Christian Moral Action Flashcards
Who was Bonhoeffer?
- Dietritch Bonhoeffer used his experience with the rise of Nazism to explore how Christian life can be fully expressed.
- as he began to challenge Hitlers influence, he left behind his pacifist view, realising Christians could not stand back and let terrible things happen in the world.
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throughout his life, he held firm to three key principles:
1) the wholly other God is revealed fully in Jesus
2) Jesus is also fully human and is ‘for us’
3) Humans are social beings and the best expression of this is found in the communal life of the Church - ”silence is the fact of evil is itself evil; God will not hold us guiltless”
The Church and the state
- German Christianity was split in the 1930’s between Nazi-controlled German Church and confessing Church.
- Some believed that the States laws were an expression of Gods law, linked with the Nazi ideology and became a part of the official German Church.
- Others wished to break away from politics entirely and were members of the confessing Church, named because they believed that they were the only Christians who were truly ‘confessing’ their faith.
- Bonhoeffer accused German Christians of not being true to their disciples and command of God
- his criticism of Nazism brought him into conflict with the Nazi states
Obedience, leadership and doing God’s will
- for Bonhoeffer, the call to discipleship is a call to obedience to the leadership of Jesus and the will of God
- this is controversial though as it places discipleship above law
- he thought the road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus
- ‘single minded obedience’ is what Bonhoeffer called for
Civil disobedience
- saw duty to God as far outweighing duty to the state
- believed the German Church was being seduced by the power of Nazism
- he wasn’t content to accept the law if Germany’s new state so he concluded that tyrannicide was his Christian duty
- so there was no ultimate rational for his view, all Christians can do is act in faith and in hope
Church as community and source of spiritual discipline
- the role of a Christian community is to give its members what they need to live good lives.
- Bonhoeffer thought that the Church needed to understand that the world is religionless and work within that context.
Religionless Christianity is understood as:
1) being in a world that has moved beyond the superstitions that religion brings with it and is moving towards rationalism
2) needing to react to what society has replaced these superstitions with, such as Nazi ideologies
3) having to lift itself beyond both its own past and current challenges
4) needing to get rid of ‘rusty swords’ - Bonhoeffers idea that ethics needs to be reinterpreted and move forward.
Bonhoeffers role in the confessing Church:
- in particular, it rejected the move by the German hierarchy to ban anyone not of Aryan descent from leadership within the Church.
- the confessing Church met together in 1934 to produce the Barmen Declaration, written by Karl Barth.
The core beliefs found in the Declaration include:
1) Jesus is the only true leader and the only way to God
2) Christians must not follow any teaching that does not come from the revelation of Jesus
3) other ideologies do not have authority over a persons life
- Bonhoeffer felt that it was not explicit enough in its idea of Church being for all people, not just the people of the nation.
- its focus on beliefs, rather than action was a weakness for Bonhoeffer, who by the end of his life thought that it had not done enough to promote disobedience to the State in a religionless world.
- he was particularly stung by the fact the Confessing Church did not take a strong stand against the directive that all Church leaders should take the oath of obedience to Hitler.
Bonhoeffer’s religious community at Finkenwalde:
- on returning from America, Bonhoeffer was asked to look after a seminary which soon moved to Finkenwalde.
- the seminary was illegal and secret because the State seminaries were only allowing Aryan people to train there. It was closed by the Gestapo in 1937.
- the seminary allowed Bonhoeffer to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian community: this was where spiritual discipline comes from. For Bonhoeffer, spiritual discipline was:
- prayer-centred: including meditation
- bible-based: lots of Bible study and discussion about scripture
- simple: there is no need to clutter a mind if you want to progress spiritually
- focused on the whole-person: the body as well as the soul
- communal: based on the idea of mutual support
- action-based: Church must look out towards the world and speak into the world
The cost of discipleship
- discipleship can come with many sacrifices one makes when they surrender to being a disciple
- cheap grace is grace without discipleship, its a covering for sins that people allow themselves
- greater spiritual discipline and practice is need to achieve costly grace
- grace cannot be bought, its the ultimate sacrifice
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believed to be a disciple you must experience sacrifice and suffering:
1) you need to deny oneself, must reject a life of self interest
2) you need to take up your cross, must be willing to die if its necessary
3) you need to follow Jesus, and his must be continual - Jesus was willing to go through suffering with humanity and ensure that he was in solidarity with his people
- at the centre of his theology if the cross was bis ethics of suffering and solidarity
