A Bonhoeffer index

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been incredibly influential on my thinking about a range of topics, especially how to do Christian ethics.  On the 80th anniversary of his death, here is a list of things I've written about him:

• Thoughts on the decline of nominal or cultural Christianity, processed with the help of Bonhoeffer's distinction between ultimate and penultimate things.
• Thoughts on divine mandates, and the different spheres of human life, prompted by the Covid-19 crisis.
• A brief thought on ethics as obedience to God, and the implications for church fellowship.
• An exploration of two key concepts from Bonhoeffer - nature and vicarious representation.
• Thoughts on the famous contrast between cheap and costly grace,
• Learning to pray, drawing on Bonhoeffer's work on the Psalms.
• A series of posts working through Bonhoeffer's (sadly unfinished) Ethics:
• Part 1 - Christ, Reality and Good
• Part 2 - Ethics as Formation
• Part 3 - Heritage and Decay
• Part 4 - Guilt, Justification, Renewal
• Part 5 - Ultimate and Penultimate Things
• Part 6 - Natural Life
• Part 7 - History and Good (1)
• Part 8 - History and Good (2)
• Part 9 - God's Love and the Disintegration of the World
• Part 10 - Church and World I
• Part 11 - On the Possibility of the Church's Message to the World
• Part 12 - The "Ethical" and the "Christian" as a Topic
• Part 13 - The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates
• A brief application of Bonhoeffer to the question of abortion.
• Some critical thoughts on Bonhoeffer's understanding of the church. This was ten years ago, and I'm not sure now that I agree with myself!
• An appreciation of Bonhoeffer's emphasis on corporate, common prayer in the church.
• Thoughts on how the gospel addresses people who are good.
• A reflection on confession of guilt as the precursor to good ethical thinking.

There are a couple of others which I haven't linked, but which you can find if you look; they deal with my reading of Metaxas's biography of Bonhoeffer, which I liked at the time but feel more ambivalent about now.

Cultural Christians and Christianised Culture

As the census rolls around again, the usual kerfuffle kicks off around the question asking people about their religion.  And no doubt in the aftermath, as the results are made public, there will be the usual hand-wringing about the decreasing proportion of people in the UK who identify themselves as Christian.  What we are seeing is the continued, and now quite rapid, evaporation of the remaining influence of Christendom; the residual notion of a 'Christian country' is more or less gone, and the default option in the census box-ticking exercise is no longer 'Church of England'.

Christian responses here vary.  For many believers, it is a jolly good thing that nominal Christianity is fast disappearing.  It helps to draw clear lines.  It means that people are no longer kidding themselves that they are Christians when they hold no Christian beliefs and show no signs of personal faith in Christ.  For many Christians, mere cultural Christianity has long been seen as a buffer against the real thing; people are inoculated with a weak form of Christian belief, reduced usually to some naff songs from the 70s and a belief that people ought to love one another in some vague way, via school assemblies, and this makes them less responsive to the real thing.  They think they are already in.  The loss of cultural Christianity clears away one barrier to evangelism, which is that people think they already know our message and are either already onboard (despite their lack of belief, practice, or other commitment) or have already sampled enough to know they don't want to take this ride.  In one sense, fewer people ticking the 'Christian' box(es) on the census just reflects reality, and it's always helpful for people to see reality.

On the other hand, many Christians will see the decline in the numbers of people identifying with Christianity as an almost entirely negative thing.  From this perspective, the decline in nominal Christianity goes along with the decline in respect for ethical norms derived from the Christian gospel.  The loss of a general, even if rather vague, sense of accountability to God is to be bemoaned.  Children are raised in a culture which actively promotes, or worse just assumes, a completely different worldview.  The ignorance of the Scriptures, unimaginable even a couple of generations ago, makes communicating the gospel intelligibly that much more difficult.  The loss of a Christianised culture makes the normalisation of such horrific practices as in utero infanticide inevitable.  It threatens the undermining of values which would be considered important even by non-Christians, who haven't yet read Dominion and so don't know that those values derive from Christianity.

These two responses are not, strictly speaking, incompatible.  However, I reckon people lean heavily one way or the other.  I have flip-flopped, but at the moment I'm coming down on the latter perspective.

In Bonhoeffer's terms, I think those who are glad to see the end of cultural Christianity are thinking in terms of ultimate things - that is to say, salvation and eternal life.  Will a vague nominal Christianity help anyone ultimately?  Nope.  Will church-going as a mere cultural phenomenon in and of itself save souls?  Nope.  A Christian ethic?  Nope.  In ultimate terms, cultural Christianity is useless and possibly worse than useless if it allows people to delude themselves.

But what about penultimate things?  Don't they matter at all?  What Bonhoeffer saw, which I think some of our contemporaries are missing, is that ultimate and penultimate are related, and the relation between them is not entirely one-way.  For those who are pleased at, or at least indifferent to, the end of cultural Christianity, the ethical challenges and cultural issues thrown up by that loss (penultimate problems) and only to be dealt with by evangelism and conversion (ultimate solutions) - you can't, after all, expect non-Christians to live as Christians.  But the traffic doesn't all flow that way.  Making the penultimate suited to the ultimate - trying as much as possible to make the ordinary stuff of life and society conform to God's Kingdom - is the way in which we prepare the way of the Lord.

So what then?  The culture war again?

I used to feel that this was unwise, and we were better off staying out of it.  More recently I've tended to think that we're in it whether we like it or not, and all we can do is try to navigate it well.  I think that many of those Christian leaders I see trying to stay out of the culture war have essentially privatised the faith, and made God's laws the rules for the dwindling Christian club rather than the absolutes which govern and direct a human life well lived.

Most of all, I think the answer is more church, and better church.  Church which carries with it a 'thick' Christian culture, not just an hour of light worship or intellectual stimulation on a Sunday.  (I wonder if there is another dividing line here: between those who see the great need as more action at the edges of the church, in evangelism and mission, and those who see the great need as renewal at the centre of the church, in liturgy and worship).  I think we as Christians need to realise more and more how much we are isolated in our culture; we need to feel less at home here.  For the sake of the culture, we need to repudiate the culture.  For the sake of the world, we need to be those who don't love the world or the things of the world.

Divine mandates and the present crisis

In the tragically unfinished Ethics manuscript entitled The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates, Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins to investigate what a well-ordered human society might look like.  The first thing he wants to be clear on is that in a well-ordered society we are always faced with the one concrete commandment of God "as it is revealed in Jesus Christ".  There can be no neutrality on this point; Christ Jesus rules in every sphere of life.  (Bonhoeffer pushes back here against the Lutheran understanding of the two kingdoms; indeed, he does not consider this to be authentically Lutheran teaching at all).  But the one commandment encounters us in particular circumstances, particular spheres.  Bonhoeffer talks about the four divine mandates of church, marriage and family, culture (or sometimes 'work'), and government.

In each of these four mandates we come up against the concrete commandment of God; each is ordered from above, from heaven, and is not merely an outgrowth or development of human history.  The four mandates are envisaged as co-existing: "None of these mandates exists self-sufficiently, nor can any one of them claim to replace all the others."  They are with-one-another, for-one-another, and over-against-one-another; that is to say, they are limited by one another even as they exist to support one another.  The obvious target here for Bonhoeffer is the encroaching Nazi totalitarianism, which wants to subordinate all spheres of life to the state.  In fact, each of the divine mandates finds itself limited in two key ways in a well-ordered society: from above, because it is constrained to serve God's commandment and not its own ends, and from all sides, because it cannot arbitrarily encroach on the territory of the other mandates.

This is Bonhoeffer's version of a theory which has been commonplace in Christian thinking about politics and society.  Whether it is the high mediæval assertion of the church's liberties against the crown (think Beckett), or the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine, or the Barmen Declaration railing against totalitarianism in the 1930s, the goal is the same: to understand, on the basis of God's creation and Christ's universal Lordship, what it means for human institutions to exercise legitimate authority within their particular spheres.

This is a peculiarly Christian approach.  Because God sits above every sphere, and because each of the mandates finds it authorisation in him and his providential arrangement, it is not possible for any to usurp the place of the others.  Family is not dependent on the state for its authorisation; the church is not dependent on the culture for its authorisation; etc. etc.  Each mandate operates with divine authorisation within its own sphere.  The mandates are oriented towards each other - they are not hermetically sealed against each other - but they cannot arbitrarily claim an authority to interfere in other spheres.  If the church is to interfere in the state, it must not be to usurp the state, but to establish the state in its independence within its own sphere.  If the state wishes to be involved in regulating family life, that can only be for the sake of the independence of family life from the state.

To my mind, this is what has been missing from a lot of Christian debate about the response to Covid from Her Majesty's Government.  Many of the responses I've seen have relied on a biblicist citing of Romans 13 to suggest that we must always submit to the Government's whims.  Most have jumped straight to the practical question 'when should we disobey?'  But the background questions which urgently need working through are: is the state currently operating within its legitimate sphere, or has it usurped the place of other mandates; and, where the state has impinged on other mandates, has it done so with the legitimate aim of strengthening those mandates in their independence?  These are the questions which are raised by the historic Christian tradition of political and social thought.  I'd like to see some more work done on them.  We ought not to take it for granted that the state has the authority which it claims for itself, nor should we short-circuit the theo-political thinking that needs to happen here by a quick appeal to a Pauline proof-text.

The church is uniquely well placed to offer constructive critique here.  This sense of a divine division of powers has largely faded in our society; we are ripe for totalitarianism, even if it does turn out to be democratic totalitarianism.  The church, though, is still able to see Christ on his throne above it all, limiting but also authorising the various human institutions in their particular spheres.  The church can and should speak out - not only when her own sphere is threatened, but also to speak up for the rights of family, and of culture, and, yes, even of the state where those rights are threatened.  Because we see each sphere as established by God, we cannot be content to see them dissolved into one another.

The present crisis is the time to think this through, to work out what we are called to say and do.  Crisis is always the time when institutions threaten to overflow their banks.  Legitimate crisis response easily becomes illegitimate accumulation of powers.  We should not take it for granted that when the crisis passes things will return to 'normal'; it is far more likely, I think, that the crisis reveals what has been really going on for years.

Ethics, obedience, fellowship

Bonhoeffer (again) argues that Christian ethics is unique because it refuses to ask the two ethical questions - how can I be a good person? and what is a good action? - because it is already confronted by a greater question: will you hear and obey God?

I think that's helpful in churches riddled with ethical confusion.  Look, the key thing here isn't to go away and have a commission and a process to try to work out what is good.  Will you listen to God and do what he says?

It's also helpful in cutting through some of the fudge.  This is just ethics, say some.  It's a peripheral and complicated issue.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in church just because of an ethical disagreement.  Why can't we all just coexist?  Well, okay Mr Fudge, I see where you're coming from.  The big 'ethical issues' we're wrestling with - around gender and sexuality, for example - are indeed 'peripheral', and have a degree of complexity about them.  I get it.  But what if we try again with the only relevant question for Christian ethics put front and centre: this is just obedience to God.  Obeying God is a peripheral matter, and it's complicated.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in God's church just because they persistently and deliberately disobey God!  Yeah, doesn't sound so good now, does it?

Leaving aside the fact that the apostle is perfectly clear that we should indeed break fellowship with people over 'ethical' issues, and that he brings this into the closest possible connection with the eucharistic celebration of the gospel, just understanding what the ethical question is ought to help us with working through the implications of the answer.

Two crucial concepts from Bonhoeffer

I've long been convinced that Bonhoeffer's Ethics ought to be required reading for all Christian leaders, and perhaps all Christians.  It astonishes me that in this unfinished work I find the most profound reflections on what it means to be a Christian in the modern world.  Two particular concepts have been on my mind lately.

Firstly, the concept of the natural.  For Bonhoeffer, the natural is not identical with the created; in fact, it contains within it the concept of fallenness.  (It is perhaps significant that both Barth and Bonhoeffer are fairly tentative about the original created state; I tend to think that contemporary evangelicals [in the anglophone sense] make rather stronger statements about the original creational design than can be sustained from Scripture).  The natural means the form of reality which persists after the fall.  It cannot be regarded, on the hand, as the original design, because of the fall.  But on the other hand it cannot be regarded as utterly fallen, because of creation.  It is, if you like, the order of preservation, the way God has ordained that things should be.  Crucially, for Bonhoeffer, it is the form of life.  The natural is ordained for life, and as such it is relatively open to the coming of Christ, because Christ comes to give life.  The natural is not yet Christian life, nor does it depend on revelation; but it is in a sense ordered towards revelation and towards Christ.

Because the natural form of things is given by God, it is not dependent on any human authority.  In fact, it is the unnatural which requires organisation, propaganda, force; the natural is simply given, simply there.  Bonhoeffer gives the example of children: they may, by the force of propaganda, be organised against their parents (he has, of course, the Third Reich in view); but if the propaganda and organisation subsides, a more natural filial relation will assert itself again.  I think this explains the constant propaganda around abortion, or around sexuality and gender, at the moment; the proponents of the new moral consensus understand very well that they must constantly buttress their position, lest nature creep back in.  It is also a source for optimism, as Bonhoeffer points out.  Not ultimate optimism - we ought to have that because of Christ! - but the relative optimism that there is a good chance that natural form will reassert itself.

Second concept is vicarious representation.  For Bonhoeffer, amidst the collapse of his society into evil, the crucial temptation to be resisted is ethics as keeping one's own hands clean.  Withdrawal, separation, an attempt to fence out evil from the church, an attempt to separate an individual life into an outward compelled evil and an inner purity...  All this has to be resisted.  An ethic that derives from the gospel recognises that Jesus does not separate himself (in that sense) from sinners, but (in his total separation) becomes a brother to the wicked, taking on himself responsibility for their actions and their waywardness.  Of course this is a movement which cannot be, and need not be, repeated; Christ uniquely bears sin and guilt, is uniquely the vicarious representative of all human beings.  But those who are in Christ must not shy away from accepting solidarity with sinners, must not shy away from accepting guilt.  There is no 'us and them'; just us, sinners.  Because Christ has borne our guilt away, we can take this stance without fear of judgement; because Christ has given us an example, we must take this stance.

The combination of the two concepts seems to me to give us the possibility of a calm, a serenity, in the face of moral collapse in our society.  We are not to be frantically lecturing those around us, as if the natural order of things ordained by God required our defence.  We need not be frantically barricading ourselves and our church communities against the evils of the world, as if Christ needed to fear contamination.  Cheerfully, we speak the truth; tearfully, we confess our complicity in guilt.  And then cheerfully again we remember Jesus.

Free grace is costly grace

Preaching this past Sunday at CCC from Jeremiah 7, I couldn't avoid mentioning Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of cheap grace. In the chapter the prophet Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to preach outside the temple courts. The subject of his sermon, like almost all his sermons, was the sin of the people of Judah; in this particular case, the numerous sins are aggravated by the attitude of the people towards the temple itself. The temple represents their security. They'll be forgiven, of course they will. They'll get away with their worship of idols, naturally. They'll be preserved from foreign invasion and divine judgement, for sure. Because the temple. The house that bears God's name is just up the hill, and they go there all the time to celebrate their salvation.

Cheap grace.

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

That's Bonhoeffer, in Discipleship.

It struck me that cheap grace may or may not seem cheap.  It might mean just praying the prayer and otherwise getting on with life.  But on the other hand it might mean a life of rigorous exertion.  In the case of the people of Judah, the sacrificial system was up and running, and that was work.  I bet it didn't seem cheap.  But what these two things - the sinner's prayer (as misunderstood and presumed upon) and the sacrificial system (as misunderstood and presumed upon) - have in common is that I give something or do something in exchange for grace.  'Grace' in this context might mean different things, but probably includes salvation, God's favour, maybe eternal life.  And it's when you start to think about what it includes that it seems cheap at the price, even if the price is a lifetime of sacrificial devotion.  Who wouldn't purchase eternal life at the cost of a lifetime of sacrifice and ritual - and if you can get it even cheaper, say just by 'believing in Jesus', then so much the better!  That is how many people understand the transition from Old to New Testament.

The other thing that the (misunderstood) sinner's prayer and the (misunderstood) sacrificial system have in common is that they both leave the rest of life untouched.  Once you've paid your dues for grace, you can carry on as you were.  Up you get from your prayer and get on with your life.  Out you go from the temple and return to - well, your abominations, says Jeremiah.  Cheap grace.

But God's grace is not cheap.  As Bonhoeffer points out, we should realise that by observing what it cost God himself.

God's grace is free.  There is nothing you have that you can exchange for God, for eternal life, for forgiveness and salvation.  You don't have anything that is worth that much, and everything you have you owe to God anyway as your Creator.  If you are going to receive those things, they will have to be given to you freely, gratis, and for nothing.  And so it, because Christ has paid for these things.

But then again, God's grace is costly.  To receive God, eternal life, forgiveness, is to lose everything you currently have and are.  Nothing can be held back.  It will take everything to be saved.  This is not a price-tag.  I'm not saying 'guys, God's grace isn't cheap; it's really, really expensive'.  I'm saying, God's grace is Jesus Christ, crucified for you and risen for you.  He has done it all.  Receiving what he has done does not require anything from you; there is nothing you can contribute.  But to receive Jesus Christ is to receive his cross.  It is grace that you lose everything you have and are, because that is the putting to death of your old sinful self at the cross of Christ, so that you might have bestowed on you the new identity of the resurrected and beloved.  It is grace that from now on your life in every single aspect is to be shaped entirely by Christ and his Spirit, because that is what eternal life looks like.

Free.  Costly.  But not cheap.

Learning to Pray

The introduction to Bonhoeffer's short book on the Psalms - The Prayerbook of the Bible - is worth every penny you might pay for the book, even assuming you didn't read and benefit from the rest of it, which you ought to.  In noting that Jesus' disciples ask him to teach them to pray, Bonhoeffer probes and pops on of the great prayer myths that circulates in the church.

"To learn to pray" sounds contradictory to us.  Either the heart is so overflowing that it begins to pray by itself, we say, or it will never learn to pray.  But this is a dangerous error, which is certainly very widespread among Christians today, to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray.

We imagine that prayer comes spontaneously or not at all.  Not so, says Bonhoeffer, for if it were so how could Jesus teach the disciples to pray?  There is plenty of stuff the heart can do by itself - "wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing" - but these are not yet prayer, and ought not to be confused with prayer.

Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one's heart.  It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty.

This has implications.  How should we learn to pray?  Why, the same way we learn to talk in general: by imitating our parent's speech.  In this case, taking on the speech of God.  "Repeating God's own words, we begin to pray to God."  We encounter this language of God in Holy Scripture.

This allows Bonhoeffer to develop a particular, and a particularly Christological, view of the prayers of the Bible, and particularly the book of Psalms.  Here in the Psalms we have the Word of God - but they are also prayers to God, which is to say they are particularly human words.  (What is prayer but a human word?)  How can they be both?

We grasp it only when we consider that we can learn true prayer only from Jesus Christ, and that it is, therefore, the word of the Son of God, who lives with us human beings, to God the Father who lives in eternity...  In Jesus' mouth the human word becomes God's Word.  When we pray along with the prayer of Christ, God's Word becomes again a human word.

Jesus prays, and we can pray along with him, because he includes us in his prayers.

If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible, and especially the Psalms, we must not, therefore, first ask what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ.

Recognising that we must learn to pray, and that we can only do so as we pray along with Christ Jesus, we learn to pray beyond our own immediate interests and feelings, to pray more than what it is in our hearts at the moment - sometimes, indeed, "it is precisely the case that we must pray against our own heart in order to pray properly."

Not the poverty of our heart, but the richness of God's Word, ought to determine our prayer.

All quotations from The Prayerbook of the Bible, in volume 5 of Bonhoeffer's Works, pages 155ff.

Reader Response: Ethics (13)

The final manuscript in Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates.  It is unfinished - to be honest, it feels barely started at the point where it breaks off.  The initial presupposition springs from all that has gone before.  "The commandment of God revealed in Jesus Christ embraces in its unity all of human life" (388).  Bonhoeffer sees four divine mandates grounded in this one commandment: family, culture, church, state.  All four are legitimate because they have their source in the revelation of God in Christ.  Through the divine commandment, revealed in Christ through Scripture, we see "the conferring of divine authority on an earthly institution" (389).

There are two major implications, as far as I can see, from this arrangement and understanding.  One is that the four mandates exist in relationship.  They are to be with-one-another, for-one-another, and over-against-one-another (hyphenated, because these are all single words in German; see 393).  To enlarge on this, we might say that as divine mandates each has its own sphere, within which God's commandment gives a certain autonomy from but also a certain relationship to the other spheres.  The family, for example, exists independently of state, culture, and church - by virtue of the divine commandment which creates it.  However, family also exists for state, culture, and church, in creative tension but also mutual reinforcement.  It cannot claim precedence over the other mandates, and it must resist any attempt by state, culture, or church to claim precedence in or over its own sphere, but it does not exist in splendid isolation.  Mutatis mutandis, the same could be said for any of the mandates.  Their unity is grounded only in Christ, and the divine command in him.

The second implication is that in each sphere there really is divine authorisation, and therefore an above and below.  "God's commandment therefore always seeks to encounter human beings within an earthly relationship of authority, within an order that is clearly determined by above and below" (391).  Because of this divine authorisation, those 'below' are genuinely subjected to those 'above', whether that is parents in the sphere of family, or governing authorities in the sphere of the state, or ministers in the church.  But because it is divine authorisation, those who are 'above' must be aware of their own responsibility to God.

This is only partially developed in the manuscript in the sphere of the church, and that development is fascinating in and of itself (but not to be explored here, alas).  But this seems to me to be a potentially fruitful framework for understanding the concrete duties of the Christian man and woman in relation to the divine commandment and authorisation given and received in the gospel.

Now, what shall I read next?

Reader Response: Ethics (12)

The twelfth (and second to last) manuscript in Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled The "Ethical" and the "Christian" as a Topic, which is perhaps not the most catchy title ever conceived.  It attempts to approach the question of "whether and to what extent the 'ethical' and the 'Christian' can be treated as a topic at all" (363), which seems a somewhat belated concern - one wonders whether, had he lived, Bonhoeffer might have placed this section rather nearer to the beginning.  Then again, its content builds on much that has gone before, so perhaps not.

There is a lot in this brief chapter, including some fascinating and controversial material about the need for an 'above' and a 'below' in society if there is to be ordered ethical discourse.  But the heart of the chapter, it seems to me, is the contrast between ethics and God's commandment.  One reason that ethics often seems a dubious subject, according to Bonhoeffer, is that "the ethical phenomenon is a boundary event both in its content and as an experience" (366).  That is to say, ethics does not deal with the ordinary and the everyday, but only with the limits of human behaviour.  It is therefore always an interruption to human life, confronting it with a limit that ought not to be transgressed.  Because this is so, ethics cannot become an everyday phenomenon - it just isn't the case that people live in a constant stream of ethical dilemmas, always standing at the crossroads of good and evil.  If ethics does seek to become more than a boundary discipline, it degenerates into tedious moralism.

By contrast, "the commandment of God is the total and concrete claim of human beings by the merciful and holy God in Jesus Christ" (378).  "It does not merely guard, like the ethical, the boundaries of life that must not be crossed, but it is at the same time the center and fullness of life" (381).  "The commandment of God is permission to live before God as a human being" (382).  God's command, which always comes to a particular person in a particular time and place who stands in particular relations of responsibility and obligation, is always permission as well as limitation.

As a striking example of what he means, Bonhoeffer refers to marriage.  "Only when the commandment not only threatens me as a transgressor of the boundaries but also convinces me and wins me over by its actual content does it free me from the anxiety and uncertainty when making a decision.  When I love my wife and affirm marriage as instituted by God, then my marriage acquires an inner freedom and a confidence of how to live that no longer suspiciously observes every step I make nor calls my every action into question.  The divine prohibition of adultery is then no longer the focal point of all I think and do in my marriage - as if the meaning and purpose of marriage consisted in avoiding adultery!" (382).

Love for God's commandment sets us free to actually live with confidence; ethics only erects nervous boundaries at the edges of life.  The latter may be necessary, especially in disordered times, but the former is comprehensive.  We live, not by a code of ethics, but by God's commandment spoken to us - to me, to you - in Jesus Christ today.

Reader Response: Ethics (11)

The eleventh Ethics manuscript (and fear not, we are near the end!) is entitled On the Possibility of the Church's Message to the World.  As with the previous manuscript, it is brief, and almost certainly is not in the form which Bonhoeffer would have envisaged for publication (it consist of brief, numbered points, each of which could perhaps do with expansion), but it concisely expresses an answer to a hugely important question: can the church address the problems of the world, and if so, what should it say?

"We ask: is it really the task of the church today to offer the world solutions for its problems?  Are there even Christian solutions to worldly problems?" (353).  Bonhoeffer points out that "Jesus is hardly ever involved in solving worldly problems; whenever he is requested to do so, he is strangely evasive (Matt 22:15; Luke 12:13)...  He stands beyond the human problematic" (354).  Indeed, it may be that not all worldly problems can be solved.  "Perhaps to God the unsolved condition of these problems may be more important than their solution, namely, as a pointer to the human fall and God's redemption" (354-5).  Everything here depends on recognising that starting with human problems is unbiblical.  "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" (356).  Solving worldly problems "cannot be the essential task of the church" (356).

What, then, can the church say in response to the world's acknowledged problems?  "The message of the church to the world can be none other than the word of God to the world.  This word is: Jesus Christ, and salvation in this name" (356).  The church "has no relationship to the world other than through Jesus Christ" (356), and therefore must only approach the problems of the world with the message of this name.  This message will be a call to repentance; it will put the church in a position of responsibility for the world; it will consist of both law and gospel ("There is no proclamation of the law without the gospel, and no proclamation of the gospel without the law" [357]).  It is not as is the law applied to the church and the gospel to the world, or vice versa: both law and gospel speak to both church and world, because both law and gospel speak Jesus Christ.  There is no double standard, as if the church were expected to live out the gospel, whilst the world was only expected to uphold the law.  "Rather, there is only the one word of God, demanding faith and obedience, which is valid for all people" (359).

The task of the church in response to the problems of the world is to proclaim Christ.  But alongside this, the church must recognise that there are certain (penultimate) conditions which are an obstruction and an offence to faith, Where the church encounters economic or social conditions which constitute such an offence, it must pronounce against them for the sake of Jesus Christ and faith in his name.  "The church has a twofold approach here: on the one hand, it must declare as reprehensible, on the authority of the word of God, such economic attitudes or systems which clearly hinder faith in Christ...  On the other hand, it will not be able to make its positive contribution to a new order on the authority of the word of God, but merely on the authority of responsible counsel..." (361). The church does not have, and ought not to pretend to have, exhaustive solutions to worldly problems, but she is equipped on the one hand with the ability to discern what is contrary to faith in Christ and to pronounce judgement on it in the name of God, and on the other hand to offer constructive advice on what might constitute a way forward.  This is an asymmetrical task simply because the church recognises that she does not have all the answers, nor is it her role to have them or to offer them.

I think this framework would be very usefully adopted by the church of the present day.  I see on the one hand Christians who feel that their faith has nothing to say to the big problems of the world, and withdraw into a pietistic disengagement - or at least, engage only with the world in order to rescue individual souls; and on the other hand, Christians who are confident that their faith entails a whole political and social programme which all Christians should be able to recognise and get on board with.  Bonhoeffer helps us, I think, to see beyond this, and could help the church to speak with a more united voice.  For example, all those of us who follow Christ can recognise the injustice and sin of pursuing an economic policy which hurts the most vulnerable, and we could unite to protest this with the authority of God, without needing to agree on what the actual solution was.

Might we speak a better word to the world by recognising our limitations and the limitation of our God-given task?  And we could surely all benefit from the reminder that what we need to speak ultimately is not public policy but Jesus Christ!

Reader Response: Ethics (10)

The tenth manuscript of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is short, and in that sense feels like a fragment - but on the other hand, it seems to me that it expresses a complete thought, and does so coherently and persuasively.  The title is Church and World I (presumably Bonhoeffer envisaged writing a Church and World II), and the theme is initially based on Bonhoeffer's observation that in the circumstances of the Nazi Reich many people were looking to the church to preserve culture and civilisation.  "Reason, culture, humanity, tolerance, autonomy - all these concepts, which until recently had served as battle cries against the church, against Christianity, even against Jesus Christ, now surprisingly found themselves in very close proximity to the Christian domain" (340).

For Bonhoeffer there is a clear logic to this: all these concepts really belong to Christianity.  "In the hour of danger, the children of the church who had become independent and run away now returned to their mother" (341).  The origin of all these good things is Jesus Christ, and although they have changed through their long estrangement from the church, they still essentially belong to her and return to her in crisis.

There follows a reflection on what this means for the relationship between the church and the world.  Bonhoeffer considers the two apparently conflicting statements of Jesus that 'whoever is not against us is for us' (which seems to set the boundaries of the church very broadly) and 'whoever is not for us is against us' (which seems to set it more narrowly).  Bonhoeffer sees the apparent conflict resolved in the experience of the German churches under Nazism.  On the one hand, the churches became a refuge for all those who resisted, Christian or not; on the other hand, the churches necessarily had to become narrower, focusing more keenly on the gospel, forced to make their confession of Christ more exclusive.  "Thus [the church] gained, precisely through this concentration on what is essential, an inner freedom and openness that protected it from all anxious efforts to erect boundaries" (343).

There is a fascinating historical reflection on the church's relationship with 'good' and 'wicked' people in the second half of this section.  From the Reformation, the church has inherited a definite emphasis on the gospel for the wicked, and the justification of the sinner - and it is essential that this be understood.  But the danger of turning this into a condemnation of goodness is always there.  In particular, we must beware of making it seem as if the tax collectors and sinners were in some sense better than the good people, adopting a position of despising 'bourgeois morality'.  I sense that danger in some of the churches I know.  But since I've written about this section before, I won't dig any further now!

Reader Response: Ethics (9)

The ninth manuscript gathered in the Works edition of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled God's Love and the Disintegration of the World.  It might clarify the meaning to write 'dis-integration', with the hyphen.  The point is that the world and the people in the world exist in a state of disunity; neither as individual persons nor as societies are we 'integrated'. 

In a sense, the existence of ethics as a discipline reflects this dis-integration.  Ethics is about knowing good and evil, distinguishing between them, and plotting a course accordingly.  But of course in the Biblical narrative, the knowledge of good and evil is a result of the fall.  "For Christian ethics, the mere possibility of knowing about good and evil is a falling away from the origin" (300).  In an unfallen state, human beings "know everything only in God, and God in all things" (300) - that is to say, they know everything in an integrated way, as it is given to be known in and through God.  But in claiming or trying to know good and evil, "human beings understand themselves not within the reality of being defined by the origin, but from their own possibilities, namely, to be either good or evil" (300).  They seek to live as if it were up to them to decide what their own lives could and should be, and then they work at living up to the ideals they discover or construct.  This is inevitably to live "in opposition to God" (300), and therefore Christian ethics "can be considered an ethic only as the critique of all ethics" (300), as an attack on the presupposition that it is the task of human beings to discern what is good and evil and to make the choice between them.

Bonhoeffer gives a helpful and important theological exposition of some of the consequences of this dis-integration.  Because we no longer know ourselves and others in an integrated way in God, we experience shame as something that tinges our whole existence, especially with other people (303-6); because we no longer live with the simple knowledge of God's perfect will, we experience conscience as the sign of our internal dis-union, as we stand as judges on our own lives and behaviour, judging and justifying ourselves, standing in the place of God (307-9).

The Pharisees - both the historical Pharisees and those who are like them - give the clearest, because the best and most noble, example of what it means to know good and evil.  "Pharisees are those human beings, admirable to the highest degree, who subject their entire lives to the knowledge of good and evil and who judge themselves as sternly as their neighbors - and all to the glory of God, whom they humbly thank for this knowledge" (310).  The conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is the conflict between those who live in disunity, who live in the knowledge of good and evil, and therefore must judge - themselves and others - and Jesus, who lives an integrated life and knows only the will of God.  In Jesus, we who are reconciled to God - and so brought back into unity with ourselves and others - are called to live from his will and not our own decision.  We recognise ourselves as those who are elect in Christ, and therefore fundamentally as chosen, not as choosers.  If we are elect in Christ, we are elect to do God's will.

An interesting theme: in the fallen state, our thinking and doing become reflexive.  Even in doing good, we are continually referred back to our own internal sense of what is good and evil, and thus pushed back against our own disunity.  It is impossible for us not to be self-judging - that is what we are at our best, in the dis-integrated state in which we live!  But reconciled to God in Christ, and thus to ourselves and others, our actions lose that reflexive nature.  What is good is for God to decide.  The judgement on our own actions is not only not necessary, but is forbidden; God will judge.  We are thus freed for genuine action in the world, action that is not just a curiously externalised sort of introspection.

This does not mean that we need not think - we do still need to discern what God's will is, and there is a legitimate self-examination under the gospel.  But this discernment and judgement takes place within the knowledge of Christ - within the event of reconciliation to God.  Fundamentally, we know the shape of God's will - by loving us, he has shown us how to love.  God's love in Christ overcomes our disunion, and sets us on the course of reconciling love ourselves.  "It is as whole human beings, as thinking and acting human beings, that we are loved by God in Christ, that we are reconciled with God.  And as whole human beings, thinking and acting, we love God and our brothers and sisters" (337-8).

Reader Response: Ethics (8)

Manuscript number eight included in the Works edition of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is actually a re-working of manuscript seven - given the title History and Good (2).  The themes are very similar, but I can see why the editors have elected to include both versions.  Bonhoeffer approaches the same questions from different perspectives, and whilst the second version is certainly tighter and clearer, the first is worth a read to see how the thought develops.  Given that it is essentially a repeat, though, here are a few thoughts with less quotes and more of my own interpretation.

In comparison to the first version. this second version puts Christology much more front and centre: it is because of Jesus Christ that we find ourselves in positions of responsibility towards one another.  Because the God who has become man is our neighbour, making us neighbours of God and one another, we are placed in relationship with God and our fellow man.  What I find fascinating and helpful about this is that, if I'm reading it right, Bonhoeffer makes Christ the source of our ethical responsibilities, the limit of those responsibilities, and the shaper of our responsible actions.

Christ is the source of our responsibilities because, as mentioned, it is he who brings us into relationship with God and one another.  Christ is, in a way, the mediator of all our relationships - we see God and others through him.  As such, he is the word of God which we hear, and to which we respond in all genuine responsible action (that is what makes it responsible).  He is also the one in whom God and the world are bound together and reconciled, and therefore the only one who can make action in the world a genuinely responsible action - an action of significance in the sight of God.

Christ is the limit of our responsibilities because he has ultimately taken responsibility for the world.  Therefore all our action takes place within the sphere of relativity; we do not deal with absolutes and ultimates.  He is himself the only absolute and ultimate left to us.  It is only because our responsibility is limited in this way that we can actually take any responsible action at all!  Otherwise we would be frozen by the weight of it all, or we would construct an abstract ethical system in order to clarify our choices.  As it is, knowing that ultimate responsibility is his, we can weight the situation and its likely consequences and make the necessary choice: we can act responsibly.

Christ is the shaper of our responsible actions, because in him we are called to vicarious representative action on behalf of all those for whom Christ has made us responsible.  Jesus, in showing us what vicarious representative action looks like, has also shown us the way: it is the cross.  That means both being willing to identify with the guilty and being willing to suffer for the other.  Perhaps what it means most fundamentally is to trust God for justification whilst venturing the necessary action to which we are called, and which we must undertake without ever being able to certainly justify ourselves.

It's a powerful way of thinking, and I'm wrestling with what it means for us (me!) in the here and now to act responsibly, responding to Christ and answerable to him.

Reader Response: Ethics (7)

The seventh manuscript in the Works edition of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is the first draft of a section entitled History and Good.  The section begins by making explicit that everything said so far only makes sense if we discard the common ethical framework of "an isolated individual who has available an absolute criterion by which to choose continually and exclusively between a clearly recognised good and a clearly recognised evil" (219).  This framework must be discarded because there is no such isolated individual, there is no such choice, and there is no such criterion.

The discarded framework is an abstraction, and fails to recognise "the historicity of human existence" (220).  An individual cannot be isolated from their historical situation and community.  Rather, "a human being necessarily lives in encounter with other human beings", which leads to the individual having responsibilities towards those others (220).  Note that these responsibilities are largely given, not chosen, and they provide the shape of our ethical lives.  The norm for moral action becomes "not a universal principle, but the concrete neighbour, as given to me by God" (221).

With this historicity, we also lose the abstract recognition of good and evil, and are forced to recognise that rather than consistently choosing between good and evil (which are both known), each ethical decision is "risked in faith while being aware that good and evil are hidden in the concrete historical situation" (221).  In other words, there is no clear ethical theory or principle which we can apply in a straightforward manner; to attempt it is mere abstraction, and can lead to the neglect of the actual responsibilities which God has given us.  Wanting to be clear-cut, to always be right, can lead to ignoring the real situations which surround us.

In place of this abstraction, Bonhoeffer calls us to live in "accordance with reality" (222), always remembering that "the most fundamental reality is the reality of the God who became human" (223).  We are called to think through the individual situations in the light of the event of reconciliation in Christ, and then to make free, and therefore risky, choices. These choices are made in faith - they "completely surrender to God both the judgement on this action and its consequences" (225).  This is not acting blindly; choice is made in recognition of the seriousness of taking responsibility, a seriousness which is grounded in the fact that God in Christ has taken responsibility for us.  But it is a recognition that we are not confronted by a black and white choice between the evil and the good, but by relative evil and good in complex situations.  Only God knows all ends, and he has already taken responsibility in an ultimate sense; we are therefore freed to take genuine responsibility in a penultimate sense.

In the end, "the commandments of God's righteousness are fulfilled in vicarious representative action, which means in concrete, responsible action of love for all human beings" (232).  What this makes clear is that the commandments of God are ultimately fulfilled by Christ, and that we take our part in their fulfilment only by conformity to him.  This may involve, as it did for him, taking on guilt - although obviously not in the same way.

This is an ethic of being in the world, of being confronted by messy situations and unclear choices.  But more fundamentally it is an ethic of being in Christ and shaped by him.

Reader Response: Ethics (6)

The sixth manuscript of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled Natural Life.  Bonhoeffer sees this as a neglected subject in Protestant theology (although it features prominently in Roman Catholic theology, where the relationship between nature and grace is understood in a way which is problematic for Protestant thought).  Natural life is not the same as created life - rather, "through the fall, 'creation' became 'nature'.  The unmediated relation to God of the true creation becomes the relative freedom of natural life" (173).  In terms of the relationship between ultimate and penultimate things, natural life is penultimate, and indeed the concept of natural life helps us to distinguish between those things in life which are genuinely penultimate and those which are unnatural and therefore destructive of the penultimate.  Bonhoeffer is here establishing a differentiation within the sphere of the world and the penultimate: against those who deride the concept of natural life because they have lumped everything that is not grace together as 'sin', he sees some things as genuinely natural and others as genuinely unnatural.  But against the Roman concept which tends to make the natural an 'ultimate' in itself, Bonhoeffer is clear that the natural-ness or unnatural-ness of anything will only be revealed in the light of Christ - when things are seen to be either penultimate preparations of the way of the Lord, or obstructions to his path.

"How is the natural recognized?  The natural is that form of life preserved by God for the fallen world that is directed toward justification, salvation, and renewal through Christ" (174).  It can therefore only be known "by looking at Jesus Christ" (174).  Nevertheless, it is reason which is the human instrument for discerning the natural.  The natural, as universally human, is not something which can be defined by any human authority, which will only show itself as arbitrary in so far as it attempts this.  Bonhoeffer, of course, has the Nazi state in view.

"The natural guards life against the unnatural" (176).  Because the natural is the form of life preserved by God, it fights off the unnatural, which is in itself "the enemy of life" (176).  The unnatural may triumph over the natural in limited ways, but the natural will always reassert itself at length.  This is because "the unnatural is something that requires organization, while the natural cannot be organized but is simply there" (177).  It takes fighting and campaigning and legislation to suppress the natural - I am reminded of various campaigns and organisations in the early twenty-first century.  If Bonhoeffer is right, and I think he is, those campaigns are right to think that they need to keep on even after they have apparently achieved their objectives; the natural will in time fight back!

The natural life is a formed life, and its form takes shape in rights and duties, corresponding to the fact that for Christian ethics life is both an end in itself and a means to an end.  Rights come first: "that means speaking first of what is given to life, and only then of what is demanded from it" (180).  This is the only way in which God is honoured, and it is also logical: "duties spring from the rights themselves, as tasks from gifts" (180).  Therefore for the remainder of the manuscript Bonhoeffer expounds particular rights of natural life, including 'to each his own', the inviolability of bodily life, and the rights of reproduction and developing life.

In this connection, and with relevance to contemporary debate, here is another snippet on abortion: "To kill the fruit in the mother's womb is to injure the right to life which God has bestowed on the developing life.  Discussion of the question whether a human being is already present confuses the simple fact that, in any case, God wills to create a human being and that the life of this developing human being has been deliberately taken.  And this is nothing but murder" (206, emphasis added).  Of course there are circumstances (and "without doubt, all this decisively affects one's personal, pastoral attitude toward the person concerned" 181), but they can't change the facts.

I see this manuscript as pursuing one of the most essential insights of Bonhoeffer's work, which is that there are ethical distinctions in the non-Christian world.  This might seem obvious, but the temptation of theologians to write off the whole structure as sinful is powerful.  Of course, the structure is implicated in sin - we are talking about natural life, not the pristine life of the first creation.  But there is nevertheless relative good and relative evil, and the church needs to engage with that if it is to prepare the way for Christ and his gospel in the world.

Reader Response: Ethics (5)

The fifth manuscript in Bonhoeffer's Ethics (at least according to the arrangement in the Works) is entitled Ultimate and Penultimate Things.  I found the argument difficult to follow in detail, although I think the broad brush strokes are clear and valuable.

The ultimate thing in a human life is justification by grace through faith.  The event of justification is "qualitatively ultimate" - "there is nothing greater than a life that is justified before God" (149); it is also "temporally ultimate" - there is "quite literally a span of time at whose end it stands" (150).  Whatever leads up to it (whether the righteous confidence of Paul or the legal fear of Luther [150]) finds its end in this ultimate word, and is therefore penultimate.  This is not to say that the penultimate - whatever it is - leads naturally into the ultimate; the latter is always God's gracious word which judges and justifies freely.  The penultimate is not penultimate in itself, nor can one judge it to be penultimate when looking forward from it; rather it is penultimate in reference to the ultimate, and can be seen to be such when looking back from the ultimate.  The penultimate, then, is (if I understand it correctly) literally everything else that is not the justifying grace of God received through faith.

The relation between the ultimate and the penultimate is the subject of this manuscript.  "Since God's justification by grace and by faith alone remains in every respect the ultimate word, now we must also speak of penultimate things not as if they had some value of their own, but so as to make clear their relation to the ultimate" (151).  In other words, in sorting through what the ultimate (the gospel) has to do with everyday life (ethics), we must begin with the gospel and show how anything else relates to that.  Two main ways have been trodden: the radical way and the way of compromise.  "The radical solution sees only the ultimate, and in it sees only a complete break with the penultimate" (153).  Christ and the world are at enmity; the Christian has responsibility only for faith.  "The world must burn in any case" (153).  I've met a few contemporary evangelicals who take the radical way!  On the other hand, the way of compromise establishes a semi-independent sphere of everyday life in which "the penultimate maintains its inherent rights, but is not threatened or endangered by the ultimate" (154).  Here the ultimate supports the penultimate, in the sense of providing justification for it, but does not in fact speak into the penultimate.  Daily life goes on, just with the added reassurance of the gospel.

Bonhoeffer will not travel either path.  "To advocates of the radical solution, it must be said that Christ is not radical in their sense; to followers of the compromise solution it must likewise be said that Christ does not make compromises" (154).  Therefore, neither of these ways is open to Christian life.  Christian life must take its lead from Christ.  In his incarnation, his cross, and his resurrection, Jesus has brought judgement on the world, but has also brought the world into genuine encounter with God and has established its genuine future.  Therefore "Christian life neither sanctions nor destroys the penultimate" (159), but participates with Christ in the genuine encounter of God with the world.

Because of his understanding of the relationship between the penultimate and ultimate, Bonhoeffer is clear that "the penultimate must be preserved for the sake of the ultimate" (160). He means this quite literally - he gives the example of slaves, who have no control over their own time, and are therefore unable to attend church and hear the word of God!  In the area of the penultimate, the church and the Christian must be concerned to prepare the way for the word (citing Luke 3, which itself cites Isaiah 40).  Preparing the way of the Lord means making the penultimate, as far as possible, suitable to the ultimate - not that we can make Christ come, or prevent him from coming ("Christ comes, to be sure, clearing his own way, whether one is ready for it or not" [162]), but that we can make it more or less difficult for ourselves and others to hear the word and believe.  As concrete examples, "it is hard for those thrust into extreme disgrace, desolation, poverty, and helplessness to believe in God's justice and goodness" (162), therefore it is the duty of the Christian to relieve those conditions.

"What happens here is something penultimate.  To give the hungry bread is not yet to proclaim to them the grace of God...  But for the one who does something penultimate for the sake of the ultimate, the penultimate thing is related to the ultimate" (163).  The two are joined together in so far as the link is seen, and therefore the way is truly prepared for the coming of Christ.  "Only Christ brings us the ultimate, the justification of our lives before God; still, or rather therefore, we are not deprived of, or spared from, living in the penultimate" (167).  Knowing the ultimate, the penultimate takes on its own (limited, but real) seriousness.

For the sake of life

"The church confesses that it has witnessed the arbitrary use of brutal force, the suffering in body and soul of countless innocent people, that it has witnessed oppression, hatred, and murder without raising its voice for the victims and without finding ways of rushing to help them.  It has become guilty of the lives of the weakest and most defenceless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ."

Thus Bonhoeffer.

And thus the Royal College of Midwives, in response to a BPAS campaign to decriminalise the killing of unborn babies:

"This campaign has the RCM’s full support. The fact that women are still bound by this legislation in the UK will surprise many people. The law should not be potentially criminalising women for their decision. The system should be offering support, treatment and care, not obstacles.

“This is a fundamental issue about equality for women. It is about them having control over their own body and not having their bodies subject to the diktats of others, however well meaning."

The weakest and most defenceless.

Time to raise our voices.  Time to find ways of rushing to help.

Reader Response: Ethics (4)

Manuscript four of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled Guilt, Justification, Renewal.  This really is a Christian, which is to say a theological, ethics - the good news of Christ is not incidental to the question of what we ought to do (and not do).  The important context here is Bonhoeffer's reading of the history of the West.

We begin with Christ: "The issue is the process by which Christ takes form among us." (134)  Because that is what is needed in the moral chaos of the collapsed post-Christian West.  We need to know "the real, judged, and renewed human being" - but this human being "exists only in the form of Jesus Christ, and therefore in being conformed to Christ" (134).  There is no way around Jesus Christ here: to be assumed by Christ in his incarnation; to be judged in Christ at the cross; to be joined with Christ in his resurrection - that is real, judged, renewed humanity, and it is the only way forward.

But as well as being the only way forward, this represents for the wayward West a major turning back - back to its Christian heritage, because back to Christ.  And "there is only one way to turn back, and that is acknowledgement of guilt toward Christ" (135).  This acknowledgement of guilt is not about confessing our occasional and more-or-less serious failures and declensions, but it is acknowledging our falling away from Christ.  That is the miracle - fellowship with Christ, the taking form of Christ among us, happens as we together confess that we have fallen away from this fellowship and this form.  This acknowledgement of guilt is based on the gospel - "only on the grace of Christ, because of Christ's reaching out for those who have fallen" (135).

So far, Bonhoeffer is talking about the collective guilt of the West - but where will this confession occur?  Only in the church.  "It is tautological to say that the church is the place where guilt is acknowledged.  If it were otherwise, the church would no longer be the church" (135).  The church takes on and confesses not only its own personal and corporate sin and failure, but also the whole falling away of society.  The church confesses sin, all sin - "This confession is strictly exclusive in that it takes all guilt upon itself" (136) - yes, all guilt.  There is a parallel to the action of Christ here: "Christ conquers us never more strongly than by completely and unconditionally taking on our guilt and declaring it his own, letting us go free.  Looking on this grace of Christ frees us completely from looking at the guilt of others and brings Christians to fall on their knees before Christ with the confession: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" (136).

Bonhoeffer continues with a series of concrete confessions.  One which particularly strikes me is this: "The church confesses that it has coveted security, tranquillity, peace, property, and honor to which it has no claim, and therefore has not bridled human covetousness, but promoted it" (140).  Ouch.  (See another one here).

Bonhoeffer's notion of original sin plays in here: in confession I acknowledge "my sin as the origin of all sin, as, in the words of the Bible, the sin of Adam" (137).  I am guilty of all sin; my sin is the source and original of all evil.  I don't look around for the guilty one - I am the man.  Therefore I can in all seriousness confess sin and guilt, and thus be justified and renewed through Christ.

This is in the church.  Society per se cannot experience this sort of repentance and renewal.  "For the church and for individual believers there can only be a full break with guilt and a new beginning, through the gift of forgiveness of sin.  But in the historical life of nations there can only be a slow process of healing" (143).  Concretely, for the West, this slow process of healing must mean amongst other things "giving space among the nations to the church of Jesus Christ, the origin of all forgiveness, justification, and renewal" (145).  This is not an arrogant claim for the church; it is simply a realistic claim if the real, judged, renewed humanity is seen in Christ alone, who takes form in his community.

Reader Response: Ethics (3)

The third manuscript of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled Heritage and Decay.  It is worth remembering here that although Bonhoeffer was partly driven by the need to establish the Christian response to the Nazi crisis, he was also looking beyond this: it seems that for him the ultimate defeat of Nazism was an article of faith, and he wanted to think about rebuilding.  What would survive, and how would it survive?  What would the world look like - especially for the church - after the war?  Heritage and Decay in many ways provides the framework for addressing those questions; it is, if you like, a zooming out from the immediate situation to survey the wider crisis of Western civilization.

The manuscript begins controversially - at least, for a modern reader; I am not sure how controversial it would have been in the 1940s.  "One can only speak of historical heritage in the Christian West".  Why is that?  Because other nations have no traditions of their own?  Certainly not - indeed, some have much older traditions.  But these are bound up with, and tend to revert to, myth.  They are about the eternal, the timeless.  Only in the incarnation of Christ is history itself guarded against mythologising: because Christian thought "is determined by the entry of God into history at a definite place and time" (104), history itself gains significance, and therefore the present moment gains significance, not being lost in the timeless, but presenting the prospect of present accountability to the God who has claimed history in Jesus.

I think this is distinctively Christian; Bonhoeffer's tying together of 'Christian' and 'Western' strikes me as highly problematic.  The problem underlies the whole of this manuscript.

For Bonhoeffer, "the unity of the West is not an idea, but a historical reality whose only foundation is Christ" (109).  In so far as this is a historical point, there is some value in it.  The heritage of the West is Christianity, whether it likes it or not, and that is a unifying heritage.  Bonhoeffer sees the history of the Western world as largely a struggle over that unity - despite the unity itself being a given.  The wrestling between Pope and Emperor, or between different Christian nations, takes place within that generally acknowledged unity.  The unity collapses at the Reformation - "not that Luther wanted it so" (111).  Luther's initial hope was the Pope would submit to Scripture; and then that the Emperor would safeguard the unity of the corpus christianum.  Both hopes were dashed, and the church and the world went their own ways.  The corpus christianum was shattered, and yet the West in some sense endured.

The more recent history of the West is one of decline.  Through a process of secularisation, involving the growing rule of technology, mass movements, and nationalism, the West has rejected its Christian heritage.  But it cannot jettison that heritage, or the unity it brings.  "The new unity... is Western godlessness" (122).  This is not just atheism.  It is "a religion of enmity toward God" (122), decisively shaped by its Christian heritage even in its rejection.

"Having lost its unity that was created by the form of Jesus Christ, the West is confronted by nothingness" (127).  This is not just a dying civilization; it does not have the feel of a death from 'natural causes'.  "Instead, it is again a specifically Western nothingness: a nothingness that is rebellious, violent, anti-God, and anti-human...  It is nothingness as God" (128).  This is, of course, the language of a man surveying Nazism at the zenith of its power.  But is it so different in our more polite age?

"Only two things can prevent the final fall into the abyss: the miracle of a new awakening of faith; and the power which the Bible calls 'the restrainer'... (2 Thess. 2:7)" (131).  Bonhoeffer understands the restrainer to be the remaining authority of order within the world, represented imperfectly but nonetheless somewhat effectively by the state.  It is fascinating that he could write this in 1941!  The Nazi state has not persuaded him of the overall evil of the state; rather the state itself is God's instrument for preservation.  Nonetheless, the state can only preserve; it cannot revivify.  "The Church has a unique task...  The Church must bear witness to Jesus Christ as living lord, and it must do so in a world which has turned away from Christ after knowing him" (132).  That makes the Church the bearer of the genuine historical tradition of the West.  The world, which has turned to nothingness, does not know what to do with its heritage; the very idea of receiving and passing on has become strange to it.  But the church does know.

Still, the church is not interested in just passing on history.  Rather, it must preach Christ as the living lord.  "The more the church holds to its central message, the more effective it is" (132).  Bonhoeffer saw the remaining forces of order in his society beginning to look to the church as an ally - and the church can be an ally in that way.  But that is not its central business.  It must proclaim Christ.  It is "the miracle of a new awakening of faith" that the church looks for amidst a culture bent on annihilation.

Reader Response: Ethics (2)

The second manuscript of Bonhoeffer's Ethics is entitled Ethics as Formation.  Here we go...

"Seldom has a generation been as uninterested as ours in any kind of ethical theory or program" (76).  This is not because there are no serious ethical problems, but because we are inundated with ethical problems.  (Remember when he is writing!)  The sheer volume and intensity of the ethical issues renders ethical reflection very difficult.  In more ordered times, one can analyse ethical issues; in times when order is subverted, and "evil appears in the form of light, of beneficence, of faithfulness, of renewal,... of historical necessity, of social justice", "ethical theorists... are blinded" (77).

A catalogue of specific ways in which ethical people fail in the face of evil: reasonable people fail because in their desire to be even-handed and their belief in the essential rationality of the world, they are betrayed, and eventually withdraw in bitterness; fanatics fail because in their desire to tackle evil head on they end up chasing presenting issues instead of seeing the heart of things; people of conscience fail because their over-riding desire to have a good conscience ends with them assuaging their conscience, "until they deceive their own conscience in order not to despair" (79); the way of duty fails because it does not take personal responsibility, and "people of duty must finally fulfil their duty even to the devil" (79); those who value their own freedom to do what is necessary are ultimately liable to fall into choosing the bad simply because it is not the worst, betrayed by their own freedom into aiding and abetting evil; those who seek to escape evil times by their own private virtue fail because they will not take responsible action in the public sphere.

None of this failure is to condemned; it is simply all to human.  The only way through is to "keep in sight only the single truth of God" (81), which concretely means Christ.  "Only that person is wise who sees reality in God.  Knowledge of reality is not just knowing external events, but seeing into the essence of things...  Wisdom is recognising the significant within the factual" (81).  This must mean Christ, because it is only in Christ that we can consider God and the world together.  Everywhere else, to focus on God is to lose the world, and vice versa.

It is only in Jesus Christ as incarnate, crucified and risen that we see God and the world clearly.  "The human being accepted, judged, and awakened to new life by God - this is Jesus Christ, this is the whole of humanity in Christ, this is us" (92).  It is only the form of humanity presented here which can answer the ethical questions of the world.  Ethical formation occurs only as this form of Christ is formed in us.  (Note that this is not the imitation of Christ, or indeed any sort of formative programme that springs from us; rather, it is Christ himself, taking his form in us, and thus conforming us to his form).  As Christ is the true human, the form of Christ is the true form of humanity.

One implication of this is that the church is at the heart of the ethical question.  It is in the church that this form of humanity is accepted.  It is valid for all humanity, but only in the church is it actually seen.  "'Formation' means, therefore, in the first place Jesus Christ taking form in Christ's church" (96).  I might take issue with the language used here (which has it's roots in Sanctorum Communio), but the ethical implications are clear: the church is the one place where the new humanity is already known, because Christ is already known, and therefore it is the one place where there can be a response to the ethical problems of the here and now on the basis of Christ, which is to say on the basis of reality.

A further implication is that ethics cannot be based on eternal principles, or a general definition of the good.  Such things inevitably degenerate into "formalism or casuistry".  But "while formalism and casuistry proceed from the conflict between the good and the real", i.e. they seek to show how the good can be applied to the real, or how the real can be conformed to the good, and in this way show that the divergence of goodness and reality is their insoluble problem, "the Christian ethic can proceed from the reconciliation of the world with God in the human Jesus Christ" (99-100).  The essential question then becomes not 'what is good?, but 'how may we see Christ formed today, in the here and now?'