Insomnia sucks. It is 3:30 am, and I'm not working, so I should be fast asleep.
As I tossed and turned, it occurred to me that I had not come up with my position on the relationship between morality and Christianity on my own. After putting on a pot of coffee (why do I need it if I'm not sleeping? Habit), I searched my bookshelf but could not find my copy of Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Let me just say that the work under this title is neither complete nor unified. His literary heirs compiled several different false starts Bonhoeffer had written over several years and put them between one cover; his mentor, Karl Barth, said that he would not want anyone publishing his incomplete, fragmented thoughts in such a way.
Yet, there is a passage at the very beginning that, when I first read it in the autumn of 1991, struck me like a hammer blow. While I believe some unpacking of it will be necessary below, and while I may have a detail or two incorrect (again, I couldn't find my copy; it might be in Lisa's church office), essentially, Bonhoeffer begins his discussion of Christian ethics by stating that an emphasis on the moral life - that is, living in the knowledge of good and evil, and living life as if it moved between these two poles, choice being forced upon us - is a life still lived in sin, because knowledge of good and evil accompanied the fall and introduction of sin in to the world. The Christian life, lived by faith through grace, is a life seeking the will of God. We do not seek to do the good and eschew evil because one is good and the other evil. We seek to do God's will, leaving the question of morality behind us.
In essence, Bonhoeffer is turning Nietzsche on his head. For Nietzsche, morality was a bone tossed to the common folk; the new humanity that was arising lived beyond good and evil, eschewing such bourgeois notions as beneath contempt, slave mentality. Bonhoeffer took Nietzsche by his syphilitic hand and said, "Ja, Friedrich, you are right. But the new humanity isn't amoral, but living in the light of God's will revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ." I'm quite sure that Nietzsche would have shook his head at what he could only deem sophistry.
Now, I will note that there are problems with Bonhoeffer's position. In the first place, both his method and presuppositions rely far too much (for my taste) upon certain Lutheran ways of thinking - the dialectic and dichotomy between grace and law, and gospel and law; the two kingdom's theory in which our Christian lives and the decisions we make there have little role in our public lives - as well as a Hegelian Spirit of overcoming contradiction through a higher synthesis, said synthesis leaving the old contradiction not so much resolved as moot.
Yet, I believe that at a fundamental level, Bonhoeffer has something here. A fully integrated Christian life is one lived in prayer, seeking after what God would have us do in our lives. This should include, for obvious reasons, how we live our lives with others. We are not to seek to do good, or to do well. We are exhorted to seek first the kingdom of God, and God's righteousness. We aren't told to seek first a Republican majority, and the end of gayness and abortions. Sometimes, doing God's will can be destructive of the most congenial human relationships and institutions, and those who so do can be called immoral without compunction; consider Bonhoeffer as an example.
He saw God's will in the Abwehr plot to kill Adolf Hitler, and participated through relatives and friends. Now, setting aside who and what Hitler was and represented, to actively seek the death of another human being, as well as the head of state of one's own country - who would deem that a moral act. Even if we do not set any of that aside - would or could any of us make such a decision, and live with ourselves?
At the end of The Kingdom of Heaven, one of the characters offers the difference between Islam and Christianity, with Christianity being one where the fundamental issue is choice - do we choose Christ or the devil, good or evil, morality or immorality? I think that this is a fundamentally wrong take on the Christian faith. Christianity isn't about choice, because the necessity of choice has been removed by the one for whom our faith is named. The issue isn't so much choice as it is freedom or slavery. Do we live our lives free in the faith and hope that Jesus has walked the path of Godforsakeness for us so we no longer have to be riddled by guilt or shame? Or do we still yoke ourselves to whatever fancy comes along, calls itself the True and Good, and hope that there is something of God in there, or enough of God in there, to keep us from the pit of doom?
