In Defense of Honor?
Barth’s Special Ethics and the Honor Hustle
About the author: Elizabeth Gatewood is pursuing her PhD in theological ethics and systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen. She is working within Karl Barth’s theology to articulate a Protestant theology of the household. She is also a classically trained violinist. She and her family recently moved from Aberdeen to Winston Salem, North Carolina.
In Barth’s special ethics, he considers whether the protection of life can involve self-defense, specifically whether one can kill in self-defense.1 Quite simply, his answer is “no.” Noting that people have varying levels of legitimate self-defense “within the framework of the law,” he clarifies that his question is whether the Christian ought to use that freedom to defend herself—whether that might be, on occasion, appropriate Christian obedience.
Barth discusses scriptural texts, including the Sermon on the Mount injunction to turn the other cheek. He comments, “We cannot dismiss them simply by admiring or ridiculing them as the product of a heaven-storming idealism, and then placing them in a corner and observing very different rules of life.”2 Instead, Scripture teaches that the “simple command of God” is to take the way of peace when violence is done to you. This “simple command of God,” Barth writes, “is valid for all men in its basic and primary sense.”3 Barth always weighs deeper levels of complexity and refuses to morph scriptural commands into wooden ethical rules—certainly, these words require nuance and particular discernment in contexts involving abuse. Nonetheless, his words stand as a pointed call to let oneself be wounded rather than retaliate, thereby entering the cycle of violence.
The logic in this larger section is as follows: life is a loan from God. Therefore, it is not a possession to be defended at any cost. It is precisely because life comes from God, belongs to God, and it is God’s duty to maintain and preserve that a person has the freedom not to be violent. Barth writes, “Human life—one’s own and that of others—belongs to God. It is His loan and blessing… Therefore respect is due to it, and, with respect, protection against each and every callous negation and destruction.”4 And yet even amid this requirement to protect life, “human life has no absolute greatness or supreme value…its proper protection must also be guided, limited, and defined by the One who commands it.”5
In a later part of his special ethics, Barth echoes this basic argument when he considers whether a person should speak up to defend her honor.6 In general, Barth answers that people should not seek to protect their honor, just as they should not physically defend themselves. A person should not worry about being misunderstood or maligned in public. Instead, “The Christian may and should have a thick skin.”7 He continues: “We do not need to go grey because of all the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of which we may become the victim.”8
The logic is the same as above—because honor (like life) “is granted to him by God,” a person should not enter the cycle of violence to defend it. There is no sense in verbal self-defense in an attempt to restore honor because “a dangerous, effectual threat to the honour of man could proceed only from God.”9 No matter how bitter or wounding, human words cannot diminish or mar another person’s God-given honor. “Hence we cannot and should not take steps to defend it as though something could.”10 God has given humanity a gift that human hands cannot despoil.
Barth was hardly one to retreat into silence. His fiery debates with Brunner, for example, indicate that he valued pointed exchanges on matters related to doctrine and truth.11 Barth specifies various situations in which people may be commanded to speak up in defense of honor or truth.12
Yet, it is clear that, for Barth, having a cheerful unconcern and a confident silence in the face of malicious words is the overwhelming norm for Christian obedience. This is an intriguing—and perhaps uncomfortable—invitation for our day. Even if we grant Barth’s claim that human words cannot despoil real honor, it seems that real things are at stake regarding honor and words—reputations, careers, and relationships.
Can we afford to be silent?
Given space constraints here—and that a casuistic analysis does not befit Barth’s work—I briefly mused on a specific facet of defense of honor. Much “defense of honor” happens proactively when a person is misrepresented or slandered. The online world pushes us to craft an image and a brand. This is not a defense of honor but a pursuit of it in pixels, tweets, podcast downloads, subscribers, and likes. The digital world seems to bestow the gift of honor upon those who, in addition to creating content, succeed in its marketing. They are the envied varsity players, exchanging the internet’s invisible currency of honor. Even one misstep can result in the ultimate withdrawal of honor: being canceled.
What might it mean to hear Barth’s words on honor and silence? Barth moves us to consider the possibility that identities anchored in the online brands we craft are wrongly backed by counterfeit honor, detached from God's immovable love and bestowal of honor. The latter will not be augmented by achieving even the sleekest and most networked online presence.
There is no formula here and certainly no prescription for digital anonymity. Yet Barth’s invitation cuts deep if we would hear it. Surely, this honor hustle does not leave its participants unchanged despite the promise of technology to be a neutral tool. The world created by the honor hustle inevitably invades the non-digital world. Barth wants people grounded in the Reality of God’s gift of honor, and his words unsettle those who cherish an “honor” earned by successful self-branding or mastery of a narrative.
Silence attests to God’s immovable gift of honor and life. In choosing the path of silence, a person manifests her deepest freedom. Jesus is silent before his accusers, untethered from either a desperate scramble for mastery of facts, control of the narrative, or a calculated scheme to direct attention. As the Word, he is hardly silent. His very existence speaks—and Barth recommends that the rest of us do the same.13
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 427 ff.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 430.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 430.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 397.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 398.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 678 ff.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 679.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 679.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 678.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 679.
See, for example, Keith Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis (T&T Clark, 2010).
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 680 ff.
Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 682.
Very much appreciated. Thank you.
This is tangential; but what are your thoughts then about honor and self-promotion, especially when it comes to our modern employment landscape?
For example, we are constantly making claims about 'how good we are' to highlight our special skills, abilities and achievements. In some ways, this seems to be linked to defending honor, though from a different perspective. Even when hiring a pastor, teams often make initial measures on their experience and qualifications, they look at whether they have grown churches and succeeded in shepherding communities. We look at measures of 'honor' or claims of the same.
Even when we have a speaker in our church, just like any speaker at a secular conference, someone comes up before and makes claims about that speaker, to define and highlight why they even have the right to speak to this congregation. These are always overly positive and focused on creating a sense of respect between the congregation and the speaker - so that the speaker has authority to speak. I see this also linked to creating honor - in part, because if I were to introduce a speaker by listing their failures, it would take away from the honor of the speaker (with the obvious exclusion of where churches love a salacious conversion story.... Welcome Tom, ex criminal, drug dealer and pimp who is now a Christian!). Even in these cases, we create honor through that redemption story - the conversion from the previous failure is the honor claim.
I know it is different, but it is definitely related; how do we consider this kind of honor seeking and giving, especially in the church?