Becoming Simple and Wise

Moral Discernment in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Vision of Christian Ethics

Kaiser

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270113
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What does it mean for a Christian to discern God's will? Such a question lies at the heart of the Christian moral life. For some, discerning God's will means reading the Bible and following its commandments. For others, discerning God's will involves the use of human reason and conscience to guide behavior.For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the question of discernment is more complex and can only be answered theologically. By tracing Bonhoeffer's understanding of moral discernment throughout his writings, and especially in his Ethics, Joshua Kaiser seeks to demonstrate the importance of discernment for Bonhoeffer's vision of Christian ethics and to explain how his view combines elements of simple faith and rational reflection. While the results of this study will be significant for those interested in Bonhoeffer, they will also be relevant to all who struggle along the path of Christian discipleship and seek to understand and act upon God's will.

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Introduction

What does it mean for a Christian to discern God’s will? Such a question implies that one does not simply know God’s will, but must come to know it through a mental process of discriminating one option from another and determining the correct path amidst false alternatives and temptations. This practice of perception and discrimination describes what we mean when we speak of “discernment” in its most general sense. And taken in this most general sense, we can say that the question of discernment occupied the mind of Dietrich Bonhoeffer throughout a large portion of his adult life. He pursued it from the time of his first lecture on Christian ethics in 1929 until his death in 1945, often framing it in terms of how to hear God’s commandment, how to perceive the form of Christ in the world, or how to recognize what Jesus wants to say to us today.1 In Ethics, the collection of manuscripts offering the best window into his mature ethical thinking, he focuses this general line of inquiry on the simple question: what is the will of God?2 For him, answering this question was central to the Christian life and required a process of moral discernment. It was not enough to rely on a depository of moral knowledge gained through universal ethical principles or static orders of creation; instead, one had to carefully discern God’s will afresh on every new occasion in order to act faithfully. Thus, discernment was both spiritual and theological for Bonhoeffer, but also intensely practical, for it helped to facilitate everyday decisions and actions. In fact, as I will demonstrate in what follows, discernment lies at the heart of his vision of Christian ethics and illustrates its hidden unity.

The concept of discernment, however, is not present throughout his corpus, but emerges only at a late stage in his writing. He offers no systematic engagement with the concept, and his aversion to anything resembling “method” in Christian ethics makes him hesitant to speak in detail about the precise process of discernment. Moreover, running throughout his corpus is a strong emphasis on simple, unreflective obedience to Christ, which seems to pose challenges for any sort of mental process of discrimination whereby one comes to determine God’s will. Perhaps the question “what is the will of God?” does not suggest any kind of rational deliberation after all. Could it be that the only answer to the question of discernment is simple faith in the immediate lucidity of God’s direction, which demands either obedience or disobedience with no room for reflection in between? A closer reading of Bonhoeffer, however, suggests more complexity. There is a contrasting emphasis in his work on the importance of reason, wisdom, experience, and an accurate perception of reality. Thus, while he advocates a simple, unreflective approach to God’s will, he also indicates the need for a rational, reflective moral deliberation that makes use of the best of human ability and recognizes its embedded place within the reality of the world. I will investigate this tension in his account during the course of this book and argue that the two contrasting emphases are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I will contend that his theology contains the necessary resources to incorporate, on Christological grounds, both simplicity and reflective moral deliberation into his concept of moral discernment. Furthermore, I will argue that this conceptual unity, premised on the relationship between Christ’s two natures, becomes efficacious in the lives of Christians through a process of conformation to the form of Christ, which includes as an essential element the disciplined practice of spiritual exercises. Finally, I will demonstrate how simple obedience, while precluding self-centered moral reflection, nevertheless creates space for meditative reflection that understands reality through a Christological lens. In so doing, this meditative reflection finds its orientation in the natural, penultimate world, which serves as a crucial context and guide for those who want to discern God’s will.

Bonhoeffer as a Practitioner of Discernment

Throughout his life Bonhoeffer had many occasions, both common and extraordinary, to practice discernment. Early in his life he had to determine which career path he would pursue; later he had to decide whether a potential visit to Gandhi’s ashram in India or a return to Germany to take charge of the Confessing Church seminary was more important; as war loomed over Europe in 1939, he had to make up his mind whether to remain in relative safety in the United States or to return to his homeland to be with his fellow Germans. As Lisa Dahill puts it:

Bonhoeffer models a Christian life centered in ongoing, clear-sighted discernment in the midst of complex and ambiguous historical circumstances. His witness therefore demonstrates the tremendous power for good which can flow through a life well skilled in Christian discernment—as well as the risky courage in faithfulness into which its sustained practice draws a person.3

Discernment was far more than a theological concept for Bonhoeffer; it was a concrete practice central to his life as a Christian. It follows that his reflections on moral discernment throughout his writings, but particularly in Ethics, are not merely a product of theological curiosity, but a result of a deep conviction about the practical necessity of discernment within the Christian experience.

But here one must exercise caution because determining the precise relationship between Bonhoeffer’s life and thought is one of the primary interpretive challenges for studies dealing with his theology. There are some scholars who believe a “biographical or narrative approach” to Bonhoeffer is indispensible.4 If one does not understand Bonhoeffer’s life experience or recognize the “autobiographical dimension” in his writing, a full understanding of his theology is impossible and one falls prey to what Thomas Day describes as the “common mistake of theologians . . . to suppose that the biographer has shown the contexts so that we [the theologians] may now zero in on texts.”5 Other scholars, however, advise caution when employing Bonhoeffer’s life story too heavily as an interpretive aid, lest his “enduring significance” be reduced to his “remarkable biography alone.”6 Worse, there exists the danger of committing a causal fallacy by interpreting Bonhoeffer’s theological formulations as the direct result of specific life experiences or historical events.7

While in the present book I am careful to avoid an overreliance on Bonhoeffer’s life story as an interpretiv...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Problem of Moral Discernment
• Chapter 3: The Christological Foundation of Discernment
• Chapter 4: Christian Formation and the Practice of Discernment
• Chapter 5: The Simplicity of Discernment
• Chapter 6: The Penultimate Context of Discernment
• Chapter 7: Conclusion
• Bibliography