Ethnography is dogmatics: Making description central to systematic theology

Scottish Journal of Theology

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 339-364

  Adams, Nicholas ^a   Elliott, Charles ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

^b Trinity Hall ^*  (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949425248     PISSN: 00369306     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0036930600051024     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. Karl Barth, Ethics (ed. D. Braun, tr. G Bromiley. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), p. 3;
2. Barth Church Dogmatics II/2 (ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 518.
3. For a good account of the relationship between ethics and dogmatics in Barth see Eberhard Jūngel, 'Evangelium und Gesetz' in Barth-Studien (Kōln: Benziger, 1982), pp. 180-209. Jūngel shows how Barth reverses Luther's 'law and gospel' to 'gospel and law', and indicates that this reversal is a good summary for understanding why, in the relationship between dogmatics and ethics, dogmatics has priority, for Barth. Where Luther says law articulates tasks and gospel articulates promises, Barth insists both tasks and promises, law and gospel, must be taken together. Rather than the 'proper difference' (Luther) we should seek the 'proper relation' (Barth) between gospel and law, i.e. if ethics relates to law, and dogmatics relates to gospel, then Barth's treatment of the relation between gospel and law illuminates his treatment of the relation between dogmatics and ethics.
4. For discussion in English see especially Nigel Biggar, The Hastening That Waits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);
5. Timothy Gorringe, Karl Barth Against Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 88-93;
6. Eberhard Jūngel, 'Invocation of God as the Ethical Ground of Christian Action' in Theological Essays I (ed. J. Webster, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 154-72;
7. John Webster, Barth's Moral Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). Happily, these works fully address the question of the relationship between divine and human action in Barth's work, and preclude the need to revisit this question here.
8. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (ed. E. Bethge, tr. N. Horton Smith. London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 3. Note: the order of the articles edited by Bethge was revised in later editions. The page numbers here refer to the 1998 impression, which follows the order from the sixth German edition.
9. Barth, Ethics, p. 7.
10. For an explicit acknowledgement of Bonhoeffer see Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 (ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), p. 4.
11. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, p. 514.
12. Karl Barth, The Christian Life (tr. G. Bromiley. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981).
13. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (tr. A Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977), p. 3.
14. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 23.
15. Jurgen Habermas has indicated these difficulties: see 'The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault' and 'Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again' in Jūrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (tr. F. Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity, 1987), pp. 238-93.
16. Habermas shows how Foucault, like Heidegger, avoids making grand metaphysical claims about 'Being' or 'History'; nonetheless, just as Heidegger claims substantial knowledge about 'disclosure of being' so Foucault claims reliable descriptions of "processes of change', and these function in a quasi-metaphysical way. Habermas objects that Foucault is insufficiently genealogical about his own genealogical method and altogether too positive about the validity of his own practices. Furthermore, Foucault smudges the empirical-descriptive meaning of power with the transcendental meaning of power, allowing the second to be parasitic on the first. Similar objections can be discerned, with Foucault's implicit 'ontology of violence' more obviously in view, in John Milbank's critique of Foucault in Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 286-94.
17. A similar concern (or lack of concern) characterises the superb defence of Foucault against Habermas by J. M. Bernstein in Recovering Ethical Life (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 166.
18. Stanley Hauerwas, 'The Ministry of a Congregation' in Christian Existence Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1988), pp. 111-31;
19. Samuel Wells, Transforming Fate into Destiny (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), pp. 135-40, 168-9;
20. William Cavenaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
21. For Kûng's project see especially Hans Küng, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (tr. J. Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1997)
22. and Hans Küng (ed.), Yes to a Global Ethic (London: SCM Press, 1996).
23. Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p. 37.