Church Dogmatics, Vol. 3.4, Sections 52-54: The Doctrine of Creation, Study Edition 19 [19, 1 ed.] 0567580288 / 978-0567580283

Table of contents :
§ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation / 1. The Problem of Special Ethics / 2. God the Creator as Commander / § 53. Freedom Before God / 1. The Holy Day / 2. Confession / 3. Prayer / § 54. Freedom in Fellowship/ 1. Man and Woman / 2. Parents and Children / 3. Near and Distant Neighbours

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KARL BARTH CHURCH

DOGMATICS

VOLUME

THE

III

DOCTRINE

OF CREATION

THE COMMAND OF GOD AND THE CREATOR I

EDITED BY

G. W. BROMILEY T. F. TORRANCE

."

t&t clark

Translated by G. W. Bromiley,]. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, Harold Knight,]. R.]. Ehrlich, A. T. Mackey, T. H. L. Parker, H. A. Kennedy,]. Marks

K S. Reid, R. H. Fuller,

Published by T&T Clark A Continuum Imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SEI 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright

@

T&T Clark, 2009

Authorised translation of Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik III Copyright @ Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1945-1951 All revisions to the original English translation and all translations @ Princeton Theological Seminary, 2009

of Greek, Latin and French

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by In teractive Sciences Ltd, Gloucester Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by MPG Books Group

ISBN 10: 0567299953 ISBN 13: 9780567299956

CONTENTS

S

S

S

52. ETHICSASA TASKOF THE DOCTRINEOF CREATION 1. The Problem of Special Ethics 2. God the Creator as Commander

28

53. FREEDOMBEFOREGOD 1. The Holy Day 2. Confession 3. Prayer

43 68 81

54. FREEDOMIN FELLOWSHIP 1. Man and Woman . 2. Parents and Children 3. Near and Distant Neighbours

109 232 275

v

[003] ETHICS AS A TASK OF THE DOCTRINE

OF CREATION

The task of special ethics in the context of the doctrine of creation is to show to what extent the one command of the one God who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ is also the command of his Creator and therefore already the sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man.

1.

THE PROBLEM OF SPECIAL ETHICS

The question of the Word of God in Christian proclamation, and therefore dogmatics, embraces necessarily the ethical question as well, i.e., the question what is good human action. For Christian proclamation is the message ofjesus Christ and of the grace of God manifested and active in Him. He is the Word of God about which dogmatics enquires. Thus dogmatics asks concerning the covenant between the true God and true man established in Him from all eternity and fulfilled in Him in time. But true man is characterised by action, by good action, as the true God is also characterised by action, by good action. As dogmatics enquires concerning the action of God and its goodness, it must necessarily make thorough enquiry concerning active man and the goodness of his action. It has the problem of ethics in view from the very first, and it cannot legitimately lose sight of it. Conversely, the ethical question-at least, ifit is intended and understood in a way which is meaningful from the Christian and theological standpointcannot rightly be asked and answered except within the framework, or at any rate the material context, of dogmatics. True man and his good action can be viewed only from the standpoint of the true and active God and His goodness. It is this connexion with dogmatics which guards ethics against arbitrary assertions, arguments or conclusions, and allows it to follow a secure path to fruitful judgments. This does not fix the outward procedure. In books and lectures ethics can be treated independently, that is, in external separation from dogmatics, so long as it is presupposed that this separation is understood and treated as purely technical, and therefore that dogmatics is not detached from its ethical content and direction and that the question of dogmatics remains paramount and decisive in ethics. We may readily admit that the Christliche Ethik of N. H. S0e (Danish ed. 1942, German ed. 1949), which is so remarkable in other respects too, fulfils in exemplary fashion this condition which must be laid upon "independent" ethics. And the same attitude to the link with

[004]

S 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation dogmatics is a commendable feature of the brilliant Ethik of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German ed. 1949, E.T., 1955), which unfortunately exists only in a fragmentary and provisional form.

But it may be considered from both sides more logical and less misleading to relate ethics outwardly as well to the movement and presentation of dogmatics. We assume here that this second procedure is in fact preferable. (See further concerning the problems which are only indicated at this point, C.D., I, 2, S 22, 3.) The task of theological ethics is to understand the Word of God as the command of God. Its fundamental, simplest and comprehensive answer to the ethical problem is that man's action is good in so far as it is sanctified by the Word of God which as such is also the command of God. "There is none good but one, that is, God" (Mk 1018). But the God who is active in His Word and command is good. By "God" we mean the One who is revealed, sovereign and operative inJesus Christ. He is good. He is the fulness, measure and source of all goodness, and therefore of what is to be called good in human action. Man's action is good in so far as he is the obedient hearer of the Word and command of God. The hearing and obeying which proceeds from and by the Word of God is man's sanctification. Ethics has to understand the Word of God as the fulness, measure and source of this sanctification (cf. also C.D., II, 2,

~ 36).

[005J

Ethics has first to attempt this with an upward look, as it were, in relation to the divine action. To that extent there is what may be called a "general" ethics, which forms part of the doctrine of God as a counterpart to the doctrine of election. In this it is a question of understanding generally the fact and extent that human sanctification and therefore good human action are effected by the action of God in His command. General ethics has thus to show (1) how the command is the claim made by God upon man in the full significance and power of His sovereign grace, i.e., the demand that man approve the merciful action of God in His own action, freely and cheerfully accepting it. It has then to show (2) that the command, as it claims man, is always God's decision: His decision about the right or wrong of human action; His sovereign and eternal decision, which as such has already been made, but is now as always made again and will always continue to be so; His concrete decision, i.e., one which is definite and pointed and filled out with content in relation to every human decision and action; and finally His good, i.e., His right and kind and salutary decision which, because it is His, is in itself free from contradiction and therefore does not separate or divide the men that it encounters either among or within themselves, but rather unites them. Finally, it has to show (3) that the command, as it claims man and decides concerning him, is God's judgment upon him; thejudgment of His grace by which man is at once condemned and acquitted and thus becomes free for eternal life. This freeing of man for eternallife by God'sjudging grace is the final goal, the real work and therefore the original purpose of the command of God. It is man's sanctification. Good 2

1.

The Problem of Special Ethics

human action is action set free by the command of God, by His claim and decision andjudgment. This is the general answer which theological ethics has to give to the ethical question. We here presuppose this general answer (cf. C.D., II, 2, ~~ 37-39). In "special" ethics, the first part of which we have now to treat in the context and as the conclusion of the doctrine of creation, it is a matter of varying emphases and standpoints within the same question and answer. We now look downwards, as it were, to the man who acts, i.e., who acts under the command of God, His claim and decision and judgment. We now enquire concerning sanctification as it comes to man from the God who acts towards him in His command, concerning the good which is real and recognisable in his action under the command of God. The ethical question would obviously not be taken up either fully or seriously were we to ask and answer it merely from the objective side, with respect to God's activity in His command. General ethics itself forbids us to remain at this point, but orders us to proceed further and in the opposite direction, with respect to the subjective side of the same event. For how can we look at the activity of God in His command without being forced to follow its movement and thus being led automatically to man, to what it performs in him, to what becomes of him in consequence? The command of God does not hang,ineffectively in the air above man. Its particular aim and concern are with him and his real activity. It is in his sanctification that its divine majesty, truth and power are revealed. How these appear and take effect in man's real activity is thus a further problem of ethics. And man's real activity is always concrete. The acting man himself is concrete, i.e., this or that man who in his place and skin cannot be compared, let alone exchanged, with anyone else. And the field of his conduct is a tremendously varied sphere of conditions and possibilities determined by time, space, nature and history. If the real man acts, this means, then, that this particular man in this tremendous sphere chooses this particular condition and possibility, deciding for it and realising it by what he does or refrains from doing. And in acting in this or that way, he claims to understand himself best, choosing and realising himself a first time, i.e., until his next decision under changed conditions and in relation to new possibilities, to which, of course, there belong especially those which he himself has created by his previous decision and action. In this new sphere he will face a new choice and decision. And in effecting a new realisation, he now claims to understand himself best in a new form, and he chooses and realises himself a second time, thus creating a new condition and possibility for his further decision, action and abstention. Man's real action is the related sequence of events in which this particular concrete man chooses and realises a particular concrete condition and possibility, and in it himself. If, then, the outworking and shaping of man's sanctification by the command of God in man's real action is a problem of ethics, this necessarily means that ethics becomes concrete, particular, or special ethics. It still has to do with 3

[006]

~ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation

[007]

the Word and command of God. It still sets out from the knowledge that God alone is good, and man only through the grace of His Word and in hearing and obeying His command. But it now follows the work of grace and the Word and command of God into the distinctive lowlands of real human action and therefore into the sphere of concrete human volition, decision, action and abstention, into the events in which this particular man realises this particular condition and possibility and therefore himself, into the related sequence of events. Here in the sphere of the concrete, particular, special elements in human possibility and reality there must be seen and demonstrated the fact and extent of the existence of good human action under the lordship and efficacy of the divine command. But if ethics takes this turn, we must consider exactly what is possible or impossible, and what is thus to be undertaken or not. "Special ethics" is sometimes taken to mean the understanding of the command of God as a prescribed text, which, partly written and partly unwritten, is made up of biblical texts in which there are believed to be seen universally binding divine ordinances and directions, of certain propositions again presumed to be universally valid, of the natural moral law generally perceptible to human reason, and finally of particular norms which have been handed down historically in the tradition of Western Christianity and which lay claim ~ouniversal validity. The grouping and blending of the various elements in this text may vary, the' Bible, natural law or tradition predominating. The essential point is that God's command is regarded as in some sense a legal text known to the ethical teacher and those whom he has to instruct. On this presupposition the task of special ethics consists (1) in expounding the statements of this law-on the analogy of a country's law-in relation to the plenitude of conditions and possibilities in which human action takes place, and then (2) in applying it to the individual cases, which means either assessing what has been done, or making a regulation or issuing a prohibition, commandment or permission in respect of future action. If the moralist knows the command of God on the one side, i.e., the definitions of universal moral law in the form of such a text, and the sphere or various spheres of real human action on the other, then basically in every case in which the conscience might be in doubt he is able to tell himself and others what is to be chosen as good or rejected as evil. One might well be tempted to call this the ideal solution to the problem of special ethics. It sheds light at once by reason of its formal clarity. It seems to effect what one might expect from ethics, and with particular eagerness from "special ethics." It rushes to the help of doubtful and groping consciences in their individual decisions, proffering its superior knowledge either before or after the event. It gives precise and detailed information about good and evil in relation to what man has done or intends doing. And in so doing it does not tyrannise him, since the principles controlling its decisions may be tested by anyone before the court of his own conscience. If only he knows and recog4

1.

The Problem of Special Ethics

nises the relevant law, he is able, should he ever doubt the direction given him by the moralist, to convince himselfwhether the latter is right and whether he mayor must stand by his positive or negative judgment. As a rule, however, everyone will be grateful to the moralist for the superior knowledge with which he is able to relieve him of the often very oppressive task of making his own orientations and decisions. We refer to the ethics which in Church history bears the name of casuistry. Its pattern is found in the exposition of the Torah in RabbinicalJudaism with its attempt to discover in all actual or even imaginable instances the right decision concerning the question of the right attitude and action enjoined upon man by God, i.e., by the text of the Torah. In Judaism, however, the predominant concern was with questions of cultic law. This type of Christian ethics (like many other things) first arose at the time of the transition from the 1st to the 2nd century, when there developed a lack of confidence in the Spirit (who is the Lord) as the Guide, Lawgiver andJudge in respect of Christian action also, and the necessary reassurance was thus sought by beginning to read and treat both the Old and New Testament witnessnot without borrowings from the Stoic moralists-as a text of ethical law, a nova lexEN1• The ethical writings of the jurist Tertullian are a first important expression of this view,and later we have the De officiis of Ambrose, who was influenced by Cicero. The real upsurge of Christian casuistry is due to the rise of the practice of confession. "Penitentiaries" was the mediaeval name for the collections of moral decisions in particular instances which, designed for the use of father confessors, were arranged either systematically or sometimes for handiness simply in alphabetical order, and which in increasing measure were grounded not only upon the Bible and natural law, but also upon pronouncements and assertions of special authorities in the earlier tradition of the Church. The famous Secunda secundae of Thomas Aquinas may very well be regarded as a penitentiary of this kind, although broadly based in scholarship. What was involved is shown by the title of more than one such text: Summa casuum conscientiaeEN2• While the ethics of the Jesuit order brought Catholic casuistry to a certain completeness, the Reformation with its return to the exclusivelynormative Word of God and the libertas ChristianaEN3 at first heralded a change. But even if a good deal of ballast was thrown overboard as regards tradition, there was no agreement or clarity at two points: first, in the question of the validity and function of the traditional propositions of natural law; and second and supremely in the question of the sense in which the newly recognised witness of the divine Word, and therefore the newly recognised basis of a freedom to be called Christian, namely, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, are or are not to be regarded and treated as a general law for concrete human action. And in the second half of the 16th century there was more and more clearly repeated what had already happened in the 2nd century. There was so little assurance of the divine Word and of Christian freedom under its lordship that ethical instruction had again to be sought in the legal sense, the need being felt for a kind of handy Codex iurisEN4 for the civitas deiEN5• The ethical sections of the Syntagma of Polan us (1609) and the Compendium ofWolleb (1626) are examples of the way in which a legal text was again being strangely compiled from the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and from all sorts of definitions of virtue from Greek and Roman antiquity. After the passing of the Reformers, their letters and decisions, and the judgments new law Compendium of Casesof Conscience EN3 Christian freedom EN4 juridical code EN5 city of God ENl

EN2

5

[008]

~ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation frequently requested from university faculties on various questions, were collected and published in illustration of the particular Evangelical direction of conscience. And by the end of the 16th century matters had gone so far that the Puritan William Perkins was willing and able to write a book, De casibus conscientiae, in which he gave a systematic account of the correct individual decisions enjoined upon a Christian. This was followed in 1630 by the even more famous work of Wilhelm Amesius, De conscientia, eius iure et casibus, which was enthusiastically used until well on in the 18th century and for decades was the example on which S. Werenfels based his ethical lectures in Basel. Similar attempts were not lacking on the Lutheran side. It is now generally maintained that in the Neo-Protestant theology formed by Pietism and Rationalism, Idealism and Romanticism, casuistry has been overcome by an ethics which lays more emphasis on purity of intention and on ethical motives rather than external conduct in conformity with definite prescriptions. But it has still to be proved whether it is not the case that Protestant ethics is guilty of a certain vacillation between two extremes. The one extreme arises when ethics lose sight of the concept and view of an objective, law-giving and judging court confronting human decision and action, of the clear conception of a divine Commander and His commanding, so that it has basically nothing more to say about a sanctification conflicting with man's inner and outer conduct. The other extreme arises when ethics tries to speak as concretely and particularly as possible in relation to real human action, and to be not only a formal ethics but an ethics filled out with material content. It has also to be proved whether, to the extent that it takes the latter course, it does not become casuistical again-the application to this or that casus conscientiaeEN6 of a general law gained in much the same way as before, but now surreptitiously.

[009J

The way of casuistry is basically unacceptable, however enticing it might seem, and however convenient it would be both for spiritual advisers and above all for troubled souls if this way could be followed. It certainly has its particula veriEN7• For in every moment and act of human activity the point at issue is a concrete and specific human choice and decision, in which the ifiner intention and external action are not to be separated from each other, but make up a whole. And this whole of human activity is undoubtedly confronted every time by a command of God which is also concrete and specific, to which it stands in a positive or negative relation in which this man in his action is intended, so that here and now he is claimed, a decision is made concerning him and he isjudged. It is thus true that in every moment and act of the action which he has chosen in its concrete and specific form, and for which he has decided as he now gives it shape, man in all the particularity of his person and of the "case" in which he now finds himself stands under the command of God. It is true that this is as such both the most general law and also a most specific law in its application to him here and now. And it is true that in this most concrete encounter judgment is given whether his conduct is good or evil. If it is meaningful to understand by "conscience" this encounter of God's command and human action, then it is true that in each moment and act of his conduct every man finds himself in a casus conscientireEN8• And the EN6 EN7 ENS

case of conscience grain of tru th case of conscience

6

1.

The Problem of Special Ethics

decision in each of these "cases of conscience" is taken in such a way that God's general command for all men in every situation is as such also the highly particular, concrete and special command for this or that man in the "case of conscience" of his particular situation, and therefore the measure by which the goodness or evil of his action is to be assessed. But more is to be said concerning the particula veriEN9 in casuistry. The individual with his actions is not an atom in empty space, but a man among his fellows, not left to himself in his cases of conscience nor in a position to leave others to themselves. It may well be the case-indeed, it will alwaysbe so-that one man has the task of interfering in respect of the conduct of another, that with the great or little authority and knowledge which he has in relation to the other he must warn him very concretely and particularly about this or that mode of behaviour or act, or vice versa spur him to it; and perhaps that neither of them can evade this duty, although ultimately each can only act for himself in a case of conscience. That is to say, it may well be the case-and will always be so-that here and now the universal command of God concentrated into a concrete and particular form will direct this man to interfere and others to accept this interference; that here and now the command of God must be proclaimed by one man to another who must hear it through him; that the very case of conscience in which each must act for himself means for both that they should talk and listen to each other. It can please the Holy Spirit-and it continually pleases Him-that not merely ethical advice and direction but the very command of God should be given in a very concrete form immediately from one man to another or to many others. To this extent there is a practical casuistry, an active casuistry, the casuistry of the prophetic ethos. It consists in the unavoidable venture-the final judgment upon this venture rests with God-of understanding God's concrete specific command here and now in this particular way,of making a corresponding decision in this particular way, and of summoning others to such a concrete and specific decision. On the other hand, there is no such thing as a casuistical ethics: no fixation of the divine command in a great or small text of ethical law; no method or technique of applying this text to the plenitude of conditions and possibilities of the activity of all men; no means of deducing good or evil in the particular instance of human conduct from the truth of this text presupposed as a universal rule and equated with the command of God. This is something which special ethics must not attempt. To quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer (op. cit., p. 208, E.T. p. 236): "An ethics cannot be a book in which there is set out how everything in the world actually ought to be but unfortunately is not, and an ethicist cannot be a man who alwaysknows better than others what is to be done and how it is to be done. An ethic cannot be a work of reference for moral action which is guaranteed to be unexceptionable, and the ethicist cannot be the competent critic and judge of every human activity. An ethic cannot be a retort in which ethical or Christian ENg

grain of tru th

7

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~ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation human beings are produced, and the ethicist cannot be the embodiment or ideal type of a life which is, on principle, moral."

Why not? There are three decisive reasons. 1. If special ethics becomes casuistry, this means that the moralist wishes to set himself on God's throne, to distinguish good and evil, and always to judge things as the one or the other, not only in relation to others but also to himself. He makes himself lord, king and judge at the place where only God can be this. He does so by claiming that in a summaEN10 of ethical statements compiled by him and his like from the Bible, natural law and tradition, he can know the command of God, see through and past it, and thus master and handle it, i.e., apply it to himself and others, so that armed with this instrument he may speak as law. He also does it by arrogating to himself the competence so to know human action-his own or that of others-that it seems to him possible and permissible to see its basis in this or that concrete particular form, and relying on his mastery of this instrument to adjudge its character, whether it is good or evil before God. Calvin objected to casuistical ethics on the ground that God is the unicus legislatorEN11 and must not be robbed of His authority as such (Instit., IV, 10, I). He must also be regarded as the unicus vitae magister ac directorEN12 (10,7). His will is the perfect and sufficient principle of all righteousness and holiness, and to recognise it is the perfect and sufficient science of a good life. He alone will rule over our souls, so that we can only obey Him, i.e., make ourselves completely dependent upon His beckoning (10,8).

[011]

It may be granted that rejection of this type of ethics is obvious and compelling. Yet this is true only when we remember that we are talking about the gracious God of the Gospel, the God who was in Christ, and therefore the God whom man can never confront except as a recipient, a beneficiary, a pure beginner, even when it is a matter of the command of God. He meets Him thus in that practical casuistry; in that immediate encounter and reckoning with God's concrete and specific command; in that venture of understanding it as it is here and now given to him in its concrete and specific content, which can also mean, and will repeatedly mean, that he himself has to pass it on to others or accept it from someone else. This is, if God wills and agrees, the event of free grace in which all human usurpation and presumption is quite excluded. But theoretical and systematic casuistry, casuistical ethics, is an undertaking in which man, even though he calls upon God's grace, would like to win clear of the occurrence, the freedom and the peril of this event, to reach dry land as it were, and to stand there like God, knowing good and evil. In it he thinks that he can be more than a mere recipient, beneficiary or pure beginner. He feels and behaves-as though this were possible-like an ethical expert and a ENI0 EN 11 EN12

compendium sole legislator life's sale teacher and director

8

1.

The Problem of Special Ethics

trustee. He thinks he can handle the command of God like a possession or domain which he has to administer. No longer now does he decide with God's decision in mind, and even when he calls others to decision, he no longer does so as directly claimed by God, and struck by His decision, and placed, terrified and consoled, before His judgment seat. At a safe distance from the ethical battlefield-like a staff officer of the Lord-he manipulates for himself and others a method of correct decisions-correct in the sense of the law that he has set between the divine decision and his own or that of others. He convinces himself and others that this law is the will of God. He applies it as a precept, and thinks and claims that he knows that he and others are dealing with the command of God in this application. He has in fact made God's will and command the prisoner of this law and his application of it. Casuistry is a mastering of the command and therefore of God Himself, which is certainly conceivable in every kind of philosophical and religious paganism, but is quite impossible in Christianity. Since this is incompatible with the knowledge of grace which God shows to men even in His command, it is a mastering of which a man who knows that he lives by God's grace will not make himself guilty. Casuistry is a violation of the divine mystery in the ethical event. 2. Again, whether it finds its direction in tradition, a conception of natural law or the Bible, casuistical ethics makes the objectively untenable assumption that the command of God is a universal rule, an empty form, or rather a tissue of such rules and forms. As in the case of human law, it thus requires to be filled out by concrete and specific application to come into force as a command. Now this may well be necessary for the "form of the good" and similar philosophical epitomes of the moral law. But the case is very different with the command of the living God. This is given to man not only universally and formally but in concrete fulness and with definiteness of content (cf. esp. C.D., II, 2, S 38, 2). It is always an individual command for the conduct of this man, at this moment and in this situation; a prescription for this case of his; a prescription for the choice of a definite possibility of human intention, decision and action. It commands not only how man is to think and act here and now, but also quite specifically what is to take place inwardly in his mind and thoughts and outwardly in what he does or refrains from doing. It leaves nothing to human choice or preference. It thus requires no interpretation to come into force. To the last and smallest detail it is self-interpreted, and in this form it confronts man as a command already in force. Here the ethical question can never be whether this or that might be the good demanded of man, but only whether and to what extent he will correspond in his inner and outer activity to the command which conies to him and confronts him in the most concrete and concentrated form, whether he will meet it with obedience or disobedience. The obscurity of God's will in a particular case always arises on man's side, not on God's. And the question which requires clarification in each particular case is not what the command is, but how it stands with the man confronted by it. 9

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S 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation

[013]

It rests on a misconception of the command of God as it emerges in Holy Scripture if casuistry thinks it can and must abstract from the Bible a collection of general moral rules which it is then the task of ethics to expound and apply in particular. For precisely in Holy Scripture the command of God does not confront us in the guise of rules, principles, axioms and general moral truths, but purely in the form of concrete, historical, unique and singular orders, prohibitions and directions. Their common import consists in the fact that it is always the same divine Overlord who in this way confronts various men, and that in these men it is alwaysa question of the people of His choice (in the Old Testament of Israel, in the New Testament of the community of jesus Christ), and, in the content of His command, of the ordering of these men to conform in their actions at a definite time, in a definite place and in a definite way to the history of the covenant and salvation controlled by Him. The commands of God in the Bible are not general moral doctrines and instructions but absolutely specific directions which concern each time the behaviour, deeds and omissions of one or more or many definite men in this historical context. Detached from this context, even such texts as the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels and the apostolic directions cannot be understood. Even here the biblical commands are not at all outside time and space, nor directed towards an indefinite multitude of men chosen at random. Nor are they empty forms which will be filled out only as they are applied to real life. In these texts, which consist predominantly of definite negations, the area is marked out in which concrete divine commandment and prohibition take place. They show its bounds by telling what is impossible in this area. They proclaim the holiness of God in His action, and they claim man for His service. They are as it were the basic statute of the divine covenant of grace in its Old and New Testament forms, in which is made known who it is that is Lord and Commander of this history and what it means for men that He is its Lord and Commander. They are as it were programmes or summaries of this history. What these men are to do or not to do in particular is told them neither in the Ten Commandments nor the Sermon on the Mount nor other biblical texts of this kind. According to both Testaments they alwayslearn by the direct instruction of God or His messengers and servants, of jesus Himself or the Holy Spirit, either to do this or not to do that in a definite historical situation. What is indicated in these texts is the place where this direction is given and is audible and effective. Hence even these passages cannot be claimed for the purposes of casuistical ethics. In a word, the command of God is in the Bible a historical reality, and not, as understood by post-biblical judaism and Christianity, a timeless truth in the sense of casuistical ethics. No wonder, then, that wherever it is treated as a timeless truth, it can only be made applicable and usable with the help of some interpretation which is more or less arbitrary even in relation to the texts, and of all kinds of amplifications and additions drawn from the treasures of natural law and tradition. It has already lost its character as a divine command when it is no longer recognised as a unique historical reality and therefore as a witness to God's special commanding here and now.

3. But casuistical ethics also involves an encroachment in relation to man's action under the command of God, a destruction of the Christian freedom, in which alone this can be a good action. In the whole concrete fulness and concentration with which it always applies to man, the command of God is an appeal to his freedom: not, of course, to a freedom of his choice, preference, or selection; but to his real freedom, which consists in his freedom for God, in his freedom to obey Him. Ifhe receives and understands it as the command of God's free grace, he then opens and attaches himself to it in freedom, as a 10

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The Problem of Special Ethics

child does to the word of its father, because he is the father and it is the child. God's demand in relation to man is a demand of man himself: not merely, then, that he should actually will or do or not will and do this or that which God proposes; but that he should voluntarily confess what is proposed, making it a matter of his own choice and decision. God wills indeed that man should be there-there in His own cause. In the fulfilment of his obedience, man is to be free for Him and therefore for eternal life. He is to act rightly as His confidant, not only in external conformity as ordered, but in genuine agreement and therefore with a good conscience. Action means not only to choose and realise this or that, but to choose and realise oneself in this or that. So, then, an action done in obedience to God cannot consist only in carrying out something that God wishes, but in man's offering himself to God in so doing. Casuistry destroys the freedom of this obedience. It openly interposes something other and alien between the command of God and the man who is called to obey Him. It replaces the concrete and specific command of God's free grace and therefore the authentic will of God which man must freely and voluntarily choose, affirm, approve and grasp, by the interpretation and application, invented by himself or others, of a universal moral truth fixed and proclaimed with supreme arbitrariness. Not only what God will command him to do here and now, but also what he himself must choose and realise here and now, and therefore the self-offering demanded of him here and now, is supplanted by this other and alien thing which is neither of God nor of himself. He may now judge himself by this pattern. He may therefore do or leave undone what it is prescribed that he should do or leave undone in this interpretation and exposition of that universal truth. In this process he himself necessarily has no place. He is not asked whether he himself participates or whether he could not or would not have done otherwise. It is certainly not in freedom before the face of God that he now takes this or that view according to the casuistical decision. This decision has not appealed to his freedom. In certain circumstances, he may well have been challenged to examine whether the decision is a correct deduction from universal truth as known to him also. Ultimately, therefore, he may very well have been his own casuist. But on this path he was not called to freedom, to be God's confidant, to the knowledge of His commandment in the form in which He Himselfwilled to give it to him, and therefore to action with a clear conscience. On the contrary, he was and is called away from all these things by casuistical ethics. For it conceals from him the character of his conduct as his own, direct responsibility. It spares him what he should not be spared-the knowledge that it is not merely his external conduct, nor his will, purpose and intention, but himself that is demanded. The Neo-Protestant critics of this ethics used to complain that it encroached too much upon man, his personality, etc. The very opposite is true; it encroaches too little upon man. It does not make clear to him, but rather conceals, what a good action is. It makes it all too easy for him to adhere to a decision which is not that of the 11

[014]

~ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation divine command, and even to judge himself by it-ut aliquid jieri videaturEN13but in so doing to preserve for himself the false freedom of being somewhere else and thus refusing the obedience due to God's command in spite of his acceptance of the casuistical decision.

[015]

The same critical point is made in some words of D. Bonhoeffer: "The commandment of God is the total and concrete claiming of man by the merciful and holy God inJesus Christ." It is not "a summary of all ethical propositions in the most general terms," nor "the universally valid and timeless in contrast ... to its application," nor "the abstract as opposed to the concrete, nor the indefinite as opposed to the definite. If it were anything of the kind it would have ceased to be God's commandment, for on each occasion it would then have been left to us to deduce the definite from the indefinite, the application from the principle and the temporal from the timeless. This would mean that precisely at the crucial juncture the decisive factor would no longer be the commandment, but our understanding, our interpretation and our application. The commandment of God would once again be replaced by our own choice. God's commandment is the speech of God to man. Both in its contents and in its form it is concrete speech to the concrete man. God's commandment leaves man no room for application or interpretation. It leaves room only for obedience or disobedience. God's commandment cannot be found and known in detachment from time and place; it can only be heard in a local and temporal context. If God's commandment is not clear, definite and concrete to the last detail, then it is not God's commandment. Either God does not speak at all or else He speaks to us as definitely as He spoke to Abraham and Jacob and Moses and as definitely as inJesus Christ He spoke to the disciples and through His apostles to the Gentiles" (op. cit., p. 215, E.T., pp. 244-245). "The commandment of God is permission. It differs from all human laws in that it commands freedom. It is by overcoming this contradiction that it shows itself to be God's commandment; the impossible becomes possible, and that which lies beyond the range of what can be commanded, liberty, is the true object of this commandment. That is the high price of God's commandment; it is no cheaper than that. Permission and liberty do not mean that God now after all allows man a domain in which he can act according to his own choice, free from the commandment of God, but this permission and this liberty arise solely from the commandment of God itself. They are possible only through and in the commandment of God; they are never detached from God; it is still always God's permission, and it is only as such that it gives freedom from the torment of anxiety in the face of each particular decision and deed; it is only as such that it gives the certainty of personal accomplishment and of guidance by the divine command" (p. 218, E.T. p. 248). We may add to this the rough draft on "Fallacious Questions" found by Bonhoeffer's editor: "1. How does the will of God become concrete? Answer: the will of God is always concrete, or else it is not the will of God. In other words, the will of God is not a principle from which one has to draw inferences and which has to be applied to 'reality.' A 'will of God' which can be recognized without immediately leading to action is a general principle, but it is not the will of God. 2. How does the good will of the Christian become concrete? The good will is from the outset a concrete deed; otherwise it is not Christian will. Man is from the outset engaged in concrete action. 3. What is the will of God for this or that particular case? This is the casuistic misinterpretation of the concrete. The concrete is not achieved in this way, for it is once again already anticipated by a principle" (p. 221, E.T. P.252).

But if this way is unacceptable, EN13

how can there be a special ethics? How can

that something might seem to be done

12

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The Problem of Special Ethics

we ask concerning the command of God in the sphere of concrete human volition, decision, action and inaction? Can ethics take this turn at all? Or in this respect can it do no more than point out that the command of God is in form and content quite definitely present to and recognisable by every man in every situation, and that if only man will recognise its presence and its demands and comply with them, his actions will be good in the measure that he does so? If this is so, it might easily be asked whether this does not amount in practice to a direction to let oneself be governed from moment to moment and situation to situation by a kind of direct and particular divine inspiration and guidance, and to prepare oneself, to make and keep oneself fit and ready, for the reception of such guidance, perhaps by "quiet times" or similar exercises. Or may it be that-without any Christian allusions-we have to learn to grasp and do justice to the kairos, the particular "command of the hour," i.e., of every hour and situation? But in these circumstances the complaint is at least understandable that while man's situation is such that step by step he confronts the command of God and has to act in responsibility to it, he himself has to determine what the contents of this command are and therefore how he must act, so that like Goethe's mule he has to find his own way in the mist. It is evident that there is a certain lack of seriousness in these questions and complaints. Hence we must not rush to console those who advance them by explaining that this is not what is meant. Naturally, it is not what is meant. Yet special ethics cannot actually proceed except in the framework of this reference to the event of God's concrete command and man's concrete obedience or disobedience. Whatever it may have to say regarding the concrete form of the command and its bearing upon man's concrete action, it will always have to repeat and underline and sharpen this reference. It will alwayshave to be on its guard against trying to give more than such a reference. It is true, then, that its decisive word will continually be a reminder of the authority, guidance and judgment of the Holy Spirit, and of the event which is renewed from one hour and situation to another, the event of revelation, and of belief or unbelief. It is true that it can offer only an encouragement to go to meet this event. And it is thus true that, even in giving this encouragement, it cannot save man from what is expected of him, namely, to dare to make for himself the leap of choice, decision and action, which he must make for himself and on his own responsibility-the leap which we have called practical casuistry in real casus conscientiaeEN14• And it cannot conceal from him that this leap, if it is not one of obedience, can only be a leap in the dark in the worst sense of the term. Those who raise questions or complaints at this must not be left in doubt on this point, if only to call them to genuine seriousness. We cannot give them easy consolation in this respect. On the other hand, we must not fail to recognise that behind their questions and complaints, though they themselves do not understand it, there does lie EN14

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the real problem of special ethics, which we cannot evade merely by assigning to it the task of always indicating that event. It is naturally not the case that the command of God is real only in a series of innumerable individual revelations of particular form and content. In these it is, of course, continually present to man in actuality. This corresponds to the fact that the One who here commands is the living, eternally rich God, who is true to Himself even in the fact that He never simply repeats Himself, that His mercy is new every morning and therefore new for every man and for him in every situation, that for God every encounter with every man at every historical moment is of sufficient individual importance for Him on His side to encounter man in His command in a unique way, for which there is neither precedence nor recurrence. But as this living, eternally rich God is One and not a plurality of gods, spirits, ideas and powers, He is also true to Himself in the fact that, in all the infinite diversity in which He gives and reveals His command, we do not have a disconnected multiplicity of individual demands, claims, directions and prohibitions, but a single and unitary command. And the individual moments at which as Commander He encounters individual men in their individual situations are historical moments, i.e., moments in the history of God's own action, work and revelation, moments in the commencement, continuation and completion of His guidance of the whole history of salvation and of the world. They are, then, moments in the context of the divine order, of the divine plan of this history. They owe their particularity and concreteness, not to any natural process, fate or chance, but to a particular purpose and disposition of God, which stands in a sure though partially or even totally hidden connexion with His other dispositions. We have to take into account this connexion and therefore the constancy and continuity of the divine command. Again, it is naturally not the case that human conduct is realised only in a series of individual decisions, acts and abstentions each of which in isolation from all others signifies a completely new beginning and therefore forms an absolutely individual case. Certainly, it does take place in individual decisions. It thus corresponds to the fact that man's existence is always real in the stress and varying choice and realisation within his allotted span of new and different possibilities, and in these of himself. But it is to be noted that human action is fulfilled in these individual cases; it does not split up or fall apart or dissolve in them. It is always the action of the same subject, of man, this man. And in every case it is only himself, man, this man, who can be chosen and realised by this subject. Who and what man, this man, is, is a question which is not left to any natural process, fate or chance, but is determined by the creation and providence, by the reconciling and redeeming action, of the God to whose command, to whose claim, decision andjudgment, man is subject in all these individual cases. Concrete human action thus proceeds under a divine order which persists in all the differentiations of individual cases. It, too, takes place in a connexion which is sure though it can seldom jf ever be demon-

1.

The Problem of Special Ethics

strated. We have to take this connexion into account, and therefore the permanence and continuity of human action as well. We may sum up provisionally as follows. Face to face with the ethical question, we have not only to consider a vertical dimension, the event or rather the many events of the encounter between God's command and human action in a singularity and uniqueness which cannot be anticipated and which scorn regimentation. For these very events all take place-as can be seen both from the divine command and human action-in a definite connexion. Only as an event takes place in this connexion is it, in all its mystery, the ethical event. Only as the vertical intersects a horizontal can it be called vertical. We have thus to consider the horizontal as well, and therefore the constancy and continuity both of the divine command and human action. If anything can be known about this horizontal, there is obviously disclosed a possibility of special ethics which has nothing to do with casuistry and yet which is not exhausted in its reference to the event. Rather, its reference to the event, which will still be its task, can cease to be monotonous, colourless and formless, and be articulated, colourful and contoured. If at the point which ethics has to indicate we have to do with the intersecting of this horizontal by the vertical, and if with each horizontal we have to do with a constancy of the divine command and human action and abstention, then necessarily the reference to the vertical of the ethical event, though there is no violation of the mystery of the event and it does not become casuistical, cannot remain a mere point, but must become linear to the extent that it has to take note of the constancy of the divine command and human action and abstention as the form peculiar to all ethical events as such, irrespective of their singularity and uniqueness. In the light of the horizontal, and with regard to it, it will be a "formed" reference. And it is the task of special ethics to make this reference to the ethical event as a reference formed in this sense. Its function or service in this formed reference is not to pronounce an anticipatory judgment on the good or evil of human action in encounter with the command of God, but to give definite instruction with regard to this event. Special ethics can then become the investigation and representation of the character which this event will always take, of the standard by which the goodness or evil of human action will be decided, not by the moralist and his ethics, but by God the Commander. In the light of the constancy of the divine command and human action, a knowledge of the character which is always peculiar to this event, and of the standards which are alwaysvalid in the decisions made in it, is not only possible but is also demanded. Special ethics may thus serve as an instructional preparation for the ethical event. And as such instruction it will plainly be distinguished not only from all casuistry but also from an ethics which is satisfied with a formless reference to the God who claims, decides and judges in the ethical event, to the Holy Spirit, or to the "command of the hour" and such like.

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[019]

But everything depends on whether anything can be known about the horizontal, the permanence, continuity and constancy of the divine command and human action. On this basis special ethics can become a formed reference to the ethical event and therefore perform its service as instructional preparation. But the point is whether we have reliable and legitimate information concerning it. To be reliable, the degree of certainty with which we claim to know about the constancy of the divine command and human action and abstention must be the same as that with which the ethical event is known to us through the Word of God as the event of God's claim, decision andjudgment in respect of our conduct. If it were any less, if we had only uncertain information here, how could ethics be bold to give to its reference to this event a definite form with regard to this horizontal? What authority could it then claim even for its instruction? And to be legitimate, what we at any rate claim to know about this horizontal must be drawn from a source which gives the same guarantee to its objective truth, and is materially of the same character, as what we can know of the ethical event through the Word of God. If a JL€Taf3aaLS €ls YEVOSEN15 took place here, what justification would there be for trying, in respect of this horizontal, to refer to the event in this or that form derived from a different and unrelated science? How could we try to give even ethical instruction with a clear conscience? Is it not to be feared from the very outset that we should mislead instead of leading? But the two questions can and must be immediately merged. Does the Word of God give us information concerning the constancy of the divine command and human action as concerning the reality of the command in the ethical event? We have reliable and legitimate information about this horizontal either by God's Word or not at all. If we did not have it by God's Word, then we should do better not to proceed but to withdraw in good time to what may be reliably and legitimately learned from that Word, which could only mean-since the way of casuistry is closed-to satisfaction with a monotonous, colourless and formless reference to the vertical. It is a serious matter to try even to refer to this vertical in a definite form, for the form and content of this reference cannot be separated. The form which we dare to give this reference will decide whether it is accurate in content, and even whether we are pointing to this vertical and not somewhere completely different, namely, in relation to another horizontal, to a vertical other than that of the ethical event in which the divine command and human action meet. It requires the authority and freedom of the same Word of God as is manifest in the ethical event to allow this formed reference to be responsibly attempted. Otherwise even at best we can give only uncertain and confusing and perhaps even utterly false information about the character of that event and the standards by which human conduct is measured there by God; and the result will be a bad or utterly false preparation for the event itself. Since in this event it is a matter of the claim, decision andjudgment of God, we

&""0

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change of categories

16

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The Problem of Special Ethics

can allow ourselves to be instructed, if at all, only by God Himself, and therefore by His Word, concerning the connexion, the permanence, continuity and constancy in which it takes place. This is the question which must be put to the ethics of Emil Brunner. He has given this the title Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (1932), E.T. The Divine Imperative (1937). I do not fully understand the intention and spirit of the book, but it is clear to me that under the concept of "orders" Brunner is particularly if not exclusivelyconcerned with what occupies us here as the problem of the horizontal. Brunner, too, rejects casuistry. He, too, knows and says: "Therefore we can never know beforehand what God will require. God's command can only be perceived at the actual moment of hearing it. It would denote a breaking away from obedience if we were to think of the Divine Command as one which had been enacted once for all, to be interpreted by us in particular instances" (p. 102, E.T. p. 117). And when this is decided and said, Brunner too can see that it is necessary to consider a second dimension of the problem. But now we are told: "The Divine Command, however, places us in the midst of reality, which, although it is not good in itself, is not severed from the action of God, which takes place apart from anything we do. In so far as the human reality within which we have to act witnesses to faith in the divine action, and in so doing to His will, we have to do with the divine 'orders' within which alone our action can take place, and in accordance with which it ought to take place" (p. 80, E.T. p. 93). And later: "Therefore God's command for the actual moment reaches us through the world around us, with all its pressure and its restrictions. Even the historically 'given' must be regarded primarily as God's Command, telling us to adjust ourselves to it. Since it is the will of God to conserve life, we should do so as well. We, too, are bound to 'preserve'-in our own appointed place-'what our God has created' in all the world around us: in the animate or inanimate creation, in human or animal life" (p. 110, E.T. p. 125). For Brunner the orders thus presented to us (orders of creation) are especially the orders of society: "Bythis we mean those existing facts of human corporate life which lie at the root of all historical life as unalterable presuppositions, which although their historical forms may vary, are unalterable in their fundamental structure, and, at the same time, relate and unite men to one another in a definite way" (p. 194, E.T. p. 210). "Here we see not merely particular spheres of life within which we are to act, but orders in accordance with which we have to act, because in them, even if only in a fragmentary and indirect way, God's Will meets us. Hence we call them 'Divine orders'" (p. 275, E.T. p. 291). What seems to be Brunner's basic idea is sound and must not be rejected: "The Divine Command is not a law which hovers above our actual existence without any connexion with it; it is the command of the God who has created our actual existence" (p. 192, E.T. pp. 208-209). But what I do not understand is from what source and in what way Brunner claims to know these orders. We are told that we have to do with divine orders in the reality which encompasses us. This reality itself bears witness to them and to that extent to "the will of God to conserve life." The command of God for the moment. His order, comes to us from this reality. But even assuming that the reality around us, being created by God and belonging to God, has a voice and does in fact bear this witness, how can we hear and understand this voice, accepting its proclamation of orders, and accepting it as an imperative and obligation, as a rule according to which we have to act and within which our action is to take place? From what source and in what way do we hear a divine command? Do we stand on such a footing with our own reality and that which encompasses us that we can reliably and authentically hear from it a command of God? It seems that Brunner will not go so far as Paul Althaus, for instance, in whose Grundriss derEthik (2nd ed. 1931, 25) we are actually told that reality is the material principle of ethics. It seems that Brunner cannot quite say what Althaus (p. 26f.) says, that the commandments of God have their basis and are given and

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known in the fact that our own reality is posited and ordered in this particular wayin relation to that of our environment. He normally distinguishes the two concepts "command" and "orders." But we cannot help feeling that at the root of his conception of "orders" there lies something akin to the familiar notion of a lex naturaeEN16 which is immanent in reality and inscribed upon the heart of man, so that it is directly known to him. But does not this mean that there is not only a second (or first) revelation of God before and beside that of the Word of His grace, but also a second (or first) knowledge of God beside that of this Word of grace? In his book Gerechtigkeit (1943), E.T.justice and the Social Order (1945), Brunner no longer leaves us in any doubt that this is what he really has in viewwhen he speaks of "orders "; that the doctrine of an earthly and human justice in family, industry and state is to be grounded quite exclusively upon a natural law (interpreted mainly in Aristotelian fashion); and that the revealed command of the gracious God is to be relegated to the sphere of individual ethics and not to be considered in connexion with the attainment of this concept ofjustice. The material consequence of this dichotomy is a question in itself. For the moment, we simply ask with what reliability and legitimacy we can speak even of the "orders" of God-of the God who created reality-when we lay aside His Word revealed in Jesus Christ and seek information on the subject from other sources. Even if there is a "natural law," is it so clear and normative that we can responsibly venture to answer on its authority the by no means trivial question of the form of the divine command? To this question of the constancy of the divine command and human action D. Bonhoeffer gives another and more helpful answer which is both more original in relation to theological tradition and also more carefully formulated in substance. He tells us in his book that there is "a definite historical form" in which God (alwaysinJesus Christ) gives His command (op. cit., p. 216, E.T. p. 245). This form may be found in the "mandates." Bonhoeffer prefers this term to "orders," because the latter involves the risk of focusing attention more strongly upon the objective and inactive element in the order rather than the inauguration, legitimation and authorisation which alone establish it (p. 223, E.T. p. 254, cf. p. 70, E.T. p. 73). "Mandate" is also to be preferred to the prized Lutheran concept of "estate," which threatens a dangerous separation of man and reality in view of the fact that man can only be either in the status oeconomicusEN17, the status politicusEN18 or the status ecclesiasticusEN19• What are these mandates? Bonhoeffer usually mentions work, marriage (the family), the authorities and the Church (so p. 70, E.T. p. 73 and p. 216, E.T.; p. 245 on p. 222f., E.T. p. 252 culture is also mentioned). All these divine mandates concern the whole man, and they radically concern all men (p. 73, E.T. p. 76). They are thus the constant form of the command. At all times and places, when and where God commands, it is materially a matter of fulfilling these mandates. In each and all of them there is presen t "the concrete divine commission which has its foundation in the revelation of Christ and which is evidenced by Scripture; it is the legitimation and warrant for the execution of a definite divine commandment, the conferment of divine authority on an earthly agent," and at the same time "the claiming, the seizure and the formation of a definite earthly domain by the divine commandment rdquo; (p. 222f., E.T. p. 252). For what is given concretion in the mandates is the original and final reference of the world to Christ, His claim of lordship over it. This and this alone, and not their actual givenness, is what makes them divine mandates. Only subsequen tly can we affirm that through them that which concretely is receives a relative justification (p. 70f., E.T. p. 73 f.). They are not "products of history" but are "introduced into the world from ENl6 ENl7 EN18 EN19

natural law family estate political estate blank slate

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The Problem of Special Ethics

above as orders or 'institutions' of the reality of Christ." And so their bearers "do not receive their commission from below; their task is not to expound and execute desires of the human will, but in a strict and unalterable sense they hold their commission from God, they are deputies and representatives of God." In them, in all the generally valid and all-embracing orders in which the command of God confronts men, there is "a clearly defined order of superiority and inferiority," both of which are given by divine injunction and therefore protected against abuse, against degenerating into earthly power relationships with their different ruling spirits, authoritarian and revolutionary (p. 224f. E.T. p. 254 f.). In the form of these mandates, and therefore in the concrete order of superiority and inferiority indicated in them, there is given to man, to all men, the command of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer emphasises that it can only be a matter of this command. And he emphasises that it is from Holy Scripture that we learn of the existence of these mandates which give concrete form to the command, and in them of the constancy of the ethical question and answer. I call Bonhoeffer's answer to the question of the horizontal more helpful than that of Althaus and Brunner because in it he has perceived that what is involved in the constancy of ethical events must also be learned only from the Word of God if a formed reference to it is to be legitimate and meaningful. Bonhoeffer's "mandates" are not laws somehow immanent in created reality and to be established at random by the moralist and proclaimed in a form which he himself discovers. On the contrary, they are "from above," like the divine command itself, and indeed with it, as the "form" which is quite inseparable from it. They do not emerge from reality; they descend into it. It is along these lines that we certainly have to think, and we may gratefully acknowledge that Bonhoeffer does this, even though it may be asked whether the working out of his view does not still contain some arbitrary elements. Why, for instance, are there only four (or five) mandates and no others? Is it enough to say that these particular relationships of rank and degree occur with a certain regularity in the Bible, and that they can be more or less clearly related to Christ as the Lord of the world? Again, does the relationship always have to be one of superiority and inferiority? In Bonhoeffer's doctrine of the mandates, is there not just a suggestion of North German patriarchalism? Is the notion of the authority of some over others really more characteristic of the ethical event than that of the freedom of even the very lowest before the very highest? Finally, is it really happy to describe the constants in question by the term "mandate" (which is linguistically hardly distinguishable from "command")? What has to be indicated is surely the modification in which God commands and man has to act-not another command beside His one command, but the constant form of this one command. Would it not be advisable, then, to begin with the more cautious question what we have to learn from God's Word concerning this constancy rather than rushing on to the rigid assertion of human relationships arranged in a definite order, and the hasty assertion of their imperative character? Is it not the case that in what the Word of God tells us at this point we are merely referred to certain constant relationships as such? Is it not the case that this reference is indispensable for our instruction concerning the command of God and the corresponding or contradictory action of man, because the Word of God tells us that we exist in these relationships and that it is in these very relationships that His command alwaysfinds us and that we will alwaysencounter Him in such and such a waywith our conduct? But is it not the case that the reference to these relationships as such does not necessarily have the character of an imperative, and therefore in the strict sense of a mandate, but that it must become an imperative, a concrete command or mandate, in the power of the divine command itself, in the ethical event? As regards the Christlicht Ethik of N. H. S0e all such objections would be irrelevant. He stands at the opposite pole to Althaus and Brunner. Indeed, we might well ask whether in his

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[023]

case, for all his rich and detailed investigation of concrete individual questions, we are not finally left with a piece-meal ethics which is never more than a mere reference to the ethical event. But this would be to do him an injustice. He is well aware of the problem of the constancy and continuity of ethical decisions. But he is so afraid (and not without good cause) of any traces of the German theology of orders current in the twenties that he evidently regards as dangerous and will not take even the slightest step in the direction of the reality so cheerfully upheld by this theology and also by Brunner. The constant of the ethical problem has for him only two forms: (1) direction by the Holy Spirit, by which in good Reformation style he understands constant guidance and instruction by the concrete Word of Scripture, the emphasising of which at every stage in the enquiry and exposition is his supreme concern and a noteworthy quality of his book; and (2) the recognisable traces of the work of the Holy Spirit, the deposit of past teaching, the recollection of what we were previously told by God's Word-something which is of strangely mixed value, partly positive and partly negative, but which has the significance that our consciousness is never a mere tabula rasa EN20 in face of the new Word of God (p. g6f.). What we have to ask S0e is how he knows so precisely, according to the second and specific part of his work, what are "the universal and fundamental human problems" and "the fundamental social orders" by a consideration of which the ethical reference becomes a formed reference? Where does he learn the sequence and way in which he speaks of these spheres? Does he not really presuppose a third constant, very differently from those who advocate orders and from Bonhoeffer, but none the less truly? According to all S0e's presuppositions, we cannot learn about the sphere and spheres which he takes for granted except from the Word of God to which we owe our knowledge of the ethical event as such. But if we cannot learn about them from any other source, then to avoid all suspicion of chance or arbitrariness it is advisable to consider first whether and to what extent we do actually learn about them from this source. Here Brunner and those who speak of orders are right. We must know what we are doing when we describe this or that sphere of human activityin this or that context as the field upon which ethical decisions are continually taken. We must try, unlike those who speak of orders or Brunner, but essentially like Bonhoeffer, to learn from the Word of God what is to be done. But we do not acquire this knowledge simply by considering the specifically ethical savings of Scripture relevant to those spheres, and their previous "deposit" in our own consciousness. A radical and comprehensive consideration of the Word of God to which these words of Scripture bear witness must be attempted. What must be stated is why the connexion and differentiation of this Word compels us in this question of constancy to turn to these particular spheres in this particular way.This task, which is unsatisfactorily discharged by Althaus and Brunner on the one side and S0e on the other, and not adequately enough by Bonhoeffer, has now to be considered in its general features.

The relationship or unity of ethics with dogmatics must now be made fruitful in this respect-fruitful in the question of what persists in the events of the divine command and human action, and therefore of what permits but also commands us to make the reference to these events as a formed reference, and in so doing to venture a true special ethics. Two factors always constitute these events in all cases. The first is primary and dominant-God with His claim upon man, with His decision and judgment concerning him. And the second is definitely secondary and not dominant, having no claim to advance and no decision or judgment to make, so that EN20

ecclesiastical estate

20

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The Problem of Special Ethics

at a first glance it might seem to be a purely passive object-man, who is distinguished as such from God even as an active subject, who is confronted by Him, with whom God is much concerned in this event, who in his action as a free subject is plainly treated with utter seriousness by God. The first persistent element in all these events is the presence of the God who at all times and places is wholly primary and superior and yet turns to man, and of the man who at all times and places is wholly secondary and subordinate and yet is treated seriously by God as a being which is autonomous in relation to Him. But the question arises whether these two factors, God and man, can be known to us in the Word of God, from which we must draw our information, only as secret realities, so that although they are factors in encounter they are factors that cannot be perceived or grasped knowable only in an encounter that cannot be perceived or grasped. Is this perhaps to be said at least of one or other of them? If that were so, it would mean that the constant element in the events which is the subject of our enquiry would be knowable, but only as a fact and not in the concrete outline of this fact, and therefore not in such a way that the reference to the events could become a formed reference. But this assumption is manifestly inaccurate. It is true that both God and man are revealed to us in the Word of God as secret realities, which do not "declare themselves," i.e., fully state in a human word their true and innermost essence, but can only be approximately described in all the words with which we seek to define them. It is not the case, however, that they are pure secret realities without concrete outlines. Hidden in their being, both God and man are revealed in their manner, not in themselves, not directly, nor on the basis of a human ability or accomplishment, but in the Word of God, in Jesus Christ. Without ceasing to be a mystery, they are an open mystery in Him; imperceptible and incomprehensible in their essence, yet perceptible and comprehensible in their work, and because in their work, therefore in their manner; not to be fully declared, but in their outline amenable to human perception and therefore to human description; able to be expressed and attested by human words. InJesus Christ the fact of the encounter of God and man is not merely a fact which can be recognised as such, but also a Word-a Word in flesh and for flesh-which can be known as such. This is the general dogmatic assumption to which ethics may cling. It must cling to this alone if it is to proceed securely; but to this it can and should cling. We thus ask (1) who is the commanding God as He is knowable to us in His own Word, in Jesus Christ, and we answer with the three main assertions of dogmatics. He is the One who created heaven and earth, and on earth and under heaven man. He is the One who reconciles to Himself the man who as a sinner has become His enemy, and in man the world. And He is the One who, from the danger and conflict in which man must still stand here and now, will liberate him for eternal life, redeeming him and making him perfect in the final act and revelation of His love. For us to understand the command which encounters man in each et~ical event as the command of God, this means in 21

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concrete terms that we have to understand it thoroughly in all these events as the command of the One who is man's Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, surrounding and holding him fast on all sides as it were in this threefold activity. In this threefold way,then, He is also man's Commander. And on this basis the ethical event, without detriment to its mystery, becomes for the first time perceptible and comprehensible, losing the appearance of a mere fact and therefore the appearance of indefiniteness which invests it as long as the selfcharacterisation of God in His work is left out of account and man is thus regarded as confronted in this event with a general and neutral divinity. The God who works and is revealed in His Word, inJesus Christ, characterises Himself (in accordance with His inner trinitarian being) as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer. This authorises and requires us to understand the ethical event as one which is alwayscharacterised by this divine action, and manner. At all times and places it will show this outline. It is not just any power or lord who here commands, claiming, deciding and judging; it is the Lord who created man, who reconciles him to Himself, and who will redeem him for eternal life. Wherever and whenever the command of God encounters a man, it is always determined by the fact that He is this God. The presuppositions, plans, intentions and methods of this God will always be normative. This event will always take place at a point on the ways of this God-and to this extent not in empty space. Looking back upon past and forward to future encounters with His command, we can have absolute assurance. The One who commands is the One who as Father is the sovereign Lord of His creature, who in His Son has given Himself for it, and who as Spirit will lead it into all truth and thus perfect it. Without detriment to its regularity and uniqueness, the reference to this event can and may and must be made as one which is sharply formed on this side. We then go on to ask (2) who is the man who acts as he is to be known from the Word of God, inJesus Christ, and we answer with the secondary assertions of dogmatics resulting from the primary. He is the creature of God, namely, the one whom God had in view when He created heaven and earth, determining him as His covenant-partner and finally for participation in His eternal life. He is the sinner to whom God in His wonderful freedom is gracious. That is, he is the being who has disobeyed God, broken the covenant, denied his own nature and missed his vocation, yet to whom God is faithful quite apart from and in defiance of his deserts, so that without being worthy of it he may hold fast to His promise in faith, live by His forgiveness and hope in Him. And he is the child of the Father led by the Spirit, who as the time of contradiction, conflict and suffering moves to its end already lives in hope in the presence of God's future and final revelation which will fully reveal him as that which he is even now. The man who in the ethical event acts in the light of the divine command is to be consistently understood as this being. On this side too, then, we are dealing with the outline of a form and not with a mere fact. Here, too, 22

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The Problem of Special Ethics

the mystery of this event is respected. Even the enumeration of the three forms in which man is disclosed to us in the Word of God, like the corresponding account of God, is more the narration of his history or description of his way than a definition of his being. But in this history and on this way, in the sequence of these three forms, man does emerge as a being with definite characteristics. On this side too, then, we are authorised and required to understand the ethical event as always formed. It will always be this man who is confronted with the command of God in the ethical event-God's creature and covenant-partner, the pardoned sinner, the child of God, who even in the present is already expectant and certain of his eternal future. This man is the other participant in this event. He is wholly secondary and subordinate to the first; indeed, it is only by the first that he is what he is. Yet it is he with his concrete characteristics who is this participant. From this standpoint, too, it is evident that the event does not take place in empty space. Necessarily, then, the reference to this event must be one which is sharply formed on this side also. If we accept this information about God and man as given in the Word of God, the possibility and necessity of a special ethics confront us with a basic clarity. Comprehensively understood, its task will be to accompany this history of God and man from creation to reconciliation and redemption, indicating the mystery of the encounter at each point on the path according to its own distinctive character. This history of God and man is obviously the constant factor and therefore the connexion or context of all ethical events. Where the divine command and human action meet, there always meet the divine Creator and His creature, the divine Reconciler and the sinner upheld by His faithfulness, the divine Redeemer and Perfecter and the child of God with his eternal expectancy. A moment in this history is involved, and the context is normative even where man may be only imperfectly conscious of himself. Who of us ever hears the Word of God so perfectly as to see this context in all its fulness? It is enough that it exists, and that God knows and rules it. This is the case even when man is not conscious of himself at all, when he is not yet or no longer a Christian. What difference can this make to the fact that each moment in his existence is on God's side and therefore in truth a moment in this history? The God who is the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, is the God of the pious and the God of the ungodly, and it is the fact that He is God, and not anything of which they are conscious or not conscious, that determines and orders what they are before Him and therefore in truth. However it may be with human consciousness, we must set out from the Word of God, from Jesus Christ, when it is a question of God, this God, when it is a question of man, this man, when it is a question of their encounter, of a moment in the history which takes place between this God and this man. Special ethics is in general terms a commentary upon this history, to be drawn up with particular regard to this encounter.

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Since the ethical event as an encounter of the concrete God with concrete man does not take place in empty space but in that defined by the concreteness of both these partners and their encounter, ethics, too, does not stand before something which is general and cannot be expressed in particular terms, but it can and must become special ethics. It has a text which it is its duty to understand and expound in relation to this event. It may also be said that it has a material principle, the perception and conception of something which is constant for all the singularity and uniqueness of this event. It knows not only the point of this event but also the field in which it takes place, to which it looks as it knows about the event as such, and from which it then looks back upon the event with a concrete perception of what is involved. But its text, material principle and field is the nexus, structure and differentiation of the history in which the ethical event has its place according to the Word of God, and of which it forms a moment. According to the Word of God! We must not think of trying to discover, construct and define for ourselves the field of "reality" to which we can look from this event and from which we can then look back upon the event. We must not have the effrontery secretly or openly to try to write in advance the text which ethics has to read, understand and expound. Certainly, it is a question of reality. But what does reality mean? We have to realise that the introduction of the concept at this point might carry a dangerous implication. Are we not dealing with reality in the event of the encounter of the God who commands with the man who acts as this is set before us in the Word of God? Can the reality of this event be different from that which it has in and by itself? Must it acquire reality by its relationship to another reality? If we understand by the God who commands and the man who acts the two partners revealed to us in the Word of God, is not the reality of their encounter the fulness, epitome and standard of all reality? Were we speaking of purely shadowy occurrences when we first tried to describe this event as such? Could we not really trust the Word of God as we listened to it, as though in respect of the reality of this event it were holding something back which we have now to obtain by means of our own discovery, construction and definition? But this is the very thing which must not happen on the threshold of special ethics. For if it did, ethics would be betrayed on to strange ground, and there could be no confidence in general ethics, i.e., in the fundamental consideration of the ethical event, of the encounter of the divine command and human action. Even here we should soon convince ourselves that we had not seriously listened to the Word of God, but accepted an invention of our own. Ifwe have heard the Word of God, it must be clear to us that the reality in which the ethical event takes place as revealed in the Word of God is none other than its own, so that we do not have to seek and find it but simply to see it as it is given to us in and by the event itself. Even a recollection of God who has created the reality in which the ethical event takes place ought not to cause us to seek and find this reality; and there-

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The Problem of Special Ethics

fore the text, material principle and field of special ethics, anywhere but in this ethical event itself as we have to understand it from and by the Word of God. For the fact that God is indeed the Creator of the field to which we would look in specIal ethics, and then look back from it to the ethical event, does not mean at all that we can know Him in this field as the Creator He is, nor does it mean that we are in a position to obtain here a reliable and authentic text. How can we know to what extent we really have to do with God's creation, and therefore with a valid standard for understanding the ethical event, in what we claim to recognise here as reality? Thus the fact that God is the Creator is only one side of the concretion, one moment of the historical form, in which He encounters man in this event, as creatureliness is only one moment in the historical form of man. We can and must pursue closely this particular moment, the relationship between God as Creator and man as His creature; and this is what we shall try to do in this first part of special theological ethics. But we cannot try to mark out and define the whole field of the reality in question on the basis of this one moment of divine and human being, or to understand summarily from this one moment the event which takes place in this field. The Word of God in which this event is revealed to us, and to which we must adhere even in respect of the field in which it takes place, does not allow any such one-sidedness. The God who commands is also the Reconciler and the Redeemer, and something corresponding may also be said of man with whom He has to deal in this event. This being the case, it would be an act of arbitrariness which could only result in misconceptions to understand the truth of the idea of creation as the only key to this reality and indirectly as the key to the understanding of the ethical event, even if it were as easy to grasp this key as representatives of the theology of orders assume. Neither with the aid of the idea of creation nor without it, however, do we need to seek a reality distinct from that of the ethical event. We need only consider and state how the latter represents and characterises itself. We need only pursue the history in which each ethical event has its place and forms its moment-the history in which God is Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer and man is that which corresponds to this divine action, His creature, the one who is accepted in grace and has a part in His promise. This history is the reality in which the ethical event takes place, to which we look from the event, and from which we must look back to the event to see it in its concreteness. We may confidently refer to this history because we have to do simply with the selfunfolding of this event. In this event, as we have seen, it is always a question of God in His articulated and differentiated action, and of man in his correspondingly articulated and differentiated being in relation to this God. This means, however, that the reality of this even t is alwaysan articulated and differentiated reality. To consider its articulation and differentiation, and to understand it in relation to and in the light of this articulation and differentiation, is the task of special ethics. It has not to take into account definitions of a reality which in some way precede the concrete encounter of God and man and thus

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constitute its norm. But it has to take into account the fact that the encounter of God with man itself brings very distinctly to view the reality in question and is itself its norm. Ethics has to pay heed to this reality in its articulation and differentiation, and in relation to and in the light of it to win an articulated and differentiated knowledge of the ethical event. It does not have to invent anything. It has to copy down what it finds already written. If it adheres to the Word of God as the source of its knowledge of this event, how else can it wish to proceed? And even if it wished, how else could it proceed? When God and man meet as revealed in the Word of God, then definite spheres and relationships may be seen in which this encounter takes place. They are determined and relatively demarcated from one another by the fact that the God who commands and the man who acts are historically articulated figures. The one will of God, without becoming disunited within itself, has different forms; and similarly His command, while it alwayscommands man to do one thing, has different elements. Again, while man is always one and the same, he exists before God in different respects; and his action before God, without detriment to its unity and totality, is made up of different elements. The one will of God and His one command embrace His work as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer. But also what He wills and commands as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer always embraces a plenitude of particular intentions and demands. Similarly, the action of the one man is his action on the three corresponding planes defined by the will and command of God, and on a closer inspection it is shown to be widely differentiated on each of these planes. The reality in which the ethical event takes place is its reality in the spheres and relationships which arise and are revealed in this way. It is clear that neither the command of God nor the obedience or disobedience of man takes place apart from these spheres and relationships, nor can they be abstracted from them. Only here are they in any serious sense worthy of the name. But it is also clear that neither the command of God nor the obedience or disobedience of man coincides with these spheres and relationships in which they take place, and therefore cannot simply be read off from them. These might very well be called orders or ordinances. But then there would always be the possibility of misunderstanding them as laws, prescriptions and imperatives. They are the spheres in which God commands and man is obedient or disobedient, but not laws according to which God commands and man does right or wrong. For if it is true that the divine command and human action cannot be understood apart from them, it isjust as true that they themselves must not be understood apart from the divine command and human action, but only as the reality of the event in which these two meet. Thus the emergence of these spheres, relationships or orders does not make possible a return to casuistry. They are not universal ethical truths, but only the general form of the one and supremely particular truth of the ethical event which is inaccessible as such to the casuistical grasp. But our present concern is with the positive scope of the matter. The par-

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The Problem of Special Ethics

ticular truth of the ethical event has in these spheres and relationships a general form. It is always in these spheres that God commands and man is obedient or disobedient to Him. This is what makes them relevant, important and significant for the question of the concrete content of the divine command and the concrete direction of right human action. To make decisions about the content of the divine command and good and evil in human action cannot be the task of ethics, nor can it be suggested to us by a knowledge of the spheres in which divine command and human action take place. More than the general form of the particular truth of the ethical event, more than the spheres in which this takes place, cannot be the content of this knowledge. What is in fact suggested and made possible by a knowledge of these spheres is that concerning which we have asked in contrast to casuistical and a purely piecemeal ethics, namely, ethics as a formed reference to the ethical event, as a description and attestation of the command of God and the right human action corresponding to it. If, then, the ethical event always takes place in this articulation and differentiation, and therefore in these spheres and relationships, we cannot refer to the former without considering the latter, but must consider the latter seriously if we refer to the former. Necessarily, then, it is possible and even imperative to trace the historical outline alwayspeculiar to the ethical event, to give an indicatory if not a complete picture of it piece by piece, to gain at least 'a prospect of the field or fields of the encounter of God and man, and then from this standpoint to put the counter-question what is the command of God and the corresponding right human action in this or that sphere and relationship and as reflected in this particular mirror. A definite lead in the direction of the answer which is finally asked of each of us individually in his relationship to God and his fellows will become possible and necessary in proportion as we perceive this historical outline: not the answer itself; not a definition or determination of this event, which as such remains outwith the sphere of all general consideration and appraisal; but a reference to it by which it is generally described in a way which is generally discernible and attested in a form which is generally valid; an ethical lead in which there is a perceptible approximation to this event; a directive, or rather a series of directives, which give guidance to the individual in the form of an approximation to the knowledge of the divine command and right human action. And naturally it can and must happen that this approximation becomes as intensive as possible, and the directives and directions as urgent and binding as possible. If we take the ideal case of a full knowledge of definite general spheres and relationships in which the ethical event takes place, then the question whether in these spheres and relationships this or that and not something else is commanded or forbidden, and is therefore good or bad, gains a sharpness in which the question almost acquires the character of an answer. It obviously cannot pretend to be an answer. For the most concrete sphere of the individual ethical case to which an answer must always relate will still have escaped ethics. Ethics will still have to

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~ 52. Ethics as a Task of the Doctrine of Creation leave the finaljudgment to God. And our knowledge of these general spheres and relationships will never actually be full, so that the question of what is commanded and forbidden will alwaysnecessarily retain a certain breadth and openness. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the question gains in precision, and therefore the directives and directions to be given by ethics gain in urgency and compulsion, in proportion as the knowledge of these spheres and relationships becomes broader and deeper. And it is clear that the service which ethics can and should render as special ethics is genuine and useful in proportion as it finds itself in this movement (though always aware of its limits), and can thus indicate with increasing urgency and compulsion the divine command and the human action corresponding to it. Whether it is in this movement, however, will depend on whether it allows the historical outline of the spheres and relationships in which the ethical event takes place, and therefore its text or material principle, to be genuinely dictated to it by the Word of God. It will certainly offer no less than guidance if it adheres to the text prescribed. But more than guidance will not be expected from even the most particular ethics, just as more than guidance to a knowledge of Christian truth, more than an Institutio religionis christianaeEN21, will not be expected from even the most precise and detailed dogmatics. In both cases what is more than guidance will be either arbitrary human assertion or the event of the revelation of which only God Himself can be the subject. True dogmatics and true ethics steer a middle course-between what they must not be and what they cannot be. They do what can and should be done by man in the light of revelation. They give well-founded and legitimate witness, and therefore training in Christianity, and in the particular case of ethics training in keeping the command.

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2.

GOD THE CREATOR AS COMMANDER

The first part of special ethics to which we now turn in detail is also in the context of dogmatics the conclusion of the doctrine of creation. We have behind us what is to be said about the work of creation as such, about man as the creature of God, about the relationship between Creator and creature according to the perception of Christian faith, in the sense of the first article of the creed. Implicitly, dogmatics must always be ethics as well. If we had not come to realise and see this in all those elements of a Christian knowledge of creation, we should have been indulging in empty speculation and therefore engaged in futile labour. But the meaning of dogmatics as ethics is so important that now at the end and climax of the great Locus de creationeEN22 what was implicit must also be made explicit. For this reason, we now ask concerning EN21 EN22

Institutes of the Christian Religion doctrine of creation

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God the Creator as Commander

the command of God the Creator, concerning God the Creator as the Commander of man. Our reflections upon the problem of special ethics have prepared us for the insight that even from the standpoint of ethics it is possible and necessary to put the question in this form. The relationship of Creator and creature is one of the great spheres where there is encounter between the God who commands and the man who acts, so that the problem of the sanctification of man by God and of man's freedom for the will of God becomes acute and must be decided one way or the other in the ethical event. In this first part of special ethics we turn to this particular sphere. What must form the conclusion of the doctrine of creation is the question, in relation to this sphere, of what the command of God wills and demands at this point, what is here the meaning of man's sanctification by His command, what is the meaning of freedom for the will of God and therefore for eternal life. But in this formulation, in this particular investigation of the command of God the Creator-to which there must be corresponding investigations at the end of the other two main lociEN23-we find ourselves on a lonely path. Hence we cannot avoid considering whether and how far this particular enquiry is possible and necessary, and what we mean and do not mean by it. God is One. That He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that in this Trinity He is the epitome and sum of all riches, does not mean that His being is inwardly divided. The older dogmatics spoke here of the perichoresis of God's three persons or modes of being. It meant by this that He is always the One, not without the Other, but in and through the Other. Just as God in His unity is not only one, but many and single, He is not abstractly and therefore not diffusely many and single, but in His manifoldness and singleness He is one and indivisible. Similarly, God is one and indivisible in His working. That He is Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer does not imply the existence of separate divine departments and branches of authority. Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisaEN24• The first and third articles of the creed can be understood only from the second, and the latter only on the assumption and in development of the first and third. All this is true also of the command of God. If we consider it in its different spheres, and therefore if we here ask particularly about the command of God the Creator, this cannot and must not mean that beside this first there is a second and separate command, that of God the Reconciler, and then a third, that of God the Redeemer. If, then, we turn particularly to the sphere of the relationship of Creator and creature, this cannot mean that we turn away from the other spheres in question. Alwaysin the ethical event God commands and man acts in all three spheres at once. Our whole exposition of the first article in this doctrine of creation was executed in the light of the second and with a view to the third. How could one think and say anything at EN23 EN24

doctrines The external works of the Trinity are undivided

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all serious and tenable about creation without proceeding at every point from Christology and for that reason assuming the main contents of Pneuma to logy and eschatology? It would not be God the Creator, the Father Almighty, as manifested in His Word and attested in the creed, if we did not immediately and fundamentally recognise in Him the Son and His work, and the Spirit, the Lifegiver. It is on the broad basis of this Christian knowledge of God the Creator that we now take our stand as we ask concerning His command. It is the one whole command of the one whole God. But what may and must be seen together must not be confused, intermingled or even identified. And where we must not split and separate, we may and must distinguish. The perichoresis of God's three modes of being does not destroy their independence. And if the one whole God is the Subject and Author of creation, reconciliation and redemption, this is not to deny that His action in each of these three spheres is a particular one, so that it is permissible and even imperative, as in older trinitarian dogmatics, to ascribe the work of creation per appropriationemEN25 to the Father, that of reconciliation to the Son and-always per appropriationem-that of redemption and consummation to the Holy Spirit, thus making a genuine distinction. And a similar distinction is allowed and required in relation to the divine command: allowed because the variety of spheres in which God commands in some sense invites it; and commanded because it is really impossible to see how a concrete understanding of the one command of the one God is to be reached if we make no use of the invitation to view it in the manifold form given by the variety of these spheres. This distinction obviously means that we can view its various forms only individually and therefore after and alongside one another, and not in the simultaneity and coincidence in which the one God really gives it and in which it is His one command; just as we can consider and name God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, only individually and therefore after and alongside one another, or can recite the creed only in the sequence of the three articles, even though it begins with the words: credo in unum Deum EN26. Here and now, i.e., on this side of the coming final revelation of the kingdom, we cannot take any other path in the knowledge of God, but theology can only be a theologia viatorumEN27• God knows Himself and all things adequately: not after and alongside one another, but in and with one another at a single stroke. And in the lumen gloriaeEN28 of eternallife we, too, shall certainly know Him in this sense adequately, "face to face." Here and now, however, our knowledge has to be inadequate-a knowledge of things after and alongside one another-if it is to be real knowledge. There is no sense in regretting its inadequacy. For adequate knowledge of God here and now would not be real knowledge any more than a direct look into the sun would be real seeing. In both cases we could only be

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by appropriation I believe in one God theology on the way light of glory

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God the Creator as Commander

dazzled and therefore blinded. If we were to see God here and now as He is, and as He sees Himself, we should die. To His Word that becomes flesh, to the shining of the lumen gratiaeEN29 given us here and now, there corresponds the humility of the inadequate knowledge of things after and alongside one another, which precisely as such, as theologia viatorum EN30, is true knowledge, the fully satisfactory form, here and now, of the true knowledge which corresponds to its object and is thus of saving power.

Hence we are not only not forbidden but positively directed to understand the one command of God successively as the command of God the Creator, the Reconciler, and the Redeemer. If He meets us in His revealed Word as inseparably one in this threefold form, but also as the One who has this threefold form in His unity, it is our duty in the knowledge of His command to take the path thus indicated, considering His command in these different forms and therefore really and truly. To be sure, this means inadequate knowledge, as will undoubtedly appear. Whatever we may see and say in detail at any point on this path will by itself never be the whole of the one divine command as it meets the acting man in the ethical event. By itself it will never be more than something temporary and particular corresponding to the temporary and particular aspect in which it shows itself to us; something transient which is necessarily preceded and followed by other things; a mere extract from His reality and therefore limited and requiring supplementation. Wherever we may happen to be on this path, we shall always be asked whence we come and whither we go, and therefore whether we are really on the path around this object. And wherever we may happen to be, we shall never be permitted to halt or to rest content with this or that particular knowledge; for of itself it cannot be knowledge of the command, but has meaning and force only in its connexion with the knowledge which precedes and follows, being possible and meaningful only as we come and go on this path. In complete and conclusive statements it can never think that it is at the goal. But in this way it is genuinely possible and meaningful, and at each point which we pass it is not merely partial knowledge but as such full knowledge. In the fragment, mirror and riddle of the detailed, it is knowledge of the one and whole which is for us here and now the one and whole only in the manifoldness and sequence of the detailed. This is the fundamental consideration on the basis of which we regard it as legitimate and necessary to enquire specifically about the command of God the Creator at the conclusion of the doctrine of creation. We do not have in mind a special command, or a mere part of the one whole command, but the one whole command in this particular form. For the work of creation itself is not separate, nor is it a mere part of the one whole work of God; it is this one whole work itself in its one form. Nor could we depict the specific work of creation, and man as the creature of God, and the relationship between Creator and creature, without disclosing at every point the other forms of the one EN29 EN30

light of grace theology on the way

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whole work of God. It is in the same sense and with the same reservation that now we may and must specifically ask concerning God the Creator as Commander. In the thesis at the head of the section we described it as the purpose of this particular task "to show to what extent the one command of the one God who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ is also the command of his Creator and therefore already the sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man." In this statement there are three presuppositions, one principal and two subordinate, which we must stress as such. The main one consists in the fact that the God who meets man as Creator in His commandment is the God "who is gracious to him in Jesus Christ." He is not, then, a new and strange God who could require from man as his Commander something new and strange and even perhaps in conflict with what is asked of him by the God who is gracious to him in Jesus Christ. Nor is He the one God who as Creator has first a different and strange manner and intention as compared with those which in a remarkable transformation suddenly become proper to Him as He is gracious to man in Jesus Christ. The One who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ is the one God beside whom there are no others and who does not Himself have to become different to be this God. This One is also the Creator by whom all things were made and who is the Lord over all that is. This is the main presupposition. It has its basis in the nature of the God who has revealed Himself in His Word. It has been our startingpoint in the whole doctrine of creation and to it we have alwaysreturned. It is the rocher de bronzeEN31 in face of all splits and dualisms when we consider what God is and does and says.It is the ground on which we take our stand here, too, in our investigation of the command of God. Even when we speak of the Creator, it is a question of the One of whom the first and final thing is said when we confess Him as the One who is gracious to us in Jesus Christ. The first subordinate presupposition in our thesis is that the command of God to man is "also the command of his Creator." And the second, corresponding to the first, is that His command "is the sanctification already of the creaturely action and abstention of man." Though not exclusively, it is also the command of his Creator; and though not exclusively, it is already the sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man. This means in general terms that both on God's side and man's side there are distinct spheres of divine commandment and human action and abstention, and specifically that there is the sphere-one among others, but distinguished from others and calling for separate treatment-where God encounters man in the spcific form of Creator and where what befalls man at His hands bears the specific character of the sanctification of his creaturely being. But what is the source of these subordinate and corresponding presuppositions? How do we come to see the particular sphere of divine commandment EN3l

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God the Creator as Commander

and human sanctification which they transcribe? It is not really self-evident that we have even the slightest solid information on the basis of which to ask concerning the nature of God's commandment and man's sanctification in this particular sphere. Where and how is this sphere marked off as such? Where and how do we know of a commandment of God in His particular form as Creator and of a sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man? We have already considered the noteworthy answer to this question which is to the effect that reality instructs us concerning God as Creator and human creaturehness. This is created by God, and simply by surrounding and being present to us it reveals to us, i.e., to the natural reason of every man, not with full but with increasing certainty and clarity, this sphere in which God is its Creator and man is part of it as the creature of God. Moreover, in and by "reality" there is also revealed what should properly be the subject of an additional question: the commanding of God the Creator and its bearing upon the action of the human creature; the order or many orders of creation, which create a sort of basis, sphere or framework for the real divine commanding to be extracted from God's particular revelation, and for the corresponding action and abstention of the man who is under specific obligation to this revelation. To see what this answer means, we shall again consult Emil Brunner as its outstanding representative. There are certain "laws of life" (op. cit., p. 193, E.T. p. 209); an "order which is given along with what is created; it is an order which, although it has been obscured by the presence of sin, and thus ignored, cannot be eliminated; it is an order of which even the' natural man ' is somehow aware, even though it cannot be known as it really is, but only discloses its true meaning to faith" (p. 329, E.T. p. 345). It ought really to be "unceasingly operative" (p. 208, E.T. p. 224). In fact, however, it is broken by sin (p. 199, E.T. p. 215)-1 am not quite clear whether Brunner means objectively or only in man's consciousness. And yet the will of God does not cease to encounter us in it, nor does it cease to be the object "ofa purely rational knowledge" (p. 204, E.T. p. 220) even of sinful man and the heathen, or to be actually accessible to a "very far-reaching sensus communis moralisEN32" (p. 215, E.T. p. 232). According to Brunner, this order is in particular a "means by which the divine wisdom compels men to live in community; this means that human life ... is continually being made possible once more" (p. 194, E.T. p. 210). Hence it is the "means of a divine training for community" (p. 320, E.T. p. 336). For this reason, while it is "produced" in its variable historical form by a human, natural and rational impulse, and even though it is obscured by sin, it is recognisable in its nature as divine creation and divine gift (p. 320, E.T. p. 336), and it is to be accepted and retained as such with "reverence and gratitude" (p. 323, E.T. p. 339; p. 208, E.T. p. 225). We have to "adjust ourselves" (p. 192, E.T. p. 208) to it because it forms at any rate the framework for the life in "heartfelt brotherly love" (p. 212, E.T. p. 228) enjoined

upon the Christian.

Leaving aside the many detailed points which might be made for and against this view, we shall simply maintain that it is not a satisfactory answer to our question. EN32

moral common sense

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Our first reason for rejecting it was mentioned in a previous connexion. With its abstraction from the revealed Word of God, with its reference to the obscure magnitude "reality" and with its credulity concerning the human ability to extract from this obscure entity useful knowledge of God and our relationship to Him, it gives no reliable or authentic answer to the question of the Creator who commands and the human creature confronting Him. It rests upon suppositions and proceeds by assertions in which the particular sphere of ethical encounter between God and man which we seek is seen only uncertainly and obscurely, and not in a way that allows us to proceed securely to further reflection. We add as a second reason that in any event what it reveals uncertainly and obscurely with its assertions is now unfortunately an "order" which is not only different from the command of God the Redeemer but plainly and expressly separate from it, being called a mere sphere or framework in relation to it. This concept "order," and the function ascribed to it as a framework for the Christian activity of love enjoined by revelation and carried out in faith, cannot conceal the fact that, even though we really have to do here with a command established by God and to be kept accordingly by man, this is another, second or first command, behind which there seems to stand the notion of an independent divine economy for the first article-the very split in the one command of God, and ultimately in the concept of God, which is to be avoided at all costs. We prefer not to enter the particular sphere of the relationship between Creator and creature as disclosed in this answer, because we are not sure that we may not be betrayed into a strange and isolated region in which neither the one God nor the whole man is at home, so that neither the command of the one God nor the sanctification of the whole man can be effectively maintained. The third reason is perhaps in the most weighty of all. This answer does not really make clear whether and in what sense it is seriously meant as an answer to the question of the relationship of God the Creator and man as His creature. If it were intended to answer this question, would it speak so confidently of an "order of creation" immanent to "reality," revealed in it and immediately apparent to a sensus communis moralisEN33? Are "Creator" and "creature," and therefore "order of creation," concepts which man, in virtue of a kind of accessible intuition and by the use of the categories of understanding at his disposal, can simply handle as he does concepts like "cause," "effect" and "causal nexus"? Is not the credo in unum DeumEN34 a bracket which encloses the first article as well? Does not even the first article denote, as also the concept of an order of creation if it is to have serious theological content, the one whole secret of God, of the reality distinct from Him and of the relationship between the two? Can there be any question of this mystery outside the bracket of the EN33 EN34

moral common sense I believe in one God

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2. God the Creator as Commander

credoEN35,

as proposed in this answer? Does not the omission of the bracket betray with painful clarity that what is meant is not anything which with theological seriousness can be called an "order of creation," but only the general truth, which requires neither revelation nor faith, of certain laws of life and existence about which the so-called "reality" gives more or less certain and clear information and which can actually be known as such by everybody with more or less certainty and clarity? The sphere in which God the Creator really encounters man as His creature, and the question of the order or command which obtains in this sphere, are not even envisaged, let alone attained. We wished to hear about the Creator and His creature, about the command of the Creator and the sanctification of man, but we have obviously been told about something very different and much more innocuous and unimportant. For all these reasons we cannot admit that any enlightenment is to be found in this answer. Consequently, if we are to see how far the one command of God really is also the command of the Creator, and as such the sanctification already of man's creaturely action and abstention, we shall have to seek another answer. But the answer is obvious if, in accordance with our arrangement, we keep to the fact that these two presuppositions are subordinate, i.e., subordinate to the first. In the fact that the one God who commands is He who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ, He also meets man in His command as his Creator, and therefore His command concerns man already in his creaturely being. The answer to be given to our question on this ground is solid because it is not related to the obscure witness of so-called "reality" but to the clear decision of the one manifest Word of God Himself. It does not place side by side two heterogeneous commands, or a command and an order. It need not try to conceal the dualism by introducing the second concept "order" On the contrary, it considers a particular form of the one command of God and its bearing for the whole man. And finally, it leaves the Creator and the creature and their mutual relationship within the bracket of the credoEN36• Hence it really considers the secret of this sphere, and thus looks to the only point to which serious questioning about this sphere can look.' We shall now try to develop this answer. Our first concern (I) is with the presupposition that the one command of God given to man is also that of his Creator. This presupposition is legitimate because it follows from the fact that God is the One who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ. The grace of God in Jesus Christ also includes within itself creation, and therefore the command of the Creator. It is the noetic basis of creation. When and as we know what free and absolutely basic and controlling grace is-the grace of God revealed to us in Jesus EN35 EN36

I believe I believe

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Christ as the remission of sins and the resurrection of the dead, as the kingdom of God-only then do we know, but then we know for certain, what creation is, who the Creator is confronting man, and what it means to be the creature of this Creator: the Creator, who did not find man already there, nor presuppose him as having come into being elsewhere, but who called and established him in being when he was not and could not be, of His own will giving him a reality distinct from His own but in its place and manner quite genuine, so that as the absolute origin of man He is always his Lord, Father and King; and the creature man, who would not exist without God, who exists only by His will, ''\Thohas contributed nothing to Him, who has nothing at all to give Him which he does not already owe Him because he owes it to Him, but who in this way may be before Him and with Him, certain of His rule and having a part in His service. In the knowledge of the grace of God in Jesus Christ there is included also this particular knowledge, the knowledge of creation, the Creator and the creature. As we have the former, the latter springs to meet us. As early Christianity confessed the second article thatJesus is Lord, it was led necessarily to see the truth of the first concerning the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and to give it precedence. But the grace of God inJesus Christ is also the ontic basis of the knowledge of creation. The eternal decree of God which precedes creation and makes it possible and necessary is the gracious election of man in Jesus Christ. And God's covenant of grace with man, in which God makes Himself Lord and Pledge and Saviour of His people and therefore the God of all men, is the internal basis of creation. It is not, then, the case that God first determined Himself as Creator, then made man His creature, and only then in a later development and decision elected man and instituted His covenant with him. On the contrary, it is for the sake of this election and in relation to this institution that He created heaven and earth and man. He created the universe in Jesus Christ. That is,Jesus Christ was the meaning and purpose of His creation of the universe. The latter was only the external basis, as it were, to make the covenant of grace technically possible. Again, Jesus Christ (and in Him the election of man and the covenant with him) is also the meaning and purpose of the divine preservation and governmen t of what God has created. That God is also the Creator of man and that the latter is also His creature, this particular form of the relationship between God and man, is rooted and grounded in its peculiarity in the overriding truth that God is gracious to man. Creation, and therefore the establishment of this particular form of the relationship of God and man, is not a neutral work of God needing to be followed by another specific work. But creation in itself and as such-as and because it has its roots in the grace of God in Jesus Christ-is already marked as a form of the divine Yes,which is the quintessence of all His works. Creation, too, is and proclaims already this divine Yes, the benefit of God, free, incomprehensible actualisation without any preceding possibility, and the free and incomprehensible justification of what is actualised-free and incomprehensible, but not without

2.

God the Creator as Commander

meaning, because it has its meaning and is characterised as benefit in its root in the grace of God inJesus Christ. This gives us, then, our presupposition that the one command of God given to man is also that of his Creator. Not in a dark cosmic reality, and not in corresponding uncertainty and obscurity, but in the all-embracing reality of the grace of God in Jesus Christ and the corresponding certainty and clarity, do we see this sphere of divine command and human action stamped-from God's side first-as a sphere in which God is in a particular way the Friend and Benefactor of man and man for his part may in a particular way be the friend of God and the recipient of His favour-in the particular way in which the Creator deals with His creature and the creature is obliged to his Creator. Our concern is not with a neutral but with a specific form of the relationship of God and man, with this form of divine grace and human gratitude. And in this form we are not dealing with a merely preparatory, partial and incomplete grace and gratitude, but already with their, fulness, although here it takes this particular form. This is the first and basic point which we have to make with regard to the command of God the Creator. The one command of God in this particular sphere is the command of the God who here too, as the Creator, is fully and unreservedly the Friend and Benefactor of man. And the attitude of man in this particular sphere can only be the attitude of one who here too, as creature, is fully and unreservedly addressed as God's friend and the recipient of His benefit. When this particular sphere of divine command and human action is marked out, it has this character. Is is thus that we know about it. And it is on this ground that in it we have to ask concerning the command of God. In this particular sphere, too, we are in the light and under the power of the Gospel, and not under another and strange law. Even here the command of God will always be the command of His mercy. Even here Jesus Christ alone is the Master, to whom man is responsible and who is man'sJudge. For without Jesus Christ this particular "here" would not exist at all. It is because He is, and the living God is in Him, that this particular sphere exists, and we know about it, and therefore we have to put and answer the ethical question in relation to this particular sphere as well. We have advanced as our second presupposition (2) that the one command of God given to man-as the command of his Creator-is already the sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man. This presupposition is legitimate because it follows from the fact that the man to whom God's command is directed is the being to whom God is gracious in Jesus Christ. The grace of God inJesus Christ is intended for and concerns the whole man, and therefore his creaturely existence too. For this reason the scope of the command, which is also the command of his Creator, extends to his creaturely action and abstention. Here, too, it is the case that the grace of God in Jesus Christ is the noetic basis as and because it is also the ontic basis of man's creaturely being. But here it is both in almost indissoluble unity, and therefore to avoid repetition we may consider it at once in this double quality.

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What we really know of man, we know by means of this grace. For how things really stand with man, who and what he is, is grounded in it. What we claim to know about man apart from it, we only claim to know. On a closer examination, it consists only of the working hypotheses of man's self-understanding: perhaps in relation to his being as a natural being beside others and in the context of the being of nature as discernible to us; perhaps in relation to his being as an ethical rational being with his ability to distinguish himself from nature and to become to a certain extent its master; perhaps in relation to his being in the act of his existence with the capacity therein demonstrated to limit himself and to that extent to transcend himself in his totality; or perhaps in relation to his being in the community of the history of his race with his ability to experience history and at the same time to make it. These are all permissible and necessary hypotheses with regard to definite aspects of human being, but they do not solve the question of the common denominator, i.e., of man himself. This question is solved, however, if we set out from the fact that man is the being to whom God is gracious inJesus Christ. From this there result definitions which certainly do not extinguish as such or even obscure these phenomena of human existence, which do not contradict or render superfluous these working hypotheses of human "self-consciousness, which give them a firm basis as hypotheses, but which, as opposed to them, refer to real man, to man himself. In the fact, revealed to us in God's Word, that God is gracious to man in Jesus Christ, we do not see any of these views of man either confirmed or questioned, nor do we see any new view of man, but we see man himself, what and how he really is. This fact includes not only the "Behold your God!" but also the Ecce homoEN37! It is not only the mirror of the fatherly heart of God, but also of the particularity of man. In what way,and to what extent? Simply to the extent that in distinction from all mere religion-even that of grace-it is the fact in which the true God is present and revealed in the true man. When we see the glory of God residing in Jesus Christ, then, in and with the most high God Himself, we also see man: humbled, accused and judged as a guilty and lost creature, and only as such, only in the fire of judgment, upheld and saved; but also exalted and glorified as the creature elected and affirmed by God from all eternity. This is real man, man himself in the mirror of God's grace addressed to him in Jesus Christ. But we must not miss a third or first point presupposed and included in both these definitions, namely, that man is above all the creature as such with which we have to do on both sides. He is the being which God created, willed and called into existence in all its particularity, which is then as such the transgressor upheld in spite of his guilt and saved from perdition, and which as such is finally received with honour as the child of the Father. Real man, man himself as he is to be known in the mirror of God's grace in Jesus Christ, is also, and EN37

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God the Creator as Commander

primarily and abidingly, this particular creature of God. He is this even in his fall and supreme peril, in which God's mercy is his only hope. He is this even when this hope is fulfilled, and he is clothed with the glory of the new creature. The true Word uttered about man inJesus Christ includes originally and finally within itself the fact that he is this creature, and is true man as such. Jesus Christ Himself, both in His historical appearance and also at the right hand of God the Father, both in His humiliation and also in His exaltation, both in His crucifixion and in His resurrection, is a human creature. Certainly, He is this in a very different way from all other men, just as He is very unlike them in the manner of His humiliation to guilt and to death, and in His victory over both as the elect First-fruits, as the Head who draws them after Him. Yet in essence He is also like them, a human creature, as they all are. Therefore the grace of God inJesus Christ does actually reach to this depth of human being and existence as such. It has force even in this presupposition of all other definitions of real man. It does not start only with man's reconciliation and redemption, but already with his creation. As God in His Son elected man from all eternity to fellowship with Himself, He ordained that he should be this being, existing in this reality. And everything that He does for him and to him, His judgment and His mercy and finally the eternal glory which He wills to bestow on him, all these are related to the fact that he is this being and exists in this reality. If the revelation of God's grace inJesus Christ also includes within itself the Ecce homoEN38!, then this always means that it includes within itself the knowledge of this creaturely being of man. This being is totally perverted and ruined by his sin and guilt, and therefore totally concealed and withdrawn from his own view. Yet this is also true of his being as a sinner, as a pardoned sinner, and as a child of God in future glory. How could man ever reach the point of telling himself that he is all these things? He either learns this from the Word of God or not at all. But the Word of God in Jesus Christ, in whom man's humiliation and exaltation are resolve, event and revelation, tells him about his creaturely being presupposed in this occurrence. He can as little perceive this empirically or infer it dialectically as he can his being as a sinner, a pardoned sinner, and a child of God. But the Word of God in Jesus Christ tells him that he is both the former and the latter. He is invited and challenged by this Word to know in faith the former no less than the latter. Of himself he will never know himself, real man, even in this respect. What man knows of himself outside the mirror of God's grace in Jesus Christ can never be more than the phenomena of the human, and not man himself. But in this mirror he knows himself, and in this respect too. There, in and with his sin, perdition and preservation, in and with the promise of his eternal future, he also knows his creaturely being as such. In spite of all human ignorance even in this respect, in spite of the ignorance that man cannot dispel or penetrate even in EN38

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this respect, God knows very well what man is even in this respect. And as he has not ceased and will not cease to be this, so God knows him-his true manner in his perversion, his nature in his degeneration, that as which and for which God created him, and which God has not destroyed either by His judgment or His grace, and which no human or devilish perversion or corruption can either obliterate or replace by another and evil creation. And what God knows of man even in this respect, because it is his first and lasting being, is told us by the Word of God, so that we, too, may and should know it-his structure as the creature of God. Who and what is man as the creature of God? If we accept instruction on this point from the Word of God and therefore from the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, four lines at least may be clearly discerned. He is (1) a being in a history, in the history of a creature who is elected and summoned by God, and gives proof of his enablement to be responsible before Him. He is (2), and correspondingly, a being in the encounter between a human I and a human Thou-human in fellow-humanity, and in this sense the image of God. He is (3), and still considered in himself, the subject, by God's Spirit, of a material organism, soul of his body, and in this duality a totality in indissoluble diversity, inseparable unity and indestructible order. And he is (4), again considered in himself and as a whole, a being which is allotted a fixed span by God and therefore limited by God, the hope of his existence. (For these statements and the preceding discussion, it is essential that reference should be made to C.D., III, 2, where these points are fully developed and established.) This is the creatureliness of man as known to us in the incarnation of God inJesus Christ. As the manJesus is generally the true Word about man, inaccessible to man of himself, so He is in this respect too. Therefore, if we are to know the reality of man essential for an understanding of God's command it is unnecessary, and if we are to know it seriously it is inadvisable, to look around for other presuppositions. For we could only find the working hypotheses of human selfunderstanding which as such can only deal with the phenomena of the human, but not with real man himself. We do not need to reject them for this reason, or even to underestimate them. Even the understanding of man from the Word of God will alwaysbe effected in practice in the language, categories and framework of the possibilities of human self-understanding. In it we shall alwaysand inevitably have before us the phenomena of the human, and to that extent make use of naturalistic, idealistic, existential, historical, psychological and similar thoughts and expressions. Yet we shall not derive the reality to which we refer from one of these working hypotheses, but from the point where it is really present, where it is event and revelation. Real man, man himself, is the being reflected in the grace of God addressed to man in Jesus Christ. This being is indeed a sinner, a pardoned sinner, and a child of God in hope. But this being does not start with the sinner. It is also the creature of God, participating as such in a definite structure, and knowable in this structure in the Word of God.

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God the Creator as Commander

This also helps us to understand our second presupposition that the one command of God is already the sanctification of the creaturely action and abstention of man. Just as there is in the being and action of God, without detriment to his unity and totality, a sphere in which He is in particular God the Creator, so in the being and action of man, again without detriment to his unity and totality, there is a sphere in which he is specifically the creature of God, and with reference to which his whole action and abstention must be understood as creaturely, in the framework of the structure of his creatureliness. And if the command of the one whole God is directed to the one whole man, and has his sanctification or liberation as its aim, then in the one totality there may and must be seen the particular, and a particular task of knowledge is posed by the fact that the command as the command of God the Creator obvious~yhas as its aim and includes within itself the sanctification and liberation of the creaturely action and abstention of man. If we were careful not to give it any particular emphasis or connexion, we might well use the phrase "order of creation" to describe this particular sphere of ethical enquiry. By this we should have to understand the order, i.e., the particular sphere of divine command and human action in which on the one side the God who is gracious to man inJesus Christ commands also as Creator, and on the other the man to whom God is gracious in Jesus Christ stands before Him also as His creature and is to be sanctified and liberated by his command. The distinction between this order and what is customarily called "order of creation" elsewhere is clear and irreconcilable. To be aware of this order we do not leave the closed circle of theological knowledge. We do not in some way read off this order where we just think we find it. We do not understand it at all as an order which can be discovered by us, but as one which has itself sought us out in the grace of God in Jesus Christ revealed in His Word, disclosing itself to us as such where we for our part could neither perceive nor find it. We not merely suppose it; we see and know it. We do so in the secret of revelation and faith, but in this way really and authoritatively. No matter what we call this particular sphere of ethical enquiry, however, the question with which we began this sub-section has surely been proved both possible and necessary by what has been said. What does the command of God will and order here? What is meant here by the sanctification of man by God's command? What is meant here by freedom for the will of God and therefore for eternal life? Here, in the sphere of the relationship of Creator and creature? We have seen that all these things can and may and must be asked in this particular sense. The three presuppositions made in this respect in our thesis are necessary because they explain and establish one another reciprocally and all represent only a particular form of the dominant principle of theological knowledge. But this means that the way is basically opened for a chapter on special ethics. Our only remaining task is to show briefly what course this path must take in accordance with the way in which it opens up. The point of departure to which

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we must constantly refer is obvious. On the one hand we shall have to ask again and again about the command of God, i.e., about His speaking, bidding, calling and demanding, about His will as it encounters man, about the command of the God who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ, and particularly in this instance to the extent that He is gracious to him inJesus Christ as the Creator. Then it is a matter of learning to what extent this command of God in this particular creaturely sphere has in view the sanctification of man, or in other words aims in this particular sphere at his freedom. At a first glance it seems rather more difficult to decide how the task is to be divided. But we may be guided by the fact that man as the creature of God, and therefore the possibilities of his creaturely action and abstention, may be known in a definite structure, namely, along those four lines. If this is the case, nothing is more natural than to ask along each of the lines in turn to what extent the command of God has in view the sanctmcation of man, and therefore his freedom, in the particular directions indicated by these lines. In so doing we naturally repeat the reservation which we have made in respect of the theologia viatorum EN39 generally, but we also remember that a theologia viatorumEN4o;, if only it is sure of its origin and aim, promises us genuine knowledge. We shall thus begin by investigating (~ 53) the freedom which is the will of the commanding God in respect of the relationship of man to God Himself. We shall then consider (~ 54) the freedom in which God wills to see man in his relationship to his fellow-man. We shall proceed to study (~ 55) the freedom which man is to realise according to the will and command of God in the act of his life as soul of his body. And finally we shall discuss (~ 56) the freedom which God has ascribed to him in respect of the fact that he is a finite being with an allotted and limited span.

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FREEDOM BEFORE GOD It is the will of God the Creator that man, as His creature, shall be responsible before Him. In particular, His command says that man is to keep His day holy as a day of worship, freedom and joy, that he is to confess Him in his heart and with his mouth and that he is to come to Him with his requests.

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THE HOLY DAY

To be a man means (cf. C.D., III, 2, ~ 44) to be caught up in responsibility before God. This responsibility implies man's acknowledgment that God his Creator is in the righ t in all that He does-in His governance and judgmen t as well as in His gentleness and goodness, in His silence as well as in His speaking, in His anger as well as in His love; and it means that he may entrust himself wholly to God and render obedience to Him alone. Real man as God's creature is the being who, whether in joyful acceptance or denial, is caught up in this activity; the being who, however true or false he may prove to it, is measured by the fact that he does actually stand in this responsibility. It is this responsibility that God's command (and in particular the command of God the Creator) claims from him. In this respect too, the ethical event will always be God's claim, decision and judgment. In this respect too, the good and evil in human actions will always be revealed. In this respect "too"? To be sure, primarily, supremely, comprehensively and in the broadest generality, we must say in this respect "precisely." It is clear that every other thing that God commands is not "another" to the extent that it stands necessarily under this denominator. All man's activity is freedom for God and responsibility before Him, whether good or bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory. And in everything that God demands of him, this responsibility is first and last also demanded of him. Yetjust because this broadest generality is so intrusive and the question of our responsibility so central and burning, we must observe that in the command of God it is also a matter of the particular. The same responsibility before God which is in fact the one and all that God claims from man is also one particular thing which, as such, stands alongside other divine claims. Hence, it must not be regarded as only embracing and accompanying everything else as a general theme, but rather as constituting at the same tune a particular theme. Here too, and particularly, religious profundity may become the enemy and destroyer of the concreteness of practical 43

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S 53. Freedom Before God Christian knowledge. The fact that we should "pray without ceasing" (Rom. 1212; 1 Thess. 517) is not a suggestion to cease praying at definite times. Special ethics has in mind the mandatum Dei concretissimumEN1 in the ethical event; it is a guide to its understanding. Good care is taken that it cannot reach and declare this at any point, and therefore not in regard to our particular responsibility before God either. But this must not prevent it from those approximations to the mandatum Dei concretissimumEN2 in the ethical event which are proposed, permitted and commanded by the Word of God. It is with one such that we are now concerned. Man is sanctified to freedom before God. This is not only the basic determination of sanctification generally. For as God the Creator wills that man as His creature shall be responsible before Him, to make this possible He also demands of Him a particular existence before Him. It is true enough that this particular thing, like and even more than all the particular things which can be considered in other contexts, cannot remain isolated, but from the very first can be this particular thing only to form the middle and circumference of the whole. Yet that does not alter the fact that it needs to be seen and considered in its particularity. There is a claim of God on man in respect of his relationship to Him which, although and because it underlies and includes all His other claims on man, is nevertheless not simply identical with them, but by reason of its general bearing must also be heard together with others and therefore independently.

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There is, therefore, no reason to disapprove the (often rather schematic) distinction made by older ethicists between man's "duties towards God" and those towards his neighbour and himself. On the contrary, it is highly dubious to draw (as Emil Brunner does, loco cit., pp. 292 ff.) from the incontestable truth that the love of God is the root of all morality the conclusion that the divine relationship as such does not itself "enter into the sphere of the moral." As he sees it, love to God and love to our neighbour are related as spring and brook, tree and fruit. He does not think that there can be any duties towards God as there are towards our neighbour. He does not agree that there can be any activity Godwards. If there were, then according to his interpretation it would immediately overshadow every other action because of its obviously pre-eminent importance. The immediate result would necessarily be a flight from the world and man in the form of all sorts of pious, mystic and ascetic practices. What remains for him as "the moral sphere" is only the field of human love established by the love of God. This whole discussion seems to have much of the aridity and aeriness of the theology of A. Ritschl. In him, too, we read: "Love to God has no sphere of operation apart from love to the brethren" (Unterricht in d. chr.Rel., 1875, ~ 6). He, too, in fierce repudiation of mysticism and asceticism, could see no place nor necessity for an activity specially directed to God apart from the general respect paid to His general position and function. And this prohibition played no small part in giving Ritschlian theology such a notably miserable character. Something of this has passed over into Brunner's ethics, too. At this point N. H. S0e has raised a well-founded objection Cop. cit., p. 143 f.). Though a man cannot for a moment withdraw from his obligation to his neighbour by fleeing to a special religious sphere, and though there exist neither general human undertakings nor particular pious practices by which he could and should gain, augment or preserve the divine goodENl EN2

the most concrete command of God the most concrete command of God

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pleasure, yet only on the basis of a very strained exegesis of Mk. 1229[. and its parallels could we say that the commandment to love our neighbour in some sense absorbs that to love God and takes away its independent quality. The truth is rather that the double command to love points us to two spheres of activity which are relatively-no more, but very clearly so-distinct. Alongside work there is also prayer; alongside practical love for one's brother there is also divine service in the narrower sense; alongside activity in state and community there is also that in the congregation; alongside the other sciences there is also theology. And obviouslyall these and similar activities are to be regarded also as command and duty, as a matter of human action, and not simply as a matter of conception, as in Brunner's somewhat sophistical distinction (p. 294). That Rev. 2122 says there is no temple in the heavenly Jerusalem is certainly true; but it is bound up with the fact that the ethical problem will then cease to be a problem at all, since even from man's side the relationship between God and man will then be finally ordered and ruled. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, however, presuppose man's existence in a here and now in which the ethical problem is still open, at least from man's side. In this respect, too, they do not pursue a theologia for they tell us very definitely that even Jesus Himself could "send away" the people that He might go up into the mountain to pray (Mk. 646 and par.); "and he continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 612). In the same way we learn from the Old Testament that from the very beginning there have been certain specially defined spheres of God's presence, and in these places at definite times a definitely commanded activity of man. Again, the prophets of Israel seem to live not only in converse with their people but primarily, continually

gloriaeEN3,

supremely and specifically in converse with their people's God. Again, in Mt. 66 the one who prays is recommended to go into his "chamber," shut the door (this certainly means leaving his neighbour outside for the time being) and pray to his Father in secret. We must be careful, then, not to overemphasise the self-evident assurance that the right relationship to God is the one and all, the basis and the root of all the other relationships of human activity. For the very same reason, and in this particular function, why should it not also be an extremely particular relationship? There is just cause for the question of a Scandinavian writer quoted by S0e whether love for man has increased with the obvious decrease of love for God.

We shall first consider the particular thing that God wants from man in relationship to Him under the concept of the commanded holy day. In this concept it is most palpably and extensively revealed that God claims not only the whole time of man but also, because the whole, a special time, not only his whole activity but also, because, the whole, a particular act. We thus enter the special sphere denoted by the fourth Mosaic commandment. With the second, the commandment or rather the prohibition in relation to images of God, this is the most detailed of all the Ten Commandments. Again with the second, it outwardly characterised most clearly the attitude of Old Testament man, his obedience or disobedience. Understood and grasped in its new-or rather its true-form, in its first and final meaning, it was surprisingly quickly and self-evidently seen to be valid and authoritative in New Testament Christianity as a rule which must naturally apply forthwith to the old, the new, the one people of God. And even in relation to its literal form there is every reason to take as our starting-point its question concerning the command of God the Creator and the corresponding sanctification of human activity: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord

EN3

theology of glory

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~ 53. Freedom Before God thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Exod. 208-11). In general, theological ethics has handled this command of God, or the one command of God in this particular application, with a casualness and feebleness which certainly do not match its importance in Holy Scripture or its decisive material significance. By far the best modern treatment is to be found in A. de Quervain's Die Heiligung (1942,353-380), under the title "Das Feiern der Gemeinde." But Dein Sonntag by Walther Liithi (1949) is also theologically important from a more practical and straightforward point of view.

What does the Sabbath commandment say? It speaks of a limiting of man's activity to the extent that this is, generally speaking, his own work, his own undertaking and achievement, the job he does for his livelihood and in the service of the community. It says that, in deference to God and to the heart and meaning of His work, there must be from time to time an interruption, a rest, a deliberate non-continuation, a temporal pause, to reflect on God and His work and to participate consciously in the salvation provided by Him and to be awaited from Him. It says that man's own work is to be performed as a work bounded by this continually recurring interruption. This interruption is the holy day. In the Old Testament it is called the "Sabbath" (probably just "festival"or "rest"). In English and German it is cheerfully given the somewhat ambiguous and heathen title of "Sunday." In the Early Church, according to Rev. 110 ~vpLaK~ ~fL€pa), it was much better called Dies dominica, the Lord's Day-still recognisable in the French dimanche. In a special way it belongs to God and not to man; and this is something man ought to respect by not claiming it as his own. Man's activityon this day ought not to be complete inactivity,but a cessation of what he does on other days. He is to pause in his work-not perhaps for his own sake, but for God's, and yet to his own salvation-so that on the following day he may again take up his work. On this day he is to celebrate, rejoice-and be free, to the glory of God. In this celebration, joy and freedom he will be obedient. To withdraw from it under any pretext would be disobedience. This is what the Sabbath commandment says.

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We place the command of God in this particular form at the beginning of our investigation of the command of the Creator and therefore at the beginning of special ethics as a whole. This arrangement may seem to be strange, but it is so only in appearance. We have so far said nothing at all about work, and how far this, too, is God's command. Above all, we have not said anything about man's relationship to his fellows, which might be expected to be decisive for an understanding of the work commanded us. We have not, then, said anything about the week of which the Sabbath is the end, the beginning and the interruption. Can we really understand the holy day before we have understood the working day and its command, its many commands? Ought not "rest" to be earned by preceding work? Should not what we say about it be in terms of what has already been said about work? The question may seem obvious, but it must actually be reversed. Can we understand the working day, the day of labour in relationship to our fellow-men, or any of its commands, before

1.

The Holy Day

we have understood the holy day? Can we hear the Law before we have heard the Gospel? Can man view and tackle his own work under the command of God without first, as the same command of God enjoins, pausing, resting and keeping holy-day in the sight of God, rejoicing in freedom? Can he value and do justice to his work except in the light of its boundary, its solemn interruption? Is not this interruption the true time from which alone he can have other time? Is not the paradoxical "activity" of the holy day the origin of all the other activity which seems to have better reason for this designation? The concern of the Sabbath commandment is with that human action which consists in rest from one's own work, and therefore-comprehensively-in readiness for the Gospel. Even where Holy Scripture commands, its meaning is still the Gospel. And that is why it does not present us with the first and only apparently more obvious form of the question, but the second. Ifwe keep to its guidance we must undoubtedly concern ourselves first with the Sabbath commandment and only then and on this basis with all else that is commanded us. I begin with a quotation from De Quervain (p. 353): "It is the observance of this commandment that decides in the old covenant whether Israel fears and loves God and knows that it is the people of God. For this day is the sign of the covenant set up in Israel. He who does not join in the rejoicing, who does not rest from his work in this joy, despises God's goodness and faithfulness and puts his hope, not in God's election, but in his own work. Hence the Sabbath is in a special way the sign of good tidings in the Old Testament. The joy of Sabbath is ... superabundant joy at the blessings which have already been given and joy in expectation of new acts of God, of the coming salvation." A short recapitulation of my exposition of Gen. 21-3 in C.D., III, 1, pp. 213 ff. may advance our argument. We read in Gen. 22 that on the seventh day God the Creator completed His work by "resting." This simply means that He did not go on with this work of creation as such. He set both Himself and His creation a limit. He was content to be the Creator of this particular creation, to glory, as the Creator, in this particular work. He had no occasion to .proceed to further creations. He needed no further creations. And He had found what He created "very good" (Gen. 131). Before this cosmos, established but also delimited by His will, and finally and supremely before the man of this cosmos, the work of the sixth day, God stood on the seventh day openly "relaxed" (Ex. 3117), celebrating joyfully and freely as the One He was from eternity and is through Himself and will be in all eternity. He now moun ted the throne from which He willed to act towards and in what He had created, to lead creation to the goal for which He had created it. This is the resting of God on the seventh day, which as such was the completion of creation and is thus described, like His preceding creative work, as a temporal event. Creation is completed in this divine ascent of the throne, and this is the beginning of everything that Holy Scripture will attest as the history between God and man. Into the totality of creation and therefore of the created world there is built as it were this special thing-the gracious address of the seventh day in which the high God willsto co-exist with it, and will actually do so. This is plainly the origin of His further special activitywithin the world created by Him. From this point the further and proper content of the biblical witness is now seen to be possible and real-the history of the covenant of grace. This would obviously not be understandable in terms of the work of the first six days. It is concerned only with the theatre and object of this history. But the seventh day shows us that it also rests on the order of creation that there is this special history within

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Before God

and alongside natural and universal history, that it takes the form of particular demonstrations, acts and revelations, from the choice of the one man Abraham and the one people of God to the incarnation of God Himself in His Son, to the particular man Jesus, and that in all this God is His own Agent and Witness within the created world. According to Gen. 21-2, even in the creation itself God has already instituted Himself the Lord of His creature in this particular sense. To the creation itself there belongs also this particular event of the seventh day, the "rest" in which the living God both confronted and also associated Himself with the cosmos and man in the cosmos, thus leaving Himself a place to be His own Witness-alongside the witness which creation gives to Him-in the coming of the kingdom of grace, and therefore to be the free Lord of what He has created. Hence the Sabbath commandment, saysGen. 23; hence the blessing and hallowing of the seventh day. This means that, mutatis mutandisEN4, every seventh day shall have for the creature the same con ten t and meaning as the seventh day of creation has for God Himself. In relation to the particular thing which began on the seventh day of creation, it is to be a special day for him. And this means first and comprehensively that it is to be for the creature a day free from work. On this day the creature, too, is to have a "breathing space" in consequence of and in accordance with the fact that God the Creator also rested on the seventh day of creation, celebrating, rejoicing, and in freedom establishing His special lordship over the finished creation. It is to be noted that there neither is nor can be issued a corresponding summons to the week's work as a supplementary and imitative participation by man in God's creative work, since man was never the witness of any of it, but was himself only its final object. Here it is proclaimed that man may and shall "rest" with God, imitating His action, doing no work, celebrating in joy and freedom. In the context in which the Sabbath commandment is affirmed there is no question of man's contemplation of accomplished work. It is only by participation in God's celebrating that he can and may and shall also celebrate on this seventh day,which is his first day. But this isjust what he is commanded to do. Hence his history under the command of God really begins with the Gospel and not with the Law,with an accorded celebration and not a required task, with a prepared rejoicing and not with care and toil, with a freedom given to him and not an imposed obligation, with a rest and not with an activity,in brief, with Sunday and not with a working day which could lead to Sunday only after a succession of gloomy working days. The first divine action which man is allowed to witness is that God rested on the seventh day and blessed and hallowed it. And the first word said to him, the first obligation brought to his notice, is that without any works or merits he himself may rest with God and then go to his work. It really consists in the fact that he is obliged to be free: free to behold the particular thing that God in His freedom has purposed to perform in His created world; free to behold the way and fulfilment of the kingdom of grace. As an institution, as a command given to every man, as one form of the one divine command given to man, and obviously as its basic form, the Sabbath is the sign of the freedom which God the Creator has assumed to be gracious to His creature and therefore to be his Lord. Hence it is also the sign of the freedom which He has given to His creature and therefore claimed from him, a freedom which consists in the fact that the creature on his side is free for His grace. To bear witness to this freedom-God's and his own-he .mayand shall do no work of his own on this day, but on every seventh of his days repetitively represent this beginning of his existence on the day of the Lord. He is thus to do what God did on the seventh day of creation, and then to descend to the days of his own work, in which he will encounter the grace promised him from this beginning of his existence, because it was the day of the Lord. Similarly,we can affirm that when New Testament Christianity did not proclaim a particuEN4

allowing for differences

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The Holy Day

lar annulment but, as it would appear from 1 Cor. 162 and Ac. 207, quite naturally began to celebrate this holy day on the first day of the week, it was not rebelling against the order of creation but was acting in profound agreement with what is said in Ex. 208[. and Gen. 2lf. on the basis of the Sabbath commandment. It did so because, according to Mk. 162 and par., the day ofjesus Christ's resurrection was the day after the jewish Sabbath and therefore the first day of the week. In the long run, therefore, it was not expounding the Old Testament commandment merely according to its sense, but according to the letter also. It saw and understood that in the resurrection of jesus Christ it was concerned with the revelation of the truth and faithfulness of God in His blessing and hallowing of the seventh day, with the termination of the history of the covenant and salvation then inaugurated, and with the event of the grace to which man with his work may continually go, but above all from which he may continually come without any merit of his own efforts, works and achievements. In the resurrection it recognised the fulfilment of the covenant between God and man which was established in creation and which no human Sabbath-breaking nor enmity against God can destroy. In the resurrection of jesus it saw and understood that the seventh day of creation which is to be kept holy as the "Lord's Day"-as the day of God's resting and also of the resting in Him commanded to man-is not only the last but above all the first day of man, and is therefore to be kept as his holy day.

The Sabbath commandment explains all the other commandments, or all the other forms of the one commandment. It is thus to be placed at their head. By demanding man's abstention and resting from his own works, it explains that the commanding God who has created man and enabled and commissioned him to do his own work, is the God who is gracious to man in Jesus Christ. Thus it points him away from everything that he himself can will and achieve and back to what God is for him and will do for him. It reminds man of God's plan for him, of the fact that He has already carried it out, and that in His revelation He will execute both His will with him and His work for and toward him. It points him to the Yeswhich the Creator has spoken to him, His creature, and which He has continually and at last definitively acknowledged, which He has made true and proved true once and for all in Jesus Christ. It summons him to hold to this Yes and not to anything else. And that is why it commands him to keep holy the Sabbath day. This does not imply an incrimination or discrediting of man's own willing and working, a negation of his capacity for it, an annulling of the commission to make the best use of this capacity. But it certainly does mean a clear delimiting and relativising of what man can and should will and do of himself. The Sabbath commandment sets a beginning and a goal to this "can" and "should" by reminding man of the decisive and almighty will and activity of God. It tells him that he may move towards the only sovereign, effectual and saving Yes of God just because he may alwayscome from it. It certainly does not forbid him to speak an active Yes of his own to himself and human society. It even commands him to do so. It summons him to keep holy the Sabbath day merely in order that it may dismiss and send him forth from it into the other days of the week. But it certainly forbids him on this day-in order that he may know it and keep to it all his days-to try to live by the Yeswhich he can say to himself or to others or to the 49

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cosmos. It forbids him to be satisfied with his own Yes.It forbids him faith in his own plans and wishes, in ajustification and deliverance which he can make for himself, in his own ability and achievement. What it really forbids him is not work, but trust in his work. He must work in all seriousness and with all his strength, but he is not in the slightest degree to believe in his work. He is not to have the slightest confidence in what he himself can attempt and achieve. He is not in any sense to direct his obedience to the ideal floating in his own mind. Here the holy day, on which he is to rest, draws an inexorably clear-cut boundary. Here the command of God introduces free grace into the human scene, taking up time in the midst of the succession of human undertakings and achievements. If man has created neither heaven and earth nor himself; if he does not owe his existence to himself, but to the will and act of Him who bestowed it on him without his slightest co-operation; if his ability to work is not his attainment and therefore his own property, but a free gift; if his obligation to work is not his invention but God's commission, then he cannot and should not imagine that what is going to become of him, his future and that of his fellow-men, lies in his own power. Rather should he continually prepare to expect and encounter it as a work and gift of the grace of God over which he has no disposal. He certainly must not try to comfort, help and justify himself with what he can and actually should plan, will, work and achieve of himself for his own sanctification, for the deepening of his piety, for the improvement of his morals, in the service of the community, of men and of humanity. The aim of the Sabbath commandment is that man shall give and allow the omnipotent grace of God to have the first and the last word at every point; that he shall surrender to it completely, in the least as well as in the greatest things; that he shall place himself, with his knowing, willing and doing, unconditionally at its disposal. It aims at this complete surrender and capitulation by singling out one day, the seventh, and thus the seventh part of the whole life-time of every man, from the succession of his work days, by forbidding him to make this day another work day, and by bidding him place himself on this day directly as it were in relation to the omnipotence grace of God and under its control. Thus the Sabbath commandment in its particularity explains all the other forms of the one divine commandment. In relation to the One who commands, it explains what is always and in all cases commanded. It does not explain this abstractly but concretely, by indicating the seventh day and the succession of sevenths (and therefore no less than the seventh part of the time granted to man) as the special time of the gracious God which it expects man to keep free for the gracious God. The concern of this particular day is indirectly that of all other days as well. This particular thing is the meaning of all the divine commands. But in this particularity this command is one among others. The meaning of the special holy day and the basis of its special observance lies in the fact that it is the indication of the special history of the covenant and salvation in some sense embedded in the course of the general history of

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nature and the world, hidden but yet revealed in it, decisively determining its basis and its goal, and secretly its way also. The omnipotent grace of God rules all world-occurrence as providence. But it does so from this starting point. It is at work here, in this particular, central sphere of history. Even as general grace, it is the grace of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the grace of the God who speaks to Moses on Sinai and meets Isaiah in the temple at Jerusalem. It is the grace in which God chooses David and calls the prophets to be watchmen to His people. It is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It is the grace which is treasured in His community. It is not exclusive. On the contrary, it is inclusive. It embraces and seek all men and all nations. But it does so from this starting-point. Its nature and its activities must be known here. The particularity of the holy day is connected with the particularity of this history. We have seen how far Gen. 21-3 is to be understood in this sense. Ez. 2012,20 also points in this direction: "Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." So, too, does the exhortation in Ex. 3112-18, which is to-day regarded as dependent on it. For the fact that "I am the Lord that sanctify them" describes implicitly and summarily the history of the covenant of God with His people, the choice, call and ruling of Israel by its God. And when the ever-recurring Sabbaths are called a sign "that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them," then on the one hand this means that these Sabbaths and the "perpetual obligation" (Ex. 3116, A.V. "covenant") to celebrate them are to be a reminder to the people of God's mighty acts and revelations and therefore of the meaning of their own existence, but on the other hand it means that with respect to the institution of this sign, though naturally without regard to the actual extent of its observance, God Himself will continually establish His particular relationship with Israel, ever anew confirm its election, and constantly undertake its sanetification. From the divine as well as from the human side, the Old Testament Sabbath is the day of the special actualising of the holy and intrinsically secure fellowship between Yahweh and Israel (cf. C. A. Keller, Das Wort OTH als Ojjenbarungszeichen Gottes, 1946, 140

f.).

We say the same thing in another way if we describe the meaning and basis of the holy day and its commandment as eschatological. In its particularity among other days, the holy day with its reminder of the special history of the covenant and salvation undoubtedly points us to the ultimate consummation of this history. The omnipotent grace of God, in this special form as well as in general providence, rules the whole of time and all times. But as it does so from this special historical sphere, so also towards a special history and time which will in their particularity be the last history and time, the end of everything that we know as history and time. It is the grace of God even in the concludingJudgment of the world and the accompanying establishment of the new age in which everything that has been will be as it was in eternity, i.e., in God's time and therefore before Him. It is also the grace of revelation in the light of which everything that is now dark-and what is not dark now?-will be bright. Yet it is not this exclusively; not in such a way that in its future power it might not secretly be present already. Rather is it so inclusively. The very particularity of the last day is the mystery of all the other days hastening toward it.

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~ 53. Freedom Before God Yet this does not dissolve its particularity. And the particularity of the holy day which interrupts and bounds our working days is also connected with the particularity of the last day, and therefore undoubtedly with what corresponds to it in each individual human life, the day of each man's death, concerning whose particularity for the individual we hardly need to speak.

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When the first Christians called their holy day "the day of the Lord" they were certainly not unaware that in the Old Testament "the day of Yahweh" denoted the day of all days, on which there would be concluded injoy and calamity the history not only of Israel but also of the other nations, in a comprehensive and decisive act of God's judgment, but in righteousness, in the restoration of the order willed by Him, in the fulfilment of His promise, in the execution of His will which had this as its goal from the very first, and therefore to His glory and to the salvation of His people and all creation. Even in the Old Testament itself we can find references to the relationship between the Sabbath and the promise of this particular day, the last day. "If thou turn awaythy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage ofJacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" (Is. 5813f.). And even more explicitly: "And it shall come to pass, ifye diligently hearken unto me, saith the Lord, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day, to do no work therein; then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever. And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places aboutJerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the Lord. But ifye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates ofJerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the places of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched" Ger. 1724f.) • But the eschatological connexion and significance of the New Testament holy day, even apart from this Old Testament background, are manifest in the fact that it has been put on the day of the resurrection ofJesus. Why not on the day of His birth or perhaps even of His death? We have already stated one reason-His resurrection was the conclusion of the history of the covenant and salvation inaugurated on the seventh day of creation and was thus the proof that God did not bless and hallow this day in vain, the proof of the fulfilment of what was promised there. But prominence may now be given to a second reason-the first Christians saw in the resurrection of Jesus the first and isolated but clear ray of His final return injudgment and consummation, the prophecy of the future general resurrection of the dead, and the security and pledge of redemption and restoration, of the revelation of the coming kingdom and of eternal life. They solemnised this day as the day of the Lord who on Easter Day appeared in His glory and who will come again in the same glory, but now comprehensively and definitively revealed. On this special day they waited specially upon Him because, in their remembrance of the past on this particular day, they were summoned by Him to wait for that other and great particular day of His future as the last day. In viewof the biblical material we can hardly blame Calvin (Inst., 11,8,30) and many of his disciples if in their exposition of the fourth commandment, although on a somewhat weak e~cha.tologica.lfoundation, they emphasise that the meaning and basis of the holy day consist

1.

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in the fact that in the imperfection in which we must now continually repeat it, it directs us to the future, perfect, eternal Sabbath of the last day, to the perpetuus sabbathismus Juturae vitaeEN5 which here and now we can only long for and seek after more and more O. Wolleb, Compo Theol. chr., 1626, II, 8, can. 13). We are well advised, of course, not to build with the significance of the numeral 7 as the number of the perfection which we on our seventh day have obviously not yet reached-Calvin did this (rather hesitantly in Inst., II, 8, 30, but also in his 1542 Catechism, cf. Niesel's edition of the Ref Bek. Schr., Qu. 176).

If we link the significance of the holy day in salvation history and its eschatological significance, and if we remember that in both instances we are concerned with its relationship to the particularity of God's omnipotent grace, we shall understand at once, and not without a certain awe, the radical importance, the almost monstrous range of the Sabbath commandment. By the distinction of this day, by the summons to celebrate it according to its meaning, this command sets man and the human race in terribly concrete confrontation with their Creator and Lord, with His particular will and Word and work, and with the goal, determined and set by Him, of the being of all creatures, which means also the inexorable end of the form of their present existence. This commandment is total. It discovers and claims man in his depths and from his utmost bounds. Nor does it attack him only in his perversion and corruption. It does do this. But it also calls in question his creaturely nature and existence, at any rate in the shape and form in which they must be presented to any possible human self-understanding. For in what possible selfunderstanding can man fail to posit, affirm and express himself, and as far as he is able represent and help and justify himself? In what possible human selfunderstanding can there be foreseen this capitulation before One who encounters him as God, this surrender to his will and power, and that not in the form of an arbitrary renunciation, but of a grateful reception of divine grace? The command to celebrate the Sabbath, and therefore to cease and abstain from all our own knowledge, work and volition, even from all our arbitrary surrenders and inactivity, from all arbitrary quiescence and resting-this command claims from man that which on the basis of his self-understanding he can understand only as a sacrifice of his human nature and existence, and against which he can really only rebel as life rebels against death. For what is the import of that to which this command points him? What is the message of the special history of the covenant and salvation? What is the meaning of the special day of the Lord at the end of all days with the judgment and consummation that it will bring? It is simply that God has taken his case into His own hands and therefore out of those of man, and that the last and final thing which man will experience about himself as he enters eternity is that his selfpositing, self-affirming, self-expression, self-help and selfjustification will be spread out before God who will then in His grace make a sovereign decision concerning him, and that man will then be wholly and utterly the one who ENS

perpetual sabbath of the life to come

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stands there in the revelation of this sovereign divine decision, not as that which he would like to make and has actually made of himself, but as that which he will be on the basis of the will and according to the judgment of God. The Sabbath commandment requires of man that he understand and live his life on this basis. It thus demands of him that he believe in God as his Ruler and Judge, and that he let his self-understanding in every conceivable form be radically transcended, limited and relativised by this faith, or rather by the God in whom he believes. It demands that he know himself only in his faith in God, that he will and work and express himself only in this imposed and not selected renunciation, and that on the basis of this renunciation he actually dare in it all to be a new creature, a new man. This is the astonishing requirement of the Sabbath commandment.

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Calvin constantly put it in this form at the climax of his exposition of the Fourth Commandment (Inst., II, 8, 28 f., Cat., op. cit., Qu. 171-3). According to those Old Testament passages, the holy day is the sign of our sanctification. But negatively at least our sanctification consists in the mortificatio propriae voluntatisEN6• It follows that the purpose of the Sabbath commandment is ut propriis affectibus et operibus emortui, regnum Dei meditemurEN7• The holy day is to figurer le Repos spirituelEN8, which consists for us de cesser de nos propres oeuvres, afin que le Seigneur oeuvre en nousEN9• We celebrate it en renoncant it noire nature, afin que Dieu nous gouverne par son Esprit. Quiescendum omnino est, ut Deus in nobis operetur; cedendum voluntate nostra, resignandum cor, abdicandae cunctae earn is cupiditates. Denique feriandum est ab omnibus proprii ingenii muniis, ut Deum habentem in nobis operantem, in ipso acquiescamusEN10• Is this mys-

ticism? Well, if and so far as it is mysticism, then Paul too was a mystic: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 220). If this is mysticism, then mysticism is an indispensable part of the Christian faith. But in those who are usually called mystics, mysticism includes a technique and craft in virtue of which man thinks he can bring about union with God quite apart from the biblical history of salvation and the end. This is an undertaking which has nothing whatever to do with the commandment to keep the Sabbath or with God's commandments in general, but in which rather man subtly transgresses the Sabbath commandment. It is true that Calvin seems to have given a not unwilling ear to Bernard of Clairvaux. For example, he could quote him with marked approval in his presentation of the doctrine of predestination (when he has to show how man must come to terms with the mystery of God's counsel): Tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia et quietum aspicere, quiescere estENll (Inst., III, 24, 4). He interpreted this precisely in the sense of his view of the Sabbath commandment. But Bernard's mysticism, with its strongly christological character, is not to be regarded as mysticism in the more dubious sense. And the same is true of what one might call the Sabbath mysticism of Calvin. At the beginning of the famous chapter on mortification of our own will that having put to death our own feelings and works, we should reflect on the kingdom of God EN 8 model the spiritual Rest EN 9 to cease from our own works, so that the Lord might work in us ENIO by renouncing our nature, in order that God might govern us by His Spirit. Above all, it is necessary to rest, so that God might work in us; our wills must yield, our hearts be resigned, all desires of the flesh be abandoned. Finally, it is necessary to rest from all our own particular duties, so that, having God at work in us, we might repose in Him ENll God in His calmness calms all things, and to behold His peace is to enjoy it EN 6

EN

7

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the Vita ChristianaENl2 (Inst., III, 7, 1) Calvin returned to this renouncing faith-without thinking expressly of the Sabbath commandment, but so much the more impressively for our understanding of it. Nostri non sumus, sed DominiENl3, is the constantly repeated motif expounded: our resolves and actions must not be ruled by our own reason and will;we must not seek what is agreeable to our flesh; we must forget ourselves and all that is ours; we must live and die un to the Lord; we are to let His wisdom and His will determine our actions; we must direct our whole life to Him as its one legitimate goal. 0 quantum ille profeeit, qui se non suum esse edoetus, dominium regimen que sui propriae rationi abrogavit, ut Deo asserat! Nam ut haec ad perdendos homines eJjieaeissima est pestis, ubi sibi ipsis obtemperant, ita unieus est salutis portus, nihil nee sapere, nee velle per se ipsum, sed Dominum praeeuntem duntaxat sequi. Sit hie itaque primus grad us, hominem a se ipso diseedere, quo totam ingenii vim applieet ad Domini obsequium. Obsequium dieo, non modo quod in verbi obedientia iaeet, sed quo mens hominis, proprio earnis sensu vacua, se ad Spiritus Dei nutum tota eonvertitENl4• Mysticism or not, we cannot possibly evade the necessity

and logic of this description of the basis of the Christian life. And it is with this truly astonishing basis of the Christian life that Calvin is concerned in the Sabbath commandment. His teaching here bears a matchless solemnity. If anyone imagines that it implies a cheapening of God's grace for the obedience of faith to be understood from this standpoint and therefore for the Law to be viewed as the Law of the Gospel, he might well learn from the sharpness with which the omnipotent grace of God is here asserted as a demand by one who has understood the matter in this way.

The Sabbath commandment demands the faith in God which brings about the renunciation of man, his renunciation of himself, of all that he thinks and wills and effects and achieves. It demands this renouncing faith not only as a general attitude, but also as a particular and temporal activity and inactivity on the Sabbath as distinguished from other days. We shall return to this point later. Our first task is to establish that this renouncing faith is the comprehensive content of the Sabbath commandment. Everything else required is included in this; it is subordinate and attached to it; it has its force only in this subordination and attachment; and therefore it has no independent significance. In other words, if obedience to the Sabbath commandment consists in this renouncing faith, in the concrete form of the special activity and inactivity of its observance, it carries with it two great benefits in which it may be seen that this same commandment is indeed the commandment of the gracious God. In the first place, by making man free from himself it makes him free for himself in a special way, temporarily absolving him from the care of his work. And secondly it makes him free for God in a special way, giving him space to EN12 EN13 EN14

Christian life We are not our own, but the Lord's 0 how much progress he has 'made, who has not taught himself about his being, but has taken lordship and mastery from his own reason in order to be joined to God! For just as there is no plague more effective for the destruction of human beings than when they shape themselves in accordance with their own ideas, so the only entrance to salvation lies in neither knowing nor to willing anything by oneself, but simply to follow as God leads. Let this then be the first step in a person deserting himself, that he might thereby apply the whole force of his skill to yielding to God. I do not speak only of the yielding which lies in obeying God's word, but that by which a person's mind, emptied of its own carnal inclinations, turns itself wholly to the command of God's Spirit

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attest and hear the Word of God-space for what in the narrower sense of the conc~pt we call "divine service." The Sabbath commandment contains also the promise of these benefits. In this twofold respect it offers man the prospect of refreshment. But in truth these promises ring out and are valid only when we see that they are embraced by the greater promise that on the Sabbath day, and because on the Sabbath on all his days, man may become and be free for God Himself and His eternal kingdom, and may find genuine refreshment in this freedom. The commandment has in view this one freedom, which must and will be revealed, but can only be revealed, in freedom from work and freedom for divine service. We can thus regard rest from work and divine service as the content of the Sabbath commandment only in so far as we do not forget that even without rest from work and divine service there could still actually be the special Sabbath act of renouncing faith. We may well say that without rest from work and participation in divine service there is no obedience to the Sabbath commandment. But we cannot say that obedience to the Sabbath commandment consists in resting from work and participation in divine service. When we obey the Sabbath commandment, in and with the fulfilment of the one great promise, we can and will realise and enjoy the benefits of resting from work and divine service. But we cannot wish to keep the Sabbath commandment merely for the purpose of enjoying these benefits. The Sabbath commandment can, of course, be grounded also in the necessities of physical, psychological or social hygiene, and therefore set on a humanitarian basis. The Sabbath as a day of rest from work does correspond to a genuine and well-founded human need-and this so much the more as for the majority of men the week's work threatens to adopt, or has long since adopted, a character which makes it difficult or impossible for the worker to retain his individuality and therefore to be more than a cog in a machine. The Sabbath day is also the establishment and victory of a well-founded law of life and freedom. In respect of this need and law the grudging of the Sabbath as a day of rest to oneself or others quickly avenges itself, and its observance brings its own reward. Hence from this standpoint, too, the Sabbath commandment is undoubtedly to be affirmed, respected and maintained in the narrower and wider sphere. It is one of the features of Calvin's explanation of the Fourth Commandment that he expressly states this aspect, especially in relation to those who are socially dependent (Inst., II, 8, 28). What the divine Lawgiver willed in this commandment was also this: servis et iis qui sub aliorum degerent imperio, quietis diem indulgendum censuit quo aliquant haberent a labors remissionemEN15• In the Catechism (Qu. 180) he added the further reason: Et pareillement cela sert a la police commune. Car chacun s 'accoutume a travailler le reste du temps, quand il y a un jour de repose EN16. And we read incidentally in Luther's Greater Catechism that the Sabbath is to be

EN15

EN16

to servants and those who live under the authority of others, He appointed a day of rest to be granted, in which they might have some respite from toil And in the same way this serves the common weal. Because each person becomes accustomed to work the rest of the week when there is a day of rest

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celebrated "also on account of the physical cause and need which nature teaches and demands for common folk, servants and maids; for since the whole week looms ahead with its work and industry, they must grasp for themselves the one day to rest and be refreshed." Sabbath was made for man-is certainly not exhausted The saYing of jesus in Mk. 227-the by this reference to a humanitarian basis. But there can be no question that it also includes it.

Yet this humanitarian basis has the necessary force and authority only when it derives its strength from the first and true basis of the commandment. Otherwise it is indeterminate. Where it is simply asserted as a postulate of human nature and reason, many a counterbasis and sundry individual and social needs can be objected against it on the ground of the same source of knowledge. On this basis, intrinsically so true and excellent, the imperative of the commandment can never be more than a much qualified and flawed imperative, which in the long run not even the strictest morality or legislation can guard from open or secret transgression. For on this basis it cannot bear a genuine categorical character. And to this there corresponds the dubious nature of the benefit when it is only an abstract rest from work. Man's Sunday refreshment, and therefore the fulfilling of this real need, the victory of this incontestable law, cannot be worth much if all it means is that man need not work on Sunday. It cannot mean anything special to him, but can only be a rather uncomfortable thing, to have nothing really to do on this day, but to be left to his own resources. Is there anything more depressing than the sight of obviously very bored male and female humanity wandering about our streets on a Sunday afternoon around three o'clock all dressed up and pushing prams? What is the point of it? Do we not feel (and from the look of them they themselves above all) that we would like to see them voluntarily put back to some sort of useful activity? But this evidence, and therefore all the fierce or ironical jeremiads which rightly deplore what we nowadays know as the celebration of the day of rest, are wide of the mark to the extent that a day of rest, based on merely humanitarian motives cannot as such be a real benefit or fulfil the need and right of resting from work. For what will such a day be used for except what it is actually used for?-various odd jobs and activities, all kinds of necessary and unnecessary meetings and assemblies, "sporting events" and rapt attendance at the same-enhanced, by prospects of a lucky win on the tote-and finally and above all a motorised or unmotorised flight to distant scenes, ending up with an escape in alcohol and flirtation. How can it be otherwise? All that we can say against it-and not only against the inevitable "excrescences"-is true. It is true that a holy day celebrated like this relieves man of none of his burdens but only lays new ones on him, that it entails no refreshment but only further toil. But all this preaching in relation to a Sunday which has only a humanitarian basis and is celebrated merely as a day of rest can have no power, because, having itself only a humanitarian basis, it cannot be more than a humanitarian denial. The Sunday alienated from its original and proper purpose is necessarily a Sunday which is lost so far as its purpose as a day of rest is concerned.

It is not the case, however, that the Sabbath commandment can be given a purely religious basis, i.e., in the necessity of a place for divine service. This is obviously a serious reason, to be respected and asserted; and obedience to it obviously reveals a further benefit. To observe the holy day means also to keep

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~ 53. Freedom Before God oneself free for participation in the praise and worship and witness and proclamation of God in His congregation, in common thanksgiving and intercession. And the blessing and profit of the holy day definitely depend also on this positive use of its freedom. At this point it is clear that its observance does not simply mean resting but, positively, the celebrating of a festival. This festival is the divine service of the congregation. This is obviously the dominating reason in Luther's explanation: "We are to fear and love God, not despising preaching and His Word, but regarding the same as holy, hearing and learning from them" (Smaller Catechism). "The Word of God is the sanctuary above all sanctuaries, yea, the single thing that we Christians know and have .... What time a man handles, preaches, hears, reads or meditates upon God's Word, he and the day and the work are thereby sanctified, not because of the external work, but because of the Word, which makes us all holy" (Greater Cat.). Similarly Calvin (Cat., Qu. 179) explains soundly and convincingly that the ordinance of this day demands que le peuple s 'assemble pour etre instruit en la verite de Dieu pour faire les prieres communes et rendre temoignage de safoi et religionEN17• the Heidelberg Catechism we find that this aspect is given the chief place.

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And in Qu.

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of

The relationship of divine service to the primary and proper meaning of the Sabbath commandment is clear. It plainly distinguishes that renouncing faith from a spiritual work of art or action in the mystical sense; so that its object is not the God of a free intuition or an arbitrarily won idea but the God who in His Word has revealed and entrusted Himself to Christendom. Thus the renouncing faith which the Sabbath commandment implies can obviously be actualised only in the fellowship of Christendom, and the true holy day can be seriously celebrated only in its assembling as a congregation and therefore in participation in its divine service. But the relationship of divine service to that other secondary meaning of the commandment is also immediately apparent. It is participation in the assembling of the congregation which gives this day's rest from work its positive meaning, and which openly distinguishes it from a mere inaction that can only be man's attempting whatever useless activities he can. De Quervain is right when he says: "The holy day is the day of the celebrating congregation. Its social significance stands or falls with the recognition that the day has its central point in the divine service of the congregation" (op. cit., p. 376). And he is absolutely right when he continues: "Our need on the holy day is the need for divine service. The holy day is emptied in the same degree as divine service is emptied." "The great acts of God in Jesus Christ which have happened for our good are the presupposition for ajoyful celebration of Sunday." Divine service is the festival-the festive heart of the holy day-if and in so far as it fulfils this presupposition. But this carries the question to the congregation whether its divine service really centres upon this presupposition. And if it implies this question, it is more urgent that Christendom should answer this question than deplore the fatal way in which it sees the world passing its "day off," and with the world itself.

But just because the divine service of the congregation EN17

is ultimately a very

that the people assemble to be instructed in God's truth, to offer prayers together, and to give witness to their faith and religion

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dubious and fragile human work subject to that question, it is a short cut to say that the Sabbath commandment merely demands our attendance at Church on this day. We can only say that it does of course demand this, too, because the renouncing faith at which it primarily and properly aims, and the rest from work which it also includes, necessarily remain insubstantial without participation in divine service. But we must not try to say more. The fact must not be overlooked that, though the connexion of the holy day with divine service has a deep and true meaning, it rests on a human agreement and arrangement for which one can strangely find no such clear direction in Holy Scripture as for the interpretation of the holy day as a day of rest from work. When Calvin-not to speak of the even more unequivocal asseverations of Luther-maintains: deinde statum diem esse voluit, quo ad Legem audiendam et ceremonias agendas convenientEN18 (Inst., II, 8, 28), one would like to know where he found this even in the Old Testament. However much there is to .sayin favour of this human agreement and arrangement, the fact is that ultimately, like the morality and legislation in respect of rest, it is only an ecclesiastically and materially well-founded but human agreement and arrangement implying a warning. Here also we have to do with a good but secondary significance of the Sabbath commandment.

We weaken the commandment when we understand it from the standpoint of any aim-even the divine service of the congregation-which is different from that of renouncing faith in God. This aim is its ultimate goal. From this primary and definitive aim the secondary aims are also seen to be necessary; resting from work and divine service are also demanded. But the point is that divine service can be understood as necessary only from the first, proper and definitive claim of the commandment. If it is concerned with the exercise of renouncing faith, then it has its basis. If not, or if the matter is left open, then both it and the summons to participate in it are indeterminate. Moreover, it then becomes a peculiar work, against whose necessity as an element in the holy day the aesthete, the nature-lover, the sportsman, the spiritually minded lover of solitary contemplation and even the ordinary man bent on a lie-in and the peaceful waste of a morning now that he is released from the labours of the week, and especially from those of Saturday evening, are obviously able to advance the strongest objections. Divine service in itself and as such is a work like any other, which they think they may omit. And the child of this world, who loves omitting this work, is an adept at discovering that something is wrong if the observance of the holy day is demanded of him simply in the form of this work.

We cannot omit this work if we are placed by God's commandment before the requirement of that renouncing faith in Him, before the summons to become free before God and for Him, and therefore free from and for ourselves, free from our work and free for divine service. When the Gospel, the good news, breaks through and asserts itself in this commandment; when the history of salvation and the end is heard in it in all its glory; when man grasps it as an invitation to keep to God's grace and rejoice in it, then he will cleave to EN18

finally, He wished a day to be established in which they would assemble for the hearing of the Law and the performing of rites

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~ 53. Freedom Before God the congregation, and will definitely go to Church on Sunday, just as he will also not begrudge himself and others the rest from work. When this has been said, special attention must be drawn to the fact that, in the renouncing faith which the Sabbath commandment properly and primarily claims, we are not merely concerned with a general rule of human conduct applying to week-day as well as holy day. There is this aspect, too. The rule of the holy day has force as that of the working day. But this does not rob it of its significance as the special rule of the holy day. It does not erase the distinctive character, as opposed to all other human action, of the activity and inactivity demanded on the holy day. The holy day is not another working day, but a concrete temporal interruption in the succession of working days. And what the commandment demands is that man shall not do on the holy day what he does on the week-day, and shall do on the holy day what he does not do on the week-day. And we try to make the narrow gate wide if in view of the comprehensive meaning of this commandment we argue that the special observance of the holy day as such is not of great consequence. For the general bearing of the commandment results only from its particular form, just as the general promise of the omnipotent grace of God can be illuminated only from the knowledge of the particular gracious day of the Lord in the history of salvation and the end. Thomas Aquinas was quite right: Praeceptum morale est quantum ad hoc, quod homo deputet divinisEN19 (S. theol., II 2, quo 122, art. 4, ad. 1). The minor interruption of our everyday by the weekly holy day corresponds to the great interruption of the everyday of world history by Easter Day,no doubt only as a sign, but nevertheless as a concrete sign to which we must pay attention. In Luther's explanation of the commandment this is somewhat obscured in favour of its factual significance for divine service, and, of course, to avoid all judaising legalism. But it can only increase the emphasis which Luther wanted to place on the Sunday service, and it does not imply any legalism, if we understand the commandment-and mutatis mutandisEN20 the same is true of all the commandments-as a concrete indication of what has and has not to happen on the holy day from man's side occupying aliquod tempusEN21• And for all the general bearing of his statements, what Calvin said about the basis of the Christian life and the decisive content of the Sabbath commandment must certainly not be understood merely as a general lesson on how man must alwaysand everywhere conduct himself towards God. He has in view a definite activity and inactivity when he speaks of the portus salutisEN22, of the primus gradusEN23 at the beginning of the Christian life, of the quiescere, cedere, resign are, abdicareEN24 and jeriare of the holy day. aliquod tempus vitae suae ad vacandum

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There can be no question here of anything but the concrete activity and inactivity which God Himself lays upon man as a duty and demand by encounEN19

EN20 EN21 EN22 EN23 EN24

It is a moral precept to this extent: that it requires a person to set aside a certain space of time in his life for matters divine. allowing for differences a certain space of time gateway to salvation first step resting, yielding, resigning, abandoning ... taking a holiday

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tering him as Commande"c Whether it be activity or inaCtiVIty,what God requires of man as the sanctifying of the holy day, as the exercising of that renouncing faith, can never be merely an opinion but always a corresponding disposition, and never merely a disposition but always a definite attitude both inward and also outward, and never merely an attitude but always in concrete action and abstention. As the Sabbath commandment, too, the commandment of God reaches and encounters each man in direct reference to his person, his situation, his ability, task and surroundings at this specific time and in these specific circumstances. The Sabbath commandment, too, makes the precise demand that this man shall here and now do this or cease to do that, always with its basic meaning, always as the action and abstention of the renouncing faith which also includes rest from work and participation in divine service. Thus in the question what is entailed by obedience the man who is called to obedience in this matter is not left to his own devices or opinion, but set on a definite path by God and required to take definite positive and negative steps. The only open question can and will be whether he hears the Word of God and hears it rightly, whether he obeys it and obeys it fully. But it is to be noted that this is true of God's commandment as it is said directly and specifically to each man. No ethics of the holy day can come between God and the individual, nor can the particularity of the Sabbath commandment, as God Himself proclaims it, be reduced to general rules, thus telling the individual indirectly what is his obedience to this commandment. Calvin no less than Luther was careful not to declare and describe in detail the actions in whose execution or omission each may have to prove his obedience to the commandment of renouncing faith. The impossibility of doing this is shown by the labour, caprice and inconsistency in which later writers involved themselves when they attempted it. We may accept the declaration ofW. Amesius (De conscientia, 1630, IV, 33) that on Sunday all those physical or spiritual occupations are forbidden which might keep man from public or private worship. But we are surprised to learn that this prohibition has validity regulariter et ordinarieEN25• And what are we to think when on Sunday there are prohibited not only all amusements which would disturb our intercourse with God, but also all journeys and travels (itinera) except to divine service, and not only all public bustle (strepitumforensem), but also all inward interest in everyday cares, though the concession is made that divine providence may often make it necessary to keep the Sabbath differently? We are told that there has to be an unquestionable necessitas evidensEN26, which is never the case in haymaking or harvesting by the farmer, although it may be with doctors, surgeons and apothecaries acting on behalf of others, as also with statesmen and soldiers. And domestic servants and other dependants, who cannot of themselves see the providential necessity of certain exceptions, may be kept at their tiresome work on Sunday by their superiors, who are naturally better instructed. Apart from works of mercy which are as such officia pietatisEN27, and apart from the opera scrvilia EN28 which are necessary for divine service (what he means is bell-ringing and the like), there are permitted only such honourable arrangements of communal obligation (communis honestatis EN25 EN26 EN27 EN28

as a rule and ordinarily self-evident necessity duties of piety works of service

61

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~ 53. Freedom Before God officia) as promote a "modest joy in life," do not upset the practice of piety and are necessary because of their humane purpose, and even there must not be too luxurious or pompous. An exigua et brevis aliqua occupatioEN29 of another kind, as demanded by time and occasion, may also be legitimate if it is united with the proper aim of Sunday, i.e., with divine service and its preceding praeparatioEN30 and succeeding recordatioEN31, the intention being to receive spiritual nourishment for the coming week. To be sure, we must not overlook the good intentions of this Sabbath ethics of the older Reformed Church. But the fact that it is so blatantly adapted to the requirements and claims of the ruling classes betrays only too clearly that a system of human rules is here being set in the place of God's command, with disastrous consequences. It is not surprising that this sort of Sunday could not maintain itself in either the upper or the lower circles of European humanity against the increasing pressure of modern secularism.

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What can ethics do in this matter? Is it to propose a Sabbatarian practice binding on all Christians and such as want it, or even Sabbatarian legislation of universal validity? Such efforts may perhaps be sometimes attempted or urged or promoted and supported by the Church. But its proper contribution to the problem of Sunday is necessarily the proclamation of the Gospel, of the history of salvation and the end, and this will always become the proclamation of the Sabbath commandment, the call to renouncing faith in God in the concrete form of celebrating this day. Yet the indication of God's command as spoken by God Himself to each man individually need not remain general, formal and empty. Here as elsewhere Christian ethics cannot proclaim a law which is only a human law and obscures the Law of God. What it can and should do is to aid the proper human hearing of God's command, and therefore true human obedience to it, in the form of a series of questions which arise from the nature of the case, and which we must all answer, but in answering which we must all be clear what is always involved in the proper hearing of this command and true obedience to it. We shall thus conclude our discussion by mentioning the questions or groups of questions which demand our attention. 1. We start out from the fact that the holy day does not belong to man but to God. To be sure, it does so only as a sign that the same is true of every day, for all our time is in His hands. Yet this day is set up as a sign, and is to be observed as such, at the heart of the rest. Is it compatible with this understanding to treat the day as if it belonged to us? On the basis of this recognition, ought it not to be a day whose course must not be radically pldtted or settled beforehand, but on which it is better to let things take their course with particular freedom, and therefore, in stark distinction from weekday practice, to live without a programme? Ought we not on this day to leave everything to God? This would self-evidently exclude a mass of unnecessary Sunday work imposed

EN30

some brief and needful task preparation

EN31

re~e~brance

EN29

1.

The Holy Day

by the weekly schedule, and a host of diversions deliberately planned, and bad for this very reason. On Sunday, whether quietly or with great zeal, one would then do just as much and as little as the day might bring, without grasping after it anxiously or eagerly. In certain cases, it might even be a kind of working day, but one which is free, liberated and unplanned, and therefore refreshing. Yet it need not be an active day, however free. It can also be wholly or partially a day of true relaxation. Nor does it have to be this either. Because it belongs to God and not to man, it should be for man a day free from any compulsion. Ought it not to be this? But this raises the further question whether it can be squared with this basic insight if we do not directly take our place before the God who gives us this free day where He is to be found and where He wants to speak with us, i.e., in His congregation? This must obviously give to the day that God's goodness makes quite programmeless at least the look and character of a day on which one is not guided by any sort of whim or chance but by the Lord of this day. The fact that we welcome His guiding is not, however, selfevident. He guides man by His Word, and His Word needs to be heard by man. Therefore, on this day which belongs to God we may participate in divine service, not as an obligation or as part of a programme, but as the natural meaningfulness, the simple thanksgiving, without which all Sunday work and Sunday diversion and Sunday rest must definitely become, instead of a Sunday freedom, the exercise of a Sunday programme. Can one really sleep or go for a walk on Sunday morning without on Sunday afternoon becoming in one way or another a real slave of Sunday? Sunday duty? But is not the whole point of the assembling of the congregation the affirmation of the true law of Sunday? And the question comes to the congregation: Is that really the point of your assembling? These are the questions which on the basis of our preliminary insight do at least point in the direction in which the commandment is to be heard and fulfilled aright. 2. Our next starting point is the fact that the meaning of Sunday freedom is joy, the celebrating of a feast. It is this as and because it is significantly concerned with freedom for God, with the remembrance of His rest and enthronement after the completion of creation, and with the remembrance of the resurrection ofjesus Christ from the dead, and therefore significantly with the expectation of the eternal kingdom. One of the best traits in the orthodox ability to give this day its joyous whole of life than continually

jewish celebration

character.

What better

of the Sabbath

is its traditional

could one desire throughout

the

and sincerely a "good Sunday"?

But we must now ask sharply and definitely what is and is not compatible with a "good Sunday," with the determination of the holy day as a happy day in the profoundest significance of the word. Was the ideal Sunday of our Reformed ancestors, with their fierce concentration on all sorts of exercitia

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pietatisEN32,

their artificial and forced abstention from work, and all their regulations and exceptions and limitations, really compatible with it? Even if it were possible, would it be desirable to revive it? Is it worth bewailing its disappearance? Was it not a bad working-day in the worst sense of the word? On the other hand, we may well ask how much there is to be seen of the effective repression of everyday cares, of joy and festivity, in the conduct, arrangements and appearance of the present-day children of this world, whether Christian or otherwise. Would not most of them find better recreation in some kind of free work? Is not a better understanding displayed by those who instead of trying to be joyful-which is impossible-are in fact joyfully occupied in a liberating activity which would otherwise escape them and which in any case makes the necessary break, even if it does entail some kind of work? A word ad hominem EN33: As we all know, the minister's Sunday involves both a programme and work, yet does this mean that he has to bemoan it? Is not the minister the ideal case of the man who works joyfully on the holy day and in this very way keeps it holy? If it were toilsome and dull for ministers to do their Sunday work, how could they expect the congregation and the world to find it refreshing? More generally, we may ask whether even during the week theology is a labor operosusEN34, a burden and anxiety, something which has to be done for professional reasons but which we should be happy to lay aside with a clear conscience. If theology as such is not a joy to the theologian, if in his theological work he is not genuinely free from care, what is it? Can he then abandon it on Sunday and devote himself to all sorts of tomfoolery? Why should he not be free for theology? But can he be directed to it? Fundamentally, cannot the heaviest theological working day be for him the best day of rest?

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Ifwe remember that joy in God is something high and rare-res severa verum EN35_we shall always have to say that it is in every respect an infallible criterion of Sabbath observance whether and how sincerely we are in a position to celebrate it as a true day of joy. At this point the counter-question to the congregation-not only to its spokesmen, but to all its members-again becomes real and inescapable, whether the joy which should be to all peopleand that means God's free grace-forms the content of their Sunday proclamations, and not perhaps the law of various religious and moral ideals, programmes and works, under the guise and in the dress of the Gospel. The Church must not allow itself to become dull, nor its services dark and gloomy. It must be claimed by, and proclaim, the lordship of God in the kingdom of His dear Son rather than the lordship of the devil or capitalism or communism or human folly and wickedness in general. It must still see its responsibility towards its members and the world in the fact that when it is assembled there always sounds out the judging, attacking, critical, yet clear and unambiguous Yesof God to man. Who otherwise will believe it when it says that the holy day gaudium

EN34

exercises in piety on a personal level onerous task

EN35

true joy is a difficult matter

EN32 EN33

1.

The Holy Day

is made the day of joy for men and therefore the day of God? How otherwise has it the right to complain at the mass of counterfeit joy which disfigures this day? How otherwise can it give the support it should to the countless numbers who only want to forget their worries on Sunday but cannot do so? We have thus to consider these questions, to face up to them, and to see whether the commandment which God Himself gives to each man individually is as hidden from this standpoint as might at first appear. 3. We choose yet another starting-point, encroaching formally on the sphere which will occupy us in the following section. Like everything that comes from God, the holy day is not given to the individual in isolation, but in relationship to his fellows. So far as one can say that it belongs to man at all, it does not belong to him in himself but in the community of which he is a member and therefore in human society. It is a communal benefit and a communal duty. From this angle, what will and will not be compatible with it? What about all the Sunday work which does not arise freely and joyfully but from the compulsion of necessary employment as imposed by the many others who claim their services on Sunday? Must not each individual, as well as general morality and custom, keep to definite limits in this respect, and perhaps to contracting limits even in the sphere of Sabbath legislation? Or, again, is it really selfevident that one best passes the holy day "on one's own," or in company which does not entail any genuine contact and intercourse with others, but merely some pleasure or spectacle better appreciated in the mass than in isolation? Is it not a sign of poverty that we must seriously applaud and support those who protest that on Sundays they want "to be with their family," thus addressing themselves to their fellows in this minimal form? Can we really exercise renouncing faith, as the Sabbath commandment demands, if on this day every man desires to go his own private way,which may of course be a collective way? Would it not be nearer the mark to practice that faith and celebrate the day by making closer contact with others and opening oneself more to them than on other days, listening to them, speaking with them and giving them the help one more or less necessarily fails to do on week-days? How many human relationships need the loosening or strengthening, or at least the attention and deepening, for which time is necessary and no other time is perhaps available! On how many Sundays has one had time for this need but used it up in other ways and therefore lost what this day could give! De Quervain is only too righ t in this respect: "Where the holy day becomes the day of man, society and humanity wither away and the demons rule .... The worldly holy day is not a genuinely social institution, for it expresses perhaps even more than the work-day the disintegration of human fellowship" (op. cit., p. 374)' And from this standpoint, too, we can understand why it is probably a kind of open or tacit release for the more serious of those who spend their Sunday privately or collectively to be allowed to return to work again on Monday, i.e., to a human

fellowship which is relatively genuine.

But the problem of Sunday worship arises in this respect too. If it were merely a matter of seeking and finding God and His Word in the depths of

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~ 53. Freedom Before God

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one's own soul; ifit were only a question of meeting Him privately, then a walk in "God's own countryside," or a devout visit to a museum, or a quiet read of some spiritual or secular book, or an encounter with noble and like-minded souls would be a very suitable celebration of Sunday morning. And if it were a matter of creating for ourselves a quiet mind and conscience by participation in the opus DeiEN36, we could fulfil our "Sunday duty" in the Roman Catholic sense by going to Church, i.e., to the sacrament or a sermon. But are not all these movements of escape? It is not at all a question of finding God in and for oneself, but of the encounter with God in His truth and majesty, in which He will not let anyone who seeks and finds Him come off badly even in his own person, but will give him food and drink. And it is not at all a matter of "going to Church" (whether to the sacrament or the sermon), but of seeking the assembling of the community which God has commissioned to hear and proclaim the witness concerning Himself. The constitution of this assembling is not just the responsibility of the minister but of each individual. Thus it is partially destroyed if the individual either withdraws from it or associates with it as a mere listener (as if he were at the theatre or a lecture) intent only on himself, and therefore really withdraws. On the other hand, it is built up as each individual participates in it (quite irrespective of what he thinks of the minister or the other participants), entering into the fellowship of support and service and prayer and not least of song. The community assembled around the Gospel is the concrete Christian form of human fellowship. In each individual case it is a serious matter to think one may turn one's back upon it. We have not to set up a law, but from this standpoint, too, we have to put a few arrow-like questions which at any rate point in the direction in which we must look if we are to realise what the command of God is in respect of the holy day. 4. We shall now ask a few more questions on the basis of the presupposition laid down at the beginning of our whole enquiry that on the Christian interpretation the holy day is not the last day of the week but the first. Will our holy day verity itself or not in the following week which it should inaugurate as the day of the Lord? Will the week be set in its light, or will it be passed in a gray halflight as if it had never been, or even be lost in the darkness emanating from it because it was not a good but a bad Sunday? What aspect must it bear if it is to persist in the everyday as a meaningful interruption of the everyday? That is the question. We may put it to any of the major or minor festivals which we rationally or irrationally celebrate, e.g., in Switzerland the Basel Shrove-Tuesday or the meetings for shooting, gymnastics and singing, and more generally (and not least of all) to our Christmas celebrations, as well as to the private recreations and entertainments people usually allow themselves from time to time. But in relation to the day which belongs to God and is set apart for the exercise of self-renouncing faith in Him the question is more burning than elsewhere: "What is to

EN36

work of God

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Thk Holy Day I I

follow?" But this entails the further questioin: "What kind of a day is it that it does follow?" Is it well with the Sunday if in the evening we wearily regret that Monday comes again? And is it well with it if we wearily rejoice when it is Monday again at last? Obviously there is something radically wrong with a Sunday of this kind.

The holy day is certainly a specIal day. But we have seen how in its very particularity it is a sign of that which is the meaning of all days. By it they are all bounded and therefore defined, just as the history of salvation and the end is in its particular time the secret, limit and determination of all the history of all times. The freedom, release from care and lack of a programme which constitute its special character must radiate from it to the week-day on which they cannot prevail like this, and therefore there must also stream from it the joy and openness for others without which the week-day is not really thinkable; just as the Gospel must shine through wherever a man is caught up in the fulfilling of the Law. Where there is only Law, only an armour of virtue and duty, however strong and brilliant, what place is there for the Gospel and how can the Law really be fulfilled? Where the work-day is only a work-day, only a day of bondage, care and planning, only a day of harsh seriousness, of self-help and selfjustification, what sort of a Sunday preceded it and how can even the work-day be a good and orderly work-day? "Sour weeks, joyous festivals"? Not at all (pace Goethe)! If the weeks are really sour, the festivals cannot be joyous. On the other hand, if the festivals are really joyous, the weeks cannot be merely sour; they may and must have at least some festive gleam about them. But this means that we are asked all the more urgently: What about our Sundays? He who has a self-renouncing faith on Sunday will have it also on a week-day. In the week he may and will work conscientiously and industriously, but neither as the lord nor as the slave of his work Uust as on Sunday he is neither the lord nor the slave of his rest). He may and will do so with a good conscience, but aware that he cannot boast of it" that it cannot save him or defend him and that he can take comfort only in God. In the week he will have to fix his eyes on one aim after another, yet not fall under the domination of any material or spiritual, individual or collective Mammon. As he is busy on the everyday, he will also rest; as he fights on the everyday, he will also be at peace; as he works on the everyday, he will also pray. At the same time he will both grasp completely and let go completely. At bottom, he will never be anxious on the working day. Why not? Nostri non sumus sed DominiEN37• But this is what must be practised on the holy day. How can we have renouncing faith on the week-day if we do not have it first on the holy day? The working day is thus the criterion of the Sunday-the criterion even in respect of the two special Sunday problems of resting from work and divine service. In neither instance have we laid down any law. But if in the week we have no rest and know no peace, refreshment nor serenity, then it is high time to ask whether we are not deceived in thinking that we can work in various ways on Sunday, and also deceived in respect of EN37

We are not our own, but the Lord's

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S 53. Freedom Before God what we regard as legitimate diversions on Sunday. And if we are found wanting in the customary service of work and the service of man, then plainly we must consider whether we ought not first to take the divine service of Sunday far more seriously. We can never overlook the fact that these arrow-like questions point with special sharpness from this angle-from the relationship of the holy day and work-day-to what God requires of every man as His command has also the form of the Sabbath commandment. We do not have to specify this. It will always be God's own affair to specify it to each man in the form determined and proper for him. But we have certainly seen that, as we consider what God Himself commands each one of us, we cannot be wholly in the dark, nor must we lack definite and indeed very urgent instruction.

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2.

CONFESSION

The holy day is a sign, and keeping it holy an exercise, of man's freedom before God and of the special responsibility towards Him in which he is man, the human creature. As the regular observance of a definite portion of time, keeping the holy day is the most visible and, because of this day's special meaning, the most comprehensive form of this special responsibility. But it takes other forms as well as this. We may mention, secondly, what might be called the invitation and obligation of man to bear express witness to God. It is a part of the commandment of God the Creator that man shall not be ashamed of the Gospel (Rom. 1 16) . If he were, he would be guilty of the folly of being ashamed of himself, of his existence as a creature. It is to the Word of God, and therefore to the Gospel, that he is indebted for his existence and nature. He himself exists as, consciously or unconsciously, gratefully or ungratefully, he is a kind of receipt for the creative Word of God. Ifhe wants to be what he is, he must want this receipt to find expression, and therefore not to be silent or to contradict itself. Ifhe is a man free before God, he is free to want this and to act accordingly. And as the commandment of God the Creator demands of him in all circumstances that he be a man free before Him-free in the execution of his responsibility before Him!-it definitely claims his readiness to bear witness to Him; and not his readiness only, but also the movement from this readiness to the execution, the act of his confession. Confession is the confirmation, declaration and impartation of what is known. The knowledge here in question, however, is the basic act of man's God-given reason, which in its root and peak, before and above all other perception, stands, as a work of God the Creator, under the determination of knowing Him. As God encounters man in His commands, He adduces the fact that He has created him for Himself, appealing to this determination of his reason and to the fact that its basic act, if it is alive as sound and pure reason, consists, and can only consist, in the fact that man knows Him. And He calls on man to confirm this knowledge, to declare and 68

2.

Confession

impart it. All divine commanding has this content-and therefore in all encounters between God and man this is the issue-that God commands man to be His witness: not just His dumb witness or His unwilling witness; but explicitly His witness, in the execution and in the act of His confession in a particular, marked way. Why is this so? Because God is gracious to man; because He loves him and therefore does not will to be without him; because He has already created him in this love; because the covenant is the internal basis of creation; because the reason originally and definitively orientated on Him, which He has given to man, is the work of His grace. As God commands man to be His witness. He confirms that He regards him as His own, that from the very first He has made common cause with him and wills to do so again. He summons him to confirm it on his side. Considered in a wider context, it is a matter of the human action which is so often described in the Bible as the praise of God. B. Duhm once called it "the most pregnant expression of the religious practice of the community." tn fact, since even prayer (if it is genuine) must begin and end with the praise of God, it is in some measure the climax of all human action Godwards. If man knows God as the One who confronts himself and all creatures; if he is aware of His sublimity, holiness and mercy in His acts; if he perceives with whom he has to do; and if he understands himself and the nature of his existence in relationship to Him, then the praise of God will break forth from him in accordance with his original determination and therefore with final necessity. That it is not an automatic and natural expression but a free action of man emerges in the fact that it can so often be the object of a call of man to himself ("Praise the Lord, a my soul") or others. And the original necessity of what is envisaged may be gathered from the fact that above and beyond all its apparent limits this call so often assumes a universal character. Not only God's servants (Ps. 1131), not only His saints (Ps. 1451°), not only Zion (Ps. 14712), not only the house of Israel (Ps. 13519) shall and may praise the Lord, but also the nations (Ps. 668, 1171), all flesh (Ps. 14521), everything that hath breath (Ps. 1506), heaven and earth and sea (Ps. 6934), sun and moon (Ps. 1483), the angels of God (Ps. 1032°), all His works (Ps. 10322). The praise of the man who knows God might seem small and insignificant amid this mighty chorus. But the writers of the Old and New Testaments certainly did not look at it like that. They understood the call to the whole creation to praise God as a summons directed with even more urgency and obligation to man with his rational knowledge. This is indeed the concern of the vast majority of the biblical passages which speak of the praise of God. But what does it mean to praise God? The simplest explanation is plainly the best. It means to pay Him honour by confessing Him, and therefore confessing that we have known Him, thus confessing both Him and that for which we ourselves are determined by His grace as His human creation. For the honour with which God desires to be honoured because He loves man is that His great revelation may find its correspondence in a small one of which man may be the subject. It is in this correspondence, as man too is revealed in relationship to the revelation of God, that fellowship between God and man consists, and therefore God's love to man reaches its goal. This little revelation on our side corresponding to His great one-the revelation of the fact that we know Him and therefore ourselves, that we find ourselves loved by Him and may love Him in returnis, in the Bible, the honouring or praising of God. This is the larger field to which belongs the narrower confession, or express witness to Him, which is our present concern.

Here again the general must not become the enemy and suppressor of the particular. It is certainly true, though almost too true, that God claims for His 69

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Freedom Before God

praise and witness man's life in all the length or brevity of its time and in all its expressions. But it is even more true, or at least it is to be noted more urgently in an ethical context, that this is also a matter of single and concrete human actions. A man's praise of God, and therefore his confession and witness to Him, is often enough recounted in the Bible as the simple moment of a particular history. And if we are obedient to God's requirement of our confession, then necessarily, not dissolving but affirming the general bearing of this claim, it will be realised in definite moments of our own history. For who can affirm that he is always and everywhere in the status conjessionisEN38? It will thus be true to the extent that the latent and indirect status conjessionisEN39 can be, and actually is, supremely manifest and direct. And it will be self-deception to the extent that the absence of any manifest and direct status conjessionisEN40 betrays that it is not present latently and indirectly. Here also we have to do with clear interruptions of customary human activity and inactivity if the character of confession and witness is not to be entirely lacking. The particular confessing, the express witness to God which His command claims, is particular because its decisive concern is undoubtedly with man's mouth, tongue and lips, with his talking and speaking. We must not try to be too spiritual at this point, or rather, too ethereal. The fact that the work of the mouth alone is not enough, that there is a mere lip confession resting on no true knowledge and therefore empty, does not alter in the slightest the fact that the confession to God which is always concretely demanded is also a confession of the lips. It is in his spoken word that man, like God, comes out into the open, making himself clear, intelligible and in some way responsible, venturing forth and binding and committing himself. In his word man hazards himself. And it is demanded of him that in his word he shall continually hazard himself to God's glory, coming out into the open as a partisan of God. In other words, this is neither more nor less than a matter of man's service in relation to the history of the covenant which is the meaning and inner basis of creation. This history must not only take place; it must also be attested. God as the Lord of this history not only wants man to be the object of His action and the recipient of His blessings, but also to have him as a responsible partner. And the fact that He makes him responsible means also that He calls him to hazard himself to His honour, claiming his word as a word of witness to Him. In order that God's glory may shine forth, the history of the covenant must also be related, proclaimed and therefore imparted. Man is made responsible for this. As God wills man to be free before Him, He always has in view the freedom of those who have something to relate about Him, the freedom of confessors who cannot keep silence but must speak of Him, their freedom to expose themselves to His glory, to commit themselves to His honour with clear and definite words, EN38 EN39 EN40

occasion for confession occasion for confession occasion for confession

2.

Confession

to be serviceable to Him In and with these words, to be His declared and decided partisans. We think of the watchmen placed on the walls of jerusalem who cannot keep silence day or night (Is. 626). Butjer. 16 shows how little self-evident it is to break silence and speak in this way: "Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child." So, too, does Ex. 410: "Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." But speech there must be; silence is impossible: "Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay" Ger. 209). And so Paul: "For necessity is laid upon me: yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!" (1 Cor. 916). For the command is insistent: "Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak" Ger. 17). "I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out" (Luke 1940). But these cannot hold their peace, even if they wanted to and everything prevented them: "And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name ofjesus. But Peter andjohn answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge yeoFor we cannot (ou DvvafLEBa) but speak the things which we have seen and heard" (Ac. 418ffo). "We also believe, and therefore speak," says Paul (2 Cor. 413), according to his understanding of Ps. 1162• And Rom. 109: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." We must relate this to Matt. 1032: "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven." But this means that,just asjesus has bound Himself to speak and still speaks for men, so without doubt they on their side are bound to speak of Him. If they fail to do the latter, they risk the loss of the former: "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven" (Mt. 1033). And if it is asked how what is impossible for man and is yet demanded can become an absolute necessity for him, the answer must be that he who gives man this commandment and imposes on him this obligation puts him also in the position to do what is demanded; indeed, that by His power He causes man to achieve what is demanded. "But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you" (Mt. 1019fo). Or again in the story of Moses in Ex. 41lfo: "And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? orwho maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." This is the imperative of divine grace in this matter. We may and must sum it all up in the question whether we can join in the first petition of the Lord's Prayer (not for nothing, surely, is it the first): "Hallowed be thy name," without accepting our share of the responsibility for its actual fulfilment. God has named Himself. And this means that He has fulfilled His work and His revelation in the world in such a way that He is recognisable in it, so that where this recogni tion is realised by His creature He may and actually does claim from it a work and revelation on its side too. "God's name is indeed holy unto Himself," as Luther rightly interprets it. Yet he is no less right when he goes on to say: "But in this prayer we pray that He may also become holy unto us." And he is right again when he refers to the clear and pure preaching of the Word of God and to the holy life of His children in accordance with this Word. God's name is holy unto Himself. This means that God has spoken, and we have heard Him and have the freedom to put our trust in Him. But radically this is also a freedom to pray that the name of God which is holy to Himself may also

[076J

~ 53. Freedom Before God be named, inadequacy)

[077]

name

confessed

acknowledged,

otherwise? freedom

and witnessed

and through

prized

The freedom

us in human

speech

(for all its poverty and

and respected,

a name

that is praised.

But how could it be

that God gives us as His name is holy to Himself is basically the

for the corresponding

for that petition!

among

our mouths. For this same reason it will also be holy among us-a

effort and action on our side. just because it is the freedom

It is in the prayer of jesus Himself that we join when we make the petition.

He places Himself at our side and us at His when He invites us to pray it with Him. There is conferred

upon

summons,

and particularly

paraphrases

us a share in His office as Prophet, that share in His prophetic

Priest and King when He issues this office which the Heidelberg Catechism

when it says: "that I may also confess His name"

(Qu. 32). Is there really any

escape from our share in His office, from the duty of witness to which the Creator as such has bound

His creature?

Here, too, we shall try to attain concreteness from different angles. 1. The witness and confession claimed from man must always bear the character of an action without an ulterior goal. Or to put it positively, it will take place only to God's honour. The peculiarity of all human activity Godwards is that if man's action is to be right it can be concerned only with God and not with a detour round God or the attainment of ends even in the name of God. What particularly marks out confession is that man may and must temporarily step out of the sphere of purpose, intentions and pursuits. He does not confess with an aim in view nor to effect and carry out this or that with his confession. He aims at no results and expects none. But he confesses because God is God and governs and does all things well, and because he knows this and therefore cannot keep silence. Confession is a serious act; but in its freedom from purpose it has more of the nature of a game or song than of work or warfare. For this reason confession will always cause head-shaking among serious people who do not know the particular seriousness of confession. Why? they will ask themselves and us, and the more seriously we confess, the less will they find an answer, for as confessors we are not concerned with any end but only with the honour of God. In this connexion

we may and must think of the amazing and almost barbaric

Sam. 6lf., which tells us how the ark of the covenant was brought the house of Obed-Edom

and then to jerusalem,

story of 2

up from Baale ofjudah

to

and in the course of which we are told (v.

5): "And David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner

of instru-

ments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals," and then again (v. 14 f.): "And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet." Poor Michal finds it undignified and humiliating, but she is told by David (v. 21 f.): "Before the Lord will I play. Blessed be the Lord, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house ... therefore will I play before the Lord. And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight .... " And if this story smacks too much of the Old Testament for our taste, we may recall the entry of jesus into the same jerusalem (Mt. 21lf.), the shouts of the children in the temple,

the righteous

indignation

Je~u~.."Out of the mouths

of the high priest and scribes, and the reminder

of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected

praise."

from

2.

Confession

Without this conviction and without the risk of being ludicrous which its utterance runs, there is no confession. A confessor is one who is not ashamed to do something quite useless in a world of serious purposes. Confession is not even for the purpose of sincerity, or the proof of moral courage, or the attainment of the release and liberation by the heartfelt declaration of a strong religious experience or emotion. Such needs and their satisfaction are another matter. They have nothing whatever to do with the attestation and confession of God which are commanded. In this there is no question of avowing or "expressing" something or other which belongs or supposedly belongs to man, but of replying to something alien that has been perceived, of giving back, or more precisely receipting something that has come to man from without. In so far as we merely want to satisfy our own need by confessing, we are not really confessors at all. Nor are we confessors in so far as by confessing we want to teach, instruct, convince and win others. This is a laudable intention; but its realisation depends absolutely on its springing from a confession which has nothing whatever to do with aims, but is the free word of a free man and not that of a psychologist, pedagogue, pastor or preacher. Confession must first establish the fact to which all these necessary efforts may refer. It creates and is the fait accompliEN41 that a man dares to give honour to God. But it fails to do this, and does not establish this fact, if the confessor has a purposeful eye on those around him. Just because confession is concerned not only to return but also to pass on a light received, it must be an utterance quite free of intention. Much well-meant, sincere and ardent personal confession comes to grief because it is either far too much a confession of faith in the sense of asserting a fides qua crediturEN42, or, if the emphasis is on the fides quae crediturEN43, it is far too much a confession of doctrine, pedagogic, polemical and apologetic. Unfortunately, most of the Church confessions both ancient and modern suffer from the fact that they have other ends in view. And are not the "testimonies" customary in the meetings of the Salvation Army, and more recently in those of Moral Rearmament, extremely unsatisfactory in the sense that they are always organised constituents in plans for revival or edification? If personal and Church confessions are to be what is commanded, then for all the inward compulsion on the part of the confessor, and all the responsibility and care in the formulation of a Church confession, they must occur on the same level as the shouts of the children in the temple: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" Otherwise they will be confessions which are inwardly disintegrated, speaking about God and not from God, and not fulfilling their objective point of introducing that fait accompliEN44

and being that shining light.

The first question, then, which we must alwayskeep in mind in this matter, is whether we clearly realise that the confession demanded of us can only be concerned with God's honour, and whether what we regard as our confession will stand the test of this criterion. EN41 EN42 EN43 EN44

accomplished fact faith with which one believes faith which one believes accomplished fact

73

[078]

~ 53.

[079]

Freedom Before God

2. The required confession may, must and will occur when a man realises that his faith, or rather the faith of the Christian community, is confronted and questioned either from within or without by the phenomena of unbelief, superstition and heresy. Confession occurs when it is given to this man to lodge a protest against these with his word-the positive protest of faith. We must explain this more carefully. There can be no doubt that the faith of the Christian community is always confronted and questioned both within and without by these phenomena. But it is always a special occurrence when this happens in such a way that an individual or some or many individuals become concretely aware of this latently continuous confrontation and questioning. Then, and only then, are they in the situation where confession to God's honour is demanded and they are called to speak as His witnesses in freedom before Him. The status conjessionisEN45 is not, then, a permanent position. If a man tries to be a permanent martyr, he can never be one at all, because he obviously does not see that martyrdom or witness is an act which can be realised only on the basis of a special summons in a special situation. One cannot bring about or construct this situation; and therefore one cannot try to be a martyr. One can only be ready to be made a martyr. And we can count on it that such situations will arise and be recognised. I

That Daniel had to spend some time in the lion's den was a quite extraordinary situation. And even in this situation he was not expected to pull the animals' tails. Similarly, the first disciples of Jesus were not asked to provoke anyone by their behaviour merely in order to have an opportunity to confess. It was when men delivered them to the courts, scourged them in the synagogues and led them before governors and kings for Jesus' sake that they were to confess, and then they were to do so without the slightest care or anxiety (Mt. 1017f.). Correspondingly, the confessions of Paul in Acts are characterised as solemn actions of a special type in special situations which he had not engineered. Above all we may recall the accounts of Jesus' own confession before the Sanhedrin (Mk. 1460f. and par.) and before Pontius Pilate Un. 1837f., 1 Tim. 613). Here also and particularly it is not a matter of everyday occurrence but of special and outstanding events which He had not provoked.

To the situation in which the call to confess comes, there does of course belong an awareness of it, and therefore of the incursion of the acute confronting and questioning of faith by one of its opponents. There thus belongs also a willingness to be aware of it and therefore a readiness to act accordingly. A man does not sleep through it, nor does he neglect it, nor reinterpret it, nor minimise it as a situation in which confession is possibly not commanded. He does not, then, deny the status conjessionisEN46 which has actually arisen, nor put off its consequences to to-morrow or the next day, to a more serious situation in which he will undoubtedly have to confess and will actually do so, though the time is not yet ripe for confession. There can certainly be preEN45 EN46

occasion for confession occasion for confession

74

2.

Confession

mature confession. But we must beware lest we make fear of this into an excuse for not confessing at all. To the necessary summons to confess there also belongs, of course, the third point that in a given situation it should actually be given to a man to lodge the necessary protest, that he should know what must be responsibly and authoritatively opposed to unbelief, superstition and heresy as the word of faith.

[080J

We remember that in Mt. 1019 the disciples are told that in such a situation they must not worry what they are to say,because it is not they who will speak, but the Spirit of God within them. But this is a reminder that, like faith itself, the word of faith is not something which is at the disposal of man, of believing man. It may be that in that situation he has to confess largely or even exclusively by his silence. Is it not noteworthy that the confession of Jesus Himself, especially in the Synoptic accounts, really consists only of short and almost monosyllabic interruptions ofa majestic silence, and that according to Luke 237f. He did not break it at all in the trial before Herod?

A merely human statement is wholly inadequate as a protest of faith. If we have only opinions and convictions, then whether we express them or not we are not actually ready to confess. The question what is given us to say in this situation must therefore be put sharply. What is adopted and not received cannot be the content of the required confession. We now assume that the confession demanded of us occurs in a particular situation not created by us but to be perceived by us, and that it occurs when it is given us to confess. We can thus proceed to say that it consists in a protest against the various judgments of unbelief, superstition and heresy. We know that it can be only a protest to the honour of God and therefore without ulterior aim. But it must have the character of a protest. Confession has nothing whatever to do with lyricism or pure meditation. Confession is always a protest against the utterance of a false faith that contradicts the glory of God. It is always a partial moment in the history between God and man in which the divine Yesis set against the human No, the divine truth against the human lie, the light of this truth against man's obscuring of it, its totality against the mass of human error which consists supremely in half and quarter and eighth truths. In this history and opposition the faith of the Christian community and therefore of each individual is continually impressed into service, and confession is the service which faith has to perform here. Pure, child-like, disinterested and unpremeditated witness may and should sometimes be an eloquent fact in this disputation to God's glory. This is the meaning of the command that man with his word shall continually be God's witness. The meaning of this command lies in the fact that man may be and speak as God's partisan. It is this that makes confession not only contemptible in its lack of aim but correspondingly dangerous. He who confesses in faith has arrayed against him the whole force of unbelief, superstition and error, and primarily of that which in all these phenomena is also and supremely powerful in himself. To confess is to enter into and maintain oneself in the opposition in which the most dangerous contradiction will be that which arises in the confessor himself against

75

[081J

~ 53. Freedom Before God his own confession. The confession commanded us has of necessity the nature of a risk or defiance. It occurs under threat from without and from within, from the world and even from the Christian community itself, and above all from one's own inventions and desires, in which the confessor always stands on the other side. We may note that all confession which lacks this character and is outside this opposition and threat cannot be the required pursuit but only a forbidden sport or empty luxury. Confession is a serious and stringent matter. If it becomes beautiful and ceremonious (liturgical), there is cause to mistrust its genuineness. The original twofold meaning of the concept p.,aprvp{a EN47 must not be circumvented. Witness to God exists only where it brings suffering for the sake of this witness. And suffering is a most unlovely and unceremonious matter. It is merely grievous. Where it was grievous for God Himself, His witnesses cannot have it easy. An easy, cheap and comfortable witness would be no witness at all. Not that one has to make it grievous oneself, or even to desire and pray like Ignatius of Antioch that it might be as grievous as possible! But it will certainly not be the witness required of us if it is easy, if it does not expose us to assault, if it does not involve us in that great and difficult contest.

But now a final point must be made in the opposite direction. The protest which confession has to raise is that of faith, and it is therefore the required protest only if it has a positive content. Confession is decisively action, and not-or only incidentally-reaction. It says Yes and not-or only relativelyNo. For decisively, originally and finally God Himself, whose partisan the confessor may be, says Yes, and only incidentally, relatively and for the sake of the Yesdoes He say No. The praise of God in which the confessor may unite in face of the clamour of false faith, and in spite of sin and death and the devil and hell, can only be praise of the grace which God exercises even in His judgments. Thus the contest without which there is no confession can never be its final word. For the same reason its proper and governing word, and therefore also its first word, cannot be either the contest against the adherents of false faiths and their errors or even the contest in which the confessor has to engage against himself.

[082]

Here we uncover a sickness which is present in much otherwise healthy,joyful and serious confessing. Though it wants to give honour to God, in the event it is a strangely bitter, sharp, scornful and quarrelsome affair because the confessor forgets that the God whose partisan he may and must be is the gracious God. He thus confesses in a friend-enemy relationship, as God's detective, policeman and bailiff, against various things in the world and the Church,. and, if he is sincere, supremely against himself. For the fact that a man is basically at war against himself can only lead him in his confessing to war against others,just as in confessing against others he will always be led back to the war against himself. In these circumstances the well-meant word of faith receives a very definite flavour of pepper, and in certain cases this may for a time make it seem extremely refreshing, courageous, spirited or even witty, and its "disturbing" opposition against all things human may look like confirmation that it is indeed from God. From God because it is against all things human? What a misunderstanding! As if God were notforall that He created and therefore for everything truly human! As if

EN47

witness

2.

Confession

such a perversion would not breed doubt and hatred against God in others and supremely in himself!

The confession that is commanded us will always be distinguished from an arbitrary outburst of human resentment by the fact that, as the confession of God's Yes, even where it must say No, even in its anathematising, even in its damnamusEN48, even in its harsh words and irony, it is always controlled. It will indeed fight, but only en route and never at the beginning or end. At the beginning and end, and therefore basically, it will be absolutely peaceful, and, even where it is spoken exclusively, comprehensive. Its critical protest against unbelief, superstition and heresy will always be to the effect that God is for us, that He is with us and not against us. The same "for" and "with" will always include those whom it must first attack. In this way it will also be comforting and helpful to the confessor himself in his own temptations. For it is the falsehood of all false faith, even that in the confessor himself, not to accept the truth of this "for" and "with." This is what must be objected against it as strongly as possible. We must not deceive ourselves. Only if the confessor makes this objection against others and himself, only if and so far as his confession expresses this truth, will it also be a true and genuine unsettlement which is of service in God's controversy with what opposes Him, a light in the darkness. These are the questions which are to be put from this second standpoint in regard to obedient confession. 3. We have seen that the confession demanded of us is distinguished from a lyrical effusion by the fact that it occurs as a definite opposition and therefore as an act of defiance and conflict. But not every verbal warfare, even though with Christian intent, is a confession in which God is praised and attested. The Christian faith which confesses in this opposition has to be the faith of the Christian community. There are indeed all kinds of private Christian beliefs as well, personal Christian convictions resting on individual experiences and lines of thought. There are also the convictions of distinct groups or whole communities within the Christian community. It is especially in the groups around prominent Christian personalities that definite forms of private belief arise. This is a circumstance worthy of all honour, and who of us can say that this private faith is not to be proclaimed? But we have to consider that the more our faith is such a private faith, the less can and will its declaration bear the character of genuine confession. A genuine confessor will never behave and act as a soloist or even a chamber musician. Whatever his individual or collective private faith, he will not branch out into a private war for its defence and diffusion. The Word which he attests with his human word will be the Word of God. But the Word of God is entrusted to His community; it is the Word heard and proclaimed by it. Similarly,it must be said that the situation in which confession is commanded and needed will alwaysbasically be one in the history, action and suffering of the community. Hence it EN48

we condemn

77

[083]

S 53. Freedom Before God cannot be grounded merely in biography or psychology. The service of genuine confession will alwaysin some sense be a participation in the service of the community, and therefore not a separate undertaking of the individual. The conflict which exists in confession will alwaystake place visiblyor invisibly,directly or indirectly, on the main front of the congregation and not on the self-chosen theatre of a minor war. And the spirit moving the confessor, comforting him and enabling him to speak the right word, must be the Holy Spirit. There are all sorts of spirits with very similar effects. We can distinguish the Holy Spirit from them by the fact that He rules and lives in the community, and that the confessor and his confession arise out of the community and constantly return to it.

But the community and the confessors of its faith (in distinction from all private faith) may alwaysbe known by the fact that they let Holy Scripture, and indeed the whole of Scripture and this for their better instruction, continually speak to them afresh with fresh openness. And their confession may be known by the fact that it is the voice of scholars in this school, who have not to recount something of their own, even though of Christian or biblical construction, but each in his own manner and speech what has been communally learnt in this school. Holy Scripture constitutes the community. The community exists as such in the measure that Scripture, and indeed the whole of Scripture and this sincerely, is constantly heard in it. And each individual is a member of the congregation in the measure that he participates in this hearing. And he confesses the Christian faith, and therefore confesses genuinely, in the measure that his confession springs from this hearing. The so-called confessions or creeds of the Church can be an important direction and help to the community as well as to the individual. It is very possible that the confession of the individual may in particular circumstances consist very simply, very offensively and very instructively in his recitation of a sentence or sentences-horribile dictuEN49, a little dogmafrom these statements of the Christian faith of the community. But ifhe is clear that he has to confess as a member of the community, he will not imagine that his confession can be completely fulfilled in the repetition of the contents of such a statement, and in this sense in a "dogmatic" assertion. The community which, having dogma and a confession, does not allow it to serve as a stimulus to further hearing, but ceases to listen to Scripture, to the whole Scripture and to this continually, is no longer the school of real hearing and learning. And if the individual tries to be content with expressing his assent to the contents of such statements (even of the Apostles' Creed), his voice is no longer the voice of a scholar from this school, nor the voice of a genuine confessor.

[084]

The one infallible test whether confession springs from this hearing, and is thus the confession of the faith of the community and genuine Christian confession, will always consist in whether and to what extent it is concerned with what Scripture sets before us as its all-controlling theme, and therefore with Jesus Christ, with the covenant fulfilled in Him, with the reconciliation accomplished in Him, with His lordship as exclusive lordship, with His unity with God and therefore with the source of all good. This is what the community has to hear, learn, proclaim, repeat and propagate. This is its faith, the driving EN49

horrible

saying

2.

Confession

force in its history, action and suffering. It is for this that it contends against unbelief, superstition and heresy. This is the praise that God expects from its mouth. In the confession of each individual it must always in some sense be a matter of this praise of God: not abstractly of the confession of certain "biblical truths"; but of the confession of this name, of this concrete truth of Scripture with which all that it attests stands or falls and from which everything else in the Bible receives its place and meaning. Christian confession will be confession of truths, facts and principles only as and to the extent that it is first and decisively confession of jesus Christ; only as and to the extent that, to be confession of Him, it must include truths, facts and principles. It is a good confession when it is strong and single-minded in its relationship to Him. It is less good when it declares something else without direct relationship to Him. It is bad when it speaks of something else without having spoken first and decisively of Him. That these are not arbitrary limits is proved by the fact that the oldest forms of Christian confession recognisable in the New Testament were purely Christological assertions-confessions of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, as the Son of God humbled and exalted for us, as the Head of His community and Lord of the cosmos. Later on, there was every reason to add to these statements preceding clauses concerning God the Father and Creator and succeeding ones concerning the Holy Spirit, the Church, etc. But the statements of the "second article" were absolutely inescapable and underlay all the others (cf. O. Cullmann, Die ersten christlichen Glaubensbekenntnisse, 1943, esp. 30 f.).

The other infallible test whether a confession is genuinely that of the community is whether and to what extent the word of the confessor commits him to a specific public action or open attitude. A declaration may be bold and clear, and centrally Christian in the above-mentioned sense, but so long as it remains theoretical, entailing no obligation or venture on the part of him who makes it, it is not confession and must not be mistaken for it. It becomes confession when the word as such implies an action, making an obvious decision in which its subject is revealed and exposed as a member of the Christian community in the larger or smaller publicity of his surroundings. There are good and perhaps strong Christian words which are not confessions because they are merely spoken among the like-minded where they cost nothing and do not help to make visible the contours of the Christian community. They become confessions when they openly intrude into the sphere of false faith and there bring to light what the Christian community regards as true and untrue, as right and wrong; when he who utters them makes himself so responsible for the cause of the community that he can no longer withdraw, but for good or evil has now to answer for this cause as his own. A man confesses when with his Christian declaration he champions this cause before men, and especially before those to whom it is alien, disclosing the community and accepting the consequences of this disclosure, in his own person. When Jesus puts to Peter, in the hearing of the other disciples, the question: "But whom say ye that I am?", the reply of Peter is the expression of a central Christian insight, but it is

79

[085]

~ 53. Freedom Before God not confession in the strict sense, although it is alwayscalled this (Mt. 1615f.). What he should have said in the courtyard of the high-priest, but thrice failed to say and actually denied while the cock crowed twice, would have been confession (Mk. 1466f. and par.). And what after Easter and Pentecost he actually did say before the high-priests and elders and scribes was undoubtedly confession (Ac. 48f. and 5 29f.) • It is in confessions of this kind, in such words of direct aggression, that the Christian community alwayswas and is built up.

[086]

This, then, is the third cycle of questions to which human confession must give the right answer if it is to occur in obedience to God. 4. Confession is a free action. How could it be otherwise? Like the holy day, it is related to God's free grace. It is obedience in response to a summons, resting on a free choice. It proceeds from the Holy Spirit, who breathes where He will. Where a man may confess, there is the triumph of an unparalleled liberalism. This brings us back partly to the point where we began-that in true confession it is always a matter of God's honour alone. This is something which we must now expand. Confession is bound to neither calendar nor clock. When its hour comes, it may and must occur. But confession is not the same as profession. One cannot confess as the representative of a position, especially of the so-called "spiritual" position. There is no position in which one could not become a confessor. Furthermore, confession carries its great reward, which consists in our being allowed to stand on the right side, on God's side. Again-andjust because this is its reward-it is a servile but a noble task in which one may be genuinely free from care in respect of the consequences. It is, moreover, a free work inasmuch as it can really happen without any regulations. None can demand confession of another; none can commission another to confess. He who goes into the open with his confession does it of his own impulse, on his own account and on his own responsibility. He climbs to a mountain peak above which there is only heaven. For this reason he cannot denigrate the confession of another. Nor can he be persuaded or forced by any to confess this or that. In this school he is a scholar just like the others, and the others are scholars like him. He must and will confess precisely what the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Scripture, the Spirit of the community, allows and commands him to confess-nothing more or less or other than what is laid specifically upon him at this specific time. It is to be expressly noted that he must not only confess, but confess in his own way and speech. It is definitely not the case that confession must alwaysbe made in biblical words or in the language of Zion. But it is also not the case that this is to be anxiously and deliberately avoided ("How shall I put it to my children?"). In free defiance, it often may and must choose the language of Zion. But it will not be bound to it. It often may and must choose wholly secular language. In secular language, too, it can be a sincere and open confession of Jesus the Lord. If only it proceeds from hearing the Word of God, if only it is not an obligatory expression of opinion or the confession of a Baal or alien deity, if only it takes place in discipline to its subject, it has all the formal freedom it wants. 80

3. Prayer And the finest thing about this freedom is that it may be free from all fear. Not looking for results, confession need have no anxiety about failures or evil consequences. Ifin confession a man stands on God's side, this has the sober and liberating implication, in respect of all that may be entailed, that God stands on his side. No sort of special courage or valour will be either demanded or needed. Even in the midst of anxiety he need have no anxiety. He stands in a place where, even if everything is missing, there can be no final lack. Fundamentally and finally, the free man is the man who no longer has to fear. He who confesses, no longer has to fear. Confessing, he has put everything he might fear behind him. And therefore he is a free man. In the act of confession he steps out into the freedom of God in which he, too, may be free. It was obviously the intention of the author of Acts, when he described the confessions of Peter and later of Paul, to bring out this freedom of confession, its freedom from all consideration, care and anxiety. He was not concerned with the phenomenon of human heroism, but with that of men who, through what they have heard ofjesus Christ and have to say about Him, are, like stranded ships, lifted up by the incoming tide and borne involuntarily awayaway from the sphere in which they might fear consequences or high-priest or governor or king. He was concerned with the phenomenon of the freedom of God in the history of men. And it was in clear reminiscence of this intention of Acts that the title-page of the Augsburg Confessions laid before the Emperor Charles V in 1530 was adorned with the words of Psalm EN50 11946: Et loquebar de testimoniis tuis in eonspeetu regum et non eonjundebar • If only the good Melanchthon had been a little less fearful and therefore more genuinely confessional in his approach and utterance ! And if only the text of this confession had been allowed to be a more free confession in every respect!

This, then, is our final description of the concept of true confession. 3. PRAYER Besides confession, the other special form of human activity in relation to God is prayer. It concerns us here from the standpoint that it, too, is a commanded activity, so that the question of man's obedience in relation to God as his Creator has also this constituent. It may be said that our general concern emerges even more clarly in prayer than in confession, namely, that alongside and in all his other activities man must not fail to turn to God, to go directly to Him. In its broadest outline this is the special movement of prayer. But we could not easily understand confession except as man's running as it were towards God and throwing in his lot with Him as a confessor. And it might also be argued that the special concern of confession, namely, that man may give honour to God, emerges less clearly in prayer, because in its decisive sense prayer obviously consists less in man offering something to God and doing something for Him than in turning to Him, EN 50

I have spoken of your testimonies in the presence of kings and I have not been put to

shame

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seeking, asking and accepting from Him something he needs. Yet how can we understand this properly without perceiving at once that perhaps the very highest honour that God claims from man and man can pay Him is that man should seek and ask and accept at His hands, not just something, but everything that he needs? We have said that in confession man understands arid expresses himself as a kind of receipt in relation to God. But in prayer he is and acts in the form of what we might call an application. Ifhe is a man free before God, he is free to will and therefore to do this too-to present himself before God wholly and utterly as an application directed to Him. At foundation and summit the two meet, for we cannot approach God as we may and should in prayer without at the same time throwing in our lot with Him in confession. Again, we cannot give Him the honour that we may and should in confession without again and again longing for Him and for what He alone can give-which is prayer. And if in confession man wants to make it clear that in relation to God he can only be a receipt, yet really to be this he will be the more able to present himself to Him as a simple application and therefore in prayer. And conversely, he cannot really seek God in prayer without finding Him and for that very reason being called upon to confess. Both confession and prayer go back to the knowledge of God as the basic act of human reason. Even as God summons man to pray to Him, He points to the fact that He has created him for Himself and appeals to this determination of his reason. No knowledge of God can be confirmed (as it may and should be in confession) without being at the same time newly grounded and won (as happens in prayer). One can be God's witness only by becoming so ever anew. This isjust what happens in prayer. Prayer and confession are related in respect of their common basis in the knowledge of God, like breathing in and breathing out, systole and diastole. That God loves man is the meaning of His command on this side too. Because He is gracious to him and regards him as His own, God wills that even when he has already found Him he shall seek Him and find Him again. On this side, too, God's command is proof of the fact that He has made common cause with man and wills to do so again. To this extent prayer, too, belongs to the larger context of what the Bible calls "the praise of God." Naturally in prayer, in sharp distinction from confession, there is no question of a lesser revelation which has man as its subject and which corresponds to the great revelation of God. Prayer is not confession, not the outward witness to the knowledge of God before one's generation. What Mt. 65[. says about the prayer of "hypocrites" in the synagogues and at the street corners is a warning we must not ignore. There is certainly no prayer which does not lead on to proclamation, just as there is no proclamation which does not proceed from prayer and lead back to it. But fundamentally, prayer is not proclamation. Prayer takes place fundamentally in "thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door," i.e., in secret. Prayer is the aspect of the praise of God which is directed only towards God, and to this exten tit is strictly its inward aspect. This is true of both personal and common prayer. Prayer as a demonstration of faith, as disguised preaching, as an instrument of edification, is obviously not

3. Prayer prayer at all. Prayer is not prayer if it is addressed to anyone else but God. The relationship between prayer and confession consists in the fact that even the confession directed outwards must have no ulterior purpose, but even though it takes place before men it does so to God's glory alone. Hence confession is nothing except in so far as it results from prayer and partakes of the nature of prayer. The special feature of prayer, however, is that even as common prayer it cannot take place at all before man, on a human front or with thought of a human opposite, but only as orientated on God, only as a word addressed to Him, only as a request directed to Him. Confession is the free praise of God before the ears of the world. But prayer is the same free praise of God in His ears alone. Even he who leads the congregation in prayer can only want to summon them to their praise of God as intended for His ears alone. From this standpoint we must say that no less in prayer than in confession we are concerned with the honour of God. And it is to be noted that prayer is from the very outset free from all care. It does not have to be beautiful or edifying, logically coherent or theologically correct. Neither formally, materially nor methodically does it have to display any kind of art. Its formation can be determined only by its own inner law. Where man is concerned only with God, he knows that he needs no alien art but must capitulate with all his arts. The only thing that counts is that he shall really be concerned with God and with a request addressed to Him. It may well be that he can only sigh, stammer and mutter. But so long as it is a request brought before God, God will hear it and understand it, and He will accept it as right, as the prayer demanded by Him, as an act of obedience, infinitely preferring it to the sublimest liturgy which does not fulfil this condition. It is as well to recall the primary meaning of the Sabbath commandment. In the supreme sense to pray is to observe a Sabbath rest from all one's cares, even the best.

Here again it is best to start with the injunction that the general must not become the enemy and suppressor of the particular. Like confession, prayer is a particular and concrete action. It is certainly true that it may and must be the perennial undertone, basis and support accompanying and upholding all other human actions. It is certainly true that fundamentally it can never be broken off, that we fall from grace if we cease to pray, that whatever is not done in prayer certainly cannot be well done before God. But it is even more trueand necessarily more compelling from the ethical standpoint-that this constant state may and must continually take concrete form in individual moments and specific actions. Like the praise of God in general and like confession, prayer is continually described in the Bible as the content of particular moments in the history of biblical man. At such moments it needs to become an event in the history of each man. What is demanded in general must be realised in particular. From apparent and usually only too real forgetfulness it must penetrate the consciousness and become an actual permission and necessity, a direct commandment to be observed here and now. The saYings in 7TPOOEVXiJ EYKaKELV

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~ 53. Freedom Before God not be misunderstood at this point and made an excuse for abstaining from prayer altogether by appeal to the need for "constant adoration." This is the inevitable result when prayer does not become an actual permission and necessity, a direct command, and when it is not observed as such. The parallel to the Sabbath commandment claims our attention. If prayer is to become and be the underlying note and basis of all human activity,it needs to be continually exercised in particular. Prayer as a particular act in some sense repeats and represents the holy day in the midst of the week. In these sayings, then, Paul was not merely pointing to a perennial attitude of prayer, but also to the fact that the concrete activity of the community and of each individual Christian in observance of the holy day may and must have its continuation and concrete correspondence on the work-day.

[090J

The distinctive feature of the specific, conscious and express prayer required by the divine commandment is that like confession it takes the form of speech. To be sure, it is speaking with God (not from God), and therefore the claim laid upon mouth and tongue and lips, the demand for formal speech, is not unconditional. Even in common prayer it not only can but must and will be decisively an inward speaking, which in its inadequacy as human speaking to this Other, and in consciousness of this inadequacy, will be simply a sig~ing and stammering, both in its beginning and in its end. But in this respect we must not try to think too spiritually or ethereally. It is already speaking even when it is only sighing and stammering. Hence this is not a matter of mere existence, of a mood, of surrender to a feeling. In all circumstances prayer is also a matter of man's responsibility before God, a responsibility fulfilled in the particular form that man has recourse to God in prayer and encounters Him as one who prays, because God wills to see and have him before Him as this praying man and therefore as a free man. But he who really prays to God has something to say to Him and dares to say it, not because he can, but because he is invited and summoned to do so, because God who has spoken to man expects man in return to speak with Him. Whether he speaks well or badly is neither here nor there; what matters is that he may and shall speak with God. Even less place is there for man's reflection on the perfection or imperfection of his speaking, the good or bad marks he might give himself. No more is required than this, but this is required, namely, that he shall speak as he is able, that within these limits he shall do so not only sincerely but in correspondence and response to what God has spoken to Him, and supremely that in this respect, in the turning to God where God alone hears him, he shall speak and not be silent. It will be God's affair, and he can leave it confidently to God, to hear and understand him in his miserable words-or what he thinks are miserable words. It will be God's affair, as He graciously listens to man, to approve and sanction that which in itself is certainly not good but far more of a failure than man in all his (perhaps rather affected) self-criticism might suppose. On no account, however, can man take it upon himself to cease speaking with God because of his incapacity for what God wants of him. Inevitably, then, real prayer involves, with some degree of awareness and clarity, an inward

3. Prayer speaking, and why not then an outward as well, especially in the meeting of the community? Failure in this respect cannot be justified by an appeal to Paul, who actually tells us in Rom. 826f.: "For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itselfmaketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Notice how exactly this corresponds with what is said in Mt. 1020 about confessing in the power of the interceding Spirit. There is no prayer without this intercession. Just before he writes: "The Spirit forestalls and helps our infirmities" (avvavTLAap.,f3avETaL), and immediately after: "And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind (the meaning or intention, TO 4>povTJp.,a) of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." In prayer, therefore, as in confession, God Himself speaks through His Spirit the true and decisive Word which can be heard and is heard already even though it cannot be attained or uttered by man. The doxology in Eph. 320 may be adduced in explanation. God "isable to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." But that does not mean for Paul, and it must not mean for anyone else, that he may choose not to utter the words in which he can pray, and therefore omit to pray, since in themselves and without the intercession and translation of the Spirit they are inadequate and cannot please God. The parable of the talents in Mt. 2514ff. can be applied in this connexion. Whether he has received and can therefore do much or little gives no one the excuse for not doing what he can as he has received. There is no question at all of more than this correspondence. But this correspondence is inexorably demanded. It consists at this point in what man in all his impotence can say in prayer to God in the light of what God has said to Him. It is for this feeble performance that the Spirit intercedes. This human speaking, weak always in its relationship to God, is what He "forestalls and helps." This is what is presented by Him to God, being translated and given the form in which it is said aright before Him. But this is not true of the laziness and vanity which would rather saynothing than something weak. In this connexion we may perhaps think of 1 Cor. 1415: "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also." He who is not willing to pray with the understanding and therefore weakly, trusting in that Intercessor and Translator, will never pray with the Spirit; and this means in practice that he will never pray at all.

We shall now establish some of the criteria of true prayer. 1. The basis of prayer, if it is true prayer, is man's freedom before God. Prayer rests, therefore, on the same basis as the holy day and confession. A man prays because he is permitted to do so by God, because he may pray, and because this very permission has become a command. It is true that to pray is to ask. It is thus true that prayer is the stating of a privation and desire, the expression of the certainty of finding it satisfied in and from and through God, the uttering of the request that this may really happen. But the basis and origin of this utterance, that which makes it right asking and therefore right prayer, can consist neither in the privation and desire, the certainty, nor the asking. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that it is wholly and absolutely a matter of this utterance, and therefore we must now show how this utterance arises, i.e., how man attains the position where he can turn to God with his request. No privation and desire as such make it necessary for him to turn to God with his requests. In other words, there is no external or even inward privation,

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and accordingly no desire, which completely excludes the other possibility that instead of turning to God with his requests he will perhaps help himself, or seek help from others, or from the natural course of things, or from fate or chance or apparently all-healing time. It is not the case that need teaches us to pray. It may also teach us an anxiety that does not pray but curiously competes with a prayer which it naturally thinks rather curious itself. It may also teach defiance, cursing and scoffing. It may also teach us to beg. It may also teach resignation. At best it will teach us to work. Even deprivation of God and desire for Him can obviously lead past prayer to the strangest by-waysof individual and collective self-help. But it is also not true that awareness of the presence of all blessings and goodness in God, of their origin and emanation from Him, will in itself and as such lead a man to prayer and therefore to that asking. On the contrary, this certainty can take a form which leads to a well-known argument against prayer and becomes the reason for not praying. For it might lead us to consider that if it rests with God to give us all that we truly lack and desire, and if we may seriously assume that He really can and will do this, and actually does it, then we must obviously suppose that He knows our legitimate needs better than we do, and even before we ourselves discover or state them. What, then, have we to lay before Him? What have we to ask Him for? Does not asking imply that we can influence or even direct His will, which, after all, has our best interests at heart? But how can we do this? Will not the result necessarily be something less good? And is it not absolutely impossible? In this certainty can one will anything other than that God's righteous, merciful and holy will shall be done, and not our own, in regard to ourselves and all men in all earthly events? Do not Gen. 3224f. (Jacob's wrestling atJabbok) and Mt. 2636-44 (Jesus' wres-tlingin Gethsemane) clearly show us that with this will-the willing of the submission of our will which is the true and practical meaning of prayer-all our feeble asking is condemned to silence? There is no need to appeal to the inviolable regularity of all occurrence. The mere concept of God is enough to establish an objection against prayer in so far as it seeks to be more than a devotional exercise for the inward development and deepening of the one who prays, and tries to be a request uttered to God. Nor can we finally main tain that, in childish defiance of all these argumen ts, the demand for divine help and gifts will necessarily drive man to utterance, to formal and serious petition, and therefore to prayer. It may well turn out, and necessarily so in most cases, that in his very awareness of need man is so oppressed by the distinction and contrast between himself and God, between the majesty of God and his own unworthiness, that he hesitates to worry Him with his desires and requests. Bound up with this there may perhaps be some reserve about addressing Him at all as one might do a comparable being, or a certain embarrassment at finding a place in one's mind, let alone on one's lips, either for the familiar words or for words of one's own addressed to Him. The result of all this is that prayer is hindered, that man has not the heart

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3. Prayer really to pray, namely, to bring his desire to utterance, even though it may really be there. Anyone who knows even a little of what prayer means knows what it is to be stuck in the mere desire which does not get so far as utterance. "I cannot pray." Yes, even if a man wants to pray, there are serious reasons for the realisation that he cannot just pray when he wants to, however sincere his desire to pray may be. That praying means asking is thus perfectly true. But, as we have just pointed out, we can keep on and on analysing the concept of the asking which turns to God and still not find in any of its elements the cause which makes this asking necessary. In this analysis we simply move round in a circle, and this is not the circle of a rolling but of a stationary wheel which can never roll without outside impetus. Where the asking really takes place, its cause must lie outside the circle. Faced by the serious question whether we really pray or not, we may not withdraw into this little meditation which unfortunately proves to be so negative. The real basis of prayer is man's freedom before God, the God-given permission to pray which, because it is given by God, becomes a command and order and therefore a necessity. As he is created free before God, man is simply placed under the superior, majestic and clear will of God. He is not, therefore, asked about his power or impotence, worthiness or unworthiness, disposition or indisposition, desire or lack of desire for prayer, but only whether it can be otherwise than that God's will shall be done by him and in him, and therefore whether he has not to pray irrespective of all possible objections and considerations. What God wills of him is simply that he shall pray to Him, that he shall come to Him with his requests. He wills this just because it is a realisation of the natural relationship between them both, between God and man. This is true as seen from man's side. As the creature of God he can only come to God and speak with Him as a suppliant, and he is directed to do so. But it is also true as seen from God's side. For He is the God who lets man come to Him with his requests, and hears and answers them. He is God in the fact that He lets man apply to Him in this way, and wills that this should be the case. Here, then, we stand before the innermost centre of the covenant between God and man which is the meaning and inner basis of creation, God's gracious will. It is so superior, so majestic, so clear that it makes man's prayer immediately necessary. It is the basis, permission and necessity of prayer, the basis which the man who is free before Him cannot escape. It is here an imperative command and a strict order. As prayer is uttered, it is not only said but it avails: "And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me" (Ps. 5015). Or, as the prophet heard: "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not" Ger. 333). Or Jer. 2912: "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you." Or Is. 556: "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near." And in the decisive dominical saying in Mt. 77: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." In the version of

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the Fourth Gospel: "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full" (J n. 1624). And in the form of the apostolic exhortation in Phil. 46: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Similarly inJude 20 f.: "Praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." It is striking with what emphasis and detail Luther in his Greater Catechism, in obvious keeping with these biblical imperatives, grounded prayer wholly and utterly in the commandment: "And the first thing is to know how we are obliged to pray because of God's commandment." Luther explains that, in the Mosaic forbidding of the misuse of God's name, "there is demanded that we shall praise the holy name, and call upon or pray to Him in all our need .... Hence it is strictly and seriously commanded, as severely as in all other (commandments) ... that none shall think 'It is all the same whether I pray or not,' like stupid folk who are so foolish as to ask or say: 'What should I pray? Who can tell whether God heeds or will hear my prayer? If I don't pray, some one else will!' and thus get into the habit of never praying at all." No, to call upon God in all our needs "iswhat God wills of us, and it is not for us to say, but we shall and must pray if we are to be Christians, just as we shall and must be obedient to father and mother and the powers that be .... For as it is not right for a son to say to his father: 'What does my obedience matter? I will go and do what I like; it is all one,' but the commandment is laid down: 'Thou shalt and must do it!'; so in this case too it is not a matter whether I want to do it or not, but I shall and must pray." Hence, according to Luther, prayer is simply a "work of obedience": "What and wherefore we ask, we shall so regard as demanded of God and performed in obedience to Him and therefore think: 'On my account it would'be nothing, but it shall be valid because God has commanded it.' Hence shall everyman, whatever he has to ask, always come before God with the obedience of this commandment ... not regarding our own persons, whether we are sinners or pious, worthy or unworthy. And we shall know that God will not play at being cross but will really be angry and punish when we do not ask, just as He punishes all other disobedience." It is perhaps no less striking that Calvin on the other hand does not call attention to the commandment and obedience of prayer nearly so emphatically as Luther. But to the questions: "In what way is it a commandment?" and "To what extent is it obedience?", he really gives a far finer and profounder answer than Luther attempted with his reference to the third commandment. For in view of the fact that it wasJesus Christ who led His disciples in prayer and therefore taught them and the whole Church to pray (Lk. IlIff.), Calvin recalls (Catechism, 1542, Qu. 250 f.) His office as Mediator and Intercessor. To the question: com-

a

ment et queZ titre nous pouvons avoir Za hardiesse de nous presenter devant Dieu, veu que nous en sommes que par trop indignes?EN55 the decisive answer is that we have the command and the

promise that we may and shall call upon God in the name of Jesus Christ. By placing ourselves behind and beside Him, the freedom to address God with our requests is given us at once: car nous prions comme par sa bouche d 'autant qu'iZ nous donne entree et audience et intercede pournousEN56. But this means that He,jesus Christ, is properly and really the One who prays. But we belong to Him, and are therefore empowered, invited and summoned to pray to Him after and with Him, not at all in respect of our own ability and permission, but just in that unity of the "we"who are referred to in the Lord's Prayer and at whose head He has placed Himself. EN 55

EN56

How and by what right can we have the boldness to present ourselves before God in prayer, seeing that we are in every way unworthy to do so? because we pray, as it were, through His mouth, inasmuch as he gives us both access and attention and intercedes for us

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3. Prayer Following in Calvin's footsteps, the Heidelberg Catechism also gives to the question "Why is prayer necessary for Christians?" the reply: "Because it is the chief part of the gratitude which God demands of us, and because God will give His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who with heartfelt sighings unceasingly ask and thank Him for them" (Qu. 116). In so doing, we "have this sure ground that He will certainly hear our prayer, for all that we are unworthy, on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, as He has promised us in His Word" (Qu. 117). From these thoughts of Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism we can better understand what is meant when Rom. 826f. says that it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to pray. Gal. 46 and Rom. 815f. are illuminating in this respect: "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son (according to Rom. 815: the Spirit of vLo8EaLa EN57) into your hearts, crYing (according to Rom. 815: whereby we cry): Abba, Father." It is not a twofold but a single fact that bothJesus Christ with His prayer and also the Holy Spirit with "unutterable groanings" is our Mediator and Intercessor. This can and must be said both of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, and in both cases it concerns the one event of laYing a foundation for prayer, i.e. for the cry, Abba, Father. It is He-Jesus Christ through the Spirit, the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ-who makes good that which we of ourselves cannot make good, who brings our prayer before God and therefore makes it possible as prayer, and who in so doing makes it necessary for us. For Jesus Christ is in us through His Spirit, so that for His sake, praying after Him as the one who leads us in prayer, we for our part may and must pray, calling upon God as our Father. And the Spirit who frees us for this and incites us to it is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the power of His Word and promise and command, the power in which we are with Him the children of God and are addressed as such, so that irrespective of what we ourselves can offer and perform we can call God our Father and go to Him with our requests. The answers of the Heidelberg Catechism are particularly instructive

because

they place the

origin of prayer so expressly in gratitude. This is in accordance with the verse immediately prior to the one quoted from Ps. 50 about calling upon God in need: "Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High" (v. 14). We also find that in Ps. 1381f. and in Phil. 46 prayer is bound up with thanksgiving and grounded in it. And thanks are offered almost formally in the introductions to the Pauline letters (1 Thess. 12, Phil. 13-\ Col. 13, Eph. 116). It is where we have to give thanks that we are authorised and freed, but also claimed, for asking and interceding. Another relationship which is helpful in this connexion is that which is frequently made in the Synoptics between watching and praying. In Mk. 1438 and Mt. 2641 this is shown to be necessary in view of impending temptation: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." If prayer has its origin in the fact that man belongs toJesus Christ, on man's side this is not an unassailable but an extremely assailed datum EN58 which can and will be lost if we sleep or neglect to guard it. The very basis of prayer is thus one which stands in jeopardy, not on God's side but man's, not on that of the spirit but of the flesh. But how is he to guard it? How is he to remain in the unity of the "we" at the head of which Jesus Christ Himself stands and in which he too, then, may pray "Our Father ... "? Alone and in itself, the summons to watch might be uncertain. It becomes meaningful and helpful through the Kat 7TpoaEVXEa8E EN59. For what else does it mean but that, in order not to lose the basis of gratitude and therefore in order to pray, we are summoned to pray? To watch, then, is not to stop doing on this basis what we can do on this basis, and therefore-in spite of temptation, the flesh, ourselves and our whole incapacity-to participate afresh in this capacity, and to gain fresh assurance

EN57 EN58 EN 59

of it.

adoption given and pray

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~ 53. Freedom Before God Ifwe gather all these insights together, and understand Luther's basing of prayer on the commandment against this background and therefore christologically and pneumatologically, then it is clear and convincing and we cannot withhold our assent. Without this explanation, however, it is a mere assertion which cannot be properly illuminated by reference to the third commandment. Perhaps it is for this reason that to the best of my knowledge it has never found the notice and appreciation it deserves.

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If prayer really has its basis in the order and command of God, all the difficulties which arise apart from this basis are dispelled. There is no longer any possibility that in his privation and desire man will not turn to God with his requests but make use of the alternative of trying to help himself or looking for some other help. Not the need but the command will teach him to pray in his need and to reject the thought of other help. Again, in the light of the command it will be clear to him that the need in which he may and shall pray does not start only in the place where he finds himself in difficulty, distress or even doubt. On the contrary, he will find himself in need, and therefore referred to prayer, even where he can immediately help himself or all sorts of other help can flow to him. He will not take it for granted that he will really find help even where this may be so. He will understand that the creature is always in need to the extent that in all its manifestations and experiences it always stands in need of its Creator as the only powerful Giver. He will thus be summoned to make his request even when things go well with him and he can immediately take what he needs. Even in such taking he will know that he is receiving. Even when he counts on it that he may immediately take, he will pray that on this occasion too he may receive. He will indeed know that in truth he can only accept everything from the hand of God, even including what he may perhaps take by reason of his work or various other circumstances. How does he know all this? Simply because he is commanded to pray-to pray in all circumstances, even when he would not himself regard it as immediately necessary, and all the more when he is consumed by need. Furthermore, there can be no place for all the pious and impious arguments against the permissibility and possibility of asking in prayer. What does it matter that God is all-knowing and all-wise, and what reason have we for the luxury of a humility which will cross the path of God's counsel and will with human asking, when it is the all-knowing and all-wise God Himself who commands us to come to Him with our requests? What do we gather from this command? The lofty insight that God is the Lord of the covenant, that His undoubtedly majestic counsel and will are fashioned as the will and counsel of His grace, that our poor human asking is thus taken up into them from all eternity, that He therefore reckons with it even in time, and that there is thus a necessity of asking. If God is not God without us, if He wills to have us with Him in His work of salvation and universal lordship, what use is the objection that we can only pray that His will should be done apart from and in opposition to ours? This can have weight only as an expression of the disobedience wherein

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3. Prayer we refuse the grace in which He takes us up with our requests. In the depth which is afraid to violate God there is hidden a defiance which is unwilling that God should violate us with the demand that we come to Him with our requests, and the affirmation that in all eternity He will not accept us otherwise than as those who ask. In face of the command which tells us that God will have our prayer, these arguments are dispersed to the winds. Again, even the blocking of prayer, the lack of desire and spirit to pray, cannot resist this command, though they are unavoidable wherever man in his longing is conscious of God's holiness and his own unholiness. Ifhe hears the command which says that he shall pray to God in his longing, then he is not asked for his ownjudgment on the infinite qualitative distinction between God and himself, nor is he questioned concerning the consequences entailed. He is not to pass any judgments nor to draw any consequences. He is simply to do what he is called by God to do, and in this action to be a man free before Him. God'sjudgment and the consequences drawn by God, God's mercy and therefore His bridging of the distinction, are revealed by the fact that He calls man to pray. "I cannot pray"? It is no good lying. What I really mean is: "I will not pray," because I try to evade the judgment and the consequences of God, because I will not live by His grace. It is again the case that when the bolt of disobedience is pushed back any man can pray. The first criterion, then, to be noted in regard to prayer is whether it is an act of obedience and can stand as such before God. It cannot stand before God except when it has its basis in His command, the commandment of His grace. 2. We must now emphasise the tacit presupposition of our deliberations thus far, that prayer is decisively petition-petition addressed to God, but still petition. A striking feature of Luther's basing of prayer on the commandment, as also of Calvin's exposition and that of the Heidelberg Catechism, is the restraint with which they understand prayer centrally as petition, developing its other aspects from this centre. Later theologians tried to be cleverer and to interpret petition as only one element of prayer alongside others. The result was that they could no longer understand it properly as petition, that the other elements which they tried to attach to it and really to superordinate over it lost their natural centre and connexion, and therefore that everything became indefinite. We have good cause to remind ourselves again that the Lord's Prayer, apart from the address and the doxology, consists exclusively of pure petitions.

A first reason why it is important to understand prayer definitively as petition is because it is thus clearly distinguished from all arbitrary service of God in which man would like to make himself worthy of God and present something worthy to God. If man, in accordance with God's command, simply lays his need before Him and therefore comes to Him as a suppliant, he thereby renounces all arbitrariness towards God, confessing that there can be no question either of representing himself as worthy or of presenting anything worthy to God. When he comes to God simply with his request, he comes with empty

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S 53. Freedom Before God hands. But empty hands are necessary when human hands are to be spread out before God and filled by Him. It is these empty hands that God in His goodness wills of us when He bids us pray to Him. He who is obedient to Him is ready to begin at the beginning every time he prays. He always understands God as the unique source of all good and himself as absolutely needy in relation to Him. He puts himself joyfully under this fundamental law of the covenant relationship. He has nothing either to represent or to present to God except himself as the one who has to receive all things from Him.

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If by devotion we mean this simple thing, then we may understand prayer as a devotional exercise. But if by devotion we mean an exercise in the cultivation of the soul or spirit, i.e., the attempt to intensifY and deepen ourselves, to purifY and cleanse ourselves inwardly, to attain clarity and self-control, and finally to set ourselves on a good footing and in agreement with the deity by this preparation, then it is high time we realised that not merely have we not even begun to pray or prepared ourselves for prayer, but that we have actually turned away from what is commanded us as prayer. This type of exercise, as evolved and prescribed by Ignatius Loyola for his pupils and as variously recommended in modern secular religion, can perform a useful function as a means of psychical hygiene, but it has nothing whatever to do with the prayer required of us. Prayer begins where this kind of exercise leaves off; and this exercise must leave off where the prayer begins in which neither the collected man nor the distraught, neither the deepened nor the superficial, neither the purified and cleansed nor the impure, and not even the clear and strong, has anything whatever to represent or offer to God, but everything to ask of Him.

A second reason for understanding prayer definitively as request is to be found in the fact that only in this way is there any safeguard that the real man comes before God in prayer. In prayer-and this is why it is commanded-all masks and camouflages may and must fall away.There are necessary and legitimate masks and camouflages. We all wear them. We all have definite roles to play in life, definite functions to exercise, definite services to render, in which we have in some way to "give" ourselves with more or less energy. But in prayer we must and may step out of our role. In prayer man does not perform a function or service. In prayer he has in no way to "give" himself. In prayer it is a matter of the man himself-he who in other spheres must function and serve, and therefore present a persona, and to that extent to wear a mask. What remains when every mask falls? Obviously nothing but the privation and desire which in his various roles, in his function and service, he can only repress and not remove, and therefore realise the more acutely. If in prayer he is placed outside every function and service, then obviously all that remains is his need in relation to God, which, when he thinks and works and eats, when he has intercourse and converse with his fellows, when he attempts in some way to help himself or to be helped in his manifold needs, may well be covered but is not in any sense appeased. The one who has need of God in and in spite of everything is man himself. And because it is man himself whom God calls to Himselfwhen He makes prayer a command for him, this needy one and therefore the one who comes to God in simple petition is the one who prays aright, in obedience to the command of God.

3. Prayer It is to be noted that this isjust as true of the common prayer of the Church as of individual prayer. Another striking feature of the Reformers' exposition of prayer is that even in the case of Luther this distinction is ignored. Certainly there is no mention of it in the Catechisms. The Reformers give no instruction for private prayer. Yetthey are not preoccupied with the "liturgical question." Their interest is simply that there may and must be prayer (both on the part of the community and on that of individuals), and that it shall be true prayer. But according to them, true prayer isjust asking. For obviously it is in asking that man is what he can be only in relationship to God-the needy one who lacks and therefore desires and is wholly and utterly directed to the grace of God. Private books of prayer and Church liturgies, and in both cases both new and old and oldest of all, are to be appraised and viewed from the standpoint whether they really place man himself-in the above-mentioned sensebefore God, whether they do not perhaps allow him to play again a role where he must not do so, but where his freedom before God must be shown in the fact that he simply expresses his need and nothing else.

The question arises whether prayer must not necessarily include thanksgiving, penitence and worship. In this regard the following points may be made. So far as thanksgiving is concerned, it is in fact the root of prayer to the extent that it impinges immediately upon the objective divine basis of this action, upon the command of the gracious God, which is as such an invitation, a permission, a freedom given to man. Who can ask aright without being supremely thankful, and expressing his thanks, that in and with all Christendom he may hear God's Word and experience His power and lordship in the great and little things of world-occurrence, and that he may therefore ask and be obedient to so kind and liberal a command of God? As gratitude responds to this command, and petition arises from gratitude, our asking can neither be agonised, wretched nor paltry on the one side nor can it be imperious on the other, as though God were at its disposal. But how are we to express the gratitude which we owe to God for being allowed to pray? Even the sincerest protestations of gratitude cannot do this even in relation to man, let alone to God. To thank God is obviously to act as He so kindly and liberally invites and demands, and therefore simply to come to Him as suppliants with our needs. But the same is true of repentance as an element in prayer. We certainly cannot pray gratefully without realising the abyss between God and ourselves, and therefore confessing to ourselves and God that, as we are unworthy of His grace and blessings in general, so we do not deserve to be summoned and required to come before Him with our requests. For we have so often scorned, and still do so, the grace shown in these opened doors. Or at least we never value it in all its depth. And therefore all human asking stands only too much in need of repentance and forgiveness. Our asking will also be guided, determined and limited by the fact that it is quite impossible without repentance. But again we must ask how repentance is to become serious and effectual. Certainly not in mere protestations, but in the simple doing of the imperfect in all its imperfection because it is commanded, because the humbling without which one cannot obey this commandment is concrete and serious as we respect and perform what is commanded us (instead of continually ignoring it

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~ 53. Freedom Before God and thus making ourselves guilty). But to do this is to make our requests to God as'we are told to do. The penitential prayers in the Psalms are obviously a model in the sense that they are real prayers. That is, they do not remain mere expressions of shame, contrition and repentance, but they always issue in asking, desiring, sighing and crying towards God that He will forgive the one who prays, that He will not let him fall, that He will show him His way and give him a clean heart and a new spirit. A confession of sin without this climax in petition, i.e., an abstract confession of sin, would not be prayer at all. Only when it results in the corresponding request

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is it prayer.

We now turn to worship, which nowadays is so often placed emphatically in the centre. What is meant by worship? It obviously means turning to God as such, quietness before His deity and its majesty, contemplation of its height and profundity, the expression of full, humbly marvelling and joyfully yet also terrifyingly surprised submission to Him. These are undoubtedly elements in true prayer. And because true prayer is also worship, this means that as petition it always moves within the necessary limits. But we must see to it that this is really the case. For the present emphasis on the aspect of worship has introduced an element of ambiguity. True worship is not the turning to a Deus absconditusEN60 in His naked majesty. It is not the well-known idolatrous cult of a remote and alien "holy" which in its negativity is as such the jascinosumEN61 and tremendum EN62 to which divine service and prayer must be offered in the form of what is ultimately a solemn stupor. If it is not this evil thing, it must be a turning to the Deus revelatusEN63 who is the God of all comfort and the Father of all mercies. But when it is offered to Him, there is in prayer as little abstract worship as abstract thanksgiving or repentance. That we can only worship as we ask means that our asking must be directed to this God, to the One who gives us the wonderful freedom, permission and summons to do so. It must respect God as God, and that means as Father and Saviour. Hence, like thanksgiving and repentance, it must issue in petition. For how can we respect the deity of this God, how can we halt before Him, how can we fear and love Him, how, then, can we worship Him, without doing what this God wants of man? How can we honour, prize and praise Him, except as we come to Him with requests, expecting everything from Him and therefore applying to Him for everything? Obviously, then, it is indubitable and incontestable that true prayer is also thanksgiving, repentance and worship. But the fact remains that decisively, centrally and essentially it is petition, and that only as such is it also thanksgiving, repentance and worship. The other elements are not independent of this; they are all elements of petitionary prayer.

We speak of petitionary EN60 EN61 EN62 EN63

prayer, and therefore of the petitions which God

hidden God fascinating fear revealed God

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3. Prayer requires of us and which we address to Him. Naturally, it is only in virtue of the fact that it is commanded by and addressed to Him that it can form the centre of prayer without, as another ready objection might say, becoming "dangerous"-dangerous for the purity and holiness of prayer. As we have said, it is already the case that our requesting as such will always stand in need of repentance and forgiveness. Rom. 826 is still true: "For we know not what we should pray for as we ought." Man might ask God for anything. The whole of ,human egoism, the whole of human anxiety, cupidity, desire and passion, or at least the whole of human short-sightedness, unreasonableness and stupidity, might flow into prayer (and that by divine commandment!), as the effluent from the chemical factories of Basel is discharged into the Rhine. What will be the result if it is this needy and doubtful asking of ours that constitutes the nature of prayer? But if God is not uneasy in this regard, we certainly need not be. We have already spoken of some of the smaller but undoubtedly effectual catalysts of human asking. To true prayer belong thanksgiving, repentance and worship. Where these elements are at work, each will in its own way contribute to the purity of our asking, to the ordering and cleansing of our privation and desire. And the great catalyst in view of which we need have no anxiety about that danger is that this is not just any sort of asking but the asking addressed to God at His command. We may again think of the intervention of jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit which makes our human asking a movement in the cycle which goes out from God and returns to God. And this means that although what we do is in itself very unholy, even when we pray, it will not fail to be sanctified. There may indeed by an influx of that which is human, perverted and limited into our petitions. We shall come as we are, and God knows well what we are. But as our asking follows His command and is addressed to Him, it is necessarily ordered and purified. What we think we may responsibly ask in obedience to His command and therefore in gratitude, penitence and adoration, for this we may and should ask fearlessly, even ifit is like the deliverance "from this untimely rain" for which an American general prayed during the Ardennes offensive of 1944. For if we are wrong in our view, if we cannot really make the request which comes to our hearts and lips in obedience and therefore truly in responsibility, then God Himself, accepting it as it stands, gives to it the pure and holy form, the ordered and cleansed meaning, which it did not have in our hearts and mouths. For He understands us better than we do ourselves, and on this side, too, what we do badly is made good by His grace. It need hardly be said that there will never be a human request which does not need to be effectively and definitively rectified on this side by the pure hands with which God receives it. We are dependent on God making good that which even with the strictest self-examination we cannot make good in His sight. But we may also rely on the fact that He will do it. Hence we may and should ask fearlessly. We may do so when we on our side have faithfully submitted to the ordering and cleansing; when we have not failed to examine our requests in

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the light of obedience; when we have not omitted the thanksgiving, repentance and worship without which there is no true prayer; when we are tractable to the one grace of God which is at issue on our side too. For in so doing we commend ourselves to the same grace on God's side as well. And when all this is said, we must go back to the beginning, i.e., to the indisputable fact that we are commanded to ask. Everything that has to be said in explanation or qualification of this asking cannot alter but can only emphasise the fact that we are to ask God in obedience. But this means that we must be humble. We must be ready to be taught; ready not to ask for much that we should really like to have; ready to ask for much that we should not have done of ourselves; ready to ask for much that we do not at first see to be necessary. We must also be humble in our realisation of the fact that even our purest asking starts very much in need of, and is wholly dependent upon, its cleansing by the One who enjoins and is willing to receive it. But precisely because it is done in obedience, it may and must also be frank asking, a genuine declaration of our needs, an asking which for all the necessary reservations is free and glad and bold. As such, and only as such, does it fulfil the command. Whether as such it forms the core and centre of our prayer is the question we have to ask ourselves. This is the second criterion of true prayer. 3. The word "we," which has frequently occurred in this discussion, is ontological and not homiletical in character. When we ask who prays, the answer is either "we," of whom 1 am one, or "I" as one in the fellowship and unity of the "we." The question which is our third criterion is the question to each individual, whether and to what extent he is one of this "we." For the asking which constitutes the essence of prayer is the asking of the "we." But who are these "we"? They are obviously the "we" referred to in the address of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, which art in heaven." It is important to notice that this first person plural disappears in the first three requests of the Lord's Prayer, but reappears in the last three, being used no less than eight times in various connexions.

Who and what these "we" are can be stated as follows. "We"are the men who "are with Jesus of Nazareth," who have Him at their Head, who follow Him because He has summoned, invited and claimed them, whom He has summoned to pray with Him. "We" are the men who are closely united, and even made brethren, by their common Head and by His command, so that even in the solitude of the individual they pray and ask together, praying and asking what is fundamentally the same thing, and doing so with and on behalf of one another. But "we" do not form an exclusive circle. On the contrary, "we" are most intimately bound to the human world around us. "We" are united and made brethren among ourselves in order that we may be responsible for the world around us, representing our Lord among them and them before our Lord. The only advantage "we" have over the world around us is that we know that He is our Lord and theirs too, and that we may use the access to God 96

3. Prayer which He has opened up for both us and them. "We" may believe in the midst of the others while they do not yet believe. "We" thus do so provisionally in their place. In this way "we" hold a position which they have not yet occupied, or may even have abandoned. "We" do it for our Lord, the Lord known by us, and therefore for them whose Lord He is also although they do not yet know Him. Hence, "we" also pray in anticipation with them and for them as we pray with and for one another and for ourselves. The "we" who pray and therefore ask are thus a fellowship which is closely knit but for this very reason open to all. This is the Christian community. Just as the holy day is its day and confession its confession, so prayer is the prayer of the Christian community. Prayer has this particular subject. And the question of true prayer is always the question whether and to what extent the individual who prays belongs to this particular subject, to this particular "we." And this is also the question as to the genuinely universal character of his action. This is what differentiates his praying from a private religious action. This is what takes away the egoistic character that it might and indeed must have in itself as the utterance of his personal privation and desire, as his personal asking. This is what liberates his asking and makes it a genuinely human action. For this particular subject, the community, believes, prays and asks only as the representative of the universal subject, of mankind and the world; and the closely knit fellowship is necessarily in its asking one which is open to all, to the whole of creation. He who asks in the community, prays with the brethren together with whom he knows the one Lord over all. He prays alwaysfor his brothers to the extent that his personal asking completes theirs and is his contribution to the constitution of this particular subject and the offering of the prayer which it is commissioned to make. But as he prays in community, he does so in anticipation with and for all other men. He does as an individual what they all can and should do. Hence he does not merely represent himself, or the community in the world, but mankind and the world as a whole before God. His asking as an individual thus acquires a genuinely universal character From this standpoint we may discern at least two lines along which a right answer may be given to the question what is entailed in genuine petitionary prayer to God. What do the "we" ask who are the subject of this true prayer? What does the Christian community ask, and within it the man who really prays? There is no room here for a proper exposition of the Lord's Prayer, which gives us the answer. We compress its reply into two statements which clearly follow from the distinction between the first three and the last three requests. As we are placed among the "we," we are invited and summoned in the first three requests to take up the cause of God and actively to participate in it with our asking. According to the first three requests of the Lord's Prayer, the God who rules and is revealed in Jesus Christ, and through Him bids us call upon Him as our Father, is not a solitary God who wills to work and create, to fight

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and win, to rule and triumph alone. What He wills-and this is one side of the mystery of His grace-is that His cause, which as such is prosecuted by Him and is completely in His free and mighty hand, should not only be His but also ours. He does not will to be God without us, or to exist as such. He calls us to His side. He summons us to make His purposes and aims the object of our own desire. Hence He takes no account of our godlessness. He reckons us among His own. He appeals to His ownership of us. He understands us from this ownership. He thus commands us to desire and will and ask that His name may be hallowed, that His kingdom may come, that His will may be done. He has no need of us. Hence He does not demand our co-operation in His work. He does not make us fellow-gods and fellow-creators, or creaturely fellow-reconcilers and fellow-redeemers. He neither compromises Himself nor does He overload us. He wills and demands of us that which is proper to us in relation to Hun, and therefore just our asking, but primarily and basically our asking for the advance and triumph of His own cause. Before Him and hence in truth, man in himself and without disguise is the man whose need is that God should prove and maintain His greatness as God, that He should be glorified, that His Word should be finally spoken and heard. That man may express this need and make it the subject of his petition is the command of God in its basic form. For this is man's modest participation in the work of jesus Christ, in which it has indeed come to pass that this man has made God's cause utterly His own. Without this participation in His work we could not belong to the "we" at whose Head He stands. Ifwe do belong to this "we," this participation cannot fail to be our own most intimate need. It is not the case, then, that in these first three requests we are as it were outside the sphere of our proper need and asking. Nor is it the case that God's kindness to man emerges only when we are finally allowed to make our own requests. But it is the basic proof of God's kindness to man in this matter that, even when everything seems to suggest that it cannot be so, He understands us in such a way as to ascribe t~is need to our indifferent and defiant hearts and to lay this request upon our lips, which open so eagerly for other requests, drawing us first to His side and then when we are set there allowing us to identify our desires with His. Again, here in these first three requests there is displayed the universal character of the particular requests of the Christian community and therefore of the personal requests of each individual in the community; for prayer is here made expressly for what all mankind and the whole world has need of, for what is of benefit for absolutely everyone. If these three requests are put first, then the same universal character will be enjoyed by those which follow even though they cannot display it so clearly. But it is essential that they be put first. Nor are they a mere introduction to be recited before we really come to the point. It is they which make human petition genuine prayer, the prayer of the Christian community, Christian, particular and therefore universal prayer. And they correspond directly to the grace of the divine command, to the freedom and frankness with which God takes man into fellowship when He bids him ask. 98

3. Prayer The last three petitions of the Lord's Prayer are the inversion and consequence of the first three. The "we" now come to the fore. As and because they are invited and summoned to espouse and actively to participate in the cause of God in their requests, they are also invited and summoned to ask God on His side to espouse and actively to participate in their cause. If God the Creator does not will to be God without man, neither can man the creature be man without God. His cause would be lost if God did not make it His own. But that He does so is not a matter of course. Man has no control over His grace. It would not be grace if it had not continually to be asked for. This is what takes place when in the fellowship of the "we" he is summoned to ask for his daily bread, for the forgiveness of his sins, for preservation from temptation. In their place these requests are indispensable, and they come under the commandment no less than the first three. Man himself and undisguised, man as God wills to have him in prayer, is the man who also has his own cause as described in these last three petitions. If he had no cause of his own, no needs and desires of his own, he would not be the man whom God has willed and created as a separate being, distinct from Himself. There can thus be no question of man's cause falling to the ground. On the contrary, it is honoured by God making it His own. Our asking Him to do this is our modest participation in the work of jesus Christ Himself, but now in the opposite sense. For in the work of jesus Christ it has indeed come to pass and been fulfilled that God has made man's cause His own, not only salvaging it but leading it to victory and clothing it with His divine glory. Without the light of this glory on our humanity,without participation in the victory ofjesus Christ, we cannot belong to the "we" at whose head He stands. If we do belong to them, we must desire this participation in Him. To participate aright in God's cause we need God to stand security for our cause. For this reason, and always in the light of everything that constitutes our humanity before God, this has always to be asked for. Hence, when we ask for what we ourselves need, our requests follow the same and not a different line as in the first three petitions. We need it in order to be present to His glory (asking that His name may be glorified and that His kingdom may come and that His will may be done). We may thus be free and bold and defiant to claim God as really for us, as our Support and Helper, as the Giver of the good gifts which we need. And our asking loses its merely private character, the personal concern being elevated to that of all mankind and all creation. Again, man may have his own needs. His privation and desire are justified by the fact that according to the first three petitions he stands in the service of God as he prays them. If all creation understood itself as request for the triumph of God's cause, it could and should be an individual request that God would accept its cause. In the last three petitions of the Lord's Prayer, the Christian community and each individual Christian is the spokesman who expresses this legitimate concern of each man and all creation. We must not be ashamed of this concern; we are not on a lower level nor in an inferior and transitory sphere when we utter it. 99

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~ 53. Freedom Before God What we can and should pray is thus indissolubly united in the work of jesus Christ. It is always a matter of God's glory and of our own salvation. We have only to keep to this unity and we shall belong to the "we" whose prayer is true prayer. 4. True prayer is prayer which is sure of a hearing. By "hearing" is to be understood the reception and adoption of the human request into God's plan and will, and therefore the divine speech and action which correspond to the human request. And the assurance of prayer is the confident anticipation of this hearing which accompanies the human request-the assurance that when we address a petition to God it is not only received by Him but infallibly passes over into His plan and will and cannot lack the corresponding divine speaking and doing. It goes without saying that this assurance, since its object is the attitude of the sovereign God, has the character of hope. But as such it cannot merely precede or only follow the human request. On the contrary, the human request is made wholly and utterly under the determination of this hope. And this hope, as and because it is directed to God, has on its side the character of unreserved and unquestioning certainty, and therefore not in any sense that of a problem or an open question. Asking is an action which does not query the divine hearing; otherwise it cannot be the asking of true prayer. The only questionable thing is whether our asking is indeed this wholly unquestioning action. We remember how human asking and divine giving, human seeking and the divine causing to find, human knocking and the divine opening are mentioned together in Mt. 77f. and obviously regarded as standing in a necessary relationship. And we recall that in the continuation in v. 9 f. even an evil man will hardly give his son a stone instead of bread or a serpent instead of a fish when he asks him. "How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" We see the same close connexion between the human and the divine movement in Ps. 9114f.: "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation." And Ps. 14519: "He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them." And the same thought seems to be echoed in 1 In. 514f.: "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he

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heareth whatsoever we ask, we know OTt ExofLEV Ta alT~fLaTa iJT~KafLEV aVTovEN64." Or, in the imperative wording of Mk. 1 122f.: "Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you. That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray-ntaTEVETE OTt EAa{3ETEKat EaTat V/-LLVEN65." Nor must we forget 5f the sharp warning in Jas. 1 .: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let hinl ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For

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that we have the petitions that we desired of him believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them

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3. Prayer let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; he is dv~p 8 {1Jvxos EN66, unstable in all his ways." The Reformers, therefore, stood on sure ground when they described assurance not merely as a laudable but optional property, but as a conditio sine qua non EN67 of true prayer. One cannot "pray uncertainly," wrote Luther in the Greater Catechism. For as we are commanded to pray, we are not only told that our asking is well pleasing to God, but also that He grants what we ask. "So canst thou advance and speak to Him: 'Here I come, dear Father, and ask, not out of my own understanding or worthiness, but at thy command and promise, so that I cannot err or be deceived.' He who does not believe this promise must know that he provokes God by supremely dishonouring and offending Him." Similarly Calvin asks (Cat., 1542, Qu. 248): Quand nons prions Dieu, est-ce a l'aventure, ne sachant point si nous profiterons ou non? ou bien si nous devons etre certains, que nos prieres seront exauceesEN68 And he gives the reply: II nous faut toujours avoir ce fondement de nos prieres, qu 'elles seront rer;ues de Dieu et que nous obtiendrons ce que nous requerons entant qu 'il sera expedient. .. Car si nous n 'avons fiance en la bonte de Dieu, il nous est impossible de l'invoquer en veriteEN69• And perhaps the strongest thing said in this connexion is to be found in the last question (129) of the Heidelberg Catechism (in explanation of the word Amen): "Amen means, this shall be true and certain. For my prayer is much

more certainly heard by God than I feel in my heart that I desire such from Him." Here is a statement which is still quite uninfected by Cartesianism. It is not as if our prayer were the certain thing and His hearing the uncertain, but precisely the opposite. We can doubt the value, power and sincerity of our owu asking, but not God's hearing. Will our request as such ever be anything but weak and poverty-stricken? Well, we are not called upon to believe in its power and richness. We are called upon to believe that it is heard by God even as it is prayed: EX0f.LEV, €Aa{3ETEEN70• It is because it is heard that we pray, and not because we are so skilled in asking.

According to these biblical passages and the exposition of the Reformers, this assurance is unconditionally demanded. But what is its basis and origin? How can we so boldly and unquestioningly take the content of our human asking into our hope in God, into the very will of God Himself? What does faith mean here? There cannot, of course, be any question of trying to build a bridge into the darkness and emptiness, or of a titanic movement of defiance. This could only issue in an impotent challenging of God, and would quickly enough break up. Here, too, faith must have its basis. And indeed, it does. We take up again the insight of our previous (third) consideration. The man who really prays, and therefore prays with this assurance of being heard, belongs to the "we," to the body whose Head isJesus Christ. But in "Christ," in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and therefore in fellowship with Him, the praying man is not separated from God nor God from Him. Rather, in Jesus Christ man is from eternity bound up with God, and God from eternity with man. And now EN66 EN67 EN68

EN69

EN70

a double minded man necessary condition When we pray to God, is it as a matter of throwing dice, not knowing whether or not we will benefit? Or is it rather the case that we ought to be certain that our prayers will be granted? We must always lay for our prayers this foundation: that they will be received by God and that we shall obtain what we request, as soon as it is expedient. Because if we do not have trust in God's goodness, it is impossible for us truly to call upon Him we have, ye receive

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~ 53. Freedom Before God "we" may pray with and after Him, making the great request which He as man has uttered and still utters at God's right hand in this union, establishing, confirming, renewing and assuring it in His obedience, in His whole existence, in the work of His life and death, and summarising it in the Lord's Prayer as the request for God's cause and man's. We ask comme par sa boucheEN71 (Calvin). But if we do this, praying as those who belong to Him and thus in conjunction with His asking, this means-and here we have the basis of faith and its assurance of being heard-that when we pray to God we have Him on our side from the very outset, and we for our part stand on His side from the very outset, so that from the very outset we must be certain that He hears our prayer. In His Son God has become man, and therefore He has actually taken our side and become our Brother. And in His Son we are actually raised as His brethren to the side of God. Now if the Son asks Him, how can the Father possibly fail to hear Him? How can His asking fail to be accompanied by hearing? And how, then, can the Father fail to hear and answer those whom His Son calls His own, who are together with His Son His children, who ask Him in company with His Son, with whom and for whom the Son asks? How can there be even the smallest interval between asking and hearing? AsJesus Christ asks, and we with Him, God has already made Himself the Guarantor that our requests will be heard. Indeed, He has already heard them. In this respect we move within the specifically Johannine thought of prayer "in the name of Jesus." In His name means under His leadership and responsibility, in the unity of our asking with His, in obedience to the summons of this one, but also with the support of His power as that of the Son, of His unity with the Father. Hence we are told inJn. 1623f.: ''Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." Or again inJn. 1516: "I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." And again inJn. 1413f.: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." In this connexion it is as well t~ remember the qualification of the "you" to whom and of whom it is said in Mt. 1819f.: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

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The objection that God cannot hear man's prayer without as it were "losing face," without abandoning Himself in some sense to the creature, fades into nothingness when seen in this light. If ever there was a miserable anthropomorphism, it is the hallucination of a divine immutability which rules out the possibility that God can let Himself be conditioned in this or that way by His creature. God is certainly immutable. But He is immutable as the living God and in the mercy in which He espouses the cause of the creature. In distinction from the immovability of a supreme idol, His majesty, the glory of His omnipoEN71

as it were, through his mouth

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3. Prayer tence and sovereignty, consists in the fact that He can give to the requests of this creature a place in His will. And does He not do this in profoundest accord with Himself by doing it precisely where in the creation He is concerned with Himself, with His beloved Son and those who are His? It obviously takes place in complete faithfulness to Himselfwhen He lets the creature, in its unity with Himself, participate in His omnipotence and work, in the magnifying of His glory and its own salvation, by commanding it to ask and hearing its requests, and when He truly gives it a place at His side in the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of the world. God cannot be greater than He is in Jesus Christ, the Mediator between Him and man. And in Jesus Christ He cannot be greater than He is when He lets those who are Christ's participate in His kingly office, and therefore when He not only hears but answers their requests. And therefore it is not an insolent but a genuinely humble faith, not a particularly bold but a simple and ordinary Christian faith, which is confident and assumes that God will grant what it asks, indeed that He has already done so even as it asks. This faith is not, then, an additional and optional achievement for religious virtuosos. It is absolutely obligatory for all those who want to pray aright. Any doubt at this point is doubt of God Himself, the living God who inJesus Christ has entered into this fellowship and intercourse with His creature. Any vacillation or questioning is the horrible confusion of God with that immovable idol. The worshipper of the idol must not be surprised ifhe calls upon it in vain. But true reverence and humility before God, and real submission to His will, are to be found when man adopts his allotted place in that fellowship with God, when he enters into that intercourse with Him, when he takes quite seriously acceptance of His command and promise, and therefore when he is no less certain of the hearing of his request than of the God to whom he turns. For this God is not only occasionally but essentially, not only possibly and in extraordinary cases but always, the God who hears the prayers of His own. We may again point to the fact that Calvin (Qu. 248) and the Heidelberg Catechism (Qu. 1 17) see the "firm basis," lejondement, of prayer in the fact that God hears the man who asks Him. Note that they do not find it in man's faith that this is so, but in the objective fact of the hearing, which is of course identical with the objective fact that he is commanded by God to ask Him (as discussed under our first head). Thus it is only an apparent paradox to say that human prayer has its origin in the divine hearing. And in any case it is particularly clear in this matter that the Gospel and the Law are not twofold but one.

By poin ting to the certainty of correspondence between asking and hearing we have established a fourth criterion of true prayer. That this certainty has in itself nothing to do with a special spiritual warmth, intensity and excitement in prayer will be evident from what has already been said. It cannot fail to make prayer urgent. But the urgency is that of the Holy Spirit pressing, driving and impelling the one who prays, and continually leading him to more radical and serious depths and fresh turns and aspects of the fellowship with God grounded in Jesus Christ, and therefore to the freedom of an asking which is certain of its case, to the liberty of the children of God and of the right which 103

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they are given. Though this may also carry spiritual excitement in its train, it need not do so and it must not be confused with any spiritual excitement. No such excitement is demanded of us; only a profoundly restful, peaceful and joyful openness for this leading of the Spirit. The Spirit definitely leads man into that liberty of the children of God where they make use of their right. What man is asked is whether he is open to this leading. 5. Under a final head we may gather together various points and questions concerning the form of prayer in ethics. Decisively and comprehensively it will be everywhere true that even the form of prayer must stand under the rule of obedience, which in this context can only be understood as a rule of freedom. What this rule is we now know. Prayer rests on the commandment. It is petition. It is the prayer of all Christendom. And it is prayer which is sure of a hearing. The form of true prayer must always correspond to this rule. The question concerning it is partly the same and partly not quite the same, depending on whether it is the prayer of the individual or of the assembled community. But an abstract division between the two is theologically impossible. We shall have to remember in both instances that the individual is a member of the community, and that even in his private prayers he can pray aright only in this capacity. But again, the community is composed only of individuals, so that even in its assembling, if it is to pray aright, it can only express the real requests of these individuals. It is probably best, therefore, to consider the various problems of the form of prayer together, although always with a view to these two sides. True private and public prayer will always have this particularly in common, that as petition they will have the character of intercession. This follows both from the nature of the individual praying man as a member of the community, from that of each assembled congregation as a single form of the one ecumenical Church in the narrower and wider sense of the term, and also from its task in relation to the world, especially the world outside. We have seen that one cannot plead one's own cause before God without first and foremost pleading His, which is also the cause of the whole community, of the ecumenical Church and indeed of all creation. The individual will plead his own cause legitimately, joyfully and effectually when he does so in this greater context. When prayer is offered in the name of Jesus, then implicitly or explicitly it will include His request for Peter: that "thy faith fail not" (Lk. 2232), as a request for the fathers, brothers and sons in the community and for all its members. Again, it will include the "high priestly prayer" in its two characteristic stages: "I pray for them: 1 pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me" (In. 179), yet nevertheless: "Not for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word" (In. 1720). We may also recall the urgency with which Paul exhorts his churches "to help together by prayer" (2 Cor. Ill) "that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified" (2 Thess. 31), "to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that 1 may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judaea; and that my service that 1 have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints" (Rom. 1530f,). We remember, too,Jas. 516f,: "Pray for one another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions

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3. Prayer as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." Nor must we fail to see that the prayer which the disciples are enjoined to make for those who persecute them, thus proving themselves to be the children of their Father in heaven (Mt. 544[.), is, on account of its closeness to Jesus' request on the cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lk. 2334), the strongest possible indication of the extensiveness of Christian prayer. And what does it signify that in the final clause of the fifth petition in the Lord's Prayer we read: "Aswe forgive them that trespass against us," and that this point is so strikingly and powerfully underlined in Mt. 614 (cf. Mk. 1 1 25): "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses"? Does not this mean in effect that Christian prayer is given the form of an action in which the praying man is active in solidarity even with those who are distant and very distant from him, i.e., of a comprehensive action? A practical result of all this might well be that we ask ourselveswhether intercession ought not to figure much more regularly and prominently in our Church services than it does to-day, and thus become far more a rule of private prayer as well.

It will, however, be a second common feature of true private and public prayer that they are both subject to a certain discipline. We must say this cautiously, for no general and absolutely valid rules of discipline can actually be drawn up. Yetwe have to say too that, since it occurs in obedience to the command of God, some sort of discipline and order cannot be absent from true prayer. It can never simply be imposed from without. Again, it can never try to absolutise and eternalise itself. It can only derive from the freedom before God which is here identical with absolute obligation. But this freedom before God will con tin ually give rise to relative and concrete obligations. One such obligation might result from the fact that prayer is not a state but an act. This being the case, there may no doubt be quiet and silent prayer, and this will be the rule in individual prayer, but there can hardly be prayer which does not take shape in definite thoughts and words. It will always be speech, whether silent or vocal. And in divine service it will very definitely be vocal. No one has ever been able to make crystal clear to us what is really meant by the so-called "silent worship" which has invaded a wider area of the Church from the Quakers, the Berneuchenern and other sects. They say that it is beautiful, and in any case necessary for the soul's health, for a churchful of men to keep communal silence for five minutes. It can also be found embarrassing. But has it any spiritual meaning? Can it be established and justified theologically? Is it not repugnant to the nature of divine service as an assembly of the community, in which prayer ought not to be a private matter but common and therefore in some wayvocal? And does it not lead us to the idea of wordless prayer, which as a whole and exceptions apart cannot be regarded as true prayer?

Another obligation can follow from the simple fact that man needs to pray much more often than he is capable of freely forming his own thoughts and words into prayer. More generally, he must continually learn to pray, like the first disciples ofJesus. From this follows the relative legitimacy and necessity of formulated prayer. A second possible and necessary reason for this, especially

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~ 53. Freedom Before God in relation to prayer at divine service, is the communal character of true prayer. When a man prays the Lord's Prayer, externally at least his praying is more surely carried, led and protected by the prayer of Jesus Christ Himself, and more surely set in the fellowship of the prayer of all Christendom, than when he goes his own way as a praying individual. Though the Lord's Prayer is certainly not intended to be the only possible form, both in public and private prayer it is unwise to try to break free from its dominion and service. The same might also be said, with appropriate reservations, of other formulas, like those proposed by Luther in the appendix to his Smaller Catechism, or the usual graces at meals and the formularies of public worship. The rule: Better according to a form than not at all, or: Better according to a form in the community than freely in separation, is one which might well be argued, although it cannot be regarded as the last word.

A further obligation results from the character of true prayer as petition. A request, or even a series of requests, is soon uttered if it is close to our hearts. Hence true prayer may and must probably be short rather than long. It is based on the assurance of being heard. And, as we have seen, it is not a confession of God before men, but an address to Him personally, an urgent flight to Him in supreme objectivity. It has thus no reason to spin itself out in the form of meditations or theological or rhetorical formalities.

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Strict discipline is perhaps required in this respect, especially in public worship. Mt. 67f. must be remembered: "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." Luther kept to this in the formularies of the Smaller Catechism. The extemporary prayers with which Calvin concluded his sermons are also short and good; and this is also a laudable feature in the extant prayers of Christopher Blumhardt. But we can only saywith shame that after the 17th century a terrible verbosity and volubility began to distinguish Protestant liturgies from the conciseness of the Roman Missal.It is to the credit of the modern liturgical movement that it is apparently trying to return to prayer which is taut and compressed. But unfortunately this does not mean that we do not have to suffer dreadful things in this respect even to-day and from the lips of good people in the form of so-called "extemporary" prayer.

Is there also an obligation with regard to definite times and hours of prayer? We might well believe so in view of the general human weakness which does not do at all easily what it does not do to rule. We must again recall that common prayer forms as essential an element in divine service as the proclamation and the hearing of God's Word. Again, the pious custom of morning and evening prayer has a solid basis in what is on the biblical view of things the meaningful alternation of light and darkness. Grace at meals is also well founded as a serious expression of human need and decisive ifnot at all self-evident divine help in the most vital sphere of the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer. General and absolute rules are obviously impossible in this matter. Serious reasons can be advanced for a different course of action, e.g., in the question of saying grace. But those who do take a different course must continually ask themselves whether they really do have seri106

3. Prayer ous reasons or whether the secret of their refusal to be bound is not simply a blatant or more subtle slovenliness.

When all this is considered, we must also say no less emphatically on the opposite side that private and public prayer, if genuine, will necessarily have it in common that they take place in man's free, hearty and spontaneous obedience. It is indeed a question of the obedience to God which is on no account to be exchanged for the performance of an imposed and basically alien work of the Law. We have already said that here, too, discipline can only flow from freedom. But this means that it can never become a developing programme. God wants us ourselves when He wills that we should be suppliants and summons us to pray. It is therefore one of the most frightful things that can happen between Him and man when prayer becomes a mask behind which man does not really ask, or a mechanism by which he only tries to create for himself a good conscience in relation to the divine summons. We might well be tempted to formulate our rule conversely: "Better no prayer at all than the operation of this kind of mechanism," or more positively: "From every mechanism to the freedom of true, because free and therefore sincere petition." For "the Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth" (Ps. 14518). On the other hand, "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people ... for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid" (Is. 2913[.). It is understandable that the Reformers, and especially Calvin, should be so emphatic at this point when we recall the background of mediaeval practice. The "Catholic" concept of the "discipline of prayer" (officium) was no less unfortunate than that of Sunday observance. God is a Spirit. He wills to be worshipped in truth. He thus desires the heart of man, intelligence et affection. Toutes priires donc faites seulement

de bouche, sont ... non seulement

superflues

mais deplaisantes

aDieu

EN72.

There is required an ardeur de prierEN73 which comes from the discovery of our misery and poverty and from the desirvehement d'obtenir grace devantDieuEN74, yet which does not have its origin in ourselves, but only in the Holy Spirit, for whom we may and should therefore continually ask (Cat., 1542, Qu. 240-245).

Here we are particularly confronted by the problem of prayer in the divine service of the congregation, in which there is a spe