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McAFEE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
TERM PAPER
A PAPER SUBMITTED TO
DR. DAVID P. GUSHEE
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER THET 709.24
MASTER OF DIVINITY
BY
ANDREW SCOTT
ATLANTA, GA
MAY 2017
During his imprisonment in the military prison Tegel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his
dear friend Eberhard Bethge on April 30, 1944 “I’m getting along uncommonly well; you’d be
surprised if you came to see me. . .What might surprise or perhaps even worry you would be my
theological thoughts and where they are leading. . .What keeps gnawing at me is the question,
what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?”1 This question is nothing new to
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, Bonhoeffer is thinking here in a different way than in the past.
Bonhoeffer had come to the determination that “We are approaching a completely religion less
age; people as they are simply cannot be religious anymore.”2
What is the Christian to do in a world that is religionless? What is Christianity without
religion? Bonhoeffer hints at a solution in his “Thoughts on the Day of the Baptism of D. W. R.”
In these thoughts, Bonhoeffer suggests that “the day will come--when people will once more be
called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be
in a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberation and redeeming like
Jesus’s language.”3 And so, after April 1944, Bonhoeffer set his sights on “the nonreligious
interpretation of biblical concepts in a world come of age.”4 Bethge calls this new focus a “new
attempt at a theology of God’s solidarity with the world.”5 This statement does seem to correctly
state Bonhoeffer’s direction of thought in these so called theological letters. Before we get into
any speculation of what the nonreligious interpretation of biblical concepts looks like, these 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 8, ed.
John W. De Gruchy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 362.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, 390.
4 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, ed. Victoria J. Barnett (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 853.
5 Ibid, 854.1
2questions must be asked: “What exactly does Bonhoeffer mean by religious interpretation?” and
“What does Bonhoeffer mean when he says that the world has come of age?”
First, we must resist the idea that this nonreligious interpretation or religionless
Christianity is the beginning of a “death of God” theology along likes of Slavoj Zizek. No,
Bonhoeffer is not trying to push Jesus out of the world, he is trying to find a place for Jesus. In
fact, the very first question that he asks is “what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us
today?”6 Bonhoeffer is asking the question of who Jesus is, or can be, in a world in which people
can no longer be religious. With that out of the way, we ask, why the new focus on theology?
Bethge states that “The specific roots of Bonhoeffer’s new theology go back to particular
ideas from his early period that he in part retained and in part given new accents.”7 Bethge
continues his argument by saying that “Theologically the way toward a ‘nonreligious
interpretation’ had clearly been prepared in Bonhoeffer’s early Christology.”8 However, different
concepts had to be counterbalanced as evidenced in the fact that
“during his work on Ethics his theological perspective changed from that of Discipleship. Although his early Christology had to lead Bonhoeffer eventually to Discipleship, the exclusive claim of Christ he asserted there ran some risk of being narrow; thus, the one-sided cry of ‘the world for Christ’ had to be counterbalanced by ‘Christ for the world.’”9
Here, Bethge lays the foundation for Bonhoeffer’s new theology of God’s solidarity with the
world: the belief that God is for the world, and not against it. For Bonhoeffer, this belief is
clearly rooted in God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ.
6 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 362.
7 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 856.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
3Bonhoeffer makes this point quite clear in the first chapter of his Ethics, “Christ, Reality,
and Good” when he states that
“In Jesus Christ the reality of God has entered into the reality of this world. . . In Christ we are invited to participate in the reality of God and the reality of the world at the same time, the one not without the other. The reality of God is disclosed only as it places me completely into the reality of the world.”10
This emphasis on Christians joining the reality of the world is in opposition to Bonhoeffer’s view
in Discipleship in which he describes the church as a sealed train while living in the world. Be
holy, for I am holy,”. . .The church-community moves through the world like a sealed train
passing through a foreign territory. . .The sanctification of the church-community consists in its
being separated by God from that which is unholy, from sin.”11 Here, a shift in Christology and
ecclesiology occurs. Now, Christ calls his followers not to be separate from the world, but enter
into it just as Jesus himself entered the real world and suffered the consequences on the cross. In
Jesus, God becomes human and enters the world so now God is for the world, and not against it.
This is ultimately the foundation of Bonhoeffer’s new theology. However, the question is still
not answered as to why Christianity must be religionless in order to accomplish the solidarity
with the world. What is the world come of age? How do we know that it has come of age?
Bethge begins his commentary on Bonhoeffer’s Tegel Theology with the main question
that Bonhoeffer himself asked: who Jesus Christ is for a world that has come of age. Again, this
question is unlike the questions of liberal theology such as who the “historical Jesus” was or
what parts of the old creeds can still be accepted today. No, for Bonhoeffer, the chief question is
10 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6 ed. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 54-55.
11 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4 ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 260-261.
4“who he (Jesus) is for us today.”12 But also in that same letter from April 30, 1944, Bonhoeffer
states that this question must be answered in a different way than before because the world is
different now: it has come of age. Bonhoeffer writes,
“The age when we could tell people that (who Jesus is) with words—whether with theological or with pious words—is past, as is the age of inwardness and of conscience, and that means the age of religion altogether. We are approaching a completely religionless age; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. . .How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well?”13
Here, the question now confronts us as to what Bonhoeffer means by “religion.” What does it
mean, for Bonhoeffer, to be religious?
Nowhere in Bonhoeffer’s writings does he ever set about to offer an extensive definition
of religion. However, Bethge offers some clues from Bonhoeffer’s letters and other sources to
point out that Bonhoeffer has several concepts that could be a working definition of religion that
directly tie to the world come of age. These are “the metaphysical and the individualistic. . .the
privileged character of religion, its partiality, its concept of the deus ex machina, its tendency to
keep people subordinate, and its dispensable nature.”14 These seven concepts tie together what
Bonhoeffer means by religion and the world that has come of age. It is now to these concepts
that we must turn.
Bonhoeffer does, in fact, give metaphysics a place in a definition of what it means to
interpret in a religious sense. In his letter on May 5, 1944 to Bethge, Bonhoeffer writes that to
interpret religiously is “to speak metaphysically, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
individualistically. Neither way is appropriate, either for the biblical message or for people
12 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 864.
13 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 362-363.
14 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 872.
5today.”15 Bonhoeffer points to the individualistic question of the salvation of the personal soul as
this combination of metaphysics and individuality. Our spirits cannot be seen. They are not
physical, so they must be explained beyond the realm of the physical, that is, metaphysically. It
is also individualistic because the concern is on each and every individual soul.
Bonhoeffer rejects both a metaphysical and individualistic interpretation biblically and
historically. Bonhoeffer asks,
“Hasn’t the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost faded away for most of us? Isn’t it our impression that there are really more important things than this question? I know it sounds outrageous to say that, but after all, isn’t it fundamentally biblical? Does the question of saving one’s soul even come up in the Old Testament? Isn’t God’s righteousness and kingdom on earth the center of everything? And isn’t Rom. 3:24ff. the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous, rather than an individualistic doctrine of salvation? What matters is not the beyond but this world, how it is created and preserved, is given laws, reconciled, and resurrection.”16
Bonhoeffer argues that in the world in which we live, human beings are no longer perplexed by
the questions revolving around the topic of people saving their souls. Instead, they are concerned
with this earth and preservation of life. Why are people no longer asking these questions? Why
has metaphysics become useless in our world today?
Bonhoeffer answers this question in his June 8, 1944 letter when he describes his position
that the world has come of age historically saying,
“The movement toward human autonomy (by which I mean discovery of the laws by which the world lies and manages its affairs in science, in society and government, in arts, ethics, and religion), which began around the thirteenth century . . . has reached a certain completeness in our age. Human beings have learned to manage all important issues by themselves, without recourse to ‘Working hypothesis: God.’ . . .it’s becoming evident that everything gets along without ‘God’ and does so just as well as before.”17
15 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 372.
16 Ibid, 372-373. Emphasis my own.
17 Ibid, 425-426.
6
For Bonhoeffer, it became apparent that religion was nothing more than a historical phenomenon
along the way towards human autonomy and world autonomy. In the April 30 letter, Bonhoeffer
implies this when he says that “if it becomes obvious one day that this ‘a priori’ doesn’t exist,
that it has been a historically conditioned and transitory form of human expression, then people
really will become radically religionless—and I believe that this is already more or less the
case.”18
By June 8, Bonhoeffer seems to be more convinced that this is the case. Religion was a
historically condition transitory human expression on the way to human autonomy from powers
and authorities. Through years of scientific research, humanity has discovered the rules and
orders that control nature, and these seem to go along just as before without the metaphysical
formulation of God in the equation. Without God, what is the Christian to do? Bonhoeffer makes
statements in some of his letters that point us toward a way of being in the world in his critique
of Christian apologetics.
In the same June 8 letter, Bonhoeffer writes:
“I consider the attack by Christian apologetics on the world’s coming of age as, first of all, pointless, second, ignoble, and, third, unchristian. Pointless—because it appears to me like trying to put a person who has become an adult back into puberty, that is, to make people dependent on a lot of things on which they in fact no longer depend, to shove them into problems that in fact are no longer problems for them. Ignoble—because an attempt is being made here to exploit people’s weaknesses for alien purposes to which they have not consented freely. Unchristian—because it confuses Christ with a particular stage of human religiousness, namely, with a human law.”19
For Bonhoeffer, the time for Christianity to resist the world’s coming of age was over because
indeed it had come of age. Here, the concepts of exploitation and subversion come into play that
18 Ibid, 363.
19 Ibid, 427.
7Bethge used about Bonhoeffer’s definition of religion. Religion is exploitation when it chooses
to focus only where human strength and knowledge fails.
Bonhoeffer continues in his letter on June 8 to say that “the Christian apologetic is now
moving against this self-confidence (the world come of age’s). It is trying to persuade this world
that has come of age that it cannot lives with ‘God’ as its guardian.”20 The Christian apologetic
tells the world that it in fact has not yet come of age, and that there are still questions that must
be answered that require God, the church, and the pastor to answer: those of death and guilt.
Bonhoeffer says that Christianity then does the same thing that existential philosophers and
psychotherapists do, namely, “To prove to secure, contented, and happy human beings that they
are in reality miserable and desperate and just don’t want to admit that they are in a perilous
situation, unbeknown to themselves, from which only existentialism or psychotherapy can rescue
them.”21 Modern Christian apologetics continues to attempt to do the same things except, instead
of existentialism or psychotherapy, the church offers Christian salvation as the only solution for
the problem of death and guilt. However, the problem with this is that it makes way for partiality.
Christianity is only needed to deal with certain issues of life.
Bonhoeffer rejects this in his argument against using God as dues ex machina. In this
framework, life continues as before as if it were a play, trouble and anxiety comes, and suddenly
a hero comes out of nowhere to save the day. In Christian apologetic’s standpoint, the trouble is
sickness, death, guilt, weakness, etc. and the hero is God to come in at the last minute and give
humanity hope. That is, Christians exploit the places where human knowledge ends. That is how
this dues ex machina allows God to have space in the world. However, as Bonhoeffer points out
20 Ibid, 426-427.
21 Ibid, 427.
8in his April 30 letter, this framework only works until human knowledge is pushed further and a
place for God must be carved out anew. Bonhoeffer writes,
“Religious people speak of God at a point where human knowledge is at an end (or sometimes when they’re too lazy to think further), or when human strength fails. Actually it’s a dues ex machina. . . to appear to solve insoluble problems or to provide strength when human powers fail, thus always exploiting human weakness or limitations. Inevitably that lasts only until human beings become powerful enough to push the boundaries a bit further and God is no longer needed.”22
This, Bonhoeffer has concluded, is what Christianity has chosen to do in a world that has come
of age and no longer needs the metaphysical hypothesis of God. The world has discovered that it
can go on without God, and so humanity now can live without God. This is the world come of
age in which people can no longer be religious.
How is the Christian to exist in this world in which God is being pushed further and
further away? Bonhoeffer begins thinking about a solution in his very first theological letter of
April 30, 1944 when he says, “It always seems to me that we leave room for God only out of
anxiety. I’d like to speak of God not at the boundaries but in the center, not in weakness but in
strength, thus not in death and guilt but in human life and human goodness.”23 Here, the
beginning of the nonreligious interpretation comes into view: it is to be an interpretation that
allows God to be in the center of life. That is, a theology of human life, and God’s solidarity with
human beings and the world.
What does God’s solidarity with humanity and the world look like? What does this mean
for the Christian and for Christian ethics? The beginning of a theology of God’s soldiarity is
22 Ibid, 366.
23 Ibid, 366-367.
9found in perhaps the most radical statement Bonhoeffer ever made: that God’s weakness is
God’s strength. In his letter on July 16, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes
“our coming of age leads us to a truer recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as those who manage their lives without God. The same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34!). The same God who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God, and with God, we live without God. God consents to be pushed out of the world and onto the cross; God is weak and powerless in the world and in precisely this way, and only so, is at our side and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us not by virtue of his omnipotence but rather by virtue of his weakness and suffering!”24
God stands in solidarity with human beings by allowing God’s self to be pushed out and onto the
crosses that we make for God. Matthew 8:17, the passage Bonhoeffer gives as reference for this
fact, reads “This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our
infirmities and bore our diseases.’”25
In Isaiah 53, the prophet further prophesies in verses 10-12,
“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain, When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors;yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:10-12)
This is where the incarnation becomes vital to Bonhoeffer’s thinking. For the righteous servant is
not just any man, but is God’s Son, God incarnate. God is the one who comes down to earth in
order to become sin before God so that we might become God’s righteousness. It is God’s
24 Ibid, 478-479.
25 All Scripture in this paper is quoted from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.
10weakness and willingness to become powerless in the world that makes God mighty, not
attributes such as omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. No, Bonhoeffer writes, “Human religiosity
directs people in need to the power of God in the world, God as dues ex machina. The Bible
directs people toward the powerlessness and suffering of God; only the suffering God can
help.”26 God stands in solidarity with humanity and the world by taking on, in human form, the
curse of animosity with God, and therefore reconciles all things to God’s self. God gives up
God’s power in order to be for and with human beings.
Bonhoeffer picks up on this topic in his “Outline for a Book” that he sent to Bethge. In
this outline, one of his most constructive statements on Christianity is in his proposed second
chapter on the topic “Worldliness and God.” Here, Bonhoeffer identifies “being-for-others” as
the interpretive key for non-religious interpretation and a theology of solidarity with the world.
Notes from Tegel from July-August 1944 reveal Bonhoeffer’s early thoughts on the
subject: “The expulsion of God from the world is the discrediting of religion Living without God
But what if Christianity were not a religion at all? worldly nonreligious interpretation of
Christian concepts. Christianity arises out of the encounter with a concrete human being: Jesus.
Experience of transcendence.”27 What does Bonhoeffer mean here by transcendence? It is
nothing more than being for the other and looking outside of one’s self. In his outline,
Bonhoeffer writes, “Jesus’s ‘being-for-others’ is the experience of transcendence. Only through
this liberation for self, through this ‘being-for-others’ unto death, do omnipotence, omniscience,
and omnipresence come into being. Faith is participating in this being of Jesus.”28
26 Ibid, 479.
27 Ibid, 490.
28 Ibid, 501.
11This concept of being for others and participating in the being of Jesus harkens back to
Bonhoeffer’s second dissertation Act and Being in which he argues that humans have a choice
between two modes of being in the world: being in Adam or being in Christ. God, according to
Bonhoeffer, freely chooses “to be bound to historical human beings and to be placed at the
disposal of human beings. God is not free from human beings, but for them.”29 Bonhoeffer
continues, “Faith is never directed towards itself but always towards Christ, toward that which is
outside”30 True transcendence, for Bonhoeffer, is the liberation of one’s own ego just as God let
go of God’s power to enter into the world.
In the second draft of his Ethics manuscript, Bonhoeffer states, “The structure of
responsible life is determined in a twofold manner, namely, but life’s bond to human beings and
to God, and by the freedom of one’s own life . . . Only that life that, within this bond, has
become selfless has the freedom of my very own life and action.”31 The Christian is supposed to
look not to his own life, self, religion, but to follow Jesus Christ. In Act and Being, Bonhoeffer
writes, “Human beings are in Christ, and as there is no sin and death in Christ, human beings do
not see their sin or death, nor do they see themselves or their own faith. They see only Christ and
their Lord and God. To see Christ in Word and sacrament means to see, all in one act, the
resurrected Crucified One in the neighbor and creation.”32
29 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 2 ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 90-91.
30 Ibid, 94.
31 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 257.
32 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 158-59.
12Those who are living in Christ are the ones who look not to themselves, but to neighbor
and creation. This concept of being for others describes a radical human solidarity. Each human
being belongs to the whole of humanity under God. Bonhoeffer argues such points in his book
Life Together, “Without Christ there is discord between God and man and between man and
man. . . The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our
brother.”33 Christ does this by standing between the Christian and the other,
“Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love”34
We are all connected because of what Jesus Christ did for all of us. In 2 Corinthians 5:12-15, the
apostle Paul states,
“We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”
This passage matches what Bonhoeffer wants to say about transcendence quite well.
Because of Jesus’s death, all have died to themselves so that they can live for others for whom
Christ died and was raised. Christ’s action on behalf of all humanity is what connects each
individual human person to humanity. Bonhoeffer writes in the first draft of “History and Good,”
“Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of the person who lives responsibly. He is not the
33 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: HarperOne, 1954), 23.
34 Ibid, 35-36.
13individual who seeks to attain his own ethical perfection. Instead, he lives only as the one who in
himself has taken on and bears the selves of all human beings”35 Because in Jesus God became
human, all humanity gained true dignity and worth. Bonhoeffer states in Discipleship that “In
Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. Whoever
from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in
himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance.”36
The incarnation of Jesus Christ has changed humanity and God by restoring God’s image
on earth among humanity. The apostle Paul makes this assertion as well in 2 Corinthians 5: 21,
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” Bonhoeffer seems to offer an exposition of this passage when he says,
“God became human in the body, thus bearing and suffering, as God, the curse of the divine.”37
Because of God’s gracious gift of the incarnation in Jesus Christ, there is no longer a curse of
separation between God and humanity. Now, humanity is accepted and affirmed by God.
Bonhoeffer states in his outline, “The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the
neighbor within reach in any situation.”38 What has been undertaken in the discussion of
transcendence seems to me to be the process of the non-religious interpretation of transcendence,
omniscience, omnipotence, etc. This interpretation states that the transcendent is not the mighty,
absolute, metaphysical God, but the very physical, concrete neighbor in our midst for whom
35 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 231.
36 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 285.
37 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 229.
38 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 501.
14Christ became incarnate, died, and was raised again and thus confirming God’s strength in God’s
weakness and willingness to take on the suffering of humanity and being for human beings.
What does this mean for us? What are we to do? Bonhoeffer answers this question with
what is perhaps his greatest contribution to the field of theological ethics: the concept of free
responsible action, or vicarious representative action. This concept is most prevalent in his
unfished Ethics. In “History and Good,” Bonhoeffer says, “Good is the action that is in
accordance with the reality of Jesus Christ; action in accordance with Christ is action in accord
with reality.”39 Action that is good is action that is done in accordance with reality. Because of
the incarnation, there can be no escaping the responsibility that one has in real situations.
Bonhoeffer states, “Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of the person who lives responsibly. He
is not the individual who seeks his own ethical perfection. Instead, he lives only as the one who
in himself has taken on and bears the selves of all human beings. His entire life, action, and
suffering is vicarious representative action [Stellvertretung].”40 Vicarious representative action is
action that is done by an actor on behalf and/or in the place of another person.
In his second draft of “History and Good,” Bonhoeffer states that “He (the responsible
person) is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self.
Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible. He
cannot escape the responsibility, which is his because he is a father. This reality refutes the
fictitious notion that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior.”41 The followers
of Jesus, like Jesus himself are not to focus on their own individual ethical purity and strength,
39 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 229.
40 Ibid, 231.
41 Ibid, 258.
15but to take responsibility for humanity as a whole. Bonhoeffer continues on this line of thinking
when he says,
“Nobody can altogether escape responsibility, which means vicarious representative action. Even those who are alone live a vicarious representatives. Indeed, they do so in an especially significant sense, since their lives are lived in a vicarious representative way for human beings as such, for humanity as a whole. For the idea of having responsibility for myself is naturally meaningful only insofar as it denotes the responsibility that I exercise toward myself as a human being, that is, because I am human. Responsibility for myself is in fact responsibility for human beings as such, that is, for humanity.”42
Our responsibility as Christians is not to be for our own individual ethical purity, but for
all of humanity as affirmed and blessed by God through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ is our life now. The apostle Paul says in Colossians 3:1-4, “So if you have been raised
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set
your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your
life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be
revealed with him in glory.”
With the establishment of a definition of transcendence from Bonhoeffer as the neighbor
in all given circumstances, these verses take on a new meaning in this interpretive frame work of
being for others. With this interpretation, the things that are above are where Christ is, and Christ
is our life. John 1:4 says about Jesus that “in him was life, and the life was the light of all
people.” Additionally in John 14:6, Jesus describes himself as the life. Jesus is life, so to set
one’s eyes on Christ is to set one’s eyes on life. And life is life that is lived in historical reality.
Our responsibility is to humanity and our neighbors in the historical circumstances in which each
human finds her or himself.
42 Ibid.
16Bonhoeffer is highly critical in his Ethics of any Christian ethic that overlooks historical
reality. For Bonhoeffer, the fact that in and through Jesus, God entered historical reality and
suffered the consequences is proof that we are to do the very same as Christians. Bonhoeffer
writes that the problem of most Christian ethics, especially that of an “ethic of Jesus” is that it
falls into the temptation of religious pietism on one side and privatization on the other.
Bonhoeffer writes,
“The ‘ethic of Jesus’ fails either within the large context of dealing with the historical world, as in the case of the religious enthusiasts during the time of the Reformation, or it retreats into the extremely narrow confines of the private life of the individual, as for example in pietism and also in the liberalism of someone like Friedrich Naumann. But such an ‘ethic of Jesus’ does not lead to concrete historical responsibility.”43
For Bonhoeffer, the solution lies neither in a pietistic nor in a revolutionary Christian
ethic, but in an ethic that takes concrete historical responsibility. Any ethic that does not take into
account the natural, historical world is “detached from the faith in God’s becoming human in
Christ and the reconciliation of the world with God through Jesus Christ.”44 However, authentic
Christian faith affirms this belief. There are also immense biblical affirmations of this belief, but
perhaps none more concrete than the apostle Paul’s words in Colossians 1:19-20, “For in him
(Jesus) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to
reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood
of his cross.” All things have now been reconciled to God through God’s becoming human in
Jesus Christ. God, in his infinite mercy and grace, was pleased to dwell among humanity as a
human in a historical place and time.
43 Ibid, 230.
44 Ibid, 229-230.
17Bonhoeffer affirms this by saying that any ethic of Jesus based on pietism or privatization
overlooks the fact from which “alone the structure of what is real can be understood, namely,
God’s becoming human, God’s entering history, talking on historical reality in the reality of
Jesus Christ.”45 When trying to take an ethical action, one must not look to any ethical principle,
but to Jesus himself “because everything real is summed up in Christ, who, by definition, is the
origin of any and all action that is in accord with reality. Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of
the person who lives responsibly.”46 Bonhoeffer has made it very clear: to act ethically is to act
responsibly, and to act responsibly is to act ethically.
This concept is, in a sense, the non-religious interpretation of the biblical concept of the
incarnation. This concept also has very much to say to modern Christian ethics. Without religion,
individuality, pietism, or even an ethic of Jesus, what is left for the Christian? Bonhoeffer begins
trying to answer this question in his Ethics manuscript “Christ, Reality, and Good.” Here
Bonhoeffer writes that those who want to talk about a Christian ethic must, from the outset, “the
very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘How can I be good?’ and
‘How do I do something good?’ Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different
question: what is the will of God?”47 For Bonhoeffer, the answer is quite clear: we are to be for
the other and serve the other through free responsible action. We are to live like Jesus himself
who, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
45 Ibid, 230-31.
46 Ibid, 231.
47 Ibid, 47.
18And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
There is no better place to tie all of this together than in Bonhoeffer’s essay “After Ten
Years.” Here, he offers an interpretation of biblical concepts that is quite nonreligious. In his
statements on the present and the future, Bonhoeffer states that
“For most people the enforced renunciation of planning for the future means that they have succumbed to living for the moment at hand, irresponsibly, frivolously, or resignedly; some still dream longingly of a more beautiful future and try thereby to forget the present. For us both of these courses are equally impossible. What remains for us is only the very narrow path, sometimes barely discernible of taking each day as if it were the last yet living it faithfully and responsibly as if there were yet to be a great future.”48
This possibility of a future is both our responsibility as humans and as we live in this world. We
live in a world either with or without God, but we cannot possibly know this with any certainty
except when we look into the eyes of another human being. We must live as if there is the
possibly that God is at work in the world or that God is not. Either way, both of these are a
possibility for us. So, it is our duty to act, and to act responsibly before our God and our
neighbors especially.
Bonhoeffer asks self reflectively,
“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. . . Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. . . Are we still of any use? We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings.”49
How are Christians to live in a world that has come of age? Simply as responsible human beings.
We are to be no more or less than what we are already: which is reconciled to God and humanity
by the cross, suffering, and weakness of our God in Jesus Christ.
48 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 50.
49 Ibid, 52.
19I conclude with what is my favorite Bonhoeffer passage. As he concludes his reflection of ten
years of resistance, Bonhoeffer writes, “we have for once learned to see the great events of world
history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the
powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.”50 This is the
perspective that Jesus himself took in the parable of the sheep and goats (cf. Matthew 25:31-46).
Here, Jesus aligns himself with the poor, the prisoner, and the abused. What are we to do?
Bonhoeffer concludes, “we do justice to life in all its dimensions and in this way affirm it.”51 A
theology of God’s solidarity with the world is God’s solidarity with life. Life is the key that we
are to deal with, and not just parts of life, as human religiosity tells us to do. No, we are to take
responsibility for all of human life, especially those who are oppressed, suspect, and suffering.
It is on the cross that we find our God and our salvation. It is in the LGBTQ person who
is hanging on the cross of rejection and hatred. It is in the Muslim refugee who cannot enter into
a safe country who is hanging on the cross of suspicion and enmity. It is in the indigenous tribes
and African-Americans struggling for water that gives them life who are hanging on the cross of
greed. It is in the immigrant who hangs on the cross of hatred. It is in the young black man shot
with his hands up who hangs on the cross of racial hatred and inequality. And finally, it is in the
woman struggling with an unwanted pregnancy who hangs on the cross of shame, hatred, and
fear. Wherever there is suffering, there is someone on a cross. It is on all of those crosses that we
see God. It is to God, to the cross that we must go to find, preserve, protect, and affirm life by
taking the infirmities of others onto ourselves and entering incarnationally into their lives as God
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
20chose to do for us. We are to model our lives after Jesus and take responsibility for the lives and
the world around us. The call is given: Are we still of any use?
Bibliography
Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 2, edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4, edited Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
21Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6, edited Clifford J. Green.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 8, edited by John W. De Gruchy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community. New York: HarperOne, 1954.
