Week 8: Ethics and the Double Life

1.Bonhoeffer's *Ethics* — left unfinished at his arrest — opens with the provocative claim that the knowledge of good and evil was itself the serpent's gift and humanity's original fall. True Christian ethics, Bonhoeffer argues, begins not with asking 'What is good?' but with asking 'What is the will of God?' What is the difference between these two questions, and why does the distinction matter so much?

2.Metaxas describes Bonhoeffer's concept of the 'mandates' — the God-given structures of family, church, state, and work through which God governs the world and humans fulfill their responsibilities. How did this framework help Bonhoeffer think about the Nazi state's overreach — its attempt to absorb or abolish the other mandates — and why was that overreach so theologically intolerable?

3.Bonhoeffer continued writing *Ethics* at the homes of family friends — particularly at the Kleist-Retzow estate — while simultaneously carrying out secret missions for the Abwehr. Metaxas portrays this as a kind of profound personal integrity: the man writing theology about responsible action was living responsible action at the same time, not from a distance. What is the relationship between writing or teaching about faith and actually practicing it?