Theological Journal – February 13 What Dietrich Bonhoeffer Would Say to the North American Church (6)

6.       “Behold, the human being!” (John 19:5): Becoming Human for the first time. DB’s sixth word to the North American church. His understanding of ethics is neither informational (Socratic), or formational (Aristotelian), but conformational (Christological). He does not believe that if we know the good we will do it. Nor that if we do the good enough it will become a habit. For him, not surprisingly, it all depends on Jesus Christ.

DB’s Ethics as Conformation

“Only the person who combines simplicity with wisdom can endure,” writes Bonhoeffer (DBWE 6:2707). Only this person can offer a free act of responsibility casting themselves on the mercy and judgment of God. 

But can such simplicity and wisdom be found? Yes, answers Bonhoeffer.

“Only because there is one place where God and the reality of the world are reconciled with each other, at which God and humanity have become one, is it possible there and there alone to fix one’s eyes on God and the world together at the same time. This place does not lie somewhere beyond reality in the realm of ideas. It lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ the reconciler of the world” (DBWE 6:2724-2734).

Ethics, therefore, is a matter of becoming increasingly conformed to Christ. In him, in living ongoing relationship with him, in worship and community. A lengthy word from DB is appropriate at this point.

“Hence we must understand by ‘formation’ something quite different from what we are accustomed to mean, and in fact the Holy Scripture speaks of formation in a sense that at first sounds quite strange. It is not primarily concerned with formation of the world by planning and programs, but in all formation it is concerned only with the one form that has overcome the world, the form of Jesus Christ. Formation proceeds only from here. This does not mean that the teachings of Christ or so-called Christian principles should be applied directly to the world in order to form the world according to them. Formation occurs only by being drawn into the form of Jesus Christ, by being conformed to the unique form of the one who became human, was crucified, and is risen. This does not happen as we strive ‘to become like Jesus,’ as we customarily say, but as the form of Jesus Christ himself so works on us that it molds us, conforming our form to Christ’s own (Gal.4:9). Christ remains the only one who forms. Christian people do not form the world with their ideas. Rather, Christ forms human beings to a form the same as Christ’s own. However, just as the form of Christ is misperceived where he is understood essentially as the teacher of a pious and good life, so formation of human beings is also wrongly understood where one sees it only as guidance for a pious and good life. Christ is the one who has become human, who was crucified, and who is risen, as confessed by the Christian faith. To be transformed into his form is the meaning of the formation that the Bible speaks about” (DBWE 6:2905-2913).

This means, as Nancy Duff (Duff, 1994, 166-170)  tells us, that DB’s ethic is not one of absolute law (“know the rule, do the rule”) nor utilitarian (“the greatest good for the greatest number”). Socrates seemed to think that if we know the law, the rule, we will do it. Bonhoeffer disagrees. He knows the sin that has warped our hearts to be centered on ourselves prevents us from doing the right because it corrupts all our thoughts and actions with self-interest. Practical utilitarian calculus, on the other hand, assumes we know what the “good for the greatest number is” and ignores the reality that Christian faith often calls us to act contrary to the perceived common good of the greatest number, indeed against it (“the foolishness of the cross”). DB will not go that way either.

Duff calls his ethic “contextual” (Duff, 1994, 170-173). Bonhoeffer is passionate for concreteness in Christian decision-making and vests our life as a community of faith with the formation of our character and growth toward maturity to give us an identity and sense of vocation that resources our decisions. He has a place for the moral law but uses it descriptively rather than prescriptively. More importantly, I think, is his emphasis on “example,” in particular that of Christ. This is not a simple following or imitating Christ by our own effort. Rather, as DB writes in Discipleship: “Only because we bear Christ’s image already can Christ be the ‘example’ whom we follow” (DBWE 4:14435).

To follow his example, then, is a gift of grace, a gift received and nurtured by living with him in and with his people. In the Outline for a Book” in Letters and Papers he did not live to write Bonhoeffer notes the church’s responsibility in a world come of age to “see that it does not underestimate the significance of the human “example” (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s writings!) . . . (I will write in more detail later about “example” in the NT—we have almost entirely lost track of this thought)” (DBWE 8: 14364-14368). 

Just before his commendation of example Bonhoeffer writes the church “will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment,” all virtues characteristic of Jesus and the early church. Jesus’ example, rather than absolute law, keeps DB’s ethics tethered to Christian faith without constraining it to explicit forms or acts. These virtues form a part of the matrix with the community and worship that equip one to make the free and responsible decision to act in a certain way.

DB’s own controversial decision to join the military resistance against Hitler and to be associated with a plot to kill the Führer was such a free and responsible decision on his part. He never claimed it was either Christian or right. He did not do it as a representative of the church. He claimed rather that a situation of dire “necessity” existed that is beyond law or the right and demands our response. Bonhoeffer explains: 

“Extraordinary necessity appeals to the freedom of those who act responsibly. In this case there is no law behind which they could take cover. Therefore there is also no law that, in the face of such necessity, could force them to make this rather than that particular decision. Instead, in such a situation, one must completely let go of any law, knowing that here one must decide as a free venture. This must also include the open acknowledgment that here the law is being broken, violated; that the commandment is broken out of dire necessity, thereby affirming the legitimacy of the law in the very act of violating it. In thus giving up the appeal to any law, indeed only so, is there finally a surrender of one’s own decision and action to the divine guidance of history” (DBWE 6:8475).

Clearly, this situation qualifies as tragic, if any does. On many levels. And Bonhoeffer acted with as much courage and nobility as one could expect under these conditions. After the underground seminary he led at Finkenwalde was closed by the Gestapo in 1937 and the Confessing Church crumbled before Hitler DB was bereft of the community he (rightly) deemed essential for Christian ethical discernment. The only community available to him was his family, which opposed Hitler, had a strong sense of civic duty, had contacts within the resistance, and got DB into the Abwehr (German military intelligence) where he could function as a double agent. Under these conditions it is hard to imagine Bonhoeffer doing other than he did.

We tend to ask was he right, or at least justified, to break with his Christian pacifist convictions and join in an attempt to assassinate Hitler? Even under “necessity” as he described it? But this is the wrong question to ask, I think. A better, more important, question is why the German church, especially the Confessing Church, was not what it ought to have been in order to mount effective Christian resistance to Hitler from the beginning of his regime. It would certainly have made a difference, though it’s impossible to say exactly what. I think James William McClendon is right to conclude:

“My thesis, then, is that Bonhoeffer’s grisly death [He was sent to the gallows] was part and parcel of the tragic dimension of his life, and that in turn but an element in the greater tragedy of the Christian Community in Germany . . .they had no effective communal moral structure in the church that was adequate to the crucial need of church and German people (to say nothing of the need of the Jewish people; to say nothing of the world’s people). No structures, no practices, no skills of political life existed that were capable of resisting, christianly resisting, the totalitarianism of the times” (McClendon, 2002, 21).

Thus, Bonhoeffer’s life, even by default at the end, emphasizes the necessity of healthy Christian community for ethical discernment. For he is right that we live in a world that presents many ethical challenges the Bible does not anticipate or provide specific laws for. But God has given us his Spirit to guide and instruct us to decide and act in Christ according to the reality disclosed in him. The church makes these discernments and decisions and acts in free responsibility (there are no laws for most of these issues) and dependent on the mercy and forgiveness of God. We may not always be right. We claim no moral high ground. We offer our deeds as witness to God made adequate for this purpose by his grace. And the most profound witness we can make is to the reality and presence of Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer of the world. 

“Behold, the human being!” – Pilate’s irony-laden presentation of Jesus to crowd, marks Jesus out as “the human” as God intended humanity to be. We are incorporated into his humanity by God. We live by his humanity as his witnesses and servants. We suffer and die in his humanity as faithful followers. In him, we become human too (for the first time!). And that’s what ethics as DB conceived it is all about!