You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Uncategorized' category.
I am in San Diego for one more day! Below is a picture of La Jolla Cove…
Justin Taylor|1:32 pm CT
Packer’s Advice for You
“I’m amazed at the amount of time people spend on the internet. I’m not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger—and then moving on quickly to the next blogger. That makes us more superficial, not more thoughtful.”—J.I. Packer, in World Magazine
I had a few days off because I was off hunting. We will get back to Bonhoeffer tomorrow!
Bryan
Today is Veteran’s Day! I am thankful for all the men and women who have sacrificed greatly so that we can be free in our country. Below is a blog from a one who has served…
Veteran’s Day, 2009
The call to serve. It has no sound, yet I have heard it.In the whispered retelling of honorable sacrifices made by those who have served before me.
The call to serve has no form, yet I have clearly seen it.
In the eyes of the men and women infinitely more courageous and more driven than most.
The call to serve has no weight, yet I have held it in my hands.
I will commit to carry it close to my heart, until my country is safe,
and the anguish of those less fortunate has been soothed.
The call to serve, is at once invisible and always present, and for those who choose to answer the call, for their country, for their fellow man, for themselves. It is the most powerful force on earth.
(From “A Global Force for Good”, US Navy)
I am proud that I have had the chance to serve my country. No, I did not got to Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or any of the other many hot spots around the globe. As a member of the Coast Guard, I did , however, save lives, protect the environment, protect the interests of American fisheries, and helped prevent drugs from reaching the shores of our country. I got to see the joy in the eyes of family when they were reunited with someone after a disaster, and the heartache and tears when they did not. I stood tall in my dress uniform sailing into foreign countries, and got down and dirty cleaning the ship’s decks. I fought fires, learned how to steer a boat that was longer than a football field, and could plot a course using only the stars and a clear horizon. I laughed alongside airmen, stood tall next to soldiers, and swore at Navy sailors. At times I felt I could do no wrong. Other times it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right. I grew up, gained confidence and learned how to lead others. I was prepared to go to war, but helped maintain the peace so we did not.
My story is unique, yet it is not. Every service member, whether they served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Coast Guard has a story to tell. Each one is different, but each one will tell of struggles, triumphs, and a deep-seated pride to having served. So I ask, on this Veteran’s day, put aside your political feelings and find a veteran to thank. Thank them for being prepared, thank them for their willingness to give their time, thank them for preparing to die, if necessary, so that you may continue to enjoy your freedoms that we really do take for granted. For a service member it is not an easy job, but one that we are proud to have done.
There are many ways to thank a veteran. Give them a hug. Give them a call. You probably know at least one. Most of us will blush at the thanks, but we really do appreciate it. One way that some businesses have decided to show their appreciation is by offering free meals or other items on or near Veteran’s Day to those who have served. To thank those establishments, I wanted to try to list as many as I can here.
Applebee’s (Wednesday, Nov 11th, selected menu, All locations)
Golden Corral (Monday Nov 16th, Free meal All Locations)
McCormick And Schmick’s (Sunday Nov 8th, Free meal, Selected locations)
Knott’s Berry Farm (Nov 1-24, Free admission plus one guest free)
Colonial Williamsburg (Nov 6-11 Free Admission to veterans and dependents)
I will update this as we get closer to the time and I hear of more restaurants honoring veterans! Please let me know if you hear of any restaurants, stores, or other places honoring veterans on (or around) Veteran’s Day.
And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
Lee Greenwood “Proud to be an American”
Posted by NW Dad at 9:00 AM
by Dr. R. L. Hymers, Jr.
A sermon preached at the Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles
Saturday Evening, August 23, 2008
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
I have been criticized for quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous statement, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1963 reprint, p. 7). Conservative Christians have told me that Bonhoeffer was a theological liberal. On some things he was, but there was one point on which Bonhoeffer was more fundamental, more true to the Bible, than many conservative preachers, and this is the point – “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” I think he meant exactly what Paul meant in Galatians 2:20,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
I think Bonhoeffer understood that verse. Oh, yes, I know he studied in a very liberal seminary when he came to New York from Germany. I know he believed some liberal teachings he learned there. I was told this about Bonhoeffer at the liberal Southern Baptist seminary I attended. But I also know that Bonhoeffer was a better Christian than he was a theologian. I mean that his heart was better than his head. This comes across in that famous statement of his, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” I think he was saying, in his own way, what the Apostle Paul said,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
What a man does is the best revelation of his heart. And Bonhoeffer literally lived out that verse in his own life. He returned from England and New York, where he had preached and studied, to Nazi Germany under Hitler. He had signed the Barmen Confession, which was written by some German pastors and theologians against Hitler. He deliberately went to Germany to preach Christ under Nazi persecution. It cost him his life. He was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo and put in prison for his preaching. A few days before the end of World War II the Nazis, under order from Hitler, tied a piano wire around his neck and hanged him. He choked to death, a martyr for Christ, shortly before the Allied forces liberated Germany at the end of World War II. He was thirty-nine years old. I admire this German preacher because he gave his very life as a martyr for Christ, thus proving to my mind that his faith was better than his theology, and that he truly believed what he said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” And I think that his words reflect that statement by the Apostle Paul,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
What did the Apostle Paul mean by that statement, “I am crucified with Christ”? Dr. Lenski said,
Note the force of the perfect tense “I have been crucified”: having once been crucified, Paul remains so; the effect is permanent. This state of crucifixion is the state of death Paul entered when he died to law. Only by being crucified with Christ does one die to law. It is the one avenue of escape. Otherwise law has us by the throat and will destroy us. Faith…alone joins us to Christ crucified to be crucified “with” him (R. C. H. Lenski, Ph.D., The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, to the Ephesians and to the Philippians, Augsburg Publishing House, 1961 reprint, page 116).
I believe that Paul meant that the real Christian must die with Christ, if he is to live with Christ.
1. Jesus began to die in the Garden – under the weight of man’s sin. So, you must go through the experience of Gethsemane before you can be crucified with Him, and become a real Christian.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
2. Jesus went through great agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, you must go through the agony of conviction and inner torment for your sin before you can be crucified with Christ and become a real Christian.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
3. Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, beaten and mocked by the high priests – so you must go through belittling and pain from unbelievers before you can be crucified with Christ and become a real Christian.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
4. Jesus was flogged under Pontius Pilate. This flogging was part of the payment for your sin. So, you must be flogged with Christ by God’s Spirit, until your heart is softened and you feel your need for Christ strongly enough to want Christ.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
5. Jesus was nailed to a cross to die for your sins. So, you must be crucified with Christ. You must die with Christ to the allure of the world.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
6. Only then can you say with the Apostle,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live”
(Galatians 2:20).
These are the marks of a real conversion: the suffering of conviction for sin (as Christ did for you, so you must experience it by being convinced of your sin). You must go through agony of soul, as Christ did in the Garden, before the weight of sin burdens you to the point of dismay. You must go through belittling and scorning by former friends. As Jesus did, you must lose your dearest friends (they all forsook Him and fled). You must be flogged so hard by God’s Spirit that you feel torn up inside. As Jesus felt when they scourged Him, you must feel the scourging of your own soul for your inward and outward sins. More than that, you must go to the Cross with Jesus, and be united with Him in His dying agony for your sin. In short – you must be “crucified with Christ.” It is only when you come to Jesus, that you can be crucified with Him. And it is only when you have died with Him, in real conversion, that you can say,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
George Bernard Shaw once said,
People are so inoculated in childhood with small doses of Christianity that they seldom catch the real thing (quoted by Richard Wurmbrand, In God’s Underground, Living Sacrifice Books, 2004 reprint, p. 120).
If you have been in church a long time in a lost state, it is doubtful that you will be converted, because you have been “inoculated with small doses of Christianity.”
Those who suffer for Christ as martyrs have truly been crucified with Christ. They are not “inoculated with small doses of Christianity.” They have caught the real thing. They can say,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
Pastor Wurmbrand said,
I was kept in solitary confinement in this cell for two years. I had nothing to read and no writing materials; I had only my thoughts for company, and I was not a meditative man, but a soul that had rarely known quiet…
Did I believe in God? Now the test had come. I was alone. There was no salary to earn, no golden opinions to consider. God offered me only suffering – would I continue to love Him?
Slowly, I learned that on the tree of silence hangs the fruit of peace. I began to realize my real personality, and made sure that it belonged to Christ. I found that even here my thoughts and feelings turned to God, and that I could pass night after night in prayer, spiritual exercise, and praise. I knew now that I was not play-acting. I BELIEVED (Wurmbrand, ibid.).
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live” (Galatians 2:20).
You also must go through a dark night of the soul. You must feel your sin, feel the lash of the law, feel the nails, die with Christ, and be born again – united with Christ in His death and resurrection – washed clean from your sins by His Blood!
(END OF SERMON)
You can read Dr. Hymers’ sermons each week on the Internet
at www.realconversion.com. Click on “Sermon Manuscripts.”
Tonight, Lois and I, will go to our favorite restaurant to celebrate her birthday!
IEP on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906—1945)
For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in the reality of Christ. Both in his thinking and in his life, ethics were centered on the demand for action by responsible men and women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory and of academic concerns with ethical systems precisely because of their failure to confront evil directly. Evil, he asserted, was concrete and specific, and it could be combated only by the specific actions of responsible people in the world. The uncompromising position Bonhoeffer took in his seminal work Ethics, was directly reflected in his stance against Nazism. His early opposition turned into active conspiracy in 1940 to overthrow the regime. It was during this time, until his arrest in 1943, that he worked on Ethics.
Table of Contents
1. Life and Resistance
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau on February 4, 1906. Dietrich and his twin sister, Sabina, were two of eight children born to Karl and Paula (von Hase) Bonhoeffer. Karl Bonhoeffer, a professor of psychiatry and Neurology at Berlin University, was Germany’s leading empirical psychologist. Dietrich received his doctorate from Berlin University in 1927, and lectured in the theological faculty during the early thirties. He was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1931, and served two Lutheran congregations, St. Paul’s and Sydenham, in London from 1933-35.
In 1934, 2000 Lutheran pastors organized the Pastors’ Emergency League in opposition to the state church controlled by the Nazis. This organization evolved into the Confessing Church, a free and independent protestant church. Bonhoeffer served as head of the Confessing Church’s seminary at Finkenwalde. The activities of the Confessing Church were virtually outlawed and its five seminaries closed by the Nazis in 1937.
Bonhoeffer’s active opposition to National Socialism in the thirties continued to escalate until his recruitment into the resistance in 1940. The core of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich was an elite group within the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), which included, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Head of Military Intelligence, General Hans Oster (who recruited Bonhoeffer), and Hans von Dohnanyi, who was married to Bonhoeffer’s sister, Christine. All three were executed with Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945. For their role in the conspiracy, the Nazis also executed Bonhoeffer’s brother, Klaus, and a second brother-in-law, Rudiger Schleicher, on April 23, 1945, seven days before Hitler himself committed suicide on April 30.
Bonhoeffer’s role in the conspiracy was one of courier and diplomat to the British government on behalf of the resistance, since Allied support was essential to stopping the war. Between trips abroad for the resistance, Bonhoeffer stayed at Ettal, a Benedictine monastery outside of Munich, where he worked on his book, Ethics, from 1940 until his arrest in 1943. Bonhoeffer, in effect, was formulating the ethical basis for when the performance of certain extreme actions, such as political assassination, were required of a morally responsible person, while at the same time attempting to overthrow the Third Reich in what everyone expected to be a very bloody coup d’etat. This combination of action and thought surely qualifies as one of the more unique moments in intellectual history.
2. Ethics
Bonhoeffer’s critique of ethics results in a picture of an Aristotelian ethic that is Christological in expression, i.e., it shares much in common with a character-oriented morality, and at the same time it rests firmly on his Christology. For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behavior is how the reality of the world and how the reality of God are reconciled in the reality of Christ (Ethics, p. 198). To share in Christ’s reality is to become a responsible person, a person who performs actions in accordance with reality and the fulfilled will of God (Ethics, p.224). There are two guides for determining the will of God in any concrete situation: 1) the need of one’s neighbor, and 2) the model of Jesus of Nazareth. There are no other guides, since Bonhoeffer denies that we can have knowledge of good and evil (Ethics, p.231). There is no moral certainty in this world. There is no justification in advance for our conduct. Ultimately all actions must be delivered up to God for judgment, and no one can escape reliance upon God’s mercy and grace. “Before God self-justification is quite simply sin” (Ethics, p.167).
Responsible action, in other words, is a highly risky venture. It makes no claims to objectivity or certainty. It is a free venture that cannot be justified in advance (Ethics, p.249). But, nevertheless, it is how we participate in the reality of Christ, i.e., it is how we act in accordance with the will of God. The demand for responsible action in history is a demand no Christian can ignore. We are, accordingly, faced with the following dilemma: when assaulted by evil, we must oppose it directly. We have no other option. The failure to act is simply to condone evil. But it is also clear that we have no justification for preferring one response to evil over another. We seemingly could do anything with equal justification. Nevertheless, for Bonhoeffer, the reality of a demand for action without any (a priori) justification is just the moral reality we must face, if we want to be responsible people.
There are four facets to Bonhoeffer’s critique of ethics that should be noted immediately. First, ethical decisions make up a much smaller part of the social world for Bonhoeffer than they do for (say) Kant or Mill. Principally he is interested only in those decisions that deal directly with the presence of vicious behavior, and often involve questions of life and death. Second, Bonhoeffer’s own life serves as a case study for the viability of his views. Bonhoeffer is unique in this regard. His work on ethics began while he was actively involved in the German resistance to National Socialism and ended with his arrest in 1943. He fully expected that others would see his work in the conspiracy as intrinsically related to the plausibility of his ethical views. When it comes to ethics, Bonhoeffer noted, “(i)t is not only what is said that matters, but also the man who says it” (Ethics, p.267).
Third, like Aristotle, Bonhoeffer stays as close to the actual phenomenon of making moral choices as possible. What we experience, when faced with a moral choice, is a highly concrete and unique situation. It may share much with other situations, but it is, nevertheless, a distinct situation involving its own particulars and peculiarities, not excluding the fact that we are making the decisions, and not Socrates or Joan of Ark.
And finally, again like Aristotle, Bonhoeffer sees judgments of character and not action as fundamental to moral evaluation. Evil actions should be avoided, of course, but what needs to be avoided at all costs is the disposition to do evil as part of our character. “What is worse than doing evil,” Bonhoeffer notes, “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). A falling away from righteousness is far worse that a failure of righteousness. To focus exclusively on the lie and not on the liar is a failure to confront evil.
Nevertheless, the central concern of traditional ethics remains: What is right conduct? What justifies doing one thing over another? For Bonhoeffer, there is no justification of actions in advance without criteria for good and evil, and this is not available (Ethics, p.231). Neither future consequences nor past motives by themselves are sufficient to determine the moral value of actions. Consequences have the awkward consequence of continuing indefinitely into the future. If left unattended, this feature would make all moral judgments temporary or probationary, since none are immune to radical revision in the future. What makes a consequence relevant to making an action right is something other than the fact that it is a consequence. The same is true for past motives. One motive or mental attitude surely lies behind another. What makes one mental state and not an earlier state the ultimate ethical phenomenon is something other than the fact that it is a mental state. Since neither motives nor consequences have a fixed stopping point, both are doomed to failure as moral criteria. “On both sides,” Bonhoeffer notes, “there are no fixed frontiers and nothing justifies us in calling a halt at some point which we ourselves have arbitrarily determined so that we may at last form a definite judgement” (Ethics, p.190). Without a reason for the relevance of specific motives or consequences, all moral judgments become hopelessly tentative and eternally incomplete.
What is more, general principles have a tendency to reduce all behavior to ethical behavior. To act only for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or to act only so that the maxim of an action can become a principle of legislation, become as relevant to haircuts as they do to manslaughter. All behavior becomes moral behavior, which drains all spontaneity and joy from life, since the smallest misstep now links your behavior with the worst crimes of your race, gender, or culture. Ethics cannot be reduced to a search for general principles without reducing all of the problems of life to a bleak, pedantic, and monotonous uniformity. The “abundant fullness of life,” is denied and with it “the very essence of the ethical itself” (Ethics, p.263).
Reliance on theory, in other words, is destructive to ethics, because it interferes with our ability to deal effectively with evil. Bonhoeffer asks us to consider six strategies, six postures people often strike or adopt when attempting to deal with real ethical situations involving evil and vicious people. Any of these postures or orientations could employ principles, laws, or duties from ethical theory. But, in the end, it makes little difference what principles they invoke. The ethical postures themselves are what make responsible action impossible. A resort to the dictates of reason, for example, demands that we be fair to all the details, facts, and people involved in any concrete moral situation (Ethics, p.67). The reasonable person acts like a court of law, trying to be just to both sides of any dispute. In doing so, he or she ignores all questions of character, since all people are equal before the law, and it makes no difference who does what to whom. Thus, whenever it is in the interest of an evil person to tell the truth, the person of reason must reward him for doing so. The person of reason is helpless to do otherwise, and in the end is rejected by all, the good and the evil, and achieves nothing.
Likewise, Bonhoeffer argues, the enthusiasm of the moral fanatic or dogmatist is also ineffective for a similar reason. The fanatic believes that he or she can oppose the power of evil by a purity of will and a devotion to principles that forbid certain actions. Again, the concern is exclusively on action, and judgments of character are seen as secondary and derivative. But the richness and variety of actual, concrete situations generates questions upon questions for the application of any principle. Sooner or later, Bonhoeffer notes, the fanatic becomes entangled in non-essentials and petty details, and becomes prone to simple manipulation in the hands of evil (Ethics, p.68).
The man or woman of conscience presents an even stranger case. When faced with an inescapable ethical situation that demands action, the person of conscience experiences great turmoil and uncertainty. What the person of conscience is really seeking is peace of mind, or a return to the way things were, before everything erupted into moral chaos. Resolving the tensions is as important as doing the right thing. In fact, doing the right thing should resolve the conflicts and tensions or it is not the right thing. Consequently, people of conscience become prey to quick solutions, to actions of convenience, and to deception, because feeling good about themselves and their world is what matters ultimately. They fail completely to see, as Bonhoeffer notes, that a bad conscience, that disappointment and frustration over one’s action, may be a much healthier and stronger state for their souls to experience than peace of mind and feelings of well being (Ethics, p.68).
An emphasis on freedom and private virtuousness are even less capable of dealing effectively with evil. What Bonhoeffer means by freedom is not coextensive with the theoretical freedom of the existential either/or, where it makes no difference what we do, since we are all going to get it in the end anyway; nor is it the freedom of the positivist’s personal preference or emotivism. No, freedom here means the freedom to make exceptions to general rules or principles. The free person is the person who has the where-with-all to ignore conscience, reputation, facts, and anything else in order to make the best arrangement possible under the circumstances. This is the freedom to act in any way necessary, even to do what is wrong, in order to avoid what is worse, e.g., avoiding war by being unjust to large numbers of people, and consequently failing to see that what he thinks is worse, may still be the better, failing to see that evil can never be satiated (Ethics, p. 69).
On the other hand, the escape to a domain of private virtue is, perhaps, of all temptations the most dangerous to the Christian. This is a pulling back from the petty and vulgar affairs of the world in order to avoid being contaminated by evil. This monastic urge is rejected by Bonhoeffer, because for him there is no such thing as escaping your responsibility to act. When faced with evil, there is no middle path. You either oppose the persecution of the innocent or you share in it. No one can preserve his or her private virtue by turning away from the world (Ethics, p.69).
Bonhoeffer’s last category, duty, is perhaps the most important to him, because it is the most easily co-opted by evil; and again it makes no difference what laws we introduce to determine our duty. If a devotion to duty does not discriminate in terms of character, it will end up serving evil. “The man of duty,” Bonhoeffer observes, “will end by having to fulfill his obligations even to the devil” (Ethics, p.69).
Bonhoeffer replaces philosophical ethics and its pursuit of criteria to justify action in advance with an ethics grounded in the emergence of Christ as reconciler. The cornerstone of Bonhoeffer’s ethical world is a social/moral realism. In any given context there is always a right thing to do. This reality is a direct result of his Christology. The reality of the sensible world, with all its variety, multiplicity, and concreteness, has been reconciled with the spiritual reality of God. These two radically divorced worlds have now been made compatible and consistent in the reality of Christ (Ethics, p.195). Through Jesus the reality of God has entered the world (Ethics, p.192). If an action is to have meaning, it must correspond to what is real. Since there is only the reality of Christ, Christ is the foundation of ethics. Any Christian who attempts to avoid falsehoods and meaninglessness in his or her life must act in accordance with this reality.
Furthermore, the sole guide for acting in accordance with this reality is the model of Jesus’ selfless behavior in the New Testament. There are numerous dimensions to this model. First and foremost, your action can in no way be intended to reflect back on you, your character, or your reputation. You must, for the sake of the moment, unreservedly surrender all self-directed wishes and desires (Ethics, p.232). It is the other, another person, that is the focus of attention, and not yourself. In ethical action, the left hand really must be unaware of what the right hand is doing if the right hand is to do anything ethical. If not, your so-called good action becomes contaminated and its moral nature altered.
Bonhoeffer illustrates this notion of selfless action by contrasting the behavior of Jesus in the New Testament to that of the Pharisee. The Pharisee “…is the man to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life…”(Ethics, p.30). Every moment of his life is a moment where he must choose between good and evil (Ethics, p.30). Every action, every judgment, no matter how small, is permeated with the choice of good and evil. He can confront no person without evaluating that person in terms of good and evil (Ethics, p.31). For him, all judgments are moral judgments. No gesture is immune to moral condemnation.
Jesus refuses to see the world in these terms. He lightly, almost cavalierly, casts aside many of the legal distinctions the Pharisee labors to maintain. He bids his disciples to eat on the Sabbath, even though starvation is hardly in question. He heals a woman on the Sabbath, although after eighteen years of illness she could seemingly wait a few more hours. Jesus exhibits a freedom from the law in everything he does, but nothing he does suggests all things are possible. There is nothing arbitrary about his behavior. There is, however, a simplicity and clarity. Unlike the Pharisee, he is unconcerned with the goodness or badness of those he helps, unconcerned with the personal moral worth of those he meets, talks to, dines with, or heals. He is concerned solely and entirely with the well being of another. He exhibits no other concern. He is the paradigm of selfless action, and the exact opposite of the Pharisee, whose every gesture is fundamentally self-reflective.
The responsible person is, thus, a selfless person, who does God’s will by serving the spiritual and material needs of another, since “…what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbor” (Ethics, p.136). The selfless model of Jesus is his or her only guide to responsible action. And second, the responsible person must not hesitate to act for fear of sin. Any attempt to avoid personal guilt, any attempt to preserve moral purity by withdrawing from conflicts is morally irresponsible. For Bonhoeffer, no one who lives in this world can remain disentangled and morally pure and free of guilt (Ethics, p.244). We must not refuse to act on our neighbor’s behalf, even violently, for fear of sin. To refuse to accept guilt and bear it for the sake of another has nothing to do with Christ or Christianity. “(I)f I refuse to bear guilt for charity’s sake,” Bonhoeffer argues, “then my action is in contradiction to my responsibility which has its foundation in reality” (Ethics, p.241). The risk of guilt generated by responsible action is great and cannot be mitigated in advance by self-justifying principles. There is no certainty in a world come of age. No one, in other words, can escape a complete dependency on the mercy and grace of God.
3. References and Further Reading
All quotes from: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., Touchstone Edition, 1995).
Works by Bonhoeffer:
- Sanctorum Communio (The Communion of Saints)
- Act and Being
- The Cost of Discipleship
- Life Together
- Ethics
- Letters and Papers from Prison
- Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols.
Author Information
Douglas Huff
Email: dhuff@gac.edu
Gustavus Adolphus College
Ed Nelson means a lot to me. When he was the intern pastor at First Baptist Church in Dannebrog, NE in 1985. I was a senior at Bethel Theological Seminary West. The search committee had my name and resume at one time but then shelved me because they wanted a more seasoned (older) person. I was 0nly 25. Well, Ed Nelson encouraged the search committee to not over look the young guys. I am so glad he said that because the Lord did call me to the church. My family and I were there for eight and a half years.
Even to the end of his life, Ed was leading a Bible study in the facility he and Dorothy lived in.
IN MEMORIAM
Edward O. Nelson, 95, died September 13. A graduate of Bethel College and Bethel Seminary, as well as the University of Michigan, with his first wife Martha he pastored Converge (BGC) churches in St. Paul, Minn. (Wheelock Parkway Baptist); Sawyer, Mich.; and Vancouver, B.C. He served as associate to the National Director of Evangelism 1952-56 and Rocky Mountain district executive minister 1963-87. He organized 19 churches, physically helped build six churches and, after retirement at age 68, served in six interim pastorates. After his first wife’s death, he married Dorothy Nelson in 1976. He is survived by his second wife, four daughters, seven grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, one brother and one sister.
Hans von Dohnanyi, the husband of Bonhoeffer’s second oldest sister, Christine, worked for Admiral Wilhelm Canaris in the Office for Counterespoinage. Both belonged to an opposition group that strove to assist oppressed Jews and document the crimes of the National Socialists, and they worked to assassinate Hitler.
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 55)
Residential Conference & Banqueting.
The former Archdeaconry – 4 Canon Lane – has been acquired by the Chapter as a result of a magnificent grant from the Community of the Servants of the Cross, whose Trustees and surviving Sisters shared Chapter’s conviction that the objects of the new centre were firmly in accord with their own.
|
George Bell House will provide a resource not only for ’serious scholars’ but also for Church and educational groups of all kinds, for whom a special tarrif has been devised. The house is also available for commercial and private hire.
The house has been refurbished to an extremely high standard and provides an oasis of peace and tranquility in the centre of a thriving city. The accommodation comprises of 8 en-suite bedrooms and can accommodate a maximum of 15 for residential conferences. To the ground floor are the Dresden Room, Bonhoeffer Room, dining room and conservatory. A marquee in the private garden allows for private dining for up to 100 guests. An ideal venue for seminars, wedding receptions, private dining and weekend breaks. For further information regarding availability and tariffs please contact Maria Gordon on 01243 813586 or email bookings@chichestercathedral.org.uk |
Recent Comments