3.3B- Christian moral action Flashcards
Bonhoeffer’s early life
-born in 1906
-elder brother killed in action
-by 13, he had a vision of how the Church should be transformed.
-became a lecturer in Berlin
-travelled to New York and studied with some influential theologians.
-Upon his return to Germany, Hitler had become the German Chancellor and Bonhoeffer delivered a speech in which he was critical of the ‘leadership principle’, but his mic was turned off.
-He joined the Resistance movement and a member of the Confessing Church (a group of clergy who refused to accept that only Aryan Germans could become members of the Church).
-Bonhoeffer returned to the US to avoid conscription by Hitler into WWII, he later decided to return to Germany to fight against the Nazi regime.
Bonhoeffer and secularism
-called secular pacifism (a false non-religious belief that society can achieve a state of non-violence) a ‘scandal’.
-His choice to join the resistance against Nazism was not one which could be called intrinsically good, for in the world of harsh realities (‘terrible alternatives’), all choices inevitably have bad consequences.
Bonhoeffers final years
-The failed Resistance assination on Hitler led to Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law being implicated.
-Hitler then ordered all resisters should be killed in 1945, resulting in his execution.
Duty to God and state
-With Nazism clearly in mind Bonhoeffer warned against all forms of ethics which claim to be based on an ideology. Ideologies are dangerous because they are simply extensions of human ideas to justify the use of power over others.
-Bonhoeffer argued that in some extreme situations we can do nothing but act out of despair, but in faith and hope.
-Bonhoeffer knew that the assassination of Hitler was the only option for the Church - even though killing is wrong and killing a powerful leader could undermine the stability of the country.
-But Bonhoeffer’s point is that the state can never represent God’s will and so can never assume any ultimate form of power. The role of the Church is not to be part of the state but rather to keep it in check.
-Bonhoeffer believed that, based on the teaching of the Gospels, all Christians are called to discipleship-all are called to be followers of Jesus and therefore must be obedient to his will. He though discipleship and obedience came hand in hand.
Duty to God and state- Obedience to God
-Bonhoeffer, however, was not concerned about whether he should follow the government; rather, his concern was whether the will of the Nazi Party was in line with the will of God -and it is this which led him to question the concept of being or doing ‘good’ and instead to focus on the will of God and being obedient to that.
-Being obedient to God’s will, for Bonhoeffer, is an act of faith. In order to be obedient to God’s will, one must abandon responsibility to all other forms of authority and follow Christ alone, no matter how much of an inconvenience this may be.
-This was controversial for Bonhoeffer as he was stating that being a follower of Christ demands that one must have an immediate and single-minded obedience to Jesus and his teachings. This then opens up the possibility of civil disobedience – he was stating that Christians do not need to follow the laws of the land as long as they are following the teachings of Christ and doing God’s will. Bonhoeffer was calling for ‘single-minded obedience’.
-For Bonhoeffer, it is only through Jesus that this single-minded obedience is possible.
Duty to God and State- Leader
-A true Christian leader, for Bonhoeffer, is one who remembers that they are first and foremost a fellow follower of Jesus, who keeps the Bible at the heart of all they do.
-Bonhoeffer argued, Germany has invented a new category of Leader which is divorced from society. It is one which replaces the imperfect father and teacher with the strong and perfect father and teacher. This is extraordinary, Bonhoeffer said, because the group has chosen to give up its freedoms and identity in obedience to a tyrant.
Duty to God and State- Civil disobedience
-It could be argued that this definition is particularly relevant when considering Bonhoeffer’s justification of his civil disobedience against the Nazi regime.
-In believing he had a responsibility to obey the will of God, Bonhoeffer justifies his civil disobedience by the fact that he believes Christians had a responsibility to monitor the State as well as to serve God’s will.
-Bonhoeffer could see that he was surrounded by reasonable, intelligent people who could see the evil that was surrounding them but were resigned to not being able to resist those in power. They either did nothing or joined the stronger party in defeat, as people were seduced by the power of Nazism.
-Many people in the German church thought that Hitler was a great leader, managing to impose order over what they saw as a disordered state. However, the marginalization of Jews and other minority groups, plus the unashamed disregard for the value of their lives, were grossly against the teachings of Christ. Bonhoeffer felt he had a Christian responsibility to defend these teachings.
-Bonhoeffer refused to accept the laws of the Nazi regime. He spoke out openly against the party, losing his much-loved job at the university as a result of this. Yet he was adamant that he must obey what he believed to be the will of God.
Duty to God and State- God’s will
-Bonhoeffer believed discipleship was about following Jesus first and foremost - responding to Jesus’ call.
-However, Bonhoeffer did not believe that this could happen on our own terms, in ways that are convenient. True faith is about accepting that we must be entirely obedient to doing God’s will, however God wills us to do it at that particular point in time.
-The obvious next question is: “How do I know what is the will of God?” Bonhoeffer’s response would be that it would ‘only be clear in the moment of action’.
-A good Christian life, for Bonhoeffer, was one where the Bible and the example of Jesus were centralised.
Duty to God and State- The centrality of Jesus
-For Bonhoeffer, the ultimate leader (God) is shown in Jesus Christ.
-He believed that Jesus, as the sole mediator in the world, has removed the need for anything else to distract us from God.
-Any attempt to live life needs to be (consciously or not) focused through Jesus.
-If we want to achieve anything, including communicating with our neighbour, we need to do this through prayer to God through Jesus.
Church as Community
-No Christian can act morally in isolation. Bonhoeffer agreed with Kant that when a person acts out of duty he knows that he does so because he is acting in solidarity with all humankind. For the Christian the role of the Church is to provide a moral and spiritual community which equips each person with the tools and attitudes to live morally in the world.
-For this to happen, Bonhoeffer argued that a Christian community or Church cannot be the middle-class institution it has become over the centuries but should be stripped of false pretence at being religious.
-The Church must grow up and embrace a religionless world and fully engage with it.
Church as Community- religionless Christianity
-Although Bonhoeffer was deeply critical of certain aspects of liberal societies, he didn’t for one moment think that democracy was wrong and that personal autonomy was essential for choosing the life best suited to one’s own happiness.
-But Bonhoeffer also felt that this had come at a cost. Liberalism may have thrown out many Christian values as being irrational but in doing so it had created what he called ‘the Western void’: that is, a moral and spiritual vacuum which was open to all kinds of dangerous beliefs seeking to fill the gap which Christianity used to occupy.
-This is why, paradoxically, Bonhoeffer argued for a religionless Christianity: Christianity without the baggage of the past and contamination by the ideological beliefs of the present.
Church as Community- The Confessing Church
-The Confessing Church was born after a group of pastors, including Bonhoeffer, rejected the German state Church’s requirement that clergy should only be of Aryan descent. Karl Barth among others produced the Barmen Declaration.
-The Barmen Declaration states categorically that a Christian’s primary duty is to Christ; the Church should reject any teaching which is not revealed in Jesus Christ. It was theologically a firm denial of Nazi National Socialism but as some have commented, only presented ‘limited disobedience’ against the state. Politically it could have gone further especially with regard to the Jews and other minorities.
-Bonhoeffer did not fully agree with the narrow view of the Confessing Church on other issues, influenced as he was by his ecumenical experiences in the USA, as he thought that the Church needed to have a focus on all minorities and have no national boundaries.
-In the end, Bonhoeffer felt that the Confessing Church had not done enough to overcome Hitler’s power.
Church as Community- The community at Finkenwalde
-Whilst setting up a seminary in1935, he used the opportunity to establish a community of Christians who lived a life that Bonhoeffer saw as the ideal Christian life. Bonhoeffer thought that true Christianity came from living as a community of disciples of the true leader, Jesus Christ, focused on prayer and discipline.
-The central practices at Finkenwalde included:
*Discipline. Discipline of oneself in relationship with others is the foundation of the Church. Bonhoeffer insisted that the body just as much as the spirit had to be disciplined and exercised.
*Meditation. Discipline is developed through meditation as the foundation for prayer.
*Bible. Frequent reading and discussion of the Bible is at the heart of Christian daily life. Debate and discussion are also significant.
*Brotherhood. The community is bound together by love of and for Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit. In practical terms Bonhoeffer insisted that the director should change frequently so that the community should not become stuck in its ways. To extend the brotherhood beyond Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer ensured that former students were to be informed by regular reports/letters of life in the community.
*Community for others. Bonhoeffer insisted that the Church is a community of the forgiven not of the righteous because no one is perfect.
The cost of discipleship
-Bonhoeffer urged followers of Christ not to be passive followers. He likened them to the Pharisees who were good at hearing and following God’s commands but did nothing to act on God’s behalf.
-Having knowledge of the law and acting on the will of Christ are two separate and distinct things for Bonhoeffer.
-The ideal for Bonhoeffer is that ethics requires action, and action must be prompted by conscience, subject to the will of God. These ethical decisions may involve conflict in this action (such as civil disobedience), but this clearly distinguishes good and evil.
The cost of discipleship- Ethics as Action
-Bonhoeffer’s most important intellectual encounter in the Finkenwalde years was with Karl Barth.
-Barth taught Bonhoeffer that if Christianity is to mean anything it cannot simply be an abstract system of human thought.
-Barth’s notion of God is that it is not we who know God but God who chooses to reveal himself to us. God’s revelation is not general but always a special act - as in the supreme example of the person and life of Jesus Christ.
-Bonhoeffer agreed with Barth but argued that Barth had not gone far enough. The danger is that we can conclude that if only God can truly act in the world then we can be no more than passive recipients of his revelation.
-Bonhoeffer likened this to the Pharisees who were very good at hearing God’s commands but did nothing to act on his behalf.
-In summary:
*Ethics is action and action is liberating.
*Action is prompted by conscience, conscience is the experience of disunity in oneself, with God and with others. Conscience is therefore a moment of self-knowledge - just as Bonhoeffer experienced in America when he decided to engage in the ‘terrible alternative’.
*Ethical decisions are always ones of conflict and action; the conflict is between knowing good and evil and the action is distinguishing between them.
*Love overcomes disunity. Love (agape) is not a human attitude but is revealed in God’s love for humanity as expressed in Jesus Christ. ‘Only in Jesus Christ do we know what love is, namely, in His deed for us.’.
Cost of Discipleship- Costly Vs. cheap grace
-Using the ideas of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Bonhoeffer believed that authentic Christianity has three fundamental aspects:
(i) only Christ
(ii) only scripture
(iii) only faith
-Anything else is merely human intervention. This thought concerned Bonhoeffer. He viewed the Church as being full of ‘cheap grace’ - because Christ died for all, then many accepted this grace for free.
-The Church was a happy, comfortable and welcoming place as Christ has already paid the price for every person’s sin so no action is required to receive this grace. For Bonhoeffer, this was a Christianity without Jesus, because being a Christian means one must ‘pick up one’s cross’ and struggle, just as Jesus did.
-Bonhoeffer was concerned that Christians did not feel they needed to make any changes to their lives, as the price for their sin had already been paid.This is a form of ‘easy Christianity’. It is a self-congratulating lie that Christians tell themselves in order to live a comfortable life and share a comforting and heartwarming message.
-Easy Christianity is not Christianity, for Bonhoeffer, and the reliance on cheap grace made the Church a secular place, willing to take on the beliefs and values of modern society.
-If cheap grace is merciless to the Church, the alternative is costly grace. It is costly because it costs a man his life and grace because it gives man the only true.
-This is grace that is not freely given, but requires a person to seek and work for it. It requires a person to make a change to their lives and the decisions they are making. Bonhoeffer was concerned that the Church was becoming too secularised and, in order to increase membership numbers (and therefore donations to the Church), it had lost the sense of costly grace in favour of cheap grace.
Cost of Discipleship- Sacrifice and suffering
- In Mark 8:34-5, Jesus links discipleship with suffering, specifically his suffering in the Passion - an ignominious, embarrassing and dishonourable death. Bonhoeffer comments on this passage in The Cost of Discipleship, saying that to be a disciple of Jesus was not an easy choice.
-For Bonhoeffer, there is a necessary link between suffering and costly grace. The suffering that disciples must bear has nothing to do with ordinary life, such as losing a job or dealing with a family member’s illness. Disciples must suffer in a specific way - ‘for Christ’.
-To describe this Bonhoeffer adopted Barth’s use of the New Testament Greek word ‘krisis’ - meaning both ‘dispute’ and ‘judgement’. The great Christian paradox is that it is because of the crisis of the world (its sinfulness, disputes, waywardness and lack of belief) that God reveals his ‘crisis’, his judgement on sin and gift of grace and redemption in Jesus Christ. This is sometimes called a theology of crisis.
-Costly grace underpins Bonhoeffer’s realisation that he would in all probability have to pay the ultimate sacrifice of death, but he did not seek to suffer and he never saw himself as a martyr. During his time in prison, as his Letters from Prison demonstrate, he did not dwell on suffering but rather affirmed the Christian life in his continuing stand against wickedness.
Cost of Discipleship- Solidarity
-One of Bonhoeffer’s favourite descriptions of Jesus was that he was ‘the man for others’. As the Church represents Jesus as the ‘body of Christ’, it follows that it must be the ‘Church for others’.
-The Church as Bonhoeffer viewed it had singularly failed in this role; it had not acted in solidarity with humanity especially those whom Jesus made it his mission to value - the weak, the vulnerable and oppressed.
-Bonhoeffer was explicit about the Church’s obligations to fight political injustice. In his essay, ‘The Church and the Jewish Question’, he wrote that the Church must fight the evil of Jewish discrimination in three ways:
*First, the Church must question whether the state’s actions are legitimate; it can call on the state to be fully responsible for its decisions.
*Second, the Church must help all victims of injustice of whatever faith or belief.
*Third, it must be fully engaged in resistance to reverse the machinery of injustice. The Church must take direct action, ‘not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.’
