Bonhoeffer's penetrating mind reached deeply into a variety of ethical topics. The essays and notes which comprise Ethics were gathered and published posthumously.Despite the lack of unified structure or flow to the book, the work is rich. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazi regime on April 9, 1945, a mere two weeks before the allies liberated the Flossenbürg concentration camp which held him. ' (14).Unfortunately, he was unable to finish. 'Sometimes I think I really have my life more or less behind me now and that all that would remain for me to do would be to finish my Ethics. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world. On the contrary, God’s commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God’s having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation.

The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. From one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, Ethics is the seminal reinterpretation of the role of Christianity in the modern, secularized world.

Bonhoeffer ethics