Hopeful realism: a theological ethic of contemporary conflict, reflecting critically on the writings of Karl Barth and H. Richard Niebuhr concerning the Second World War
Karl Barth and H. Richard Niebuhr both attempted to understand the Second
World War in theologically realistic fashions. Barth has been termed a "critically
realistic thinker" in recent scholarship, as he uses both realism and idealism to argue
against anthropocentric theology and ethics, including traditional just-war theories.
He maintains that God must always be primary, the one who determines good and
evil; therefore theology and ethics must always be theocentric not anthropocentric.
Good is, according to Barth, that which God commands. This leads him to argue for
a divine-command ethic in which God speaks to concrete persons in concrete
situations.H. Richard Niebuhr, who belonged to the Christian Realists in the United
States, argues from a very similar theological basis as Barth, but ends up with an
ethics ofresponsibility rather than a divine-command morality. According to
Niebuhr, human beings are responders, who respond in answer to prior action upon
them. The primary question for ethics is therefore what is happening, to what must I
respond in this situation and how ought I respond to it. In attempting to determine the
fitting response, one must also attempt to understand what the response to my
responding action will be. This model assists in understanding the events that lead
up to and occur during war and can help to build a more stable peace.Both Barth and Niebuhr attempted to understand the particular events of the
Second World War in a theological and Christian way. Their insights provide
assistance in our response to situations that may require the governmental use of
force, i.e. military action, peacekeeping missions and humanitarian missions. The
world situation, however, has changed since World War II; there are now more
armed conflicts between non-State groups, such as civil and ethnic wars. Therefore,
both Barth and Niebuhr's ethics of war from that time require some modification to
deal with current events. Barth's theological rejection of anthropocentrism remains
the framework for any Christian ethic dealing with contemporary uses of military
force, but his divine-command morality leaves little room for moral debate and
discussion, especially in a multi-cultural setting. H. Richard Niebuhr's ethics of response provides a model for ethical decision-making which allows for moral
discourse amongst various persons of different cultures and religions. It also helps us
to understand the situations to which governments may have to respond with force.
Yet Niebuhr's ethics, with its emphasis on the question of what is happening in a
given situation, has difficulty in providing assistance for contemporary decision
making concerning the use of force. By bringing Barth and Niebuhr into dialogue
with each other concerning the Second World War, we can see how a theology of
hopeful realism aids us in forming a model for Christian ethical decision-making
concerning the use of force in the current situation. This hopefully realistic model,
based on interpreting God's activity in history, takes the situation seriously yet is
able to respond to that situation with Christian hope. It does this by understanding
human beings not as rational beings who seek logic and rationality in all their
experiences but as symbol users who strive to understand themselves and their world
by means of symbols, or patterns, from their past. For Christians, Jesus Christ is
central to the symbols they use. This then provides for the use of Trinitarian symbols
to understand the ethical problem presented by war
