Introduction
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany to Karl and Paula von Hase Bonhoeffer. He had a twin sister Sabine. Six years later, the Bonhoeffer family moved to Berlin where Karl assumed teaching responsibilities in neurology and psychiatry at Friedrich Wilhelm University. These two factors played a major influence on Dietrich. For his urban experiences (as contrasted say to Tillich) and his family's Enlightenment understandings would shape and focus his later theological developments. He was executed by hanging on 9 April 1945, by direct order of Heinrich Himmler.
Since treatments of Bonhoeffer's life and theology are inevitably intertwined, details of his life are readily available. For the purposes of this presentation, I will largely remain silent concerning biographical details, nonetheless operating under the assumption that these do play important roles in his theology. The focus, then, will be on his theology.
Which brings to bear another matter. In the words of John de Grouchy (1988:41): "Bonhoeffer did not leave us a carefully worked out systematic theology, though a careful reading of his writings will reveal the coherence of this thought. Bonhoeffer's legacy is rather that of seminal ideas which arose out of his engagement with the realities of his historical context." This means that to a certain degree a strict adherence to a systematic gathering of his theological thought may be rather forced. Nonetheless, the broad strokes of his "system" are fairly clear. So while my arrangement is somewhat provisional, it is at least not initially invalid.
As with Barth, whom he admired but with whom he departed theologically (calling Barth's theology a "revelational positivism"), his theology is dialectical in movement. This is most clearly seen in his Christ the Center, with Christ seen through the lenses of "as" and "in." Thus while a concentration will be made on the later development of his thought, I will borrow the structure of Christ the Center for our discussion.
I. Christ as and in the Church
"Henceforward one can speak neither of God nor of the world without speaking of Jesus Christ" (Bonhoeffer Ethics 1955:194). And to begin speaking of Christ we start with the Church for the "Church is the place where Jesus is known and loved" (Hoedern 1968:226). In fact, "Bonhoeffer did not assume that christology occupied such a central place in his theology. He frequently chose to begin with ecclesiology, only later to reshape things christologically and to give them meaning on account of that" (Feil 1985:60). Thus we begin our discussion of Christ as the Church and in the Church.
For Bonhoeffer, Christ is the Church by virtue of his pro me being, his being "for me." He is in the Church as revelation (Word). And the sacrament is the Church as the Body of Christ (cf. Bonhoeffer Christ the Center 1978:58-59).
In Christ's pro me being, he is found as the center of human existence: "Christ as the centre means that he is the fulfillment of the law. So he is in turn the boundary and judgement of man, but also the beginning of his new existence, its centre. Christ as the centre of human existence means that he is the judgement and justification of man" (Ibid. 61). He is then, Christ for us, mediator in our midst. However, while the "for us" in The Cost of Discipleship was primarily oriented toward the Church (and his viewpoint of the world was more critical), in the prison letters "'being for us' became 'being for others' and only through that dimension could there be a true overcoming of the cor curvum in se. That dimension brought with it a turning toward the world . . ." (Feil 1985:96).
This turning toward the world would eventually, in Bonhoeffer's thinking, necessitate a "religionless Christianity" (see below). In this kind of Christianity, Christ is no longer a semi-possession of religion, rather he is the Lord of the world. And as such, the world is no longer left on its own but God is transcendent in its very midst. So the Church is no longer ghettoized, but open to this world, indeed, a church "for others" (Ibid. 177).
This Christ as and in the Church would anchor the Church in the very "centre of the world, not in a spirit of triumphalism, but in openness to secular people and a willingness to engage with them in the struggles and issues which shape life in society" (de Gruchy 1988:39).
II. Christ as and in the Sacrament
Christ is not only the center of human existence as the Church (for us) and in the Church (for others), but he is the center between God and nature as and in the sacrament.
Bonhoeffer begins his discussion (Christ 1978:52-58) by tying proclamation and sacrament and nature in one bundle. Christ is the Word by and through the sacramental preaching of the gospel, he is God's spoken Word. But he is the sacrament that proclaims, embodied, not mere representation. He is in the sacrament and for-us-the-sacrament, not God becoming man, but the humiliation of the God-man. And he is the new creation. "[N]ature finds in Christ as its centre, not reconciliation, but redemption. . . . A sign of this is given in the sacraments, where elements of the old creation are become elements of the new. . . . In the sacrament, Christ is the mediator between nature and God and stands for all creation before God" (Ibid. 65).
As Bonhoeffer's thought developed in prison, Christ as and in the sacrament became, in my opinion, what Bonhoeffer was to call the "secret discipline." Christ as and in the Church led to an openness to the world. However openness "to the world alone, would . . . lead to a loss of Christian identity and substance, and 'righteous action' alone could not be sustained for long, unless the church also practiced a disciplina arcanum . . ." (de Gruchy 1988:40). It seems that Bonhoeffer advocated this on two grounds, to protect the mysteries of the faith from profanation as well as to protect the world from a cheap gospel (or cheap grace) (cf. Letters 1972:281, 286). So the secret discipline was both nourishment and restriction: something that would feed them privately apart from the world, but also a restraint of speech and proclamation until the Word could be perceived in its meaning for us today (cf. Fant 1991:77).
But it should be kept in mind, that the secret discipline was not intended to be another division of sacred and secular. The sacrament is Christ-for-us, mediator of nature, the embodied Word. And as such there are no spheres of life that do not belong to Christ. Thus the place for the Church is where Christ is as Church, the center of human existence and the center between nature and God.
III. Christ as and in the Word
Christ is truth, the Word, that is, the Logos of God. As the Logos of God he remains separate from the logos of man. Only in this separation can he be the address of forgiveness and command. But Christ as the Word means also the person of Christ as the Son of God. The Son of God who addresses us in forgiveness and command, the Word of the Church in proclamation (Christ 1978:49-52).
We find Christ as and in the Word as the center of history.
And so we come to the most memorable of Bonhoeffer's terminology: religionless Christianity, world come of age, worldly faith. Terms which need careful description.
For Bonhoeffer, the term "world come of age," "borrowed form Kant, was not a moral but a historical judgment. He did not mean that the world had become better, wiser, or more just. . . . he was describing the logical consequences of the eighteenth century Enlightenment" (de Gruchy 1988:38). In Bonhoeffer's understanding, the world had come of age by owning up to a world without God. Religion tried to hold onto God, but only found him in the gaps, on the fringes of human existence. Bonhoeffer rightly recognized that the world come of age rejected such a religion, for it no longer needed God.
But God was, for Bonhoeffer, not a God of the gaps, but Christ the center: the God who suffered at the hands of the world in its midst. So in rejecting a God of the gaps, Bonhoeffer came to understand the world as "the sphere of concrete responsibility which is given us in and through Jesus Christ" (Ethics 1955:233).
As such it calls for a different kind of Christianity. Religion left God at the gaps. So a religionless Christianity (or a non-religious interpretation) was called for, one that proclaimed Christ the center as and in the Word.
And this calls for a worldly faith. Women and men, for whom Christ stands at the center "may and must live worldly lives now: Christian belief in the world come of age is 'participation in the suffering of God in the secular life' (LPP, 361). Belief is certainly not the seeking of one's own personal salvation (LPP, 361)" (Feil 1985:188). Or in Bonhoeffer's own words: "I discovered and am still discovering up to this present moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe" (cited in Hoedern 1968:229).
But this kind of worldly faith, the proclamation of Christ as and in the Word opens up new concerns. As Fant indicates, "Implicit in all that Bonhoeffer said concerning proclamation in the world come of age is the question of language" (1991:81). If Bonhoeffer was serious about a religionless Christianity, then he was equally serious about the concrete quality of the Christian message.
But when we speak of the problem of language, we are not speaking merely of vocabulary. "The key question for Bonhoeffer was never that of knowing how to say what we know but of knowing what to say . . . not how to present Christ to secular men and women, but 'Who is Christ of us today?'" (Fant 1991:85).
Bonhoeffer of course never had the opportunity to more fully develop this aspect of his thinking.
Conclusion
The only substantive criticism I could find of Bonhoeffer is his stress on immanence. His does not seem to be a transcendent picture of an in-breaking God, as does Barth's.
However, while I share somewhat that concern—for example, I am not certain how much of a connection Bonhoeffer sought to preserve between the so-called Jesus of history and the Christ of the Church—I think too much emphasis on it is unwarranted. It seems clear that Bonhoeffer's immanence can be seen—as this class has discussed—as near transcendence.
Likewise, Bonhoeffer's understanding of the world come of age, is incredibly relevant in postmodern society. Particularly our own. I am mindful, for example, of Douglas Couplands, Life after God, a collection of short stories describing gen x, the first religionless generation, and their wrestling with God.
Therefore, I recommend Bonhoeffer and his theology as seedbed for postmodern theology and faith.
Bohoeffer, Dietrich. Christ the Center. Tr. by Edwin H. Robertson. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.
________. Ethics. Tr. by Neville Horton Smith. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1955.
________. Letters and Paper from Prison. Tr. by Reginald Fuller, Frank Clark, et al. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972.
________. Worldly Preaching. Tr. by Clyde E. Fant. New York: Crossroad, 1991.
De Gruchy, John. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ. San Francisco: Collins, 1988.
Feil, Ernst. The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Tr. by Martin Rumscheidt. Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1985.
Hoedern, William. A Layman's Guide to Protestant Theology. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968.
© 1995 Clifton D. Healy
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