Peace and Violence in the Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

An Analysis of Method

Palmisano

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498287739
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Not many theologians have had as great an impact on the study of peace and violence as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was labeled an Enemy of the State and eventually executed in April 1945. In this book, Trey Palmisano examines the theological connection between peace and violence across a range of Bonhoeffer's writings, sermons, and letters. Despite the challenges Bonhoeffer experienced in his personal life and in the life of his country, Palmisano asserts that a strong consistency emerges in Bonhoeffer's approach to ethics that resonates in the positing of Christ as the center of all ethical discourse and orients one to the ever-present challenges of a changing world. Palmisano creates distance from former studies that sought to define Bonhoeffer as a committed pacifist, a situational pacifist, or one who compromised his values to accommodate an exception for violence. By prioritizing methodology as the key to interpreting Bonhoeffer's thought, Palmisano argues that the ethical dilemma thought to be caused by Bonhoeffer's actions is avoided. The result is one that creates an authentic ethical openness by responsiveness to Christ rather than Christian virtue, and frees the individual from redundancies of action derived from deeply embedded patterns of theological engagement.

1

Influences in Bonhoeffer’s Ethical Thought

Assessing the work of thinkers who have had an impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an important step toward understanding the development of his method. Influence, however, is not always a matter of direct citation. It may also be determined by the author’s own lack of originality. In such cases, influence may be reconstructed as an engagement between an author and another party whose identity is ascertained by the nature of the problem under consideration and the solution offered. Martin Rumscheidt provides the following direction: “It is when one studies the thoughts that Bonhoeffer presents as his own, the positions he defends and his life, that one discerns who influenced him and how.”1 In this chapter, I focus on five thinkers and the way each influenced Bonhoeffer’s work in ethics.

Martin Luther

Germany was not just coaxed into modernity by Martin Luther; for all intents and purposes modern Germany was founded by him. “Researchers of the German language are to a great extent agreed that Luther, not only with his translation of the Bible but also with his prefaces to the Bible, sermons, Small Catechism, and his songs, pamphlets, and tracts, is an event in the history of German literature to which no other can be compared.”2 Indeed, Jörg Rades writes, “Luther not only influenced German theology but German language and the German political attitude . . . Luther is present in many areas of life unknown to many. The impact of his life helped Luther to disappear in the anonymity of the ‘Zeitgeist.’”3 This observation is certainly true for Bonhoeffer, who at times adopts Luther’s thinking as an almost self-evident reality in his writing.

From early in Bonhoeffer’s student days in Berlin, writes Heinz Eduard Tödt, “Martin Luther’s theology decisively influenced Bonhoeffer.”4 During his own days as a professor in Berlin, Bonhoeffer exhorted his own students to “go back to the beginning, to our wellsprings, to the true Bible, to the true Luther.”5

One important agreement with Luther derived from his sermon entitled “Sermon von den guten Werken” (1520), stressing that all ethics begin with God. Luther writes “Das erste und höchste, alleredelste gute Werk ist der Glaube an Christum . . .”6 That the first commandment was considered by Luther to be the greatest ethical duty imposed upon humanity, and that love, which draws a relational rather than formal bond between Christ and the disciple, is irrevocably etched into the reality of Bonhoeffer’s theology.

This emphasis on love as the first and greatest work, expressed as faith born in humanity by God, makes the remaining commandments secondary.7 As Rades notes, “In the end, it seems that in a rather unexpected way the whole of ethics in Luther’s understanding cannot be set apart from the doctrine of justification. It stands in dialectical relation with it where faith is regarded as the first of the good works.”8 This concept is essential to Bonhoeffer’s method.9

Luther’s influence can also be discovered in the way in which Bonhoeffer translated certain of Luther’s doctrines as ethical interpretations.10 Tödt asserts this is particularly true in Bonhoeffer’s use of Stellvertretung, a theme he sustains from “his dissertation to his latest manuscript for an ethics.”11 Hans Friedrich Daub asserts that the importance of the concept to works like Discipleship is self-evident. “Breiten Raum nimmt in Nachfolge ein genuin lutherisches Stellvertretungsdenken ein. Bonhoeffer schreibt von der Unumgänglichkeit, die Sünder wegen ihre Sünde zu bestrafen, und von der stellvertretend erlittenen Strafe Christi am Kreuz.”12

Clifford J. Green describes the concept in Bonhoeffer as follows:

Christ the Stellvertreter is the initiator and reality of the new humanity. The person and action of Christ is “vicarious” in that he does for human beings what they cannot possibly do for themselves . . . as Kollektivperson, from Adam; every member of humanity sins in the same way as Adam, but only Christ overcomes the “broken community” of sin.13

The result of this, writes Tödt, is that “no one should still say they are supposed to stand up for their own guilt on their own and alone.”14 And because of this, the individual is freed to love others the way Christ loved him.

The concept is often considered within systematics as an example of dogmatics in the realm of atonement theology. But Bonhoeffer’s interest spans beyond its typical meaning. “Like Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer regards dogmatics and ethics as a unity, following the tradition of Reformation theology.”15 While the confessional dimension of Christ’s vicarious substitution for the sins of humanity is a starting point, Bonhoeffer is much more concerned with how Stellvertretung presents itself in the world as an ethical concept.16

The connection between representation and incarnation was indispensable. Daub writes, “Menschwerdung und Stellvertretung werden von Bonhoeffer in direktem Zusammenhang gesehen.”17 For Bonhoeffer, one encounters God in the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement relationally rather than propositionally. Here too, Luther’s influence is palpable. Bonhoeffer rejected the radical transcendence of Barth’s God who was inaccessible to human effort. For Barth, even where Christ comes to reveal himself as the Logos of God, it is still only Christ as the infinite expression of God.18 Bonhoeffer, however, rejected God’s hiddenness as the wrong message. Eberhard Bethge writes, “Bonhoeffer vigorously protests with Luther against this all his life . . . God’s glory is total freedom not from, but for man.”19

For Luther, the divine attributes (communicatio idiomatum) could be abstracted to the person of Jesus. The human nature was thus suffused with divinity. While concerns ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Timeline
• Chapter 1: Influences in Bonhoeffer’s Ethical Thought
• Chapter 2: Bonhoeffer’s Ethical Method
• Chapter 3: Bonhoeffer and the Quest for Peace
• Chapter 4: Bonhoeffer and the Question of Murder
• Bibliography