Ethics

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The crown jewel of Bonhoeffer's body of work, EthicsEthics is the culmination of his theological and personal odyssey. Based on careful reconstruction of the manuscripts, freshly and expertly translated and annotated, this new critical edition features an insightful Introduction by Clifford Green and an Afterword from the German edition's editors.

Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a post-war world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life.

This edition allows scholars, theologians, ethicists, and serious Christians to appreciate the cogency and relevance of Bonhoeffer's vision.

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Hardcover, 593 pages

Published November 5th 2004 by Fortress Press (first published September 1st 1955)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, philosophy, christianity, classics, religion, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Politics, Power, Responsibility

“Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment. Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be. Not in the flight of ideas but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of living. God’s command is enough and your faith in him to sustain you. Then at last freedom will welcome your spirit amid great rejoicing.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The task of pastoral ministry, above all else, is to arrange contingencies for an encounter with the divine.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“What is worse than doing evil, is being evil” (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that “(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie” (Ethics, p.67).”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Evil, Lie, Truth Telling

“Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do something good?' Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: 'What is the will of God?”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Action, Duty, Ethics, Responsibility

“A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self. Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible. He cannot escape the responsibility, which is his because he is a father. This reality refutes the fictitious notion that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior. It is not the isolated individual but the responsible person who is the proper agent to be considered in ethical reflection.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Duty, Ethics, Fathers, Responsibility

“The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Appropriateness, Ethics, Moderation, Overkill

“The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Discipleship, Success

“The task is not to turn the world upside down but in a given place to do what, from the perspecive of reality, is necessary objectively and to really carry it out.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Action, Responsibility

“Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action, and subject to misunderstanding and condemnation. Every attempt to portray a Christianity of 'pure' love purged of worldly 'impurities' is a false purism and perfectionism that scorns God's becoming human and falls prey to the fate of all ideologies. God was not too pure to enter the world.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Theology

“Due to some dim but irresistible notion of the way things are, it is simply not possible, out of order, not apprpriate to the situation at hand, if, within the circle of those who are experienced and advanced in years, the young person declaims ethical generalities. Young people will again and again find themselves in a situation that is so irritating, astounding, and incomprehensible to them that their word falls on deaf ears, while the word of an older person is heard and has weight even though its content is no different at all. It will be a sign of maturity or immaturity whether this experience leads them to understand that what is at stake here is not the stubborn self-satisfaction of old age, or the anxious effort to keep youth in their place, but the pereservation or violation of an essential ethical law. Ethical discourse needs authorization, which youth are simply not able to bestow upon themselves, even if they speak out of the purest pathos of their ethical conviction. Ethical discourse does not merely depend on the correct content of what is said, but also on the speaker being authorized to say it. Its validity depends not only on what is said, but also on who says it.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Age, Appropriateness, Ethics, Validity, Wisdom, Youth

“Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Christian, Ethics, Religion

“In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a “worldly” into a “spiritual” “realm.” The practice of the Christian life can be learned only under these four mandates of God.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The world is not divided between Christ and the devil; it is completely the world of Christ, whether it recognizes this or not. As this reality in Christ it is to be addressed, and thus the false reality that it imagines itself to have, in itself or in the devil, is to be destroyed. The dark, evil world may not be surrendered to the devil, but must be claimed for the one who won it by coming in the flesh, by the death and resurrection of Christ.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Christianity, Evil, Good, Reality, The Devil, The World

“This nothingness into which the West is sliding is not the natural end, the dying, the sinking of a flourishing community of peoples. Instead, it is again a specifically Western nothingness: a nothingness that is rebellious, violent, anti-God, and antihuman. Breaking away from all that is established, it is the utmost manifestation of all the forcesopposed to God. It is nothingness as God; no one knows its goal or its measure. Its rule is absolute. It is a creative nothingness[113] that blows its anti-God breath into all that exists, creates the illusion of waking it to new life, and at the same time sucks out its true essence[114] until it soon disintegrates into an empty husk and is discarded. Life, history, family, people, language, faith—the list could go on forever because nothingness spares nothing—all fall victim to nothingness.[115]”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topics: Christian Life, Encounter, Partcipation, World

“The justification of my life before God is to live because of and toward the living, dying, and rising of Jesus Christ.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Because there is nothing that lasts, the foundation of historical life—trust in all its forms—is destroyed. Because truth is not trusted, specious propaganda takes over.[127] Because justice is not trusted, whatever is useful is declared to be just.[128]”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Radicalism hates time. Compromise hates eternity. Radicalism hates patience. Compromise hates decision. Radicalism hates wisdom. Compromise hates simplicity. Radicalism hates measure. Compromise hates the immeasurable.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.

Overshadowed by his life and death, his theology and his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has nevertheless remained very influential.

He seems to have undergone something of a personal conversion from a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity to a dedicated man of faith, resolved to carry out the teaching of Christ as he found it revealed in the Gospels.
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