Sociality and Church in Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology

Clifford Green

doi:10.1017/S003693060005479X

Sociality and Church in Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009

Clifford Green

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In July 1930 Bonhoeffer wrote in the preface to the published version of his doctoral dissertation: ‘The more theologians have considered the significance of the sociological category for theology, the more clearly the social intention of all the basic Christian concepts has emerged. Ideas such as “person”, “primal state”, “sin” and “revelation” are fully understandable only in relation to sociality.’ Two recently published works, a translation of Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology lectures and John A. Phillips' study of Bonhoeffer's theology, give occasion for examining the meaning of this statement and its importance in understanding Bonhoeffer's thought.

Type: Research Article
Information: Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 416 - 434

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S003693060005479X [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1968

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^{page 416 note 1} Sanctorum Communio: a dogmatic enquiry into the sociology of the church, trans. Smith, R. Gregor, Collins, London, 1963Google Scholar; Harper & Row, New York, as The Communion of Saints.

^{page 416 note 2} Christ the Center, ed. and introduced by Robertson, E. H., trans. Bowden, John, Harper & Row, New York, 1966; Collins, London, as Christology.Google Scholar

^{page 416 note 3} Christ for Us in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harper & Row, New York, 1967; Collins, London, as The Form of Christ in the World: a Study of Bonhoeffer's Christology. The work originated as a doctoral dissertation under Professor Ronald Gregor Smith at the University of Glasgow, the author being a former student of Dr William Hamilton.

^{page 416 note 4} Phillips, op. cit., 30. This work is hereafter cited as CFU; while the titles of the British and American editions are different, the pagination is identical.

^{page 416 note 5} CFU 27f, and so for the rest of this paragraph unless otherwise indicated.

^{page 417 note 1} ibid.; cf. 57ff, 73ff.

^{page 417 note 2} CFU 1 Iof, 117.

^{page 417 note 3} CFU 110; cf. 115, 121, 142.

^{page 417 note 4} CFU 6gf; it is suggested that the Lutheran-Barthian Bonhoeffer needs to ‘distinguish his position from the self-contained ecclesiology and revelation of Rome’.

^{page 417 note 5} Except where indicated, quotations in this and the two following paragraphs are from CFU 70–76.

^{page 418 note 1} As will be demonstrated, both ‘form’ and ‘place’ are thoroughly ecclesiological concepts.

^{page 418 note 2} In the Ethics Phillips also sees a triumphalist Christology introduced between the humiliated Christ of both the 1933 lectures and the prison letters; cf. CFU 150, 154, 284, n.19,, following Hamilton; yet on p. 195 the theme of ‘Christ, the triumphant Lord’ is said to be in most of the letters.

^{page 418 note 3} CFU 27, 226f, 228ff, 244.

^{page 419 note 1} CFU 194, 238, again following Hamilton; cf. 290 n.17, 297 n. 38.

^{page 419 note 2} The first half of the book alone yields over 50 erroneous or dubious translations and omissions; the following should particularly be noted: ‘He is present and therefore his influence must be felt’ (p. 43) and ‘—a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Cor. 1.23)’ (p. 46) have no basis in the German text and seriously obscure the argument; ‘The Logos is not only an idea’ (p. 28) should read ‘The Logos is not an idea (ist keine Idee)’; the translation of Gegen-Logos (Counter-Logos) by ‘Anti-Logos’ introduces an irrationalism foreign to Bonhoeffer and obscures the connexion with his concept of transcendence; Bonhoeffer's distinctions of Gestalt and Form and of Wesen and Natur are obscured in the translation.

^{page 419 note 3} As ‘Christologie’ in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. Ill, ed. Eberhard Bethge, Kaiser, Munich, 1960, 1966,^{note 2} pp. 166–242, and in paperback as Wer ist und wer war Jesus Christus?, Furche-Verlag, Hamburg, 1962.

^{page 421 note 1} Contra CFU 76, 193.

^{page 421 note 2} ‘Christologie’, Gesammelte Schriften III (hereafter GS III), 182; Christ the Center, 47. Christ the Center and Christology hereafter cited as CC; pagination is identical.

^{page 421 note 3} GS III.180, CC 45.

^{page 421 note 4} GS III.181, CC 46.

^{page 421 note 5} ibid.

^{page 421 note 6} ibid.; cf. Bultmann.

^{page 422 note 1} GS III. 182, CC 47.

^{page 422 note 2} In this line see Bonhoeffer's anthropological concept of analogia relationis, e.g. Creation and Fall (1932–3), London, S.C.M. Press, 1959, pp. 34–38Google Scholar. Barth later used this concept in his anthropology, cf. Church Dogmatics Ill/Iff passim. One might generalise that in Bonhoeffer all being is relational.

^{page 422 note 3} Barth's early Römerbrief and later summary statement in his essay on ‘The Humanity of God’, Bultmann's existential hermeneutic, Tillich's vigorous critique of theism and supranaturalism, Van Buren's The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, and, on the popular level, Bishop Robinson's Honest to God, have all sought in various ways to speak to this issue.

^{page 423 note 1} GS 111. 185, CC 51.

^{page 424 note 1} GS III. 170f, CC 30f.

^{page 424 note 2} GS III. 170, CC 31.

^{page 425 note 1} Contrast CFU 78, 99, 101, 104, etc. The discussion of transcendence by Phillips on p. 187f depends on the use of a faulty translation. The German word behind the quotation is not Transzendenz but Jenseits; Jenseits here is an eschatological term and does not mean transcendent in Bonhoeffer's sense. Elsewhere (e.g. the quote on p. 189) Jenseits can be interpreted by Transzendenz, but not vice versa; could this possibly be a ‘non-religious interpretation’? The equation of the transcendent and deus ex machina on p. 242 is a complete anomaly in a Bonhoeffer study.

^{page 426 note 1} GS III.187, CC 53.

^{page 426 note 2} GS III.I88, CC 54.

^{page 426 note 3} ‘The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life and Theology’, Chicago Theological Seminary Register, LI.2, 1961, p. 17; now reprinted in World Come of Age, ed. Smith, R. Gregor, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1967.Google Scholar

^{page 427 note 1} GS III.193, CC 59.

^{page 427 note 2} GS 111.192, CC 58.

^{page 427 note 3} GS III.182, CC 47. This is a choice example of Bonhoeffer's revisionism. Like a post-Bultmannian before his time he can even castigate a ‘theoretical objectifying way of speaking’ in Christology, but with a difference, cf. GS III. 230f, CC Io5f.

^{page 428 note 1} cf. Bethge, op. cit., 23.

^{page 428 note 2} GS III.iggf, CC 67.

^{page 428 note 3} cf. CFU 82, where the author simply passes over the analysis of the ‘form’ of Christ and gives no consideration to the relationship between the two, thereby gaining mediation without the person of the Mediator.

^{page 428 note 4} For this correlation cf. GS III.188, CC 54; GS III.188, CC 55; GS III.192, CC 58f; GS III.199f, cc 76; GS, III.195, CC 62: ‘The One who is present in Word, Sacrament and Community is in the centre of human existence, history and nature.’

^{page 429 note 1} Contrast Bultmann, whose existential interpretation of the Pauline σμα yields man as an historical existent but not ‘essentially’ embodied in nature; he notes that σμα also has this meaning in Paul, but it is filtered out by the hermeneutic; cf. Theology of the Mew Testament, I, 192ff, Scribner, New York, 191.

^{page 429 note 2} cf. Ethics, Letters and Papers from Prison, passim.

^{page 429 note 3} The sacraments are signs of the new creation in their Für-den-Mensehtn-Dasein, GS III.192, Iggf, CC 59, 66f.

^{page 430 note 1} GS III.197ff, CC 65ff.

^{page 430 note 2} doppelten, zweifacher Gestalt, GS III.198, CC 66; cf. the 1932 address ‘Dein Reich komme!’ trans, in Godsey, Preface to Bonhoeffer, Philadelphia, Fortress, 1965, 27–47. This twofold or double ‘form’ should not be confused with the threefold form of Christ present in the Church; by using the figure of the inner and outer circle for the double form or mode, I have tried to express first the distinction between Christ present and revealed in the Church, present but not revealed in state, history and nature, and secondly, the intrinsic relationship between the Christ present in his threefold form in the Church and present as the same Christ outside the Church. It is the one triple formed Christ, but doubly! Cf. also the correlations Wordhistory, Sacrament-nature, Community-state.

^{page 430 note 3} ibid.

^{page 430 note 4} ibid.

^{page 430 note 5} GS III.168, CC 28.

^{page 430 note 6} GS III.198, CC 66.

^{page 431 note l} GS III.186, cc 51.

^{page 431 note 2} GS III.198, cc 65.

^{page 432 note 1} Letters and Papers from Prison, 3rd English edn., revised and enlarged, Macmillan, New York, 1967, 2Ogf.

^{page 432 note 2} ibid., 211.

^{page 432 note 3} CFU 58f, 54, 50, and many statements about ‘space’.

^{page 432 note 4} e.g. Jenkins, Daniel, Beyond Religion, London, S.C.M. Press, 1962.Google Scholar

^{page 433 note 1} Letters and Papers from Prison, 197.

^{page 433 note 2} ibid., 154; cf. 153, 185f 209, 210, and note that in all these references to ‘religion’ there is no suggestion of an institutional understanding.

^{page 433 note 3} ibid., 179, 188, 191, 193.

^{page 433 note 4} Bonhoeffer describes his interpretation interchangeably as ‘religionless’, ‘non-religious’, ‘worldly’ (weltliche: ‘secular’?) or ‘religionless-worldly’ as in this present case; cf. op. cit., 155, 156, 157, 181, 190, 193, 195, 197.

^{page 433 note 5} ibid., 153.

^{page 433 note 6} ibid., 211.

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