The ethics of abortion

Abortion is in the news again, with the possibility that the landmark judgement in the USA which ensured the legality of abortion may soon be struck down.  Now, I preached Psalm 139 on Sunday as we celebrated new life, and with the affirmation that each baby is knit together in the womb by Almighty God very much ringing in my ears, it seems right to celebrate anything which might reduce the likelihood of this creative work of God being interrupted and thwarted by the destructive work of humanity.  It grieves me, frankly, that here in the UK abortion is hardly controversial; just a medical procedure, which we all tacitly agree to by funding it through our taxes and carrying it out through 'our NHS'.  It is not an ethical question in our society at large.  But it should be.

It is generally accepted that the newborn baby is a human being, fully deserving of all the protections which we typically accord to human beings and which we often bracket under the heading 'the sanctity of life' - a phrase which continues to be used even by people who don't really believe in sanctity as a concept at all.  Okay.  Let us take this as accepted.

So the question is this: what ethically significant change has there been in the baby?  He or she was in the womb, and now they are not; has that bestowed humanity on him or her?

Typically I don't think we would say so.  We talk about 'the baby' while she is still in the womb.  Sometimes we talk to the baby while she is still in the womb!  The baby is human, whether they have passed through the birth canal or not.  The onus is on the so-called 'pro-choice' advocate to show what the ethical difference is.

If not the birth canal, is it some other change earlier in pregnancy?  Is that why we typically limit the stage at which abortions can be carried out?  But what change is it that occurs, and why is it ethically significant?  Is it the ability to survive outside the womb?  If so, why is that ethically significant?

The logic of the 'pro-choice' position is that it is down to an expectant mother to decide whether the developing human being within her has value or not.  That is the logic.  You can try to wriggle out of it all you like, but there is no escaping the fact that what makes the difference between a foetus with no rights and a baby with rights rests in the will of another human being.

One human being gets to decide whether another human being has value or not.

There are lots of complicating factors, and I don't want to minimise them.  But I cannot see that any of those factors change the basic equation.  Is this an ethical position we're happy with?

Ah, but since abortions will happen anyway, shouldn't they be safe and regulated?  But there is no safe abortion for the baby involved.  And it matters what we as a society are prepared to sanction.  If we are talking about the taking of a powerless human life, then it matters that this be illegal even if it still happens.

I don't know how to make this a live issue again in British society.  Maybe, absent Christian presuppositions, it can't be done.  Maybe, as I've mused sadly before, we are past the point where ethical arguments can make headway against the 'sanctity of choice'.  But maybe it's just that this is another one of those areas where we believe things are important, but don't want to make things socially awkward by acting on our beliefs?

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.

Limits

Been thinking a bit about limits and limitations this week.  The first 'limits' in the Biblical story are found right back in Genesis 1, when God separates light from dark, the earth from the heavens, the land from the sea.  The anti-creation forces of darkness and chaos are driven back to within specific limits, in order to create space for life.  And according to the unfolding story, God maintains these limits - consider specifically the boundaries of the sea in Jeremiah 5:22.  The limits which make life possible were established by him in his Wisdom and are preserved by him so that life itself may be preserved.  (Consider the story of Noah's flood as an example of what happens when God in his wrath declines to preserve these borders!)

The counterpart to the limits of Genesis 1 are found in the story of the Garden.  There is, of course, the boundary to the Garden itself, but actually this is not the real limit in the story; there seems to be some expectation that the Man will increase the size of the Garden, cultivating the earth and making it all a place fit for human life.  The real limit is found in the centre of the garden, where the two trees stand: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

This is the first personal, ethical limitation that we find in Scripture.  The limits of Genesis 1 were established by fiat; this limit is delivered by command and requires obedience.  Here the Lord deals with his animate, rational creature, rather than the impersonal darkness and sea.  But the purpose of the limitation is the same - life.  God limits the darkness and the sea because he wills the life and flourishing of humanity.  The world without form and void is not habitable.  It is death.  In the same way, 'life' outside the commandment of God is not life, but death.  This continues to be underlined throughout Scripture.  Wherever humanity is confronted by God's command, the options are life and good or death and evil.  There is only life in his will.  The limit is good.

To rail against our limitations seems to be the most human thing in the world - and perhaps it is.  Human, all too human.  But if God is for us - if he is on our side - then the limits he has imposed are good for us.  He has given me these gifts and skills and not those.  That limits me.  He has given me this level of energy and not that.  I am limited.  I cannot, contrary to the mush which passes for a contemporary worldview, be whoever and whatever I want to be.  I must accept these limits as the good provision of God.  They provide the borders, the negatives, within which God wills to give positive shape to me.  I can only exist as the person I am here.

And similarly, the commands of God which limit me, which tell me what I may and may not do - these are good.  They set out the boundaries of human flourishing.  It is not possible to transgress them with impunity - not in the end, and if it seems like you're getting away with it, it just isn't the end yet.  Actually, just as I can only really be me within the physical/psychological/cultural/etc. limits that God has set for me, so I can only really be me within the limits of God's commandments.  God's commandments, which seem so narrow from the outside, turn out from the inside to establish a broad space within which I can live.

The most challenging limitation of all is of course death, when God returns me to dust.  I think about that a lot, and this week I marked another birthday, which makes me think about it more.  But to accept this limitation too as in some way good - not perhaps good in the sense of the first design of creation, but good for me as a sinner, as one who is fallen, just as I believe it was mercy which set up the flashing sword at the gate of Eden - that is a challenge.  But one to be embraced in Christ Jesus; as the limit which also carries the promise of a glorious resurrection, the boundary which makes life - real life - possible.

Good without God

The Guardian offers a (fairly bland) editorial on what it will mean to be a society in which people increasingly don't believe in God.  They don't really offer an answer, content instead to raise the question: "if organised mainstream Christianity is on the way out, what will replace it?"

I want to make two observations on the editorial, and point out one major error which runs through a lot of humanist and soft-atheist argument.

The first observation is that the Guardian, and others of this ilk, are noticing something which believers have actually been well aware of for a couple of generations at least: namely, that Christian observance and belief is dropping off, in fact has dropped off a cliff.  The editorial observes that "more than half of all British people now say that they have no religion; about two-fifths are Christians of one sort or another; 9% are Muslims."  The phrase which I have italicised is frankly very generous, and can only be reached through allowing a person's religious outlook to be defined entirely by their own self-identification.  Actually, those of us who believe and practice orthodox Christianity have known for some time that the real figure is much lower.  Some have estimated more like 3%.  This may be news to the Guardian, but it has been our reality for ages.

The second observation is that 'organised mainstream Christianity' may well be dying out, if by that is meant the liberal, compromised religion of cultural Christianity and traditional observance.  Far from that being of concern to orthodox Christians, the collapse of this horrible perversion of Christ's religion is in many ways welcome.  Yes, the disappearance of basic knowledge makes mission harder work, and the loss of moral consensus and community cohesion is painful, but on the other hand, it clarifies things.  Where the gospel is still preached, according to the Scriptures, it still works to bring new life and to gather God's people in; God isn't dependent on the structures of cultural Christianity to do his work.

The massive falsehood in the editorial is tucked away in the middle.  We are told that "theology and morality are only tenuously related."  This is so because "habits of kindness, decency and tolerance come from practice rather than belief."  This is demonstrable nonsense.  It depends on the naive Enlightenment view that morality is self-evident, that people simply using their reason unaided will be able to discern in the world a 'right' way to act, and will then be able to follow it.  It assumes a universal moral code, which people can just pick up by thinking right.  The editors of the Guardian should know better; they should have read their Nietzsche more attentively.

In fact, ethical systems and beliefs are particular, not universal, and are grounded in particular beliefs about reality.  You can mask this with bland talk about kindness, decency, and tolerance; but it gets much more difficult when you get into specifics.  We are morally obliged to care particularly for the weak and the helpless.  I guess the average Guardian reader agrees.  But is this a universal moral intuition?  It is not!  It is the ethical corollary of the theological belief in the dignity and sanctity of human life, derived from its Creator.  This belief burst onto the scene historically with Christian revelation and has not been arrived at in any other way.  If it seemed to the Founding Fathers of the American republic that these truths were "self-evident", they only showed thereby that they were steeped in Christian doctrine - without even realising the extent to which their moral intuition was determined by this framework.  More honest and percipient philosophers today - such as Luc Ferry - admit that they do in fact want to continue to hold ethical positions which are specifically derived from Christian belief without the accompanying beliefs themselves, and moreover admit that this is as yet something for which they have failed to derive a convincing reason.

The flipside of this falsehood at the heart of the Guardian's editorial is the assumption that religion basically only exists to make us good.  Can we not, in fact, be good without God?  How can people not see that this question cannot be answered without resolving the question 'what does it mean to be good?'  And one cannot begin to answer this question without dealing with the question of what reality is like.  If there is no God, then it may be possible to be good without God; although I am not convinced that a sound and compelling account can be given of what 'goodness' means in that worldview.  On some versions of theism, and most versions of deism, it may also be possible to be good without God.

But if the Christian revelation is actually true - that is to say, if God the Son really walked among us, died on a Roman cross, and rose to eat breakfast with his disciples - then goodness is inherently wrapped up in relationship with God.  In that case, one cannot be good without God, because being good is not merely about ethical behaviours ("habits of kindness, decency and tolerance") but about bowing before the Creator, accepting his Lordship - and most of all accepting his grace.  Because of course the point of the Christian religion is not to provide you with an ethical system to help you to be good, but to provide you with a Saviour to bring you to God.

The work done by a doctrine of creation

It can be easy for the doctrine of creation to function merely as a backdrop - establishing a baseline, as it were, to make it easier to see the effects of the fall.  Yes, God made the world, and yes, it was good; but that's all in the past, and this side of Genesis 3 what matters is just pulling souls out of the wreckage before the whole thing goes up in smoke.

But a robust doctrine of creation - of the view that God made all this stuff and that it is therefore good, because it bears the mark of its Creator and serves his purposes - is so much more important than that.

Doctrinally, you can't make sense of Jesus without a sound doctrine of creation.  The idea that God the Son took on flesh makes no sense except in a scenario where God the Maker is still concerned for the stuff he has made.  The emphasis on stuff that pervades the gospel accounts - the physical healings, the miracles of food and wine, baptism and Supper - is inexplicable without a God who has not turned his back on his creation, or had second thoughts about the sheer physicality of the thing.  And then the resurrection - why all the insistence that it was with a real body that Jesus appeared after his crucifixion?  Why the eating of fish, the barbecue on the beach?  This is all such earthly stuff for the risen Son of God to be involved with, don't you think?  I wonder if a lot of the aversion which some people have to the idea of incarnation and resurrection actually comes from a sense that it just isn't spiritual enough for their idea of god.

The Christian hope also depends on our doctrine of creation.  Jesus rose in a physical body, and will return to raise our bodies and to renew the whole physical creation.  It is a new heavens and a new earth we're looking forward to, not an ethereal floaty existence as disembodied spirits.  Because God loves this creation he has made, he will redeem it.  All creation groans together in anticipation of that glory; it's a shame if Christians aren't excited at the prospect.

Ethically, there are a whole range of issues which Christians will tend to neglect without a firm doctrine of creation.  Environmental stuff, of course, but it goes a lot further than that.  I'm sure some of the debate a couple of decades ago about the right balance between evangelism and social action sprang in some measure from a deficient doctrine of creation: a sense amongst some that what matters is souls, not bodies or social systems or politics.  But if God is the Creator, all those things matter.

Most recently I've been thinking about how lack of a decent doctrine of creation makes our witness and evangelism harder.  It's easy for Christians to become interested only in 'Christian stuff', to the neglect of the world around.  Whether it's the person who can talk intensely about Christ and the need to be saved but has nothing to say about sport or art, or the person who sees value in reading theological tomes but has never enjoyed a good novel - it all serves to make Christianity seem anti-creation, anti-stuff.  Our lives are impoverished if we go even a little way down this road, and then who will want to join us in our impoverishment?

So anyway, God looked at everything he had made and saw that it was very good.

Welcoming and Warning

There is something fascinating going on in Matthew 18:5-6.  Matthew brings together two sayings which are separated in Mark (by three verses) and Luke (by eight chapters!) to make a really interesting juxtaposition:

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

What has been particularly stimulating my thinking this morning is the tying together of two themes: welcome and hospitality on the one hand, and leading another into sin on the other.  I feel like one of these gets a lot of airplay in contemporary debate.  The idea of being inclusive and welcoming is very important - and rightly so.  Here it is, from the mouth of the Lord: to welcome someone in Christ's name is to welcome Christ himself (and Mark adds: also to receive the one who sent him, i.e., the Father).  Christian hospitality is crucial, and it is only right that it be talked about a lot.  We could do with moving on to actually practice it, to be honest.  It's worth noting that the discussion here is about welcoming believers - i.e., about practical Christian unity - rather than hospitality towards those outside the community (which the NT addresses elsewhere).  Still, here is an agenda which we ought to get behind - and none the less because in a more general, fuzzy sense it is a popular agenda in the world at large.

Logically, we might think that the 'but' in Matthew 18:6 should be followed by an opposite, something like: whoever turns someone away turns me away.  Instead it is followed by the warning that if anyone causes a believer to sin (literally, to stumble), it would be better for them to drown.  The link, presumably, is partly caused by the ongoing image of the believer as child (reinforced in the narrative by the actual presence of a child).  But that surely isn't all.  Matthew presents this as one complete thought: you should welcome believers in Jesus' name, but you shouldn't cause them to sin.  It is not hard to imagine the multiplicity of ways in which one might cause a believer to sin: by giving a poor example; by failing to encourage and support; by failing to welcome and include, I guess, such that they are cut off from church life; and also by teaching falsely about right and wrong.

I wonder whether there is something here that needs teasing out for the sake of our current discourse.  One of the dynamics in the church at the moment is that there are those pushing for a change in the church's ethical teaching so as to be more inclusive.  I feel like that is taking the theme of Matthew 18:5 and ignoring the 'but'.  The NT has a particular horror of those who will teach the church to believe falsely and behave wrongly.  Matthew is perhaps particularly strong on the latter - consider Matthew 5:17-20.  If we take seriously the call of the NT to radical welcome and inclusion in the name of Jesus, we must also take seriously the call to ethical purity for the sake of Jesus.

Matthew 18:6 is not gentle language.  It is, nevertheless, gracious language.  It is unlikely that anyone who is on the end of an appeal to stop leading others into sin will feel that it is gracious - especially not if language about millstones is involved - but if the Lord Jesus is right (if!) then it is gracious to abruptly correct someone, to point out that they are endangering the souls of themselves and their hearers.  Arguably, it is part of receiving an erring brother or sister in Christ's name to rebuke them strongly, to warn them that they are in danger of forfeiting that name - and all the more so if they have taken on the role of a teacher.

It is not a contradiction of Matthew 18:5 to also read Matthew 18:6.

Thoughts about life

For reasons which will be obvious to anyone who follows the news, I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be 'pro-life' - and also what it doesn't mean.  What is a distinctly Christian approach to the ethical issues surrounding the beginning and end of human life?  Here are some thoughts, not all well developed at this stage.

1.  The theological foundations of a Christian pro-life stance are creation and Christology.  The doctrine of creation teaches us that each human being is made by God, in his image, and belongs to him.  Life - including my own life! - does not ultimately 'belong' to any of us, but to God.  That is why a human being cannot arbitrarily take another human being's life - consider Genesis 9:6.  Christology comes in because it is, if you like, the highest compliment that could be paid to human nature that God the Son took it on himself and became incarnate.  If we doubt the value of human life, the doctrine of the incarnation should be a sufficient rebuttal of those doubts.  We could also add that, de jure, each human life belongs once again to God, this time not only by right of creation but by right of redemption.

2.  The ethical implications of these foundations are sometimes very clear, and sometimes not so much.  I think that anyone who celebrates the Annunciation - I don't mean necessarily by keeping the feast, but by being gladdened by the angelic news of the incarnation - ought to recognise that Christ in his incarnation sanctifies human life from conception.  We ought to be pro-life in the narrower sense of 'against the deliberate ending of life in the womb'.  But we need to recognise that issues around end-of-life care just are more difficult.  There can be a moral difference, for example, between deliberately ending a life and withdrawing treatment - although both will end in death, and are undertaken in that knowledge.  We ought not to act or talk as if this stuff were simple and straightforward.

3.  To be pro-life is not the same as being anti-death.  One aspect of recognising the sanctity of life is recognising that the mystery of its end does not lie entirely within our power.  Thanks to medical advances, we can often delay death - but whether we ought to do so in every case is surely very doubtful.  Especially for the Christian, who believes in and looks for the resurrection of the dead, being pro-life ought not to mean 'prolonging life wherever possible regardless of other considerations'.

4.  It seems to me that many people - especially, I have to say, Americans - muddy the waters by confusing more than one issue.  For example, in some of the tragic issues involving children which have come up in the UK, American commentators have been quick to equate being pro-life with believing in absolute parental autonomy.  Some talk as if parents own their children's lives, something which I can't accept on theological principle (see 1, above), and some import the distinctly American (but not Christian) idea that the community and the state ought to have no input into tough decisions involving children.  This is an unhelpful blurring of issues, and particularly when it is being shouted across the Atlantic sounds a lot like real-life tragedies here are being used as ammunition for ongoing culture wars there.  (And as an aside, if the sanctity of life means anything, it means that issues of life must not be used in this way).

5.  A distinctive of Christian engagement with this issue ought to be a certain amount of calm.  Don't get me wrong: there should be anger when the sanctity of life is not respected, and there should be grief over individual tragedies and systemic horrors.  But there needs to be somewhere behind that the faith in God who raises the dead and gives each one his or her due, so that we can engage without bitterness and frenzy.

6.  Life is a gift.  It is all too easy to present life as a burden - and then say that you have to carry it anyway, because hey, we're pro-life.  Life is a gift.  There should be joy in being pro-life, joy in honouring the greatest thing the Creator has made, joy in the fact that Christ came that we might have life, and life to the full.  The Christian pro-life position is full of gratitude, seeing goodness where nobody else can see it, the joy of glimpsing the imago dei even in the briefest flickers of human existence and the hardest moments of human being.  Tone matters, because it betrays what is really going on in our hearts.

Heteronomy's back

Four steps in the history of ethics in Western culture:

1.  God gives the moral law, which you should obey because it comes from God.  Being moral means being subject to another, namely God.

2.  The moral law is objective, and should not be accepted on authority.  Rather, universal reason will bring us to the same moral conclusions, to which we must freely bind ourselves if we are to be moral.  Being moral means being subject to yourself as rational being.

3.  The moral law is subjective, and can only be found within yourself.  There is no universal reason, and what is morally right for you may not be morally right for me.  Being moral means being subject to your own sense of morality and purpose.

4. The moral law is inter-subjective, and can only be discovered through social interaction.  There is no universal sense for what is right and wrong, but your action should be governed by whether it is likely to offend anyone else.  Being moral means being subject to literally everyone you come across.

Under authority

This morning the news has broken that Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Roman Catholic, holds ethical positions consistent with Catholicism.  Alongside the almost comical shock that being a Catholic should involve Catholicism, there have been a couple of interesting reactions, for example this:

Either life is sacrosanct from conception or it isn't. Otherwise you're just punishing the woman for making "bad" choices, ie. having sex https://t.co/TBiNNF5Wlb

— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) 6 September 2017

I don't think I'd considered that particular line before, but it is surely true that consistency here is critical.  Attempts to make compassionate exceptions to the right to life actually end up making our ethics awful woman bashing.

One thing I dread whenever Roman Catholic ethical positions come into public discussion is the widespread perception that Protestants are just a bit more easy-going on these sorts of things.  This was the heart of my GCSE Religious Education, as far as I recall (and I freely admit that I may not recall ever so accurately, so don't think too poorly of my teachers): here is a tricky ethical problem, Roman Catholics take this hard line, other Christians just do what they feel like.  There are perhaps two misconceptions about Protestantism that are put about in this context:

1.  Protestants, because they are not so much bound by tradition, are more likely to be progressive than Roman Catholics.  This is not true.  Protestants are no more free than Roman Catholics to take their lead on ethical issues from the trends of wider society.  They are under the authority of Christ, expressed concretely in Holy Scripture.  Where Protestants dissent from Roman Catholic teaching on ethics, it is because they do not think Scripture supports the Roman position.  It is not because they are free.

2.  Protestants, because they are all about individual conscience, are not bound to their church's ethical positions in the way that Roman Catholics are.  This is not true.  It is true that the Reformation made much of conscience, but the intention was not to overthrow the authority of the church.  It was to relativise it.  The church has the authority to take doctrinal and ethical positions.  The point of the Reformation was simply that these positions are open to challenge from Holy Scripture, because the church is not God.  The idea is not that every individualist church member can just believe and do whatever they feel is right.  The church is a disciplined community.

Of course I know that the reason people have these misconceptions about Protestants is partly because many people calling themselves Protestants really do think and behave like this.  All I can say is that this is bad Protestantism, Protestantism gone to seed.  Real Protestants are people bound under authority, no less than Roman Catholics - just not quite the same source of authority.

Division, faith, ethics

One of the more unfortunate responses to the Nashville Statement (of which, to be clear, I am not a fan, despite being broadly in agreement with its ethical positions) is to complain that this statement is divisive.  You can find the complaint here, for example, on a blog which I have on other ocassions found useful and encouraging.  It's unfortunate because of two things: firstly, it complains that the statement does exactly what it aims to do; and secondly, it implicitly claims that division is always bad.  The second claim is obviously the important one, and it doesn't work.  The NT is full of commands to divide from people - off the top of my head, one might consider 1 Corinthians 5, or 2 Thessalonians 3:6.  These two references are particularly pertinent, as they don't command division from people who take erroneous doctrinal stances, but from people who persist in ethically forbidden behaviour.

That helps with countering a particular form of the 'division is bad' argument, which makes it an issue of whether we believe in justification by faith.  In the same post I linked earlier, you will find essentially this argument: if you divide from anyone over anything other than faith in Christ, you are saying that justification requires faith in Christ and this other thing, in this case a particular take on sexual ethics.  And therefore you are denying the heart of the gospel.

It's worth picking over the logic.  The idea is that if I divide from someone else who professes faith in Christ, then I am claiming that this person is not a Christian, and therefore I am saying, or at least implying, that I think they're not justified.  Therefore I am making justification depend on faith in Christ and right doctrine or behaviour, and this will not do.

Let me counter some of that.  Firstly, it is worth noting that the NT is clear that certain kinds of behaviour rule out inheriting the Kingdom of God, regardless of the faith you profess - see Galatians 5:19-21 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.  Without getting into the detail of how that works, it seems clear that if your understanding of justification sola fide makes these verses untenable, your understanding is wrong.  Secondly, division from another person who professes faith in Christ ought not to be understood as a final judgement on them as to their justification - by what power or right could we possible pass such a judgement?  It is more like a warning shot.  It says 'friend, we consider your doctrine or behaviour to be such that we cannot regard you as a true Christian; and therefore we call you to consider whether you are in the right with God, and to repent'.  That is a severe thing to say, but it could be a mercy if it brings repentance!

Thirdly, in the final analysis, this is just a rehash of the Counter-Reformation calumnies against justification by faith alone, but given a perversely positive spin.  The Counter-Ref claimed that Protestants taught that so long as you believed in Jesus you could behave as you liked - there was no motive for ethical living, because your faith would guarantee you salvation regardless of what you did.  Of course, the Roman apologists of this era were appalled at such a suggestion.  Now, though, it is expressed as if this were a positive thing: we can all just disagree about sexual ethics, because it doesn't really matter what you do, so long as you believe in Christ!  But this is a desperate caricature of the beautiful doctrine of justification by faith alone.  If you think that justification by faith alone means 'trust in Christ and it doesn't matter how you live', then you have missed the point.  The person who is justified by faith in Christ is given a heart to obey Christ.  The person who does not obey Christ does not love Christ, does not trust Christ.  This is all in the New Testament, front and centre.  You can deny the gospel by your behaviour, as well as by your doctrine.

I hope the Nashville Statement disappears soon.  I don't think it's fit for purpose.  It lacks theological rigour and gospel tone.  But there is a serious need for division in the church.  If we take the NT warnings about ethics and the Kingdom seriously - read again some of the verses I've linked above! - the least loving thing we can do is to try to fudge the issue.  Eternal life is at stake. We must be clear.

The Alternative Society

I don't really want to comment on the Donald, except to point out that it's no huge surprise (even if it is a tragedy) that a culture (not American culture uniquely, but perhaps particularly) which insists that human beings are gods chooses a leader who appears to believe that he is God.  Friends across the pond: I sympathise.  I don't know which way I would have jumped.  Appalling policies on the left, an appalling person on the right.  Into the valley of death...

But enough of this pessimism.  I want to think about the church.  What are we to do?  What are we to be?

In a sort-of follow up to this post, I want to suggest that the answer is pretty clear.  We need to be an alternative society, a society in waiting.

I suspect that the church in the West has re-entered (or perhaps in the USA is in the process of re-entering) a state of normality vis a vis culture and society at large.  There are basically three ways the church can exist.  Sometimes it is the martyr church, bearing witness with its blood and life to the resurrection of Christ in the midst of an actively hostile and aggressive culture.  On the other hand, the church is sometimes the Constantinian church, having a huge influence on culture and society and becoming in many ways the arbiter of morality and social mores as the majority at least outwardly acknowledge the lordship of Christ and accept Christian ethics.

We have to be ready at any time to be either of those churches again.  But that's not where we are now.  No, despite the slightly hysterical Daily Mail-esque concern of various Christian pressure groups, we are not being actively persecuted.  We are not (now, or yet) called to be the martyr church in the West.  But we have been the Constantinian church for so long that we have forgotten that there is a third, more normal mode of existence of the church, which is to be the marginalised church, the church outside the camp.  This is the church which is rejected by society but not actively persecuted; which finds itself with its norms and values barely tolerated but certainly outside the mainstream.  I say this is 'normal' because this is the church of the NT.  1 Peter is a classic example.  Mocked, but not martyred.  That's where we are.

Now things could get worse, and we do have to be ready to become the martyr church.  It might happen.  But can I suggest that we also need to be ready to be the Constantinian church again?  I don't mean the state church.  I just mean that, believing as we do in the omnipotence of the gospel, we have to be ready for people to be persuaded, to bow the knee to Christ, to join his people - and not in the trickles that we see now, but in torrents.  We need to be ready for that.  We need to balance our awareness that the future may be the martyr church with the knowledge that in God's grace it could also be revival.

I think that affects our stance towards wider society.  I think we need to offer a genuine alternative.  We need to be a society where, for example, left and right are welcomed as they submit to Christ, but where some of the things which left and right typically hold dear - let's say, for example, the right to murder our own children in the womb, or the right to exploit people and the earth purely for profit - will have to be left at the door.  We'll need to provide the community that serves as a plausibility structure for a different kind of sexual ethics, a different kind of economics, a different kind of leadership.  We'll have to do it whilst remaining genuinely open, and open to a world which will mock and malign us.  We're going to need to look like a society in waiting.

Church is political.  It's the society of the Lord.  It's not souls and clouds, it's people and policies and a new creation in the midst of the chaos.  It's the society of the gospel and the law, which says yes and no, but always the no for the sake of the yes.

O Church arise...

On not fighting the culture wars

For most of the British Christians I know, it is a source of some pride or at least satisfaction that we are not fighting the culture wars.  A quick glance across the Atlantic appears to reveal a war-zone in which Christians are fighting what looks very much like a desperate and increasingly compromised rear-guard action against the modern world.  We are pretty glad to be out of it.

There are a number of reasons we're not fighting the culture wars, I think.  For starters, Christians are fairly evenly spread across the main political traditions in the UK, which makes it almost impossible for us to act as a block in political matters.  There is enormous value in this for the church - it means that we have represented in our congregations people who see the goodness in each of those political traditions, which keeps us from becoming narrow, and it brings us regularly into contact with people who share our fundamental allegiance (to Christ) whilst having a largely different political loyalty, which keeps us from becoming too partisan.  This is good.  I think there is also a different tradition of Bible-reading and interpretation, less influenced by fundamentalism (in its historic, not its pejorative, sense), which is less quick to shut down discussion with a 'because the Bible says so'.  This, I think, is also good.

Because there are good theological reasons not to join in this fight.  I think the central reason is that the gospel is not a worldview or a philosophy or a rule-book for society, but is the glorious and joyful good news of what God has done in Christ.  That good news cannot be identified absolutely with any worldview or form of society, but critiques them all; it is therefore not in order to use the gospel to defend a nostalgic or utopian social order.  Then again, there is good theological reason to avoid fighting because the offensive or defensive posture necessary for the culture wars does not sit well with the openness of the gospel or the freedom of its invitation.  Angry or frightened soldiers don't as a rule look like emissaries of the gracious King.

Still, I have a few anxieties.  The first one is about motivation.  There are all sorts of potential motives for not fighting the culture wars which are really good, but I can't help feeling that quite often we don't fight because we want to look good or credible to the world, or just because we're afraid of taking a stand for anything.  That is something I need to check my own heart on.

Second, I'm anxious that by not fighting we must just be losing by default.  After all, it only takes one side to start a war.  When you notice the preponderance of stories on the BBC seeking to normalise the idea of gender fluidity, for example, it's hard to escape the impression that just because we're not fighting doesn't mean we're not being fought against.

Third, I'm anxious that we're allowing a social order to solidify which presents a sort of penultimate challenge (in Bonhoeffer's sense) to the gospel.  That is to say, although issues of, for example, sexuality or economics are not ultimately gospel issues, it is entirely possible to create a setup of penultimate things which makes it harder for the ultimate (the gospel message) to be heard.  I wonder if we're doing that.

Fourth, I'm anxious for my children, who are growing up in a world where a Biblical stance on numerous ethical and social issues is completely implausible - much more so than when I was young.  Have we let them down?

Fifth, but perhaps most urgently, I'm anxious - or rather, distressed - at the way in which we've allowed issues of the utmost importance - like the value of life - to become grey areas.  There's nothing grey about killing babies, and I'm not sure that avoiding fighting the culture wars, even for good motives, is a good reason not to speak up.

I don't want to fight the culture wars.  I don't think we'd win anyway, and I don't think it would do the cause of Christ's gospel any good.  But what are we going to do?

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.