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Editor’s Preface

What shall we do? In the summer and winter semesters of 1928, a year after the publication of Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit and Carl Schmitt’s Der Begriff des Politischen, the same year that Eberhard Grisebach brought out his work Gegenwart, the Kierkegaard renaissance reached its height, and the word “decision” was on the lips of all, Karl Barth at Münster put to himself for the first time, in a series of academic lectures, the fundamental question of ethics. The Christian form of this question is: What is commanded of us by God? Not man but the Word of God as the commanding and claiming of man is, as the acting subject, the theme of theological ethics. It would be a misunderstanding to conceive of this Word as an abiding objective truth which is inscribed somewhere and formulated in some way, which man may know or not and acknowledge or not, and over which he can gain the mastery by insight or act. Instead, it is expressly understood as the revelation of the command of God, as a present event in the midst of the reality of our life which he who hears God’s Word cannot overlook.

The ethical lectures of 1928 were not printed during the lifetime of Karl Barth because the author, as he confessed to his friend Eduard Thurneysen, appears in them as still an advocate of the doctrine of the orders of creation which later he passionately rejected. Nevertheless, this circumstance and explanation should not cause us to lose sight of the fact that in these 1928 lectures, notwithstanding their borrowing of a bit of debatable tradition, there did in fact take place a fresh grounding of the materials of general and special ethics which was generated by the rediscovery of the Word and which resembles what may be seen in respect of God’s Word in the Christian Dogmatics in Outline, which had been published in the early autumn of 1927. In those Münster years Karl Barth found himself in lively debate with his brother, the philosopher Heinrich Barth, with the religious philosopher Heinrich Scholz, who later became professor of mathematical logic and basic research, with the philosopher Heinrich Knittermeyer, and also with leading representatives of the Roman Catholic theology of the day. In part the ethical lectures arose under the impression of the impulses received in these discussions. In a strict sense they do not belong to the dialectical phase of the development of Barth’s theology, that of the Romans and the works of reforming revolt at the beginning of the twenties. On the other hand they are also not an expression of the new principle of analogy. Instead, the present work forms part of a bridge for the road which leads from the 1922 essay Das Problem der Ethik in der Gegenwart (Ges. Vorträge I, pp. 125ff.) to the ethics of the Church Dogmatics. In the 1928 lectures Barth offered a general sketch of theological ethics in which he anticipated what would be developed in the Church Dogmatics at the end of each volume as the doctrine of the command of God. While this chief theological work of his remained a fragment—apart from the basis of ethics in II, 2 and the chapter of special ethics in the doctrine of creation which deals with the command of God the Creator in III, 4, the author has left behind only his doctrine of baptism (IV, 4) and some sections of the ethics of reconciliation—the 1928 outline is undoubtedly of particular interest not only because it is the only complete sketch of a detailed elucidation of the doctine of sanctification but also because it represents the first structured lectures of Barth that we have.

The text of the lectures was available for this edition in two forms. On the basis of a manuscript that has not survived, we have first the original which was typed at Barth’s dictation by Charlotte von Kirschbaum, his assistant for many years; we then have a copy which Rudolf Pestalozzi, a Zürich merchant who was a friend of the author’s, had duplicated and which in 1929 was distributed by the SCM in Geneva in two volumes, Ethics I (254 pages) and Ethics II (301 pages).

The author expanded the original with a series of additions written partly in ink and partly in pencil in the margins. Among these, two groups may be distinguished. First we have those which were put in the text at once, and presumably before the course began, since the Pestalozzi version includes them. The text containing these additions represents the lectures as Barth delivered them in 1928/1929. In this edition it is called Text A. Then there are the additions which were obviously made later, since they are not in the Pestalozzi copy of 1929. When Barth moved from Münster to Bonn he repeated the lectures to his students there in the summer of 1930 and the winter of 1930/1931. It may be conjectured that the second group of additions to the original arose on the occasion of this repetition. A comparison with the notebooks which two of the Bonn audience, Pastor Helmut Traub and Professor Helmut Gollwitzer, have kindly placed at my disposal strengthens this conjecture. The basis of the present edition, then, is Text B, the full text of the lectures of 1928/1929 supplemented by the additions of 1930/1931. The marks ⌜⌝ are used in this edition to denote these additions. As a rule we have refrained from reproducing single words from the first version when these had to be excised or changed by the author in order to fit in the extensions. On the other hand, an excised word or phrase or sentence is given in the notes as Text A when a new version has replaced it in Text B to expand the sense or to make it more precise.

In reproducing the text I have kept to the guidelines laid down by the Conference of Editors of the Barth Gesamtausgabe. Incomplete sentences have been completed according to sense, and missing words have been added, in angular brackets. Grammatical mistakes have been corrected, repetitions excised, and spelling slips put right, without being noted. The author’s style of spelling has been adjusted in principle to modern usage and kept only where it is especially characteristic of Barth, e.g., in the use of capitals for Alle, Viele, Jeder, and Andere. The punctuation has also been improved and completed in accordance with modern rules. In doubtful cases I have kept to the general trend in the Church Dogmatics. The underlinings of words and sentences in Text A have been indicated by italics. But before beginning his lectures in Münster, and two years later in preparing Text B, Barth introduced additional underlinings, partly for oral delivery and partly to emphasize more the material importance of certain words and phrases. Naturally it has not been possible in every case to distinguish clearly between the two intentions. Hence the additional underlinings have not been introduced into the present text in cases where the choice of words in the sentence as a whole seems to make them superfluous. In the interests of greater perspicuity the text has also been given a tighter structure by the introduction of new divisions. Sometimes the author prepared the way for these either by a dot and dash or by a simple slanting line, which in many cases, of course, simply indicates the end of a lecture. It has been thought necessary and helpful, at times, to tie the text together by additional sentences. These are indicated by a vertical line after the period. Sections that Barth cut out of the first version and marginal notes in the Ms which are notes on the text but not true corrections or necessary additions are dealt with in the footnotes. When the author simply cites or alludes to a biblical verse the reference has been supplied by the editor in angular brackets. Works by other authors which are given only abbreviated titles in the main body of the text are given their full titles in the notes along with the place and year of publication and the numbers of the pages in the edition used by Barth. Reference is also made to more recent editions of these works. Quotations from books and writings are given in full wherever possible. When there is divergence from the original wording the note is introduced by a “cf.” and when the quotations are incomplete or there is obviously a formal mistake in the author’s version, the correct text is given in the footnote. Some special difficulties arose in the final chapter when the semester was reaching its close and Barth did not always succeed in expressing his thoughts precisely in the decreasing time available. In one or two instances the editor has here taken the liberty of interpreting grammatically complicated sentences, and in a few others attention is drawn in the notes to obvious errors of grammar, fact, or syntax.

Indexes of scripture references, names, and subjects have been supplied with the help of Sebastian Barth, Gerhard Siegert, and Reiner Marquard, whose cooperation I am glad to acknowledge.

Thanks are also due to Professor Markus Barth, who did valuable preliminary work for this edition and in particular gave me essential help in deciphering one part of his father’s handwritten marginal notes. I must also thank Pastor Dieter Zellweger, Mr. Siegfried Müller, and Mrs. Else Koch for their help in establishing the titles of some older works and their researches in some historical questions. I am especially indebted to Dr. Heinrich Stoevesandt for his expert advice in the grammatical and syntactical clarification of various passages, for his help in verifying not a few dicta whose elucidation demanded skill in detection, and also for many important pointers. He gave me powerful support in preparing this edition, especially in its final phase. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Fritz Schröter, who read the proofs and here and there suggested improvements in the Ms, and also to the Theologischer Verlag Zürich for its kindness and friendly cooperation.

DIETRICH BRAUN