Ethics

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CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface to the First Through the Fifth German Editions

Editor’s Preface to the Sixth German Edition

Stations on the Way to Freedom

PART ONE

I. The Love of God and the Decay of the World

The World of Conflicts

Shame

Shame and Conscience

The World of Recovered Unity

The Pharisee

Proving

Doing

Love

II. The Church and the World

The Total and Exclusive Claim of Christ

Christ and Good People

III. Ethics as Formation

The Theoretical Ethicist and Reality

Ecce Homo!

The Despiser of Men

The Successful Man

The Idolization of Death

Conformation

The Concrete Place

INHERITANCE AND DECAY

GUILT, JUSTIFICATION AND RENEWAL

The Confession of Guilt

Justification and the Healing of the Wound

IV. The Last Things and the Things Before the Last

Justification as the Last Word

The Penultimate

The Preparing of the Way

THE NATURAL

Natural Life

Suum cuique

The Right to Bodily Life

Suicide

Reproduction and Nascent Life

The Freedom of Bodily Life

The Natural Rights of the Life of the Mind

V. Christ, Reality and Good (Christ, the Church and the World)

The Concept of Reality

Thinking in Terms of Two Spheres

The Four Mandates

VI. History and Good

Good and Life

THE STRUCTURE OF RESPONSIBLE LIFE

Deputyship

Correspondence with Reality

The World of Things—Pertinence—Statecraft

The Acceptance of Guilt

Conscience

Freedom

THE PLACE OF RESPONSIBILITY

Vocation

VII. The Ethical and the Christian as a Theme

The Warrant for Ethical Discourse

The Commandment of God

THE CONCRETE COMMANDMENT AND THE DIVINE MANDATES

The Concept of Mandate

The Commandment of God in the Church

PART TWO

I. The Doctrine of the Primus Usus Legis According to the Lutheran Symbolic Writings

1. The Concept and Its Usefulness

2. The Theological Justification for the Doctrine

3. Interest in the Concept

4. Definition

5. Contents

6. Its Purpose

7. Means of Execution

8. The Proclaimer

9. The Hearer

10. The Primus Usus and the Gospel

11. Some Deductions and Questions

12. Critique of the Doctrine of Usus in the Lutheran Symbolic Writings

II. ‘Personal’ and ‘Real’ Ethos

1. Personal or Real Ethos?

2. The New Testament

3. The Symbolic Writings

4. Some Criticisms of Dilschneider’s Thesis

5. Systematic Considerations Concerning the Assertions Which Christian Ethics May Make with Regard to Secular Institutions

III. State and Church

1. The Concepts Involved

2. The Basis of Government

A. In the Nature of Man

B. In Sin

C. In Christ

3. The Divine Character of Government

A. In Its Being

B. In Its Task

C. In Its Claim

4. Government and the Divine Institutions in the World

5. Government and Church

A. Government’s Claim on the Church

B. The Church’s Claim on Government

C. The Ecclesiastical Responsibility of Government

D. The Political Responsibility of the Church

E. Conclusions

6. The Church and the Form of the State

IV. On the Possibility of the Word of the Church to the World

V. What Is Meant by Telling the Truth?

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Index of Biblical References

References to the Lutheran Symbolic Writings

Editor’s Preface to the First Through the Fifth German Editions

This book is not the Ethics which Dietrich Bonhoeffer intended to have published. It is a compilation of the sections which have been preserved, some of them complete and others not, some already partly rewritten and some which had been committed to writing only as preliminary studies for the work which was planned. These are the parts of the work which it was possible to conceal in a place of safety before they could be seized by the police. They have been retrieved from their garden hiding-places in the same disorder in which they were put there. And then there are other parts which were already in the hands of the Gestapo before 5th April 1943, the day of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s arrest.

Already at the time of completing his Nachfolge¹ Bonhoeffer was planning a new approach to the problems of Christian ethics. He thought of this as the beginning of his actual life work. In June 1939 he was invited by Professor John Baillie, on behalf of the Croall Lectureship Trust, to lecture at Edinburgh, and he hoped to make his lectures the basis for his book. The war put an end to his preparations, and he did not take up this work again until 1940, when he was compelled to give up his clergy training duties and forbidden to speak in public anywhere in the Reich. He was also forbidden by the Reich Chamber of Literature to publish any kind of written work, because, it was said, he had neither signed on nor asked for exemption from signing on as a Nazi propagandist. The manuscripts which are now before us were written between 1940 and 1943 in Berlin, at the monastery of Ettal and at Kieckow. The work was interrupted by various tasks undertaken on behalf of the Brotherhood Council of the Confessing Church, by various journeys in connexion with political activities, and finally by Bonhoeffer’s arrest.

Bonhoeffer’s books did not progress chapter by chapter in accordance with a fixed and unalterable plan. Each one grew gradually by the coalescence of numerous separate studies of the subject until it formed a whole. The titles and the arrangement of the books were subject to constant change in the course of this process. We possess a sketch for the arrangement of the Ethics, dating from the autumn of 1940. It runs as follows:

I. The Foundations

Ethics as Formation

Inheritance and Decay

Guilt and Justification

The Church and the World, Christ and the Commandments

The Things Before the Last, and the Last Things

The New Man

II. The Structure

Structure of Personal Life

Structure of Classes and Offices

Structure of Communities

Structure of the Church

Structure of Christian Life in the World.

As possible titles Bonhoeffer jotted down the following characteristic phrases: The foundations and structure of a world which is reconciled with God; The foundations and structure of a future world; and The foundations and structure of a united west. His sub-title was: A tentative Christian ethic. A little later he wrote in a letter: Today I have thought of a possible title for my book: ‘The preparing of the way and the entry into possession.’ This would correspond with the division of the book into the things before the last and the last things.

The material has come to us in such a form that there has been no possibility of working out a clear arrangement of the extant chapters in accordance with the subjects they treat. The first sections have been arranged according to the outline to which we have already referred.² The remaining sections in many cases approach from a new angle some topic which had already been treated before; these have been placed in the order in which they appear to have been written. Roman figures indicate the sections which are clearly intended to form coherent units and in which there is a clear line of advance within the particular range of problems with which they deal. A few sub-headings have been added by the Editor, according to the demands of the material.

Of the essays contained in Part Two, Numbers I and III were written as reports for the Reich Brotherhood Council and Numbers IV and V were sketched out in the prison at Tegel. It is to be hoped that the theological parts of Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison will later be published: they will show how he continued to concern himself with these matters until the very end.³

Special thanks are due to Frau Anni Lindner for her part in the laborious task of deciphering the manuscripts and arranging the innumerable small slips of paper in order.

On 18th November 1943 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from Tegel: "I for my part have been reproaching myself for not having finished the Ethics. No doubt part of it has been confiscated. It has been some comfort to me to know that I had already told you the gist of it. Even if you no longer have it in mind it will still somehow crop up again indirectly. And in any case my ideas were not yet altogether in shape. And on 15th December 1943 he wrote: Sometimes I think I really have my life more or less behind me now and that all that would remain for me to do would be to finish my Ethics ..."

9th April 1948                Eberhard Bethge

Editor’s Preface to the Sixth German Edition

¹

The discussion of Bonhoeffer’s theological development, leading up to the Letters and Papers from Prison, made it seem desirable to examine the chronology of the composition of his approaches to the subject of ethics. The adaptation of this new edition for a uniform edition of Bonhoeffer’s works has been the occasion for an edition of the Ethics which attempts to present Bonhoeffer’s four different new approaches in chronological sequence. Some parts can be dated with confidence, but there are others for which only a probable date can be given.

A. The first approach is made up of what were formerly chapters IV and V. The Love of God and the Decay of the World, like The Church and the World, is close to The Cost of Discipleship in thought and language. Of course, there is no indubitable evidence that Bonhoeffer’s work on ethics began with these sections. Among the notes for The Love of God and the Decay of the World are types of paper which Bonhoeffer used for letters in the spring and summer of 1940. Notes and headings for The Church and the World are on leaves from a calendar for May 1939; among them are the two key biblical passages, Mark 9.40 and Matthew 12.30. The first sheets of The Church and the World are the same sort of paper as that used for the last pages of The Love of God and the Decay of the World. These chapters therefore should be dated 1939/40. They were probably broken off before August 1940.

B. The second approach can be dated more accurately. The first pages of what was formerly Chapter I, Ethics as Formation, was clearly written on the property at Klein-Krössin (Kieckow), in September 1940. That means that its theme took shape just after Bonhoeffer’s first momentous meetings with Colonel Oster at the Abwehr. During this period—up to October 1940—he also wrote the sketch for the arrangement of the Ethics mentioned in the Preface to the First Edition.² The Confession of Guilt was thus written down at a time when Hitler had achieved his most astounding victory.

C. What was formerly Chapter III, The Last Things and the Things Before the Last, forms the third approach. It originated in Ettal between the end of November 1940 and the middle of February 1941, was broken off as a result of the first journey to Switzerland and never taken up again. But it represents the most complete section of the work for the Ethics. The heading The Last Things and the Things Before the Last can be found earlier on notes from Klein-Krössin. Bonhoeffer never had such a long period for work again.

The dating of what was formerly Chapter II, Christ, Reality and Good, is uncertain. It came at this point because in some respects that could be said to correspond to the Klein-Krössin sketch for the arrangement of the book, written in 1940. The paper used is of the kind that Frau von Kleist used to collect and prepare for Bonhoeffer in Klein-Krössin (by then it had become difficult to get rough paper). So the chapter could have been written in the summer of 1940 or in the summer of 1941, when Bonhoeffer was again staying in Pomerania. My own preference is for 1941. The pages of the manuscript end in Bonhoeffer’s handwriting with page 14, whereas History and Good begins on page 15, of course on quite different rough paper. The latter chapter was not begun until sometime during the course of 1941.

D. If this suggested order is correct, then the first theological starting point would be The Cost of Discipleship, the second conformation, and the third justification. The fourth, which follows, would be incarnation. What was formerly Chapter VI, History and Good, will have been begun in the summer of 1941, as is indicated by the type of paper being used in Klein-Krössin in August 1941. The second journey to Switzerland took place in September, and in November Bonhoeffer had pneumonia. After that, the work continued with interruptions until a long and intensive period of traveling began in April 1942. Bonhoeffer worked on this most political of chapters during the climax of his activity in the conspiracy. He rejected a first sketch which had already gone a considerable way³ and began once again in more detail. Seen in the light of the disposition of the problem as indicated, the first shorter attempt did, however, progress a good deal further. The second version quotes Bultmann’s Commentary on John, which appeared in 1941.

During the winter of 1942/43, what was formerly Chapter VII, The ‘Ethical’ and the ‘Christian’ as a Theme will next have taken shape. When Bonhoeffer was arrested, his desk was littered with jottings on this theme. They also included the heading being there for the world.

This arrangement of the Ethics makes Bonhoeffer’s inner development from the Cost of Discipleship to the threshold of Letters and Papers from Prison somewhat clearer, and so the transposition may seem justified.

The first section of Part Two, "The Doctrine of the Primus Usus Legis ..., originated as a working paper for a commission of the synod in preparation for a declaration on the fifth commandment. This commission sat in Magdeburg on August 10, 1942, and on March 15, 1943, with G. Harder as chairman. Bonhoeffer probably presented his work at the second session—i.e., shortly before his arrest. Its conclusion contains a clear rejection of excessively apocalyptic preaching, and it strikes the note of true worldliness as opposed to the exploitation of worldly ordinances in the name of Christianity or the Church (see p. 312 below) to the point of demanding the necessary collaboration between Christians and non-Christians in particular matters of fact and in definite tasks. ‘Personal’ and ‘Real’ Ethos" was written as a critique of Dilschneider’s Ethics soon after that appeared; it was published in 1940. Unfortunately there is no hint so far of the occasion for State and Church and the time at which it was written. Two notebooks simply indicate the paper used at Klein-Krössin. On the Possibility of the Word of the Church to the World is written on atrocious paper, used only at a late stage, on which it was only possible to write in pencil; I therefore assume that it comes from Tegel, but this is not certain. What Is Meant by ‘Telling the Truth’ does, however, clearly belong to the time at Tegel.

Other examples of Bonhoeffer’s ethical work of these years are: "Thoughts on William Paton’s The Church and the New Order," written in September 1941⁴ and the literary fragments from Tegel.⁵

There are more than a hundred sheets with notes of various kinds among the manuscripts—some only with headings, others with longer sentences and outlines.

July 1962                  Eberhard Bethge

STATIONS ON THE WAY TO FREEDOM

Self-discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, you must learn before all

things Mastery over sense and soul, lest your wayward

desirings, Lest your undisciplined members lead you now this way, now that way.

Chaste be your mind and your body, and subject to you and obedient,

Serving solely to seek their appointed goal and objective.

None learns the secret of freedom save only by way of control.

Action

Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment.

Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might

be. Not in the flight of ideas but only in action is freedom.

Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of living.

God’s command is enough and your faith in him to sustain

you. Then at last freedom will welcome your spirit amid great rejoicing.

Suffering

See what a transformation! These hands so active and powerful

Now are tied, and alone and fainting, you see where your work ends.

Yet you are confident still, and gladly commit what is rightful

Into a stronger hand, and say that you are contented.

You were free from a moment of bliss, then you yielded your freedom

Into the hand of God, that he might perfect it in glory.

Death

Come now, highest of feasts on the way to freedom eternal,

Death, strike off the fetters, break down the walls that oppress us,

Our bedazzled soul and our ephemeral body,

That we may see at last the sight which here was not vouchsafed us.

Freedom, we sought you long in discipline, action, suffering.

Now as we die we see you and know you at last, face to face.

PART ONE

I

The Love of God and the Decay of the World

THE WORLD OF CONFLICTS

The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection.¹ The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge. In launching this attack on the underlying assumptions of all other ethics, Christian ethics stands so completely alone that it becomes questionable whether there is any purpose in speaking of Christian ethics at all. But if one does so notwithstanding, that can only mean that Christian ethics claims to discuss the origin of the whole problem of ethics, and thus professes to be a critique of all ethics simply as ethics.

Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the origin. Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with this origin.

In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that he now knows only himself and no longer knows God at all; for he can know God only if he knows only God. The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil.

But man cannot be rid of his origin. Instead of knowing himself in the origin of God, he must now know himself as an origin. He interprets himself according to his possibilities, his possibilities of being good or evil, and he therefore conceives himself to be the origin of good and evil. Eritis sicut deus. The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil, says God (Gen. 3.22).

Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at his origin and has made himself his own creator and judge. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself. But God’s gift is essentially God’s gift. It is the origin that constitutes this gift. If the origin changes, the gift changes. Indeed the gift consists solely in its origin. Man as the image of God draws his life from the origin of God, but the man who has become like God draws his life from his own origin. In appropriating the origin to himself man took to himself a secret of God which proved his undoing. The Bible describes this event with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Man now knows good and evil. This does not mean that he has acquired new knowledge in addition to what he knew before, but the knowledge of good and evil signifies the complete reversal of man’s knowledge, which hitherto had been solely knowledge of God as his origin. In knowing good and evil he knows what only the origin, God Himself, can know and ought to know. It is only with extreme reserve that even the Bible indicates to us that God is the One who knows of good and evil. It is the first indication of the mystery of predestination, the mystery of an eternal dichotomy which has its origin in the eternally One, the mystery of an eternal choice and election by Him in whom there is no darkness but only light. To know good and evil is to know oneself as the origin of good and evil, as the origin of an eternal choice and election. How this is possible remains the secret of Him in whom there is no disunion because He is Himself the one and eternal origin and the overcoming of all disunion. This secret has been stolen from God by man in his desire to be an origin on his own account. Instead of knowing only the God who is good to him and instead of knowing all things in Him, he now knows himself as the origin of good and evil. Instead of accepting the choice and election of God, man himself desires to choose, to be the origin of the election. And so, in a certain sense, he bears within himself the secret of predestination. Instead of knowing himself solely in the reality of being chosen and loved by God, he must now know himself in the possibility of choosing and of being the origin of good and evil. He has become like God, but against God. Herein lies the serpent’s deceit. Man knows good and evil, but because he is not the origin, because he acquires this knowledge only at the price of estrangement from the origin, the good and evil that he knows are not the good and evil of God but good and evil against God. They are good and evil of man’s own choosing, in opposition to the eternal election of God. In becoming like God man has become a god against God.

This finds its expression in the fact that man, knowing of good and evil, has finally torn himself loose from life, that is to say from the eternal life which proceeds from the choice of God. And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ... he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3.22 and 24). Man knows good and evil, against God, against his origin, godlessly and of his own choice, understanding himself according to his own contrary possibilities; and he is cut off from the unifying, reconciling life in God, and is delivered over to death. The secret which man has stolen from God is bringing about man’s downfall.

Man’s life is now disunion with God, with men, with things, and with himself.

SHAME

Instead of seeing God man sees himself. Their eyes were opened (Gen. 3.7). Man perceives himself in his disunion with God and with men. He perceives that he is naked. Lacking the protection, the covering, which God and his fellow-man afforded him, he finds himself laid bare. Hence there arises shame. Shame is man’s ineffaceable recollection of his estrangement from the origin; it is grief for this estrangement, and the powerless longing to return to unity with the origin. Man is ashamed because he has lost something which is essential to his original character, to himself as a whole; he is ashamed of his nakedness. Just as in the fairy-story the tree is ashamed of its lack of adornment, so, too, man is ashamed of the loss of his unity with God and with other men. Shame and remorse are generally mistaken for one another. Man feels remorse when he has been at fault; and he feels shame because he lacks something. Shame is more original than remorse. The peculiar fact that we lower our eyes when a stranger’s eye meets our gaze is not a sign of remorse for a fault, but a sign of that shame which, when it knows that it is seen, is reminded of something that it lacks, namely, the lost wholeness of life, its own nakedness. To meet a stranger’s gaze directly, as is required, for example, in making a declaration of personal loyalty, is a kind of act of violence, and in love, when the gaze of the other is sought, it is a kind of yearning. In both cases it is the painful endeavour to recover the lost unity by either a conscious and resolute or else a passionate and devoted inward overcoming of shame as the sign of disunion.²

They made themselves aprons. Shame seeks a covering as a means of overcoming the disunion. But the covering implies the confirmation of the disunion that has occurred, and it cannot therefore make good the damage. Man covers himself, conceals himself from men and from God. Covering is necessary because it keeps awake shame, and with it the memory of the disunion with the origin, and also because man, disunited as he is, must now withdraw himself and must live in concealment. Otherwise he would betray himself. Every profound mind requires a mask, said Nietzsche. Yet this mask is not a disguise; it is not intended to deceive the other man, but it is a necessary sign of the actual situation of disunion. For that reason it is to be respected. Beneath the mask there is the longing for the restoration of the lost unity. Whenever this longing forces its way towards fulfilment, in the partnership of sex when two human beings become one flesh (Gen. 2.24), and in religion, when a human being seeks for his union with God, whenever, that is to say, the covering is broken through, then, more than ever, shame creates for itself the very deepest secrecy. The fact that he was ashamed when he was discovered praying was for Kant an argument against prayer. He failed to see that prayer by its very nature is a matter for the strictest privacy, and he failed to perceive the fundamental significance of shame for human existence.

Shame implies both a positive and a negative attitude to man’s disunion, and that is why man lives between covering and discovering, between self-concealment and self-revelation, between solitude and fellowship. This means that in his positive attitude to his disunion, that is to say in solitude, he may have a more intense experience of fellowship than in fellowship itself, though certainly only of a disunited fellowship. But both must always be present. And not even the closest fellowship must be allowed to destroy the secret of the disunited man. It may, therefore, be felt to be a repudiation of shame if one’s relation to another is expressed in a free exchange of words, for one thereby reveals oneself and lays oneself bare before oneself. Nor will the most profound and intimate joy or grief allow itself to be disclosed in words. In the same way shame preserves a man against making any kind of display of his relation to God. Finally, man protects himself against any ultimate disclosure, he keeps his own secret even from himself when, for example, he refuses to become conscious of himself in everything that arises within him.

The covering of shame conceals everything nascent that proceeds from man’s yearning for the reattainment of the unity which he has lost.³ The secrecy of shame remains outspread over the creative power of man which comes to him in the self-sought union of the disunited. It is the memory of the disunion from the Creator, and of the robbery from the Creator, which is here disclosed. This is true of the coming into being of human life, just as it is true of the coming into being of a work of art, of a scientific discovery, and indeed of any creative work which arises from the union of man with the world of things. Only when life is born, when the work is perfected, is the secret broken through by jubilant open joy. But the secret of its coming into being it bears within itself for ever.

The dialectic of concealment and exposure is only a sign of shame. Yet shame is not overcome by it; is rather confirmed by it. Shame can be overcome only when the original unity is restored, when man is once again clothed by God in the other man, in the house which is from heaven, the Temple of God (II Cor. 5.2ff.). Shame is overcome only in the enduring of an act of final shaming, namely the becoming manifest of knowledge before God. That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God (Ezek. 16.63). I will do this ... You will have to be ashamed and to blush for shame at your behaviour (Ezek. 36.32).⁴ Shame is overcome only in the shaming through the forgiveness of sin, that is to say, through the restoration of fellowship with God and men. This is accomplished in confession before God and before other men. Man’s being clothed with the forgiveness of God, with the new man that he puts on, with the Church of God, with the house which is from heaven, all this is comprised in the lines of the Leipzig hymn of 1638: Christ’s blood and righteousness, that is my adornment and my fine raiment.

SHAME AND CONSCIENCE

In shame man is reminded of his disunion with God and with other men: conscience is the sign of man’s disunion with himself. Conscience is farther from the origin than shame, it presupposes disunion with God and with man and marks only the disunion with himself of the man who is already disunited from the origin. It is the voice of apostate life which desires at least to remain one with itself. It is the call to the unity of man with himself. This is evident already from the fact that the call of conscience is always a prohibition. Thou shalt not. You ought not to have. Conscience is satisfied when the prohibition is not disobeyed. Whatever is not forbidden is permitted. For conscience life falls into two parts: what is permitted and what is forbidden. There is no positive commandment. For conscience permitted is identical with good, and conscience does not register the fact, that even in this, man is in a state of disunion with his origin. It follows from this also that conscience does not, like shame, embrace the whole of life; it reacts only to certain definite actions. In one sense it is inexorable; in forbidden actions it sees a peril to life as a whole, that is to say, disunion with oneself; it recalls what is long past and represents this disunion as something which is already accomplished and irreparable, but the final criterion remains precisely that unity with oneself which is imperiled only in the particular instances in which the prohibition is disobeyed. The range of experience of conscience does not extend to the fact that this unity itself presupposes disunion with God and with men and that consequently, beyond the disobedience to the prohibition, the prohibition itself, as the call of conscience, arises from disunion with the origin. This means that conscience is concerned not with man’s relation to God and to other men but with man’s relation to himself. But a relation of man to himself, in detachment from his relation to God and to other men, can arise only through man’s becoming like God in the disunion.

Conscience itself reverses this relation. It derives the relation to God and to men from the relation of man to himself. Conscience pretends to be the voice of God and the standard for the relation to other men. It is therefore from his right relation to himself that man is to recover the right relation to God and to other men. This reversal is the claim of the man who has become like God in his knowledge of good and evil. Man has become the origin of good and evil. He does not deny his evil; but in conscience man summons himself, who has become evil, back to his proper, better self, to good. This good, which consists in the unity of man with himself, is now to be the origin of all good. It is the good of God, and it is the good for one’s neighbour. Bearing within himself the knowledge of good and evil, man has become judge over God and men, just as he is judge over himself.

Knowing of good and evil in disunion with the origin, man begins to reflect upon himself. His life is now his understanding of himself, whereas at the origin it was his knowledge of God. Self-knowledge is now the measure and the goal of life. This holds true even when man presses out beyond the bounds of his own self. Self-knowledge is man’s interminable striving to overcome his disunion with himself by thought; by unceasingly distinguishing himself from himself he endeavours to achieve unity with himself.

All knowledge is now based upon self-knowledge. Instead of the original comprehension of God and of men and of things there is now a taking in vain of God and of men and of things. Everything now is drawn in into the process of disunion. Knowledge now means the establishment of the relationship to oneself; it means the recognition in all things of oneself and of oneself in all things. And thus, for man who is in disunion with God, all things are in disunion, what is and what should be, life and law, knowledge and action, idea and reality, reason and instinct, duty and inclination, conviction and advantage, necessity and freedom, exertion and genius, universal and concrete, individual and collective; even truth, justice, beauty and love come into opposition with one another, just as do pleasure and displeasure, happiness and sorrow. One could prolong the list still further and the course of human history adds to it constantly. All these disunions are varieties of the disunion in the knowledge of good and evil. The point of decision of the specifically ethical experience is always conflict.⁵ But in conflict the judge is invoked; and the judge is the knowledge of good and evil; he is man.

THE WORLD OF RECOVERED UNITY

Now anyone who reads the New Testament even superficially cannot but notice the complete absence of this world of disunion, conflict and ethical problems. Not man’s falling apart from God, from men, from things and from himself, but rather the rediscovered unity, reconciliation, is now the basis of the discussion and the point of decision of the specifically ethical experience. The life and activity of men is not at all problematic or tormented or dark: it is self-evident, joyful, sure and clear.

THE PHARISEE

It is in Jesus’s meeting with the Pharisee that the old and the new are most clearly contrasted. The correct understanding of this meeting is of the greatest significance for the understanding of the gospel as a whole. The Pharisee is not an adventitious historical phenomenon of a particular time. He is the man to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life; in other words, he is simply the man of disunion. Any distorted picture of the Pharisees robs Jesus’s argument with them of its gravity and its importance. The Pharisee is that extremely admirable man who subordinates his entire life to his knowledge of good and evil and is as severe a judge of himself as of his neighbour to the honour of God, whom he humbly thanks for this knowledge. For the Pharisee every moment of life becomes a situation of conflict in which he has to choose between good and evil. For the sake of avoiding any lapse his entire thought is strenuously devoted night and day to the anticipation of the whole immense range of possible conflicts, to the reaching of a decision in these conflicts, and to the determination of his own choice. There are innumerable factors to be observed, guarded against and distinguished. The finer the distinctions the surer will be the correct decision. This observation extends to the whole of life in all its manifold aspects. The Pharisee is not opinionated; special situations and emergencies receive special considerations; forbearance and generosity are not excluded by the gravity of the knowledge of good and evil; they are rather an expression of this gravity. And there is no rash presumption here, or arrogance or unverified self-esteem. The Pharisee is fully conscious of his own faults and of his duty of humility and thankfulness towards God. But, of course, there are differences, which for God’s sake must not be disregarded, between the sinner and the man who strives towards good, between the man who becomes a breaker of the law out of a situation of wickedness and the man who does so out of necessity. If anyone disregards these differences, if he fails to take every factor into account in each of the innumerable cases of conflict, he sins against the knowledge of good and evil.

These men with the incorruptibly impartial and distrustful vision cannot confront any man in any other way than by examining him with regard to his decisions in the conflicts of life. And so, even when they come face to face with Jesus, they cannot do otherwise than attempt to force Him, too, into conflicts and into decisions in order to see how He will conduct Himself in them. It is this that constitutes their temptation of Jesus. One need only read the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew, with the questions about the tribute money, the resurrection of the dead and the first and great commandment, and then the