Bonhoeffer and Climate Change: Theology and Ethics for the Anthropocene 9781978701830, 9781978701847, 1978701837

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Praise for Bonhoeffer and Climate Change

“For the past fifty years, eco-theologians have rightly maintained that a significant barrier to a Christian ecological ethic are theologies of domination, and they have provided what at times amounts to devastating critiques of the tradition. The brilliance of Rayson’s eco-theology and eco-ethic is that it offers an entry point for Christians into this conversation that is both familiar and challenging: the person and work of Jesus Christ. Rooted in Bonhoeffer’s expansive understanding of Christology, Rayson turns our attention to the One who in becoming a creature established divine immanence within creation; who, through the reconciliation of all things, beckons us to profoundly love the earth upon which God’s kingdom comes; and, out of that love, calls us to be the creatures we were created to be—to act responsibly, combat climate change, and, in doing so, live in right relationship with all of creation.” —Jennifer M. McBride, McCormick Theological Seminary and president, International Bonhoeffer Society, English Language Section

“An important and rich theological contribution to the pressing climate concerns in the epoch of the Anthropocene. Dianne Rayson explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christological ethic to develop a deep relational response to the unprecedented ecological challenges of the current age. The spiritual, moral, and theological richness of Rayson’s book gives the reader a new ground for raising the question, what it means to speak of an ‘earthly Christianity’ today.” —Ulrik Nissen, Aarhus University

Bonhoeffer and Climate Change

Bonhoeffer and Climate Change Theology and Ethics for the Anthropocene

Dianne Rayson Foreword by Larry Rasmussen

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934351 ISBN: 978-1-9787-0183-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-9787-0184-7 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For William Henry Hoskins With love and gratitude

The crown, a wreath of sharp thorns, is pressed upon his forehead. The first drops of blood fall on the earth, upon which he, the love of God, walked. The earth drinks the blood of its creator’s beloved Son, who loved it as no one had loved it before. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘Good Friday’, 15 April 1927

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Contents

Foreword Larry Rasmussen xiii Preface xv Acknowledgments xvii Notes on Citations

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1 Theology and Climate Change

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2 The Problems

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3 Bonhoeffer’s Christology

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4 Creator and Creation

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5 Creaturely Theological Anthropology

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6 God’s Kingdom on Earth

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7 Ecoethics 183 8 Who Actually Is Christ in the Anthropocene?

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Bibliography 249 Index 269 About the Author

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Foreword

This work arrives just when scientists themselves say that the planetary ­emergency they document must be addressed as a deeply moral and spiritual matter. Science as science cannot do that; it doesn’t do the work of theological ethics. The need for moral, theological, and spiritual address is widely acknowledged in other quarters as well, by prominent secular humanist philosophers among others. Indeed, in four decades of teaching Christian social ethics, I have never seen consensus emerge so quickly and so broadly that we must now disinter all the big human questions of origin, destiny, identity, and way of life so as to take up anew the meaning-making, story-making work essential for our earthly salvation and the future of the community of life. We need a template of truth different from the one human domination and consumer capitalism have stamped on Earthly reality everywhere. Dietrich Bonhoeffer uncannily anticipated the Anthropocene. An age of unprecedented human knowledge and power upends everything, he says, and asks for a new ethic of comprehensive responsibility. For Bonhoeffer, that requires interrogating all the base points of Christian faith itself—Who is God? What are salvation, redemption, and the vita nova now? Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today? This Christocentric theologian asks, with emphasis on ‘for us, today’. What is Christian faith amidst our new reality and how is it to be lived? Dianne Rayson masterfully investigates all the key categories of Bonhoeffer’s theology and brings them to bear on the overwhelming reality of our times—anthropogenic climate change. What develops is dramatic: an ecoethic that is both grounded and radical in the way Bonhoeffer was, only now for a time he did not live to see.

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We owe Rayson a great debt for the substance of this theological ethic, together with the lucidity of her exposition and proposal. I will gratefully return to these pages often in coming years. Earth-honouring gems from Bonhoeffer such as that appear here are not often seen in other treatments of the Bonhoeffer corpus. ‒‒Larry Rasmussen Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics Union Theological Seminary, New York City

Preface

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) lived and died well before the current muchheadlined climate change crisis. Nonetheless, we find in his theology many clues to how he might have addressed it were he alive today. In particular, we find a central notion of God, in Christ, as lord of the world. When understood in the context of his creation theology and Christology, this is not a notion of superiority and dominion but of divine embeddedness in creation and hence of relationship. In Christ, God became human in a complete fleshy and terrestrial sense. God does not sit above creation so much as live within it. This is not pantheism. For Bonhoeffer, it is what the Christ Event means. Consonant with this understanding, it is not for humans to sit above creation as though it is there merely for their use; least of all is it to be destroyed for their short-term comfort and wealth. Humans were made last not because they were a crowning achievement of God’s creative power, but because they were given the capacity to be in a responsible relationship with creation. This is what being made ‘in the image of God’ entails. When humans act responsibly in their relationship with creation, God’s purpose is honoured. When they fail and creation suffers, then God suffers. In a time that sees conservative Christian voices aligned with power politics and corporate wealth creation, invariably utilising more limited, age-old theologies to justify their position, Bonhoeffer’s understanding is more important than ever. For those Christians and others who yearn for alternative voices to those of our political and corporate masters who, by any account, are poor and delinquent custodians of creation, Bonhoeffer’s theology can serve as a tonic and inspiration for the new relational consciousness we see appearing, especially among young people. Hence, the book explores the theology of Bonhoeffer, via primary and secondary texts, in an attempt to develop a Christian response to the problem xv

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of anthropogenic climate change, changes wrought by human activity. As such, it draws on Bonhoeffer’s unfinished yet partially systematic theology, one that underlines an important voice for theology in addressing contemporary issues. The main research question concerns whether, and if so to what extent, Bonhoeffer’s theology can contribute to ecotheological and ecoethical thinking in an epoch increasingly referred to as the Anthropocene, the ‘Age of Humans’. This book utilises the Christologically focussed theology of Bonhoeffer to interrogate the nature of human relationships, including those between humans, our fellow species, and Earth herself. Through Bonhoefferian insights, the book also explores those problematic theologies of domination and mastery that have prevailed, emanating especially from the ways that the Genesis creation myths have been interpreted. Indeed, the book will contend that theologies of dominion and domination have contributed in their own way to the problem of climate disruption. It supplants these interpretations with ecotheological and ecoethical propositions that can serve as the basis of a Christian theological response to the problems emerging from the Anthropocene. This theology is reliant on Bonhoeffer’s notions of Christ’s immanence (being in this world) and kenosis (self-emptying) and associated ethical notions of vicarious responsible action and contextuality. The book proposes the idea that Bonhoeffer’s notion of ‘worldly Christianity’, focussed on a penultimate, Earth-bound, unified reality, might be depicted, in the Anthropocene, as ‘Earthly Christianity’. Earthly Christianity then becomes central to a Bonhoefferian formulation that facilitates a Christian response to the problems of climate disruption in the Anthropocene.

Acknowledgments

I live and work on the traditional country of the Awabakal and Biripi peoples, whose enduring connection to place is acknowledged and respected and underpins my own. This research was conducted with the support of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, The Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre, and a Flechtheim Scholarship for Bonhoeffer Studies. The latter honours Julius Flechtheim, a colleague of Bonhoeffer’s and a victim of the Holocaust, and is awarded by his grandson, Rev. Stephen Moore. Thanks to Bonhoeffer scholars around the world who warmly welcomed me into the community, including The Very Rev. Dr Kevin Lenehan. Thankyou to my family and friends for their generous support and encouragement. Special thanks to Em. Prof. Terence Lovat who introduced me to Bonhoeffer and became my mentor and pal.

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Notes on Citations

This book quotes the critical edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works— English (DBWE) published by Fortress Press and used with permission. Throughout this book, shortened form citations are employed quoting volume number only, as below. Similarly, ‘Editor’s Introductions’ and ‘Afterwords to the German Edition’ are identified throughout by their source DBWE volume and appear as such in the bibliography. Series translation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. Edited by Eberhardt Bethge, Ernst Feil, Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schönherr, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ilse Tödt. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS General Editors: Victoria J. Barnett, Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr, Barbara Wojhoski. DBWE 1 Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Vol. 1. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. DBWE 2 Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. Vol. 2. Edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. Translated by H. Martin Rumscheidt. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

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Notes on Citations

DBWE 3 Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1-3. Vol. 3. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Douglas Stephen Bax. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. DBWE 4 Discipleship. Vol. 4. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. DBWE 5 Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible. Vol. 5. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly. Translated by Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996. DBWE 6 Ethics. Vol. 6. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West and Douglas W. Stott. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. DBWE 7 Fiction from Tegel Prison. Vol. 7. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Nancy Lukens. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. DBWE 8 Letters and Papers from Prison. Vol. 8. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. DBWE 9 The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918–1927. Vol. 9. Edited by Paul Duane Matheny, Clifford J. Green and Marshall D. Johnson. Translated by Mary C. Nebelsick with Douglas W. Stott. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. DBWE 10 Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931. Vol. 10. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. DBWE 11 Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932. Vol. 11. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett, Mark S. Brocker and Michael B. Lukens. Translated by Anne Schmidt-Lange, with Isabel Best, Nicolas Humphrey and Marion Pauck. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012. DBWE 12 Berlin: 1932–1933. Vol. 12. Edited by Larry L. Rasmussen. Translated by Isabel Best and David Higgins. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. DBWE 13 London: 1933–1935. Vol. 13. Edited by Keith Clements. Translated by Isabel Best. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. DBWE 14 Theological Education at Finkewalde: 1935–1937. Vol. 14. Translated by Douglas W. Scott. Edited by H. Gaylon Barker and Mark S. Brocker. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013. DBWE 15 Theological Education Underground: 1937–1940. Vol. 15. Translated by Claudia D. Bergmann and Peter Frick. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011.

Notes on Citations

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DBWE 16 Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945. Vol. 16. Edited by Mark S. Broker. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. DBWE 17 Indexes and Supplementary Materials. Vol. 17. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett and Barbara Wojhoski. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States and are used by permission. All rights reserved. I use Bonhoeffer’s convention of referring to the Hebrew Bible as the ‘Old Testament’ throughout.

Chapter 1

Theology and Climate Change

What is the place of theology in the public discourse around anthropogenic climate change? How might Christian action address it? Is Christian theology complicit in the beliefs and actions that humanity has taken in the past that have contributed to the problem? Assuming a theological analysis of the issue is justified and that certain Christian theologies have been complicit, how can the theology of the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), provide an entry point for a rejuvenated theology that can grapple with such an issue and a Christian theology that can recover its credentials as a positive contributor to humanity’s management of it? What contribution might Bonhoeffer make to an ecoethic suitable for the challenges that climate change presents? The problem of anthropogenic climate change has been brought into sharp focus in recent years. As the temperature of the planet has increased, some areas have heated more than others and climate disruption has been experienced in different ways. The devastating fires of the east coast of Australia in 2019–2020 were seen by many as a glimpse of what the future of life on a warmer planet might look like. The student movements that gained momentum, inspired by Greta Thunberg, have brought the intergeneration justice issues to the fore. International movements loosely connected through Extinction Rebellion have demonstrated a thirst for fundamental change. The pandemic of COVID-19, a novel coronavirus that swept the world and caused death and destruction in ways that mimicked the influenza pandemic of a century before, demonstrated that our social and economic structures are more susceptible to disruption than we might think. The social isolation, empty supermarket shelves, sudden unemployment, and closed churches and community spaces hint that social collapse is a very real consequence of the 1

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longer-term problems of climate change. They also declare the need for deep and careful theological interrogation of the root problems at work. This book responds to these questions and justifies the theological imperative, principally through the lens of Bonhoeffer’s primary texts and those secondary texts that have analysed them. It builds especially on those secondary texts that have linked Bonhoeffer’s theology with issues of ecology and climate change in the hope that this work will continue to gain momentum and contribute in real ways to the world’s challenges. It takes a selection of relevant Bonhoeffer texts, describes their contents, interprets their meaning in the context of the setting in which they were written, and finally, critically appraises their content and interpretations in order to apply them to the issue of climate change. In doing so, it better equips the church community to see and understand climate change as a deeply theological issue and at the same time provides a Bonhoeffer-inspired ecoethic to combat it. BONHOEFFER’S THEOLOGY: CONTEXTUAL AND SYSTEMATIC An appreciation of the broader context in which Bonhoeffer’s theologising occurred is important as it bears on this work of this book. His theology comes to us as partially unfinished business so it has been incumbent upon subsequent theologians to assemble and reconstruct much of his work, and speculatively but carefully utilise it in new and creative ways. The context of Bonhoeffer’s theological development offers some clues about the usefulness of this theology to an issue as real and challenging as climate change. Despite the various forms of Bonhoeffer’s material and the different countries and professional positions in which he worked, this book is bound by the view that there is continuity1 and yet, ongoing development, in Bonhoeffer’s work. Such a view holds that his work contains a veritable systematic theology, one found in his various theses, sermons, lectures, fiction, and letters. Heinrich Ott refers to his systematic theology as ‘the invisible law of the inner unity of his development, even if it is only occasionally explicitly treated’.2 Moreover, this systematic thought persists throughout the entire corpus, albeit it develops as the context changes. In a practice not so common in the discipline, authors have often chosen to articulate Bonhoeffer’s theology in light of his biography and this is evidence that his context is vital to understanding his theology.3 Whilst his material repeatedly responds to the contemporary issues that Bonhoeffer confronted in his various occupations and settings (examples being ecumenism, governance, and the Jewish question),4 nonetheless, a thorough examination of Bonhoeffer’s corpus reveals that some theological development, of the type

Theology and Climate Change

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to which Ott refers, was occurring even up to the final, sometimes hastily written, prison material. The task before us is to ascertain whether the basis of a renewed ecotheology and ecotheological ethic for the issue of climate change can be located within Bonhoeffer’s developing systematic theology. This will be attempted with special reference to Bonhoeffer’s theological understanding of creation, found most succinctly in his Christological interpretation that asserts Christ as Lord of the world. Bonhoeffer’s theology is consistently concerned with human flourishing ‘here and now’, a ‘worldly Christianity’ that addresses the one, unified reality in which we find ourselves, together with its problems with which we must deal, and to do so in a way that benefits us all. This validates, then, the attempt to utilise Bonhoeffer’s theological insights to address an ‘Earthly’ issue, such as is represented by the issue of climate change and its potentially catastrophic implications. In this regard, it is best to see his orthodoxy and orthopraxis as inextricably bound up with each other: neither is fully true without the other. This inextricability is part of what links the contextual and systematic features of his theology. In related fashion, Larry Rasmussen notes the consistency between Bonhoeffer’s life and work, stating that ‘his biography and theology were of a piece’.5 Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s actions, expressed in his own servanthood, seem to emerge from a private spiritual life of integrated and disciplined Bible study, prayer, and reflection. There is ample evidence of this throughout Bonhoeffer’s life, including, almost in summary form, from his prison writings: We can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.6

The ‘Earthly Christianity’ that this book develops is one that is outward looking and acting: towards others, other Earthlings, and Earth herself, and yet one grounded in the arcane disciplines. GLEANING THEOLOGICAL METHOD In the conjoining of Bonhoeffer’s contextual and systematic theologising, one can detect a useful methodological approach to addressing contemporary social issues in what he referred to as the ‘world come of age’ [Mündigkeit].7 Whilst resting foundationally on revelation in the biblical text and practices that allowed him to elicit the revelational message, Bonhoeffer nonetheless confidently employed disciplinary insights germane to a world come of age.

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Thus, he better understood the revelational message to be found in the events of his time. Like Aquinas, Bonhoeffer chose not to be limited by a hierarchy of types of theological reflection, particularly between the natural and the biblical.8 Rather, Bonhoeffer’s integrated, single reality paradigm is reflected in the methodology that underpins his theology. Reliant on Scripture, Bonhoeffer has his feet firmly on the ground of reality in developed a theology that remains relevant. Bonhoeffer reignited the type of ‘boundary pushing’ theology of Aquinas that saw natural theology in dialogue with biblical revelation and saw reason and spiritual reflection legitimately coming into play. The description of Bonhoeffer as practical mystic represents the type of Christianity that Bonhoeffer both articulated and lived out.9 Rasmussen, the highly respected Bonhoeffer theologian since the 1960s, captures much of Bonhoeffer’s method in a recent paper that also fortifies his contribution to ecotheological thought. Building on his own important earlier works that utilised a historico-social lens through which to examine Bonhoeffer’s peace ethic, Rasmussen now examines his ecological credentials.10 In doing so, Rasmussen cautions against the misuse of Bonhoeffer in engaging with a subject that he did not specifically name—a field that was yet to become critical to human survival, or, as Benjamin Burkholder has said, ‘a couple of decades before ecological concern was even seen as necessary’.11 Indeed, in defending Bonhoeffer’s apparent lack of explicit analysis of ecotheological concerns, Burkholder reminds us: In light of the fact that Bonhoeffer’s immediate concern was confronting the tenacious power of the Third Reich, he can hardly be faulted for concentrating his energies on the pressing issues of his time.12

Misrepresenting Bonhoeffer by haphazardly applying his work, or reinterpreting him through contemporary lenses, is an important caution among Bonhoeffer scholars and one to which this book will remain alert.13 However, I intend to demonstrate that by using sound theological methodology and giving consideration to the biographical and contextual clues, it is entirely possible to apply Bonhoeffer’s theology with validity to the ecotheological and ecoethical questions demanded of twenty-first-century theology.14 In this context, Rasmussen underlines the importance of method in exploring Bonhoefferian theology, ‘to engage Bonhoeffer directly for a subject that was never his own mandates that we be highly conscious of method’.15 Clifford Green articulates areas of concern regarding interpretation of Bonhoeffer, two of which are relevant here. The first concerns the question of subordination of early material to the prison writings, which provokes ‘hermeneutical decisions’ relating to the continuity/discontinuity question noted above.16 The second concern applies directly to this project, namely,

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that of tracing a single motif or concept through Bonhoeffer’s material. In other words, there are potential risks to be found in emphasis, proof-texting and decontextualising. Green makes these comments in his landmark study of Bonhoefferian sociality, demonstrating that successful thematic exploration of Bonhoeffer’s material is both possible and important. As Lenehan states, ‘a thematic treatment of a particular motif . . . can be safely undertaken by properly situating that motif in the broader context of Bonhoeffer’s thought.’17 This project is not strictly thematic, but the caution is valid when seeking to apply the Christological and ethical findings to a contemporary issue not specifically addressed by Bonhoeffer himself. Rasmussen articulates a suitable method for his own work, one that mirrors Bonhoeffer’s own method. As noted above, Bonhoeffer’s theological practice was to begin with the revealed Word of God (following Karl Barth) and consider how it spoke into his experience of the world in which he found himself.18 He sought the contemporary theological meaning through the revelatory text in conjunction with his experience of reality. Bonhoeffer hears the Word in the context of reality, which in turn brings experience into engagement with the Word. This interplay allows for a certain level of active discernment in how the revealed Word of God is concretely addressed in Bonhoeffer’s contemporary situation. In allied fashion, Burkholder finds that ‘Bonhoeffer upholds the Christian tradition, remaining faithful to the biblical texts. . . . [He] fully affirms Christology and is able to detect ecological sensitivity without compromising heritage’.19 The present project also dialogues with the biblical texts that Bonhoeffer utilises. This is important in maintaining fidelity to Bonhoeffer’s own ‘groundedness’ in biblical revelation and in order to confront other biblical interpretations that have impeded the ecological intent of the Christian faith (a claim that will be duly explored and expounded in this book).20 The three-pronged approach that Rasmussen proposes and that will be utilised in this book, involves, first, a description of the Bonhoefferian text, second, a historical-theological ‘excavation’ of underlying themes and, third, a reflective critique of the explicit and implicit theological meanings contained therein, including how they relate to issues relevant to climate change and ecology more broadly. This mirrors a Habermasian methodology of moving from empirical-analytic, through historical-hermeneutic ways of knowing, and finally to critical-self-reflective analysis.21 Bonhoeffer’s enduring interest in Christianity’s praxis reflects Habermas’ own commitment to authenticity as it applies to a life well lived, or what Aristotle called eudaemonia, that is, the pursuit of the supreme good, which demands more than understanding and experience.22 Eudaemonia insists on full engagement with the world and it is this lived out experience that is observable in Bonhoeffer’s own theology.

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Ott, an early commentator on Bonhoeffer, describes this hermeneutical process as ‘a discussion with Bonhoeffer’ whereby: consequences are drawn. If we wish to do justice to Bonhoeffer we have to engage ourselves with the thoughts that his thought raises in us. . . . Perhaps now then the matter could be carried a little further and it is time for us to join Bonhoeffer in thought and advance with him again and again to the frontier of still open questions.23

It is precisely in responding to the thoughts ‘that his thought raises in us’ which represents the Habermasian type of response to Bonhoeffer that is required when applying his theology to the problems entailed in climate change in the twenty-first century. Rasmussen reminds us that methodological criteria of resonance and relevance must be brought to bear in relation to this book, of Ott’s ‘advancing to the frontier of still open questions’.24 That is, in exploring Bonhoeffer’s Christology in relation to ecology, we must question whether the themes have resonance as ‘Bonhoeffer’s own’ or are simply marginal and, furthermore, if they have resonance in the contemporary context. As to relevance, Rasmussen asks, ‘[are] Bonhoeffer’s themes and his treatment of them of consequence for our circumstance and work? Do they help fashion our own ecological theology and point the way for our ethics?’25 Utilising such methodology will help navigate the trap of misusing the Bonhoeffer legacy, a feature not unknown in Bonhoeffer (and general theological) scholarship, as well as the popular media.26 On the other hand, as Ott asserts: Since, then, sudden violent death over took and prevented him, it would not have been a good thing if his call had remained unheard, if the Church had had still to wait for another great man who knew how to put the problem with the same urgency and power. In view of this, the unriddling of the enigmatic and the extension of the broken lines, which is now passed over to us as our task, seems a charge which can justly be laid upon us.27

The ‘extension of the broken lines’ is pursued by this investigation of Bonhoeffer’s contribution to ecotheological and ecoethical thought. Ott penned those words in 1966 in his assessment of Bonhoeffer’s notion of religionless Christianity, a notion which will become important in relation to the developing ecotheological ethic to be found in this book. Ott’s general sentiment remains valid in developing the application of Bonhoeffer’s theology here, as well as to a range of other Bonhoeffer projects. As humanity now grapples with a problem that appears to threaten its very existence, Bonhoeffer’s own methodology, written theology, and life example all

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provide clues as to how to apprehend and address the issue of climate change. It is to this issue and the anthropogenic nature of it that this introduction now turns. The next chapter briefly outlines the established climate and ecological science that forms the background to this book, relying on sources from the scientific disciplines to situate this work. This theological work lies within its own Sitz im Leben, alert to the historical political and media debates that have occurred in some countries, the persisting denialism and vested interests being expressed, as well as disappointingly slow and meagre political responses.28

NOTES 1. Kevin Lenehan, Standing Responsibly between Silence and Speech: Religion and Revelation in the Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and René Girard, Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 5–34; John de Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ, The Making of Modern Theology: 19th and 20th Century Texts (London: Collins, 1988). 2. Heinrich Ott, Reality and Faith: The Theological Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer [Wirklichkeit und Glaube, Erster Band: Zum theologischen Erbe Dietrich Bonhoeffers], trans. Alex A. Morrison (London: Lutterworth, 1971), 318. 3. For example, de Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ; Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised, illustrated ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); John A. Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009). 4. Reluctant Revolutionary. Chapters 3 and 7; ‘Reports on Ecumenical Work’, DBWE 11, 165–76; Keith W. Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2015). 5. Larry L. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’, in Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding. International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 6, ed. Peter Frick (Frankfurt am Maim: Peter Lang, 2014), 267. 6. DBWE 8, 389. 7. Ibid., 426 is the first of several references to this term, after Dilthey. See chapter 8 on this. 8. Paul L. Allen, Theological Method: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International, 2012), 111. See also Barry Harvey, ‘Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Theology and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 9. Terence J. Lovat, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Interfaith Theologian and Practical Mystic’, Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 25, no. 2 (2012): 176–88.

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10. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’; and Building on His Monograph, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Geneva: WCC, 1996). 11. Benjamin J. Burkholder, ‘Christological Foundations for an Ecological Ethic: Learning from Bonhoeffer’, Scottish Journal of Theology 66, no. 3 (2013): 338. 12. Ibid., 350. 13. Mark Lindsay, ‘Re-Writing the Icon: Exploring and Exploiting the Bonhoeffer Legacy’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 2, no. 2 (2014): 1–18. 14. See Robert Vosloo, ‘Interpreting Bonhoeffer in South Africa? The Search for a Historical and Methodological Responsible Hermeneutic’, in Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding, ed. Peter Frick (Frankfurt am Maim: Peter Lang, 2013), 119–42. 15. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’, 251. 16. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly, 5. 17. Ibid., 32. 18. For example, DBWE 6, 81. 19. Burkholder, ‘Christological Foundations’, 340. 20. The neologism, ‘groundedness’, is used intentionally, rather than the more typical ‘grounding’, for its implied dual meaning of both finding a foundation, and for relationship with Earth. 21. Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. J. Viertal (London: Heinemann, 1974); Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1972). 22. Terence J. Lovat, ‘Jürgen Habermas: Education’s Reluctant Hero’, in Social Theory and Educational Research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Derrida and Bourdieu, ed. M. Murphy (London: Routledge, 2013), 69–83. 23. Ott, Reality and Faith, 315. 24. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’. 25. Ibid., 252. 26. One might include here Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. A Righteous Gentile vs the Third Reich (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010). This work has popularised Bonhoeffer at the expense of theological integrity. See n161. 27. Ott, Reality and Faith, 122. 28. Peter Weingart, Anita Engels, and Petra Pansegrau, ‘Risks of Communication: Discourses on Climate Change in Science, Politics, and the Mass Media’, Public Understanding of Science 9, no. 3 (2000): 261–83.

Chapter 2

The Problems

This is the Anthropocene.1 Human behaviour has evidently influenced the Earth’s homeostatic systems, subsystems, and feedback mechanisms in ways previously unknown to the planet. Because of this, Earth has moved from the relatively stable state of the last 11,500 years in which humans have flourished and civilisations developed—the Holocene—into a new epoch characterised by instability. A single species has affected all parts of our world: the hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and atmosphere.2 Our imprint is such that no ecosystem is now without human impact, and yet no human exists outside of the provisions of ecosystems.3 We are, as individuals and societies, integrated parts of the lithosphere, historically benefitting from it and now shaping it in ways beyond anything identifiable in the past. Human behaviour, particularly since ‘The Great Acceleration’ from the 1950s (characterised by exponential growth in population, affluence, and technology), has resulted in resource scarcity, degradation of ecosystems and their provisions, a reduction in the ability of the planet to continue absorbing our wastes, and an overall negative impact.4 Human development, to this point, has occurred in the relatively stable Holocene and the possibility of continuation and flourishing of human life outside these stable conditions is uncertain.5 The description of the ecology’s parameters as ‘planetary boundaries’ has highlighted that there are parameters nearing points of no return—tipping points and thresholds—and some parameters that are already breached, such as atmospheric carbon levels. The measurement of atmospheric carbon is a proxy for climate change since the amount of carbon trapped in the atmosphere has a direct correlation to the radiative forcing, that is, the proportion of the sun’s radiation that is trapped by the atmosphere instead of bouncing back out into space. As more is captured in the atmosphere, a ‘greenhouse’ effect ensues, warming first the 9

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oceans and then the core temperature of Earth.6 The carbon dioxide (CO2) level has cycled over the past 800,000 years between around 180 to 280 parts per million (ppm). Starting from a ‘baseline’ of 278 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 CE, it was believed that 350 parts per million was the uppermost limit for carbon emissions before catastrophic warming ensued. In 2019, the level passed 415 ppm.7 The last time levels were this high, in the Miocene, the core temperature was 3–6 degrees higher, the sea level was 25–40 metres higher than at present, and there were no polar ice caps.8 The rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases produced since the Industrial Revolution have influenced and unbalanced the carbon cycle. That influence has already led to 1.1 degree Celsius (1.1°C) warming of Earth’s core temperature, with future increases almost certain and with the resultant changes to biophysical systems already commenced, with devastating results that presages the future world.9 The interactions between the Earth’s natural biophysical processes and human activity are described as the ‘carbon-climate-human system’, indicating that a systemic approach to redirecting the human enterprise is required.10 The large and increasing body of evidence confirms that human activity is the dominant cause of observed global heating and has led the climate science community to a broad position in relation to anthropogenic climate change that both alarms it and requires an urgent response.11 The breadth and depth of this evidence necessitated its systematic collation by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The IPCC is responsible for providing ‘authoritative and objective scientific and technical assessments’ to governments and policymakers.12 Its membership of 195 countries collates ‘the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide’, rather than undertaking its own experimental research. When governments endorse IPCC reports, they ‘acknowledge the authority of their scientific content’.13 The IPCC’s Working Groups individually address (1) the physical scientific aspects of climate science and climate change; (2) vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems, the consequences of climate change and adaptation to it; and (3) mitigation options through greenhouse gas emission prevention and removal.14 Working groups provide individual reports with the combined report released at intervals; the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was released in November 2015. That report confirms human influence and unequivocal warming of the climate system.15 Within the extensive scientific community, there has been a range of results, particularly from computer modelling, which, over time, has become more sophisticated despite its inherent vagaries and acknowledged shortcomings.16

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The predictions by the IPCC are therefore necessarily conservative in nature and are categorised, overall, from 2°C core temperature heating (the highest increase that the planet has previously sustained and potentially the temperature limit for many existing life forms) through to predicted trajectories based on current pollution levels of 4°C and even higher.17 These trajectories consider scenarios of reduced, constant and increased emissions, climate system feedbacks, and climate commitment (how the climate will continue to change owing to past emissions).18 The grave concern raised by the current trajectories is that they exceed previous alterations in core temperature, and in an extremely short time frame, outstripping any previous processes of adjustment and evolution. Natural global temperature fluctuations in the past, even though much slower, were still associated with the extinction of species and shifts in ecosystems.19 This rapid change in climate, along with other planetary boundary breaches such as land use changes and loss of habitat, is associated with the so-called sixth mass extinction event, and the first to be initiated by human activity.20 In addition to the loss of other species, if slow feedbacks are included in the modelling, then eventual predicted temperature increases (4–8°C) ‘would severely challenge the viability of contemporary human societies’.21 Why is this happening? The Earth’s energy budget has been altered by the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), meaning radiative forcing is positive and excess energy is taken up by the climate system.22 Earth’s mechanisms mean that the ‘system’ that some would call Gaea continuously attempt to achieve new homeostasis despite the insults of increasing pollution.23 Over time, this has led to an increase in atmospheric and ocean temperatures, diminishing snow, glaciers, and continental ice, rising sea levels and disruption to climate systems, resulting in increased and worsening weather events and fires. The complexity of carbon and other biogeochemical feedback cycles, resulting from the atmospheric pollution perturbation, has led to ocean acidification, increased sea ice and ‘big freeze’ weather events.24 These processes are difficult for the layperson to comprehend and may appear counter-intuitive without an understanding of the interrelatedness of the Earth systems and subsystems involved. Climate change is occurring and Earth’s best hope had been in limiting the increase in core temperature to the ‘guardrail’ 2°C, which represents a quasi ‘safe’ limit for adaptation of ecosystems and for ‘orderly’ retreat from sea level rise.25 It might also represent a tipping point beyond which feedback processes will become uncertain. Stopping at 2°C, let alone 1.5°C, is increasingly unlikely since a primary cause of the increase is fossil fuel combustion.26 The global systems supporting processes of carbon pollution are proving difficult to dismantle or reform within the required timeframe. In fact, there is no evidence of any concerted global effort to truly reckon

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with the root causes of fossil fuel dependence and the capitalist imperative of economic growth.27 This ‘human inertia’ is an aspect of the carbon-climatehuman system that invites theological reflection, particularly if theologies, in this case, Christian theologies, contribute to that inertia.28 With a warmer world comes instability, extreme weather, and unreliable seasons. Expected sequelae that are likely to especially affect human populations include increased water stress, decreased food security, coastal inundation, increased hazardous weather events and fires, increased morbidity and mortality from a variety of conditions, including tropical diseases and new viruses, and all of this with ramifications of social and political upheaval and unrest.29 The potential prospect of such disruption demands attention and that planning for adaptation and mitigation be progressed. Anthropogenic climate change is inherently complex: it is a complicated system of feedback mechanisms that are not fully understood, with a variety of potential ramifications for the natural and social world (of unknown scope and over unclear timeframes), requiring a co-ordinated, global effort to address it. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the UN, describes this complexity as precisely what ‘politics is not good at’.30 There is, in addition, the looming threat of abrupt or irreversible changes—tipping points—which adds a layer of psychological hazard to the overall problem.31 This book, as an exercise in theology rather than in climate science, relies on the evidence, projections, and conclusions about climate change presented by the IPCC as a starting point for theological enquiry. While there remains some level of ambiguity, both scientific and in the popular discourse, around the details of specific parameters, future projections, and complex runaway sequelae (all heavily reliant on computer modelling and their underlying assumptions), ‘almost all informed observers concur that the Earth and its various ecosystems are groaning in travail. The plight of the Earth is all too real’.32 The nature of scientific investigation relies on inherent scepticism to challenge prevailing theories and create null hypotheses in order to advance accuracy in scientific knowledge. Since this is not well understood by the general public, there is a misinterpretation of such scepticism as instead, ‘disbelief’, which does not reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change.33 Misinformation provided by the fossil fuel industry that mimics tactics by the tobacco industry of previous decades (in some instances, provided by the same personnel) has served to confuse some people who would not otherwise question scientific methods or results in other areas of life.34 In a similar vein, donations to political parties by industries with vested interests has undermined meaningful political discourse and made decision-making partisan.35 There is a variety of factors that influence climate change denialism, including the genuine response of the sheer terror that facing the truth of climate

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disruption instils.36 Further discussion of denialism is beyond the scope of this book, of which the focus is a theological and ethical interrogation of the problem. However, it does background the nature of discourse about ecological issues within church-communities. Since anthropogenic climate change and its mitigation involve human beliefs and behaviour, then it must be addressed by not only the Earth sciences, but the human sciences as well.37 Theology has a particular interest since faith beliefs and understanding shape individual and cultural practices; in the past, these faith beliefs might have contributed to the present problem but, whether or not, this book is premised on the working belief that they should form part of the global response to it. Furthermore, theology has a distinct role in speaking to the ethical problems that arise from climate change scenarios and, consequently, to the pursuit of interfaith engagement in order to address those problems. Anthropogenic climate change connotes that humans are both responsible for the pollution initiating the processes that will cause the projected devastation and that they will suffer as its victims. Populations that will be (and are being) first and most affected are those at the poorest and most vulnerable end of the population spectrum, those often least culpable for the problem as well as least able to effect mitigation and adaptation.38 It is sometimes these groups that have maintained primal belief systems with arguably enhanced integration between humans and their ecology: in other words, these are beliefs systems that are the very antithesis of the capitalistic and industrialist imperatives that have contributed so heavily to the problem. On the other hand, industrialised and largely ‘Christian’ countries have historically emitted the vast majority of atmospheric pollutants, and Western empiricism (characterised by the social structures that reflect domination such as industrialisation and militarism) has been implicated in supplanting ecological practices that were generally more sympathetic to ecological sustainability.39 The results call into question the beliefs and values base for such behaviour and this requires a robust theological response both in recognising faulty historical approaches and in forging a suitable contemporary one. Humanity’s relationship to the rest of creation is at the core of the theological question of anthropogenic climate change. If former ecotheologies have not resulted in behaviour that protects the planet but, rather, have contributed (actively or implicitly) to the damage of ecosystems and species (including, potentially, our own), it would seem, then, that theology should engage more robustly with both the underpinning constructs of how we relate to the remainder of creation, and how we might now act collectively to restore a new homeostasis. As Lawrence Sullivan writes, ‘Religion distinguishes the human species from all the others, just as human presence on earth distinguishes the ecology of our planet . . . . Human belief and practice mark the earth.’40 The question here is how human presence,

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belief, and practice can be manoeuvred to instead operate for the benefit of other species (and ourselves) rather than to cause harm. This appears to be a primary challenge of theology in the twenty-first century. Indeed, Sullivan posits that only theology has the tools to summon the religious imagination to the task of restoring the human-nature relationship which, in the world, becomes self-conscious and alert to roles and responsibilities.41 The climate crisis will increasingly be couched as a problem of justice as the effects ultimately entrench and worsen economic disparity and create a new sub-class of climate refugees.42 Economic and social developments, that have occurred unevenly and at the expense of the environment, have already impelled questions of justice. Climate justice also involves the species, environments, and ecologies impaired and lost as a result of the altered conditions. Granted the depth and complexity of the ethical issues entailed in the climate crisis, an effective theology to address and redress these complexities seems to be the minimum required of a Christian response. Rasmussen writes (after Rauschenbusch) that ‘the Spirit of the Twentieth Century . . . testif[ies] to a reality about which the spirits of previous dead centuries were silent’, implying that our contemporary problem of climate disruption in a globalised, urbanised world is both quantitatively and qualitatively unique from the context of earlier theologising.43 It is into this space that a partly re-constructed Bonhoefferian dialogue with ecotheological problems, via his Christology, will be attempted, as well as ecoethical responses emanating from such a discussion. The problem is now urgent, but not a new. The theological probe into humanity’s conceptualisation of its relationship with the balance of creation and, hence, the appropriate ethic, supersedes the present situation. It is valid in itself insofar as it represents a maturity of understanding of humanity’s relationship to Christ. A fuller understanding of Christ as ‘lord of the world’ connotes an authenticity in representing the Christian gospel.44 In John de Gruchy’s words, ‘these issues are perennial to the human condition, and . . . dealing with them is critical for the future of both Christianity and humanity as a whole.’45 Similarly, according to Steven Bouma-Prediger, ‘even if there were not ecological degradation of the kind and extent which we face today, there are still compelling reasons from within the Christian faith itself for reflection theologically on this issue and ultimately for attending to the Earth and caring for its many creatures.’46 THE THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM The relationship between humanity and the rest of creation, from a Christian perspective, can be perceived as a complex maze of ideas, including those

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of the ontology of humanity, imago Dei, and humanity’s assumed role on Earth, as well as those of creation itself. Historically, the belief that humanity is somehow different and separate from, as well as superior to, the rest of creation has been manifest, at least to some extent, in a position of domination over Earth and her biodiversity. Coupled with increasing population and advanced technology, this has meant that humanity’s impact on the environment, other species, and the very Earth systems which support life, has become largely detrimental and, in all likelihood, the chief cause of the sixth mass extinction.47 The notion of superiority is itself reinforced by a variety of constructs. Industrialisation, consumerism, market economies, and geopolitical interests form a web, making extrication from these systems difficult. It has been suggested that education systems that mimic industrialised processes serve to reinforce the superiority model and promote a detachment from, and objectification of, elements of nature for the very purposes of manipulation.48 At the simplest level, others have described this in the familiar terms of ‘no longer having our feet touch the Earth’.49 The dual meaning of this, both metaphorical and physical, is explored further in this project. Moltmann draws us back to the fundamental reality of life as ‘communication in communion’ and conversely that ‘isolation and lack of relationship means death’.50 In summary, a misuse of the biblical injunction to have dominion over Earth, manifest in an anthropocentric superiority, has led not only to Earth’s exploitation but to Earth’s devastation as well. The significance of a worldview, and in this case, a Christian one, to impact behaviour is apparent with regard to climate disruption.51 Wendell Berry describes it thus: The contempt for the world or the hatred of it, that is exemplified by the wish to exploit it for the sake of cash and by the willingness to despise it for the sake of ‘salvation,’ has reached a terrifying climax in our own time. The rift between soul and body, the Creator and Creation, has admitted the entrance into the world of the machinery of the world’s doom.52

The use and misuse of ‘dominion’, and hence justification for domination, stems to a great extent from God’s instruction in Genesis 1:28, ‘to have dominion and subdue the Earth’. A brief consideration of the Genesis creation accounts is useful in backgrounding the trajectory of Christianity in relation to the environment as well as introducing some ecotheological approaches to the problem. After all, in this context, it is the utilisation of the creation narrative and the way it is interpreted, including its relationship to other narratives and theological probing in general that underpins much ecotheological reflection. A contemporary critical biblical studies approach therefore has much to contribute to ecotheology and ecoethics. As this next section demonstrates,

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the creation accounts introduce theological notions of humanity’s ontology and relationship to creation, which both introduce a more robust notion of dominion and exclude that of domination. In considering the depth and variety of text comprising both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, I sound a clear note of caution in the fact that, following Bonhoeffer’s lead, I am addressing only three chapters of Genesis; nonetheless, given their significance to the discussion, it seems warranted here. It should be noted, at this early stage, that Bonhoeffer found the creation narrative compelling and important, to the extent that his third major work, Creation and Fall, consists of its exegesis.53 I examine Bonhoeffer’s own findings more directly in chapters 5 and 6. The following section serves as background to that argument. GENESIS CREATION NARRATIVES The Genesis stories of chapters 1 to 3 introduce ideas of creator, creation, and the moral responsibilities and role of humanity in relation to the Earth and its creatures. Ideas of interrelatedness, belonging, and imago Dei are presented, and Bonhoeffer links these together throughout his own work, expanding upon these notions as they relate to broader conceptions of relationality and sociality.54 The creation narratives specifically deal with the physical environment, flora, fauna, and humans, and their functions and relationships. They also introduce God, amongst other attributes, as one who creates, sustains, and is in relationship with creation. And yet, these same creation narratives can be seen to have been used in the service of human domination over creation, manifesting in pollution, resource depletion, detrimental manipulation of ecological services, and harmful treatment of plants and animals. If these manifestations have, even in part, their theological justification in the misuse of biblical scripture, then Bonhoeffer’s exegesis of these texts has genuine relevance in the search for a contemporary ecoethic. The range of Christian responses to the climate problem reflect, in turn, the variety of approaches to the biblical narrative and the ecoethical implications of specific interpretations. In the absence of a coherent Earthly Christianity, individual church-communities’ modus operandi might range from ‘stewardship’, on the one hand, which still assumes a privileged place for humans, to outright authority to rule with disregard for Earth, on the other hand and, in all likelihood, on the basis of a theology reliant upon prevalent and popular interpretations of the creation narratives.55 At its most basic, this amounts to complicity to continue consuming recklessly; in this context, the use or consumption of plastics, fossil fuels, fast fashion, and industrialised meat production are especially problematic. Another position is to simply not treat human interaction with the world as a theological

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issue at all, leaving it in the realm of the worldly in order to focus on the spiritual and post-apocalyptic heaven that awaits.56 The theological foundation of such a problem rests on at least several notions. These include, broadly, that humans, being in the image of God is understood to connote an entitlement to operate without boundaries in relation to Earth and her biodiversity. This is supported, so the logic would determine, by a further misinterpretation of the notion of dominion over plants and animals. In place of a theological interpretation of dominion, an anthropocentric style of domination is enacted over as much of nature as has been historically possible. Herein, the nexus between scientific mastery and the burden of increasing population are brought to bear. Traditionally, small populations with little ‘technology’ living close to the rhythms of land and working primarily for food security can be seen to have enacted a kind of dominion which has respected Earth’s productivity and resources. A reasonable state of balance has been in place.57 The scientific, industrial, and technological revolutions, coupled with increasing affluence and population growth, along with global systems of production and trade underpinned by economic growth based on excessive consumption, have upset this balance. The result has been described in terms of The Great Acceleration.58 Christianity can be seen to be complicit insofar as it has failed to challenge the impact of the Great Acceleration, neither the social structures nor the religious assumptions which have permitted it. These currents of thought seem to swirl through Western Christianity apparently without challenge: if the opposite was true, then church-communities would be seen actively engaging with eco-justice in its manifold forms. This would include the lifestyle choices made by households, local communities and, at a higher level, governance units. Pope Francis’ letter addressed to all people, Laudato Sí, can be seen as a clear attempt to re-engage the church-community with the ethical imperative that can be derived from within the Christian tradition.59 I make the claim that such re-engagement can be supported by close attention to major elements of Bonhoeffer’s theology. This is where forms of public theology might legitimately play a role in the climate change debate.60 Public theology provides a complementary discourse to public issues and in this case, offers hope for ethical engagement. The task here involves disentangling biblical narrative, and theological and religious assumptions from anthropocentrism and excessive consumption. Christianity in the twenty-first century might speak positively into a contemporary ecoethic that allows households and church-communities to be part of a hopeful future. I am utilising Bonhoeffer’s direct challenge to find who Christ is for us today, in a world that is heating to dangerous levels and in which Christian communities have largely failed to provide the ethical leadership required to combat it.

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THEOLOGICAL RESPONSES Given the biblical constructs of God’s nature, and humanity’s ontology and role in it, as elicited from the creation accounts (that are further investigated in the following chapters), I briefly turn to some of the arguments concerning the implications for Christianity in addressing the issue of the human contribution to the current environmental crisis. Kheel highlights the risk of further debate when action is required: It is a sad irony that the destruction of the natural world appears to be proceeding in a direct ratio to the construction of moral theories for how we should behave in light of this plight.61

The premise that drives this work is that theoretical discernment is an important basis on which to challenge theological constructs that in turn hinder the necessary practical action that is required. Lynn White Jr.’s philosophical critique in 1967, which laid the blame for environmental degradation squarely at the feet of Christianity, has been largely rebutted, but there remains a valid perseverance of the notion that Christianity has, at least to some extent, been a contributor to such degradation, and might well persist as such.62 A theological critique of Christianity and Earth must precede the development of an ecoethic and, in this space, some varied work has been done. This section does not provide a comprehensive review of ecotheology, as such, but rather contextualises the contemporary milieu as a way of providing a background for the exegetical work on Bonhoeffer’s texts. Paul Santmire has examined theological thinking about nature from the church fathers to the mid-twentieth century by tracing two overarching theological motifs—ecological and spiritual—which, broadly speaking, also represent a key difference between what can be generally termed as Eastern and Western theological traditions.63 These two motifs, in turn, he sees as arising from the root metaphor (or combination of two metaphors) utilised. He articulates three root metaphors, namely, ascent, fecundity, and migration, and proceeds to examine the approach to nature of key theologians using this three-fold framework.64 Santmire asserts that the analysis by metaphor holds true across types of theology, from confessional to philosophical. All three metaphors relate to the arch narrative of theologies, whereby life is characterised as a journey, in the first two metaphors, in relation to a mountain and, in the third, to a promised land. In brief, ‘ascent’ speaks of rising above to a spiritual realm. ‘Fecundity’ relates to appreciating the ‘view’ along the way, while ‘migration’ utilises the narrative of moving beyond this world to a better one in the familiar, Hebraic sense.65 In Santmire’s analysis, use of an overarching metaphor of ascent generally results in a theology with an

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impoverished view of nature, and the domination of it, such as to be found in Origen.66 Metaphors of migration to a good land, and those of fecundity, tend towards theologies that incorporate a ‘rich vision of nature’.67 Santmire’s project discloses the ambiguity of Christian theology in its relationship to nature but, in doing so, it also traces a thread of what he describes as ‘the ecological promise of classical Christian thought about nature’.68 He finds evidence for this ecological promise in such theologies as those of Irenaeus, Augustine, and Francis of Assisi. In contrast, the spiritual emphasis characterised in much Western theology, particularly post-Reformation and Evangelical theologies that tended to employ a metaphor of ascent, can be seen to underpin, and justify a disjunct from nature.69 Santmire’s thoughtful framework is useful in demonstrating that nature theologies cover a wide spectrum of positions influenced by anthropology, ontology, and eschatology, and these, in turn, can be traced to the metanarrative in which the particular theology is originally grounded. It is no wonder, then, that Christianity’s historical relationship to Earth is complicated and ambiguous and that there is evidence both for and against the case of whether Christianity is complicit in ‘causing’ climate change. The Jewish theologian, Lawrence Troster, classifies ecotheologies by how competently religion is seen to measure up to the environmental challenge as a result of applying them.70 In this simple schema, ‘apologetic’ readings of the Abrahamic faiths claim that the traditions are adequate to respond to the environmental crisis. John Haught has written that ‘if only we practiced the timeless religious virtues we could alleviate the crisis . . . our relation to nature would have the appropriate balance, and we could avert the disaster that looms before us.’71 Apologetics tend to hold up traditional texts and find them ‘green’ to the extent that they contain an environmental ethic, but do not necessarily consider the context in which the texts were created (or the texts that contradict the position), nor whether the ethical approaches outlined are ever entirely adopted.72 In this approach, Peter Ellard’s analysis of ‘the green pope and the green patriarch’, Benedict IX and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, finds them both apologists. As a starting point, it is important to analyse the textual basis for nature and related theologies; however, the ethical approach contained in apologetic ecotheologies tends to be inherently anthropocentric, relying on stewardship towards the other, inferior aspects of creation.73 In response to this type of apologetics, the incorporation of scientific understanding of the universe has led to the emergence of a sacramental approach to the environment, whereby the Cosmos itself has become the ‘primary text of revelation’ but, in a slight shift from natural theology, has become a theology of nature.74 Thomas Berry was a pioneer in this type of thinking (identified as ‘dark green’ by Ellard), as was Teilhard de Chardin, pre-empting, and

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sometimes inspiring, a raft of contemporary theologians, including Denis Edwards, Neil Ormerod, Dieter Hessel, Brian Swimme, underpinning a conception of the ‘cosmic Christ’ and, to some extent, establishing dialogue with natural religion and Indigenous spiritualities.75 Others take a less cosmological stance and, using a range of more traditional approaches, emphasise God’s transcendence and humanity’s ethical responsibility (these include Jürgen Moltmann, Walter Brueggemann, Rowan Williams, Peter Manley Scott, Ernst Conradie, and Pope Francis).76 The ecotheological conversation is rich. Alternatively, Santmire has categorised two schools as constituting broadly ‘confessional’ and ‘reconstructive’ approaches to ecotheology, which closely aligns to Peter Scott’s distinctions of ‘provincialism of nature’ and ‘secularism of nature’.77 Scott’s criticism of Santmire is that he sees Santmire’s contrast in types as being merely methodological and proposes that consideration of ecotheologies should include not only the methodological but also assessment of the substantive, metaphysical, and hermeneutic aspects. That is, consideration should focus not only on how the creation narrative is utilised but also on the range of doctrinal resources chosen and utilised; the status of natural theology; how the relationship between creation and science narratives describes the relationship between humanity and non-human nature; and how the position regards the significance of the relations of humanity and nature in the ‘passage of modernity’.78 Scott’s work that both critiques the ‘postnatural world’, and addresses Bonhoeffer’s ecotheological insights, offers a contemporary response to the theological question of the place of humans in relation to the created world. I am in agreement with Green, Rasmussen, and Scott, that Bonhoeffer brings to ecotheology considerable depth across a range of parameters. Far from Christianity being the ‘cause’ of the climate catastrophe, Scott, like Burkholder and Rasmussen, sees Bonhoeffer’s notion of Christ as the key contribution to a potential remedy. Edward Elchin has also proposed a Christological foundation for ecological engagement. Some of his innovative work considers Jesus’ integration with the Palestinian ecology using an imaginative reflection on the gospel texts.79 Elaine Wainwright attempts an eco-hermeneutical approach that allows the natural components of the text speak for themselves, in what she describes as an eco-rhetorical process.80 Such a hermeneutic influences the further discussion of the creation narratives in chapter 5. This book relies heavily on Bonhoeffer’s Christology as the starting point for establishing his ecotheological utility. In general terms, ecology relates to the connections between living and non-living aspects of the lithosphere as being interrelated and interdependent, and forming ‘metacontexts’.81 This lends itself to an immediate resonance with feminism that also rejects notions of separateness and hierarchy while, at

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the same time, being committed to equality and the rejection of assumptions that derive from false dualisms. Ecofeminist theology constitutes a family of approaches, employing ecological and feminist frames to intersect with the spiritual, religious and, in this case, Christian understanding, practice, and experience.82 It has been particularly useful in drawing attention to systems and paradigms that are so intrinsically normative that, historically, they have evaded critique. Rosemary Radford Ruether sees this situation as constituting a profound challenge to traditional Christian theology (and indeed all religions ‘shaped by the worldview of patriarchy’), both on the cultural-symbolic level and on the resultant socio-economic level.83 In support of this, Elizabeth Johnson has emphasised the lived experience of women in relation to Earth exploitation and sexist relations and how this, in turn, distorts Christianity.84 Both authors equate the plight of Earth with that of people, particularly the vulnerable and disadvantaged, seeking a resolution in a type of eco-justice that restores relationships and equity.85 For Ruether, this means recasting our theology in light of the cosmological ‘universe story’ in order to retract from what she describes as the historic rationalisation inherent in patriarchal domination.86 Others, including Johnson, thinking about the cosmological and universal, also pare down to the particularity of relationships, including between humans and other animals, placing significance on the sacramental and liturgical foci latent within the tradition.87 Ecotheology increasingly dialogues with other disciplines and, importantly, with feminism, seeing the rise of both ‘ecofeminist theologies’ and ‘feminist ecotheologies’, both terms signifying a broad range indeed of approaches and subconstructs. Feminist theology itself largely derives from within the Liberation Theology tradition and, in relation to ecological thinking, it draws attention to the anthropocentric systems and constructs that alienate or oppress both women and the ecology. Ecofeminists generally see ‘domination as a core phenomenon at the ideological and material roots of the woman/nature nexus’ which, in itself, is ‘rooted in a common ideology based on the control of reason over nature’.88 Dualism arises from a mechanistic view of the world wherein reason is held to be over and against nature, further reflected in notions of, for example, rationality over animality, public over private, the universal over the particular.89 In the words of the feminist philosopher, Val Plumwood, such thinking results in ‘the construction of a devalued and sharply demarcated sphere of otherness’.90 Ecofeminism describes continuity between the mechanistic view of the world and domination of it, as articulated by early figures such as Francis Bacon, and a misogynistic view of the world that further validates the domination.91 Ecofeminism connects and collects together the ‘weaker’ elements of the dualisms: it describes the links between nature and femininity, imagination and fertility,

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intuition and creativity, for example, in rejection of domination paradigms of reason and mechanistic constructs. It is at this point that ecofeminist theology extends beyond that of a somewhat reactive Liberation Theology and becomes a positive frame with important ethical implications. Not only do dualisms describe the dominant paradigm but they are also prioritised, one over against the other. So, reason, rationality and masculinity represent the pinnacle of a hierarchy that intrinsically subjugates the feminine, natural, and intuitive. In turn, according to ecofeminism, this is manifest in the ‘revolutionary idea of progress and economic growth, solidified into beliefs, social structures, and organisational principles, including the most recent form of economic globalisation’.92 The orders in place—social, economic, political, and religious—reflect and sanction the ideological superstructure of sexism and environmental exploitation, two manifestations of domination, according to Ruether.93 In response to what is understood as the status quo, feminist ecotheologies offer a range of approaches for understanding and explaining such domination and for expounding an ethical response. In some ways, ecofeminist theology combines the challenges raised by both ecological thinking and feminist critique, already rejecting hierarchical dualisms and other key assumptions. Ecological concerns are not peripheral to feminist theology but, rather, are fundamental to it. Dismantling dualistic, mechanistic notions that underpin domination of both women and nature requires a multipronged approach. This includes fresh hermeneutical approaches to scripture, deconstructing religious tradition, gender criticism, and reorientation to an Earth-centred approach, as against a tradition-centred one. Therefore, there is a great variety of ecofeminist theological approaches and strategies. While Ruether might have initiated the formal intersection of feminist and ecological theologies in the 1970s, the conversation has developed in many other directions since that time. These include reexamining aspects of doctrine (creation, God, sin), biblical studies, ethics, and multifaith analyses. Such approaches are, in turn, represented by a great number of authors and schools of thought, only some of which are touched on here. The sacramental, especially, resonates with Ivone Gerbera’s notion of ‘lived awareness’ in a particular way,94 and hearkens back to primal and Indigenous conceptions of spirit-infused creation and respect or veneration for processes of reproduction and the nurturing of life. Anne Elvey’s creative theological exploration of Luke’s Gospel, using a ‘gestational paradigm’, characterises a facet of meaning particular to the feminine.95 Sallie McFague’s important articulation of creation as the body of God brought feminist ecotheological thinking face to face with the interrogation of creation theology and its implications for ethics.96 Ruether, along with other Mariologists, sees Mary as the new hope, ‘representative of the redeemed humanity’.97 There

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would seem to be some congruence between Mary and the maternal notion of Earth that might be a useful construct in some contexts and as a way to claim legitimacy for the feminine. Dean-Drummond raises a theological caution against utilising Mary as the one who reconciles humanity and creation, which is the role of Christ. She considers that part of the reason Ruether and others confer this role onto Mary is in the difficulty in apprehending Christ’s two natures. Dean-Drummond writes that ‘Ruether’s willingness to identify with the humanity of Mary more easily than the humanity of Christ reflects a popular implicit religious idea that Jesus’s divinity somehow weakens his humanity’.98 Ruether appears to have outlined the historical iterations of various forms of Mariology, against which Deane-Drummond’s critique would appear valid. Ruether’s own position may be more nuanced than these historical views, and possibly closer to that of Bonhoeffer’s, given their shared emphasis on the humanity of Christ. The additional problems of the male person of Jesus representing all of humanity (regardless of people’s own gender), the historical contexts of male domination, and what Deane-Drummond calls ‘Protestant nervousness about the figure of Mary’, all contribute to the persisting tensions between ecology, theology, and feminism.99 As the notion of the Great Acceleration indicates, social integration of humans with their ecology is now unbalanced. The romantic notion of primal cultures coexisting with nature is also not a sustainable one. There is no evidence of any culture wherein, given population growth, increasing technology and affluence, has not entered to some extent the pathway of environmental degradation; Plumwood’s later work reflects well on these realities.100 Plumwood is also known for her repositioning of humans within the natural food chain, as well as rejection of ‘ontological veganism’ as reinforcing dualistic separation from the natural.101 Both of these positions derive from locating humanity within the biosphere and rejecting notions of separateness or otherness. Feminist ecotheologies have also drawn attention to notions of interconnectedness with the Earth and other creatures. Vicky Balabanski’s depiction of the human body as a community of beings: twenty-three trillion bacteria coexisting with and as host human, exemplifies how species, elements, and systems can collectively comprise the living organism. It represents the collective of life and the geophysical which comprises Gaea, and how humans might represent the sentient aspect of that organism.102 According to Celia Deane-Drummond: The recognition of sociality within the human community is part of a wider recognition of the sociality of all things. In this way mutual relationships are not narrowly defined, but both ecological and cosmological.103

Within this broad church of feminist ecotheological explorations, lies ecofeminist Christology, exemplified by authors such as Schade, Solberg,104 and

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Deane-Drummond.105 The latter, in particular, has traced the Christological treatment of ecology in the theologies of Teilhard, von Balthasar, and Moltmann, examining them all against an evolutionary cosmology. Her work represents an important development in methodology moving towards, and potentially beyond, the planetary crisis. Ecofeminist Christology might be characterised by a foundational worldview that existing social structures reflect patriarchal, dualistic thinking, but it nonetheless drills down deeply to Christological and Trinitarian understanding in order to articulate ontological meanings and, hence, ethical frames. Some creative work has been undertaken realigning Christian thought with primal notions of connectivity to Earth and positioning injustices towards women as mirroring irresponsibility towards Earth.106 Increasingly, the influence of primal knowledges of Indigenous spiritualities with their emphasis on the interconnectedness of all of life and creation, physical and spiritual, is being demonstrated in Christian ecotheology and biblical studies. In the Australian context, the wisdom and experience of the world’s oldest living culture has much to teach about the immanence of the creator God and the ontology and responsibility of the human portion of creation.107 An ecological hermeneutic retrieves the claims of the others in the creation accounts over and against the claim of the humans and, vicariously, the claim of their monotheistic deity. That is to say, it is a way to provide some pushback on behalf of creation—the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea, all the land creatures and Earth herself with her rivers and ecosystems, plants, and bacteria—against the dominance of humans. As discussed, it is a dominance that has collapsed perceived superiority over the creatures with superiority over nature and Earth herself, and with the subjugation of women, children, slaves, and ‘inferior’ cultural groups. In identifying the symptoms of the anthropocentric interpretation of the creation accounts, Lynn White was broadly correct. In diagnosing their cause, he was rather too quick to blame the entire Christian tradition. The ecological hermeneutic is a way to highlight the retrieval of the co-relationality of creation that is mindful of the scientific evidence, and of the wealth of the Christian tradition that has, especially prior to the Industrial Revolution and Modernism, treated creation with love and sanctity. Within this analysis, other faith traditions too must accept some share of culpability, as well as identifying the ameliorating resources within them. An ecological hermeneutic provides a lens for examining not only Christian texts and traditions but also those of other spiritualities. It provides a way for faith traditions to capitalise on the commonality of our shared love and sanctity of creation. Bonhoeffer’s notion of sociality is crucial to understanding all relationships, in light of characteristics of the Trinity, and particularly when considering humanity’s ontological standing before the rest of creation and God;

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for this reason, sociality will become an important component of exploring the potential for Bonhoeffer’s theology to address satisfactorily the environmental issues that need to be addressed by Christian theology. Importantly, feminist ecotheologies have largely straddled the sacramental/apologist division, a straddling also seen in Bonhoeffer, and considered by Lisa Dahill and others.108 The intersection of ecofeminist and broader liberation theologies can be represented by Gebara. Her particular contribution to this project is in her interpretation of sin within the dominance frame, something this book will also consider.109 This brief presentation of ecofeminist theology is included here for several reasons. First, much of the theological heavy lifting required to dismantle the notion of domination and its expression in church traditions has been undertaken via ecofeminist engagement, without wishing to diminish the important contributions made by other key ecotheologians. Ecofeminist theology has helped to provide the resources and the language with which to continue the process of challenging the extant in the negative, and so, in the positive, reimagining how we might better live together on this planet. Second, ecofeminist theology has largely taken its cues from ecofeminist theory’s emphasis on the cultural-symbolic paradigm, and perhaps less on material and practical matters. Bonhoeffer’s own emphasis on the material, in the form of a worldly Christianity that addresses the ethical imperative by responsible action, would appear to counter this apparent deficit. Third, I wish to locate Bonhoeffer’s contribution to the ecotheological and ecoethical discourse, not so much as part of this tradition but rather as pre-empting it. A closer mining of Bonhoeffer’s contribution to ecotheological discourse establishes that how we understand Christ, sociality, and our ethical response to the world around us necessarily speaks directly to our relationship with the rest of the biosphere and our ethical imperative. The tension between maintaining Christianity’s tradition and yet subverting it in order to authentically engage with God and each other was central to Bonhoeffer’s own project. In this project, we seek, with Bonhoeffer, to discover ‘who Christ actually is for us today’. Bonhoeffer’s Christology, at the heart of his theology, represents both an opportunity and a challenge. This book will argue that contrary to the prevailing dualism that privileges the spiritual over the material, the future over the present, and humans over the rest of creation, Bonhoeffer’s Christology demonstrates the unified Earthly reality that God has created, assessed as good, and validated through Christ. The kingdom of God has been initiated on Earth and draws us towards its fulfilment. A new Earth under God’s dominion is the hope provided to humanity. In an age of ecological crisis and climate catastrophe, the Anthropocene can also be seen as the turning point whereby God’s kingdom comes closer and Paradise is reconciled and

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restored. Bonhoeffer’s unique exploration of Christ for us today, of seeking a relevant new language about God, and of a Christianity that relates to this world provides a contemporaneity to his theology. His notion of sociality, it will be shown, provides a methodology through which we can renegotiate our relationships with the other species and components of Earth, and Earth herself. On the other hand, there could be potential challenges to utilising Bonhoeffer in this way. First, and most obviously, is the precaution of misappropriating Bonhoeffer, as identified earlier. The phenomenon that Clifford Green has identified as ‘Metaxasising Bonhoeffer’ is a danger in any work that aims to apply early twentieth-century German Christian theology to the climate crisis of the twenty-first century.110 Was Bonhoeffer an environmentalist? No! Does his theology speak into this issue? I have argued that, most definitely, it does. The potential contribution of Bonhoeffer to the ecotheological discussion has begun to be explored, both building on the work of Green and Rasmussen as well as returning to Bonhoeffer’s texts afresh with an ecological lens. This small but growing category of authors, including Scott, Burkholder, Dahill, Jordan Ballor, Michael Mawson, Steven van den Heuvel, and others, are divergent in their conclusions, but they all acknowledge the legitimacy of bringing Bonhoeffer to the task of ecotheology and ecoethics.111 Green’s challenge for the next generation of Bonhoeffer scholars to develop an overarching theology from the fragments left to us might well be met in turning to the problem of the ecological crisis.112 In doing so, we trace Bonhoeffer’s contribution to it all the way back to what is central to his theology, namely, his Christology. CONCLUSION Anthropogenic climate change constitutes a grave threat to human survival and well-being, as well as to that of the entire ecology and, indeed, to Earth systems. This threat has been scientifically researched and described, but nonetheless invites further theological interrogation. Such a threat requires theology to take stock of deficient interpretations of humanity’s relationship with nature, confront and redress them, as well as attend to the ethical challenges that present to us this century. The effects of climate disruption have commenced, and we can be reasonably certain that problems of extreme weather events, mass migrations, water, and food insecurity and, potentially, increased military interventions, will continue to ensue. Each of these force us to address the overarching problem of climate justice, justice for the poor, the other species, and Earth herself.

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While it is useful to note the broader context of other ecotheologies that speak to creation, stewardship, and notions of relationship, Bonhoeffer’s theology largely predates and transcends ecotheology in its current forms. Green’s identification of Bonhoeffer’s paradigm-shifting Christological interpretation recognises the breadth and depth of Bonhoeffer’s scholarship and its potential value to Christian theology. Bonhoeffer’s Christology and interrelated concepts describing humanity’s ontology and relationships with God, nature, and each other provide a rich source of data through which we are able to examine anthropogenic climate change and offer a Christian, ethical response to it both in terms of amelioration and mitigation. Bonhoeffer’s theology is a useful lens through which to examine creation theology, ecoethics, and related areas of investigation, as they contribute to a more robust interpretation of Christianity appropriate to the twenty-first century—a ‘world come of age’. Bonhoeffer’s own methodology confers legitimacy on this project, utilising text-based investigations to consider real-world problems and, on this basis, acting to effect change that enhances the flourishing of life on Earth. Nonetheless, this book seeks not so much to derive a particular Bonhoefferian ecotheology or ecoethic as to probe Bonhoeffer’s theology and, in particular, his Christology, for its potential to equip us with an ecotheological way of thinking and an ecoethical way of acting. This would appear to be a more authentic application of Bonhoeffer’s material, and his own biographical tools, to the current climate crisis. Bonhoeffer’s ideas about humans living on planet Earth, as they have been introduced in this chapter, will be further examined in subsequent chapters in order to explore both their interrelatedness and how they might relate to anthropogenic climate change as an issue, as well as to an ecoethic that responds to it. These include notions of the ultimate, penultimate, and one single reality; sociality, responsible action, and freedom to serve, and, Christ as the embedded, physical, and suffering God. The approach will be to highlight key texts in relation to the chapter topic and examine them contextually in order to come to some conclusions about how they apply to the problems of climate change. In 2009, Rasmussen wrote: Too little has been made of these 1932 writings, Creation and Fall and “Thy Kingdom Come!” in conjunction with each other. Of special note, at least for our time, is that they display Bonhoeffer’s significance for ecological theology on grounds that avoid the pitfalls of natural theology and at the same time wholly engage all of creation and ourselves as creatures of earth. What is more, the foundational theme of the Christology lectures—Jesus Christ as the cosmic Christ, Jesus Christ as the center of nature, humanity, and history—also belongs to Bonhoeffer’s contributions to ecological theology.113

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This book goes some way to meeting the above challenge of examining Creation and Fall and ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ as they relate to an emergent ecotheology. It will draw together this foundation, with the manifestation of ethical action in the church-community, by considering portions of other key texts from Sanctorum Communio, Ethics and texts from Barcelona and Berlin. The attempt will be made to let Bonhoeffer speak directly to the search for an ecoethic.114 With Rasmussen, it will assert that Christ at the centre of all reality underlies Bonhoeffer’s contribution to ecotheology. It is to Bonhoeffer’s Christology that we now turn.

NOTES 1. Andrew Glikson, ‘Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep-Time Blueprints of the Anthropocene’, Anthropocene: Human Interactions with Earth Systems 3 (2013): 89–92; Johan Rockström et al., ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Nature 461, no. 7263 (24 Sept 2009): 472–75; Colin N. Waters et al., ‘The Anthropocene Is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene’, Science, no. 8 January (2016): 1–9. 2. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’. These terms respectively describe the water cycle, the frozen components, the entire living community, the solid Earth, and the surrounding gases. Also influential in climatology is the celestial sphere, including the Sun and Earth’s orbit. Mick Pope, ‘Rediscovering a Spirituality of Creation for the Anthropocene’, in The Nature of Things: Rediscovering the Spiritual in God’s Creation, ed. Graham Buxton and Norman C. Habel (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016). 3. Carl Folke et al., ‘Reconnecting to the Biosphere’, Ambio 40 (2011), 719–38. 4. Ibid.; Victor Galaz, Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: The Anthropocene Gap (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2014). 5. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’. 6. Galaz, Global Environmental Governance. 7. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), AR5 SR (Geneva: IPCC, 2014); University of California San Diego Mauna Loa Observatory Schripps CO2 Group recordings, (October 2019), https​:/​/sc​​ripps​​.ucsd​​.edu/​​progr​​ams​/k​​eelin​​​gcurv​​e/ 8. Aradhna K. Tripati, Christopher D. Roberts, and Robert A. Eagle, ‘Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years’, Science 326, no. 5958 (2009): 1394. 9. Thomas F. Stocker et al., (IPCC), AR5 WG1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); NASA, ‘NOAA ESRL Data’, (2017). ftp:/​/aftp​​.cmdl​​.noaa​​ .gov/​​produ​​cts​/t​​rends​​/co2/​​co2​_m​​​m​_mlo​​.txt 10. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment of ICSU (SCOPE), The Global Carbon Cycle. GCP Report No. 5. An Output of the Global Carbon Project (Paris: UNESCO-SCOPE, 2006).

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11. Stocker et al. (IPCC), AR5 WG1, v; Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’, 473; UNEP, Frontiers 2018/19: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2019). 12. Stocker et al. (IPCC), AR5 WG1, v. 13. IPCC, ‘Organization’. http:​/​/www​​.ipcc​​.ch​/o​​rgani​​zatio​​n​/org​​aniza​​​tion.​​shtml​ 14. Core Writing Team, R. K. Pachauri, and A. Reisinger, eds. (IPCC), AR4 SR (Geneva: IPCC, 2007); Bert Metz et al. (IPCC), AR4 WG3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Martin Parry et al. (IPCC), AR4 WG2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 338; Susan Solomon et al. (IPCC), AR4 WG1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 15. IPCC, AR5 SR (Geneva: IPCC, 2014), paras. 1; 1.1. 16. Climate system data, paleoclimate archival data, theoretical studies, and climate model simulations contribute to IPCC information. These data sources themselves are contributed to by a range of scientific disciplines. C. B. Field, et al. (IPCC), ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. AR5 WG2 (Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 3–4, 9–10; Stocker et al., (IPCC), AR5 WG1, 15–19; 743–865. 17. P. G. Dhar Chakrabarti, ed. People, Planet, and Progress Beyond 2015 (New Dehli: TERI, 2016), 18. 18. Stocker et al. (IPCC), AR5 WG1, 188. 19. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment of ICSU (SCOPE), Global Carbon Cycle. 20. Glikson, ‘Fire and Human Evolution’; Stocker et al., (IPCC), AR5 WG1; Elias Lazarus et al., ‘Biodiversity Loss and the Ecological Footprint of Trade’, Diversity 7, no. 2 (2015): 170–91 ; Gerardo Ceballos et al., ‘Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction’, Science Advances 1, no. 5 (2015): 1–5; Philip Cafaro and Richard Primack, ‘Editorial: Species Extinction Is a Great Wrong’, Biological Conversation 170 (2014), 1–2. 21. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’, 473. 22. Stocker et al., (IPCC), AR5 WG1, 198. 23. Mother Earth in Greek mythology and, as a term indicating a unified, homeostatic organism, popularised by James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See Bonhoeffer on Gaea in chapter 6. 24. Stocker et al., (IPCC), AR5 WG1, 4-29. 25. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’, 473; Scott A. Kulp and Benjamin H. Strauss, ‘New Elevation Data Triple Estimates of Global Vulnerability to SeaLevel Rise and Coastal Flooding’ Nature Communications 10, no. 1 (2019): 1–12. 26. Dhar Chakrabarti, People, Planet, and Progress Beyond 2015, 125–29. 27. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs the Climate (London: Allen Lane, 2014); Vaclav Smil, ‘Harvesting the Biosphere: The Human Impact’, Population and Development Review 37, no. 4 (2011): 613–36. 28. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment of ICSU (SCOPE), Global

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Carbon Cycle, 6; See also Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2010). 29. IPCC, AR4 SR, 51. 30. Jeffrey Sachs, ‘Strategies for Deep Decarbonisation of the Global Energy System’, in Public Lecture (Centre for Climate Economics and Policy; Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, 22 May 2014). 31. IPCC, AR4 SR, 53-54; Hamilton, Requiem for a Species. 32. H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology, ed. Kevin J. Sharpe, Theology and the Sciences (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), 6. 33. Naomi Oreskes, ‘The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change’, Science 306, no. 5702 (2004): 1686; ‘Science and Public Policy: What’s Proof Got to Do with It?’, Environmental Science & Policy 7, no. 5 (2004): 369–83. 34. ‘Scientific Consensus’; ‘Science and Public Policy’. 35. Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright, ‘Organized Climate Change Denial’, in The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 144–60; Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, ‘Denialism: What Is It and How Should Scientists Respond?’, European Journal of Public Health 19, no. 1 (2009): 2–4; Max H. Bazerman, ‘Climate Change as a Predictable Surprise’, Climatic Change 77, no. 1 (2006): 179–93. 36. Hamilton, Requiem for a Species. 37. IPCC contributions come from the disciplines of, for example, human geography, development, behavioural science, ethics, cultural, and organisational theory, particularly in relation to adaptation and mitigation. See IPCC, AR4 WG2. 38. Camilo Mora et al., ‘The Projected Timing of Climate Departure from Recent Variability’, Nature 502 (2013); Alistair Woodward et al., ‘Protecting Human Health in a Changing World: The Role of Social and Economic Development’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78, no. 9 (2000): 1149, 51; United Nations (UN), ‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ (Geneva 1992), Article 5. 39. Heather Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, ed. Mary C. Grey, Lisa Isherwood, and Janet Wootton, Introductions in Feminist Theology (London: T&T Clark Intl., 2005), 34; Martin S. Shanguhyia, Population, Tradition, and Environmental Control in Colonial Kenya (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015); Fikret Berkes, Johan Colding, and Carl Folke, “Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Adaptive Management”, Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1251–62; Clarence Alexander et al., ‘Linking Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge of Climate Change’, BioScience 61, no. 6 (2011): 477–84. 40. Lawrence E. Sullivan, ‘Preface’, in Christianity and Ecology, xi. On this see Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2017). 41. Sullivan, ‘Preface’, xii. 42. The World Council of Churches has long framed the problem of climate change within the larger context of ethics and justice, a view shared with other religious faiths. David G. Hallman, ‘Climate Change: Ethics, Justice, and Sustainable

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Community’, in Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans, ed. Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions Publications, 2000), 453–54; Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics. See evidence of this presented to the UN Climate Summit, New York, 23 September 2014. http://www​.un​.org​/climatechange​/summit/ 43. Larry L. Rasmussen, ‘Global Eco-Justice: The Church’s Mission in Urban Society’, in Christianity and Ecology, 519. 44. DBWE 15, 478 and elsewhere. See Steven Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology: Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler and Jürgen Moltmann, ed. Barbara A. Holdrege, American Academy of Religion Academy Series (Atlanda: Scholars, 1995), 12. 45. John de Gruchy, ‘Theology for Dark Times’, Christian Century (2010): 33. 46. Bouma-Prediger, Greening Theology, 12 (original italics). 47. Glikson, ‘Fire and Human Evolution’. 48. Jeremy Rifkin, Declaration of a Heretic (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985). Bonhoeffer’s lecture, ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ deals specifically with technology as a tool separating humanity and the Earth. This will be taken up further. 49. ‘The soil / Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod’, in ‘God’s Grandeur’, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poetry and Prose (London: J. M. Dent, 1998), 44. 50. Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God [Gott in Der Schöpfung: Ökologische Schöpfungslehre], trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 3. 51. Daniel J. Fleming, Terence J. Lovat, and Brian Douglas, ‘Theology in the Public Square of Australian Higher Education’, Journal of Adult Theological Education 12, no. 1 (2015): 30–42. 52. Cited in Bouma-Prediger, Greening Theology, 1. 53. DBWE 3. 54. Specifically ibid., but these are notions throughout Bonhoeffer’s corpus. 55. A wide range of positions exist, as the next section demonstrates. 56. Chapter 5 specifically addresses Bonhoeffer’s response to this. 57. For consideration of the neurobiological foundations of such behaviour, see Darcia Narvaez, ‘Triune Ethics: The Neurobiological Roots of Our Multiple Moralities’, New Ideas in Psychology 26, no. 1 (2008): 95–119. 58. Will Steffen et al., ‘The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration’, The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 81–98. 59. Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015). 60. Denis Edwards, Ecology at the Heart of Faith (New York: Orbis Books, 2007); Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, ‘Public Theology and Political Ethics’, International Journal of Public Theology 6, no. 3 (2012): 273–91; Clive Pearson, ‘Exploring a Public Theology for Here on Earth’, in Christianity and the Renewal of Nature: Creation, Climate Change and Human Responsibility, ed. Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper (London: SPCK, 2011).

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61. Cited in Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, 35; Santmire, Travail of Nature; ‘So That He Might Fill All Things: Comprehending the Cosmic Love of Christ’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 42, no. 3 (2003): 257–78; ‘In God’s Ecology: A Revisionist Theology of Nature’, Christian Century (2000), 1300–05. 62. Lynn White Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science 155 (10 March 1967), 1203–07; Ernst M. Conradie, ‘Christianity Bears a Huge Burden of Guilt: Discourse on Lynn White’s Thesis’, in Christianity and Earthkeeping, Resources in Religion and Theology, 16. Publications of the University of the Western Cape (Stellenbosch: SUNPReSS, 2011); Clive Pearson, ‘The Purpose and Practice of a Public Theology in a Time of Climate Change’, International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 3 (2010): 356–72. 63. Santmire, Travail of Nature. 64. Ibid., 13–29. 65. Ibid., 17–21. 66. Ibid., 31–53. 67. Ibid., 73. 68. Ibid., 53, 73, 97, 143, and throughout. 69. Paul H. Santmire, ‘Ecology, Justice, Liturgy: A Theological Autobiography’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 48, no. 3 (2009): 267–78; ‘So That He Might Fill All Things’. 70. Lawrence Troster, ‘What Is Eco-Theology?’, CrossCurrents (2013), 380–85. 71. John F. Haught, The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 91–92; also in ‘Christianity and Ecology’, in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York/ London: Routledge, 2004), 234. 72. Using a similar argument, Lynn White’s assertion that Christian belief has caused the crisis cannot be fully true since belief and behaviour are rarely so closely aligned. See Philip Goodchild, ‘Review: A Political Theology of Nature by Peter Scott’, Ars Disputandi 4 (2004). 73. Troster, ‘What Is Eco-Theology?’, 381. 74. Ibid., 382. 75. Peter Ellard, ‘Not Green Enough: A Response to the Green Pope and the Green Patriarch Based on the Dark Green Thought of Thomas Berry’, International Journal of Environmental Studies 69, no. 3 (2012): 524–39; Celia Deane-Drummond, ed., Pierre Teilhard De Chardin on People and Planet (London: Equinox, 2006); Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology, Ecology and Justice: An Orbis Series on Global Ecology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995); Neil Ormerod, Creation, Grace, and Redemption, Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007); Dieter T. Hessel, ‘Spirited Earth Ethics: Cosmological and Covenantal Roots’, Church and Society (1996); Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Cozoic Era—A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992); Kenneth Cragg, ‘The Singer and the Song: Christology in the Context of World Religions’, in Christology in Dialogue, ed. Robert F. Berkey and Sarah A. Edwards (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim, 1993), 185–200.

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76. Moltmann, God in Creation; Walter Brueggemann, ‘The Loss and Recovery of Creation in Old Testament Theology’, Theology Today 53, no. 2 (1996): 177–90; Rowan Williams, ‘Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment’, in Christianity and the Renewal of Nature: Creation, Climate Change and Human Responsibility, ed. Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper (London: SPCK, 2011), 1–13; Peter M. Scott, A Theology of Postnatural Right, vol. 13, Studies in Religion and the Environment (Berlin: LIT, 2019); Ernst M. Conradie, Christianity and Earthkeeping: In Search of an Inspiring Vision, vol. 16, Resources in Religion and Theology (Stellenbosch SA: SUN PReSS, 2011); Creation and Salvation Volume 2: A Companion on Recent Theological Movements (Zurich: LIT, 2012); Hilda P. Koster and Ernst M. Conradie, eds., T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change (London: T&T Clark, 2019); Pope Francis, Laudato Sí. 77. Santmire, ‘Ecology, Justice, Liturgy’; Peter Manley Scott, ‘Types of Ecotheology’, Ecotheology 4 (1998): 8–19. 78. Ibid., 12. 79. Edward P. Echlin, ‘James and Sensate Creatures of Palestine and of the Earth’, Irish Theological Quarterly 62, no. 4 (1996): 269–83; ‘Jesus and Hinterland’, Rural Theology 5, no. 1 (2007): 3–12. 80. Elaine Mary Wainwright, ‘Images, Words and Stories: Exploring Their Transformative Power in Reading Biblical Texts Ecologically’, Biblical Interpretation 20, no. 3 (2012): 280–304. 81. Anne Privavesi, From Apocalypse to Genesis: Ecology, Feminism, and Christianity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991). 82. Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, 87–88. 83. Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Ecofeminism: The Challenge to Theology’, in Christianity and Ecology, 97. 84. Elizabeth A. Johnson, ‘Losing and Finding Creation in the Christian Tradition’, in Christianity and Ecology. 85. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2014); Ruether, ‘Ecofeminism: The Challenge to Theology’. 86. Ibid.; Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature’, in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996), 97–112. 87. Johnson, Ask the Beasts; ‘Losing and Finding Creation’; She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992); Quest for the Living God (New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2011). 88. Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, 59. 89. Ibid., 57. 90. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, ed. Teresa Brennan, Feminism for Today (London: Routledge, 1993), 41. 91. Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, 56–57. 92. Ibid., 57. 93. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism and Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996); cited in Eaton, Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies, 32.

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94. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999). 95. Anne F. Elvey, An Ecological Feminist Reading of the Gospel of Luke: A Gestational Paradigm (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2005). 96. Sallie McFague, ‘The Scope of the Body: The Cosmic Christ’, in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996); ‘An Ecological Christology: Does Christianity Have It?’, in Christianity and Ecology; A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008). 97. Rosemary Radford Ruether, New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (New York: Seabury, 1975), 80. 98. Celia Deane-Drummond, A Handbook in Theology and Ecology (London: SCM, 1996), 33. 99. Ibid. 100. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 101. Plumwood, The Eye of the Crocodile (Canberra: Australian National University ePress, 2012), 78. http://press​.anu​.edu​.au​?p​=208511 102. Lovelock, Gaia; Vicky Balabanksi, ‘“Do Not Handle, Do Not Taste, Do Not Touch” (Col 2:21). Rediscovering Our Selves as Community, in Order to Re-Imagine Our Interconnectedness with Creation’, in The Nature of Things: Rediscovering the Spiritual in God’s Creation, ed. Graham Buxton and Norman C. Habel (Eugene: Pickwick/Wipf & Stock, 2016), 173–87. 103. Deane-Drummond, Handbook, 55. 104. Leah D. Schade, ‘Preaching and Ecofeminist Theology at the Crossroads: Homiletic Theory and Praxis in Dialogue with a Lutheran Ecofeminist Christology’, in Eco-Lutheranism: Lutheran Perspectives on Ecology, ed. Karla G. Bohmbach and Shauna K. Hannan (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2013), 100–11; Mary M. Solberg, Compelling Knowledge: A Feminist Proposal for an Epistemology of the Cross (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1997). 105. Deane-Drummond, Teilhard; Handbook; Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009); Eco-Theology (London: Darton, Logman & Todd, 2008); Celia Deane-Drummond and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, eds., Religion and Ecology in the Public Sphere (London: T&T Clark, 2011). 106. Deane-Drummond, Handbook, 55. 107. Anne Elvey, ‘Feminist Ecologies in Religious Interpretation: Australian Influences’, in Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene, ed. Lara Stevens, Peta Tait and Denise Varney (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 209–29; Christopher Sexton, A Theology of Land: Terra Australis from ChristianAboriginal Perspectives (Adelaide: ATF, 2019); Garry Worete Deverell, Gondwana Theology: A Trawloolway Man Reflects on Christian Faith (Reservoir, VIC: Morning Star, 2018). 108. Lisa Dahill & Jim B. Martin-Schramm (eds), Eco-reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril (Eugene: Cascade, 2016); Jennifer M. McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford: OUP, 2014). 109. Gebara, Longing for Running Water.

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110. Metaxas, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. See n26. 111. Peter Manley Scott, ‘Beyond Stewardship? Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Nature’, Journal of Beliefs and Values 18, no. 2 (1997): 193–202; ‘Types of Ecotheology’; A Political Theology of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); “Trinitarian Theology and the Politics of Nature”, Ecotheology 9, no. 1 (2004): 29–48; Anti-Human Theology: Nature, Technology and the Post-Natural (London: SCM, 2010); Burkholder, ‘Christological Foundations’; Jordan J. Ballor, ‘Christ in Creation: Bonhoeffer’s Orders of Preservation and Natural Theology’, The Journal of Religion 86, no. 1 (2006): 1–22; Dahill & Martin-Schramm (eds), Eco-reformation; Michael S. Mawson, ‘Understandings of Nature and Grace in John Milbank and Thomas Aquinas’, Scottish Journal of Theology 62, no. 3 (2009): 347–61; ‘Theology and Social Theory—Reevaluating Bonhoeffer’s Approach’, Theology Today 71, no. 1 (2014): 69–80; A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 2007); Steven C. van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology and Fundamental Debates in Environmental Ethics (Eugene: Pickwick 2017); and Matthew W. Puffer, ‘Human Dignity and Global Ethics: Is the Analogia Relationis Still of Any Use?’, XII International Bonhoeffer Congress. Basel, Switzerland, 2016. 112. Clifford J. Green, ‘Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo: Bonhoeffer’s Foundations for a New Christian Paradigm’, in Bonhoeffer, Religion and Politics. Fourth International Bonhoeffer Colloquium, ed. Christiane Tietz and Jens Zimmerman, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 11–36. 113. DBWE 12, 41. 114. The original findings of this research were presented as: Dianne Rayson, ‘Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Anthropogenic Climate Change: In Search of an Ecoethic’ (Research Doctorate, University of Newcastle, 2017), http://hdl​.handle​.net​ /1959​.13​/1349861

Chapter 3

Bonhoeffer’s Christology

The centrality of Christology in Bonhoeffer’s theology is uncontested. As Rasmussen has said, it is ‘the still centre of all his thought’.1 This chapter describes the key features of Bonhoeffer’s formulation of Christology to demonstrate how it underpins his overall theological approach and, furthermore, his ethics. This serves as foundational work for turning attention more specifically to ecotheological and ecoethical applications in subsequent chapters. As described in this chapter, Bonhoeffer pays close and particular attention to Christology in certain writings, including most obviously in the ‘Lectures on Christology’ of 1932 (hereafter, ‘Christology Lectures’). However, the centrality of Christ or, as Bonhoeffer puts it, the person of Christ—the ‘who’ and not the ‘what’—constitutes a common foundation throughout his works from Sanctorum Communio to the Letters and Papers from Prison. The development in Bonhoeffer’s thinking in relation to Christology can be seen to rest less in his attempt to comprehend God in Christ theologically, than in his grappling with an ethical response to the notion of Christ as ‘lord of the world’.2 This chapter considers Bonhoeffer’s Christology as it relates to certain themes that are important to the overall proposition concerning the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s Christology to ecotheological and ecoethical discourse. These are, broadly, how Bonhoeffer’s Christology informs thinking about God, people, and creation and the relationships between them. Whilst Bonhoeffer himself began his theological project with an anthropological probe in Sanctorum Communio, for the purposes of this chapter, we start instead with the features of Christology that articulate Bonhoeffer’s

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understanding of God, followed by humanity and, finally, as they relate to the entirety of creation. The overwhelming argument derived from Bonhoeffer’s Christology is that ‘matter matters’ and that Christ’s becoming one with humanity is not only an act of incarnation but also one that establishes a process of reconciliation between humanity and God, and indeed all of creation with God. This has profound ramifications for the relationships between humans and with others: God, humans, and non-human creation. These ramifications challenge the assumptions that have been made about the relationships of humans with the world and the role that humanity plays on Earth. The complexity of this argument allows for Bonhoeffer to continue to seek its fuller meaning in his ongoing search for what it really means for Christ to be Lord of the world, a search that continued until the end of his imprisonment.3 Bonhoeffer’s type of Christocentrism, highlighting the concrete presence of God’s Word, influences how he considers epistemology.4 Understanding reality, ontology, and ethics all rest on Christology as far as Bonhoeffer is concerned. A key tenet of Bonhoeffer’s Christology is the vulnerability of the Suffering God. In conversation with humanity’s condition framed by Bonhoeffer in terms such as sociality and responsibility, it is important to introduce because it offers several pointers to the theological task of addressing the challenges represented in ecology as well as the tools for required interfaith relations. We see in Bonhoeffer’s theology an interrelatedness of concepts within the starting point of his Christology and centred within the frame of a single, unified reality.5 Bonhoeffer’s approach, of which ‘one reality’ thinking is just a part, has been considered by Green to represent a total paradigm shift of the order of Augustine, Aquinas, or Luther. Green describes this paradigm as Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo,6 which, for the purpose of this project, captures the interrelatedness of Christ and creation, both in and for the world, and the specific place of humanity as a unique part of creation but only insofar as we recognise Christ in and through creation and in the face of the other. Christus pro Mundo provides the shape to the interrelated ideas of kenosis, sociality, and responsibility most fully articulated by Bonhoeffer in Ethics7 but which pervade practically all his works and perhaps intensify as he moves between academia and the practical application of theology to pastoral, ecumenical, and social justice domains. Another way of describing this is in Bonhoeffer’s own term of ‘worldly Christianity’, a phrase revisited throughout this project, especially as the idea of ‘Earthly Christianity’ is developed.8 The book returns to Christus in Mundo in the final chapter.

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THE CHRISTOLOGY LECTURES The ‘Christology Lectures’ are comprised of Bonhoeffer’s teachings at Berlin University during the Summer Semester, May to July 1933, and are extant mostly in the form of reconstituted student notes. They are significant among the Bonhoeffer corpus because they represent the most articulate treatment of his Christology in discrete form as well as establishing the Christology that goes on to impact on the entirety of his work. As examples of how his Christology underpins other works, one might consider Christ as the centre of the church-community and sacrament in Discipleship9 and Life Together10 and Christ as the Word of God speaking from the centre of all creation in Creation and Fall.11 There is variation in the way Bonhoeffer emphasises his Christology and puts it to work in dialogue with the specific project at hand, but none of his works is exempt from the foundational tenet of Christocentrism. Whilst the case might be made that a central theme of Bonhoeffer’s theology is ecclesiology, this in turn is the outworking of Christ’s presence in concrete form, that is, the body of Christ as the church-community. The fundamental concepts in the ‘Christology Lectures’ position Bonhoeffer as refuting the appeal being made by Nazism and German Christians [Deutsche Christen] from that time forward across a range of issues and theological manoeuvring. Ultimately, they underpin his Christian ethical response, best formulated in Ethics.12 Furthermore, a case can be made for recognising that in Bonhoeffer’s own life testimony, the centrality of Christ to theology underpins Bonhoeffer’s roles and functions as pastor of churches, leader of the Finkenwalde seminary, and indeed conspirator and resistor. For Bonhoeffer, the Christian response to God’s revelation of God’s self in Christ emerges in concrete, ethical action. The reconstructed notes of the ‘Christology Lectures’ have Bonhoeffer commencing his lectures with the following: Christology, as the doctrine about Christ, is a rather peculiar area of scholarship, [to the extent that] Christ is the very Word of God. Christology is doctrine, speaking, the word about the Word of God. Christ is the Logos of God. Christology is logology. . . . From the outside, Christology becomes the center of knowledge. The Logos we are talking about here is a person. This human person is the transcendent.13

Bonhoeffer’s premise is that the academic investigation referred to as Christology constitutes the centre of all other ‘-ologies’; that is, all other knowledge is humanly derived and therefore limited. Therefore, the central

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task for the gaining of knowledge is to know that Christ is. By extension, knowing Christ became Bonhoeffer’s endeavour. The ‘Christology Lectures’ proceed systematically. After establishing the subject matter, Bonhoeffer proceeds, in part 1 of the lectures, to address the ‘Present Christ—the Pro-me’, to outline characteristics of the person and work of Christ and then to consider specifically the form of Christ as Word, sacrament, and church-community. This is followed by the important section on the place of Christ as the centre of our existence, history, and nature. Part 2, entitled ‘The Historical Christ’, emphasises the significance of Christ’s entry into historical reality, deals with critical/negative Christology, and is completed by a section on positive Christology. It is this final section that focuses on Christ’s humiliation, which becomes especially important in Bonhoeffer’s later construct of the Suffering God. Whilst examination of the ‘Christology Lectures’ is vital to grasping Bonhoeffer’s Christology, his Christology is so embedded across the corpus that reference must be made to other texts. The following discussion is therefore not limited to the lectures. Who is Christ? Revelation and Knowing Christ represents God’s own revelation of God’s self into history. Bonhoeffer considers that there is no way to speak about God other than via God’s own self-revelation. All attempts to discover or reveal God represent a faulty premise that God is an idea to be explored when God is beyond an idea and instead is truly a person. That person has revealed God’s self through his Word in the human form of Jesus and, in doing so, has entered history in a profound and permanent way. For this reason, all theological or indeed philosophical speculation necessarily generalises and thus limits its knowing about God. Bonhoeffer’s solution was to ask a different question, not What is God, but Who is Christ? This fundamental question of how it is that we can know God at all, or know anything about God, constitutes an important aspect of Bonhoeffer’s original theological contribution. In accepting that epistemology is driven by the relationship between the knower and the known or, more formally, by the subject-object relation, Bonhoeffer instead introduced a new paradigm that placed sociality firmly at the core of the relationship. This allowed for humans to be persons before God and each other and placed the power of knowing, not with the self at the centre, but rather with God in Christ at the centre.14 This becomes a key feature of what is meant by Bonhoeffer’s Christian concept of ‘person’. As Bonhoeffer would later explore in his Ethics, Christ at the centre of reality also determines that there is one, unified reality which in turn has implications for the legitimacy and value of the material, created world. That he practically defines his Christology as ‘Christ

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reality’15 demonstrates its significance to his theological framework and underpins both Bonhoeffer’s work in ontology and the development of his ethics. It is important both in combatting the prevailing two realms thinking but more directly in establishing the entire paradigm in which Christianity and, more especially, Christians themselves are to ethically engage. From a Bonhoefferian viewpoint, therefore, any ecoethic is best grounded in his Christology. The Closed Circle of Self In Act and Being, his Habilitationsschrift, Bonhoeffer addresses what he describes as the ‘problem of consciousness’. In outlining his ‘theological epistemology’, Bonhoeffer is responding to what he sees as the outstanding questions about ‘what kind of knowledge human reason yields in relation to other subjects and in relation to God’.16 Whilst allowing for the usefulness of transcendentalism or ontological thinking to theology, Bonhoeffer considers that: these concepts of knowledge [founder] on the attendant understanding of the self—which proves to be that of the autonomous I understanding itself only in terms of itself and subject only to itself.17

Bonhoeffer sets out to ‘unify the concern(s) of true transcendentalism and . . . true ontology’.18 The result is what Kevin Lenehan describes as ‘a way of knowing (act) which flows from and is congruent with the type of being that is the revelation of God in history’.19 Briefly, Bonhoeffer is positioning himself, with Kant, over against the prevailing neo-Kantian transcendental idealism of the nineteenth century by re-establishing that human reason is necessarily limited, an assertion that Bonhoeffer uses positively in creating his new ‘ecclesiological form of thinking’.20 Bonhoeffer resolves this in a way that sets him apart from the contemporary philosophies. He makes use of Luther’s metaphor of the ‘heart turned in on itself’ or the ‘enclosed I’.21 Cor curvum in se connotes the sinfulness of the human making one inviolable to both the revelation of God and the encounter with one’s neighbour. This same notion, alternatively described by Bonhoeffer as ‘the circle of the ego’, recognises the barrier which is confronted as the human attempts to encounter the other.22 The self looks in on itself rather than outward. The ‘I’ becomes ‘lord of the world’.23 This in turn impedes access to the self by the other, both God, or neighbour. It is sin which causes the self to introspect, and when it does, it is sin which it finds at the heart. Sin, therefore, divides one from oneself and from one’s neighbour: other humans, fellow species, or non-living components of the lithosphere, an idea further explored below.

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The idea of the closed circle of self is returned to in chapter 7 as it pertains to ethical responsibility. Where transcendental philosophies had emphasised the closedness of this ‘circle of cognition’, and theology had emphasised the asceity of the Other, Bonhoeffer brings act and being together in an integrated way.24 That ‘way’ is the revelation of God which necessarily denies the possibility of: self understanding of the I apart from the reference to revelation (Christian transcendentalism). The concept of revelation must, therefore, yield an epistemology of its own.25

The importance of the mystery of revelation as a counter to the intelligibility of reason helps set Bonhoeffer apart from both his predecessors and his contemporary, Barth. For Bonhoeffer, theology occupies the space ‘in between’ act and being and, as such, uniquely mediates epistemology.26 As God forms and transcends the boundary of the self, the human is able to recapture the unity between self and others precisely because the broken state, the disunity, is restored through Christ. In describing the act of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Creation and Fall (Gen. 3:7), Bonhoeffer contrasts the limit which was grace with the dividedness it now represents in the fallen state: The limit is no longer grace that holds the human being in the unity of creaturely, free love; instead the limit is now the mark of dividedness. Man and woman are divided from each other.27

Once Christ enters history in the defining act of self-revelation, the potentiality arises for humans to be reconciled to each other and, once again, be unified thereafter in the ‘body of Christ’. Furthermore, and crucial to Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology, revelation occurs not only to the individual, opening the ‘closed circle’ to the transcendent, but necessarily in the concrete fact of the church. This ensures that adequate interpretation occurs: Revelation has to be thought about within the concreteness of the conception of the church, that is to say, in terms of a sociological category in which the interpretation of act and being meet and are drawn together in one.28

God’s entry into the world through Christ represents an alternative epistemology to the autonomy of human knowing. Instead of human enquiry attempting to resolve the ‘how’ of immanence, Bonhoeffer asserts that the counter-logos, God’s Logos, ‘presents its demand in a wholly new form, so that it is no longer an idea or a word that is turned against the autonomy of the human

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logos . . . but rather . . . appears, somewhere and at some time in history, as a human being, and as a human being sets itself up as judge over the human logos and says, “I am the truth”’.29 As such, according to Bonhoeffer, all that can ‘remain is the question: Who are you?’30 By way of contrast, continuing to ask the ‘how’ question keeps us under constraint to human authority and lacking confidence in our own understanding. It follows that the question of ‘who’ becomes an engagement with the other, both God and neighbour. Ultimately, humans are unable to really ask the ‘who’ question unless the answer has already been revealed. Otherwise, the question essentially remains one of ‘how’, a question that limits and constricts human knowing of Christ. Thinking occurs once the self is already inhabited by Christ through faith. The awareness of the transcendent fills the subject and the self, hitherto turned in on itself but now, instead, inhabited by Christ.31 Therefore, says Bonhoeffer, ‘the question of who can only be asked on condition that the answer has already been given’.32 The answer is the living human Jesus, who represents not only God becoming a human but, indeed, God taking on the entirety of humanity. The Who Question and Faith Bonhoeffer contends that we can only know God through God’s self-revelation. Whilst we might examine the works of God and draw conclusions, this is inadequate and necessarily limiting. He explores this idea by extrapolating Luther’s comparison of faith and works in the human example. In this case, one can look at another’s works and make assumptions about that person but unless they choose to reveal themselves, then it is erroneous to think we can know that person by their works alone. Works are ambiguous. Another person can only be known if they choose to reveal themselves and this selfrevelation occurs by the confession of sins in the context of church. One reveals oneself as a sinner and receives forgiveness from the other.33 As this case applies to God, it follows that we can only understand the works of God seen in the life works of Jesus if we know who has performed them. Only looking at the life and death of Jesus is problematic. It leads us away from knowing God. For if Jesus’ life is simply one of good works to be emulated, then one might feel uplifted, but nonetheless remain unforgiven— leading to ‘utter despair’.34 Hence, on two counts this is problematic: first, the works themselves are ambiguous. Different readers will understand Jesus’ actions in different ways. The final act of the crucifixion is open to various interpretations and like all of Jesus’ works are meaningless unless they are understood to be ‘for me’.35 Second, direct conclusions about God based on an incognito entry into history are false generalisations. It is not possible to draw ‘direct conclusions about God on the basis of history’.36 For Bonhoeffer,

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whilst the actions of Jesus are indeed operative both as a model to emulate, and as a window to perceive the nature of God, this is not the entirety of their purpose. The only option left for knowing God is therefore one related to God’s self-revelation. For Bonhoeffer, this occurs through Christ: ‘only through Christ’s own revelation do I have opened to me his person and his works’.37 That is, the self-revelatory intent of God in Christ is that we might know God. Bonhoeffer has established the pre-eminence of the Christological ‘who’ question over the soteriological one. More pressing for Bonhoeffer, however, is the articulation of Christ as the one who is present. The importance of Bonhoeffer establishing this alternative epistemology is that it both reinforces his basic assumption in his first thesis and looks forward to the remainder of his corpus. He had addressed, in Sanctorum Communio, the limitations of philosophical thinking that either assumed the pre-eminence of the knowing self or the self as an isolated knower. Without Christ as the centre, there can be no apprehension of the concept of person, no unified reality upon which rests both his eschatology and his challenges to the ‘orders of creation’, and no validation of things worldly or natural.38 Having established an epistemology that allows for the influence of the transcendent on the knowing subject, or, as will be articulated later, placing Christ at the centre of the person, Bonhoeffer turns to the role that faith plays in the transaction of God’s self-revelation. As one asks the ‘who’ question, one is providing both space and legitimacy for faith to be an element of the knowing that ensues. For Bonhoeffer, unless one approaches the theological question allowing for the possibility of faith, one necessarily limits the answers for, indeed, ‘the basis of all theology is the fact of faith’.39 Furthermore, theological questions, to the extent that they are asked as a scholarly exercise, are therefore logically asked within the context of the faith community, the church.40 There is an element of knowing that requires participation in Christ, and in the Christ-community which is the church.41 Bonhoeffer was pre-empting the emergent field of embodied cognition by linking knowing with participation, faith with acting. He was also pre-empting his own comment that he wrongly thought he could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, ‘or something like’ that.42 The relationship between faith and works rests not in the pursuit of holiness but in the person of Christ. Student notes from Finkenwalde record: With regard to myself, my own faith is nothing. I have faith—an empty assertion. Do the work of faith. You serve God not through talk but through obedience.43

As he developed these ideas later in Discipleship, Bonhoeffer can be seen to be engaging with the tensions: between faith and works; and between being

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changed into the image of Christ (the being-in-Christ) vis participating in the ongoing imitation of Christ. All are simultaneously valid if imitatio Christi is understood in terms of an ongoing, participatory process, rather than in attempting to emulate Christ’s unique works which are God’s.44 Instead, says Bonhoeffer: I am affected by these works as one who could in no way perform them myself. . . . Through these works, through this Jesus Christ, I have found the God of mercy. . . . Thus it depends on the person of Christ, whether his works perish in the old world of death or last eternally in a new world of life.45

Imitating Christ is more a matter of appropriating God’s work in Christ in terms of God’s mercy. Frick has further noted that Bonhoeffer was deeply attracted to Thomas à Kempis, opening up the possibility that the latter’s classic text, The Imitation of Christ, had been influential in some way on his writings in Discipleship and Life Together. At the end, Bonhoeffer read a Latin version of Imitatio Christi in Tegel prison.46 He was also influenced by Kierkegaard’s extensive use of Efterfølgelsen (following after) which is translated in English as ‘imitation’. Kierkegaard is translated as, ‘Why must “imitation” be emphasised?’ Bonhoeffer would have understood it not literally as ‘imitation’ but to mean ‘following after’.47 Whispers of both à Kempis and Kierkegaard, then, can be heard in Bonhoeffer’s ‘Outline for a Book’, wherein the notion of the church existing for others appears in what was to be the conclusion: It will have to see that it does not underestimate the significance of the human ‘example’ (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s writings!); the church’s word gains weight and power not through concepts but by example. (I will write in more detail later about ‘example’ in the NT—we have almost entirely lost track of this thought).48

As Bonhoeffer wrote to Erwin Sutz, ‘Following Christ—what that really is, I’d like to know—it is not exhausted by our concept of faith.’49 So imitating Christ is to give effect to faith rather than pre-empting it and it is the example of the church that becomes a powerful witness, not a concept or ideal. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of imitating Christ flows out of his understanding of grace and, in particular, the costliness of grace through Christ. Because Christ exists, Christ is to be followed, not as an ideal or doctrine, but as a person. So those who believe obey, and only those who obey believe.50 For Bonhoeffer, the new life in Christ is both a new state of being [Zustand] and concrete steps of action [Wandeln]51; it is the complementarity of ‘Paul and James’.52 Outside of the potential for faith, it becomes impossible for the enquirer to ‘leave room for the reality of God, which can never be conceived by

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theological thinking’.53 Bonhoeffer’s rich and comprehensive education across philosophy and theology had led him already, as a nineteen-year-old student, to commence his first thesis somewhat outside the assumptions and expectations of early twentieth-century Lutheran Reformation thinking.54 Bonhoeffer found that the methodologies of both theology and philosophy could show themselves to be inadequate to the apprehension of God. Instead, Bonhoeffer’s starting point is that God is central to reality and that, outside of God, there is no reality. Whether one recognises this, through one’s questioning, becomes a matter of faith, but it is a faith grounded in God’s revelation, through Christ, in history. The place of Christ as the centre of our existence, history and nature is therefore a central consideration in Bonhoeffer’s Christology. THE PLACE OF CHRIST ‘The starting point for Christology has to be the God-human’, states Bonhoeffer, in the section of the ‘Christology Lectures’ subtitled ‘Pro-me’.55 In it, he goes on to describe the forms of Christ’s presence in Word, Sacrament, and church-community. These forms of Christ’s presence, discussed below, are necessarily predicated on the ontological structure of the God-human who is ‘for me’, that is, Christ’s being as ‘essentially relatedness to me’.56 It is difficult to explain Christ’s presence in Word, sacrament, and community, without first establishing that Christ’s presence requires an answer to the ‘who’. Who is present? Bonhoeffer’s answer is the God-human Jesus. Bonhoeffer has thus established that the question of Christ is the ‘who’ question and has articulated that the truth of the human-God is known by faith. Bonhoeffer then treats Christology in two sections: the form of Christ and the place of Christ.57 Bonhoeffer established that all knowing about God is reliant on the deobjectification of God and hence God’s self-revelation. This allows one then to understand God’s self-revelation through Christ and the fundamental underpinning of reality, both universally and in the example of the person. For Bonhoeffer, the person, history, and nature all have Christ no longer on the periphery but at their centre. This is how it is that reality is unified in Christ. Later, he uses this same construct to ponder what Christianity itself might look like when God is considered ‘in the centre of the village’ rather than the God of the gaps, at the unexplainable periphery or at the limits of knowledge.58 When God is understood to be simply a God of the gaps, God becomes some kind of deus ex machina, appearing magically in order to redeem the sinner or save the day.59 Instead, Bonhoeffer posits, God, in Christ, becomes the centre, first by delineating the boundary between

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‘me and myself’ and then by transcending that very boundary. In doing so, Christ enables the community of persons to become the body of Christ, the church-community wherein each actor is newly enabled to look outside their former ‘circle of self’ to the face of Christ in the other. In this way, Christ remains present in his body, the church-community, the Sanctorum Communio.60 Furthermore, Bonhoeffer examines the potential for the church when it operates from the position of being central in society, rather than being peripheral. He articulates these questions in the 1932 ‘Nature of the Church’ lectures and does not appear to abandon consideration of them. They define his teaching at Finkenwalde and influence his own ethical stance in relation to German Nazism. The ethical questions for the church-community will be further explored in chapter 6 where the church-community’s ethical response to climate change is considered. The significance of Christ existing as church-community is emphasised by Bonhoeffer’s extensive writings on this topic, from Sanctorum Communio that establishes his thesis, through Life Together and Discipleship which record the practical implications of the common life of Christians. Writing of his time in Finkenwalde Seminary under the leadership of Bonhoeffer, Paul Busing notes the integration of Bonhoeffer’s academic teaching of Christ as Lord coupled with the demonstration of living together as disciples of Christ in community.61 Faith and works were in coalition, a demonstration of costly grace. Elsewhere, Bonhoeffer reverses the formula of the ‘Christology Lectures’ and examines the form of the church-community, using the categories of Christ. In his lecture course on ‘The Nature of the Church’ from the Summer Semester of 1932 (Berlin), he examines ‘church’ and ‘Christ’ from the perspective of the present Christ and Christ’s vicarious representative action.62 That is to say, the presence of Christ in the church is so fundamental to Bonhoeffer’s thinking that it can be restated repeatedly and from alternative starting points (‘Christology’ versus ‘nature of the church’), from the theoretical, sociological construction (Sanctorum Communio) to the practical, lived implications (Discipleship and Life Together) and the explicit ethical implications (Ethics). Furthermore, in Bonhoeffer’s sermons and devotions throughout his career, his Christological focus and its meaning for the church-community underpins his hortative works and ecumenical searching. Finally, his theological letters from prison maintain the Christological quest and what it might mean for a post-war world to participate more fully in Christ in a non-religious but more ‘adult’ way and how Christ might ‘become Lord of the religionless as well’.63 If Christ is the centre of existence, then Christ is also the centre of history, transcending the boundary ‘between promise and fulfilment’ and filling

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reality with Christ’s immanence.64 Christ’s becoming human at a fixed place and time is the form of the Word becoming flesh: Then the miracle of all miracles takes place. The Son of God becomes a human being. The Word became flesh. The One who had dwelled from all eternity in the Father’s glory, the One who was in the form of God, who in the beginning had been the mediator of creation so that the created world can only be known through him and in him, the One who was very God—this One takes on humanity and comes to Earth.65

So Christ’s form as Word becomes enfleshed and takes on the entirety of humanity. Finally, and importantly for the argument here, if Christ is the centre of existence and history, then Christ is also the centre of nature. Christ is the mediator [Mittler] between nature and Creator God and is present in the form of the Eucharist not only symbolically but also actually. Christ validates the natural not only by representation but also by inhabiting the grape and the grain, by allowing humanity to participate in the embodiment of Christ through consuming the elements of the Eucharist. The implications for our understanding of creation through the initiation of the Eucharist is to be discussed below. If Christ is both boundary and centre of existence, history, and nature, then Christ is truly centre of one unified reality, ontologically, spatially, and temporally. It is worth quoting this passage in full, given its significance to Bonhoeffer’s entire theology and hence to the argument in this book: There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world. The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. The world has no reality of its own independent of God’s revelation in Christ.66

The unified reality premise is so important to all that would develop thereafter in Bonhoeffer’s theology precisely because it permits the ethic that places the Christian entirely within, and not separate from, the world. It justifies the material and all that that implies, namely, joy, celebration, delight, and it serves to completely disarm pietism and adventism. Rather, Bonhoeffer would go on to articulate a way of Christian living that so engages with the world and its concerns that it led him to a personal conviction for responsible action that required of him his life. He spoke of this engagement as a rejection of a spiritual and secular dualism, stating: It is a denial of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ to wish to be ‘Christian’ without being ‘worldly,’ or [to] wish to be worldly without seeing and recognizing

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the world in Christ. Hence there are not two realms, but only the one realm of the Christ—reality [Christuswirklichkeit], in which the reality of God and the reality of the world are united. Because this is so, the theme of two realms, which has dominated the history of the church again and again, is foreign to the New Testament. The New Testament is concerned only with the realization [Wirklichwerden] of the Christ–reality in the contemporary world that it already embraces, owns, and inhabits. There are not two competing realms standing side by side and battling over the borderline, as if this question of boundaries was always the decisive one. Rather, the whole reality of the world has already been drawn into and is held together in Christ. History moves only from this center and toward this center.67

Perceived alienations are merely symptomatic of the essential alienation of humanity from God—the ‘deepest of all alienations’.68 The two realms of a separated world are paired into artificial dualisms, namely, the sacred and profane, rational and revelational, good and evil: For human beings in disunion from God, everything splits apart—is and ought, life and law, knowing and doing, idea and reality, reason and instinct, duty and inclination, intention and benefit, necessity and freedom, the hard-won and the ingenious, the universal and the concrete, the individual and the collective; and even truth, justice, beauty, and love conflict with one another just as do desire and aversion, happiness and sorrow.69

Conflict arises because people try and negotiate these artificial realms. Either they attempt to live in the world as if God is only in heaven and has no interest in or relevance to the worldly, or they attempt to live merely spiritual lives with no reference to the worldly. Both of these positions have been problematic for humans’ relationship with Earth and the ramifications for their impact on the planet. Neither position is satisfying nor sustainable. Once reality is recognised as unified, however, humans are no longer persons of ‘eternal conflict’ but are completely reconciled with God through Christ.70 We are no longer operating in a state of eternal dividedness but find a new steady state wherein Christ is the centre of all reality, including the self. For Bonhoeffer, Christ is present here and now (in Word, sacrament, and church-community) and at the centre of existence, history, and nature; whilst, at the same time, we are present with the ascended Christ in heaven.71 The meaning of this is quite the opposite of a futurist escape from any contemporary trials that would constitute an example of deus ex machina. Bonhoeffer endorses a life fully engaged in this world, but with a view of it from heaven or, more correctly, a perception of reality whose centre is Christ. Furthermore, and this became increasingly important to

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Bonhoeffer, the view from heaven enables both a view of reality fully engaged in the here and now and one which is ‘from below’.72 By this, Bonhoeffer was describing empathetic connection and communicative action with others who, for whatever reason, were less able to successfully negotiate the vagaries of life. The ‘privileged’ position of the view from Christ at the centre means being able to be alongside others regardless of characteristics of class, gender, or race.73 The implications for this in terms of climate justice and the ‘view’ from the climate refugees will be explored in chapter 7 on ecoethics. Having established the fundamental ‘who’ question and an epistemology appropriate to its answer, that is, God’s own revelation, and acknowledging the unified reality that is in Christ, it is possible to consider more specifically the elements of Bonhoeffer’s Christology. These elements are One Lord: Christ Incarnate, Christ Crucified, and The Risen Christ. One Lord Bonhoeffer usually refers to Christ, the ‘one Lord’, as the incarnate, crucified, and risen one.74 These three aspects, whilst significant individually, are important collectively to Bonhoeffer’s comprehensive understanding of Christ and his efficacy. He refers to ‘the entire form’75 of Christ and the implications for followers of Christ in tripartite form.76 The church-community recognises God’s ‘incarnate love’ insofar as it acknowledges the ‘crucified and risen Christ’.77 The three dimensions are only understood in relation to each other. Before returning to the three ‘forms’ of Christ (Word, sacrament, and church-community), articulated in the ‘Christology Lectures’, we turn to Bonhoeffer’s overarching conception of Jesus Christ as incarnate, crucified, and risen, to pre-empt the discussion of implications for humanity and creation. A key text here is from Ethics, in the manuscript, ‘Ultimate and Penultimate Things’, which will also be important to the discussion of eschatology in the following chapter. For now, however, this text summarises Bonhoeffer’s Christology: In Jesus Christ we believe in the God who became human, was crucified, and is risen. In the becoming human we recognize God’s love toward God’s creation, in the crucifixion God’s judgment on all flesh, and in the resurrection God’s purpose for a new world. Nothing could be more perverse than to tear these three apart, because the whole is contained in each of them.78

Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen will now be addressed separately, a fraught procedure in light of their intrinsic interconnectedness.79

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Christ Incarnate The importance of Christ’s incarnation to Bonhoeffer’s theology cannot be over-emphasised. The fleshly, human form of Christ validates the material. That God would become flesh honours the fleshly form of all persons and restores that which was lost of imago Dei: ‘In Christ’s incarnation, all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God.’80 This theological materialism asserts that creation is good, returning our thinking to an idea presented in the first story of creation found in Genesis 1. The incarnation itself has further theological meaning for humans and is crucial to how we then understand the rest of creation and our relationship to it. The notion of this body of Christ, that is, the person of Jesus, positions Christ temporally and spatially at a fixed point in history, providing evidence for Christ as mediating promise and fulfilment, being the pivot between the Old Testament and the New Testament.81 Bonhoeffer’s use of Mittler, mediator, applies here as it does in a range of other contexts. Christ mediates the revelation of God to God’s people of the Old Testament, with God’s revelation to God’s people from the time of Jesus onwards. Bonhoeffer’s own appreciation of the Old Testament appears to have developed over time, with key comments from the prison letters indicating how, theologically, his position was favouring a turn toward the God of the Old Testament and the life of the faithful presented in those texts. In particular, the notion of universal blessing attributed to this worldly life, with little regard for the ‘saving one’s soul’ or the life hereafter, resonated with Bonhoeffer’s incarnational theology.82 The value of God’s righteousness and God’s kingdom on Earth were, for Bonhoeffer, the key themes of the Old Testament that extended into the New Testament. According to him, Romans 3 ‘is the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous’ rather than an ‘individualistic doctrine of salvation’.83 Bonhoeffer is able to make these claims in light of the cruciform theology he had developed over time and the Christian ethic he cultivated accordingly. The result is that Christ is present in time and space, in history, not as some ongoing power or influence, according to Bonhoeffer, which would amount to being understood only by his ambiguous works or as the ‘ideal human’ to which to aspire.84 Rather, Christ is present as person. The soteriological significance of Christ is, for Bonhoeffer, that Christ became human and, indeed, became humanity. In doing so, Christ replaces the existing status quo represented by Adam, that of brokenness and division from God. As Green notes, in contrast to Anselm’s emphasis of Christ’s actions on the cross being the voluntary sacrifice ‘mak[ing] satisfaction for all the sins of humanity’.85 Bonhoeffer asserts that Christ creates a new humanity through the prior decision and act of God. In doing so, Christ is the new Adam. Christ becoming humanity ushers in the new reality that includes the

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new state of humanity, and of course the new kingdom with important ramifications for this book. Green highlights that this emphasis on the new humanity, the literal body of Christ, is presented by Bonhoeffer first in Sanctorum Communio and it persists through Ethics and into the prison writings.86 God’s act to become human through Christ demonstrates par excellence God’s position of being pro me that emerges from God’s freedom to act. God’s freedom makes reconciliation not merely a potentiality, but an ‘ontological reality’.87 This reality enables humans to live in a ‘truly human’ way,88 embedded in this one reality in the same way that God chose to live as Jesus and, furthermore, to live a life in freedom. Such freedom is centred on being free for God and for others. Bonhoeffer’s ethic of responsible action on behalf of the other, Stellvertretung,89 would not be logically possible without the humanity of Christ underpinning it. Furthermore, as will be demonstrated in the final chapter, God’s position of pro me extended to include all of creation, pro Mundo, would be consistent with both God’s freedom to act on behalf of the world loved by God and Christ’s immanence. Christ Crucified The form of Christ on Earth adopts the form of death, suffering, violence, humiliation, and the unjust death of the falsely accused. The form of God enfleshed is the human Jesus who, in taking on bodily form, takes on sin, suffering, and death. The rejection and abandonment of Christ demonstrates the image of God in human form or, as Bonhoeffer says, ‘this is the human being who is the new image of God!’90 Not only did God choose to become flesh but, moreover, God chose to live as one who suffered and died unjustly. Christ, the firstborn of creation, chose to take on humility and victimhood. The effect of this is that Christ takes on the entirety of suffering for humanity and indeed creation. Suffering and death permeate the entire physicality of Jesus’ life because it represents the ‘new creation of the image of God’ that is represented by crucifixion.91 Christ is purposefully identifying with the ‘least’ of people, knocking at the door not as God clothed in majesty but as a beggar dressed in rags.92 ‘The Spirit of the redemption of the world’93 is also the sojourner, the wanderer, standing at the door and knocking, so Bonhoeffer states in his sermon on Revelation 3:20 in Barcelona, Advent 1928.94 He continues, ‘Christ walks the Earth as long as there are people, as your neighbour, as the person through whom God summons you, addresses you, makes claims on you.’95 The unified reality in which we exist means that other persons we now confront do indeed make claims on us, and those others are the form of Christ. Christ makes claims on us from the underside, the poor, the homeless, the lonely, and does this because Christ is the crucified Christ.

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Bonhoeffer’s crucified Christ is the Suffering God who asks for comfort at Gethsemane, as in this portion of his prison poem, ‘Christians and Heathens’ (July 1944) cited here from the 1953 translation: Men go to God when they are sore bestead, Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread, For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead; All men do so, Christian and unbelieving. Men go to God when he is sore bestead Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.96

In contrast with the disciples who slept as Jesus prayed, the Christian is called to stay awake with God in God’s suffering just as the women who stood by the cross of Jesus (John 19:25). God’s suffering is presented to us in the form of the poor and disadvantaged: poor, scorned, without shelter or bread. If we are called to stand by God in God’s suffering, we are also called to live fully in the world to do so, because that is where God is, namely, in Christ in the form of the suffering other. We only learn to have faith insofar as we live ‘in the full this-worldliness of life’, life that is ambiguous and inherently full of suffering.97 It is at this point that Bonhoeffer’s unified reality meets the Suffering God and emerges as a new ethic. In this case, the possibility exists to completely look outside oneself and ‘stay awake’. This is the situation in which Bonhoeffer apparently found himself in 1944, whilst approaching his own death: Then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane.98

Bonhoeffer describes Christ presenting as the beggar, the prisoner, and potentially the climate refugee, as Christ ‘incognito’, a term he specifically uses in the ‘Christology Lectures’ when addressing the problem, stated earlier, of how it is that we know Christ: This is the issue, that the Son entered into the flesh, that he wants to do his work within the ambiguity of history, incognito.99

Furthermore: In being humiliated, Christ, the God-human, enters of his own free will into the world of sin and death. He enters there in such a way as to conceal himself

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[there], so that he is no longer recognizable visibly as the God-human. He comes among us humans not in μορΦὴ θεοῦ [Godly form] but rather incognito, as a beggar among beggars, an outcast among outcasts; he comes among sinners as the one without sin, but also as a sinner among sinners. This is the central problem for all Christology.100

Bonhoeffer recognises the stumbling block that an incognito God can constitute but is able to convincingly assert that, paradoxically, the hiddenness of Christ is essential to his self-revelation.101 What Christ’s incognito shows us is that Christ freely and willingly takes on suffering in place of recognition, that Christ accepts condemnation rather than Earthly praise. That there is a stumbling block requires that there be faith, at least in the form of an initial questioning which Bonhoeffer sees as faith in itself.102 Christ’s incognito demonstrates again Christ’s pro me, pro nobis. Bonhoeffer is therefore able to muse that, for the proletariat, Jesus is present in factory halls as a worker among workers, in politics as the perfect idealist, in the life of the proletariat as a good human being. He stands beside members of the proletariat as a fighter in their ranks against the capitalist enemy.103

There again is the notion of Christ’s hiddenness couched in the standing alongside of the needy. It is for this reason that Bonhoeffer is able to say, ‘when the proletariat says that Jesus is a good human being, it means more than the bourgeoisie means when it says that Jesus is God’.104 The simple pondering of Christ hidden in suffering is the beginning of faith. As others preach Christ’s death on the cross as substitutionary atonement, Bonhoeffer’s assessment is subtler and more universal. On the cross, Christ both exposes and reconciles the brokenness of the world divided from God. It is not possible to deify the world—it is demonstrated as imperfect—but Christ’s crucifixion makes being reconciled to it possible. This is not merely a potentiality; Christ’s death occurring in history has ushered in a new reality that is all-encompassing.105 Given the emphasis on Christ crucified, Bonhoeffer is able to underline that Christ comes to us as living Word, as a person, and not as doctrine. Because ‘the firstborn of all creation’106 becomes humanity, the Word ‘creates existence anew’.107 In soteriological terms, this means that not simply a collection of individual souls are saved out of something for a future life in heaven, but rather that existence itself has been renewed, restored, and that God’s kingdom has commenced. Does this include Earth’s ecosystems, including her climate regulatory systems and feedback processes? Whilst Bonhoeffer does not name them specifically, one senses that there is sufficient space within

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Bonhoeffer’s concept of a unified reality that nothing can be excluded from it or from Christ’s restoration. The implications for our reckoning with climate change on the basis of the new creation will be explored in chapter 6. The Risen Christ The risen and ascended Christ ushers in the new age of a kingdom established on Earth, ruled by a liberating lordship that sets creation free, free to know and worship God, free to relate and ethically engage with others. Bonhoeffer says, in his ‘Reflection on the Ascension’, that it places creation in a space ‘between having and waiting’.108 There is a reliance on the risen Christ who indwells and mediates. There are more specific aspects of ‘the risen Christ’ needing attention here. Considering Bonhoeffer’s theological and pastoral training and expertise, it is no surprise that he underpins his Christology with biblical references (although, as has been observed, his quoting of texts both biblical and other is frequently an approximation based on memory or gist and left partially or un-referenced if he considered them well-known).109 Consider this statement: Who in the beginning had been the mediator of creation so that the created world can only be known through him and in him—the one who was very God.110

This sentence from chapter 10, ‘The Body of Christ’ in Discipleship, makes reference to seven scriptural verses or portions, one of which is Ephesians 1:4, ‘just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love’.111 Looking at this verse in its own context (vv. 3–14) allows for the drawing of parallels between Bonhoeffer’s intention in ‘The Body of Christ’ and the intention of the writer of the letter to the Ephesians (traditionally Paul but at least in a Pauline form) and thereby noting its possible influence on Bonhoeffer’s thinking.112 In the Ephesians passage, the author outlines characteristics of Christ and his work: that God blessed us with spiritual blessings, chose us, and destined us in and through Christ; that we have forgiveness and redemption through his blood; that, through Christ, God has made known the mystery of his will; and, that our inheritance is to live for the praise of his glory. This last point is made three times in the passage, emphasising that the intention of God’s embodiment as part of humanity is that humanity, in turn, would live ‘to the praise of his glory’.113 In this passage, the mystery of God’s will, which has been disclosed, is ‘to gather up all things in him’ (v. 10). In Bonhoeffer’s own words, this means that the ‘created world can only be known through him.’114 This has important eschatological implications that will be addressed in the following chapter.

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At this point, however, the fact that Bonhoeffer draws together the purpose of Christ’s mediation—so that humanity can know creation—as a fundamental purpose of Christ’s bodily form points to a key aspect of Bonhoeffer’s Christology in relation to our developing ecotheology. That is, knowing creation results from reconciliation provided in Christ, and characterises humanity that is ‘living to the praise of [God’s] glory.’115 What it means to know creation is a point that will be taken up in later chapters. Here, Bonhoeffer is highlighting the universality of Christ’s redemptive action, namely, the gathering up of all things in heaven and Earth, and the ability for humanity to know creation through Christ. Christ in bodily form reveals much more, as referenced by Bonhoeffer: that all things ‘are’ though Christ and exist through him (1 Cor. 8:6, John 1:13); that all things were created in him (Col. 1:16, Heb. 1:2); that ‘he himself is before all things’ (Col. 1:17); that our chosenness in Christ comes before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4; Col. 1:16); that he ‘sustains all things through his powerful word’ (Heb. 1:3) and ‘in him all things hold together’ (Col. 1:17); and, ultimately, that Christ is heir of all things (Heb. 1:2). A possible summary of these Christological aspects is to be found in Bonhoeffer’s reference to 1 Corinthians 8:6, ‘there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.’116 The fact of Christ’s resurrection allows for the person of Christ to be ‘its own work.’117 Because Christ is resurrected and ascended, he is able to be ‘simultaneously present to us all’.118 For Bonhoeffer, it is the reality of Christ’s ongoing presence in time and space, in the church, that validates the ongoing divinity-humanity of Jesus: Even as the Risen One, Jesus remains the human Jesus. Only because he is human can he be present to us. But that he is eternally with us here, eternally with us in the now—that is his presence as God. Only because Jesus is God can he be present to us. The presence of Jesus Christ compels the statement that Jesus is wholly human, as well as the other statement that Jesus is wholly God—otherwise he would not be present.119

In this, we recognise a distinctive feature of Bonhoeffer’s theology, one that characterises his writings to the end: Christ’s presence in time and space is both fully divine and human. The implications for a present human-God in Christ are profound for understanding human ontology and our relational value to each other and God. Furthermore, by extension, so are they profound for understanding the relational value of us to our fellow species and elements which make up, first, our Earth’s biosphere and lithosphere and, ultimately, the Multiverse that represents the entirety of creation.

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Not only does this Christology define anthropological ontology, but it also speaks to reconciliation and establishes conditions for changed relationships. That is, God’s work pro nobis is a great act of mercy that serves to reconcile humanity and God and mend the state of dividedness. Reconciliation applies to all things, to the gathering up of all things in heaven and Earth. Christ as mediator mends dividedness between people, permitting the creation of the Sanctorum Communio. Christ mediates all other relationships, those between Earth and heaven, and among the community of species here on Earth. It is from this position of reconciliation that an ecoethic is possible. Bonhoeffer describes this as the means for participating in the love which is Christ.120 If Christ is indeed ‘in and through all things’ and mediates relationships between those actors, ‘gathering up’ all creation in God’s self, then it is reasonable to extend Bonhoeffer’s pro me act of mercy to one that explicitly includes all of creation, that is, pro Mundo (as Green has proposed), or potentially pro Multiverse.121 The recognition that Bonhoeffer’s Christological framework is inclusive of all that exists is so crucial that Green has claimed that it represents a ‘new paradigm in Christian thinking’.122 Because of this important assessment by Green, we can confidently pursue the investigation of Bonhoeffer’s Christology in its application to both humanity’s relationship to creation and in the development of its ecoethical implications. The potential to investigate humanity’s relationship to Earth and her constituent components, living and non-living, provides an opportunity to think in a de-anthropocentric way that offers scope for the enactment of the reconciliation that Christ has instituted. It is possible that notions of care and protection, stewardship, and ‘tilling the garden’, could be subverted and superseded by placing humanity within the community of species with God-breathed roles for re-creating creation.123 To summarise thus far: Bonhoeffer’s theology is firmly grounded in Christology; our limited knowledge of God is dependent upon God’s revelation through Christ. Christ can only be understood in the fullness of the Trinity, not independent of it. For this reason, Bonhoeffer’s use of ‘Christ’ represents notions of Creator and Spirit that are indivisible from the revealed God. God freely choosing to become human is the apogee of God’s social intent for humanity. Becoming human means that humanity is now represented not by Adam, in dividedness from all others, but in the new Adam and characterised by restoration of relationships. No longer looking inward, humans are enabled to look outward and recognise the face of Christ in all things. Furthermore, Christ mediates the relationship now possible between individual actors. That Christ takes on flesh, suffers, and is resurrected has further implications. Taken together, and in Bonhoeffer’s mind, they are inseparable; they tell the greater story of God’s free act to become fully human for humanity.

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Explored individually, they represent telling aspects of the nature of Christ: incarnation signifying the value of the material; crucifixion demonstrating the vulnerable, suffering God; and, the resurrected Christ establishing the new order wherein heaven and Earth are gathered together and where reconciliation begins. Materiality is thereby validated and the world thereby sanctified. Christ’s immanence justifies the actual world and the meaning we derive from it, underpinning our reinterpretation of our relationship with creation. THE FORM OF CHRIST In the ‘Christology Lectures’, Bonhoeffer works to describe the interrelated forms of Christ but, as is the case in his other writings, the purpose of articulating Christology is to inform theological anthropology. That is, what does it mean for the Sanctorum Communio that Christ, who is God, appears in human form and in the form of a slave? Furthermore, what is the significance of the Christ being in the form of Word, Eucharist, and Community? In general terms, the pro me nature of Christ emerges when we see, following Bonhoeffer, that demonstrating the forms of Christ allows us to be formed into Christ in the active sense. Christ existing in humanity provides the conduit for people to be fully shaped into the image of God. Before examining the anthropological implications, we turn to the three forms of Christ as Word, Eucharist, and Community. Christ as Word Christ is God’s Word present, both in the human form of Jesus (suffering, slave, crucified, incognito) and in the eternal form of the family of humanity. Whenever the Word is preached, Christ is present. Much has been written elsewhere on the significance of Christ as Logos, a consideration that is beyond the scope of this section except by way of a short allusion.124 The allusion is that Bonhoeffer’s commitment to the act of preaching the Word rests on his adherence to the tenet that ‘what’ is being preached is the manifestation of Christ’s presence, ‘who’. Important to this discussion is the bringing together of the creation story and the re-creation story in Christ, as well as its significance to ecotheology. God’s creative action in Genesis occurs by the spoken Word, ‘Let there be.’125 This indicates the creative impetus being manifest through the Word, which occurs after the Breath of God has first hovered over the face of the deep.126 God’s Word is action: we know God not by the audial but by the visual (which further lends itself to the mystical) whereby the Word discloses the invisible and unheard.127 The Trinitarian connotation here is established, as

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is the allusion to Light being God’s first creation, and the equating of Christ (the ‘firstborn of all creation’) and light in the New Testament.128 Christ’s investment in the creative act is demonstrated; it can be expected that this is not lost on Bonhoeffer as he apprehends Christ as ‘Word’. God’s action offers Jesus. Furthermore, the re-creation of heaven and Earth is more akin to a creative renewal (even ‘re-newal’), or restoration, rather than replacement of that which is already good. Creation, which is the result of the action of God, via God’s Word, is validated. It is validated first through God’s own assessment of creation and, second, through its renewal in Christ. Logos becoming human reinforces the unity of creation rather than its disunity: Christ’s redemptive act makes no sense if applied to a portion of creation and not its totality. Romans 8 describes the travail of nature as it groans awaiting rebirth. For Bonhoeffer, the preaching of the Word makes Christ active in the process of renewal. That the ‘Word became flesh’ permits the mediator of creation to appear concretely within it and, hence, ever after impact upon it.129 So God’s Word is present in the human being Jesus and continuously in the community that identifies with Christ.130 God reveals God’s self as Word which is living, whereas, by contrast, the human logos, in the form of an idea, is not concrete.131 When God’s act of incarnation is apprehended, it becomes a conversation between ‘two persons’ where truth, which is God’s Word, ‘breaking into a concrete moment’ in history.132 In God’s freedom, God speaks through the Word and reveals this truth. The truth speaks on whenever the Word is preached and wherever there is community. Christ as Eucharist By way of extension of Christ as Word, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the Word in bodily form. It is not representational because ‘only that which is not present can be represented’.133 Christ is present in Word and community and, in this instance, in the Eucharist. Rather, it is the Word of God proclaiming the gospel of the forgiveness of sins. People who participate in the sacrament receive the Word and, by believing the Word, receive ‘the sacrament wholly’.134 Bonhoeffer moves smartly from the soteriological and resumes outlining the significance of the form of Christ as Eucharist. God was revealed in Jesus but is hidden in the sacrament as a stumbling block. Returning to the idea of the incognito, he describes the sacrament as signifying the humiliated state of the crucified one. Christ is there ‘in the bread’ but only ‘where he reveals himself though his Word’.135 Consistent with his earlier emphasis on the ‘who’ question over the ‘how’, Bonhoeffer herein describes ‘who’ is present in the

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sacrament. Christ, who is at once humiliated and exalted, revealed and hidden, forgiving and judging, is fully present. The complexity of the apparent paradoxes existing in tension ratifies Bonhoeffer’s assertion that Christology is an investigation of what is revealed, not what is understood by human minds. For him, this confirms again the separation of theology from philosophy. Even more crucial to this discussion is the emphasis on the natural, which Bonhoeffer places on the sacrament. Christ becomes present to us as food, the very tangible, humble, Earthy form of the Word. In doing so, Christ brings together the seen and unseen, the profane and sacred, Earthly and divine, and, in Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘the God-human, creature and creation’.136 The community gathers to seek the spiritual, to hear the Word and, in practice, feed on the physical. Eucharist exemplifies the indwelling of Christ at the centre of the person. Not only does Christ become human and all humanity but, through the bread and wine, Christ becomes all creation, both transcendent and immanent at once. In the sacrament, the ‘gathering up of heaven and Earth’ is experienced through the senses.137 Christ as Community The third form of Christ that Bonhoeffer describes in the ‘Christology Lectures’ is Christ as community, and it is this aspect that underpins his entire ecclesiology and ethics. Kelly describes Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the very body of Christ being the Christian community as ‘the interpretive key’ not only to Bonhoeffer’s experience and retelling of the seminary community experiments, but to the entire theology of Bonhoeffer.138 The nature of community and his theological interpretation of it is established in Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being. In the Finkenwalde writings, he explores the presence of God in Christ among those who profess faith and, in turn, ‘how communities of faith must assume concrete form in the world’.139 Linked to the obedience of costly grace, Christ’s presence in the world is in concrete action rather than abstraction. In Ethics and the prison writings, the chief question of what it really means for Christ to be the Lord of the world takes shape in how the concrete form of the church negotiates its way in a changing environment. So Christ is the embodiment of both God and Christians and, as such, the community is empowered and enabled to behave differently. As Bonhoeffer demonstrated in his own real-life example, it enables groups to be in community, to live together and, in doing so, exhibit God-like characteristics of compassion, sacrifice, and responsibility for others. We only become fully human in community, and the Word, too, craves community: first as Trinity and then as the ongoing church-community. Christ mediates both transactions and is present in both.

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The significance of Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the concrete presence of Christ as community, and the implications for ethical action, will become clearer in chapter 7. It must be borne in mind that Bonhoeffer’s starting point that all reality is established by Christ, and is only known to us via the revelation through Christ, means that the significance of identifying the churchcommunity as the concrete presence of that same Christ, on Earth, eternally, is seminal for our discussion of an ethical response to the climate crisis. A FUTURE FORM OF CHRIST After the Second World War, the world that Bonhoeffer was looking forward to, preparing for, and of which he was hoping to be a creative part, Bonhoeffer expected that Christ’s presence would be understood differently. At the very least, the significance of Christ in bodily form representing an example for humanity appears to have gained traction in Bonhoeffer’s mind and was apparently to be a section of his final (unwritten) book.140 His notes suggest that Bonhoeffer would have returned to the significance of the humanity of Christ for Paul’s writings in the way that he had previously extrapolated in 1938.141 However, Christ’s bodiliness signifies more than a human example to be followed. It speaks of God’s inherent immanence in creation or what Green refers to as Christus in Mundo.142 A narrative is drawn from Christ the Word at creation to Christ’s incarnation and the ongoing presence of Christ in the world. It is this immanence that can be understood differently in a new, ecological age. Christ is not present in a collection of pieces of creation, but rather is the Mittler of the interrelationships which describes and defines the entire biosphere. Christ’s lordship is not alien to creation, but rather is embedded within it, giving it new life through Christ’s mercy. He is the living Lord of creation, not apart from it but, rather, immanent and sustaining it in a very real way. As Bonhoeffer describes the church as the visible, physical body of Christ, the human participation in Christ, this focal point of creation becomes the tangible, specific example of what Bonhoeffer understands to be the universal embeddedness of Christ. God’s transcendence is closer to what John Godsey describes as ‘the “beyond” in the midst of our life, not the “beyond” of otherworldly religions, with their myths of salvation’.143 Bonhoeffer develops the notion of Christ’s inseparability from his creation and the unification of reality by the example of deus ex machina, the god who emerges from the machine to save the day.144 God is not at the beck and call of the Christian to initiate some escape from this world. On the contrary, Christ’s immanence validates creation in its entirety and escape becomes an illogical motivation for human or divine action. By the time of

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his prison writings, Bonhoeffer was conversing again with Wilhelm Dilthey’s use of Grotius’ maxim, etsi deus non daretur (literally, ‘even if God did not exist’).145 According to Lenehan, there are two ideas here: first, is that Grotius had argued for the creation of international law based on an inherent goodness found within natural law (establishing a foundation for the flourishing of human life and social order even if God did not exist); second, is that in the ‘world come of age’, many people already do indeed live as if God does not exist.146 Bonhoeffer’s own experience was that this phenomenon applied to both the inhumane acts of the Nazi regime and the failure of the church to oppose them. Related to this thinking is Bonhoeffer’s rejection of the religious a priori as a ‘working hypothesis’147 and ‘stop-gap’148 for the incompleteness of human knowledge. Both of these ideas had influenced the way the church had ‘assumed the role of guardian of society’s conscience and righteousness’149 whilst simultaneously failing to engage either intellectually or pastorally with people. Continuing to assume the religious a priori fails to recognise the ‘epochal shift marked by Western modernity’150 that was characterised by intellectual and personal autonomy. Persisting with this false premise had made the church, indeed the proclamation of the gospel, ‘both ineffective and dishonest’.151 The significance of this discussion to our understanding of Bonhoeffer’s Christology is that he situates Christ as relevant and accessible regardless of the historical context of any period, including modernity. In fact, if the ‘working hypothesis’ is done away with, then Christ’s immanence, as described biblically and understood theologically by Bonhoeffer, presents Christ stripped of religious garb and instead clothed in creation. It is Bonhoeffer’s view that if the church were to become effective, relevant, and honest again, it would have to learn anew how to preach a gospel that set aside the religious a priori for a more down-to-Earth, tangible Christianity. Bonhoeffer speculated on the meaning and potential of this for post-war Europe and the world. Each of these ideas, namely of God not being a stop-gap or saving us out of the situation, nor even being assumed as an intellectual starting point, are contained in this argument from his cell on 30 April 1944 about religionless Christianity: How do we go about being ‘religionless-worldly’ Christians . . . seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? Christ would then no longer be the object of religion, but something else entirely, truly lord of the world.152

The relationship of this, arguably his best-known prison letter, to the balance of his Christology is not that it subverts or challenges it, but that, in continuity with his corpus, it fulfils it. In asking ‘How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well?’, he is bringing to fruition the central tenet of his

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Christocentric theology, namely, that Christ is universally immanent and that the church’s task is to proclaim that gospel.153 To these ideas, Bonhoeffer put the question ‘What is Christianity, or Who is Christ actually for us today?’154 Whilst these elements are important to Bonhoeffer’s theology and thereby to this book, and their implications are yet to be fully explored let alone manifest, they do not define or summarize his corpus. It is the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s Christology, in all its fullness, that must remain the key feature of his theology and its interpretation. Green has raised the following challenge facing third generation Bonhoeffer scholars: it will be about the search for the meaning and import of Bonhoeffer’s theology ‘read as a whole’.155 Whatever the answer to that challenge, it cannot be separate from his Christocentrism.

CONCLUSION This chapter has demonstrated the centrality of Christology to Bonhoeffer’s entire theological project, including his systematic theology, kerygmatic works, and the manuscripts that would comprise Ethics. It has demonstrated that Christology also underpins his profound prison works. Having outlined Bonhoeffer’s Christology in terms of the presence of Christ in history and reality, and the form of Christ incarnate, crucified, and resurrected, in Word, Eucharist, and community, the next chapters examine the significance of this for both theological anthropology and creation (chapters 4 and 5) and then place them in the context of God’s kingdom on Earth, that is, in Earth (chapter 6). Throughout the remainder of this book, this Christology will be continually referred to as it forms the scaffolding for the entire argument. ,Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo drives the search for an ecoethic that both reflects Christ’s immanence in the world and Christ’s objective for the world that is made real by the participation of humans in that renewing activity. This work of renewal is brought sharply into focus in the Anthropocene, an age defined by humans and which carries the burden of human responsibility for catastrophic disruption of Earth systems and death to extinction of her creatures. These notions of anthropology, ethics, and our relationships in the biosphere, as a function of time and space, make up the following chapters.

NOTES 1. DBWE 12, 37. 2. A term Bonhoeffer uses throughout his works and notably at DBWE 8, 364. 3. Ibid.

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4. Geffrey B. Kelly, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 5, 7. See also H. Gaylon Barker, The Cross of Reality: Luther’s Theologia Crucis and Bonhoeffer’s Christology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015); Fritz de Lange, ‘Aristocratic Christendom: On Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche’, in Bonhoeffer and Continental Thought: Cruciform Philosophy, ed. Brian Gregor and Jens Zimmerman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 73–83; Stephen J. Plant, ‘“We Believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ”: A Pro-Nicene Revision of Bonhoeffer’s 1933 Christology Lectures’, in Christ, Church and World: New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics, ed. Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 45–60. 5. ‘One reality’ is a key assumption especially underpinning Ethics and articulated in the manuscript, ‘Christ, Reality and Good’. DBWE 6, 47–75. 6. Green, Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo; Lenehan, Standing Responsibly. 7. DBWE 6. 8. Dianne Rayson, ‘Earthly Christianity: Bonhoeffer’s Contribution to Ecotheology and Ecoethics’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: An International Journal 6, no. 1 (2018): 21–34; ‘Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene: The Climate Crisis and Ecoethics’, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance, ed. Lori Brandt Hale and W. David Hall, Faith and Politics: Political Theology in a New Key (Lanham: Lexington, 2020), 148–56. 9. DBWE 4. 10. DBWE 5. 11. DBWE 3. 12. DBWE 6. 13. DBWE 12, 302. 14. See ‘Personal Being as Structurally Open’, DBWE 1, 65. 15. DBWE 6, 58–59. 16. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly, 45. 17. DBWE 2, 31. 18. Ibid., 32. 19. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly, 45. Original italics. 20. DBWE 2, 32. 21. Richard Cumming, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Concept of the Cor Curvum in Se: A Critique of Bonhoeffer’s Polemic with Reinhold Seeberg in Act and Being’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 62, no. 3–4 (2010): 116–33; Larry L. Rasmussen, ‘Luther and a Gospel of Earth’, ibid. 51, no. 1–2 (1997). 22. DBWE 10, 452. 23. DBWE 2, 94. 24. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly, 46. Lenehan is referring to Bonhoeffer’s extended discussion of the role of cognition in approaching knowledge of God throughout Act and Being. Nietzsche also wrote, ‘The circle’s thirst is within you; every circle curves and turns in order to catch itself up again.’ Cited in Peter Frick, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche’s Aphorisms and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology’, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Diebeck, 2008), 181. 25. DBWE 2, 31.

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26. For discussion of the problematic of boundlessness, see Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., ‘Encounter with an Other: Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, 105. 27. DBWE 3, 122. 28. DBWE 2, 31. 29. DBWE 12, 302. 30. Ibid. 31. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly, 47. 32. DBWE 12, 303. 33. Ibid., 309. See also, M. P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 34. Ibid., 309. 35. Ibid., 314. 36. Ibid., 310. 37. Ibid. 38. See Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Barbara Rumsheidt and Martin Rumscheidt, 2nd ed. (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2018). 39. DBWE 10, 454. 40. DBWE 12, 303. 41. DBWE 4, 284–85. 42. DBWE 8, 486. 43. ‘Lecture Section on Good Works’, DBWE 14, 616. 44. DBWE 12, 309. 45. Ibid. 46. Peter Frick, ‘The Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, 31–52. 47. DBWE 4, 39n3. 48. Ibid., 503–04. 49. DBWE 13, 136. 50. DBWE 4. 51. Frick, ‘Imitatio and DB’, 41; DBWE 14, 616. 52. DBWE 14, 617. 53. DBWE 10, 454. 54. Frick, Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation. 55. ‘Part 1, The Present Christ—The pro–me’, DBWE 12, 313. 56. Ibid., 314. 57. Ibid., 315–23, 324–27. 58. DBWE 8, 367. 59. Ibid., 366. 60. The notion of the church-community is a key component of Bonhoeffer’s theology and noted here only in reference to one of the three ‘forms’ of Christ. Further development of this idea is well beyond the scope of this book although it has important ramifications for ecoethics in chapters 6 and 7. 61. Paul F. W. Busing, ‘Reminiscences of Finkenwalde’, The Christian Century (1961), 20 September 1108–11.

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62. DBWE 11, 269–332. 63. DBWE 3, 121; DBWE 8, 363. 64. DBWE 12, 325. 65. DBWE 4, 214. 66. DBWE 6, 58. 67. Ibid. 68. Green, Clifford J. ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 9. 69. DBWE 6, 308–09. 70. Ibid., 58. 71. Also the subject of, ‘Reflection on the Ascension: A Reflection on Its Christological, Soteriological, and Parenetical Meaning’, DBWE 16, 476–81. 72. ‘The View from Below’, DBWE 8, 52; 73. Ibid.; Lisa E. Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene: Pickwick, 2009). 74. DBWE 4, 205. 75. DBWE 4, 285. 76. DBWE 1, 156. 77. Ibid., 154. 78. DBWE 6, 157. 79. Or, as Paul Ricoeur has written ‘I have tried to arrange Bonhoeffer’s notes around a few themes, in spite of the fact that they will become entangled all over again’. Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Non-Religious Interpretation of Christianity in Bonhoeffer’, in Bonhoeffer and Continental Thought: Cruciform Philosophy, ed. Brian Gregor and Jens Zimmerman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 162. 80. DBWE 4, 285. See also, Ted Peters, ‘Imago Dei, DNA, and the Transhuman Way’, Theology and Science 16, no. 3 (2018): 353–62. 81. Old Testament is the term used here since this is how Bonhoeffer referred to the Hebrew Scriptures. 82. DBWE 8, 372. 83. Ibid., 373. 84. DBWE 12, 311. 85. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 8. 86. Ibid., 9. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., 8. 89. This notion appears throughout Bonhoeffer’s work and is specifically dealt with in chapter 6.2. See, for example, DBWE 1, 120; DBWE 6, 232. 90. DBWE 4, 284. 91. Ibid., 286. 92. DBWE 10, 545. 93. Ibid., 543 94. 2 December 1928. DBWE 10, 542–46. 95. Ibid., 545.

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96. Eberhard Bethge, ed. Letters and Papers from Prison: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abridged and revised by John Bowden ed. (London: SCM, 2001), 131; new translation at DBWE 8, 460–61. 97. Letter of 21 July 1944, DBWE 8, 486. 98. Ibid. 99. DBWE 12, 309. 100. Ibid., 356. 101. Ibid., 358. 102. Ibid., 303. 103. Ibid., 306. 104. Ibid. 105. ‘The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates’, DBWE 6, 388–408. 106. Col. 1:15b. 107. DBWE 4, 62. 108. Around April 1940, DBWE 16, 476–81. 109. Kevin Lenehan, ‘Etsi Deus Non Daretur: Bonhoeffer’s Useful Misuse of Grotius’ Maxim and Its Implication for Evangelisation in the World Come of Age’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 1, no. 1 (2013): 48–49. 110. DBWE 4, 214. 111. Ibid., 213-24. 112. James D. G. Dunn, ‘Ephesians’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 113. Ephesians 1:14. 114. DBWE 4, 214. 115. Ephesians 1:14. 116. DBWE 4, 214. 117. DBWE 12, 312. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid. 120. On this, see DBWE 6, 50–55; DBWE 14, 475. 121. Green, ‘Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo’. 122. Ibid., 12. 123. Gen. 2:5. For further discussion in chapter 5. See Stephen M. Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Williams, ‘Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment’; Scott, ‘Beyond Stewardship?’. 124. For some contemporary scholarship indicating the breadth of the discussion, see these examples: Vladimir de Beer, ‘The Cosmic Role of the Logos, as Conceived from Heraclitus until Eriugena’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 59, no. 1–4 (2014): 13–39; Robert W. Jenson, ‘Once More the Logos Asarkos’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13, no. 2 (2011): 130–33; Jackson Lashier, “Irenaeus as Logos Theologian”, Vigiliae Christianae 66, no. 4 (2012): 341–61; Herman C. Waetjen, ‘Logos Προζ Τον Θεον and the Objectification of Truth in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2001): 265.

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125. God creates through the spoken word repeatedly as recorded in Genesis 1. Chapter 4 of this book considers this more closely. 126. This has been treated more closely in chapter 1. 127. For interesting comments on Bonhoeffer’s mysticism see Lovat, ‘Interfaith Theologian and Practical Mystic’; Ricoeur, ‘Non-Religious Interpretation’. René Kieffer, ‘John’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 962. 128. Col. 1; John 1. 129. DBWE 4, 214. Bonhoeffer is referencing John 1:14. 130. Kelly has written that Bonhoeffer never strays from this Christocentrism of Berlin throughout Life Together. Kelly, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ in DBWE 5, 8. 131. DBWE 12, 317. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., 318. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid., 321. 136. Ibid., 323. 137. Ephesians 1:10. 138. DBWE 5, 6. 139. Kelly, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ in DBWE 5, 6. 140. DBWE 8, 503. 141. Ibid., 504. 142. Green, ‘Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo’. 143. John D. Godsey, Preface to Bonhoeffer: The Man and Two of His Shorter Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965), 14–15. 144. DBWE 8, 366. 145. Much of Bonhoeffer’s prison writing can be read as being in conversation with Dilthey, the philosopher of the ‘totality of life’, to whom Bonhoeffer refers throughout Act and Being, for example at DBWE 2, 28, 55, 127. See Karl Bonhoeffer’s comment regarding Bonhoeffer studying Dilthey ‘for his Ethics’, DBWE 8, 240n15. On 14 January 1944, Bonhoeffer wrote, ‘I’m back to working with more concentration and am especially enjoying reading Dilthey.’ His father had sent him Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung as a birthday gift, inscribed in part ‘for lonely hours’, DBWE 8, 259 and n6. Similar comment to Bethge on 18 January 1944, ‘I’m finding Dilthey very interesting,’ followed by ‘for an hour a day I’m studying the medical corps handbook, for any eventuality.’ DBWE 8, 263. On 2 February he wrote, ‘I really wanted to get to know nineteenth–century German thought as thoroughly as possible. But I still particularly lack a good knowledge of Dilthey. . . . I greatly regret my lack of knowledge of the natural sciences, but it’s too late to catch up on that.’ DBWE 8, 285. Later he explored Dilthey’s Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik which appears to have influenced his thinking on music—another line of enquiry deserving of more thorough, future investigation. 146. Lenehan, Etsi Deus Non Daretur, 43. 147. DBWE 8, 425. 148. Ibid., 405. 149. Etsi Deus Non Daretur, 43.

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150. Ibid., 44. 151. Ibid. 152. DBWE 8, 364. 153. Ibid. 154. Ibid., 362. 155. Adam C. Clark and Michael Mawson, eds., Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013), ix.

Chapter 4

Creator and Creation

Bonhoeffer’s Christology as the foundation of his theology has been described in chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 now begin to theologically explicate the ramifications of Bonhoeffer’s articulation of Christology and, in particular, as it relates to our ecological understanding of relationships and responsibility. Turning to the traditional theological categories of treating God, creation, and humanity separately, chapter 4 considers Bonhoeffer’s integration of the creation stories for what they reveal, in the first instance, about God and creation. At the same time, acknowledgement is made of the inherent problem of this methodology. Such categorisation entrenches precisely what this book argues as the core problem of anthropocentrism and its associated hierarchical thinking, which places humanity over and above the rest of creation. The outworking of such hierarchical thinking with regard to the Earth is fundamental to the human behaviour implicit within the environmental crisis. However, at this point, using these three categories helps organise our thinking around the problem and remains a useful way of mining Bonhoeffer’s own material. As discussed briefly in the opening chapter, the biblical creation narratives have been drawn on explicitly or implicitly to bolster Christianity’s ambivalent attitude (at best) to the rest of creation, accounting at least in some part for the attitudes of mastery and exploitation of resources that have underpinned the ecological crisis. Against that background, this chapter analyses aspects of Bonhoeffer’s own consideration of the creation narratives of Genesis in Creation and Fall as a way of investigating an alternative theological anthropology, one not based on hierarchy but on relationships, and one which both integrates his Christology and underpins his ethics. After positioning Creation and Fall in its own context, this chapter notes the key concepts in the portions of text examined, these concepts being: (1) God’s 71

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transcendence from creation; (2) God’s freedom in creating; and (3) the goodness of creation. CREATION AND FALL: HISTORY AND CONTEXT Bonhoeffer’s study of the first part of Genesis forms the basis of this discussion. It was published as Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3 in 1933, having been delivered as an original series of lectures at Berlin University in the Winter Semester of 1932–33 where Bonhoeffer worked as a young Privatdozent, not yet permanently part of the faculty.1 The course was immensely popular and, by all reports, students crowded in to hear the charismatic Bonhoeffer speak with originality and authority, relying on the biblical text to explicate contemporary truths to a population suffering the turmoil of political instability and economic hardship.2 Bonhoeffer was inviting his students to join him in ‘listen[ing] to the text as a systematic thinker’.3 ‘Delivered with passion in kerygmatic style rather than in the language of academic discourse’, the lectures temporally marked Bonhoeffer’s new relationship with the Bible, his reliance on the Sermon on the Mount as life guidance, and a personal response to the living Word.4 In terms of his audience’s context, already National Socialism was appropriating the classical categories of orders of creation to justify an excessive role for the state, and Bonhoeffer wished to re-present the creation legend in a theological way that would equip students to counter such poor theological interpretation. In Bethge’s words, it would ‘prepare defenses for the struggles ahead’.5 Bonhoeffer moves, in this period, in the world Ecumenical circles working for peace, whilst protesting state moves against the marginalised within Germany. Bonhoeffer does this by his active engagement with the church machinery, through his academic and church teaching, and through occasional public and one-off radio lectures. He changes from the philosophical theology of his earlier works to equipping his theological students to engage with the signal issues facing Germany. This, is, indeed, moving ‘from the phraseological to the real’.6 Academically, the Creation and Fall lectures announced a new methodology. His delivery has been described as kerygmatic since the new methodology had no real counterpart in contemporary biblical scholarship and a sermon would be the closest example with which to compare the lectures. But Bonhoeffer was not preaching as much as allowing the theology of the creation stories to speak for itself. This set Bonhoeffer’s lectures apart from the voguish historical and critical scholarship approaches that analysed the scripture from the paradigms of other disciplines at the expense of the theological. Archaeological, biological, and literary approaches to Genesis

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had overtaken what had become literal understandings of the six-day creation accounts up until the end of the nineteenth century in Germany.7 Hans Schmidt’s examination of Genesis reflected the history-of-religions school and relegated the story to a myth of another god altogether.8 By the twentieth century, the influence of Darwinian Theory had left the creation story as a somewhat irrelevant piece of folklore and not a usual subject for either academic or church study.9 Already von Harnack had written in 1929 that theological existence was being ‘threatened by contempt for scientific theology and by unscientific theologies. Those who stand by the standard of genuine science must therefore hold it high with all the more conviction’.10 Announcing his lecture series at Berlin University would have been considered radical for the subject, on the one hand, and for its approach, on the other hand. Influenced by Barth by this stage, Creation and Fall takes Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric approach and applies it to the entire Bible. In this, he employs ‘a continual returning from the text to the presupposition’ of Christ, thus interpreting the whole of scripture Christologically.11 This method became important later in countering the Deutsche Christen’s misuse of scripture. Bonhoeffer wrote: The New Testament is the witness of the promise of the Old Testament as fulfilled in Christ. It is not a book containing eternal truths, teachings, norms, or myths, but the sole witness of the God–human Jesus Christ. As a whole and in all its parts, it is nothing other than this witness of Christ, Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.12

One senses Bonhoeffer’s appreciation of the dialogue going back and forth between Old Testament and New Testament. By extension, the concreteness of Christ as Word in the biblical text becomes fully realised when preached, ‘the real voice of Christ speaking in the sermon’,13 as he later taught at Finkenwalde. There, he instructed that One and the same God is speaking throughout the entire Bible. . . . The same God is attested by every text. . . . Scripture is harmonious and clear, not because it does not contain contradictions but because it is the same God.14

Furthermore, Bethge reports on Bonhoeffer teaching at Finkenwalde in the following way: Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. . . . Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it. . . . Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity.15

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Bonhoeffer did not disregard that the Hebrew Bible is the sacred Scripture of Judaism, but he permitted it instead to function in two roles concurrently: both as Hebrew Bible and as Old Testament. Jesus’ own Jewishness was an important feature of both Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Christ, and also in his defence of the Jews.16 Thus, Bonhoeffer’s method, which was somewhat controversially announced in the title of the lectures, came, much later, to be well regarded in the Old Testament community as ‘canonical criticism’.17 Accordingly, Creation and Fall represents not a retreat from the critical to the mythological, but rather a way of seeing the flourishing human as necessarily both, and at once, bodily and spiritual. Bonhoeffer explores how Genesis 1-3 can be seen as an invitation to live life fully, with Christ at the centre of life rather than at the margins, driving an ethical imperative. Creation and Fall is a post-critical consideration of the text ‘as it presents itself to the church of Christ today’.18 For Bonhoeffer, this could only be fully appreciated by seeing the continuity of the Christian gospel through the entire canon. Barth himself used his expository method but almost entirely on New Testament texts.19 Bonhoeffer was listening to the Old Testament and hearing it in a different register, only comprehensible from the voce of the New Testament revelation of Christ. This is a hermeneutic he utilised at Finkenwalde and in that context, demonstrates its applicability to the withdrawn, pietistic, and meditative life of the preacher as well as the communal, public life of the active church-community. The Finkenwalde experience in toto must be considered within its own historical context of responding to the Deutsche Christen’s complicity with the state. Bonhoeffer insists on allowing the Word to speak for itself to church leadership and members and this resources them for their work in the world.20 In Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer was seeking to do several things. Using a new and creative methodology, he was engaging with Old Testament scriptures in a fresh, theological way in order to seek out their relevance and application to individuals and the church in the context of the state usurping the church’s guardianship of the Bible. He was reviving the relevance of the creation stories to the academy and to the church, not by protesting against science but rather by seeing the two projects, the scientific and the theological, as complementary. Bonhoeffer straddled a line between critical literacy methodology and theological interpretation of the text represented respectively by his teacher, von Harnack, and Barth, a position he maintained to the end. He read both authors in prison.21 Bonhoeffer’s description of the creation of humanity effectively dismisses the Darwinian concerns as being fundamentally different from the theological interests of Creation and Fall: There is no transition from somewhere else here; here there is new creation. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Darwin. Quite apart from that issue

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humankind remains in an unqualified way God’s new, free work. We in no way wish to deny humankind’s connection with the animal world—on the contrary. Our concern, our whole concern, nevertheless, is that we not lose sight of the peculiar relation between humankind and God above and beyond this.22

It is this ‘peculiar relation’ which is the focus of the question concerning how humans theologically understand our place and role in the ecology. An ecological view that recognises human animality and interconnectedness with other species also acknowledges the unique place of humans within it. That is, humans have indeed come to dominate the planet by population, habitation, and technological mastery to the extent that humans are now disrupting Earth systems, altering land use, and causing mass extinction. This cannot be denied. On the other hand, the historical intervention of God in Christ has revealed God in a particular way to our particular species. As the dominant sentient species, there are ramifications inherent in this self-revelation of God that impel looking beyond our own species to the others. Christ has enabled us to do so. It is this peculiar relationship which drives our responsibility to address the problems of the Anthropocene. In addressing the modelling of Adam from the Earth, Bonhoeffer emphasises, rather than denies, the basic biology and materiality Darwin had affirmed: The human being whom God has created in God’s image . . . is the human being who is taken from Earth. Even Darwin and Feuerbach could not use stronger language than is used here.23

Erich Klapproth’s student notes from the lectures confirm Bonhoeffer stating, ‘To say that humankind is made of Earth is to lay stronger emphasis on matter than Darwin/Feuerbach did.’24 In these remarks, Bonhoeffer is reinforcing that what he set out to achieve at the outset of Creation and Fall was to explore the contemporary theological meaning of the text and not confuse that with historicocritical analysis or scientific theories of the beginning of the world. He also gives a passing glance to attempts to use the Bible to literally count the years since creation: This quite unrepeatable, unique, free event in the beginning, which must in no way be confused with the number 4800 or any such date, is the creation. In the beginning God created heaven and Earth. . . . [Freedom] rules out every application of causal categories for an understanding of the creation.25

Bonhoeffer was well acquainted with contemporary scientific knowledge, coming from a family replete with scientists, including some who

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were notable.26 In his childhood, he read with enthusiasm David Friedrich Weinland’s book, Rulaman, about the original cave dwellers of Germany and prehistoric animals, a book which had been written as the first discoveries of Neanderthals were made and primitive houses of Germany and Scandinavia were being excavated.27 Perhaps this also influenced him. Specifically, in relation to the question of Darwinian evolution, is Bonhoeffer’s direct reference to the creation of ‘the day’ and the six days of creation: The beginning is not to be thought of in temporal terms. . . . Whether the creation occurred in rhythms of millions of years or in single days, this does no damage to biblical thinking. We have no reason to assert the latter or to doubt the former; the question as such does not concern us.28

This summarises Bonhoeffer’s position on the creation myths vis-à-vis science. The myths are pictures, the language of fantasy, of magic and mystery. He says: Who can speak of these things except in pictures? Pictures after all are not lies; rather they indicate things and enable the underlying meaning to shine through. . . . One way or another, however, they remain true, to the extent that human speech and even speech about abstract ideas can remain true at all—that is, to the extent that God dwells in them.29

Bonhoeffer’s ongoing project was to reclaim theology as a living, contemporary discipline rich in meaning and relevance to individuals, the church, and civil society. This feature of Bonhoeffer’s theological intent continues to bear relevance and is echoed in the emergence of public theology as a field of enquiry and engagement in the twenty-first century.30 Bonhoeffer’s approach to Genesis 1 to 3 was to discern the theological meaning and its relevance to his contemporary context. For Bonhoeffer, that context included his own fundamental works that explored the basic notions of the ethical human being; and sin represented as dividedness and, to a lesser extent, disobedience. Connecting these concepts, and one might say the entire corpus of Bonhoeffer’s works, is the social intent of the gospel.31 The relevant questions for this work are: What does the social intent say about God’s relationship to God’s own creation, and hence, for our proper relationship to creation? This section demonstrates that in the creation narratives, we can recognise God’s freedom and transcendence, and the goodness of creation. The implications for relationships will be explored in the following chapter. GOD’S TRANSCENDENCE Bonhoeffer establishes God’s transcendence apart from God’s creation. God’s Word and act are unified, but God remains separate from all that God creates.

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We note that, elsewhere, Bonhoeffer sees transcendence and immanence meeting in Christ and, through Creation and Fall, he refers to Christ not only through the Sanctorum Communio but also as cosmic Christ, being the Word through which God creates all things.32 For Bonhoeffer, transcendence is not far removed from the world, but rather pressing in and being at hand for it, most tangibly in the person of Christ. The person of Christ remains tangible in the body of Christ on Earth, the church-community. Already in the act of creating the formless world and chaos, Bonhoeffer equates the darkness of the deep with the passion of Christ as if to say that these are already hints of what lies ahead. Later, in Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer expresses God’s ongoing presence in creation through God’s preservation and sustenance of it. Pre-eminently though, God is transcendent from creation, over the deep and above the waters and, as such, is in contrast with gods of other contemporaneous creation myths that see creation emerge as a kind of self-expression of the deity: In opposition to all such myths, however, the God of the Bible remains wholly God, wholly the Creator, wholly the Lord, and what God has created remains wholly subject and obedient, praising and worshiping God as Lord. God is never the creation but always the Creator.33

Just what Christianity’s emphasis on the transcendence of God means for interrogating our relationship to creation is crucial, not only for this question in itself but also for the implications for how Christianity engages with other spiritualities in which transcendence is less emphasised. God’s transcendence ‘over and above’ creation establishes, for Bonhoeffer, God’s otherness. Creation is not God. The Abrahamic faiths do not worship creation as God. ‘God is God, the one’, der Eine Gott, was Bonhoeffer’s final statement of the first part of Creation and Fall in its draft.34 It was both a response to the Marcion tendencies in the religion-as-histories school, differentiating the God of the Old Testament from God of the New Testament, and, I suggest, affirming God’s transcendence from God’s creation.35 Bonhoeffer clearly makes the distinction between the Creator and creation, and yet there is a closeness of relationship between the two not seen in the religious traditions contemporaneous to the Genesis myths. Bonhoeffer would ponder this near-at-hand transcendence in prison: God is the beyond in the midst of our lives. The church stands not at the point where human powers fail, at the boundaries, but in the center of the village. That’s the way it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we don’t read the New Testament nearly enough in the light of the Old.36

Bonhoeffer accounts for the tension between Creator and creation in several ways: the immanence of Christ both as Word through whom creation comes

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into being and as incarnate human to which Bonhoeffer refers in many places, notably the ‘Christology Lectures’. Bonhoeffer relies on orthodox New Testament notions of immanence from texts such as John 1 and Colossians 1. Here, he follows in the tradition of many theologians before him and these notions are not original. He extends this thinking, though, to its logical conclusion of a single, unified reality that so characterises Ethics and the prison writings, even though it has its roots in his earliest theses. It can be summarised in this statement from ‘Christ, Reality, and Good’: Like all of creation, the world has been created through Christ and toward Christ and has its existence only in Christ (John 1:10; Col. 1:16). To speak of the world without speaking of Christ is pure abstraction.37

In much of Bonhoeffer’s theology, there is an emphasis on the application of doctrine to the real problems and circumstances of the church-community. This is so in his dogmatic articulation of transcendence and immanence. As an example, in Bonhoeffer’s paper from Union Theological Seminary and published in The Journal of Religion in 1932 as ‘Concerning the Christian Idea of God’, he brings the doctrinal queries around transcendence and immanence back to the very human implications for justification. It is the unity of the godhead at work in redeeming the world. Bonhoeffer writes: The question becomes one of applying this most objective ‘idea’ of God to man—which is absolutely necessary if the whole treatment is not to remain merely in the metaphysical realm. . . . The word of God spoken to me in the act of my faith in Christ is God in his revelation as the Holy Spirit. Faith is nothing but the act of receiving this word of God. . . . It is just here that the personalities of God and of man come in contact with each other. Here God himself transcends his transcendence, giving himself to man as Holy Spirit. Yet, being personality, he remains in absolute transcendence; the immanence of God means that man hears God’s own word, which is spoken in absolute self–revelation, always anew. . . . The justification of the sinner—this is the self–proof of the sole authority of God. And in this justification man becomes a new personality by faith, and he recognizes here—what he never before could understand or believe—God as his creator. In the act of justification God reveals himself as Holy Trinity.38

GOD’S FREEDOM Further to God’s transcendence, immanence, and the implications for the physicality of humans, is that creation and the creative act demonstrate God’s

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freedom. Freedom becomes an intrinsic notion for Bonhoeffer’s entire Ethics and, specifically, Stellvertretung, so it is vital that anthropological freedom is only to be considered in light of God’s own freedom. Bonhoeffer makes this case himself, first in Sanctorum Communio and then in Act and Being. Describing freedom as an attribute of God, Bonhoeffer goes to Genesis 1:1-2 where, in the first paragraph of his exegesis, he compares our inability to grasp both ‘beginning’ and ‘freedom’.39 In introducing the notion of the ‘nothingness that lies between the freedom of God and creation’, Bonhoeffer immediately directs the reader to Christ: The world exists in the midst of nothing, which means in the beginning. This means nothing else than that it exists wholly by God’s freedom. What has been created belongs to the [free] Creator. It means also, however, that the God of creation, of the utter beginning, is the God of the resurrection. The world exists from the beginning in the sign of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Indeed it is because we know of the resurrection that we know of God’s creation in the beginning, of God’s creating out of nothing. The dead Jesus Christ of Good Friday and the resurrected κύριος [Lord] of Easter Sunday—that is creation out of nothing, creation from the beginning.40

This section continues, declaring that the lack of continuity between the dead Christ and the risen Christ exemplifies that lack of continuity of substance between God and God’s creation, and the two are linked by the notion of God’s freedom which has, in turn, initiated both creation and resurrection. In God’s eternal freedom, through the acts of creating and re-creating, God as Creator is expressing those qualities immediately identifiable with Christ: That God is in the beginning and will be in the end, that God exists in freedom over the world and that God makes this known to us—that is compassion, grace, forgiveness, and comfort.41

The next section (Gen. 1:3) discusses God’s freedom in relation to the spoken Word, further strengthening Bonhoeffer’s Christological interpretation of Genesis. He asserts that in God’s freedom, God creates a Cosmos which, whilst reflecting God’s attributes, is not identical to God and not in continuity with God. Creation worships God and directs us, as humans, to God, but does not contain God’s essence. Therefore ‘God remains wholly free over against what is created’.42 What ties creation to God is the Word and, in contrast with Kant who distinguishes ‘the reality of the thing from what it appears to be [das Ding an Sich]’, in the case of Christ, the Word is the thing, inseparable, and not only that, but the Word is the action.43 Word and action bind the created to Creator.44 Not only are Word and action unified, but creation is

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hence bound to God and, in turn, God is bound to creation, but nonetheless in freedom. God chooses to be bound to creation, ‘chooses to encounter the creature as its Creator’.45 In this way, what relates the two (God and creation) is the Word and because God freely chooses to speak, to command, then God too remains completely free from creation. However, God’s creation, which has been created by his Word, remains wholly bound to God and reflects God’s goodness. The significance of God’s first Word of creation, light, is, for Bonhoeffer, profoundly telling of God’s interest in creation. Bonhoeffer here draws together the significance of the creation of light in contrast with the formless world, and the prefiguring of light to the Light which is Christ, just as the formlessness prefigured Christ’s Passion. Bonhoeffer’s methodology here is such that his exegesis is not mere explication but instead establishes the Christological significance of the creative acts. From the formless, Passion-like darkness—notwithstanding its readiness for worship—God’s first Word of creation is light. The writer of the Fourth Gospel uses precisely this notion of Christ as the Light in the opening chapter of John. The Gospel starts by replicating the opening of Genesis, immediately directing attention to Christ as the Word, which is to be the subject of the Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.46

Bonhoeffer footnotes John’s first chapter for several reasons. The first is to acknowledge the clear parallelism between the two texts: Genesis and John both start with ‘In the beginning’ and establish the transcendence of God. What Genesis leaves hidden in metaphor, with the focus on God the Creator, John clearly announces: that the Word is Christ and that Christ is the Light; and the Light contrasts with the darkness and is not defeated by it (John 1:5). The second reason for utilising the book of John is that Bonhoeffer seeks to establish that God’s transcendence and freedom from creation, his first point in Creation and Fall, is balanced by the immanence of Christ, as Word, and hence God’s commitment to sustaining and preserving creation: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.47

Bonhoeffer states that ‘creation and preservation are two sides of the same activity of God.’48 God’s will to not only freely create but to ‘uphold and preserve it’ is consistent with biblical notions of Christ’s immanence holding

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creation intact, references to which are throughout both testaments and referred to by Bonhoeffer elsewhere.49 Notable here is Bonhoeffer’s reference to ‘preservation’, to which he will return as he rejects the anti-Semitic misuse of the Lutheran doctrine of the divine orders of creation.50 Bonhoeffer maintains the connection between creation and preservation throughout, despite his developing understanding. Orders of creation, to orders of preservation, and finally to ‘mandates’, represent the shift in Bonhoeffer’s thinking in the directionality of the process. The first two models framed as orders commence with the world and henceforth deduce God’s intent. Bonhoeffer’s mandates (explored more fully in chapter 7) represent a construct that starts with God’s intent and works towards the world. In this, Bonhoeffer is describing the tension between God’s transcendence and immanence. As is Bonhoeffer’s tendency throughout his theology, such dogmatic descriptions only have use in the service of praxis. What is the implication of such a theology? Most frequently, Bonhoeffer utilises these biblical texts to support his notion of the church-community manifesting as the body of Christ on Earth.51 The very premise of Sanctorum Communio is not that the collective personality of the church and Christ ‘are being thought of as being in some kind of relation’, but rather, that they are identical.52 The direct identification between the two—Christ and the ecclesia—is built upon the biblical evidence of Christ’s immanence.53 This section in Creation and Fall also serves to demonstrate that, for Bonhoeffer, Christ’s immanence has real-world implications for the created world around us. TRINITY IN CREATION In creation, we are witness to God’s free expression of God’s self in the creative act which occurs through the breath of speech, the spoken Word. The Trinitarian understanding of God as Father, Son, and Spirit is apparent to Bonhoeffer in these first few verses of the Old Testament: ‘In the beginning God created’; ‘a wind from God swept over the waters’; and, ‘then God said’. It is not so much a matter of assigning acts to ‘quasi-independent agents’, as John Webster has put it. Webster elaborates, ‘in the economy, the Trinity acts indivisibly, and the works of the Trinity are to be attributed “absolutely” to the one divine essence.’54 Ignoring this, which Bonhoeffer does not, ignores the consubstantiality of the persons of the godhead.55 But Bonhoeffer’s keener interest in relation to the Trinity is how this communicates to the notion of the body of Christ, that is, the church-community. First Adam is said to be indwelt by the holy Trinity (referring to the Lutheran orthodox notion of trinitatis inhabitatio, expounded by Heinrich Schmid).56 In Discipleship, Bonhoeffer deems that all Christians follow this Trinitarian

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indwelling: ‘It is indeed the holy Trinity who dwells within Christians, who permeates them and changes them into the very image of the triune God.’57 Immediately following this sentence, Bonhoeffer continues: The incarnate, the crucified, and the transfigured Christ takes on form in individuals because they are members of his body, the church. The church bears the incarnate, crucified, and risen form of Jesus Christ. The church is, first of all, Christ’s image (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10), and through the church so too are all its members the image of Christ. Within the body of Christ we have become ‘like Christ’.58

This demonstrates Bonhoeffer’s prevailing imperative concerning how dogmatics speaks directly to the church. The notion of the Trinity is only usefully considered when it issues in application to the church-community. Ultimately, for Bonhoeffer, this comes back to the incarnate, crucified and risen Christ.59 In chapter 7, I examine Bonhoeffer’s use of ‘the arcane discipline’ [Arkandisziplin] in terms of the interiority that must underpin ethical action, or how private worship and prayer bolster the Christian for engagement in the worldly context. This is how the ‘arcane discipline’ is usually understood, but it also connotes protection of the ‘mysteries of the Christian faith’, such as the Trinity.60 These doctrines are ‘not for public consumption’, as de Gruchy has said, but are preserved by the community through individual, hidden acts in the long tradition.61 Wayne Floyd refers to Bonhoeffer’s ‘creative mystery of community’,62 implying both that the church-community is a profound ontological mystery, and that it is also comprised of individuals each sharing the private practices of the faith. Of course, the arcane discipline is closely linked to the notion of costly grace throughout Discipleship, precisely how one engages with the Christian life; this is not however the focus here. Bonhoeffer’s sheltering of the mystery of the Trinity, along with other ‘significant and necessary parts of the whole’ (a phrase he utilised to dispute Barth),63 is to place such dogma as secondary to the ‘being-for’ that Christ is for the world. Barth’s positivist doctrine of revelation which, according to Bonhoeffer, says ‘like it or lump it’, places intellectual assent to difficult doctrines such as the Trinity over above the overarching reality of Christ’s gift.64 Bonhoeffer’s way of knowing the Trinity refers not to the ‘what’ or ‘how’ question, but to the mystery of the ‘who’ dwelling within the Christian. To summarise this argument: Bonhoeffer’s orthodox doctrine of the Trinity unquestionably underpins his work, as evidenced in Creation and Fall, but, as dogma, it is nonetheless subservient to the place of Christ in relation to the world. Bonhoeffer deemed that it is not biblical to expect people to ‘swallow’ the whole of these difficult doctrines or else be excluded from God’s grace.65

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‘There are degrees of cognition and degrees of significance,’ he wrote, that led him to the point of wanting to reinterpret such dogma in a ‘worldly way’ or, in the sense of the Old Testament and in the sense of the material, ‘Wordbecome-flesh’ way of John 1:14.66 For Bonhoeffer, the meaning of Proverbs 25:2, ‘It is the glory of God to conceal things/but the glory of kings is to search things out,’ is in the difference between human philosophy’s privileging of human cognition over other types of knowing. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, the inherent limit on human knowledge is delineated by its being an enclosed circle. The mystery of the Trinity eludes such cognitive analysis. Bonhoeffer uses this very argument at Finkenwalde when articulating aspects of the catechism relating to the Trinity.67 Almost a century later, efforts by way of de-gendering of God has, to some extent, impacted on some interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity, especially within feminist and liberation theologies.68 Bonhoeffer’s Trinitarian interest relies less on nomenclature and more on the unity of relationships between the godhead. In this way, it is not inconsistent with the ethical-social implications of some of the feminist ecotheologies that succeeded him.69 The worldly, or indeed ‘Earthly’ way that Bonhoeffer sought to interpret not only the Old Testament but indeed all of his Christology, as well as his ethic of ‘worldly Christianity’, is fundamental to the ecotheological implications that this book pursues. Christocentrism ‘or’ Trinitarianism In Bonhoeffer’s discernment of the universal meaning of Jesus Christ, there has been some criticism for his apparent failure to adequately articulate a fully Trinitarian Christian theology.70 Discussion of Trinitarian theology is well beyond the scope of this book but some brief points can be noted in response as they relate to this discussion. The criticism made in some scholarship of Bonhoeffer’s lack of emphasis on Trinitarian theology fails to note the fundamental function of Christ revealing all that ‘is to be known of God in his relation to the world’.71 According to John Godsey, such criticism does not take into account the description of Christ ‘making himself known in the hearts of men’ as ‘Illuminator, Comforter and Sanctifier’, attributes sometimes ascribed uniquely to the Holy Spirit.72 It ignores the Christ who is the ‘Firstborn of all Creation’ and by whose Word creation occurs, as well as the unity of the Godhead in the act and maintenance of creation.73 Most notably, the criticism fails to recognise Bonhoeffer’s orthodoxy as a Lutheran theologian fully committed to a triune God who is at once indivisible and irreducible. That Bonhoeffer draws attention to the humanity of Christ reinforces, in turn, his commitment to his divinity; his ethic

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of Stellvertretung is thoroughly dependent upon the relational value of the love among the Trinity.74 The comprehensive interpretation of a Christology that reinterprets philosophical and epistemological reflection about God, reality, anthropology, and ecclesiology is surely evidence that Bonhoeffer’s Christ is neither reduced nor diminished in Trinitarian terms. Rather, it enhances the form and place of Christ within the Trinity. In Christ, the reality of God in God’s Trinitarian fullness encounters the reality of the world and, hence, humanity. This continues to occur in our engagement with the Word, which operates as a conduit for the indwelling of Spirit. His Finkenwalde lectures and practical exercises repeatedly refer to interrelationships between Word, power, Spirit, Christ, God, making him heavily reliant on the Trinitarian construct to explain the reality of the believing Christian in the church-community. Using the spatial and linear metaphors, Bonhoeffer emphasises the Trinitarian indwelling of the believer through linear engagement with the word and spatial engagement with the Spirit.75 Furthermore, comparing the focus of spatial indwelling with temporal indwelling distinguishes, for Bonhoeffer, orthodoxy, and Catholicism, respectively.76 When read in light of Bonhoeffer’s articulation of the limited role of cognition and the place of mysticism, one senses that Bonhoeffer utilises traditional dogmatic notions such as the Trinity not so much to explain theological truths but to highlight their inextricability. Again, the similarity with Habermasian method is notable. That is to say, insofar as cognition and experience are able, Bonhoeffer teaches his students systematic theology and biblical studies, alert to the need for structuring opportunities for meditative, prayerful engagement with the mysteries of the faith. The notion of the arcane discipline, of withdrawing to eke out time for self-learning, and dwelling in the mysteries, is returned to in chapter 7. Bonhoeffer’s quest to know the Lord of the world and the implicit meaning for ethical engagement also has Trinitarian thinking underpinning it. As an example, Bonhoeffer’s deconstruction of orders of creation thinking to a responsibility-based ethics was, in part, influenced by wanting to anchor his ethics in the Trinity.77 Since Bonhoeffer’s ethics represents such a significant part of his applied theology, the case against Bonhoeffer’s neglect of Trinitarianism seems redundant. Bonhoeffer’s own justification for his apparent lack of explicit attention to the notion of Trinity is seen in the closing lines of his sermon on Trinity Sunday 1934: There is truly only one God, but this God is perfect love, and as such God is Jesus Christ and the Holy [Spirit]. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is nothing but humankind’s feeble way of praising the mighty, impetuous love of God, in which God glorifies himself and embraces the whole world in love.78

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Furthermore, a passage that Bonhoeffer removed before finalising that sermon aligns notions of the Trinity with the mystery of faith in a particularly lovely passage: The Creator of the world loves you—that’s not common sense, that is mystery, incredible mystery, which only those who are loved by God understand. The mystery is being loved by and loving God; but being loved by God means Jesus Christ, and loving God means the Holy Spirit. The name of the mystery is therefore Christ and Holy Spirit, the name of God’s mystery is Holy Trinity.79

There can be little question of Bonhoeffer’s commitment to orthodox Trinitarianism. His overriding emphasis on Christ arises from his context (in contrast to Blut und Boden ideology) and his engagement with the person of Christ. After all, we experience the transcendence of God in Jesus.80 GOODNESS OF CREATION The fourth point to be drawn from Bonhoeffer’s exegesis, after God’s transcendence and freedom, and the Trinity in creation, is the goodness that God sees in creation. Bonhoeffer turns to Genesis 1:4a, ‘And God saw that the light was good’, heading this section, ‘God’s Look’. He is highlighting the moment when God mindfully appraises God’s work and considers it to be good. Bonhoeffer has used the term ‘moment’ for the third time here: the previous two moments were the Spirit hovering over the chaos, and the act of creation from formlessness into form by the Word. The first he interprets as ‘a moment of hesitation’, or pause, perhaps in preparation for the work ahead.81 This can be read as a subtle allusion to the weakness and suffering of God, a concept that increasingly permeates Bonhoeffer’s theological writings. Furthermore, vulnerability, which is so vital to sociality and vicarious representative action, is not merely a tool or strategy operating as a characteristic of ethical action. It is more fundamentally a component of imago Dei. We are vulnerable because God is vulnerable. Only in permitting ourselves to be vulnerable can we become truly human, and, by extension, in becoming vulnerable to each other we learn to become vulnerable to the rest of the Earth community. The notion of vulnerability makes its biblical entrance in the creation narrative through the hovering spirit of God. The three moments, though, are indivisible: ‘God looks at God’s work and is pleased with it, because it is good.’82 The light which has been brought to the chaos (before the creation of the sun) is the light of God’s own presence being brought to the world. The light pre-empts the light of the Word that would be brought in the form of Christ.

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The use of ‘moment’ may be a demonstration of Bonhoeffer’s playful use of words. As the translator, Douglas Bax, has noted, Augenblick is used here (and previously) in the usual sense of ‘moment’ to indicate the single instant of good creation.83 The literal meaning of the word, Augenblick, is ‘in the blink of an eye’ and when coupled with the title of the chapter, ‘Der Blick Gottes’, (‘God’s Look’), shows Bonhoeffer’s amusing anthropomorphising of God—something to which he is sensitive in this very monograph. His criticism is nuanced. He is disdainful of the anthropomorphising which limits God to human constructs but, at the same time, he recognises the mythological benefit of such a tool in describing the indescribable. What is Jesus if not the ultimate anthropomorphising of God? Bonhoeffer says: And yet just at this point one must reply that anthropomorphism in thinking of God, or blatant mythology, is no more irrelevant or unsuitable as an expression for God’s being than is the abstract use of the generic term ‘deity’. On the contrary, clear anthropomorphism much more plainly expresses the fact that we cannot think of ‘God as such’ whether in one way or another. The abstract concept of God, precisely because it seeks not to be anthropomorphic, is in actual fact much more so than is childlike anthropomorphism. And we need a proper name for God so that we can think of God in the right way. Indeed the proper name is God as such [an sich]. We have God in no other way than in God’s name. This is true today as well. Jesus Christ—that is the name of God, at once utterly anthropomorphic and utterly to the point.84

Augenblick is also used in 1 Corinthians 15:52 to describe the moment, the twinkling of an eye, when the dead shall be raised, incorruptible.85 If Bonhoeffer had this in mind in using this word, then this possibly strengthens the Christological lens of his Genesis interpretation. A further allusion is to Heidegger’s important use of Augenblick in Being and Time in 1927. In turn, Heidegger was following both Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s use of Augenblick.86 Heidegger uses it in a specific way to emphasise the particularity of an instant, the ‘authentic present’.87 It is an ecstatic ‘Moment’, which characterises Dasein’s way of being in the world. Heidegger places emphasis on both the ‘temporality’ and the ‘look’ inherent in the word by italicising it specifically as ‘Augenblick’.88 Given Bonhoeffer’s own Act and Being and the ongoing influence of Heidegger on his work (or at least to the extent that Heidegger provides a voice of contrast),89 it is possible to conceive that Bonhoeffer was giving the nod to Heidegger here. If so, he does this by using a common word which, by then, may well have been strongly associated with Heidegger in philosophical and academic circles. Bloch had also already used Augenblick in response to Heidegger in The Spirit of Utopia (1915–1916) (and again later in The

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Principle of Hope [1938–1947]). Bloch’s own term, Dunkel des gelebten Augenblick, refers to the ‘darkness of the lived moment’, indicating the obscurity and rupture of the Now (and thereby, time).90 Bonhoeffer draws attention to the moment in which God conceives, contemplates, and considers creation. We have no evidence of Bonhoeffer studying Bloch and we remain mindful that Augenblick in its normal usage was and is a common German word. However, at least by way of coincidence, Bonhoeffer’s use of Augenblick gives significance to the ‘moments’ of creation in ways that suggest a response to both Heidegger’s particularity of the ecstatic moment and Bloch’s darkness that requires human agency to overcome history. Bonhoeffer’s decisive moment is entirely of God’s agency and, as we have seen, saturated by Light. Later in Ethics, Bonhoeffer would return to God’s look as ‘the gaze of Christ’: Faith means to be captivated by the gaze [Blick] of Jesus Christ; one sees nothing but him. Faith means to be torn out of imprisonment in one’s own ego, liberated by Jesus Christ.91

In this short sentence, there is a demonstration that Bonhoeffer brings together his concept of person, Christ as both Mitte and Mittler, and the gaze of God seeing God’s own work as complete and good. In Act and Being, Bonhoeffer uses a similar statement: If in Adam Dasein was violated by the form in which it actually exists [Wiesein]—through the encapsulation of human beings in themselves—then the solution to this problem comes as humanity reorients its gaze towards Christ.92

Bonhoeffer’s exegesis of Matthew 10 in Discipleship includes another comparable phrase: ‘The gaze of the Savior falls in pity on his people, on God’s people.’93 The ambiguity that is raised here is the look of God or the captivating look of Christ. There is a tendency toward mutuality where the gaze of God is captivating and humanity is unable to look away once looked upon. The holding of a gaze, and the window to the soul that the held gaze becomes, is a motif that Bonhoeffer used several times in this prison fiction.94 Furthermore, and as a final usage of ‘gaze’, we see Bonhoeffer pre-empting the notion of dividedness (to which we return in the next chapter) in Ethics: No one can look at God and at the reality of the world with undivided gaze as long as God and the world are torn apart. Despite all efforts to prevent it, the eyes still wander from one to the other. Only because there is one place where God and the reality of the world are reconciled with each other, at which God

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and humanity have become one, is it possible there and there alone to fix one’s eyes on God and the world together at the same time.95

As God considers God’s work of creation, God’s assessment is that creation is good. God sees that God’s work is good; God loves it and upholds it. Bonhoeffer points out that this analysis does not require the presence of evil by way of contrast. Rather, it is a goodness that exists simply by being under God’s dominion. This is a crucial point. It has implications for our understanding of creation qua creation, its goodness as a given: ‘God’s look sees the world as good, as created—even where it is a fallen world.’96 It is this view from God’s perspective, an ongoing vision of creation, that ‘keeps the world from falling back into nothingness [Nichts], from complete destruction [Vernichtung]’, according to Bonhoeffer.97 He is still referring to the contrast between the formless abyss and the light of creation of the first day. He goes on, ‘because of God’s look, with which God embraces God’s works and does not let it go, we live.’98 God sees God’s creation as good, loves it—embraces it—and upholds it.99 God does not reject or destroy God’s good creation; God keeps and nurtures it. It is under God’s dominion. What is the significance of the world being under God’s dominion? It is not only that, from God’s view, it is good. Dominion speaks to the condition of the relationship between creation and God and, as we will see, it has ramifications for the relationship between humankind and creation as well. Bonhoeffer says that the world lives wholly before God, from God and towards God.100 Already Bonhoeffer had asserted that simply by being under God’s gaze, creation, or the work of doing creation, ‘comes to rest and becomes aware of God’s pleasure in it’.101 One suspects that Bonhoeffer is projecting forward to each iteration of God’s look and God’s assessment of goodness and the work coming to a rest because, in this verse (Gen. 1:4), only the light has been created and considered good (although he was following Luther in assuming that the formless chaos was part of the first creative act; verse 4 has God seeing and assessing only the light). One wonders at this point whether the notion of the work coming to rest and becoming aware of the gaze is not, in some way, influenced by Bonhoeffer’s childhood neighbour, Max Planck, who had, in 1900, discovered particle/wave behaviour and first described quantum physics. On the other hand, or perhaps in addition, is Bonhoeffer already applying a Christological interpretation to the Light and the ultimate Rest? In both interpretations, one senses that being under God’s gaze and being assessed as good speaks to creation’s relationship with God. God, in God’s freedom, creates a good world and is transcendent beyond the world whilst at once permeating and breathing life and energy into that world. This can be described as a type of immanent transcendence that Green has described as having God

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‘close at hand’.102 Humanity, along with our fellow species and Earth elements, lives wholly before God whilst being held together at the very basis of our being by Christ who is the Light of the first creation. Bonhoeffer’s Christological reading of the Genesis creation story is not so much a deviation from orthodoxy as it is an illumination of it. CONCLUSION This chapter has introduced Bonhoeffer’s lectures and book, Creation and Fall, from his Berlin period. In exegeting Genesis 1 to 3, Bonhoeffer first considers Old Testament theology in general, and the creation narratives in particular, in a Christian context. That is, Bonhoeffer reads Christ ‘backward’ and through the Hebrew Scriptures. The chapter has sought to demonstrate that Bonhoeffer is able to articulate certain truths about God from the creation stories. These are God’s transcendence over creation and God’s freedom from it. These two notions together separate any future Bonhoefferian ecotheology from pantheism on the basis of God’s separation from creation. At the same time, Bonhoeffer draws on his Christocentrism to emphasise Christ’s participation in creation, the metaphoric allusions to the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross in the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. Establishing his orthodox treatment of the Trinity, Bonhoeffer affirms the Trinitarianism of God that is evident throughout the Genesis accounts of creation. Two further links between Bonhoeffer’s Christology and the creation stories are important for the ongoing argument being made in this book. The first is in the goodness of God’s creation and the second relates to the human condition. God’s entire creation, created and systematically placed by God, is established to be both orderly and interrelated. Components build upon the preceding part of creation, and their functions complement their temporal and spatial positions. In all of this, God’s look sees creation as good, very good! In the same way, Christ’s redemption and restoration of this same creation is for the entire world, not only for that one species created at the last. The next chapter attends more closely to that species, Homo sapiens, the human being. Here, the freedom binary is examined via the notions of ‘being in Adam’ or ‘being in Christ’ and a deeper exploration of how Bonhoeffer utilises imago Dei. The argument so far is that Bonhoeffer’s articulation of Christ is of Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen, and present in the unified reality, present in history. Christ’s ongoing presence is in the form of Word, Eucharist, and church-community. Christ not only validates the material world but is present within it, holding it together. Just what this means for

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humans and the relationship between humans and our fellow creatures is the topic of chapter 5.

NOTES 1. The small, slim volume was in Gothic script and bound in simple, brown paper (personal observation). A second edition was issued in 1937, and the third, in 1955, used Latin script. It was subsequently translated into English; hence it was among the earlier of Bonhoeffer’s works widely available. See John de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 2n4. 2. Ibid., 1; Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman and Ronald Gregor Smith, eds. I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (London: Collins, 1966). 3. Bethge, DB Biography, 215; see also Otto Dudzus, ‘Arresting the Wheel’, in I Knew DB, 83. 4. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 5. 5. Bethge, DB Biography, 215. 6. DBWE 8, 358. 7. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 6. 8. Martin Rüter and Ilse Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, ibid., 157. 9. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, ibid., 7. 10. Martin Rüter and Ilse Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, ibid., 152. 11. Bonhoeffer had read Barth by 1925 and met him for the first time in 1931. ibid., 412; Bethge refers to ‘his almost Barthian theology’. Bethge, DB Biography, 127. 12. DBWE 14, 424. 13. DB Biography, 442. 14. DBWE 14, 492. 15. DB Biography, 442. 16. Bonhoeffer’s ongoing engagement with the Jewish Question, especially via the Ecumenical and Confessing Church processes, and with direct support to Jewish people, is well documented. See ibid., 288; 304–23; 745–48; Bonhoeffer’s original radio address opposing the Führer’s misuse of leadership is at DBWE 12, 268. 17. Rüter and Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 3, 153n22. 18. DBWE 3, 83. 19. Barth uses Isaiah extensively to demonstrate theological points in some volumes of Dogmatics but does not devote a manuscript to exegesis of an Old Testament book. 20. H. Gaylon Barker, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 14, 35. 21. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 8, 22. 22. DBWE 3, 62. 23. Ibid., 76.

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24. Ibid., n7. 25. Ibid., 32. John de Gruchy notes the equivalent year, 4004, in the Englishspeaking world, printed in the King James Version, n24. EK’s student notes contain this profound and beautiful statement from Bonhoeffer: ‘Creation is not “before” so many years but always “before” the moment in which I reflect on it, that is, before my existence’, 47n12. 26. Including his brother Karl Friedrich, the biophysicochemist. The Max Planck Institute now shares its name with Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer. Max Planck, founder of quantum theory, himself lived in Grunewald near the Bonhoeffers and was present at the family get-togethers along with other notable members of the Bildungsbürgertum where a range of ideas were generated and discussed. The Planck Grunewald house was lost in bombing raids and Planck’s extensive scientific notes were destroyed. Planck’s son, Erwin, was a fellow conspirator and was executed in 1945 although it is unknown whether Erwin and Bonhoeffer continued their relationship into the war. Erwin Planck’s membership of the Bildungsbürgertum, like Bonhoeffer’s, and his career as politician, placed upon him the obligation to serve Germany in every way possible. Personal communication, Pf Kurt Kreibohm, Berlin, and Dr med Nikolaus Roos, Max Planck’s great-nephew, Berlin, 22 August 2016; J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, ‘Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck’, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland. http:​/​/www​​-hist​​ory​.m​​cs​.st​​-and.​​ac​.uk​​/Biog​​raphi​​ es​/​Pl​​anck.​​html;​ Moses, Reluctant Revolutionary. 27. Sabine Leibholz, ‘Childhood and Home’, in I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman and Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Collins, 1966), 26. 28. DBWE 3, 32, 49. 29. Ibid., 81. 30. As examples, see Eva Harasta, ‘Christ Becoming Pluralist: Bonhoeffer’s Public Theology as Inspiration for Inter-Religious Dialogue’, in Bonhoeffer, Religion and Politics. 4th International Bonhoeffer Colloquium, ed. Christiane Tietz and Jens Zimmerman, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 4 (Frankfurt am Maim: Peter Lang, 2012), 61–75; Pearson, ‘Exploring a Public Theology’; Fleming, Lovat, and Douglas, ‘Theology in the Public Square of Australian Higher Education’. 31. Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality, Revised ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999). 32. Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution, takes up these threads in this supremely interdisciplinary book. 33. DBWE 3, 40. 34. Martin Rüter and Ilse Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’. DBWE 3, 156. 35. Bonhoeffer contradicts von Harnack’s defence of the Marcion heresy in various places throughout Creation and Fall, and, for example, in Discipleship, DBWE 4, 116; DBWE 5, 80. On this, Geffrey Kelly refers to Martin Kuske, The Old Testament as the Book of Christ: An Appraisal of Bonhoeffer’s Interpretation, 60–124. Abandonment of the Old Testament would become fashionable among German Christians as anti-Semitism increased. See DBWE 16, 160. 36. DBWE 8, 367. My italics.

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37. DBWE 6, 68. 38. DBWE 10, 458–61. 39. DBWE 3, 26. 40. Ibid., 34–5. 41. Ibid., 36. 42. Ibid., 41. 43. Ibid., 40n3. 44. Ibid., 40–1. 45. Ibid., 41. 46. John 1:1–3. 47. John 1:3–4. 48. DBWE 3, 45. 49. Ibid. 50. For example, ‘Barmen Theological Declaration (1934)’; ‘The Church and the Jewish Question’, DBWE 12, 361. 51. For example, ‘Major Themes in the New Testament View of the Church’, in DBWE 1, 134–41. 52. Ibid., 134n29. 53. Bonhoeffer quotes here, in order, 1 Cor. 1:13; 12:12; 6:15; Col. 3:11; Rom. 13:14; ibid. There is, of course, much more biblical evidence, which includes Matt. 11:25–30; 21; 23; 24:3; Luke 7:35, 11:31, 49; 13:34; John 1:13,14; 4:34; 6:27; 8:21; 10:3; 11:27; 15:26; 16; 20:8, 17, 22, 31; 1 Cor. 1:15–20; 8:9; 9:1; 10:1–4; 11:2–16; 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:4, 6; Eph. 1:6; 4:7–11; Gal. 4:19; Philip. 1–2; Heb. 1:3; 12:1–2. Old Testament texts around Wisdom which support this notion include Eccl. 7:23–26; Is. 45:18–25; Prov. 8, 9; Sir. 24; and Wis. of Sol. 7, 8. 54. John Webster, ‘Trinity and Creation’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 1 (2010): 15. 55. Ibid. 56. DBWE 3, 64. See also n17. 57. DBWE 4, 287. 58. Ibid. 59. Further discussion of God’s Spirit follows. 60. DBWE 8, 373. 61. Ibid., n13. 62. ‘General Editor’s Foreword’, in DBWE 1, 1. 63. DBWE 8, 373. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Jürken Henkys, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 14, ed. H. Gaylon Barker and Mark S. Brocker (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 971–1014. 68. For example, Mark J. Cartledge, ‘God, Gender and Social Roles: A Study in Relation to Empirical-Theological Models of the Trinity’, Journal of Empirical Theology 22, no. 2 (2009): 117–41; Ruether, ‘Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections’; Johnson, She Who Is; McFague, ‘Scope of the Body’; Mukti Barton,

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‘Gender-Bender God: Masculine or Feminine?’, Black Theology: An International Journal 7, no. 2 (2009): 142–66. 69. Dianne Rayson, ‘Bonhoeffer’s Christology in a Warming World: Ecotheological Conversations with Feminist Theology’, SeaChanges: Journal of Women Scholars of Religion and Theology 7 (2016): 1–28; Martin A. Shields, Man and Woman in Genesis 1–3 (MTh [hons] Dissertation: Sydney College of Divinity, 1995). 70. Christopher R. J. Holmes, ‘Bonhoeffer and Reformed Christology: Towards a Trinitarian Supplement’, Theology Today 71, no. 1 (2014): 28–42. 71. Godsey, Preface to B, 12. 72. Ibid. 73. For example, Col. 1:15–20; Gen. 1:2, 26–27. 74. Discussed at length in chapter 6. 75. DBWE 14, 445–58. 76. Ibid., 458. 77. DBWE 12, 194n19. 78. DBWE 13, 363. Original italics. 79. Ibid., 362n9. 80. DBWE 8, 501. 81. DBWE 3, 38. 82. Ibid., 45. 83. Ibid., 45n1. 84. Ibid., 74–5. This brings to mind C. S. Lewis’ expression that the biblical myths are in the tradition of all cultural and religious mythologising, but that the grand-narrative myth of Christ happens to be fixed in history. See Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). 85. ‘in einem Augenblick, zur Zeit der letzten Posaune; denn die Posaune wird erschallen, und die Toten werden auferstehen unverweslich, und wir werden verwandelt werden’. 86. Koral Ward, Augenblick: The Concept of the ‘Decisive Moment’ in 19th- and 20th-Century Western Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 87. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Revised Edition of the Staumbaugh Translation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 323. 88. Ibid., Translator’s footnote, 313. 89. Stephen Plant, ‘“In the Sphere of the Familiar”: Heidegger and Bonhoeffer’, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, 301–28. 90. José Eduardo Dos Reis, ‘The Eternal Present of Utopianism’, in The Philosophy of Utopia, ed. Barbara Goodwin, Special Issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (Ilford: Frank Cass, 2001), 50. Acknowledgement of input by Dr Yazhi Li regarding Bloch. 91. DBWE 6, 147–8. 92. DBWE 2, 150. 93. DBWE 4, 183. 94. DBWE 7. 95. DBWE 6, 82. 96. DBWE 3, 45.

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97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Note the anthropomorphic tendency here. See also biblical references to the embrace and protection of God’s ‘wings’, for example, Ex. 19:4; Deut. 32:11; Ruth 2:12; Ps 17:8; 2 Esdr. 1:30; Matt. 23:37. 100. DBWE 3, 45–6. 101. Ibid., 45. 102. Unpublished paper delivered at 12th Australian Bonhoeffer Conference, Sydney, 9 September 2016.

Chapter 5

Creaturely Theological Anthropology

This chapter turns to the implications of this Christology for creation and for people, that is, theological anthropology. This follows the traditional theological method of treating God, creation, and humanity separately, notwithstanding the inherent limits therein. Such categorisation entrenches precisely what I argue as the core problem, being anthropocentrism and its associated hierarchical characterisation, which places humanity over and above the rest of creation. The outworking of such hierarchical thinking with regard to the Earth is fundamental to the human impact on the environmental crisis. At this point, however, using these categories helps organise our thinking around the problem and remains a useful way of mining Bonhoeffer’s own material, particularly Creation and Fall. Kelly reminds us that according to Bonhoeffer, the will of God is ‘ever directed to the concrete historical human being’.1 God’s goodness, first revealed in creation and further revealed in Christ has, at its heart, the flourishing of lives lived in community on Earth. This being so, by the end of Bonhoeffer’s career, he was investigating the future ramifications for people living in a new age. In this new age, the response of humanity to God’s action of restoration generally, and specifically in post-war Germany, was central. The searching, in the prison letters, for a ‘religionless Christianity’ in a ‘world come of age’, can be seen as one of Bonhoeffer’s most original contributions. However, these innovative concepts have their roots firmly in the theological anthropology which emerge from the Christology that had been evolving throughout Bonhoeffer’s work. For this reason, these innovative ideas are better seen in continuity with his established theology, rather than the prison theology being seen as separate and entirely distinctive. These concepts, ‘religionless Christianity’ and ‘a world come of age’, are discussed 95

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within chapter 8 and are noted here for their foundation in Bonhoeffer’s earlier works and, specifically, in Creation and Fall. I have demonstrated above that Bonhoeffer established that Christ’s work has reconciled the whole world with God. The particular place of the churchcommunity is to draw others into that event and to a place of understanding through faith. The church-community does this through imitating Christ and Christ’s ‘being there for others’ and through suffering for the sake of others.2 Bonhoeffer puts this succinctly as, ‘discipleship is being bound to the suffering Christ’ and such binding is manifest in actions on behalf of the other, or Stellvertretung.3 This chapter articulates components of Bonhoeffer’ theological anthropology now that his Christology has been established in chapter 3. Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology is discussed in terms of the human body, forgiveness, imago Dei, and formation, and being in Adam and Christ. These, in turn, build the case for the relationships and role of humans within creation, treated in the second half of this chapter. Relationships, both between humans and with ‘others’, are discussed in terms of dominion, naming, and selfassertion, and therefore the chapter returns to the Genesis creation stories for a closer examination in this context. To conclude this chapter, Bonhoeffer’s notion of analogia relationis is discussed as an alternative, ecological model for human-other relationships. THE HUMAN BODY The incarnation of God in Christ as human, indeed as all of humanity, reaffirms the value of the human bodily form. For Bonhoeffer, the human person is lived in and through the physical body, and this body is well designed for enjoyment. The value of the body underpins Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the human in relation to God, each other, and all relationships, as well as the social intent of the gospel, since we only know each other and interact with each other in bodily form. The Sanctorum Communio is no collection of spirits, but the concrete body of Christ seen in the bodies of the members of church. Bonhoeffer’s ‘self’ is the complete package of the person who is present in this world in bodily form. Bonhoeffer makes no mere philosophical argument about the place of the ego, but instead explores what it means to be fully human. As God validates the human body by enfleshing God’s own Son to be present in history in human form, so God validates the whole of humanity and the entire physical world.4 Furthermore, the physicality of God in Christ not only demonstrates this validation but it also, in itself, provides the physicality to the spiritual problem of unbelief. In Discipleship, Bonhoeffer expressed it in this way:

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The Son of God accepts all of humanity in bodily form, the same humanity which in hate of God and pride of the flesh had rejected the incorporeal, invisible word of God. In the body of Jesus Christ humanity is now truly and bodily accepted; it is accepted as it is, out of God’s mercy.5

Christ’s humanity not only accepts humanity, but it also provides a way for humanity, in faith, to accept God’s mercy. The invisible Word of God made visible in Christ is, in itself, an act of mercy. Similarly, the human body is not merely a conduit for spiritual purpose but is also the ra of God’s creative act. In two consecutive sections of ‘The Natural Life’ in Ethics, ‘The Right to Bodily Life’ and ‘The Freedom from Bodily Life’, Bonhoeffer makes explicit his premise that the body is not a means to an end but rather an end in itself. Here, he states that two things ‘belong indivisibly together’, they are being human and bodiliness.6 This gives rise to the right to the preservation of life since the body is the expression of the self. He goes on to defend the rights and freedoms of the bodily life: rights to life (from murder, euthanasia, and suicide) and freedoms from rape, torture, enslavement, and unjust imprisonment. These he frames as ‘arbitrary encroachment’ and ‘serious invasions’ on the body.7 The mystery of the body, though, should be protected. Part of the profound mystery of the body is sexuality. Sexuality and Dividedness The reference to sexuality here is in order to demonstrate Bonhoeffer’s primary understanding of the human condition. The ultimate intention, ‘the original, ethical life of the human spirit’8 is to live in community, where dividedness is subsumed in giving and belonging to the other. This occurs most completely in the expression of sexuality and provides a specific picture for the more generalisable notion of sociality throughout the community.9 Sexual expression is the ultimate bodily expression of both being individual and belonging to another,10 two elemental features of being human. Marriage, however, it comes to be defined, becomes the smallest sociological unit, and acts as a microcosm of the ultimate intention for humans, which is to live in community. In the same way, Bonhoeffer bestows value on its corollary, friendship.11 Bonhoeffer describes sexuality and marriage in Creation and Fall to the extent that it represents both the created goodness of the body designed for joyful, pleasurable experiences that include potential reproduction and childrearing, as well as post-fall constraints of attempting to manipulate the other for the gratification of the self. Bonhoeffer interprets the making of the woman from the bone of the man, rather than the soil of the Earth, as representing the likeness of the man and woman, and the intractable connection between them. The creation of

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the female counterpart to the man as told in Genesis 2 comes after Adam expresses his loneliness. The significance to Bonhoeffer of the creation of the male and female humans as companions and sexual mates cannot be overstated. In the smallest sociological unit, that which is a microcosm of the church-community, Christ’s Body on Earth, lies this deepest form of relationship possible in creatures.12 The potential to look outside of oneself towards the other is realised in the union of the man and the woman. The Earthiness of the humans corresponds to Bonhoeffer’s Christology, for if humans are not fully Earthly, then neither can Christ be Earthly. We see Bonhoeffer’s devotion to the Earthiness of the humans in his affection for the biblical book, Song of Songs. From prison, he meditated upon it and wrote to Bethge, ‘I’m now especially enjoying reading Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and, thanks to your thoughts about happiness [Glück] and blessing [Segen], reading them with newly awakened senses.’13 The Song of Songs, he wrote, should be read ‘as a song about Earthly love, and that is probably the best “Christological” interpretation’.14 Dividedness, on the other hand, is expressed in the assertion of the self over against the other. Creation is now characterised by dividedness since sin breaks apart perfect belonging. Sexuality, instead of expressing a ‘community of love’ now tears it to pieces.15 It does this because another person is objectified, and the self is asserted. Bonhoeffer often uses this device of stating the individual consequence of sin and then the broader social implications for the community, strengthening his original thesis of the social intent of the gospel. In the context of the creation story, shame arises from the knowledge of this dividedness, both of the individual and of the entirety of creation. As sexual beings, instead of accepting the other as a gift from God (derived from, destined for, and belonging to the other), obsessive desire for the other arises whilst simultaneously acknowledging that the other desires not simple belonging but also to assert oneself. Shame then arises in this split-apart world.16 As sexuality is subverted towards obsessive desire, manipulation, and distrust, the sequelae of ramifications becomes possible. In turn, this negates the purpose and intent of sexuality and instead results in exploitation and even rape. At the social level, constructs that devalue the other, such as misogyny, androcentrism, and patriarchy, can also support narratives that undermine the lived experience of women. Rape culture contains elements of such a narrative. Having traced dividedness as the core fracture of sociality in Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer treats bodily infringements as ethical issues in his Ethics. Bonhoeffer wrote Ethics during the human rights abuses in Germany during the Second World War and so specifically defended rights and freedoms being abused under the regime. This does not detract from the universality of

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Bonhoeffer’s theological works. Speaking into contemporary moral and ethical issues and of entering public and political discourse, rather than speaking primarily to the academic community, adds to the value and relevance of Bonhoeffer’s theology, whilst serving as a template for contemporary theological method.17 Furthermore, his transformational moment of learning to see the world from the viewpoint of the disenfranchised, ‘from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering’, is vital.18 This ‘view from the underside’ serves to authenticate a theology that could have been dismissed as just another one written by a white, elite, male from the West.19 These are important insights to take into chapter 6, which develops an ecoethic. Here it is a reminder of the contextual nature of Bonhoeffer’s work. Imago Dei and Formation As Bonhoeffer writes, ‘the issue is the process by which Christ takes form among us. Therefore, the issue is the real, judged, and renewed human being . . . [who] exists only in the form of Jesus Christ and therefore in being conformed to Christ’.20 Formation in Christ, or being conformed to the image of Christ,21 is the outworking of the event and process of reconciliation. What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Christ? As Green has explained, God becoming human in the form of Jesus Christ is the ontological reality of reconciliation.22 Bonhoeffer is keen to express what that ontological reality means in terms of how it becomes real in human beings—by the transformation of people into the form of Christ. Bonhoeffer unpicks in Ethics what Green calls the ‘existential transformation flowing from the ontological reality in Christ’, building on the roots of this exploration throughout his works.23 What is laid out in Sanctorum Communio, as moving from isolation to a community of saints, is investigated in Act and Being as contrasts to philosophical introspection, and is articulated in Discipleship and Life Together as parenetic, pastoral exhortations to conform to Christ. Whilst all of these writings occur within the context of the Confessing Church, visà-vis the German Church’s acquiescence to National Socialism as well as the conspiracy’s decision regarding the assassination of Hitler, they are no less enduring theological investigations with relevance in the contemporary setting. Finally, in the prison writings, Bonhoeffer returns to his enduring question of what it means for Christ to be truly Lord of a changed, cynical world where the religious a priori ceases to have precedence. One suspects at least part of that answer, had he the chance to write it, would have involved the transformation of communities of people. Throughout this historical development of Bonhoeffer’s writing, the influence of the Sermon on the Mount is evident.24 The practical application of

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the Beatitudes to the everyday circumstances of living together seems to have grown in importance from Bonhoeffer’s engagement with it during his time at Union Theological Seminary (1930–31) and reflected in his own description of ‘moving from the phraseological to the real’.25 Increasingly, the conformation to the image of Christ becomes completely intertwined with the actions of the person: the ethical implications are no less than an all-encompassing lifeway that expresses the new ontology of being ‘sons and daughters of Christ’ whereby we bear Christ’s image just as Christ bears God’s.26 Bonhoeffer reflects this position in one of his final prison letters (21 August 1944): What we imagine a God could and should do—the God of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with all that. We must immerse ourselves again and again, for a long time and quite calmly, in Jesus’s life, his sayings, actions, suffering, and dying in order to recognize what God promises and fulfills.27

In the final analysis, it is the life, sayings, actions, suffering, and dying which are to inform and shape the Christian and to mould the person into the form of Christ. It is Christ, the Agnus Dei who Bonhoeffer poetically asserts is: The human being who is God incarnate, who was sacrificed for humankind sicut deus, in true divinity slaying its false divinity and restoring the imago dei.28

Furthermore, Bonhoeffer indicates that it is only through Christ’s incarnation that humanity ‘regains the dignity of bearing the image of God’.29 Pertinent to this discussion is Bonhoeffer’s use of imago Dei and his preference to interpret it as analogia relationis.30 Relying again on his central tenet of sociality, here Bonhoeffer is equating our reconciled and restored vertical relationship with God with our horizontal one with our fellows. This happens as an acknowledgement of the intrinsic relationality of the persons of God. It is impossible for a human to be in the image of God without being in relationship with both God and others; furthermore, since Bonhoeffer has relied on the ethical ‘I-You’ relation to define the human person, he thus establishes ‘the image of God as an intrinsically ethical concept’.31 Hence, the reliance on the ‘this-worldly’ nature of the Christian life as the outworking of reconciliation. Sociality becomes the central meaning of imago Dei.32 Even in describing the imago Dei, Bonhoeffer continues to affirm the body. The fact that Adam is created as body means he is also redeemed as body and the new reality of creation is represented in the ‘broken body’ of the Eucharist.33 Bonhoeffer says that ‘it is the image of God not in spite of but precisely in its bodily nature’.34 There is even more significance in this

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statement than the validation and verification of the body. The significance relates to the inherent relationship with other creatures that our corporeality confers: For in their bodily nature human beings are related to the Earth and to other bodies; they are there for others and are dependent upon others. In their bodily existence human beings find their brothers and sisters and find the Earth. As such creatures human beings of Earth and spirit are ‘like’ God, their Creator.35

Bonhoeffer’s description of imago Dei as more aptly analogia relationis is nowhere more clearly stated than in this passage. Bonhoeffer is not entirely immune to a Platonic notion of the separatedness of the body and spirit. He states that the Spirit, having been breathed into the nostrils, separates the human from the other creatures in more than their origin. There is a qualitative distinction between them. ‘Other life is created through God’s word’, he writes, ‘but in the case of human life God gives God’s own life, of God’s own spirit’.36 It is for this reason that the human body is different from all other bodies, in that the human body ‘is the form in which the spirit of God exists on Earth’.37 However, in the same instant that Bonhoeffer affirms the human difference with other creatures, he is emphasising our commonality of origin and of quality: ‘The human body differs from all non-human bodies . . . just as it is altogether identical with all other life in being Earthlike.’38 It is the shared characteristic of being Earth creatures and part of the ecology which is affirmed by science. The ethical responsibility which humans have towards our fellows and common home may well be the final arbitrator of Bonhoeffer’s notion of difference. For if humans are indeed different in that the Spirit dwells within them, then they are also compelled to participate in the suffering of Christ on behalf of others. Adam and Christ: Sin and Forgiveness Bonhoeffer’s concern with sociality, and the collective nature of the human experience in relation to God, drives his exposition of sin. The collective, equated to the Israelite notion of the ‘people of God’ and contemporaneously to the church as the Sanctorum Communio, is the ultimate expression of being human. The ‘this-worldliness’ of Bonhoeffer’s Christology relates to the temporality and spatiality of life together in the collective. How is the expression of being human affected by sin? This is an important question for Bonhoefferian scholarship since the ‘fully human life’ is both basic to Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and soteriology, and because it expresses Bonhoeffer’s fundamental theology of sociality.39 His ethical collective concept of humanity required Bonhoeffer to reconstruct both Augustine’s and

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Ritschl’s assessment of original sin (chapter 4 of Sanctorum Communio), which he did in that thesis after first addressing the primal state (in chapter 3). Herein, his arguments will be briefly summarised. Others have discussed Bonhoeffer’s treatment of sin—or the apparent lack of it—concluding that for Bonhoeffer the problem of sin is not a standalone one, but rather can only be truly perceived retrospectively through the eyes of faith, belonging to the forgiven.40 This is consistent with his Lutheran instruction. We think about the human person historically, that is, after the fall and affected by sin. Hope overcomes that history of sin and death.41 The primal state prefigures the ‘new humanity’ of hope manifest in community. That primal state is one of ‘unbroken social community’ and is paralleled in the eschatological. That is to say, the Garden story speaks of humans without division between themselves or with God. Community with God and with each other is concomitant: one does not lead to the other; rather, they exist together and neither without the other.42 As demonstrated above, sexuality describes transcendence of the boundary of the self. In the primal condition, this demonstrated the lack of dividedness between the people of the Garden. As sin ‘steps between human beings and God, as between human beings themselves’, the response is shame and the covering of the body as an outward sign of the new boundary of division.43 More fundamentally, whereas in the Garden, ‘God speaks and the word becomes deed and history through human beings’, this relationship is fractured. It was only restored again by God personally speaking and acting through Jesus Christ, ‘and at the same time accomplish[ing] a new creation of human beings’.44 However, in the space between promise and fulfilment, or what Bonhoeffer later describes as the penultimate before the ultimate, there remains some continuity between the primal and the contemporary state of humanity. Bonhoeffer goes on to explore this by employing Paul’s metaphor of being ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’.45 However, he initially addresses it in Sanctorum Communio: The world of sin is the world of ‘Adam’, the old humanity. But the world of Adam is the world Christ reconciled and made into a new humanity, Christ’s church. However, it is not as if Adam were completely overcome; rather, the humanity of Adam lives on in the humanity of Christ. This is why the discussion of the problem of sin is indispensable for understanding the sanctorum communio.46

It is worth noting here that Jesus is referred to as being ‘born of the Holy Spirit’.47 In the creation story, the wind, reasonably understood as the breath

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of God, ruach (‫)חוּר‬, hovers over the deep prior to creation.48 It is conceivably this same breath that is breathed into the shaped lump of Earth to give life to Adam. Bonhoeffer’s description of Christ as the new Adam reflects the continuity of life initiated in both Adam and Christ by the Spirit. In Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer suggests it is this breath of life, the Spirit enlivening Adam, which sets humanity apart from other creatures. As will be discussed later, this comment comes not as one that contributes to a theology of creatures, but as one that fits the context of a theological anthropology—which is Bonhoeffer’s purpose in his exegesis of Genesis 1 to 3. The parallel between Adam and Christ both being given life by the breath of the Spirit adds to the theological justification for Christ both representing and becoming all of humanity. ‘Adam’ is complex. Adam is both good and corrupt, and is also reconciled and made new whilst still constrained by the limitations of sin. Bonhoeffer classically negotiates this complexity and settles with the paradox by acknowledging the tension and allowing it. The meaning of being in Adam is not that humanity is entirely corrupt while those in Christ are entirely renewed. Rather, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, Christ’s identification with humanity reveals more of the complexity of God as one who is humbled, hidden, and humiliated and not entirely triumphant and victorious. In the same way, humanity remains in the ‘in between’ of promise and hope, where both sin and renewal coexist. For this reason, Eva Harasta has proposed that the notion of being ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’ is better expressed as ‘Adam in Christ’ and that the key to Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology is that Bonhoeffer identifies Christ with Adam, at once guilty and redeemed.49 Humanity is understood to have fallen in Adam but not in the sense of ‘original sin’ defining every subsequent human person as born automatically sinful.50 Bonhoeffer thought this interpretation undermined human integrity: The doctrine of ‘original sin’ along with the idea that results from it of the transmission [of original sin] by procreation is a poor attempt to do justice to the actual condition of sinful existence. It also does damage to the humanity of human beings.51

Rather, Bonhoeffer leans towards a notion of sin whereby each human is actively disobedient and hence falls and becomes ‘guilty by their own strength and fault’. Furthermore, the focus on one’s own sin (described in this quote as being set within the particular political context) necessarily precludes interest in the sin of another: I must acknowledge that my own sin is to blame for of all these things. I am guilty of inordinate desire; I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have

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spoken; I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the face of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors; I am guilty of disloyalty and falling away from Christ. Why does it concern me if others are also guilty? Every sin of another I can excuse; only my own sin, of which I remain guilty, I can never excuse.52

The story of eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden serves to explain God’s intended goodness for humans and the human tendency to small temptations and disobedience. In this, every human ‘is Adam’, and humanity, a collection of ‘countless isolated units’ each ‘being guilty toward the whole’.53 Isolation becomes a manifestation of the barrier that sin erects between persons and underlies Bonhoeffer’s critical notion of sociality that characterises his theological anthropology. Created for relationships, humanity struggles along in isolation wherever sin remains a barrier between people. Christ is the mediator who confronts that barrier and allows restoration of relationships to occur. In this way, Bonhoeffer is able to say that we can see Christ in the face of the other, for without the very mediation of Christ, the other is unable to be truly seen. Bonhoeffer is more concerned with the pragmatic condition in which we find ourselves—apparently unable to be in relationship with others—than he is with the traditional doctrine of transmission of original sin via procreation. As noted, he identifies this doctrine as doing ‘damage to the humanity of human beings’, and reframes sin not as a genetic state but an ethical frame within which humans operate. Furthermore, in contrast with individual piety and private spirituality, the ethical concern for Bonhoeffer is a social one. The church is the presupposition of theology and so the text and the Word speak to the church-community which is the body of Christ on Earth. Contextualised thus, sin becomes the choices that the community continuously makes, and the ethical consideration becomes primarily a social one. Disobedience places barriers between relationships instead of removing them and binding communities together. The emphasis here is reconciliation, which Bonhoeffer locates within Christus-wirklichkeit—Christ-reality—and which carries with it the varied aspects of the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Christ. If Christ is the mediator of this reconciliation, says Bonhoeffer, and humanity is reconciled by being ‘in’ Christ, then the mediator must represent ‘not only the reconciling divine love’, but also humanity being reconciled.54 That is, Christ as mediator is both divine and humanly. So humanity changes state from oldAdam to new-Adam-in-Christ. As such, fallen humanity is reconciled to God but remains sinful (in Adam) (to the extent of being able to act out in sin) whilst being reconciled (in Christ). Here, as worldly creatures, subject to pain and suffering and yet forgiven and reconciled, humanity reflects Christ incarnate, crucified, and exalted.

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In Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘In the body of Jesus Christ, God is united with humankind, all humanity is accepted by God, and the world is reconciled to God. There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God. . . . The world belongs to Christ.’55 Again, ‘In the body of Jesus Christ humanity is now truly and bodily accepted; it is accepted as it is, out of God’s mercy.’56 In these passages, Bonhoeffer expresses God’s universal soteriological intention, namely, that all humanity, and indeed the world, is reconciled. This squares with his concept of Christuswirklichkeit where nought exists outside of Christ and that it is impossible, too, to be outside of Christ’s saving grace. The hope of Christ and the promise of fulfilment means that those ‘in Christ’, who are no longer simply looking inward, have the ability to transgress the boundaries that sin has placed between people and between people and God. Bonhoeffer has expressed this hamartiology as a vertical/horizontal construct.57 That is, the individual’s sin which instigates a boundary vertically, between the person and God, also puts in place a boundary horizontally, between the person and others.58 So sin has both individual and corporate ramifications only overcome by the hope and mediation of Christ. DOMINION AND NAMING This chapter has so far examined the structure of Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology based largely in Creation and Fall. It now turns to the problem of relationships in the created world. How does this inform our understanding of the human project in terms of dominion, naming of animals, self-assertion, and analogia relationis? According to Bonhoeffer, the world ‘lives wholly before God, that it lives from God and toward God’, and this describes what it means to be fully human and living under God’s dominion.59 Throughout the course of his career, Bonhoeffer articulated what is meant by the intended flourishing of humans on Earth, before God. Dominion, therefore, describes the relationship between creation and the Creator and how, under the gaze of God, in its goodness, creation is able to rest within the pleasure and preservation of God. As shown in chapter 2, the concept of dominion is problematic insofar as it has been misused to justify or underpin domination over the rest of creation, and to the extent that human appropriation of Earth’s resources has led to excessive pollution of the land, sea, and sky, and the devastation of habitat has ruined the lives of other species, both individually and entire species. Our control of plant growth through monoculture, genetic modification, and herbicide use has its own sequelae of soil deterioration and weed growth, as well as habitat loss and migratory species disorientation.60 Control

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of domesticated animal species to the extreme of industrial factory farming is a key contributor to methane gas generation and to large animal biodiversity loss, with inherent land-use problems (and human health implications of high-protein, high animal-fat diets). Domination is not limited to the land alone. Species extinction extends to the sky and the sea. Our pollution goes even further: to Space and recently, to other planets. This snapshot demonstrates that the problem of domination and, at its root (at least in part), the misunderstanding of the meaning of dominion, has had profound implications for historical interactions between humans and Earth and the rest of creation, and continues to do so. Even today, the notion of dominion being used to justify Earth exploitation remains prevalent in some sectors of (particularly) Evangelical theology.61 Lynn White’s oft-quoted paper of 1965 brought this argument to scholarly attention and triggered a deluge of responses of alternative reckonings of the role of Christianity vis-à-vis environmental degradation. White’s argument was that at the core of the problem was Christianity’s apparent imprimatur to dominate and ransack.62 Now largely dispensed with, White did bring to the forefront the aspect of domination thinking that has at least influenced aspects of Western colonialisation, and the pervasive consumerist thinking that has been concurrently exported to the global community. It is this nexus of domination and consumption that Pope Francis highlighted in Laudato Sí.63 For these reasons, it is crucial to examine not only where dominion is first introduced in Genesis 1 but also to trace other uses of similar words throughout the Old Testament and the idea of dominion in the New Testament. There is a further complexity in the textual analysis of dominion pointed out by David Jobling and cited in David Gunn and Danna Nolan Fewell’s discussion of Genesis 2 and 3.64 Apart from the hermeneutical and ideological decisions that are made in interrogating the text, Jobling points to a deeper problem inherent in the text itself that defies the feminist retrieval of the value of the woman and, in turn, the rest of creation in relation to the domination of the man in the Garden. He says: These ‘positive’ features are not the direct expression of a feminist consciousness . . . . Rather, they are the effects of the patriarchal mindset tying itself in knots trying to account for woman and femaleness in a way which both makes sense and supports patriarchal assumptions.65

It is no wonder, therefore, that a contemporary reader struggles with text that has emerged from a patriarchal context wherein not only is domination normative and theologically justified but where the text itself attempts to validate the very domination by positivising subjection, or, as Gerald Graff has put it,

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‘the very expressions by which . . . credibility [is claimed] betray how fragile and challengeable [that credibility] is’.66 The social theorist, Mieke Bal, expresses agreement with Jobling in this lengthy quote: The burden of domination is hard to bear. Dominators have, first, to establish their position, then to safeguard it. Subsequently, they must make both the dominated and themselves believe in it. Insecurity is not a prerogative exclusively of the dominated. The establishing of a justifying ‘myth of origin’, which has to be sufficiently credible and realistic to account for common experience, is not that simple a performance. Traces of the painful process of gaining control can therefore be perceived in those very myths. They serve to limit repression to acceptable, viable proportions.67

For this reason, Graff’s notion of ‘reading against the grain’ to seek out the ‘doubts they repress or leave unsaid’68 permits such a re-examination of the dominion motif in Genesis and the Old Testament. Gunn and Fewell claim: Read in terms of social class, the text’s ideology keeps a peasant class in tow. Read in terms of gender, the text explains why women are and should be subordinate to men. Read in terms of theology, the text promotes the frailty of humanity over against the sovereignty of God. All of these dimensions assign people their places in a social or theological structure. On the surface, the text seeks to assure a status quo. When read ‘against the grain’, however, it can be heard to call for transformation.69

Lacking in this paragraph is the challenge that the text can thus offer to the subordination of the natural world to the prioritisation of humans, and men in particular. Gunn and Fewell suggest that Genesis also reveals internal contradictions of freedom and control in both God and the man and a failure to convincingly transfer blame from the man to the woman. Gunn and Fewell refer to this as a demonstration of how dominion and domination are easily enlisted to support hierarchical thinking when the position of the man actor in the biblical text is nuanced and, I would further argue, potentially tenuous.70 Exposing domination as inconsistent with Bonhoeffer’s Christological and social intent of the text therein becomes a call to redress that very domination. Genesis Accounts of Dominion The notion of human dominion is introduced in Genesis 1. It occurs in verses 26 and 28, operating in two ways. It serves to bookend the poetic retelling of the creation of humans in the image of God, in the middle, at verse 27.

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It could also be seen to have a more complex function that will be explored below. The passage states: 26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the Earth.’ 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth’. 29 God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the Earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the Earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the Earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food’. And it was so.

Verses 26 and 28 can be seen as parallel verses wherein dominion provides the fulcrum to two manifestations of humanity that both rely on God’s intent for them. In the first instance, at verse 26, God’s intent is that humans ‘be made in our image, according to our likeness’. The manifestation of this intent is at verse 27 wherein the humans are made, male and female. Between these two (the intent and manifestation) in the text, lies the notion of dominion. In this verse (v. 26b), dominion is over the fish, birds, cattle, wild animals, and every creeping thing on the Earth. The scope of dominion is related to the reproductive qualities of the natural world. The fish, birds, animals, and creeping things have taken their place, filled their spaces, in the sea, air, and land. Humans are then created with sexuality and with reproduction capabilities (noting also the later explanation of Adam needing a ‘helper’—perhaps to achieve that which he could not achieve alone, reproduction).71 The second statement about dominion occurs at verse 28. Having created humans (at verse 27), God blesses them and intends that they too fill the Earth in the same way (in the likeness?) of the other creatures, that is, by reproduction. In doing so, the humans would subdue [kabash] Earth. In this reading, then, the manifestation of that blessing of intent occurs at verse 29. That manifestation is (at vv. 29–30) that plants are provided for food, to the humans and to the animals, ostensibly so that they are invigorated to reproduce. Every plant yielding seed and every tree with seed in its fruit will be food for humans, and for

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the animals—everything with the breath of life—God has provided every green plant. In this reading, there is no focus on humans sub-managing the Earth on God’s delegation. Rather, for the purpose of filling the Earth, there is reproduction and there is food. In this way, the creation of a variety of species filling a variety of spaces is presented as a network of diversity. Together, the creatures, their food, and their habitats form a world that is seen as coordinated and integrated. Therefore, at the conclusion (at Gen. 1:31-2:1), God saw everything, and it was very good. The heavens and Earth were finished, and all their multitude. Finally, in an extension of this type of reading, the very elements become characters in the narrative. Throughout Genesis 1, we see elements acting out with verbs: the dome separates (v. 7); the waters gather (v. 9); Earth puts forth vegetation (v. 11, 12); lights give light, mark time, and rule the sky (vv. 14–18); waters give forth fish, and the sky, birds (vv. 20, 21); and, Earth brings forth the animals (v. 24). The verses examined above (vv. 26–28), when considered in this context of many operative characters, simply regard the humans (in both biblical and evolutionary terms) latecomers to the fecundity of creation whilst being intrinsically enmeshed with all that preceded them. Genesis 2 provides the more human-focussed account, or at least fills out some of the details or questions that arise from the chapter 1 account. It attends to the fundamental problem (Gen. 2:5) that ‘there was no one to till the ground’, reaffirming Earth as a character, created as a dynamic system. Mark Brett has an alternative view of the reading of dominion in Genesis, seeing it as a democratising tendency. He writes, ‘When humanity as a whole is exhorted to rule over the other living creatures, this is best read as a polemical undermining of a role otherwise associated primarily with kings’.72 That is, the dominion usually associated with the monarch is here divested to all of humanity, which Brett sees contextually as a response to the oppression of the Babylonian exile during which time, in all likelihood, Genesis was finally edited. In addition, where dominion is introduced in Genesis 2 as an expression of likeness to divinity, Brett sees it undermined already in that chapter since it does not relate to ‘rule’, and then further deconstructed in Genesis 3, stating that in that chapter, ‘dominance [is seen as] a regrettable consequence of sin, a sign of distance from God, rather than proximity’.73 Brett considers that each characteristic that has been historically interpreted to reflect the human imago Dei, that is, dominion, knowing good and evil, and immortality, is deconstructed in the creation text itself. Immortality is already removed because the way to the Tree of Life is barred to them. Overall, then, the human can really only be like God by ‘acting rightly [and] by ruling over sin’.74 Brett’s analysis is used here to highlight how the assumptions around domination, whether of women, animals, or the rest of creation (or all of them) continue to be challenged by theological interpretation. As demonstrated in the opening chapter, Brett is certainly not alone in this.

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Bonhoeffer’s methodology, in this respect, endures. It also demonstrates that imago Dei and dominion are by no means fixed notions and, in the contemporary context of the climate catastrophe, their re-examination is legitimate. A Bonhoefferian interpretation of these concepts would rely heavily on his investment in sociality. When God chooses to create humans and invites them to ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, . . . the cattle, . . . the wild animals . . . , and every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth’, God is similarly inviting humans into a relationship with these creatures such as their Creator already enjoys. This statement is made on the grounds of God’s inherent relationality, as asserted in the section above on the Trinity in Creation. For Bonhoeffer, the sociality that underpins his theology applies no less to our understanding of relations between species and, in particular, dominion. Humans could, according to this text, participate in some kind of relationship with fish, birds, cattle, wild animals, and creeping animals. Humans could (like God) gaze upon the animals and see their goodness, and the animals in response could rest in the pleasure and preservation that humans might exhibit. This mirroring of the relationship between God and creation, a relationship of dominion, and the potential relationship between humans and animals promised by God in the form of a blessing, represents what Bonhoeffer had described in Sanctorum Communio as the analogia relationis. Humans being made ‘in the image of God’ connotes the analogy of relationship and such relationship is defined here by ‘dominion’. The next verse further reinforces that notion, and the blessing from God, whilst raising its own apparent problem: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth.75

Set against the tribal, agricultural context in which the Genesis creation myths were developed, the notion of dominion over fish of the sea and birds of the sky speaks to an ideation or fantasy of flourishing when the physical reality is one of toiling for survival. Dominion over the other creatures at once acknowledges the domestication of species and the development of herding and husbandry, whilst positioning humans to flourish within the harsh and dangerous environmentthat characterised the Near East. This is echoed in a similar use of ‘dominion’—radah—at Wisdom 9:2-3, ‘And by your wisdom you have formed humankind/to have dominion over the creatures you have made,/and rule the world in holiness and righteousness,/and pronounce judgment in uprightness of soul’. The idea of the Garden of Eden which, being walled off from danger, is verdant and productive speaks again to the fantastic. As Whybray has noted, the creation stories as they developed served to explain reality by using the literary technique of contrasting with the ideal.76

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Tribal herdspeople of this era most certainly had no rule over the sky or the seas, indicating that the reference to human dominion is a vicarious reinforcement of the dominion of the monotheistic deity whom they worshipped. This is further extended in the notion of imago Dei, namely, that humans not only worship a superior, individual God, but that humans themselves reflect that God. Dominion, in this context, becomes a notion of delegation by an allpowerful God, somehow deputised to run things on Earth while God takes care of heaven. The imago becomes the image of power and authority over those who are lesser in the hierarchy, in the same way that humans are lesser than God. ‘Dominion’, in the relational sense, is further enhanced by the account in the second creation myth (Gen. 2:4-25). Where the first Priestly account focuses on the story of God and creation, the second, the Yahwist, is (likely) the older story of humans. At verse 18, after the person has been created, God recognises that he should not be alone. Here, the intrinsic sociality of humans is asserted. Bonhoeffer proffers, ‘Adam was alone in hope, Christ was alone in the fullness of deity, we are alone in evil, in hopelessness’, demonstrating from the text both Christology and its theological meaning.77 By aligning Adam’s aloneness with Christ’s, Bonhoeffer is drawing together humanity’s state of ‘being-in-Adam’ with the restored state of ‘being-in-Christ’. Instead of using the difficult notion of sin to demonstrate these alternative states, Bonhoeffer again utilises the dense human experience of aloneness. This mirrors his use elsewhere of dividedness and self-assertion to capture what others, and Bonhoeffer elsewhere too, describe as sin. God sets about forming all the animals out of the Earth, in precisely the same way God had made the man, in order that the man may express his imago Dei through relationships with creatures. These creatures, formed of the same Earth, become Adam’s brothers and sisters, ‘for that is what they are, the animals who have the same origin as humankind does’.78 It is at this point in this account that the notion of dominion is reintroduced, whereby God, having formed every animal and bird, ‘brought them to the man to see what he would call them’.79 Some kind of parade is imagined here, with Adam giving names to each of the creatures. This text has been utilised to further support the authority of ‘man’ over the other creatures. The danger of faulty hermeneutics lies in searching in the text for evidence of preexisting assumptions or beliefs. If the assumption is that ‘man’ is in authority over the creatures, then ‘evidence’ to support that stance can be produced from the text by way of such a hermeneutic. Coupled with Genesis 1:28 (above), it has been, on occasion, interpreted historically and used even now as a defence, as a rightful way for humans to dominate animals, manipulating them, killing and eating them, domesticating them as they see fit.80 These verses have been called upon to variously justify

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laboratory testing, zoos, trans-species genetic and organ transplantation, and factory farming.81 In this type of interpretation, the creation of the man is seen as the pinnacle of God’s creation, and God rests having finally created God’s ‘best work’, the man, in God’s own image. The man is then put on duty, exerting the authority over creation that God has acceded to the man. In a somewhat convenient twist, only the male human is afforded this authority since the creation of the animals, the blessing of dominion, and the naming of the animals all occurs before the creation of the woman. God’s order is set. As we have already seen, though, much of this is deconstructed in the Genesis 2 account itself and, furthermore, such an interpretation requires a specific hermeneutic seeking of a justification for a system of domination that is inconsistent with, at the very least, the scientific evidence now available to us. Dominion, in Hebrew, radah, is used twenty-three other times in the Old Testament.82 It literally means to tread in a winepress, and thus, to rule, to govern. A second Hebrew verb, kabash, to subject, make subservient, is used in Genesis 1:28 (above) and in thirteen other places (as well as in Esther 7:8 where it means ‘to rape’). There are distinct limitations to tracing word usages outside their original context, and without analysing the time periods in which they were utilised (given the seven to eight-century span of the writing of the Old Testament). However, there are still some general points to note. Often, radah is used in the Bible to contrast the type of dominion that God ordains with what is unacceptable. For example, Leviticus 25 forbids ruling over slaves with harshness, and 1 Kings 4 suggests dominion that amounts to ‘peace on all sides’. Other examples are of overseeing and supervising workers so the task is well completed, or ‘possessing’ the nations. Sometimes, radah is used to demonstrate that others will rule over if they are unfaithful to God, or in Jeremiah 5, priests ruling by their own authority. Similarly, kabash speaks of forcing (Neh. 5:5), subjugating Israel (2 Chron. 28:10), subjugating slaves (Jer. 34:11, 16) or literally treading down the slingers (Zech. 9:15). Where the Niphal (passive) form of the verb is used, it relates to the land being subdued before the Lord or by others. Taken together, these verbs in the Old Testament tend to describe dominion whilst concurrently evaluating it. It is not simply a neutral notion. The New Testament notion of dominion, καταδυναστεύω (katadunasteuo) usually relates to the rule of sin (in Adam) or of grace (in Christ), alluding to the extent that either sin or grace characterises the entire state of the person. In Romans 5-6, either sin or grace ‘rules’. Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 provide examples of ‘power and dominion’ in an exhortative tone, and 1 Timothy 6 and Revelation 1 similarly use dominion in the form of a benediction.83 Dogmatically, the notion of Christ’s dominion largely forms the argument of the New Testament, although katadunasteuo is not used in relation to

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Christ directly. Bonhoeffer characterises Christ’s dominion more as Christ’s vulnerability and servanthood than his triumph and majesty. There appears to be little in the way of New Testament scriptural evidence on which to rely to justify human or androgenic dominion. Self-Assertion as Domination If my sin is the origin of all sin, as Bonhoeffer asserts, and such sin is expressed historically as domination over others, especially women and nature as Gebara has posited, then what is the mechanism by which this occurs?84 The notion of dominion, as it has been used and misused, relates closely to Bonhoeffer’s term, ‘self-assertion’. Writing in the same semester as the Creation and Fall lectures, Bonhoeffer delivered a single lecture on 4 February 1932 entitled, ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’, in a series he coordinated with visiting speakers at the Charlottenburg-Berlin Technical College where he was student chaplain. Bonhoeffer’s lecture constitutes the exposure of a theme that would recur through his Finkenwalde seminary teaching and in his major work, Ethics, and would have been at the core of his final, unfinished (and lost) manuscript. That theme is self-assertion, connoting the rights of humans and the associated problem of the assertion of rights over against those of others. Self-assertion is the attempt to impose one’s own power over against another’s and is the result of what Bonhoeffer describes as dividedness [Entzweiung]: ‘humankind’s dividedness, the world’s dividedness in general, and one’s own dividedness.’85 That is, where an individual is cut apart from their own authentic state through sin, where they are riven from true relationship with God and with each other, new inauthentic forces come into play. Those forces are exerted in attempting to assert the self over against the other, be this in the form of people, Earth, or God. Instead of the completeness that sexuality is designed to attain, that Bonhoeffer deals with in the chapter, ‘The Power of the Other’ in Creation and Fall, there is now the assertion of self both in interpersonal relationships and in the way that societies and cultures are structured. In place of humanity expressing dominion within the biosphere as a specific role within a community of species, there is domination and exploitation over the environment. Where God once walked with Adam in the Garden in the cool of the evening (Gen. 3:8), there is now, as a result of dividedness, a desire by humans to manipulate God. Manifestations of this type of manipulation can be seen in the historical examples of cultural assertion of sacred texts or religious institutions over against the person of God. The notion of religious assertion over God underpins Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion and his preferred ‘religionless Christianity’.86 As an aside, Rüter and Tödt note a link between

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Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity and his theological approach to the Old Testament: That in 1944 Bonhoeffer came to dedicate his future work to a nonreligious interpretation of theological concepts is also the fruit of his view of the Old Testament as the word of the one God. The Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide can describe the process of thought by which Bonhoeffer came to speak of religionless Christianity as ‘primordially Jewish [urjüdisch]’.87

Bonhoeffer challenged his listeners to consider the historical-social responsibility that is required of Christian action in the concrete world. In the context here, a valid extension of Bonhoeffer’s thesis enables us to understand ‘self-assertion’ as the underlying problem, not only of the violence of war (Bonhoeffer’s own position) but also the broader issue of violence to the ecology. The two, war and nature, are linked most obviously in terms of collateral damage and exploiting one for the other, whereby the environment suffers from the warfare itself (consider the image of the destroyed battlefields of the First World War) or is used as a weapon (e.g. poisoning water sources, burning vegetation cover) but they are also fundamentally connected at a conceptual level where theological interrogation of mastery, power, and violence can occur. As noted above, the immediate context for Bonhoeffer’s lecture was the mass unemployment in Germany that had just reached its zenith at over 30 per cent.88 Bonhoeffer was not only aware of the demoralising effect of unemployment but also that being employed under these conditions sets up a similar uncertainty of dispensability, or what he describes as the ‘superfluous human existence’, and dahinvegetieren—a vegetative existence.89 This is seen in the following, when he asks: What right do you have to assert yourself in the struggle for human existence, in full awareness that you are thereby ruining, destroying, and leaving the lives of others prey to meaninglessness? Stand up for your rights! Or surrender them!90

Bonhoeffer is both acknowledging the immediate situation of his student audience and the implied wider audience of both employed and unemployed. In doing so, he sets up the larger questions concerning not only individual rights but those of communities, nations, and humanity at large. This critique of the rights of the employed at the expense of the unemployed becomes but one component of Bonhoeffer’s larger project concerning the critique of industrialisation. It is in this context that the key issues of mastery of technology and mastery of nature are framed. The attempted mastery of technology and nature forms the core of Bonhoeffer’s lecture and therefore underpins the

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argument here, serving as a platform for considering attempted mastery as a contributing factor to anthropogenic climate disruption. Bonhoeffer posits that there have traditionally been two answers to the question of self-assertion, or the ‘fundamental question [Urfrage] of all life’,91 that is, survival: these are, namely, the Eastern and Western responses characterised broadly by ‘surrender’ and ‘mastery’, respectively. Framing his argument in this way reflects Bonhoeffer’s strong interest in Eastern religions and in Gandhi’s application of personal faith to political and social responses. Bonhoeffer was hoping to visit and study with Gandhi, whom he saw as presenting an authentic response to Christ’s challenges. He had made three attempts to do so, the third in 1939 when he chose instead to return to Germany to stand with the church and his nation through the war. Bonhoeffer wrote to grandmother Julie Bonhoeffer that perhaps Gandhi represented a more solid form of Christianity and community life than what he saw in the Reich Church of Germany.92 Colleagues remember Bonhoeffer as thinking that ‘a person like Gandhi thought more highly of The Sermon on the Mount than most Christians’ and ‘wondering whether Gandhi did not represent ‘God’s will for the nations’.93 In what Bonhoeffer calls the Eastern response to the fundamental question, he refers to: The distant, fertile, sunny, form- and idea-rich world of India, in which the body is easily provided with good things and thus the soul is left free for surrender and self-deepening.94

The interrelatedness of humanity with the rest of the biosphere is a Jain notion that also appears in the Hindu Upanishad as tat tvam asi, meaning that one’s true self or essence is identical with the whole of existence.95 The culturally Hindu Gandhi had been mentored in Jainism and acknowledged both belief systems as being influential, in addition to his reading of Christianity that had occurred largely in London. Bonhoeffer uses tat tvam asi to describe the way that the (Eastern) soul breathes the life and cycles around it, ‘probing and pondering its rhythm and depths, which are basically the depths of the soul itself. . . . In this way, the submerging soul recognizes itself again in all that lives, as if in thousands of mirrors; out of every form of nature it hears the quiet answer: tat tvam asi, this is you, you yourself’.96 Bonhoeffer presents this as an Eastern ontology and so the empirical response follows: The eternal awe of the sanctity of all life comes over the soul. It aches if nature suffers from violence; it is torn apart when living things are injured. You should not kill, for life is the soul, and life is you yourself; you should not do violence

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to any living thing; you should resist and reject anything in you that stimulates you to get your way with violence.97

In this, Bonhoeffer is outlining the Jain and Hindu commitment to nonviolence as the manifestation of an interrelated ontology. The three jewels of Jainism: right faith, right conduct, and right knowledge, are underpinned by personal practices of which non-violence, ahimsa, is one. This Jain discipline requires not simply removing non-violent actions from one’s life, but removing the ability to commit violence, and, furthermore, removing the ability to even conceive of it. Violence towards the natural world represents a violation of the life force present there and also, by extension, a violation of oneself.98 Violence can be understood here in its broadest sense of the assertion of power: Hannah Arendt recognised violence as both the flagrant manifestation of power and also a ‘kind of mitigated power’.99 Power denies the absolute autonomy of the other for the purposes (intended or unintended) of the perpetrator. In a worldview that acknowledges the jiva, or the life force, throughout the entire Cosmos, violence, or the direction of power, over humans, other species, or Earth herself, is contrary to the sanctity of life and therefore jeopardises one’s own holiness.100 Gandhi’s masterstroke, according to Bonhoeffer, was in taking the notion of non-violence as it relates to the individual dealing with the universe, encapsulated in the individual, and expanding it to evoke community action and responsibility. This was non-violent (neither ‘passive’ nor ‘pacifist’) political resistance, satyagraha, classically demonstrated at the massacre of Amritsar in 1919. ‘Placing the community under the commandment’ of not destroying life and suffering in preference to any violence,101 Bonhoeffer saw both a rejection of the Western approach of violent struggle and a manifestation of the Sermon on the Mount, a text that Bonhoeffer and Gandhi both studied and responded to throughout their careers. Bonhoeffer would return again and again to the Sermon on the Mount, especially through his seminary teaching at Finkenwalde and in the section in Ethics on responsibility and self-assertion.102 Gandhi appeared to return to the Sermon on the Mount, as did Bonhoeffer, at the most crucial times in their lives when political action presented as an imperative. Bonhoeffer presents the notion of an alternative, non-violent suffering as a contrast with the historical German/Western tradition of war and violence, whilst acknowledging Gandhi as a truer exemplification of the Christian ideal than what he saw emerging at home. The Eastern commitment to non-violence means that, rather than assert oneself, the individual learns to suffer, and ultimately die, and thus remains holy. Bonhoeffer uses the image of rural India, with the presumed proximity to Earth and sustainable provision of needs inspiring an inherent sanctity for life. This might be an over-simplification

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reflecting, in part, the Orientalist thinking of the time,103 but it was intended nonetheless to inspire a German audience that was devoid of hope and hardly interested in the notion of more suffering. Freedom for suffering would constitute Bonhoeffer’s final proposition: this does not constitute acquiescence in order to protect one’s holiness, but a turning towards the other and standing in their place as vicarious representative action.104 This notion will be pursued below. First, however, the Western condition is addressed. Where Indians have learned to ‘suffer for the sake of the soul’, Europeans have attempted to ‘master nature in order to force it into their service’.105 Bonhoeffer sees ‘this position of human mastery over nature [as] the fundamental theme of European-American history’.106 That is, Western history is characterised by an attempt to master and dominate both people (self-assertion, which manifests ultimately as war) and, importantly, nature (emerging, at least in part in the West, as industrialisation). Bonhoeffer portrays the Western apprehension of nature as a ‘love/ hate’ relationship. On the one hand, the Romantics (both Early and Late) philosophically refocused our natural biophilia, namely, humans’ love of the aesthetic that nature bestows, the notion of perceived harmony, and validation of the emotional response to the outdoors.107 Nonetheless, the Western relationship is marred by its innate tendency to assert power and become nature’s enemy. Therefore, despite ‘loving’ nature, we ‘hate’ it and resent its untameable aspects. We simultaneously love it for its service to us through provision, its aesthetics, and even because it forces us to struggle against it in order to receive from it, eliciting a kind of respect for a worthy opponent whilst, at the same time, striving to control, overpower, and ultimately destroy it. Bonhoeffer surmises, ‘the human path to nature is a broken one’.108 So in contrast with the (possibly idealised) East, where humans apparently live with nature symbiotically, experiencing blessing and validating its life force, in the West, the coexistence is defined by struggle and premised on separation. Wendell Berry articulates this separation as follows: The contempt for the world or the hatred of it, that is exemplified by the wish to exploit it for the sake of cash and by the willingness to despise it for the sake of ‘salvation’, has reached a terrifying climax in our own time. The rift between soul and body, the Creator and Creation, has admitted the entrance into the world of the machinery of the world’s doom.109

Nonetheless, Bonhoeffer cautions against the superficial preference of the Eastern over the Western approach to nature, identifying that, in both solutions, ‘the human being steps outside the connection to nature and is something utterly different from an animal’.110 His argument here is that, in contrast with the animals that live in accordance with the rhythms and laws

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of nature, humanity—both Eastern and Western—‘stands facing nature, ruling and conquering it’.111 In the East, it is through suffering for the sake of the soul but, in the West, it is through the attempted mastery of nature. There is universality in the confrontation with nature, both an Eastern and Western challenge, despite the different manifestation of that confrontation. The contention between humans and nature also pertains to primal cultures when they transition to modern living and supersede traditional methods of land use. We have no evidence of any society, given population, affluence, and technological increase (markers of The Great Acceleration from around 1950 onwards), that has not spiralled into destruction of the environment as a manifestation of the fundamental rupture in its relationship with nature.112 Accelerated increase in the three vital facets of population, affluence, and technology characterise the key shift in humanity’s global relationship with Earth and can be seen as marking the beginning of the geological epoch, named here as the Anthropocene. The human enterprise is the key driver of Earth System impact with the disastrous results of breaching Planetary Boundaries that have provoked climate disruption.113 With regard to the above disruption, Bonhoeffer suggests that ‘fight[ing] against it, forc[ing] it to his service’ both catalogues Western history and explains a history characterised by war.114 Attempted mastery of nature, machines, and ultimately other people, are dysfunctional attempts to respond to the key question of self-assertion. Bonhoeffer states that the Western ‘solution’ to the problem of survival, or self-assertion, is as a history of war, understood as a chronicle of violence, power, and struggle. Here, war and the machine—technology—become conflated as the Western way of addressing the problem of self-assertion in society. The machine should be expected, or hoped at least, to make war less of an option: increasing technology should act as a deterrent and decrease the likelihood of violence; additionally, in the event of war, technology would be expected to limit carnage and the impact on the environment if humanity truly mastered it. His conclusion in ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ is that whilst we think we master technology, the machine in fact masters us and we live according to its rules. His immediate example was the carnage and destruction of the First World War, and he was also speaking against the rise of the Führer, whose own use of ‘the master race’ concept provides further evidence of Bonhoeffer’s argument here. National Socialism re-interpreted and distorted the meanings of both mastery [Herrentum] and leadership [Führertum].115 Bonhoeffer sought to correct both of these distortions. For Bonhoeffer, the false leader was both a snake speaking out of the twilight and Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. He made this point in his lecture on 31 January 1933. The day before, Hindenburg had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of the Reich. On 1

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February, Bonhoeffer made his radio address denouncing the Führer’s leadership—the address famously cut short.116 Bonhoeffer continued to examine self-assertion as seen in his Ethics (ten years later), this time utilising the French Revolution to characterise the false notion of mastery: The desire for absolute freedom leads people into deepest servitude. The master of the machine becomes its slave; the machine becomes an enemy of the human being. What is created turns against its creator—a strange repetition of the biblical fall! The liberation of the masses ends in the horrible reign of the guillotine. Nationalism leads directly to war. Human liberation as an absolute ideal leads to the self-destruction of human beings. At the end of the road traveled by the French Revolution lies nihilism.117

The killing machine that was the First World War had inflicted atrocities that, in Bonhoeffer’s description, were ‘impossible’118 or unimaginable. The victim was universal, taking the forms of combatants, non-combatant humans, other species, and Earth herself. ‘Impossibility’ implies the entrenched nature of the tendency to attempt mastery of others and, hence, the inevitability of violence and destruction. The continuing history of war throughout the twentieth and now into the twenty-first century demonstrates the environmental and ecological damage that war actualises. Consider Agent Orange in Vietman and the burning oil fields of Kuwait as graphic examples. Robert Hirst reflected this in ‘Mountains of Burma’: Pack your bags full of guns and ammunition Bills fall due for the industrial revolution Scorch the Earth till the Earth surrenders.119

After the Second World War, the Geneva Convention outlawed the destruction of dams, dykes, and nuclear plants in war, but only if it threatened civilian life.120 Targeting of sites with the potential of ‘releasing dangerous forces’ is now prohibited insofar as human life is considered to be at risk. Other species and ecosystems are not similarly protected in their own right. The Convention that protects against ‘environmental modification techniques’, that is, ‘the deliberate manipulation of natural processes— the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space’121 in warfare is purposed to protect human life. In fact, it is possible that, as warfare has become ‘safer’ for humans, it has become even more dangerous to Earth. That is, as militaries target industrial features rather than face armies in direct conflict, the risk of contamination to the environment could well

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increase. Technology has mastered humanity where human life is prioritised over other species, ecosystems, and atmosphere but potentially finds itself at risk in the medium and long term from the effects of that very warfare. When machines are used for the purpose of killing and extending national boundaries, the result is catastrophic. The machine is ‘placed in the deliberate service of destroying human life’ but, instead, ‘directs this fight primarily not against the human being but against nature’.126 This had never been as evident as in the First World War. The result of technology’s mastery of humanity means that humanity is left to live ‘according to the machine’s reality’,127 distanced and abstracted from the reality of the natural world. That is, we live in a world defined by technology and far removed from the close connection to nature typified in Eastern religions128 and, in recent times, affirmed as natural and optimal for flourishing by neuroscience and elements of physiological anthropology.129 Ultimately, rather than being masters of either technology or of nature, humans are themselves mastered by both and rendered simply a shell of the humanity that is their destiny under God. The domination of technology over humanity also makes possible the ‘subjugat[ion of] nature to human beings’.122 Humanity, instead of having dominion over birds, fish, and animals, has rather dominated and ultimately harmed the entire Earth System123 and this through the misguided use of technology. The mastery of the machine becomes a trope for industrialised society.124 Capitalism, as historically played out in the West, had not resulted in less violence, let alone brought peace. Capitalism as a human system has been complicit in the violence against Earth by regarding the resources of Earth as ‘limitless’, the environment simply a backdrop to core economic activity, and not placing economic penalties on waste or pollution.125 Other systems might be similarly subjected to critique. The ultimate violence against nature consists of the emerging threat of geoengineering, that is, war against Earth ‘itself’ in order, ostensibly, to protect it from itself. Reliance on geo-engineered interventions to limit the results of our human-driven changes to the Earth System is not only cynical but also indicates an ill-founded commitment to human mastery where none actually exists. As Earth endures the sixth mass extinction—the first caused by the human species—humans continue the use of violence against Earth herself in an attempt to protect the viability of the human species alone in the face of the climate crisis.130 The hypocrisy of this strategy is profound. The rejection of the rights of other species and, indeed, Earth Systems and ecologies and their subjugation to the assertion of the human species means that we now face such biodiversity loss that our own viability is at stake.131 Using Bonhoeffer’s analysis, geo-engineering might represent the ultimate manifestation of the machine mastering humanity and forcing us to live according to the rules of technology.

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Bonhoeffer’s ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ demonstrates the close connection between self-assertion and domination, and how both concepts relate to the problem of the ego turned in on itself, unable to look outward until Christ is recognised at the centre. As it relates to the problem of human relations with not just each other but with the species and ecologies that comprise our world, it speaks to the false perceptions that humans can master the natural world in the same way that humans attempt to master technology. Attempted mastery might have characterised the history of the Western world, but Bonhoeffer demonstrated that it is not a viable strategy as we enter the twenty-first century, if indeed it ever was. Analogia Relationis: Relational Naming and Dominion An alternative interpretation supports ‘dominion’ in terms of Bonhoeffer’s analogia relationis. The calling of the animals can be seen as an intimate engagement between Adam and each creature, wherein they—both man and animal—experience a level of communication not normally experienced between species. The Hebrew verb used here, to call (qaraʾ/‫)אָרְקִיּ‬, is common in the Hebrew Bible with a similar variety of meanings as its English counterpart, including to summon, address, greet, encounter, preach, and name.132 The kind of anthropocentric interpretation described above has tended to focus on the naming aspect, which is supported to the extent that, in Genesis 2:19b, ‘whatever the man called every creature, that was its name’. The transaction is one-way: whatever name the man calls the animal is simply given to that creature. However, Bonhoeffer appears to find that the relational aspect is represented even in the naming of animals, and this in contrast with the place of animals in other religions.133 Even Bonhoeffer’s focus in this section of Creation and Fall is on the human condition, Adam’s aloneness, and God’s work to amend that condition. As Adam lets the animals ‘pass by’, he considers them and finds that they are not suitable helpers or partners for him. Bonhoeffer’s focus on ‘aloneness’ is not germane to the argument here. Instead, it is to question the validity that has been attributed to this biblical text for the justification of domination. What is the possible nuance in this text that supports an alternative dominion of relationality? I suggest it is on at least two grounds. I propose that, consistent with the practice of name-giving in the Old Testament, the act of giving a name to the animal is Adam’s recognition of the characteristics of that animal.134 As Adam names, he sees aspects of the animal which describe some element of it to him. Just as Adam finally recognises Eve as ‘the mother of all living’, the naming or renaming examples in the Old Testament refer to certain notable characteristics of the one being named. A name is given to the one named, not chosen by them, and the act of ‘calling’ implies both being

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named and being invited to come closer or being sought out and encountered. Naming is not an act of domination but one of relationality in an encounter which anticipates and potentiates knowing. In the parade of animals, Adam is recognising that no beast or bird is completely suitable to be his helper or partner. As a narrative device, this sets up the need to create the woman directly from the bones of the man rather than from the Earth. In this way, only one so very like Adam could be his partner and establish the potential unity of their flesh. In the first instance, the naming is calling out the unsuitability of the animals to be Adam’s closest companion rather than asserting in any way Adam as the rightful dominator of the other species. Naming does not confer rulership: this part of the narrative is to establish the need for Eve. Second, the imagery of God bringing to the man every bird and animal for Adam to discover and address demonstrates God structuring a series of encounters whereby the man has the opportunity to mindfully notice, assess, and address each creature. This is not the dominion of one who is over and above the creatures, this is Adam alongside, gazing upon them and describing them in a word: their name. Third, and related to the point above, is that the descriptor, as a symbolic identifier, only has agency in communication if there is a hearer of that word. Who is the listener in this narrative? There are three possibilities: God, the animals, or, potentially, Eve. Does God invite Adam to name the animals so God can hear the names? Is the name even a word or could it be a song or a growl or a chirp? Does the calling of the animals represent a deeper level of interaction than Adam simply looking and naming? Is there a communicative process occurring between all those created from the soil? Are the animals hearing the names given them and responding in some way? Do they answer back in a pre-Babel-like voice that the whole of creation shares? For these speculations, there is no textual evidence. However, the potential that does arise is in the form of a kind of Gadamer-inspired willingness to truly hear each other and, in doing so, to create a shared language between the creatures. Perhaps Pentecost does some of this work. The notion of shared language is one taken up by the philosopher and ecologist, David Abram.135 He makes the argument that oral language operates within the ecology and that the sensate nature of being in the world is a fundamental precursor to the physical response that emerges as language.136 Rather than being a uniquely human skill, Abram understands language, and particularly oral language, as functioning in a reciprocity with the living world. The Songlines in Aboriginal Australia are an example of the song working as a mnemonic for the landscape, assisting the traveller to pass through the space and ‘singing the places’ which serves to restore and recreate that land. In a reciprocal way, the land itself functions as a mnemonic to the song,

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prompting the memory of the language through the senses: seeing the land, breathing the fragrance, hearing the wind through the vegetation, all of which assists the singer to recreate the landscape when they are separated from the place. The coherence of language and of ecology are thus equated.137 In turn, the song that the land prompts also creates and restores a code of behaviour for the humans, one that both maintains the land and the community.138 Extending this thinking, it is possible to inhere in the naming narrative an intention for relationship between humans and animals based on the notion of language. Already, the creation narrative relies heavily on God speaking the creation into being via the Word. The naming of animals invites the notion of ongoing re-creation, just as in the Songlines, of the living world. This could be seen as part of the responsibility of dominion that ties together the sentient human and Adam’s sensate, physical engagement with creation that is mediated by language. In the Garden narrative, the ‘horizons’ of the man and the animals are similar enough to meet Hans-Georg Gadamer’s prerequisite fusion for dialogue (to apply the construct beyond Gadamer’s own intent).139 In a sense, the man and the animals experience each other’s differences alongside their similarities which, in Gadamer’s language, is ‘the experience of negativity’ and which serves in this narrative to highlight Adam’s need for a partner. The man thus questions each creature as to their fitness for purpose.140 Bonhoeffer does not directly address the naming in this section of Creation and Fall, apart from the key finding that Adam does not find any of them suitable as a partner: ‘they remained a strange world to Adam, indeed they remain, for all their nature as siblings, creatures subjected to, named by, and ruled over by, Adam. The human person remains alone.’141 Bonhoeffer does not challenge the pervasive notion of rulership here but, since his hermeneutical key in this section is a suitable relationship partner, this is perhaps not surprising. The recognition of difference leads then to the essentiality of Eve in order to meet Adam’s need for a partner not only as helper but also as communicator. It is useful here to consider the alternative insights from Ursula Le Guin on the place of language in establishing the groundwork for relationships of domination. In the subversive piece of flash fiction from 1985, She Unnames Them, Le Guin purposefully undoes the language of domination between Adam and Eve, and between humans and animals. The story unhinges language from object as the animals return their names in the same way that Umberto Eco did in The Name of the Rose, where the rose, so symbolic and rich in meaning, becomes clichéd and meaningless.142 For Le Guin, the name only has meaning elsewhere, in an altered context: Among the domestic animals, few horses had cared what anybody called them since the failure of Dean Swift’s attempt to name them from their own

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vocabulary. . . . all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to whom—as they put it—they belonged.143

Le Guin explores the alternative ‘what if’ story of Eve ‘unnaming’, in turn, each of the animals and ultimately, herself. The unnaming allows the animals to be more fully themselves as they ‘parted with all the Linnaean qualifiers that had trailed along behind them for two hundred years like tin cans tied to a tail’.144 The unnaming is portrayed as a letting go of that which carries semiotic overtones of domination, hierarchy, and divisiveness to the one who does the naming, the ultimate owner of the name. In doing so, Le Guin’s description makes the animals appear to be more themselves when linguistically unencumbered: The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunnelling away. As for the fish of the sea, their names dispersed from them in silence throughout the oceans like faint, dark blurs of cuttlefish ink, and drifted off on the currents without a trace.145

Furthermore, the unnamed woman narrator writes: None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim by or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk beside me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier.146

‘Eve’ notices the animals in the mindful way that the Genesis story presumes Adam to have done, before domination, in the act of naming. She also describes the barrier that had existed between them, a barrier instigated as naming, is utilised as an act of domination and not relationship, one characterised by fear, and one that is described by Bonhoeffer, as we saw in the chapter 3, as the self being unable to look beyond itself. What has happened in the meantime? White’s explanation via exploitation, or Bonhoeffer’s of dividedness, both speak to the burden of the categorisation and essentialisation that was the manifestation of the naming of the animals and continues with scientific naming. At the same time, naming can have an entirely positive meaning. The Bible is replete with the benefits of ‘being called’ or having one’s ‘name written’ in the book of life. The naming of the animals should have been an example of mindful acknowledgement of the character of the creature, a sharing of communication, and recognition of sameness of origin. It is to these pre-fall notions that the event of the

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restoration in Christ allows us to return. In very practical terms, psychological investigations demonstrate that humans are more likely to remember, have compassion for, and seek to conserve species which are most like us. For example, each of us can, to some extent, empathise with the plight of the Indonesian orangutans’ loss of habitat and status as an endangered species. We are less likely to have compassion for plants than animals, which is especially important in relation to the plant species that are being lost. There might be evolutionary explanations for this: zoological threats are generally more urgent. There are biological factors as well, such as those concerned with visual perception: plants are immobile and generally look similar to each other so there is difficulty in differentiating individuals. There is also the enduring philosophical stance of Aristotelian hierarchical thinking, described in his Scala Naturae, and of Darwin’s own Phylogenetic scale, as well as our own prioritisation of humans over all others. Similarly, humans apparently have less compassion for the insects, fish, and bacteria, all adversely influenced by human impact on ecosystems than we do for larger animals. In other words, our biophilia is not evenly spread. Even though vertebrates (of which humans are one species) constitute only 3 per cent of known species, their visibility, variation in size and form, and ubiquitous habitation across almost all elevations and depths contribute to human familiarity with them.147 Animals have great cultural and ecosystem significance, and yet we are still to ‘discover’ or, at least, mindfully notice many of them. As a point of hope, ethnographic studies have revealed that cultures that relate closely to plants can perceive and value them differently, providing a potential entry point for conservation imperatives.148 Many other species remain unidentified: to us, they still have no name. Of the speculated 8.7 million species of eukaryotes on Earth, only 1.2 million have been taxonomically classified, leaving 86 per cent yet to be named.149 Many species become extinct without ever being catalogued and given Linnaeus names, indicating both human lack of knowledge of our fellow species and a situation that is contrary to the notion of Genesis 2:19 of Adam recognising each of the animals. The crisis of biodiversity loss has societal and economic implications, as well as psychological impact for humans and the overall well-being of the entire Earth system. This leaves the conservation effort in a bind. On the one hand, should it attempt to raise our general regard for all creatures and increase our generic biophilia or, on the other hand, capitalise on what seems to be a particularly human trait of recognising and caring for those most like us. Do conservationists attempt to save large mammals, like the orangutan, because community support and funding is more likely, or the snails and frogs intrinsic to ecosystem maintenance? Or do they attempt to anthropomorphise birds and fish in an attempt to cultivate human interest in unlikely species? Teaching us about the parenting behaviour of birds, for

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example, helps bridge a gap of identification between humans and ‘others’. In the same way, as we learn more about the communications and responsiveness of plants, and their interconnectedness as social communities, humans are more likely to enhance their view of plants away from the usual, hierarchical one.150 Or does this reinforce anthropocentrism to the extent that our value of others is dependent on their likeness to us? In all of this, Genesis 3 invites a fresh perspective to the naming of other creatures of Earth, whereby naming becomes the act of actively noticing, truly seeing characteristics, and seeking relationship. The creation narratives, as exegeted by Bonhoeffer, demonstrate core truths that support a relational notion of dominion. To summarise, they demonstrate that, in God, we recognise freedom, transcendence, and pleasure in the goodness of God’s creation. In the creation of the world, we see order and relationality whereby the first three days establish the foundations which bring forth their fruit in days four to six. In the engagement of human and animal, we see the intimate act of recognition of character and speaking those characteristics as names but, since there is no suitable partner, the names fall silent. In none of this is one part of creation pitted against another. The establishment of hierarchy of humans over others is not supported but, instead, the myths create a vision of creatures coming before the man and their special characteristics being identified and named. The scene is set for the creation of the partner, namely, Eve. CONCLUSION This chapter has examined Bonhoeffer’s findings in Creation and Fall and as they relate to the corpus of his theology. Bonhoeffer asserts that a Christological interpretation of Old Testament is justified and allows the text to speak theologically to the contemporary reader. In relation to the creation narratives of Genesis, Bonhoeffer highlights in these stories what they teach about God’s transcendence over creation as well as the immanence of Christ and the hovering of the Spirit bringing God close to God’s creation whilst being distinct from it. God’s Word as action has significance for Christian materiality. The Trinitarian reading of the creation stories locates within Bonhoeffer’s theology its focus on sociality. This sociality takes the form of a universal propensity to relationality that has distinct implications for all of creation, human and other-than-human. As demonstrated here, Creation and Fall continues Bonhoeffer’s description of humans as creatures in the image of a relational God. Following on from the theological heavy-lifting done by Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, and the ‘Christology Lectures’ and ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’,

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Creation and Fall continues to describe a type of theological anthropology that builds the case for seeing humans as a species among many, but nonetheless with a distinctiveness. This distinctiveness, described as ‘being-inAdam-in-Christ’, and revealed to us not through philosophical enquiry but through Christ, has ethical implications. Human flourishing is nurtured when humans turn outward and respond relationally to the other. Acting sacrificially and on behalf of the other is captured by Bonhoeffer in the notion of Stellevertretung, vicarious representative action. Standing in the place of the other is both the example of Christ that we follow, and made possible through Christ’s own vicarious representative action. Christ’s sacrifice reconciles not just humans but the entire world which is good, and it remains good despite the presence of sin. The goodness of creation, materiality, the natural world is not negated after the fall and neither is sexuality or the human body. Significantly, the network of relationships making up the natural world remain intact and good. Christ has recreated and reconciled the relationships that humankind can potentially nurture. These relationships are primarily between humans, and particularly in the church-community. The relationship between the two human partners, exemplified by the couple in the Garden, represent the microcosm of human relationships in the form of the smallest social unit. Members of the church-community relate to each other as a community of forgiven people, modelling the flourishing, mutually sacrificial life. In this book, the key application for Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology is with regard to human relationships to the animals, plants, and microscopic members of the Earth community and to the other components of creation that make up our world. If dominion and naming are re-read through a Bonhoefferian lens of sociality, then patriarchal androcentric notions are unviable. Deconstructing them in this way challenges the ongoing theological justification for unjust, rampant human domination of the planet and her creatures. What Bonhoeffer refers to as ‘self-assertion’ can only be redressed as the reality of Christ at the centre is acknowledged. This, in turn, has implications for how change is understood in the Anthropocene. As Christ is the Mittler, so the effective body of Christ mediates the world and the world to come. The tension between the ‘now and the not yet’, and the role of the church-community in effecting restoration, is particularly pertinent in the Anthropocene. The role of humanity in the recreation of living Earth that is pre-empted in creation theology requires that it be augmented through eschatology and ethical enquiry. The temporality of Christian hope necessarily bears in on the existential question for the viability of life on Earth. It is to Bonhoeffer’s eschatology that this book turns, utilising his treatment of The Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom Come!’ for this purpose, and his notions of the penultimate and ultimate as articulated in Ethics.

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NOTES 1. DBWE 5, 6. 2. DBWE 8, 501. 3. DBWE 4, 89. Bonhoeffer’s notion of ‘vicarious representative action’ is crucial to an ecoethic based in his theology. It is further developed in chapter 7. 4. DBWE 1, 146. This is the case being made in the section, ‘The Church Established in and through Christ—Its Realization’. 5. DBWE 4, 214. 6. DBWE 6, 186. 7. Ibid., 214. 8. DBWE 1, 58n1. 9. Material here reflects Dianne Rayson, ‘Women’s Bodies and War: Bonhoeffer on Self-Assertion’, in Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion, ed. Carolyn Blyth, Emily Colgan, and Katie Edwards (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), 119–42. 10. DBWE 3, 100. 11. DBWE 1, 282n457. 12. Ibid., 226. 13. DBWE 8, 410. 14. Ibid., 315. 15. DBWE 3, 101. 16. Ibid., 80–93. 17. Green, Theology of Sociality; Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’; Lenehan, Standing Responsibly. 18. DBWE 8, 52. 19. Dahill, Underside of Selfhood. 20. DBWE 6, 134. 21. Rom. 8:29; also Rom. 12:2, Phil. 3:21, 1 Pet. 1:14. 22. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 7. 23. Ibid. 24. Dianne Rayson and Terence Lovat, ‘Lord of the (Warming) World: Bonhoeffer’s Eco-Theological Ethic and the Gandhi Factor’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 2 (2014): 57–74; DBWE 13, 161. 25. DBWE 8, 358. 26. DBWE 4, 286–88. 27. DBWE 8, 514–15. 28. DBWE 3, 113. 29. DBWE 4, 285. 30. DBWE 1, 58n1; DBWE 3, 65. 31. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 4. 32. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 11. 33. DBWE 3, 146. 34. Ibid., 79.

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35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 78. 37. Ibid., 79. 38. Ibid., 78–9. My italics. 39. Green, Theology of Sociality. 40. Recent examples, Tom Greggs, ‘Bearing Sin in the Church: The Ecclesial Hamartiology of Bonhoeffer’, in Christ, Church and World, ed. Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 77–100; Philip G. Ziegler, ‘“Completely within God’s Doing”: Soteriology as Meta-Ethics in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, ibid. 41. DBWE 1, 63. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 142. 45. For example, 1 Cor. 15:17–27; 2 Cor. 5:12–6:1. See “The Body of Christ”, Ch 10, DBWE 4, 213–24. 46. DBWE 1, 107. 47. Luke 1:35, see also John 3:8. Eric Franklin, ‘Luke’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 48. R. N. Whybray, ‘Genesis’, ibid.; John R. Kohlenberger III and William D. Mounce, eds., Kohlenberger/Mounce Concise Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament (Electronic text v2.6 designed by OakTree Software, Inc. for use in Accordance, 2012). 49. Eva Harasta, ‘Adam in Christ? The Place of Sin in Christ-Reality’, in Christ, Church and World, 61–75. 50. Whybray, ‘Genesis’, 43. 51. From ‘The Essence of the Church’, 1932 but does not appear in DBWE 11. Cited in Rüter and Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 3, 150–1. 52. DBWE 6, 137. 53. DBWE 1, 146; 6, 137. 54. DBWE 1, 142. 55. DBWE 6, 66–7. 56. DBWE 4, 214. 57. ‘The Nature of the Church’ DBWE 11, 269–332. 58. Also discussed by Greggs, ‘Bearing Sin’. 59. DBWE 3, 45–6. 60. IPCC, C. B. Field et al., eds., AR5 WG2, Part A, 278. 61. Brian McCammack, ‘Hot Damned America: Evangelicalism and the Climate Change Policy Debate’, American Quarterly 59, no. 3, Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States (2007), 645–68. 62. White Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’; Conradie, ‘Christianity Bears Guilt’. 63. Pope Francis, Laudato Sí.

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64. David M. Gunn and Danna Nolan Fewell, ‘Readers and Responsibility’, in Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and G. N. Stanton, Oxford Bible Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 189–205. 65. Ibid., 200. Original italics. 66. Ibid., 201. 67. Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 110. Cited in Gunn and Fewell, Narrative, 200. 68. Narrative, 203. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 193; Phyllis Trible, ‘Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41, no. 1 (1973): 30–48. 72. Mark G. Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity, ed. Keith Whitelam, Old Testament Readings (London: Routledge, 2000), 28. 73. Ibid., 41–2. 74. Ibid., 42. 75. Gen. 1:28b. 76. Whybray, ‘Genesis’. 77. DBWE 3, 96. 78. Ibid. 79. Gen. 2:19. 80. Whybray, ‘Genesis’. 81. David Clough, ‘Interpreting Human Life by Looking the Other Way: Bonhoeffer on Human Beings and Other Animals’, in Bonhoeffer and the Biosciences: An Initial Exploration, ed. Ralf K. Wustenberg, Stefan Heuser, and Esther Hornburg, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 51–74; Neil Messer, ‘Humans, Animals, Evolution and Ends’, in Creaturely Theology, ed. Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough (London: SCM, 2009), 211–48. 82. Most are in the Qal (simple, active) form. Judg. 5:13 is in the Piel (intensive) form, and Is. 41:2 in the Hiphil (causative) form. Thanks for Dr Edmund Parker’s contribution to this section. 83. See Rom. 5:14, 17, 21; 6:9, 12, 14; Eph. 1:21; Col. 1:16; 1 Tim. 6:16; Rev. 1:6. 84. A similar form of this section has been published as a chapter in Ecological Aspects of War—Religious Perspectives from Australia, edited by Anne F. Elvey, Deborah Guess and Keith Dyer (Adelaide: ATF, 2017), 95–110. Copyright remains with author. 85. DBWE 3, 101. 86. DBWE 8, 363. 87. Rüter and Tödt, ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 3, 173. 88. DBWE 11, 247n4. 89. Ibid., 247.

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90. Ibid., 248; See Christoph Strohm, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 11, 477. 91. DBWE 11, 250. 92. Letter of 22 May 1934, DBWE 13, 152. 93. DBWE 10, 42n183. 94. DBWE 11, 250. 95. Ibid., 250n15. 96. Ibid., 250. 97. Ibid. 98. Agustín Pániker, Jainism: History, Society, Philosophy and Practice (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2010). 99. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 38. 100. Christopher Key Chapple, ‘Jainism, Ethics and Ecology’, Bulletin for the Study of Religion 39, no. 2 (2010): 3–7. 101. DBWE 11, 251. 102. ‘History and Good, Part 1’, DBWE 6, 219–45. 103. Alessandra Marino, ‘The Tomb of Orientalism? Europe after the Lure of the East’, Third Text 27, no. 6 (2013): 762–73. 104. For a concise introduction to this key concept of Bonhoeffer’s, see Clifford J. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 1; Theology of Sociality. 105. Moses, Reluctant Revolutionary, 93. 106. DBWE 11, 252. 107. A term coined by Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (Cambridge: President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard University Press, 1984). Karl Ameriks, ed. ‘Introduction: Interpreting German Idealism’, in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–17; Dieter Sturma, ‘Politics and the New Mythology: The Turn to Late Romanticism’, ibid. 108. DBWE 11, 252. 109. Cited in Bouma-Prediger, Greening Theology, 1. 110. DBWE 11, 252. 111. Ibid. 112. Steffen et al., ‘The Great Acceleration’. 113. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’. 114. DBWE 11, 252. 115. DBWE 7, 173n12. 116. ‘The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation’, DBWE 12, 268. 117. ‘Heritage and Decay’, DBWE 6, 122. 118. DBWE 11, 255. 119. Robert Hirst, ‘Mountains of Burma’, in Blue Sky Mining, Recorded by Midnight Oil (Sony/ATV Music, 1990). Used with permission, 12 April 2017. 120. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ‘Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I)’, in UNTS 3-1125, Article 56.

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121. ‘Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques’, in UNTS I-17119. 122. DBWE 11, 255. 123. Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’. 124. DBWE 6, 122; DBWE 12, 199, 271. 125. Folke et al., ‘Reconnecting to the Biosphere’; Klein, This Changes Everything; Pope Francis, Laudato Sí. 126. DBWE 11, 255. 127. Ibid. 128. Including Israel’s experience of belonging to the land as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible, and incidentally, also in primal spiritualities such as that of the Australian Aborigines. See also Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, eds., Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy and the Environment, Ecology and Justice (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994). 129. Jeffrey M. Craig, Alan C. Logan, and Susan L. Prescott, ‘Natural Environments, Nature Relatedness and the Ecological Theater: Connecting Satellites and Sequencing to Shinrin-Yoku’, Journal of Physiological Anthropology 35, no. 1 (2016): 1–10. 130. Ceballos et al., ‘Accelerated Species Losses’. 131. Ibid.; Lazarus et al., ‘Biodiversity Loss’. Ceballos et al., ‘Accelerated Species Losses’; Lazarus et al., ‘Biodiversity Loss’. 132. Dr Emily Colgan, pers. comm. 31 March 2016; Dr Rachelle Gilmour, pers. comm. 4 August 2016; Strong’s Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament (Hebrew Strong’s Dictionary), (Bible Foundation e-Text Library Hypertexted and formatted by Oaktree Inc. v3.0). 133. DBWE 3, 96–7. 134. George W. Ramsey, ‘Is Name-Giving an Act of Dominion in Genesis 2-3 and Elsewhere?’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1988). 135. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage, 1997). 136. Ibid., 77–86; David Abram, Waking Our Animal Senses: Language and the Ecology of Sensory Experience (Alliance for Wild Ethics 1997) wilde​​thics​​.org/​​essay​​ /waki​​ng​-ou​​r​-ani​​mal​​-s​​enses​/ 137. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 163–79. 138. Ibid., 175. 139. David Vessey, ‘Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17, no. 4 (2009): 531–42. 140. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method [Warheit Und Methode] [Truth and Method], trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). 141. DBWE 3, 96–7. 142. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose [Il Nome Della Rosa] (Orlando: Harcourt, Martin Secker & Warburg, 1983). 143. Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘She Unnames Them’, The New Yorker January 21 (1985), 27. 144. Ibid., 27.

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145. Ibid. 146. Ibid. 147. Michael Hoffmann et al., ‘The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World’s Vertebrates’, Science 330, no. 6010 (2010): 1503–09. 148. Mung Balding and Kathryn J. H. Williams, ‘Plant Blindness and the Implications for Plant Conservation’, Conservation Biology (2016), 1–8. 149. Camilo Mora et al., ‘How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?’, PLoS Biology 9, no. 8 (2011): 1. 150. Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses of Your Garden and Beyond (Oxford: Oneworld, 2012); Matthew Hall, Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany, SUNY Series on Religion and the Environment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011); Balding and Williams, ‘Plant Blindness’.

Chapter 6

God’s Kingdom on Earth

This chapter turns to Bonhoeffer’s essay, ‘Thy Kingdom Come! The Prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth’, given as a lecture on 19 November 1932 for a women’s devotional retreat. Bonhoeffer prepared this paper during the Winter Semester 1932–1933 in Berlin, the same period in which he was delivering the Creation and Fall lectures. As demonstrated in chapter 5, Creation and Fall establishes crucial aspects for Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology that understands humankind, essentially designed for sociality, to be living between creation and restoration, or between curse and promise, or what Bonhoeffer calls ‘the middle’. Building on the core notion of the ‘Christology Lectures’ (which were prepared in the previous summer and delivered the following semester, that is, Summer 1933), Creation and Fall reads Genesis Christologically and sees Christ at the centre, including in the centre of the Garden of Eden. The reading of Creation and Fall, together with ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, and in light of Bonhoeffer’s Christology, provides a solid foundation for ecotheological reflection and continues to build the evidence for Bonhoeffer’s credentials as an ecotheologian. The ambiguities that confront us regarding humanity’s relationship with creation in the Anthropocene find their source and, at least in part, their explanation in Genesis chapter 3. Looking to Bonhoeffer’s exegesis provides a way to understanding our own plight that presents as an existential crisis for humanity and our fellow species. This situation requires not only theological interpretation but also demands an ethical interrogation and response. This chapter first interrogates Bonhoeffer’s notion of ‘the ambiguous twilight of creation’ from Creation and Fall to provide a way of interpreting the ambiguities of the Anthropocene. 135

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In the context of Bonhoeffer’s entire theology of unified reality, relationships in the Garden are interpreted by Bonhoeffer through the lens of the centrality of sociality in Christ, recognising Christ as universal Mittler. This chapter considers more closely the implications of living in this ambiguous period and the demand for a ‘this-worldly’ Christianity. As it demonstrates, ‘this-worldliness’ is consistent with an Earth-honouring Christian spirituality and establishes the theological basis for the final chapters on ecoethics. In applying this understanding, the possibility emerges for reorienting contemporary Christian thinking away from unhelpful dualisms that privilege humans over the rest of creation and towards Stellvertretung—vicarious representative action—on behalf of creation. In this way, it is possible to build a foundation for contemporary Christianity to engage imaginatively with political discourse and activism around climate change. Chapter 5 therefore brings together Bonhoeffer’s description of the creation story: the original kingdom (from Creation and Fall) with his piece on the new kingdom (‘Thy Kingdom Come’). As always with Bonhoeffer, the beginning and the end are mediated by the now familiar notions of sociality, church-community, and Stellvertretung. Methodologically, it presents a reminder of the challenge that Bonhoeffer set himself in Sanctorum Communio: The doctrine of the primal state cannot offer us new theological insights. In the logic of theology as a whole it belongs with eschatology. Every aspect helpful to its comprehension is imparted through revelation. Nothing about it can be ascertained by pure speculation. It cannot speak of the essence of human being, of nature, or of history in general terms, but only in the context of revelation that has been heard. The doctrine of the primal state is hope projected backward. Its value is twofold. It forces the methodological clarification of the structure of theology as a whole; then it renders concrete and vivid the real course of things from unity through break to unity. Thus the concepts of person and community, for example, are understood only within an intrinsically broken history, as conveyed in the concepts of primal state, sin, and reconciliation.1

For Bonhoeffer, the key component is the context for the hearing and seeing of revelation. This chapter invites us to consider, through a Bonhoefferian lens, the implications of the kingdom of God on Earth in the Anthropocene. It traces Bonhoeffer’s ideas of eschatology and the ambiguity of life in the middle, particularly in relation to the creation myths. It examines what it means to be in the twilight and how this provides the conditions for self-assertion and mastery, especially over creation. The chapter then draws together these ideas to explore what it means that God’s kingdom has been inaugurated. To this end, the next section considers Bonhoeffer’s notions of ‘ultimate’ and

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‘penultimate’ and relates ideas from ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ to Creation and Fall, canvassing more of Bonhoeffer’s ideas as they relate to establishing ecotheological precepts. Finally, this chapter also examines Bonhoeffer’s complex ideas about the relation of humans to Mother Earth. The ongoing dialogue between the various texts demonstrate their interrelatedness and how the roots of ecotheological thinking are present throughout Bonhoeffer’s corpus of works. THY KINGDOM COME: ESCHATOLOGY OF A CHANGING CLIMATE When Bonhoeffer exhorts his hearers to pray, in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Thy kingdom come’, he springboards from the prayer to highlight one of the key planks of his entire theology, namely, the ‘this-worldliness’ of Christianity. In this little examined piece from 1932, there are key elements of ideas that would reappear throughout his career, emerging in the prison letters in phrases such as ‘Christ as lord of the world’ and in that enduring question, ‘Who is Christ for us today?’ The ‘worldly Christianity’ that Bonhoeffer continued to articulate had firm roots in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, building on the ecclesiological and philosophical foundations of Sanctorum Communion and Act and Being, respectively. In the work from the Berlin period, we see a move towards engaging with the ambiguities of life: ethics, discipleship, and politics are coupled with a deepening spirituality and a sense of the significance of the ‘arcane discipline’ to Christianity. The latter would find fruition in the Finkenwalde experience. The former would develop into some of Bonhoeffer’s most important works: Discipleship would become his most popular and Ethics the closest he comes to developing a systematic theology; additionally, from Bonhoeffer’s point of view, Ethics was his most significant work. What contributed to this shift in Bonhoeffer’s approach? I have discussed elsewhere (with Terence Lovat) the significance of Bonhoeffer’s engagement with the Sermon on the Mount and his attraction to Gandhi and the lived ethic of non-violent resistance.2 Reggie Williams has drawn attention to the importance of Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the Black church, whilst at Union, in shaping his Christian experience, coupled with the importance of friendships with Erwin Sutz and Jean Lasserre.3 One senses, though, that there is an overarching personal, spiritual experience for Bonhoeffer, coupled with the natural maturation process that accompanies the start of a working life. Bonhoeffer was generally loath to over-disclose the personal, more emotional displays, so understatedly refers to this conversion of sorts as ‘turning from the phraseological to the real’.4 In Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer spoke of this period in this way:

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The Bible, especially the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from all this. Since then everything has changed. . . . That was a great liberation. It became clear to me that the life of a servant of Jesus Christ must belong to the church, and step-by-step it became clearer to me how far it must go. . . . I no longer saw or thought about anything else.5

From this point onward, the shift in emphasis from ‘the phraseological to the real’ in Bonhoeffer’s work incorporates the life of a Christian following Christ, in community, for the benefit of the world. Bonhoeffer was able to direct this personal spirituality to the service of his already developed ecclesiology amidst the frenzy of growing National Socialism in a clear, methodical, and determined way. Christoph Strohm suggests that psychological factors are important here. Strohm’s assessment is that resolve, steadfastness, and clarity of mind served Bonhoeffer’s objective of resisting the regime and that this was coupled with what Strohm terms, ‘a virtuoso of friendship’.6 He became ‘a teacher who not only fascinated his students but also turned to them both spiritually and personally’.7 That he went from intellectual loftiness to the deep and profound friendships described in various places is testament, according to Strohm, of Bonhoeffer’s having dealt with these tensions within himself.8 Bonhoeffer’s intellectual regard for the biblical text now became a deeply personal and spiritual one. Dudzus has written that ‘he invited his listeners to search afresh for the destroyed, defiled, dishonoured Church in the biblical Word’.9 In this winter of discontent, it was clear to Bonhoeffer that the political situation in Germany was becoming critical.10 ‘Then came the painful situation of 1933’, he later wrote, a period in which, as Rasmussen has described, civilisation and barbarism coexisted.11 Hitler’s ascension to power, together with the partisanship of the German Christians, brought into sharp focus for Bonhoeffer the need for Christianity to engage theologically and ethically with this world with its political and practical challenges. In this regard, two points are important here. The first is that an eschatology that focuses on escape to another world has no validity. The second, and crucially related, is that the flourishing Christian life is in this reality, this world. These points are now addressed by exegeting ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. Two conditions place us in a state of disbelief in God’s kingdom on Earth, according to Bonhoeffer. These are otherworldliness and secularism. Both conditions, in turn, have implications for our relationship with Earth. Bonhoeffer’s key argument in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ is that, by being either otherworldly or secularist, we demonstrate disbelief in God’s kingdom and that this is necessarily reflected in our distorted relationship with Earth. In this, he is prefiguring that important section of Ethics, the ‘Christ, Reality, and Good’ manuscript, wherein Bonhoeffer debunks dualistic thinking that

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separates a single reality into parts. Broadly, a stand against otherworldliness drives his thinking theologically, and being against secularism drives his ethic. He is at pains to reject both and reinforce a unified reality: As hard as it may now seem to break the spell of this conceptual framework of realms, it is just as certain that this perspective deeply contradicts both biblical and Reformation thought, therefore bypassing reality. There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. . . . The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. The world has no reality of its own independent of God’s revelation in Christ. . . . Hence there are not two realms, but only the one realm of the Christ–reality [Christuswirklichkeit], in which the reality of God and the reality of the world are united.12

This-worldliness therefore has two distinct but related meanings. Thisworldliness expresses the spatiality and temporality of God’s kingdom, inaugurated and manifest here and now. It also, in a very tangible sense, relates to the world-liness of the kingdom, that is, the kingdom not only on Earth, but of Earth. The relationship of humanity and Earth is so important that our belief in God’s kingdom is dependent upon our love of Earth. A further point to make here, and this relates to our reading of Creation and Fall, is that God’s kingdom is not only Earthly in a generic sense, but is planted in the cursed soil of Earth.13 This introduces the notion of ambiguity not from the position of the sinful or forgiven human, but from God’s grace in redeeming the entire world. These are crucial arguments to this book, and they will be returned to in the conclusion of this chapter. Let us now explore the concepts of other-worldliness and secularism more deeply. AS IT IS IN HEAVEN Bonhoeffer has apparently borrowed from Nietzsche the notion of otherworldliness. Here, and throughout his corpus, Bonhoeffer puts it to use as a way of confronting the type of escapist eschatology that focuses on a future life ‘up there’. This type of ‘head in the clouds’ Christianity comes at the expense of a flourishing, engaged life on Earth or, worse still, a rejection of Earthliness in the hope of a superior heavenliness. As noted in chapter 1, such otherworldliness has an obvious detrimental effect on engaging the church in climate activism. As Jesus taught his disciples to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’, he continued, ‘on Earth as it is in heaven’. It is this aspect of ‘on Earth’ that Bonhoeffer takes up. In order to make the argument for connecting humans to an Earthly

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kingdom, he describes otherworldliness in terms of ‘the devious trick of being religious’.14 Such religiosity pre-empts Bonhoeffer’s later explorations of a religionless type of Christianity.15 ‘Otherworldliness,’ he says, affords a splendid environment in which to live. When life begins to be difficult and oppressive, one leaps boldly into the air and soars, relieved and worry free, in the so-called eternal realm.16

His disdain for this approach, closely linked with the notion of homo religiosus, only gets more pronounced in his prison writings, where the urgency of the confinement accentuates his words. For example, from the letter of 5 December 1943, previously quoted: Only when one loves life and the Earth so much that with it everything seems to be lost and at its end may one believe in the resurrection of the dead and a new world.17

The reason that other-worldly Christianity is so contrary to Bonhoeffer’s theology is not just that it runs counter to his ethic of responsibility, reflecting notions of the Kulturprostestant and Bonhoeffer’s Stellvertretung. More fundamentally, it negates the unity of reality made one in Christ. As demonstrated in chapter 2, the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s Christology makes escapism to another world, and away from this one, inconsistent with the notion of Christ’s immanence or the value of the incarnation. That is why Bonhoeffer can say that otherworldliness ‘means that we no longer believe in God’s kingdom.’ ‘Coward[ly] fleeing to other worlds’ implies that Christ is not present in this one.18 In addition to the Christological problem of such an eschatology, there is a second ramification for Earth. Hope for escape to another world allows us to scorn Earth, be hostile, and consider ourselves superior to it.19 We want to be better than the Earth and, indeed, in this thinking, our easy heavenly victories are superior to the temporal defeats that we might experience in this world. Such thinking leads to mischievous preaching to the weak, something that is more fully formed in Discipleship as ‘cheap grace’. Bonhoeffer’s language from prison is much stronger, equating such religiosity in the face of the post-religious a priori as ‘religious rape’.20 An escapist church—one which is ‘intellectually dishonest’—preaches to the weak, offering spiritual victories by way of comfort21: An otherworldly church can be sure that it will in no time at all attract all the weaklings, all those who are only too glad to be deceived and deluded, all the dreamers, all disloyal children of the Earth.22

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Here again, Bonhoeffer frames otherworldly escapism as betrayal of Earth. Betrayal has connotations of dishonesty, unreliability, lost trust, and deceit— character traits condemned under the moral code of the Bildungsbürgertum and hence, in the Bonhoeffer family.23 The implications of this type of eschatology are not only individualistic, but, moreover, there are ‘real world’ effects. Despite the sarcasm apparent in that quote, Bonhoeffer attempts to provoke a generous response—for who would not want to ‘mount the chariot that descends from the sky with the promise of taking us to a better world on the other side?’ and if the church does attract the weak, then should not the church show mercy?24 This is the problem: instead of receiving from Christ strength for weakness, an otherworldly church further removes the person from their proper relationship with Earth. The ‘weakling’ is threatened by the strength of Earth and so ‘wrests himself from it and refuses to take it seriously.’25 In this transaction, the weakling is attracted to the cheap victory of heaven. Bonhoeffer says that, instead, the human should receive strength from Christ: ‘Christ does not lead him into the otherworldliness of religious escapism. Rather, Christ returns him to the Earth as its true son.’26 Just as the deluded are equated with being disloyal children of Earth, so restoration in Christ means returning to Earth, ‘our mother’.27 The idea of Earth as mother is further explored at the end of this chapter. The second condition estranging us from a belief in the kingdom of God is secularism or, more precisely in Bonhoeffer’s terms, pious, Christian secularism.28 Bonhoeffer utilises the notion of secularism to describe the separation of Christian thinking from the public sphere. Here, he is contrasting the weak (above) with those who would be strong. Instead of fleeing the power of Earth, secularists identify such power and identify with it. This is a Christian ‘renunciation of God as the Lord of the Earth’29 and a usurping of that place as the church builds its own Earthly kingdom. This is power confronting power and the church confronting the world. Building such a fortress and arming itself, the church lives well enough with such cheerful secularism. ‘The human being,’ Bonhoeffer says, ‘. . . enjoys a good fight and putting his strength to the test’, resulting in a faith hardened to ‘religious convention and morality, and the church into an organization of action for religious-moral reconstruction’.30 Instead of engaging wholeheartedly with the world and its problems, the pietistic, secularist church builds for itself an empire against the world and necessarily, against Earth. Such pious secularism can be attractive, preaching effectively to those who would be strong: the ‘brave, determined, well-meaning, all the all-true sons of the Earth on its side in this happy war . . . gladly represent[ing] God’s cause in this wicked world’.31 In fact, Bonhoeffer is mimicking Hitler’s militaristic language, in one paragraph alone using terms such as ‘arms itself’, ‘powers’, ‘builds itself a strong fortress’, ‘safe and secure with God’, ‘a good fight’, and

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‘putting his strength to the test’.32 However, ‘God intends to be Lord on Earth and regards all exuberant human zeal on his behalf to be a real disservice’.33 In fact, according to Bonhoeffer, God has no need of humans ‘earn[ing] God his right in the world’ at all, nor desires that humans ‘assume his role on Earth in loud, boastful strength’.34 In attempting to co-opt the power of the Earth, indeed, loving the Earth for its own sake, humans attempt to take the place of God: ‘Whoever evades Earth in order to find God finds only himself.’35 It becomes clear that this is contrary to the type dominion that was articulated in the previous chapter. Both these conditions, otherworldliness and pious secularism, reflect the lack of belief in God’s kingdom, and are two sides of the same coin. One would flee from the Earth to find a better place (but does not find God there), while the other finds himself in a worldly kingdom created by himself. Neither regards God’s kingdom as God’s kingdom on Earth. Loving God necessarily means loving God as the Lord of the Earth because God is Earth’s creator and preserver. Loving the Earth then must mean loving it as God’s Earth. It follows, furthermore, that loving God’s kingdom must mean loving it as God’s Earthly kingdom. God would be Lord of the world, and Bonhoeffer exhorts us to love God as the Lord of the Earth as it is. These three are inextricably linked. Loving God, loving God’s Earth, and loving God’s kingdom on Earth demands a this-worldly Christianity that not only rebuffs a false war between good and evil, or an escape to a lovelier world, it requires us to love Earth, our Mother. God’s kingdom has been planted on this Earth, a kingdom ‘dawning in this world’.36 What do we make of God’s kingdom planted in the cursed soil of Earth? How do we imagine blessing and curse to co-exist? How does this dovetail with Bonhoeffer’s description of the penultimate and ultimate in his Ethics? To address these questions, we return to Creation and Fall where Bonhoeffer uses the phrase, ‘the ambiguous twilight of creation’.37 CREATION MYTHS AND THE MIDDLE The pious question of the serpent, ‘Did God really say . . .?’ is the turning point in the creation narratives and the introduction of the problem of evil in the Bible, that is, the introduction of ambiguity. To appreciate the importance of this fulcrum, the story thus far is recapped. Two accounts of the myth, one focussed on God and the second on humans, relate that God, in God’s freedom, created all that exists by the Word, and God saw it as good. The narrative proceeds, using literary and culturally significant motifs (including, for example, parallelism and the number seven), providing a metanarrative of the mystery of creation and the place of humanity within it. The narratives

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seek not so much to explain the beginning as to account for the reality of the present. This reality is: that there is diversity, sexuality, and sin; that there are defined spaces populated by various species; and, that there is a greater Cosmos with planetary and stellar components operating in an orderly fashion. The focal point is the Garden of Delight, the centre around which the actors play their parts, a man and a woman in a fertile place both beautiful and fecund. It is a place to live and enjoy, to work and rest. Bonhoeffer sees the description of the Garden as the obvious paradise for the desert-dwelling writers: What else would a person from the desert think of here but a land with magnificent rivers and trees full of fruit? Precious stones, rare odors, gorgeous colors surround the first human being. The fruitful land in the distant east, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, of which so many wonderful things were being told— perhaps that was the place, the garden of the first human being.38

In the middle of the Garden stand the two trees that will determine the destiny of humankind.39 One tree is of life, and the other is the tree whose fruit the man is forbidden to eat, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ‘Life, knowledge, death’, Bonhoeffer says, are connected with one another and are fundamental to the human experience.40 Bonhoeffer is not demarcating pre- and post-fall human experience, instead, he had already established that humanity exists in the ‘middle’, between the beginning and the end. Bonhoeffer would go on to write about this middle period as the ‘penultimate’ to the ‘ultimate’ of the new, coming kingdom.41 The church, he says, knows of the beginning because it also knows of the end, that is, the new creation, the kingdom of God.42 Eschatology and creation are partners and frame the penultimate, middle. Accordingly, Bonhoeffer relates the trees at the centre of the Garden with the cross on which Christ hung. This is the centre of reality. Christ, already present in and through creation as the Word through which creation occurs, is symbolically represented in the Garden through the tree. Christ is always both Mitte—in the middle, and Mittler—mediator, not merely of sin but of all reality. Leibniz’s analogy of Christ as centre of a circle radiating outward, with no circumference, means that Christ is at the centre, always and everywhere. Christ is faithful at the centre. Bonhoeffer uses the circle metaphor in Act and Being, after Luther, as does Nietzsche in Zarathustra: the human ego is an arc curved in on itself. Throughout Bonhoeffer’s theology is the notion that human ego, represented as philosophy, is never adequate to the task of answering the ‘why’ question, as discussed in chapter 3. ‘Thinking’, he says, ‘can never answer its own last question why . . . . Our thinking . . .

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lacks a beginning because it is a circle. We think in a circle . . . . We exist in a circle’.43 In our fallen state, our thinking is circular, a circulus vitiosus, repeatedly positing itself as the object.44 Only when Christ is recognised as being at the centre of human existence is the human able to look outward and recognise Christ at the centre of all reality and hence able to mediate relationships. In the Garden, Adam is not at the centre: God’s tree of life is at the centre and so Adam has life.45 Christ as Mitte of all reality is a constant throughout Bonhoeffer’s works. The science-religion binary is further challenged by rejecting the notion of a God who only fills the gaps, where God is used to answer questions unanswerable by human intellect. The description of the Lückenbüßer (stopgap) God had been used by Friedrich Brunstäd, whom Bonhoeffer in turn utilises in Act and Being.46 In the 1931–1932 Winter Semester, Bonhoeffer made reference to Paul Tillich who had written of ‘the radical separation of the territories of faith and knowledge and . . . the unconditional surrender of the field . . . to autonomous science’, which ‘made impossible the use of gaps in scientific knowledge for . . . introducing God as a gap-filler in the scientific description of the world’.47 Bonhoeffer also uses the phrase, ‘the working hypothesis of God’, in a similar way and, together, these conceptions of God contribute to his rejection of the religious a priori in a ‘world come of age’, where the gaps themselves are making, in Weizsäcker’s words, ‘a continuous and dishonourable retreat’.48 In ‘Outline for a Book’ (3 August 1944) and ‘Exposition on the First Table of the Ten Words of God’ (June/July 1944), Bonhoeffer rejects using God as the excuse for discomfort or embarrassment when we want to silence science or art, or indeed our own ignorance.49 In a scientific age, this was no longer a credible approach, if indeed it ever was. Bonhoeffer’s career-long searching for who Christ is for us today50 represents his renegotiating revelation and history, a dialectic emanating from his assertion of the centrality of Christ in a unified reality. Bonhoeffer’s letter of 29 May 1944 distils the notion of the place of Christ and rejects this God of the gaps. In this significant letter, he virtually summarises this argument and its meaning in terms of theological anthropology but does so in the personal language of a prisoner writing to a dear friend. It is quoted at length here: We shouldn’t think of God as the stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge, because then—as is objectively inevitable—when the boundaries of knowledge are pushed ever further, God too is pushed further away and thus is ever on the retreat. We should find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants to be grasped by us not in unsolved questions but in those that have been solved. This is true of the relation between God and scientific knowledge, but it is also true of the universal human questions about death, suffering, and guilt. Today, even for these questions, there are human answers that can

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completely disregard God. Human beings cope with these questions practically without God and have done so throughout the ages, and it is simply not true that only Christianity would have a solution to them. As for the idea of a ‘solution’, we would have to say that the Christian answers are just as uncompelling (or just as compelling) as other possible solutions. Here too, God is not a stopgap.51

Returning to the creation story, we now recognise why Bonhoeffer is able to see the immanence of Christ in the centre of the Garden. The tree represents the cross; the Mitte is also Mittler. Into this scenario, the serpent enters. THE AMBIGUOUS TWILIGHT The notion of ambiguity is one that recurs in Bonhoeffer’s writings, reflecting his rejection of a divided world of false dualisms, preferring to describe reality which, whilst unified, is experienced in grey and difficult choices, not so much between good and evil but more often in seeking to live responsibly when there is no clear ‘good’ path. Lenehan has described it (both Bonhoeffer’s theological and biographical stances) as standing responsibly somewhere between silence and speech.52 For Bonhoeffer, life is necessarily lived in this ambiguous zone—the twilight—distorted by that third actor in the Garden between God and the humans. In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer provides a visual image of the rift: A third power, sin, has stepped between human beings and God, as between human beings themselves. Later this is symbolized in the medieval representation of the fall. In the center is the tree with the serpent coiled around it, man and woman on either side, separated by the tree whose fruit they ate in disobedience.53

In relation to Genesis 3, ambiguity relates to the serpent’s question (Did God really say?) and the serpent itself (the Devil?), Eve (the temptress?) and, as we have seen, the trees. At a higher conceptual level, there exists the ambiguity of the two lights, the Zwielicht, as well as the ambiguity of the ethical response to the question. Finally, there is the ultimate ambiguity of living out our lives in the ambiguity that is our world, namely, the ambiguity of blessing and curse, of the beauty of Earth, and the ravishing and distortion that has created the climate crisis of this middle period. Let us consider some aspects of these ambiguities. Twilight is that temporal and qualitative space between the day and the darkness, where neither dominates and neither sun nor moon rules the sky. Etymologically, it speaks to two lights, namely, the tussle between day and

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night when sunlight is diffused through the dust and is softened and muted, finally giving way in transition to a new period. It is used in English to refer to an intermediate, undefined state and to mark the end of a period, ‘the twilight years’ or the twilight of a career. In German, it retains the notion of ‘two lights’ and it is this mixing of day and night, sunlight and moonlight that Bonhoeffer is utilising. The Prince of Darkness and the Father of Lights are names of Satan that speak to the alternative to the Light which is Christ. It sits in contrast with God’s first act of creation in separating the light from the darkness, the decisive act. Regarding Genesis 3, Bonhoeffer’s use of the phrase, the ambiguous twilight of creation, represents the goodness of creation in which there is a potentiality for the free humans to rebel. The serpent is already present, the scene is set. The point though is that the two lights cannot be separated, just as twilight cannot be divided into day and night. Here is Bonhoeffer’s whole paragraph: The twilight [Zwielicht] in which what has been created and what is evil appear here cannot in any way be made an unmixed light without destroying something that is decisive. The ambiguity of the serpent, of Eve, and of the tree of knowledge as creatures of God’s grace and yet as the place where the voice of evil is heard must be preserved as such; it must on no account be crudely simplified and its two aspects be torn apart to make it unambiguous. For precisely this twilight, this ambiguity, in which the creation here stands constitutes the only possible way for human beings in the middle to speak about this event—and the Yahwist too was a human being in the middle. Only in this way is it possible to maintain two complementary concerns: truly to lay all the guilt on human beings and at the same time to express how inconceivable, inexplicable, and inexcusable that guilt is.54

Attempting to solve the riddle of theodicy repeats the pious question and is as futile as parting the twilight. The creation story does not attempt to explain the origin of sin; it seeks rather to ‘witness to its character as guilt and as the unending burden that humankind bears’.55 Returning to Bonhoeffer’s advice to his Berlin students, ‘The theological question is not a question about the origin of evil but one about the actual overcoming of evil on the cross’.56 The Christological focus of Bonhoeffer’s theology is seen, by him, to permeate the entirety of the scriptures and dogma so that a doctrinal issue of theodicy, in turn, is treated as one of ethics. The serpent’s question in the Garden to the humans—the question Bonhoeffer calls the pious question—is, ‘Did God really say?’ The serpent knows the question will only have resonance with the humans if it ‘purports to come from God and represent[s] God’s cause’.57 This is why the serpent speaks with a ‘forked tongue’: for what appears as a pious question is the most godless; it suggests that the serpent knows more about God than God

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has revealed, and more of God’s purpose than God’s Word has spoken. Bonhoeffer emphasises, through metaphor, the veiledness of the evil within creation: it is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Satan in the form of light, evil veiled in the garb of piety.58 If the question was not a pious one, then all power is lost and evil is exposed as a mere Kinderschrecken, a bogeyman, not to be feared. The serpent and the question introduce the first notions of instability and uncertainty to the narrative. It is the presence of ambiguity. Evil has currency within creation via human agency and, as such, expresses the universality of humankind’s propensity to sin. Bonhoeffer puts it this way, that ‘the guilt is mine alone: I have committed evil in the midst of the original state of creation’.59 My own sin is the origin of all sin, which is why, in Ethics, Bonhoeffer can say that ‘every sin of another I can excuse; only my own sin, of which I remain guilty, I can never excuse’.60 Indeed, the quiet personal sin is the very poison of community, for it ‘soils and destroys the body of Christ’.61 Furthermore, he asks, ‘Why does it concern me if others are also guilty?’ Indeed, others are guilty because every person since Adam poses anew the serpent’s original pious question, ‘Did God really say?’62 This, for Bonhoeffer, is the implication of original sin. Therefore, as already noted, he says, ‘the guilt is mine alone: I have committed evil in the midst of the original state of creation’.63 He continues in these student notes from ‘The Nature of the Church’ (1932): Who is Adam? The one who committed the first sin. Actually there [is] no difference: every sin is the first sin, a tearing asunder of community with God. [Also] every sin that follows is the first sin. Every human then is Adam! We are guilty of the sins of humanity. Adam is ‘one’ human; he is all of humanity in one. Adam is the person who personifies the whole [Gesamtperson]. Every individual human must recognize himself as humanity’s Adam and allow himself to be judged.64

Asking such a question about God places humans in an untenable position, teetering over the abyss, as Bonhoeffer would have it. Looking into the abyss is a trope that Bonhoeffer uses not only in relation to sin but, later in his prison essay, ‘The Best Physician’, as a description of sickness. It is not that sickness is necessarily the result of or punishment for personal sin but that sickness prompts a searching, a deeper look, into the abyss which is the world’s sin and our own Godlessness.65 Equating of sin with sickness hearkens to the Latin etymology of the word ‘salvation’, with implications ‘to salve’ and ‘to sooth’, and to Jesus as healer of both physical and spiritual disorder. Again, this supports Bonhoeffer’s idea of person as indivisible and the rejection of a physical/spiritual binary. Such an incomprehensible act of defiance by the humans in the Garden is only explainable by the clandestine nature of sin, represented by the serpent.

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Bonhoeffer draws attention to the presence of evil already in creation, albeit veiled. The evil ‘does not suddenly and manifestly break its way into creation’, which would exonerate the humans who simply fall prey to Lucifer.66 If the devil cannot be blamed, then neither can creation. The guilt is mine, indeed, as Bonhoeffer proffers, It is precisely in accord with the completely down-to-Earth nature of the biblical account that what prepares the way for the fall and the fall itself take place in the midst of what has been created, and in this way the fall’s complete inexcusability is expressed as plainly as possible. . . . And yet evil takes place . . . through humankind, through the serpent, through the tree.67

Human responsibility for the evil that takes place underpins what Bonhoeffer would go on to develop as an ethic of responsible action (the focus of chapter 7). Just as there is no escaping the responsibility for the division that characterises our reality in toto, by way of concrete example, humanity must squarely face its responsibility for its role in causing the climate crisis and, accordingly, take responsible action in terms of mitigation and adaptation.68 Linked to responsibility is suffering, not only as a result of evil but as a way to understand humanity’s participation in God’s work in the world. Our ‘worldly Christianity’ then becomes shaped as a suffering with the world, for the world, and on behalf of the world. We return to these linked concepts in the following chapter. Ambiguity is present in creation and characterises this middle period between primal goodness and ultimate restoration. The preceding sections have returned to Creation and Fall to establish that our ‘present’ is the ambiguous twilight and it is this current reality that forms the context for eschatological thinking. It also shapes our ethical response because our agency is determined by our ontological state. Bonhoeffer says, ‘Human beings at work live between curse and promise, between tob and ra, pleasure and pain, but they live before God the creator’.69 Human players, looking into the abyss of sin, have an ethical choice in the way they respond to the serpent’s question. In the creation narrative, the choice made by the prototype humans results in a rupture of the unbroken community: ‘Losing direct community with God, they also lose—by definition—unmediated human community.’70 How does this happen? The broken relationship with God occurs through the human attempt at mastery over God. It is this notion of attempted mastery that Bonhoeffer deeply interrogates and that relates directly to the problem of the climate crisis.71 That is, attempted mastery over God manifests and is replicated in attempted mastery over others, technology, and nature. In real terms, this manifests in the Anthropocene as attempted mastery over Earth herself. Since we are Adam

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made from Adamah, we join the entirety of the carbon domains (animate and inanimate) and the component systems that comprise Earth.72 In other words, any domination of another becomes an offense against Earth. Mastery The real evil of the question posed to the man by the serpent, ‘did God really say’, is that it attacks the basic attitude of the creature toward the Creator.73 No longer does the man simply listen to the word and, in freedom, obey it. Instead, Adam utilises ‘an idea, a principle, or some prior knowledge about God’ in order to ‘pass judgment on the concrete word of God’.74 This is how the serpent is successful. The serpent presents to the humans a ‘better, a prouder, God than they seem to have, if they are to fall’.75 This enables Adam the opportunity to bring to God Adam’s own initiative, intellect, and resourcefulness in contrast to that which was required, namely, obedience to the spoken word. The concrete word apparently still needed ‘interpretation and explanation’.76 In doing so, Adam has thereby manipulated God, or at least Adam’s own version of God. Instead of God being known through God’s own word, God becomes subject to the man’s challenge. Conflict thus enters the established relationship with God. Having put this conflict ‘into the heart of the first human’,77 the distortion thus created infiltrates all other relationships. As introduced in the earlier discussion of ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ (also from 1932), Bonhoeffer portrays humanity’s attempt at mastery not only of each other but also of technology and nature. It is reintroduced here as it relates directly to Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the interaction between Adam and creation in the Garden with God, and has relevance to our current problem. The broken relationship with God is manifest in a broken relationship with Earth and the creatures. As Earth is cursed: ‘the soil, the Earth, the land’, Adam is affected by worry, woe, and toil, and becomes her enemy.78 Work comes to represent the dividedness that has led to the curse of soil, whilst still holding out hope for a restoration of the unity between humankind and Earth. We see glimpses of this hope in the scientific knowledge revealing the positive neurological effects that result when humans interact with soil bacteria.79 Despite the inherent ambiguities in our relationship with it, in the ‘twilight zone’ the tendency to mastery and domination is affecting our relationship with Earth. The ambiguities in the relationship account for the sense of awe that even scientists attest to and yet the desire to control and even thwart natural systems. Bonhoeffer’s quote, ‘the human path to nature is a broken one’,80 continues to bear out even in our desire to take responsibility for our actions. That is, the Christian notion of stewardship (to some extent a counter to White’s criticism) remains an ambiguous one. Stewardship would

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appear to not go far enough in restoring reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of the Earth-community because it still bolsters the place of humans as outside of ecology and outside relationships.81 Scott’s work here on the common realm of God, nature, and humanity reflects a more ecological, and less administrative, view of humanity’s vocation.82 Bonhoeffer’s attitude to Earth and the natural was positive and affirming. His personal link to landscapes, sunshine, plants, and birds are obvious evidence of this attitude; furthermore, and at a deeper level, his unremitting affirmation of living a ‘this-worldly’ life (temporally and spatially) is foundational to his theology, as evidenced particularly in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. This underpins and affirms the creation of humans in the Garden as derived directly from Earth: God as such is glorified [Gott verherrlicht sich] in the body, that is, in the body that has the specific being of a human body. Humankind created in this way is humankind as the image of God. It is the image of God not in spite of but precisely in its bodily nature. For in their bodily nature human beings are related to the Earth and to other bodies; they are there for others and are dependent upon others. In their bodily existence human beings find their brothers and sisters and find the Earth. As such creatures human beings of Earth and spirit are ‘like’ God, their Creator.83

Bonhoeffer understands our relationship with Earth, our Mother, in the same way that he saw all relationships: we are designed for sociality (despite being in the middle period where those relationships are fraught). ‘What is to be taken seriously about human existence is its bond with mother Earth, its being as body. Human beings have their existence as existence on Earth’, and this underpins Bonhoeffer’s worldly Christianity, or what I name as Earthly Christianity. Rasmussen has investigated Bonhoeffer’s use of the term ‘world come of age’, relating the ‘age’ here not as it is generally understood as postEnlightenment, but specifically as the new age of the Anthropocene.84 Given all the clues in Bonhoeffer’s ecological understanding of interrelationships, and our subsequent knowledge that confirms the intrinsic sociality of the biosphere, it is not too difficult to begin to see Bonhoeffer as a forerunner to explicit ecotheological thinking and with associated ecoethical implications. Bonhoeffer continues, describing the sequelae of impacts arising from disobedience. The other created things rebel against humankind-sicut-deus, against the creature that thinks it can live out of its own resources. . . . They themselves . . . fall into dividedness as well; . . . nature under the curse, accursed ground. That is our Earth. Cursed, it is cast out of the glory of its created state, out of the unambiguous immediacy of its speech and its praise of the Creator into the ambiguity of utter strangeness and enigma.85

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Dividedness now characterises the whole of creation: in the twilight of creation, all relationships are rent asunder. In negotiating the difficult path between the dominion exhortation of Genesis 2 and the sociality that underpins his theology,86 Bonhoeffer’s argument hinges on the ethical. That is, humans are bound to the creatures and to Earth through God’s Word. At the same time, freedom and responsibility are both operational with regard to human agency. These two, freedom and responsibility, become the hallmarks of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics and are captured in Stellvertretung, vicarious representative action. First, to Bonhoeffer’s statement on Earth: In my whole being, in my creatureliness, I belong wholly to this world; it bears me, nurtures me, holds me. But my freedom from it consists in the fact that this world, to which I am bound like a master to his servant, like the peasant to his bit of ground, has been made subject to me, that over the Earth which is and remains my Earth I am to rule, and the more I master it, the more it is my Earth.87

We see in this quote the ambiguity presented to us as humans in this twilight, or middle period. Earth is cursed and the plants and animals ‘point . . . to the incomprehensibility and arbitrariness of a despot who is hidden in darkness’.88 Despite this, the enduring goodness of creation and God’s word continue: tob and ra co-exist and are unable to be separated, just as the twilight cannot be divided. Humans negotiating this ambiguity continue to ‘attempt to master’ Earth but they must do so as a servant, being bound to her at the deepest level since she is Mother and the very source of our bodies. At a deeper level, we can now understand Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Earth, whereby Earth is her own person, and utilise this construct in an Earthaffirming hermeneutic. Earth and her landscape features are no longer mere backdrops, a theatre to the human drama, but actors with their own narrative, such as has been utilised in the Earth Bible project.89 If Bonhoeffer’s Christological focus recognises Christ’s immanence throughout the scriptural text, then it is not unreasonable that, given emerging ecological insights, he might have also seen the validity of non-human creatures and Earth, each in their own analogia relationis, also as legitimate actors in the biblical stories. This indeed is closer to the Hebraic conception of land and echoed throughout the Hebrew Bible.90 Emerging contemporary spiritualities that seek to reconnect to the land and to the entire biosphere reflect a turn to the primal religious appreciation of the interconnectedness of life, in this sense. Abram refers to this as ‘turning inside out’ and ‘freeing sentience to return to the sensible world that contains us. Intelligence is no longer ours alone but is a property of the earth; we are in it, of it, immersed in its depths. . . . Each terrain, each ecology, seems to have its own particular intelligence, its unique vernacular of soil and leaf and sky’.91 Abram utilises Rainer Maria Rilke’s line of poetry, ‘The inner—what

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is it, if not intensified sky?’ to describe the liminality between self and world, mediated by ‘the sensorial field itself, induced by the tensions and participations between the human body and the animate earth’.92 Anthropocosmic world views that are exemplified in East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Taoism, for example, portray a more ‘seamless interconnection’ between the interior and exterior worlds, and human and biosphere worlds, which might be seen as characterising aspects of Hebrew, Christian and Muslim worldviews.93 Moreover, the task of reclaiming these anthropocosmic threads from within these latter traditions is clearly possible; in the case of Christianity, Bonhoeffer’s attention to incarnational Christology, along with reference to traditions of sacramentalism, would seem to provide some of the resources for doing so. That is to say, to the extent that a ‘turning inside out’ of Christian theology is warranted, Bonhoeffer’s Christology provides the theological framework to underpin the type of spirituality that might serve as an adjunct to the more robust and effective anthropocosmic views increasingly being sought in at least some Western domains.94 This search is in some ways a natural response to the environmental crisis, wherein alienation from the world can be seen as both the cause and the result of the problem. At the heart of his theology, one sees in Bonhoeffer that, in place of mastery in its various forms, his notion of life in the twilight of creation is characterised by relationship. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE TWILIGHT OF CREATION Reality is therefore defined by, on the one hand, the ambiguity of dividedness and, on the other hand, the ushering in of God’s kingdom on Earth. Bonhoeffer has a deep grasp of these two concepts being in tension. This overarching schema finds itself repeatedly reproduced in examples of a yin-yang balance. Not only is one brought into relief by the presence of the other, such as tob and ra, pleasure and pain, sickness and health, but, more profoundly, each force infiltrates and defines the other. So pleasure not only contrasts with pain, but also its very character is defined by the simultaneous presence of pain. ‘Tears of bliss, too, are salty.’95 Love of Earth is necessarily mixed with jealousy, mastery, and toil. Freedom is defined by being bound. God is only strong when weak. God’s kingdom on Earth must therefore be characterised by perfection and imperfection coexisting. Suffering is not merely the result of sin but the expression of truth in our ecosystem. Sacrifice and death, on the one hand, become, on the other hand, food, and fertiliser. Desire for another turns to yearning for control unless mediated by sacrifice; production is mediated

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by reproduction. It is Bonhoeffer’s profound contribution to theological thought that these apparent paradoxes can be held together, both in tension, and in complementarity, echoing yin-yang harmony.96 They are positively enmeshed, for Christ is in all and through all. The compelling nature of Bonhoeffer’s biography testifies to the enactment of such enmeshing: what appears as paradox reveals instead the complexity of reality. Pacifism might require tyrannicide, a pastor might become a conspirator, a Hindu, a close representation of Christ. There is no black and white. Let us consider some evidence for these ideas. God’s ‘profound yes . . to the world’, according to Bonhoeffer, is Christ’s breaking through the ‘law of death’ and promise of a new Earth.97 Such a ‘kingdom of resurrection’ explains why Bonhoeffer’s worldly—Earthly— Christianity can be so engaged with the gritty ordinariness of life; the prosaic rejects utopianism and instead it takes Earth seriously, since Earth implores us to do so.98 Resurrection, far from being escapism, is the distinctive of Christianity, not because it redeems us out of the ‘sorrows, hardships, anxieties, and longings, out of sin and death,’ says Bonhoeffer.99 Rather, it refers people to their life on Earth in a wholly new way, and more sharply than the OT. Unlike believers in the redemption myths, Christians do not have an ultimate escape route out of their Earthly tasks and difficulties into eternity. Like Christ . . . they have to drink the cup of Earthly life to the last drop, and only when they do this is the Crucified and Risen One with them, and they are crucified and resurrected with Christ. This-worldliness must not be abolished ahead of its time; on this, NT and OT are united. Redemption myths arise from the human experience of boundaries. But Christ takes hold of human beings in the midst of their lives.100

Otherworldly escapism, which emphasises that which is ‘beyond death’s boundary’ (his words from prison), is contrasted with the ‘yes of God to the world’ so that, in the same way that ‘Israel is redeemed out of Egypt so that it may live before God, as God’s people on Earth’, we too say yes to Earth.101 Our hope of resurrection begins with the ‘redemption [that] has come into being’; the ‘Yes of creation, reconciliation, and redemption’.102 Christ refers us to Earthly life. Bonhoeffer takes this up in the prison letters, as we have seen, but its roots are firmly in the Berlin period and before it. In prison, Bonhoeffer explains the difference between facing dying and conquering death.103 The real meaning of Easter, he says, is to ‘live in the light of the resurrection’.104 It is only through the acknowledgement of Christ’s, and hence, universal, resurrection ‘that a new and cleansing wind can blow through our present world’.105 Taking Earth seriously means regarding her limitations not as problematic,

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but rather as the arms of a mother wrapped around her babes. We live in Earth bound by these arms and bound in such a way that the ambiguity is not only acknowledged but cherished.106 Earth will not let us escape into otherworldly piety, we, like Earth, are subjected to the natural, the finite, the twilight. Only in facing such a reality do we emerge as honest in Bonhoeffer’s estimation. We perceive, then, that several ideas are coalescing. God’s reality is breaking in on Earth in the form of a new kingdom, one which validates at once the concrete and the ambiguous. This is so because of Christ’s resurrection that defines an eschatology of Earthiness, not escapism nor Utopia. Life in the resurrection-kingdom has little to do with death or future hope but much to do with an engaged, present life, fully immersed in a twilight where two lights cannot, and should not, be disentangled. In this way, we can speak of Bonhoeffer’s notion of penultimate and ultimate. But we too are being thrown back all the way to the beginnings of our understanding. What reconciliation and redemption mean, rebirth and Holy Spirit, love for one’s enemies, cross and resurrection, what it means to live in Christ and follow Christ, all that is so difficult and remote that we hardly dare speak of it anymore.107

Bonhoeffer may have been suggesting that speaking of the otherworld was simply the easier option. As difficult as it is, life in the twilight, which is the Anthropocene, requires us to face all of these notions: reconciliation, redemption, following Christ, and loving our enemies. Attempting to address the climate crisis without ‘being thrown back’ to them and to ourselves, with our propensity to master and dominate, is pointless. In the tob and ra we cannot live without God, one another, and nature. Ultimate and Penultimate The etymology of ‘penultimate’ points to its temporal meaning; literally, the ‘almost last’. In English usage and in Bonhoeffer’s usage, these terms have two traits, namely, qualitative and temporal, so the penultimate is lesser than the ultimate and also comes before, preceding the ultimate. The ultimate is the final, optimal state. Conveniently, the ‘ultimate’ is contained within the ‘penultimate’ semiotically and etymologically. This alludes to the ‘now and not yet’ or, expressed another way, the kingdom of God ushered in and yet not fully manifest. The penultimate prefigures the ultimate in such a way that it both discloses its characteristics and yet veils the depths of these truths. Bonhoeffer articulates the relationship between penultimate and ultimate by maintaining the mystery that exists between them. They both exist qualitatively and temporally, but they are not mutually exclusive. Both ‘solutions’,

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those of either radicalism or compromise, define them in their exclusivity. In Bonhoeffer’s words: Sometimes by destroying the penultimate through the ultimate, other times by banishing the ultimate from the domain of the penultimate. . . . Both wrongly absolutize ideas that are necessary and right in themselves.108

It is not enough to simply be worldly and take responsibility, reckoning on the end that is yet to come, for the ‘end’ has come in Christ. Such a position of compromise absolutises worldliness and God as creator without acknowledging God as redeemer and the new world. The beginning and end, the penultimate and ultimate, are not divorced but are both resolved and unified in Christ. God entering reality as Jesus Christ, the human being, does not only confirm and validate existence. The fact that this human is also without sin ‘is the decisive thing’ that resolves how divine grace and fallenness can co-exist.109 Separating penultimate and ultimate is as false as separating the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Only in their unity can the conflict be resolved.110 Furthermore, the unification of reality provides the mechanism for us to be fully human in the penultimate: ‘The ultimate has become the cover of the penultimate.’111 Jesus’ being human embodies, therefore, a double judgment on human beings— the absolute condemnation of sin and the relative condemnation of existing human orders or organisation. Clustered inside this condemnation, however, is that Jesus is really human and wants us to be human beings. Jesus lets human reality exist as penultimate, neither making it self-sufficient nor destroying it—a penultimate that will be taken seriously and not seriously in its own way, a penultimate that has become the cover of the ultimate.112

In the same way, Jesus Christ, the crucified, recognises both the judgement of the ultimate on the penultimate and the concurrent divine grace. The resurrection breaks into history and the old world as a signature of the ultimate. We remain human and Earth remains herself ‘but in a new resurrected way that is completely unlike the old’.113 Bonhoeffer’s extended discussion of penultimate and ultimate in Ethics, barely summarised here, becomes so important to him in prison, as has been commented on above. Therein, after the failed coup, he must continue to live in and through the penultimate whilst being sure of the ultimate divine Word of grace. These ideas of penultimate and ultimate are consistent with his Christological theology seen throughout most of his career, and indeed are evident in Discipleship. If they were not, then unified reality could not be deemed to be foundational to his thinking.

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His discussion of penultimate and ultimate is cited here for how it shapes Bonhoeffer’s eschatology and consequently what that means for the world of the Anthropocene facing potential disaster. His eschatology appears in his writings, convincingly infiltrated by the ethical imperative. As ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ demonstrates, along with ample evidence from his sermons, Bonhoeffer’s hope in the resurrection is mediated by God’s profound interest in the cursed Earth. This is true of his reading of Genesis and entirely underpins his Christological view of God entering history. As also noted in chapter 3, this view influences Bonhoeffer’s view of the Eucharist as holding eschatological gravity.114 Whether Bonhoeffer, on his short walk to the gallows at Flossenbürg, really did say, ‘This is the end, but for me the beginning’, matters less than the fact that it has been so readily accepted as being entirely consistent with his theology (and his life testimony). The argument here relies on the significance of the relationship between penultimate and ultimate as it applies to ethics, and specifically in relation to the Earth. Bonhoeffer was contemplating this in prison, and this letter from him brings his dwelling on the Old Testament together with Earth: By the way, I notice more and more how much I am thinking and perceiving things in line with the Old Testament; thus in recent months I have been reading much more the Old than the New Testament. Only when one knows that the name of God may not be uttered may one sometimes speak the name of Jesus Christ. Only when one loves life and the Earth so much that with it everything seems to be lost and at its end may one believe in the resurrection of the dead and a new world. Only when one accepts the law of God as binding for oneself may one perhaps sometimes speak of grace. And only when the wrath and vengeance of God against God’s enemies are allowed to stand can something of forgiveness and the love of enemies touch our hearts. Whoever wishes to be and perceive things too quickly and too directly in New Testament ways is to my mind no Christian. We have already, of course, discussed this a few times, and every day confirms for me that it is right. One can and must not speak the ultimate word prior to the penultimate. We are living in the penultimate and believe the ultimate, isn’t that so?115

Loving life and Earth in the penultimate characterises the Christian life in the penultimate for Bonhoeffer. This quote also demonstrates, to my mind at least, that which might have been somewhat overlooked in Bonhoeffer scholarship: the combination of rhetoric and poetics in Bonhoeffer’s words. In the same way that Green laments the lack of literary criticism regarding Bonhoeffer’s poems and fiction, little has been made of the poetic integrity of Bonhoeffer’s specifically theological writing.116 In the above quote, for example, Bonhoeffer uses literary devices not frequently seen in theology. Another example of the beauty

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in his writing, intended for a broader audience than his best friend, is in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ itself: Here, too, is love—although always immersed in the possibility of hate; here, too, is joy—but never without the bitter awareness of its transitory nature;— [and] salvation—but always at the edge of despair.117

As the ancient poet, Homer, has been depicted as setting forth beauty and rhetoric to flight as on the wings of a bird, I suggest that Bonhoeffer’s own work has been underrated in its poetic quality, perhaps owing to its greater theological import. The quote above is examined later in the discussion but is introduced here for its form, an example of epea pteronta, poetry on the wing, or, the bird of eloquence.118 The Cursed Ground What does it mean that God’s kingdom has been planted in the cursed ground? Bonhoeffer takes up this question in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ and there are connections here, too, to Bonhoeffer’s notion of hiddenness and ambiguity. First, we return to the creation stories. What does Bonhoeffer make of this part of the story in Creation and Fall, and then, how does he treat it, in eschatological terms, in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’? The curse demonstrates that there are implications for Earth as a result of the disobedience of humans. The soil of the untainted Eden, we read in Genesis 2:5-9, was anticipating someone to till it. This same ground forms the creatures, grows the trees, and brings forth the garden for food. The human is placed in the garden ‘to till and keep it’ (v. 15). This is the form of paradise, and then comes the fall. In the poetry of Genesis 3:14-19, God apparently punishes, in turn, the serpent, the woman, and the man and because of the man’s disobedience in eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the ground itself is cursed. As a result, the man will now toil to eat of it: growing and harvesting the plants of the fields and having to make bread (vv. 18, 19). The ground, under its curse, will bring forth thorns and thistles (v. 18). Instead of simply tilling a garden for fruit, the man now works the fields, apparently for grain. This requires toil, both in working the land and by the competition from weeds. ‘Paradise is destroyed’, says Bonhoeffer.119 God announces the results of the disobedience to the humans. As a consequence of the actions of the humans, there is disruption to relationships with creatures, symbolised in the serpent. There will be pain in childbirth and poor relationships between men and women. The ground suffers because of humans, and therefore the whole life cycle of people—working to survive, labouring on the land—is disrupted, only to cease when the people return to the Earth

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herself. Nonetheless, as we see in this rendition of the results of sin, there is blessing. At verse 20, the man names his wife Eve, the mother of all living. At verse 21, God clothes the humans, redeeming their exposure and shame. At verse 19, the suffering is finite: death is promised. Bonhoeffer summarises this argument in the following quote: The world is changed and destroyed in that human beings in their dividedness can no longer live with God, with one another, and with nature; yet, in this dividedness between tob and ra, they also cannot live without God, without one another, and without nature. They do live in a world that is under a curse. Yet just because it is God’s curse that oppresses it, the world is not wholly Godforsaken; instead it is a world that even under God’s curse is blessed and in its enmity, pain, and work is pacified, a world where life is upheld and preserved.120

Note here Bonhoeffer’s introduction of the idea of preservation that contrasts with the orders of creation theology, increasingly used by the German Church to defend aspects of National Socialism ideology. Bonhoeffer uses orders of preservation language to refer to Christ maintaining or upholding creation in this middle period. As the translator of Creation and Fall points out, the verb erhalten means to uphold or preserve. Whilst translating it as ‘uphold’ would highlight Bonhoeffer’s wordplay on ‘fall’ and allude to the contrast of holding up versus falling down, translating it as ‘preservation’ points towards the Erhaltungsordnungen (orders of preservation) idea.121 Later, he foregoes ‘orders’ altogether and uses a description of mandates in Ethics (see chapter 7). That this biblical text of Genesis 3 has been used to condone and justify disorder (Bonhoeffer’s Zwiespalt—disruption) is a mark of the very judgement that humans are under.122 When verse 16 (‘he shall rule over you’) is used to support the notion that God desires or ordains that men should rule over women, it is a case of poorly interpreting the resultant disorder, not as evidence of dysfunction, but as God’s establishment of order. Bonhoeffer is pre-empting subsequent biblical scholarship in this area by announcing that ‘The curse is the Creator’s affirmation of a world that has been destroyed’.123 Using the results of sin as justification for their ordination by God is perverse theology. God neither destroys the world as punishment nor does God ordain this brokenness; God sees the damage and yet cares for the world which is good. God is portrayed in this account as describing that, as a result of sin, a husband will rule over his wife. God is not establishing patriarchy, androgyny, or misogyny as God’s ‘will’. Similarly, Earth remains good despite being cursed. Just as relationships suffer as a result of sin, so Earth suffers the curse of humanity. Again, this is not evidence of God’s ordained order but, rather, that humanity’s fallenness has implications for our relationship with Earth. Yet, as the biblical story

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demonstrates, Earth continues to provide food and, as implied by the narrative, a new place to live, and resources to be clothed and housed within it. Blessing and curse coexist. Only the ground suffers the curse: the lights of the heavens, the waters and the sky are apparently unhindered by the curse of verse 17. The subject of the curse relates to the thistles and thorns which, in turn, means that sourcing food will hereafter require hard work. We are reminded herein of Bonhoeffer’s description of the contested relationship that we have with technology and with nature—a kind of ‘love/hate’ relationship.124 We love the fields, and the industrious life of working the land, but it is not without cost: we experience blessing and curse whilst living in the middle. The humans in Genesis 3 are removed from a garden that provides fruit, to the fields wherein God has provided an alternative source of sustenance for them. God continues to bless the humans whilst acknowledging that curse is now present. ‘Curse and promise are applied with reference to the same thing’, says Bonhoeffer, and Adam consequently ‘lives between curse and promise’.125 Humankind gets what it wants, living sicut deus (that is the curse) but not without God’s Word (that is the promise).126 Blessing and curse weave together in the ambiguous twilight of creation. The exclusion from the Garden at verses 23 and 24 prevents them from eating the fruit from the tree of life (or, technically, perhaps from continuing to eat this fruit. Maybe it had sustained them until this point in the story). This too is blessing, for (repeatedly) eating this fruit would only endlessly prolong their toil, pain, and enmity. Bonhoeffer describes it as ‘Wanting to live, being unable to live, having to live—that is the way in which humankind sicut deus is dead’.127 He goes on to explain the depth of meaning contained in this notion. Our focus here, though, is on how the blessing and curse coexist on Earth, and into which twilight, the new kingdom enters. Before leaving Creation and Fall, we see how clearly Bonhoeffer is equating the story of Adam with that of New Adam, and the breaking in of Christ’s kingdom to a cursed world. As an illustrative example, Bonhoeffer points to the bread for which Adam will now have to toil becoming the bread that Christ freely gives in the new kingdom in the form of the Eucharist. What Adam misunderstands and fears as the curse of death, seen in the light of the resurrection, is actually a promise of life and that promise restores not only relationships with each other and God, but with the creatures and Earth herself: How should Adam know that, in this promise of death, already the end of death, the resurrection of the dead, was being spoken of? How could Adam hear announced already in the peace of death, and returning to mother earth, the peace that God wishes once more to conclude with the Earth, the peace that God wishes to establish over a new and blessed Earth in the world of the resurrection?128

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In ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, Bonhoeffer now has to manage the idea of God inaugurating a kingdom in a world that is cursed. How does Bonhoeffer do this? ‘But—this blessed Earth has been cursed by God’.129 This begins one of the densest paragraphs in Bonhoeffer’s entire writing and it comes as a pivot point in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. Up until now in this essay, Bonhoeffer has been contrasting the two positions that demonstrate lack of belief in God’s kingdom: otherworldliness and secularism. Now, he demonstrates how it is that a blessed, now cursed, Earth is blessed again by the coming of God’s kingdom. First, he equates the cursed ground with the thorns and thistles it yields which, as we saw above, is the result, the physical evidence, of human sin. Then, he states, ‘but—Christ has entered into this cursed Earth’.130 Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the historical event of Christ is coupled here with the notion of Earth as cursed. Christ is not somehow distanced from the reality of Earth’s curse or the tainting of Earth by the sin of humanity. Not only does Christ approach Earth and enter her biosphere but ‘the flesh Christ bore was taken from this ground’.131 Christ’s flesh is from the same soil as Adam’s, as all of humanity’s and that of the creatures. That soil is cursed. Christ takes on not only the sinfulness of humanity but the curse of Earth. Bonhoeffer emphasises this by drawing together the inauguration of God’s kingdom through the very body of Christ: ‘This second “but” establishes the kingdom of Christ as God’s kingdom on the cursed ground.’132 The kingdom is established not so much through the death and resurrection of Christ, but through Christ’s birth. The perfect taking on of the imperfection of the cursed ground is the reason, according to Bonhoeffer, that we can speak of the kingdom as being ‘lowered into the cursed ground from above’.133 Above and Below This introduces the next important idea in this paragraph from ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. That the kingdom has been lowered to Earth from ‘above’ means that it is here, now. It is present but it is hidden. Bonhoeffer says it is ‘like a hidden treasure in the cursed field’.134 Here, he connects the idea of the kingdom of God with something valuable and sought after, and also tangible and real. It is not obvious, but veiled, and must be pursued. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer returns to the image of the cursed field with its weeds. In passing over the ground, we see the field, we see the thistles and we might even see the grain growing, but we do ‘not find the hidden treasure in the cursed ground’.135 There is a further layer of meaning in the notion that the kingdom has been lowered to Earth from above. I suggest that Bonhoeffer is intentionally returning his reader to the first rendition of the creation myth at Genesis 1.

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We saw in the previous chapter that Bonhoeffer treats the creation myths in Creation and Fall as non-scientific accounts that explain humanity’s deepest questions theologically. There, it was noted that the first and second stories tell of creation from two points of view: the first focuses on God and the second, on humans. Norman Habel, in his own commentary on Genesis, offers an alternative way of interpreting the two myth cycles.136 The second account remains the story of people but the first, he says, is the story of Earth. Read through an ecological hermeneutic, Erets (Earth, as distinct from sky [shamayim]) is the central character of Genesis 1.137 Seen in this way, the story is of the birth of Earth from the womb of primordial waters into the space prepared for her by God. Once born, her creator looks upon her and recognises her ‘goodness’, naming her, as a parent names a newborn, Earth. As a co-partner in creation, Earth in turn issues forth the plants and animals.138 Birthing Earth is consistent with biblical examples of Earth as mother (e.g., Ps. 139:13-15) and Job’s exclamation, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there’ (Job 1:21). Psalm 90 also speaks of God as midwife birthing Earth through labour, according to Anderson.139 The significance of returning to the creation myth of Earth here is that it intersects with the coming of the new kingdom at several points. The first is in the contrast between above and below. Bonhoeffer says the new kingdom has been lowered to Earth from above. By way of contrast, in the creation myth, the Earth emerges from below. The waters of the deep reveal Earth like a babe appearing from the womb. ‘It is a birth’, Habel writes. ‘First there is the parting of the waters and then the hidden form appears; separation preceded the appearance of Erets . . . “let dry land appear”’.140 Earth ‘appears’ in two senses, both to be present and to be seen. Earth’s appearance is in contrast with her hiddenness in the primordial dark depths of Genesis 1:2. Earth emerges into the prepared light, allowing God to see her, as discussed in chapter 3. She is also newly present: God, having separated the Erets and shamayim, has made space for Earth and the beginning of life.141 Furthermore, in relation to the kingdom descending to Earth is the reminder that Bonhoeffer discusses ‘God’s look’ upon creation and ‘upholds’ it.142 This remains true, that as Earth appeared and was seen by God to be good, and ever after in judgement, the world is looked upon and upheld. Bonhoeffer states this partly in rejection of Kant’s argument that only the ‘will’ can be good because, biblically, both God’s will and God’s creation are demonstrably good. More critically, Bonhoeffer continues to build the case that God’s world is good and that does not change after the temptation and disobedience: That which was . . . called forth into being through God’s word is kept in place through God’s look. It does not, in the moment of becoming, sink back again;

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instead God looks at it and sees that it is good, and God’s look, resting upon God’s work, upholds that work in being. . . . The work that is upheld is still God’s good work.143

God’s good work is intrinsically good and not made ‘un-good’ through sin. This becomes a key tenet of Bonhoeffer’s unified reality in Christ. Finally, the descent of the new kingdom into Earth below can be seen as a reunification that renders complete the creative acts of God in the myths. Habel quotes Ellen van Wolde’s explanation that ‘to separate’ is a better rendering of bara’, which has traditionally been rendered ‘to create’.144 If this is the case, then the first creation cycle can be seen as stages of separation and ordering. The new kingdom, coming from above, unifies reality. This confirms Bonhoeffer’s overarching theological statement of a unity of reality in Christ. In a full circle, ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ is confirming both the creation myths he wrote of in Creation and Fall and the unified reality in Christ, which remains the foundation of the rest of his theological works. Hiddenness of the Kingdom of God To return to Bonhoeffer’s paragraph on the kingdom of God coming to a cursed Earth where he begins his conclusion to the argument: Indeed, this is the true curse that is a burden upon the ground of the Earth; not that it yields thistles and thorns, but rather that it hides God’s countenance.145

The travail of nature is much more than the evidence of sin; it means even more than the punishment of sin. The curse that Earth finds herself under is that God’s kingdom, though present, is discrete and undisclosed. Earth might point to God and reflect God’s glory, but contra natural theology, ‘even the deepest furrows in the Earth do not unveil for us the hidden God’.146 The notion of hiddenness of God in creation, as used here, could reflect Bonhoeffer’s interest in Luther’s use of Earth as ‘God’s mask’. It is noteworthy, in passing, that the image of the ‘face’ of the deep and the ‘face’ of the waters is used in Genesis 1:2, possibly implying personage to this element and in direct contrast with the ‘chaos’ of contemporary creation myths of the ancient world.147 God’s Spirit flutters over the face of the entity that will birth Earth. The interplay of mask and face, hidden and revealed, sensorially anchors the temporal notion of now and not yet that is apparent in the kingdom narrative. This is further evidence of the ambiguity of creation: the mask both covers the visage whilst simultaneously being the only face that we sensorially perceive. It might be hidden but it is at least a representation. This is how a potential Bonhoefferian ecotheology is able to recognise that Earth is blessed, cursed, and blessed; is a pointer to the Creator; is redeemed and

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good; and is the home of the kingdom of God. In recognising both Christ’s immanence and the transcendence of God, it is possible to evade pantheism and remain, with Bonhoeffer, completely within a Christological frame. Again, the argument returns to the creation cycle: the hidden, embryonic Erets is fully disclosed when born into the light and ruach (representing air, atmosphere, as well as God’s Spirit).148 Earth, once hidden, is revealed. The hidden God, too, will be fully revealed once God’s kingdom on Earth is finally made complete. By way of deviation, one wonders if Bonhoeffer reflected on the Spirit of God hovering over the deep at creation when he was in prison. A line from the letter of 27 March 1944 uses similar imagery: It’s possible for a human being to manage dying, but overcoming death means resurrection. It is not through the ars moriendi but through Christ’s resurrection that a new and cleansing wind can blow through our present world.149

It is outside the scope of this present discussion to examine this closely, but there is ample evidence that Bonhoeffer was being more deeply drawn to the Old Testament over the course of his incarceration. It is possible that describing the impact of Christ’s resurrection on how we might face death as ‘a new and cleansing wind’ resonated for Bonhoeffer as a reference to the Spirit hovering over the waters at creation.150 If the curse is the hiddenness of God in creation, then we pass over the ground, Bonhoeffer says, ‘unaware’.151 Furthermore, ‘this not-seeing becomes a judgment on us’.152 The ‘not-seeing’ turns back on us in the form of dividedness that cannot be reconciled. In practical terms, dividedness is expressed in poor relationships with God, each other, our fellow Earthlings and Earth. The fact that Bonhoeffer is expressing the hiddenness of God in Earth herself means that the link between our bodily selves and Earth is unavoidable. To find God requires that we seek to establish a relationship with Earth and that restored relationship be manifest in very practical terms. Bonhoeffer’s use of the ‘hiddenness’ motif might also reflect the biblical texts using this metaphor, some examples being: Hidden wisdom and unseen treasure, of what value is either? (Sir. 20:30); The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matt. 13:44); and, . . . the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col. 2:2–3)

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The final Colossians reference is of note because Bonhoeffer had spent two Sundays in June 1932 preaching on 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. (Col. 3:1–4)153

Using a hermeneutic based on the ‘charity principle’ of philosophical enquiry requires that this be, in the first instance, assumed to be consistent with Bonhoeffer’s worldliness, rather than being inconsistent with it.154 Indeed, in their historical context, it is noted that Bonhoeffer used these sermons to preach against the emergent misuse of Christianity by National Socialism, rather than in any apparent contradiction to what he would say in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. In fact, the following week (19 June 1932) he preaches: There may be innumerable things that are urgent and necessary, but there is only one thing that is needed: just this, that our whole life be protected by God. And just that, for which we human beings did not even dare to ask from afar, is simply assured to us: You have been raised with Christ, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.155

Bonhoeffer is making clear that ‘setting our minds on things above’ is not a rejection of the world. Rather, it is an assurance that, in these terrible times of Nazi Germany where the state interferes with the church and uses Christianity to its own end, our lives are already hidden in Christ. Far from being forgotten by God, we are hidden within God. In the earlier sermon of 12 June 1932, he restates notions of hiddenness and appearance: But because they are God’s thoughts, they cannot remain hidden from us in eternity. Because it is God who in this Christ bends down to us, to draw us to him, because he has loved us always and forever . . . He himself will tear away the veil that now lies over his holy words; he himself will open our astonished eyes for that glory, for it is true that we have died with Christ but have also been raised with Christ, that our true life is that which is now and always hidden with Christ in God.156

This demonstrates an example of a certain level of consistency across Bonhoeffer’s Berlin material wherein various works are talking to and informing each other, a case that this book has continually made (the

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follow-up sermon from 17 June is quoted in part in the next chapter since it relates specifically to Earth ethics). As demonstrated, for Bonhoeffer, the beginning is only understood in light of the end. God’s new kingdom has been lowered to Earth and is hidden here, almost in a literal, physical sense. The more we come to understand the quirks of quarks, the hiddenness of physics, the intercommunication of species, the more is revealed of the intrinsic sociality of creation which we understand, with Bonhoeffer, to be precisely the nature of Christ. However much we might begin to understand of nature, it is not reducible to mathematics even if mathematics is the language of the universe. Even as the light of the first act of creation becomes bound to form, laws, and mathematics on the fourth day, it does not lose its uniqueness in God; ‘It remains in God . . . it remains God’s creation and never itself becomes a calculable number.’157 What describes the universe is not what creates and upholds it. As Colossians states and Bonhoeffer’s Christology affirms, it is not mathematics but Christ in God who creates and sustains life. Furthermore, just as our ‘true life . . . is hidden with Christ in God’ so too is Christ’s kingdom hidden here on Earth.158 We, who are of Earth, also hold Christ’s kingdom within us. Praying for the Kingdom of God How, then, are we to pray for the coming of the kingdom? If we are to pray for it, then we can only do so ‘as those wholly on the Earth’, or, in light of our ecological knowledge in a new century, we might better say, those ‘wholly in Earth’.159 Is it possible, given the preceding argument, that only by recognising the intrinsic nature of our Earthly ecology, might we begin to discover the hiddenness of the present kingdom? If, instead of digging furrows in the land (which in itself implies using technology and toiling), we recognise that we are actually of the land and permeated with the same types of organisms which make up the soil and, in doing so, that we are closer to discovering the hidden kingdom?160 Is it possible that this is an entry-point for kingdom-living in face of the climate crisis? Could a deeper appreciation of our interconnection with Earth’s biome be an authentic way to participate in the new kingdom? Bonhoeffer says that two things are necessary for us to be able to pray for the coming of the kingdom, the complete establishment of that which has been inaugurated. We can only pray this prayer if we are completely enmeshed in the world in which the kingdom is already hidden. Attempting to evade the world is ethically counteractive and, ecologically speaking, impossible. That is to say, one simply cannot pray for a world when one does not realise that one is already within it, both as theological premise and ecological truth.

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Who can pray ‘Thy kingdom come’? First, it is not those most interested in personal salvation: Praying for the kingdom cannot be done by the one who tears himself away from his own misery and that of others, who lives unattached and solely in the pious hours of his ‘own salvation’.161

Much can be said about Bonhoeffer’s rejection of piety when it comes at the expense of sociality. The expression of God’s kingdom is best found in the church existing for others, looking outward, participating in the suffering of God in Earth. If the promise of the ‘world of the resurrection’ is one wherein God’s reign is characterised by no tears, sorrow, crying or death (Rev. 21: 4), then it is truly ‘the kingdom of life, of community, of transfiguration’.162 The social imperative here could not be clearer. The kingdom will exist externally as a manifestation of us no longer being divided, ‘but God will be all in all’.163 On the contrary, praying for the kingdom means that the church would ‘identify completely with the fellowship of the children of the Earth and the world’.164 ‘Identifying completely’ returns us to Bonhoeffer’s analogia relationis, a point immediately reinforced by Bonhoeffer in this tight phrase. He points not only to ‘others’ but, specifically, others defined by sociality, that is, ‘the fellowship’. Furthermore, this fellowship is not limited to those with whom we easily identify; rather, it is with the ‘children of the Earth’. Who are they? Bearing in mind his Genesis exegesis and our own ecological knowledge, we can be confident in asserting that the children of Earth are all the Earth beings, known to us and those unknown, seen and unseen. Finally, Bonhoeffer would have the church identify not only with all the creatures, but with the world. How one understands this term depends partly on one’s own context. Considering the preceding discussion, and our contemporary context, the Anthropocene, it would be difficult not to understand that we should extend the fellowship, of which Bonhoeffer speaks, to Earth herself. To pray for the kingdom, we must first identify and be in fellowship with fellow Earth beings and Earth. BEING BOUND TO MOTHER EARTH Being ‘in fellowship with’ has very deep implications, according to Bonhoeffer. His motif here is being ‘bound to Earth’ and we become tightly bound as we pray the prayer, Thy kingdom come. There are two concepts here. The first is that unless we are in fellowship, we are unable to pray this prayer, as discussed above. The second is the ongoing relationship that such a prayer initiates. In this way, our relationship with the ‘children of Earth and

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the world’ reflects the penultimate/ultimate temporality of the kingdom: it is inaugurated but not yet fully manifest. As noted earlier in this chapter, Bonhoeffer uses these terms, ‘penultimate’ and ‘ultimate’, in his Ethics to describe essentially the relationship of faith and grace in the present to their ultimate consummation. In this way, it is impossible to talk of the ultimate without the penultimate. The relevance of these notions to our current argument is that the ultimate cannot be divorced from the penultimate. That is, Christ does not come as ‘destroyer’ of things Earthly (penultimate) and as the judge of whether things fall into one of two categories, ‘for or against Christ’.165 In this thinking, everything penultimate (Earthly) is sinful and therefore must ‘burn’ in judgement.166 Alternatively, ultimate and penultimate can be ‘divorced in principle’, meaning that the penultimate has no relationship with the ultimate.167 These two positions Bonhoeffer names as ‘radicalism and compromise’.168 Their solution, as expected, Bonhoeffer finds, is only resolved in Christ: In Jesus Christ we believe in the God who became human, was crucified, and is risen. In the becoming human we recognize God’s love toward God’s creation, in the crucifixion God’s judgment on all flesh, and in the resurrection God’s purpose for a new world. Nothing could be more perverse than to tear these three apart, because the whole is contained in each of them. . . . The conflict is resolved only in their unity.169

The above text, that has been quoted already in chapter 3, is crucial here in demonstrating the ongoing permeation of Bonhoeffer’s Christology to this discussion of eschatology, to the notion of ‘this worldliness’, and to the emergent, Earth-related ethic. This extends even further the case already made for the internal consistency to be found in Bonhoeffer’s theology. Therefore, the unity between the kingdom of God hidden in this Earth, and the fully consummated kingdom that will be revealed, is resolved in the presence of Christ which Bonhoeffer classically describes as the church-community. It falls to the church-community to pioneer ‘fellowship [with] the children of the Earth and the world’ as a demonstration of the grace experienced by that community. Bonhoeffer has made clear that only those ‘wholly [in] Earth’ can pray for the kingdom and, in praying this prayer, we are consequently bound to Earth.170 This relationship is sacred: it is an ‘oath of fealty’ and, in light of the status of covenant and oath in both biblical texts and theology, it is of the utmost importance.171 Being bound is not only a reminder that humans are created from Earth and will return to her (Gen. 2:7; 3:19), but that this relationship has ethical implications (Gen. 1:28; 2:15). At this point, Bonhoeffer directs that responsibility not in general terms but in very specific ones: ‘to misery, to hunger, to death’.172

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The concrete manifestation of now being able to look outside the self is being bound to misery, hunger, and death in the world. This is the foundation of being-for-others, Bonhoeffer’s ideal Christ. It confirms Bonhoeffer’s view from the underside, namely, being able to consider the relationship from the aspect of the most disadvantaged. In the Anthropocene, if we consider the person of Earth as being miserable, hungry, and dying, we begin to sense the gravity of responsibility that our ‘oath of fealty’ bears. Our fellowship with Earth’s other children means we cannot fail to notice the misery, hunger, and death that is being caused as a result of human activity. Bonhoeffer draws on classical tenets from the Lutheran tradition to assert God’s transcendence, both in the opening chapters of Creation and Fall and in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. A less likely source for theology, namely, the ancient Greek myth of Antaeus, is used by Bonhoeffer to demonstrate an aspect of relationship with Earth. Bonhoeffer refers to this story in ‘Basic Questions for a Christian Ethic’, a short piece he wrote in Barcelona in February 1929.173 It links closely with ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ and Creation and Fall through the notion of Mother Earth, as will become clear. In the 1920s, some attention was being paid to this more obscure Greek myth, with several books written and various references being made to it by academics. The story is, briefly: Hercules (Heracles in Greek), the hero, is tasked with a series of seemingly impossible labours and ridding the land and sea of monsters, comes upon Antaeus, the Libyan giant who is son to Gaea (Earth) and Poseidon (Sea). Antaeus is exceedingly strong but rather unpleasant, living off lions and slaying the tillers of the Libyan fields (worth noting here is the contrast with Genesis where the ideal human lives in community with animals, tills Earth, and eats plants). Antaeus forces passing strangers to wrestle and places the skulls of the defeated atop the temple to Poseidon. What makes Antaeus an interesting case for Bonhoeffer is that, despite Antaeus’ wretchedness, he derives his strength and to some extent, moral capacity, from Gaea, his Mother Earth. Antaeus sleeps on the bare Earth, recovering his strength all night and becoming so strong that none could overcome him until, inevitably, he meets his match. Hercules is equally strong but, eventually, realises that whenever Antaeus falls to the ground, Mother Earth restores him. Hercules might think he has the victory, but when Antaeus lies down, he is revived. Hercules then bear-hugs Antaeus and separates him from his Mother, lifting him off Earth long enough to finally sever his connection and unto his death: Earth was unable to convey strength into the frame of her dying son. For Alcides, standing between, gripped the breast that was already stiff with cold obstruction. And refused for long to trust his foe to the Earth.174

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Legend has it that, even after the death of Antaeus, his tomb mysteriously persisted. When soil was removed from the hillock, rain would immediately ensue, only ceasing when the Earth was replaced.175 The powers of Mother Earth endure beyond the fleeting strength and subsequent death of her individual son. The Greek myth makes its way into Bonhoeffer’s Tegel fiction writing, forming the conclusion of ‘Drama’ where the character, Heinrich, uses Antaeus to demonstrate how success is linked to being grounded: The only thing that counts for you is to keep your feet on the ground. Otherwise you’d be like the giant Antaeus, who had to keep his feet on the ground to get his strength, and who lost it in a battle when Hercules tore him away from the Earth. . . . If you want to live, you need ground under your feet—and we don’t have this ground.176

Success in this context (for the character, Heinrich), is related to freedom, effectiveness, and the good life. Having ground under one’s feet alludes to both the Boden of German soil, a home on land, a homeland, and also metaphorically, to not being unrealistic but, rather, pragmatic. Given Bonhoeffer’s predilection for worldliness, his affection for nature, and his characterising of Mother Earth, ‘groundedness’ appears to also entail a literal meaning, that of humans being connected to the very ground beneath them, just as it was for Antaeus. In both a metaphorical and a literal sense, our connection to Earth strengthens and sustains us, as Mother Gaea rejuvenates her son, Antaeus. Groundedness occurs again in Bonhoeffer’s prison piece, ‘After Ten Years’, regarding people with ‘so little ground under their feet’ and Bonhoeffer asking, ‘Who stands firm?’177 In this, we see Bonhoeffer teasing out the layers of meaning that the lack of ground has for those facing desperate circumstances. One cannot help but consider both the literal and metaphorical meanings conveyed in his use of ‘ground’ and his referral to the Antaeus myth. Again, the parallels with this generation facing cataclysmic climate disruption are profound: Have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, had so little ground under their feet, people to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life? Have there been those who like us looked for the source of their strength beyond all those available alternatives? Were they looking entirely in what has passed away and in what is yet to come? And nevertheless, without being dreamers, did they await with calm and confidence the successful outcome of their endeavor? Or rather, facing a great historical turning point, and precisely because something genuinely new was coming to be that did not fit with the existing alternatives,

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did the responsible thinkers of another generation ever feel differently than we do today?178

In this passage, it becomes apparent that being grounded is contrasted with being dreamers out of touch with reality. Bonhoeffer, true to his own cultural values but also, I claim, consistent with his trenchant faith in Christ, rests in God’s assurances despite the seeming desperation of the circumstance. We find ourselves in such a situation in the Anthropocene. The double notion of groundedness, in the senses of being practical and responsible, whilst also having a literal connection to Earth, becomes vital. Consistent with Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the priority of the material, the connection is not simply metaphorical. Groundedness takes on its fullest meaning when it incorporates the physical. Earth sciences and neuroscience, among other disciplines, continue to demonstrate the scientific underpinning of the relationships among species, and between the biomass and Earth. The benefits of ‘forest bathing’—shinrin-yoku—relate in some part to the inhalation of organisms and particulate matter (elements, soil fragments, pieces of insects, among others) in the forest atmosphere.179 Mental health is enhanced by gardening, owing to the organisms in the soil acting on the vagus nerve and thereby affecting brain function.180 There is growing evidence that humans who live, work, and play most proximal to or within ‘blue’ and ‘green’ environments experience both restorative and preventive health benefits. Benefits are physical, cognitive, psychological, social, and spiritual.181 These points are among the growing body of evidence that humans are essentially merely a component of the complex system which is the biosphere. Bonhoeffer’s ‘groundedness’, therefore, has layers of meaning: being solid in one’s convictions and sense of purposefulness, which was the duty and privilege of the Bildungsbürgertum, remains a component of the meaning of groundedness. We sense here, noting Bonhoeffer’s several references to the Antaeus/Gaea story, that he was nuancing the notion of groundedness with actual and literal meaning of being of and on the ground, that is, Earth. The significance of this understanding for an ethical position in terms of ‘treading lightly on Earth’, something I return to in the next chapter. Bonhoeffer returns to the importance of materiality further on in Creation and Fall after God has made the people: What is to be taken seriously about human existence is its bond with Mother Earth, its being as body. Human beings have their existence as existence on Earth. They do not come from above; they have not by some cruel fate been driven into the Earthly world and been enslaved in it. Instead, the word of God the almighty one summoned humankind out of the Earth in which it was

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sleeping, in which it was dead and indeed a mere piece of Earth, but a piece of Earth called by God to have human existence.182

This very materiality—being made of the Earth—influences Bonhoeffer’s understanding of what it means to be fully human and the implications for ethical action. That is to say, one cannot be fully human if one denies the bodily aspect of life or denies the physicality of living among others on Earth. In his own life, we see this exemplified. Bonhoeffer’s success at school sports, enjoyment of outdoor recreation, good food and wine, and, ultimately, his later decision not to remain single but become engaged, all reflect his understanding of what it is to live fully embodied. During his incarceration, Bonhoeffer pays attention to what he eats and smokes, where he sleeps and exercises, and his thoughts of the natural world. For example, in this letter to Bethge, 30 June 1944, he says: I should really like to feel the full force of [the sun] again, burning on one’s skin and gradually making one’s whole body glow, so that one knows again that one is a corporeal being. I’d like to get tired by the sun instead of by books and thinking. I’d like to have it awaken my animal existence, in the sense not that debases one’s humanity but that delivers one from the peevishness and artificiality of a merely intellectual existence and makes a person purer and happier. I’d like, just for once, not just to see the sun and sip at it a little, but to experience it bodily.183

One senses that his desire to travel in the preceding years was more than reflective of the voguish tourism of his time and among his class. In addition to the usual destinations (Spain, Italy, England, USA, for example), Bonhoeffer also visited the less typical, such as Morocco, Sweden, Mexico, Cuba, and intended to work with Gandhi in India. At least part of this interest in travel relates to living in a way that is fully physical. One aspect of this physicality is the brightness and heat of the sun in tropical latitudes: The romantic enthusiasm for the sun, which only gets intoxicated over sunrises and sunsets, has no idea of the power and reality of the sun but knows it only as a picture. . . . The hot countries, from the Mediterranean to India to Central America, have really been essentially the intellectually creative countries. The colder countries have lived and been nourished by the intellectual [geistig] creativity of others, and their own original contribution, technology, basically serves the material needs of life and not the life of the spirit. Could this be the reason why we keep being drawn to the hot countries?184

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For Bonhoeffer, the life of the spirit is nourished by the heat and the light of the sun and he felt this acutely when constrained inside the German prison cells with limited access to exercise, the elements, and nature. Even Bonhoeffer’s refined musical ability and emergent interest in African American spiritual music and jazz, from his exposure to life in Harlem, reflect his delight in the sensate. Berliners reminiscing about the Finkenwalde experience recall his prowess at dancing and his giving over of afternoons to physical recreation.185 All this speaks to Bonhoeffer’s comfortable blending of the intellectual, spiritual, and physical, as well as the individual and the social, the personal and political, in what it means to be fully human. The flourishing life manifests all these aspects, just as the humans in the Garden of ‘Delight’ do.186 Our ontological relationship with God and its implicit behavioural ramifications are inextricably linked to our relationship with Mother Earth. Further investigation of Bonhoeffer’s use of ‘Mother’ reveals several related points: that his relationship with his own mother bears on the mother imagery of in his writings; that his reference to Mother Earth is seen as early as 1928 and continues to the end; and, that Bonhoeffer’s personal connection to nature influences his relationship to Mother Earth and Father God (as described above).187 One senses that, just as in the Protestant tradition, reference to Sophia is neglected, so too is Mother Earth: this is something that Bonhoeffer reclaims from the Genesis narrative and develops up to the prison writings. As described in chapter 5, the human body being made from Earth signifies our horizontal relationship with the other creatures. It also establishes our intrinsic connection to Earth who is our Mother, in that sense. Eve being named ‘mother of all living’ is in the image of Earth who is the primal Mother of all else, who brings forth the vegetation of her own accord and out of whom the animals are formed. In the passage quoted below, Bonhoeffer makes this very argument: The ‘earth is its mother’; it comes out of her womb. To be sure, the ground from which humankind is taken is not the cursed but the blessed ground. From it human beings have their bodies. . . . The human being in the beginning really is the body, is one—just as Christ is wholly his body and the church is the body of Christ. People who reject their bodies reject their existence before God the Creator. What is to be taken seriously about human existence is its bond with mother earth, its being as body.188

As noted, Bonhoeffer quotes Sirach 40:1b, ‘the earth is its mother’, both in Creation and Fall and in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. The bond that Bonhoeffer wants to be taken seriously, between humans and our Mother, contrasts with Father God’s transcendence. God chooses to be bound to Earth, asserting,

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‘God is not bound to what is created. Instead, God binds it to God’.189 God is in the world by God’s Word. But the human binding to Earth can only logically manifest in a solidarity with the rest of the Earth community which is at its most intense in ethical action on behalf of the suffering. To return to the passage from ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ more fully, we apprehend the weaving together of being bound, being responsible, and being this-worldly: The hour in which the church prays for the kingdom today forces the church, for better or worse, to identify completely with the fellowship of the children of the Earth and world. It binds the church by oaths of fealty to the Earth, to misery, to hunger, to death. It renders the church completely in solidarity with that which is evil and with the guilt of their brothers. The hour in which we pray today for God’s kingdom is the hour of the most profound solidarity with the world, an hour of clenched teeth and trembling fists. It is not a time for solitary whispering, ‘Oh, that I might be saved’. Rather, it is a time for mutual silence and screaming, that this world which has forced us into distress together might pass away and Your kingdom come to us. It is the eternal right of Prometheus to love the Earth, the ‘Earth, which is the mother of us all’ (Sir. 40:1); this allows him to draw near the kingdom of God in a way that the coward fleeing to other worlds cannot.190

Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s personification of Mother Earth is deeply tied to Christ’s own Earthliness and lordship as in this example from Creation and Fall: It is God’s command which creates that which lives out of what is dead—it is God’s being able to raise up children to Abraham out of these stones, and calling Christ to rise up from the dead earth. The earth becomes the mother of the living; from now on life will break forth out of her dead darkness, and the world of plants, with their seed and their fruit, comes to be.191

The new kingdom of God on Earth is not, primarily, a spiritual one. It is one in which Earth’s own motherhood is restored on account of Christ’s resurrection from out of the Earth. The notion of Mother Earth is derived not from some romantic or pagan affection for nature. It is demonstrably theological insofar as it resounds with Christ’s immanence in the form of the Word made flesh and remade anew at the resurrection. Layered upon the Christological imperative is the anthropological one, of being in Christ. This is seen in this extract, also from Creation and Fall: Thus, the work that human beings do on the ground that is cursed comes to express fallen humankind’s state of dividedness from nature; that is, work too

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falls under the curse. At the same time, however, it comes to express an obsessive nostalgia for the original unity; that is, work stands under the promise that humankind is still allowed to live alongside nature, from which it was taken and to which it belongs as a sibling. So, the fruit of the field becomes both the bread that we eat with tears and yet at the same time the bread of grace of the one who upholds, who allows human beings to go on living on the accursed ground and remain true to their mother, the earth, even though she stands under God’s curse.192

The rift between humans and nature will be revisited in chapter 8. Apart from reinforcing the derivation of humans from Earth, this passage also unifies Earth and creatures in the curse that is the result of human sin. Accordingly, Earth is implicated in the release from that curse and in the renewal that accompanies the new kingdom. Two further examples complete this section, reinforcing the centrality of Earth as Mother to Christian theology and ethic: The earth remains our mother just as God remains our father, and only those who remain true to the mother are placed by her into the father’s arms. Earth and its distress—that is the Christian’s Song of Songs.193 God loved the earth and made us from that earth; God made the earth our mother, God, who is our Father. We were created not as angels but as children of the earth with guilt and passion, strength and weakness, but as children of the earth whom God loves, children loved by God precisely in our weaknesses, in our passions, in our guilt. Precisely in our defiant position on earth—within time, within our own time—God loves us; precisely in holding fast to our Mother Earth and to what she has given us, in solidarity with the human race, even where it is weak, in kinship with our own, small, weak times—God wants us, and something of eternity that destroys all time shines into our hearts.194

Further and final evidence of Earth as Mother is graphically portrayed in Bonhoeffer’s Good Friday sermon on John 19 from 15 April 1927: The crown, a wreath of sharp thorns, is pressed upon his forehead. The first drops of blood fall on the earth, upon which he, the love of God, walked. The earth drinks the blood of its creator’s beloved Son, who loved it as no one had loved it before.195

The divine-human mystery, who is Christ, exemplifies the human-Earth relationship in this act. Christ, who trod the face of his Mother, Earth, now spills his blood and gives it to her.

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CONCLUSION Examining ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ in conjunction with Creation and Fall establishes Bonhoeffer’s commitment to Christ’s immanence in a unified reality that has ushered in God’s kingdom in this present world. It has demonstrated that we who know Christ can only pray for God’s will to be done on Earth if we also participate in that kingdom in solidarity with Earth, our Mother. Earth’s Motherhood is symbolic and metaphoric, but it is also concrete and theologically based in Bonhoeffer’s Christology. To conclude this chapter, we return to Bonhoeffer’s words in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. ‘The hour in which we pray today for God’s kingdom is the hour of the most profound solidarity with the world’,196 he says. Furthermore: it is a time for mutual silence and screaming, that this world which has forced us into distress together might pass away and Your kingdom come to us.197

Praying for the kingdom means to acknowledge that this ambiguous time of ‘discord and contradiction’198 has been entered into by Christ in God. The kingdom has been planted in cursed ground, thereby blessing that very ground. This penultimate world awaits its ultimate fulfilment. That ground is our Mother, Earth, who provides the platform for our solidarity with our siblings. Where there is hunger and misery, Christ has said ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink’ (Matt. 25:35) and, by extension, where there is loss of habitat and extinction of species, there is Christ, too.199 Christ’s immanence underpins Christ’s suffering in and for this world and yet allows for human participation in the alleviation of such suffering. The new kingdom promises no more tears, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more death, which Bonhoeffer calls ‘the kingdom of life, of community, of transfiguration’ where the Spirit reigns.200 Humans have a particular role in the family which is the biosphere. As Christians, we are bound to Earth and the church-community demonstrates this by being-for-others. This Earth is the new Earth; ‘There is no planet B’ in the words of climate activists. Bonhoeffer’s eschatology, such that it is, validates the presence of Christ in the current reality and his intervention in history for the purpose of reconciling the world with God. Standing with and for Earth and her children, between silence and screaming, requires ethical engagement with the problems of the Anthropocene. The costliness of grace goes beyond praying for the kingdom of God; it requires that we stand with the kingdom, with our feet on the ground. It is an ethical responsibility that chapter next addresses.

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NOTES 1. DBWE 1, 58–62. My italics. 2. Rayson and Lovat, ‘Lord of the (Warming) World’; see also Clifford Green, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letter to Mahatma Gandhi’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2020): 1–9. 3. Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Resistance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014); Bethge, DB Biography, 151–53. 4. Clifford J. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 7, 17–8; Renate Bethge, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, ibid., 202–5; Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman and Ronald Gregor Smith, eds., I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Collins, 1966); DBWE 8, 358. 5. Letter to Elisabeth Zinn, 27 January 1936, in DBWE 14, 134. 6. Strohm, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, in DBWE 11, 492. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Otto Dudzus, ‘Arresting the Wheel’, in I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman and Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Collins, 1966), 83. 10. De Gruchy employs this Shakespearean motif. De Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 1. 11. DBWE 14, 134. This little phrase is used by Bonhoeffer in ‘Novel’, ‘Then came the catastrophe . . .’ and it appears in his letter to Karl Barth, 23 October 1933, ‘Then came the Aryan paragraph . . . ’, DBWE 13, 22; Larry L. Rasmussen, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 12, 1. 12. DBWE 6, 58. 13. DBWE 12, 295. 14. Ibid., 286. 15. DBWE 8, 363. 16. DBWE 12, 286. 17. DBWE 8, 213. 18. DBWE 12, 289. 19. I reflect Bonhoeffer’s use of the ‘it’ pronoun in this section. 20. DBWE 8, 363. 21. Ibid. 22. DBWE 12, 286. 23. Moses, Reluctant Revolutionary, 134–5; Leibholz, ‘Childhood and Home’, 21; Bethge, DB Biography, 13. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. Bonhoeffer quotes Sir. 40:1 here. 28. Ibid., 287. 29. Ibid.

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30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 287. 32. Ibid., 289. 33. Ibid., 288. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. DBWE 3, 129. 38. Ibid., 81. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 83. Original italics. 41. DBWE 6, 146. 42. DBWE 3, 22. 43. Ibid., 26. 44. Ibid., 26–8. 45. Ibid., 83–4. 46. DBWE 2, 51–3. 47. DBWE 8, 405n5. Bonhoeffer preached 3 sermons based on this work in Barcelona, having requested it from Berlin, where it was published in 1926, ‘Please send me Tillich: religiöse Lage der Gegenwart! Right away!!’ DBWE 10, 166. 48. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, The World View of Physics, trans. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge, 1952), 157, cited in DBWE 8, 408n6. 49. DBWE 8, 500; DBWE 16, 641. 50. DBWE 8, 362. 51. Ibid., 405–6. 52. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly. 53. DBWE 1, 63–4. 54. DBWE 3, 104. Original italics. 55. Ibid., 105. 56. Ibid., 120. 57. Ibid., 106. 58. See Matt. 7:15; 2 Cor. 11:14. 59. DBWE 3, 105. 60. DBWE 6, 137. 61. 1 Cor. 6:15. 62. Gen. 3:1b; DBWE 15, 391. 63. DBWE 3, 105. 64. DBWE 11, 294. Original italics throughout. 65. DBWE 16, 501. 66. DBWE 3, 105. 67. Ibid., 105. 68. See Lydia Barnett, ‘The Theology of Climate Change: Sin as Agency in the Enlightenment’s Anthropocene’, Environmental History 20, no. 2 (2015): 217–37. 69. Ibid., 134.

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70. DBWE 1, 63. 71. ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’, DBWE 11, 246; Further discussion of that lecture is at Rayson, ‘Bonhoeffer and The Right to Self-Assertion”’. 72. Norman C. Habel, The Birth, the Curse and the Greening of Earth: An Ecological Reading of Genesis 1–11, ed. Norman C. Habel, The Earth Bible Commentary Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), 7, 48. 73. DBWE 3, 108–9. 74. Ibid., 108. 75. Ibid., 107. 76. DBWE 4, 71. 77. Ibid. 78. DBWE 3, 134. 79. C. A. Lowry et al., ‘Identification of an Immune-Responsive Mesolimbocortical Serotonergic System: Potential Role in Regulation of Emotional Behavior’, Neuroscience 146, no. 2 (2007); Graham A. W. Rook, ‘Mycobacteria, Immunoregulation, and Autoimmunity’, in The Value of BCG and TNF in Autoimmunity, ed. Denise L. Faustman (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2014), 756–72; Graham A. W. Rook and Christopher A. Lowry, ‘The Hygiene Hypothesis and Psychiatric Disorders’, Trends in Immunology 29, no. 4: 150–58. 80. DBWE 11, 252. 81. Scott, ‘Beyond Stewardship?’; Gregory Curtis, The Stewardship of Wealth: Successful Private Wealth Management for Investors and Their Advisors (Heboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Energy and Tourism Department of Resources and Imprint, Stewardship: Leading Practice Sustainable Development Program for the Mining Industry (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2009); Margaret Duguid and Marilyn Cruickshank, eds., Antimicrobial Stewardship in Australian Hospitals (Sydney: Australian Commission on Safety & Quality in Health Care, 2011); Robert A. Young, Stewardship of the Built Environment: Sustainability, Preservation, and Reuse (Washington Island, 2012). These represent the distance between stewardship and relationship as it appears across disciplines. 82. Scott, ‘Beyond Stewardship?’ 83. DBWE 3, 79. 84. Larry L. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer and the Anthropocene’, Stellenbosch Theological Journal 55, no. Supp 1 (2015): 941–54; ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’. ‘Bonhoeffer and the Anthropocene’; ‘Bonhoeffer: Ecological Theologian’. This is addressed again in chapter 7. 85. DBWE 3, 134. 86. Green, Theology of Sociality. 87. DBWE 3, 66. 88. Ibid., 134. 89. Habel, Birth, Curse and Greening. See also Wainwright, ‘Images, Words and Stories: Exploring Their Transformative Power in Reading Biblical Texts Ecologically’. 90. Gunn and Fewell, Narrative. 91. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 262.

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92. I note the ironic choice of quoting Rilke given Bonhoeffer’s poor opinion of his work, and Maria von Wedemeyer’s deep appreciation of it. Bonhoeffer does reflect Rilke though in aspects of his fiction. See DBWE 7, 42n15, 115n26, 22n61; DBWE 8, 99, 203; von Bismarck, Kabitz, and Bethge, eds., Love Letters from Cell 92, 37; Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 261–2. 93. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, ‘Series Foreword’, in Christianity and Ecology, xxv–xxvi. 94. Nancy T. Ammerman, ‘Spiritual But Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52, no. 2 (2013): 258–78; Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religions as of 2010 (Washington DC: Pew Research Center, 2012). 95. DBWE 10, 546. 96. Peter K. H. Lee, ‘A Christian-Chinese Version of Eco-Theology: Goodness, Beauty, and Holiness in Creation’, in Christianity and Ecology, 337–56. 97. DBWE 12, 291. 98. Ibid. Original italics; Ibid., 290. 99. DBWE 8, 447–8. 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid., 447; DBWE 12, 291; DBWE 8, 447. 102. Ibid.; DBWE 6, 251. 103. DBWE 8, 333. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. Habel also uses this prepositional phrase, ‘in Earth’. See Habel, Birth, Curse and Greening. 107. ‘Thoughts on the Day of Baptism’, DBWE 8, 389. 108. DBWE 6, 154. 109. Ibid., 157. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., 158. 112. Ibid., 157–8. 113. Ibid., 158. 114. In this, Bonhoeffer again reflects tenets of Orthodoxy. Whilst beyond the scope of this book there is much to be explored in the shades of similarity in the theologies of Bonhoeffer and Eastern Orthodoxy. See Andrew Louth, ‘Eastern Orthodox Eschatology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, ed. Jerry L. Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 233–47. 115. DBWE 8, 213. 116. Green also notes that in the first instance the attention on the familial-autobiographical dimension of ‘Novel’ especially, was to the detriment of its theological significance. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 7, 9. 117. DBWE 12, 294. 118. Prof. Bernard Curran, pers. comm. 10 November 2016. 119. DBWE 3, 131–2.

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120. Ibid., 135. 121. Ibid., 135n9. 122. Zwiespalt, literally ‘a state of being split into two’ and so ‘split, rift, cleavage, disruption, conflict, strife, dissension’. Ibid., 88n24. 123. Trible, ‘Depatriarchalizing’; J. Cheryl Exum, Fragmented (Sub)Versions of Biblical Narratives: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement Series 163 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), 30–48. 124. See especially ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ in DBWE 11, 246; Rayson, ‘Bonhoeffer and “The Right to Self-Assertion”’. 125. DBWE 3, 132. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., 142. 128. Ibid., 136. 129. DBWE 12, 288. 130. Ibid. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., 289. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid. 136. Habel, Birth, Curse and Greening. 137. Ibid., 26, 28, 44–5. 138. Ibid., 31–3. 139. Cited in ibid., 31. 140. Ibid. 141. Ibid., 28. 142. DBWE 3, 47. 143. Ibid. 144. Habel, Birth, Curse and Greening, 28. 145. DBWE 12, 289. 146. Ibid. 147. Habel, Birth, Curse and Greening. 148. Ibid., 29. 149. DBWE 8, 333. 150. Also beyond the scope here, but it would be an interesting and deeply illuminative project to map the Moravian Daily Texts to Bonhoeffer’s prison writings to investigate links between the text that Bonhoeffer was reading each day and the subject matter in the letters, especially as it relates to ‘lord of the world’ and Stellvertretung. The ongoing influence of his mother’s Moravian boarding school and his governesses belonging to the Herrnhuter branch of the Moravian Brethren appears to be underexplored in the literature. See Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany (Eugene: Cascade, 2016), 27. 151. DBWE 12, 289. 152. Ibid.

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153. Quoted at start of sermon notes. Reproduced in NRSV translation here. DBWE 11, 450. 154. George Hunsinger, Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Approach (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), xii–xiii. 155. DBWE 11, 460. 156. Ibid., 456. 157. DBWE 3, 55. 158. DBWE 4, 251. 159. DBWE 12, 289. 160. Cf. ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’. 161. DBWE 12, 289. 162. Ibid., 295–6. 163. Ibid. 164. Ibid., 289. 165. DBWE 6, 153. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid., 154. 168. Ibid., 153–7. 169. Ibid., 157. 170. DBWE 12, 289. 171. Ibid. 172. Ibid. 173. DBWE 10, 359–78. 174. Lucan, The Civil War [Pharsalia], ed. and trans. J. D. Duff, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 223. 175. Apollodorus, The Library, trans. J. G. Frazer (London: W. Heinemann, 1956), 223. 176. DBWE 7, 68. 177. ‘An Account at the Turn of the Year 1942–1943: After Ten Years’, DBWE 8, 37–52. 178. Ibid., 38. 179. Craig, Logan, and Prescott, ‘Natural Environments’. 180. Rook, ‘Mycobacteria, Immunoregulation, and Autoimmunity’. 181. L. E. Keniger et al., ‘What Are the Benefits of Interacting with Nature?’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 10, no. 3 (2013), 913–35. 182. DBWE 3, 77. 183. DBWE 8, 448–9. 184. Ibid., 449. 185. Pers. comm., Pf Kurt Kreibohm, Berlin, July 2015. See also, Busing, ‘Reminiscences of Finkenwalde’; Zimmerman and Smith, I Knew DB. 186. Whybray, ‘Genesis’, 44. 187. Beyond the scope of this project, but note the many references to mother/ child relationships throughout the corpus, particularly in children’s sermons and reference to ‘the gentle hand on the head of her son’, for example. I note that Reynolds

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minimises the significance of Bonhoeffer’s maternal relationship. Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany. His final Barcelona sermon from February 1929 is considered in chapter 7. 188. DBWE 3, 76–7. 189. Ibid., 41. 190. DBWE 12, 290. 191. DBWE 3, 57. 192. Ibid., 134. 193. DBWE 10, 378. 194. Ibid., 530–1. 195. DBWE 9, 520. 196. DBWE 12, 289. 197. Ibid. 198. Ibid., 295. 199. Ibid. 200. Ibid., 296.

Chapter 7

Ecoethics

When Bonhoeffer asked, in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, ‘How do you really imagine your Kingdom of God on Earth?’ he was inviting us to consider our ethical response. The question is not only how do we imagine God’s kingdom but also what is required in terms of action to realise it. Real-world problems require us to actively participate in their assessment and alleviation to effect consistency with the kingdom of God ideal. The expression of religious faith requires more than intellectual assent and affective response, although in Bonhoeffer’s case, both are also demonstrably present. The authentic expression of Christian faith, for Bonhoeffer, extends the theological imagination into the ethical act. Manifesting God’s kingdom on Earth in the Anthropocene represents a journey in a direction contrary to the apparent unravelling of Earth systems that climate change poses. Instead, it is action to restore what were once seen as normal and natural systems and to limit the sequelae of weather weirding, natural disasters, and the human, and other, loss of life. The demands in this context are unique, however, the response can be shaped from utilising Bonhoeffer’s theology and, in particular, those sections where his attention was turned especially to the question of ethics, namely Ethics itself, along with ‘Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic’, a lecture to the Barcelona congregation on 8 February 1929.1 Despite some notable changes and developments in Bonhoeffer’s thinking from this lecture to later works (particularly those that relate to nationalism and war), this chapter demonstrates the consistency between this lecture and Ethics around fundamental concepts. Critically speaking, Ethics stands as a fulcrum between the ‘systematic’ theology of the earliest works and the deeply spiritual works that reflect the Christian life of discipleship to Christ. Sabine Dramm points out the high regard that Bonhoeffer had for this piece of work that he hoped to realise.2 In 183

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a prison letter to Bethge on 15 December 1943, Bonhoeffer places the significance of finishing Ethics alongside his longing to have a child, so as ‘not to vanish without a trace’.3 Neither milestone was reached, but the fragments of Ethics manuscripts that were not confiscated, and were instead reassembled by Bethge (and subsequently by others), represent a significant theological heritage and testify to Bonhoeffer’s ongoing significance.4 Bonhoeffer has clearly not vanished without trace. This chapter explores some key texts from Ethics and demonstrates their applicability in framing a response to the climate crisis. In doing so, it stretches backward in time to some earlier works of Bonhoeffer and forward into some of the writings from prison. This serves to reinforce the fundamental nature of Bonhoeffer’s understanding of ethics as it integrates with other components of theological thinking that he utilised throughout his entire works. As ever, it is difficult to discuss one concept in isolation from other key components of Bonhoeffer’s theology. In discussing ethics and its application to the current crisis, one is compelled to return to notions of Christology, sociality, and the theological anthropology of the human being. Regardless, the singular focus in this chapter is to consider that if, in Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘the Earth wants us to take it seriously’, then what is required in terms of human action, individually and collectively.5 Critically, it asks on what basis eco-friendly actions (in the broadest sense) might be initiated and assessed—the why of ecotheology and the ecoethical response emerging from Bonhoeffer’s theology. This discussion starts with an outline of Bonhoeffer’s purpose and description of Ethics, outlining the basis of his ethical framework. It then proceeds to examine characteristics of Bonhoeffer’s ethics: privacy, Stellvertretung, Sachgemäßheit, freedom, and love. It then addresses notions of the collective person and the doctrine of divine mandates. Finally, it considers how these characteristics apply in the context of the church-community and the world at large and how the ethical response applies not only to humans but to fellow Earthlings and Earth herself. For Bonhoeffer, ethics, in its most basic connotation, means simply, participation in Earthly life, ‘a matter of blood and a matter of history’.6 At the most fundamental level, it describes the active agency of humans living together before God. Being fully human, therefore, is framed by ethical action and reflection. Put another way, given the concrete act of God in Christ, how do those who profess faith in that act manifest their faith in a similarly concrete way? How does the form of Christ take form in the world in concrete terms through human agency? Specifically, how is participation in Earthly life to be understood in this era when Earthly life itself is in peril? Understood like this, ethics is an intrinsic component of Bonhoeffer’s theology from the start and throughout. This explains the attention to theological

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anthropology and ecclesiology in Sanctorum Communio. A consideration of the notion of person requires that we understand the person to have agency and that action is not neutral, on the part of either the individual nor of the community of saints (and subsequently of all people and organisations). In Act and Being, Bonhoeffer deliberates aspects of personhood and agency more thickly, exploring the theological limitations of idealist epistemology to emerge with an ethical frame in which ‘the limit set by the individual person is overcome’,7 that Bonhoeffer exposed in Sanctorum Communio. The space between the person and the other is a metaphor for the potentiality of encounter and ethical engagement. As already demonstrated, Creation and Fall takes the person as free, whilst also limited by humanity’s dividedness from God, attempting life sicut deus and acting accordingly. The ‘Christology Lectures’ describe Christ at the centre of reality, the boundary at the centre, a situation which both allows and invites us to be authentically human. All these works articulate Bonhoeffer’s basic premise that living as if there is no boundary, with the unbounded ‘I’ at the centre, makes it impossible to employ the sociality that would characterise untainted humanity and makes any relationship with the transcendent a competitive one. Such a position, in turn, is reflected in the inability to be impacted on by others or to engage ethically with them. The notion of ethical action is woven throughout Bonhoeffer’s Berlin work (see chapters 3 and 4, for example), as is the case in his Finkenwalde writings and those from abroad. It is highly significant that Bonhoeffer’s intended magnum opus was not strictly a systematic theology, biblical exegesis, or philosophical treatise. It was Ethics. ETHICS AND CHRISTOLOGY Bonhoeffer sees Christian ethics as a way of being. His rejection of a set of principles, laws, or rules to govern moral action was not simply a matter of rejecting both casuistry and formalism in the negative.8 Both of these approaches rely on the human attempt to arbitrate good and evil. Bonhoeffer’s ethic is positively linked with his Christology and the concrete implications of God in Christ. That God revealed God’s self as a concrete human not only validates all of humanity, and all the world, as demonstrated in chapter 6. It also sets in place a distinct and concrete ethic fully enmeshed in, informed by, and responsive to the reality of life. It is an ethic that ‘can proceed from the reconciliation of the world with God in the human Jesus Christ, in God’s acceptance of real human beings’.9 For this reason, Bonhoeffer repeatedly refers to the Christ incarnate, crucified, and resurrected throughout his work but especially in Ethics. Separated, these forms of Christ are unable to convey the fullest understanding possible of

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the Christ event. In this, Bonhoeffer is consistent with the Chalcedonian statements that he specifically supports in various places, particularly in defending the ‘truly human’ aspect of Christ.10 Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen runs ‘like a litany’ through Bonhoeffer’s writings, including Ethics in particular, making the case for his Trinitarian theology, rather than undermining it, as has been suggested above.11 One can interpret Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the Paschal mystery as a route to counter the type of esoteric philosophising that Ethics disputes. Elsewhere, he writes of the two natures of Christ, indivisible, inseparable, that ‘the mystery is left as a mystery and must be understood as such’.12 This mystery equally discloses the world as it discloses God.13 That God in Christ became human underpins Bonhoeffer’s entire approach to ethics and it does so as a deliberate antithesis to all other philosophical and theological approaches to ethics. Bonhoeffer spends the entire first and second manuscripts setting out this foundation and it continues to reappear throughout the other manuscripts. His case is that ethics is not a matter of asking how to be good or do something good, or even asking questions about the ‘ought’. In fact, he ‘outrageously’ demands at the outset that these questions must be given up.14 What they are replaced by is the ultimate reality: Of ultimate importance, then, is not that I become good, or that the condition of the world be improved by my efforts, but that the reality of God show itself everywhere to be the ultimate reality. Where God is known by faith to be the ultimate reality, the source of my ethical concern will be that God be known as the good [das Gute], even at the risk that I and the world are revealed as not good, but as bad through and through.15

Instead of ethics being an attempt to achieve an ideal good, Bonhoeffer’s ethics relies on the imperative of making God known in the world and, furthermore, making the goodness of God known in a world that is not entirely good. As demonstrated in chapter 6, the twilight in which we live is an admixture of good and evil, not able to be separated. This hidden reality drives Bonhoeffer’s ethics. The theoretical is thereby replaced by an ethics of formation. In some ways, this builds on Bonhoeffer’s writings out of the Sermon on the Mount and his work with the Confessing Church, appearing as Discipleship and Life Together, for example. That is to say, Ethics develops what it actually means to ‘follow Christ’ and live in relationship with others in a world where good and evil are mixed and nuanced.16 It reinforces Bonhoeffer’s notion of ethics as Christ living on in the church, expressed here using an urgent stylistic that is commensurate to the times in which he was writing:

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Ecce homo—behold God become human, the unfathomable mystery of the love of God for the world. God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. God establishes a most intimate unity with this.17

Bonhoeffer builds the case towards ‘Ecce homo’, of beholding the true Christuswirklichkeit—the Christ-reality—by canvassing the erroneous approaches exemplified when the individual internalises and abstracts ethical action. The failure of reasonable people, fanaticism, people of conscience, those acting out of a false sense of duty or out of a false sense of freedom to compromise: all these untenable ethical options, according to Bonhoeffer, have, at their root cause, the abstraction of ethics.18 Bringing together the Christological imperative of ethics as formation with the concrete reality of the context and in light of decision-making process of the individual and collective, Bonhoeffer summarises at the end of this manuscript19: Ethics as formation, then, is the venture of speaking about the form of Christ taking form in our world neither abstractly nor casuistically, neither programmatically nor purely reflectively. Here we must risk making concrete judgments and decisions. Here decision and deed can no longer be shifted onto the individual’s personal conscience. Here concrete commandments and guidance are given, for which obedience will be demanded.20

Obedience is demanded not to a universal code but to the person of Christ who now takes form in the church-community. As such, this reality-based, love-imbued ethics as the outworking of following after Christ stands in contrast to any systematic philosophical ethic: Christ does not proclaim a system of that which would be good today, here, and at all times. Christ does not teach an abstract ethic that must be carried out, cost what it may. . . . Christ did not, like an ethicist, love a theory about the good; he loved real people.21

The life of the Christian is to emulate such a love-based life, rather than be guided by notions of good, ought, or ideal; as Dramm proffers, this is an ethic that ‘refuses to dissipate into relativism or abstractions’.22 The foundational aspect of God’s commandment underpinning the love-based life furthers the Christological basis of Bonhoeffer’s ethics. He develops this in the final

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manuscript of Ethics, ‘The “Ethical” and the “Christian” as a Topic’ (referred to only briefly here).23 In that document, Bonhoeffer places the concrete commandment of God, both as word and as action, at the centre of Christian ethics and uses this as leverage for other elements that come into play in ethical decision-making, namely, time and place (context) and authority (or, more precisely, authority from above).24 This chapter will demonstrate that, further to this Christological basis of the concrete commandment in Christ, Bonhoeffer layers notions of responsibility and context, as well as the individual and the community setting. As always, Bonhoeffer’s own biography bears weight here. Ethics emerges out of Bonhoeffer’s personal decision-making process to move from an early position nearing pacifism to active participation in the conspiracy to overthrow the government—one that might foreseeably involve tyrannicide. Although never directly engaged in assassination plots, Bonhoeffer was actively involved in the higher-level thinking and planning to that end.25 Bethge reports Bonhoeffer’s remark that ‘if it fell to him to carry out the deed, he was prepared to do so’ and as pastor, counselled others who might undertake the assassination attempts.26 At a deeper level, beyond the immediate context of the wartime conspiracy, Bonhoeffer’s interest was in the formation of Christian ethics in the church as it confronted Nazism (or might have) on behalf of society. In this, the notion of the church being-for-others is central: the task of the church includes communicating the redemptive nature of Christ in the world and the maintenance of the world in its penultimate state. Praying ‘Thy kingdom come’ continues with ‘on Earth as in heaven’. That is to say, Earth’s plight—the travail of nature—is not fully restored but is in a period of becoming. To this end, Bonhoeffer’s assertion that Christian ethics involves the willingness to suffer and take on guilt becomes relevant, concepts explored later in this chapter. In general terms, the tumultuous context of Ethics portrays the very tangible nature of the difficult and ambiguous ethical decision-making in which Bonhoeffer was engaging at the time of writing. Bonhoeffer himself sets up his manuscript, ‘Ethics as Formation’ with these laden words: Today we have villains and saints again, in full public view. The gray on gray of a sultry, rainy day has turned into the black cloud and bright lightning flash of a thunderstorm. The contours are sharply drawn. Reality is laid bare. Shakespeare’s characters are among us.27

Context is relevant, both to Bonhoeffer’s original writing of his theology and to the contemporary setting in which it is interpreted and reinterpreted. Green has correctly stated that ‘Bonhoeffer’s theology is not an epiphenomenon of his resistance to National Socialism’, and neither is his Ethics.28 However,

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acknowledging the Sitz im Leben of Ethics lends authenticity to its applicability to our own context of ethical decision-making in the climate crisis. As Bonhoeffer himself states, ‘What is at stake are the times and places that pose concrete questions to us, set us tasks, and lay responsibilities on us’.29 The responsibilities lain upon us in the context of the climate crisis, that threatens so much, cannot be underestimated. What saves our own contemporary context, or any other time in history, from collapsing into an individualised, relativistic ethic is the fact of Christ having entered the world’s history and remaining an ongoing part of that history. It is within this Christological frame that Bonhoeffer develops his Ethics, not prescriptively, but to affirm the manifestation of Christ taking form in the world. ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING Ethical agency has, as its mediator, notions of intellectual engagement, discernment, and decision-making. Unlike other moral codes or religious laws, ethical discernment occurs for the Christian in the context of the individual in relationship with God. Acting, according to Bonhoeffer, is to be conformed to God’s will through a certain mindfulness of how justice and grace exert themselves in any given moment.30 Being mindful that one’s actions are being played out before God, and that God desires that God’s will be done, is necessary in order to conform one’s will to the divine will.31 As such, the whole person is engaged in the ethical act: the mind, the will, the soul, and the body, first individually and then effected in community with reference to the collective person and the mandates. Again, this demonstrates the consistency of this approach to ethics with the materiality emphasised in Bonhoeffer’s theology. As ethical agents, we engage with the world in a fully embodied way. The theological anthropology determined in Bonhoeffer’s first thesis is manifest in Ethics, not so much as a handbook for living but as a guide to mindfully engaging with the world, before God. The relationship between the will and the body in ethical action reinforces the broader case being made that the overarching nature of the ecotheological question is one of sociality. Sociality, in this context, relates not only to the human species as has been well articulated by Green.32 The critical aspect of Bonhoeffer’s theology in relation to the ecotheological question is that sociality, if it has any place, must extend to the entire Earth community. We recognise our biological relationship with the others since humanity and all other Earthlings share so much. Our carbon chemistry,derived in the first instance from exploding stars,33 our common DNA that shows us to be more alike than different, along with the ability for genes to horizontally jump species,34 all speak to our physical relationship. The gap in theology has been

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in failing to articulate well enough our ethical relationships with our otherthan-human fellow Earthlings. Following Bonhoeffer, basing that ethical relationship on notions of Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit would logically direct our action in the climate crisis in favour of those most at risk of harm. The evidence demonstrates that this not only includes but also prioritises the poorest of the human race, vulnerable ecosystems, and critically endangered species.35 Furthermore, as this book argues, the ethical imperative has sound theological foundations ranging from a reading of the creation narratives informed by ecology to a Christology reflecting the trifold forms of Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen. Privacy contra Piety The temptation to retreat to the privacy of piety to the detriment of responsibility and action is a contradiction to Bonhoeffer’s notion of ethical decisionmaking. This move occurs as the individual treats ethics as an abstraction and withdraws to ideals of goodness, ‘rightness’ and ‘the ought’. Bonhoeffer has no tolerance for this. He describes this as ‘reach[ing] for the sanctuary of a private virtuousness’.36 There are two problems here: the first being an abstraction of the ethical act that Bonhoeffer sees as the human desire to be the arbitrator of good and evil in the place of God—the very problem of the fall. The second problem is that piety hamstrings socio-political engagement with the world. In justifying such inaction in the face of need, the pious are forced into hypocrisy.37 The retreat to the pious is the logical option to prevent cognitive dissonance in the face of contemporary need. When the words of Christ demand justice and echo the long tradition of the Old Testament for the same, and condemn inaction as in the words of the Prophets, then not to act accordingly requires a psychological strategy in order not to ‘be destroyed’.38 The personal piety promoted by some Christian sects whilst rejecting both scientific evidence for climate change and the need to deal with climate refugees, for example, can be seen as evidence of this strategy at work.39 In Bonhoeffer’s analysis, he suggests that ‘They must close their eyes and their ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world’.40 Furthermore, to abstract ethical action to philosophical moralising, regardless of good intentions, is to reject the concrete person of Christ: Christ does not teach an abstract ethic that must be carried out, cost what it may. Christ was not essentially a teacher, a lawgiver, but a human being, a real human being like us. Accordingly, Christ does not want us to be first of all pupils,

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representatives and advocates of a particular doctrine, but human beings, real human beings before God. Christ did not, like an ethicist, love a theory about the good; he loved real people.41

Bonhoeffer’s understanding, that Christ in human form validates the material, permeates his notion of ethical responsibility to the extent that ethics must not retreat to the non-material but must remain fully engaged in the concrete. The concrete action is love. In contrast with the false purity to which Bonhoeffer objects, that is, piety, he endorses the inwardness of self-examination that might characterise the spiritual nature of Christian action before God. How does Bonhoeffer differentiate this type of spirituality from piety? There are two elements at work here. The first is the disciplined nature of prayer, meditation, and scriptural pondering that exemplified Bonhoeffer’s personal practice, characterised the routine of Finkenwalde, and is the basis of the works from that period.42 The second element has a darker overtone and relates to the very nature of Bonhoeffer’s ethics. It concerns the willingness of the individual to make responsible decisions only before God. In the absence of external modifiers of behaviour, the Christian is driven to conduct their ethical agency only in the sight of God. ‘The will to be good exists only as desire for the reality that is real in God.’43 Closing in on this reality requires turning to the will of God in prayer. From Barcelona, Bonhoeffer makes clear that ethical action occurs in the relationship of creature to Creator: You must act and behave such that in each of your actions you are mindful of also acting before God, mindful that God has a certain will and wants to see that will done. Each particular moment will reveal the nature of that will.44

More will be made of this statement in the discussion on law and freedom. Here, it establishes that in ethical decision-making, the individual is alone before God. Feil writes that for Bonhoeffer, ‘even the good which Christians can do in the world can be done only as something arcane’.45 This means that the prayerful meditation on the Word and the situation ‘spares the world from a direct, unmediated confrontation with the Christian message’46 and upholds the mystery of the faith. What it allows for is the sacrificial act of responsible action without the trappings of religion or the hindrances that come with proselytisation and self-conscious acts of good. This latter reveal the desire to ultimately do ‘good’ for the self rather than acting selflessly and primarily on behalf of the other. Bonhoeffer is following a long tradition in Christian spirituality here.47 Emmanuel Levinas also understood this and, hence, we see the coinage of the ‘other-self-other’ motif that indicates the risk of any act of

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service having an ulterior motive of glorifying the self.48 Bonhoeffer is alert to this risk, dealing with it in ‘History and Good [2]’: In our encounter with other human beings and with God, the Yes and the No are bound together in a unity of contradiction, in selfless self-assertion, in a self-assertion that is a surrender of myself to God and to other human beings.49

In the solitude of ethical decision-making, one might also find oneself lonely: No one but Christians and God, however, can know whether they are indeed acting rightly or wrongly. Ethical decisions lead us into the most profound solitude, the solitude in which a person stands before the living God. Here no one can help us, no one can bear part of the responsibility; here God imposes a burden on us that we must bear alone. Only in the realization that we have been addressed by God, that God is making a claim on us, does our self [Ich] awaken. Only through God’s call do I become this ‘self’, isolated from all other people, called to account by God, confronted, alone, by eternity. And precisely because I am face to face with God in this solitude, I alone can know what is right or wrong for me personally.50

It is in this ontological condition of the Christian, alone and ‘before God’: in relationship and being seen by El-roi that the self awakens and is tuned to the notion of grace.51 Bonhoeffer was acutely aware of the introspective aspect of Christianity (particularly after his ‘phraseological to real’ transposition). It is this that allows him, in the prison letter of 30 April 1944, to say that the arcane discipline would have new significance for ‘religionless-worldly Christians . . . those who are called out . . . seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world’.52 Earlier, in Discipleship, the arcane discipline is related to the mindful discernment of protecting the mystery of costly grace that places people under the costly yoke of grace.53 It is not so much the matter of secrecy, as the mystery of faith, protecting it from profanation whilst at the same time engaging in the world and being the church for others (one is again reminded of Lovat’s epithet of Bonhoeffer as ‘practical mystic’).54 Being ‘called out’, being the ecclesia, necessarily requires being ‘called to’ the transcendental experience of being alone before God. In this way, ethics is shaped by being mindful of the aloneness before God and the hiddenness of the mystery of faith. Such aloneness and hiddenness, that characterises true piety, drives ethical action on behalf of others, reflecting the nature of Bonhoeffer’s costly grace. Bonhoeffer says that the significance of the Sermon on the Mount is not a new ideal or code but that it establishes an ethic of responsibility whereby grace supersedes any law or codification of action. Principles cannot be

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brought to bear prior to the action, since only in the particularity of the event can grace be known. ‘You stand before the face of God, God’s grace rules over you’, he says, and this is ‘completely different’.55 Only in the prayerful nurturing of this connected relationship with God is it possible to act out of that relationship, surrendering to the divine will and acting on behalf of the other. Each moment of potential ethical value represents an opportunity to reestablish the aligning of the will to God’s will. This, according to Bonhoeffer, ‘can be characterised as love’.56 Finally, conscience mediates the decision-making process. Bonhoeffer summarises this in ‘History and Good [2]’, first defining conscience in terms of integrity of the self, then relating it to the ethical act: Conscience is the call of human existence for unity with itself, voiced from a deep wellspring beyond one’s own will and reason. It manifests itself as the indictment of lost unity and as the warning against losing one’s self. Its primary focus is not a specific act, but a specific way of being. It protests against activity that threatens this being in unity with one’s own self.57

The specific act is not the goal of ethical action. Living ethically before God, for the sake of others, is a way of being that seeks unity of the self. In this, it is authenticity of a flourishing, human life and the counterpoint to the ‘pseudodoing’ of hypocrisy.58 Speaking through the character, Uncle Harald, in his prison ‘Novel’, Bonhoeffer says, ‘This life alone is fruitful and human.’59 The fruitfulness of the ethical life is grounded in the arcane discipline. The next section investigates more closely what frames ethical action and how it applies to the contemporary problem of the climate crisis. ETHICS FOR THE WORLD: EARTHLY CHRISTIANITY Acting responsibly is not a matter of following principles but, instead, engaging with the world in a Christ-like manner. Having established that humans are essentially ethical agents and that following Christ entails a process of ethical formation, Bonhoeffer offers two fundamentals that frame ethical action. Bonhoeffer offers Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit as ways to consider what responsible action might look like in the real world. Stellvertretung, translated as vicarious representative action, is a legal concept applied to theology. Karola Radler has identified the influence of Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, on Bonhoeffer’s utilisation of Carl Schmitt’s understanding of this jurisprudential term for his own theological purposes.60 Schmitt emphasised the representative nature of Stellvertretung in the law.61 As Bonhoeffer uses Stellvertretung theologically,

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it has two slightly different but related meanings in his work: one is soteriological and the other ethical. Bonhoeffer uses Stellvertretung in these two nuanced ways that has not always been made clear in the literature. The soteriological use of Stellvertretung appears in Sanctorum Communio and describes the salvific work of Christ on behalf of humanity, and indeed, the world. In this way, it is uniquely vicarious and representative: ‘even though in the one Adam there are many Adams, yet there is only one Christ. For Adam is “representative human being” [der Mensch], but Christ is the Lord of his new humanity.’62 Only Christ in God could, and indeed, did, undertake the action necessary to restore the entirety of humanity to itself and to God, reconciling all of creation, and ushering in the kingdom of God. No action on the part of humans could make this possible or could reciprocate that action: In this work Christ has a function that sheds the clearest light on the fundamental difference between Adam and Christ, namely the function of vicarious representative [Stellvertreter]. . . . In the old humanity the whole of humanity falls anew, so to speak, with every person who sins; in Christ, however, humanity has been brought once and for all—this is essential to real vicarious representative action [Stellvertretung]—into community with God.63

Bonhoeffer’s use of Stellvertretung as an ethical imperative has somewhat different characteristics. It is the necessary responsible action taken on behalf of another or a group (not all of humanity) and, unlike Christ’s action, there is some degree of reciprocity implied between the communion of saints and for others. The example Bonhoeffer uses is that of a soldier going to war and laying down his life for the sake of the nation of citizens. In this way, one voluntarily takes on the burden of others by standing in their place. It is not absolute in the same way as Christ’s Stellvertretung. In further contrast, it is not unique but, rather, becomes an active way of living, choosing moment by moment to act ethically in a discipline of repeated good actions, or what has been described as ‘vulnerable discipleship’.64 There is an implicit willingness to take on suffering for the sake of others. Willingness to take on suffering extends to willingness to take on guilt where necessary. This is the position Bonhoeffer took in relation to the actions of the conspiracy, to act out of Stellvertretung and fall on God to seek mercy. Bonhoeffer says in Sanctorum Communio that ‘my service to the other person springs from the life principle of vicarious representative action’.65 As such, Stellvertretung becomes a foundational ethical precept for the churchcommunity. Here, Bonhoeffer is phraseologically pre-empting what would, for him, become the realness of seeing the world from the underside of disadvantage, racial prejudice and poverty, the perspective that would underpin his ethics thereafter.

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If the life together of the community of saints is so characterised, then what is the relationship between those who follow Christ and those who do not, actively and consciously, follow Christ? Here, I use Bonhoeffer’s categorisations of those in the church being those who recognise their sin and submit to God’s love, on the one hand, and those who are ‘lost and condemned’, on the other.66 This appears nonetheless as an unsatisfactory categorisation: it is as though Bonhoeffer is compelled to utilise these traditional categories whilst, at the same time, retracting from them. The weight of the corpus of Bonhoeffer’s theology is not on condemnation but acceptance, not on exclusion but on glimpses of Christ’s efficacy throughout all of humanity. It is these threads that he draws upon when, in the prison letters, he suggests notions of unconscious, anonymous, and religionless Christianity. Bonhoeffer limits his commentary on judgement and focuses on reconciliation and grace, but this remains an unresolved tension in his work. The difference between the church and those beyond it is not in the extent of God’s saving grace in Christ. Rather, it is in the church’s acknowledgement of it: The church community is separated from the world only by this: it believes in the reality of being accepted by God—a reality that belongs to the whole world—and in affirming this as valid for itself it witnesses that it is valid for the entire world.67

It is in this context that I turn to the role of the church in relation to the world. Bonhoeffer’s notion of Stellvertretung is demonstrably not limited to vicarious representative action between Christians. How do we move from Stellvertretung within the church to beyond? The church exists to proclaim God’s love and this is done through action rather than words. It is the sacrificial love of the Christian community on behalf of others that enacts the Christlikeness demanded of the followers of Christ. Bonhoeffer summarises this idea when he describes the purpose of Christian ethics as helping us learn how to live together and this is universal, not for the church alone.68 More crucially, perhaps, is that Bonhoeffer’s key concern is in speaking to the church and this is most direct when he states ‘the church is church only when it is there for others’.69 That is to say, if the church does not behave responsibly and vicariously for those outside the church, then it ceases to be the body of Christ. It is this thinking that surely underpins Bonhoeffer’s own behaviour to support the conspiracy and, furthermore, consider foreign occupation and defeat as an act of repentance by the church on behalf of Germany. Fundamental to universality is Bonhoeffer’s assertion that nothing and no one is outside of Christ’s act of forgiveness and redemption. The section ‘Christ, Reality and Good’ in Ethics also states ‘that in the body of Christ all humanity is accepted, included, and borne, and that the church-community of

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believers is to make this known to the world by word and life’.70 How does the church-community make this acceptance by God known through word and life? Bonhoeffer’s commitment to the preaching of the word of God, and to its power to reveal Christ to the world, underpins his work as both academic and pastor. His emphasis on reading the Bible as a whole, seeing the continuity of the Old Testament with the New Testament, is evident from his earliest works and, especially, in Creation and Fall. In prison, we have evidence of him having read the Old Testament through at least twice, as well as having meditated daily on Old Testament passages, spending more time in the Old Testament than the New Testament.71 He developed a sense of the foundational nature of the Old Testament to the New Testament in that the Old Testament establishes the penultimate conditions, whilst ultimate conditions are to be found in the New Testament, as previously noted. Hence, in the Old Testament, the name of God is revealed and revealed to be unutterable whilst, in the New Testament, the speakable name of Jesus is revealed. Similarly, the Old Testament demonstrates the binding nature of the law in contrast with the New Testament’s grace, and God’s vengeance in the Old Testament makes way for the love and forgiveness of the New Testament.72 In this, Bonhoeffer is not only contrasting the ultimate and penultimate but is establishing that the ultimate is not recognisable without reference to the penultimate. Whoever does so, he says, ‘is to my mind no Christian’, despite the fact that ‘one can and must not speak the ultimate word prior to the penultimate’.73 Although the DBWE translators, at this point, elected to use the words ‘ultimate’ and ‘penultimate’, Bonhoeffer is not necessarily referring to these specific notions as he articulated them in Ethics (and which is taken up in the next chapter). The intimate, conversational tone of the text and the immediate context suggest that Bonhoeffer is simply referring to the Old and New Testaments, as in, the former and the latter. It is simply not possible to properly speak of New Testament truths without their foundation in the Old Testament. The representation of life in the Old Testament is the enduring reality of the penultimate and the hope of the ultimate that is presented in the New Testament.74 His immersion in the Old Testament, and a comprehensive interpretation of it, led Bonhoeffer to assert that faith involves not being saved from the world but living fully in it. A flourishing life in this world is both spatial and temporal. He notes the lack of resurrection promise in the Old Testament but nonetheless the emphasis on the good, communal life with its attendant blessing: Only when one loves life and the earth so much that with it everything seems to be lost and at its end may one believe in the resurrection of the dead and a new world.75

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It is the resurrection and a new world that defines the hope of the believer. It is not hope in heaven, or apocalypse, or rapture from Earth, or any other kind of escape out of this world. Hope in ‘the resurrection of the dead and a new world’ can only be possible when this life and this Earth are truly loved and fully engaged with. The error of earlier critics of Bonhoeffer’s ‘worldly Christianity’ was that they understood it to mean either an embrace of secularity or a contamination by the evil world of those who should remain pure and distant from it. This indicates a misunderstanding of the Christological focus of Bonhoeffer’s theology, whereby the world (life and Earth) is validated, honoured and, once again, held up as ‘good’. This validation is done via the mechanism of God’s self-revelation in Christ. Bonhoeffer used ‘worldly Christianity’ as a rejection of both the problems of the doctrine of two kingdoms, and of secular Christianity. In the positive, he used the term to proactively locate the church-community’s act and being in the world. ‘Worldly Christianity’ runs the risk of misinterpretation since worldliness can carry with in negative connotations outside of Bonhoeffer’s intention. Such misinterpretations include understanding worldly Christianity to permit undesirable attachment to the world and its ‘temptations’ at the expense of desire for God. Another barrier is a type of syncretism or hybridism between secularity and Christianity, which might account for the manifestations of Christian Capitalism currently being experienced, for example. In the Anthropocene, a new phraseology is proposed to better preserve Bonhoeffer’s intention in his expression, ‘worldly Christianity’. Restating the term as ‘Earthly Christianity’ might achieve this. In the positive sense, Earthly Christianity reiterates the unified, one reality and humanity’s embeddedness in it. It reaffirms our participation in Christ who is in and through not only the ‘world’ in the abstract, but through the very atoms and particles that make up the soil, water, and air of our lithosphere. Whilst recognising the cosmic character of Christ in and through all things, Earthly Christianity returns the focus to the world in which humans are placed and have ethical agency and responsibility. Earthly Christianity attends to our latent primal spirituality of connection to place, reverence for Mother Earth, and real concerns about the global crisis.76 In contrast to Joseph Sittler’s mid-twentieth-century term, ‘Earthy Christianity’, Bonhoeffer’s notion implicitly attaches ethical agency to ontology and, furthermore, places both within an eschatological schema of contemporary reality (as demonstrated in chapter 6). As this book demonstrates, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentricity underpins his notion of worldly Christianity and as such, is implicit in ‘Earthly Christianity’.77 For these reasons, a creative reworking of ‘worldly Christianity’ to ‘Earthly Christianity’ remains legitimately Bonhoefferian whilst strengthening the notions of ecology and primal spirituality that it encompasses.

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Whilst Stellvertretung has been attended to in the literature, its corollary, Sachgemäßheit, appears to have been somewhat neglected. This is the aspect to which Bonhoeffer draws attention in order to place ethical decision-making in its own context. It refers to the appropriateness of the action in the context of the situation, the players, and the moment. Sachgemäßheit reinforces the changeable nature of ethical actions so that every moment must be faced afresh to consider its own context. It is for this reason that the guiding principles or universals that philosophy might create are inadequate to the task. Instead, the context is the situation in history that drives the appropriateness of the ethical action that might be taken. The ethical agent operates by engaging with the context and using reason to negotiate what responsible action looks like in that moment. In the same way that ethical action must be re-formed daily, so too every new situation has its own context that must be assessed afresh. The concrete nature of the world, validated in Christ, is the context for such responsible action and, as such, necessarily provides limitations to the possibility of that action: Responsible action is nourished not by an ideology but by reality, which is why one can only act within the boundaries of that reality. Responsibility is limited both in its scope and in its character, i.e., both quantitatively and qualitatively.78

Time and space, which characterises our historicity, is not ignored in Bonhoeffer’s ethics, au contraire, it defines the concrete nature of responsible action. It is precisely this that binds Sachgemäßheit and makes it fundamental to Stellvertretung. That is to say, responsibility is bound by the context and therefore the scope of action will always be dependent upon the circumstance. Circling back to Christology, Bonhoeffer restates that ‘No one has the responsibility of turning the world into the kingdom of God, but only of taking the next necessary step that corresponds to God’s becoming human in Christ’.79 Manifesting God’s kingdom on Earth requires participation in those actions that expose the person of Christ in the world, one ‘necessary step’ at a time. Bonhoeffer is acutely aware of the imperfect nature of such responsible action. This is the key difference to operating by standards imposed by ideology: that one is forced to rely on God’s mercy rather than principles or rules. Responsible action therefore has no choice but to take on guilt, willingly. The lessons Bonhoeffer took from his Old Testament reading are especially important to the final phase of his theology from prison. Hence, a fully engaged life is not pietistic but revels in the bodily and sexual, and the responsibilities of an ordinary life. Turning directly towards the world, rather than towards the ‘other-world’, underpins Bonhoeffer’s opposition to religion per se and the favouring of true spirituality that he understood to be Christianity. Even as he

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was incarcerated, we see him totally interested in the activities of his extended family on the outside, showing concern for their hardships, and rejoicing in their celebrations. The authentic life trumps the ascetic and the pietistic, and the church is required, as a model community, to interweave their lives with others so that, in that very messiness, sacrificial love occurs as testimony to Christ: This means not being separated from the world, but calling the world into the community [Gemeinschaft] of the body of Christ to which the world in truth already belongs.80

The way the church relates to the world is entirely predicated on God’s relationship with the world, one characterised by universal mercy, acceptance, and reconciliation. The church’s unique role, and privilege, is to proclaim to the world its reconciliation with God or, in Bonhoeffer’s words: It is the task and the essence of the church-community to proclaim precisely to this world its reconciliation with God, and to disclose to it the reality of the love of God . . . . Thus even the lost and condemned world is being drawn ceaselessly into the event of Christ.81

In proclamation and disclosure of this ethical type, the church is participating in the ongoing process of the restoration of the world. There is no part of the world that is not included in this process. Christ lived and died for all of humanity and the entire world, demonstrating universal acceptance and reconciliation: ‘Christ has died for the world.’82 How does the church proclaim this? The church’s actions must speak of the acceptance that Christ has already demonstrated towards the world. As the church-community affirms for itself the reality of its own acceptance, it witnesses to the world that it too is accepted and belongs to God. Hence, Bonhoeffer is able to state, ‘There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God.’83 To think otherwise, he says, is to deny the body of Christ. For it is the body of Christ, first made human and then sacrificed on the cross, which ‘embodies’ all of humanity84 and crystallises for us how the two belong together: The body of Jesus Christ, especially as it is presented to us on the cross, makes visible to faith both the world in its sin and in its being loved by God, and the church-community as the company of those who recognize their sin and gratefully submit to the love of God.85

Elsewhere, Bonhoeffer describes the ‘belonging together of God and world that is grounded in Christ’86 and that ‘God and the world are enclosed in this

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name’.87 To summarise the argument here: God, through Christ, has reconciled the entirety of the world to God’s self, even in its state of sinfulness. The church-community represents the portion of the world that recognises and responds to this reality. It manifests this reality by its members’ sacrificial, engaged lives on behalf of those who do not so recognise and respond to God’s self-revelation. The boundary between the church and the world is by no means static, whilst the difference between the two is not denied. Already, we have seen how Bonhoeffer takes the church-community to be the form of Christ in the world, and the celebration of the Eucharist to be a physical symbol of Christ’s presence. However, what Bonhoeffer is denying is the superiority of the church over those outside it, instead emphasising the inclusive, universal nature of the redemptive action of Christ. The role of the church then is framed not by the notion of contrast (those outside versus those inside the church) but instead by its agency in reconciliation. The use of Bonhoeffer’s theology in this way has underpinned socio-political interventions such as the reconciliation movement in South Africa.88 Activism of this type can only occur inasmuch as the church is outward-looking. As demonstrated in chapter 3, Bonhoeffer’s very concept of the ethical person is in relation to ‘the other’, that is, to those not ‘like me’. The ramifications for this are crucial to how an ecoethic might be framed and, in particular, what this means for interfaith encounters. Both of these ideas are taken up in the final chapter. Guilt Theologically speaking, Bonhoeffer recognises the ‘guilty solidarity’ that all humans share. What he is speaking of in Sanctorum Communio is the way that vicarious representative action supersedes any type of superficial solidarity (as per Scheler) in favour of an active taking on of guilt where such is necessary in order to function ethically.89 This is consistent with Bonhoeffer’s model of the person as socio-ethical agent.90 It might be phrased thus: my solidarity with you does not stop at standing alongside you. It requires that I actively engage to the extent required for your good and regardless of the cost to me, including the cost of taking on guilt. Being-for-others and taking on suffering for the sake of others includes, if necessary, taking on guilt on behalf of others. This is precisely the position in which Bonhoeffer placed himself with regard to the conspiracy. The tyrannicide for which the conspiracy was working breached both the Old Testament commandment and the criminal law against murder (and treason) and was contrary to Bonhoeffer’s peace ethic. However, given the greater good that the act would potentially serve, and the further harm it would prevent, Bonhoeffer was prepared to accept the guilt for the act and plead for God’s mercy.

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Erich von Dietze, the grandson of a co-conspirator and member of the Freiburg Circle (Constantin von Dietze), spoke of this at the seventieth anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s execution.91 He said: They faced significant uncertainty, only believing that ultimately their stance was right and that right Christian action for ethically justifiable reasons would in the end be vindicated before God. . . . Bonhoeffer and his co-conspirators knew they were deliberately making themselves guilty . . . and ultimately their only option would be to throw themselves into the merciful arms of God. . . . Taking a cue from Luther’s theology, they literally believed that they risked eternal hell for the actions they were planning.92

Von Dietze proceeds to emphasise the difference between Bonhoeffer’s and alternative theological ethics being found ‘largely in the depth of ethical and theological reflection and prayerful thought given to their plans. . . . Sometimes what is believed . . . to be unethical may in the long run turn out to be the more ethical choice, the difficulty is how to discern this’.93 It was observed earlier in this chapter that God has revealed the ultimate reality. It is not a reality created by norms or ideals of ‘ethics’ that should consequently be abandoned in light of this revelation. Bonhoeffer says as much in Ethics: With what reality will we reckon in our life? With the reality of God’s revelatory word or with the so-called realities of life? With divine grace or with Earthly inadequacies? With the resurrection or with death?94

Participating in such a reality necessarily runs the risk of being found guilty, and clearly, as imperfect human beings in the concrete world, actions cannot be without this danger.95 As quoted at the start of this chapter, God’s reality is the ultimate context of ethical agency. Readiness to take responsibility for one’s actions and, hence, to take on guilt for those actions, relies on this ultimate reality and ‘my’ concern for ‘God to be known as the good, even at the risk that I and the world are revealed as not good, but as bad through and through’.96 From Barcelona, Bonhoeffer might have pre-empted his own actions, stating: There are no acts that are bad in and of themselves; even murder can be sanctified. There is only faithfulness to or deviation from God’s will. There is no law with a specific content, but only the law of freedom, that is, bearing responsibility alone before God and oneself.97

Consistent with this approach to ethics of responsibility is Bonhoeffer’s sermon on 2 Chronicles 20:12 that he preached in Berlin on 8 May 1932. A long paragraph is quoted here for two purposes. Its content emphasises the need to

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rely on God’s judgement and mercy in one and to situate this within both a Christological and eschatological frame, this reflecting previous discussions (refer to chapters 3 and 6). Its form demonstrates the passion and eloquence of Bonhoeffer, the preacher. Such a style of writing places the prison letters, including the love letters to Maria, into a stylistic context.98 Bonhoeffer’s sermon states: We do not know what to do—because we stand damned under the cross, and our paths are at an end. But we look to you, you who in judgment and mercy, in cross and resurrection, remain God and give your commandment permanence, even if because of this the world is smashed to pieces. We look to you not as those who finally know, after all, what they should do, but as those who do not know at all what they should do but who know that you forgive sins and are merciful, as those who have no firm ground under their feet anymore but are grasped and held over the abyss of the bottomless void from above by you, who know that your paths and your commandment are hidden in this world under the cross, but that they shall be revealed in your kingdom.99

In the context of ‘not knowing what to do’, it is law and freedom, precisely, ‘the law of freedom’, that is next addressed. Law and Freedom Put simply, Bonhoeffer’s ethics drives us to the love of God, meaning that God in God’s freedom forged a path from God to humans in Christ. What Bonhoeffer calls ‘God’s limitless love for human beings’ transcends all attempts at human pathways towards God.100 All moral laws, all principles, all philosophy represents the human judgement of good and evil and, as such, an attempt at a human pathway towards God.101 The primal condition is a state beyond good and evil, since the dividedness from God, the sicut deus, occurs with the eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge and good and evil.102 However, Bonhoeffer does not agree with movements that proclaim the ‘new commandment of love’ as the ‘new ethic . . . the center of Christianity’.103 A Christian ethic does not take its starting point or even its direction from the human attempt to love God. Instead, Christ represents a ‘dismissal of principles’ that is captured in Paul’s assertion that the law is fulfilled.104 Ethical action, then, is not derived from principles or from our love of God. In fact, principles reinforce our own superiority. ‘If I have principles, I feel I am secured sub specie aeternitis’, he says.105 Instead, something unique and new is at work. Bonhoeffer says that the world we inhabit provides for us the ethical potential of moments: moment after moment, a

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new opportunity exists to express our new relationship with God’s will. Here is the full quote from the Barcelona lecture, capturing the essential difference between human, philosophical ethics, and the Christian ontology that drives ethical action: Does the Sermon on the Mount really have nothing new to say to us? It has nothing ‘new’ in the sense of new demands, but it does have something completely different to offer. The significance of all of Jesus’s ethical commandments is rather to say to people: You stand before the face of God, God’s grace rules over you . . . . You must act and behave such that in each of your actions you are mindful of also acting before God, mindful that God has a certain will and wants to see that will done. Each particular moment will reveal the nature of that will. You must merely be perfectly clear that your own will must in every instance be accommodated to the divine will; your will must be surrendered if the divine will is to be realized. Hence to the extent that acting before God requires utter renunciation of personal demands and claims from us, Christian ethical acts can be characterized as love. This assertion is not a new principle, however, but derives rather from the status of human beings before God. There are no ethical principles enabling Christians, as it were, to make themselves moral. Instead, one has only the decisive moment at hand, that is, every moment that is of potential ethical value. Never, however, can yesterday decisively influence my moral actions today. I must rather always establish anew my immediate relationship with God’s will. I will do something again today not because it seemed the right thing to do yesterday, but because today, too, God’s will has pointed me in that direction.106

This passage confirms the earlier point that the Christian is not responsible for ‘turning the world into the kingdom of God’,107 but rather, that the necessary steps are simply the immediate, responsible, contextual steps before us. Those steps are determined by us in the freedom given to us as ethical agents. Freedom from the law implies freedom from ethical codes, universal morals, and, technically, from the rigid application of rules exemplified by the Pharisaic conduct of the New Testament against which Paul wrote. In the place of law is the freedom to act out of responsibility and service, that is characterised by Bonhoeffer as love, as evidenced in the Barcelona lecture: The decision demanded in reality, however, must be made in freedom in the concrete situation by the individual involved.108

With ‘all bridges burned’ behind and all ties dissolved, the Christian stands free before God and the world; having full responsibility for how one deals

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with the gift of freedom in terms of acting on behalf of others.109 ‘The idea of the cross’ establishes the ethical imperative: In every instance the idea of the cross, as the example of God’s love actualized even unto death, determines our actions, since it places divine love above all other characteristics of God.110

The obverse of the imperative to act freely is that those who do not act in freedom forfeit their status as Christians.111 Freedom is the gift that Christ has given and Christians are not to re-enter the yoke of slavery (Gal. 5.1).112 Bonhoeffer takes the negative argument very seriously: Christian ethical action is action out of freedom, out of the freedom of those who have nothing in themselves and everything in their God, those who ever anew have their actions confirmed and reinforced by eternity. . . . Those who surrender their freedom also surrender their status as Christians. Christians stand in freedom, without any backing, before both God and the world; they alone bear the entire responsibility for how they will deal with this gift of freedom.113

Being free to act responsibly allows for great diversity and creativity of response both between people and for the individual as they grow and change over time and across contexts. As the individual struggles with competing options for how to act in any given moment, the relationship with God (love) and being mindful of God’s will (love for others) are the supreme drivers. Bonhoeffer talks about this in terms of the two commandments of truth and love, in which the relationship supersedes notions of each individually.114 Therefore, Bonhoeffer continues: Christians become creative in their ethical actions. Acting according to principles is unproductive and merely reflects or copies the law. Acting in freedom is creative. Christians draw the forms of their ethical activity out of eternity itself, as it were, put these forms with sovereignty in the world, as deed, as their own creations born of the freedom of God’s children.115

As historical beings, this accounts for the tendency to create moral and religious laws over time. However, such guides cannot replace the individual freely acting before God, ‘without looking sideways at others’.116 It is to the notion of ethics in the community setting that the discussion now turns. Freedom for Others, Suffering for Christ, and Stellvertretung If sociality characterises the behaviour of the faithful follower of Christ, then Bonhoeffer interprets this in a Christological fashion. That is to say, the

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Christian relationship with others is characterised by vicarious representative action—Stellvertretung. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this relates to the notion of freedom. It is this coupling of freedom and suffering that characterises Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology and this requires further elucidation below. As Adam chooses between remaining imago Dei or sicut deus, in disobedience he chooses not liberation as expected, but constraint. It is only through the path of reconciliation and re-establishing imago Dei that new-Adam once again gains freedom. In doing so, humankind understands that God’s freedom is pro nobis. Therefore, as we are conformed to God’s image, we too understand that our freedom must logically be for others. God, in whose image we are conformed, is one who, in freedom, suffers for others as demonstrated in Christ. Those who are being reshaped as ethical beings are therefore moved to suffer for others; freedom in Christ must be manifest as service for others. As Geffrey Kelly has described it, Stellvertretung in the Christian Church is ‘the life-giving principle of the visible communion of saints’.117 Furthermore, throughout Life Together Bonhoeffer depicts Christ: As the embodiment both of God and Christians, who are moved to do what, without Christ, they would be unable to accomplish: to live together, sharing faith, hope, and self-giving love in a prayerful, compassionate, caring community. Christ is present in the community as representative of God’s graced outreach to God’s children and the incarnate embodiment of all those who crave in their faith for community with God.118

Since the faithful are in the image of God, there is progressive formation to be like God through the development of characteristics that demonstrate they exist for the sake of others. Such a process is undertaken by following Christ’s example and immersing the self in the suffering of others. It is not coincident that Bonhoeffer entitled his exploration of the life of the Christian via the Sermon on the Mount, Discipleship [Nachfolge], literally ‘imitation’ or ‘following after’ Christ. As Peter Frick has pointed out, Bonhoeffer brings the book to a conclusion with a wordplay that weaves together the notions of ‘following Jesus’ and ‘imitating God’.119 In the final paragraph, he writes: Only because we already are made like him can we be ‘like Christ.’ Since we have been formed in the image of Christ, we can live following his example. On this basis, we are now actually able to do those deeds, and in the simplicity of discipleship, to live life in the likeness of Christ. . . . But now the final word about those who as disciples bear the image of the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus Christ, and who have been transformed into the image of God, is that they are called to be ‘imitators of God.’ The follower [Nachfolger] of Jesus

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is the imitator [Nachahmer] of God. ‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.’ (Eph. 5:1)120

In this passage, Bonhoeffer brings together the notion of imago Dei with that of discipleship through imitation. The tasks of addressing the challenges represented by ecology and the climate crisis, and developing an ecoethic, can only be met as we imitate the vulnerable, Suffering God. The tools required for practical interfaith relations around ecoethics can only emerge from this source. Applying principles or organising structures are inadequate. Basic to Bonhoeffer’s Christology is the concept of Christ’s physicality and embeddedness in this one, single reality. The embodiment of Christ validates this physical reality in its entirety and causes a shift in emphasis from the salvation of the individual to the salvation—or health—of the whole of creation. This is why, to Bonhoeffer, the role of the church is to be the natural ‘home’ of sociality: the church-community is a construct wherein individuals can enact or play out sociality as a microcosm of all humanity in relationship with God, with others, and with the balance of creation. He sees ‘church’ as being representative of both guilt and redemption and therefore as open to a different (redemptive) way of operating.121 That different way is servanthood towards the other and, in this context, the other signifies not simply other people but all of creation.122 The very nature of Christ is embodied in order to manifest servanthood. Bonhoeffer explores this notion in his writings on The Sermon on the Mount and invites us to examine the problem of the climate crisis through the focus of the Suffering God. He presents us with a God who wins power and space in the world by God’s weakness, which seems paradoxical, but provides a key to operating within the interrelationship model. Seeing the Suffering Christ123 embodied in all of creation allows us to subvert the existing model of domination over others and, by extension, over creation. So Christ’s embodiment validates both our physicality and our embodied relationships and gives us a starting point to explore Bonhoeffer’s deeply layered term, ‘lord of the world’. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Christ drives what he understands to be the task of the life in faith. Seeing Christ as the ‘image of the invisible God’, whereby ‘all things have been created through him and for him . . . and in him all things hold together’ (Col. 1:15-17), underlies Bonhoeffer’s quest for what it means that Christ is ‘lord of the world’. That is, Christ’s ontology necessarily promotes human flourishing insofar as we emulate analogia relationis. In the context of this book, there are important implications of relationships for ecoethics as we suffer on behalf of the most vulnerable species, preferencing the view of the ecologies at risk. Frick has made the case for the potential influence of à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi on both the thinking and title of Discipleship, as well as in the spiritual

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disciplines he pursued through monastic experiences, Finkenwalde, and in preparing the Sermon on the Mount, lessons that finally became Discipleship.124 I have written elsewhere of the possible influence of Gandhi on Bonhoeffer, and Gandhi’s own interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.125 Imitation of God, following Christ, is only possible because of God’s empowering presence; indeed, all theology and discipleship are a product of the work of God. Christianity becomes, then, not a new religion but a new life that represents participation in Christ’s reality.126 Following Luther, it is faith that initiates the works that then emerge. Christ is recognised in the undertaking of free acts on behalf of the other. The call of Christ to follow the Sermon on the Mount is conjoined with the call to follow Christ to the cross. Bonhoeffer is inaccurately (but frequently) quoted from Discipleship, ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die’, which would be better translated as, ‘Every call of Christ leads into death.’127 As Bonhoeffer explains, this is not the tragic death at the end of a virtuous life but the death of the old self in the encounter with Christ which, paradoxically, is life.128 Part of ‘the fruit of suffering’ that is shared by all believers is bearing the sins of others. Sin can only be borne by forgiveness, Bonhoeffer tells us, and so the community of believers becomes a community of forgiveness.129 Furthermore, and as Bonhoeffer demonstrated in his own willingness to participate in the plot to assassinate Hitler, the Christian has the potential to participate in the guilt of others. That is, by willingly taking on the guilt of another, we absolve the other’s guilt. This occurs at the level of the individual as well as in the community context. Christ’s example of this draws us to reckon that not only service to others and suffering on behalf of others, but also the ultimate step of willingly taking on the guilt of others, is the role of the Christian. This is what Bonhoeffer meant, in part, when he said that every call of Christ leads into death, and why this phrase is so nuanced. Willingness to take on guilt is distinct from seeking guilt, in much the same way that suffering for others is not validation for suffering domestic violence or other abuses that some have taken it to mean.130 As von Dietze has said: Bonhoeffer and his co-conspirators knew they were deliberately making themselves guilty of murder and treason, and ultimately their only option would be to throw themselves into the merciful arms of God.131

One senses the deep thought that Bonhoeffer applied to the ethical dilemma facing Christians who had to negotiate the option of an assassination attempt. It was not only the defiance of the Mosaic Law not to kill—in some ways this was the least problematic of the quagmire of ethical uncertainty facing those in the conspiracy. At an even deeper level was Bonhoeffer’s disquiet over the possible outcomes once Hitler and the other leaders were removed.132 In his

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secret meeting with Bishop Bell in Sigtuna on 31 May 1942, Bell notes that Bonhoeffer had, given his broader perspective of the events, concluded that not only would a negotiated peace not be possible (even assuming Hitler’s removal and a successful coup and transfer of power), but that it was not deserved. Bonhoeffer came to the position that the Christian responsibility for Germany was not only in ‘murder and high treason’ classically associated with the conspiracy but to suffer, repent, and suffer some more. That this suffering would come at the hands of the Allies unwilling to support the resistance within Germany was irony surely not lost on Bonhoeffer. However, his stance was clear: ‘Christians do not wish to escape repentance, or chaos if God wills to bring it on us. We must take this judgment as Christians.’133 Mark Brocker has pointed out that the circumstances of Bonhoeffer’s last few years, where his twin vocations of reflective theology and political action are so closely connected and complementary, drive towards Bonhoeffer’s insight: ‘the profound this-worldliness of Christianity’.134 Bonhoeffer wrote that ‘one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life’ because the ‘Christian is simply a human being’, not a Homo religiosus.135 One sees the connection between this, in one of his last prison letters, back to his ‘Christology Lectures’ of 1933: that even asking the question of ‘Who is Christ’ is the beginning of faith, as noted earlier. Faith becomes the byproduct, the grace bestowed, as the attempt, however faltering, is made to be human. Hence, the profound this-worldliness of Bonhoeffer’s Christology is underlined again. Learning to have faith occurs through engagement with this world and the preparedness to take on guilt on its behalf. THE ETHICAL COMMUNITY Bonhoeffer rejects ethics built upon universal principles in favour of responding to the concrete Word, action, and person of God in Christ. His ethical approach is based not on principles, yet it is not devoid of direction. Bonhoeffer determines the direction of this love-based ethics at least in the two notions of Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit, both of which are dealt with above. Together, in his mind, they support the framework for enacting such a love-based ethic. As to the question of how it is possible to love others, for Bonhoeffer, this follows logically from the ontology and witness of Christ’s humanity. The following paragraph can be seen as drawing together these threads of his theology up to this point: Only because God became human is it possible to know and not despise real human beings. Real human beings may live before God, and we may let these real people live beside us and before God without either despising or idolizing

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them. This is not because of the real human being’s inherent value, but because God has loved and taken on the real human being. The reason for God’s love for human beings does not reside in them, but only in God. Our living as real human beings, and loving the real people next to us is, again, grounded only in God’s becoming human, in the unfathomable love of God for us human beings.136

The phrase, ‘loving the real people next to us’ has definite implications for an ethic suitable for the climate crisis, given the victims of land reclamation by the rising sea, food shortages, and resultant wars. In literal terms, these victims are likely to become refugees right ‘next to us’ and provoking in us our ethical response. In a globalised, media-saturated world, it is hard to conceive of very many people not being next to us: so close are their circumstances followed and broadcast online. Perhaps this new world intensifies the ethical requirement to care for our neighbour. Later, what it means to love the species and landforms next to us is considered in chapter 8. ‘Loving the people next to us’ captures Bonhoeffer’s overarching ideas of sociality and relationality, namely, that we become more fully human and better reflect imago Dei to the extent that we open the ‘closed circle of self’ in order to allow the infiltration of the other along a relational axis. This vulnerability in itself is exemplified in Christ, the Suffering God, something beyond the scope of this book but well documented elsewhere.137 Such an implementation of love reflects Bonhoeffer’s assertion of the purpose of ethics being to provide the space wherein we not only to learn to live alongside others but perhaps also to learn to live through living alongside each other. Coupled with Bonhoeffer’s insight of learning to view the world from the underside, after his exposure to racism in the United States, the emerging ethics necessarily becomes a dynamic process whereby the self is subsumed in the space occupied by relationships. Rather than being a prescriptive remit, this type of ethical process takes place not at the margins where one is faced with the compelling obligation of the ‘ought’, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, or a universal rule to be applied across given criteria. Instead, Bonhoeffer is appealing to the reality of life that is disturbed and interrupted by obligations and, indeed, by the command of God but where the concrete nature of the demands faced in real life requires a judicious response. This is where ‘mitleben zu lernen’ emerges as profoundly insightful and hortative. I also suggest that the emphasis that Bonhoeffer places on this notion, ‘to learn to live together with’, and the rather more emotive language he uses in this manuscript, hints at the tragic and perilous circumstances in which it is written.138 In a further move from the phraseological to the real, from the view not only from Bildungsbürgertum but from the poor and

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oppressed, Bonhoeffer is bringing his theology to its focal point: learn to live together, not by rules, but from each other. Love each other. The Collective Person Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit also have currency in relation to Bonhoeffer’s notion of the collective person. All our ethical engagement, purposed by demonstrating God’s goodness in the world and shaped by responsibility and context, serve to concretise the ‘realization of the Christreality among us’.139 In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer uses two terms to describe the person in community, namely, Kollektivperson and Gesamptperson.140 The latter is literally, the whole community understood as a person, meaning that whole does not exist without the individuals. ‘Community is a concrete unity’141 and, as such, has ethical agency. The collective person transcends the simple sum of many individuals and instead embodies the mystery of the body of Christ and acts with ethical agency. In fact, in community, the centre of the ethical act lies in the community,142 outside the individual: It is not as if many persons, gathered together, now add up to a collective person. Rather, the person comes into being only when embedded in sociality, and the collective person comes into being together with the individual person. It is neither prior to, nor a consequence of, the individual. That is, the collective person exists only where there are individual persons. But since the collective person, understood as a center of activity, is only possible as concrete community with specific goals, it is possible only where the individual person belongs to the essence of the concrete community.143

This goes to the heart of the problem concerning how the church might engage in social action to mitigate and adapt to climate change and related harms, such as pollution, land clearing, and biodiversity loss. Ethical action in this case must occur as an outworking of the faith community. Thinking globally but only acting locally (at the level of the individual or household) is an insufficient response from a pragmatic angle. Even the most ardent cyclist and recycler will have little global impact, for example. To only act individually is problematic at a deeper level: it undermines the theological imperative of the church being the concrete body of Christ. Being the concrete body requires that the church-community participate in the global problem of climate change as a community, for ‘the center of activity lies not in each member, but in all of them together’.144 Anything less is dishonouring to the body of Christ.

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The notion of collective person also bolsters my premise that sociality extends beyond the classic understanding of the ‘I-You’ relation being characterised as referring to the human-to-human relation. When Bonhoeffer articulates the idea of collective person, he dismantles Theodor Litt’s view that ‘all social being is exhausted in the relations of I and You’.145 Bonhoeffer continues: For I-You–relations are also possible between a collective person and an individual person. For the collective person is, after all, also an individual person; only when collective persons are included in social intercourse can its richness be fully grasped. Thus to postulate a collective person does not mean to limit the sociological basic—category of I-You—relations. Rather, one must articulate the similarity of structure of the collective person and the individual person in the eyes of the universal person of God [der Allperson Gottes]: closedness and openness, mutual enrichment, social and inward intentions within this structural unity. Yet we still hesitate to declare the reality of the collective person [Kollektivperson]. Since the problem of reality can be solved fundamentally only from the perspective of ethics, we must first consider the degree to which ethical categories can be applied to a collective person [Gesamtperson], in the sense of an ethical personhood. This will provide decisive insights for the concept of the church. Thus, the groundwork is laid for a theory of the formation of empirical forms of community. They all must be built upon these basic-relations that are given with the personhood of every human being. This net of sociality into which people are woven is prior to any will for community.146

This is instructive of several matters that can apply to the scientific understanding of ecology and its potential engagement with theology. The intrinsic sociality of the human species, shorthanded by the ‘I-You’ relationship, applies also to the collective person in social intercourse. Social intercourse is not limited to the human species and, logically, neither can the notion of sociality and, hence, ethical responsibility. The ethical responsibility of the church-community is to the entire ecology. Furthermore, in ‘the eyes of der Allperson Gottes’, Bonhoeffer points to social basic relations of openness, mutual enrichment, and social and inward intention—these, he says, are the building blocks of personhood and exist within the ‘net of sociality into which people are woven’.147 The similarity with the language of ecology is striking. Bonhoeffer proceeds to examine the extent to which ethical categories might apply to the Gesamptperson.148 In doing so, Bonhoeffer gives us direction on how those ethical categories might extend outside the human species and apply to the entire web of sociality that is life on Earth. Just as Bonhoeffer’s intent in doing this is to provide theoretical underpinning for the empirical,

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concrete church, the praxis of ethical engagement with Earth and her creatures for Christians is similarly underpinned by theological foundations. Suggestions have been made from the social sciences that groupings of 150–200 people meet ‘natural’ levels of social interaction and productivity.149 If even partly true, then this affirms the typical-sized local church-community in Australia of approximately seventy people as a suitable cooperative unit, albeit with room to expand.150 In practical terms, climate action undertaken by large numbers of local church-communities within a national or global context has some potential to achieve significant results. Australian data indicates an already increasing involvement in community service by churchgoers, which might mean that an opportunity exists to similarly engage people in community-wide climate strategies.151 This is simply one ramification of our social mandate to other species. Universals: The Divine Mandates Seldom has a generation been as uninterested as ours in any kind of ethical theory or program. . . . This does not come from any ethical indifference in our times, but rather the reverse, from the pressure of a reality filled with concrete, ethical problems such as we have never had before in the history of the West.152

So begins Bonhoeffer’s second manuscript of Ethics, ‘Ethics as Formation’, written in 1940. The ‘concrete, ethical problems’ to which Bonhoeffer refers could just as validly be the problems of the Anthropocene, such is the relevance of this material to the ‘pressure of the reality’ of our contemporary situation. Taking socio-political action to combat climate change in a globalised world requires taking stock of Bonhoeffer’s notions of social structure. Bonhoeffer is interested in the ordering [Ordnung] of the social milieu to make sense of the connections and relationships that make up society. ‘Order’, here, refers to its organisation in the sense of ‘being in order’ and not being disorderly. Bonhoeffer’s interest in this is to examine the extent to which the existing ‘ordering’ of society reflects the unity of Christ or, alternatively, stands in the way of participating in Christ’s reality. His progression of thought in this area stands alongside the historical context. It also reflects the value that the Bildungsbürgertum placed on orderliness and discipline, in itself enacted by Bonhoeffer in the daily routine of Finkenwalde and in the hopes of the conspirators to build a new, post-Reich society.153 Moving from ‘orders of creation’ to ‘orders of preservation’ was a theological attempt to distance understanding of the current reality from the notion of it being divinely ordained. The change in terminology (signifying the deeper shift in meaning) takes place specifically in 1932–1933, contemporaneous

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with the Berlin lectures, Creation and Fall, and Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical conference. At that conference, Professor Wilhelm Stählin uses the orders of creation to justify war between nation states. Stählin is building on Althaus’ notion of the Volk, bound by blood-relations to form a nation, as an order of creation. This had formed the basis of the theological legitimacy of racial and anti-Semitic doctrine under Nazism, of which the Deutsche Christen had taken hold. Bonhoeffer opposes this and the further argument brought by Pastor Friedrich Peter, making explicit his alternative model of ‘orders of preservation’. He wrote a thesis, ‘The Discernible Nature of the Order of Creation’, which he presented as a paper to the Working Group of Theologians and Economists (part of the Church Social Federation) on 19 January 1932. Michael Lukens states that Bonhoeffer ‘strenuously objected to Peter’s fusion of grace, the created order, and historical destiny, clearly reflective of Peter’s participation in the German Christian movement.’154 The move to new terminology in the Ethics manuscript, ‘The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates’, is an effort to completely remove any confusion with the notion of ‘order’ that the regime was supporting, that is, with the admixture of Blut und Boden with Aryan supremacy and expansionism.155 Bonhoeffer’s divine mandates are a way to look at the world in its historicity and assess theologically whether social constructs reflect a participation in Christ—auf Christus hin—or if they serve to dehumanise people and strip Earth of her rights, along with those of other Earthlings.156 This section considers the mandates and relates them to the current context. The mandates represent a nearly final way for Bonhoeffer both to oppose former theological (particularly, Lutheran) constructs of society and, thereby, the way that Nationalist Socialism had appropriated them. In a positive way, the mandates return Christ to the centre of social reality, effecting a consistency with the corpus of Bonhoeffer’s work and, in this sense, can be seen as completing the scaffolding of his systematics. Building on the Christocentric revelation of God that validates this Earthly life, Bonhoeffer continues in that manuscript to pare what is evident in the world from what is the command of Christ. That is, Christ’s claim on human beings is all-encompassing because God’s reconciling love of people and the world is universal.157 As such, the commandment ‘encounters us concretely’ in historical, socio-political forms.158 Where those forms reveal Christ’s love, they can be considered to be legitimate. Where they do not, they require confrontation. For those forms to be legitimate, they must uphold the commandment and thus participate in the restorative action of Christ. This is what, in another manuscript, Bonhoeffer means when he describes the penultimate and ultimate: the contemporary world foreshadows the complete restoration of the reconciled world. The social forms remain only a means to an end, regardless of their alignment with the commandment. In Bonhoeffer’s note from the

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Ettal monastery to Bethge dated 27 November 1940, he describes it in terms of ‘Preparing the Way and Arrival’ [Wegbereitung und Einzug], an alternative way that Bonhoeffer might have described penultimate and ultimate and so organised Ethics accordingly.159 As demonstrated in chapter 6, we live in a unified reality that awaits its full consummation in Christ. To this end, Bonhoeffer addresses the socio-political constructs for their alignment with ‘preparing the way’, or the ultimate good. What might appear as ordained or ordered by God through cultural appropriation, tradition or lack of imagination, Bonhoeffer deals with in terms of the extent of the infiltration of the commandment of God in Christ: God’s commandment is not to be found anywhere and everywhere, not in historical forces or compelling ideals, but only where it gives itself to us. . . . God’s commandment is to be found not wherever there are historical forces, strong ideals, or convincing insights, but only where there are divine mandates [Mandate] which are grounded in the revelation of Christ.160

From this, he posits the four divine mandates that represent the universal human experience in a variety of forms: This commandment encounters us concretely in four different forms that find their unity only in the commandment itself, namely, in the church, marriage and family, culture, and government.161

Putting the mandates in context requires noting, more closely, the constructs that preceded them. At the time, the dominant theological notion of ‘orders of creation’ described what was historically evident as divinely ordained. Bonhoeffer’s mandates reverse this assumption and instead start with the Divine. If the social order finds unity with the revelation of Christ, then this can be described as divinely mandated. The reverse is not true, namely, that simply because a social order exists, then it is inprimus ordered by God. Furthermore, the appropriation of the orders of creation to justify Aryan supremacy and patriotic notions of the Volk required the theological challenge that Bonhoeffer was meeting here. Green states: By this he intended to deny autonomous authority to history and nature as sources of revelation, to rob the German Christians and their allies of theological legitimacy, and to deny theological status to ideological categories such as race, blood, and Volk.162

By the time Bonhoeffer was writing Ethics, he had abandoned the term, ‘orders’. His objective in Ethics was to examine how social systems, such as

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government, culture, work, and family provide the framework for individuals and groups to be ethical agents and, furthermore, to provide the opportunity for the Kollectivperson to preserve communities towards Christ. Much earlier on, Bonhoeffer began describing the social reality in terms of ‘orders of preservation towards Christ’ which, similarly, reflects how a social system can preserve the goodness in creation for the sake of its ultimate fulfilment in Christ.163 Here, God’s activity is seen as both creating and preserving, ‘two sides of the same activity of God’.164 This is another way of describing the penultimate/ultimate or journey/arrival temporal notion of eschatology. It refutes the notion of creatio continua to the extent that Bonhoeffer sees preservation as already occurring, not merely anticipated.165 That is, from the perspective of revelation and redemption, social structures are not decided at creation and maintained by God thereafter. They are merely the means for preserving creation and supporting the flourishing of life, the ‘holding fast’ of us, for the sake of ‘openness toward the gospel, for the hope of new creation’.166 Orders of preservation in Creation and Fall can be seen as building on Bonhoeffer’s claim of society operating rationally on the basis of the orderly self-preservation that he proffered in Sanctorum Communio (which in turn reflects Scheler’s influence on Bonhoeffer’s thinking at this time).167 Therein, he goes on to offer critique of the continuum between the relation of force and the relation of wills that bind society and how neither grasps the participation in Christ which truly reflects the human potential for sociality. Orders of preservation, as expounded, are a way for God to preserve or prevent the downward spiral to the abyss but instead preserve creation for its full redemption. De Gruchy sees it as a way for Bonhoeffer to distance himself from natural theology, which is true insofar as the category of social organisation is concerned, as well as in opposition to the misappropriation of ‘orders’ at the time.168 He identifies the problem with the Deutsche Christen’s use of natural theology as being in its yielding of ‘autonomous orders’, including the German nation, the Volk, as an essential component of God’s ordering and quite apart from God’s revelation in Christ.169 Bonhoeffer, in contrast, locates the world’s universals of family and state within God’s activity ‘to preserve the world from chaos, in anticipation of its end, its redemption in Jesus Christ. God’s ordering is thus understood eschatologically, not from its past or present “in nature”’.170 The Altona Confession against the Deutsche Christen included the line ‘Creation and revelation [in Jesus Christ] must never be played against each other,’ which summarises it well.171 Elsewhere, there is demonstrable evidence of the complementarity of natural theology with revelation, in particular with the validation of materiality discussed earlier, as well as the distinct correlation of Bonhoeffer with the thinking of Aquinas.172 Whilst a full exploration of this latter point is

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beyond the scope here, it offers a potential area for further, more detailed examination, particularly to balance the thinking that emphasises the extent to which Bonhoeffer is indebted to Luther. However, despite their similarities, Bonhoeffer persists in his reliance on revelation to the extent that creation alone is insufficient in itself. Wayne Floyd makes the case that Bonhoeffer counters natural theology and its misuse by Nazi ideology on two premises, namely, the distinction between creature and creation as demonstrated in Creation and Fall, and the creature’s inability to live within those creaturely limits.173 Furthermore, since the human and all of creation can only be talked about in terms of ‘being in Adam’ and ‘being in Christ’, it points to the revelation of God in Christ as being central to his entire theology and, hence, underpinning his objection to orders of creation as being foundational. For Bonhoeffer, as demonstrated above, ‘being-in-Christ’ represents the taking up of the past and suspending it in the future, and so reflection is suspended in intentionality.174 This is how ethical reflection can become a possibility of acceptable ethical action: God’s judgement is suspended in grace and mercy.175 Whilst Bonhoeffer’s semantic move from orders of creation to orders of preservation, and finally to mandates, is only completed in Ethics, the basic understanding that things are only good if they reveal God’s goodness is not unique to Bonhoeffer’s ethical writing but it is a constant feature of all of his writing. As early as in Act and Being, Bonhoeffer had claimed that creation itself does not provide ontological categories that are outside the notions of sin and judgement: Concepts of being, insofar as they are acquired from revelation, are always determined by the concepts of sin and grace, ‘Adam’ and Christ. There are in theology no ontological categories that are primarily based in creation and divorced from those latter concepts.176

In this, Bonhoeffer is prefiguring much of what he expounds theologically and what forms the basis of his understanding of ethics. Together, they support the one, unified reality in Christ. A creation restored in Christ is not divorced from its fallenness in Adam. The interest in mandates for this project is, first, what these universalities mean in terms of Earth community and, second, in order to cast a critical eye over existing social orders in terms of how they contradict wholeness and reconciliation of the Earth community. As Rowan Williams has alerted us, the global community is necessarily a very different one in that difference and inter-relationality characterise it in a way previously not achieved.177 How do the mandates speak into this contemporary, globalised world with its unique existential problem? Bonhoeffer states:

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We speak of divine mandates rather than divine orders, because thereby their character as divinely imposed tasks [Auftrag], as opposed to determinate forms of being, becomes clearer. In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a ‘worldly’ into a ‘spiritual’ ‘realm’.178

Bonhoeffer’s focus is on the tasks for which these forms of organisation allow. Again, the focus is on Earthly responsibility—of how best people can live together responsibly and, in doing so, promote the flourishing of life. Bonhoeffer articulates aspects of human social organisation that appear common to humanity, albeit in a variety of forms, these being marriage and family, work and/or culture, church, and state. Whilst the distinction between the latter two is made, it is not by way a reality fractured into spiritual and secular parts. Bonhoeffer somewhat dismantles Augustinian thinking here, as well as superseding the three Stände (estates) construct of Lutheranism (being the domestic, civil, and ecclesial).179 Bonhoeffer goes on to specifically describe the place and value of authority of social positions as being grounded in divine authority in that they emulate both ethical authority as well as ethical responsibility. The relationship-based interactions that comprise society are not oblivious to different roles and qualities. In light of the equal dignity of people espoused by Enlightenment thinking, not only is authority not to be used as a way to privilege an individual or class but also, in a positive way, it serves and benefits those not privileged.180 Bonhoeffer illustrates the divine mandate to work with the example of Adam in the Garden, purposed to till and keep the Earth. He continues: After the fall, work remains a mandate of divine discipline and grace (Gen. 3:17–19). By the sweat of his brow Adam wrests nourishment from the field, and soon the range of human work embraces everything from agriculture through economic activity to science and art (Gen. 4:17ff.). The work founded in paradise calls for cocreative human deeds.181

As previously demonstrated in my earlier explorations of this story, there is an undeniable theological and social commitment to the place of productive engagement by humans with creation. In the context of relationality with other species and Earth herself, which has been posited throughout this book, a framework for human employment is being developed by Bonhoeffer. As such, it must pay attention to the notions of responsibility and context.

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In the Anthropocene, there are overriding imperatives to save life and to minimise harm. In the human world, the evidence is already suggesting that (human) lives lost through heatwaves, the most deadly of natural disasters, are not impacting on the political Zeitgeist sufficiently in order to provoke the required policy changes. Similarly, political reaction to the needs of climate refugees leaving their homes owing to submersion, erosion, salination, or war are not currently generous and accommodating. If this is the reaction to human loss of life and habitat, then what hope for other life? Mass extinction describes the loss of life in an unprecedented way. Individual lives are naturally lost in the normal course of events. In this era, however, individuals are losing their lives as a direct result of human activity: habitat destruction, disruption of migration and mating seasons, alteration of atmosphere and ocean parameters are examples. Normally, as lives are lost, others are born or hatched or sprouted. The mass extinction to which we are witness, however, has a sense of the eternal that we are unaccustomed to addressing: the sense of this eternal is connoted by the finality of death. For extinct species, there is no rebirth and no recovery. There are only implications for a failing ecosystem and unexpected consequences of unbalanced communities and tipping points. Bonhoeffer’s divine mandates challenge the status quo by alerting us to the problems of social systems that have created and continue to maintain the climate crisis. What seems to be ‘eternal’ are systems of domination that represent the fallenness of ‘being-in-Adam’, rather than being suspended in Christ. Consideration of authority and responsibility, in this context, demonstrate that elected political leaders, and governmental structures that support them, have not fulfilled their responsibilities to protect life, be it human life, the lives and continuation of the species, or the future of life generally on Earth. Abrogation of the responsibility to be informed and to make evidenced-based decisions appears to be correlated with distrust of so-called ‘elites’ and, in particular, distrust of the scientific community.182 Bonhoeffer sees the mandates and the problems they highlight serving as prompts: They rather prompt a return to a true ordering under [Unterordnung] the divine mandate, and a restoration of true responsibility for the divine task. Such true responsibility consists in aligning the concrete form of the divine mandates with their origin, existence, and goal in Jesus Christ.183

Far from being the ideal, the mandates merely reflect society as it is, in its fallen but redeemed state. That they are instituted in the first place is a reflection of sin but that they remain useful insofar as they preserve the fallen world in Christ, is only by virtue of Christ’s work.

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To summarise this section, it is clear that Bonhoeffer’s notion of the divine mandates serves to describe aspects of social organisation that appear to be universal in some form. Generically, they are instituted by God as a safety net to prevent outright chaos in a fallen world. However, they are only valid insofar as they preserve the world and individuals for the sake of Christ, looking forward to total restoration. If they do not provide for human flourishing and, I would suggest, the flourishing of the entire Earth community, then institutions of family, state, government, and work or culture need to be subjected to critique and, potentially, to be dismantled. This is the interface with responsible, contextual action. THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE The climate crisis barely affords hope for a solution.184 It is both a complex problem, not open to simple reductionist analysis, and a wicked one, meaning that there is no single solution and no assurance than many approaches together will succeed in addressing it. As a wicked problem, dealing with the climate crisis and the other breaches of planetary boundaries requires a multifaceted range of strategies to intervene in order to lessen harm, ameliorate suffering, and attempt to save at least some species from extinction. The challenge can appear overwhelming and appear hopeless in the light of political action that is slow, incommensurate, or undermining. Bonhoeffer’s own context of living under the Third Reich provides some insight into how an individual and a church might behave in the climate crisis. Bonhoeffer’s position is that all the good programs and strategies in the world are insufficient to overcome crises such as we face; rather, we are asked to participate in a process of formation.185 He summarises this, and our position so far, in the somewhat famous paragraph, ‘Ecce homo!’, also from ‘Ethics as Formation’: Ecce homo—behold, what a human being! In Christ the reconciliation of the world with God took place. . . . Not ideals or programs, not conscience, duty, responsibility, or virtue, but only the consummate love of God can meet and overcome reality. Again, this is accomplished not by a general idea of love, but by the love of God really lived in Jesus Christ. This love of God for the world does not withdraw from reality into noble souls detached from the world, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world at its worst. The world exhausts its rage on the body of Jesus Christ. But the martyred one forgives the world its sins. Thus reconciliation takes place. Ecce homo.186

That being so, how is the church to operate in a world that faces such peril?

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The case has been presented that, given the ecological understanding that we now have of how species and elements interact and are interdependent, the notion of ‘other’ takes on new meaning, both positive and negative. On the one hand, humankind’s assessment of itself as wholly other and ontologically different from the rest of creation permits the type of hierarchical and categorical thinking that we recognise as contributing to the attempted mastery of nature (and indeed, each other). Even in contemporary ecotheological literature, the term ‘otherkind’ is used to refer to all Earthly life which is not human but ‘otherly’ (alternatives to ‘otherkind’ include ‘other-than-human’ and ‘more-than-human’ that are problematic in their own ways). In its positive sense, however, the notion of otherness is held up as an enticement to engage: Adam’s partner in the Garden, for example, is not identical but different and, in this difference, is the invitation to companionship and ‘knowing’. We never truly ‘know’ another but knowing and being known by another are among our deepest desires. An aspect of God’s self-revelation in Christ is the bridging of the gap between the unknowable, otherness of the transcendent with the knowable and recognisable human, Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer is inviting vulnerability towards, and the ability to be affected by, the other.187 This vulnerability is enacted in the ethical stance characterised by Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit. Utilised in this sense, ‘otherness’ opens a fresh, theologically sophisticated way to approach ecoethics in the Anthropocene. If the rest of the creatures are otherly, but nonetheless fellow Earthlings, what prevents a similar stance of knowing and being known emerging from a potential position of vulnerability that humans might take? For this purpose, ‘knowing’ must be reckoned in a different way in order to take account of not only human attributes, but those of plants, animals, microscopic creatures, and macroscopic components of ecosystems. Is such a metaphysical approach able to sit convincingly within an orthodox Christian theology? Earth is already motioning towards humanity that Homo sapiens (nomenclature that is almost ironic in the circumstances) is indeed vulnerable. Existentially, the continuation of human life is dependent upon the health of Earth’s ecosystems and, within that, the biodiversity of life.188 Therefore, the assurance of the continuation of the life of other species is intrinsic to the ongoing viability of humanity. The Anthropocene is the first period in which this has been understood in scientific terms and it is also the only period in which the application of this knowledge has become critical. Vulnerability is closely linked to suffering and, in this way, takes on the positive characteristic that Bonhoeffer locates in his motif, ‘costly grace’. Costly grace has currency in the climate crisis in terms of the existential vulnerability that can be reinterpreted as an opportunity for a positive response of being-for-others, including all other Earthlings, for which the construct of sociality provides.

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A reorientation of humanity’s relationships with creation can be approached according to Bonhoeffer’s model of sociality. Consistent with the premise that Bonhoeffer laid out from Sanctorum Communio and through the corpus of his works, there is potential for humans to reimagine their relationships with animals, plants, and bacteria, and the elements of Earth—water, soil, and air, for example. Those reimaginings could also reflect openness to change and vulnerability that Bonhoeffer is championing. Humans, instead of seeing themselves only as agents of influence (if not mastery), could consider themselves as co-Earthlings with other species, in partnerships and wider relationships with these fellows. Such thinking is not new to primal and Eastern spiritualities but would represent a significant reorientation for portions of Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths. As such, it provides an entry point for engaging theologically with other spiritualities. It also provides a contemporary response to cultural needs. Christianity would be in a position to re-establish its relevance and appropriateness as a cultural tool in response to the climate crisis, rather than being ‘late to the party’ or, worse still, seen as complicit in the cultural mechanisms that have, first, allowed for consumerism to reign over the protection of the planet and, second, allowed such mechanisms to go largely theologically unchallenged. That this type of approach resonates with people both inside and outside the church can be seen in the supportive response to Pope Francis’ statements on the climate crisis and the complicity of consumerism in the problem. Francis’ extensive and continuing engagement in the climate problem and its intrinsic links to poverty and consumerism, and the need for mercy to drive any valid response, culminated in the release of the Encyclical letter, Laudato Sí and is complemented with his ongoing engagement in ecological issues.189 Relationality would imply that humanity actively looks to see Christ present at the centre of the other and, in doing so, would respond differently to the rights, needs, and wants of other Earthlings. How can humans reorient their thinking to take notice of Christ as Mittler between us and the plants and animals with whom we cohabit? In practical application, this would necessitate a reordering of priorities in terms of our current life-ending practices, such as industrialised farming, forest clearing, and indiscriminate antibiotic use. Issues such as these have been addressed in terms of ‘services’ but, generally, in terms of service provision to humans, prioritising human needs over those of other species and ecosystems.190 What is required is a shift in thinking to recognise the theological imperative that if Christ is Mittler at all, then Christ must be Mittler of all Earth’s creatures. As demonstrated in chapters 4 and 5, Christ is the mediator (Mittler) at the middle (Mitte) of reality, a reality that we understand ecologically to be interdependent and interrelated. At the same time, Christ serves as the boundary for the inward-looking self and, as such, provides the opportunity for the outward

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vision.191 As Bonhoeffer reflected in Fiction from Tegel Prison, through the character of the Major, the limits that others place upon the person drive the development of one’s own ethical self, such that ‘freed from the tyranny of self, people are freed to live with and for each other’.192 In an extension of this same freedom, humans can be similarly impacted on by the limits of the ‘other others’ (plants and animals) and be freed from the ‘little ego’s world dominion’, in this case, over nature.193 A relational approach to Earth ethics would consider the rights and needs of Earth first and, consequently, ecosystems and their component parts, including various species and, hence, individuals. Gandhi’s exhortation to ‘tread lightly’ resonates as not only a metaphor for leaving little trace of human presence. It is a concrete way to consider what Jain spirituality understands to be the sensory perception of Earth herself, or what science has now begun to investigate.194 A similar notion is echoed in the Qur’an at Sura 25, verse 63a: ‘The true servants of the Merciful One are those who walk on the earth gently’.195 Other translations equate gentleness with humility, which is also consistent with Bonhoeffer’s sociality among creatures explored here.196 This verse also highlights that being faithful is equated with treading lightly. Furthermore, treading lightly recognises that Earth and her creatures suffer undeservedly on account of human sin. Notions of stewardship and dominion then become seen as inadequate responses to a problem of our own making and treading lightly would seem to be the least we can do to recognise our responsibility for the travail of nature.197 The view that ethics is comprised of the personal and public is consistent with the ethical demands placed on humanity by the climate crisis. Our response needs to occur at the level of both the individual and to permeate our socio-political, including religious, structures. Furthermore, as Pope Francis outlines in Laudato Sí, economics without the limitations imposed by politics necessarily weakens the ability of a system to address the needs of the most vulnerable nor the environment.198 Responsibility within and between these systems, as well as by the individuals who comprise them, is required. This relates to Bonhoeffer’s critique of power in ‘The Right to SelfAssertion’ and is a key part of Ethics. His critique of power, roles, the right use of power and the wrong use of coercion and domination speaks to an ecoethic. That is, Bonhoeffer is concerned with ethical action of the individual and with the socio-political (including ecclesiological) organisation of power structures. His use of mandates is Bonhoeffer’s way of framing this discussion. It is important to note that domination of other nations, and nature, are seen as an extension of the problematic notion of self-assertion over the other at the individual level. Again, the prose example of the Major in Fiction from

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Tegel Prison demonstrates Bonhoeffer’s view that the ethical act of the individual and the socio-political have the same basis: The decisive thing was not what we both lost, namely our claim to live alone in the world as demigods, but what we gained, namely a humane life in community with another human being. Now I believe the same thing holds true for nations, as well, and fundamentally for all historical movements.199

This same view is reflected in the slogan, ‘Think Global, Act Local’ (or sometimes, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’). Although the origins of the phrase are unclear, it has been used by Friends of the Earth and the United Nations, both urging local initiatives in response to global environmental problems. The subsequent neologism, ‘glocal’ reflects this duality (noting that this term has been co-opted by multinational companies attempting to increase local tenacity, such as McDonalds customising its menu to suit local tastes in different countries).200 Thinking globally and acting locally encapsulates many aspects of a useful ecoethic, such as that the problem is of a planetary scale; that all populations (human and other) are affected; that intervention is required at international, national, regional and community levels; and, that individual responsibility and sacrificial living is required. Following Bonhoeffer, it is to these latter that attention will be turned in the final chapter. CONCLUSION This chapter has examined Bonhoeffer’s ethics across a selection of his writings, principally parts of Ethics and ‘Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic’ from Barcelona. It restates Bonhoeffer’s commitment to Christological theology as the driver for ethical interpretation. Christ’s validation of the material insists on the grounding of ethical action in the concrete problems of the world around us. Ethical action is not measured against an ideal or based on universalities that are placed against the situation in order to define the appropriate action for that circumstance. These errantly place the human as the definer of good and evil, which is a post-fall condition, and makes the human as the one who attempts to forge a path to God. Rather, Bonhoeffer sees ethical action as the quiet, measured response to a relationship with God, forged in the silence of the mystery and manifest in service towards others. In taking the step of vicarious representative action, the Christian places him or herself solely before God, seeking God’s will in any given moment and responding as best they can. That response will

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necessarily be less than perfect, unable to heal or give wholeness, and open to the judgment of God. Because the Christian knows God to be a God of judgement and mercy at once, acting responsibly on behalf of the other might incite guilt but, simultaneously, seeking and receiving forgiveness. In this way, a Christian response is ever fresh and creative, seeking wisdom to respond to the relief of suffering. Where does this leave the Christian facing climate change? The framework that Bonhoeffer provides to establish ethics is no less applicable to the problems of the Anthropocene than it was to his context of the problem of National Socialism. Indeed, this chapter has argued that they are immensely applicable because of the nature of the created world as being one of interrelationships. The ‘I-You’ vulnerability, which Bonhoeffer treats as underpinning human sociality, can be extended to the ecological family which is life and non-life in Earth. The Suffering Christ suffers for all creation, and all of creation is restored with the Risen Lord. Human ecoethics, therefore, requires vicarious representative action on behalf of all the Earth community who will suffer as a result of climate chaos. The final chapter will examine how the church-community might proceed as ecoethical agents in this era.

NOTES 1. DBWE 6, 363–87; DBWE 10, 359–78. 2. Sabine Dramm, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. Thomas Rice (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 93. 3. DBWE 8, 222. 4. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6. 5. DBWE 12, 290. 6. DBWE 10, 360. 7. DBWE 1, 27. 8. DBWE 6, 99. 9. Ibid., 100. 10. Even as late as the letter to Bethge on 20 May 1944 that refers to the love of God as the cantus firmus of life; also in the ‘Christology Lectures’, DBWE 12, 342. In ‘Theological Letter for Christmas 1939’, he quotes, ‘never more be separated nor mixed together with each other, nor can one be transformed into the other’, DBWE 15, 532. The language of Chalcedon bears resemblance to Bonhoeffer’s use of Zwielicht as discussed in chapter 5. 11. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 6. 12. DBWE 2, 87–8. 13. DBWE 6, 55. 14. ‘Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand—from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to

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this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do something good?’’, ibid., 47. 15. Ibid., 48. 16. Nachfolge is the German title of the book titled Discipleship in English. 17. DBWE 6, 84. 18. Ibid., 76–80. 19. ‘Ethics as Formation’ is regarded as the second manuscript of the collected materials. 20. DBWE 6, 102. 21. Ibid., 98. 22. Dramm, DB Introduction, 99. 23. DBWE 6, 363–87. 24. Ibid., 365. 25. Kelly, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ DBWE 5; Bethge, DB Biography. See chapter 12. 26. DB Biography, 751. 27. DBWE 6, 76. 28. Clifford J. Green, ‘Foreword’, in Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship, ed. Adam C. Clark and Michael Mawson (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013), vii. 29. DBWE 6, 100. 30. DBWE 10, 365. 31. Ibid. 32. Theology of Sociality. 33. Denis Edwards, Made from Stardust (North Blackburn: Collins Dove, 1992). 34. Varodom Charoensawan, Derek Wilson, and Sarah A. Teichmann, ‘Genomic Repertoires of DNA-Binding Transcription Factors across the Tree of Life’, Nucleic Acids Research 38, no. 21 (2010): 7364–77; on recent developments in synthetic DNA coding, by way of interest, see Yorke Zhang et al., ‘A Semisynthetic Organism Engineered for the Stable Expansion of the Genetic Alphabet’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). 35. IPCC, AR5 SR. 36. DBWE 6, 80. Original italics. 37. Ibid., 79–80. 38. Ibid. 39. McCammack, ‘Hot Damned America’; Miriam Pepper and Rosemary Leonard, ‘Climate Change, Politics and Religion: Australian Churchgoers’ Beliefs About Climate Change’, Religions 7, no. 5 (2016): 1–18; by contrast, see The Evangelical Climate Initiative Signatories, ‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action’, (2012). http:​/​/chr​​istia​​nsand​​clima​​te​.or​​g​/sta​​​temen​​t/ 40. DBWE 6, 80. 41. Ibid., 98. 42. DBWE 4; DBWE 5; Maurice Schild, ‘Confessing Church, Finkenwalde and Bonhoeffer in Context: Otto Berendts’ Report of a Contemporary (Continued): A Translation from the Original German’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian

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Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 4, no. 1 (2016): 71–82; Busing, ‘Reminiscences of Finkenwalde’. 43. DBWE 6, 50; Schild, ‘Confessing Church, Finkenwalde and Bonhoeffer’. 44. DBWE 10, 365. 45. Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Martin Rumscheidt (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 200. 46. Ibid., 200. 47. Bonhoeffer’s alignment with Aquinas’ notion of synderesis is notable. The commonality of thought between Bonhoeffer and Aquinas is apparent and to date has not been well explored in the literature. After Luther and Augustine, Aquinas appears to be the theologian most often referred by to Bonhoeffer, either directly or implicitly. 48. Daniel J. Fleming and Terence Lovat, ‘‘Self-Other’ or ‘Other-Self-Other’? A Conversation between Bonhoeffer and Levinas on Vulnerability’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 1, no. 1 (2013): 133–49. 49. DBWE 6, 254. 50. DBWE 6, 367. 51. Gen. 16:13 Hagar is seen in the desert by El-roi, God who sees. 52. DBWE 8, 364. 53. DBWE 4, 45. 54. Lovat, ‘Interfaith Theologian and Practical Mystic’. 55. DBWE 10, 365. 56. Ibid. 57. DBWE 6, 276. 58. Ibid., 328, 329. 59. DBWE 7, 168. 60. Karola Radler, ‘Theology as Politics Versus “Political Theology”’, in Dem Rad in Die Speichen Fallen: Das Politische in Der Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers / A Spoke in the Wheel: The Political in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. K. Busch Nielson, R. Wüstenberg, and J. Zimmermann (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013), 270–86. 61. Karola Radler, ‘Equality and Human Dignity—Substantive Foci of Enduring Significance in Bonhoeffer’s and Leibholz’ Interdisciplinary Discourse’, in Christian Humanism and Moral Formation in ‘a World Come of Age’: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Marilynne Robinson, ed. J. Zimmermann and Boldt. Natalie (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 178–98. 62. DBWE 1, 146. 63. Ibid. 64. Fleming and Lovat, ‘Bonhoeffer and Levinas’, 133. 65. DBWE 1, 147. 66. ‘Christ, Reality and Good’, DBWE 6, 66. 67. Ibid., 67–8. 68. Ibid., 370. 69. ‘Outline for a Book’, DBWE 8, 503. 70. DBWE 6, 67.

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71. DBWE 8, 181. 72. These insights build on his creative explorations on the Prophets throughout his career, including as early as 1927 on Jeremiah, and extensively at Finkenwalde. DBWE 9, 515. 73. DBWE 8, 213. 74. Thanks to Rev. Maurice Schild for early translation assistance on this point. 75. DBWE 8, 213. 76. Rayson, ‘Earthly Christianity’, 21–34. 77. Joseph Sittler’s work on ecotheology had more focus on the Cosmic Christ and the grace found in nature. Note audiotape from 17 July 1961, ‘The Care of the Earth’, First in the ‘Message to Our Malaise series, Princeton Theological Seminary; Joseph Sittler, The Care of the Earth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); Bouma-Prediger, Greening Theology. 78. DBWE 6, 225. 79. Ibid., 224–5. 80. DBWE 6, 67. My italics. 81. Ibid., 66. 82. Ibid., 67. 83. Ibid., 67. 84. Ibid., 66–7. 85. DBWE 6, 68. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid., 54. 88. John de Gruchy, ‘Kairos Moments and Prophetic Witness: Towards a Prophetic Ecclesiology’, HTS Theological Studies 72 (2016); Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 1–7. 89. Bonhoeffer contra Max Scheler, see throughout DBWE 1 esp. 90; DBWE 6, 52. 90. DBWE 1, 79n58. See also, Christine Schliesser, Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty: Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Accepting Guilt (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008). 91. Bethge, DB Biography, 775. 92. Erich von Dietze, ‘“Hope Does Not Disappoint”: Honouring the 70th Anniversary of the Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 3, no. 1 (2015): 70–1. 93. Ibid. 94. DBWE 6, 49. 95. Ibid., 48. 96. Ibid. 97. DBWE 10, 367. 98. von Bismarck, Kabitz, and Bethge, Love Letters from Cell 92. 99. DBWE 11, 439. 100. DBWE 10, 363. 101. Ibid., 365. 102. Ibid., 363.

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103. Ibid., 364. 104. Ibid., 365. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid. My italics. 107. DBWE 6, 224–5. 108. DBWE 10, 369. 109. DBWE 4, 62. 110. DBWE 10, 369. 111. Ibid., 366. 112. Ibid. Bonhoeffer quotes this along with other Scriptural references in making his argument for freedom over law. 113. Ibid., 366. 114. Ibid., 369. 115. Ibid., 366. 116. Ibid., 367. 117. Kelly, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ DBWE 5, 8. 118. Ibid. 119. Frick, ‘Imitatio and DB’, 35. 120. DBWE 4, 287–8. 121. Ballor, ‘Christ in Creation’; David R. Law, ‘Redeeming the Penultimate: Discipleship and Church in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 1 (2011): 14–26. 122. Patrick Nullens, ‘Towards a Spirituality of Public Leadership: Engaging Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, International Journal of Public Theology 7, no. 1 (2013): 91–113; Jennifer M. McBride, ‘Christ Existing as Concrete Community Today’, Theology Today 71, no. 1 (2014): 92–105. 123. DBWE 13, 401–4; Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, ‘Bonhoeffer’s Spirituality and God’s Vulnerability,’ in The Cost of Moral Leadership (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2003), 173–86. 124. Frick, ‘Imitatio and DB’. 125. Rayson and Lovat, ‘Lord of the (Warming) World’. 126. DBWE 8, 364–5. 127. ‘Jeder Ruf Christi führt in den Tod’. DBWE 4, 87n11. 128. Ibid., 87–8. 129. Ibid., 88. 130. Dahill, Underside of Selfhood. 131. Erich von Dietze, 6 April 2015, Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, Australia. 132. DBWE 16, 301. 133. Ibid., 300. 134. DBWE 8, 485; Mark S. Brocker, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 16 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 3. 135. DBWE 8, 486. I suggest in the final chapter an alternative to Homo religiosus. See also, Barry Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity (Eugene: Cascade, 2015).

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136. DBWE 6, 87. 137. For example, Kelly and Nelson, ‘Bonhoeffer’s Spirituality and God’s Vulnerability’, in The Cost of Moral Leadership; Fleming and Lovat, ‘Bonhoeffer and Levinas’. 138. Green has pointed out that this is a theme voiced by the Major in Bonhoeffer’s prison fiction. See ‘Novel’, DBWE 7, 167–70. For example, ‘I look only at people and their task of living with other people, and I view succeeding at this very task as the fulfillment of human life and history. What your teacher considers a misfortune is in my view the only good fortune and happiness human beings have. They don’t need to live with ideas, principles, doctrines, and morals, but they can live with one another, providing one another with limits. Precisely in so doing, they point one another toward their real task. This life alone is fruitful and human’, 168. 139. DBWE 6, 74. 140. DBWE 1, 78–9. 141. DBWE 1, 78. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid., 78. 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid. 146. Ibid., 78–9. 147. Ibid., 79. 148. Ibid. 149. Jan de Ruiter, Gavin Weston, and Stephen M. Lyon, ‘Dunbar’s Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans Reexamined’, American Anthropologist 113, no. 4 (2011): 557–68. 150. NCLS 2001 survey results show the typical congregation to be 60–70 people. http:​/​/www​​.ncls​​.org.​​au​/de​​fault​​.aspx​​?site​​​mapid​​=93 151. Ruth Powell, ‘Trends in Protestant Church Vitality over Twenty Years (1991–2011): NCLS Research Occasional Paper 23’, (Strathfield: National Church Life Survey Research, 2013). 152. DBWE 6, 76. 153. Zimmerman and Smith, I Knew DB. See especially Zimmerman’s and Koch’s acccounts of Finkenwalde therein; Busing, ‘Reminiscences of Finkenwalde’. 154. DBWE 11, 267n1. 155. DBWE 6, 388–408. A companion document, ‘A Theological Position Paper on State and Church’, appears in DBWE 16, 502–28. Another planned manuscript was ‘The Mandates being-with-one-another, for-one-another, and against-one-another’. Tödt et al., ‘Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition’, 448. 156. DBWE 11, 333n1. 157. DBWE 6, 388. 158. Ibid. 159. DBWE 16, 92. 160. DBWE 6, 388. 161. Ibid. 162. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 6, 19.

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163. DBWE 3, 135n9, 140 and n3. 164. Ibid., 45. 165. Ibid., 46n8. 166. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 12; DBWE 11, 268. 167. DBWE 1, 91–2. 168. de Gruchy, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 3, 11, 12. 169. Ibid., 12. 170. DBWE 12, 362n6. 171. ‘Wort und Bekenntnis Altonaer Pastors’, 11 January 1933. Bonhoeffer included this is his lecture series, ‘Review and Discussion of New Publications in Systematic Theology’ in Berlin, Winter Semester 1932–1933, apparently immediately after its release. Ibid., 192n3, 194. 172. Harvey, ‘Augustine and Aquinas’. 173. DBWE 2, 32n22; Rasmussen points this out regarding ‘The Church and the Jewish Question’, DBWE 12, 362n6; DBWE 3, 35–40, 69–72, 102–13. See, for example, ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ lecture of 1932, DBWE 11, 246–56. 174. DBWE 2, 30. 175. DBWE 11, 99. 176. DBWE 2, 32. 177. ‘Christology and Politics as Discourses of Transformation’, keynote address at the XII International Bonhoeffer Congress, 6–10 July 2017, Basel. 178. DBWE 6, 68–9. 179. Ibid., 19; DBWE 6, 74. 180. Ibid., 374. 181. Ibid., 70. 182. Bonhoeffer talks about ‘stupidity’ in this context. ‘An Account of the Turn of the Year 1942–1943: After Ten Years’, DBWE 8, 37–52. 183. DBWE 6, 70. 184. Notwithstanding the optimism of Tim Flannery, Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis (Melbourne: Text, 2016). See also Claire Dawson and Mick Pope, A Climate of Hope: Church and Mission in a Warming World (Melbourne: Urban Neighbours of Hope, 2014). 185. DBWE 6, 83; 92–3. 186. Ibid., 82–3. 187. See Fleming and Lovat, ‘Bonhoeffer and Levinas’. 188. Lazarus et al., ‘Biodiversity Loss’; Folke et al., ‘Reconnecting to the Biosphere’. 189. Pope Francis, Laudato Sí. 190. Smil, ‘Harvesting the Biosphere’; Rockström et al., ‘Safe Operating Space’; Jon Sawyer, ed. Ecological Civilization: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ecological Civilization and Environmental Reporting (Yale Center Beijing: Pulitzer Center, 16 June 2015); Patrick ten Brink et al., The Health and Social Benefits of Nature and Biodiversity Protection: A Report for the European Commission (London/Brussels: Institute for European Environmental Policy, 2016). 191. Feil, Theology of DB, 76.

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192. Green, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in DBWE 7, 10. 193. DBWE 7, 160. 194. Rayson and Lovat, ‘Lord of the (Warming) World’; Abram, Spell of the Sensuous; Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate [Das Geheime Leben Der Bäume] (Carlton, Vic.: Black Inc., 2016); Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows. 195. Islamic Foundation UK, ‘Towards Understanding the Quran’, Islamic Studies. http:​/​/isl​​amics​​tudie​​s​.inf​​o​/taf​​heem.​​php​?s​​ura​=2​​5​&ve​r​​se​=63​​&to​=6​9 196. See alternative translations in Tahereh Saffarzadeh, The Qur’an with Persian and English Translations (Tehran: Parsketab 2001); Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Qur’an with Translation in English (Damascus: Tajweed, 2000); Saffarzadeh, The Qur’an with Persian and English Translations. 197. Burkholder, ‘Christological Foundations’; Scott, ‘Beyond Stewardship?’ 198. Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 16. 199. DBWE 7, 169. 200. McDonald’s UK, June 2012. http:​/​/www​​.mcdo​​nalds​​.co​.u​​k​/ukh​​ome​/w​​hatma​​ kesmc​​donal​​ds​/qu​​estio​​ns​/fo​​od​/me​​nu​/wh​​y​-is-​​the​-m​​cdona​​lds​-m​​enu​-d​​iffer​​ent​​-i​​n​-dif​​ feren​​t​-cou​​ntrie​​s​.htm​l

Chapter 8

Who Actually Is Christ in the Anthropocene?

So far I have mined selected Bonhoeffer texts to explore the building blocks of his theology, namely, Christology, theological anthropology, creation theology, and eschatology. Chapter 7 considered Bonhoeffer’s application of this profoundly Christological theology to ethics. This concluding chapter now brings Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics into conversation with the signal issue of our time, the problem of climate change, seeking an ecoethic that can guide the church-community. Through this conversation, one can continue to ask, as Bonhoeffer did, who Christ actually is for us today and what it means that Christ is Lord of the world.1 This chapter demonstrates the richness and depth of Bonhoeffer’s theology as it bears on twenty-first century theology in the Anthropocene and, in particular, in relation to ecotheological and ecoethical thinking. THE NEW PARADIGM Green continues to press for a description of Bonhoeffer’s theology in toto, that is, reading his theology as a whole to seek a rubric that summarises its content and distinctiveness.2 To that end, Green’s proposed motif, Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo, emphasises his paradigm of the ‘presence of Christ in this actual socio-historical world and Christ for the world’.3 The corollary of a foundational theology of this type, as this book has also claimed, is the ‘polemical thrust’ of opposing dualisms of the spiritual versus the material, worldliness versus piety, a future heaven versus a present Earth.4 These two distinctive notions, namely, of Christ in the world and for it, frame the discussion of what it means for us that Christ is Lord of the world in this world come of age, the Anthropocene. 233

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Green claims that such a paradigm should be recognised as a significant change in trajectory for theology, in the likes of Paul and Luther.5 For the church-community, the implications of a Christ-centred epistemology are to be found in the ethics that necessarily emanate from it and to be found in the concrete action that the church takes on behalf of the world. The framework of such an ethic was developed in chapter 7, namely, attending responsibly to present needs and operating on behalf of the other, through mechanisms of Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit, because Christ is understood to be present in the other. The extension of ‘other’ to include the entire Earth community, as a reflection of ecological interrelatedness, was posited. Since Christ is demonstrably ‘powerless’ and ‘vulnerable’, the church-community best reflects her devotion to Christ by acting on behalf of the most vulnerable and powerless, ‘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’.6 Such actions will be costly to the church-community as is consistent with a church that must operate for the benefit of others.7 Ecoethics is defined by its costliness, its preferencing of the vulnerable, and its standing alongside the community of species which constitute the biosphere. The costliness of ecoethics for the church-community, in tangible and practical terms, has not yet been well explored in the literature. The costly grace of which Bonhoeffer speaks involves several ideas.8 First, Bonhoeffer bases it on the cost at which all grace has been bought: that is, the sacrifice of Christ at the cross. Grace in itself is intrinsically costly at the outset. The cost to Christ is great. Second, grace requires a response, a reaction. Nachfolge implies not only a following but also a ‘following after’, or imitation of Christ. Christ who is the Servant, the Suffering God, the crucified, forges a path to be followed. Jesus’ words commanding his followers to take up their cross and follow him demonstrate both ideas of devotion or commitment (following), and following after. Finally, in the notion of ‘costly grace’, there is a turn towards the immanence of Christ embedded in the very fabric of Earthly life. Bonhoeffer starkly describes this in the prison poem, ‘Christians and Heathens’. The poem was referred to earlier in part; it is quoted here in full, from the critical edition: People go to God when they’re in need, plead for help, pray for blessing and bread, for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death. So do they all, all of them, Christians and heathens. People go to God when God’s in need, find God poor, reviled, without shelter or bread,

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see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand by God in God’s own pain. God goes to all people in their need, fills body and soul with God’s own bread, goes for Christians and heathens to Calvary’s death and forgives them both.9

Bonhoeffer’s poem demonstrates that not only does God come to people—all people—in both a universal and a particular way, but that, in reciprocity, ‘Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.’ By this criterion, one could almost suggest that standing by God in God’s own pain describes a Christian, opening the way for Bonhoeffer’s notion of unconscious Christianity.10 From several notes from prison written around July–August 1944, there is evidence that Bonhoeffer was toying with non-religious interpretations of Christian concepts and how that might translate into a new world. This, of course, builds on the non-religious interpretation he utilised throughout his theology and his consistent seeking for the meaning of Christ as Lord of the world. His note, ‘what if Christianity was not a religion at all’, is directly related to what he described as the expulsion of God from the centre of cultural and personal reality precisely because religion was obscuring rather than illuminating God.11 The God excluded from the world was, however, not the God revealed through Christ at all. Instead, it was an inferior interpretation of God as either deus ex machina or a god only useful for filling spaces unfilled by the intellect.12 Pushing God to the margins was also the ‘discrediting of religion’, and should therefore be the impetus for a religionless Christianity that is outward-looking and operates on behalf of the vulnerable, ‘belonging wholly to the world’.13 Bonhoeffer was anticipating the move towards a non-religious encounter with the God who suffers with creation. This tendency finds it fulfilment in the human turn towards Earth, which is perhaps part of the trend towards the self-identification of some people in the West as ‘spiritual but not religious’, as people who recognise Earth’s sacredness but might not find it reflected in a typical church-community.14 It underpins Bonhoeffer’s statement that ‘only wanderers of this kind, who love the Earth and God as one, can believe in God’s kingdom’.15 Participating in the manifestation of God’s kingdom on Earth is only possible for those who see Christ in Earth, and for Earth: in Mundo, pro Mundo. Standing with Earth becomes a manifestation of becoming, not Homo religiosus, but one more fully human. I suggest that the term Homo cosmicos reflects such a notion of becoming more ‘fully human’.16 It better recognises the interrelatedness of humanity with all of creation, both ecologically and theologically. The use of Homo

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cosmicos in this way reflects both meanings in Latin.17 That is, as an adjective, it means ‘belonging to the world’ whilst, as a noun, it means ‘a citizen of the world’. Bonhoeffer’s attention to belonging to Earth, and to responsible action are reflected in both types of meaning in the term Homo cosmicos. In both senses, it would appear to be a useful, positive way to describe the fully human being as we approach the ecoethical challenges ahead. Homo cosmicos reflects the idea of vulnerability, for to belong to the world and be an Earth citizen requires layers of vulnerability. First, we must be open to God’s revelation of God’s self as one who is vulnerable as both Spirit hovering over chaos and as Christ crucified. Second, only in breaking the closed circle of self are we able to be vulnerable to each other and engage lovingly at all. It is this, above all other characteristics, which defines our role in dominion, namely, that we are able to love. Bonhoeffer writes: God created human beings and with them, in them, as the most gentle, profound, pure, purifying, mature element, the urge to be with other human beings, love for one’s neighbor. Out of eternity God created human beings to complement one another. Friend and friend, spouse and spouse, God created them such.18

The task of the sentient, loving species is to apply intelligence and love to the entire Earth community. Our similar urges to be in nature, in our gardens, forests, oceans, and mountains prefigure the vulnerability and love necessary for the new paradigm. The Australian novelist, Tim Winton, has spoken of the landscapes of his works of fiction in a way that articulates this type of relational engagement with them: In all of my novels and stories, landscape is a character and in fact it’s the bedrock of the story. The place comes first and the people come second and in a sense that only reflects reality.19

Winton’s appreciation for both the primacy and the person of landscape reflects the kind of ecological sociality developed herein. Third, and by extension, I propose that as citizens of Earth our role and way of being is to become vulnerable to our fellow Earthlings, including the other life species, landforms, elements, and Earth herself. The practical ramifications of this are likely to be broad, including the influence of emerging theologies of interfaith engagement on our own practices. Vulnerability will be the forerunner for establishing the relationships necessary for practical action in the climate activism space. Vulnerability to other species will invert utilitarian reasoning that currently underpins industrialised ‘farming’ of animals for food production and will challenge our ways of growing and collecting food, for example. An emerging theology of vulnerability to landscape

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and climate systems sees humans not merely as victims but as active, ethical agents with a keener awareness of how costly grace might render our ‘civilisation’ unsuited and unfit for the Anthropocene. As Christ is pro Mundo, then so must we be. The implications for the church only being the church when it is for others are that we must therefore serve the entire Earth community. Bonhoeffer himself was alert to the shortfalls of Homo religiosus to the end: Don’t be alarmed! I will definitely not come out of here as a ‘homo religiosus’! Quite the opposite: my suspicion and fear of ‘religiosity’ have become greater here than ever. That the Israelites never say the name of God aloud is something I often ponder, and I understand it increasingly better.20

Homo cosmicos reflects the turn from religiosity towards the Earth community and enables Earthly Christianity. Bonhoeffer reconciles a growing appreciation of the ritual experience and mystical sensitivity with a move away from the type of religiosity that constrains Christ’s lordship. The reverence for the name of God, as cited above, reflects Bonhoeffer’s progressive understanding that Christ being Lord of the world necessarily positions the individual and, hence, the church-community, in coalition with Christ in an active position against injustice and suffering in others. In this, religion is superseded by ethical action just as the arcane discipline retains the mystery of the faith. In this thinking, standing with Earth and her creatures implicitly (if not explicitly) acknowledges Christ’s suffering in creation and aligns ethical action with ‘Christian’ action. There is an opportunity for people and groups of various spiritualities to share their common ‘standing by Earth’ in a solidarity of ethical action that sidelines dogmatic disagreement. In fact, each of the major faiths and many other minor faiths have statements valuing Earth and her creatures, and committing to ‘stand by’ Earth.21 The proposed notion of Homo cosmicos also has resonance across a range of faiths as concern for Earth and her creatures is increasingly being both preached and practised. Experience in environmental action taking place in an ecumenical and/or interfaith setting can strengthen communication and cooperation between disparate groups. Experiential learning of this type coupled with reflective practice has the benefit of replacing the goal of interfaith dialogue with interfaith action, meeting urgent needs in practical terms and allowing relationships to build, upon which effective dialogue can then take place (rather than the reverse).22 Such a process finds resonance in Bonhoeffer’s goal for the concrete form of the church manifesting herself in actions of peace, ecumenism, and international relations, such as he set out in Life Together.23 For the church-community, it returns us to Bonhoeffer’s ‘non-religious language’, the language of action rather than words. Ecumenical and interfaith

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cooperative action to stand by Earth is consistent with the following statement from May 1944: We can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.24

Prayer and action, mystery and ethic, the internal and outward forms—these do not represent dualisms in the Christian experience. As demonstrated throughout this work, Bonhoeffer treats the pairs as dual sides of the same coin, inseparable, complementary and, in each case, necessary to the other. The mystery that is Christian faith is not to be thrust upon the world in words but instead demonstrated through service that stands with the vulnerable. As a result, words become obsolete in contrast with the testimony of action. Inner morality, when it remains merely personal piety, is also superseded.25 THE NEW AGE The new age can mean several things simultaneously: the world come of age, the commencement of God’s kingdom on Earth, the Anthropocene, globalisation, or the sixth mass extinction. Bonhoeffer’s hope was for a new form and interpretation of Christianity that reflected the concrete reality of his time and, hence, of our own time. Rasmussen describes Bonhoeffer’s theology as veritably pre-empting the age of the Anthropocene in both its potential catastrophe and in the required ethical response.26 Bonhoeffer variously uses ‘religionless Christianity’, ‘worldly Christianity’ and the ‘non-religious interpretation’ to describe a powerful new way for the world to experience God’s kingdom breaking in to what we now know to be the Anthropocene: 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 liberating and redeeming like Jesus’s language, so that people will be alarmed, and yet overcome by its power—the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near.27

The Anthropocene presents as a unique period for humans in our relationship with Earth and, by implication, it must be a new age for speaking the liberating language of peace. In the twenty-first century, the power of language is no less important; on the contrary, the written word of social media accentuates

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its importance. The critical importance of our choice of words further justifies the proposed term, ‘Earthly Christianity’, as an extension of Bonhoeffer’s use of ‘worldly Christianity’. The language of Earthly Christianity also separates Bonhoeffer’s intent in employing the notion of worldly Christianity from any negative impressions that the latter term might otherwise convey. Earthly Christianity helps to refocus the church’s mission towards Earth and her entire community of species, specifically for their sake, and in spite of the sacrifice this might entail for humans. The ‘language’ of witnessing to Christ is a much more profound turn towards the suffering of Earth and her creatures through action and engagement that supersedes the semantic intent of ‘Earthly Christianity’. Acting responsibly on behalf of the world—a concrete, this-worldly ethic—makes real Christ’s own partiality for the world, Christus pro Mundo. The church-community as the present body of Christ enacts Christ’s suffering and representative action on behalf of the Earth community. In such actions, the church-community is bearing witness in a concrete form but is also, more fundamentally, in continuity with Christ’s kenotic service. Christ’s body, the church-community, participates in the ongoing project of creating the just, new kingdom. As we do this on behalf of the entire Earth community, we become engaged in a kind of kenotic ecology. The notion of sacrifice, death, and rebirth is already present in animal, plant, and microorganism interrelations; this is what characterises the natural world around us. Food chains and life cycles represent this despite the extent to which humans see themselves excluded from it. The difference between the natural world of sacrifice and the human world is that in the natural world, there is no waste. Sacrifice and death occur for the purpose of giving and sustaining new life and, in these processes, nothing is wasted. ‘The way natural ecosystems work is exemplary’, according to Pope Francis.28 The human project is unique in that it produces pollution, that is, the inability to balance the inputs and outputs of living, and thus contaminate the entire planetary system and beyond. Furthermore, as identified in ‘The Right to Bodily Life’, Bonhoeffer sees the option of self-sacrifice to be the defining feature of humanity.29 Re-examining self-sacrifice (in its continuum of manifestations) in the context of sacrifice within the natural world, reintegrates humanity to its rightful, ecological place. Christ is Lord of the world in part because Christ is already in the world, through all of creation. In the created world, Christ knows suffering, death, and extinction. In the ocean, Christ endures the travails of overheating and acidification. Christ is in an atmosphere filled with pollution that holds too much heat, and in the fields of monoculture, where insects die, and soil bacteria cannot reproduce. Christ knows this suffering and injustice. For the church-community to witness to Christ, it must participate in this same

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kenosis alongside the victims of humanity’s self-assertion over against the Earth community. The focussed revelation of sacrifice and vicarious action that is in Christ is present in an opaque way in the world around us. Participating in Christ brings humanity into a kenotic ecology already present and already redeemed. Pursuing a deeper understanding of Earthly Christianity refines our understanding of Christ’s immanence and our relationship with Christ in the world. I suggest it forms the basis of a new, theological approach to interfaith engagement that ultimately moves beyond cooperation to shared understandings. Whilst this is beyond the present enquiry, Bonhoeffer has much more to offer this area of study. Christ is demonstrated to be in and through all things. From an ecological perspective, it is understood that there is continuity of life across Earth, sea, and sky, and between, for example, the external and internal realms of beings themselves. What we breathe affects how we think, the soil we touch changes our mood, and being near flowing water changes both. Does our understanding of Christ’s immanence extend to Earth and all her components? If Christ is indeed the centre of reality, and the centre of the self, then is Christ at the centre of every Earthling’s being? If this is the case, then Bonhoeffer’s argument in Sanctorum Communio of the self-being freed of its boundary and responding to the Christ at the centre of the other might extend to all our fellow Earthlings. It is difficult to travel down this path of logic without being aware of the commonalities of this thinking with that of other faiths. Bonhoeffer’s Christology as it has been applied to ecotheology offers a move beyond the commonality across faiths towards a unifying ecotheology. To summarise this section: Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo articulates Bonhoeffer’s twin tenets of Christ being in the world and actively suffering with it, and Christ seeking justice and alleviation of suffering on its behalf. That actively occurs through the church-community’s participation in Christ, that is, the bodily engagement with contemporary problems. A turning to the world, to stand by Earth and her creatures, reflects a non-religious interpretation of ethics and spirituality (reflected in Homo cosmicos). ‘Earthly Christianity’, as a term, encapsulates all of these notions. Ethical engagement on behalf of the vulnerable Earth community is necessarily costly because grace is costly. THE NEW COMMUNITY I’d like to conclude by helping us imagine a new Earth community enraptured with the mystery of Christ, one filled with and bound together in love, hope, and joy.

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Bonhoeffer’s own commitment to the disciplined life is well recorded and has been briefly described above. In the field of edusemiotics, habit formation requires the bringing together of the internal and external into a coherent system.30 When this theoretical perspective is brought to bear on neuroscience and ecology, the notion of the human person acting within the biosphere becomes one of embodied cognition. That is to say that the individual both learns from and through the ecology of which they are a part. Repeatedly acting on behalf of the vulnerable ecology creates new ethical habits, just as repetition of the arcane disciplines creates spiritual habits of worship, prayer, and confession. This can be thought of as applying to the metaframe of the Kollektivperson. As the church-community participates in Christ’s sufferings in the ecology, it benefits from the active learning or embodied cognition that materiality confers. Thinking of Bonhoeffer as practical mystic notes the integration of the interiority of the arcane discipline with the material. Consistent with Bonhoeffer’s project of participation in Christ is the flourishing of life that is both internally and externally consistent or integrated. Our engagement with our fellow creatures, from a position of humility, allows for reciprocity in learning, service, and grace—even to some form of self-sacrifice. Furthermore, as Abram has described, that reciprocity extends to the acquisition and use of language itself, something Abram sees as mirroring other action: It is surely not a matter of ‘going back’, but rather coming full circle, uniting our capacity for cool reason with these more sensorial and mimetic ways of knowing, letting the vision of a common world root itself in direct, participatory engagement with the local and the particular.31

We have seen that Bonhoeffer makes the claim that costly, ethical action by the church-community cannot be undertaken in separation from the arcane discipline. The complex of confession, Bible study, meditation, and worship necessarily pre-empt and underpin the move towards concrete action for the world that is participating in Christ: The first confession of the Christian church–community before the world is the deed!32 The deed interprets itself.33

What does confession and repentance in the Anthropocene involve? Jennifer McBride has made the argument that for Bonhoeffer, confession and repentance manifest in the actions of the church-community.34 It is as the church-community bodily positions itself in the place of the vulnerable that its members participate in the suffering of Christ. Such an understanding of what McBride describes as ‘confession unto repentance’ is what Bonhoeffer portrays in ‘Christians and Heathens’, saying:

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People go to God when God’s in need . . . Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.35

By whom shall the church-community stand? Fifty per cent of all wild animals have disappeared from Earth in the past fifty years.36 One-third of all species are expected to be lost in this same extinction event.37 The ocean, having taken on the burden of the planet’s excess heat and acidity itself, can no longer keep accommodating the results of greenhouse gases warming the world and this is leading to ocean plants and animals, including corals and plankton, not being able to survive.38 The successive mass bleachings of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and the tundra melting that is releasing sequestered greenhouse gases, are evidence of planetary systems near to breaking point and commencing runaway chain reactions.39 The Black Summer that consumed Australia in 2019–2020, the pandemic that followed, and then drenching floods, are not unrelated to the fundamental problem of climate change. If we consider the vulnerability of others, and Bonhoeffer considers that we must, then that logically includes plants and animals, microbes and ecosystems, the air, the sea, and Earth herself. Seeing the world from the underside in the Anthropocene means looking variously at satellite data, through a microscope, and through a submarine porthole. Our look must reflect God’s Blick, which surely, at creation, saw the 95 per cent of life that is hidden from the naked human eye.40 Repentance requires that the church-community first acknowledge and repent of its original sin of dominating our fellow species. It suggests that the church-community confess complicity in systems that create and sustain injustice for people and others. It then necessitates actively working towards justice for all Earthlings, human and other-than-human, as a form of participating in Christ and enacting restoration. Only by confessing such complicity, as well as suffering with and on behalf of the victims of it, can the church-community legitimately proclaim Christ and Christ’s victory over injustice and suffering. Witnessing to Christ’s presence in the world takes on the mantle of ecojustice in its many forms. Practically speaking, it involves protecting and caring for vulnerable species, refugees, and victims of extreme weather events and social disruption. Crisis care (of humans) has been an area of social engagement that has long defined the church-community. We have less experience with strategies of climate adaptation and mitigation, and of changing behaviours around consumption and waste, transportation, and energy use. It is in these very actions that the present Christ can be made visible to the entire Earth community. Bonhoeffer states: Sacrifice, intercession, and the forgiveness of sins are the miraculous powers of the Christian church-community; all three can be summed up in the one word ‘love’, the love God showed us, or ‘becoming Christ for the other person’.41

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How shall the church-community demonstrate love for the biosphere? How do we become Christ for the Earth community? Bonhoeffer’s Christological theology and his accompanying ethic finds its home in his ecclesiology. Whilst it has not featured in this book, ecclesiology is found as a thread through all of Bonhoeffer’s theology and necessarily drives the ethical response to the problem of climate change. In fact, Lenehan has argued that ecclesiology is the organising principle of Bonhoeffer’s theology, just as Green has argued the case for sociality.42 Both rest on the fundamental Christology that has been argued here. In this context, the proposed ecoethical implications are effected through the church-community in the first instance. The concrete actions that scaffold ecoethics necessarily take place in the church-community which Bonhoeffer describes as a ‘community of spirit’, manifest in concrete love for the other.43 A key difference for Bonhoeffer between the community of spirit and any other organised group is the mystery of love. ‘Love,’ he says, ‘by its intentional nature seeks to form community, i.e., to awaken love in return. . . . Even though love does not aim at love in return, it implicitly aspires to it.’44 Attempting to manifest an ecoethic takes the church-community beyond this implicit aspiration to be loved in return. The kenotic ecology described earlier takes on this notion of loving Earth and her creatures, not only out of sacrifice and servanthood but also expecting nothing in return. This is where a Bonhoefferian ecoethic and secular human ecology find their distinctiveness from each other. Using the language of natural services that humans receive from the so-called ‘environment’ is anthropocentric and has the humans as players in a theatre of the natural world, rather than being intrinsically part of it. The Bonhoefferian approach developed here has deconstructed such thinking and reconstructed it along the following lines. Christ is immanent in the world, validates it and loves it. Christ’s being-forthe-world is expressed in Christ’s sacrificial act and in the establishment of a new kingdom based on justice and alleviating the suffering of the vulnerable. The new kingdom is here among us and the church-community manifests it by ethical engagement with the world. We act on behalf of those suffering, seeing Christ in the other. Such love for the other desires but does not expect reciprocity; rather, we are the church precisely when we exist for others. Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo expresses these notions of ontology and mission. As Christ’s body on Earth, the church-community participates in Christ’s project for the Earth as we turn towards Earth and stand alongside her and her creatures in sacrificial acts of love. Seeing Christ in our fellow species allows us to legitimately extend Bonhoeffer’s exhortations for ethical action on behalf of the ‘other’. We find ourselves naming our fellow Earthlings anew, seeking dominion not in self-assertion and dominance, but in mindfully recognising our neighbours, with their unique characteristics, as

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fellows in the ecology of which we are a part. We find ourselves tilling and caring for the Garden in a new spiritual community which does not exclude other-than-human counterparts but nurtures them and creates a safe place for shared habitation and flourishing. Participation in Christ finds us fully participating in our ecology and finding ourselves more fully human, Homo cosmicos. In Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘the goal of Jesus’ love commandment is the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth’45 and it has been demonstrated that the kingdom has been introduced and invites human participation in its manifestation. When humans pray for God’s kingdom to come, they initiate an imaginative response, one of creativity, in aligning the human will with God’s. This occurs in the ‘community of spirit’ which Bonhoeffer describes as a community of understanding and expression.46 He says that into such a community, both must enter, the one who loves and the one who is loved, ‘regardless of the attitude of the latter’.47 ‘Fossil-fuelled climate change is killing the things we love’ is the cry of activist groups in relation to the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, and applies more generally to the mangroves ‘who died of thirst’ on Queensland’s coast in the drought of 2016, and the 122 species of Earthlings officially classified extinct in the course of the writing of this book.48 Many more are pushed to the brink since the Black Summer fires of 2019–2020. There is a distinct opportunity here for a religionless Christianity allowing humans to enter into a community of spirit with the biosphere, ‘regardless of its attitude’ but for the sake of the very world which sustains all life. We participate in kenotic ecology understanding that it does not come without cost. Bonhoeffer reminds us that two lights cannot be unmixed: Here, too, is love—although always immersed in the possibility of hate; here, too, is joy—but never without the bitter awareness of its transitory nature;— [and] salvation—but always at the edge of despair.49

At the edge of despair is hope for the salvation and restoration of the world. Bonhoeffer refers to Paul’s assessment of the relationship between the tensions of human sinfulness and joy, concluding that however costly one’s response to grace might be, without joy, ethical action becomes impotent. Where joy abounds, it ‘becomes the source of all virtues’.50 Is it inconceivable that the costly task before us in addressing climate change already has within it markers for joy that make its restoration a possibility? Is the universal biophilia, our natural affection for nature, our physiological response to being in the woods, together constituting the mark of paradise upon us, preparing us for the challenge of the Anthropocene? Is this the source of joy that will sustain participation in Christ in this world come of age? Bonhoeffer writes:

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In Paul, the notion of human sinfulness neither leads to giving up on joy, i.e., resignation, nor does joy’s brightness drown out the message of sin. Instead, both stand next to or—better yet—over against each other. With this, however, joy obtains a practical ethical emphasis. It becomes the source of all virtues. . . . Hence, Christian joy must be present in order for a work to be ethically good. Joy and justice are not merely sentiments that grow out of actions but are values that make actions valuable.51

Joy becomes not only the result of participating in Christ’s action for the vulnerable, but it precedes it and thereby makes the way a more accessible one. The inherent beauty that humans find in nature and the affection we have for other creatures would seem to predispose us to those ‘ethically good’ actions that would contribute to addressing the climate crisis. In the same piece in which Bonhoeffer examines the trajectory of joy throughout Christian history, he uses Matthew 6:29 as the example of ‘the natural joy in Jesus’ sayings’: ‘yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.’ Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that Bonhoeffer equates natural joy with the delight of nature. Bonhoeffer’s credentials as proto-ecotheologian are therefore established in what has preceded. Based firmly in his Christology, which emphasises Christ’s concrete presence in the contemporary world, the foundation for the ecoethic necessary for this age is created. This is a new age, geologically, and with new ethical responsibilities placed upon us. In a world thus come of age, we have seen attempted mastery to be the root of the relational problem with Earth and the apparent cause of the climate crisis. If Christ is to be Lord of this world, then the church-community must participate in Christ’s kingdom on Earth. It has been demonstrated that, according to Bonhoeffer, we are bound to Earth, our Mother, the ground of all Earthlings. A Bonhoefferian ecoethic is based on contextual, responsible action for the sake of the vulnerable. Bonhoeffer invites participation with Christ, for the sake of our fellow species, that manifests in ethical action to address the problem of climate change. We understand ourselves to be ontologically one with our fellow creatures, which includes our Mother Earth, bound together by an intrinsic sociality, and expressed in a kenotic ecology that would characterise Earthly Christianity. Finally, we turn to Bonhoeffer’s farewell sermon to the congregation of Barcelona, in February 1929. Here, the young pastor, not yet a professional academic, writes what could be considered a summary for this entire book, linking together many of its elements: Whoever has felt but once how nature can embrace us and rob us of our senses, perhaps at a quiet forest lake in the evening, a lake that shines into our soul

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like the deep eyes of a child, perhaps before the simplicity of a beautiful forest flower we encounter like a pure greeting nature sends to its children; whoever has felt but once how creation, how Mother Earth seizes the heart—that person will know forever what he or she lacks. These people know what a bitter aftertaste such experiences leave behind; they know that tears of bliss, too, are salty. And one realization emerges for them that is great and profound and serious: namely, that a rift runs through the world, a rift that is visible in nature where human beings are, and that disappears where human beings are no more. Human beings move through God’s world as strangers, indeed as those who have been driven out, who have fallen. It is as if they see paradise before them and yet have been driven out and cannot enjoy its bliss; they bear the sign of Cain on their foreheads, the sign of human existence, the sign of outcasts.52

Shall we continue to live as strangers in the new kingdom of God on Earth? Bonhoeffer’s paradigm-shifting, ecologically aware theology provides us with a way to understand our new age and the tools to ecoethically confront the challenges and the responsibilities that are laid upon us. His Earthly Christianity transitions us from Homo religiosus to Homo cosmicos. Just who Christ actually is for us today becomes more apparent as we look for, and find, Christ in our fellow creatures, and in our shared home, Earth, and act on their behalf.

NOTES 1. DBWE 8, 362–64. 2. Green, ‘Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo’. 3. Ibid., 11–2. 4. Ibid., 12. 5. Ibid. 6. DBWE 8, 26. 7. DBWE 6, 280–2. 8. DBWE 4, 43. 9. DBWE 8, 460–1. 10. ‘Notes II, Tegel, July–August 1944’, ibid., 489, 491. 11. Ibid., 490. 12. Ibid., 366. 13. Ibid., 364. 14. Ammerman, ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’; Gary Bouma, Being Faithful in Diversity: Religions and Social Policy in Multifaith Society (Adelaide: ATF, 2011). 15. DBWE 12, 286. 16. A similar term, Homo cosmicus has been used by Stroe in an unrelated way. Mihai A. Stroe, ‘Blake, Ginsberg, Einstein: Poetic and Scientific Paths to Cosmic Religion’, BAS—British and American Studies, no. 16 (2010).

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17. Thanks to Terry Ryan, former Lecturer in Classics, University of Newcastle, for assistance here. 18. ‘Sermon (fragment) on Song of Solomon 8:6b, Barcelona, Remembrance Sunday, 25 November 1928’, DBWE 10, 537–8. 19. Transcript of interview with Sabra Lane broadcast on 7.30, 19 September 2015. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. http:​/​/www​​.abc.​​net​.a​​u​/7​.3​​0​/con​​tent/​​ 2015/​​s​4315​​703​.h​​tm 20. DBWE 8, 189. 21. It is beyond the scope of this book to examine Homo cosmicos in terms of other faiths but will form a future research question. See also ‘Hindu Declaration on Climate Change: Presented for Consideration to the Convocation of Hindu Spiritual Leaders, Parliament of the World’s Religions, Melbourne, Australia, December 8, 2009’, Hinduism Today (April/May/June 2010); Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC), ‘Open Letter to Leaders of G20 in Brisbane: Faith Leaders Call out G20 Leaders for Failure to Act on Climate Change’ (12 November 2014). http:​/​/arr​​cc​ .or​​g​.au/​​open-​​lette​​r​-to-​​leade​​rs​-of​​-g20-​​​in​-br​​isban​​e; Sigurd Bergmann, ‘Climate Change Changes Religion: Space, Spirit, Ritual, Technology—through a Theological Lens’, Studio Theologica 83 (2009): 1251–62; Terence J. Lovat, ‘Interfaith Theology for the Twenty-First Century: An Artefact for Faith in a Global Era’, in Advances in Sociology Research, ed. Jared A. Jaworski (Hauppage: Nova Science, 2010), 189–97; Mary Evelyn Tucker, Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (New York: Open Court, 2003); Kyle S. van Houtan and Michael S. Northcott, eds., Diversity in Dominion: Dialogues in Ecology, Ethics, and Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010). 22. Richard Jordi, ‘Reframing the Concept of Reflection: Consciousness, Experiential Learning, and Reflective Learning Practices’, Adult Education Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2011): 181–97. 23. DBWE 5. 24. ‘Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rüdiger Bethge’, DBWE 8, 389. 25. Ibid., 362. 26. Rasmussen, ‘Bonhoeffer and the Anthropocene’. 27. DBWE 8, 390. 28. Francis, Laudato Sí, 16. 29. DBWE 6, 185–96. 30. Inna Semetsky, ‘The Embodied Mind: Education as the Transformation of Habits’, in Edusemiotics: A Handbook, ed. Inna Semetsky (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 137–50. 31. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous. 32. DBWE 11, 314 33. Ibid., n329. 34. McBride, The Church for the World. 35. DBWE 8, 461. 36. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), ‘Possibly Extinct and Possibly Extinct in the Wild Species’, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016–3 (2016). http://www​.iucnredlist​.org

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37. Chris D. Thomas et al., ‘Extinction Risk from Climate Change’, Nature 427, no. 6970 (2004): 145–48. 38. IPCC, AR5 SR. 39. Tracy D. Ainsworth et al., ‘Climate Change Disables Coral Bleaching Protection on the Great Barrier Reef’, Science 352, no. 6283 (2016): 338–42. Susan M. Natali et al., ‘Permafrost Thaw and Soil Moisture Driving CO2 and CH4 Release from Upland Tundra’, Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 120, no. 3 (2015): 525–37; Carolina Voigt et al., ‘Warming of Subarctic Tundra Increases Emissions of All Three Important Greenhouse Gases—Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide’, Global Change Biology 23, no. 8 (2017): 3121–38; Bazerman, ‘Predictable Surprise’. 40. Osvaldo E. Sala, Laura A. Meyerson, and Camille Parmesan, eds., Biodiversity Change and Human Health: From Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease (Washington: Island, 2012), 195. 41. DBWE 10, 509. 42. Lenehan, Standing Responsibly; Green, Theology of Sociality. See also, Christiane Tietz, ‘Bonhoeffer on the Ontological Structure of the Church’, in Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship, ed. Michael Mawson and Adam C. Clark (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013). 43. DBWE 1, 170–3. 44. Ibid., 171–2. 45. DBWE 9, 538. 46. DBWE 1, 172. 47. Ibid. 48. IUCN, ‘Possibly Extinct Species’. See also my work on climate grief, Dianne Rayson, ‘The Hills are Alight’, in Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church, ed. Hannah Malcolm (SCM, London, 20), 121–25. 49. DBWE 12, 294. 50. DBWE 9, 382. 51. Ibid. 52. DBWE 10, 546.

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von Bismarck, Ruth-Alice, Ulrich Kabitz, and Eberhard Bethge, eds. Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria Von Wedemeyer 1943–45. Nashville: Abingdon, 1992. von Dietze, Erich. ‘“Hope Does Not Disappoint”: Honouring the 70th Anniversary of the Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’. The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 3, no. 1 (2015): 69–76. von Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich The World View of Physics [Zum Weltbild der Physik]. Translated by Marjorie Grene. London: Routledge, 1952. Vosloo, Robert. ‘Interpreting Bonhoeffer in South Africa? The Search for a Historical and Methodological Responsible Hermeneutic’. In Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding, edited by Peter Frick, 119–42. Frankfurt am Maim: Peter Lang, 2013. Waetjen, Herman C. ‘Logos Προζ Τον Θεον and the Objectification of Truth in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel’. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2001): 265. Wainwright, Elaine Mary. ‘Images, Words and Stories: Exploring Their Transformative Power in Reading Biblical Texts Ecologically’. Biblical Interpretation 20, no. 3 (2012): 280–304. Ward, Koral. Augenblick: The Concept of the ‘Decisive Moment’ in 19th- and 20thCentury Western Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Waters, Colin N., Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Clément Poirier, Agnieszka Gałuszka, Alejandro Cearreta, et al. ‘The Anthropocene Is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene’. Science 351, no. 6269 (8 January 2016): 1–90. Webster, John. ‘Trinity and Creation’. International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 1 (2010): 4–19. Weingart, Peter, Anita Engels, and Petra Pansegrau. ‘Risks of Communication: Discourses on Climate Change in Science, Politics, and the Mass Media’. Public Understanding of Science 9, no. 3 (2000): 261–83. White Jr., Lynn. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’. Science 155 (10 March 1967): 1203–07. Whybray, R. N. ‘Genesis’. In The Oxford Bible Commentary, edited by John Barton and John Muddiman, 38–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Resistance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014. Williams, Rowan. ‘Christology and Politics as Discourses of Transformation’. Keynote address at the XII International Bonhoeffer Congress, 6–10 July 2017, Basel. ———. ‘Renewing the Face of the Earth: Human Responsibility and the Environment’. Chap. 1. In Christianity and the Renewal of Nature: Creation, Climate Change and Human Responsibility, edited by Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper, 1–13. London: SPCK, 2011. Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species. Cambridge, Mass.: President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard University Press, 1984. Wohlleben, Peter. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate [Das Geheime Leben Der Bäume]. Carlton, Vic.: Black Inc., 2016.

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Index

Abrahamic faiths, 19, 77, 221 Abram, David, 122, 151 Act and Being (Bonhoeffer), 41, 60, 79, 86, 87, 99, 126, 137, 143, 144, 185, 216 abyss, 88, 147, 148, 202, 215 Adam, 51, 57, 75, 81, 87, 89, 96, 98, 100–102, 105, 108, 111–13, 121, 122–25, 144, 147–49, 159, 160, 194, 205, 216–18, 220 Adamah, 149 Adam-in-Christ, 103, 104, 127 adaptation, 10–13, 148, 242 aesthetics, 117 ‘After Ten Years’ (Bonhoeffer), 169 Age of Humans. See Anthropocene Agnus Dei, 100 ahimsa (non-violence), 116 alienations, 49 Althaus, Paul, 213 Altona Confession, 215 Amritsar massacre (1919), 116 analogia relationis, 96, 121–26 androcentrism, 98, 127 animal, 16, 17, 21, 76, 105, 106, 108– 12, 117, 120, 121–23, 125–27, 151, 161, 168, 171, 172, 220–22, 236, 239, 242 Anselm, 51

Antaeus, 168–70 Anthropocene, 9, 25, 63, 75, 118, 127, 135, 136, 148, 150, 154, 156, 166, 168, 170, 175, 183, 197, 212, 218, 220, 224, 233, 237, 238, 242, 244 anthropocentrism, 17, 21, 71, 95, 121, 126 anthropocosmic world views, 152 anthropogenic climate change, 10–13, 26, 27 anthropomorphism, 86 apocalyptic, 17 apologetics, 19 a priori, 62, 99, 140, 144 Aquinas, Thomas, 4, 38, 215 AR5. See Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) arcane discipline (Arkandisziplin), 3, 82, 84, 137, 192, 193, 237, 241 Arendt, Hannah, 116 Aristotle, 5, 125 Arkandisziplin (arcane discipline), 3, 82, 84, 137, 192, 193, 237, 241 ascent, 18, 19 assertion, 41, 44, 60, 98, 144, 188, 195, 202, 203, 209; self-assertion, 96, 105, 111, 113–21, 126, 127, 136, 149, 192, 222, 240, 243 atmospheric carbon, 9 269

270

Index

atmospheric pollution, 11, 13 Augenblick, 86, 87 Augustine, 19, 38, 101 Australia, 1, 242 authenticity, 5, 14, 189, 193 Bacon, Francis, 21 Bal, Mieke, 107 Balabanski, Vicky, 23 Ballor, Jordan, 26 Barcelona, 28, 52, 168, 183, 191, 201, 203, 223, 245 Barcelona lecture (Bonhoeffer), 52, 183, 203, 245 Barth, Karl, 5, 42, 73, 74, 82 Bartholomew I of Constantinople, 19 ‘Basic Questions for a Christian Ethic’ (Bonhoeffer), 168, 183, 223 Bax, Douglas, 86 Being and Time (Heidegger), 86 ‘being-in-Adam,’ 111, 218 ‘being-in-Adam-in-Christ,’ 127 ‘being-in-Christ,’ 45, 111, 216 belief systems, 13–15, 115 Bell, George, Bishop of Chichester, 208 below, 160–62 below, view from, 50 Benedict IX, 19 Berlin, 28, 47, 89, 135, 137, 146, 153, 164, 185, 201, 213 Berlin University, 39, 72, 73 Berry, Thomas, 19 Berry, Wendell, 15, 117 ‘The Best Physician’ (Bonhoeffer), 147 Bethge, Eberhard, 72, 73, 98, 184, 214 Bible, 3, 72–75, 77, 112, 124, 142, 196 Biblical references: Genesis: 1, 51, 160, 161; 1–3, 74, 76, 89, 103; 1:1-2, 79; 1:2, 161, 162; 1:3, 79; 1:4, 88; 1:4a, 85; 1:7, 109; 1:9, 109; 1:11, 109; 1:12, 109; 1:14-18, 109; 1:20, 109; 1:21, 109; 1:24, 109; 1:26-28, 107–9; 1:28, 15, 111, 112, 167; 1:29-30, 108–9; 1:31–2:1, 109; 2, 98, 106, 112, 151; 2:4-25, 111; 2:5, 109;

2:5-9, 157; 2:7, 167; 2:15, 157, 167; 2:18, 111; 2:19, 125; 2:19b, 121; 3, 106, 109, 126, 145, 146, 158; 3:7, 42; 3:8, 113; 3:14-21, 157–58; 3:16, 158; 3:17, 159; 3:17–19, 217; 3:19, 167; 3:23, 159; 3:24, 159; 4:17ff., 217; Leviticus 25, 112; 1 Kings 4, 112; 2 Chronicles: 20:12, 201; 28:10, 112; Nehemiah 5:5, 112; Esther 7:8, 112; Job 1:21, 161; Psalms: 90, 161; 139:13-15, 161; Proverbs 25:2, 83; Jeremiah: 5, 112; 34:11, 112; 34:16, 112; Zechariah 9:15, 112; Matthew: 6:29, 245; 10, 87; 13:44, 163; 25:35, 175; John: 1, 78; 1:5, 80; 1:10, 78; 1:13, 56; 1:14, 83; Romans: 3, 51; 5–6, 112; 8, 59; 1 Corinthians: 8:6, 56; 15:52, 86; Galatians 5.1, 204; Ephesians: 1, 112; 1:3–14, 55; 1:4, 55, 56; 4:24, 82; 5:1, 206; 10, 55; Colossians: 1, 78, 112; 1:15-17, 56, 78, 206; 2:2-3, 163; 3:1-4, 164; 3:10, 82; 1 Timothy 6, 112; Hebrews: 1:2, 56; 1:3, 56; Revelation: 1, 112; 3:20, 52; 21: 4, 166; Sirach: 20:30, 163; 40:1b, 172; Wisdom 9:2-3, 110 Bildungsbürgertum, 91n26, 141, 170, 209, 212 biodiversity, 15, 17, 220; loss, 106, 120, 125, 210 biophilia, 117, 125, 244 biophysical systems, 10 biosphere, 9, 23, 25, 61, 63, 113, 115, 151, 152, 160, 170, 175, 234, 241, 243, 244 biota, 119 Bloch, Ernst, 86–87 bodiliness, 61, 97 ‘The Body of Christ’ (Bonhoeffer), 55 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1, 4–6, 14, 16, 17, 20, 23–26, 28, 81–89, 95–98, 100, 101, 103–5, 111, 113–17, 119–21, 123, 124, 126, 127, 136, 140–73, 190, 191, 198, 199, 204, 208, 209, 211, 217, 219–21, 224,

Index

234–38, 241–46; contextual and systematic theology, 2–3, 27, 63, 84, 99, 137, 167, 183–85, 195, 200, 233, 238; divine mandates, 212–19; Ecumenical conference, 213. See also individual entries Bonhoeffer, Julie, 115, 116 Bonhoeffer, Karl Friedrich, 91n26 Bonhoeffer’s Christology, 6, 20, 25–28, 37–63, 71, 79, 83, 85, 89, 96, 98, 101, 107, 135, 140, 146, 151, 165, 167, 175, 197, 206, 208, 240, 243; form of Christ, 58–63; place of Christ, 46–58 Bouma-Prediger, Steven, 14 bound, 2, 3, 80, 96, 151, 152, 154, 165– 75, 192, 198, 213, 240, 245 boundary, 4, 9, 11, 17, 42, 46–49, 77, 102, 105, 118, 120, 144, 153, 185, 198, 200, 219, 221, 240 breath, 57, 58, 81, 88, 101–3, 108, 115, 122, 240 Brett, Mark, 109 Brocker, Mark, 208 Brueggemann, Walter, 20 Brunstäd, Friedrich, 144 Burkholder, Benjamin, 4, 5, 20, 26 Busing, Paul, 47 capitalism, 120, 197 carbon dioxide (CO2), 10, 11 carbon-climate-human system, 10, 12 Catholicism, 84 Charlottenburg-Berlin Technical College, 113 Christ, 3, 14, 20, 23, 25–28, 37–41, 43–45, 73, 74, 77–80, 83, 85, 87, 89, 96, 99, 121, 126, 127, 136, 140, 141, 144, 146, 151, 153–55, 158–60, 163, 165, 167, 174, 175, 185–87, 190–91, 198, 200, 213–16, 219, 221, 233–37, 240–43, 245, 246; Adam and, 101–5, 111, 159, 194; body of, 42, 47, 51, 55, 77, 81, 82, 98, 195, 199, 210, 239, 243; as community, 60–61, 63;

271

cosmic, 20, 77; crucified, 52–55, 63, 82, 89; dominion, 112–13; embodiment of, 206; as Eucharist, 59–60; form of, 58–63, 84, 85; image of, 100, 150; imitating, 45; incarnation, 51–52, 63, 82, 89, 96, 100, 140; place of, 46–58, 84; risen, 55–58, 63, 79, 82, 89, 153, 156, 159, 160, 163, 173, 197; suffering for, 204–8; as Word, 58–59, 63, 77, 80, 89, 143. See also God; Jesus Christian theology, 19, 21, 25, 27, 152, 174; and climate change, 1–7, 12, 13; German, 26 Christianity, 4, 5, 14, 15, 17–21, 25–27, 41, 46, 62, 63, 71, 77, 106, 115, 136–39, 152, 164, 192, 198, 202, 207, 208, 221, 238 Christocentrism, 38, 39, 63, 73, 83–85, 89, 197, 213 Christology, 3, 5, 6, 14, 20, 27, 44, 47, 79, 84, 86, 88, 89, 95, 111, 126, 152, 155, 156, 163, 173, 184–90, 198, 202, 223, 245 ‘Christology Lectures’ (Bonhoeffer), 37–63, 78, 126, 135, 185, 208 ‘Christ, Reality, and Good’ (Bonhoeffer), 78, 138 Christ-reality (Christuswirklichkeit), 105 Christus in Mundo, 38, 61, 63, 233, 240, 243 Christus pro Mundo, 38, 63, 233, 237, 239, 240, 243 Christuswirklichkeit (Christ-reality), 105 church-community, 13, 16, 17, 28, 39, 40, 46, 47, 50, 60, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 89, 96, 98, 104, 127, 136, 167, 175, 184, 187, 195–97, 199, 200, 206, 210, 212, 233–35, 237, 239, 240–43 climate change, 1–7, 9–13, 17, 19, 27, 47, 55, 136, 183, 190, 210, 212, 224, 233, 242–45 climate crisis, 14, 26, 27, 61, 148, 154, 184, 189, 193, 206, 209, 218–22, 245 climate justice, 14, 50

272

Index

climate system, 10, 11, 237 collective person (Kollektivperson), 184, 189, 210–12, 215, 241 community, 1, 10, 17, 23, 44, 46, 47, 57–61, 63, 74, 82, 85, 95, 97–99, 102, 104, 106, 113–16, 123, 125, 126, 127, 136, 138, 147, 148, 150, 166, 167, 168, 173, 175, 185, 188, 189, 194, 195, 199, 204, 205, 207– 19, 223, 224, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240–46 community of spirit, 243, 244 compassion, 60, 79, 125, 205 computer modelling, 10, 12 ‘Concerning the Christian Idea of God’ (Bonhoeffer), 78 ‘The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates’ (Bonhoeffer), 213 Confessing Church, 99 confession and repentance, 241, 242 confessional approach, 20 Conradie, Ernst, 20 conservation, 125 contemporary theology, 5, 75, 99 context, 2–6, 14, 15, 16, 18–20, 23, 24, 43, 44, 51, 55, 62, 63, 71–76, 82, 85, 89, 96, 98, 103, 106, 109–12, 114, 123, 136, 148, 164, 166, 169, 183, 184, 187–89, 195, 196, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206, 207, 210, 212–14, 217–19, 224, 239, 243 contextuality (Sachgemäßheit), 3, 4, 18, 27, 99, 104, 109, 184, 190, 198, 203, 208, 210, 219, 220, 234, 245 continuity, 2, 4, 21, 62, 74, 79, 95, 102, 103, 196, 239, 240 contradiction, 73, 107, 164, 175, 190, 192 cor curvum in se, 41 core temperature, 10, 11 Cosmos, 19, 79, 116, 143; cosmology, 24 costliness, 45, 175, 234 COVID-19, 1 creation, 23, 24, 27, 38, 39, 50–52, 57–59, 61, 71, 72, 74, 76–81, 89, 95,

97–98, 109, 112, 126, 127, 136, 145– 48, 150, 151, 158, 163, 165, 213, 216, 221, 235; God’s kingdom in twilight of, 152–66; goodness of, 85– 89; myths, 142–45, 161, 162; orders of, 44, 72, 81, 84, 158, 212–14; and preservation, 215, 216; theology, 22; trinity in, 81–85, 110 Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3 (Bonhoeffer), 16, 27, 28, 39, 42, 71–90, 95–127, 135, 136 creator, 15, 16, 24, 48, 57, 71–90, 101, 105, 110, 117, 119, 142, 148–50, 155, 158, 161, 163, 172, 174, 191 creature/s, 14, 16, 23, 24, 27, 42, 60, 63, 80, 90, 98, 101, 103, 104, 108–11, 121–27, 146, 149, 150, 151, 157, 159, 160, 166, 172, 174, 191, 212, 216, 220–22, 237, 239–41, 243, 245, 246 crucifixion, 43, 50, 52, 54, 58, 155, 167 cruciform theology, 51 culture, 23, 24, 113, 118, 125 curse, 135, 139, 142, 145, 148–51, 156–60, 162, 163, 172–75 Dahill, Lisa, 25, 26 dahinvegetieren (vegetative existence), 114 Darwin, Charles, 125; evolution, 73, 76 days, 46, 61, 73, 76, 88, 124, 126, 145, 146, 165 de Gruchy, John, 14, 82, 215 Dean-Drummond, Celia, 23, 24 death, 1, 6, 15, 43, 45, 52–54, 63, 73, 102, 143, 144, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 173, 175, 201, 204, 207, 218, 239 degradation, 9, 14, 18, 23, 106 denialism, 7, 12, 13 despair, 43, 157, 244 deus ex machina, 46, 49, 61, 235 Deutsche Christen (German Christians), 39, 73, 74, 138, 213–15

Index

Dilthey, Wilhelm, 62 disbelief, 12, 138 ‘The Discernible Nature of the Order of Creation’ (Peter), 213 Discipleship (Bonhoeffer), 39, 44, 45, 47, 55, 81, 82, 87, 96, 99, 137, 140, 155, 186, 192, 205–7 discontinuity, 4 disobedience, 76, 103, 104, 145, 150, 157, 161, 205 disruption (Zwiespalt), 1, 11–15, 26, 63, 115, 118, 157, 158, 169, 218, 242 diversity, 109, 143, 204 dividedness (Entzweiung), 42, 49, 57, 76, 87, 97–99, 102, 111, 113, 124, 149, 150, 152, 158, 163, 173, 185, 202 divinity, 23, 56, 83, 100, 109 domination, 21, 22, 24, 25, 149, 218, 222; human, 16, 17; and naming, 105–26; patriarchal, 21, 23; selfassertion as, 113–21 dominion, 112–13 ‘Drama’ (Bonhoeffer), 169 Dramm, Sabine, 183, 187 dualism, 21, 22, 25 Dudzus, Otto, 138 Earth (Erets), 161, 163 Earth system, 11, 15, 26, 63, 75, 118, 120, 125, 183 Earthly Christianity, 3, 16, 38, 83, 150, 153, 193–208, 237, 239, 240, 245, 246 Easter, 153 Eastern religion, 115, 120 Ecce homo, 187, 219 ecclesia, 81, 192 Ecclesiastes, 98 ecclesiology, 39, 42, 60, 185, 243 Eco, Umberto, 123 ecoethics, 25, 27, 28, 37, 57, 63, 136, 150, 183–224, 233, 234, 236, 243, 245, 246; challenge, 219–23; and Christology, 185–89; community,

273

208–19; decision-making, 189–93; Earthly Christianity, 193–208 ecofeminism, 21–22 ecofeminist Christology, 23, 24 ecofeminist theology, 21, 22, 25 ecofeminist theory, 25 eco-hermeneutical approach, 20 eco-justice, 17, 21 ecology, 6, 9, 13, 20, 21, 26, 38, 120– 22, 150, 206, 211, 220, 241; crisis, 26, 71; hermeneutics, 24 eco-rhetorical process, 20 ecosystem, 9, 11–13, 54, 119, 125, 190, 218, 220, 222 ecotheology, 3, 4, 6, 13, 15, 18–21, 24–28, 37, 56, 58, 83, 89, 135, 137, 162, 189, 220, 233, 240; ethic, 3, 6, 15–18, 22, 27; problems, 14 ecumenism, 2, 237 education systems, 15 Edwards, Denis, 20 ego, 41, 87, 96, 121, 143 Elchin, Edward, 20 Ellard, Peter, 19 Elvey, Anne, 22 embodied cognition, 44, 241 enfleshment (enfleshed), 48, 52, 96 Entzweiung (dividedness), 42, 49, 57, 76, 87, 97–99, 102, 111, 113, 124, 149, 150, 152, 158, 163, 173, 185, 202 environmental crisis, 19, 71, 152 environmental degradation, 18, 23, 106 environmental modification techniques, 119 epea pteronta, 157 epistemology, 38, 40–42, 44, 50, 185, 234 Erets (Earth), 161, 163 Erhaltungsordnungen (orders of preservation), 158 escapism, 140, 141, 153, 154 eschatology, 44, 50, 136–41, 143, 154– 56, 167, 175, 202, 215 ‘The “Ethical” and the “Christian” as a Topic’ (Bonhoeffer), 188

274

Index

ethic(s): approach, 19; challenge, 219–23; Christian, 202, 204, 207; Christology and, 185–89; community, 208–19; decisionmaking, 189–93, 198; responsibility, 20, 42, 101, 175, 191, 211, 217, 245 ‘Ethics as Formation’ (Bonhoeffer), 188 Ethics (Bonhoeffer), 38–40, 47, 50, 52, 60, 63, 78, 79, 87, 97–99, 113, 116, 119, 127, 137, 138, 142, 147, 151, 155, 158, 167, 183–224 etsi deus non daretur, 62 Ettal, 214 Eucharist, 48, 58–60, 63, 89, 100, 156, 159, 200 eudaemonia, 5 eukaryotes, 125 Evangelical theology, 19, 106 Eve, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 145, 146, 158, 172 evil, 145–49 evolutionary cosmology, 24 exegesis, 16, 79, 80, 85, 87, 103, 135, 166, 185 exploitation, 15, 21, 22, 71, 98, 106, 113, 114, 117, 124 ‘Exposition on the First Table of the Ten Words of God’ (Bonhoeffer), 144 Extinction Rebellion, 1 extinction, 11, 63, 106, 175, 219, 239, 242; mass, 11, 15, 75, 120, 218, 238 face, 38, 47, 57, 58, 104, 108, 162, 174, 192, 193, 203 faith, 43–47, 54 fecundity, 18, 19, 109 feedback, 9, 11, 12, 54 Feil, Ernst, 191 feminism, 20, 21 feminist ecotheologies, 21–23, 25, 83 feminist theology, 21, 22, 83 Fewell, Danna Nolan, 106, 107 Fiction from Tegel Prison (Bonhoeffer), 222–23

Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), 10 Finkenwalde Seminary, 47 First World War, 118, 119, 120 flesh, 48, 50–53, 57, 59, 83, 96, 97, 122, 160, 167, 173 flourishing, 3, 9, 27, 62, 74, 95, 105, 110, 120, 127, 138, 139, 172, 193, 196, 206, 215, 217, 219, 241, 244 Floyd, Wayne, 82, 216 food, 12, 17, 23, 26, 60, 108, 109, 152, 157, 159, 171, 175, 209, 236, 239 forgiveness, 43, 55, 59, 96, 101–5, 207 formation, 96, 99–101, 186–88, 193, 205, 211, 212, 219, 241 fossil fuel, 11, 12 Fourth Gospel, 80 Francis (Pope), 17, 20, 106, 221, 222, 239 Francis of Assisi, 19 freedom, 27, 49, 85, 89, 97, 98, 107, 117, 119, 126, 142, 149, 151, 152, 169, 184, 187, 191, 222; God, 52, 59, 72, 76, 78–81, 88, 89; law of, 201–4; for others, 204–8 ‘The Freedom from Bodily Life’ (Bonhoeffer), 97 French Revolution, 119 Frick, Peter, 45, 205, 206 Friedrich, Karl, 91n26 Friends of the Earth, 223 friendship, 97, 137, 138 Führer, 118, 119 fundamental question (Urfrage), 115 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 123 Gaea (Gaia), 11, 23, 168, 169, 170 Gandhi, Mohandas, 115, 116, 137, 207, 222 gaps, God of the, 46, 144, 145, 189, 220 Garden, 89, 102, 104, 110, 123, 127, 135, 136, 143–47, 149, 150, 172, 220, 244 gaze, 87, 88, 105, 110 Gebara, Ivone, 25

Index

Genesis, 58, 71–73, 77, 80, 86, 89, 107, 124, 135, 156, 166, 168; accounts of dominion, 107–13; creation, 15–17 genetic modification, 105 Geneva Convention, 119 geo-engineering, 120 Gerbera, Ivone, 22 German Christian movement, 213 German Christians (Deutsche Christen), 39, 73, 74, 138, 213–15 German Church, 99, 158 Germany, 72, 73, 95, 98, 114, 115, 138, 208 Gesamptperson, 210, 211 gestational paradigm, 22 global heating, 10 global warming, 9, 10, 242 globalisation, 14, 22, 209, 212, 216, 238 glocal, 223 God, 5, 16, 18, 24–27, 37, 38, 40–46, 49, 53, 55, 57, 60, 61, 71, 75–77, 84, 85, 87–89, 102, 105, 110–13, 142, 144, 147, 148, 155, 157–63, 185–86, 189, 199–200, 235, 236; commandment, 214; freedom, 52, 59, 72, 76, 78–81, 88, 89, 126; hiddenness of, 162–65. See also gaps, God of the; image of, 100, 122, 205; judgment of, 224; love of, 50, 84, 167, 174, 187, 195, 199, 202, 219; people of, 101; physicality of, 96; reality, 201; self, 57; spirit of, 85, 101; transcendence, 20, 61, 72, 76–78; will of, 55, 80, 95, 115, 158, 161, 166, 175, 189, 191, 193, 203, 204, 208, 223–24; word of, 5, 39, 58, 59, 78–80, 97, 142, 146, 149, 151, 173, 196. See also Christ; Jesus God’s kingdom, 25, 51, 54, 63, 135–75, 183, 194, 198, 235, 238, 244, 246; being ‘bound to Earth,’ 166–74; creation myths, 142–45; eschatology of changing climate, 137–39; notion of ambiguity, 145–52;

275

otherworldliness and secularism, 139–42; praying for, 165–66; in twilight of creation, 152–66 Godsey, John, 61, 83 Good Friday sermon (Bonhoeffer), 174 goodness, 62, 72, 76, 80, 85–89, 95, 97, 104, 105, 110, 126, 127, 146, 148, 151, 161, 186, 190, 210, 215, 216 grace, 42, 45, 79, 82, 105, 112, 139, 146, 155, 156, 167, 174, 175, 189, 192, 193, 195, 196, 201, 203, 205, 208, 213, 216, 217, 240, 241, 244; costly, 47, 60, 82, 192, 220, 234, 237; cheap, 140 Graff, Gerald, 106, 107 The Great Acceleration, 9, 17, 23, 118 Green, Clifford, 4, 5, 20, 26, 27, 38, 51, 52, 57, 61, 63, 88, 99, 156, 188, 189, 214, 233, 234, 243 greenhouse effect, 9 greenhouse gases, 10 Grotius, Hugo, 62 ground/groundedness, 5, 110, 150, 151, 157–60, 162, 163, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 187 guilt, 144, 146–48, 174, 194, 200–202, 207 Gunn, David, 106, 107 Habel, Norman, 161, 162 Habermas, Jürgen, 5 Habermasian method, 5, 6, 84 habitat, 11, 105, 109, 125, 175, 218 Harasta, Eva, 103 Harnack, Adolf von, 73, 74 Haught, John, 19 heaven, 17, 49, 50, 54, 56–60, 75, 109, 111, 139–42, 159, 163, 188, 197, 233 Hebrew Bible, 16, 74, 121, 151 Heidegger, Martin, 86 Heracles, 168 hermeneutics: approaches, 22; decisions, 4; process, 6. See also ecohermeneutical approach

276

Index

Hessel, Dieter, 20 hiddenness, 54, 157, 161–65, 192 hierarchical thinking, 71, 95, 107, 125 Hinduism, 115, 116 Hirst, Robert, 119 history, 27, 40–43, 46–49, 51, 53, 54, 59, 63, 72–76, 87, 89, 96, 102, 117– 19, 121, 136, 144, 155, 156, 169, 175, 184, 189, 198, 212, 214, 245 ‘History and Good’ (Bonhoeffer), 192, 193 Hitler, Adolf, 99, 118, 138, 141, 207, 208 holiness, 44, 110, 116, 117 Holocene, 9 Holy Spirit, 78, 83, 85. See also ruach; Spirit Homeostasis, 11, 13 Homer, 157 Homo cosmicos, 235–37, 240, 244, 246 Homo religiosus, 140, 208, 235, 237, 246 hope, 2, 11, 17, 22, 25, 102, 103, 105, 111, 117, 125, 127, 136, 139, 140, 149, 153, 154, 156, 183, 196, 197, 205, 212, 215, 218, 219, 238, 240, 244 human behaviour, 9, 13, 71 human body, 23, 96–105 human reason, 41 humanity, 1, 6, 13–16, 18, 20, 23–27, 38, 43, 48, 50–52, 54–58, 60, 61, 71, 83, 87, 88, 95–97, 100–105, 108, 109, 115, 118–20, 127, 135, 139, 142, 143, 148, 149, 158–61, 185, 189, 194, 195, 197, 199, 208, 217, 220–22, 235, 239, 240 imago Dei, 15, 16, 51, 89, 99–101, 109, 111, 205, 206, 209 The Imitation of Christ (Imitatio Christi, Kempis), 45, 206 immanence, 24, 42, 48, 52, 58, 60–63, 77, 78, 80, 81, 126, 140, 145, 151, 163, 173, 175, 234, 240 immortality, 109

incarnation(al), 51–52, 58, 59, 61, 63, 82, 89, 96, 100, 140, 152, 155 incognito, 43, 53, 54, 58, 59 India, 115, 116, 171 Industrial Revolution, 10, 24 industrialisation, 13, 15, 114, 117 interfaith, 13, 38, 200, 206, 236, 237, 240 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 10–12 Irenaeus, 19 I-You relations, 100, 211, 224 Jainism, 115, 116, 222 Jesus, 20, 23, 27, 40, 43–45, 50–54, 56, 58, 59, 73, 83–87, 99, 100, 102, 105, 155, 185, 196, 199, 215, 219, 234. See also Christ; God Jews (Jewish Question, Jewish), 2, 74, 114 jiva, 116 Jobling, David, 106 Johnson, Elizabeth, 21 The Journal of Religion, 78 joy, 48, 157, 163, 240, 244, 245 justice, 1, 3, 6, 14, 17, 21, 26, 38, 49, 50, 103, 189, 190, 238, 240, 242, 243, 245 justification, 15, 16, 78, 84, 103, 112, 121, 127, 158 kabash, 108, 112 Kant, Immanuel, 41, 79, 161 katadunasteuo, 112 Kelly, Geffrey, 60, 95, 205 Kempis, Thomas à, 45, 206 kenosis (self-emptying), 38, 240 kenotic ecology, 239, 240, 243–45 Kheel, Marti, 18 Kierkegaard, Søren, 45, 86 Kinderschrecken, 147 Klapproth, Erich, 75 Kollektivperson (collective person), 184, 189, 210–12, 215, 241 Kulturprostestant, 140

Index

Kuwait, 119 language, 25, 26, 72, 75, 76, 122, 123, 140, 141, 144, 158, 165, 209, 211, 237–39, 241, 243 Lapide, Pinchas, 114 Lasserre, Jean, 137 Laudato Sí (Francis), 222 law, 2, 49, 62, 117, 153, 156, 165, 185, 189, 191–93, 196, 200–204 Le Guin, Ursula, 123, 124 Leibholz, Gerhard, 193 Lenehan, Kevin, 5, 41, 62, 145 Letters and Papers from Prison (Bonhoeffer), 37; Life Together (Bonhoeffer), 39, 45, 47, 99, 186, 205, 237 Levinas, Emmanuel, 191 liberation theology, 21, 22, 25, 83 light, 21, 24, 50, 51, 59, 79, 80, 85, 87– 89, 146, 147, 153, 159, 163, 172 Litt, Theodor, 211 ‘lived awareness’, 22 logos, 39, 42, 43, 58, 59 lord of the world, 3, 14, 37, 38, 41, 60, 62, 84, 137, 142, 206, 233, 235, 237 Lord’s Prayer, 127, 137 Lovat, Terence, 137 love, 24, 42, 49, 50, 55, 57, 84, 85, 88, 98, 104, 117, 139, 140, 142, 152, 154, 156, 157, 159, 164, 167, 173, 174, 184, 187, 191, 193, 195–97, 199, 202–5, 208, 210, 213, 219, 235, 236, 240, 242–44 Lückenbüßer (stopgap), 144, 145, 189, 220 Luke, 22 Lukens, Michael, 213 Luther, Martin, 38, 41, 43, 143, 162, 207, 216, 234 Lutheran doctrine, 81 Lutheran Reformation, 46 Lutheran tradition, 168 machine, 61, 118–20

277

mammals, 125 mandates, 4, 81, 158, 184, 189, 212–19, 222 Mariology, 23 marriage, 97, 214, 217 masculinity, 22 mass extinction, 218 mass unemployment, 114 ‘the master race’ concept, 118 mastery (Herrentum), 17, 71, 75, 114– 15, 117–21, 136, 148–52, 220, 245 material/materiality/materialism, 40, 48, 51, 58, 75, 89, 126, 127, 170–71, 189, 191, 215, 223, 233, 241 Mawson, Michael, 26 The Max Planck Institute, 91n26 McBride, Jennifer, 241 McFague, Sallie, 22 mediator (Mittler), 48, 51, 143, 221 metaphor, 18–19 methane, 106 method, theological, 3–7, 95, 99 middle (Mitte), 87, 143–44, 221 migration, 18, 19, 26, 218 Miocene, 10 miracle, 48 misogyny, 21, 98, 158 mission, 239, 243 mitigation, 10, 12, 13, 27, 148, 242 mitleben zu lernen, 209 Mitte (middle), 87, 143–44, 221 Mittler (mediator), 48, 51, 143, 221 modernism, 24 modernity, 62 Moltmann, Jürgen, 15, 20, 24 monoculture, 105, 239 mother, Mother Earth, 121, 137, 141, 142, 150, 151, 154, 158, 159, 161, 166–75, 197, 245, 246 Mündigkeit (world come of age), 3, 27, 62, 95, 144, 150, 233, 238, 244 Multiverse, 56 mystery, 42, 55, 76, 82–85, 97, 142, 154, 163, 174, 186, 187, 191, 192, 210, 223, 237, 238, 240, 243

278

Index

myth, 61, 73, 76, 77, 86, 107, 110, 111, 126, 136, 142–45, 153, 160–62, 168, 169 The Name of the Rose (Eco), 123 naming, 96, 105–27, 161, 243 narrative, 15–20, 61, 71, 76, 85, 89, 98, 109, 122, 123, 126, 142, 147, 148, 151, 159, 162, 172, 190 National Socialism, 72, 99, 118, 138, 158, 164, 188, 213, 224 ‘The Natural Life’ (Bonhoeffer), 97 natural theology, 4, 19, 20, 27, 162, 215, 216 ‘The Nature of the Church’ (Bonhoeffer), 47, 147 Nazism, 39, 47, 188, 213, 216 neuroscience, 120, 170, 241 new age, 238–40 New Testament, 16, 49, 51, 59, 73, 74, 77, 78, 106, 112, 113, 196, 203 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 86, 139, 143 non-violence, 116 ‘Novel’ (Bonhoeffer), 193 oath, 167, 168, 173 Old Testament, 51, 73, 74, 77, 81, 83, 89, 106, 107, 112, 114, 121, 126, 156, 163, 190, 196, 198, 200 ‘one Lord,’ 50 ontology, 15, 16, 24, 27, 38, 41, 46, 52, 56, 57, 99, 100, 115–16, 172, 197, 206, 208, 243 orangutan, 125 orders of preservation (Erhaltungsordnungen), 158 Ordnung (orders), 22, 44, 72, 81, 84, 155, 158, 212–17 organism, 23, 165, 170, 239 Origen, 19 Ormerod, Neil, 20 orthodoxy, 3, 81, 83, 84 otherness, 21, 23, 77, 220 otherworldliness, 138–42, 160 Ott, Heinrich, 2, 3, 6

‘Outline for a Book’ (Bonhoeffer), 45, 144 pain, 104, 107, 138, 139, 148, 152, 157, 158, 159, 187, 235, 242 pantheism, 89, 163 paradigm, 4, 21, 22, 25, 27, 38, 40, 41, 57, 72, 233–38, 246 patriarchy, 21, 24, 98, 106, 127, 158 person, 23, 37, 39, 40, 43–46, 51, 52, 54, 56, 60, 77, 85, 87, 96, 98, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111–13, 115, 123, 136, 141, 143, 147, 151, 168, 184, 185, 187, 189, 190, 192, 194, 198, 200, 208, 210–12, 222, 236, 241, 242, 246 Peter, Friedrich, 213 Phylogenetic scale, 125 piety, 104, 147, 154, 166, 190–93, 233, 238 Planck, Erwin, 91n26 Planck, Max, 88 planetary boundary, 9, 11, 118, 219 pleasure, 88, 105, 110, 126, 148, 152 Plumwood, Val, 21, 23 pollution, 11, 13, 16, 105, 106, 120, 210, 239 Poseidon, 168 post-Reformation, 19 power, 4, 6, 40, 45, 51, 84, 111–14, 116–18, 138, 141, 142, 145, 147, 171, 196, 206, 208, 222, 238 powerlessness (powerless), 99, 234 ‘The Power of the Other’ (Bonhoeffer), 113 praxis, 5, 81, 211 prayer (pray, prayed), 3, 53, 82, 84, 127, 137, 139, 165–67, 173, 175, 188, 191, 193, 201, 205, 238, 241, 244 preservation (Erhaltungsordnungen), 77, 80, 81, 97, 105, 110, 158, 212, 213, 215, 216 primal state, 102, 136 primal, 13, 22–24, 102, 118, 148, 151, 172, 197, 202, 221

Index

The Principle of Hope (Bloch), 86–87 prison, 74, 77, 78, 87, 95, 98–100, 137, 140, 153, 155, 156, 163, 169, 172, 184, 195, 196, 198, 202, 208, 235 privacy of piety, 190–93 pro me, 52, 54, 57, 58 pro Multiverse, 57 pro nobis, 54, 57, 205 proclamation, 62, 199 proletariat, 54 Proverbs, 98 provincialism vs. secularism of nature, 20 public theology, 17, 76 qara’, 121 quantum physics, 88 Qur’an, 222 radah, 110, 112 Radler, Karola, 193 rape, 97, 98, 112, 140 Rasmussen, Larry, 3–6, 14, 20, 26–28, 37, 138, 150, 238 rationalism, 21, 22, 49, 215 reality, 3–5, 14, 15, 25, 27, 28, 38, 40, 41, 44–46, 48–56, 61, 63, 64, 78, 79, 82, 84, 87, 89, 99, 100, 104, 110, 120, 127, 136, 138, 139, 140, 143–45, 148, 152–55, 160, 162, 170, 171, 175, 185–88, 191, 195–201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 211–17, 219, 221, 235, 236, 238, 240 reason, 4, 14, 21–23, 25, 41, 42, 49, 50, 54, 57, 80, 101, 103, 106, 107, 140, 160, 171, 185, 193, 197, 198, 201, 209 reconciliation, 57, 58, 99, 100, 104, 154, 185, 195, 199, 200, 213, 216, 219 reconstructive approach, 20 redemption, 52, 55, 56, 59, 89, 153, 154, 215 ‘Reflection on the Ascension’ (Bonhoeffer), 55 refugees, 14, 50, 53, 190, 209, 218, 242

279

Reich Church of Germany, 115. See also Deutshe Christen relationality, 16, 46, 110, 122, 126, 209, 217, 221 relationship, 13–16, 19–21, 23–27, 37, 38, 40, 44, 49, 51, 57, 58, 62, 63, 71, 72, 75–77, 83, 88, 90, 96, 98, 100–102, 104, 105, 110, 111, 113, 117, 118, 123, 124, 126, 127, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 144, 148–52, 154, 156–59, 163, 166–68, 170, 172, 174, 185, 186, 189–93, 195, 199, 203–6, 209, 211, 212, 217, 221, 223, 236–38, 240, 244 religionless Christianity, 6, 62, 95, 113, 114, 149, 195, 235, 238, 244 responsibility, 14, 16, 20, 24, 38, 42, 60, 63, 71, 75, 84, 101, 114, 116, 123, 140, 148, 149, 151, 155, 167, 168, 175, 188–92, 197, 198, 201, 203, 204, 208, 210, 211, 217–19, 222, 223, 245, 246 restoration, 55, 57, 59, 89, 95, 104, 125, 127, 135, 141, 148, 149, 199, 213, 218, 219, 242, 244 resurrection, 50, 56–58, 63, 73, 79, 104, 140, 153–56, 159, 160, 163, 166, 167, 173, 185, 196, 197, 201, 202 revelation, 3–5, 41, 42, 46, 50, 51, 57, 74, 75, 82, 136, 144, 213–15, 236, 240; self-revelation, 40, 42–44, 46, 54, 75, 78, 197, 200, 220 rift, 15, 117, 145, 174, 246 ‘The Right to Bodily Life’ (Bonhoeffer), 97, 239 ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ (Bonhoeffer), 113, 121, 126, 149, 222 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 151 Ritschl, Albrecht, 102 Romantics, 117 ruach, 103, 163. See also Holy Spirit; Spirit Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 21–23 Rulaman (Weinland), 76

280

Index

rule, 16, 55, 109–12, 118, 120, 123, 145, 151, 158, 185, 193, 198, 203, 209, 210 Sachgemäßheit (contextuality), 3, 4, 18, 27, 99, 104, 109, 184, 190, 198, 203, 208, 210, 219, 220, 234, 245 Sachs, Jeffrey, 12 sacrament, 19, 21, 22, 39, 40, 46, 59, 60, 152 salvation, 15, 51, 61, 117, 147, 157, 166, 206, 244 sanctification (sanctified, Sanctifier), 58, 83, 201 sanctity, 24, 115, 116 sanctorum communio, 102 Sanctorum Communio (Bonhoeffer), 37, 44, 47, 52, 57, 58, 60, 77, 79, 81, 96, 99, 101, 102, 110, 126, 136, 137, 145, 185, 194, 200, 210, 215, 221, 240 Santmire, Paul, 18–20 Satan, also Lucifer, 118, 146–48 satyagraha, 116 Scala Naturae (Aristotle), 125 scepticism, 12 Schade, Leah D., 23 Scheler, Max, 200, 215 Schmidt, Hans, 73 Schmitt, Carl, 193 Scott, Peter Manley, 20, 26, 150 sea level rise, 11 Second World War, 61, 119 secular Christianity, 197 secularism, 138, 139–42, 160 self, closed circle of, 41–43, 47, 209, 236. See also cor curvum in se self-assertion, 105, 111, 113–19, 121, 127, 136, 192, 222, 240, 243. See also ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’ self-emptying (kenosis), 38, 240 self-revelation, 40, 42–44, 46, 54, 75, 200, 220 Sermon on the Mount, 72, 99, 115, 116, 137, 138, 186, 192, 205–7

sermon, 2, 47, 52, 72, 73, 84, 85, 156, 164, 165, 174, 201, 202, 245 serpent, 142, 145–49, 157 servanthood, 3, 113, 206, 243 sexuality, 97–99, 102, 108, 113, 127, 143 shame, 98, 102, 158 shared language, 122, 123 She Unnames Them (Le Guin), 123 shinrin-yoku, 170 sicut deus, 100, 150, 159, 185, 202, 205 silence (silent), 14, 103, 124, 126, 144, 145, 173, 175, 223 sin, 41, 43, 51, 76, 98, 101–5, 111, 113, 147, 155, 158, 160, 162, 174, 207, 242 Sittler, Joseph, 197 Sitz im Leben, 7, 189 sixth mass extinction event, 11, 15, 120, 238 social intercourse, 211 social systems, 214, 215, 218 sociality, 5, 16, 23–27, 38, 40, 85, 97, 98, 100, 101, 104, 110, 111, 126, 127, 135, 136, 150, 151, 165, 166, 184, 185, 189, 204, 206, 209–11, 215, 220–22, 224, 236, 243, 245 Solberg, Mary M., 23 Songlines, 122, 123 Song of Songs, 98, 174 soteriology (soteriological), 44, 51, 54, 59, 101, 105, 194 space, 1, 9, 14, 18, 42, 44, 51, 54–56, 63, 102, 106, 108, 119, 143, 161, 198, 206, 209 spatiality, 101, 139 species, 9, 11, 13–15, 23, 26, 41, 56, 57, 75, 89, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 116, 119–22, 125, 127, 135, 143, 165, 170, 175, 189, 190, 206, 209, 211, 212, 217–22, 234, 236, 239, 242–45 Spirit, 14, 52, 57, 78, 81, 83–85, 101–3, 126, 154, 162, 163, 175, 236. See also Holy Spirit

Index

The Spirit of Utopia (Bloch), 86 spirituality, 137, 138, 151, 152, 191, 221, 222, 237, 240 Stählin, Wilhelm, 213 Stellvertretung (vicarious representative action), 52, 79, 84, 127, 136, 140, 151, 184, 190, 193–94, 198, 204–8, 210, 220, 234 stewardship, 16, 19, 27, 57, 149–50, 222 stopgap (Lückenbüßer), 46, 144, 145, 189, 220. See also gaps, God of the Strohm, Christoph, 138 student movements, 1 suffering, Suffering God (sometimes Christ), 27, 38, 40, 52–54, 58, 72, 85, 96, 99–101, 104, 116–18, 144, 148, 152, 158, 166, 173, 175, 194, 200, 204–9, 219, 220, 224, 234, 237, 239–43 Sullivan, Lawrence, 13, 14 sun, 9, 85, 145, 171, 172 superiority, 15, 24, 200, 202 sustainability, 13 Sutz, Erwin, 45, 137 Swimme, Brian, 20 synderesis, 226n47 tat tvam asi, 115 technology, 9, 15, 17, 23, 75, 114, 118– 21, 148, 149, 159, 165, 171 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 19, 24 temporality, 86, 101, 127, 139, 167 theological anthropology, 58, 63, 71, 95–127, 135, 144, 184, 189, 205; dominion and naming, 105–26; human body, 96–105 theology: cruciform, 51; liberation, 21, 22, 25, 83; method, 3–7; natural, 4, 19, 20, 27, 162, 215, 216; problem, 14–16; public, 17, 76; responses, 18–26; systematic, 2–3, 27, 63, 84, 99, 137, 167, 183–85, 195, 200, 233, 238; traditions, 18; Western, 19 Third Reich, 4, 219

281

‘this-worldliness,’ 101, 136, 137, 139, 150, 167, 173, 208 Thunberg, Greta, 1 ‘Thy Kingdom Come! The prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth’ (Bonhoeffer), 135–75, 183 Tillich, Paul, 144 tipping point, 9, 11, 12, 218 tob and ra, 148, 151, 152, 154, 158 transcendence, 78, 80, 81, 85, 88, 102, 126, 163, 168 transcendentalism, 41, 42, 60 tree, 42, 89, 108, 109, 143–46, 148, 157, 159, 202 Trinitarian theology, 83–85, 186 Trinity Sunday 1934 (Bonhoeffer), 84–85 Trinity/trinitarian/trinitatis inhabitatio, 24, 57, 58, 60, 78, 81–85, 89, 126, 186 Troster, Lawrence, 19 twilight (Zwiespalt), 118, 135, 136, 142, 145–66, 186 ultimate and penultimate, 154–57, 167, 175, 196 ‘Ultimate and Penultimate Things’ (Bonhoeffer), 50 unconscious Christianity, 235 underside, 52, 99, 168, 194, 209, 242 unemployment, 1, 114 UNEP. See United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) unified reality, 3, 38, 40, 44, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 78, 136, 139, 155, 162, 214, 216 Union Theological Seminary, 78, 100 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 10 United Nations, 223 universe story, 21 unnaming, 124 Upanishad, 115 Urfrage (fundamental question), 115

282

Index

utopianism, 153, 154 van den Heuvel, Steven, 26 van Wolde, Ellen, 162 vegetative existence (dahinvegetieren), 114 vertebrates, 125 vicarious representative action (Stellvertretung), 47, 85, 117, 127, 136, 151, 193–95, 200, 205, 223, 224 violence, 52, 104, 114–16, 118–20, 207 Volk, 213–15 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 24 von Dietze, Erich, 201, 207 vulnerability, 10, 38, 85, 113, 209, 220, 221, 224, 236, 242 Wainwright, Elaine, 20 warfare, 114, 119, 120 weapon, 114 Webster, John, 81 Weinland, David Friedrich, 76 Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von, 144 Western Christianity, 17 Western colonialisation, 106 White, Lynn, Jr., 18, 24, 106 Whybray, R. N., 110

wicked problem, 219 Williams, Reggie, 137 Williams, Rowan, 20, 216 Winton, Tim, 236 WMO. See World Meteorological Organization (WMO) word, 5, 39, 58–59, 63, 77–80, 89, 97, 142, 143, 146, 149, 151, 173, 196 Working Group of Theologians and Economists, 213 world come of age (Mündigkeit), 3, 27, 62, 95, 144, 150, 233, 238, 244 worldliness, 155, 164, 169, 197, 233; otherworldliness, 138–42, 154, 160; this-worldliness, 53, 101, 136, 137, 139, 153, 167, 208 worldly Christianity, 38, 83, 137, 148, 150, 153, 197, 238, 239 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 10 worldview, 15, 21, 24, 116, 152 yin-yang balance, 152, 153 Zwielicht (twilight), 145, 146 Zwiespalt (disruption), 1, 11–15, 26, 63, 115, 118, 157, 158, 169, 218, 242

About the Author

Dianne Rayson received her PhD in Theology from The University of Newcastle. She lectures in several universities following a career in public health and social policy in Australia and the Pacific. She is an Adjunct Fellow at the Research Centre for Public and Contextual Theology and has published on Bonhoeffer, rape culture, the ecological impact of war, and her theological reflections on Australia’s Black Summer bushfires.

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