Evaluate Bonhoeffer’s views on duty to the State.
Bonhoeffer intrinsically rejected this idea of ‘duty to the State’, and instead
laid out an argument that asserted we try to understand God’s will in order
to know how to behave in circumstances. His polarising attempted
assassination in the Second World War unveiled the strong duty Bonhoeffer
felt to God and justice, rather than the discriminating rules of his time. He
went on to create the Confessing Church, a rejection of the Lutheran
Church’s duty to the state, where the religion argued that God put
designated people in place to rule as he did in Biblical times. However,
Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas have good reason to suggest that this is
flawed logical thinking and argue that, whilst it may not always be realistic
as Aquinas pointed out, we should follow our duty to God over our duty to
the State.
The Lutheran Church in Bonhoeffer’s time, deriving their views from
St.Paul’s teachings, established that Christians had a duty to the Church,
which correlated with a duty to the State, despite the unjust, discriminatory
rules of Nazi Germany at the time. They stated that this duty should be
exercised publicly, but Bonhoeffer rejects this notion with his idea of costly
grace, a contrast to cheap grace. He said that the Lutheran Church
expressed a value for cheap grace, which didn’t require much to earn the
reward of grace from God e.g confessing your sins to a Pastor so you will
be forgiven. Costly grace, on the other hand, proposes that we suffer and
sacrifice for not just ourselves, but other people, as Jesus did. This may
involve going against the State as Bonhoeffer did, and whilst the action of
assassination may have been wrong, hence ‘thou shalt not kill’, the
suffering he shared with those subject to the torture of Nazi Germany as
solidarity outweighs this command. There’s lots of credibility to this
argument when we consider how Jesus lived a situational life. He
emphasises ‘love’ more than anything else in his philanthropic, ministerial
life on earth, allowing his disciples to eat grains on the sabbath and
refusing to stone a woman for adultery. Both of these examples show that
Jesus was willing to alter the rules, in accordance with his view of the Old
Testament commandments on the Sermon on the Mount - ‘For I have not
Bonhoeffer intrinsically rejected this idea of ‘duty to the State’, and instead
laid out an argument that asserted we try to understand God’s will in order
to know how to behave in circumstances. His polarising attempted
assassination in the Second World War unveiled the strong duty Bonhoeffer
felt to God and justice, rather than the discriminating rules of his time. He
went on to create the Confessing Church, a rejection of the Lutheran
Church’s duty to the state, where the religion argued that God put
designated people in place to rule as he did in Biblical times. However,
Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas have good reason to suggest that this is
flawed logical thinking and argue that, whilst it may not always be realistic
as Aquinas pointed out, we should follow our duty to God over our duty to
the State.
The Lutheran Church in Bonhoeffer’s time, deriving their views from
St.Paul’s teachings, established that Christians had a duty to the Church,
which correlated with a duty to the State, despite the unjust, discriminatory
rules of Nazi Germany at the time. They stated that this duty should be
exercised publicly, but Bonhoeffer rejects this notion with his idea of costly
grace, a contrast to cheap grace. He said that the Lutheran Church
expressed a value for cheap grace, which didn’t require much to earn the
reward of grace from God e.g confessing your sins to a Pastor so you will
be forgiven. Costly grace, on the other hand, proposes that we suffer and
sacrifice for not just ourselves, but other people, as Jesus did. This may
involve going against the State as Bonhoeffer did, and whilst the action of
assassination may have been wrong, hence ‘thou shalt not kill’, the
suffering he shared with those subject to the torture of Nazi Germany as
solidarity outweighs this command. There’s lots of credibility to this
argument when we consider how Jesus lived a situational life. He
emphasises ‘love’ more than anything else in his philanthropic, ministerial
life on earth, allowing his disciples to eat grains on the sabbath and
refusing to stone a woman for adultery. Both of these examples show that
Jesus was willing to alter the rules, in accordance with his view of the Old
Testament commandments on the Sermon on the Mount - ‘For I have not
