Christian Moral Action

• "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil” - Dietrich Bonhoffer 
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  Early Life: He has an idyllic childhood, but it was cut short in 1918 by the war and traumatic death of his brother. His family was not church goers, but he decided to study theology. 

  • His dad was a professor of Psychiatry, and his family was not Chrisitan but followed Chrisitan traditions 
  • His brother died in the war  
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  University: He went to Tubingen and then later to Berlin. During this time, he worked on his radical form of Christianity; the church should be aiming to achieve justice. 

  • In 1930, he went to Berlin to become a lecturer  
  • The state and the church had become too intertwined which gave the state too much power and corrupted Chrisitan teaching 
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  America: He was introduced to members of the black churches. His experience meant that he realized that Christianity needed to build relationships between different churches without radical or geographical boundaries. 

  • He moved to America to study influential theologists, but he saw the racism in America through the churches  
  • He preferred the black churches system and thought that is more like what Jesus was trying to teach  
  • Anger about racism shaped his future views about antisemitism in Nazi Germany  
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  Resistance to Nazism: As he began to talk it became apparent that he was deeply critical of the ‘leadership principle’ which Hitler represented and the effect it was having on the church. 
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  • In 1933, he began a radio broadcast called The Younger Generations Altered View of the Concept of the Fuhrer 
  • He worked against the state in two ways: became a member of the Confessing Church (a group of clergy who refused to accept that only Aryan Christians could become members of the Church) and joined the Resistance. 
  • When he joined the Resistance, he was staying in New York due to an investigation against him by the Gestapo. 
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  • He then visited America again to avoid being calling up to serve in Hitler’s army and damaging the representation of the Confessing Church. However, he changed his mind because they thought that to be true to himself, he had to return to Germany and attempt to overthrow the evil regime. (Costly Grace or orthopraxy)   
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  • He believed that pacifism should be based on preparing for the coming of God and secular pacifism perpetuated lies and injustice. 
  • On returning to Germany, he joined the Counterintelligence Section to find out information to aid the resistance and support victims
• BONHOEFFER'S LIFE

  Arrest and execution: The Gestapo arrested him. He then spent 18 months in Berlin’s Tegel Military Prison. 

  • Most of his writings were written when he was in prison 
  • Moved to a concentration camp and eventually executed after an unfair trial (comparison to Jesus) 

  “... so entirely submissive to the will of God” - An account of Bonhoffer’s execution 
• Bonhoffer’s teaching on the relationship of Church and the State 

  Bonhoffer warned against all forms of ethics that were based on ideologies: he said ideology was just an extension of a human idea to justify using power over others. He therefore thought that Christian ethics were vastly different to human ethics – humans are finite and sinful and therefore no human decision can be totally right or totally wrong. He acknowledged that in extreme circumstances, we can do nothing but act out of despair, in faith and hope. 
• Bonhoffer was broadly in agreement with Luther that it was the duty of a Christian to be obedient to the State because a government’s aim is to enforce law and order our sinful tendency to disorder. This either leads to... 

  • State gaining too much power and therefore makes justice second to its policies 
  • The state thinks that it is the embodiment of justice and uses this to justify any of its actions 

  Both cause the state to inflate its own self-importance. 
• This led Bonhoffer to make the following conclusions... 

  • The state can never represent God’s will 
  • Therefore, they can never assume ultimate power 
  • The role of the Church is not to be part of the State but to keep it in check 
• Civil disobedience: An active and open refusal to obey certain laws set down by the government. 
• Should Christians practice civil disobedience? - YES

  Bonhoeffer’s own acts of civil disobedience  

  • Openly challenged Nazism. 
  • Became a double agent.  
  • Rumor that he was a part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. 

  Black Lives Matter 

  • International activist movement against violence and racism towards black people. 
  • Honours and respects Jesus as well as following Christian duty to bring about change. 
• Should Christians practice civil disobedience? - YES

  Civil disobedience 

  • Sometimes necessary because duty of God is more important than duty to the State. 
  • Doing nothing isn’t an option. 
  • Costly grace 

  Aquinas  

  • Civil obedience can be used to get rid of a leader that is causing disorder. 
  • This follows on from the primary precept – ordered society and protect the innocent. 

  Jesus 

  • Stand up for people who cannot stand up for themselves.  
  • Following Jesus’ teachings for the greater good. 
• Should Christians practice civil disobedience? - NO

  Westboro Baptist Church 

  • Hate group against LGBT+, Jews, Catholics, military (etc.). 
  • Don’t reflect Jesus’ teachings. 

  Who did the Nazis persecute? 

  • Put homosexuals, prostitutes, Jehovah’s witnesses, alcoholics, pacifists, beggars, criminals (etc.) into concentration camps. 

   
• Should Christians practice civil disobedience? - NO

  Bonhoeffer’s call to obedience and discipleship 

  • Christians should be obedient as they are the followers of Jesus. 
  • Because it is only real faith and makes decision-making easy. 

  Bible 

  • Always follow God’s rule. 
  • This means that you should follow the leaders because they were put there by God. 

  Hitler 

  • Did build roads and hospitals so others would ignore his crimes 

   
• “Whoever wishes to take up the problem of a Christian ethic must be confronted at once with a demand that is quite without parallel. He must from the outset discard as irrelevant the two questions which allow him to concern himself with the problem of ethics, ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do good?’ and instead of these he must ask the utterly and totally different question: ‘What is the will of God?’”.  - Bonhoeffer 
• “The nature of this will of God can only be clear in the moment of action; it is only important to be clear that every man’s own will must be brought to be God’s will, that his own will must be surrendered if God’s will is to be realized, and therefore insofar as complete renunciation of personal claims is necessary in action before the face of God, the Christian’s ethical action can be described as love” - Bonhoeffer 
• Obedience to God’s will 

  Luther taught that there are two kingdoms ordained by God: 

  • The spiritual kingdom of Christ governed by the Church 
  • The political kingdom of the world governed by the state  
• Two passages from the New Testament tend to reinforce the idea that Christians have a duty to obey the state... 

  “Give to the emperor this things that are the emperors, and to God the things that are God’s.” - Mark 12:17 

  “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is not authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” - Romans 13:1 
• How does one know what the will of God is? 

  The will of God is an act of faith: a complete ridding of one’s own ambitions and submitting every day to what God wills. He is therefore critical of Autonomous Christian Ethics because love is not knowable as a self-evident principle. This theory makes love a human principle which in turn makes people slaves to an ideology, rather than being liberated. 
• Leadership 

  The idea of leadership is not the same to the idea of being a leader: 

  • Leadership is rooted in community and focusses on matters beyond the leader 
  • The idea of a leader is specific to a specific person 

  “It is virtually impossible to give a rational basis for the nature of the Leader” - Bonhoeffer 

  Bonhoeffer believed Germany created an idea for perfect father and teacher in their leader and were prepared to give up their freedoms and identity in obedience to this. 
• Justification to Civil Disobedience 

  “For the sake of Christ, the worldly order is subject to the commandment of God.” - Bonhoeffer 

  • Nazi Germany was deviating from the world which God wanted so Bonhoeffer felt he had to intervene (his reason for civil disorder). 
• If it is the case that the state is making “reasonable people face unreasonable situations”, then a Christian has a duty to disobey it. Bonhoeffer very much felt that the Church in Nazi Germany was being seduced by the power of Nazism. What they thought the state was doing was bringing order to a disordered nation, but their law enforcement was a gross distortion of the God-given order.  
• Tyrannicide may be a Christian duty if it means establishing social order. Bonhoeffer called this “suffering disobedience”. Disobedience is not easy to justify: what about people who believe they are doing their duty but allow evil to prevail? How do we justify our actions if right and wrong is not self-evident? He was equally critical of consequential ethics because we are never able to judge all possible outcomes. 
• “Now day by day, hour by hour, we are confronted with unparalleled situations in which we must make a decision, and in which we make again and again the surprising and terrifying discovery that the will of God does not reveal itself before us as clearly as he hoped”. - Bonhoeffer 
• “He was distinctly a Christian martyr despite the lingering disclaimer of the German Churches. Bonhoeffer’s resistance was essentially an expression of his theology” - von Klemperer 
• “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it’” - Mark 8:34 – 35 
• The cost of discipline  

  Bonhoeffer says that the call to discipleship is linked to the Jesus’ suffering at the end of his life. A death that was without honor, admiration, and sympathy from others. Suffering and sacrifice are inherent to discipleship for anyone who follows Jesus must pick up his cross and follow the path of suffering that Jesus walks. 
• Cheap and costly grace 

  • Cheap/Costly grace: Grace is not easy to obtain it is not freely given. Costly grace gained through engaging with the suffering of Jesus, they must fully accept the leadership of Jesus. He worried the church had become secularized and lost the sense of costly grace 
• Sacrifice, suffering and the cross 

  • For Bonhoeffer, the class to Christian discipleship is closely linked to the passion of Jesus – his rejection, suffering and death. 
  • Anyone who follows Jesus must pick up the cross and follow Jesus’ path of rejection, suffering and death 
  • Discipleship and costly grace involved self-denial and endurance. Rejection for the sake of Christ is a central part of Christian life. 
  • Being Christian is not just ‘being normal’ but is a life of suffering for Christ. 
• Solidarity 

  • Being with others and showing solidarity is a way of understanding God and his qualities.