“Christianity is Basically Amoral”

“Christianity is Basically Amoral.”

Not immoral.

Amoral.

As Robert Jenson observes about the Decalogue, Israel’s God is unique among the barren deities in that he creates with a moral will. Even the creation of the world occurs through command and obedience, “And God said, “Let there be light. And there was light.”

Jenson writes:

“God’s work on creatures is not random but morally purposeful. He creates and redeems us to be this and not that: faithful rather than questing, pious rather than neglectful, communal rather than autonomously individual, chaste rather than liberated, helpful to the fabric of community rather than harmful to it, mutually pleasured rather than covetous.”

By contrast, Marduk butchers Tiamat and calls the carcass a world. Zeus is a force among forces but no more righteous than the sea he cannot rule. But the LORD of the scriptures creates a world ordered to the good, and he stays determined towards that telos across a history of promises, infidelities, and idolatries. A pagan in first century Rome did not enter a site of imperial sacrifice expecting to be summoned to a particular way of life. The Father of Jesus Christ, however, addresses us with commandments. He does indeed tell us “You are to be this rather than that.” In fact, the Son’s relationship with the Father in their Spirit is nothing less than one of obedience. God the Son is faithful to God the Father’s will. The God of the Bible distinguishes himself from pagan deity exactly by his moral intent for his creatures, which makes it surpassingly strange that this same God is simultaneously confessed by the least ethically structured religion in the world.

The God of the Bible distinguishes himself from pagan deity exactly by his moral intent for his creatures, which makes it surpassingly strange that this same God is simultaneously confessed by the least ethically structured religion in the world.

Of course, the Triune God is not indifferent to righteousness. Rather than shrug at injustice, blithely above the history he makes with us, the LORD calls forth prophets from among the people. Still, the same God who uniquely creates with a moral will for his creatures likewise does not deal with them on the basis of their morality. It is every bit as paradoxical as the God who is human, Jesus Christ. In that same Jesus, the only LORD with a moral will for his creatures asks the least of our ethics.

Thus does Dietrich Bonhoeffer argue in his 1928 lecture, “The Essence of Christianity.” Delivered while he served a congregation of expatriates and diplomats in Barcelona, Bonhoeffer echoed Karl Barth’s commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in its rejection of religion as nothing other than the enemy of the gospel.

“Christianity,” Bonhoeffer insisted to his congregation, “is basically amoral and irreligious.” While this claims sounds like something Nietzsche might have said about Christianity, Bonhoeffer meant it as praise. Bonhoeffer’s title was not chosen innocently. Earlier, his own teacher in Berlin, Adolf von Harnack, had made his name arguing that the essence of Christianity essentially boiled down to “the fatherhood of God and the infinite worth of the human soul.” Ludwig Feuerbach, meanwhile, had used nearly the same title to argue there was no essence at all to Christianity; Christianity merely reflected humanity’s wishes and values projected onto a construct called God.

Bonhoeffer took a similar-sounding title for his lecture in order to deliver the negation of their arguments. Christianity is not reducible to ethics, humanism, mysticism, or spirituality because Christianity is not religion. Or rather, taken as a religion, Bonhoeffer says, Christianity is no different— and no better— than any other religion.

True Christianity, Bonhoeffer argues in “The Essence of Christianity,” is not religion; in that, Christianity is not a morality. In Christ, God does not come to make bad people good, or to improve on the ethical wisdom already on offer. After all, Bonhoeffer notes, Jesus’ own teaching held scarcely a commandment the rabbis had not already given.