Essential Community, Part 1Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the most interesting theologians of the twentieth century, not least because of his involvement in the the German resistance movement. What is perhaps most compelling about his theology is that he had the opportunity to not only write about his insights but actually put them into practice in the midst of Nazi fanaticism. Any reader can have confidence that his works on discipleship, community, and ethics resulted in the careful study of Scripture and then practiced as a part of Bonhoeffer’s living faith. But this living faith was not practiced in isolation. By the very fact that we are reconciled to God through the mediation of Jesus Christ means we are also drawn into the community of the cross. Our faith is lived not only as an individual but also in a community of other believers. Together we are the one body of Christ. This insistence on the essential nature of community means that it has far-reaching implications that should influence Christian approaches to church, missions, and the society around us. Bonhoeffer in Historical Context Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born into and developed within an extremely volatile era. World War I commenced when he was just eight years old and his older brother Walter died fighting on the front. Following hard on the heals of Germany’s defeat was the Treaty of Versailles which placed the burden of the war on Germany’s shoulders and forced the country into a recession. The monarchy was stripped of all its power in favor of democracy, but the transition to the Weimar Republic was accompanied by weak leadership. Germany was a nation filled with disillusioned youth still reeling from the carnage of World War I, rapid inflation, and instability. In 1933, Hitler stepped into the gap by promising a glorious return to German power and superiority. Bonhoeffer’s theology was also developed within the diverse and disparate intellectual currents of his time. The Enlightenment’s glorification of rational, systemized thought had led to a crisis in Christian theology. By the time of Bonhoeffer’s studies, historical-criticism was in full force in academic scholarship, leaving Christians to wonder if the scripture was the Word of God or merely a document written by fallible human beings. Two predominant, irreconcilable views emerged. One was that of the “literalists” or “positivists” who attempted to hold together faith in God by rejecting scholastic study of the Bible all together (Schlingensiepen 26). The liberals held the opposing view and reduced the Bible to a source of morality utterly devoid of God’s revelation (26). Amidst these tensions, two of Bonhoeffer’s teachers had a lasting impact on his theology. The first was Karl Barth who unabashedly affirmed the Bible as a source of God’s Word or revelation while also teaching within an academic setting. Barth’s christocentric vision became the core of Bonhoeffer’s own theological understanding. However, Bonhoeffer rejected Barth’s belief that the Church had lost credibility permanently because of its sanction of war both before and during World War I and thus, was not worth the effort of renewal (34). The only thing of importance for Barth was the preaching of the Word (35). For Bonhoeffer, this Word of God can only be fully realized and preached within a community of disciples following Christ. On the other end of the spectrum was his teacher Adolf von Harnack, a renowned church historian who championed the historical-critical approach. Harnack believed that good theology only happened within the realm of reason and thus, should be very precise and systematic (27). Bonhoeffer’s first attempt to meld the viewpoints of Harnack and Barth was in his doctoral thesis, Sanctorum Communio, which tied the christocentric vision of Barth to the Church using the rational precision taught by Adolf von Harnack (37). Throughout Bonhoeffer’s writings, he resists the historical-critical method of picking Scripture apart in an attempt to uncover some sort of kernel of truth. Not only did Bonhoeffer find himself in the middle of the Enlightenment crisis but he also figured prominently in the German church division in 1933. In the early nineteenth century, liberal theology had gained a foothold in Berlin through the work of Schleiermacher. This effort to humanize Christian theology by reinterpreting it through human experiences troubled both Barth and Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer later identified such thinking as interpreting the scriptures “in such a way that the biblical message is passed through the sieve of man’s own knowledge--what will not go through is scorned and tossed away” (Sword 309). Liberal theology became fully entrenched in German thought with the rise of Hitler in 1933 and his goal of synchronization (Schlingensiepen 158). Everything, including religion, was now to be “subject to [the] one single will” of the Führer (158). The aspects of Christianity which did not fit into the Reich’s goal was tossed or reinterpreted through the will of the Führer. Hitler’s political aspirations split the German church into two main factions: the Confessing Church and German Christians. The Confessing Church felt the “goal to integrate Christianity and National Socialism in a racially pure ‘people’s church’ was a direct challenge not only to the autonomy of the regional churches but to Lutheran and Reformed doctrinal principles as well” (Hockenos 4). Unfortunately this struggle for their autonomy was always directed against the German Christians’ synchronization with the Reich, not Hitler and his government itself (Schlingensiepen 116). German Christians desperately searched for a strong leader who would lead Germany back to its Christian roots. Hitler preyed on this weakness by creating an image of his divine mission through the mixture of political and religious language in his speeches (118). From the mire of confusion, Bonhoeffer emerged as one of the first theologians to recognize the Aryan Paragraph problem and theologically criticize the government’s legal conduct (125). From the time of the Counter-Reformation, the church and government had held a close relationship “based on Luther’s ‘doctrine of the two kingdoms’” which “did not even allow for the theoretical possibility that the state itself could become unjust” (125/126). Against this current Bonhoeffer adamantly called the church to action against not only the German Christians’ synchronization but against the government itself. The Confessing Church failed to go that far in their protests. Instead, they “strove to reconcile their political loyalty to Hitler and their religious loyalty to the Lutheran confessions by maintaining that the state leadership was divinely ordained” (Hockenos 16). For Bonhoeffer this meant a failure “to recognize Luther’s admonishment to keep the worldly and spiritual kingdoms separate” (16). It was into this extremely divisive and hostile environment that Bonhoeffer strove to form a coherent vision of Christian community which would carry into the post-Hitler era’s church rebuilding. The great tragedy is that he did not survive to see his vision come into fruition but was executed by the very government he strove to resist. Community in Creation and Fall It can be argued that one’s vision of community is fundamentally shaped by one’s view of the fall. If we are fallen, what does that mean for our relationship with not only God but with one another as well? Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall is a collection of lectures on Genesis 1-3 delivered from November 18, 1932, to February 21, 1933 (Gruchy 1). During this time period, all of Germany witnessed the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rapid rise starting in January 1933 of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is the only lecture course delivered by Bonhoeffer which was preserved in its entirety, perhaps because he seemed to tap into the questions and emotions of his audience in a new and unique way (2). This is the first of Bonhoeffer’s works which attempts to go beyond philosophy and science in search of the Word of God. Bonhoeffer may believe that this “theology in direct dialogue with the Bible” is the only thing that can orient the German people during this time of social and political upheaval (5). Gruchy in his introduction to the English translation claims that in this work, we see Bonhoeffer wrestling “with the text in order to understand and interpret its message theologically, so as to enable that message to address contemporary people in their contemporary...situations” (7). In these lectures, Bonhoeffer moves away from using Christology in service of ecclesiology and begins to place the person of Christ in the center of his theology (Gruchy 10). Community is then described not as an end in itself, but only in relation to the whole of salvation history contained in the Bible. To understand this, we have to start from the moment God created us in his image. Imago dei means “humankind is like the Creator in that it is free” (62). Freedom, however, does not mean humans have freedom in a cultural and communal vacuum as if it were “a possession, something to hand, an object” (63). We only have freedom in relation to our Creator, in the fact “that God’s self enters into God’s creation” from the moment he fashions us from the dust of the earth (63). This created freedom, dependent on the Creator, worships God and “the creature loves the Creator, because the Creator loves the creature” (64). Yet even though we are created in God’s image, we are only like God in relation to him, not in our being itself (67). We exist as man and woman or, in other words, in relation to each other. When God created Adam, he recognized that “it is not good that the human being should be alone,” so God let Adam attempt to find a helper among the animals. But Adam could not finds this “other” among the animals God gave him authority over, so God created a helper out of Adam’s rib. Because Eve was fashioned from the body of Adam, they are bound together as one even though they are physically two separate creatures. Bonhoeffer says, “They have from their origin been one, and only in becoming one do they return to their origin” (97). This shared origin provides Adam with a partner who is on equal footing with him and able to help the other bear the creaturely limit God imposes on them (“Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!”) through the love they have for one another (99). However, this community built on unity and yet diversity is perverted through the fall. We begin to insist on our “own contribution to, and claim upon, the other” because, after all, we did contribute a part of our body to God’s creation (99). The fall destroys our sense of humility which should be derived from God’s grace in creating the other person to be our helper in bearing the limit. We no longer love each other but in fact hate the other who is the embodiment and reminder of our limit. We no longer allow the other to be free from us and free for God, but instead attempt to either possess or destroy the other (99). Our unity ceases to exist and we become divided. Community gives way to complete isolation (100). Shame emerges as our eyes are opened to our dividedness. And this dividedness is further accentuated by our knowledge that we “are consumed with an obsessive desire for the other” and “that the other person too is no longer content to belong to me but desires to get something from me” (101). Bonhoeffer’s view of human fallenness encompasses more than the individuals and their individual choices. God-intended community itself is fallen. We are unable to initiate and sustain healthy relationships with God and with others. We are no longer free for the other because we have stopped living out of the life of God and have chosen our own finite human abilities. We have divided the world into the opposing factions of good and evil that compete and attempt to overcome the other. It is only in Christ that community is redeemed so that once again we can be “free for others” and allow others to be free for God. Through Christ, humans are united together in recognition of our common origin in Christ as the one body of Christ, the Church. Community as Church Perhaps one of Bonhoeffer’s best known works is Discipleship which is embraced as a classic on Christian spirituality in both Protestant and Catholic circles (Geffrey and Godsey 1). In the editors’ introduction to the English edition, Geffrey and Godsey emphasize that Bonhoeffer “was determined to break the church out of its standard mode of compromise with, and accommodation to, political powers for the sake of its own survival” (3). He could not tolerate the German Christians’ synchronization with the Reich and their adoration of Hitler in lieu of God. What he leaves to us in Discipleship is his own manifesto against a compromising Christian identity. Instead, he develops a vision of what it means to follow and obey the call of Jesus Christ to discipleship. This is the way of the cross, a way fraught with suffering, but also the way of grace in Jesus Christ. He calls this costly grace:
The sacrament of baptism is an important act. It is a visible act of obedience that occurs only once and incorporates us “into the visible church-community of Jesus Christ” (210). This is not an action which we take ourselves but “is essentially a paradoxically passive action; it means being baptized, suffering Christ’s call...We become Christ’s possession” (207). As a result three events happen. First, Jesus causes a break in which we lose our claim to immediacy and Christ becomes our mediator of all relationships (208). Second, it causes our death through community with Christ on the cross. Our old self dies once-and-for-all. Third, we receive “justification away from sin.” In the incarnation Jesus became the new humanity, a second Adam, who will reconcile the estrangement between God and his creatures (215). Christ bridges the alienation between God and between other humans by meeting the claim sin has on our life through his death, which we symbolize in water submersion. Bonhoeffer says, “Sin no longer has any claim on those who are dead; with death the claim has been met and has ceased to exist” (209). Christ’s resurrection is then the promise of new life which we claim in a visible way when we rise again from the water. Thus, “those who are baptized are still meant to live, even after the Lord’s death and resurrection, in the bodily presence of and community with Jesus” (213). Not only that, but Christ is still present in bodily form on earth:
If we are called to live in the body of Christ then two truths must be realized about Christian community. First, “Christian community is not an ideal, but a divine reality” (Life Together 35). Everyone will bring into the Christian community their own idealization of what it should look like. We are forced to destroy these images or we run the risk of becoming “prideful and pretentious,” standing in the place of God as judge (36). God has already set up community. We do not create it but we enter into it and receive it as a gift from God (37). Second, “Christian community is a spiritual and not a psychic reality” (36). It is spiritual because it is created by the Holy Spirit, based in the Word of God which is Jesus Christ, called by Christ, a light to the world (1 Jn 1:5), and serves (38-40). This stands in opposition to the psychic community, or self-centered community, which is created from the “natural urges, strengths, and abilities of the human soul” (38). Self-centered community seeks to serve itself and its love turns into hate when faced with the enemy. In spiritual community we recognize the other is my boundary (see Creation and Fall). It speaks the Word of God and is “willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them” (44). Fundamentally, individuals are not capable of shedding the old self unless they become a part of the body of Christ which is this community. If Christ is still bodily present then that also means that he still bodily suffers through his church-community (Discipleship 222). We are “suffering in the power of the body of Christ...‘for’ the church-community, ‘for’ the body of Christ” (222). Bonhoeffer describes the suffering church-community as called to the forgiveness of sins:
In Life Together, he elaborates that public confession is an enactment of the “community of forgiveness of sins.” Christians are given the power to forgive sins so that they can be “the sign of God’s truth and grace” to each other (109). In the practice of confession we receive a “breakthrough to community” because it destroys sin’s alienating power (110). We receive a “breakthrough to the cross” because “in the profound spiritual and physical pain of humiliation before another believer, which means before God, we experience the cross of Jesus as our deliverance and salvation” (112). We receive a “breakthrough to new life” because we give up our selves and follow Jesus (112). Thus, confession becomes a renewal of baptism. Finally, we receive a “breakthrough to assurance” because we can never really know in private confession if we are seeking forgiveness from ourselves or from God (113). In confession, we “experience the presence of God in the reality of the other” and thereby receive the assurance that it is actually the Word of God which is judging and forgiving us. Bibliography
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