Yoder on Barth on the ethics of killing

I’m about 35 pages into John Howard Yoder’s Karl Barth and the Problem of War. The text is an account and critique of Barth’s views on war, based on Barth’s writings as well as personal conversations Yoder had with him.

Chapter 3 offers a general overview of Barth’s approach to the ethics of killing. While Barth doesn’t embrace an absolute prohibition on killing, he does think that the New Testament has pushed back the boundaries on acceptable instances of it to the point where only in the rarest of cases is it permissible.

Yoder writes:

It is indeed a matter of surprise, Barth remarks (CD 400), that after the incarnation in which human life was taken up by God himself in Christ, after the crucifixion where human death was likewise assumed and absorbed by Christ, and after the resurrection when death’s power was broken, the New Testament does not simply declare all killing to be out of the question. It is clear that the New Testament reckons much less than the Old Testament with the possibility of cases where killing is necessary; the improbability and infrequency of such cases in the New Testament clearly calls us to vigilance and to hesitancy before we may conclude that we have come to the point where the taking of life is commanded. Yet the New Testament clearly does not forbid killing. “On the basis of the incarnation and crucifixion the protection of life has received the sharpness and intensity which obliges us to push further and further back the border between killing which may be commanded as ultima ratio and murder which is forbidden” (KD 456). This pushing back of the border between legitimate and illegitimate killing is undeniably the burden of the New Testament; yet it still has not been pushed back infinitely. There is still room beyond it for killing. (pp. 29-30)

Yoder goes on to offer Barth’s take on specific issues such as capital punishment:

There are logically three possible kinds of grounds for judicial penalties. The first is the protection of society. But a protection which is so absolute as to require the absolute elimination of any menace is justifiable only if the state which is to be protected, or the nation which intends to protect itself, is also an absolute. The absolute value of the state or the human social order is, however, something which the Christian cannot affirm. The second general reason for penalties is the expiation of an offense against the moral order; yet the Christian knows taht there can and need be no more expiation since the cross of Christ. The third general ground for judicial penalties is the argument that through punishment the criminal may be rendered a more useful citizen. In this case killing is conceivable only if we are sure ahead of time that no improvement is possible; this also is something which a Christian may not affirm. Thus Barth concludes that the death penalty normally is never acceptable; capital punishment may not legitimately be a state institution. However, in exceptional cases the death penalty might become a necessity. Such cases arise in wartime, e.g., as treason or perhaps as the necessity to assassinate a tyrant. Both these possibilities belong in the field of warfare rather than in the field of normal judicial procedure; we shall therefore defer their discussion. (p. 34)

I find the second and third arguments convincing, but the firts can be questioned I think. To say that “society” or “the state” cannot for Christians be an absolute value is undeniable. However, what about cases where capital punishment may be the only way to prevent other people from being killed? Granted that their lives are not absolute values either (for Barth, according to Yoder, physical life has value in that it is the vehicle of our obedience to God), doesn’t it still seem that if one had to choose between the life of a murderer and the life (lives) of his victim(s) that the murderer should be put to death? Still, as John Paul II pointed out in Evangelium Vitae, this situation generally doesn’t obtain in modern industrialized nations where murderers can be restrained by non-lethal means.

Yoder’s discussion of Barth’s view of abortion is also worth noting:

Again it is clear that the will of God is the preservation of life. Again it is clear that man has no right to make exceptions. Again there can be the extreme case in which it can be the will of God for the life of an embryo to be sacrificed intentionally. Contrary to his general procedure elsewhere, Barth enumerates certain conditions (CD 421 ff.); these conditions, however, are not to be understood in a casuistic sense, but rather as attempts to make still more clear how extreme the case must be for it ever to be possible to say that God commanded the killing. For example, the first condition is that it must be a matter of life against life. Abortion for the sake of convenience, for the avoidance of psychological shock, to avoid illegitimate birth even as the result of rape, for economic reasons, or for reasons of health cannot be justified. Only if it is clear that a developing pregnancy really threatens the life of a mother can it be permitted to take the life of the unborn child. The second condition is that once the question has been weighed, the decision before God must be made courageously–conscientiously, but also with certainty. Third, the decision can be made only as a response to the command of God, and fourth, it must be made in the knowledge of and in faith in the forgiveness of God in Christ. (p. 32)

In later chapters Yoder is going to question whether Barth’s concept of the Grenzfall (the “borderline case” or “extreme case”) that may permit killing is adequate for the use Barth makes of it.