capable and to that extent partakes of true being even without grace, and therefore—analogia entis—of communion with the supreme essential being, with God, and therefore with the supreme good, although on account of the fall a special illumination by the grace of revelation is needed actually to prevent it from falling into error (530).

This presupposition of the Roman Catholic construction is in every respect unacceptable. Strong opposition must be made to the idea that the metaphysics of being, the starting-point of this line of thought, is the place from which we can do the work of Christian theology, from which we can see and describe grace and nature, revelation and reason, God and man, both as they are in themselves and in their mutual relationship. The harmony in which they are co-ordinated within this system is surreptitious. For what has that metaphysics of being to do with the God who is the basis and Lord of the Church? (530-531).

If this God is He who in Jesus Christ became man, revealing Himself and reconciling the world with Himself, it follows that the relationship between Him and man consists in the event in which God accepted man out of pure, free compassion, in which He drew him to Himself out of pure kindness, but first and last in the eternal decree of the covenant of grace, in God’s eternal predestination. It is not with the theory of the relationship between creaturely and creative being, but with the theory of this divine praxis, with the consideration and conception of this divine act, of its eternal decree and its temporal execution, that theology, and therefore theological ethics, must deal (531).

Having dispensed with all that, Barth can now make some definitive statements regarding theological ethics. Theological ethics concerns itself with the sum of the good and the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good. This is no "mere possibility" but is reality.

But this means, first, that the reality of the good as such, the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good, cannot be treated as a mere possibility. We cannot first make a problem of the reality of the good in the command of God, or of the reality of the command of God as the sum of the good, and then come back to the affirmation of them in the form of a solution of the problem. We cannot even incidentally reckon with the possibility that there is no good, or that it consists in something other than the command of God. We cannot even incidentally make it the object of our choice. For if we do, it is no longer this good, not even if we do finally approve it. This good is chosen only in obedience, i.e., in the choice in whose making we have no choice, because we are chosen ourselves and can only make this one choice. Its possibility demands our recognition and apprehension as it is included in its reality as the reality of God, which either includes all possibility or excludes it as an impossible possibility. Even when it takes up the ethical problem, theological thinking is always bound to this reality (536). 

Not only that, but theological ethics concerns the right conduct of humanity and it cannot cease to attest and interpret the reality of God. It thus directs its attention to the Word of work of God which have taken place in Jesus Christ (537ff).

This orientation of theological ethics means, secondly, that while it, too, enquires concerning the right conduct of man, it cannot cease to attest and interpret the reality of God, and therefore His Word and work. It cannot change either its direction or its theme. When it asks about right conduct, it cannot stealthily become an indicative or imperative representation of the Christian; an empirical or ideal depiction of Christian existence. It cannot turn its back on the Word of God in order, for a change, to see what has become of the man who hears the Word of God, or what will perhaps become of him. Even as ethics, theology is wholly and utterly the knowledge and representation of the Word and work of God (537-538).

What right conduct is for man is determined absolutely in the right conduct of God. It is determined in Jesus Christ. He is the electing God and elected man in One. But He is also the sanctifying God and sanctified man in One. In His person God has acted rightly towards us. And in the same person man has also acted rightly for us. In His person God has judged man and restored him to His image. And in His person again man has reconstituted himself in the divine likeness. We do not need any other image but this: neither another image of God nor another image of man and his right conduct; neither another Gospel nor another Law. In the one image of Jesus Christ we have both the Gospel which reconciles us with God and illumines us and consoles us, and the Law which in contradistinction to all the laws which we ourselves find or fabricate really binds and obligates us. This is the Law to which theological ethics clings. It is ethics of grace or it is not theological ethics. For it is in grace—the grace of God in Jesus Christ—that even the command of God is established and fulfilled and revealed as such. Therefore “to become obedient,” “to act rightly,” “to realise the good,” never means anything other than to become obedient to the revelation of the grace of God; to live as a man to whom grace has come in Jesus Christ (538-539).

Jesus Christ forms the center of theological ethics because by him God has done what is right for humanity, and in Him, humanity can do what is right for God. Barth concludes with a discussion of the possibility of non-theological ethics. He concludes that yes, in part, the good may be known and done apart from Jesus Christ, but only because of God's wisdom and patience (see how Barth is rooting it again in the Doctrine of God?); and yet, the forms no basis for an independent ethics.

Thanks to the wisdom and patience of God, and the inconsequence of men, it is quite possible in practice that Christian insights and deductions may actually exist where their Christian presuppositions are wholly concealed, or where a closer investigation would reveal all kinds of presuppositions that are only to a small extent Christian. There are many people who live by Christian presuppositions, who even represent and proclaim them, and yet if they were questioned, could only tell us something very far from satisfactory or quite unsatisfactory, something which we might have to dismiss as heathenism or Jewish doctrine. The wise course, then, is to keep to what they actually know and not to what they unfortunately seem not to know or even in their folly to deny. The business of the reader or hearer of this type of ethics is tacitly to supplement and correct its more doubtful—implicit or explicit—presuppositions (as Paul did in Ac. 17:28), and for the rest to learn from it what it actually has to teach. But this does not in the least alter, but rather confirms, the fact that in thesi, in principle—and this is what concerns us here—correct ethics can only be Christian ethics, and Christian ethics, if it speaks scientifically, cannot be differentiated from theological ethics. In the last analysis, therefore, the only strict answer to our question is to say that in a scientific form there is only one ethics, theological ethics (542).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §35.4 "The Determination of the Rejected" pp. 450-506

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §35 states: "The man who is isolated over against God is as such rejected by God. But to be this man can only be by the godless man’s own choice. The witness of the community of God to every individual man consists in this: that this choice of the godless man is void; that he belongs eternally to Jesus Christ and therefore is not rejected, but elected by God in Jesus Christ; that the rejection which he deserves on account of his perverse choice is borne and cancelled by Jesus Christ; and that he is appointed to eternal life with God on the basis of the righteous, divine decision. The promise of his election determines that as a member of the community he himself shall be a bearer of its witness to the whole world. And the revelation of his rejection can only determine him to believe in Jesus Christ as the One by whom it has been borne and cancelled."

In paragraph §35 ("The Election of the Individual") and subsection §35.4 ("The Determination of the Rejected"), Barth now turns to the question of the determination of the rejected. Who is the rejected?

A “rejected” man is one who isolates himself from God by resisting his election as it has taken place in Jesus Christ. God is for him; but he is against God. God is gracious to him; but he is ungrateful to God. God receives him; but he withdraws himself from God. God forgives him his sins; but he repeats them as though they were not forgiven. God releases him from the guilt and punishment of his defection; but he goes on living as Satan’s prisoner. God determines him for blessedness, and His service; but he chooses the joylessness of an existence that accords with his own pride and aims at his own honour. The rejected man does exist in his own way alongside the elect (449-450).

Barth begins his consideration of the determination of the rejected with the assertion that God possesses one will, not two; meaning, the determination of the rejected is made by the same will as the elect.

The proposition from which we must start is that in the determination of the rejected we have to do with the will of God in what is by definition a wholly different sense than in the determination of the elect. The one will of God which determines both is here the almighty, holy and compassionate non-willing of God. No eternal covenant of wrath corresponds on the one side to the eternal covenant of grace on the other. Nor does an established or tolerated kingdom of Satan correspond in scope or duration, in dignity or authority, to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, just because God does not will always to chide with man, He has initiated the covenant of grace as the beginning of all His works and ways and to destroy the rule of Satan over mankind, thus opposing the kingdom of Jesus Christ to Satan in triumphant superiority. The rejection of mankind is the rejection borne eternally and therefore for all time by Jesus Christ in the power of divine self-giving. It is, therefore, the rejection which is “rejected.” Because this is so, the rejected man is from the very outset and in all circumstances quite other than the elect. He is the man who is not willed by the almighty, holy and compassionate God. Because God is wise and patient in His non-willing also, he still exists and is not simply annihilated. But although—as the object of the divine non-willing—he exists with the elect, he has no autonomous existence alongside or apart from him (450).

Only the elected knows the rejected because the elect are the only ones who can perceive the rejected supremely in Jesus Christ (451). Also, the rejected have no existence apart from the elect. The rejected as been displaced by Jesus Christ in his rejection.

With Jesus Christ the rejected can only have been rejected. He cannot be rejected any more. Between him and an independent existence of his own as rejected, there stands the death which Jesus Christ has suffered in his place, and the resurrection by which Jesus Christ has opened up for him His own place as elect. It is only as one who has been, but is no longer, that he may again proclaim or assert himself. It is bad enough that even this is not yet taken from him. But in any case, it takes place only within the divinely appointed limit and not with the absolute force of that which is properly and autonomously present (453).

This power is taken from it by what took place in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as willed and decided from all eternity in the resolve and decree of God. Therefore even in the past, present and future godlessness of the elect the rejected himself exists only as the object of that evil, dangerous, but powerless representation—in such a way that he is denied from the very outset by his election (the election of Jesus Christ), and is now denied in practice too by his faith in Jesus Christ, being exposed and discredited as a liar. He is permitted neither respite, peace nor consolidation. He may be able to query the election of the elect, to obscure or jeopardise it, but he cannot reverse it. He can lie, but he can lie only against the Gospel. He has no truth of his own to assert against it. He can do nothing against the one truth. Even although it is no greater than a grain of mustard-seed, faith refutes and overcomes him. He can reproduce, but he cannot again perpetrate, the sins for which Jesus Christ died. He can endure a likeness of the punishment of death that Jesus Christ has suffered in his place, but he cannot—even remotely—endure death itself (453-454).

His distinctive determination is rooted in his distinctive nature. He does not have it apart from or alongside, but with that of the elect. It indicates the meaning and purpose of the determination of the elect. It is the necessary reverse side of this determination, which must not be overlooked or forgotten. And in its ultimate range it points to the very spot at which the proper and positive determination of the elect begins (454-455).

Barth suggests that the rejected has three specific functions. First, the task of representing humanity in need of the gospel.

In the reality of the existence peculiar to him, it is the determination of the rejected to manifest the recipients of the Gospel whose proclamation is the determination of the elect. The rejected has not simply vanished or been destroyed. Thanks to the divine wisdom and patience, he can take different forms within the appointed limit. And in this capacity he represents the world and the individual in so far as they are in need of the divine election. As a sinner against God, he is the lost man who in spite of his election, and the salvation and preservation which it includes, necessarily confirms this fact by his godlessness. He is the man whose salvation and preservation made necessary the self-giving of God in His own Son, and for whose salvation and preservation only this divine self-giving could avail (455).

Second, the rejected has the function of showing what is denied and overcome by the gospel.

In the distinctive character of his existence, the rejected has the determination constantly to manifest that which is denied and overcome by the Gospel. In word and voice he has to raise a Gloria Deo ex profundis in face of, and yet also in concert with, the Gloria Deo in excelsis. The rejected is the man whose only witness—and most powerfully in his false picture of God—is to himself and his false choice as the man isolated over against God, the man who at the deepest level and in the deepest sense has nothing at all to say. He is the man who lives in a false service as well as in a false liberty. He is the man who is deceived because he deceives himself (456).

Third, the rejected is the man whose function is to show (indirectly) the purpose of the gospel, that is, that a person without a future does indeed have a future.

The rejected has the determination, in the distinctive limitation of his existence, to manifest the purpose of the Gospel. We have now reached the point at which the determination of the rejected indicates the beginning of the determination of the elect. The form of the rejected is in every respect one which yields and dissolves and dissipates. He is condemned to impotence and insubstantiality by the way in which disposition is made concerning him in the election of Jesus Christ, being only an object of the victory of actuality and truth as it was decreed concerning him from all eternity, and as it has been achieved for him in the midst of time. The rejected has no future. As the man who wills to be his own master, he can only achieve his own destruction. But the purpose of the divine election of grace is to grant to this man who in and of himself has no future, a future in covenant with God (457).

It is in this way, in these functions, that we can note the determination of the rejected - that the rejected would come to hear and believe and be witness to the election of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It is with this in view that the Gospel speaks. It is with this purpose that God turns to man, and that His Word is addressed to man. It is addressed to the man who in and of himself is rejected, who has fallen a prey and is delivered up to absolute destruction. But the concrete form of the purpose of the Gospel is its proclamation and faith in it, the work of the Holy Spirit in the summoning of the elect man, in which his whole determination to blessedness, thanksgiving and witness has its basis and origin (457).

To pull the discussion of the determination of the elect out of an abstract realm into the realm of specific example, Barth uses Judas Iscariot as an example.

The character in which the problem of the rejected is concentrated and developed in the New Testament is that of Judas Iscariot, the disciple and apostle who “betrayed” Jesus. We observe at once that—like the Old Testament, but much more unequivocally—the New Testament does not seek or find the rejected at a distance, but in the closest conceivable proximity to Jesus Christ Himself, and so not in the alien, hostile world to which Jesus Christ came and to which the witness of His apostles, the Church and the elect is to be addressed. The counterpart of the elect is not really an opponent who confronts and opposes the kingdom of God from outside. Certainly, the existence of this counterpart stands in the closest relationship to the power and effectiveness of what St. John’s Gospel calls “the prince of this world.” But, according to his manifestation in Judas Iscariot, “the prince of this world” obviously cannot be so easily and simply recognised and engaged as would be the case if he were to oppose Jesus Christ and His Church at a distance as one who is wholly foreign to the kingdom of God, if he were to oppose Jesus Christ and the testimony to Him from outside, representing, as it were, the “malice of the object.” Again, however, he obviously does not possess the authority, value and the power of this kind of objective opponent. But just as the existence of the rejected of God, the “son of perdition” (Jn. 17:12), betrays by its sinister proximity to Jesus Christ and His apostles all the intimacy of the dangerous power and effectiveness of the devil, it also reveals its relativity, and the fact that it can express itself only under the direct supervision and control, as it were, of the overruling power and effectiveness of the Lord Himself, only in the work of a disciple and apostle (458-459).

In an intricate small print excursus Barth notes that though Judas is against Jesus, Jesus is for Judas. And even though Judas hands Jesus over to the authorities and betrays Him, this action is carried out in service and fulfillment of the purpose of the gracious election of God. It is in this way that Judas, representative of the rejected, show how the rejected too serve election. As Bromiley notes, "his divine determination, as may be seen in the elect, is to come to election on the basis of the election of Jesus Christ and the handing over of Jesus to rejection on his behalf." As Barth concludes...

But to say this is to say all that we need to say about the general question of the divine will and intention for the rejected, the non-elect. The answer can only be as follows. He wills that he too should hear the Gospel, and with it the promise of his election. He wills, then, that this Gospel should be proclaimed to him. He wills that he should appropriate and live by the hope which is given him in the Gospel. He wills that the rejected should believe, and that as a believer he should become a rejected man elected. The rejected as such has no independent existence in the presence of God. He is not determined by God merely to be rejected. He is determined to hear and say that he is a rejected man elected. This is what the elect of the New Testament are—rejected men elected in and from their rejection, men in whom Judas lived, but was also slain, as in the case of Paul. They are rejected who as such are summoned to faith. They are rejected who on the basis of the election of Jesus Christ, and looking to the fact that He delivered Himself up for them, believe in their election (506).

Blogging with Barth: CD 2.2 §35.3 "The Determination of the Elect" pp. 410-450

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §35 states: "The man who is isolated over against God is as such rejected by God. But to be this man can only be by the godless man’s own choice. The witness of the community of God to every individual man consists in this: that this choice of the godless man is void; that he belongs eternally to Jesus Christ and therefore is not rejected, but elected by God in Jesus Christ; that the rejection which he deserves on account of his perverse choice is borne and cancelled by Jesus Christ; and that he is appointed to eternal life with God on the basis of the righteous, divine decision. The promise of his election determines that as a member of the community he himself shall be a bearer of its witness to the whole world. And the revelation of his rejection can only determine him to believe in Jesus Christ as the One by whom it has been borne and cancelled."

In paragraph §35 ("The Election of the Individual") and subsection §35.3 ("The Determination of the Elect"), Barth tackles the question, "for what purpose was man elected?" 

The election of a man, the distinction of his relationship to God, operative and visible in his differentiation from other men, takes place with a very definite purpose. It means that his life is given a definite goal and content. As his election is fulfilled in his calling, it is seen that in and with his election itself and as such a determinate expression and fulfilment of his being are planned and executed; that its determinate meaning and order are not due to chance or to his own caprice, but tliat all these things are the concern of the divine good-pleasure which elects him. What is this determination of the elect? To what is he elected? We must now consider this question further (410).

In this consideration by Barth, he announces (not surprisingly) that the election of man means that  elect man is elect in and with and for Jesus Christ (410) and individual election takes place in the community of Jesus Christ (410). Not only that, but humanity is loved by God in Jesus Christ in this election (411).

This is indeed the determination of Jesus Christ Himself—in our flesh to be the One loved of God from and to all eternity. This is the determination of Israel and of the Church: they are the people and congregation of those who are loved by God in Jesus Christ. Obviously no man can be anything other or better than this—one who is loved by God. This is what God wills with him—to love him. And this is what He wills from him—to allow himself to be loved by Him. It is for this purpose that He elects him. He may and shall live as a partner in the covenant which God of Himself willed and established, of which God Himself is the Lord and Guarantor, the continuance of which is ensured by the omnipotent faithfulness of God. Whatever else this may signify, it signifies love. Severe, wrathful, burning love—but love; and love that is eternal, not bounded by the limitations of creatureliness, forgiving his sin, giving the creature a share in the glory of the Creator. This participation, provided and executed in free grace, as present promise and hoped for fulfilment, is the goal and content, the expression and fulness, the meaning and order of the existence of the elect (411).

The determination of the elect to be the object of the love of God is undoubtedly his determination to blessedness, which results in a congregation of the elect of Jesus Christ who live in gratitude (412). This congregation of the elect is drawn into the will of God and is beckoned to serve God. Gratitude is the response to God's kindness. The vocation of the elect is to serve God and to witness to His graciousness.

And what else can His community be but the people and assembly which, as they are created by the grace of God, declare this their creation, exhibiting and glorifying their Creator, not according to their own imagination or invention, but as He is and as He wills, as the One He has shown Himself to be in relation to them? So, too, it is with the elect individual. He is what he is by the divine election of grace. The election of Jesus Christ is his own election through the mediacy of His community. His determination is to be its witness, and this is the purpose which God has for him, and in the execution of which the meaning and order of his being consist. The gracious good-pleasure of God is not merely achieved in him but through him, and it is in this way that it is effectively achieved in him. He is its real object as he is its witness, and therefore its subject. The elect is, therefore, one who stands in the service and commission of the gracious God. As a result of his election, he is summoned by the operation of the Holy Spirit. His election as it has taken place in Jesus Christ can be declared to him. By faith he can appropriate the promise given. But if this is the case, it is not merely his private calling but also and as such his official calling. Not only are his salvation and blessedness disclosed and promised to him, but at the same time he is introduced to his service and commission as a witness (414).

'Witness' is such an important word in the theology of Karl Barth. The church, the elect, is to be/are to be witness(-es).

Each elect individual is as such a messenger of God. This is his service and commission. It is for this purpose that he may represent and portray the glory of the grace of God. It is in this that he may be grateful and blessed. He is sent. He is an apostle. The reason for this is the election of Jesus Christ to be an apostle of grace. Its context is the apostolate of grace which is the meaning and order of the life of His whole community. The determination of the elect is to allow the light which has kindled within himself to shine; to pass on the good news of God’s love for man which he himself has received; and to make the calling, in which he has been given a share, his own concern in respect of all others (415).

As they do this, "the ongoing of the reconciling work of the living God in the world...takes place" (417).

And now, if we may venture a final word, the determination of the elect consists in the fact that in and with his election and calling, in and with the service for which he is intended and which he has to perform, the ongoing of the reconciling work of the living God in the world is included and takes place. The election of each individual involves, and his calling completes an opening up and enlargement of the (in itself) closed circle of the election of Jesus Christ and His community in relation to the world—or (from the standpoint of the world) an invasion of the dark kingdom of the lies which rule in the world, a retreat and shrinkage of its godless self-glorification. The existence of each elect means a hidden but real crossing of frontiers, to the gain of the kingdom of God as the kingdom of grace. It is the concern of God that there should be these frontier-crossings (417).

Pulling all this together, Barth makes a determinative statement about the election of man ... he is fundamentally a witness to the Yes of God.

The elect man is chosen in order that the circle of election—that is, the circle of those who recognise and confess Jesus Christ in the world—should not remain stationary or fixed, but open up and enlarge itself, and therefore grow and expand and extend. What is given him in his election and calling is undoubtedly the task not to shut but to open, not to exclude but to include, not to say No but Yes to the surrounding world; just as he himself is undoubtedly one to whom it was opened, who was included, to whom Yes was said—the Yes of the unmerited, free and eternal grace and love of God. It is by and in this Yes that he must live with others. He represents and reflects the gracious God, and Jesus Christ and His people, as he causes them to hear this Yes. If he says No he also says Yes; even when he closes he opens; even when he excludes he includes. He will face others wrathfully but never contemptuously, with indignation but never with malice, angered but never embittered, a guest and a stranger but never an enemy. He will never renounce the recognition of their (and his own) lost condition. But he will also never renounce the obligation by which he is bound to them, as a lost soul to whom the grace of God has been revealed and come. Nor will he renounce the confidence that the same grace is addressed to them too. He will not weary in his service towards them, nor will he ever be disloyal to it, because of any self-made judgments of his own concerning them. It belongs to God Himself to determine and to know what it means that God was reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). The concern of the elect is always the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18), and no other. This is the determination under which he has to live (419).

For support of this calling and witness, Barth turns to the evidence of witness to Christ in the New Testament. This begins with a small print section which reviews the scope of Jesus Christ's work (421-423) and an examination of the evidence by which Barth can suggest we are called to witness and service (423ff.). He concludes the section with a significant small print review of the apostalate in the New Testament (431-449). He concludes in this way:

To what does God elect a man? The New Testament answers this question with its portrayal of the existence of the apostles; their calling, appointment and mission. It is in them, in their being and their deeds, that the Church can and should recognise itself as the assembly of the elect for all time. It is in them that each individual member of the Church can and should recognise the meaning and purpose of his own election. He who is elect of God is elect in Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is the original object of divine election. He is the one Elect, apart from whom there can be no others. He who is elect of God is elect through Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is also the original instrument of divine election. It is through Him, as the object of His election, and through Him alone, that others are also elected. It is in this way, in and through Him, that the apostles and those gathered into the apostolic Church are elect. But what is their determination? According to the New Testament it is simply the transmission of the assurance and promise which have come upon themselves. It is therefore the attestation, the proclamation of Jesus Christ in the sphere of the world and among the men who have not yet heard His name, who have not yet come to believe in Him, who have not yet been benefited by the work which as God’s Prophet, Priest and King He performed for them too, who certainly stand under His lordship, but have not yet recognised and confessed Him as Lord, or given thanks to Him as Lord. The determination of the apostles is to go into this world with the task of baptising it. Through the apostles this is the determination of the Church, and in the Church it is the determination of all its members, of the elect. If God elects a man, it is that he may be a witness to Jesus Christ, and therefore a proclaimer of His own glory (449).