Ethics

by Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

• ISBN13: 9780684815015
• ISBN10: 068481501X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-09-01
• Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER

Summary

The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum; what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics.The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world; such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God's having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. On the contrary, God's commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world.

Author Biography

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau in 1906. The son of a famous German psychiatrist, he studied in Berlin and New York City. He left the safety of America to return to Germany and continue his public repudiation of the Nazis, which led to his arrest in 1943. Linked to the group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed, he was hanged in April 1945.

Table of Contents

General editor's forword to Dietrich Bonhoeffer works
Editor's introduction to the English edition	p. 1
Manuscripts in a reconstructed writing sequence	p. 45
Christ, reality, and good : Christ, church, and world	p. 47
Ethics as formation	p. 76
Heritage and decay	p. 103
Guilt, justification, renewal	p. 134
Ultimate and penultimate things	p. 146
Natural life	p. 171
History and good [1]	p. 219
History and good [2]	p. 246
God's love and the disintegration of the world	p. 299
Church and world I	p. 339
On the possibility of the church's message to the world	p. 352
The "ethical" and the "Christian" as a topic	p. 363
The concrete commandment and the divine mandates	p. 388
Editors' afterword to the German edition	p. 409
Chronology of Ethics	p. 450
Preparing the German edition of Ethics	p. 467
Arrangements of Ethics	p. 477
Facsimile pages, "heritage and decay"	p. 478
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