Monthly Archives: June 2006

Bonhoffer on the Nature of Ethics "Without God, a…

Posted by on June 23, 2006 6 comments

“Without God, all seeing and percieving of things and laws become abstraction, a separation from both origin and goal. All questions of our own goodness, as well as the goodnes of the world, are impossible unless we have first posed the question of the goodness of God. For what meaning would the goodness of human beings and the world have without God? Since God, however, as ultimate reality is no other than the self-announcing, self-witnessing, self-revealing God in Jesus Christ, the question of good can only find its answer in Christ.

The source of a Christian ethic is not the reality of one’s own self, not the reality of the world, not the reality of norms and values. It is the reality of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the demand, before all others that must be honestly made of anyone who wishes to be concerned with the problem of a Christian ethic. It places us before the ultimate and decisive question: With what reality will we reckon in our life? With the reality of God’s revelatory word or with the so-called realities of life? With divine grace or with earthly inadequacies? With resurrection or with death? This question itself, which none can answer by their own choice without answering it falsely, already presupposes a given answer: that God, however we decide, has already spoken the revelatory word and that we, even in our false reality, can live no other way than from the true reality of the word of God. The question about ultimate reality already places us in such an embrace by its answer that there is no way we can escape from it. The answer carries us into the reality of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ from which it comes.

The subject matter of a Christian ethic is God’s reality revealed in Christ becoming real among God’s creatures, just as the subject matter of doctrinal theology is the truth of God’s reality revealed in Christ. The place that in all other ethics is marked by the antithesis between ought and is, idea and realization, motive and work, is occupied in Christian ethics by the relation of reality and becoming real, between past and present, between history and event (faith) or, to replace the many concepts with the simple name of the thing itself, the relation between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The question of the good becomes the question of participating in God’s reality revealed in Christ. Good is no longer an evaluation of what exists, for instance my essence, my moral orientation, my actions, or a state of affairs in the world. It is not longer a predicate that one can apply to something that exists of itself. Good is the real itself, that is, not the abstractly real that is separated from the reality of God, but the real that has its reality only in God. Good is never without this reality. It is no general formula. And this reality is never without the good. The will to be good exists only as desire for the reality that is real in God. A desire to be good for its own sake, as some sort of personal goal or life vocation, falls pray to an ironic unreality; honest striving for good turns into the ambition striving of the paragon of virtue. Good as such is no independent theme for life. To take it as such would be the craziest Don Quixotry. Only by participating in reality do we also share in the good.”

(Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 49-51)

Comments on Bonhoeffer, Ethics: Christ, Church, and World

Posted by on June 22, 2006 4 comments

Bonhoeffer’s first chapter in the text of this edition of Ethics explores the fundamental nature of Christian ethics. He begins by arguing that the fundamental ethical questions, “‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do something good?’” (p. 47) are fundamentally wrongheaded. Rather the question for Christian ethics, must be “What is the will of God” (p. 47). To ask the normal ethical questions of how I become or act good already presupposes that myself and the world are ultimate. Ethics in that light ultimately enthrones my own quest to become good. However, for Bonhoeffer, the whole question of the self and the world and the nature of the good is set within the revelation of the reality of God. Thus, Christian ethics must begin, not with reflections on what is or is not good, but rather by attending to the reality of God. If the reality of God is not seen as the primal reality in which the self, other and the world cohere and on whom they depend for their being, then all questions of ethics (or metaphysics or any other philosophical pursuit) become disintegrated and distorted. Thus, Bonhoeffer states,

 

The source of a Christian ethic is not the reality of one’s own self, not the reality of the world, not is it the reality of norms and values. It is the reality of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the demand before all others, that must honestly be made of anyone who wishes to be concerned with the problem of a Christian ethic. (p. 49)

 

That ultimate question for ethics for Bonhoeffer is, “With what reality will we reckon in our life?” (p. 49). Thus, “The subject matter of a Christian ethic is God’s reality revealed in Christ becoming real among God’s creatures” (p. 49). This is important because it underscores what is key for Bonhoeffer, namely that Christian ethics essentially is the reality of Christ becoming real in us by the Spirit (see p. 50). Who Christ reveals God to be is the ultimate reality which we are called to follow and conform ourselves to. All reality is seen within the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Thus, the Christian ethical life, for Bonhoeffer is “participating in God’s reality revealed in Christ” (p. 50). The theology of participation in the reality of God through Christ is the fundamental ground of Bonhoeffer’s ethic. By understanding ethics in this way, Bonhoeffer is able to show the shortcomings of ethical systems based either on motives or consequences. Since the good is nothing other than the reality of God revealed in Christ in which all created reality has its being, the good life cannot be split into such dichotomies. Motives, action, consequences, principles – the essence of ethics cannot be localized in any one of these things, for all aspects of human life and actions are called to participate in the good, namely the reality of God revealed in Christ. For Bonhoeffer, “Human beings are indivisible wholes, not only s individuals in both their person and work, but also as members of the human and created community to which they belong” (p. 53). Thus there can neither be an ethic of consequences or an ethic of motivations since an ethic circumscribed in such a way does not reckon with the fact that humans are holistic persons who, precisely as whole persons in community are called to participate in the good, which is the reality of God revealed in Christ.

With this foundation of the reality of God in Christ as the essence of the good, Bonhoeffer addresses the question of the relation between God and the world. Much of medieval and post-reformation theology, wittingly or not, dichotomized the order of grace and the order of nature. As such, ethics was often reduced to choosing to either follow God and thereby abandon the world, or to live in the world and thereby fail to serve God. Bonhoeffer explodes this notion through Christology. Christ is the place where God and the world meet and where they find perfect harmony. As we participate in the reality of Christ, we participate in the reality of the world and the reality of God at the same time. Thus, “the Christian ethic asks, then, how this reality of God and of the world that is given in Christ becomes real in our world” (p. 55). What this understanding of all reality as centered and cohering in Christ means is that the ides of ‘social ethics’ needs to be radically rethought. In the medieval synthesis, post-reformation scholasticism and modernity, the world is seen as a neutral, secular reality, an autonomous realm that exists alongside or in opposition to the church. Thus, ethics has often been concerned with issues of ‘spheres.’ For example as a Christian, in the ‘sphere of the church’ a person is forbidden to take vengeance. But, that same person, operating as a magistrate in the ‘sphere of the state’ (or nature, society, etc) is free to implement vengeance, coercion and all manner of violence. This of course, came to full expression in Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms as it was expounded in confessional Lutheranism (whatever Luther meant by this doctrine is not as important as the disastrous use to which it was put, as Bonhoeffer maintains on p. 60). Christians as members of the church should never engage in violence, but as members of the state or government, they are free to use such measures. Bonhoeffer shatters any such portioning of reality into different spheres wherein commands of Christian discipleship are rescinded. For Bonhoeffer, all social life is located inside the reality of Christ. Thus there cannot be two orders (nature and grace, church and world, spirtual and earthly, etc.) alongside one another, competing with one another. The self, the world and all created things exist and cohere inside of “Christ-reality”. Thus, for Bonhoeffer, “there are not two realms, but on the one realm of Christ-reality, in which the reality of God and the reality of the world are united” (p. 58). Christian ethics is not concerned with how the Christian negotiates living in different social spheres, but rather how the reality of Christ is made real in the world and how all other social formations are reordered in light of Christ and the demands that attend following him.

What Bonhoeffer is able to helpfully do through this Christological undergirding, is to show how Christianity can never withdraw from the world and neither can the world exist apart from the church’s witness to Christ. In his own words,

A world existing on its own, withdrawn from the law of Christ, falls prey to the severing of all bonds and to arbitrariness. A Christianity that withdraws from the world falls prey to unnaturalness, irrationality, triumphalism and arbitrariness. (p. 61).

Thus, Bonhoeffer makes the insightful observation that “Every attempt to evade the world will have to be paid for sooner or later with a sinful surrender to the world” (p. 61). Since all reality is one in Christ, the Christian always lives in light of what it means to participate in “Christ-reality” which is the definition of Christian ethics. Bonhoeffer offers a Christocentric cosmology which grounds an ethic that takes with utmost seriousness the demands of Christian discipleship (as he unpacked in Discipleship), while at the same time showing how that ethic is the only thing that truly embraces the world rather than withdrawing from it.
Bonhoeffer then goes on to discuss the church-community’s relation to the world in light of this Christological cosmology. Bonhoeffer argues that “The church-community’s relation to the world is completely determined by God’s relation to the world” (p. 66). The church is separate from the world only in that it is the place where the word of Christ is believed and the truth of Christ is witnessed to in word and deed. Thus the distinctiveness of the church as a visible community distinct from the rebellious world is essential, but the separation is not ultimate. What is ultimate is that all reality has been redeemed in Christ, though Christ is not yet all and in all. Thus, Bonhoeffer speaks of what has been acomplised in Christ “becoming real” in the church through the work of the Holy Spirit (p. 50). The church’s posture over against the world is ultimately penultimate and bears witness to the future unification of all created reality in Christ wherein the world will participate in the reality of God.

Bonhoeffer spends the rest of this chapter deconstructing the doctrine of the orders of creation (p. 68-75). In place of these, Bonhoeffer argues for a doctrine of “mandates.” These mandates are identified as “work, marriage, government and church” (p. 68). What is striking about this section is how Bonhoeffer recasts human social formations as “mandates” rather than as “orders”. Since they are mandates, they are not given realities bearing authority in themselves, but vocations to which humanity is called. Thus, the divine mandate for work and economic life does not serve to legitimize whatever economic order happens to obtain in the way that a doctrine of the “orders of creation” does. It was such doctrines of creation orders that led German people, including most of the Christians under the Nazi regime to give theological legitimacy to race (volk), land and government and all the national ideologies that undergirded these concepts. Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of mandates cuts against this by rooting all concepts of economic, familial and social life in the revelation of God in Christ. Thus Bonhoeffer’s account radically calls into question any and all instantiations of economic, familial, governmental and ecclesial forms of life in light of the reality of Christ. For it is in Christ and Christ alone that we are able to exist in any and all of these various social formations. Thus they all muse be reordered to conform to and participate in the reality of Christ.

The only real question I have about Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of mandates is how the church fits into it and whether such an account gives enough place to eschatology. He acknowledges that the church is in a significant way different from all the other mandates (see p. 73-74). However, I still don’t quite see how the church could be just one of the four mandates that Bonhoeffer seems to see as essential forms of social life. The church is ultimately a non-necessary social formation that exists solely by the work of Christ and the Spirit and is a distinctly eschatological reality. It is the advent of the church as the body of Christ, as a non-necessary social formation that exists in continuity with the way of Christ which disrupts and re-orders all the other social formations. This is of course, only true when the church is faithfully participating in the reality of Christ, who is truly the one who disrupts and reorders all social relationships. Thus, I certainly see great benefit in how Bonhoeffer has formulated his doctrine of the mandates. Nevertheless, I do think a bit more clarity would help on seeing how the church is related to the other social formations. On this point I have been helped much by D. Stephen Long’s book The Goodness of God: Theology, the Church and Social Order. Long is really engaging some the same questions as Bonhoeffer is here, and I think provides a good account of how the church fragments and reorders different social formations.

Ultimately, I am amazed by the work that is done by Bonhoeffer in this chapter. His Christocentric cosmology that grounds his ethics of participation is brilliant. It clearly is linked to Barth’s theology of creation, but I think that Bonhoeffer has an even stronger sense of how all reality coheres in Christ and how that shapes our vision of the world, the self and the other. Also, Bonhoeffer’s recognition of ethics as participation in the reality of God revealed in Christ is profound and extremely helpful. Ideas for a “participatory ontology” are much in vogue of late in contemporary theology (especially John Milbank and the Radical Orthodox” movement). However, none that I know of have appropriated Bonhoeffer’s account of participation as articulated here. What really commends Bonhoeffer’s approach is its firm Christological grounding and vibrant theology of creation. This is one of the things that distinguishes Bonhoeffer’s account of participation from many contemporary ones which veer into abstraction. Bonhoeffer’s account is grounded firmly in his Christology, a theology of creation and the biblical narrative. Ultimately this account of theological ethics is extremely rich and insightful.

Comments on Dietrich Bonohoeffer, Ethics: Introduction

Posted by on June 21, 2006 4 comments
These comments and page reference pertain to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6, edited by Clifford J. Green and translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Scott (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 593 pages.  

Editors’ Introduction

In the introduction to the English edition of Ethics, the editors make a number of helpful comments that will help guide the reader through this supremely important book of Bonhoeffer’s. The first observation that they make is that Ethics is primarily motivated by two issues for Bonhoeffer, namely the conspiracy against Hitler and the issue of how Christians should contribute to the reconstruction in post-war Germany. These two overriding concerns frame what takes place in Ethics and should be kept in mind throughout (p. 1-2).

Secondly, they chart Bonhoeffer’s development leading up to the writing of Ethics. The first traces of what Bonhoeffer explicates in Ethics are found in his early book, Sanctorum Communio. Herein, Bonhoeffer develops a theological account of the concept of the person which is essentially theology of relationality or sociality (p.3). This is further developed in his lectures on Genesis 1-3 later published as Creation and Fall. Here Bonhoeffer articulates a theology of the imago dei as imago relationis – an image of relationship. Bonhoeffer denies that an individual person is technically the bearer of the image of God. Rather it is in their mutual interrelationships that humanity is the image of God (p. 4). The editors also note the relationship between Discipleship and Ethics, a relationship that has often been misunderstood badly. The key difference that they note is that Discipleship is more explicitly concerned with the church’s resistance against the accommodated Lutheran church in Germany and the growing Nazi movement while Ethics looks beyond the war toward the tasks of peace and reconstruction and the question of how Christians should participate in those things (p. 5).

Thirdly, the editors note carefully the centrality of Christology in Ethics. Ethics is no less Christocentric than Discipleship or any of Bonhoeffer’s other works. However, what is key in Ethics is the concept of ‘humanization.’ Unlike the language of many patristic fathers who speak of Christ becoming human so that we may become divine, Bonhoeffer speaks of Christ becoming human so that we may become truly human (p. 6-7). This introduces a key element in Ethics, namely the relation between the ‘ontological’ and the ‘existential’ or in ethical terms, between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ (see p. 49-50). Ethics, for Bonhoeffer concerns the making real, or the formation of that which is true in Christ. Thus in Christian ethics, Christians are formed and transformed in their concrete situation (existentially) into who they have been constituted as (ontologically) in Christ. The agent of this transformation is, of course the Spirit (see p. 50).

In keeping with the Christological center of Ethics, the editors note how central it is to Bonhoeffer’s project that Christ is the center in which all reality coheres. Apart from his person (taken concretely, looking at the whole of his human career in all its historic reality) all things collapse into disintegration.

Fourthly, the editors helpfully point out what Ethics does not do, namely attempt to offer a justification for Bonhoeffer’s own participation in the conspiracy against Hitler. Rather, they point out how Bonhoeffer clearly viewed his participation as incurring guilt and requiring repentance, despite being the only form of responsible living in his current context. This is commensurate with the fact that Bonhoeffer’s pacifism was never a pacifism based on absolute principles but rather the word of Christ as it addresses his followers in their particular historical situation. Thus Bonhoeffer recognizes and does not attempt to hide that the plot against Hitler was contrary to the Decalouge and the Sermon on the Mount (p. 13). Rather he viewed it as his only option for responsible action for peace, despite the fact that he clearly understood it as being a sinful act which required his repentance. Whatever we think of Bonhoeffer’s reasoning on this point, it is at least striking and convicting to examine how Bonhoeffer did not engage in self-deception about attempting to justify his action. This is precisely what separates Bonhoeffer forever from any sort of just-war position, namely that he refuses to attempt to justify violence and maintains the necessity of repentance from any violent act. Such honest it indeed the mark of the true disciple, no matter how we evaluate the course of action he chose in this matter.

Finally, the editors note how Bonhoeffer critiques and revises traditional Lutheran doctrines such as the “two kingdoms” and the “orders of creation”, both of which had been used to legitimate the Nazi project. Bonhoeffer dismantles the notion of two kingdoms, arguing instead for an integrated view of reality in which all things are seen as centered in Christ. Bonhoeffer also rejects the idea of orders of creation, instead articulating a doctrine of “divine mandates” which are seen as marriage and family, work, government and church. Whatever difficulties may attend such a doctrine, I think it is striking how Bonhoeffer’s articulation of these social realities as “mandates” rather than “orders” delegitimates different concrete instantiations of family, government, etc. They are mandates, callings or vocations that God issues to humankind, not normative realities that are simply given. The mandates that God gives for what family, government, work and church are to be can never legitimate the status quo, because they constantly call contemporary social realities into question in light of the revelation of Christ. This I think is very insightful.

There follows a plethora of other sections in the introduction detailing the history of the translations of Ethics, the rationale for the ordering and translation of the current edition and guidelines for its use. All in all, the editors have done an excellent job of introducing Ethics and preparing the reader to engage Bonhoeffer’s work therein.

 

Why this blog?

Posted by on June 21, 2006 2 comments

Having resisted being drafted into the blog universe for some time, I have finally given in. Basically I have a couple of reasons. First, I’ve been writing book reviews on Amazon.com for a few years and I’ve received numerous emails from people asking me to start a blog. Secondly, I enjoy internet discussions of theological and philosophical topics but I find the discussion forums on the net to be woefully inadequate and full of posters who are interested in the most inane and uninteresting sorts of questions. To that end, a blog may well be a good alternative venue.

I plan to use this blog to post my thoughts on the books I’m currently reading, theology, ethics and philosophy, as well as giving myself something of a platform to discuss current events, politics and culture. I imagine music and movies will figure prominently in my musings about culture and theology as well.

A quick word about the name I chose for the blog, Inhabitatio Dei. Much of my theological thought and my practice of Christian life in the church have been fueled by pondering the being of the Triune God. The phrase inhabitatio dei captures part of what I have come to see as central to our understanding of the mystery of God and our life before him, namely that an authentically human participation in the richness and plenitude of the Triune Love is the eschatological goal of God’s redeeming work in Christ and that telos is anticipated and proleptically realized in the life of the Church. All God’s actions of Triune grace through the Son and Spirit seek to draw us into communion with himself, allowing us to share in the eternal dynamism of Trinitarian Life that God eternally is. The goal and destiny of humanity is to be inhabitiatio dei, that is, to dwell in God as his beloved creatures, knowing ourselves eternally in the plenitude of his infinite love which descends to us in Christ that we might ascend with Christ by grace and be drawn into the eternal feast of love which is the life of God.

It is in the service of that vision of God and God’s works in the world that I read, study and strive to practice Christian life. If blogging about it can serve that end in some small and subtle way, then perhaps it can be a worthy endeavor.

Switch to our mobile site