78 which are given by God, for the purpose of Christ.

Here his characteristic notion of the divine mandates shoule be remembered. Government is not a creator but a maintainer of God's creation. For example, marriage and labour have their origin in God, and government must acknowledge and preserve them.

The connection between Church and government is defined in this way. Government is instituted to serve Christ, Christ is the Lord of government and at the same time the Lord of the Church. Government serves Christ, also indirectly the Church, in the exercise of its commission to secure an outward justice by the

government is ultimately linked with the Church. Government does not stand as a second authority side by side with the authority of Christ, but its own authority is only a form of the authority of Christ. As a citizen the Christian does not cease to be a Christian, but he serves Christ and obeys Christ. On the other hand, the Church has the task of summoning the whole world to submit to the dominion of Jesus Christ. Since she knows that it is in obedience to Jesus Christ that the commission of government is pro­ perly executed, she testifies to government as to their common Master.

Then the problem has to be considered, whether government makes a religious decision, or whether its task lies in religious neutrality. The office of

government must remain independent, of the religious decision, but it pertains to the responsibility of it to support the practice of religion.

Government will fulfil its obligation under the first commandment by being government in the rightful manner and by discharging its govern­ mental responsibility also with respect to the Church. But it does not possess the office of confessing and preaching faith in Jesus Christ.

(79)

The Church has political responsibility. He distinguishes between the responsibility of the 79) Ethics, p. 313

spiritual office and the responsibility of each Christian, The Church has an office of guardianship to name sin as sin and warn people against sin. As far as a political responsibility of. the individual Christian is concerned, the author insists that because of his faith and his charity he is responsible for his own calling and for the sphere of his own personal life. Every individual must fulfill his office and mission in the polis and

through it, in the true sense, he serves government with „ his responsibility.

The problem of State and Church was, needless to say, a very urgent one for himself. He pursued the conspiracy against Naziism, and lived in the midst of this question. Some people criticize Bonhoeffer on the grounds that he overleapt the Christian limitation by engaging in a political resistance movement. However, it was his conviction that the individual Christian can­ not be made responsible for the action of government, and he must not make himself responsible for it, but that by responding to his own calling and fulfilling his responsibility in faith he can have.an effect in the whole of the community.

Thus he concludes the discussion.

Government and Church are connected in such various ways that their relationship cannot be regulated in accordance with any single general principle. ... No constitutional form can as such

remoteness of government and Church. Government and Church are bound by the same Lord and are bound together. , In their task government and Church are separate, but government and Church have the same field of action, man. No single one of these relationships must be isolated so as to provide the basis for a particular con­ stitutional form (for example in the sequence state church, free church, national church); the true aim is to provide room within every given form for the relationship which is, in fact, instituted by God and to entrust the further development to the Lord of both gov-‘ ernment and Church. (80)

V. MANDATES

The concepts of mandates is one of the unique and important thoughts in the Ethics. As is well known Bonhoeffer deals with the idea of the mandates twice. In chapter five "Christ, Reality and Good", he begins with the christological unity of reality. In chapter seven "The 'ethical' and the 'Christian' as a Theme", he starts with an inquiry into the factors that make ethical language possible and the translation of the law into concrete action.

It is correct to understand this conception in the line of his,searching for a better worldliness, Bonhoeffer sought to permeate the whole understanding of the

structure of life in the world with the same dynamic that 80) Ethics, p. 315

informed his refusal to think in terms of two spheres. Thus he developed the concept of mandates,

The world is created through Christ and unto Christ whether it knows it or not. The world's relation to

Christ takes concrete form in a number of divine mandates in which certain basic relationships and spheres of life are shaped and defined.

The world is relative to Christ, no matter whether it knows it or not. This relativeness of the world to Christ assumes concrete form in certain mandates of God in the world. The Scriptures name four such mandates: labour, marriage, government and the Church. We speak of divine mandates rather than of divine orders because the word mandate refers more clearly to a divinely imposed task rather than to a deter­ mination of being. (81)

In the section entitled "The Concept of the Mandate", Bonhoeffer examines the traditional concepts such as

"institution", "estate", and "office". He, however, decides to drop these words because of the historical misconceptions associated with them. He frankly says,

"for lack of a better word, therefore, we will for the time being retain the term 'mandate', but it is still 81) Ethics, p. 179. In the Ethics, p. 252, he sub­ stitutes ^culture' for 'labour' . In Letters and Papers from Prison (pp.193ff.), he reflects of how the 'area o freedom (art, education, friendship, play):' is to be brought within the system of the four mandates. He attempts to bring this sphere of reality not under the mandate of 'labour', but under the mandate of 'Church', or alternatively to establish the concept of a fifth mandate. However, Bonhoeffer never speaks of five

our purpose, by dint of. clarifying the concept itself, to help to renew and restore the old notion of the

8 2

institution, the estate and the office." Here he is on very traditional ground, and his move beyond the limits of his heritage is subtle. However it must be noticed that by the choice of the term "mandate" instead of "order" he means to indicate their character as divine institutions rather than self-determined entities.

By the term 'mandate* we understand the con­ crete divine commission which has its foundation in the revelation of Christ and which is evidenced by Scripture; it is the legitimation and warrant for the execution of a definite divine commandment, the conferment of divine authority on an earthly agent. The terra 'mandate' must also be taken to imply the claiming, the seizure and the formation of a definite earthly domain by the divine com­ mandment. The bearer of the mandate acts as a deputy in the place of Him who assigns him his commission. (83)

Therefore the mandates are not norms, but rather spheres of responsibility. In them the formation of Christ is to take place in the sphere of everyday. The mandates are not simply something like ordinances for

life, built into creation as such. They have a genuine relation to the event of salvation. In them the way is to be prepared for men to come to Christ, and for Christ to come to men. The mandates, thus, are aspects of the 82) Ethics, p. 254.

mission of Christians to the world and for this reason viewpoints for a concrete ethic from the perspective of

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the Church of Jesus Christ in this world. The basic character of the doctrine of the mandates is Christo- centric ,

It is God’s will that there shall be labour, marriage, government and church in the world; and it is His will that all these, each in its own way, shall be through Christ, directed towards Christ, and in Christ. (8 5)

When Bonhoeffer wrote these sentences, the time of the Third Reich, there was the controversy over the ideological glorification of race and nationality. In that controversy the principle of national law was invoked to justify and support the claims of the so- called German Christian. National law, for them, was the most important of all the institutions of creation. Against this perversion of the doctrine of the insti­ tutions, he uses the concept of the mandates and presags towards the God who lives and commands and who is revealed solely in the dominion of Christ. He insists that the divine mandates are introduced into the world from above as orders of Christ’s reality, that is to say, of the reality of the love of God for the world and men which is revealed in Jesus Christ.

It is also clear that with this doctrine of mandates 84) H. Ott: Reality and Faith, the Theological Legacy of Dietrich Bdnhdeffer,

he seeks to reformulate the Lutheran doctrine of the three estates, oeconomicus, politicus, and hierarchicus.

The three ’primary institutions' of social life in Christendom, viz., marriage, the state and the church, or alternatively family and economics, state and church, are founded by God. Even man can see how God has so ordered them that they correspond to nature. For they were created together with man.

They provide the sphere where man may serve God in the world. They are what Luther called ’the three primary powers to help us in resisting the devil.’ ... The three institutions to which we have reference are the Church, the state, and the economy. Two of them, it will be noted, are secular powers, viz., the state and the economy. The

’secular state’ in the hierarchical structure of the corpus christianum (in Catholic doctrine) is not left to itself on principle or made subject to the

'clerical estate’ as a mere object of education.

On the contrary, their whole life is directly subject to the word of God. (8 6)

Bonhoeffer endeavours to refurbish such a teaching. The doctrine of the mandates works better than any the­ ology of orders.

The mandates are dependent solely on the command­ ment of God, and these four mandates are in conjunction,

in combination, and in opposition with one another. Each mandate is bounded on two sides; by the eschato- logical reign of Christ, so far as its existence and function is concerned, and by the other mandates in

regard to its limits. No single one of them is sufficient in itself or can claim to replace all the others.

86) E. Wolf: Peregrinatio, 1954, pp. 232ff. Quoted by J . Moltmann; Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, p. 74.

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