Frequently debated, infrequently resolved, but crucial to the study of international relations is the issue of the relative influence of personal factors and role factors in decision-making. Are national decision-makers so constrained by their roles that they have little individual freedom? Or, conversely, are their policies shaped in major ways by their own individual preferences
The Sermon on the Mount guided Bonhoeffer's ethics in his decisive early opposition to Hitler. His interpretation was guided by a hermeneutic of renunciation. But the Sermon is strangely missing in his Ethics. The context had shifted; he needed to confront a massive concentration of power — crucial in our context as well. We need to see that the structure of the Sermon is not dyadic antitheses of renunciation, but triadic transforming initiatives of confrontation — significantly more helpful in confronting power, and in recovering its original meaning. We need to heal the historic split between the Sermon and Christian ethics.
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