Ethics

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781451688504
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

From one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, Ethics is the seminal reinterpretation of the role of Christianity in the modern, secularized world.

The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum; what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics.

The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world; such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God’s having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. On the contrary, God’s commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world.

PART ONE

I
The Love of God and the Decay of the World

THE WORLD OF CONFLICTS

The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection.¹ The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge. In launching this attack on the underlying assumptions of all other ethics, Christian ethics stands so completely alone that it becomes questionable whether there is any purpose in speaking of Christian ethics at all. But if one does so notwithstanding, that can only mean that Christian ethics claims to discuss the origin of the whole problem of ethics, and thus professes to be a critique of all ethics simply as ethics.

Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the origin. Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with this origin.

In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that he now knows only himself and no longer knows God at all; for he can know God only if he knows only God. The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil.

But man cannot be rid of his origin. Instead of knowing himself in the origin of God, he must now know himself as an origin. He interprets himself according to his possibilities, his possibilities of being good or evil, and he therefore conceives himself to be the origin of good and evil. Eritis sicut deus. “The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” says God (Gen. 3.22).

Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at his origin and has made himself his own creator and judge. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself. But God’s gift is essentially God’s gift. It is the origin that constitutes this gift. If the origin changes, the gift changes. Indeed the gift consists solely in its origin. Man as the image of God draws his life from the origin of God, but the man who has become like God draws his life from his own origin. In appropriating the origin to himself man took to himself a secret of God which proved his undoing. The Bible describes this event with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Man now knows good and evil. This does not mean that he has acquired new knowledge in addition to what he knew before, but the knowledge of good and evil signifies the complete reversal of man’s knowledge, which hitherto had been solely knowledge of God as his origin. In knowing good and evil he knows what only the origin, God Himself, can know and ought to know. It is only with extreme reserve that even the Bible indicates to us that God is the One who knows of good and evil. It is the first indication of the mystery of predestination, the mystery of an eternal dichotomy which has its origin in the eternally One, the mystery of an eternal choice and election by Him in whom there is no darkness but only light. To know good and evil is to know oneself as the origin of good and evil, as the origin of an eternal choice and election. How this is possible remains the secret of Him in whom there is no disunion because He is Himself the one and eternal origin and the overcoming of all disunion. This secret has been stolen from God by man in his desire to be an origin on his own account. Instead of knowing only the God who is good to him and instead of knowing all things in Him, he now knows himself as the origin of good and evil. Instead of accepting the choice and election of God, man himself desires to choose, to be the origin of the election. And so, in a certain sense, he bears within himself the secret of predestination. Instead of knowing himself solely in the reality of being chosen and loved by God, he must now know himself in the possibility of choosing and of being the origin of good and evil. He has become like God, but against God. Herein lies the serpent’s deceit. Man knows good and evil, but because he is not the origin, because he acquires this knowledge only at the price of estrangement from the origin, the good and evil that he knows are not the good and evil of God but good and evil against God. They are good and evil of man’s own choosing, in opposition to the eternal election of God. In becoming like God man has become a god against God.

This finds its expression in the fact that man, knowing of good and evil, has finally torn himself loose from life, that is to say from the eternal life which proceeds from the choice of God. “And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ... he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3.22 and 24). Man knows good and evil, against God, against his origin, godlessly and of his own choice, understanding himself according to his own contrary possibilities; and he is cut off from the unifying, reconciling life in God, and is delivered over to death. The secret which man has stolen from God is bringing about man’s downfall.

Man’s life is now disunion with God, with men, with things, and with himself.

SHAME

Instead of seeing God man sees himself. “Their eyes were opened” (Gen. 3.7). Man perceives himself in his disunion with God and with men. He perceives that he is naked. Lacking the protection, the covering, which God and his fellow-man afforded him, he finds himself laid bare. Hence there arises shame. Shame is man’s ineffaceable recollection of his estrangement from the origin; it is grief for this estrangement, and the powerless longing to return to unity with the origin. Man is ashamed because he has lost something which is essential to his original character, to himself as a whole; he is ashamed of his nakedness. Just as in the fairy-story the tree is ashamed of its lack of adornment, so, too, man is ashamed of the loss of his unity with God and with other men. Shame and remorse are generally mistaken for one another. Man feels remorse when he has been at fault; and he feels shame because he lacks something. Shame is more original than remorse. The peculiar fact that we lower our eyes when a stranger’s eye meets our gaze is not a sign of remorse for a fault, but a sign of that shame which, when it knows that it is seen, is reminded of something that it lacks, namely, the lost wholeness of life, its own nakedness. To meet a stranger’s gaze directly, as is required, for example, in making a declaration of personal loyalty, is a kind of act of violence, and in love, when the gaze of the other is sought, it is a kind of yearning. In both cases it is the painful endeavour to recover the lost unity by either a conscious and resolute or else a passionate and devoted inward overcoming of shame as the sign of disunion.²

“They made themselves aprons.” Shame seeks a covering as a means of overcoming the disunion. But the covering implies the confirmation of the disunion that has occurred, and it cannot therefore make good the damage. Man covers himself, conceals himself from men and from God. Covering is necessary because it keeps awake shame, and with it the memory of the disunion with the origin, and also because man, disunited as he is, must now withdraw himself and must live in concealment. Otherwise he would betray himself. “Every profound mind requires a mask,” said Nietzsche. Yet this mask is not a disguise; it is not intended to deceive the other man, but it is a necessary sign of the actual situation of disunion. For that reason it is to be respected. Beneath the mask there is the longing for the restoration of the lost unity. Whenever this longing forces its way towards fulfilment, in the partnership of sex when two human beings become one flesh (Gen. 2.24), and in religion, when a human being seeks for his union with God, whenever, that is to say, the covering is broken through, then, more than ever, shame creates for itself the very deepest secrecy. The fact that he was ashamed when he was discovered praying was for Kant an argument against prayer. He failed to see that prayer by its very nature is a matter for the strictest privacy, and he failed to perceive the fundamental significance of shame for human existence.

Shame implies both a positive and a negative attitude to man’s disunion, and that is why man lives between covering and discovering, between self-concealment and self-revelation, between solitude and fellowship. This means that in his positive attitude to his disunion, that is to say in solitude, he may have a more intense experience of fellowship than in fellowship itself, though certainly only of a disunited fellowship. But both must always be present. And not even the closest fellowship must be allowed to destroy the secret of the disunited man. It may, therefore, be felt to be a repudiation of shame if one’s relation to another is expressed in a free exchange of words, for one thereby reveals oneself and lays oneself bare before oneself. Nor will the most profound and intimate joy or grief allow itself to be disclosed in words. In the same way shame preserves a man against making any kind of display of his relation to God. Finally, man protects himself against any ultimate disclosure, he keeps his own secret even from himself when, for example, he refuses to become conscious of himself in everything that arises within him.

The covering of shame conceals everything nascent that proceeds from man’s yearning for the reattainment of the unity which he has lost.³ The secrecy of shame remains outspread over the creative power of man which comes to him in the self-sought union of the disunited. It is the memory of the disunion from the Creator, and of the robbery from the Creator, which is here disclosed. This is true of the coming into being of human life, just as it is true of the coming into being of a work of art, of a scientific discovery, and indeed of any creative work which arises from the union of man with the world of things. Only when life is born, when the work is perfected, is the secret broken through by jubilant open joy. But the secret of its coming into being it bears within itself for ever.

The dialectic of concealment and exposure is only a sign of shame. Yet shame is not overcome by it; is rather confirmed by it. Shame can be overcome only when the original unity is restored, when man is once again clothed by God in the other man, in the “house which is from heaven,” the Temple of God (II Cor. 5.2ff.). Shame is overcome only in the enduring of an act of final shaming, namely the becoming manifest of knowledge before God. “That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God” (Ezek. 16.63). “I will do this ... You will have to be ashamed and to blush for shame at your behaviour” (Ezek. 36.32).⁴ Shame is overcome only in the shaming through the forgiveness of sin, that is to say, through the restoration of fellowship with God and men. This is accomplished in confession before God and before other men. Man’s being clothed with the forgiveness of God, with the “new man” that he puts on, with the Church of God, with the “house which is from heaven,” all this is comprised in the lines of the Leipzig hymn of 1638: “Christ’s blood and righteousness, that is my adornment and my fine raiment.”

SHAME AND CONSCIENCE

In shame man is reminded of his disunion with God and with other men: conscience is the sign of man’s disunion with himself. Conscience is farther from the origin than shame, it presupposes disunion with God and with man and marks only the disunion with himself of the man who is already disunited from the origin. It is the voice of apostate life which desires at least to remain one with itself. It is the call to the unity of man with himself. This is evident already from the fact that the call of conscience is always a prohibition. “Thou shalt not.” “You ought not to have.” Conscience is satisfied when the prohibition is not disobeyed. Whatever is not forbidden is permitted. For conscience life falls into two parts: what is permitted and what is forbidden. There is no positive commandment. For conscience permitted is identical with good, and conscience does not register the fact, that even in this, man is in a state of disunion with his origin. It follows from this also that conscience does not, like shame, embrace the whole of life; it reacts only to certain definite actions. In one sense it is inexorable; in forbidden actions it sees a peril to life as a whole, that is to say, disunion with oneself; it recalls what is long past and represents this disunion as something which is already accomplished and irreparable, but the final criterion remains precisely that unity with oneself which is imperiled only in the particular instances in which the prohibition is disobeyed. The range of experience of conscience does not extend to the fact that this unity itself presupposes disunion with God and with men and that consequently, beyond the disobedience to the prohibition, the prohibition itself, as the call of conscience, arises from disunion with the origin. This means that conscience is concerned not with man’s relation to God and to other men but with man’s relation to himself. But a relation of man to himself, in detachment from his relation to God and to other men, can arise only through man’s becoming like God in the disunion.

Conscience itself reverses this relation. It derives the relation to God and to men from the relation of man to himself. Conscience pretends to be the voice of God and the standard for the relation to other men. It is therefore from his right relation to himself that man is to recover the right relation to God and to other men. This reversal is the claim of the man who has become like God in his knowledge of good and evil. Man has become the origin of good and evil. He does not deny his evil; but in conscience man summons himself, who has become evil, back to his proper, better self, to good. This good, which consists in the unity of man with himself, is now to be the origin of all good. It is the good of God, and it is the good for one’s neighbour. Bearing within himself the knowledge of good and evil, man has become judge over God and men, just as he is judge over himself.

Knowing of good and evil in disunion with the origin, man begins to reflect upon himself. His life is now his understanding of himself, whereas at the origin it was his knowledge of God. Self-knowledge is now the measure and the goal of life. This holds true even when man presses out beyond the bounds of his own self. Self-knowledge is man’s interminable striving to overcome his disunion with himself by thought; by unceasingly distinguishing himself from himself he endeavours to achieve unity with himself.

All knowledge is now based upon self-knowledge. Instead of the original comprehension of God and of men and of things there is now a taking in vain of God and of men and of things. Everything now is drawn in into the process of disunion. Knowledge now means the establishment of the relationship to oneself; it means the recognition in all things of oneself and of oneself in all things. And thus, for man who is in disunion with God, all things are in disunion, what is and what should be, life and law, knowledge and action, idea and reality, reason and instinct, duty and inclination, conviction and advantage, necessity and freedom, exertion and genius, universal and concrete, individual and collective; even truth, justice, beauty and love come into opposition with one another, just as do pleasure and displeasure, happiness and sorrow. One could prolong the list still further and the course of human history adds to it constantly. All these disunions are varieties of the disunion in the knowledge of good and evil. “The point of decision of the specifically ethical experience is always conflict.”⁵ But in conflict the judge is invoked; and the judge is the knowledge of good and evil; he is man.

THE WORLD OF RECOVERED UNITY

Now anyone who reads the New Testament even superficially cannot but notice the complete absence of this world of disunion, conflict and ethical problems. Not man’s falling apart from God, from men, from things and from himself, but rather the rediscovered unity, reconciliation, is now the basis of the discussion and the “point of decision of the specifically ethical experience.” The life and activity of men is not at all problematic or tormented or dark: it is self-evident, joyful, sure and clear.

THE PHARISEE

It is in Jesus’s meeting with the Pharisee that the old and the new are most clearly contrasted. The correct understanding of this meeting is of the greatest significance for the understanding of the gospel as a whole. The Pharisee is not an adventitious historical phenomenon of a particular time. He is the man to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life; in other words, he is simply the man of disunion. Any distorted picture of the Pharisees robs Jesus’s argument with them of its gravity and its importance. The Pharisee is that extremely admirable man who subordinates his entire life to his knowledge of good and evil and is as severe a judge of himself as of his neighbour to the honour of God, whom he humbly thanks for this knowledge. For the Pharisee every moment of life becomes a situation of conflict in which he has to choose between good and evil. For the sake of avoiding any lapse his entire thought is strenuously devoted night and day to the anticipation of the whole immense range of possible conflicts, to the reaching of a decision in these conflicts, and to the determination of his own choice. There are innumerable factors to be observed, guarded against and distinguished. The finer the distinctions the surer will be the correct decision. This observation extends to the whole of life in all its manifold aspects. The Pharisee is not opinionated; special situations and emergencies receive special considerations; forbearance and generosity are not excluded by the gravity of the knowledge of good and evil; they are rather an expression of this gravity. And there is no rash presumption here, or arrogance or unverified self-esteem. The Pharisee is fully conscious of his own faults and of his duty of humility and thankfulness towards God. But, of course, there are differences, which for God’s sake must not be disregarded, between the sinner and the man who strives towards good, between the man who becomes a breaker of the law out of a situation of wickedness and the man who does so out of necessity. If anyone disregards these differences, if he fails to take every factor into account in each of the innumerable cases of conflict, he sins against the knowledge of good and evil.

These men with the incorruptibly impartial and distrustful vision cannot confront any man in any other way than by examining him with regard to his decisions in the conflicts of life. And so, even when they come face to face with Jesus, they cannot do otherwise than attempt to force Him, too, into conflicts and into decisions in order to see how He will conduct Himself in them. It is this that constitutes their temptation of Jesus. One need only read the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew, with the questions about the tribute money, the resurrection of the dead and the first and great commandment, and then the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10.25) and the discussions about the keeping of the Sabbath (Matt. 12.11), and one will be most intensely impressed by this fact. The crucial point about all these arguments is that Jesus does not allow Himself to be drawn in into a single one of these conflicts and decisions. With each of His answers He simply leaves the case of conflict beneath Him. When it is a matter of conscious malice on the part of the Pharisees Jesus’s answer is the still cleverer avoidance of a cleverly laid trap, and as such it may well have caused the Pharisees to smile. But that is not essential. Just as the Pharisees cannot do otherwise than confront Jesus with situations of conflict, so, too, Jesus cannot do otherwise than refuse to accept these situations. Just as the Pharisees’ question and temptation arises from the disunion of the knowledge of good and evil, so, too, Jesus’s answer arises from unity with God, with the origin, and from the overcoming of the disunion of man with God. The Pharisees and Jesus are speaking on totally different levels. That is why their words so strikingly fail to make contact, and that is why Jesus’s answers do not appear to be answers at all, but rather attacks of His own against the Pharisees, which is what they, in fact, are.

What takes place between Jesus and the Pharisees is only a repetition of that first temptation of Jesus (Matt. 4.1-11), in which the devil tries to lure Him into a disunion in the word of God, and which Jesus overcomes by virtue of His essential unity with the Word of God. And this temptati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Editor’s Preface to the First Through the Fifth German Editions
• Editor’s Preface to the Sixth German Edition
• Stations on the Way to Freedom
• Part One
• Part Two
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Biblical References
• References to the Lutheran Symbolic Writings
• Footnotes
• About the Author
• Copyright