Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Review: Bonhoeffer for the Church

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Cover image for "Bonhoeffer for the Church" by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick.

Bonhoeffer for the Church, Matthew D. Kirkpatrick. Fortress Press (ISBN: 9781506497822) 2024.

Summary: A study of what Bonhoeffer wrote about the church’s identity, purpose, practices, and life together.

When the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes up, one might ask, “which Dietrich Bonhoeffer?” At present, their are different “camps” trying to claim Bonhoeffer for their own. While his widest readership has always been among those who identify with one or another church, his works do not offer a systematic theology of the church. What Matthew D. Kirkpatrick does, with the aid of the now-completed set of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, published by Fortress Press, is organize this material into an extended statement of Bonhoeffer’s message for the church. While reflecting extensive scholarship, Kirkpatrick writes for the church, making this a text for pastors, leaders, and lay people to explore together.

After a brief biographical sketch emphasizing Bonhoeffer’s pastoral work, Kirkpatrick begins by discussing foundations of the church’s identity. He begins with creation and fall, emphasizing the tragedy of wanting to be like God when we already were. Instead, the first couple turned in on themselves, and we re-enact this in our lives in a shared predicament. But God breaks in through Christ’s work on the cross, God’s living Word. God breaks in, often mediated through others, enabling us to have faith in Christ. Such faith calls us into community with love as faith’s expression. Christ makes our community possible through that love and we meet each other through Christ. Thus our own “visions” of and attempts to build community die. Instead we receive community as a gift through Christ.

Crucial to our community is Bonhoeffer’s idea of vicarious representation. Christ served and redeemed as a vicarious representative, and while the church cannot do what Christ did in redemption, it vicariously represents Christ in service to one another and the world. For Bonhoeffer, this is the basis of pastoral care. This further works itself out in intercessory prayer and the confession of and forgiveness of sin. Intercession is not just praying for others, but praying as the other in and through Christ and is a profound expression of community. In confession of sin, we take on the sins of others, recognizing our own sin, and pronouncing Christ’s forgiveness of the other. A concluding chapter in this section discusses ecumenism, the true and empirical church, and why we go to church as a counter to our individualism. Christ meets us in others.

Part Two turns from our identity to our inner life. Firstly, Bonhoeffer addresses authority, leadership and the priesthood of all believers. The focus is on the priority of the God’s word over human words and structures as the source of authority. This is followed by a chapter on preaching, theology, and the word of God. Preaching is central to the inner life of the church. For Bonhoeffer, this means submission to the word of God, by both those who preach and the congregation. The church comes together to be addressed not by a person but by the living God. Kirkpatrick follows this with a chapter on the reading of scripture, music, and sacraments.

For Bonhoeffer, evangelism is not winning people to Christ but rather a means by which God, mediated through Christ, calls people to faith. Evangelism meant listening before speaking, both to God and the person, seeking to discern God’s word in that situation. For this reason, he opposed programmatic approaches. for him, faith in Christ and his word was sufficient. Likewise, in his teaching on time alone, the focus is on listening to God, both in prayer and in scripture. Each nurtures the other.

Part Three engages the church in the world. Kirkpatrick emphasizes that Bonhoeffer did not focus on rules or laws. Rather, the focus was on God to discern what one must do to follow Christ. This may explain as well as anything Bonhoeffer’s decision to plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer on the state followed Luther’s two kingdoms. However, in the context of Nazism, he also believed the church must address the state with the Word of God. Thus he refused to incorporate the Aryan paragraph as a violation of the Word of God. The final chapter covers his letters and papers from prison. This includes Bonhoeffer’s idea of a “religionless Christianity.”

Few agree with Bonhoeffer at all points. But the delight of this book is in how it underscores the centrality of Christ. Salvation comes through him. Community is possible only in him. Our preaching is for hearing Christ’s word together. Our witness is predicated on Christ’s work of calling others to himself. Ethics is obedience to Christ. Amid the contentions around Bonhoeffer, Kirkpatrick has given us a book at once profound and useful for our life together.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Some Writers I Just Can’t Ignore

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“A New Harvest, With Wendell Berry, Henry County, KY” by Guy Mendes is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

James T. Keane, in a current America article titled “Wendell Berry: the cranky farmer, poet, and essayist you just can’t ignore,” asks this question:

“My reaction was a simple one: Did Wendell Berry just leap off the page and hit me over the head with a fencepost?”

Wendell Berry is one of those writers I can’t ignore. I recently read and reviewed his The Hidden Wound, is a profound essay on racism, written, not in 2018 but 50 years earlier in 1968. Berry seems to speak from somewhere else with a voice unlike other voices, and it got me to thinking who some of the other writers are who have spoken from somewhere else with a voice I cannot ignore. Here are some I came up with:

Marilynne Robinson. Her essays and novels, steeped in, of all things, Calvinism, challenge both modern scientism and our easy moral equivocation and dismissal of the relevance of God. I’m reading her lectures at Yale in 2010 right now, Absence of Mind.

C.S. Lewis. He brought his love and encyclopedic knowledge of old books and Christian theology to the questions of the day as well as in children’s literature in a way both timely and timeless.

Kristin Hannah. This is an author who keeps me awake at night, after I put her books down, with her strong female characters confronting personal and systemic inhumanity, often at the hands of men. They make me as a man want to fight against the wrongs done to subjugate women.

Eugene Peterson. I heard Peterson speak to the staff of the organization I work for after a hugely successful conference, warning of the dangers of believing too much in our success. He wrote trenchantly during his life on the calling of pastors, and how he saw many exchanging noble for ignoble work. He ought to be assigned reading for all our celebrity pastors.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I may not believe all he would say theologically, but I cannot ignore words that come out of resistance to totalitarianism and his experience of leading a Christian community of resistance.

Mary Oliver. I’ve only come to discover her poetry in the last few years, but her perception of the transcendent in the ordinary, the large issues of life in small incidents nudge me to be aware of the same.

Nicholas Wolterstorff. Wolterstorff is a philosopher who teaches at Yale. Whether writing about the death of a son, justice in South Africa, philosophy of education, or his defense of religious ideas in scholarly discussion, he brings head and heart, reason and passion together. Read his memoir In This World of Wonders and his “Advice to Those Who Would Be Christian Scholars.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading his sermons and speeches is like a trumpet call. His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a powerful response to the moderate white pastors who counselled patience.

Fleming Rutledge. Anyone who would argue that women cannot preach or teach theology should read her work. Her The Crucifixion is the most significant theological work I have read in the past ten years. Three Hours is preached reflections on the seven last words of Christ. Advent is also quite good.

I don’t know about you, but in a world of amusement, distraction, and obliviousness, I need to be “hit over the head with a fencepost.” This is part of the company of writers who serve that function for me. These are writers who do not so much answer my questions, as question my answers. Who does that for you?

Reading Scripture as the Church

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Reading Scripture as the Church (New Explorations in Theology), Derek W. Taylor. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: Brings Dietrich Bonhoeffer into conversation with three theologians concerning how the church reads and interprets scripture.

The printing press, the Reformation, vernacular translations and rising literacy put the Bible into the hands of many more Christians, leading to a rise of personal Bible reading, contributing both to personal devotion, and the rise of idiosyncratic interpretations. The latter makes it ever more apparent that scripture is meant to be read and interpreted as the church, within Christian communities.

Derek W. Taylor explores the contribution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the reading of scripture in community in a conversation with three other theologians: John Webster, Robert Jenson, and Stanley Hauerwas. Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessing Church movement that resisted Hitlerian tyranny, and the seminary community at Finkenwalde, a ministry centered around reading scripture within community. The central idea coming through in this volume is that of following this risen Lord who calls his people to follow him in discipleship into his mission in the world. Taylor unpacks this in four parts:

  1. The church as a creation of the word. Here he draws on John Webster’s idea of the church as creatura verbi. What Bonhoeffer brings to this is the idea of the risen Christ without whom the community of the church cannot exist.
  2. The church as an institution. Taylor brings in Robert Jenson who emphasizes the importance of reading within the traditions of the church, allowing how the church has read to influence how we read. To this Bonhoeffer adds the dimension of the living Christ who has been leading this church into all truth throughout history.
  3. Reading as a congregation. Taylor focuses on a leading exponent of ecclesial theology, Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas sees the church’s reading together as enacting the community. Bonhoeffer would counter that the gathered community is the place addressed by the risen Lord, and led by him into discipleship.
  4. The church as missional community. Here, Taylor doesn’t draw upon a particular theologian but notes that Bonhoeffer’s missional theology is inherent in the question “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” that addresses the community in its given context.

The most significant conclusion to this discussion for me is one Taylor makes in his epilogue. He states:

By examining the church in terms of its identity-defining relationships, I have suggested that this hermeneutic is not a method but a posture and that this posture can be most succinctly summarized as the ongoing act of discipleship (p. 258).

For Taylor, scriptural interpretation can never be codified into the fabric of the church nor its history of interpretation. Rather, the risen Lord speaks through scripture leading his people, forming them as disciples and leading them into mission, helping them to be both ever true, and ever new in their life together and work in the world. Taylor brings Bonhoeffer in conversation with three theological interpreters of scripture, and adding his own insights, offers a rich account of how we might read scripture as the church.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Did He Really Say That?

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200px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1987-074-16,_Dietrich_Bonhoeffer“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

For some time, I have used this quote in the “signature” for my emails. I attributed the quote to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think I must have picked it up off a quotes site when I did a profile of Bonhoeffer for a book group.

A friend contacted me recently after I used the quote in a post about the encyclical “Laudato Si’ ” by Pope Francis. Others have used this quote in connection with matters related to the environment and my friend was interested in the context in which Bonhoeffer was using the quote and where it could be found.

I thought this might be easy, so I googled the quote to see if anyone had cited the source as well as attributing it to Bonhoeffer. The quote turned up on a number of websites, all attributing it to Bonhoeffer but none giving the source. So I did two other things.

One was that I left a message at the website of Eric Metaxas, who has written a biography on Bonhoeffer. One of his staff responded but could not give the source of this quote either but suggested works in which I might find it.

A search in Google Books turned up nothing so I turned to trusty Facebook and asked my friends. None of those who responded could find it either. One friend, Nancy, talked to Charles Marsh at the Bonhoeffer House who said Bonhoeffer wouldn’t have used these words but mentioned that in Letters and Papers From Prison Bonhoeffer said, “The question of ultimate responsibility is not how I might extricate myself heroically from the situation but how the coming generation is to live.” Looking “inside the book” on Amazon, I found this in the front matter toward the bottom of page 7. The discussion was on the question of our responsibility toward history, which ultimately was not to be heroic or “successful” (the section is titled “on success”) but to consider our responsibility to the rising generation.

This is certainly a related idea, but focused on the life of an individual rather than a moral society, and speaks not of ultimate tests, but ultimate responsibility. It still leaves me with questions. Foremost is the question of “how responsible can I be for how the coming generation will live?” We may be responsible for the conditions the coming generation will face, but can I really be responsible for how another generation will live?

Back to the quote that I thought was Bonhoeffer’s (and may still be although no source for this has been found so far). This all seems a big deal over a quote that most people I know like and give at least intellectual assent to. Most, apart from Charles Marsh, would think it sounds like something Bonhoeffer would say. And it is often quoted. So why not?

I think the issue is truthfulness. It seems this has become a slippery slope, particularly in our public discourse. The problem then becomes the credibility of anything anyone says. Do we ever really want people to trust us, to take us at our word. That can only be so if we tell the truth to the best of our ability. And so from now on, I will have to say of this quote, “source unknown, commonly attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

If someone reading this actually knows where the quote that begins this post comes from, whether by Bonhoeffer or not, drop me a note in the comments.

Review: Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture

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Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture
Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture by Keith L Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Have you noticed the spate of Bonhoeffer books on the market? I wonder if this reflects our longing for genuine heroes, the kind who finish well and are people of substance and integrity. Perhaps his ideas of “religionless” Christianity resonate with those who prefer to consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” What is more fascinating for me is the evangelical embrace of Bonhoeffer, who clearly loved and trusted Christ, but by no stretch embraced the wider spectrum of evangelical conviction. Particularly intriguing is the fact that this book represents the proceedings of a theology conference at Wheaton College, the citadel of evangelical conviction.

This collection of papers explores a gamut of concerns around Bonhoeffer. The book opens with an essay by Philip Ziegler on Bonhoeffer as a theologian of the Word of God, which is shorthand for the idea that Jesus Christ is God’s Word to us. This is followed by a paper by Timothy Larsen on the evangelical reception of Bonhoeffer, which he would attribute both to Bonhoeffer’s life and death, and his more popular books. What I found neither dealing with is Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of scripture and its incompatibility with evangelical conviction, although Larsen does cite some of the early critiques of Bonhoeffer by evangelicals.

128px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1987-074-16,_Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Several essays illuminate what has always been a question for me, which is how Bonhoeffer, who articulates pacifist ideals in The Cost of Discipleship could decide to embrace active resistance to Hitler including participation (minor) to assassinate him. Reggie L Williams essay on Bonhoeffer’s exposure to the Harlem renaissance and the idea of a “black” Christ of resistance argues for how Bonhoeffer could part ways with the established church, and even his Confessing brethren to act against Hitler. Steven J Plant’s paper on Bonhoeffer’s politics introduces us to his ethic of responsibility for his life while being accountable to God. It seemed even clearer to me from this paper that there was a “double” character to his thinking that recognized both the necessity to act against Hitler and yet also recognized his accountability for the taking of life before God and that all he could do was cast himself on God’s grace. In Lori Brant Hale’s essay on vocation, we see that Bonhoeffer did not believe in an abstract ethic, but one worked out in concrete life and in social relations. The Reich changed all the conventions and to say “yes” to Christ and “no” to self in this context demanded some unusual choices.

Daniel Treier explores a connection I had never before made between Bonhoeffer and Jacques Ellul around their similar ideas about technology. Charles Marsh chronicles Bonhoeffer’s increasing estrangement from “academic” theology. Keith Johnson explores what we can gain from Bonhoeffer for the Christian academy. Joel Lawrence explores Bonhoeffer’s theology of the church as the community that exists for others, and that does so by practicing “death together” in its practices of confessing our sins to each other–one of the most challenging pieces of the book for me! Jim Belcher concludes the book by exploring the liturgies Bonhoeffer practiced at Finkenwalde, an illegal seminary training Confessing Church pastors, and how this sustained Bonhoeffer during his imprisonment and as he faced death.

This is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the life, work, and writing of Bonhoeffer. I found new insights for some of the questions I have about Bonhoeffer. However, I did find it curious that at an evangelical conference co-sponsored with an evangelical publisher, there was so little about the evangelical engagement with and appropriation of a theologian who was far from evangelical in some of his fundamental convictions.

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Review: In Search of Deep Faith

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In Search of Deep Faith
In Search of Deep Faith by Jim Belcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jim Belcher and his family were at a crossroads. He’d spent ten years pastoring a church from its very beginnings into a thriving congregation. He made the bold decision to resign. His wife needed a respite from the bubble of pastoral ministry. And he was facing a significant question as a parent: how do I help my children come to own a “deep faith” in their own lives, not just an inherited faith that disappears when one is removed from a Christian social context, but an enduring faith?

Belcher’s answer was a pilgrimage through England and Europe revisiting the sites where thoughtful and courageous Christians he had looked to as heroes lived, and sometimes died for, their faith. This book is a kind of travel or pilgrimage narrative of that year.

The first part of the book follows their journeys in England exploring the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, Sheldon Van Auken’s struggle for a meaningful faith, the life and places of C. S. Lewis, and the conversations that changed the life of William Wilberforce, who changed the course of British history with regard to slavery.

The second half of the book (Parts Two and Three) recount their journeys through Europe. He begins, interestingly enough with the life and art of Van Gogh, and his struggle between despair and belief. They move on to the French village of Le Chambon, where Andre Trocme and a village of Protestant Huguenots hid and saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. We shift then to Holland and the German prison camps where Corrie Ten Boom lost her sister but held fast to her faith for the same courageous act of protecting Jews. Then we consider the life and death of Bonhoeffer, and the equally courageous decisions of the von Trapp family, both like, and unlike their Sound of Music counterparts. We end with Heidelberg, and Martin Luther, and finally the soldier’s cemetery at Normandy.

Belcher interweaves the narrative of his travels and interactions with family with the narratives of each of his heroes. And this also seems to have two major parts to it–the challenge of ordinary obedience in things like home school lessons and our Jekyll-Hyde struggle with sin during their stay in England. In Europe, and particularly as they witnessed the sites of courageous acts and even martyrdom, they wrestle with what constitutes a deep faith that sustains one through despair, danger, suffering, resistance, and in the face of death. It does seem that when Belcher realizes that the education in faith of this pilgrimage is more important than math and writing and grammar lessons that they all are opened up more to what God had for them on this pilgrimage.

I’ve read other narratives of many of the lives he profiles but I found Belcher wrote with a concise freshness that brought people like Lewis and Bonhoeffer to life in new ways for me. Perhaps it was the act of inhabiting their places. And I appreciate that Belcher “kept it real” with regard to the struggles as well as the moments of insights his family faced on this pilgrimage. One of the best books I’ve read so far this year.

[I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through a contest hosted on Goodreads.]

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