To all who continue to read this ragged thread, may God's peace be with you.
"Justification by grace and faith alone remains in every aspect the final word and for this reason, when we speak of the things before the last, we must not speak of them as having any value on their own, but we must bring to light their relation to the ultimate. It is for the sake of the ultimate that we must now speak of the penultimate. This must now be made clearly intelligible. " 125 Ethics by D. Bonhoeffer
"Two extreme solutions can be given to the problem of relation of the penultimate with the ultimate in Christian life. It may be solved 'radically' or by means of a comprimise; and it is to be noted at once the comprimise solution, too, is an extreme solution. The radical solution sees only the ultimate and in it only the complete breaking off of the penultimate. Ultimate and penultimate are here mutually exclusive contraries. Christ is the destoyer and enemy of everything penultimate, and everything penultimate is enmity towards Christ. Christ is the sign that the world is ripe for burning. There are no distictions. Everything must go to judgement. There are only two categories : for Christ, and against Him. 'He that is not with me is against me.' (Matt. 12:30). Everything penultimate in human behaviour is sin and denial. In the face of the approaching end there is for the christian only the last word and his last conduct. What becomes of the world through this is no longer of any consequence. The Christian bears no responsibility for it, and the world must in any case perish. No matter if the whole order of the world break down under the impact of the word of Christ, there must be no holding back. The last word of God, which is a word of mercy, here becomes the icy hardness of the law, which despises and breaks down all resistance.
The other solution is the comprimise. Here the last word is on principle set apart from all preceding words. The penultimate retains its right on its own account, and is not threatened or imperilled by the ultimate. The world still stands; the end in not yet here; there are still penultimate things which must be done, in fulfillment of the responsibility for this world which God has created. Account must still be taken of men as they are (cf. Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor). The ultimate remains totally on the far side of the everyday; it is thus, in fact, an eternal justification for things as they are; it is the metaphysical purification from the accuation which weighs upon everything that is. The free world of mercy now becomes the law of mercy, which rules over everything penultimate, justifying it and certifying its worth.
The two solutions are equally extreme and both alike contain elements both of truth and of untruth. They are extreme because they place the penultimate and the ultimate in a relation of mutual exclusiveness. In the one case the penultimate is destroyed by the ultimate; and in the other case the ultimate is excluded from the domain of the penultimate. In the one case the ultimate does not admit the penultimate; and the penultimate does not admit the ultimate. In both cases thoughts which are in themselves equally right and necessary are in an inadmissable manner made absolute. The radical solution has as its point of departure the end of all things, God the Judge and Redeemer; the comprimise solution bases itself upon the Creator and Preserver. On the one side it is the end that is regarded as absolute, and on the other side it is things as they are. Thus creation and redemption, time and eternity confront one another in a conflict which cannot be resolved; the unity of God Himself is sundered, and faith in God is broken apart. the answer to the exponents of the radical solution must also be that Christ does not make compromises. Christian life, therefore, is a matter neither of radicalism nor of compromise. There is not a point in debating the relative ernestness of these two conceptions; for there is ernestness only in Jesus Christ, and His earnestness reveals that neither of these soltuions is earnest.
There is earnestness neither in the idea of a pure Christianity in itself nor in the idea of man as he is in himself; there is earnestness only in the reality of God and the reality of man which became one in Jesus Christ. What is earnest and serious is not some kind of Christianity, but it is Jesus Christ Himself.
And in Jesus Christ there is neither radicalism nor compromise but there is the reality of God and men. There is no Christianity in itself, for this would destroy the world; there is no man in himself, for he would exclude God. Both of these are merely ideas; only the God-Man Jesus Christ is real, and only through Him will the world be preserved until it is ripe for its end.
Radicalism always springs from a conscious or unconscious hatred of what is established. Christian radicalism, no matter whether it consists in withdrawing from the world or in improving the world, arises from hatred of creation. The radical cannot forgive God His creation. He has fallen out with the created world, the Ivan Karamazov, who at the same time makes the figure of the radical Jesus in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor. When evil becomes powerful in the world, it infects the Christian, too, with the poison of radicalism.
It is Christ's gift to the Christian that he should be reconciled with the world as it is, but now this reconciliation is accounted a betrayal and denial of Christ. it is replaced by bitterness, suspicion, and contempt for men and the world. In the place of the love that believes all, bears all and hopes all, in the place of the love which loves the world in its very wickedness with the love of God (John 3:16), there is now the pharisaical denial of love to evil, and the restriction of love to the closed circle of the devout. Instead of the open Church of Jesus Christ, which serves the world till the end, there is now some allegedly primitive Christian ideal of a Church, which in its turn confuses the reality of the living Jesus Christ with the realization of a Christian idea. Thus a world which has become evil succeeds in making the Christians become evil too. it is the same germ that disintegrates the world and that make the Christians become radical.
In both cases it is hatred towards the world, no matter whether the haters are the ungodly or the godly. On both side it is a refusal of faith in the creation. But devils are not cast out through Beelzebub.
Compromise always springs from hatred of the ultimate. The Christian spirit of compromise arises from the hatred of the justification of the sinner by grace alone. The world and life within it have to be protected against this encroachment on their territory. The world must be dealt with solely by means which are of the world. The ultimate has no voice in determining the form of life in the world. Even the raising of the question of the ultimate, even the endeavour to give effect to God's word in its authority for life in the world, is now accounted radicalism and apathy or antipathy toward the established orders of the world and towards the men who are subject to these orders. That freedom from the world which Christ has given to the Christians as well as the renunciation of the world (1 John 2:7), is now denounced as opposition to creation, as unnatural estrangement from the world and from men, and even as hostility towards them. In their place adaptability, even to the point of resignedness, and mere worldly-wise prudence and discretion are passed off as genuine openness to the world and as genuine Christian charity.
Radicalism hates time, and compromise hates eternity.
Radicalism hates patience and compromise hates decision.
Radicalism hates wisdom and compromise hates simplicity.
Radicalism hates moderation and measure, and compromise hate the immeasurable.
Radicalism hates the real, and compromise hates the word.
To contrast the two attitudes in this way is to make it sufficiently clear that both alike are opposed to Christ.
For in Jesus Christ those things which are here ranged in mutual hostility are one.
The question of the Christian life will not, therefore, be decided and answered either by radicalism or by compromise, but only reference to Jesus Christ Himself. In Him alone lies the solution for the problem of the relation between the ultimate and the penultimate.
In Jesus Christ we have in the incarnate, crucified, and risen God. In the incarnation we learn of the love of God for His creation; in the crucifixion we learn of the love of the judgement of God upon all flesh; and in the resurrection we learn of god's will for a new world. There could be no greater error than to tear these three elements apart; for each of them comprises the whole. It is quite wrong to establish a separate theology of the incarnation, a theology of the cross, or a theology of the resurrection, each in opposition to the others, by a misconceived absolutization of one these part; it is equally wrong to apply the same procedure to a consideration of the Christian life. A Christian ethic constructed solely on the basis of the incarnation would lead directly to the compromise solution. An ethic which was based solely on the cross or resurrection of Jesus would fall victim to radicalism and enthusiasm. Only in the unity is the conflict resolved."127-131 Ethics by D. Bonhoeffer
PJ
