Christian moral action Flashcards
What denomination of Christianity was Bonhoeffer raised as? What did this mean?
- Lutheran
- Meant he often fiercely criticised the Church if it diverged from the Bible
What did he join in 1934? What did this become?
- Pastors Emergency League
- Became the Confessing Church
When was the confessing church outlawed?
1937
What prompted Bonhoeffer to found the confessing church?
Hitler’s founding of the German Evangelical Church, 1934
What was the Barmen declaration?
- Mostly written by Karl Barth
- Rejected governmental interference in the Church
- Affirmed the Bible as the source of revelation
What was Finkenwalde?
- Illegal secret seminary
- Introduced seminarians to daily meditating on the Bible and African-American Church music he’d experienced
How did Bonhoeffer interpret solidarity?
- Purpose of Christianity = about the relationship to God by living with/for other people
- It’s why he returned to Germany to resist Hitler even after getting to US
- Wanted to share the trials of this time with his people
What did Bonhoeffer believe about the Fall?
- It corrupted our ability to know good and evil
- Meant we cannot know God’s will for certain
What does it mean for Bonhoeffer to be a ‘responsible person’?
- Someone who acts to stand their ground against evil with faith that they’re doing God’s will
- Even if this means putting aside human ethics
- This is why Bonhoeffer got involved in a plot to kill Hitler
How certain was Bonhoeffer that killing Hitler was right?
- He was never certain
- Said that if he survived WW2, he’d step down as a preacher because of it
- Believed God would forgive hum even if he became a sinner in the process
Matthew 5:39
‘If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.’
Romans 13:1
‘Obey the rulers who have authority over you.’
What is a neo-orthodox view of the Bible?
- Followed by Barth and Bonhoeffer
- Meant that Bonhoeffer didn’t think the Bible was the perfect word of God
- Believed meditating on the Bible in a community of believers can create an encounter with Jesus
- Will of God is alive within the Christian church
- Every situation needs a new attempt to understand God’s will
- Bible contains no universal, eternal ethical truths
What is the only purpose of the Bible?
- To inspire people to follow Jesus
- We should throw away principles when they become useless
What did Bonhoeffer call principles from previous times? What did this mean?
- ‘Rusty swords’
- Means obsolete/ineffective for fighting evil today
What did Bonhoeffer believe about human laws?
- Agreed with Luther’s claim that Christians should obey state’s laws
- Order is good for sinful creatures like us
- Human law is fallible and govs can become corrupt with power
Where is a Christian’s primary allegiance owed? What does this mean that the Church has to check?
- God
- Means a Christian’s role is to obey laws but also to disobey leaders if they act against God’s will
- Civil disobedience
What did Paul Hill do after being “inspired” by Bonhoeffer? What criticism about Bonhoeffer does this link to? How might Bonhoeffer counter this?
- Murdered an abortion doctor
- Bonhoeffer justified the assassination of politicians, which could justify many acts of religious terrorism
- Bonhoeffer emphasised selflessness, putting our own desires aside to act according to God’s will
What issue would secularists have with Bonhoeffer’s theology?
- Secularists don’t believe the Church should have any role in government
- Some argue that the church is even more open to corruption than the state
- At least the state is voted for in democratic elections
How does Stanley Hauerwas defend Bonhoeffer?
- Argues the Church protects against authoritarian dictatorship
- Without God, we lack meaning purpose and moral guidance which can be exploited by authoritarians
What is cheap grace?
The Church suggests believers don’t have to do anything difficult to receive grace, just confess your sins (in Catholicism)
What is costly grace?
- True grace
- Requires us to truly suffer and sacrifice like Jesus had
- There are arguably sacrifices we can still make today to prevent evil, eg. war/climate change
Mark 8:35
‘[disciples must] take up their cross and follow me’
Why would pacifism not have worked for Bonhoeffer?
- Peaceful protests only work against leaders who are not willing to kill
- Hitler was definitely willing to kill, so killing him was the only way to stop him
- This means his theology works today because it advocates working out how to resist the evil of your time/situation
Did Aquinas disagree with Bonhoeffer?
- Bonhoeffer didn’t follow natural law and use human reason to gain lesser knowledge of God
- If a law goes against human good, then civil disobedience may be justified, unless the disorder created by disobeying the is worse than the law
Acts 5:29
“We must obey God rather than man”
How did Bonhoeffer agree with Nietzsche?
- Nietzsche claimed that Christianity had become a negative force
- Bonhoeffer hoped to reform Christianity to make it relevant to modern secular society as a force for good and change it to get around Nietzsche’s critiques of it
What were Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity?
- “God is dead”
- He’d once been alive in our culture as our purpose
- Rise of secularism kills this purpose
What were Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity?
- “God is dead”
- He’d once been alive in our culture as our purpose
- Rise of secularism kills this purpose
- Nietzsche hoped this world could assert their own purpose and values without Christianity
- Christianity’s influence had been to infect us with ideas of sin and otherworldliness
- We become dependant on religion as a cure of sin that it infected onto us
- There will be a nihilistic void in Christianity until we move past Christianity’s influence on us
What is religionless Christianity?
- Thought rising secularism could usher in a new form of Christianity
- This form would focus on what it means to live like one of Jesus’ disciples and leaves behind rusty swords/cheap grace
What is this-worldliness?
- Concept Bonhoeffer uses
- Describes how Christianity should be about sharing God’s worldly suffering instead of just about personal pursuit of salvation
- Focuses Christians of concrete action and sacrifice they have to make in this world to stand against evil
Who did Bonhoeffer study theology under?
Karl Barth
What book did Bonhoeffer write?
The Cost of Discipleship
What plot did Bonhoeffer assist in?
The July Bomb Plot, where he worked in military intelligence. He hung for this
Where did Bonhoeffer think God’s will was clearest?
In action
What ethical views was Bonhoeffer critical of?
- Consequentialism - you can never know all the outcomes of an action
- Those who justify actions out of duty yet ignore evil
- Ethics based solely on agape love
What is the western void?
- Replaced the nihilistic void
- A moral/spiritual vacuum open to all sorts of beliefs seeking to fill gaps which Christianity had filled before
