Go here to read Part One.
Barth begins with a critique of casuistry, the venerable practice of identifying general principles and applying them to particular cases. Barth rejects casuistry for a variety of reasons. One, God never speaks in generalities but always in specifics. Even the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount, which seem to glow with the aura of timeless truth, were specific commandments given to specific persons in a specific socio-cultural-historical context.
Second, doing casuistry mandates a caste of experts who are schooled in applying these allegedly timeless truths to a given situation. What one ends up with, Barth argues, are more or less arbitrary interpretations based on the interpreter’s bias or even his/her zeal to bend a clear No into something that sounds like a Yes.
I’m reminded of the weeks and months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Preachers here and there dusted off their notes on Just War doctrine, and applied them from the pulpit to the coming conflict. And depending on what the preacher thought of the U.N. inspection regime or the likelihood of holding the multi-ethnic state of Iraq together after decapitating it, it turned out that the conflict was shaping up to be both a Just and an Unjust War!
Thirdly, casuistry infringes on the human freedom and obligation to obey God. To live responsibly before God and neighbor is to hear and obey (Deuteronomy 6: 4-6), not to extrapolate, interpret, or, God forbid, evade and rationalize. Casuistry hands the Christian a paint-by-numbers set when God wants artists to create masterpieces at the Spirit’s inspiration.
The idea that the individual Christian cannot refer his/her ethics to a higher authority gets reinforced many pages later when Barth finally treats of war in detail. Time and again Barth emphasizes the individual Christian citizen’s responsibility in both war and peace. The Church was wrong, he writes, when it told early modern Christians that their sole ethical obligation was to obey the State and answer its summons to kill, quashing whatever moral reservations they might have had about the justness of the cause or the iniquity of the other side. Contra Louis XIV, each of us, collectively constitutes the State.[1] Therefore each of us must soberly decide for war or peace.
There’s a strongly Protestant flavor to Barth’s critique of casuistry. Barth will not countenance a Church of docile sheep easily led by the priest in the confessional or the politician at the microphone. But the critique is not so much grounded in any confidence that the laity or the general public is inherently smarter than its leaders. Barth believes that God still speaks in Word and Spirit. He would have Christians believe the same, rather than looking up the answer in someone’s rule book.
Lastly, casuistry sets up principles where God ought to be. God alone is timeless, eternal truth. One can hear in this objection an echo of Barth’s objections to apologetics. Just as there is no high ground one can get to in order to evaluate the truth or falsity of the gospel, the Word of God being self-authenticating, God’s command is itself good, and not an enunciation of a separate and possibly higher goodness.[2]
This is a great post, thanks!
Posted by: Eric Lee | 17 January 2008 at 02:43 PM