Christian Moral Action

Cards (109)

  • Bonhoeffer was extremely critical of other ethical theories because of their failure to confront evil directly. His criticisms of ethics resulted in an Aristotelian ethic that is Christological in expression.
  • For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour is how the reality of God, and the reality of our world, is reconciled in the reality of Christ.
  • Bonhoeffer holds that there are two guides for determining the will of God in any given situation:
    1. The need of one’s neighbour
    2. The model of Jesus
  • Reconcile the reality of our world, with the reality of God through the reality of Christ
  • Bonhoffer saw the action of the German Church as a conflict between Germanism and true Christianity and accused the German Christians of not confessing their faith and not being true to their discipleship and the commands of God.
  • “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church… Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost…the account has been paid in advance and because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.”
  • People have a misunderstanding of grace and that they think that because Jesus had paid the price for sin they were off the hook and did not need to make any changes or be sorry for their wrong actions or even notice God at all.
  • Being a Christian means ‘picking up your cross’ just as Jesus did’
  • Grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus and that means making changes to our lives and our decisions. Not truly committing your life to costly grace had grave consequences and Bonhoeffer argued resulted in millions of spiritual corpses
  • Sacrifice and suffering 
    Bonhoeffer felt strongly that suffering and sacrifice are inherent to discipleship for anyone who follows Jesus because they must pick up his cross and follow the path of suffering that Jesus walked.
    Jesus experienced suffering and rejection- death without honour. Bonhoeffer therefore believed that suffering and rejection was a crucial element of Christian life.
    Ultimately the life of a christian is a life of suffering for Christ as supported by the quote: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34 )
  • “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34 )
  • Solidarity
    Bonhoeffer's thoughts around suffering are closely linked to his views on solidarity, arguing that for Christians, the goal is not to become religious but to be there for others. For him, this meant that when he had the opportunity to flee the suffering that was happening in Germany and reside in America, he only stayed for 21 days before returning to Berlin. Bonhoeffer truly lived by the belief that we encounter God in the middle of life when we are there for our neighbours and it is this that makes you a Christian.
  • “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” Romans 13:1
  • “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.” (Mark 12:17)
  • Leadership principle lecture:
    In order to act with genuine leadership: resist becoming an idol, messianic figure and acknowledge that ultimately, authority comes from God.
    “Duty to God, not the state”
    Bonhoeffer it is your obedience to Jesus that makes you a Christian: “there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road - only obedience to the call of Jesus.” (Cost of Discipleship).
  • “Duty to God, not the state”
  • The call to discipleship is a call to obedience to the leadership of Jesus and the will of God. The first disciples responded to Jesus with an act of obedience rather than with a procession of faith or an actual account of the theology they believed in. This is shown in the example of jesus’ first encounter with Matthew where he simply told him to “follow me” and he did.
  • “Go out in the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow”
  • “Go out in the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow”
    ‘Single-minded obedience’
    Jesus called Peter to risk his life and walk on the sea, reason, conscience and responsibility all stand in the way of this and he argued that people should just simply obey God.
  • “We do not walk under our self-made laws and burdens, but, under the yoke of him who knows us and walks under the yoke with us”.
  • “Faith without action is dead”
  • “Freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts”
  • Civil disobedience is the active and open refusal to obey certain laws set down by the government.
  • “Jesus said to him, ‘let the dead bury their own dead’”. (Luke 9:57-62)
  • Jesus healing on the Sabbath ‘ which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:1-6).
  • Bonhoeffer’s civil disobedience
    Spoke out against Nazi ideas at the university in which he worked
    He spoke publicly about his opposition to the Nazi party and was banned from giving public lectures.
    He criticised the confessing Church
    He participated in an illegal seminary.
    He spoke openly about praying for the defeat of his country.
    After his ban from public speaking, his brother gave him a job working for the German military intelligence becoming a double agent and passed on information to the allies and used information to smuggle Jews into Switzerland to safety
  • Bonhoeffer’s ecclesial edifice is the question “who is Jesus Christ for us today?”. He refuses to make a distinction between the Church and the world because the Church should not be a separate entity from the world.
  • Bonhoeffer: followers of Christianity are a visible community, their discipleship should be visible in action and a sign for others. He is adamant that without salt and light, the Church is lost.
    Salt: Christians are preservatives of the World, preserving it from the evil in the world.
    Light:the presence of Christians in the world should be the light in the darkness.
  • Karl Barth: Theological Declaration of Barmen Confessing Church:
    -Asserted the centrality of Jesus as the only way to God and rejected all other world leaders such as Hitler.
    -Asked Bonhoeffer to lead and direct a secret illegal seminary, which eventually moved to a disused private school in Finkenwalde.
  • Bonhoeffer A02: Augustine
    Augustine: Bonhoefter’s theology of action is not possible in a postlapsarian world where people are inherently flawed
    Bonhoeffer asks us to reconcile the reality of our world with the reality of God which is impossible whilst we are at an epistemic distance from him.
    Augustine: The notion of costly grace implies that salvation is within our control, which it is not
  • Bonhoeffer A02: Catholic Church
    Catholic church - Jesus did not encourage political liberation, he was focused on spiritual liberation instead
  • Bonhoeffer A02: Richard Dawkins
     Dawkins: Religion is dangerous. Bonhoeffer's theology is asking people to go against the rules of the government, this can lead to a slippery slope that could even result in extremism
  • Blending theological exegesis with normative ethics, this unit asks the question: how should Christians behave? With life in Nazi Germany as the backdrop to this thinking, we will look to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to answer the question; thinking critically about the theological and social conflict that can arise when your government demands a way of life that conflicts with your religious duty and how, crucially, Christians should behave in these circumstances.
  • Bonhoeffer was living under Nazi rule. A Christian pastor, he enjoyed a rich academic and ecclesiastical career before he was eventually arrested and executed by Nazi authorities for his apparent involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. 
  • Bonhoeffer opposed the Church adopting many Neo-Nazi practices, some German Christians had joined the Nazi party believing that Hitler was an embodiment of Christian values; some religious leaders began wearing brown uniforms to preach in church, linking themselves to National Socialism; the Nazi party prohibited ministers with Jewish ancestry from working for the Church and Hitler was seen by many as the leader of Christianity, alongside Jesus. This led Bonhoeffer to believe that the action of the German Church created conflict between Germanism and true Christianity.
  • Bonhoeffer  was extremely critical of other normative ethical theories, accusing them of failing to confront evil directly. These criticisms led him to develop his own principles of moral behaviour which he complied in his work unambiguously titled ‘Ethics’. Bonhoeffer’s ethics provide a nod to Aristotelian virtue ethics in that they are character-orientated yet, are crucially, Christological in expression. The edifice of moral action he propounded was to reconcile the reality of God with the reality of the world, through the reality of Christ
  • Bonhoeffer took an Augustinian stance by insinuating that the reality of the world in which we are living conflicts with the will of God and the reality that he intended. Through Christ, God provides us with revelation into his will and this in turn supports Christians to understand how they should act. 
  • Since we are at an epistemic distance from God, understanding his will needs to come through looking to the incarnation, Christ, and mimicking that behaviour.
  • The true edifice of Bonhoeffer’s theology of action is found in his work: The Cost of Discipleship. This underlying principle is that being a disciple requires you to take action to reconcile the reality of our world with the reality of Christ and this action comes at a personal cost. Key components of the cost of discipleship are: costly grace, sacrifice, suffering and, solidarity.
  • costly grace is the notion that, whilst God has provided undeserving love to all, humans have been myopic in their interpretation on what this means. He proposes that many Christians has misunderstood the sacrifice of Jesus to mean that salvation is now available to all, through their belief in Christ. Bonhoeffer expresses that faith in Christ is only part of the price that you must pay in order to receive salvation when he writes “freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts”.