Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Interpretation of Scripture - Research Paper Example

Discuss how Dietrich Bonhoeffers interpretation of scripture influenced his views and actions surrounding the issue of social justice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a German theologian famous for his opposition and resistance to Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In the late twentieth century, Bonhoeffer’s life and work, which are fundamentally intertwined in regard to his theology, became a standard by which Christian social responsibility was measured.1 Indeed, few of twentieth century theologians have been influential in enabling us to see the connections between faith and politics, spirituality and justice, and the renewal of the church within the life of the world. Subsequent generations of Christians have considered Bonhoeffer a model of Christian faithfulness and, certainly, an inspiration in regard to the struggle for justice as an expression of “costly grace.” Central to Bonhoeffer’s principles centred around the reality of the transcendent God in Jesus Christ and the fact that the church became a continuing presence of the revelation of God in the world as it is a vehicle for revealing Jesus Christ to the world.2 Specifically, he used this to criticize the issue of social justice in regard to his lonely struggle against Nazism and his critique of the Christian church’s response to its policies. Background As has been established, Bonhoeffer’s writings and theologies reflected what he had actually experienced. Throughout his life, he had to suffer the oppression of Nazism, both in the German Lutheran church and in German society. In the course of this experience, he would bitterly emphasize how the Church became passive witness to the atrocities committed by Hitler and his policies. From his childhood to his adult life and as a theologian, he became increasingly alarmed by a regime which seemed to him to be taking the authority of God upon itself. According to G. M. Newlands (2006): His [Bonhoeffer’s] Christology led him to critique an ecclesiastical triumphalism which was unconcerned about those outside the church’s own ranks. This led him to see, as he put it, the form of Christ in the world and to look for a future involving a kind of non-religious Christianity.3 In his critic of the church, Bonhoeffer would constantly invoke the original Lutheran values which went against the deterioration of a Christian church. The Lutheran argument about the Christian church that had grown affluent and comfortable, manipulating monasticism to justify its own addiction to a status quo of wealth and privilege shaped his advocacy of a Christian secular intervention. With his critique of the Lutheran church in his time, he would long for the original Lutheran spirituality that unraveled the ironic distortion of Christian life by leaving the monastery and preaching against monastic repudiation of the sinful world. In Bonheoffer’s opinion, the original effect of the Lutheran Reformation was noble and, rightly so, influenced much of his arguments about a proactive and secular role for the Church. During the crisis years of the Hitler era, Christians have become in Bonhoeffer’s (2003) caustic judgment, “like ravens… gathered around the carcass of cheap grace” imbibing “the poison which has killed the following of Jesus.”4 When he was 21years old, Dietrich wrote a dissertation, the Community of Saints, to complete his theological studies. Dietrich (2001) declared that when the church is a true gathering of God’s people into community, “standing under God’s rule means living in community with God and with the Church.”5 Here, one can see that his ideas about theology, particularly in regard to the concept of religious community, were years ahead of most of his contemporaries. This also reflected his study of Barth and the emergence of his unique interpretation of the scriptures. According to him, “we shall see not only God but God’s community too. We shall no longer merely believe in its love and faith, but see it. We shall know the will of God continually ruling over us and put it into practice in the kingdom of the community.”6 From his early work, one can see that Dietrich had begun to articulate an understanding of the role of the church in society. This development in his principles would be strengthened by his exposure to American ideas of social justice when he spent time in the Union Seminary in 1930. It became fundamental in his defense of the Jews and criticism against the Nazis. Discipleship In his argument for social justice in the context of the scripture, Bonhoeffer formulated what he called as faithful discipleship and effective action. This is in consonance with the Christian tradition of equality in men and his status in the hierarchy of nature. The idea is that the struggle for justice, peace and equality would have floundered badly had people not been guided by the Christian faith. For Bonhoeffer, discipleship was not the “cheap grace” of bourgeois Lutheran piety and morality, but the “costly grace” of suffering and martyrdom and that being a Christian requires that one stand over against the world even if this means standing alone.7 It is faith whom Bonhoeffer would repeatedly invoke to emphasize discipleship and his eventual involvement in a political conspiracy. For Bonhoeffer, there could be no true Christian faith without obedience to mandates in Jesus’ teachings and that the call to discipleship is a calling to be conformed by Jesus Christ by living in full communion with him, including the acceptance of Jesus Christ’s cross. This is spelled in a letter to an agnostic brother, Karl Friedrich, wherein Bonhoeffer wrote: At present, there are still some things for which an uncompromising stand is worthwhile. And it seems to me that peace and social justice or Christ himself are such.8 Bonhoeffer recognized a realization of the kingdom of God in the practice of costly discipleship where we actually endeavour to follow Christ’s guidance amid our worldly afflictions. He was convinced that Christian can actually be light and salt in an unfriendly and even loveless world and can thereby effect real changes. In regard to the secular spirituality that Bonhoeffer impressed upon, he recognized that often people have to address penultimate concerns – such as those concerning home and shelter, food and peace – before they can be introduced to the ultimate religious thrust, such as salvation. The idea is that by giving ourselves to the cause of justice and service of the needy, we can set the stage for introducing people to the claims of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. The central motivation in many ways, wrote Kelly, Nelson and Bethge, is Bonhoeffer’s commitment to work for the restoration of peace and social justice, and, in the name of Jesus Christ, to make common cause with the oppressed of Nazi Germany.9 This subject was extensively discussed in his lectures on “Following Christ in Discipleship” to his seminarians in Finkenwalde as he returned to the subject of faith in the context of the perceived national ecclesiastical neglect to conjoin obedience to the gospel. Christian Sociology In regard to his Nazi experience, Bonhoeffer suggested how should the church respond when it is marginalized. In his works, he has adequately provided accounts as to how the church must negotiate a world. In summarizing Bonhoeffer’s argument, Peter Scott and William Cavanaugh (2004) wrote: As was in the world, so the church is in the world. These are not pious sentiments, but reality-making claims that challenge the way things are. They are the very heart of Bonhoeffer’s theological politics, a politics that requires the church to be the church in order that the world can be the world.10 (p. 141) In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer attempted to develop a specifically Christian sociology as an alternative to Troeltsch who posited several categories for the concept – church/sect/mysticism, Gemeinschaft/Gesselschaft.11 He argued in this opus that that such categories must be rejected if the visibility of the church must be reclaimed because Troeltsch supposedly confuse questions of origins with essences, with the result that the gospel is subjected to the world. The very choice between voluntary association and compulsory organization is rendered unacceptable by the “Protestant understanding of the Spirit and the church-community, in the former because it does not take the reality of the Spirit into account at all, and in the latter in that it severs the essential relation between Spirit and church-community, thereby completely losing any sociological interest.”12 But Christian worldliness is not his turning away from the kind of community discipline that he so eloquently defended in Discipleship and Life Together. Bonhoeffer’s work, in general, was to provide a complete alternative to the liberal Protestant attempt to make peace with the world. In the Finkenwalde lecture, for instance, Bonhoeffer asserted that the intention of contemporary Christians “should be not to justify Christianity in this present age, but to justify the present age before the Christian message.”13 Conclusion There are those who criticize Dietrich Bonhoeffer vision of secular spirituality and, indeed, such theology did not prove popular in the latter part of the twentieth century. However, his insistence that the church should be concerned for society in general and not simply for its own structure, and this precisely as obedience to Christ, was echoed in a new theology centered on the kingdom of God, which developed in various different directions. Here was a theology of Jesus Christ in solidarity with the despised and the outcast, and which led Bonnhoeffer to political action, prison and death. For centuries following his death, he will be considered a Christian martyr, courageously facing a certain death just so he could achieve social justice according to his faith. Bonhoeffer outlined a way to overcome the separation of faith and politics in order to live creatively in the tension between the ‘mystical’ and the ‘prophetic’ in the struggle for human and social transformation. What gives credibility to his arguments is that those are based on his experiences and not mere philosophical musings. In reflecting on his life and thoughts and the influences found therein that eventually shaped his principles, one finds sense why the church must be proactive in the pursuit of social justice. With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we are reminded that the context of theological interpretation of the scriptures move beyond personal prayer and the liturgy of the worshipping community and the library and the lecture hall. Dietrich has taught the world that in theology one discovers the meaning and truths of truth the biblical texts not only on pure religious terms but that in the context of social issues such as cruelty, injustice and killings. What this implies, for Dietrich, is that the scripture or theology or religion in general, does not merely charged with the liturgy but could, in fact, come across as the work of the people. In particular, this highlights a particular holiness that sets store on faith that does justice by striving to eliminate oppression and human suffering. According to Geffrey Kelly, F. Burton Nelson and Renate Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s words have a contemporary application in a world where voice of the church seems so inept against militarism, oppression, and exploitation of the little people and smaller, underdeveloped nations.14 In his first major study, Bonhoeffer have maintained that Christ is a “collective person” and went to assert that the church is a “Christ-existing-as-community”. In a word, he brought sociology and theology together as the basis for his lifetime theological work. Bonhoeffer has offered invaluable insight as he placed God in the center of our world, our history and our life. Time and time again Bonhoeffer demonstrated that his theology concentrates on the pressures of today of the imminent tomorrows. There is also a reminder for us in Bonhoeffer’s theology that the incarnate God is existing “in, with, and under” social relations.15 The simple significance of this perspective in social justice is that in our obedience to Christ’s teaching, we should remember that Christ is one for others who demonstrates a redeeming compassion for each and every human being. References Bonhoeffer, D, 1981, Ethics Dietrich Braun (ed.) T. & T. Clark. Bonhoeffler, D 1965, No Rusty Swords, Edwin Robertson and John Bowden (trans.). New York: Harper & Row. Bonhoeffer, D 1998, Sanctorum Communio. Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens (trans.). Minneapolis: Fortress. Bonhoeffer, D 2003, Discipleship. Fortress Press. De Gruchy, J 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cambridge University Press. De Gruchy, J 2001, Christianity, Art and Transformation. Cambridge University Press. Bonhoeffer, D 2001, Letters & Papers from Prison, new greatly elarged edition. SCM-Canterbury Press, Ltd. Kelly, G, Nelson, B and Bethge, R 2003, The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, S 1994, The Bonhoeffers: Portrait of a Family. Chicago: Covenant. Newlands, G M 2006 Christ and Human Rights: The Transformative Engagement. Ashgate Publishing. Roberts, J 2005, Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power. Westminster John Knox Press. Sawyer, J 2006, The Survivors Guide to Theology. Zondervan. Scott, P and Cavanaugh, W 2004, The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology. Blackwell Publishing. Von Dehsen, C & Harris, S 1999, Philosophers and Religious Leaders. Greenwood Publishing Group. Read More