Bonhoeffer and the Weakness of God
23 June 2008
I’m supposed to be working on the dissertation, but I’ve gotten bogged down in some nasty German linguistics. Last night I was doing some reading designed to kind of “wind me down” and came across what I see as a prophetic comment from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Letters and Papers from Prison. So much for winding down. I’d love to hear some thoughts on the implications of this for the church today. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
“And we cannot be honest unless we recognise that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [even if there were no God]. And this is just what we do recognise – before God! God himself compels us to recognise it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. 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 of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. 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. Matt. 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering”.
PS – Thanks Jack.
Entry Filed under: Christianity, Church, Crisis management, Faith, Inspiration, Power, Religion, Rumination, Theology. .
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1.
Ken | 23 June 2008 at 5:31 pm
I think that to some extent the PCUSA became Bonhoeffer’s church in the second half of the 20th century, until more radical theologies became popular among the clergy. I do think he spoke as a prophet to the church in his time. I think the church heard him.
I think the PCUSA did a good job of teaching me to manage my life without God, as if there is no God.
Now we have Richard Dawkins:-)
2.
Benedict | 23 June 2008 at 5:41 pm
Maybe the PCUSA did hear him to an extent. But I have my doubts about the vast majority of the rest. Considering the way American Christianity shapes up immediately after WWII, Bonhoeffer’s reflection strikes me as being pretty opposite to the way evangelicalism developed after the War. But I think I see what you’re saying; the majority of CHRISTIANS do in fact seem to live their lives as if there were no God, but the CHURCHes? Not so much.
Not sure what you mean by more radical theologies among the clergy. I don’t think it gets much more radical than what Bonhoeffer is implying here.
3.
Ken | 23 June 2008 at 5:51 pm
I agree that he is quite the opposite of evangelicalism.
In referring to radical theologies I was thinking of liberation theologies, ones whose advocates call themselves radical.
4.
Ken | 23 June 2008 at 6:17 pm
I think we grew up in churches that are quite different. I was thinking about how the PCUSA was a place where one could go without really believing in God. I have the impression that few of my classmates in seminary believed there is a God and many ministers I have known in the PCUSA don’t believe there is a God.
I have the impression that you grew up in a church where there was much belief.
I have the impression that we hear different things in Bonhoeffer’s words because of this difference.
I hear in him a determined resistance to nihilism, not unlike the resistance I hear in Richard Dawkins. The trouble I found with such theology is that it reinforced the very thing it sought to combat. My tendency is nihilism, not evangelicalism.
I have the impression that while I have lost faith in liberal protestantism, and yet cannot really escape it, that you have lost faith in evangelicalism and likewise cannot escape it.
In a way, I think Mircea Eliade’s discussion applies – how we are basically nonreligious today and yet we continue to do a few things we inherited from our religious ancestors.
I think of Bonhoeffer as paradoxically acknowledging the death of God and trying to say that it does not matter. I think of Bonhoeffer as being a member of the church in Nietzsche’s Parable of the Madman. Fifty years after the madman left, Bonhoeffer spoke to the congregation, saying it does not matter that God is dead, does not matter that we murdered God as long as we do the right thing now.
5.
Peter | 3 July 2008 at 1:42 pm
In his final sentence here Bonhoeffer reminds us of both the purpose and the method of Jesus’ coming to earth: that He might partake of the weakness of our flesh, the consequences of our sin, the experience of our separation from God–and that in so doing–by identifying with us in our weakness–He might conquer those limitations for us and give us the chance to partake of His victory. If we suffer with Him, we will be glorified with Him.
The implications of this for the church today are vast, and profound. To be very brief, we could at least start with this blog’s politics: it is an understatement to say that the antics of our American politics regarding public expressions of their religion are very far from the spirit of Bonhoeffer’s observations. But this goes far deeper into our private lives and the lives of our churches: our identification with Him in His weakness, in response to His identification with our weakness, readily cancels out all our attempts to make something or be somebody through our religion, and returns us to the place of being one with the poor and serving those who are most in need–the place Jesus consistently taught us to take if we are ever going to follow Him in any meaningful way.
Mr Obama said recently that if the Defense Department tried to operate on the priinciples of the Sermon on the Mount–well, he didn’t know if they could do it! But that’s the real issue, the real paradox here, the real scandal of the cross. And this is the distinctive contribution we can have as believers in Jesus in the midst of our tyrannical and “No-God” generation.
Respectfully,
Peter
6.
Peter | 3 July 2008 at 1:57 pm
OOPS!
Allow me to correct a mistake in my recent comment:
In the second paragraph I wrote the nonsensical phrase “the antics of our American politics…” What I was thinking was “the antics of our American political candidates.”
Thanks for the opportunity to comment on these thoughtful observations.
Peter