A Thinking Reed

Bonhoeffer and the problem of dirty hands

Written by

Lee M.

in

An article from Books & Culture on Bonhoeffer and the just war vs. pacifism question. Everyone wants to claim Bonhoeffer – just warriors appeal to his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler; pacifists point to his writings, especially Discipleship.

I confess that I have a hard time with the view – sometimes brought up in connection with Bonhoeffer – that there might be occasions when one should act in a way that incurs guilt. That is, one must sometimes get one’s hands dirty to do right. (This is sometimes taken to be the meaning of Luther’s advice to “Sin boldly.”)

But my question is this – if one is doing what is objectively right, then in what sense is one incurring guilt? (“getting one’s hands dirty”?) In other words, if assassinating Hitler would have been the right thing to do, then B. didn’t sin by participating in the plot.

I can think of two possible interpretations of the “dirty hands” view that might be consistent. First, it might mean that since it’s often hard to know what the right thing to do is in certain situations, then we risk doing the wrong thing if we act on incomplete knowledge.

Another possible interpretation is that in choosing a certain course of action we will be required to do something immoral in the course of carrying out that course of action. For instance, getting involved Abwehr plot, even if morally laudable in itself, may have required B. to do other things – lie, steal, etc. – that were immoral.

Maybe this makes me a bad Lutheran, but I guess what I reject is that there are situations where it is necessary to sin. If we are forced to act based on incomplete knowledge, then I don’t see how we sin by choosing the best we are able. And if a certain course of action requires choosing certain immoral means, then we shouldn’t choose that course of action. Or, alternately, it may be that some things – e.g. lying, stealing, even killing – are not wrong under some circumstances.

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7 responses to “Bonhoeffer and the problem of dirty hands”

  1. Eric Lee

    I have a feeling the “just war” peep’s assertion about Bonhoeffer is ambiguous at best. Hauerwas, who has definitely studied Bonhoeffer, had this to say in that one interview on BeliefNet:

    Yet Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and killed because he was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler. Does this mean he came to see violence as acceptable, if only to kill one man?

    We don’t know. He had contacted George Bell, bishop of Chichester, hoping to negotiate with British officials. His group planned to offer to organize a coup against Hitler if the British would agree to a conditional surrender. I believe they got as far as Anthony Eden, who insisted on unconditional surrender. That changed the course of the plot, but it’s not certain what Bonhoeffer’s role was.

    He definitely worked for the Abwehr, the German intelligence service of the German navy, after he lost his church position, as a way of avoiding the draft, which would have meant taking the oath to Hitler. The head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, and other officers were plotting to assassinate Hitler. But there are too few documents to be certain what Bonhoeffer’s thinking about violence was at the time. What is certain is that he’d consider killing Hitler a sin.

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  2. Chris T.

    I guess I don’t find it too hard to imagine that in a given situation, every possible response will be a flawed one. When a poor person is faced both with the problems of world hunger and difficulty making ends meet, can we really say it’s laudible or moral to turn their back on either the hungry in their community to pay for their children’s education? On the other hand, can we suggest that they should ignore the needs of their own family to help others in need? Neither response seems to be really good, though one may be preferable to the other.

    I’ve written about this dilemma a great deal on my blog. I refuse to call the killing of another human being a good thing. If a cop kills a murderer or rapist to prevent them from committing a violent crime, the cop may have done the best possible thing in the situation, but she or he has nonetheless also sinned—we don’t get to call murder objectively good.

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  3. chip frontz

    Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the source that says what DB’s thoughts were about participating in the Abwehr plot. I’d assume it’s in Bethge, but I have not read Bethge.

    I do know that for DB theologically, he was a solid Lutheran (even if he was a pacifist, LOL) in the sense that he regarded justification solely as gift and never as achievement. Trying to argue that killing Hitler was not a sin or was somehow “justified” by the situation would therefore have been counter to his entire program theologically. He would have been involved in “going behind the word of God” in order to justify himself, a sure recipe for the demonic in his book.

    Does this mean he shouldn’t have done it, if he knew it was a sin? My guess is he also thought it would have been just as much an act of self-justification not to act, and to claim that because of his own concerns about his salvation, he could not act to help his neighbors. Sort of like, maybe, the Samaritan who, “having compassion,” risks ritual uncleanliness in order to help a dying man by the roadside. Maybe.

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  4. Lee

    As I understand Luther (which is to say, not very well – so someone please correct me if I’m wrong) all our acts, even our objectively good ones (perhaps especially our objectively good ones!) are tainted with sin because at least part of us thinks that we are justifying ourselves in God’s sight by doing them.

    Nevertheless, I think one still has to distinguish between my (at least partly) sinful motives for doing x and x considered simply in itself as an act. In that sense, I would say that the act of, say, shooting the rapist is not objectively sinful, even if the policeman’s motives might have sinful elements (rage, hatred, desire to prove himself, etc.).

    And this is not to say that killing someone, even in legitimate self-defense, is a good thing considered in itself. Other things being equal, it’s better not to have to kill someone. But I’m not convinced that it’s sinful. Basically this is because I can’t make sense of the notion that a certain act can be both morally obligatory and sinful – that seems like a contradiction to me.

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  5. Chris T.

    I don’t like the idea of simply focusing on motives—that kind of outlook sees evil as primarily positive, an idea Mary Midgley is pretty effective at destroying in Wickedness, which I just blogged about.

    I don’t mean to abandon a kid in Africa to hunger and poverty when I spend $30 on a meal at Applebee’s instead of buying the ingredients at the grocery store for $5 and making something myself. But isn’t that excess still sinful? Even if I still go to Applebee’s now and again, I’m really wary of a worldview that calls that excess justified simply because I don’t mean to hurt anyone by it. Part of everything being tainted by sin is recognizing that even things we might justify in human terms (like a cop shooting a rapist or murderer) is objectively sinful. God doesn’t look on such acts with pleasure, even if they are relatively less evil than doing nothing.

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  6. Lee

    Chris, I agree with you and don’t want to devolve into too much semantic hair-splitting (though some is ok!). I do think there is a certain sense in which we are enmeshed in sin in such a way that it is virtually unavoidable – we all participate in systems (economic, political, etc.) that are morally tainted.

    Still, I want to distinguish between that kind of general “collective” guilt (though I find that term somewhat misleading) and the “personal” guilt that attaches to intentional choices of wrong actions. I don’t think the police officer (to stay with the example) incurs personal guilt when he does what is, ex hypothesi, the right thing to do all things considered.

    Also, we might want to distinguish between doing wrong and not doing as much good as we could. Most of us, it seems safe to say, could be doing more good than we presently are. Instead of eating at Applebee’s I could be giving that money to a third-world charity. Instead of reading blogs I could be working in a soup kitchen!

    So, are we obliged to maximize the amount of goodness we do? If Peter Singer is right all of us should give away to starving thrid-worlders all the money we have beyond what we need for subsistence. And yet, that seems wrong – it does seem like it’s okay to enjoy certain luxuries even when others are in need (think of the story of Jesus and the woman who anointed him with expensive perfume – do we want to embrace the ethics of Judas??). Did Christ sin in allowing such a “wasteful” use of resources? This indicates to me we need an ethic that goes beyond mere utilitarianism.

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  7. Chris T.

    Still, I want to distinguish between that kind of general “collective” guilt (though I find that term somewhat misleading) and the “personal” guilt that attaches to intentional choices of wrong actions. I don’t think the police officer (to stay with the example) incurs personal guilt when he does what is, ex hypothesi, the right thing to do all things considered.

    Okay, in that case I think we more or less agree. I think that even in our “right thing to do, all things considered” actions we need to maintain a sense of our own participation in collective guilt for the fallen state of the world. But should the police officer who shoots to defend an innocent have to suffer individual guilt for doing the best thing she or he could? You’re right, no, they shouldn’t.

    I don’t think that’s the status quo, though. I don’t think folks in less dramatic situations who are doing a more-or-less good thing like giving $50 to Oxfam and then going out to Applebee’s instead of giving $80 to Oxfam are as aware as they should be of their participation in the fallen nature of the world. We shouldn’t have the ethic of Judas, but I also don’t think Jesus was unaware of the other things at stake in that story. (Incidentally, stories like that are what lead me to hold a low Christology. But that’s a topic for another day. 😉

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