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Center for Advanced Theological Studies School of Theology Fuller Theological Seminary
THE CHURCH COME OF AGE

AN ANALYSIS OF BONHOEFFERS NON-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION1 FOR THE RELIGOUSLY PLURALISTIC WORLD
A dissertation submitted to the faculty o f the School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree o f Doctor o f Philosophy
written by Sung Mo Kang
May, 2001
UMI Number: 3003172
Copyright 2001 by Kang, Sung Mo
All rights reserved.
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Copyright 2001 by Sung Mo Kang
Center for Advanced Theological Studies School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary Dissertation Approval Sheet
This dissertation entitled
The Church 'Come O f Age': An Analysis Of Bonhoeffer's 'Non-Religious Interpretation' For The Religiously Pluralistic World
written by Sung Mo Kang and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor o f Philosophy has been awarded by the Faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary upon the recommendation of the following readers:
Kay S a n d e rs o n Robert K. Johr^on urton Nelson
_ .
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I express my grateful thanks to my primary mentor, Dr. Ray S. Anderson, who inspired me with his theological insights and personal warmth. His consistent confidence in me helped me throughout this effort. Dr. Andersons understanding and guidance helped me especially through the last stages of this effort. I appreciate the time and effort that he invested in me, and I am truly grateful to God that I had the opportunity to meet such a mentor. His presence as a mentor did not end as a professor, but was seen in his consistent support, encouragement, and, o f course, critical comments! My second mentor, Dr. Robert K. Johnston, gave me his criticism which helped me shape my work in a more scholarly format. Also, he was more than generous in lending me his valuable Bonhoeffer literatures. Before he shared his resources with me, I had never known how many literary works there were on Bonhoeffer. I also acknowledge that my external reader, Dr. F. Burton Nelson, was a very detailed, informative reader. He pointed out many places where I had generalized my ideas and made me reflect on certain points that were ambiguous in definition. He also provided a list o f additional secondary Bonhoeffer literatures to strengthen the quality o f my dissertation. Most of all, I thank my family who supported me in this project with their love, understanding and patience. The constant and torturous clicking sound o f the keyboard at night became a household norm. To my two daughters, Hyunjoo and Hyunsook, who went through their teenage adolescent years without much o f my guidance, I thank from my heart. Also, to my loving wife, I thank for her prayer, patience and sacrifice of
having a virtual husband during all these years o f study at Fuller. I dedicate this work to my precious wife and lifetime companion, Tae II, for her love and support.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................... iv ABBREVIATIONS.......................................................................................................................vii INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................viii
PART I
BONHOEFFERS THEOLOGY FOR THE WORLD COME OF AGE An Overview of Bonhoeffers Theology...................................................... 2 Bonhoeffers Theological Concern......................................................... 3 The Interpretations o f Bonhoeffers Theology...................................... 8 The Church for Others.................................................................................21 Christ, the Center......................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
The World Come of Age................................................................................. 40 The Development o f the Concept............................................................ 40 Bonhoeffers Worldview............................................................................ 47 The Human Autonomy and the Decay o f Religion..................................52 Christs Forsakeness and the World Come o f Age.................................. 62 A Wholly New Way o f Life....................................................................... 66 The Freedom for Others.............................................................................. 69
CHAPTER 3
A Non-religious Interpretation o f the Gospel..................................................73 Bonhoeffers Understanding o f Religion .............................................. 74 The Problem o f A Religionless World...................................................... 90 The Development o f the Non-religious Interpretation .........................94 Religionless Christianity.......................................................................... 99
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PART n
OUR RELIGIOUSLY PLURALISTIC WORLD

A World in Transition........................................................................................114 The Meaning o f Postmodemity................................................................ 116 A Brief History of Postmodemity...............................................................122 The Transition from Modernity to Postmodemity.................................... 127 A Challenge o f the Transition for Christianity........................................ 132
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
The Nature of Our Contemporary World....................................................... 136 Rejecting Universal Truth..........................................................................136 The World Without God: God is Dead.................................................... 142 Relativism and the Problem o f Hermeneutics......................................... 143 Individualism and Communalism............................................................... 147 Toleration...................................................................................................... 155 Pluralism...................................................................................................... 158 Challenges for the Church......................................................................... 160 The Maturity o f the World.......................................................................... 164
CHAPTER 6
The Religiously Pluralistic World.................................................................. 169 The Challenge of Religious Plurality......................................................... 170 The Meaning of the Religiously Pluralistic World ............................. 172 Popular Attitudes Toward Religious Plurality.......................................... 176 Christian Attitudes Toward Other Religious........................................... 182 Religious Pluralism.......................................................................................187
PART m
A NON-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION FOR THE RELIGIOUSLY PLURALISTIC WORLD A Non-Religious Interpretation f o r ..................................................................195 the Religiously Pluralistic World A Critique o f Bonhoeffers the Religionless World .......................... 197 Challenges of a Religiously Pluralistic W o rld ........................................ 203 The Relevance o f Non-religious Interpretation.................................... 213 Religionless Christianity for the Religiously Pluralistic World............. 219 The Church for the Religious O th e rs........................................................222
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
The Church in Adolescence...............................................................................228 The Meaning o f Adulthood, Miindigkeit...................................................228 Self-centeredness o f an Adolescent Church..............................................247 Pharisaism o f an Adolescent Church......................................................... 250 Territorialism of an Adolescent Church.................................................. 253 An Adolescent Church as a Religious Inistitutution.............................. 258 An Adolescent Church in a Religiously Pluralistic W orld..................... 268
CHAPTER 9
The Church Come of Age................................................................................ 272 What Should the Church Do to Become Mature?....................................273 The Form of the Church Come o f Age......................................................282 The Praxis of the Church Come o f Age.................................................... 293 Christianity for the Religious Others......................................................... 308 Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life...................................... 311
BIBLIOGRAPHY
325
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................331
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ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations have been used. Full publication details are given in the Bibliography.
AB CC CF D NRS WF DBW
Act and Being. DBWE 2, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1996 Christ the Center. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1960 Creation and Fall. DBWE 3, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1997 Discipleship. DBWE 4, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2001 Mo Rusty Sword. New York, Harper & Row, 1965 The Way to Freedom. New York, Harper & Row, 1967 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, the critical edition of Bonhoeffers works. 1986-1999
DBWE Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition, 1996 E LPP Ethics. New York, Touchstone, 1955 Letters and Papers from Prison. The Enlarged Edition, New York: Macmillan, 1972; Simon & Schuster, 1997 Life Together. DBWE 5, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1996 Sanctorum Communio. DBWE 1, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1998
LT SC
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INTRODUCTION
Background About half a century ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw the world coming of age. According to him, in the Enlightenment and subsequent modernity, humanity had become confident enough to rule over nature and manage its own life without God. He characterized the mature world as a religionless world where God as a stop-gap and religion are no longer needed by humanity. In order for the gospel to be preached to a people who can reason and who feel they are capable of making their own decisions, a Christian interpretation o f biblical terms must be made which makes sense to their reason. As a response to this secularization o f the world, he called for the non-religious interpretation o f biblical concepts 1 for the religionless world.2 The purpose o f Bonhoeffers commitment to a non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts was to rescue Christianity from being a religion or a religious system that had become irrelevant to the religionless world. Bonhoeffer criticized religion for its exploitation of human weakness and religiosity. In his view, religion seems to push Christ to the margins o f real life. Furthermore, with regard to the essential character of the gospel o f Jesus, Bonhoeffer questions whether Christianity is a genuine religion of redemption in which the main emphasis is on the far side of the boundary drawn by
1 LPP 344, 8 July 1944. 2 LPP 280ff 30 April 1944; 285ff 5 May 1944; 339, 27 June 1944.
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death. He asserts, But it seems to me that this is just where the mistake and the danger lie. Redemption now means redemption from cares, distress, fears, and longings, from sin and death, in a better world beyond the grave.3 Then, Bonhoeffer asks the key question, But is this really the essential character o f the proclamation of Christ in the gospels and by Paul?4 He answers that it is not.5 Rather, he says, The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and the mythological hope is that the former sends a man back to his life on earth in a wholly new way which is even more sharply defined than it is in the Old Testament.6 Redemption myths or religion arise from human boundary-experiences, but Christ, as the Lord o f this world, takes hold of humanity at the center o f this-worldly life.7 Therefore, the non-religious interpretation was essential for Bonhoeffer to restore the essential meaning of the gospel of Jesus fo r the world. In order to
communicate with and preach to the world which, from his perspective, had become religionless, it was necessary to present the truth o f the gospel in non-religious ways. According to Bonhoeffer, Christianity was losing the battle to the secularization o f the world. In his incamational Christology, Bonhoeffer found a way for a non-religious interpretation within such a religionless world; authentic humanity can only be found in Christ who was bom in human flesh in order to humanize humanity.
3 LPP 336, 27 June 1944. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.. 336-7. 1 1bid., 337.
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A New Situation However, in anticipating the dawn o f a new millennium, it is clear that a new understanding of the world, which is different from Bonhoeffers is called for. Contrary to his prediction of a religionless world, the world that we experience today still seems to be predominantly religious. Why did he fail to see this historical phenomenon of a religious world? It might be said that Bonhoeffers failure in this regard came from the fact that, though he was influenced by Gandhis pacifism, his world-view was quite limited to the intellectual world of Germany and o f the West, which he had mostly experienced personally throughout his life. If he were to see our contemporary world and what really takes place in most parts o f the globe, he would realize that his idea of a religionless world has been realized only for a small part of the whole humanity. Even in the Western world, which is technologically advanced, religion still maintains its stronghold today. Surely, God (or the gods) has been hovering over the human spirit. Death is an unavoidable destiny for all human beings, and two of the fundamental questions o f religion are about the unknown world beyond death and any supernatural being who is beyond human knowledge. Unless human beings can avoid death by some means or the question of after-death can be answered with the clarity o f a simple mathematical formula, it is clear that the myth o f god will continue through to the end o f human history.
The Relevance of Bonhoeffers Thesis Although Bonhoeffer failed to foresee this present globalized world because his worldview itself was too narrow from our current perspective, his thesis o f a non-
religious interpretation for the world come o f age is still commendable for several reasons: First, regardless o f historical contexts, his non-religious understanding of Christianity is valid in view o f the original meaning o f the gospel as intended by Jesus Christ. Many interpreters o f Bonhoeffers theology have stumbled over the fact that he established the religionless world as the condition o f the non-religious interpretation. It seems that the contemporary world at large is religious rather than religionless. Thus, the thesis of the non-religious interpretation appears to lose its meaning because its condition, the religionless world, is not satisfied. However, Bonhoeffers non religious interpretation should not be viewed as a mere contextualization o f the gospel. Rather, it should be understood as his effort to restore the original meaning o f the gospel for the world come of age. From his observation, the religious interpretation o f the gospel, which used to be meaningful to the religious world, became irrelevant to the religionless world. Therefore, Bonhoeffer responded to the situation by restoring the original meaning o f the gospel as intended by Jesus Christ. In doing so, he projected that the world had come o f age by becoming religionless, which, in reality, did not seem to have happened. Nonetheless, the non-religious nature o f the gospel makes the non religious interpretation still meaningful for the world with many religions. Second, it is evident that a new interpretation o f the gospel for the changing world is not only necessary but also demanded by the gospel. The good news o f Jesus is engraved not on tablets o f stone but on the tablets o f human hearts (2 Co. 3:3), as Paul understood it. The fact that the gospel is engraved on the tablets o f human hearts signifies the dynamic nature o f the gospel o f Christ. From an historical perspective, God
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has provided each human generation with a different environment for life and a different level of understanding o f the created world. For each generation and for people with different cultural backgrounds, God speaks in a language that can be understood by each one of them. Clearly, the gospel as the living truth o f Christ must be continually reinterpreted in such a way that the contemporary heart and mind can understand it. Third, even though Bonhoeffer was mistaken in projecting that the world would come of age as the religionless world, the fact that world has come of age is still valid for different reasons. Contrary to Bonhoeffers assessment, it seems that human beings are still dependent on God. However, it can be said that the mind o f human beings has become mature in postmodemity by being more tolerant and open to differences. Diversity is no longer viewed as a problem but as merit. We are living in the postmodern context where openness and relativism have established a firm place of their own in the human mind. Humanity has learnt to tolerate differences and to live in harmony with others of different cultural, racial and religious backgrounds. From a spiritual or religious perspective, the maturity of the world was attained not through its freedom from God or religion but through its tolerance for different religions and its mutual respect for other religions. In contrast with Bonhoeffers problem o f the religionless world, todays open world has become a breeding ground of religious plurality, which is the problem with which the contemporary Church must deal. Lastly, the problem of todays church is that it is still in its adolescence while the world that it serves has moved into its adulthood. It is clear that this adolescent Christianity cannot be in full service for the mature world. The Church cannot properly communicate with the world unless it transforms itself and grows into its own adulthood.
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The adolescence o f Christianity can be depicted as a child who is still fighting for its religious space with other religions in the spiritual playground. The object o f the game is to get a control over this world and other religions. But from the perspective o f other religions, Christian conversion may be viewed as synonymous to a religious invasion against them.
The Opportunity of Non-religious Interpretation Although Bonhoeffers thesis of a non-religious interpretation o f the biblical terms and concepts for the religionless world can be applied to the present world of many religions, the non-religiousness o f interpretation should not be understood as secular or humanistic. As Bonhoeffer saw, the interpretation must be Christ-centered. The gospel must be interpreted by Jesus Christ himself as he is revealed in this world as the Son of God and the Son o f Man through the life o f the Church and the life o f his disciples empowered and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The shortcoming o f Bonhoeffer is that he focused only on the world that was becoming religionless from a humanistic standpoint, and didnt pay enough attention to the world, which needs to be freed from the grips of religions. His primary concern was that Christ is no longer in the center of the Western world which became autonomous. He was concerned about the secularism that was wide-spreading and the Churchs inability to provide its service to the world. However, in todays world, the non-religious interpretation o f the gospel o f Jesus Christ provides the Church with an opportunity to free all human beings from the grips o f many religions. Clearly, the commonality of human beings encompassing different parts o f the world is the lack o f knowledge about the true God, which is called religiosity.
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Therefore, the purpose o f the non-religious interpretation o f the gospel is to bring the knowledge about the true God to the people who are religious in many different ways.
The Nature of the Non-religious Interpretation The present reality of the incarnate Son o f God should be the way in which we interpret his gospel. The historical event o f the Incarnation already includes the divine nature o f the one who came into this world in human flesh. The incarnation o f the Son of God must be preached to the religious world with power and authority. How should we understand the power that the Son o f God received from the Father and passed to the Church through the Holy Spirit? How should we interpret the miracles performed by the apostles? Bonhoeffer understood the power of God as the power of self-sacrifice and humility. God performed the miracles out o f His love toward humankind for their salvation. The conversions, which took place in the biblical accounts, were not a conversion from one religion to another, but a conversion from the Jewish religion to the non-religious truth o f God as revealed in Jesus. Therefore, in the subsequent discussion, it will be argued that Christianity should not be at war with other religions, but should be in Gods service to awaken the world from the slumber o f religion (including Christianity!). According to Bonhoeffer, Barth shared this view on religion, but didnt go far enough to restore the biblical meaning o f the Christian faith by leaving Christianity in the religious category as the true religion.8 The nature o f the non-religious interpretation o f the gospel can be explained from several aspects. First, the non-religious or incamational interpretation o f the gospel must
8 LPP 328, 8 June 1944.
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be based in the Word, because apart from the Word we cannot speak o f the Incarnation: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (Jn. 1:14). The Scripture as the spoken Word is not the object o f a non-religious interpretation but its point of departure. Second, the non-religious or incamational interpretation is practical, because it is based on who Jesus really is for this world today. He is the way (Jn. 14:6). The
gospel, therefore, must be practical in every possible way. It is not simply an ethical statement because it does not remain as a moral value, which tells us what we should do and how we should live in this world. With transforming power, the gospel instead leads and transforms humanity into the kingdom. It teaches and empowers us in how to love, not just in how to live. Third, the non-religious or incamational interpretation is liberating. Its power is to free the human spirit. The gospel as the truth frees humanity from every bondage. Jesus is the truth over against the falsehood and oppression of all religions and philosophies. He is the truth. Fourth, the non-religious or incamational interpretation brings back life to the spiritually dead. It overcomes the power of death and removes the needs o f religiosity for human beings. Everlasting life was given to humanity as a reality. He is the life. The non-religious interpretation o f the gospel is actualized through the life of the Church. The Church in its adulthood is the Church that knows itself as the resurrected Christ and ministers to the world on behalf o f Christ who is constantly at work to build the kingdom, the final resting-place for all humanity. The incarnation is the continuing praxis o f Christ. The power and authority o f the resurrected Lord penetrates and
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transforms this hopelessly religious world into the kingdom o f God, and it is precisely the act of new Creation. The ultimate goal o f the praxis of the Spirit o f God is the kingdom. What is ultimate is also original from Gods perspective because God is the Alpha and Omega. The kingdom is continually being shaped by Gods mature people who are finally freed from the captivity o f the religious world and led into the eternal kingdom by the truth o f the gospel. The gospel o f the resurrected Jesus Christ is the gospel for the oppressed people in every comer o f this world. It creates the light that provides vision for the world, which is lost in the chaos o f relativism. From this chaos, a new creation, the kingdom is coming forth. The gospel o f Jesus is the gospel o f the new creation out of the vast void of human invention and confusion. This incamational interpretation seeks to find the will of God in this contemporary world. We are not to seek a new external form o f church. There have been countless superfluous forms o f the Church, whether under the guise o f orthodoxy, denomination, sect, home church, and so on and so forth. These have stemmed largely from different ways of interpreting the gospel based on differing human perspectives. In many cases, the characterization of the different form o f churches is solely based on how its leaders or founders interpreted the gospel and the Christian faith from their own interpretive key. The division within religious Christianity is, therefore, an inevitable consequence of such cultural myopia. However, by restoring the vision o f Christ, the incamational interpretation sees that the Church as one body of Christ must be united in one Spirit. Also, Christian worship has too often become a self-serving spiritual ritual. Our task at hand is to rediscover the meaning and purpose o f the Church as willed by God for
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this world. What needs to be set forth is neither a new form o f church nor a new method of its religious rituals, but the will o f God in Christ revealed through the life o f the authentic and mature Church. This does not mean that the structure of the Church is unimportant. Like a tree which takes its form as it grows, it is clear that the Church will take its shape when the Church lives its life in obedience to the will o f God. Throughout church history, the will of God for the Church, which is to become one as the Spirit is one (1 Co. 12:13, Eph. 4:4, Php. 2:2), has been denied by the Church leaders for the sake of their human religious doctrines. For the Church to become mature, it needs to undress the religious robes of adolescence and be clothed with the resurrected Jesus himself. The true meaning of church will be rediscovered and a new form of church will emerge not as a human invention, but as the result of obedient acts o f individual Christians who accept the will of the Father and unite under the lordship o f the Son who works through his body, the Church, which is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Methodology In order to set forth the discussion on the concept o f a non-religious interpretation o f the Gospel for a world come of age, first, Bonhoeffers understanding of both religion and the world come of age needs to be clarified. Religion is an ambiguous term with various meanings. His theological thesis o f non-religious interpretation is anchored on his critique o f religion. By understanding how he has viewed religion, it will be possible to comprehend his concept o f the religionless world from the perspective o f the world come of age, as well as his concern for the
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relationship between the Church and his then-contemporary world. For the religionless world come o f age, Bonhoeffer prescribed a non-religious interpretation. What he meant by non-religious interpretation and how he developed his thesis as a solution to the problem o f secularization in his world will be discussed. He observed that the religionless world seeks concrete answers for the human problems it faces. Bonhoeffer believed that the only concrete answer the Church can give to the secularized world is in the authentic humanity o f Christ who broke into the world through his incarnation, death and resurrection. Thus Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation is based on his Christology of Incarnation and Resurrection. In addition to those historical events, the Ascension of Jesus and Pentecost are important for Bonhoeffer. His early thought of Christ existing as community9 remained at the center o f his theology which, in Bonhoeffers later view, must focus on the secular world where Jesus is. Second, our contemporary situation will be analyzed in light o f the pluralistic and diverse nature of the present world, especially in the realm o f religion. Based on the outcome o f this analysis, the validity o f Bonhoeffers claim for the religionless world as a world come of age will be critiqued. In this section o f the discussion, we will find that his prediction o f a religionless world has not been fully materialized in the present world. Quite contrary to his projection, even Bonhoeffers western world has come under the shadow of many different religions and has continued for the most part to be filled with religious people. Thus, the adulthood o f the world which Bonhoeffer posits might better be reinterpreted in terms o f its openness and tolerance towards differences instead o f in its secularization as Bonhoeffer assessed in his time. Moreover, for any
9 SC 214.
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living creatures, maturity also means the beginning o f decline. It is not clear how Bonhoeffer has wrestled with this issue. Therefore, it will be argued that the nature of the world come of age must be redefined in order for his thesis o f the non-religious interpretation to remain helpful for the present world. Third, my view on the adolescence o f the Church as the problem o f todays Christianity will be explained. In the midst o f religious struggles against other religions, Christianity has marginalized itself as a religion among many others. The truth o f Christ has been put on the shelves of the spiritual marketplace along with other religious ideas. As a direct result of the openhandedness o f the world, some Christian circles are even suggesting that Christianity should respect other religions and tolerate their belief system on the basis of an equality o f religion and the importance o f human freedom o f choice. A Buddhist monk will soon deliver the teachings o f Buddha as a guest speaker during a Christian worship service, and one will ask, Whats wrong with that? Arent we supposed to have an open mind after all? What was once quite clear has now become unclear and muddy. Mature humanity is being asked to make its own choice just as the Israelites were challenged in the desert by Moses and Joshua (Ex. 32:26, Deut. 29-30, Jos. 24:15). A mature theology will impose the question o f choice upon the people of Christ. Without a working practical theology to guard the Church from becoming a religious child cornered by other religions, Christianity will only suffer further marginalization. A new theology should be developed to not only guide Christianity through the myriad of this strange world o f many religions, but also help the Church to carry out its mission for this peculiarly religious world.
The adulthood o f the Church for the world come o f age in its openness will be presented as the solution for the question o f what should the Church do for this world? The concrete meaning o f the adulthood o f the Church is based on the humility o f Jesus Christ. The love o f Christ must be practiced first within the body of Christ with openness as the obedient acts of the disciples. Bonhoeffer found his theological answer for the Church in his Christology of Incarnation and Resurrection. Similarly, it will be argued that the fully mature church is the eschatological community o f Christ empowered and enlivened by the Holy Spirit and united together in the Lord who will hand his kingdom over to the Father at the victorious eschaton, which is not only a future event but the historical process which began with the ministry o f Jesus Christ on earth. In Christ, the adulthood o f the Church is not the point o f beginning o f decay, but the beginning of a new life attained through its marriage with Him, which is the meaning of the biblical account o f the first marriage in Genesis 2:24. Christianity as a religion per se has to be abolished in order for the Church to be transformed into the body o f the risen Christ. Immanuel will be presented as a ground for the demolition of Christianity as a religion. The Church as Immanuel for the world can be built based on the eschatological criteria. In conclusion, a non-religious interpretation o f the Gospel calls for the praxis o f the Church come o f age, which is led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Church should become mature in order to embrace the world come of age. Those who are called to participate in the renewal of the Church come o f its age should ask the following question: how can we tell the Gospel o f the risen Christ to this religiously pluralistic and open world by becoming a part o f the good news? The meaning and the purpose of
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the Church need to be reinterpreted. By becoming the true body o f Christ through its praxis of the love of Christ, the Church should be able to transform the world into the kingdom of God. By understanding the true purpose and the true goal o f the Church for Gods kingdom , we can finally have a plan for our action, not for speculation. It is the mission of the Church come of age to be the praxis of the triune God for a world come of age. The Church come of age is meant to be the source of life for the world which claims its own adulthood.
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PARTI BONHOEFFERS THEOLOGY FOR THE WORLD COME OF AGE
CHAPTER 1 AN OVERVIEW OF BONHOEFFERS THEOLOGY

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theologian who paid a great deal of attention to the world from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His theology was a reflection of the life and faith he lived during a time of political and ideological turmoil, the mass destruction of war, and the human suffering of the holocaust. Unlike most o f his contemporary theologians, whose primary interest was in the formulation o f a systematic for the Church, Bonhoeffers primary concern was to establish a Christian agenda for the world he felt responsible for as a disciple o f Christ. In short, his theology was not simply to understand God and his will but also to act upon it obediently. From that sense, his theology must be understood from the perspective o f a practical theology rather than a systematic theology. Because o f the lack of its systematization, some Bonhoeffer interpreters find his theology somewhat fragmented. However, I would say Bonhoeffers theology can be described as dynamic rather than fragmented. He had a clear vision and direction for his theology, even while he was changing his focus as a reaction to the different situations he had to confront. I will argue later that the main thrust of Bonhoeffers theology throughout its development was the presence and praxis o f Christ in this world as the Lord of the Church and the world. In order to find the relevance o f Bonhoeffers theology in todays religiously pluralistic world, which is our present goal, we need first to understand his theology in much more detail. Throughout this dissertation, then, I will attempt to use his theology
to solve todays problem of religious plurality within the context o f postmodemity. Therefore, understanding Bonhoeffers theology is not an end but a starting point o f the thesis, the beginning point for a non-religious interpretation o f Christianity for the religiously pluralistic world. The main goal o f this present endeavor is not to give another interpretation of Bonhoeffers theology, but to find out its applicability as a theological agenda for the contemporary which finds itself confronted by postmodemity. To accomplish this, however, some interpretation and a brief overview o f Bonhoeffers theology will be necessary for the further discussion.
Bonhoeffers Theological Concern

The theological loci o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer can be summarized in three central themes: the Church, Christ, and the world. The theological point o f departure for Bonhoeffer, whom Andre Dumas rightly called a theologian o f reality1 , was the Church as the concrete reality o f Christ, which Bonhoeffer described with the famous phrase the Church [Kirche] is Christ existing as G e m e in d e Clifford J. Green explains: This [phrase] does not mean that an institution calling itself church defines where Christ is communally present. On the contrary, it is not a church organization that defines Christ, but Christ who defines the Church. In other words, it is precisely where, and only where, Christexists-as-Ge/we/rtc/e that we find the church {Kirche). This point is crucial for understanding Bonhoeffers action in the Church Struggle against National Socialism. That there was a German church organization, with its clergy, its traditions, its congregations, its laws yes, even its scripture and its appeals to Martin Luther - does not guarantee that it is church. Only Christ present in communal word and sacrament, that is, the Gemeinde Christi, constitutes the Church.2
1 Andre Dumas, Theologian o f Reality (Bristol: SCM Press, 1971). In this book. Dumas characterizes Bonhoeffer as the theologian of reality. 2 Clifford J. Green, Editor "s Introduction in the English edition of Sanctorum Communio (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 14.
Bonhoeffers initial effort through his doctoral dissertation o f 1927, Sanctorum Communio, was to define the relationship between Christ and the Church. In the book, he dealt with the social characteristic o f the Church and its relationship with Christ. From the very onset o f his theological development to the end o f his life, the question of What is the Church? and What should the Church do? occupied his mind. Along with the question of the Church, the Christological question o f Who is Christ for us today?3 was central to his theology. He understood the reality of Christ in terms o f his lordship o f the Church and of the world. It is important to remember that Christology was always at the center o f Bonhoeffers theology. Misinterpretations and misapplications o f Bonhoeffers theology are due to the lack of understanding of its Christocentric characteristic.4 Ralf K. Wtistenberg observes that some interpreters like Harvey Cox have called Bonhoeffer an atheist, others a secularist (A. Loen), Bemd Jaspert and John Macquarrie believed that Bonhoeffer himself had a religious nature, while for William Hamilton and others,
3 LPP 279. 30 April 1944. A For instance, Hanfried Mullers interpretation of Bonhoeffer, which views religionless Christianity close to the atheism of Marxism, ignores the fact that Bonhoeffers worldview is not simply social and political as Muller seems to understand, but is rather theological in which Christ is understood as a God who is actively involved in human history. (See Hanfried Muller, Concerning the Reception and Interpretation o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Ronald Gregor Smith, World Come o f Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 182-214, and for Mullers Marxist interpretation of Bonhoeffer). The subsequent interpretations by John A. T. Robinson in his Honest to God (1963), Paul van Buren in his The Secular Meaning o f the Gospel (1963), Harvey Cox in his The Secular City (1965), Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton in their Radical Theology and the Death o f God (1966) seem to have either misinterpreted or misused Bohoeffers incamational Christology and the meaning of the terms such as "religionless Christianity. worldly Christianity, and "etsi deus non daretur." They do not seem to have fully appreciated the meaning of Bonhoeffers statement Before God and with God we live without God (LPP 360).
Bonhoeffer was the father of the God-is-dead theology.5 Wiistenberg adds, Such interpretations clearly reflect the religious or the secular perspectives of the interpreters rather than the assumptions o f Bonhoeffer himself. . . Many o f the misinterpretations o f Bonhoeffer in the 1960s owed to the failure to take into account how profoundly his theology was informed by his Christology.6 The presence o f Christ in concrete human situations was an ever-present theological condition underlying Bonhoeffers theology. If this aspect is not taken into consideration, one would easily end up misinterpreting Bonhoeffer. For Bonhoeffer, the centrality and actuality o f Christ in this world was the master key to answer all theological questions. The relationship between Christ and the Church should be understood on the same premise. For instance, it is not the Church, which invokes the Spirit of Christ to receive worship. On the contrary, Christ is the one who is present at the center of the congregation inviting the people to the fellowship through his community called the Church. In all places and in all situations, Christ is the Lord. While Bonhoeffer paid much attention to the Church as the reality o f Christ, his ultimate theological concern was the problem o f this world in relationship with the incarnate Christ and the Church, which Dumas summarizes in the following paragraph: The reality of which Bonhoeffer speaks consists o f a world already inhabited by the incarnate Christ. As he sees it positivism and idealism are only abstract understandings of that specific reality. From the standpoint of his realism, Bonhoeffer works out a christological analysis o f the concrete, which is neither superimposing Gods work on mans failure, nor letting man take over once God retires, but rather the way in which God as man in Jesus Christ takes the world upon himself, and the way in
5 See Ralf K. Wiistenberg, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Tegel Theology in John W. de Gruchy ed., Bonhoeffer fo r a New Day (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 58. 6 Ibid.
which man yields to that responsibility in such a way that it is an act of submission but not surrender.7 It can be said that Bonhoeffer viewed the reality o f the Church, Christ, and the world as interwoven together. He understood the interrelationship between the Church and Christ, Christ and the world, and the Church and the world through: 1) the sociality of the Church in relationship with Christ and with the world8, 2) the centrality of Christ in the Church and in the world, 3) the maturity o f the world in Christ, which necessitates the Churchs renewal as the Church for others. Although these interrelations were addressed throughout the different developmental stages o f Bonhoeffers theology, he summarized his theological concern in the form o f an Outline fo r a Book that was enclosed in the letter o f 3 August 1944. In it he divided the content o f the book, which he was planning to write, into three chapters: 1) A Stocktaking o f Christianity, 2) The Real Meaning o f Christian Faith, 3) Conclusions.9 The first chapter o f his book was going to deal with the then-current situation of the world come o f age in which, based on his judgment, Christianity, as a religion, became irrelevant. In the second chapter, he was going to answer his self-imposed question of Who is Christ for us today?1 0 Hoping that it may be o f some help for the Churchs future, the conclusion of the book would have provided his blueprint of the new Church that shares in the secular problems o f ordinary human life, not
7 Andrd Dumas, Theologian o f Reality, 17. 8 Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer, A Theology o f Sociality (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 10. 9 LPP 380, 3 August 1944. 10 LPP 279, 30 April 1944.
dominating, but helping and serving.1 1 No matter how briefly he expressed his thoughts in the Outline , those are the theological issues he wanted to deal with in earnest. Though he was not able to develop the Outline into a theological treatise, many o f his thoughts still stimulate other theologians and church leaders who are genuinely concerned about the current situation and problem o f the Church in a world that is much different from Bonhoeffers. Perhaps that is because in our contemporary world his prophetic statement o f the world come o f age finally has been realized in the form of postmodemity. O f course, what he meant by the world come o f age remains to be discussed. However, as we live in the postmodern era, we can share with Bonhoeffer some sense that humanity as a whole has become much more enlightened and capable than ever before. The world, for example, has been transformed into a cyber-village through the internet. Technology no longer remains as Sci-fi, and it has become the reality in which we now live. The future generations will experience much faster acceleration of technological advancement than we can currently imagine, which will bring them a worldview totally different from ours. With rapid changes taking place in the world, one has to wonder what is the place for Christianity and what is the task o f theology for the present and the future. It is precisely the same concern that Bonhoeffer had five decades ago. Therefore, the present effort in this thesis can be viewed as an effort to continue his theological formulation that was planted in his Outline fo r a Book for our contemporary situation. Edwin H. Robertson made a similar endeavor to do what Bonhoeffer intended with his Outline and to take Bonhoeffers theological insights into Robertsons contemporary generation and
1 1 LPP 382-83, 3 August 1944.
explore their relevance within the context o f Bonhoeffers O u tlin e12 Although, in general, his effort is commendable, it does not seem to seriously consider the post modern situation of religious pluralism as the context in which the Outline should be developed further. In order to develop Bonhoeffers Outline into a theology relevant to our contemporary context, it will be necessary to understand Bonhoeffers theological insights. As a beginning, it will be helpful to conduct a brief survey on how others have appraised Bonhoeffers theology.
The Interpretations of Bonhoeffers Theology

Ernst Feil correctly observes that interpreting Bonhoeffer is difficult because: 1) Bonhoeffers work is so varied as far as the genre o f texts is concerned, 2) the variety of the texts raises the question for interpreters as to what extent the writings together form the basis for a scholarly analysis, 3) there are different views as to how one should interpret Bonhoeffers life: as a co-requisite of the interpretation o f his work, primarily as a uniform development, or as a development in which far-reaching changes took place.1 3 Despite the difficulty in interpreting Bonhoeffer, there have been various interpretations of Bonhoeffers theology, which will be briefly surveyed here. David H. Hopper questions Bonhoeffers stature as a systematic theologian and particularly the continuity o f his theological thought. It can be said that, although Hoppers effort to prove his points o f dissent can be deemed as not that successful14, his
12 See Edwin H. Robertson, Bonhoeffer's Heritage: The Christian Way in a World without Religion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), 12. 1 3 Ernst Feil, The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 3-4. I4David H. Hopper, A Dissent on Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975). For
extensive survey of the various interpretations of Bonhoeffers theology in support of the points o f his dissent serve as an excellent source for the various interpretations of Bonhoeffer. According to Hopper, Karl Barth and others had already made an appraisal of Bonhoeffer in the 1950s. Hopper suggests that Barth, in 1952, a year after publication of the original German edition o f Letters and Papers fro m Prison, described Bonhoeffers theological stature as an impulsive visionary thinker who was suddenly seized by an idea to which he gave a lively form, and then after a time he called a halt.1 5 Barth also complained about the lack o f continuity and consistency in Bonhoeffers theology, and he maintained such an assessment in his 1967 letter to Bethge following the publication of the latters biography o f Bonhoeffer.1 6 Against the earlier assessment by Barth and others, in 1955, Gerhard Ebeling, a student of Bonhoeffer, asserted in defense o f Bonhoeffer that the concept of a nonreligious interpretation of biblical concepts was rooted, with consistency and continuity,
instance, Hopper argues, The matter of BonhoefFers personal quest, his longing for an answer to the question Who am I?, the pull of his family and his own liberal heritage, the synthetic impulse, his fascination with the heroic; these uniquely personal, existential concerns make Bonhoeffers theology something less than system atical34). It is my opinion, based on Bonhoeffers own criticism against the positivistic revelation, and on the dynamism and fluidity of his theological thought for the concrete reality, we can deduce that he never wanted to be identified as a systematic theologian." Therefore, it is a moot point to say that the non-systematic nature of his theology is problematic even if that is the case. Of course we cannot equate systematic theology with the positivistic revelation. However, there is no evidence that he wanted to formulate a systematic theology in the traditional sense. The influence of his theology is not from the systematic nature of his theology, but from the creative and prophetic nature of its content. Hopper also argues that the inconsistency between Christ for others and Christ for me at points be interpreted as suggesting a certain noblesse oblige (135) without considering that me is also included in others from Gods perspective; thus a uniformity does exists in his christology of a suffering God. 15 John A. Phillips, Christ for Us in the Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 251. from a letter of Karl Barth to Landessuperintendent P. W. HerrenbrQck, 21 December 1952, pp. 121-22, quoted in ibid., 154. 16Ibid.
in certain long-standing theological presuppositions which were more than mere personal whim.17 In 1959, Jurgen Moltmann made a point in The Lordship o f Christ and Human Society that there was a pattern of continuous development in BonhoefFers thought. He asserted that Bonhoeffer, in his early writings, was preoccupied with the sociology o f the Church, with the consequences of faith in the presence of Christ in his church, with Christ existing as Christian community, and with the distinctive nature o f the community in discipleship. In Ethics , however, Bonhoeffers horizon is broadened to include the Lordship of Christ not only in the Church, but also in the world. About this, Moltmann says: In noting this change we do not mean to imply a breach in Bonhoeffers work as a whole. Nor will it be possible to quote his latest thinking against his earlier theological essays. Rather, we should draw the conclusion that it was the theology o f earlier writings, the ethical social transcendence of God, the entering o f God into reality and the vicarious action of Christ, which now prove their worth when applied to other themes.1 8 I agree with Moltmann in his view that what has changed in the development of Bonhoeffers theology was not its underlying principles but the horizon for its application and his theological focus. Hopper finds that the following two points came to represent the common ground of the assessment o f Bonhoeffer in the decade o f the 1960s. First, Bonhoeffer was profoundly Christological in his theological concern
' Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, tr. by James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), 103126. especially p. 105. Cf. also Die miindig Welt, vol. II, pp. 12-73, quoted in ibid.: Ebelings analysis was presented as a paper to one of the conferences of friends and pupils of Bonhoeffer that were held periodically beginning in 1954. Some of the proceedings of these conferences were subsequently published at intervals in several volumes under the title Die miindig Welt. This series of conferences, terminating in the year 1962, had much to do with establishing the new estimates of Bonhoeffers stature, despite occasional dissenting opinions expressed in these meetings. 1 8 Jurgen Moltmann and Jurgen Weissbach, Two Studies in the Theology o f Bonhoeffer, trans. Reginald H. Fuller and Use Fuller (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1959), 56.
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throughout his theological work, and second, the scope o f his vision was ever more broadened over the years. At the time o f his writing A Dissent on Bonhoeffer , Hopper observed, It now was commonly argued that to understand properly the nature and content o f the Letters and Papers from Prison one had to interpret them in the context o f Bonhoeffers earlier writings and be cognizant o f his developing and increasingly perceptive grasp o f reality as he became more and more involved in the life of the world.19 On this same plane o f understanding, Eberhard Bethges biography is entitled Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary suggesting the progressive stages in Bonhoeffers life with continuity in his theological thinking.20 In the English-speaking world, John Godsey, in 1960, published his study The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer with an understanding that Bonhoeffers theology was essentially Christology. He marked off three stages in the development o f Bonhoeffers thought: During the first period his thought centered on Jesus Christ as the revelational reality o f the Church. During the second period his emphasis was upon Jesus Christ as the Lord over the Church. In the third period Bonhoeffer concentrated his attention upon Jesus Christ as the Lord over the world."2 1 Godsey also found that Bonhoeffers theological concern for the Church was a continuing theme of his theology throughout, and that he anticipated the presence o f the Church and its function even in a religionless world.22
19 Hopper. A Dissent on Bonhoeffer, 29. :o Ibid., 29-30. 3 1 John Godsey, The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 266, quoted in ibid., 31. ~ John Godsey, 271, quoted in ibid.
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In From the Church to the World (1961), Hanfried Muller made an interesting observation about Bonhoeffers theological development in terms o f a changing awareness of the social and political situation.23 Despite his Marxist interpretation of Bonhoeffer which provokes challenges from other interpreters, his interpretation, as primarily based on Christology, was generally accepted.24 However, it seems that Muller made a wrongful conclusion by viewing that Bonhoeffer had dropped the doctrine of church from his later theological agenda. As can be seen from the Outline fo r a Book , Bonhoeffers major interest still lay in the matters o f the Church to the end, and with such evidence, Mullers conclusion o f Bonhoeffers abandonment o f ecclesiology seems to be premature. It is clear that the underlying essence o f Bonhoeffers question, Who is Christ for us today, is his consistent inquiry as the theologian o f the concrete reality of Christ. This point will be discussed in more detail later in the section in which a critique o f Bonhoeffer will be made. Quite unfortunately but perhaps unavoidably, given the obscure and at times confusing nature of Bonhoeffers language, the next wave o f sensational reaction to Bonhoeffers theology or theological questions appeared in the form o f a secular theology by John A. T. Robinson - the Bishop o f Woolwich in England - and Paul van Buren in America. According to Hopper, Robinson, in his Honest to God published in 1963, expressed the authors disaffection with and doubt about traditional theological formulations, based on the thought of Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rudolf
23 Hopper, A Dissent on Bonhoeffer, 30; 155: Muller, Von der Kirche zur Welt. See ed. Ronald Gregor Smith, World Come o f Age (Fortress Press, 1967), 182-214. Muller essentially argues for the abandonment of ecclesiology by the later Bonhoeffer. Also, see Chapter 3 of Hoppers A Dissent on Bonhoeffer. 24 Ibid.
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Bultmann.25 In the same year Paul van Buren published The Secular Meaning o f the Gospel in which he came to the task o f theologizing out o f the philosophical school of linguistic analysis based on the statement o f a non-religious interpretation o f biblical concepts.26 In 1965, Harvey Cox came out with The Secular City in which he defined his major task as a restatement o f Christian faith that would free faith from religion and metaphysics and make common cause with a profane and pragmatic humanism.27 Since the so-called secular theology is not the focus o f the present discussion, these interpretations of Bonhoeffer will not be analyzed at length. However, it might be worthwhile to make a brief observation on some interpretations by these secular theologians. Robinson was first influenced by Paul Tillichs sermon The Depth o f Existence in 1949 in which Tillich transposed the religious symbolism o f God from the heights to the depths. In other words, God is not an Other Being out there or up there but the depth and ground o f our very being.28 Second, he was impressed by Bonhoeffers Letters and Papers from Prison, from which he understood Bonhoeffer as saying that, in Robinsons words, God is deliberately calling us in the twentieth century to a form of Christianity that did not depend on the premise of religion.29 Third, he was influenced by Rudolf Bultmanns analysis and program o f demythologizing the Christianity which was introduced in his 1941 publication of New Testament and Mythology .
25 Ibid., 16-17. 26 Ibid.. 17. 21 Ibid., 18. 28 John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (SCM Press, 1963). 21-22. See also Paul Tillichs The Shaking o f the Foundations, 1949, 63-64. 29 Ibid.. 23.
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By juxtaposing Tillichs concept o f God as the ground and depth o f our being against Bonhoeffers definition o f God as dens ex m a c h i n a l Robinson tried to put an end to theism, which treats God as a supernatural being external to human beings, and to derive his own understanding of God as Love that, to him, is the very ground o f our being.31 He asserts: The only way in which Christ can be met, whether in acceptance or rejection, is through the least of his brethren. The Son o f Man can be known only in unconditional relationship to the son o f man, to the one whose sole claim upon us is his common humanity. Whether one has known God is tested by one question only, How deeply have you loved? - for He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.32 Robinson considered the conception o f God as Love as linking up with Bonhoeffers non-religious understanding o f God, for such an ultimate question has nothing to do with religion. In denying a theistic understanding o f God, Robinson seems to have asked What is Christ for us today? instead of Bonhoeffers original question Who is Christ for us today? Following the lead of Bultmann, he had to demythologize the Incarnation, which is the most important element o f Bonhoeffers christology. Thus, it can be said that his question o f what in place of who regarding Jesus Christ seems to be a major point of departure from Bonhoeffers theology. Although his effort to answer Bonhoeffers questions from the perspective of the world come o f age was remarkable, Robinson simply took Bonhoeffers theological concern and ran his own course. Robinson rode on
30 Ibid., 47. God of gap. 3 1 Ibid., 49-53: To assert that God is love (1 John. 4:8) is to believe that in love one comes to touch with the most fundamental reality in the universe, that Being itself ultimately has this character. 3- Ibid., 61.
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Bultmanns demythologization while at the same time attempting to hybridize Tillichs philosophical theology - which understood God as the ultimate concern and the ground o f being - with Bonhoeffers non-religious Christianity for the world come o f age. In his review of Robinsons book, Daniel Jenkins raised a series o f questions. First, he challenged Robinson for accepting the ground o f being as the object o f our faith. Second, he questioned whether Robinson did justice to the biblical idea o f God by pointing out that the Bibles concern is to make clear the Lordship o f God over the world and humanity, not simply to picture the God up there. Third, he suggested that much more work needs to be done about religion and the world come o f age. Jenkins argued that it is not fair to think o f religion in purely negative terms as Robinson did. He asked, Can we write off the whole vast history o f mans religion, in all its variety, quite as easily as that?33 He also understood the world come o f age as such that humanity has come of age in Jesus Christ: Humanity has entered into its heritage o f freedom as the child o f God through Christ and, . . . the gifts and graces o f the Spirit have now been poured over humankind so that together we can grow to full-grown humanhood in Gods image. . . . The great power over themselves and their environment . . . has not been achieved by a combination o f purely secular historical forces, any more than it has been achieved by the efforts o f institutions bearing a Christian label. . . . But it is an insight which is misunderstood if we fail to see that it is in the light o f Christ that we discover maturity.3 4 Based on Jenkins definition o f religion, Robinsons new non-religious program can indeed be viewed as another religious program devised by our human effort of
33 Ibid., 210-11. 34 Ibid., 212-3.
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seeking the ground of being As we shall see later, however, Bonhoeffers religionless Christianity has a different source. It lies on none other than Christ himself as its ground. From Bonhoeffers perspective, any human effort to define God, such as Robinsons the ground of being, is another form o f religion or metaphysics. What Bonhoeffer intended was to interpret Christianity non-religiously rather than to create another religious program. In The Secular City, Harvey Cox made an affirmative evaluation o f the modem megalopolis and the secularization of the world. He used Bonhoeffers thought in a different way. He tried to answer Bonhoeffers question How do we speak o f God without God? How do we speak in a secular fashion o f God? Based on the Creation account of Genesis and the idea of Friedrich Gogarten, Cox argued that secularization represents an authentic consequence o f biblical faith.3 5 Cox described three biblical elements that had given rise to secularization: the disenchantment o f nature begins with the Creation, the desacralization o f politics with Exodus, the deconsecration o f values with the Sinai Covenant, especially with its prohibition o f idols.36 In much the same way as postmodemity is distinguished from postmodernism, he distinguished secularization, as a historical process, from secularism which is the name for an ideology, very much like a religion.37 The disenchantment of nature is an absolute precondition for the development o f natural science, which is in turn the precondition for securalization and urbanization.38 Likewise,
35 Harvey Cox, The Secular City, Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1965), 15. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 18. 38 Ibid., 19.
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the desacralization o f politics and the deconsecration o f values are critical elements of the process of secularization. And, according to Cox, the biblical antecedent of those three processes supports the idea that secularization is intended by God, not by humans. Bernard Murchland maintained, Cox manages rather well in blessing his secular city and all its works with appropriate biblical texts. But he does so at the cost of suppressing equally relevant biblical data. The same Genesis narrative that establishes humans responsibility for the created order also speaks o f its fall, of humans perennial tendency to slip away from the desirable ideal. 9 Certainly, the most unfortunate outcome o f a secular interpretation of Bonhoeffers theology came out in the form o f the so-called death o f God theology, which is chiefly identified with William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer. Hopper explains: The death o f God theology represented a repudiation o f the traditional conception o f God and pressed the point that Gods presence was no longer a reality in the lives of most contemporary Christians, that if there ever was a God he had now withdrawn from the human scene and that the duty o f Christians was to seek enrichment o f life in interpersonal relations.40 While Altizers brand of the death o f God theology was inclined more toward metaphysics and mysticism, Hamilton formulated a death o f God theology from his own understanding of Dostoevsky and Bonhoeffer. To him, a movement away from God and religion, which is the language of Bonhoeffer, means the movement into, or toward the world, worldly life, and the neighbor as the bearer o f the worldly Jesus. Eberhard
39 Ed. Daniel Callahan, The Secular City Debate (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1966), 18-19. 40 Hopper, A Dissent on Bonhoeffer, 18.
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Bethge and Paul Lehmann, two close friends o f Bonhoeffer, both rejected Hamiltons view as a distortion and a careless dissemination o f a half-truth.4 1 It seems that Hamilton dropped the transcendent nature of God in its entirety, whereas Bonhoeffer saw that the transcendence has come into the world within our reach through our neighbor. Bonhoeffer said, The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation.42 In 1967, John A. Phillips, in Christ fo r Us in the Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer , while concurring with Muller and Godsey on the point o f Bonhoeffers Christological focus, viewed Bonhoeffer as abandoning an early ecclesiological Christology in favor of a new Christology reaching out to both the individual and the world. According to Phillips, the new Christology appears in Bonhoeffers 1933 Berlin lectures on Christology. On the side o f Muller, Phillips criticized Godseys linking of Christology and ecclesiology, and said, Whatever Bonhoeffer was concerned with in the Ethics and the prison letters, it was not primarily ecclesiology.43 But contrary to the assessments of Muller and Phillips, it is clear that Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation has the essential character o f eccelsiology and serves as its foundation. Godsey was correct. In 1966, Heinrich Ott, who succeeded Karl Barth in the chair o f theology at Basel, published Reality and Faith. It asserted the theme o f continuity in Bonhoeffers thought. Ott argues that Christology and ecclesiology are present in Bonhoeffers
4 1 Ibid.. 19. 42 LPP 381, Outline fo r a Book. 43 John A. Phillips, Christ fo r Us in the Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 27.
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theology with constancy throughout his thought. He further argues that Bonhoeffers theology has two unifying themes: namely, Christology and reality as the title o f his book suggests.44 Andre Dumas, in 1968, interpreted Bonhoeffer along the lines o f Ott from the perspective o f Bonhoeffers emphasis on reality, but sought, in addition, to establish the fundamentally Hegelian character o f Bonhoeffers thinking.45 Dumas argues that the influence of Hegel on Bonhoeffer can be discerned from the fact that the categories o f space, logic, physics and geography are more basic to Bonhoeffers thought than time, events, personality, and history.46 Ernst Feil published yet another important interpretative work, Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers, in 1971. He suggests that Bonhoeffers theology should be understood in terms o f the interrelationship between his christology and simultaneous awareness and understanding of the world. Feil argues that Bonhoeffer believed that theology could never state the content o f faith once for all but was itself grounded in discipleship and arose out of concrete historical situations.47 From this perspective, according to Feil, Bonhoeffer never set aside or lost sight o f the empirical church even in the prison letters. Hopper makes an assessment on Feils interpretation by saying, A concluding aspect of Feils treatment is his effort to show the systematic coherence of the fragmentary themes of the prison letters and to argue their continuity with Bonhoeffers earlier (1932) theological concerns.48
44 Hopper, A Dissent on Bonhoeffer, 33-36. 45 Ibid.. 36. 46 Andre Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), 30-31. 4' Hopper. A Dissent on Bonhoeffer, 37. Quote from Ernst Feil, Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Munich, 1971). 71-72. 48 Ibid., 38.
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In summary, most interpreters o f Bonhoeffers theology agree on one point: that there is a continuing theme of Christology throughout its developmental stages. Secondly, except Muller and Phillips, most o f them also agree on the continuity of ecclesiology in his theology in a certain form. Thirdly, while Ott and Dumas find that the reality o f Christ and the reality of humanity are central to Bonhoeffers theology, Feil finds the concrete situations of the world and its relation to Christ to be central. For all, there is in Bonhoeffer a recognition that theology must be made concrete. Clifford J. Green adds a fourth dimension to his analysis, observing that sociality [church], Christology, anthropology [the concrete], and soteriology were the recurring themes in Bonhoeffers theology.49 Surely soteriology is an important theme as well, but it seems that the central themes in Bonhoeffers theology can be summarized in the following terms: 1) the Church as the form o f Christ in this world or the Church for others, 2) Christ as the Lord of the Church and the world, 3) the world God has forsaken. Although Bonhoeffer started from the concept o f the Church in his theological formulation, it is clear that Christology, the concrete reality o f Christ in this world, was the foundation upon which he developed his theology. Moreover, it is Christ in the midst o f life and discovered. With this basis, those three central themes will be treated next for further understanding o f Bonhoeffers theology.
49 Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer, A Theology o f Sociality, 10. Green summarizes Bonhoeffers view of the sociality of Christ and humanity, which is actualized through the Church; (1) the ecclesiology is set within the more comprehensive context of Bonhoeffers theology of sociality, (2) sociality informs Bonhoeffers discussion of all the basic Christian concepts: person, creation, sin, and revelation, (3) already in Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer demonstrated that anthropology is inseparable from his Christology and has a fundamental role in his theology, (4) sociality is linked with soteriology.
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The Church for Others

In 1927, when he was only twenty-one years old, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio under the supervision o f Reinhold Seeberg, which was presented to and accepted by the Faculty of Theology at Berlin University. It was not published immediately after acceptance due to lack o f interest from publishers, but, after some revision,50 it was finally published in July 1930. Although it did not gain as much popularity as his later writings, perhaps due to its academic format, it contains his early thoughts, which demonstrate a starting point and foundation o f his theology, important for the proper understanding o f the whole o f Bonhoeffers theology. It was in Sanctorum Communio where Bonhoeffer began formulating the Christology of the concrete reality of Christ in the community o f saints. In short, his theological agenda was based on his understanding o f Christ as the Lord of the Church and o f the world. What Bonhoeffer wanted to do in service for the German church was encourage renewal based on his understanding of the Church as the actuality and reality o f Christ His early endeavor made in Sanctorum Communio was to establish a theological method. Bonhoeffer made a self-evaluation o f the book in its preface, The value o f the book was the basic approach adopted in dealing with the problem of systematic understanding of the Christian church as a community.5 1 In summary, Bonhoeffers basic approach to deal with the problem o f the Church in Sanctorum Communio was
50 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology o f the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 10. Bonhoeffer edited . . . and estimated that he cut 20 to 25 percent of the text prior to publishing. 5 1 Ibid.
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two-fold: (1) He chose ecclesiology as the starting point and the main locus o f his theology. It is observed that the problem of the Church continued to occupy his mind throughout his career as a theologian and practitioner of theology. (2) He saw the need for placing social philosophy and sociology in the service o f theology in order to explain the concrete nature of the Christian church in a systematic manner. The employment of those disciplines allowed him to be a critical yet practical thinker. Feil finds: The community of saints, or the reality o f the Church (SC, 87) was the subject matter of Bonhoeffers doctoral dissertation. Such a reality was to be comprehended theologically, but Bonhoeffer found the available conceptual tools of the metaphysical scheme (SC, 26) unsuitable for his perception o f the Church as an empirically real community o f believers . . . The initial step was to overcome the prevalence o f epistemology and its necessarily concomitant individualism. Due to the premise o f its metaphysics of cognition, idealism includes individualism because it cannot comprehend the other person; that is to say, it can only comprehend the other person as something other (SC 28).52 The reality of the Church was to be dealt with sociologically not metaphysically. As its subtitle A dogmatic inquiry into the sociology o f the Church suggests, Sanctorum Communio was Bonhoeffers effort to formulate an ecclesiology based on the sociality or social-reality of the Church rather than the abstract concepts produced by the epistemology of metaphysics. Bonhoeffers approach was contrary to that o f German idealism. Although Bonhoeffer was influenced by Barth in theological content, Bonhoeffers methodological point of departure differed from Barth. From Bonhoeffers standpoint, Barth took the revelation o f God as the starting point, which left his theology in the realm o f epistemology.
52 Ernst Feil. The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 6.
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Bonhoeffer clearly stated the aim o f the book in his own words, We wish to understand the structure, from the standpoint o f social philosophy and sociology, o f the reality o f the Church o f Christ which is given in the revelation in Christ 53 It is certain that the understanding of the structure o f the Church given in the revelation in Christ was not only the aim o f Sanctorum Communio but also the persistent aim o f his theology throughout What is remarkable about Bonhoeffers work in Santorum Communio was that he chose an approach which viewed the Church as a social phenomenon subjected to the study o f sociology. It was this empirical community of saints, whose structure he attempted to understand. This was due to his tendency o f being an empiricist, which primarily emerged from his family background. Despite the fact that he was bom and educated in a country where the giants o f idealism - such as Kant and Hegel - sprang up and dominated the world o f philosophy and theology, from the beginning o f his theological journey, Bonhoeffer knew that he must avoid the poison of idealism in order to solve the problem o f the Church. He viewed the world from an empirical perspective rather than an ideological perspective. According to Renate Wind, Bonhoeffer was deeply influenced by his father, Karl Bonhoeffer, who was a rationalist and at the same time an empiricist.54 Wind says, Karl was indisputably the model for his younger son55 [Dietrich], who even more than the
53 SC 20. 5'1 Renate Wind, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Spoke In The Wheel, trans. John Bowden (Grand Rapids. MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 2-3: Karl Bonhoeffer was a typical fin de siecle academic. He was convinced that the world could be investigated and understood. He had no time for speculation, whether religious or speculation.. . . For him, science was empirical research and rational explanation of demonstrable phenomena. 55 Ibid., 2: Dietrich was the youngest of four sons. He was the sixth of eight children which include his older brothers Karl-Friedrich, Walter, Klaus, and older sisters Ursula, Christine, his twin sister Sabine.
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others had to fight for his fathers recognition.56 There is no need to pursue the psychology o f young Dietrich any deeper in this discussion. However, Bonhoeffer maintained his tendency o f being an empiricist, which came from his upbringing in a family where the empirical method was emphasized, throughout his theological career. In addition to his family background, a historical figure who influenced him deeply on the empirical nature of his theology was Martin Luther. For Luther, the Church must be a reality where Christ is revealed. Bonhoeffers understanding o f the Church as a reality, which is the concrete form of revelation of Christ as his body, can be viewed as a more developed concept from the Lutheran doctrine o f consubstantiation.57 Furthermore, from his diary written during his trip to Rome, which he made with his brother Klaus, it can be deduced that Catholicism also influenced him in understanding the concept o f the Church from the transubstantiation58 point of view. The revelation o f Christ in reality was what he experienced in Rome. Wind quotes from Bonhoeffers diary: On Sunday afternoon to Trinita dei Monti. It was almost indescribable. About 6 oclock around forty young girls who wanted to become nuns were brought in a solemn procession. The organ began and they sang their vespers with great seriousness, with incredible simplicity and grace. The whole thing was so fresh, and made an unprecedented impression o f the deepest piety. When the door was opened again after the brief halfhour, one had the most splendid view over the cupolas o f Rome in the
and younger sister Susanne. 56 Ibid., 23: Under his fathers influence, as he described it, he turned from the phraseological to the real. He sent his parents a letter from holiday: Our director has once again set us quite stupid tasks.. . . What the trees tell me. O f course he wants dreadful phraseology. But Im having Christel write the article, a very academic one about the anatomy and physiology of trees. That was very much along with his fathers line. As an adolescent, he learned to suppress imagination and emotion in himself under the influence of his father. 57 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Michigan: WM.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1941), 646: Luther insisted on the literal interpretation of the words of the institution and on the bodily presence of Christ in the Lords supper. However, he substituted for the doctrine of transubstantiation that of consubstantiation ... according to which Christ is in, with, and under the elements. 58 Ibid., 645: (The essence of the doctrine of transubstantiation is) Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the holy sacrament.
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setting sun. Now Im going to take a walk on the Pincio. It was a splendid day, the first day on which I gained real understanding of Catholicism.. . . I believe I am beginning to understand the concept o f the church.59 Wind adds her remark to what Bonhoeffer recorded in his diary, In Rome, church and faith, doctrine and life, which had previously been separate, came together for Dietrich. He experienced a piety which did not exclude or reject senses. And he came to know a church which was universal and at the same time gave a binding order and a visible form to personal faith.60 Bonhoeffers experience in Rome helped him to have a perspective on the question o f the Church.61 Surely, the unprecedented impression o f the deepest piety opened a new door for this young seminarian, Bonhoeffer, who came from a world where human ideology prevailed and the real presence o f Christ in the Church couldnt be felt. He saw and felt Gods grace from a simple religious ceremony, and such pious impression was deeply engraved in his heart. Having experienced what a living church is, his remaining task was to formulate an answer to the problem o f the Church in a systematic way, and Sanctorum Communio was his first attempt to explain the Church as a reality given by God to this world. From the perspective of theology, Bonhoeffers theorem, Christ existing as Church-community, was a refutation against a rational and ideological view on revelation. It was his attempt to break down the theology built upon the foundation of
59 Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Jugend und Studium, 88-89 (Italian diary), quoted in Renate Wind, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Spoke In The Wheel, 28. 60 Ibid., 29. 61 Ibid., 31.
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idealism and metaphysics, and to rebuild it on the concrete reality o f Christ in the Church and the world. For BonhoefFer, the Church was the most obvious and concrete object of theology as an empirical study. In order to satisfy his particular tendency o f favoring the empirical method of study, BonhoefFer chose sociology as his tool for the construction o f his theology. Reinhold Seeberg, his mentor at the University o f Berlin, was an important figure for BonhoefFer who gave him sociology as a tool to be used in shaping his theology. BonhoefFers method o f viewing the church from the perspective o f sociology, a term borrowed from Comte, and of social philosophy was innovative at the time that he wrote his dissertation. From the historical development o f sociology developed by Simmel, Troeltsch, Vierkandt, and Tonnies, BonhofFer found the real object of sociology to be society as the bearer o f relation between its individual members.62 Social forces as defined by Simmel - which include such concepts as love, subordination, mystery, and conflict, as well as kinds o f relation, as found in the distinction made by Tonnies between community and society - are the object o f basic sociological questions.63 In order to clarify his method o f investigating the concept o f the Church, BonhoefFer said: So our problem has to be attacked from two, or even from three, sides: that o f dogmatics, o f social philosophy, and sociology. In the next chapter we shall show that the Christian concept of the person is real only in sociality. Then we shall show, in a social-philosophical section, how man's spiritual being is likewise possible and real only in sociality. Then in a purely sociological section we shall consider the structures o f empirical communities, being by that time in a position to refute the atomist view o f society. Only then, through the insight we have acquired into the nature
62 SC 16: From his judgment, Troeltschs analytic and formal group of sociological work settled in the universities as scientific sociology over against historical-philosophical-encyclopedic group. 63 Ibid. The basic category of sociological thought must therefore be relation. And questions must be asked concerning social forces as well as kinds of relation.
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o f community, shall we able to come near to a conceptual understanding of Christian community, of the sanctorum com m unio64 In Sanctorum Communio , Bonhoeffer can be understood as explaining the concept o f church mainly in terms o f church-community and its relation with Christ. In his early period, Bonhoeffer described his Christology in terms o f the Christ existing as church-community: The community o f saints as the community o f penitent sinners is held together by the unity of the body of Christ. In the Church, as in any other community, people repent both for their own sin and for that o f the collective person of the community. Now, is this collective person perhaps Christ existing as church community, the body o f Christ? . . . The very fact that as a sinful community the Church is nevertheless still holy, or rather that in this world it is never holy without also being sinful - this is what Christs presence in it means. It is precisely as such a community that is holy in its sinfulness that the Church is Christ existing as church-community.65 Bonhoeffer also viewed the Church as the place where salvation occurs. Sin is overcome by the love o f Christ and peccatorum communio (community o f sinners) is transformed into sanctorum communio (community o f saints).66 Regarding sin and how it relates to the sanctorum communio in Bonhoeffers theology, Clifford J. Green asserts: His [Bonhoeffers] account o f sin is specific, not vague; this specificity involves clearly delineated anthropological dynamics: power, egocentric self seeking, domination and exploitation, and individual isolation and corporate fragmentation. This is the syndrome which stands in contrast to the love and mutual self-giving of the primal community. This is the syndrome which the love o f Christ the Stellvertreter [the initiator and reality o f new humanity]67 overcomes, thereby inaugurating the new
WSC 20-21. 65 SC 214. 66 Clifford J. Green. Bonhoeffer, A Theology o f Sociality, 63-65. 67 Ibid.. 56.
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humanity and talking up the peccatonim communio into the transforming life of the sanctorum communio.6* Bonhoeffer reaffirmed his Christocentric ecclesiology o f Christ existing as church-community in Act and Being (1930) from the perspective o f the present revelation o f Christ: Christian revelation must occur in the present precisely because it is, in the qualified once-and-for-all occurrence of the cross and resurrection of Christ, always something o f the future. It must, in other words, be thought in the Church, for the Church is the present Christ, Christ existing as community. In the proclamation o f the community o f faith for the community of faith, Christ is the subject common to the proclamation (word and sacrament) and the community o f faith alike. The proclamation and the community o f faith are linked in such a way that each, when considered on its own, loses its meaning altogether. Christ is the corporate person [Gesamtperson] of the Christian community of faith.69 In Discipleship (1937),70 he emphasized the Church as the visible community of the disciples of Christ.7 1 Discipleship was understood in the sense o f community of faith. He said: The first disciples lived in the bodily presence and communion o f Jesus . . . We are made members of the Body o f Christ through baptism . . . It means that although Jesus has died and risen again, the baptized can still live in his bodily presence and enjoy communion with him . . . The disciples enjoyed exactly the same bodily communion as is available for us to-day, nay rather, our communion with him is richer and more assured than it was for them, for the communion and presence which we have is that of the glorified Lord. Our faith must be aware o f the greatness o f this gift. The Body of Christ is the ground and assurance o f that faith. It is the one and perfect gift whereby we become partakers of salvation. It is
68 Ibid.. 65. 9 AB 111. 0 At the time of this writing, the more popular title of the English translation of the book. Nachfolge (1937). is The Cost o f Discipleship (1959). 7 1 See D 114-20.
indeed the newness o f life. In the Body o f Christ we are caught up into eternity by the act of God.72 It is through the two sacraments o f baptism and the Lords supper that we come to participate in the Body o f Christ.73 Here he argued that the Church is the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is the immeasurable grace and privilege of the Church to suffer for Christ. Suffering as the vicarious activity of the members o f the Body is the very life of Christ, who wills to be formed in his members (Gal. 4 :19).74 His concept of the Church for others can be seen in this line of thought. In Life Together (1938), Bonhoeffer described Christian community as the community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ from the perspective o f our life together. He said: We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. It means, first, that a Christian needs others for the sake o f Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that from eternity we have been chosen in Jesus Christ, accepted in time, and united for eternity.75 For Bonhoeffer, Christian community is not an ideal that we have to realize with our own effort, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.76 It is not our own product, but a grace and gift o f God. It is different from all other communities in that it is a spiritual [pneumatische] and not a psychic [psychische] reality. The Holy Spirit, who puts Jesus Christ into our hearts, creates the spiritual community o f faith.77 In Ethics, however, the further development of his view of the Church can be seen in terms of its relation with the world. He said:
:: Ibid.. 236. ' 3 Ibid.. 239. 74 Ibid., 245. 75 LT 31. 76 Ibid..38. 7 7 Ibid.
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It is essential to the revelation o f God in Jesus Christ that it occupies space within the world. But, o f course, it would be entirely wrong to interpret this space in a purely empirical sense. If God in Jesus Christ claims space in the world, even though it be only a stable because there was no room in the inn (Luke 2.7), then in this narrow space He comprises together the whole reality o f the world at once and reveals the ultimate basis o f this reality. And so, too, the Church o f Jesus Christ is the place, in other words the space in the world, at which the reign o f Jesus Christ over the whole world is evidenced and proclaimed . . . The place of the Church is not there in order to try to deprive the world o f a piece of its territory, but precisely in order to prove to the world that it is still the world, the world which is loved by God and reconciled with Him.78 Bonhoeffer described the Church as a divine mandate that fulfills the concrete divine commission, which has its foundation in the revelation o f Christ and is evidenced by Scripture.79 In respect to the office o f the Church, Bonhoeffer asserted that it is instituted directly by Jesus Christ Himself, not by the congregation. He said, It does not derive its legitimization from the will of the congregation but from the will of Jesus Christ. It is established in the congregation and not by the congregation, and at the same time it is with the congregation.8 0 The trail o f Bonhoeffers theological development o f ecclesiology can be followed starting from his sociological and socio-philosophical investigation o f the structure o f the Church based on the sociality o f the Church, continuing with his emphasis on the presence o f Christ in the Church. Through those developmental stages, Bonhoeffer finally formulated the ecclesiology of the Church that suffers for others. Bonhoeffer saw that in order to answer the ecclesiological question What is the Church? we should first answer the more fundamental theological question Who is
78 E 109-200. 79 Ibid., 282. Bonhoeffer listed the Church, marriage, and the family, culture and government as the divine mandates. 80 Ibid.. 289.
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God? The answer is not in an abstract concept o f God such as omnipotence. He argued that the encounter with Jesus Christ as a genuine experience o f God is an experience that a transformation o f all human life is given in the fact that Jesus is there only for others 81 Bonhoeffer argued: His [Jesus Christs] being there for others is the experience o f transcendence. It is only this being there for others, maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being o f Jesus (incarnation, cross, and resurrection). Our relation to God is not a religious relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable that is not authentic transcendence - but our relation to God is a new life in existence for others, through participation in the being o f Jesus. The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within our reach in any given situation.82 Bonhoeffer redefined the meaning o f transcendence as the transcendence over our self for the sake o f others who are within our reach. As Jesus was the man for others on the cross, the Church is the community o f faith that lives the life of Christ by partaking of his suffering for the others in this world, which Bonhoeffer called the messianic sufferings o f God in Jesus Christ.83 As the conclusion o f the book that he was planning to write, and in a sense as the conclusion o f his ecclesiology, he stated in July/August 1944: The Church is the Church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The Church must share in the secular problems o f ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men o f every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.84
8 1 LPP381. 8: Ibid. 83 Ibid., 362. 84 Ibid., 382-83.
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This is a rather bold challenge to the Church that has accumulated its wealth through the ownership o f properties through which it has been maintaining its influence in the world. His call for the independence o f the Church from the state was expressed in terms of the wages that clergy have been receiving from the state. In essence, he called for the Church for others within the historical context o f the oppression by the Nazis and the silence o f the Church in the midst o f the sufferings of others; especially the Jews and other groups o f people who were being victimized by the extreme inhumane prejudice. Thus far, we have seen how Bonhoeffer understood the Church in terms of its relation with Christ and the world. Since Bonhoeffers ecclesiology is based on his Christology, which is active in all aspects of his theology as a whole, how he viewed Christ will be discussed next.
Christ, the Center

Having examined Bonhoeffers ecclesiology in the previous discussion, it can be seen how important it is to understand his Christology in order to interpret his theology correctly. Regarding the paradox o f Bonhoeffers catchphrases such as religionless Christianity or worldly holiness, Edwin H. Robertson rightly said that it can only be resolved by the study of Bonhoeffers Christology.8 5 In the Introduction o f his Christology lecture in 1933, Bonhoeffer claimed that Christology is the center o f all disciplines o f study based on the fact that Jesus Christ is the Logos:
85 Edwin H. Robertson, Translator's Preface of Christ the Center (English translation) which is the reconstruction of Dietrich Bonhoeffers 1933 Christology lectures from the students note (San Francisco: Harper, 1960), 20.
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Christology as the study of Christ is a peculiar discipline because it is concerned with Christ who is himself the Word or Logos, from which we also derive the term for study. So that christology is really Logo-logy, the study of study, the word of the Word o f God . . . Only a discipline which understands itself in the sphere of the Church is able to grasp the fact that christology is the center of all disciplines. It is the unknown and hidden center of the university of learning.86 The centrality of Christology in Bonhoeffers theology is one o f its main characteristics. Christology is the discipline par excellence and the center o f its own space. Bonhoeffers Christology lectures were divided into three parts. Part I dealt with the present Christ - the pro me (for me). In this section o f the lectures, Bonhoeffer discussed the form and the place of the present Christ. Part II dealt with the historical Christ. From this portion of the lectures, Bonhoeffer presented an important concept of Christ as the Incarnate One, the Humiliated One, and the Exalted One. Part III dealt with the eternal Christ, but it was never delivered and no manuscript has been preserved. Robertson summarizes the nature o f the Christological questions Bonhoeffer raised in the lecture: In these lectures on Christology, Bonhoeffer is not prepared to find a category for Christ. His questions are not, How is it possible for Christ to be both man and God? His question about Christ is never, How? but always, Who? He will not even have a disguised What? or How? in the form o f a Who? Every avenue of his thinking leads him to confront Christ and ask, Who art thou, Lord? or to be confronted by Christ and hear his question, Whom do you say that I am?87 With regard to the questions o f How? and Who?, Bonhoeffer gave a rather sophisticated explanation in the lecture. The question How? is the question about immanence. How are you possible? is the godless question and the question o f the
86 CC 28. 1933 Christology lectures from the students note. 87 Edwin H. Robertson, Translator's Preface o f Christ the Center, 15.
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serpent.88 In other words, the How? question is the question o f the human logos. Bonhoeffer said, The human logos repeats its old question: How is such a claim possible? How can it be contained within its structure? It continues to ask about the How?89 Throughout the history of Christianity, the How? questions have been asked about Jesus Christ: How is the incarnation possible? How can God die on the cross? How is the resurrection possible? Bonhoeffer considered those questions inadequate for Jesus because he is the Son o f God who transcends the questions of human logos, which is limited to understand only the immanent matters. On the contrary, about the question o f Who? Bonhoeffer said: The question, Who? expresses the strangeness and the otherness o f the one encountered and at the same time it is shown to be the question concerning the very existence of the questioner. He is asking about the being which is strange to his being, about the boundaries o f his own existence. Transcendence places his own being in question. With the answer that his logos has reached its boundary he faces the boundary of his own existence . . . In theological terms: it is only from God that man knows who he is.90 Here Bonhoeffer seems to have given a hint that Christology is possible only through our encounter with Jesus Christ, and that we can answer the question, Who am I? by knowing Who God is first. Therefore, Bonhoeffer concludes that the testimony of Jesus to himself stands by itself, self-authenticating, and that it is the backbone of every theology. He continued to assert boldly, The truth o f the revelation o f God in Christ cannot be scientifically established or disputed.91 Perhaps, any postmodern thinker would consider this kind o f attitude o f Bonhoeffer close-minded. Nonetheless, it
88 CC 30. 89 Ibid.. 29. 90 Ibid.. 30. 9 1 Ibid.. 32.
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is clear that his differentiation between the Logos and the human logos is important, not only to understand the characteristic o f his theology, but also to set the correct relationship between science and theology in todays world. In other words, the scientific questions can be asked and answered by the human logos without a human encounter with God, but the theological questions are impossible for a human logos to ask because it cannot escape its boundary. Theological questions are possible only in and through Christ. Jesus told the Pharisees, You are from below; I am from above. You are o f this world; I am not o f this world.92 Therefore, as Bonhoeffer understood, it can be said that theology must be the knowledge from above not from below. It can also be argued that Bonhoeffers criticism about the traditional form o f theology based on his understanding of Christology still applies to the present theological world. Bonhoeffer criticized the fact that Christology had been asking the question how as opposed to who in regard to the truth o f the revelation through the Incarnation. For Bonhoeffer, the how question would mean a human effort to find an answer for Gods truth. He further argued that, in that way, the human logos would be claiming to be the beginning and the father o f Jesus Christ.93 This was Bonhoeffers indirect way o f criticizing liberal theology and all other theologies based on Idealism. This way o f thinking was also applied to his criticism o f religion, which he viewed as coming from below. Thus, as we shall see later, revelation and religion are viewed as two opposing concepts; one from above and one from below. He said that human reason has reached its limits with the question, Who? He explained:
92 Jn. 8:23. All biblical quotations are from NIV. 93 Ibid.
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Pilate asks, Who are you?, and Jesus is silent. Man cannot wait for the answer, because it is too dangerous. The logos cannot endure the Counter-Logos. It knows that one o f them must die and it therefore kills the one whom it asks . . . The incarnate Logos o f God must be crucified by mans logos.94 In that way, Bonhoeffer explains the nature of crucifixion. Extending his thought toward the event o f the resurrection of Christ, Bonhoeffer asked: But what happens if this Counter-Word, which was killed, rises alive and victorious as the final Word of God? . . . If the crucified One shows himself as the risen one? Then the question is sharpened to an extreme point. Then it remains a living question for ever, over, around and in man, as also does the answer.95 Thus the question How? can no longer be asked, so that Who are you? remains as the only question that humans can ask. The inherent nature o f this question of Who? is that one must come face to face with Christ. Bonhoeffer pointed out that one cannot avoid encounter with the person of Jesus because he is alive.96 He stated that there are only two possible ways of encountering Jesus: we must die or we must put Jesus to death.97 Seemingly, the danger of this way o f thinking appears to be that it overlooks the human tendency of being indifferent with regard to the spiritual matters as well as with regard to the encounter with others. Such a statement of Bonhoeffers was solely based on a Christian view of human encounter with Jesus. However, in reality we find that the major part of the world neither loves nor hates Jesus Christ. They simply ignore their encounter with Jesus, and surely, this indifference o f the world is the biggest theological challenge in todays world.
94 Ibid., 33. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.. 34. 97 Ibid., 35.
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In answering the Christological question o f Who are you, Lord? Bonhoeffer laid out two statements: 1) Jesus is the Christ present as the Crucified and as the risen one, 2) Christ, as person, is present in the Church. The first statement means that Jesus Christ is present here and now in space and time. Through the second statement Bonhoeffer meant that his presence in this world is the presupposition for the unfolding of the Christological question, and that Jesus Christ is present in the Church through the proclaimed Word and sacraments.98 Again, it is not the question o f How the risen Christ can be here and now?, rather, the Christological question that should be asked is Who is Christ present here and now? . Such ontological questions can be answered only in terms o f the structure o f his person. Bonhoeffer explained: The structure o f his person must be outlined more clearly and unfolded as the pro me structure (that is, the structure I can relate to) of the Godman, Jesus Christ. Christ is Christ, not just for himself, but in relation to me. His being Christ is his being for me, pro me. This being pro me . . . is to be understood as the essence, the being o f the person himself . . . what is decisive about the pro me structure is that being and act o f Christ are maintained together in it.99 This unity o f act and being o f Christ in his Christology provided the basis for his ecclesiology o f the Church for others as the community o f disciples o f Jesus Christ who exists pro me. Bonhoeffer concluded that this one and complete person, the Godman, Jesus Christ, is in the Church in his pro me structure as Word, as Sacrament and as Community.1 00
98 Ibid., 43. 99 Ibid.. 47. 100 Ibid., 48. The further discussion of the form of Christ as Word, Sacrament, and as Community can be found in the subsequent pages 49-59.
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Bonhoeffers next Christological question was Where? is Christ within the structure o f the Who? 1 0 1 As Christ is here and now both spatially and temporally pro me, Bonhoeffer found that Christ stands on the boundary o f my existence as the mediator or the center between I and Thou, and between I and God Christ is the center of human existence, o f history and of nature.102 Therefore, the centrality o f Christ in Bonhoeffer was not because of its importance as a theological doctrine, but because of the very nature o f the person of Christ to be in the center o f all theological problems at hand here and now. Another important aspect of Bonhoeffers Christology is the weakness o f Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer claimed that if we are to deal with the deity o f Jesus, we must speak o f the weakness o f Jesus. He said: If we speak o f Jesus Christ as God, we may not say o f him that he is the representative of an idea of God, which possesses the characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence . . . rather, we must speak o f his weakness, his manger, his cross. This man is no abstract G od.1 0 3 One needs to be careful to understand that with weakness o f Christ Bonhoeffer did not mean human weakness such as stupidity, lack o f independence, forgetfulness, cowardice, vanity, corruptibility, or temptability.104 Rather, what he meant with weakness was Gods humility revealed through the manger and the cross o f Jesus Christ within the structure o f pro me as the suffering Christ. Also, it is the contingency of God who freely takes on humility in the form o f sinful flesh.
1 0 1 Ibid., 59. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 104. 104 LPP 392.
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In this chapter, we have glanced at Bonhoeffers theological concern, which can be summarized in terms o f the Church, Christ, and the world. It was pointed out that there are various interpretations of Bonhoeffers theology. Some interpreters of Bonhoeffer view that his theology is fragmented and inconsistent. However, it is evident that those main loci o f his theology remained central throughout his theological development. An overview o f Bonhoeffers understanding o f the Church as the community of faith that exists for others was provided. His Christology views Jesus Christ as the incarnate Christ in Word, sacrament and community as the center o f human existence, history, and between God and nature. One of the most controversial themes o f Bonhoeffers theology has been his understanding o f the world as the world come o f age. Since it is a crucial point of his theology for non-religious interpretation, it will be discussed in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER 2 THE WORLD COME OF AGE

In the previous chapter, Bonhoeffers understanding o f the Church and Christ was reviewed briefly. Considering his view o f the Church as the Church existing for others based on his Christology of pro me , which means Christ for others, it can be deduced that his main theological concern was What should the Church do for others? It can be said that the latter part o f his theological development was based on his understanding o f the world come of age. Undoubtedly, his worldview affected the development o f his thesis the non-religious interpretation o f the gospel for the world come of age. Therefore, as a part o f an effort to understand his theology, the meaning o f the controversial concept of Bonhoeffer - the world come o f age - will be analyzed next.
The Formulation of the Concept

Wustenberg finds that the concept o f maturity or coming o f age already appears in his lectures and writings in 1933, 1935, and 1940.1 In those early years,
1 Ralf K. Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 76-77: In his lecture on The Leader and the Individual, Bonhoeffer insists that a leader should guide the individual to real maturity (GS 2.36). Here he applies the concept of maturity untheologically to the current historical situation in which it is precisely immaturity - of the individual over against the leader - that has become the program of the day. The idea of coming of age occurs repeatedly in Bonhoeffers Finkenwalde homiletics, The Protestant should come of age in dealing with the Bible (GS 4.255). He advises his candidates not to read any other sermons for their own homiletical studies, since this makes one dependent and makes the path to maturity more difficult' (Ibid. 260). Sermons should guide a congregation toward coming of age in scripture (Ibid. 268). It is not doctrine that the congregation should remember, rather, after the sermon congregation members should themselves open scripture and read the text (Ibid.). Bonhoeffers demands in his outline Theology and Congregation from 1940 tend in the same direction. Here he struggles to come to a clear understanding of the relationship between the congregation and theology (GS 3.422), and charges the congregation to come of age in knowledge (Ibid.). Hence Bonhoeffer again applies the notion of
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Bonhoeffer applies the notion o f coming o f age to the individual or the congregation rather than to the world. He does not yet observe any world come of age, prompting him to pose the question o f Christ and the world come o f age. Wustenberg observes clearly that: Although the Letters and Papers from Prison do not retract this demand for a congregation come o f age, it is clear that the concept o f maturity acquires new accentuation in Tegel under the influence o f historicism.2 Based on the findings o f Wustenberg, it can be concluded that the concept of maturity attracted Bonhoeffer from the early stage o f his theological development. Bonhoeffer was very much concerned about the immaturity o f the individual Christians, the congregation and the Church of Germany. They were not able to discern the evil leadership o f Germany nor able to keep their independence from the state. He witnessed the German church kneeling down completely before the political power of this world and become collaborator with the evil regime against what he had learned as Gods will. There have been various interpretations on his judgment o f the world come of age. For example, in a 1968 study, Andre Dumas concluded that Hegels influence on Bonhoeffers theology seems undeniable3 from the perspective o f Hegels emphasis on reality and on the triumph of human autonomy and of the autonomy of the spirit.4
coming of age to the congregation rather than to the world, as is the case in the Letters and Papers from Prison." 2 Ibid., 77. 3 Andrd Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality (New York: The Macmillan Company), 1968, 30f: The analysis of creaturely-existence (Dasein) aims at demonstrating its reality by grasping its hidden and active structure, rather than by opening it to a message that would transform it from beyond itself. Hegels influence in this seems undeniable (an influence continually present in Communion o f Saints, Act and Being and Christ the Center) Also, see David H. Hoppers A Disssent on Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 36f, for Hoppers understanding of Dumas study on Bonhoeffer. 4 Ibid,31.
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Despite his observation on the overall influence o f Hegel on Bonhoeffers theology, Dumas, referencing the letter o f 30 June 1944,5 argues that Bonhoeffer chose the same term come of age (miindig ) used by Kant in his brief essay o f 1784, What is Enlightenment? In that essay, Kant described the Enlightenment as the emergence of humanity from a state of immaturity for which humans themselves are responsible (aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmiindigkeit)6 Dumas believes that this Kantian source provides the correct interpretive key for the term come of age Dumas says: To have come of age in Bonhoeffers thought as well as in Kants does not mean to be better or happier. It is simply a descriptive term that presupposes nothing about the optimism or the progressivism o f its author. Nor does the term come o f age stand for secularism - a word, as Bethge pointed out, Bonhoeffer never used after 1939, since it implied a certain contempt for the new-found reality o f the world, or, a positive evaluation o f it.7 However, Phillips partially disagrees with Dumas on this point o f observation. Based on his study on Ethics , Phillips asserts that Bonhoeffer was wrestling with the problem of what valuation one can place upon a secularism that one has described as godless. Phillips says, In most instances in the Ethics , secularism has a pejorative sense. Secularism leads to the abyss and means the ultimate destruction o f history, if its relentless march is not halted. But Bonhoeffer can also recognize a better secularism.8 Phillips evaluation o f better secularism will be examined later in this discussion.
5 LPP 341,8 June 1944. 6 Ibid., 184f. 7 Ibid, 185. 8 Phillips, Christ fo r Us in The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 149.
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Nonetheless, Dumas asserts that Bonhoeffer, by using the term, simply stated a phenomenon observed in his time without being interested in developing an interpretation of history, or hailing the rise o f the Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century, as Kant had done.9 According to Dumas, Bonhoeffers only concern was that, in every realm o f life, the notion o f God as the stopgap at the breakdown of what we can conceive, or the notion o f God as the working hypothesis at the limits of what we can do, has withered away. Dumas continues to discuss the decline o f religion: According to Bonhoeffer this withering away means the death o f religion, which always lived off the unexplored areas of human experience. God continues to be reduced to just the degree that human knowledge is expanded. Religion decreases as scientific knowledge increases. What Bonhoeffer tells us here has become a commonplace in many quarters.1 0 As knowledge increases humans discover that the world can manage its affairs quite well without interference of God or religion. In fact, we can trace Bonhoeffers dialectical understanding o f the antithetical relation between god/religion and
human/scientific knowledge through many fragments o f his thought in the letters,1 1 one o f which reads: [Weizsackers book The Worldview o f Physics ] has again brought home to me quite clearly how wrong it is to use God as a stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers o f knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat.1 2
9 Ibid 10 Ibid, 185-86. 1 1 LPP 279-78, 281-82, 30 April 1944; 311-12, 29 May 1944; 325-26, 8 June 1944; 341-42, 30 June 1944; 359-60, 16 July 1944. 12 LPP 311,29 May 1944.
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In short, Dumas interprets Bonhoeffers understanding of coming o f age from the perspective of the freedom of humanity from God and religion, and o f its own responsibility. Dumas says, The world come of age signifies the emancipation o f the human enterprise with respect to what remains unknown o f either sky or soul. It is the presupposition of human responsibility. 1 3 The human emancipation from God and religion was gained through our maturity on the plain o f epistemology. From this point of view, Dumas concludes, no matter how chaotic and suffering and de-structured the world was for Bonhoeffer in 1944 (and as it likewise is for us today), it is a mature world, a world come of age. 1 4 On the other hand, another observation is made by Wustenberg. He suggests that, in Bonhoeffers letter of 16 July 1944, we can see clearly how he expands Diltheys historical reflection concerning the world come of age in view o f modem physics motivated by C. F. von Weizsackers Weltbild der Physik (The Worldview o f Physics), from which he derived the expression working hypothesis God. 1 5 According to Wustenberg, Bonhoeffer was hoping to learn a great deal from Weizsackers book for his own work,1 6 and apparently Bonhoeffer did learn much from it. As referenced earlier in this chapter, the book gave Bonhoeffer a clear understanding o f how wrong it is to use God as a stopgap for the incompleteness o f our knowledge. 1 7 Bonhoeffer defined the characteristic of religiosity, and in so doing provided an important clue as to how he
13 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality, 187. u Ibid 1 5 Wustenberg, < 4 Theology o f Life, 71. 16 LPP 308, 24 May 1944. 1 7 LPP 311, 29 May 1944.
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viewed religion from the perspective o f the world come o f age: Humans religiosity makes them look in their distress to the power o f God in the world: God is the dens ex m achina"1 * Dumas and Wustenberg both agree that Bonhoeffer was influenced by Diltheys historicism. As our scientific knowledge increases, God as a stopgap is being pushed further and further back in retreat. It is the same for the other human problems of death, suffering, and guilt. Bonhoeffer claimed that it is now possible to find, even for these questions, human answers that take no account whatever o f God.1 9 It is true that, from the perspective o f Christianity, it is impossible to answer these questions without God. The nature o f sinful human beings is precisely the reason for the necessity of Gods incarnation. What Bonhoeffer saw, however, was the fact that people deal with these questions without God, and that it has always been so. Christianity is not the only way to answer those questions and Christian answers are just as unconvincing - or convincing - as any others.20 His observation that those questions are being answered without a Christian God is quite plausible, especially in an age when the world is wide open and people live happily with their own religion, getting their own answers for those questions which Christianity once believed that only its God could provide. Here we can see that he is already concerned about the advent o f relativism in the postmodern world.
18 LPP 361, 16 July 1944. 19 LPP 311, 29 May 1944. 20 LPP 312, 29 May 1944.
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Nonetheless, it is Wustenbergs opinion that Bonhoeffer is apparently transferring Weizsackers argument about God as a stopgap and God as a working hypothesis into Diltheys historicism.21 In other words, Bonhoeffer viewed the maturation o f humanity as a historical process in which God as a stopgap is being abolished and humanity no longer needs God as a hypothesis for the problems o f the world. Bonhoeffer stated: God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science, has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion (Feuerbach!). For the sake o f intellectual honesty, that working hypothesis should be dropped, or as far as possible eliminated.22 According to Bonhoeffer, there had been great advancement toward a religionless hypothesis from the side o f humankind. Many historical figures had contributed to this historical development in such areas as theology, ethics, politics, natural science, law and philosophy.23 Based on the observation of Wustenberg, Feil and Gremmels both observe the clear influence o f Dilthey on Bonhoeffers Tegel theology expressed in the letters from the first half o f 1944.24 Both Feil and Gremmels agree on the influence o f Dilthey on Bonhoeffer with respect to the key terms o f historicism.2 5
:1 Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, 71. " LPP 361, 16 July 1944. 23 LPP 359-60, 16 July 1944: Bonhoeffer briefly summarized the intellectual development of the West in various disciplines: In theology one sees it first in Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who maintains that reason is sufficient for religious knowledge. In ethics it appears in Montaigne and Bodin with their substitution of rules of life for the commandments. In politics Machiavelli detaches politics from morality in general and founds the doctrine of reasons of state. Later, and very differently from Machiavelli, but tending like him towards the autonomy of human society, comes Grotius, setting up his natural law as international law, which is valid etti deus non daretur, even if there were no God. The philosophers provide the finishing touches: on the one hand we have the deism of Descartes, who holds that the world is a mechanism, running by itself with no interference from God; and on the other hand the pantheism of Spinoza, who says that God is nature. In the last resort, Kant is a deist, and Fichte and Hegel are pantheists. Everywhere the thinking is directed towards the autonomy of human and the world. 2 A Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, 71. Citation from Feil, The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 178ff, 179, 180, 183f.: According to Ernst Feil, the Lessing citation in the letter of January 23, 1944 ,
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In summary, although Diltheys historicism opened a new dimension for Bonhoeffers theology from the perspective o f the world which came to a different stage of its development, the God o f stopgap is not sought by human beings. The world is mature enough to understand the true relationship between God and humanity. Bonhoeffer is no longer focused on the Church by itself. Through the lens o f historicism, he began to see more clearly than ever that the Church is situated within the world that has come of age.
Bonhoeffers Worldview
In order to answer Bonhoeffers central question, Who is Christ for us today?, we need to come to an understanding o f his view on the then-contemporary world. In his essay of 1981, Ernst Feil summarized his interpretation o f Bonhoeffers worldview in the following four aspects: a) the rejection o f thinking in two spheres, b) the concept of worldliness, c) the concept o f ultimate and penultimate, d) the world come o f age.26 According to Feil, Bonhoeffer rejected any division into two spheres, especially in his Ethics. In his student days, he was already preoccupied with Schleiermachers On Religion and Naumanns Briefe iiber Religion (Letters about Religion) in negative
comes from Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Poetry and Experience). The term worldliness in the letter of March 9, 1944, derives from Bonhoeffers reading of Von Deutscher Dichtung und Musik (cf. the letter of February 5, 1944), which he received for his birthday. The terms metaphysics and inwardness, which acquire significance beginning in April 1944, similarly derive from this reading, and in Bonhoeffers usage comes to designate religion. The concept of maturity, coming of age, as well as the historical reflections associated with autonomy in the letters of June 8 and July 16, 1944, derive from Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seti Renaissance und Reformation." Ibid., 72. 26 Ernst Feil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Understanding o f the World' in A Bonhoeffer Legacy: Essays in Understanding, ed. A. J. Klassen, (Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1981), 237-255.
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terms.27 Bonhoeffer regarded both authors as proponents o f a form o f Christianity that one would have to call religious. Feil continues: This religious form o f Christian faith consisted o f what Bonhoeffer had come to view as a false determination o f the relationship between God and the world, namely, a precocious separation o f God and the world, a separation that corresponds with a fallacious amalgamation o f both that had occurred largely in the background and had therefore remained unrecognized. The result o f this separation is that God is safely settled beyond the boundaries o f our world and our reason. . . . The separation corresponds with a restriction o f Gods relationship to inwardness. . . . as a result, God has no place in the world, and faith is compartmentalized as religion.2 8 Bonhoeffer took the division into two spheres as a ground for religious Christianity. According to him, a division such as secular and Christian, natural and super-natural, profane and sacred, and rational and revelational, as if they were ultimate static antitheses, makes the mistake o f limiting Christ to one sphere, whereas in fact the whole world belongs to Christ.29 For Bonhoeffer, the rejection o f two spheres is inevitable for anyone who claims that Jesus is the Lord o f the whole world. The world has to be viewed as one in Jesus Christ. The seed o f his thought on the unity o f two spheres can be seen as early as the time of his writing o f Sanctorum Communio. Bonhoeffer claimed that the sanctorum communio [community o f saints or church-community] does not make peccatorum communio [community o f sinners] irrelevant. He explained, the life o f those who have been justified, that is the new life, is hidden in God. I do what I do not want to do, and
2 7 Ibid., 239-240. 28 Ibid., 240. 29E 197-205.
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what I do want I do not do. . .. The reality o f sin and the communio peccatorum remain even in G ods church-community [sanctorum communio]."30 The reality of sin co-exists within the reality o f Gods community. With his later thought o f religionless Christianity, Bonhoeffer endeavored to establish a ground for the Church in a world that was becoming religionless. He told Bethge, As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, God is being pushed more and more out o f life, losing more and more ground.31 In the world where God as an abstract concept loses its ground, Bonhoeffer tried to overcome the separation of two spheres by redefining Christianity non-religiously. John Phillips pointed out that Bethge already had raised the question to Bonhoeffer whether any ground is left for the Church based on Bonhoeffers view o f the religionless world.32 In regards to Bethges question, Phillips concludes that Bonhoeffer did not give a satisfactory answer.33 However, it appears that Phillips is too hasty to make such a conclusion because Bonhoeffer surely gave Bethge an answer to the question in the following terms: Now I will try to go on with the theological reflections that I broke off not long since. I had been saying that God is being increasingly pushed out o f a world that has come o f age, out o f the spheres o f our knowledge and life, and that since Kant he has been relegated to a realm beyond the world of experience.34
30 SC 123-24. C f p.213: Among human beings there is no such thing as a pure, organic community life. The peccatorum communio [community of sinners] continues to coexist within the sanctorum communio. The Adamic humanity is still present in actuality even though it has already been overcome in reality. 3 1 LPP 326, 8 June 1944. 3: LPP 329, 8 June 1944. 33 John A. Phillips, Christ fo r Us in The Theology o f Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 25. 34 LPP 341, 30 June 1944.
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Here, Bonhoeffer put the blame on German idealism for relegating God to a realm unreachable by human beings, and for the separation o f two spheres. He then continued to argue that God was made dens ex machina [God o f the gaps]: Theology has on the one hand resisted this development with apologetics, and has taken up arms - in vain - against Darwinism, etc. On the other hand, it has accommodated itself to the development [the relegation of God beyond the world o f experience] by restricting God to the so-called ultimate questions as a dens ex machina, that means that he becomes the answer to lifes problems, and the solution o f its needs and conflicts. So if anyone has no such difficulties, or if he refuses to go into these things, to allow others to pity him, then either he cannot open to God; or else he must be shown that he is, in fact, deeply involved in such problems, needs, and conflicts, without admitting or knowing it. If that can be done - and existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy have worked out some quite ingenious methods in that direction - then this man can now be claimed for God, and methodism can celebrate its triumph.35 The methodism o f existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy pushed God to the edge o f human life. Bonhoeffer was contending against such methodism, which makes people guilty first in order to force them to repentance, and then to faith. Bonhoeffer said: When Jesus blessed sinners, they were real sinners, but Jesus did not make everyone a sinner first. He called them away from their sin, not into their sin. . . . Jesus claims for himself and the Kingdom o f God the whole o f human life in all its manifestations.36 Bonhoeffer rejected existential philosophy and psychotherapy for their
manipulative methods to promote Christianity as a religion by turning people into sinners. Christ is not at the edge o f human life, but at the center and the whole of human life. Christ is the Lord o f the Church and the world at the same time.
Ibid. LPP 341, 30 June 1944.
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The second point o f Bonhoeffers worldview, according to Feil, is the concept of worldliness, which is the central concept in the last section o f Ethics. Feil says that Bonhoeffer understood worldliness as freedom from the self-deification of the world rather than as the profanity of the world. The cross sets one free for life before God in the midst o f a godless world, and the crucified Reconciler protects the world from every vain attempt to deify the world.37 In other words, Bonhoeffer never spoke of worldliness without thinking the qualifying phrase before God. One must remember that he used the term worldliness not ordinarily, but theologically. In other words, the ordinary use o f worldliness means the nature o f the secular world that is separate from the realm of God. Contrary to the ordinary use o f the term, Bonhoeffer used it theologically to mean the world which stands before God, being wholly responsible for its own actions. It can be suggested that, if one misses this point, he or she would misinterpret the meaning o f Bonhoeffers concept o f worldly Christianity. The third point of Bonhoeffers worldview, is the concept o f ultimate and penultimate. According to Feil, Bonhoeffer attempted to replace two-sphere thinking with a positive proposal, namely, the historical concept o f the ultimate [the last things] and penultimate [the things before the last] in an earlier section o f Ethics. Bonhoeffer thought that ultimate and penultimate are connected in Jesus Christ, and the tension between ultimate and penultimate can only be resolved in Christ. Feil explains, Because
37 Feil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Understanding o f the World, 248.
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the ultimate came to the world in Jesus Christ, the penultimate is really pen-ultimate: the world that is preserved for Christ and his coming.3* The last point o f Bonhoeffers worldview is the concept o f the world come of age. In Jesus Christ, the world is really the world accepted by God. Bonhoeffer was influenced by Diltheys Weltanschauung und Alayse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation. From Diltheys historical analysis, Bonhoeffer came to see the completion of the movement toward human autonomy. In comparison with F. Gogarten, who also was influenced by Diltheys book, Bonhoeffer guards against Dilthey and his followers ultimately idealistic acosmicism and a corresponding inwardness - religiousness.39 In my opinion, Bonhoeffers awareness o f the world come o f age triggered his theological quest of finding out Who Jesus really is for this world. He came to realize that the world had become much more different, and that Christianity cannot communicate to the world in the traditional fashion o f positivism o f revelation.40 Thus, as a logical outcome of his renewed worldview, a new interpretation o f non-religious nature became necessary for the sake o f the world that became mature and religionless.
The Human Autonomy and the Decay of Religion

According to his letter o f 8 June 1944, Bonhoeffer was convinced that the world come of age and the autonomy o f humanity reached an undoubted completion in his time.41 Rasmussen, in his study on Ethics, interprets Bonhoeffers question Who is
38 Ibid, 249. 39 Ibid, 251. 40 LPP 280, 286, 329. 30 April, 8 May, 9 June 1944 respectively. 4 1 LPP 325, 8 June 1944.
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Christ for us todayV 42 along the same line of Dumas dialectical interpretation of Bonhoeffers the world come o f age. According to Rasmussen, today as the time of the world come o f age is a double movement for Bonhoeffer. On the one hand there is the increase o f human autonomy through the maturation o f reason, and on the other hand there is the decay o f religion.43 Bonhoeffer understood human autonomy from the perspective of our relationship with God and religion. To him, human autonomy and religionlessness are the two sides of a coin: namely, the world come o f age. In addition to his dialectical analysis o f the concept, Rasmussen follows Bethges suggestion that the character o f the people with whom Bonhoeffer grew up and with whom he worked in the Resistance had influenced Bonhoeffer to have this view o f the world come o f age. Rasmussen says, He [Bonhoeffer] was privileged to grow up among people who were deeply conscious o f human autonomy and who were convincing representatives o f autonomous reason in many disciplines and occupations. They certainly did not require of us God as a working hypothesis.44 Rasmussens point of view needs further examination. It is true that the influence o f highly educated people with whom Bonhoeffer grew up and was associated with might have affected his theological thinking. In addition, his idea o f the world come o f age would not have come from a cultural vacuum. In fact, as Dumas observes, the concept o f coming o f age was an
42 LPP 278, 30 April 1944. 43 Larry L. Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reality and Resistance Studies in Christian Ethics Series, (New York: Abingdon Press, New York), 1972, 80-81. 44 Ibid., 84.
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interpretation based on the culture o f his time and age.45 However, we do not have clear evidence as to how his biographical background has influenced his assessment o f the worlds maturity itself Moreover, such an interpretation has two negative implications for our understanding o f BonhoefFers the world come o f age. First, it characterizes the concept as such that it is merely based on his personal experience with highly educated people who influenced his thought, and that it does not have much relevance to the common people o f the Western world in general. Second, Rasmussens biographical interpretation ignores Bonhoeffers worldview that is deeply rooted in Christology, which finds Christ as the concrete reality in this world. The first implication o f Rasmussens biographical interpretation lacks the understanding o f the fact that a historical analysis is the basis o f Bonhoeffers assessment o f the world come o f age. In the letter of 30 April 1944, Bonhoeffer said: Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the religious a priori o f mankind. Christianity has always been a form - perhaps the true form - o f religion . But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless - and I think that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any religious reaction?). . . 46 One can argue that history shows us that there are enough evidences for the religious reaction to the war during this period, and Bonhoeffer simply did not know about it. However, it can be suggested that his observation was based on his experience with the indifference or subordination of the state church o f Germany to the situation,
45 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality, 184. 46 LPP 280, 30 April 1944.
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and the failure o f the Confessing Church to react to tyranny and war rather than on those individual religious reactions which did not significantly influence the course o f history. The German church as well as the Christian church as a whole, which include Protestant as well as Catholic, was not at the center o f human history at that moment. From this it can be deduced that his personal experience based on a much larger scale, which includes the horrible war he personally experienced, was a more influencing factor for his conclusion of the religionless world than his limited experience with the intellectual people that did not need God or religion. Nonetheless, his understanding o f the religionlessness o f the world was in turn translated into the picture o f a mature world in reference to the relationship between the world and God/religion. The nonexistence of religiosity in the world come of age signals the decay o f religion. Even though Bonhoeffer was influenced by the highly intellectual environment in which he grew up,47 contrary to Rasmussens observation, his idea o f the world come of age was derived rather from his own historical, cultural, and theological analysis on a much deeper level. To Bonhoeffer, the human autonomy from God was a movement deeply rooted in the history of the Western world. Humanity had gone through the historical process o f self-awakening in which it came to realize that it can deal with all kinds of problems of this world without help from God, and that the Bible doesnt give answers to all questions o f the natural laws, social and political problems. Bonhoeffer concluded that, from a historical perspective, the movement o f human autonomy finally came to its completion:
47 Adolf von Hamack is one of those neighbors who influenced Bonhoeffers theological thoughts.
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The movement that began about the thirteenth century (Im not going to get involved in any argument about the exact date) towards the autonomy of humanity (in which I should include the discovery o f the laws by which the world lives and deals with itself in science, social and political matters, art, ethics, and religion) has in our time reached an undoubted completion. People have learnt to deal with themselves in all questions of importance without recourse to the working hypothesis called God. In questions o f science, art, and ethics this has become an understood thing at which one now hardly dares to tilt. But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true o f religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without God - and, in fact, just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, God is being pushed more and more out o f life, losing more and more ground.4 8 When we read this statement, the question about the validity o f his claim for human autonomy immediately arises: did the autonomy o f humanity truly reach an undoubted completion in his time? How was he able to come to the conclusion about the autonomous status of humanity with such a high degree o f confidence, especially when he was confined in a jail cell witnessing his contemporary world that was going through the most terrible war humankind had ever experienced? These questions have been dealt with by many who took the theology o f Bonhoeffer seriously. Peter Selby is among those who criticize the problem o f oversimplification in Bonhoeffers definitive claim that in his time the worlds maturity reached an undoubted completion. Selby thinks that the reality o f this world is much more complicated especially when we take seriously the fact that Western nations, which was the boundary of Bonhoeffers claim, constitute only a small part o f the world49. Selby says:
48 LPP 325-26, 8 Junel944. 49 Peter Selby, A World Come o f Age (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1984), 29.
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Clearly it is possible to question much here as a matter o f historical judgement, and it is easy enough to brand it as an oversimplification. As we have already noted, there is in fact a resurgent interest in all kinds of religion and religious experience. It is certainly hard to agree that the movement of which Bonhoeffer speaks has in our time reached an undoubted completion.5 0 As an attempt to rescue Bonhoeffer from such criticism, Selby claims, along the same line of Rasmussen, that Bonhoeffers perception of the world come o f age was deeply rooted in his own life experience and in the history through which he lived. Selby interprets Bonhoeffers perception o f the world come of age from the viewpoint of his life story of academic formation, becoming a pastor, moving into his position o f leadership in the Confessing Church, becoming a conspirator against Hitler and finally becoming his victim. Selby claims: It is as though each movement in that life story and each new turn o f his thought were the unwitting preparation for ideas that were to bring him into final conflict with authority and in the process bring to birth ideas which we still have not sufficiently assimilated.5 1 According to Selby, Bonhoeffers life was deeply intertwined with the tragedy o f the Nazi period. Bonhoeffer began to find that the principle o f the leader whom the German people had chosen was contrary to the understanding o f the constitutional order in which he had been brought up, and, as time went on, he found it to be contrary to Gods redemptive purpose as revealed in the gospel. Finally he came to the decision o f taking part in the plot to assassinate Hitler. From this unfolding vocation, Selby sees its
50 Ibid. 5 1 Ibid., 27.
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remarkable resemblance to the way in which Bonhoeffer described the coming o f age of humankind in his Letter and Papers from P rison52 Selby understands coming o f age53 as a simple fact that at a certain point people come o f age and have to be responsible for their decision and action. In Selbys own expression, You sign your own cheques and incur your own debts, you answer for your own crimes and have to keep your own promises because there is nobody else who can be asked to keep them for you. You are responsible, accountable and without excuses to plead.54 For Selby, what Bonhoeffer claimed was that humanity had now reached a stage in its development where humans had to be responsible for themselves whether they liked their new stage or not and whether they deserved it or not.55 Selby rightly criticizes the secularizing theologies o f the 1960s for their abuse o f Bonhoeffers theology by interpreting him as having made some very optimistic claims about the capacity o f human beings to handle the world in which they live in a mature way without recourse of religion or God, and for their understanding o f Bonhoeffers view o f the world come of age as grounded in the maturity of human race as their achievement.56 Selby says that they are not the kind o f achievements as a result o f which humankind might be said to deserve to manage by itself. Rather, the achievement o f knowledge and o f science makes
5: Ibid. 53 Ibid., 28-29, M&ndigkeit. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 28. 56 Ibid.
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it increasingly necessary for us to live without recourse to God. In other words, it is a necessity rather than a privilege or a reward for human beings to be autonomous from God. Selby took seriously this model o f coming o f age, which is based on a persons life and experience of historical development, and came to the conclusion that coming of age for Bonhoeffer is not a once-for-all development. He takes maturation as the process o f taking responsibility and o f finding ourselves in charge, which it repeats as the years pass and new experiences come to us. The new times demand new forms of coming o f age. He finds its similarity with the movement o f civilization. Selby says: Knowledge advances and new ideas explored and in the process new responsibilities dawn upon us and alibis disappear. Yet the process is a continuing one and is never complete. Responsibilities burden humanity for a time and then disappear to be replaced by new demands.5 7 However, it seems that Selbys interpretation o f Bonhoeffer is problematic because there is no indication that Bonhoeffer viewed the maturation of human beings as a revolving process that is continuing towards different stages and is never complete. Selby utilizes the model o f a humans life cycle to explain Bonhoeffers claim that the maturation o f the world came to its completion. However, in doing so, Selby is simply avoiding but not facing the criticism o f Bonhoeffers claim that the autonomy of humanity has in our time reached an undoubted completion .58 For Selby, what is central to Bonhoeffers claim is not the question whether human autonomy came to its final completion or not, but the fact that humanity happened to grow up to be at that stage.
57 Ibid., 29. 58 LPP 325-26, 8 June 1944. Italics for emphasis.
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Selbys observation does not satisfy our curiosity about Bonhoeffers original intent because it appears that Bonhoeffer undoubtedly believed that the Western civilization attained the goal o f the movement o f human autonomy from God in his time. In fact, Selby appears to contradict himself by acknowledging that Bonhoeffer regards any attempt to compromise the adult status o f human beings as in the first place pointless, in the second place ignoble, and in the third place unchristian.59 Bonhoeffer claims the irreversibility of the adulthood o f the world and this is central to his thought. To Bonhoeffer, understanding the world come o f age as the final state of the movement is important because it provides an opening for the non-religious interpretation: The question is: Christ and the world that has come o f age. The weakness of liberal theology was that it conceded to the world the right to determine Christs place in the world; in the conflict between the Church and the world it accepted the comparatively easy terms o f peace that the world dictated. Its strength was that it did not try to put the clock back, and that it genuinely accepted the battle (Troeltsch), even though this ended with its defeat.6 0 Bonhoeffer claimed that we cannot and should not try to undo the maturity o f the world. It is as pointless as an attempt to put a grown-up person back into adolescence. He did not view human history as something that repeats itself in cyclic fashion through different stages. Simply, we cannot erase our history and start it all over again. Humanity has arrived in its adulthood on a track where there is not a turn-about. We have to accept humankinds maturity as a historical fact whether we like it or not. Any attempt
59 LPP 327. Quoted in Selbv, A World Come o f Age, 31. 60 LPP 327, 8 June 1944.
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to deny our human autonomy from God is ignoble because it amounts to an attempt to exploit the weakness o f humanity for religious purposes that are alien to it. It must be pointed out that the scope o f his worldview was limited to the West for the most part of his theological thoughts. Whether his theology is relevant to our contemporary world situation or not is another issue that will be discussed later. Bonhoeffer acknowledged that the phenomenon o f the maturation o f human reason and the decay of religion as its result are unique to the West: Technology became an end itself. It has soul o f its own. Its symbol is the machine, the embodiment of the violation and exploitation o f nature. . . It cannot be overlooked that technology has arisen only in the west, that is to say, in the world which has been shaped by Christianity and more particularly by the Reformation. When it penetrates to oriental countries it acquires a totally different significance in that it ceases to be an end in itself. Technical development in the Islamic world, for example, continues to stand entirely in the service o f belief in God and o f the constructive furtherance of Islamic history.6 1 From this, it can be observed that his idea of the world come o f age is based on the historical understanding of the Western world that has been shaped by Christianity. The maturity o f the world, from Bonhoeffers standpoint, is the result of historical development o f the Western civilization under the influence o f Christianity. O f course it would be logical to conclude that the limited scope o f his worldview unfortunately reduces its applicability to our contemporary world that is open and globalized. However, considering the proliferation o f the Western civilization into different parts of the world leveraging its advanced technology, which has been the main source of
6i E
99
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human confidence, Bonhoeffers worldview and his theology seem to be gaining more relevance for the rest o f the world than in his own time.
Christs Forsakenness and the World Come of Age

Returning to the second implication o f Rasmussens biographical interpretation, which ignores the Christological aspect o f the world come o f age, it can be argued that, along the line o f Dumas, Bonhoeffers worldview was derived from his theology firmly based on the Christology o f Christ as the concrete reality in this world. Dumas points out an important role o f Christology in the formulation o f Bonhoeffers concept o f the world come of age: But what happens when God enters into the reality o f this world? After the cultural and biblical levels o f interpretation we come to the christological level, which is by far the most compressed and enigmatic. Gods encounter-in-tension with reality in Jesus Christ is neither a victory nor an abolition, but the humiliation and annihilation o f the cross. This is the opposite o f Feuerbachs religious position, where Gods enrichment represents humans impoverishment, but it closely resembles Hegels analysis of Christ as the historical embodiment o f negation.62 After quoting the letter o f 16 July 1944, where Bonhoeffer talked about the forsakenness ( Verlassenheit) o f the world, Dumas continues to assert that, from a Christological perspective, the godlessness o f responsible resistance overlaps with the before God o f believing submission. Because God is willing to alienate himself on the cross, humanity needs no longer to be alienated from God. Dumas argues: Theology becomes christology because in Christ God himself is present. And because God is present, christology is more than a matter o f
62 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality, 190.
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example, more than providing a model to imitate. It becomes concrete. It effects reconciliation63 Although Bonhoeffer viewed responsibility64 as an important aspect of maturity, it is clear that he did not consider maturation as a revolving process of human growth apart from God. Rather, it can be said that Bonhoeffers model for maturation is based on the concept o f ultimate and penultimate. Through the presence o f Christ, humanity came to the last point of penultimate. Human beings finally realized that God forsook the world when Jesus cried out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?65 However, the paradox of this event is that the world was forsaken by God along with Jesus Christ, who is God. Therefore, Bonhoeffers concept of maturity is not individualistic separatism in which God and humanity are separated, but the restoration o f correct relationship between God and humanity similar to a parentschildren relationship that was once realized in the Garden o f Eden prior to the Fall. Furthermore, Bonhoeflfers model for such relation between God and humanity is from his eschatology o f the ultimate. Evidently, Bonhoeffer was convinced that human beings have enough capability to understand the ultimate relationship between God and humanity. Thus, he concluded the world come o f age. Another point o f observation was made by Ralf K. Wiistenberg who observes that C. Gremmels has found that Bonhoeffer appropriated reflections on the idea of the
63 Ibid. 190-91. 64 LPP 298. Thoughts on the Day o f the Baptism o f Dietrich Wilhelm Radiger Bethge. Bonhoeffer talks about responsibility relates to action. In the world come of age, he envisions, human beings will take actions out of responsibility rather than thoughts. 65 Mt. 27:46.
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world coming of age and human autonomy from passages o f Wilhelm Diltheys work.66 There is verbatim agreement between some o f Bonhoeffer citations and Diltheys.67 According to Gremmels, this-worldliness is the key interpretive term applicable to Bonhoeffer as well as Dilthey, and it signifies a focus on the here and now.68 Gremmels says that the issue is no longer the poorly posed alternative between immanence and transcendence, earth or heaven, but rather a mediation of the intentions attached to these categories. Bonhoeffer finds this mediation with a Christological formulation: God is beyond even in the midst of our lives.69 Gremmels observes that Bonhoeffer developed his coming of age by bracketing Diltheys intellectual-historical element with a Christological element. Gremmels says: The concept o f the world come o f age interprets the end o f specific world-historical development; it is to be understood historically; or intellectually-historically. . . . The concept o f the world come o f age interprets the beginning of the salvific-historical development; it is to be understood Christologically.70 Gremmels Christological interpretation o f Bonhoeffers concept, the world come o f age, seems to deserve further review in the light o f the religionless Christianity. Bonhoeffer said: The concepts [of the New Testament] must be interpreted in such a way as not to make religion a precondition o f faith (cf. Paul and circumcision). . .. Thus the worlds coming of age is no longer an occasion for polemics
66 Ralf K. Wiistenberg, A Theology o f Life, Dietrich Bonhoffer's Religionless Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 70. Quotation from C. Gremmels Mandig Welt, pp. 13f. 67 Ibid.: C. Gremmels has juxtaposed Bonhoeffer citations from Widerstand und Ergebung. Neuausgabe with statements from Diltheys Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, revealing verbatim agreement in statements concerning . . . See the text for more detail. 68 Ibid. 69 LPP 282, 30 April 1944. 70 Wiistenberg, A Theology o f Life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity, 70. Quotation from C. Gremmels Mandig Welt, p. 22.
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and apologetics, but is now really better understood than it understands itself, namely on the basis of the gospel and in the light o f Christ.7 1 Therefore, Bonhoeffer understood the world come o f age as a stage for religionless Christianity rather than as the beginning o f the salvific-historical development as Gremmels asserts. It is in the world come o f age that we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur (even if there were no g o d ). . . God would have us know that we must live as human who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).72 As a result o f the historicalintellectual development o f humanity, we can recognize the forsakenness of the world that has been concealed under religion, and the reality o f Christ in the midst o f our lives. An important point one should note here is that Bonhoeffer, from his christocentric viewpoint, placed Christ at the center o f the historical development which led humanity to its maturity. The world forsaken by God can only be understood through Christ. In this regard, Bonhoeffer said thathe wasconcerned about- theclaimof a
world that has come of age by Jesus Christ 73 Asmentionedearlier, the maturityo f the world does not mean that we are alienated from God. Rather, from a christocentric viewpoint, Christ alienated himself from God into the world. Thus, when Bonhoeffer said that our coming o f age leads us to a true recognition o f our situation before God,74 he had this christocentric view in mind where humanity comes to the true recognition of the world being united with God through the reality o f Christ in this world. Bonhoeffers
7 1 LPP 7- LPP 73 LPP 74 LPP
329, 8 June 1944. 360, 16 July 1944. 342, 30 June 1944. Italic is for emphasis. 360-61, 16 July 1944.
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idea o f the world corne o f age was mainly based on his Christology. It cannot be simply equated with a developmental process o f human beings as perceived by Selby and others.
A Wholly New Way of Life

Another aspect of the world come o f age is related to how Christianity is understood by the world. Bonhoeffer argued that to view Christianity as a religion of redemption is unchristian, because it confuses Christ with one particular stage in humankinds religiousness.75 Bonhoeffer criticized Christianity as a religion of redemption based on his understanding o f the Old Testament: Now for some further thoughts about the Old Testament. Unlike the other oriental religions, the faith o f the Old Testament isnt a religion of redemption. Its true that Christianity has always been regarded as a religion of redemption. But isnt this a cardinal error, which separates Christ from the Old Testament and interprets him on the lines o f the myths about redemption?76 From the fact that the Old Testament does not pay attention to salvation nor redemption o f human beings, Bonhoeffer found that Israelites in the Old Testament lived this earthly life with God. Rather than hoping for the things o f afterlife, the Israelites hoped for the restoration o f their kingdom through a Messiah here on earth. Bonhoeffer saw that their focus on this worldly kingdom was important for the concept o f the world come o f age because the maturity o f the world meant a holistic life o f human beings in this world in a wholly new way. Bonhoeffer continued:
75 Ibid. 76 LPP 336, 27 June 1944.
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The decisive factor is said to be that in Christianity the hope of resurrection is proclaimed, and that that means the emergence o f a genuine religion of redemption, the main emphasis now being on the far side o f the boundary drawn by death. But it seems to me that this is just where the mistake and the danger lie. Redemption now means redemption from cares, distress, fears, and longings, from sin and death, in a better world beyond the grave. But is this really the essential character o f the proclamation o f Christ in the gospels and by Paul? I should say it is not. The difference between the Christian hope o f resurrection and the mythological hope is that the former sends a man back to his life on earth in a wholly new way which is even more sharply defined than it is in the Old Testament.77 In a wholly new way we are sent back to our life on earth by the Christian hope of resurrection in our adulthood. This redemption is not simply pointing to the direction of beyond death but it points to the reality o f this world as well. Israel is delivered out o f Egypt so that it may live before God as Gods people on earth.78 The mature world is the ground where Christianity should stand before God. Bonhoeffers main concern was to find out Who is Christ for us today in the world come o f age? Christianity is more than redemption from sin and death beyond this world. The hope for eternal life in a world beyond this, which was what Christianity had been preaching for the past nineteen hundred years, was not adequate for the world come o f age. The time when people would accept unconditionally or blindly the words that are proclaimed was over, and the maturity o f this world cannot be undone. The Church may wish to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages when it enjoyed its privilege and dominion over this world where its authority was not challenged. However, the world come o f age is the
77 Ibid.
7 8 Ibid. 67
reality within which the Church must live its life in a wholly new way to preach the gospel to the world. What, then, was Bonhoeffers attitude toward the historical phenomenon o f the world come o f age? Selby applies the idea o f the world come o f age to our own world and finds that there is no Someone who will solve the real problems o f life other than ourselves. The problems of war, poverty, and economics must be dealt with by ourselves: There is nowhere to look for the answers to the hard questions, no book of life with the correct solutions provided by an omniscient God.79 Agreeing with Bonhoeffer, Selby claims that the seeds o f our religious faith have been planted in the soil o f human sinfulness and morality. Religion meets us at the points o f our vulnerability and weakness.80 The steady growth of human knowledge and power has pushed humanity in the direction of having to make endless decisions for all the matters o f this world on our own. From this sense o f responsibility imposed upon human beings, Selby views the adulthood o f humanity as a stage humanity has reached unwillingly. We have to accept it whether we like it or not. However, Selbys somewhat negative view o f human autonomy and of responsibility as a burden must be rejected in the light o f Bonhoeffers positive evaluation o f the situation. For example, Bonhoeffer said: To that extent we may say that the development towards the worlds coming o f age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception o f God, opens up a way o f seeing the God o f the Bible, who
9 Selby, A World Come o f Age, 30. 80 Ibid., 32.
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wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our secular interpretation.8 1 Contrary to Selbys view, Bonhoeffer understood human autonomy from the historical side. Human autonomy from God was not a biological development o f a life that naturally occurs and goes away when a new life appears. (See Diltheys influence on the historical view of Bonhoeffer.) Rather, it was the great historical development o f the West, which led humanity to its current mature state. Human thinking had been directed towards a state o f the autonomy from God, both with regard to humanity and with reference to the world. It can be said that Bonhoeffer was positive about the world come o f age from the perspective that it opened the door for the non-religious interpretation, which was not possible in the previous stages o f human maturation.
The Freedom for Others

Rasmussen views Bonhoeffers coming of age from two aspects: moral accountability and rational maturity. For moral accountability, he explains that Bonhoeffer designates the increase o f human autonomy by various forms o f the German miindig (maturity). The person who is miindig is one who speaks for oneself.82 The term mtindig references to the passage from adolescence to adulthood. One is no longer a minor but is on their own; that one has come o f age means that the person is fully responsible for his or her own actions. Based on this understanding o f the German term miindig Rasmussen warns the English readers o f Bonhoeffer to be careful to note that
8' LPP 361, 16 July 1944. 82 Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reality and Resistance, p. 81. X Ia n d ig k e it means adulthood ; mandigwerden means coming of age; mandigwordene means having come of age or come of age. Quoted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung, ed. Eberhard Bethge, 11th ed.
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miindig is thus a reference to moral accountability and not moral maturity. He explains his understanding o f miindig further: That is, Bonhoeffer is saying that humanity is fully responsible for their actions whether they act childishly, immaturely, irresponsibly, or whatever. The worlds adulthood is in part, then, Bonhoeffers designation of humanitys irrevocable responsibility for their answers to lifes questions, together with all the consequences. One can no longer return to an adolescent dependence upon their parents to whom final responsibility falls.8 3 For another aspect of coming o f age as rational maturity, Rasmussen believes that Bonhoeffers appropriation of come o f age is drawn from Kants description of the Enlightenment as the emergence o f humankind from immaturity that they are responsible for themselves. Immaturity is the incapacity to use ones own intelligence without the guidance of another person. Rasmussen summarizes his view of Bonhoeffers understanding of come o f age based on the literary meaning o f miindig and the influence from Kants emphasis on the human reason: Humankind, using their autonomous reason, can and do answer the questions o f life; humankind and can and do interpret natural and social processes, all without the tutelage o f a divinity, without God as a working hypothesis. Further, humankind is accountable for the use o f their reason and its behavioral expression. World come o f age, then, designates rational maturity and moral accountability. Especially the former is clear in a summary of Bonhoeffers.84 Even though to Bonhoeffer rational maturity is certainly one o f the characteristics o f the world come o f age, were rational maturity and moral responsibility the only things
Munich, Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1951, pp.217, 236, 241, 218, 331 respectively. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid.
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he had in mind when he said, People are now capable of taking in hand the direction of their own internal and external history?85 From his view, we must live as men or women who manage our lives without God. It means that we have our freedom to decide what to do without being dictated to by God or by religion. In a poem Stations on the Road to Freedom , Bonhoeffer expressed his thought on freedom: If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that that your passions and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow, . . . Chaste your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them; only through discipline may a man learn to be free.8 6 It can be stated that the concept o f freedom is where Bonhoeffer was heading as the destiny of a mature human being. It is a freedom with responsibility that is allowed to us as mature beings. Based on this, one should be careful in understanding Bonhoeffers concept of freedom in that it is not the self-centered freedom as a right of individual but the freedom for others, the freedom to suffer for the sake o f the world, the freedom from sin, and the freedom to die for others, which was exemplified by the life of Jesus. In summary, Bonhoeffers understanding o f the world come o f age can be interpreted based on historical and Christological perspectives. It is not the question of whether humanity became self-justifiable or not without God. From the perspective of historical development, it is a movement toward human autonomy that came to its completion. However, the autonomy o f the world cannot be explained without the reality
85 E 101. 86 LPP 370.
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of Christ. As suggested earlier, the place o f christocentricity in the concept o f the world come age has been missed by many interpreters o f Bonhoeffer, and such
misunderstanding led them to misuse or abuse his theology o f the world come o f age and the religionless world. Based on the christocentricity o f his worldview, it can be concluded that Christology, which is based on his concept o f Incarnation, was at the core of his understanding o f the world come of age. God was being pushed out and from the world more and more on the cross. However, it was Christ, the Son o f God, who was forsaken from the Father in order to remain in the midst o f the world with us and for us. As we have seen in Chapter 1, another aspect o f his Christology is the concept of Christ for others. It is clear that the freedom for others is precisely the outcome of the maturity of the world. As Bonhoeffer pointed out, the world come o f age is not the end of itself. Rather it directs humankind to the correct recognition o f the human situation before God. With his understanding of Christ forsaken by God on behalf o f the world, and of the world come o f age in Christ, Bonhoeffer established a theological agenda o f a non religious interpretation of biblical concepts and Christianity. Therefore, in the next chapter, his critique o f religion as it relates to his concept o f non-religious interpretation will be discussed. In addition to that the meaning o f his non-religious interpretation of the biblical concepts and Christianity will be discussed in more detail.
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CHAPTER 3 A NON-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPEL
In the previous two chapters, the major themes o f Bonhoeffers theology - the Church, Christ, and the world - were reviewed. In short, Christ is the center of the Church and the world from the perspective that he is the Lord o f both. At the same time, Christ is the center between God and humanity, between human beings in the midst o f the world, from the perspective that he is the mediator. Bonhoeffer understood the Church as the body o f Christ who exists for others. From his Christocentric theological foundation laid out in the very early stage of his theological development, Bonhoeffer concluded in his letters from prison that we should reinterpret the Gospel in a non-religious way for the world come o f age, which was becoming religionless. In a nutshell, Bonhoeffers theology can be viewed as a reaction to the situation of the Church where it was losing its ground - religion - in the world that had become increasingly 1 religionless. He observed that the Church was not only irrelevant to the changing world but also indifferent to the suffering o f the world and fellow human beings. Since this thesis is an application o f Bonhoeffers theological concept o f non religious interpretation to our contemporary situation, the meaning o f the concept needs to be discussed further. Because Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation is obviously
1 LPP 326, 8 June 1944. We can deduce that Bonhoeffer had some sense of urgency regarding the changes that were taking place in the world. He said, But for the last hundred years or so it has also become [increasingly] true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without God .
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anchored to the term religion, I will first discuss how Bonhoeffer understood religion in order to explain the meaning o f non-religious interpretation later.
Bonhoeffers Understanding of Religion

Religion is a term that cannot be clearly defined because its meaning and usage can be so diverse depending on the context in which it is used. Because Bonhoeffer himself used the term with different meanings from time to time, there has been some confusion in understanding how his theological ideas developed around the concept of religion. Bonhoeffer scholars have been asking the question, What was Bonhoeffers understanding of religion? in order to grasp a more clear meaning o f his controversial ideas such as religionless Christianity and a non-religious interpretation o f the gospel and the biblical concepts. After an exhaustive study on how Bonhoeffer understood religion, Wiistenberg concluded that Bonhoeffer neither defined religion conceptually, nor developed any closed theory of religion.2 Previous Bonhoeffer scholarship presupposed that Bonhoeffers fixed concept of religion enabled one to draw conclusions regarding the statement about religionlessness and non-religious interpretation.3 However, Wiistenberg rightly says, The continuing paraphrastic renderings o f the religious thematic material o f the Letters and Papers from Prison clearly demonstrate that scholars are still searching for an interpretive key or a sustaining explanatory model for this book.4 Therefore, with regard to Bonhoeffers
2 Wiistenberg, A Theology o f Life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity, 29. 3 Ibid., 30. The Bonhoeffer scholars are listed in the authors German edition, Glauben als Leben, Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die nichtrligiOse Interpretation biblischer Begriffe (Frankfurt am Main:Perter Lang, 1996), 255-345. See the note on p. 172. 4 Ibid.
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critique o f religion, Wiistenberg suggests an evaluation o f the various influences on Bonhoeffer such as Karl Barth and Wilhelm Dilthey during the period when the critique would have been formulated. Wiistenberg finds that a survey o f Bonhoeffers references to religion prior to 1927, the year of his dissertation Sanctorum Communio, reveals that there is hardly a single statement of Bonhoeffer which aims directly at any critique o f religion.5 Rather, Bonhoeffers positive and appreciative attitude toward religion can be found in the letter to his parents in 1924 and several lecture notes from the period o f 1925 - 1926.6 On the other hand, Bonhoeflfers first reference o f his critique o f religion is found in a note on Luthers lectures on Romans in 1925: The intention o f theological logic is to free itself from psychologizing.7 Already, a glimpse o f Bonhoeffers negative perception of religion as psychotherapy can be seen. Wiistenberg views this as a critique of E. Troeltschs doctrine of the religious a priori, which will acquire significance in Bonhoeffers later critique of religion.8 Nonetheless, we can deduce from those materials that Bonhoeffer was still formulating his critique of religion with mixed attitude in his student days. In 1927, when his dissertation Sanctorum Communio was finished, Bonhoeffer made a decisive turn against religion. In his dissertation, Bonhoeffer argued that the Church is misunderstood, There are basically two ways to misunderstand the Church,
5 Ibid., I. 6 DBW 9, 124, 271-305. 410-30. 7 DBW 9. 324. 8 RalfK. Wiistenberg, A Theology o f Life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity, 1.
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one historicizing and the other religious; the former confuses the Church with the religious community, the latter with the Realm o f God. 9 According to him, Both are dangerous, since both can be nourished by religious pathos and seriousness.10 Neither o f them, however, understands the reality o f the Church, which is simultaneously a historical community and one established by God. 1 1 With the first point, in making a clear distinction between the Church and the religious community, he viewed the religious community as a human product established by the religious motives or religious impulse of human beings, whereas the Church is established by God. Continuing from the previous paragraph, Bonhoeffer said: The former overlooks the fact that the new basic-relations established by God actually are real, and points instead to the religious motives that in fact lead to empirical community (the missionary impulse, the need to communicate, etc.). This view, however, plainly is condemned by the saying in Johns Gospel that You did not choose me, but I chose you (John 15:16).12 Bonhoeffer makes a subtle but important distinction between religious community and the Church. How many Christians come to the Church every Sunday with a sincere belief that it is the Church established by God and the same God is present in the midst of people who are gathered to worship him? The truth o f the matter is that most Christians think that the Church is there to satisfy their religious impulse or spiritual needs. From that sense, Bonhoeffers critique o f the Church as the religious
9 SC 125. 10 SC 126. Seriousness is a theological term used by Karl Barth. In his early articles Barth spoke quite frequently about seriousness.
1 1 Ibid. l- Ibid. 76
community can still be applied to our contemporary churches. Bonhoeffers Godcentered theology was taking its shape in Sanctorum Communio. On the second point o f his critique o f the Church, Bonhoeffer said: But then what does it mean to believe in the Church? We do not believe in an invisible church, nor in the Realm o f God within the Church as coetus electorum [company or assembly o f the elect]. Instead we believe that God has made the concrete, empirical church [Kirche] in which the word is preached and the sacraments are celebrated to be Gods own churchcommunity [Gemeinde]. We believe that it is the body o f Christ, Christs presence in the world, and that according to the promise Gods Spirit is at work in it.1 3 The understanding o f the Church as coetus electorumi [company or assembly o f the elect], which became popular through Lutheran theology, was viewed negatively by Bonhoeffer because o f its lack o f concreteness and its conceptual view o f the Church. In other words, the Realm seems to remove God from the concrete and empirical Church in which God is present as the builder o f community. I conclude that Bonhoeffers criticism o f the Church as a religious community or the Realm o f God was based on his understanding o f the Church as the concrete and empirical body o f Christ and o f the presence of God as the center of the Church-community. In Sanctorum Communio , Bonhoeffer defined religion as the impulse of the community toward deity. He said, Religion is defined as the touching o f the human will by the divine will, and as the overcoming o f the former by the latter to enable free action. 14 Bonhoeffer first understood religion as a social phenomenon. Although it may not be certain whether religion begins in the individual soul as a slow dawning of an
1 3 SC 280. 1 4 SC 131.
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other in the most primitive feelings such as horror, fear, and terror, or whether the biological communal forms such as the family and the clan are primarily seen as the subject o f religion. What was certain to Bonhoeffer was that worship is carried out by a community expecting the protection o f its communal life.15 Religion, from its origin, is closely tied to social life - community. He defined four different modes o f relationship between religion and community16: 1) A radical rejection o f outward and inward community. An example o f this is mysticism. The mystical fusion o f I-You relationship between God and human beings rejects the concept o f community;1 7 2) Free religious communities that are held together purely on the basis o f and in order to achieve a purpose, and solely through a common religious practice as a means o f accomplishing a purpose. Its internal structure is individualistic. They are cultic societies, and have a voluntary association; 3) The religious formation o f community that is based on physical communities. The family or the clan is firmly regarded as the subject of religion. The individual is active in religious practice only as a part o f a whole, thus constituting a pronounced collectivism. The historically conditioned religious communities, such as the children o f Israel, belong to this category; 4) The free communities that are held together by meetings for worship, without which each individual would wither religiously; these consider the communal element in particular as constituting an aspect o f the meaning of religion. Bonhoeffer, then, defined three types o f communities: 1) the charismatic community characterized by the sorcerer; 2) the regulated, uncharismatic community
1 5 SC 131-32. 1 6 SC 132. 1 7 SC 84.
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characterized by the priest; 3) the religious community characterized by the prophet. However, according to him, these types o f community do not lead us to the concept of the Church, which can be reached only where Christian revelation is believed. The commonality of those three types o f community is the fact that human beings rather than the revelation o f God characterize them all. Bonhoeffer claimed, Only the concept o f revelation can lead to the Christian concept o f the Church. 1 8 In other words, unlike other religions that have been formed historically , the Christian church has been established through Gods revelation. More importantly, Bonhoeffer already determined that the Church is not a religious community, and Christianity should not be identified with religion: Now the relationship of Christ to the Church can be stated by saying that in essence Jesus Christ was no more the founder of the Christian religious community than the founder o f religion. The credit for both o f these belongs to the earliest church, i.e., to the apostles. This is why the question whether Jesus founded a church is so ambiguous. He brought, established, and proclaimed the reality o f the new humanity . . . It is not a new religion recruiting followers - this is the picture o f a later time. Rather, God established the reality of the Church, o f humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ - not religion, but revelation, not religious community, but church. This is what the reality o f Jesus Christ means.1 9 Thus, Bonhoeffer made a clear distinction between religion and revelation, and religious community and the Church. What differentiates revelation from religion is the resurrected Christ who is present in the Church as revelation, as the Spirit. Historically speaking, the ascension of Christ draws the line between the disciple-community o f the followers of Jesus and the Church actualized at the Pentecost.20 Bonhoeffer said,
18 SC 133. 19 SC 152-3. :o SC 152.
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Formerly the disciple-community represented Christ; now it possesses him as revelation, as Spirit.21 As we shall see later, this differentiation made by Bonhoeffer characterizes todays church as a disciple-community, which represents Christ rather than possessing him as the Lord in the Spirit. As Wustenberg points out, Bonhoeffer also identified religion as mysticism in Sanctorum Communio. Bonhoeffer defined mysticism as a fusion o f our being into Gods. He said: Whatever kind o f unity of will exists, one must never conclude any kind of unity o f the willing persons in the sense o f fusion; this is impossible considering all that has been said. Community o f will and unity o f will only build upon the inner separateness o f I and You . . . The Christian notion of community with God can be realized only on the basis o f this interpretation o f community. Otherwise, community with God becomes unification in the sense o f transgressing the boundary o f the I-You-relation - th a t is, mystical fusion.22 The separateness between God and the community with God is necessary for the correct I-You-relation in which the true obedience to Gods command as the basis of community o f saints is possible. I observe that Bonhoeffer reiterated his critique of religion as mystical fusion in Creation and Fall in the following terms; Nevertheless it is clear that if between the creature and the Creator the boundary were to be transgressed, then this would coincide with the transgression o f the boundary within creation. Every transgression of the boundary at the same time injures the creatureliness o f the other person. Violating the tree of life would at the same time violate the other person.23
:1 SC 152. ~ SC84. 23 CF 118.
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Bonhoeffer understood mysticism as the mystical fusion into God, which humanity desires by its nature, and it is the transgression o f the boundary drawn between God and human, and between the Creator and the creature. According to Bethge, Bonhoeffer, while an assistant pastor in Barcelona, delivered lectures for a series o f three evenings, the first on the Old Testament, the second on the New, and the last on the ethical questions. On the second evening, 11 December 1928, his subject for the lecture was Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity. The lecture began with a concept o f provincialism, which Bonhoeffer may have received from Friedrich Naumann: . . . that Christ in practice [has been] eliminated from our lives . . . Christ, instead of being the center of our lives, has become a thing o f the Church, or of the religiosity o f a group o f people. To the nineteenth- and twentiethcentury mind, religion plays the part o f the so-called Sunday room . . . We do not understand it if we make room for it in merely one province o f our spiritual life. . . . The religion o f Christ is not the tidbit that follows the bread, but is the bread itself, or it is nothing.24 This observation o f Bonhoeffer as a young pastor still applies to the Christian religion o f today. It seems that the quiet time or the small group Bible study appear to constitute a major part o f Christianity in todays church. He criticized the partiality of Christianity as a religion, which occupies only a small part o f the life o f Christians. In 1928, Bonhoeffer criticized religion as related to happiness. Happiness and religion belong together like glitter and gold; religion that does not make a person happy is not religion. But this means we are conceiving religion from the perspective o f human beings themselves, and evaluating it only with respect to human beings as the center of
Z A Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer A Biography (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 116. DB W 10, 302-3.
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the world.25 Religion is viewed as human-centered service that brings happiness and comfort to human beings. Bonhoeffer also criticized religion for placing God in the service o f human beings to promote their happiness and peace. In a sermon on Thanksgiving 1931, Bonhoeffer pointed out, We often hear and say that religion makes a person happy and harmonious and peaceful and satisfied. That may well be correct for religion. But for God, the living God, it is not correct; it is fundamentally false.26 In 1931, at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as a scholar abroad, Bonhoeffer insisted that Barths theology shows how all human attempts to come to God must fail, and condemns all morality and religion.27 Having read William James, and observed pragmatism in America, Bonhoeffer criticized the American churches. Wvistenberg comments, Bonhoeffer observes critically that this pragmatism in its most extreme form (Growing God) also led to a creative coupling o f religion and faith in progress, with religion becoming social ethics. American ecclesiology allegedly confuses the Church with a religions association, a criticism recalling Sanctorum Communio.2* Bonhoeffer criticized the American churches based on the fact that instead of the priesthood of believers, we have the right o f membership in the association, and instead o f the rite vocatus we have the pastor as the association chairman.29 Almost
25 Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, 4. Also, see Sermon on 2 Cor. 12:9 (Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 9, 1928) DBW 10, 505-11. 26 Ibid., 10. DBW 11, p.378. 21 Ibid.. 5. See The Theology of Crisis and Its Attitude toward Philosophy and Science, DBW 10, 43449,435. 28 Ibid., 6 DBW 10, 269. 29 Ibid., DBW 10. 277.
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seventy years later, I find Bonhoeffers harsh criticism on the American churches still convincing. Bonhoeffer also made his criticism on the process o f religious individualization through the lectures that he offered in the winter semester o f 1931/32 on the subject of History o f Systematic Theology in the 20th Century. He said: Individualism has destroyed the Protestantism o f the Reformation. In the post-Copemican age, the word religio appears in the place o f faith (the English Deists), and refers to the ultimate, most delicate human possibilities. The human being is discovered as being related to God.30 Wustenberg summarizes Bonhoeffers criticism o f religion in this period, Bonhoeffer believes that theology is absolutely not to be confused with philosophy of religion or with a doctrine of faith.31 In the lectures on Systematic Theology in the 20th Century, Bonhoeffer concludes that for the relationship between religion and individualism, individualism is the basic error o f Protestant theology,32 a criticism referring essentially to Schleiermacher: His [Schleiermachers] church is a voluntary assembly o f Christian devotees. This refers the Church back to the piety o f individuals. The Church is not the ultimate presupposition. He puts individual religiosity before the brackets.33
30 Ibid., DBW 11, 145. 3 1 Ibid. DBW 11, 199. Wustenberg continues his summation (p.7): The lecture series The Essence of the Church from the summer semester of 1932 seeks the Locus of the Church (Part L DBW 11. 23 Iff.) In the World (Part I.A, 23 If.) and In Christendom (Part I.B, 233f.), and then concludes with respect to Catholicism and cultural Protestantism that neither the state church nor the middle class is the locus of the Church (232). The Church does not take up residence at privileged places (233), nor is it found on the periphery of life (233). The implied critique of religion here is ecclesiastically directed and will reappear in the Tegel prison cell in the notions of religiously privileged persons and partiality. 3: Ibid. DBW 11,238. 33 Ibid.,7. DBW 11.253.
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A sermon on Mark 9 in 1932 also demonstrates Bonhoeffers negative understanding o f religion as human product, which is an important precursor for his formulation o f a non-religious interpretation: We have grown accustomed to finding in religion something that comes from a need within the human soul and then satisfies that need. . . . But we forget here one decisive question, namely, whether religion itself is something true; whether it is the truth; for it may be that although it is all a beautiful illusion, it is nonetheless still just an illusion.34 Here Bonhoeffer criticized religion by juxtaposing religion and truth. He argued that religion is an illusion and has nothing to do with the truth o f God, and that the Church had drifted into the category o f religion. He found the precedence or prototype of the Church as religious community from Exodus 32, on which he preached in 1933, God has abandoned us, but we need gods! Religions! If you cannot coerce the living God, then make gods for us yourself! .. . Keep religion for the people, give them worship service.35 In 1936, Bonhoeffer spoke to Swedish and Danish congregations on the subject The Visible Church in The New Testament. He expounded on Acts 2, 42-7 under the title The New Community: The coming o f the Spirit is a new creation, simply because it leads the community into fellowship with Christ. Kaine ktisis (2 Cor. 5.17, Gal. 6.15), the second creation after the old, corrupt creation, is man/woman in the community, the community itself (Eph.2.15). Part o f the world is made afresh after the image o f God (Col. 3.10). Thus no new religion has been founded; a part o f the world has been made anew. That is the founding o f the C hurch.6
34 Ibid.. 12. G S 4, 142. 35 Ibid.. 12. G S 4, 126. 36 GS m , pp. 325-34. Tr. and Ed. Edwin H. Robertson, The Way to Freedom (London: Collins, 1966), 47-8.
Here again it can be seen that Bonhoeffer was making a clear distinction between the Church and religion. He made a further distinction between the Church and the religious community: The event o f Whitsuntide[Pentecost] thus does not consist primarily in a new religiousness, but in the proclamation o f a new creative act o f God. And that means that the whole o f life is requisitioned. It is not for a moment a matter of putting the religious before the profane, but o f putting Gods act before both religious and profane. Here is the essential difference between the Church and a religious fellowship [religious community], A religious fellowship is concerned to put the religions above profane, to divide life into the religious and the profane; it is concerned with an ordering o f value and status. A religious fellowship has its end in itself in the religious as the highest - one might go on to say God-given - value. The Church, as a part o f the world and o f mankind created afresh by Gods Spirit, demands total obedience to the Spirit which creates anew both the religious and the profane. Because the Church is concerned with God, the Holy Spirit, and his Word, it is therefore not specially concerned with religion, but with obedience to the Word, with the work of the Father, i.e. with the completion o f the new creation in the Spirit. It is not the religious question or religious concern of any form which constitutes the Church - from a human point o f view - but obedience to the Word of the new creation o f grace.37 Bonhoeffer emphasized the Churchs obedience to the will o f God, and the doing o f Gods work, over against the Churchs concern with religion. This, in my opinion, is another precursor o f his concept of non-religious interpretation. Bonhoeffer continued to define the true nature o f the Church: In other words, the Church is constituted not by religious formulae, by dogma, but by the practical doing o f what is commanded. The pure teaching o f the Gospel is not a religious concern, but a desire to execute the will o f God for a new creation. In the Church, the Holy Spirit and obedience take the place o f the religious.38
38
3' Ibid. Ibid.
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The religious has been taken over by the non-religious at the event of Pentecost. Religion of human origin was replaced by the Church, which was founded by the will o f God manifested through the work o f the Holy Spirit. Thus, Bonhoeffer was able to say: The second creation of God by Christ in the Holy Spirit is as little a religious matter as was the first creation. It is a reality o f God. The total claim of the Church, which is not content with the priority o f the religious, is grounded in the claim o f the Holy Spirit to be creator in the Church.39 At the same time, Bonhoeffer criticized the Church that became nothing more than a religious institution: Where the Word and the Action o f God are tom apart to the extent that they are in the Orthodox churches, the Church must become a religious institution and there is no longer any protection against the pietistic, total dissolution o f the concept of the Church in which piety constitutes the Church - and the action of God is identified with human, pious work.40 In [The Cost of\ Discipleship , Bonhoeffer found Monasticism religious from the perspective that it was represented as an individual achievement, which the mass of laity could not be expected to emulate. He said: But the decisive mistake of monasticism was not that it followed the grace-laden path o f strict discipleship, even with all o f monasticisms misunderstandings o f the contents o f the will o f Jesus. Rather, the mistake was that monasticism essentially distanced itself from what is Christian by permitting its way to become the extraordinary achievement o f a few, thereby claiming a special meritoriousness for its e lf. . The humble work o f discipleship had become in monasticism the meritorious work o f the holy ones.41 He also spoke of religion as a spiritual tyranny by asking:
Ibid '" Ibid 4 1 D 47. 86
39
Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign o f terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saves? Should the churchs word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing?42 In a sense, one could view [The Cost of] Discipleship as Bonhoeffers renunciation o f the Church as a religion. He opens the book by saying, Cheap grace is the deadly enemy o f our church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Then he states: Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cur-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the churchs inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit . . . Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, as principle, as system. It means forgiveness o f sins as a general truth, it means Gods love as merely a Christian idea o f God . . . The world finds in this church a cheap cover-up for its sins, for which it shows no remorse and from which it has even less desire to be set free. Cheap grace is, thus, denial o f Gods living word, denial o f the incarnation o f the word o f God.43 Here he identifies religion with cheap grace. He further asserts, The Christian better not rage against grace or defile that glorious cheap grace by proclaiming anew a servitude to the letter of the Bible in an attempt to live an obedient life under the commandments o f Jesus Christ!44 The Church as a new religion o f the letter is built on a doctrine, a dogma, a principle, a system, rather than on Jesus Christ. On June 18, 1939, during his second stay in America, Bonhoeffer was once again dissatisfied with the state o f the American church. After attending a Sunday worship service, he wrote: Simply unbearable. . . The whole thing was a decent, luxuriant, selfsatisfied religious celebration. Such idolization o f religion prompts a
42 D 38-9. 43 D 43. 44 D 44.
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revivification o f the flesh which is accustomed to being held in check by Gods word. Such preaching makes one libertinistic, egoistic, indifferent. Do these people really not know that one can get along just fine and even better without religion - if only God himself and his word did not exist?45 Again, he formulated his critique of religion and ethics based on his observation of the American church: American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand what critique through Gods word means in its entire scope. That Gods critique is directed also at religion, and even at the Christianity o f its churches and at the sanctification o f Christians, and that God has established his church beyond religion and ethics - ultimately none o f this is understood. One indication o f this is the general clinging to natural theology. In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics.46 In Ethics , Bonhoeffer declares religion as shame-based. Expounding on Gen. 3:7 and 2:24, he argued that shame is humankinds ineffaceable recollection o f his/her estrangement from the origin, and the powerless longing to return to unity with the origin.47 And he continued to argue: Whenever his longing forces its way towards fulfillment, in the partnership o f sex when two human beings become one flesh (Gen. 2.24), and in religion, when a human being seeks for his union with God, whenever, that is to say, the covering is broken through, then, more than ever, shame creates for itself the very deepest secrecy.4 Bonhoeffers prison letters show that he thought o f religion as the way in which human beings seek answers from God for the difficult questions and problems o f life. In his letter on 30 April 1944 he wrote:
45 Wustenberg, 16. GS I 300. 46 Ibid, G S l 354. 47 E 24.
^EIS.
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Religious people speak of God when human knowledge (perhaps simply because they are too lazy to think) has come to an end, or when human resources fail - in fact it is always the deus ex machinei49 that they bring on to the scene, either for the apparent solution o f insoluble problems, or as strength in human failure - always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries.5 0 Here he understood religion as a solution to the insoluble problems o f life such as natural disasters, accidents, blows of fate, death, or guilt.5 1 People come to religion as a rescue from the problems that they face, for the comfort of their soul, for the blessings on their life that come from supernatural being. It is a belief in anything supernatural which is expressed in some superstitious practice. The religious a priori o f humankind leads
them to believe in a supernatural power that is capable to provide solutions for their difficult problems. To Bonhoeffer, from the perspective o f the world come o f age, religion is a system that has been exploiting human weakness or human limitations. Furthermore, he defined Christianity as having rested on the religious a priori o f humankind for the whole nineteen centuries as a form of religion. Therefore, it is important to note that he used the term religion as the way in which human beings express their dependence on God, a supernatural being, for their insolvable problems o f life. One needs to be careful in understanding this particular point o f Bonhoeffer. He did not deny the reality o f human weakness that leads us to depend on God for our
49 God of the gaps. 50 LPP 281-282, 30 April 1944. 5 1 LPP, 3 August 1944. Outline for a Book, pp.380: The safeguarding of life against accidents and blows of fate; even if these cannot be eliminated, the danger can be reduced. Insurance (which, although it lives on accidents, seeks to mitigate their effects) is a Western phenomenon. The aim; to be independent of nature. Nature was formerly conquered by spiritual means, with us by technical organization of all kinds. 52 LPP 231,9 March 1944.
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problems. However, he opposed the Churchs exploitation o f peoples dependency on God and its preaching o f cheap grace rather than the concrete presence o f Christ. Bonhoeffer viewed the Church or Christianity as an institution as a form of religion. Putting it in a different way, Christianity has been wearing the religious garment throughout its history.53 Because the Western world has been shaped primarily under the influence o f Christianity, it is critical to understand the religious nature o f Christianity in relationship with the world.
The Problem of A Religionless World

Bonhoeffers critique of religion anticipated a new theological thesis, and he met such anticipation with concepts such as religionless Christianity, worldly
Christianity, or a non-religious interpretation. Clifford J. Green makes two observations: First, while statistically Bonhoeffer spoke more often o f interpretation of biblical concepts, he is clearly after something more than conceptual alteration: he is, as stated before, trying to describe a new psychic posture which affects a persons whole life, and this obviously involves more than concepts; for this reason I highlight the phrase religionless Christianity, instead of non-religious interpretation. Second, Bonhoeffers several phrases clearly fall into two groups: the negative, polemical formulations which use the adjectives religionless and non religious, and positive descriptions which speak o f worldly [weltliche] Christians or worldly interpretation.54 It seems that Green made wrong judgments in both observations. In his Tegel theology, Bonhoeffers main concern was to find the meaning o f Christ and Christianity
53 LPP 280, 30 April 1944: If religion is only a garment of Christianity - and even this garment has looked very different at different times -then what is religionless Christianity? 5 A Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer, A Theology o f Sociality, Revised Edition (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 269.
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for the world come o f age. In a letter o f 30 April 1944, Bonhoeffer was raising a question of theological importance: What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means o f words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience - and that means the time o f religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more.55 Based on his remarks, the most important theological concern for Bonhoeffer seems to be how to answer the question Who Christ really is, for us today? In other words, the meaning o f Christ and the Church for the religionless world must be defined in concrete terms. Therefore, the interpretation o f biblical concepts should not be understood on a conceptual level as Green understands it. Rather, it should be understood on a practical level where the interpretation isunderstood as an effort to formulate a
practical plan for the renewal o f the Church. In terms o f relationship between the religionless Christianity and a non-religious interpretation, it can be seen that the religionless Christianity is an outcome o f a non-religious interpretation of the gospel. Going back to Greens second observation, it seems that he is mistaken when he categorizes Bonhoeffers use of the adjectives religionless or non-religious for the negative, polemical formulation, and worldly Christians or worldly interpretations for the positive descriptions. As discussed earlier, Bonhoeffer did not view the religionlessness o f the world negatively. On the contrary, based on Bonhoeffers critique o f religion, he viewed religionlessness as a characteristic o f the world come of
55 LPP 279.
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age. What he was concerned about was the religiousness o f the Church, not the religionlessness of the world. In that sense, it can be suggested that Bonhoeffers term non-religious carries a positive and hopeful, not a negative connotation. What are the challenges the world come o f age imposes upon Christianity? First, the foundation o f Christianity, the religious a prior f is taken away. Bonhoeffer wrote: Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the religious a priori of mankind. Christianity has always been a form - perhaps the true form - o f religion. But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form o f human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless . . . what does that mean for Christianity? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole o f what has up to now been our Christianity, . . . 56 Whether it was correct or not, Bonhoeffer made an assumption that human beings will find that the religious a p r io r f o f humankind does not truly exist. When people come to know that the religious a p r io r f was only historically conditioned and transient, they cannot simply be religious anymore. He asked, What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world?57 If the foundation o f Christianity is taken away, those questions must be answered to redefine Christianity and the Church, and Bonhoeffer answered those questions with the concept o f religionless Christianity. Second, the concept o f religionless Christianity as the solution for the religionless world brings up the question, How do we speak o f God - without religion?58 God has been the object o f religion. If religion suddenly disappears from this
56 LPP 279-80. 57 LPP 280. 58 Ibid.
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world, how can we speak of God? Bonhoeffer answered, Christ is no longer an object o f religion, but something quite different, really the Lord o f the world.59 His answer is a polemic against Nietzsches claim that God is dead. Christ is not only still alive but also finally freed from the religious Christianity as the boundary o f religion is removed. Third, Bonhoeffer asked, What is the place o f worship and prayer in a religionless situation? If religious Christianity no longer exists, and religionless Christianity takes its place, what will happen to the Church? Bonhoeffer was truly anticipating some radical changes in the Church. In a sense, his prophetic anticipation has been realized in the European and American churches. For instance, many urban churches have lost their congregation and the Church buildings are empty. Yet, statistically, the Christian population didnt decline substantially. What does it mean? It can be suggested that it is an indication that the Church as the religious community, in Bonhoeffers term, has been losing its ground. The Church is losing its influence not because o f the religionlessness o f people, but because o f its religious and institutional nature. There are many Christians, especially in the younger generation, who do not participate in the life o f the Church, yet confess their faith in Christ. Facing those challenges o f the religionless world, Bonhoeffer responded with the concept of non-religious interpretation to answer the question What is a religionless Christianity? the next discussion will focus on the meaning o f his non-religious interpretation of the gospel and the biblical concepts.
59
LPP 281.
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The Development of the Non-religious Interpretation"

It can be observed that Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation is not a thought developed just in Tegel prison. Rather, it can be traced back to his student days to find the embryo o f his thoughts that led him to start formulating the thesis, a non religious interpretation of biblical concepts. To be more specific, on 7 August 1928, in his letter to one o f his contemporaries, Helmut Rossler, Bonhoeffer, serving as an assistant minister to the German-speaking church in Barcelona, Spain, expressed his dissatisfaction with the Christian world by writing: Im getting to know new people every day; here one meets people as they are, away from the masquerade of the Christian world, people with passions, criminal types, little people with little ambitions, little desires and little sins, all in all people who feel homeless in both senses o f the word, who loosen up if one talks to them in a friendly way, real people; I can only say that I have gained the impression that it is just these people who are much more under grace than under wrath, and that it is the Christian world which is more under wrath than under grace.60 One can glimpse his ideas of worldly Christianity or worldliness from his expression for the real people he was getting to know everyday in a different world. In thesame letter, Bonhoeffer stressed his view o f the centrality o f Christ in preaching, point [Christ] but can only be
First,preaching can never apprehend this central
apprehended by it, by Christ.61 In other words, preaching should not be a human effort to apprehend Christ, but on the contrary, through preaching Christ becomes flesh that liberates and unites individuals who hear it.
60 NRS 37. 6 1 NRS 38.
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More importantly, in an address given to his congregation on 25 January 1929, Bonhoeffer spoke o f the relationship between Christianity and ethics under the title What is a Christian Ethic? He believed the Christian message has nothing to do with ethics. He declared: Christianity was basically amoral, i.e. that Christianity and ethics were in fact divergent entities. And why? Because Christianity speaks o f the single way of God to man, from the merciful love o f God for unrighteous men and sinners, and because ethics speaks o f the way o f man to God, o f the encounter of the holy God with unholy man; because the Christian message speaks of grace and ethics speaks o f righteousness . . . Christianity and ethics do indeed have nothing to do with one another; there is no Christian ethics and there can be no transition from the idea o f Christianity to that of ethics.62 However, Bonhoeffer was aware o f a logical problem that can arise from his statement. Thus he raised the self-imposed questions, Why then are the Gospels full of evidently ethical directions? What business does the Sermon on the Mount have in the New Testament? . .. What is the significance o f the so-called New Testament ethic?63 In answering those questions, Bonhoeffer found that, first, the commandment o f love, which had been viewed by the New Testament ethics as the center o f the Christian message, was not exclusively Christian, but was generally recognized and widespread at the time of Jesus.64 He asked, What now remains o f a Christian ethic? He claimed that there is nothing new in the sense of a new commandment in the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, Bonhoeffer viewed that:
62 NRS 41. 63 Ibid. M NRS 42. Bonhoeffer was utilizing the historic investigation of the Rabbinic literature of the time of Jesus to conclude that the commandment of love was not new or unique to Christianity. Rabbi Hillel, for instance, was asked what is the greatest commandment and he replied, Love your neighbor as yourself. That is the greatest commandment Bonhoeffer listed an example of Roman philosopher Seneca who said, Let us not become weary of exerting ourselves for the general good, of helping individuals, of bringing aid
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The significance o f all Jesus ethical commandments is rather to say to men: You stand before the face of God, Gods grace rules over you; you are at the disposal o f someone else in the world and for him you must act and work . . For the Christian there are no ethical principles by means o f which he could perhaps civilize himself. N or can yesterday ever be decisive for my moral action today. Rather must a direct relationship to Gods will be ever sought afresh. I do not do something again today because it seemed to me to be good yesterday, but because the will o f God points out this way to me today.65 He argued that Gods grace and the surrender o f the will o f human beings is the ground for the Christians ethical action. This argument o f the uniqueness of Christs message is followed by an important concept o f freedom. Bonhoeffer asserted: If there was a generally valid moral law, then there would be a way from man to God - I would have my principles, so I would believe myself assured sub specie aetemitatis. So, to some extent, I would have control over my relationship to God, so there would be a moral action without immediate relationship with God. And, most important o f all, in that case I would once again become a slave to my principles, I would sacrifice mans most precious gi ft, freedom.66 In Bonhoeffers language, freedom is always understood within the relationship between God and human beings. He explained the meaning o f freedom by writing: When Jesus places men immediately under God, new and afresh at each moment, he restores to mankind the immense gift which it had lost, freedom. Christian ethical action is action from freedom, action from the freedom o f a man who has nothing o f himself and everything o f his God, who ever and again lets his action be confirmed and endorsed by eternity. . . . The Christian stands free, without any protection, before God and before the world, and he alone is wholly responsible for what he does with the gift o f freedom.67
even to our enemies. 65 NRS 42-43. 66 NRS 43-44. 67 Ibid.
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Bonhoeffers concept o f freedom is an important clue to decipher his non religious interpretation of the gospel, because his interpretation can be in essence equated with action that comes from ones freedom before God. Acting from freedom is creative, he said. The Christian creates a new standard for his or her action based on the will o f God. No moral laws, not even the Moses Decalogue, can become the standard for the Christian. The commandments o f the Sermon on the mount should not be made into laws: There are no ethical directions in the New Testament which we should have, or even could have, taken over literally. The letter kills, the spirit gives life, says Paul; . . . The Holy Spirit is only in the present, in ethical decision, and not in fixed moral precepts, in ethical principles. For this reason, the new commandments o f Jesus can never be regarded merely as ethical principles; they are to be understood in their spirit, not literally.68 Bonhoeffer already emphasized the reality o f Christ in this world and in the life of the Church-community in Sanctorum Communio. Here he was reinforcing his understanding of the presence of Christ in this world from the perspective o f Christian ethics. Ones freedom to make ethical decision comes from the dynamic reality o f God69 in ones daily life. A more evident clue to the non-religious interpretation is found in a letter from Rossler to Bonhoeffer on 22 February, 1931. In it, Rossler expressed his frustration over the situation o f the German Church. His concern was that a new paganism or neo-pagan religion was being formed under the National Socialism that demanded the unity o f the Christian religion and the Aryan race by putting the gospel at the service of a racial
68 NRS 45. 09 NRS 65.
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movement. Rossler pointed out to Bonhoeffer, And the tragic thing about our epoch is the encounter o f two most deeply related fronts: consistent secularism o f a consciously this-worldly nature and secularism with a religious flavor which can only reach a pragmatic understanding o f religion. And the Church o f Christ is out in the thick of this.70 Rossler, although being pessimistic about the whole situation,71 presented Bonhoeffer with his idea regarding preaching: But, that [we are saved] is the great thing about Christ: there is certainty of salvation. Or in other words: preach Christ; because this old mankind has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains . . . Preaching must be about this. This change is due and absolutely necessary. The popular pattern will not do, i.e. the pattern in which man is brought to fear and trembling over his sins, then Christ is preached to him as the savior, and in this way (after repentance) faith comes. No, the new pattern must run like this: to this hopeless, suffering mankind, Jesus Christ, the great hope, is preached! O f course it may never be forgotten that this Christ of hope is precisely the crucified one. But today we need no longer threaten men with hell, because reality today is complete hell. (Dostoievsky says: Hell is when one can no longer love!) Therefore today Christ must be shown and be preached as the absolute relief o f all faith, as the great sosachtheia. All else is cruelty or deceiving the people.72 Rosslers proposal can be considered as a precursor to Bonhoeffers non religious interpretation. The idea behind Rosslers juxtaposition o f the popular pattern and the new pattern o f preaching is similar to Bonhoeffers criticism o f the clerical sniffing-around-after-peoples-sins 73 and proposal o f a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming - as was Jesus language.74
70 NRS 74. 7 1 NRS 74-75: I often fancy that the extent and intensity of the Churchs lostness in the midst of a hopeless world has never been so great in the course of history. Come, children, let us go, the evening closes in - 1 still believe in a heightening of the idea of Antichrist (against Althaus eschatology o f the perpendicular!) and that we are also standing on the eve of a last era of the world historv,. . . 72 NRS 75. 7 3 LPP 345. 8 July 1944 1 ALPP 300. May 1944. Thoughts on the Day o f the Baptism o f Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger Bethge.
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Based on the previous survey, I conclude that Bonhoeffers theological proposal, a non-religious interpretation o f the biblical concepts and the gospel, was formulated since the very early stage of his theological development. I will discuss next the non religious interpretation in more detail.
Religionless Christianity
It is important to remember that Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation is not a proposal for a new method of biblical analysis or exposition o f the biblical concepts. Rather, it should be understood as a theological thesis or proposal for the renewal o f the Church. The form o f the renewed Church was, in Bonhoeffers term, religionless
Christianity. Bonhoeffer himself said, Im only gradually working my way to the non religious interpretation of biblical concepts; the job is too big for me to finish just yet.75 What did Bonhoeffer have in mind when he coined the phrase? Based on my understanding that the phrase truly represents the whole structure o f Bonhoeffers theology, I suggest the non-religious interpretation can be understood from several perspectives: 1) the world come of age, 2) Christology o f Incarnation, 3) the religionless Christianity, 4) the Church for others.
1) The world come of age Bonhoeffers foremost concern was the fact that the world has come o f age. Although he, in general, maintained a positive attitude towards the changes o f the world,
75 LPP 359. 16 July 1944.
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he was also concerned about the meaninglessness o f the culture o f the younger generations: Unfortunately the generation o f Maria and Renate76 has grown up with a very bad kind o f contemporary literature and finds it much harder than we did to take up earlier writings. . . . Can you think o f a book from the belles-letters of, say, the last fifteen years which you think has lasting value? I cant. It is partly just talk, partly striking attitudes,. .. non insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always bad, unfree writing.77 He was also concerned about the hostility o f the changing world o f the West against Christianity. He said, The West is becoming hostile towards Christ. This is the peculiar situation o f our time, and it is genuine decay.
78
Nonetheless, his general attitude
towards the maturity of the world was a positive and open one. Then, what are the implications of the world come o f age from the perspective o f a non-religious interpretation? First, Bonhoeffer was convinced that humanity had learned to deal with their own problems without the working hypothesis called God.79 The world come o f age became capable of managing its own affairs.80 The new scientific discoveries and technological advancement pushed God out to the edge o f human life. The only unanswerable question seems to be the question o f death and afterlife. Bonhoeffer was asking what would happen to Christianity as religion if someday even those questions were answered. Since Christianity was losing its ground, the Church had to come up with
76 Maria is Bonhoeffers nineteen-vear-old fiancd, and Renate is Bonhoeffers niece who married Bethge. 77 LPP 148,27 November 1943. 78 E 109. 79LPP 326, 8 June 1944: Man has leamt to deal with himself in all questions of importance without recourse to the working hypothesis called God. . . . As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, God is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground. E 101, Remaking the Nation: The people deemed that they had now come o f age, that they were now capable of taking in hand the direction of their own internal and external history. They asserted their right to freedom and development as a people, the right to a government which should rest on the will of the
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a solution for its survival. Bonhoeffer singled out existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy as the Churchs methodism for its survival as a religion in the world come o f age. However, Bonhoeffer saw that methodism was not going to be able to solve the problem o f the Church in the religionless world because such methodism was still based on the human effort, religion. Second, the ordinary people do not pay much attention to those existential problems and psychoanalysis. Most o f them are detached from religion, and the religious matters became irrelevant to their daily life. Bonhoeffer wrote: The ordinary man, who spends his everyday life at work and with his family, and o f course with all kinds o f diversions, is not affected [by the secularized offshoots of Christian theology, namely existentialist philosophy and the psychotherapists]81 Third, the world come of age demands Christianity to become mature following its lead. From its inception until modernity, Christianity has influenced and shaped the Western world. However, starting from modernity, Christianity was losing its influence over the world. As the Church was witnessing the fall o f Christendom, it began to realize that it had to adapt itself to the changing world. Thus the relationship between Christianity and the world had changed; the world became the mentor of the Church. Bonhoeffer saw that whiie the world finally became mature and religionless, the Church still remained immature and religious. Therefore, he argued that the Church and its congregations need to become mature by being able to conduct their own daily affairs responsibly without God and before God.
nation. 81 LPP 326-27,8 June 1944.
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Fourth, Christianity must liberate itself from religion. The Church needs to take off its millennia-old garb o f religious institution. It should abandon its rusty dogmas and laws to be free from the bondage o f religion. It must renounce the superficial religious ceremonies and renew the meaning o f baptism, communion, worship, and preaching. A radical change from religion to religionless Christianity should take place in the Church. The clergy need to be re-formed by the person o f Jesus Christ in order to serve him faithfully. Liturgies and the Apostles Creed need to be revised to reflect the maturity o f the Church. Fifth, the world come o f age should be viewed as a positive force for the maturation of Christianity and the Church. The maturity of the world means that it
finally became capable to know who Christ is truly is. The world come o f age abandoned God as an abstract idea. Bonhoeffers concept o f the world come o f age does not suggest secularism o f profanity. Rather, the world come o f age means that it is mature enough to know who God truly is for us today. Bonhoeffer wrote, Thus the worlds coming o f age is no longer an occasion for polemics and apologetics, but is now really better understood that it understands itself, namely on the basis o f the gospel and in the light o f Christ.82 Sixth, the Church should recognize that the world and people have come o f age.83 Thus, it should not impose on human beings its dogmas or codified ethics. Instead of exploiting the weakness o f human beings, the Church should confront them at their
83 LPP 329, 8 June 1944. 83 LPP 346, 8 July 1944: "I therefore want to start from the premise that God shouldnt be smuggled into some last secret place , but that we should frankly recognize that the world, and people, have come of age, that we shouldnt run man down in his worldliness, but confront him with God at his strongest point,. . . The Word of God is far removed from this revolt of mistrust, this revolt from below. On the contrary, it reigns.
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strongest point. In other words, Christ should be proclaimed as the truth who is wholly present in their life. Christians should not be ashamed o f the gospel. Bonhoeffer stated: When we speak o f God in a non-religious way, we must speak o f him in such a way that the godlessness o f the world is not in some way concealed, but rather revealed, and thus exposed to an unexpected light.84 Anxious souls will ask what room there is left for God now; . . . And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [even if God does not exist]. And this is just what we do recognize - before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming o f age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God.85
2) Christology of Incarnation The theological foundation o f the non-religious interpretation is Bonhoeffers Christology o f Incarnation. How does the presence and centrality o f Christ relate to the non-religious interpretation? First, Bonhoeffer wanted to bring Christ back to the center stage o f the world, the Church, and the life o f Christians. He understood the partiality of religion from the fact that people seek God only when they face problems such as death, sickness, failures, suffering, and despair. In religion, God is pushed out to the edge o f the life o f human beings. The non-religious interpretation is an effort to re-enthrone Christ at the center o f life: This world must not be prematurely written off; in this the Old and New Testaments are at one. Redemption myths arise from human boundaryexperiences, but Christ takes hold of a man at the center o f his life.86 Today is Ascension Day, and that means that it is a day o f great joy for all who can believe that Christ rules the world and our lives.87
w LPP 362, 18 July 1944. 85 LPP 360, 16 July 1944. 86 LPP 337. 27 June 1944. 87 LPP 49,4 June 1943.
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Here again, God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the center of life, not when we are at the end o f our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigor and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin. The ground for this lies in the revelation o f God in Jesus Christ. He is the center o f life, and he certainly didnt come to answer out unsolved problems.88 Second, the non-religious interpretation is an attempt to restore the original meaning o f the gospel as intended by Jesus Christ. I have already said that the non religious interpretation is not simply a contextualization o f the gospel for the religionless world. Rather, it was Bonhoeffers effort to restore the original meaning of the gospel and Christianity within the context of the world come o f age. To Bonhoeffer, the non religious interpretation was necessary to renew Christianity and the Church, which lost its influence over the world because of its religionless nature. Then, how did he understand the gospel of Christ? Bonhoeffer claimed that Jesus Christ is not a founder o f a new religion called Christianity. On the contrary, he came to liberate humanity from the bondage o f religion, which is the humans way to God. I argue that in Bonhoeffer liberation means to be liberated from religion. Bonhoeffer said: When holy scripture speaks o f following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which pressures, burdens, or cases worry and torment o f conscience.89 Third, Bonhoeffer did not suggest social programs or political revolution as a mean for liberation. Liberation Theology seems to have interpreted Bonhoeffers concept o f liberation in a wrong way. In fact, Bonhoeffers somewhat negative attitude towards the Churchs social justice movement can be seen in his sharp criticism o f the social
88 LPP 312, 29 May 1944. 89 D 39.
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gospel and pragmatism that were prevalent in the American churches at the time o f his visit to America. Bonhoeffers critique was that, in the theology o f the social gospel, Christianity is made an ethical religion, and the Decalogue and its interpretation in the Sermon on the Mount occupy the central position.90 Regarding this point, Bonhoeffer asserted: What matters in the Church is not religion but the form o f Christ, and its taking form amidst a band o f men. If we allow ourselves to lose sight of this, even for an instant, we inevitably relapse into that programmeplanning for the ethical or religious shaping of the world, which was where we set out from.91 Ethics as formation, then, means the bold endeavor to speak about the way in which the form o f Jesus Christ takes form in our world, in a manner which is neither abstract nor casuistic, neither programmatic nor purely speculative.92
3) The religionless Christianity Bonhoeffers critique of religion is one o f the main thrusts o f his theology as a whole. One might suggest that his discovery o f the world come o f age triggered his critique of religion and, as a reaction to his contemporary situation, led him to develop the concepts of the religionless Christianity and the non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts and the gospel. However, I argue that, on the contrary, his enthusiasm for religionless Christianity more or less influenced him to conclude that the world has finally come of age as an adequate environment for the realization o f the religionless
90 Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, 4..6. 9 1 E 85.

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es^
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Christianity that he was hoping for. Nonetheless, the concept o f religionless Christianity can be viewed from several aspects. First, the Church is understood as the reality or form o f Christ in this world, not as the assembled worshippers o f Christ. Bonhoeffers career was devoted to sending the Church a message: Christ is not the object o f religion, but he is the Church! The renewal of the Church is not possible without this understanding. In what way are we religionless-secular Christians, in what way are we the EK-td.rjoia, those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point o f view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object o f religion, but something quite different, really the Lord o f the world. What is the place o f worship and prayer in a religionless situation? Does the secret discipline, or alternatively the difference . . . between penultimate and ultimate, take on a new importance here?93 The body is the form. So the Church is not a religious community o f worshippers o f Christ but is Christ Himself who has taken form among men. 9 4 The Pauline question whether nepnopr} [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition o f salvation. Freedom from nepnoptj is also freedom from religion.95 Second, the place o f the Church needs to be change from the boundaries to the center o f the world. In other words, the Church should not view itself as a religious organization that only deals with spiritual matters. The two-spheres worldview has separated the Church from the reality o f this world. I should like to speak o f God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in the weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in mans life and goodness. . . . God is beyond in the midst o f our life. The
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LPP 280-81, 30 April 1944. ' E 84. 95 LPP 281. 30 April 1944. 106
Church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle o f the village.96 Third, the individualistic nature o f Christianity needs to be changed. The Churchcommunity suggested in Sanctorum should be realized as a genuine form o f the Church. The inwardness o f religious Christianity resulted in a bunch o f isolated individual Christians. The Church is the place for those individuals to gather once a week to worship and pay their dues for personal salvation. What does it mean to interpret in a religious sense? I think it means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other hand individualistically. Neither of these is relevant to the biblical message or to the man o f today.97 In the light o f community life, Bonhoeffer was envisioning a plan to restore the family life as the Kingdom in the midst o f the world.98 He was also writing a novel to tell an ideal story o f middle-class families that were building a community together. His attempt to demonstrate a blueprint o f a religionless community o f Christ and his strong desire to realize the theology o f Life Together can be seen here: I began to write the story o f a contemporary middle class family. . . in short, it was to present afresh middle-class life as we know it in our own families, and especially in the light o f Christianity. It tells o f two families on terms o f friendship living in a small town. Their children grow up, and as they gradually enter into the responsibilities o f official positions, they try to work together for the food o f the community as mayor, teacher, pastor, doctor, engineer99
96 LPP 282. 30 April 1944. 97 LPP 286, 5 May 1944. 98 LPP 44, May 1943, A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell: Most people have forgotten nowadays what a home can mean, though some of us have come to realize it as never before. It is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, s stronghold amid lifes storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary, 99 LPP 130-31, 18 November 1943.
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One has to live for some time in a community to understand how Christ is formed in it (Gal. 4.19); and that is especially true o f the kind o f community that you would have.100 Fourth, religionless means that one should take Christianity for the life as a whole. Bonhoeffer always considered religion something partial: The religious act is always something partial; faith is something whole, involving the whole o f ones life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life. 1 01 To him, the event o f resurrection means that Christ has come into our life in its fullest meaning.102 Whether weakness or strength, in joy or sorrow, in success or failure, we should live before God. Whatever weakness,, miscalculations, and guilt there is in what precedes the facts, God is in the facts themselves. . . . To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human. . . . I think we honor God more if we gratefully accept the life that he gives us with all its blessings, loving it and drinking it to the full, and also grieving deeply and sincerely when we have impaired or wasted any o f the good things o f life . . . than if we are insensitive to lifes blessings and may therefore also be insensitive to pain.103 Fifth, it means that Christianity should not be practiced as a superstitious act. It also means that evangelism should not attempt to exploit the weakness o f people. The religious programs designed to manipulate people at their weakness should be abolished. The Church should not give its people a false promise that their God will solve all the problems o f their life. God as a stop-gap is no longer applicable in the religionless world. wearein a fulllife
100 LPP 359, 16 July 1944. 10 LPP 362, 18 July 1944. 102 LPP 240, 24 March 1944: Easter? Were paying more attention to dying than to death. . . . Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrectioa . . . If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed. To live in the light of the resurrection - that is what Easter means. 103 LPP 191-92,23 January 1944.
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Bonhoeffer wrote, In my time here Ive been trying to observe how far people believe in anything supernatural. Three ideas seem to be widespread, each being partly expressed in some superstitious practice. 104 In a separate letter, he also wrote: As we were again lying on the floor last night, and someone exclaimed 0 God, 0 God (he is normally a very flippant type), I couldnt bring myself to offer him any Christian encouragement or comfort; all I did was to look at my watch and say, It wont last more than ten minutes now. There was nothing premeditated about it; it came quite automatically and perhaps I felt that it was wrong to force religion down his throat just then. (Incidentally, Jesus didnt try to convert the two thieves on the cross; one o f them turned to him!).105
4) The Church for others. Bonhoeffers decisive term for the Church is the Church for others. Therefore it might be appropriate to sum up my discussion o f the non-religious interpretation by reviewing several aspects o f the Church for others. First, Bonhoeffers idea for the Church is mainly based on his understanding of Christ as the suffering God in this world. On the cross, Christ was forsaken by the Father.106 The paradox of Christ as the one being pushed out from the world on the cross, yet being forsaken into the world by the Father can be resolved only by the Gods love for this world. To Bonhoeffer, the love o f Christ is expressed in terms o f the longing of
104 LPP 231. 9 March 1944. Those three superstitious ideas are: (1) Keep your fingers crossed, (2) Touch wood when the question is discussed whether they (air raids) will come tonight or not, (3) If its got your number on, youll get i t Bonhoeffer contrasts them with Christian interpretation (I) a recollection of intercession and community, (2) Gods wrath and grace, (3) divine guidance. The religionless Christianity, therefore, stands against those superstitious ideas. 105 LPP 199, 29 and 30 January 1944. 106 LPP 337, 27 June 1944: The Christian, unlike the devotees of the redemption myths, has no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but like Christ himself ( My God, why hast thou forsaken me?), he must drink the earthly cup to the dregs and only in his doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ
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the Incarnate to take form in all men. 107 The Church is a small part o f the realization of for what Christ is longing. As the weak and powerless God, Christ lives for us and helps us: The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15.34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis o f God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. . . . He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.108 Second, the meaning of transcendence needs to be redefined. The Church should no longer seek the God of transcendence, because the transcendence is not what is beyond our reason, but it is within our reach through our neighbor. That is the meaning of Bonhoeffers expression God who is beyond and in the midst o f the world. God is not an abstract concept o f the transcendental. The transcendence, which has been understood as the one beyond our reach and revealed only through a point o f contact, is in actuality among us and revealed to us in our daily life through our neighbor: Our relation to God is not a religious relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable - that is not authentic transcendence - but our relation to God is a new life in existence for others, through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any situation.109 Third, the Church should come out from the survival mode. It has been so busy struggling with its own survival that it has forgotten its mission and purpose for this world. The Church must be renewed to preach the word of reconciliation and redemption
107 E 84. 108 LPP 360, 16 July 1944. 109 LPP 381, July/August 1944, Outline fo r a Book. 110
to humankind and the world.110 The renewal o f the Church means that it will speak a new language o f Jesus; the liberating and redeeming language o f reconciliation for humanity: It is not for us to prophesy the day (though the day will come) when men will once more be called so to utter the word o f God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non religious, but liberating and redeeming - as was Jesus language; it will shock people yet overcome them by its power; it will be the language o f a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming Gods peace with men and the coming o f his kingdom.1 1 1 Fourth, the Church for others means its participation in Gods suffering. Being a Christian means to partake of his cup. Drinking the cup in communion signifies our participation in Christs earthly suffering. Our encounter with Jesus is made on his cross. Being bom again in the Spirit means that our life is transformed to a being for others. Bonhoeffer said, Jesus asked in Gethsemane, Could you not watch with me one hour? That is a reversal o f what the religious man expects from God. Man is summoned to share in G ods sufferings at the hands o f a godless world. 112 He also wrote: Encounter with Jesus Christ. The experience that a transformation o f all human life is given in the fact that Jesus is there only for others. His being there for others, is the experience o f transcendence. It is only this being there for others, maintained till death, that is the ground o f his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being o f Jesus (incarnation, cross, and resurrection).113 As a conclusion, Bonhoeffer asserted boldly, The Church is the Church only when it exists for others. Then he continued:
110 LPP 300, May 1944: Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world . . . our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be bom anew out of this prayer and action. 1,1 Ibid. 112 LPP 361, 18 July 1944. 113 LPP 381.
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To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings o f their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The Church must share in the secular problems o f ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men o f every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.114 Thus far, in Part I, the theology o f Bonhoeffer has been discussed by focusing on his main theological concern - the Church, Christ, and the world - his worldview o f the world come o f age, and the non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts and the gospel. Having discussed the theology of Bonhoeffer, it is necessary to understand the nature of our contemporary world in order to discover how Bonhoeffers theological concepts can be applied to a world that is significantly different from the time when those concepts were developed by him. The contemporary world must be understood from the perspective of modernity and postmodemity. Religious plurality and religious pluralism will next be discussed in order to lay out the foundation o f this thesis.
114
LPP 382.
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PART II OUR RELIGIOUSLY PLURALISTIC WORLD
CHAPTER 4 THE WORLD IN TRANSITION
Thus far, Bonhoeffers theology has been surveyed in light o f a non-religious interpretation o f the gospel and the Bible. Based on the previous discussion, I find that Bonhoeffers theology is mainly practical rather than systematic. As his Ethics shows, his main theological concern was not the construction o f a systematic theology as a collection o f abstract concepts, but to find Christ as the concrete reality o f this world. His christology was based not on a philosophical method but on the incarnation, which is the praxis o f Christ for the sake o f this world. Understanding that Bonhoeffers theology is Christocentric from the perspective of Christs concrete presence in this world, and that his theological question Who is Christ for us today? must be answered within the context of the present world, we need to ask the question What is the relationship between Christ and the world today? Undoubtedly, Bonhoeffers concept o f a non-religious interpretation was his response to his then-contemporary world, which, from his judgment, was increasingly becoming religionless. To some, it may sound like a contextualization o f the gospel for the culture o f his time. However, his non-religious interpretation should not be viewed as a mere contextualization o f the Gospel for the religionless world. It was not like an alteration ordered to fit ones clothing to an ever-changing waistline. Rather, as we shall see, Bonhoeffers purpose was to restore the original meaning o f the gospel by reflecting upon the religionless nature o f his contemporary world. Nonetheless, when we consider the religionless world as the contextual
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condition for Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation, this new thesis - a non religious interpretation o f the gospel for the religiously pluralistic world - raises the question: How can the term non-religious interpretation be used in the service o f the two extremely opposing characterizations religionless and religiously pluralistic? Of course, Bonhoeffers non-religious interpretation for the religionless world sounds more logical than non-religious interpretation for the religiously pluralistic world In fact, the latter characterization in its context sounds almost self-contradictory. Therefore, it is necessary to explain how the concept o f a non-religious interpretation o f the Gospel can remain relevant in todays religiously pluralistic world. For the purpose o f this discussion, a clarification needs to be made. The term religiously pluralistic does not simply mean that there are many religions in this world from a phenomenological standpoint. Indeed, the plurality o f religions is not a new phenomenon. O f course, there have been countless religions in human history. The phrase religiously pluralistic includes religious plurality as well as religious pluralism which views all religions as being the same in essence. What, then, makes the religious pluralistic world a challenge for Christianity in our present time? The answer to the question lies not in the phenomenon o f religious plurality itself but in a new way o f thinking which is called postmodernism. From this new perspective, religious plurality is no longer to be conquered, but to be accepted. Before analyzing the meaning o f religious plurality to Christianity, then, we must define postmodemity.
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The Meaning of Postmodemity

Someone asked me recently, Should I consider myself a modem man or a postmodern man? My answer to him was It all depends. Unwittingly, I gave him an answer of the postmodern kind. Yes, the answer all depends on ones perception and how one defines the terms modern and postm odern It is clear that we are living in a changing world. But, toward what end is this world changing? A modem person would answer, We are moving towards postmodemity. The modern mind is seeking a definite answer. However, a postmodern person would answer, There is no predestined direction for the world. It will change in response to its present needs. The postmodern mind avoids any fixation. How can we characterize our contemporary world? There is no easy answer. In fact, the world has become more complex as it is open to cultural diversity. It has also become so dynamic technologically that it cannot be easily defined with fixed terms. Nonetheless, the world is continuing to mature. The world has its own life cycle, and we cannot put modernity to death in order to give postmodemity a full life. We are living in a time o f transition from modernity to postmodemity. In order to understand the present world, we need to understand modernity as well as postmodemity because both conditions still do exist today. Defining a term such as postmodemity has become an extremely difficult task especially in a world where every meaning is relative to an individuals perception. It might even seem to be a futile effort to attempt to define a term when everyone has his or her own ideas about it. Therefore, rather than trying to define the term in isolation, it would be advantageous to analyze postmodemity as it relates to modernity.
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In 1996, Stanley Grenz observed that we were in the midst o f a transition from the modern to the postmodern era.1 Whether modernity has already become a thing o f the past or is still in the middle o f a transition towards a postmodern age, many scholars characterize the contemporary world with the term postmodemity. According to Grenz, we can go back as far as the 193 Os for the first use o f the term postmodern in terms of a major transition in the arts. However, the term was first used to denote a new style of architecture in the 1970s, and now it represents almost every aspect o f the contemporary world at the dawn o f second millennium.2 From a phenomenological standpoint, it is clear that we have been experiencing tremendous changes in nearly every aspect of our society for the past several decades. The changes can be seen not simply in peoples lifestyles or moral values, but in peoples worldviews as a whole. The most important driving force o f the transition in todays world might be information and communication technologies. The floodgate o f information is wide-open through the proliferation o f communication media and internetworking technologies. Personal computers can be connected to each other through the internet, and information is shared globally on an instantaneous basis. Having been enlightened by the information and knowledge gained through technological advances, people have radically changed the way in which they view God, religion, truth, life, nature, relationships with others, social structures, arts, and moral values. In the midst o f such a rapid transition, the old
1 Stanley J. Grenz. A Primer On Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), 3. 2 Ibid.,: The term postmodern may first have been coined in the 1930s to refer to a major historical transition already under way and as the designation for certain development in the arts. But postmodernism did not gain widespread attention until the 1970s. First it denoted a new style of architecture. Then it invaded academic circles, originally as a label for theories expounded in university English and philosophy departments. Eventually it surfaced as the description for a broader cultural phenomenon. For a discussion of the origin of the term, see Margaret Rose, Defining the Post-Modern in The Post- Modern Reader, ed. Charles Jencks (New York: S t Martins Press, 1992), 119-36 (Grenz, 175).
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traditional values are being rejected openly by the new generations o f the postmodern age. Frederick Ferre says, Giving definition to the postmodern is imagining a profoundly different future. This is at best an uncertain exercise, but one vitally needed in our present age o f felt transition.3 According to him, the most general name to become associated with the new mechanistic, progressive age was simply modern, from the late Latin modemus. Initially, the English word modem, first recorded in the sixteenth century, meant just now, contemporary. It was an expression o f temporal location denoting the current mode or manner and merely pointed to whatever was present or recent.4 Based on his understanding o f modern as a term o f temporal location from the perspective o f its original meaning, Ferre argues, As such, though the things modem itself - having no whatever is new and fresh. could not be conceived characteristics of an epoch, it indexed could quickly become outdated, the content of its own - must move on to denote In this way, the epoch following the medieval easily, by those within it, to have the that is, to be one o f many periods o f time.5
In other words, initially, the term modern was not used to denote a single period o f human history. As what is modem becomes outmoded, what is postmodern would again become modem or contemporary. In that sense, modem and contemporary come close to being synonymous. These two terms, modem and postmodern, denote in tandem what is contemporary and what is being anticipated or emerging at a certain point o f history. Ferre considers that nothing will become outmoded so surely as the name postmodern, which he sees as a stopgap for a new name for the age in which we
3 Frederick Ferre, Being and Value, Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics, SUNY, New York, 1996, p.277. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid
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live.6 In answering the question, What is Postmodernism?, Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard says: What, then, is the postmodern? . . . It is undoubtedly a part o f the modem. All that has been received, if only yesterday (modo, modo, Petronious used to say), must be suspected . . . A work can become modem only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant . . . Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox o f the future (post) anterior (m odo)1 On the other hand, Charles Jencks believes the term postmodern is going to remain a historical term to denote our contemporary world just like the Dark Ages or the Enlightenment. In his work, What is Post-Modernism?, Jencks argues, A mere list o f pm titles8 would fill a thousand pages; a bibliography would become a small encyclopedia. . . . The term is now almost as ubiquitous, disliked and misunderstood as its parent, the modem.9 Supposedly, we are the right generation to determine whether or not modern or postmodern are the adequate terms to describe the present world. When the historical critical analysis o f the West had its birth, the condition o f the then-contemporary world was appropriately labeled modern to denote what was then current. Postmodern is
6 Ibid., 278. Ferrd anticipates a new name for the present age. As the people who lived in the Dark Ages could not have imagined their then-contemporary world would be called the Dark Ages, what is called modem or postmodern will have their unique names in the future. Ferrt says, This is not the first time in our history that an age, seemingly solid as rock, has turned out porous to intimations of radical change. When modernity rose and shattered centuries-strong assumptions and institutions of premodemity, some felt the early vectors with apprehension, others with exhilaration. Many, like Leomardo da Vinci or Francis Bacon, had the sense of a new day dawning - something post-medieval, something drawn by new values or at least strikingly new configurations of values, something not yet clear but portentous, something seeking a name (277). 7 Jean-Framjois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History o f Literature, Volume 10) trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 71-81. Also, Appendix (Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?) trans. Regis Durand. 8 Charles Jencks , What is Post-Modernism?(Fourth Edition) (Maryland, National Book Network, 1996), 14-15. In this book, which was first given as a paper at conference in America and Germany in 1985, Jencks lists some seventy terms that are related to postmodern. 9 Jencks, 14.
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simply a term relative to modern to describe the different condition o f the present world. Whether or not the term postmodern will remain as a permanent expression for our contemporary world is out o f the scope o f this discussion. What needs to be clarified at this point is whether what we call postmodern is a mere repetition o f historical transition from one era to another, as Ferre views it from the indexical sense, or if it is fundamentally different from any other historical transitions in the past, as Jencks claims.1 0 It seems that Ferres view over-generalizes the historical transition that is occurring in our contemporary world. It is true that each generation that has lived through a transitional period must have felt enormous pressure from the political, social, religious, and cultural changes o f their time. Based on this view, the transition from modernity to postmodemity may not be historically unique. However, a better analysis would suggest that the transition which is happening in our contemporary world can be differentiated from any other previous historical transitions in several ways. First, the postmodern transition is occurring in a globalized world. The terms that denote historical transitions such as the Enlightenment can be applied only to the West. Postmodemity is the first common cultural term that can be applied to humanity as a whole since the time o f the Tower of Babel when God confused the language and scattered human beings over the face o f the whole earth.1 1 In our current age, humanity
10 Ibid., 11: Instead of the usual cultural classification, such as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and so on, our period might be seen in terms of more powerful forces that shape it - politics, social movements, or economics. 1 1 Ge. 11:7-8.
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has finally come to communicate with each other from all comers o f the world regardless o f race, gender, age, or belief. Although the so-called Third-world is still going through a transformation into a modem structure, it will not be long before the Third-world also feels the shock-wave of postmodemity. From a biblical standpoint, postmodemity marks a significant point in history for the Second Advent o f Christ, because the open world of postmodemity would allow the gospel to reach the ends o f the earth. Second, postmodemity is different from other transitional periods in that the world is being reconstructed upon the soil o f human self-awareness. From the perspective o f Bonhoeffers understanding of a world come o f age, postmodemity is an affair o f humanity come of age whereas the previous transitions were movements towards its maturity. From that sense, far more radical changes can be expected as the outcome of the postmodern transition. The human soul has finally been unleashed from God! The implication of human maturity upon Christianity is enormous. It can be compared to the leap o f an adolescent to the life o f an adult. When that happens, the whole perspective of a person changes. Likewise, the transition of humanity into the postmodern world is a rude-awakening for the generations bom in the modem era. Finally, postmodemity completed the individualism o f modernity by dissolving humanity into individual elements o f society which are completely free from each other. The social structures in the postmodern world are being revised to benefit individual members rather than the society or community to which they belong. One might argue that individualism is a modem phenomenon and communalism12 replaces it in the
* Communalism is my own term which denotes any ideas relate to the concept of community. It is used to distinguish individualism from those ideas which attempt to mend the problem of isolation of individuals under individualism. It is distinguished from communism.
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postmodern world. However, it seems that communalism is in essence a disguise of individualism. This point will be presently discussed in more detail. Individualization is also a critical shift in relationships of human with God and with other human beings. The human effort o f the West prior to postmodemity was focused on independence from God. Having achieved freedom from God, humanity shifted it effort to the mutual relationships between human beings and to on the inner self.
A Brief History of Postmodemity

Keeping in mind that the transition to postmodemity is unique, I will briefly review the history of postmodemity. Although it is disputable whether our contemporary world should be called modem or postmodern, the most commonly used expression that describes today j world, at least in academic circles, is the term postmodern. Therefore, our discussion will be primarily focused on postmodemity. However, we have to keep in mind that modernity still plays a major role in the shaping of society, thus we cannot completely ignore it in our discussion. As the first step for our understanding of postmodemity, a brief survey of the use of the term, postmodern, would be helpful. Charles Jencks lists the names o f several scholars for their extensive scholarly works on the postmodern.1 3 He analyzes postmodemity from a cultural perspective and provides a brief history on the use of the term postmodern 14 By using Seventy Posts15, which is an expression by Jencks to list
1 3 Jencks, 13. Jencks lists three most scholarly studies of the term, post-modern, which include Margaret Rose, The Post-Modern and The Post-Industrial, A Critical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1991), Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmodeme Moderne (Weinheim: VCH, 1988), and Hans Bertens, The Idea o f the Postmodern, Routledge (London, 1995). 1 4 Ibid., 17-19. According to Wolfgang Welsch the first inconsequential use of the term was as early as the 1870s, by the British artist John Watkins Chapman, but it was really the social concept post-industrial which was first theorised by Arthur J Pentry and others, from I914-22.14. . . The first tentative, written use of Post-Modernism was apparently that of the Spanish writer Federico de Onis. In his Antologia de la
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seventy terms that begin with the prefix post, Jencks divides the development of postmodemity into three phases: (1) Prehistory - 1870-1950 Post-modern as the modem period in decline (or rarely) ultra modem. (2) 1950-80 Post-modern defined positively as counter-culture, double-coding, POSTS, and Pluralism. (3) 1980 to present Post modern condition attacked, Post-modern culture anthologized, Post-modern global morality defined.1 6 In its first phase o f development, postmodemity was bom as a reaction to the decline of modernity. The use of the term was referred to as a new period that was anticipated as the modem world lost its hope for a utopia. In the second phase, the concept of postmodemity is positively defined in terms o f pluralism, de-centering, and
poesia espandla e hispanoamericana, 1934, he used it to describe a reaction from within Modernism, not a critical overcoming of the paradigm. Subsequently, Arnold Toynbee, in his ^4 Study o f History, 1947, used the term as an encompassing category to describe a new historical cycle starting in 1875. . . . Irving Howe and (Harold) Levines usage in 1959 and 1960. was malevolent enough to sting, but potent enough to catch on and become positive. . . . Virtually the first positive use of the prefix 'post was by the writer Leslie Fiedler in 1965, when he repeated it like an incantation and tied it to current radical trends which made up the counter-culture: 'post-humanist, post-male, post-white, post-heroic. . . post-Jewish. . . . A positive defense of the growing tradition had to wait until the 1970s and the writings of Ihab Hassan, by which time the radical movements which Fiedler celebrated were, ironically, out of fashion, reactionary, or dead. By the mid-seventies, Ihab Hassan had become the self-proclaimed spokesman for the postmodern and he tied this label to the ideas of experimentaism in the arts and ultra-technology in architecture. His list of exemplars includes William Burroughs and Buckminster Fuller, and such key terms as 'Anarchy, Exhaustion/Silence . . . Decreation/Deconstruction/Antithesis. . . Inter-text.. . These are the trends which I, with others, would later characterize as late-modem, because they took modernist impulses to an extreme. In literature and then in philosophy, because of the writings of Jean-Fram;ois Lyotard in 1979 and a tendency to elide Deconstruction with the post-modern, the term has often kept association with what Hassan calls 'discontinuity, indeterminacy, immanence. Mark C Taylors curiously titled EHRING, A Postmodern A/Theology is a characteristic of this genre, which springs from Derrida and Deconstruction. My own The Language o f Post-Modern Architecture, 1977, was the first book to thematise a post modem movement and use the phrase in the title. . . . What I did was to summarize the various responses to the architectural failures of modernity and tie them polemically to a wide agenda of double-coding. The success (and failure) of this polemical act will be apparent shortly, but it also had the effect of amplifying nascent movements in philosophy and the arts which were seen as related. Because of this, and the writings o f Hassan and then Lyotard, the movement quickly became self-fulfilling prophecy and moved right off exploding in the 1980s to become a series of deconstructive and post-structuralist schools or, by contrast, movements that were self-styled 'contextual, constructive, ecological, grounded and restructive post-modernism. Ibid., 14-15. Seventy Post is Jencks compilation of terms that have the prefix post and are related to postmodern Ibid.
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counter-cultures. In the third phase, the negative postmodern condition and the various postmodern movements are analyzed. While Jencks analysis is mainly based on the observation o f a cultural shift, Margaret A. Rose emphasizes the social condition as the breeding ground for the post modern. Rose gives an extensive treatment on Arnold J. Toynbees A Study o f History of 1939 and 1954, and says: Further to being used in the post-war volumes o f Toynbees A Study o f History to describe the period from the end o f the nineteenth century, the term post-modern (now written post-Modem) had been used by Toynbee in those volumes to describe the rise o f an industrial urban working class, and after the term M odem had been used by him to describe the middle classes o f Western civilization.17 Toynbees use of the term was to describe not only the rise o f an industrial working class, but also the rise o f other nations and their proletariats and the rise of a variety o f post-Christian religious cults as well as sciences.1 8 Stanley Grenz says, In Toynbees analysis, the postmodern era is marked by the end of Western dominance and the decline o f individualism, capitalism, and Christianity. He argues that the transition occurred as Western civilization drifted into irrationality and relativism. When this occurred, according to Toynbee, power shifted from the West to non-Westem cultures and a new pluralist world culture.19 We will discuss later the decline o f individualism, which was based on a form o f rationalism in which individuals became the center of epistemology. Toynbees observation, however, is widely accepted as the first analysis o f its kind, which convincingly characterizes the nature o f the shift that was occurring in the West in the early twentieth century. Chronologically, Toynbee was not the first scholar to coin the
1' Margaret A. Rose, The Post-modern and the Post-industrial (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 9. 1 8 Ibid, 10. 19 Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 16.
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term post-modern. Rose, beyond quoting from the post-modern works listed in the Oxford English Dictionary's (OED) Supplement o f 198220, refers to Michael Koehler who listed other early users of the term not listed by the OED in his article entitled Postmodemismus: Ein begrijfsgeschichtlicher Ueberblick, which was published in 1977.21 Among other names, Koehler drew attention to Federico de Onis for his use of the terms postmodemismo for the period o f 1905-1914 to describe a reaction to the excesses o f modernism that sometimes resulted in more prosaic or ironic works, and ultramodemismo of 1914-1932 to describe an attempt to extend the modernist search for poetic innovation and freedom.22 This early observation o f Onis is rather significant for our understanding of postmodemity because it acknowledges the overlapping characteristics o f modernity and postmodemity. In summary, postmodemity was bom as a reaction to the social, political, religious and cultural changes which happened in the modem world. First, as Toynbee rightly observed, the rise o f a post-industrial urban working class demanded a new worldview. The elitism o f modernity could no longer satisfy a society with new social classes. Second, modernity was collapsing due to the failure o f its philosophical
20 Rose. 11-12. Further examples of the use of the term post-modem given by OED include C. Wright Millss use of it in his The Sociological Imagination of 1959 to describe a new Forth Epoch after the Modem Age; Leslie Fiedlers 1965 reference to postmodernist literature . . . Frank Kermodes 1966 remarks that Pop Fiction demonstrates a growing sense of the irrelevance of the past, and that *postModemists are catching on; Nikolaus Pevsners reference in The Listener of 29 December 1966, to a new style, a successor to his International Modem of the nineteen-thirties which he was tempted to call. . . a post-modem style; a reference in the New York Review o f Books of 28 April 1977 to the post-modernist demand for the abolition of art and its assimilation to reality, two somewhat different remarks in the Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts of November 1979 to Post-Modern architects [who] use motifs . . . in questionable taste, and to Post-Modernists who have substituted the body metaphor for the machine metaphor; a reference in Time of January 1979 to Phillip Johnson as the nearest Post-Modernism has to a senior partner; and another, finally, to The Times Higher Education Supplement of 7 March 1980 in which Postmodernism, structuralism, and neo-data are all said to represent a reaction against modernism. 2 1 Ibid., 12. 22 Ibid., 13.
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foundation, namely, German idealism. Toynbee mentioned the decline o f individualism in the early twentieth century. Third, as Toynbee observed, the decline o f Christianity in the West left a spiritual vacuum, which was subsequently filled by other religions, religious cults and the New Age philosophies. Therefore, post-modernity can also be characterized as post-Christianity. Fourth, the cultural transition from modernity to a new era was anticipated as a result o f the decline o f Christianity and the rise o f the urban working class o f Western society. On the one hand, postmodemity is a response to the changes in the world, for which modernity was not prepared. On the other hand, postmodemity itself was an active agent which promoted the radical changes forced upon modernity. Since postmodemity has grown out o f modernity, in order to understand postmodemity correctly, it is necessary to understand how postmodemity relates to modernity. Postmodemity can be properly understood only in relationship with modernity, as Rose says: Here the modernism of which [Dudley] Fitts speaks is not the modernism to which Joseph Hudnut will refer in his articles on the post-modern house o f the 1940s but the decorative Symbolism o f the end o f the nineteenth century. Despite this, both Hudnuts post-modernism and the postmodernism spoken by de Onis and Fitts/Hays may be said to share the common element of a lack o f sentimentality and decorativeness because the post-modernism o f which de Onis and Fitts/Hays have spoken was conceived of as a reaction to a late nineteenth-century decorative modernism, while Hudnuts post-modern house may be understood as an extension o f the abstract and decoration-free (less is more) modernism of the International Style and its offshoots. Here we may again note that the term post-modernism will always need to be read alongside the authors understanding o f both modernism and the prefix post.23 Based upon such an understanding, several ways to describe the relationship
23 Ibid.. 14-15.
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between modernity and postmodemity will be described, first o f which is to understand postmodemity as a double-coded response to modernity.
The Transition from Modernity to Postmodemity

The significance o f Oniss observation is that he saw the double-coded nature of the modem-postmodern relationship. The double-coded characteristics o f postmodemity, which Onis described with the terms postmodemismo and ultramodernismo, is similar to what Jencks called a double-coding. Jencks says: [Post-modern] has, as its essential definition, what I have called a double coding. For me the post-modem is the continuation o f modernity and its transcendence. In this sense it is critical. It is very important to stress this subtle relationship to Modernism because so many misunderstand it. PostModernism is not Anti-Modernism; it is neither traditionalism nor the reactionary rejection o f its parent. It does not, as philosophers Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard contend, reject the Enlightenment project; that is, the social emancipation o f humanity, increasing freedom and human rights. Rather, it rejects the totalising arguments with which universal rights are often imposed by an elite on a subservient minority.24 Jencks defines his double-coding o f postmodemity in terms o f the continuation and transcendence o f modernity. To prove his point, Jencks continues his assertion, Modem liberalism fought for the universal rights which the First World now partly enjoys; post-modern liberalism argues that the agenda o f multiculturalism, and the rights of minorities should be asserted where they do not diminish the rights o f other minorities. In this sense it is the direct heir o f its parent and could not have occurred previously.25 Another example of the continuation and transcendence o f modernity can be found in humanism and individualism. Humanism in the modem era rose against a Christian worldview in which God is solely responsible for setting the course o f human history.
24 Jencks. 15. 25 Ibid.
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However, modernitys realization o f humanism was primarily limited to white male intellectuals. Postmodernism, while fundamentally maintaining humanisms objection against the God-centric worldview, expanded its scope by applying humanism to the whole of humanity, including different races, genders, and social classes. To think that postmodemity rejected what modernity achieved would be much too naive. For example, postmodemity never intended to relinquish humanitys freedom from God that was achieved by modernity. On the other hand, along the lines of the thought o f Jurgen Habermas and JeanFran$ois Lyotard, Grenz argues that postmodemity signifies the quest to move beyond modernism, as the name suggests. According to Grenz, postmodemity specifically involves a rejection o f the modem mindset, but is launched under the conditions of modernity.26 Grenz suggests that the accomplishment o f modernity was rejected categorically by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) from the perspective of: 1) the demise o f the modem concept o f truth, 2) the rejection of the modem concept o f values, 3) the rejection of the modem philosophers o f the West.27 Although Nietzsche seems to be correct regarding postmodern rejection o f a modem epistemology o f universal truths, he seems to have gone too far by thinking that postmodemity rejects what modernity has achieved. It is clear that postmodemity has many faces in its relationship with modernity. Therefore, it is not possible to reduce the complex relationship between modernity and postmodemity into a single term. However, several points o f observation can be made.
26 Grenz.A Primer On Postmodernism, 3. :7 Ibid., 88-97.
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First, postmodemity rejects the universal truths, for which modernity was striving. It seems that what postmodemity rejects is not the achievements o f modernity but the underlying goal o f modernity, namely the discovery o f the universal truths. By negating absolute truth, postmodemity shifted its epistemological course to relativism. Second, postmodemity represents a continuation o f the underlying principles o f humanism and individualism inherent in modernity. Postmodemity is not much different from modernity in terms o f human-centric values and individual-oriented pragmatism. In fact, postmodernism goes far beyond what modernism had in mind with regard to humanism and individualism. Postmodemity undoubtedly seeks something beyond modernity, but it is not standing totally against modernity. While Nietzsche was anti modern from his philosophical standpoint and succeeded in convincing the world that modernity was chasing after an illusion o f universal truth, Onis, Toynbee, Rose and Jencks later observed that postmodemity does not stand against but follows after modernity in reference to humanism and individualism. Therefore, it can be concluded that postmodemity tries to correct and adjust the course o f modernity rather than overthrowing modernity to start over again on completely new philosophical ground. In that sense, a more accurate term for postmodemity might b

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Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and

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THE CHURCH COME OF AGE

written by Sung Mo Kang

UMI Number: 3003172

Copyright 2001 by Kang, Sung Mo

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2001 by Sung Mo Kang

Kay S a n d e rs o n Robert K. Johr^on urton Nelson

OUR RELIGIOUSLY PLURALISTIC WORLD

8 LPP 328, 8 June 1944.

PARTI BONHOEFFERS THEOLOGY FOR THE WORLD COME OF AGE

CHAPTER 1 AN OVERVIEW OF BONHOEFFERS THEOLOGY

Bonhoeffers Theological Concern

1 1 LPP 382-83, 3 August 1944.

The Interpretations of Bonhoeffers Theology

33 Ibid., 210-11. 34 Ibid., 212-3.

The Church for Others

8 1 LPP381. 8: Ibid. 83 Ibid., 362. 84 Ibid., 382-83.

Christ, the Center

88 CC 30. 89 Ibid.. 29. 90 Ibid.. 30. 9 1 Ibid.. 32.

92 Jn. 8:23. All biblical quotations are from NIV. 93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., 33. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.. 34. 97 Ibid., 35.

CHAPTER 2 THE WORLD COME OF AGE

The Formulation of the Concept

2 7 Ibid., 239-240. 28 Ibid., 240. 29E 197-205.

Ibid. LPP 341, 30 June 1944.

37 Feil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Understanding o f the World, 248.

The Human Autonomy and the Decay of Religion

50 Ibid. 5 1 Ibid., 27.

5: Ibid. 53 Ibid., 28-29, M&ndigkeit. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 28. 56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., 29. 58 LPP 325-26, 8 June 1944. Italics for emphasis.

Christs Forsakenness and the World Come of Age

62 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian o f Reality, 190.

7 1 LPP 7- LPP 73 LPP 74 LPP

A Wholly New Way of Life

75 Ibid. 76 LPP 336, 27 June 1944.

9 Selby, A World Come o f Age, 30. 80 Ibid., 32.

The Freedom for Others

85 E 101. 86 LPP 370.

CHAPTER 3 A NON-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPEL

Bonhoeffers Understanding of Religion

1 5 SC 131-32. 1 6 SC 132. 1 7 SC 84.

18 SC 133. 19 SC 152-3. :o SC 152.

:1 SC 152. ~ SC84. 23 CF 118.

3' Ibid. Ibid.

Ibid '" Ibid 4 1 D 47. 86

42 D 38-9. 43 D 43. 44 D 44.

45 Wustenberg, 16. GS I 300. 46 Ibid, G S l 354. 47 E 24.

The Problem of A Religionless World

56 LPP 279-80. 57 LPP 280. 58 Ibid.

The Development of the Non-religious Interpretation"

First,preaching can never apprehend this central

60 NRS 37. 6 1 NRS 38.

even to our enemies. 65 NRS 42-43. 66 NRS 43-44. 67 Ibid.

68 NRS 45. 09 NRS 65.

75 LPP 359. 16 July 1944.

Nonetheless, his general attitude

nation. 81 LPP 326-27,8 June 1944.

88 LPP 312, 29 May 1944. 89 D 39.

90 Wustenberg, A Theology o f Life, 4..6. 9 1 E 85.