Bonhoeffer - Christianity Flashcards

Question

What two key things does Bonhoeffer highlight

Answer 1

Urgency of action and obedience to God, rather than religion

Answer 2

The battle between good and evil that exists in Christianity **working as individuals though**

Answer 3

His theology is: - Divisive - Counter-productive - Undermines the power of joint action, promulgated by the Church Jesus wasn’t necessarily trying to champion the oppressed, but bring them up to a societally accepted level Its political nature makes it become a form of ‘worldly’ Christianity - many Christinas think you have to right in this world but it has little consequence in the LR

Answer 4

Both saw what was happening in Germany and saw the same errors emerging

Answer 5

Bonhoeffer put more power into the hands of individuals, whilst Barth denied the ability of human beings to understand God and what He wants for us Bonhoeffer felt we had to get rid of the Church and religion, returning to a more traditional Christianity where people weren’t sheep and take individual responsibilities Barth felt humans couldn’t be trusted to understand God and His will. He thought the only real answer was to listen and trust what God has told us to do; stop trying to reason

Answer 6

Approaching the Bible with humility and meditating on it in a community of believers can create an encounter with Jesus Bonhoeffer adopted this

Answer 7

He thinks legalism is wrong; the will of God is not the stale set of ancient ethical rules written in the Bible. It is alive in a Christian church community. Each new day and situation needs a renewed attempt to understand the will of God Finkenwalde is where he tried putting this to action

Answer 8

… ethical precept which we may or even can adopt literally’ – Bonhoeffer.

Answer 9

Bonhoeffer thought that part of a Christian’s responsibility to the state is not only to obey its laws that encourage law and order but also to disobey their leaders if they act against the interests of the state and God’s will. He engaged in civil disobedience by taking part in the confessing Church and the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde; arguably his plot to kill Hitler went beyond ‘civil’ action

Answer 10

There are many historical instances where people have done terrible things because they thought they had the will of God on their side (France that massacre of Catholics and then Protestants) Even Nazi soldiers had the slogan ‘God is on our side’ on their belts Paul Hill murdered an abortion doctor and claimed to be inspired by Bonhoeffer George Bush cited Bonhoeffer to justify his war on terror

Answer 11

Acting according to God’s will for B requires that we put aside both our human ethics and our personal desires for it to be a truly selfless act - the injunction of ‘Love thy neighbour’ was thought be B to require selflessness of us This makes his recommendation less susceptible to justifying terrible things The Nazis didn’t put aside their selfish ideas and neither did Bush

Answer 12

It is impossible to truly put aside your own mind; your desires shape your perspective on the world in a deep and inescapable way Harvey Cox claimed Bonhoeffer’s theology is like a Rorschach test; it revealed the theological presuppositions of the reader The fact that such an inconsistent variety of people have drawn inspiration from Bonhoeffer suggests he is just providing an excuse for people to do as they will

Answer 13

They want a complete separation of Church and State, even rejecting the idea that the Church could act as a check on the state They may argue that the Church is more corruptible due to its lack of democracy ‘The long peace’ is the significant level of peace after the Second World War to present day. Secularists use it to argue that the rise of secular liberal democracy is good and how unnecessary religion is for maintains social order Thus, B’s view that the Church should act as a check on state power is unnecessary today and so relevant no more

Answer 14

Says how western democracies practice religious tolerance for pragmatic reasons without concern for religious truth. Pragmatism without truth, leading to indifference and then cynicism. Liberal secular western societies have undermined theological and religious truth which creates a void vulnerable to being filled by totalitarian powers He is saying we lack purpose and guidance without religion and without purpose people don’t realise their freedom is being taken away Arguably Bonhoeffer has a point that the Church can act as a useful moral compass for society to protect against this possibility

Answer 15

… disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ - Mark 8:34-35 Suggests costly action is required for true discipleship

Answer 16

Irrelevant today Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on suffering made more sense contemporarily, resisting Nazi rule We live in times of relative peace and security and thus suffering is not as required

Answer 17

Jesus called on us to sacrifice like he did and arguably that was the primary meaning of discipleship. Our cross might be different from his but there are still sacrifices we can and should make today to prevent evil like racism/sexism and global issues involving war and climate change.

Answer 18

**Ghandi’s** liberation of India from the British **MLK** was a Christian who had a different view to B about the effectiveness and morality of violence in civil disobedience Arguably, **Ghandi** and **King’s** method is morally superior and more true to Christian ethics compared to Bonhoeffer’s which allows violence

Answer 19

Jesus’ pacifism ‘worked’ because he was raised from the dead and thereby saved us from our sins MLK’s pacifism ‘worked’ against the evil of racism in America, so B would provably have approved However, it would not have worked against Hitler so B thought that fulfilling God’s will required violence Non-violent resistance works only if the tyrant has a problem with killing peaceful protestors This shows Bonhoeffer’s theology remains relevant because it’s saying you must figure out how to resist evil in your situation and have that it’s God’s will to act on that and that He will forgive you if you’re mistaken. In this Fallen world it is the best moral approach a Christian can hope for and it is what God wants of us - He wants us to act

Answer 20

We can disobey laws if they are bad for us, only if the fallout from the disobeying is not as bad though If the law is opposed to Divine Law e.g idolatry, then Christians mustn’t follow those laws ‘*We ought to obey God rather than man*’ - Acts 5:29 Aquinas’ view is therefore much simpler than Bonhoeffer’s about when civil disobedience is justified and there’s much less risk of it justifying evil acts, being misinterpreted or misapplied

Answer 21

‘To live in an orderly society’ is one of Aquinas’ Primary Precepts and thus civil disobedience could be seen to be hindering the ability to follow this precept, so long as the cause it is going against is not destroying this itself

Answer 22

Bonhoeffer mostly agreed with Barth that human reason was corrupted and so cannot be relied upon to know the primary precepts So, Aquinas’ criticism fails due to the lack of validity that the argument it is derived from holds - only faith in God’s revelation in the Bible works

Answer 23

Capacity for the infinite’ - Karl Barth

Answer 24

Only rational beings can sin - the doctrine of original sin claims that post-lapsarian humans are sinners It follows that we must still be rational to some degree; our reason therefore still inclines us, through synderesis, towards goodness

Answer 25

Barth still seems correct that our corruption makes our reasoning about God’s existence and morality also corrupted Even if there is natural law, we are unable to follow it reliably as the bad in our nature unfortunate means we cannot rely on the good. Whatever a weak and misled conscience discovers is too unreliable

Answer 26

A concept B used to describe the way in which he thinks Christianity should be less about personal pursuit of salvation and more about ‘*sharing God’s sufferings in the world*’ He initially thought that living a holy life would help him acquire faith, but came to think instead that ‘*only by living completely in this world*’ enables one to have faith This worldliness focuses Christians on the concrete actions and sacrifices they would have to make in this world to stand their ground against evil in the service of God’s will

Answer 27

A form of Christianity Bonhoeffer thought should emerge following the ‘*world come of age*’, meaning humanity reached a level of maturity such that it no longer depended on the traditional legalistic form of religion in the past B thought this could be a good opportunity for a new Christianity to assert itself, because it makes irrelevant the theological baggage, rusty swords and cheap grace of traditional religion and enables us to focus on what it means to live like a disciple of Jesus and trying to follow God’s will The success of this defence of a version of Christianity which works in the secular age is vital to the validity and relevance of B’s theology

Answer 28

Some argue B has gone too far in making Christianity relevant in modern secular times by stripping Christianity of its doctrinal content in appeasement of secularism

Answer 29

Prompted him to discuss religionless Christianity and this-worldliness Nietzsche thought that the rise of secularism led to the death of God and thus a need to find our own ethic He thought Christianity’s influence on us was to infect us with the idea of ‘sin’ and ‘otherworldliness’ - the idea we could only have purpose through a supernatural thing we could never live up to, thereby undermining our confidence in asserting our own purpose, making us reliant on religion Nietzsche likened Christianity to a bloodsucking parasite The nihilistic void will linger until become fully free of Christianity’s influence on us, telling us we need cosmic purpose in order to have purpose or moral guidance

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Bonhoeffer - Christianity Flashcards

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