BONHOEFFER: CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE & CHURCH AS COMMUNITY

Question 1

What is Bonhoeffer’s justification for civil disobedience?

Answer 1

Is that Christians have a responsibility to the state to ensure that it acts in accordance with God’s will.

Question 2

When is a Christian allowed to disobey the state according to Bonhoeffer?

Answer 2

If the state is making “reasonable people face unreasonable situations”.

Question 3

What is tyrannicide?

Answer 3

Killing a tyrant.

Question 4

How may tyrannicide be a Christian duty?

Answer 4

If it means establishing social order. He called this “suffering disobedience”.

Question 5

What actions of civil disobedience did Bonhoeffer take?

Answer 5

• Spoke out in university, lost his job as a result.
• Spoke openly about praying for Germany’s defeat.
• Criticised Confessing Church for faltering under pressure to conform.

Question 6

In what way did Bonhoeffer agree with Kant?

Answer 6

When a person acts out of duty he knows that he does so because he is acting in solidarity with all humankind.

Question 7

What is the role of the Church according to Bonhoeffer?

Answer 7

To provide a moral and spiritual community, which helps people live morally.

Question 8

What did Bonhoeffer believe the Church could not be?

Answer 8

Cannot be a middle class institution - should be stripped of false pretences.

Question 9

What did Bonhoeffer mean when describing Western culture as a ‘world come of age’?

Answer 9

Embracing a rational view of the world and rightly discarding its childish superstitions.

Question 10

What did Bonhoeffer mean by ‘religionless Christianity’?

Answer 10

Christianity without the baggage of the past and contamination by ideological beliefs of the present.

Question 11

What does Bonhoeffer mean when he states that there should be ‘no rusty swords’?

Answer 11

Outworn ethical attitudes which have no use today. Rethink ethics theologically.

Question 12

What is the metaphor of salt and light?

Answer 12

Presence of Christians amongst other people in the community: just as salt adds flavour to food, so Christians must act as moral people.

Question 13

What did ‘German Christians’ promote?

Answer 13

The Nazi Aryan Clause, which prohibited ministers who had Jewish ancestry from working for the Church.

Question 14

What did Bonhoeffer accuse the German Christians of?

Answer 14

Not confessing their faith, not being true to their discipleship and the commands of God.

Question 15

What did Bonhoeffer see duty to God as?

Answer 15

Far outweighing duty to the State.

Question 16

What was Bonhoeffer not content to accept?

Answer 16

The law of Germany’s new state. He spoke out against Nazi ideas in the university where he lost his job.

Question 17

What was Bonhoeffer made a member of?

Answer 17

German Military Intelligence to protect him from arrest.

Question 18

What does Bonhoeffer see from the Sermon on the Mount?

Answer 18

The requirement that the followers of Jesus must be salt and light.

Question 19

What is Bonhoeffer writing about relating to the Sermon on the Mount?

Answer 19

What he calls the ‘visible community’.

Question 20

What does Bonhoeffer note about the Sermon on the Mount?

Answer 20

Notes that the Bible does not say that you have the salt but you are the salt.

Question 21

What did Bonhoeffer argue that Hitler was?

Answer 21

The anti-Christ.

Question 22

What is the purpose of Christian life according to Bonhoeffer?

Answer 22

Not to be ‘religious’ but rather to be in a relationship with God, through living an existence for others.

Question 23

Where did Bonhoeffer show solidarity?

Answer 23

In returning from America to be with the German people.

Question 24

What did this idea of solidarity lead Bonhoeffer to do?

Answer 24

Get involved with the resistance, smuggling Jews into Switzerland, ultimately leading to his arrest.