Christian Moral Action Flashcards
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’slife
Bonhoeffer was an outstanding academic theologian but he also lived a life attempting to embody Christian principles morally and spiritually. He had a profound effect on what it means to put moral Christian principles into action.
University
In 1930 he finished his doctoral thesis and became a lecturer in Berlin, at this time he worked on his idea of radial Christianity. He argued that the state should not have authority, the church should be more active in pursuing justice. Since the reformation the church had decided, through Luther’s teachings, that the church and state should be equal. To disobey the state is to disobey god. But this was a false interpretation, one which Bonhoeffer would dedicate himself to reinterpreting.
America
In September of 1930, Bonhoeffer travelled to New York and studied with influential theologians there. He was impressed by their teachings of christian social responsibility but felt they underestimated human goodness. Most significantly, he was introduced to the members of the black churches. His experience of their vibrant christianity made him realise that christianity needed to build relationships with different churches without boundaries. Even before Hitler, his theology posed a radical challenge to the church and state.
Resistance to Nazism
When Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer got his opportunity to speak his message. As he spoke on a radio broadcast it became clear how critical he was of Hitler’s leadership ideas and its effect on the church. He resisted nazism in two main ways from there on:
He became a member of the confessing church, a group who refused the message that only aryans could be part of the church and accepted only Christ as authority
He joined the resistance, the most momentous decision of his life. At the time he was staying in New York after investigation by the gestapo for his role of training clergy in the confessing church.
In 1939 he returned to America for a visit, to avoid being called into Hitler’s army, which, if he refused, would damage the reputation of the confessing church. His visit was a short-term solution, but he realised soon that in order to be true to everything he had taught and believed, he must return and attempt to overthrow Nazi Germany. He thought of himself as a pacifist until then, but he realised he had based this off a secular view, calling it secular pacifism. He said this failed to acknowledge that true justice and peace are not of this world, making it unable to tackle evil, instead perpetuating lies. In joining the resistance, he acknowledged it as a harsh reality of the world.
In 1945, Hitler ordered all resistance fighters be killed, and just before the American army liberated the area he was in, they gave him a mock trial and he was hanged.
DutytoGodandstate
Bonhoeffer never completed his book, ethics, but it was posthumously put together. In it he set out to explain Christian ethics as different from human ethics. He warned against all forms of ideology based ethics, because ideologies are an extension of a human idea used to justify having power over others.
Christian ethics must start view the view that humans are finite and sinful, and that no decision is completely right or wrong. In extreme situations, he argued, humans must act out of despair but with hope and faith. Bonhoeffer knew that killing was wrong, but said that the killing of Hitler was the only option for the church.
The trouble was for Bonhoeffer that a Christian’s duty was to be obedient to the state, because the government imposes laws to keep away from sinful disorder. The problem was that the state gained too much power, making justice subordinate to its policies. It fails to acknowledge obedience to God’s will. The role of the Church is to keep the state in check. But at what point does a Christian decide that it is his duty to disobey the state?
Obedience to God’s will
The main passage of the NT that back this point up is thus: ‘let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.’
Bonhoeffer asked not if it was good or bad to obey the state, but if it was Gods will. How does one know that it even is God’s will? His reply was only that it would be clear in the moment of action. It is an act of faith.
While he agrees there is nothing unfamiliar about the Christian principle of love, he is critical of those who put it first. If love were self-evidently knowable, it would make God human. Human ideas make them slaves to these ideas, but responding to God’s will is liberating. Bonhoeffer argues this is Jesus’ teaching on inner law through prayer.
Justification of civil disobedience
His justification is to be understood with the pretext that Christians have a responsibility that the state aligns with God’s will. He says if a state is making ‘reasonable people face unreasonable situations’ then it may be disobeyed. This is true in the case of Nazi Germany. He said tyrannicide was justified if social order is re-established. He was critical of those who said they were doing their duty while allowing evil to prevail, and also of those who said the ends justify the means because we cannot count all possible outcomes. He said in prison that the attempt to kill Hitler and disobey the state was justified by ‘bold action as the free response of faith’. There is no amount of human reason which can justify killing, but God promises to forgive the ‘man who becomes a sinner in the process’.
Religionless Christianity
He was deeply critical of some aspects of liberal society, but agreed that democracy was right and personal autonomy was best for choosing the life best suited to ones own happiness. He described modern western culture as a ‘world come of age’ which had grown up and matured, leaving behind its childish superstitious view of religion in favour of a rational one. But he felt there was a cost. In throwing out old Christian views as irrational, it created ‘the western void’, a moral and spiritual vacuum in the place of christianity, open to be filled with dangerous beliefs. Bonhoeffer argued that instead of these modern ideas like human progress and competition becoming new religions, Christianity had to become a religionless Christianity, shedding the baggage of the past as well as the contamination of the present.
The confessing church
The birth of the Church came as a reaction to the Nazified faction of protestant clergy, who blended national socialism with Christianity. Hitler created the German evangelical church and only allowed clergy of aryan descent. Bonhoeffer and Niemoller disagreed with this and set up the confessing church of likeminded clergy. Karl Barth produced the Barmen Declaration at a meeting in 1934.
This was a declaration which stated that a Christian’s primary duty is to Christ, rejecting any teaching not revealed in him. Theologically it was a firm denial of national socialism but only presented a ‘limited disobedience’ to state. Later Bonhoeffer felt this church became self-focused and defensive. He said that ‘the church is her true self when she exists for humanity’ while he was in prison.
Thecostofdiscipleship
His distinctive ethical contribution was his focus on obeying the will of God instead of being sidetracked into matters of good and evil. But its is not easy to discern the will of God. Forming a set of ethical duties on this basis would be wrong, though, as Bonhoeffer made it clear the church should be grounded in everyday life. God reaffirmed this by become human in the person of Jesus.
Ethics as action
An important encounter was with Karl Barth. Barth taught Bonhoeffer that Christianity should not be an abstract system of human thought. Barth believed that God chooses to reveal himself to us, it is not us that finds him. God’s revelation comes in a special acts, mainly the life and death of christ. Bonhoeffer took it further to say that we should not say only God can act, or we become passive, such as the pharisees who received the message and did not act. He argued the law must entail being a doer of the law.
Costly grace
How can Christianity be regligionless? Bonhoeffer says that the Church should be based on three things: ‘only christ, only scripture and only faith’. Anything else is human invention. Therefore religion as an institution is just a human invention. Bonhoeffer argued from this that the church and state must be separate and free from each other. The cost was that in taking on the world, the disciple is put in danger. God’s grace cannot be bought as a commodity by going through the Christian rituals. That is cheap grace. Costly grace is ‘costly because its costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives the man the only true life…above all it is costly because it cost god the life of his son’.
Solidarity
Bonhoeffer’s favourite description of Jesus is that was a ‘man for others’. As the church represents the body of Christ, it should be a church for others. Bonhoeffer said this is where the church has failed, not acting in solidarity with humanity, especially the weak, vulnerable and oppressed.
Against injustice
He explicitly stated that the church had obligations to fight political injustice, especially in his time, fighting the evil of Jewish discrimination in three ways:
Questioning the state’s actions as being legitimate, calling on the state to be responsible for its actions
Helping the victims of injustice no matter what faith or belief
Being fully engaged with the resistance against injustice. the church must take direct action.
He said the church has failed in all this.
With the Jews
Bonhoeffer was true to his word. He wrote critically about the Nazi regimen, calling for solidarity with the persecuted. When German synagogues and Jewish businesses were burned and destroyed, he publicly rejected the view that this was God’s punishment for their rejection of Christ, instead calling it an act of a godless and violent regimen. He later even aided Jewish immigrants which led to his arrest and execution.
Global politics
Many critics say that because of the time when he wrote his work, it can only apply in similarly extreme situations. He compromises Christian pacifism only because his extraordinary situation meant that he was forced to. Whats more, his ethical focus was on a single threat, not a global threat. His localised politics is not as complex or multi-faceted as modern conflicts and power struggles. Some also argue that theology is
Not equipped for life in a stable, liberal democratic society.
On the other hand, his ethics on engagement with the world gives a place for Christianity as a moral and spiritual conscience in the state’s involvement with world politics. Stanley Hauerwas argued that Bonhoeffer’s concern for truth in politics was important today. There is a role for the church today to play a role in global politics to remind leaders not to confuse tolerance with a lack of engagement with truth.
Plural moral societies
Generally it is thought that we don’t have a single moral code in our current society. Moral pluralism says each person pursues their own ethical code with no absolute wrongs or rights but relative to situation. But every society seems to believe that each person must respect other’s morals up to the point of them causing harm. Bonhoeffer seems to support this view, at least in Fletcher’s interpretation. He says that Bonhoeffer’s example of mother Maria who sacrificed her life for a Jewish girl shows that killing innocent people cannot be an absolute wrong but requires a situationalist view relative to the principle for Christian love. He also approves of Bonhoeffer’s view that telling the truth depends on situation and place.
On the other hand, Fletcher’s interpretation is completely wrong. Bonhoeffer is not a moral relativist because his views are formed within a Christian community. Truth is an absolute but has to be applied in each situation directed by faith and conscience. Telling a lie is still a lie even if it is a last resort. Bonhoeffer is deeply critical of liberal societies for relativising moral values.
Although his ethics may appear contrary to moral pluralism nowadays, it does serve as a reminder to society to remember what a truly just society is, and where it is in relation to it.
Multi-faith society
Despite his work to defend the Jews, many argue that his beliefs that Jews should eventually convert made his work incompatible with a multi-faith society. Bonhoeffer was not aggressive in this view, actually considering it was the states duty to be equal to all citizens, but critics think this aspect would cause resentment.
On the other hand, he wrote an essay from prison to his co-conspirators about his lessons being part of the suffering and marginalisation of the outcast and powerless. He had new sympathy, not merely tolerance but an experience of what it means to belong to a faith community receiving discrimination or lack of power.
All religions, but especially Christianity, can find his idea of sympathy as costly grace as a guide for more genuine multi-faith societies, but with sacrifices and costs. For Christianity it serves a major purpose providing practical ways for the church to question its power without losing integrity as witness to Christ.
