Cultural Synthesis to......

Modem Theology 5:4 July 1989 ISSN 0266-7177 $3.00

FROM CULTURAL SYNTHESIS TO COMMUNICATIVE ACTION: THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND ETHICAL THEOLOGY

WILLIAM SCHWEIKER

The Nineteenth century bequeathed much to us. For theology one of its gifts was the importance of the Kingdom of God for biblical and systematic thought.1 The status and import of this symbol was intertwined with yet another gift: the problem of articulating the relation of ethical and dogmatic reflection within the compass of the theological sciences. This second gift exposed, at the level of method and discipline, the deeper problem of the status and import of Christian claims for the wider culture. In a word, the question of the veracity of religious symbols was intertwined with that of the relation between dogmatic and ethical reflection. For many theologians in the last century that relation was clear. Ethics was either an autonomous discipline or it provided the basic conceptual resources for making sense of dogmatic symbols and thus for carrying on the theological task in an age of criticism. For our time, these solutions bequeathed to us from the past have become problems.

Theologians earlier in this century cried Nein to the attempt to ground dogmatics in ethics and to all claims for the autonomy of the ethical. Yet with the eclipse of the Neo-orthodox consensus about the need to subsume ethics into dogmatics, the question concerning the relation of these disciplines has returned. And so too has reflection on the Kingdom of God. For some thinkers, like Glebe-Mller, Peukert and others, the task at hand is to think beyond Christocentric interpretations of the Kingdom, or its demythologization into individual encounters with the Word of God.2 Theologians facing nuclearism, political and economic oppression, and the wanton destruction of nature must reconsider the

Professor William Schweiker, The Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

368 William Schweiker

status of their discourse and other ways of interpreting religious symbols. Small wonder that currents of thought prevalent in the last century seem oddly familiar and call for critical reconsideration.

Recent developments in thought bear on this reconsideration of dogmatics and ethics and the status of Christian claims and symbols. This paper explores merely one strand in this discussion. I will do so by tracing a line of thought from Ernst Troeltsch to the recent work of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Trutz Rendtorff. The reason for exploring these thinkers is that they have argued for the normative status of theological discourse. In doing so they have been compelled to make claims for ethical norms and God-talk amidst cultural relativism. Significantly, the symbol of the kingdom has played a large part in their work. Thus whether or not one agrees with their project, by interpreting their works important developments in theological reflection come to light as well as some of the problems current theology faces.

My approach to these thinkers and issues is admittedly an interpretive and historical one. This is, for want of a better term, an exercise in historical theological ethics. My overarching concern is not only historical, however. As will become clear, I see genuine problems in the work of the thinkers I am exploring. Yet my task in this essay is not to offer an alternative to theirs; it is to understand the tasks and problems facing theologians that come to light by tracing connections between thinkers. Historical inquiry is here in the service of constructive theological and ethical reflection still to be undertaken.

My argument will proceed in three steps. First, I want to return to a dispute between Troeltsch and Wilhelm Herrmann on the relation of theology, ethics, and the Kingdom. This debate provides a background for understanding current disputes and contributions in theology and ethics, particularly in the line of thought represented by Rendtorff and Pannenberg. With this background in hand, I will turn, next, to Pannenberg's attempt, through eschatological categories, to revise and extend Troeltsch's suggestions about the Kingdom of God and theological reflection on the moral life. Recently, these suggestions have themselves been deepened in important ways by Trutz Rendtorff. He has attempted to reconceive the task of Ethicotheologie around the communicative structure of life and an eschatological understanding of the Kingdom. Rendtorffs position, I contend, draws together strands of thought running from Troeltsch to Pannenberg while opening new directions for theological reflection.

My contention is that there is a discernible development in understand-ing the Kingdom of God and the relation of ethics and dogmatics from Troeltsch to Rendtorff. This is seen in the concern of these thinkers to understand the Kingdom vis-a-vis the objective good of the human. Troeltsch explores this through a notion of cultural synthesis and an ethic of objective value. Pannenberg, in response to criticisms of Troeltsch,

From Cultural Synthesis to Communicative Action 369

turns to the temporal structure of purposive actions to speak of the good. He understands the Kingdom of God as the final eschatological good of human action proleptically anticipated in purposiveful acts. Rendtorff, I contend, shifts the discussion once again, this time away from the paradigm of individual acts to that of communicative intersubjectivity. From this paradigmatic action he understands the kingdom of God and the human participation in reality. Thus the development I am seeking to trace is from a notion of cultural synthesis through the temporal structure of purposive acts to communicative action as a paradigm for under-standing the symbol of the Kingdom. Exploring the use of this symbol discloses how these thinkers relate theological and ethical reflection.

Finally, I will draw some conclusions and forward some criticisms relative to the present task of theology. Most basically, I contend that the form of ethical theology found in Rendtorff and Pannenberg is incomplete and risks being formalistic, overly cognitivist in its assessment of human life, and, finally, anthropocentric. To meet these problems and to complete their project would entail, I suggest, abandoning or enriching the characteristic feature of ethical theology as they have conceived it: the use of specific 'acts' (purposive or communicative) as the paradigms for theological and ethical thinking. Here I suspect that theological ethics must return to the original complexity of life at the expense of the clarity that Pannenberg and Rendtorff seem to seek.

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In the Foreword to the first edition of his Ethik, Wilhelm Herrmann acknowledged his indebtedness to Schleiermacher and Ritschl.3 By doing so, Herrmann placed himself within the tradition of liberal thought and Neo-Kantianism flourishing in his own university of Marburg. This Kantianism allowed him to develop an ethic independent of dogmatics. By doing so he was able to relate and yet distinguish the rationally grounded and seemingly universal claims of ethical discourse to the historical positivity of Christian claims. Even in his ethics, Herrmann began with an investigation of die Sittlichkeit through which the human distinguishes itself from nature. Only given this did he then turn, in the second part of the Ethik, to the Christian moral life and its historical positivity. The claim which underwrote this move, as Herrmann put it, is that if one wishes 'to come to God, we must not, above all things, turn our backs upon the actual relations in which we stand.'4 It is, he insists, only within these conditions open to ethical inquiry that humans have a personal communion with God.

Herrmann distinguished and yet related ethics and dogmatics. This meant, contra some Kantians, that he resolutely avoided collapsing


religion into morality. Indeed, he claimed that morality 'always means independence, whereas in religion man feels himself in the power of a Being to whom he surrenders himself. It means sheer dependence.'5 Yet while autonomy and dependence distinguished morals and religion there was still a relation between them. It was one of tutelage. Morality could lead one to religion. As he put it in his Dogmatik, religion 'can be understood only by the man who himself lives in it. But the way to religion may be shown to anyone who does not repudiate moral obligation.'6 Thus Herrmann's Neo-Kantianism allowed him to articulate the relation and yet distinction of morality and religion. Morality he conceived in terms of autonomy; religion, following Schleiermacher, was a matter of absolute dependence in personal experience. His task was to explore their relation.

The significant move of the Ritschlian school was that the relation between the religious and the moral was to be conceived through the symbol of the Kingdom of God harmonizing the human with its natural world.7 On this point Ritschl had criticized Schleiermarcher for failing to grasp the full import of the Kingdom for theologial reflection. He claimed that Schleiermacher did not harmonize the teleological (moral) character of the Christian idea of the Kingdom with redemption won through Jesus as Mediator. In a moment we will see that Troeltsch agrees on this point, but drew different conclusions.

Herrmann, for his part, articulated the relation of faith and morals somewhat differently. As he put it in the Ethik, faith was to be conceived als Kraft, das Gute zu tun.8 This faith was an individual, salvific relation to the God who acts on us. It meant a transformation of the moral agent enabling her or him to act in the world.9 Not surprisingly, Herrmann divided the second part of his ethics around the import of salvation for morality, and then the service of God that forms character in the natural orders of human community (marriage, state, etc.).

Herrmann's Ethik sparked immediate reaction. In his Grundprobleme der Ethik, Troelstch criticized Herrmann for having forsaken crucial insights of Schleiermacher. Indeed, Herrmann seemed to have returned to an ethics of conviction centered on the individual agent.10 Troeltsch claimed that the impulse of Schleiermarcher's thought was to free theological reflection from such formalism and subjectivism and set it on the proper track of an ethic of the objective good or value. Ironically, Troeltsch also criticized Schleiermacher on this point, as had Ritschl. He claimed that in moving from philosophical to Christian ethics, Schleiermacher had failed to grasp the universal cultural import of his notion of ethics. The task that lay ahead, Troeltsch averred, was to explore this trajectory of thought relative to the needs of Western culture. In this Troeltsch, a Neo-Kantian and Ritschlian of sorts, seemed more Hegelian than Kantian, and more attuned to Schleiermarcher's philosophical Ethik than his Die Christliche Sitte.

As Troeltsch saw it, the decisive shift between his day and Schleier-


macher's was that the opponents were no longer moralistic and romantic despisers of religion, but positivists and those, like Nietzsche and Feuerbach, who saw religion as an illusion. Against these, and the relativism they implied, Troeltsch sought to carry on 'ontological speculation concerning history - speculation that, through reflection on the very multiplicity of history, leads to knowledge of the unitary ground of all life.'11 This speculation would overcome historical relativism only when it provided grounds for fundamental value judgments about cultural configurations within history itself. Thus for Troeltsch, the principle problem was not simply the transformation of the moral agent, but the grounding of norms within a relativistic culture. This grounding would demonstrate the normativity and objectivity of Christian claims. The difficulties in carrying out this task were considerable. Pannenberg and Rendtorff, as we will see, are still wrestling with them.

Troeltsch insisted that modern historical consciousness decisively laid to rest traditional, speculative metaphysics. Given this, no simple return to metaphysically interpreted normative values was possible, and so too any metaphysical theology. The other obvious candidate for the task of determining norms within the travail of history was ethics. Yet here too there were problems, especially in the theological tradition. In the Grundprobleme, Troeltsch concluded that Christian ethics traditionally was dualistic. Theologians too often spoke of the created world of nature and then another graced or supernatural world. Troeltsch saw this in Roman Catholic thought with its claims about natural law and the supernatural good of the visio Dei. And it was present too in the Protestant emphasis on the freedom of conscience through faith relative to givenness of human vocations and the orders of creation. He acknowledged that this dualism allowed a certain compromise between religious claims and the needs of a culture. Nevertheless, it would not meet the problems Troeltsch faced. A fundamental reconsideration was required.

Troeltsch criticized Herrmann as continuing the traditional dualism. Against Herrmann's brand of Kantianism, Troeltsch argued that ethics is concerned not only with the subjective determination of will and value, but must also 'determine the objective value and purpose of action.'12

One must, as Schleiermacher had done in his philosophical ethics, explore the ethical relative to an analysis of human action as always oriented towards some good. In the Grundriss der philosophischen Ethik, Schleiermacher schematized ethics around the power of reason to act on nature (Tugendlehre), objective determinations of thought and action (Pflichtenlehre), and the final expression of the union of reason and nature as the sumfnum bonum (Gterlehre).13 These articulate the various 'causes' (efficient, formal, final) within reason's action in and on nature. Ethics explores and presents the supreme good vis--vis the internal dynamics of human action.


Troeltsch went so far as to claim that Schleiermacher, 'formed a historically oriented ethics of the objective good [which was] the high point of German Idealism.' Indeed, one must realize against all formalistic ethics that the 'system of ends forms as an entirety the object of ethics, as was presented by Schleiermacher in his philosophical ethics.'14 Thus contrary to what he took as Herrmann's ethics of conviction, Troeltsch sought an ethics of ends, of the objective good. Later we will see the central importance of the turn to action and the objective status of the good in Rendtorff's and Pannenberg's work on the Kingdom of God and ethical theology.

However, Schleiermacher seemed to forsake this vision when he turned to Christian ethics. The center of focus shifted, in the christliche Sitte, from the objective good of rational activity to the religious determination of consciousness in all its positivity. This required an interpretation of how pious consciousness, referable to the redemption won in Jesus, arises and is active in the world. Thus the focus on consciousness allowed Schleiermacher to articulate the relation and distinction of dogmatics and ethics. He claimed that 'Christian doctrine is presented on one side as dogmatics, which interprets Christian self-consciousness in its relative peace, and on the other side as ethics, which interprets it in its relative movement.'15 Thus in taking up the specific task of Christian ethics and dogmatics the more general claims of philosophical ethics seemed to be lost.

At least Troeltsch thought so. Grounding Christian ethics in religious consciousness was no answer to the problem of cultural and moral relativism. Indeed, Troeltsch claimed that one must show that 'Christianity is the incarnation of spirit, reason, culture, the very system of objective good.'16 Given this, another route had to be sought to understand the status and import of Christianity for its culture.

As is well known, Troeltsch was far better at isolating problems than in answering them. His own attempts at demonstrating the relation of Christianity and culture included early arguments about a religious a apriori that would secure the importance of the religious as a dimension in all thinking and willing against rationalistic and positivistic attacks.17

Later, in his The Absoluteness of Christianity, Troeltsch turned explicity to the import of religion for a cultural synthesis.18 He explored the power of Christianity to help forge a viable cultural expression and thereby demonstrate its relative absoluteness for the West by providing the power of its cultural synthesis.

Ironically something like this had also been suggested by Schleiermacher. In the Christian Faith, he argued that the Church, as the Kingdom of God on earth, would eventually become coterminous with the world and thus be its redemption. Troeltsch, facing the night of relativism, foreshortened this eschatological claim to understand the cultural power of Christianity the present. Thus theology is carried on by reflecting on


the ethos of Western culture and attempting to explore the import of Christianity for it. From this bud flowered the myriad theologies of culture seen in this century. In Troeltsch's case it led to the ambiguous claim that the absoluteness of Christianity was culturally relative. Christianity was absolute for the West.

With this conclusion, the objectivity that Troeltsch took as central to the project of overcoming an ethics of conviction seemed attenuated, at best. Troeltsch seemed to end with an ethics of conviction at the level of a culture: a culture entails some historically specific convictional synthesis which in the West is articulated through Christian symbols and empowered by Christian faith. This paradoxical claim about a relative absolute and the adequacy of his use of the Kingdom were put to question by Neo-Orthodox theologians.

Troeltsch's attempt to carry off such a theological task came to an abrupt demise with World War I. Yet his questions remain. What is the relation of theology and ethics? What is the status of Christianity in a relativistic and emotivistic culture? How can one reflect theologically on the ethos of Western culture? These are questions about the truth status of theological reflection and have become all the more pressing in a radically pluralistic world.19 They have re-emerged after the breakdown of the hegemony of Neo-Orthodox thought.

In a similar vein, the last few years have witnessed a return to the conceptual problems seen in Troeltsch's dispute with Herrmann. The philosophical debate is always shifting. On the one hand, there are thinkers, like John Rawls in this country and Jrgen Habermas in Germany, who seek to isolate and ground universal moral norms vis--vis the shape of the human as a rational, intersubjective agent.20 This entails some ethics of conviction about interests in perceived goods and a sense of justice (Rawls) or communicative competence and emancipatory interest (Habermas). On.the other hand, there are thinkers, such as Alasdair Maclntyre and the so-called Neo-Aristotelians, who claim that such a task is impossible since moral existence only takes place within specific communities and traditions. Given this, they explore the moral discourse and values of a community that shape human life.21 The quarrel between these positions centers on the possibility of making universal, objective moral claims based on the rationality of human action.

The important shift in this discussion, one seen in theologians as well, has been away from the autonomous individual agent to the dynamics of communicative action. Whereas Kant and his critics in speaking of duties and goods began with the autonomous agent and Schleiermacher turned to the action of reason on nature, current ethics explores intersubjec-tive activity. Thinkers are concerned with forms of activity or practices that constitute subjectivity as intersubjective as well as what norms, principles, or virtues might be inherent in and required by that activity. Their task is to break out of the subjectivism of Enlightenment and liberal


moral thought. Yet while this turn is shared by all in the debate, the status of claims and norms drawn from communicative action remains in dispute.

Theologically, the current discussion has taken shape once again around the import and meaning of an ethically informed theology. The various forms of political, liberation, and feminist thought all challenge what they perceive as Neo-Orthodoxy's attempt to locate the encounter of the human with the Word of God beyond the pale of substantive political and moral relations.22 Yet here too there are conflicts. Some theologians have turned to the narrative faith and experience of a community in speaking theologically, while others seek to make general claims about the import of Christian faith to political reality. What is at question here, it would seem, is the normativity of theological discourse. In a word, Troeltsch's question about the status of religious claims is very much alive.

Mindful of these issues and developments, I want to turn now to Pannenberg and Rendtorff. In discernible continuity with Troeltsch, they attempt to retrieve and rethink the Kingdom of God and its import for theology and ethics. They have developed the notion of the Kingdom in two important ways. First, each has made a turn to an eschatological notion of the Kingdom. And, second, both explore the Kingdom relative to the shape of action. Rendtorff's contribution, as we will see, is to shift the emphasis from individual purposive action to the communicative structure of life in his hermeneutic of religious symbols and the moral life.

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Pannenberg has, over the course of twenty years, articulated a theology that draws heavily on the Kingdom. He readily acknowledges that Jesus' discourse about the coming Kingdom has often been taken to entail an interim ethic or a perfectionism only possible in a specific community. And yet, in the face of the decay of the authoritative and binding status of ethical discourse in modern culture, Pannenberg holds that some foundation for norms must be found. He attempts to think through the implications of the Kingdom understood eschatologically for providing the ontological foundation for such norms. This continues Troeltsch's ontological quest for securing moral absolutes.

Pannenberg claims that such a foundation 'must be established in connection, with objective analysis of human action.'23 Accordingly, he turns to an analysis of human action, as did Schleiermacher and Troeltsch. Yet unlike them, Pannenberg does not take as his paradigm of action that of consciousness in its cultural forming power of acting on nature. He explores individual purposeful acts and finds, as did Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and a host of others, that all human action strives for some good. Given this, the 'quest for the good, seeking what is good for human beings, still provides


the best starting point for ethical investigation.'24 Pannenberg, centering on individual purposive acts, argues for the priority of the good in ethical reflection.

The importance of this turn to action for Pannenberg is that human acts are always futurally directed, always seeking to realize what is not yet, some end. The end or good, however, substantively understood, has a status beyond the empirically given. It is this futurity of the good, that it is 'beyond being' as Plato might have put it, that is crucial for Pannenberg. AU human action opens on to a transcendent reality which it strives to embody. This reality must be understood in temporal categories, however. Pannen-berg claims, therefore, that the temporal structure of action allows for a dialectical interpretation of the Kingdom and the good: the eschatological Kingdom is interpreted through the category of the good even as the good is understood vis--vis God's rule. This amounts to an ethical hermeneutic of the Kingdom of God that transforms the notion of the moral good. Pannenberg notes:

God is the ultimate good not in isolated transcendency but in the future of the Kingdom. This means that the striving for God as the ultimate good beyond the world is turned into concern for the world.25

Through an eschatological understanding of the Kingdom and an analysis of human action as future directed, it is possible to understand the Kingdom as the good which has priority oyer all human striving. The Kingdom defines the horizon of all specific norms and focuses moral attention on God and the world. God is the futurum of the world; God is the summum bonum towards which all strive.

Pannenberg goes on to spell out these claims relative to human community, love, fellowship, human destiny and the like. We need not explore his thoughts on these matters. The crucial point is that he has introduced an eschatological concept of the Kingdom into the task of an ethical theology seeking to answer Troeltsch's questions. And he has done so by considering the shape of action itself. Indeed, we have here something like a metaphysical ethic of action. This has two implications. First, the eschatological Kingdom as the futurum of action disallows the identification of Christianity with any cultural synthesis. Pannenberg's work responds at this level to one of the Neo-Orthodox critiques of Troeltsch. Second, his position seeks to avoid, as Troeltsch did, a bifurcation of Christian ethics from general ethical reflection. Much like Troeltsch, Pannenberg is attempting to show the ontological import of Christian symbols.

However, it is not clear, given the fu turai thrust of Pannenberg's reading of the Kingdom as the good, how this analysis might inform


reflection on the human participation in concrete given reality. More generally we can ask, is such as ontological, eschatalogical grounding of general norms even possible once the historical and social specificity of human life is recognized? There is a strand of idealism, even utopianism, in Pannenberg's thought about the good that runs back to Plato's comment that the good is beyond being. Pannenberg would reply that while the status of Christian claims are deferred eschatologically, they are pro-leptically grasped in every action seeking good. This prolepsis is paradig-matically disclosed in the resurrection of Christ as the appearance of the future. However, this merely intensifies the question about the status of the human participation in reality and concrete moral communities as well as the plausibility of Christian symbols. Put differently, Pannenberg has not accounted for the shift from individual purposive acts to communicative praxis and what this might man for a consideration of the ethical reality of life and the status of theological claims.26 This is the task, I contend, that Rendtorff has undertaken.

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Rendtorff is concerned not only to interpret the convictions of a community, but to provide a hermeneutic of human life and praxis that is backed theologically by a construal of how God relates to the world. Indeed, he has argued that theological ethics is fundamentally concerned with the human communion with God. His basic task, it would seem, is to speak of this relation once the radical responsibility of the human for its world is acknowledged. Thus if current narrative theology is concerned with Christian Sittlichkeit and communal identity, the problem for Rendtorff and his mode of theology is the relation of divine sovereign activity and human power and action. Following Kant, although with important modifications, we can call this, as Rendtorff does, an 'ethical theology.'27

Not surprisingly, there are a variety of ways of conceiving ethical theology. Some thinkers, such as Gordon Kaufman, imaginatively construct the idea of God to orient and guide human life relative to our participation in the eco-system and history. Sallie McFague and others explore the metaphoric and liberative character of Christian faith vis--vis a holist vision of human life in the world. Finally, political theologians like Johann . Metz and others look to the memory of suffering and the liberative action of Christ among the poor to speak of human action and God's relation to the world.28 These forms of ethical theology draw on Kantian constructivism to speak of God relative to moral need (Kaufman, McFague), or follow Kant's Second Critique and the priority of practical reason and freedom in moral and religious discourse (Metz).

Despite the differences between these approaches to ethical theology, what is being interpreted in each case is the relation of God to human


suffering and action in a world of social and natural relations. Discourse about God supports a view of human responsibility for our world. Where these positions differ from Kantian Ethicotheologie is in their rejection of the individual moral agent and subjective self-legislation as grounding moral norms and theological construal. They have, in various ways, decentered the self through the communicative structure of life, our relation to the created order, or the struggle in history for liberation. Nevertheless, this mode of theology continues the Kantian and liberal project of speaking of the divine relative to human moral existence.

Rendtorff's Ethics'is the most complete recent articulation of this kind of theology. In terms reminiscent of Troeltsch, he argues for an ethical theology that considers 'the objective structure of the world of human life that claims us as being God's world.'29 Ethics explores 'an intensified form of the human experience of reality, insofar as the theme of ethics is participation through one's own conduct in the reality that confronts us with its demands.'30 Rendtorff's task, then, is to interpret the human participation in reality in its moral and religious dimensions. On this score he admits that his work is a Lutheran theology, of sorts. As we will see, he articulates the character of human life between the claim and promise of the divine (law and gospel), the orders and relations which structure human life (orders of creation), and the import of justification for the life of love. However, his principle concern is with the human participation in the objective structure of reality and the Kingdom of God. His task, like Pannenberg's and Troeltsch's, is to establish the normativity and objectivity of theological claims for life.

Ethics, for Rendtorff, is a theory of the conduct of life. In developing his position he explores the givenness of life, the giving of life, and reflection on life. Theology, for its part, provides enlightenment and orientation for the ethical life. It means seeing the world that claims us as God's world and hence gives support to our participation in the giving and givenness of life. Put differently, Rendtorff contends that this giving and givenness amounts to a communicative structure of life which is, in its essence, a communion with God. Accordingly, ethics 'is an intensified form of theology, because it expands the themes of the question which is basic to all theology, that of the structure of our relations to reality.'31 The theological problem is to understand the relation of the divine to the communicative structure of life. We will see shortly that the Kingdom of God fulfils this role in Rendtorff's project. Yet in doing so, Rendtorff makes a substantial addition to Pannenberg's eschatalogical reading of the Kingdom without forgoing the status of the good vis--vis human action. In order to grasp this it is important first to outline his argument.

Given his notion of ethical theology, Rendtorff turns to explore the elements of the ethical reality of life and the methodology of ethics. The givenness of life implies the element of dependence and valuation on others in human existence, a corresponding concern for factual know-


ledge in moral judgments, and an awareness of tradition, for rules and duties, in ethical reflection. Rendtorff readily admits the importance of tradition and the moral substance of a community in forming ethical existence. These are expressive of the fundamental giftedness of all of human life. Not surprisingly, a basic moral task is the acceptance of one's own existence in all its ambiguity. This acceptance is an affirmation of the created status of life. Thus while human life entails free, autonomous action, one fundamental structure of life is its givenness. This givenness is not a structure of heteronomy; it is the very condition for one being an agent in relation to others. After all, what is conditioning freedom is merely the acceptance of one's own life.

Yet while life is given, it is also an act of giving. The giving of life signals the radically intersubjective and free character of human existence which requires not only accepting one's own life but that of others as well. This entails the demand for responsibility and the need in reflection to move from principles to decisions of conscience. These decisions are a yes to one's own life in the world. But this freedom must also take the form of love. Indeed, Rendtorff goes so far as to speak of love as life in freedom grounded theologically in justification. Like Luther, he moves from the givenness of human life in substantive orders and relations to the priority of love for the neighbor. Yet against Luther, and Herrmann as well, Rendtorff interprets justification within the structural elements that mark the shape of life. There is no radical break between Christian morality and what is possible for all moral agents. Ethical theology discloses the basic shape and orientation of all human life without dictating the content of that life.

While the givenness and giving of life mark out the basic elements of the human participation in reality, there is also a need for orientation in life. Reflection flows from this need. Rendtorff contends that the communicative structure of life coheres with the pull of the future as the eschatalogical Kingdom of God. That is, he moves from the structure of action, as Pannenberg did, to explore the ultimate horizon of moral existence. Yet unlike Pannenberg, he has turned to the communicative act of life at the basic conceptual paradigm for his interpretation of the Kingdom. This accentuates the ethical importance of the human participation in reality and thus mitigates the possible idealism of Pannenberg's eschatalogical vision. Moreover, it voices the current attempt to move beyond the subjectivism of Enlightenment modes of thought to intersubjective experiences and rationality. For Rendtorff the givenness and giving of life structure moral existence. The coming Kingdom of God, however, is the goal of Christian ethics.

Rendtorff is concerned with the objective structure of the moral world and also the importance of the eschatological future of God's kingdom. The communicative structure of life is supported by the future kingdom as the summun bonum. He insists, moreover, that the symbol of the


Kingdom 'has its significance as an enduring encouragement to do the good that transcends success.'32 Thus like Herrmann and Luther there is here a religious inducement for moral conduct. Yet for Rendtorff this en-couragement flows from the objective structure of our communicative participation in reality. Not surprisingly, then, Rendtorff has also moved beyond Troeltsch's cultural absolutism. By exploring the shape of the basic communicative act of life, the very giving and givenness of life, Rendtorff is trying to show the import of theological claims for all specific forms of life. Yet in order to do so, he must provide some theological interpretation of the good relative to the ethical structure of life. On this point, Rendtorff claims that with

reference to these two basic elements of the ethical reality of life, eschatology sets the theme of an ontological 'added value.'. . . But active human beings cannot simply identify themselves as the subjects of this ontological 'added value' of the givenness of life and the giving of life. The true subject is recognized when God is acknowledged as the subject of all reality.33

Ethics is an intensification of the theological since in ethics we explore the human relation to God as the subject of all reality.

For Rendtorff reflection on God as such forms the horizon of ethical theology, or, we might say, the transition point to dogmatics. .In his Ethics Rendtorff is content to concentrate on the shape of human moral and religious existence. Indeed, he claims that the symbol of the eschata-logical Kingdom allows ethical theology to concern itself solely with the shape of human life while remaining a theological discipline. Given this, Rendtorff eschews reflection on the being and activity of God. I will return to this shortly as one of the tasks facing theologians.

In summary, we can say that the eschatalogical Kingdom has a threefold role to play in Rendtorff's conception of ethical theology. First, it presents an ontological 'added value' about the ultimate subject of the communicative structure of life. Ethical theology is fully theological when in reflecting on the human participation in reality it is also speaking of the divine being and activity experienced in and through the shape of life. The means, moreover, that ethical/theological claims are rooted in the structure of the communicative act of life thereby overcoming what Troeltsch called an 'ethics of conviction.' The symbol of the Kingdom serves to demonstrate the import of Christian faith for ethical life relative to life's actual structure.

Second, the Kingdom also serves to provide orientation and motivation for moral existence. This recalls the Lutheran influence in Rendtorff's thought. The human condition before the divine as a graced sinner issues forth in a love of neighbor that transcends the immediacy of personal good. The concept of good is accordingly a complex one. Like


Pannenberg, the Kingdom is the summum bonum of human action. The communicative act of life is always oriented to and by the divine as the ultimate subject of life. However, Rendtorff also argues, as we have seen, that love entails acting for a good that transcends success. He has provided a reading of the good life beyond the implicit eudaimonism of Pannenberg's concern for the good of action. Rendtorff's turn to the communicative structure of life allows, then, a more complex reading of good. That good both transcends and yet coheres with the giving and givenness of life as itself a communion with the divine.

This participation in reality leads to the final role that the Kingdom plays in Rendtorff's argument. The interrelation of the Kingdom and the communicative shape of life serves to back and ground more specific moral norms. Like Pannenberg and Troeltsch, Rendtorff's concern is to provide justificatory arguments for norms relative to the structure of action. Of course the significant move that Rendtorff has made is from individual purposive acts or the amorphous notion of a cultural synthesis to the communicative structure of life. Accordingly, his position begins with the human participation in reality and seeks to understand its moral dimensions. As we have seen, he articulates this through the categories of freedom, respect, acceptance, and love. Thus like other current theologians and philosophers, Rendtorff seeks to overcome the emotivism that has beset contemporary Western culture. This emotivism is the night of relativism that Troeltsch sought to escape. Rendtorff's way beyond it is to show the interdependent shape of agency and what this entails for derivative norms, such as acceptance of self, respect for the other, and freedom in love.

Thus what we see in Rendtorff's work is an understanding of ethical theology relative to an eschatological reading of the Kingdom of God. This position, he claims, allows one to show the import of Christian faith for moral existence, combats the relativism of our time by showing the relation of the good to the objective structure of life, and is fully theological since in reflecting on life one explores the human communion with God. Clearly this work stands within the series of questions and problems isolated above. And it seeks to address these problems in ways that overcome the subjectivism of Enlightenment and liberal thought currently under question.

IV

In brief fashion I have explored three thinkers on the status of theological claims and the Kingdom of God. Their work represents the journey of modern and contemporary theological liberalism. The concern of such liberalism is to demonstrate to a culture the intelligibility and status of religious claims and to relate these to the ongoing human project. The theologians considered here have done so by attempting to explore the


relation of the good of human action and the Kingdom of God. I want to conclude by isolating the import of their work for current reflection as well as noting criticisms of it.

First, we have seen a concern for action as the conceptual paradigm for speaking of the relation of theology and ethics. Of course, there have been differences in which action is taken as most fruitful for theological discourse. The most significant shift, I have argued, is from individual, purposive action set on realizing some good to that of communicative action, as Rendtorff has articulated this. This shift means that the divine is understood not only as the futurum of action, but also as the ultimate subject of the giving and givenness of life through time. Such a construal of the divine coheres with the human participation in natural and social reality without claims for a metaphysical teleology. And not surprisingly, communicative action and an eschatalogical understanding of the Kingdom takes the human participation in reality with radical serious-ness. It provides strong warrants for the transformation of the present structures of life, a demand these thinkers have not often explored themselves.

The line of thought running from Troeltsch to Rendtorff seeks to show the normativity and objectivity of theological claims relative to some act definitive of human being. The act transcends but is expressed in our cultural existence. Given this, Rendtorff and Pannenberg make stronger claims for the universality of the Kingdom than Troeltsch. Indeed, Rendtorff's form of Kommunikationsethik seeks to ground in the very structure of life derivative norms about the acceptance of self, freedom in love for others, and the shape of human community. The point is that intersubjective, communicative action provides a conceptual paradigm for reflecting on the human participation in its world and a relation to the divine beyond the perceived subjectivism of Enlightenment ethics while continuing the liberal concern for freedom and emancipation.

However, it is at this point that we encounter difficulties. One task that remains in developing an adequate ethical theology, it would seem, is to provide a doctrine of God relative to the complexity of life. Some work has begun in this direction, but clearly Rendtorff's thought remains incomplete. Further reflection on the shape of the communicative act might aid in understanding the logic and rhetoric of God-talk.34 Until such work is undertaken the import of an ethical theology remains at best ambiguous. After all, what does it mean to claim that the divine is the ultimate subject of the communicative act of life, and how might this claim have bearing on human existence as well as what we can say about the divine?

Without attention to this question, an ethical theology falls into a theological and ethical formalism. As we have seen, Pannenberg's Kingdom is only proleptically grasped, and Rendtorff can say little about


the divine other than to claim that God is the ultimate subject of life providing reason for seeking goods beyond success. Ethical theology must undertake constructive reflection on the divine or risk being religiously vacuous.35 And yet to do so, it may have to abandon or radically augment the very paradigm of thought within which these theologians seek the universality of their discourse, that is, the structure of purposive or communicative acts.

Put differently, we can ask if theological thinking does not require forsaking or rethinking the centrality of the 'act' as found in this mode of thought. Since the divine is understood in relation to but transcending the shape of some paradigmatic act, the formal structure of that act determines the shape of discourse about 'God' even as the divine necessarily transcends that structure. We have seen this relationality and transcendence regarding time in Pannenberg and subjectivity for Rendtorff. Yet it is precisely in how the transcendence of the divine is understood in this mode of thinking that renders formal its discourse and its bearing on the moral life.

The importance of action to these arguments also signals, second, a constant concern for the human subject. Obviously there is no logically necessary relation between a turn to action and concern for the human agent. Recent deconstructionist theologies explore the unending play-action of language precisely to undo normative discourse about the self, God, and text as well.36 No doubt the status of the human as subject and agent is a hotly debated issue in current theology. Yet what is clear from the work of Pannenberg and Rendtorff is that neither thinker holds to an Enlightenment subjectivism or cognitive foundationalism. And Rendtorff's turn to communicative action further decenters the self in acceptance of and love for the other. Thus the relation between a communication ethics and other developments in theology is complex indeed.

My task here is not to settle disputes between Pannenberg, Rendtorff, and the radical, deconstructionist theologians. The point is that the turn to communicative action continues but transforms the liberal concern for the human subject. Neither the status of theological and ethical claims nor the final good is seen in terms of individual human rights and flourishing. Those claims and the good are understood relative to a complex, in ter subjective act which is both the condition for human subjectivity and the force of its transformation. Nevertheless, these thinkers do continue the modern concern for the equality of all human subjects. And they seek to escape what they see as the paralysis of relativism and emotivism of late modern culture.

This concern for the human agent remains important in light of the massive suffering and oppression that marks our time. However, here too the task of ethical theology remains incomplete. In the concern to ground specific moral norms, ethical theology can become a purely objectivist


ethic. A richer account of human agency, one that considers virtues, passion, desires and needs seems important. Ironically, Troeltsch's insight about the importance of the particular shape of historical communities for thought and life must be heard anew. This would provide a way to retrieve discourse about virtue, imagination, and affection present in other strands of theological ethics. Again, the paradigm of the act seems unduely problematic. It provides a means to speak of those goods sought by any acting, or interacting, agent as well as a way internal to action to specify norms binding on all engaged in those acts. Yet it does so by constricting the account of human moral life. The task for theological and ethical reflection is to remain faithful to the complexity of life rather than forsaking it in the quest for absolutes.

The final point to make about this discussion concerns the Kingdom of God. We have seen a subtle transformation in the role that the Kingdom played in liberal Ethicotheologie. The classical liberal tradition understood the symbol vis--vis the human distinction from its world and a way to meet the challenge of relativism. Pannenberg seeks to escape any vestige of the liberal project of grounding theology on ethics. To do so he attempts to show how the moral good is the divine Kingdom. In the face of historical and cultural relativity, Pannenberg has explored the horizon of time as the solution to the normativity of theological and ethical claims. In order to consider the human experience of transcendence, Rendtorff seeks to explore our participation in reality rather than pitting the human against its world. Hence the Kingdom does not simply harmonize the human with the contingency of life; the Kingdom is the inducement to seek a good that transcends success even as it symbolizes the ultimate subject of reality as 'God.' This shift to a communicative and eschata-logical hermeneutic means that the self-world structure is understood within both the horizon of time and the inter-subjective act of life, which, when interpreted through the symbol of the Kingdom, disclose the divine. Thus the Kingdom no longer warrants an interim ethic of Jesus nor the historical progressivism seen in early liberalism. It is concerned with the human participation in time and reality. But what does it warrant?

I have suggested that a construal of the God/world relation and a dense reading of human experience is needed if any theological ethic is to be theologically and ethically adequate. These concerns meet in a third regarding the symbol of the Kingdom. Put as a question we can ask, for whom is the Kingdom of God the summum bonum? That is, we can ask about the locus of good in these positions. Are they finally anthropo-centric in their construal of the good?37 If we speak of the communicative structure of life, does it include only the human project?

Here it would seem that the symbol of the Kingdom or reign of God could further decenter Enlightenment subjectivism, still seen in Pannenberg and Rendtorff on this point, by enlarging the realm of value


to include the created order. Thus in addition to the problem of formalism and cognitivism, the task facing theology is to overcome the anthropo-centrism bequeathed to us by the previous centuries. This is one gift that we cannot accept.

The difficulty, again, seems to be the concentration on or interpretation of act in this mode of theological thinking. It is not the case, for instance, that human action alone has a temporal dimension. In fact, it may be possible to explore the relation of human being and doing to natural processes precisely through the forms of temporality found in each. In the same way, while human communicative acts demarcate the domain of the human 'world,' the possibility and the scene of that world entail the relation of the human to its environment.38 Thus to meet these questions about the scope and locus of good, an ethical theology of the kind explored here must either abandon its paradigmatic acts or explore how those acts inscribe the human in its world such that the value of that world is disclosed and recognized. Rendtorff, it would seem, has begun this task; it remains to be seen if it can be completed within his model of reflection.

V

Pannenberg and Rendtorff represent but one way of doing ethical theology, one hermeneutic of the Kingdom and the relation of ethics and dogmatics, and also but one of the trajectories of thought that owe their parentage to Troeltsch. I have raised serious questions about the possibility and adequacy of their project while noting the important contribution they have made to contemporary theology. The task of ethical theology as articulated by them remains incomplete, and to develop a complete position may require, ironically, abandoning or rethinking their starting point. As it now stands, their positions may entail undue theological and ethical formalism, an overly objective and cognitivistic assessment of human agency, and an anthropocentric theory of value. Nevertheless, the consideration of intersubjectivity and our participation in reality marks a genuine gain for theological reflection.

Tracing other lines of thought or suggesting a more adequate position is beyond the scope of this inquiry. However, it is clear that one gift of modernity we cannot reject is the urgent demand to reflect on how the moral reality of human life informs and can be informed by theological reflection. The thinkers explored here have given a gift to the ongoing struggle of reflection. Whether one accepts or rejects their work does not negate the fact that theological thinking must explore our participation in reality and what this means for understanding the divine and the shape of human life.


NOTES

1 The symbol of the 'Kingdom7 of God is troublesome within our religious and moral situation because of its inscription in patriarchial discourse. Clearly, such images and symbols must be explicitly problematized and reconceived if they are to be used at all in current theological thinking. I employ it throughout this article simply because it is used, albeit uncritically, by the thinkers under investigation. I want to thank James Brandt, Peter Gerhardt, David Klemm, and Terence Martin for helpful suggestions on this essay.

2 See Jens Glebe-Mller, A Political Dogmatics, trans. Thor Hall (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) and Helmut Peukert, Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communicative Action, trans. J. Bohman (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).

3 Wilhelm Herrmann, Ethik, 5. Aufgabe (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1913). 4 Wilhelm Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian with God, trans., J.S. Stanyon and ed.

R.W. Stewart (New York: G.P. Putnam's Son, 1906), p. 64. 5 Wilhelm Herrmann, Systematic Theology (Dogmatik), trans. N. Micklem and K. Saunders

(New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 31. 6 Ibid., p. 33. 7 See Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation Vol. Ill, trans.

H.R. Macintosh and A.B. Maccauly (Clifton, NJ: Reference Book Publishers, Inc., 1966). 8 Herrmann, Ethik, pp. 135-148. 9 While it is beyond the scope of this essay to explore, there is little doubt that Herrmann's

claim that one speaks of God only as the divine acts on us was continued by his students, such as Rudolph Bultmann. On this see Bultmann's 'What Does It Mean to Speak of God,' in Faith and Understanding, ed. with intro. by R.W. Funk and trans, by L.P. Smith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 53-66.

10 Ernst Troeltsch, 'Grundprobleme der Ethik' in Gesammelte Schriften II, Zur religisen Lage, Religionsphilosophie und Ethik (Tbingen, 1913, 1922), pp. 552-672. Max Weber had made the distinction parallel to Troeltsch's between an ethics of conviction and one of responsibility in his 'Politics as a Vocation.' For a discussion of these issues in current moral philosophy see Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

11 Ernst Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, intro. by J.L. Adams, trans, by D. Reid (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1971),pp. 40-1.

12 Troeltsch, 'Grundprobleme', p. 565. 13 F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Grundriss der philosphischen Ethik, hg. von D.A. Twesten (Berlin:

G. Reimer, 1841), pp. 3-37. For a standard work on Schleiermacher's ethics see H.-J. Birkner, Schleiermachers Christliche Sittenlehre im Zusammenhang seines Philosophisch-Theologischen Systems (Berlin: A. Tpelmann, 1964), especially, on this point, pp. 36-50. I am not able in this essay to explore the forms of activity (organizing and symbolizing) that are crucial to Schleiermacher's ethics. It is the symbolizing activity that becomes important for later theologies of culture.

14 Troeltsch, 'Grundprobleme,' p. 566. 15 F.D.E. Scheiermacher, Die Christliche Sitte, hg. von L. Jonas (Berlin: G. Reimer,

1843), p. 24. 16 Troeltsch, 'Grundprobleme,' p. 567. 17 For Troeltsch's early arguments on this see his 1906 essay 'Religion and the Science of

Religion,' in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, trans, and ed. by R. Morgan and M. Pye (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977), pp. 82-123. Also see Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology, ed. J.C. Powell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

18 Troeltsch, Absoluteness of Christianity, passim. For a recent discussion of the problem of the authority of theological claims in a time of relativism see Worldviews and Warrants: Plurality and Authority in Theology, eds. William Schweiker and Per Anderson (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987).

19 For a helpful analysis of this problem see Langdon B. Gilkey, Society and the Sacred: Toward a Theology of a Culture in Decline (New York: Crossroads, 1981).

20 See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). For a statement of Habermas's position see his 'Moralitt und Sittlichkeit. Treffen Hegels


Einwnde gegen Kant auch auf die Diskursethik zu?' in Moralitt und Sittlichkeit: Das Problem Hegels und die Diskursethik, hg. von W. Kuhlmann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), pp. 16-37.

21 See Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). For a discussion of the status of moral norms relative to the clash between Kantian and non-Kantian ethics see Ursula Wolf, Das Problem des moralischen Sollen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984).

22 For a recent expression of this criticism of Neo-Orthodox theology see Peukert, Science, Action and Fundamental Theology, pp. 1-19, 247-276.

23 Wolfhart Pannenberg, 'The Kingdom of God and the Foundation of Ethics/ in his Theology and the Kingdom of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 105.

24 Ibid., p . 106. 25 Ibid., p . 111. 26 Pannenberg does explore these issues in 'Die Theologie und Die Neuen Fragen nach

Intersubjektivitt, Gesellschaft und religiser Gemeinschaft,' in Archivio Di Filosofia 54:1-3 (1986): 411-425. In this essay he charts the shift, which I have noted, from accounts of the unity of experience in the to forms of intersubjective reflection. His own conclusion rests on the relation of the Church and the eschatological Kingdom through sacramental action. Given this, it would seem that specific purposive acts (sacramental ones in this case) remain paradigmatic in his thought. My concern here is not the degree to which Pannenberg can or cannot take intersubjectivity seriously, but rather that action provides a paradigm for his thought.

27 On this see Trutz Rendtorff 'Theologische Problemfelder der chistlichen Ethik' in Handbuch der Christliche Ethik hgs. von A. Hertz, et. al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1978), pp. 199-216. The terminology of Ethicotheologie goes back at least to Kant. See his Lectures on Philosophical Theology trans. A. Wood and G. Clark (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1978).

28 See Gordon D. Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), Sallie McFague, Model of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), and Johann . Metz, Faith in History and Society, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury, 1980).

29 Trutz Rendtorff, Ethics Volume I: Basic Elements and Methodology in an Ethical Theology, trans. K. Crim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), p . x.

30 Ibid., p. 3. 31 Ibid., p. 9. 32 Ibid., p. 188. 33 Ibid., pp. 187-188. 34 The importance of the category of 'act' for theology has been shown by David Burrell.

See his Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). Also see Calvin O. Schrg, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). The crucial question is which act is taken as paradigmatic for a theological and ethical thinking, that of consciousness, communica-tion, specific actions, or even being.

35 The charge of formalism is often made against Kantian positions, beginning with Hegel and Schleiermacher. My concern here is not with this debate since Kantian positions can recognize the moral substance of a culture and hypothetical obligations. My point is a theological one. A purely formal notion of God relative to the structure of act risks two problems. First, a bifucation between human existence and the rest of creation. Not surprisingly, the construal of the 'kingdom' or the good as harmonizing reason and nature is a product of beginning, as Schleiermacher does, with the act of reason on nature. Second, a concentration on the act risks a reduction of God-talk to providing the warrants for moral duties and goods. What is needed, I am suggesting, is a richer account of the human agency that sticks to the complexity of life and a more dialectial relation between theological and ethical discourse that avoids such theological reductionism.

36 See Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). For a different position see William Schweiker, 'Beyond Imitation: Mimetic Praxis in Gadamer, Ricoeur and Derrida,' in The Journal of Religion 68:1 (1988): 21-38.


37 The charge that Western thought is marked by anthropocentrism is made by McFague and Kaufmann, noted above, and also by Rosemary Radford Reuther and James M. Gustafson. See Reuther's Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), and also James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981-4).

38 Working within an ethical theory dominated by a paradigm of action does not preclude taking seriously the human relation to its world. On this see Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966) and his The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, trans, by Hans Jonas and David Herr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

^ s

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