Grab some coffee, this is going to take a while...
Part 1: The Good
It is important in understanding Bonhoeffer’s ethics, and before we define what ethical (good) is from his perspective, that we have the right understanding of where good (responsible) action takes place. Good and bad can only be discerned within reality. Reality is nothing other than the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus Christ that the world is reconciled to God (made real) and only in Christ can we know what is truly good. In Bonhoeffer’s ethics the idea of an independent agent that can objectively determine good from evil is a myth that is not rooted in reality. Bonhoeffer writes, “No one has the responsibility of turning the world into the kingdom of God, but only of taking the next necessary step that corresponds to God’s becoming human in Christ.”
So then, what does Bonhoeffer define as good? “Good is historical action that receives its laws of historical action from the center of history, from the event of God’s becoming human.” It is only in Christ that anything we do can or should be considered good. Real good can only ever exist in the reality that God has become a human being, Jesus Christ.
Bonhoeffer rejects any attempt to generate ethical principles from Jesus, this would just be replacing one law with another, not freedom from the law. He writes, “Jesus is not concerned with the establishment of new ethical ideals…but exclusively with God’s love for human beings.” It is this love for humanity that compels Christian activity which, “springs from the unity between God and the world.” Jesus taught about this kind of love in the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer writes, “The Sermon on the Mount as the proclamation of the incarnate love of God calls people to love one another, and thus to reject everything that hinders fulfilling this task—in short, it calls them to self-denial.” The love of God expressed in Christ for humanity is not just an end in-and-of itself, rather God’s love in Christ is the means by which we arrive at the real end that is reconcilliation.
The love of God constitutes what Bonhoeffer would call a ‘responsible action’ in that it is a self-sacrificial love. Jesus, “lived as the one who in himself has taken on and bears the selves of all human beings.” As his followers we are not excused from self-sacrificial love either, “only selfless people truly live.” We are not just responsible for ourselves, but those that God has entrusted into our care. This responsibility demands that the Christian take part in the world not just for their own benefit but for the well-being of others. It requires following Christ in the public as well as the private.
Drawing upon what we have read so far it is clear that Bonhoeffer does not believe in a purely personal ethic. Our ethics, our understanding of what is Good, can only be rooted in relationship with Christ, and through Christ the rest of humanity. Among the followers of Christ there is no such thing as the abstract individual on which to base an ethic. We are literally called, in Christ, to ‘life together.’
It seems then that Bonhoeffer’s continuing message to the church is that we would turn to Jesus. Jesus is the only hope for humanity, and therefore the church. Apart from Jesus, and his love for the world, we are lost and suffer under the ‘divine No’ of God’s judgment on sin. This message contends against a church that remains complicit in its engagement of the world apart from the love of Christ for the world. When the church is not in Christ–as Christ is in and reconciled to the world– it is no longer the church.
Part 2: The Bad
What is the forbidden fruit? What had God deemed improper for Adam and Eve to know? Scripture refers to the tree that bears that fruit as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Bonhoeffer understands this prohibition as one of possibilities, namely that prior to their knowledge of good and evil our progenitors did not conceive of their own capability to do evil; but, “by understanding themselves according to their possibilities… human beings come to see themselves as the origin of good and evil.” Or, “Instead of knowing themselves in God, who is their origin, they now must know themselves as the origin.” Finally, “They have become like God—but opposed to God.”
It is important at this point to make the distinction between guilt and shame. Through the actions of the first humans we are guilty. Guilty is not a feeling, but a pronouncement upon us. The emotion that confirms to us in our guilt is shame. We can deal with shame in two different ways. Bonhoeffer writes:
“Shame contians both an acknowledgement of and a protest against disunion, which is why human beings live between concealment and disclosure, between hiding and revealing themselves, between solitude and community.”
Shame can lead to repentance, reconcilliation, and restoration, or it can lead to dissolution, distance, and ultimately death.
What role does the conscience play in this process of evil and the human? If shame reminds us of our disconnection from our origin (from God), “conscience is the sign of human beings’ disunion within themselves” It is our conscience that longs for us to become/remain reconciled and avoid the prohibited. Humans seek unity within themselves, “this unity itself already presupposes disunion with God.” Bonhoeffer understands conscience as only concerned with ones ability to be at peace with oneself for ones own actions. By assuaging our own conscience–apart from God’s mandate of what good is–good and evil become centered within ourselves and we, “have now become the judge of God and others.” Bonhoeffer epitomizes the one who is in this disunion as the Pharisee. “For Pharisees, every moment of life turns into a situation of conflict in which they have to choose between good and evil.” The pharisee has in effect confused the law of men for the law of God. This sureness of their own piety, and confirmed by their conscience, leads them to see the true origin, the I am that is Jesus, as a nihilistic upstart who, “knows and respects nothing but his own law”.
What is the Good News then in light of our knowledge of our own capability for good and evil? Bonhoeffer summarizes this hope as such:
“The freedom of Jesus is not the arbitrary choice of one among countless possibilities… but always only one. Jesus calls this one option the will of God… He lives and acts not out of knowledge of good and evil, but out of the will of God. There is only one will of God. In it, the origin has been regained. It is the source of freedom and simplicity in everything that is done.”
When peering into the life of Bonhoeffer it can be seen that he did not just simply write his theology, but lived it out. Bonhoeffer’s theology is born out of his interactions within the real world. Conscience is not simply some external guide that attempts to keep us on the straight and narrow, conscience is something internal and with which we must struggle. There were points in his life in which Bonhoeffer needed to know God’s will apart from keeping his own conscience appeased. This a richer and deeper understanding of guilt, shame, and conscience than many of us currently know.
There are times in which God’s will can come into conflict with our fallen–disunified–sensibilities and bring us to point where like Jacob we find ourselves wrestling with God. Bonhoeffer encourages us to engage with God’s will in a dynamic and ongoing way, and not to rely on a set of ‘principles’ which can lead us down the path of the Pharisee.
It is ultimately a challenge of the Christian to press on in their discipleship under Jesus Christ. Will we be obedient God’s will?
Part 3: The Ethical
This last part will cover a rather large swath of territory, drawing from the remaining four chapters of Bonhoefer’s Ethics. It is important to stress that the ethic covered here largely concerns the church and its interaction with the world as Christ’s body. To understand Bonhoeffer’s view of the church we must realize that he places no special status on humanity within the church other than it, “participates in Christ.” There can be a misconception among Christians that Christ belongs to the church alone, that we are granted a more priviliged estate than those outside of the faith. Bonhoeffer rejects this ‘two-worlds’ theology when he states, “Christ belongs to the wicked and the good,” In order for the church to properly bring Christ’s message to the world it must consider itself no better. It must, as Christ does, enter into the world and become ‘worldly’ in the most Christian sense of the word.
This entering into the world presents a challenge then for the church. Bonhoeffer writes, “A theologicall correct Christian proclamation is not enough… the church is supposed to offer solutions for the world’s unsolved problems.” As Christians we will fail to deal with these human problems if we start from our own vantage, Bonhoeffer states, “The way of Jesus Christ, and thus the way of all Christian thought, is not the way from the world to God but from God to the world.” Bonhoeffer argues that a purely human solution to a human problem is, for the Christian, unbiblical. As God sent Christ because he so loved the world, the church of Christ is placed in, “responsibility for the world.” We are held responsible because, “there are not two sets of values, one for the world and one for Christians. Rather, there is only the one word of God, demanding faith and obedience, which is valid for all people.” In taking responsibility for the world the church is ‘preparing the way’ for Christ’s return.
As we prepare the world for Christ’s return, how should we then live in the world? Bonhoeffer is concerned with the school of ethical thought as it applies to Christian life in that its estimation of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is not rooted in God, but in the ethical construct of the ‘ought’. Bonhoeffer understands ‘ought’ as a secularist understanding of original sin. This is because, “the ‘ought’ only belongs where something is not.” That is to say that ought is a secularist view of where there is a gap between what is, and what should be. Right is only restored when there is no more ought, so it becomes the job of the ethicist to overcome the existence of ought by helping people, “learn to live with others.” This would be a noble goal if it were not for the revelation of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God has claimed the right of expecting our obedience. Right, then is not the removal of ought, but doing what God commands, “it is concrete speech to concrete human beings. God’s commandment leaves human beings no room for interpretation, but only for obedience or disobedience.” Keep in mind though that Bonhoeffer does not claim each and every decision is dependent on God’s command. He writes:
“God’s commandment is either utterly specific, clear, and concrete or it is not God’s commandment,” and also, “The commandment of God is permission to live before God as a human being. God’s commandment is permission. It is distinguished from all human laws in that it commands freedom.”
Bonhoeffer closes Ethics with an essay discussing how the church has come to be the place in which God has entrusted the gospel be proclaimed. Bonhoeffer argues that this kind of mandate can, “only be understood from above, from God.” The mandate of the church then is rooted in God’s work from above entering into humanity below. We have been mandated then, “as a vicarious representative, as a stand-in for the one who issued the commission.” Bonhoeffer expounds on this more concreately:
“God wants a place at which, until the end of the world, God’s word is again and again spoken, pronounced, delivered, expounded, and spread. The Word that in Jesus Christ came from heaven wants to come again in the form of human speech… In the church God is determind to speak in person.”
The church then is to be the voice of God amongst the orders of the world, calling them to obedience to God’s command for them. It is important that the church remain faithful in its own calling because only then, “can it legitimately question the goverment about fulfilling its mandate.” Christians have no right from which to critique the goverment until/unless we are doing what it is that God has mandated us to be doing.
As we consider Bonhoeffer’s challenge to a traditional/secularist ethic there is a consistency to his message. Turn to Christ. Strive to know the will of God. God’s will is always specific and has real-world applicability. Confess your sins before God and men. It is these pillars that guided Bonhoeffer to make the boldest of stands against his own government, and to take on the highest responsibility for his fellow humans. While we can quibble with this or that about his theology, that it is either too situational, or perhaps even too fatalistic, we cannot argue that Bonhoeffer did not live out his theology.
Bonhoeffer offers this suggestion for continued reform in the protestant church that still bears repeating today, “Only by rediscovering the divine office of private confession will the Protestant church find its way bact to a concrete ethics.” If the church is to stand against the forces of pornography, illicit sex, human trafficking, unjust war, genocide, abortion, and poverty it must become a place where confession is heard, forgiven, and dealt with. The church that does not confess its sins will die from the inside out.
What’s Next
Our next reading assignment will cover part one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work Discipleship which is volume 3 of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series by Fortress Press.
;)
That Christ grew older is a testament to the normalcy of the growth and maturation process we go through as humans. Christ showed us how to grow, and gave us a pattern for development. There is something profound and inspiring in growing as our Lord did, to know that there is a starting point, that we don't have to know it all, be it all, or do it all on our own. That Christ lived, means that we can truly live, that we can become what God longs for us to be.
David Brush ;)
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