Not surprised: Barth calls Bonhoeffer brilliant

As I make my way through portions of Barth's Church Dogmatics, it's been fun to see Barth refer to Bonhoeffer.  There were several references in my seminar reading for this week - selections from volume III, The Doctrine of Creation.  I'll set up the scene here for one of my favorite Bonhoeffer shout outs...

In Church Dogmatics III/4 Barth takes up the issue of ethics and identifies it as a task of the doctrine of creation.  Here, he describes how ethics cannot be detached from dogmatics.  He explains: "In books and lectures ethics can be treated independently, that is, in external separation from dogmatics, so long as it is presupposed that this separation is understood and treated as purely technical and therefore that dogmatics is not detached from its ethical content and direction and that the question of dogmatics remains paramount and decisive in ethics" (p. 3).

Basically, Barth is saying that how we think about ethical actions cannot be separated from what we think and believe about God.  I was reminded of Bonhoeffer here, and so was Barth.  Take a look at what Barth now says in the notes: "And the same attitude to the link with dogmatics is a commendable feature of the brilliant Ethik of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which unfortunately exists only in a fragmentary and provisional form" (because Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo while he was still working on the project).

That's right - the brilliant Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  And here's one reason why I gather Barth thinks so.

Barth: "The task of theological ethics is to understand the Word of God as the command of God" (p. 4).
Bonhoeffer: "Those who wish to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand - from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: "How can I be good?" and "How can I do something good?"  Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: what is the will of God?" (Ethics, 47).

Brilliant.  Ethics - for Barth and Bonhoeffer - does not and can not exist apart from the Word and will of God.  Now, certainly there is a distinction between the Word and will of God; but the point is that for both of these theologians the ethical question is ultimately a matter of theological orientation which finds its starting point in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.  Ethics is not a question of doing something good.  Ethics is obedience to the command of God.  What does that mean?  Well, more than I am going to get into now...  I recommend reading - you guessed it - Barth and Bonhoeffer.

I'm writing this quarter on Barth, Bonhoeffer, and revelation... but this ethics connection is tugging at me as well...  I guess I'll have to put it in the hopper for another paper.