Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance (Faith and Politics: Political Theology in a New Key) 9781498591065, 9781498591072, 149859106X

Citation preview

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance

Faith and Politics: Political Theology in a New Key Series Editor: Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame “Political Theology” is a theme which straddles two major areas of inquiry: political philosophy and theology, or differently phrased: the realms of secular politics and the sacred. The relation is marked by difference, sometimes by tension or conflict. During the past century, such conflict reached a boiling point when the Nazi regime sought to coopt or integrate the Christian population. In opposition to this attempt, a “Confessing Church” was formed which, under the leadership of Karl Barth, issued the Barmen Declaration (May 31, 1934) which insisted on the independence of faith from political power structures while, at the same time, guarding against the pure “privatization” of faith. In our time, it is important to remember this precedent because there are strong tendencies to push religion into similar dilemmas. This series will launch new investigations into the relations between faith and politics on a broad ecumenical and global level. Its guiding question will be, “to what extent do different theologians or different political theologies make possible the prospect of a divinely sanctioned ‘kingdom’ of peace and justice?” Recent titles in the series: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance, edited by Lori Brandt Hale and W. David Hall The Legacy of the Barmen Declaration: Politics and the Kingdom, by Fred Dallmayr

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance Edited by Lori Brandt Hale and W. David Hall Introduction by Victoria J. Barnett

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books 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 © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All Chapters: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 17 vols. Edited by Victoria Barnett, et al. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996–2014. Chapter 4: D.J. Smit. “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” In A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1982, edited by G.D. Cloete and D.J. Smit. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. Chapter 7: Lisa E. Dahill. “Con-Formation with Christ: Bonhoeffer, Social Location, and Embodiment.” In Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, edited by Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Books/Wipf & Stock, 2010. Chapter 7: Lisa E. Dahill. “‘There’s Some Contradiction Here’: Gender and the Relation of Above and Below in Bonhoeffer.” In Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Method and Understanding, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations Series, volume 6, edited by Peter Frick. Berne/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2013. 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: 2020932601 ISBN: 978-1-4985-9106-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-4985-9107-2 (electronic) TM

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 our kids— Caleb Hale, Lillian Hall, Micah Hale, and Jonah Hale— who keep our lives interesting and our days full. We love you more than we can say.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction Victoria J. Barnett

1

I: Historical-Critical Interpretation 1 The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology Michael P. DeJonge 2 Recovering the Natural for Politics: Bonhoeffer and the Natural Law Tradition Jens Zimmermann 3 Political Meditations in Confessional Keys: The Political Theologies of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer W. David Hall 4 Bonhoeffer, the Discourses on Status Confessionis in Apartheid South Africa, and Confessing the Faith Anew Robert Vosloo

7

II: Critical-Constructive Engagement 5 Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality: A Theological Resource for Dismantling Mass Incarceration Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

vii

9

27

49

67

87 89

viii

Contents

6 The Interfaith Imperative: How Dietrich Bonhoeffer Compels Interfaith Action Lori Brandt Hale 7 Self and Shadow: Bonhoeffer, Social Location, and Gender as Genre Lisa E. Dahill 8 Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene: Ecoethics and Earthly Christianity Dianne P. Rayson 9 “Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?: Lessons for White Christians from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Confederate Monuments Debate Karen V. Guth III: Constructive-Practical Application 10 The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence John W. Matthews 11 Between Sundays: What the Church Is For Paul Lutter 12 Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville Jeffrey C. Pugh

111

129

143

157

175 177 187 195

Index

209

About the Contributors

213

Acknowledgments

In 2016, the International Bonhoeffer Society—English Language Section (IBS-ELS) did something unusual for an academic society. It held a Board of Directors’ Strategic Planning Retreat to create a shared mission and vision for the Society in light of two things: the completion of the translation of Bonhoeffer’s work into critical English editions—a twenty-five year and seventeen volume project, and the recognition of the broad interest in Bonhoeffer both in and out of the academy. This successful meeting produced a renewed commitment to the historical and critical examination of Bonhoeffer’s work and context that has marked Bonhoeffer scholarship for more than fifty years. It also resulted in a clear articulation of four additional commitments: engaged pedagogy, constructive readings, interconnection of theology and practice, and access (virtual and otherwise). In honor of these commitments, we have organized this exploration of the political theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer around three of these commitments: historical-critical interpretation, critical-constructive engagement, and constructive-practical application. We are grateful to the IBS-ELS board members and others who participated in that rich conversation about the future and import of Bonhoeffer work. Thanks are due to Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books for the launch of the new series—“Faith and Politics: Political Theology in a New Key.” We are grateful to series editor, Fred Dallmayr, for the invitation to edit the volume on Bonhoeffer, and we appreciate the support we have received from both Judith Lakamper and Michael Gibson at Lexington Books. We would also like to thank our departmental colleagues in our respective institutions, at Augsburg University and Centre College, for their ongoing support and encouragement of our scholarly endeavors as well as our day-to-day tasks, teaching and such. ix

x

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to those who contributed to this volume. Thank you to Vicki Barnett, Lisa Dahill, Michael DeJonge, Thomas Fabisiak, Karen Guth, Paul Lutter, John Matthews, Jenny McBride, Jeffrey Pugh, Di Rayson, Robert Vosloo, and Jens Zimmermann. We admire your work deeply and are humbled by your acceptance of our invitation to write. We also thank Anne Holzman for her very fine indexing work. We offer a special thanks to Wipf & Stock and Peter Lang Publishing for granting permission to reprint some materials in Lisa Dahill’s chapter. We are grateful for friends who have helped us celebrate milestones along the way: Chris Paskewich and Sarah Cramer, Dave and Lisa Bonko, Ann and Joe Leahy, Russell and Julianne Kleckley, Glenn Whitehouse, Alice Bond, and many others. We are grateful for unending support from family: Lew and Lorena Brandt, Peggy and Don Allan, plus Sam, Malia, Tim, Paige, James, Michele, and the nieces and nephews. And we are grateful for one another. Finally, we dedicate this book to our children: Jonah Hale, Micah Hale, Caleb Hale, and Lillian Hall. We love you more than we can say. Lori Brandt Hale and W. David Hall November 2019

Abbreviations

DBW

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, 17 vols. Edited by Eberhard Bethge, et al. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gütersloh Verlagshaus, 1986–1999.

DBWE

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 17 vols. Edited by Victoria Barnett, et al. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996–2014.

xi

Introduction Victoria J. Barnett

It is understandable why the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are so often cited in the literature of political theology. Beginning with his dissertation Sanctorum Communio, his theological work was grounded in what he would later call the “this-worldliness of Christianity.” Bonhoeffer’s Jesus was “God become human” and “the man (who lives) for others.” He understood Church as the space where the Gospel is proclaimed for the sake of the world and where Christians experience what it means to encounter Christ in the other. In particular, his understanding of what it means to be a Christian was articulated concretely in action: on behalf of the other, in community with others, in engagement with “life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities—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. And I think this is faith; this is metavnoia. And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian.” 1 Bonhoeffer wrote this passage in 1944 in prison and in the immediate wake of the final failed coup attempt against the Nazi regime, but his words were fully consistent with his earliest theological work. As he had written in 1927 in Sanctorum Communio: “at the moment of being addressed [with the ethical demand] the person enters a state of responsibility or, in other words, of decision.” 2 That “state of responsibility” is closely tied to the essential nature of our lives as Christians. Each of Bonhoeffer’s major theological works unpacks a different aspect of what it means to live faithfully and responsibly as a Christian in this world. Additional nuance and insight can be gleaned from his correspondence as well as the numerous sermons, bible studies, and theological essays that he wrote during his brief life. 1

2

Victoria J. Barnett

All of these texts can and should be read as Bonhoeffer’s direct response to what was happening in the world around him in that moment, for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology was an ongoing critical dialogue with the social, political, and cultural challenges of his times. His thirty-nine years were lived out during one of the most turbulent, violent, and tragic eras in human history. He was born into a family that placed great emphasis on political responsibility and citizenship. He had childhood memories of the First World War, which touched him directly through the death of his brother Walter. He came of age, studied, and began his career during the Weimar Republic, a time of profound social and cultural disruption, massive unemployment and economic uncertainty, and gradual disintegration into political chaos and extremism. He worked and studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain, and at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and his writings from those periods illustrate his alert engagement with the issues around him, whether it was the growing nationalism among wealthy German expatriates in Spain or the widespread racism that he witnessed in the United States. He was drawn to the European ecumenical movement in part because of his own sense that as a young German he had an obligation to work with other Europeans for peace. It should come as no surprise that with the Nazi rise to power—particularly given the ascent within German Protestantism of the Deutsche Christen, who preached a nationalist, anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi version of Christianity—Bonhoeffer soon emerged as one of the most prophetic voices in the German Protestant church. Although he openly expressed his political opinions in his correspondence with friends and family, the prophetic texts for which he is best known are his theological works, ranging from his early 1933 critiques of the “Führer principle” and his reflections on how the church should respond to the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation into church law; to his books Discipleship and Life Together, written as guidance for young seminarians who were training for Christian ministry under a fascist regime; to his late writings in Ethics and his prison reflections on what the future of Christian faith might look like, given the disastrous record of Christian complicity in the violence of National Socialism. Many of these texts don’t address political issues explicitly, but taken together they epitomize Bonhoeffer’s approach to political theology. Political theology is all too often falsely portrayed or misunderstood as “politicized” theology—the theologically framed embrace of a certain political agenda or party. As scholar Stephen Haynes and many others have noted, this misunderstanding is fairly widespread with Bonhoeffer, who has been claimed for all kinds of political causes. Politicized theology was what the Deutsche Christen were doing as they removed passages from the Bible, rewrote hymns and liturgies, and replaced crosses in the churches with swastikas. Between 1933 and 1945 in Germany, politicized theology was the

Introduction

3

practice of creating a new version of Christianity that conformed to National Socialism. The Confessing Church—the faction within German Protestantism that emerged in protest against this ideological, pseudo-Christian faith—was founded to preserve and defend the core of Christian faith against such politicized theology. The 1934 Barmen Confession of Faith, written by theologian Karl Barth, refuted ideological distortions of Christian teachings, such as the replacement of Christian obedience to God with obedience to the Führer, by invoking the core Christian teachings as articulated in the classic Christian confessions. Over time and under pressure, however, most Confessing Church pastors failed to withstand the pressures of National Socialism. The clarity and steadfastness of Bonhoeffer’s theology stand in stark contrast to this failure, and this may be one reason why Bonhoeffer continues to be read with such attentiveness. His theology remained grounded in the foundation of Christian thought and doctrine, even as he engaged the challenges of his time, and thus it continues to speak to Christians in very different contexts. Drawing on that foundation, Bonhoeffer found a language that unmasked the distortions of Christianity—both subtle and outrageous—that were being propagated by other German theologians. The chapters in this book have been written in that methodological vein, drawing from various aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought. The contributors to this volume include some of the leading international scholars on Bonhoeffer’s work and they write from an unusually wide spectrum of expertise and experience. In the first section, scholars Michael DeJonge, Jens Zimmermann, W. David Hall, and Robert Vosloo explore seminal aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought that are crucial for understanding the theological underpinnings of his critique of the Nazified church and National Socialism in general. Drawing on the essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” DeJonge carefully explores how Bonhoeffer understood the church’s unique role in a political context to act “as church.” Zimmermann discusses an under-examined aspect of Bonhoeffer’s thought—his exploration of the teachings of natural law—as an important resource for critiquing Nazi ideology. Hall brings Bonhoeffer’s thought into conversation with the work of two very different contemporaries, the Catholic conservative jurist Carl Schmitt and Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin. Robert Vosloo compares the theological debates and understandings of status confessionis that arose in the German Protestant church in 1933 and the Reformed churches of South Africa under Apartheid. The authors represented in the second section of this volume engage Bonhoeffer’s thought more directly with some of the burning issues of our own times. Thomas Fabisiak and Jennifer McBride analyze the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States and the related historical and political challenges of systemic racism. Turning to Bonhoeffer’s critique of Christian “morality,” they unpack the disconnect between Christ’s teachings and the

4

Victoria J. Barnett

individualistic distortions of morality that too often shape Christian behavior, and explore how these have worked systemically against vulnerable populations. Lori Brandt Hale discusses how Bonhoeffer’s concept of Stellvertretung might open the way for a constructive analysis of the applicability of his theology in contemporary interfaith contexts. Lisa Dahill provocatively explores the tension between Bonhoeffer’s privileged social location and his gradual and imperfect progress toward the “view from below,” raising the important question of how accessible his theology is for women, people of color, and other marginalized populations. Di Rayson looks for the resources in Bonhoeffer’s theology—particularly his ethical writings—that could provide a foundation for ecotheology, and proposes a reframing of his “worldly Christianity” as an “earthly Christianity.” Karen Guth offers a rereading of Bonhoeffer’s chapter in Ethics on “heritage and decay” in conjunction with US debates about public and political memories of Confederate monuments, viewing the current controversies as manifestations of a deeper problem that demands acknowledgment, repentance, and a commitment to justice. The third section of the volume looks at the legacy of Bonhoeffer’s theology for practical ministry in several contexts, ranging from church congregational life to the various public forms of activism. John Matthews traces the numerous ways in which his reading of Bonhoeffer over the decades has shaped his ministry and the life of the congregation he served, expanding the reach of their community to a wide range of issues and new ethnic and religious partners. Paul Lutter describes a similar expansion in his ministry, using several deeply personal examples of how he and his congregation responded to immediate, sometimes conflicting needs, drawing on Bonhoeffer’s central insight that where the Church is present, it finds its task and its life. The volume concludes with Jeffrey Pugh’s powerful eyewitness account of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when an “Altright” coalition of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and others marched to protest the removal of a Confederate monument. The events that unfolded led to the brutal murder of Heather Heyer, the deaths of two state troopers, and serious injuries among a number of other peaceful counterdemonstrators. Pugh’s reflections center on the nature of community and the kind of community that is necessary to withstand and fight against evil—the same questions that confronted Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church throughout the 1930s. The diverse issues raised by the contributors to this volume, and the range of insights they draw from Bonhoeffer’s work, illustrate Bonhoeffer’s continued relevance for the realm of practiced, political theology. The richness of their reflections show why Bonhoeffer’s writings and his own lived theological experience continue to offer resources for creative theological engagement with the challenges of our own times.

Introduction

5

NOTES 1. Letter of July 21, 1944, to Eberhard Bethge, in Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 486. Volume 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009). 2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 48. Volume 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

WORKS CITED Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Sanctorum Communio. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 1. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010.

I

Historical-Critical Interpretation

Chapter One

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology Michael P. DeJonge

On February 14, 2017, New York Times columnist David Brooks wondered how best to understand the threat posed by the Trump presidency and, therefore, how best to resist it. The first option that Brooks considered (before settling on another) was that Trump might pose the threat of authoritarianism. If that is the threat, Brooks continued, “then Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the model for the resistance. . . . In the face of fascism, [Bonhoeffer] wrote, it was not enough to simply ‘bandage the victims under the wheels of injustice, but jam a spoke into the wheel itself.’” 1 Brooks’s column testifies both to the anxiety many felt in the early days of the Trump presidency and to the ongoing inspiration offered by Bonhoeffer’s legacy of political resistance. What actions specifically did Brooks imagine with the image of jamming a spoke into the wheel? He went on to interpret the phase this way: “If we are in a Bonhoeffer moment, then aggressive nonviolent action makes sense: marching in the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting town halls, vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition.” Bonhoeffer’s idea of jamming a spoke into the wheel is associated with gumming up the machinery of power through nonviolent resistance. The phrase “jamming a spoke into the wheel itself” (or “seizing the wheel itself”) 2 comes from Bonhoeffer’s 1933 essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” which took an early public stand against the Nazi regime. There he writes, “There are thus three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-à-vis the state,” before naming “seizing the wheel itself” as the third, most extreme option. 3 We see that “seizing the wheel itself” is explicitly an action of the church. Specifically, as I show in this chapter, it is a form of the church’s proclamation. 9

10

Michael P. DeJonge

One of the noteworthy features of Brooks’s invocation of Bonhoeffer, then, is its omission of the church as a unique agent of resistance. Such downplaying of the church’s resistance agency, which is not limited to Brooks and other popularizers of Bonhoeffer’s legacy but is in fact common even in the scholarship, obscures the logic of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in which Bonhoeffer meticulously defines and protects the unique resistance agency of the church. To the degree that this essay is also a central text in Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking, such a reading of “seizing the wheel itself” covers over a key feature of his political theology: its differentiation of actors on the political scene. I offer in this chapter an interpretation of the phrase “seizing the wheel itself” in the context of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” read with special attention to the array of agents Bonhoeffer differentiates there. This differentiation serves, in part, to reserve for the church the kind of political action most proper to it as the community gathered around the word of God, the most drastic action of which is the kind of proclamation that he names “seizing the wheel itself.” THE “TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST . . . LIVES BY THE GOSPEL ALONE” At the opening of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” Bonhoeffer notes that the recently passed Aryan paragraph legislation prohibiting Jews from various organizations and professions raises the question of the church’s relationship to the state. As he puts it, “How does the church judge this action by the state, and what is the church called upon to do about it?” 4 From the beginning, Bonhoeffer explicitly frames the essay in terms of the church; the question is how the church should respond to this unjust legislation. Moreover, he immediately insists that this question of church-state interaction can be answered only “on the basis of a right concept of the church.” 5 So, the essay asks a question about the church’s action and answers it in terms of the concept of the church, which sets the parameters of the church’s relation to the state in general and in response to the Aryan paragraph in particular. In fact, the logic of the whole essay radiates from this “right concept of the church” outward. What then is the “right concept of the church”? As he puts it shortly thereafter, the “true church of Christ . . . lives by the gospel alone.” 6 Bonhoeffer’s definition of the church in terms of the gospel has a twofold meaning that is in keeping with the authoritative Lutheran Augsburg Confession, where the church is defined as “the assembly [or communion] of saints in which the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly.” 7 In this definition, the first fold of the church’s relationship to the gospel

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

11

is this: the church preaches the gospel (while also administering the sacraments that are the concretion of that gospel). The second fold presents the church as the community gathered by that very preaching of the gospel. The church as a gathered community is not defined by nationality, race, class, political persuasion, and so forth. Rather, the defining feature of the church qua community is the fact that it is gathered around the word. 8 So, to name both folds, the church is both that community that does the preaching of the gospel and at the same time the community gathered by that preached word. In short, the church preaches and hears the gospel. 9 That is the “right concept of the church” in a nutshell. These two folds of the concept of the church are important later in “The Church and the Jewish Question” when Bonhoeffer distinguishes between the kinds of resistance proper to the church’s preaching and teaching office (i.e., the church as preacher of Christ’s word) and the church’s diaconal ministry (i.e., the church as the body of Christ). Until that point (discussed below in the section “to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel”), I keep the focus on the church’s proclamation. 10 In order to understand how the “right concept of the church” contains within it an answer to the question of the church’s relationship to the state, we need to unpack the form of the church’s proclamation. We need to know, what is the form of the gospel, the preaching of which is the defining task of the church? As a first step in unpacking what is meant by gospel, we need to disambiguate two senses of the word. 11 In the Lutheran tradition in general and in Bonhoeffer’s thinking in particular, gospel has both a narrow and a broad sense. The narrow sense of the word is at work when the gospel is contrasted with the law, as when Lutherans say that justification comes not through the works of the law but through the hearing of the gospel. In this narrow usage, law refers to the expectations God places on humans while gospel refers to the message of justification, the declaration that humans are forgiven despite their failure to fulfill the law. In this law-and-gospel language, then, gospel refers narrowly to one part of the church’s proclamation. In the broad sense, however, gospel means the entirety of the church’s proclamation, including both the proclamation of the law and the proclamation of the gospel narrowly understood as the forgiveness of sins. The term gospel is ambiguous in this way in that it sometimes refers to the whole of the church’s message and sometimes refers to a part of it. When Bonhoeffer defines the church in terms of the gospel, both the narrow and broad senses need to be kept in mind. The church preaches the gospel in the narrow sense, the message that the believer is justified by faith through God’s gracious work in Christ. But preaching the gospel in this narrow sense requires also preaching the law in what is called its theological or spiritual use—only if sinners despair of their own ability to fulfill the law can they recognize and accept Christ’s gracious work. Furthermore, in addi-

12

Michael P. DeJonge

tion to preaching the gospel in the narrow sense and the law in its theological use, the church also preaches the law for the restraint of sin. For example, the church preaches “thou shalt not commit adultery” not only to show us that we can never fulfill this law in the radical sense of never lusting after anyone in our heart (that would be the theological use). The church also preaches “thou shalt not commit adultery” for the restraint of sin, that is, so that families and communities are not further torn apart by adultery. So, the church preaches the gospel in the narrow sense, the law in its theological use, and the law in its sin-restraining use. Finally, all three of these fall under the gospel in the broader sense, the proclamation of the church in its totality. All of this is involved when Bonhoeffer says the church preaches the gospel. The church that “lives by the gospel alone” is the church that preaches that multifaceted gospel. THE “STATE AS GOD’S ORDER OF PRESERVATION” The multifaceted gospel goes some way toward elaborating the concept of the church at the heart of “The Church and the Jewish Question.” What defines the state with which such a church might interact? According to Bonhoeffer, the task of the state is the “exercise of the power of the sword and of the law. . . . In this it has not only the negative task of punishing the wicked but also the positive task of commending the good as well as the godly (1 Peter 2:14!).” 12 The state is tasked with political rule, the making and enforcing of law in the interest of justice. The previous section’s definition of the church in terms of the multifaceted gospel combined with this account of the state’s task allows Bonhoeffer to position precisely the place of the state vis-à-vis the church. To say that the state uses the law and the sword for the promotion of justice is to say that the state’s defining task is the exercise of the sin-retraining function of the law in society. If the church’s task is the preaching of the gospel in the broad sense—which includes preaching the gospel in the narrow sense, preaching the law in its theological use, and preaching the law in its sin-restraining function—then the task of the state is the exercise of the sin-restraining function of the law in society, what we can call the political use of the law. 13 Bonhoeffer is clear that the state’s authority to regulate society is derived from God. The state rules the world “in God’s stead.” 14 Its authority derives “from above,” from God. 15 Its authority is thus a “form of the authority of Christ.” 16 In this way, the state plays an important, God-ordained role in the world. Put in salvific-historical scope, the state works to preserve the world from the chaos that is by rights the result of sin’s entry into the world. Theologically put, the state’s task is preservation. For this reason Bonhoef-

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

13

fer, in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” calls the state “God’s order of preservation.” 17 So defined, the church and the state have demarcated roles as God’s agents in the world. They differ as to tasks and tools: the state preserves order and relative justice through law, and the church preaches redemption by the word. Bonhoeffer is clear on this division of labor: “The church may not become the state,” and the church “will not try to govern the state.” Rather, they are each called to “completely responsible, true action, each according to its own office.” 18 Church and state have respective divine mandates, and each has the tools to fulfill its mandate. Under ordinary circumstances, then, the church and state’s relationship is cooperative. The two work together as partners in God’s plan for preservation and redemption. As Bonhoeffer puts it, the “church and the state are side by side,” working in cooperation and relative autonomy. 19 The state enjoys relative autonomy from the church, for it knows the content of the law. The church allows the state this autonomy while itself focusing on proclamation. So long as the state functions according to its divine mandate, the church need not interfere. This basically cooperative understanding of church and state stands behind Bonhoeffer’s initial statement regarding the church’s response to the state’s adoption of the Aryan paragraph. Having asked at the opening of “The Church and the Jewish Question” how the church should respond to the state, he first says, “There is no doubt that the church of the Reformation is not encouraged to get involved directly in specific political actions of the state. The church has neither to praise nor to censure the laws of the state.” 20 The “true church of Christ, which lives by the gospel alone and knows the nature of state actions, will never interfere in the functioning of the state in this way.” 21 Bonhoeffer’s initial response is that the church should refrain from comment on the state’s enactment of law. Given what has been passed down about Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazi state, this initial response is perhaps surprising. Nevertheless, it is entirely in keeping with his “right concept of the church” that “lives by the gospel alone” and the corresponding account of the state as “God’s order of preservation.” It is the state’s—explicitly not the church’s—task, as a matter of course, to govern society through law. And the state, by God’s good providence, has the tools to do so. For the church to involve itself in lawmaking and law-enforcing as a matter of course would contravene God’s mandate for both state and church. Now, we know from the rest of “The Church and the Jewish Question”— “seizing the wheel itself”!—that this initial word is not Bonhoeffer’s last on ecclesial resistance to the state. But by this initial word of restraint Bonhoeffer maintains the distinction between state and church, a distinction crucial for guaranteeing that the church, should it resist, resists as the church.

14

Michael P. DeJonge

“IT REMAINS FOR THE HUMANITARIAN ASSOCIATIONS . . . TO ACCUSE THE STATE OF OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY” There is in “The Church and the Jewish Question” an equally important but less obvious distinction, not between church and state but between church and humanitarian organizations, which are defined by their pursuit of moral and humanitarian goals. When Bonhoeffer initially urges the church to refrain from commenting on the state’s laws, he says that it is not the church’s primary task to determine whether a given law is, as he puts it, “good or bad from a humanitarian perspective.” And, he says, any judgment the church renders on the state “stands quite apart from any moralizing and is to be distinguished from every sort of humanitarianism.” 22 In statements like these, the distinction between church and humanitarian association emerges. This contrast between church and humanitarian association might surprise us because we may associate the church’s political voice precisely with moral and humanitarian concerns. If the church speaks against the state, we might think, it does so on the basis of its moral authority. But Bonhoeffer disagrees. If the church speaks against the state, he says, it must do so on the basis of the gospel. When the issue is put this way, we see that the distinction between church and humanitarian association rests on a more fundamental contrast between the gospel and morality, a contrast that is especially pronounced in Lutheran thinking. The contrast between gospel and morality is apparent in that central Lutheran doctrine, justification. The Lutheran doctrine of justification trades on the contrast between human attempts at self-justification and the free, divine gift of justification by grace. According to this contrast, humans attempt to justify themselves before God, and one of the criterion by which they do this is the moral law. By being good, that is, through the works of the moral law, we try to justify ourselves. When the gospel indicts our self-justificatory moral striving, then, the distinction between the gospel and morality comes into relief. For a Lutheran theological orientation, it is fundamental that the gospel stands in judgment of morality. Now, this is not to say, of course, that a life lived from the gospel and a life lived from moral principles will always be at odds. On the contrary, sinners who have been justified do live morally, Luther and the tradition insist, for faith finds expression in works of love. But the justified sinner approaches the moral life now from a fresh perspective, doing good not under the pressure of moral selfjustification but in gratitude to God and love for the neighbor. In this way, a Lutheran theology of justification involves a dialectical moment of contrast between the gospel and morality, after which the justified sinner returns, so to speak, to a higher form of moral living. So, while gospel-driven action might ultimately find common cause with morality-driven action, the contrast between

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

15

the gospel and morality is crucially important. It is the difference between works-righteousness and justification by faith. What plays out in the fundamental contrast between gospel and morality repeats for Bonhoeffer at an institutional level in the contrast between church and humanitarian association. It is explicitly the task of humanitarian associations, he says, “to accuse the state of offences against morality.” Such moral activism is not generally the task of the church, for the church is defined by the gospel rather than by a moral-humanitarian program. If the church were to speak on every unjust action of the state and do so “from the standpoint of any sort of, say, humanitarian ideal,” 23 it would cease to be the church and become a humanitarian organization. The church does have ethical tasks, but its essence—the thing that makes the church the church—is the gospel. Whatever the church’s moral stances, these must be understood from the gospel rather than some generally accessible morality. Although this distinction between church and humanitarian association does not announce itself as obviously as the church/state distinction in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” it does nonetheless run like a thread through the argument. Bonhoeffer repeatedly contrasts the church’s gospeldriven action with humanitarian action: whether the actions of the state are “good or bad from a humanitarian perspective,” the church speaks from the gospel; the church will not criticize the state “from the standpoint of any sort of, say, humanitarian ideal”; and any “judgment by the church . . . is to be distinguished from every sort of humanitarianism.” Nearly synonymous with the language of humanitarianism in this essay is the language of morality. The judgment of the church on the state “stands quite apart from any moralizing”; the church should not accept the state “relegating essentially moral . . . duties to it”; the church may need to tolerate the kind of “‘moral’ injustice that is necessarily involved in the use of force in certain concrete state actions”; the church has gospel authority to speak against the state “precisely because it does not moralize about individual cases”; and “the church spares the state any moralizing reproach.” 24 While the church’s actions might coincide with actions motivated by humanitarianism and morality, the church acts in accordance with the logic of the gospel, not the logic of humanitarianism or morality. Let humanitarian associations moralize. The church must speak and act from the gospel. “AND INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN MEN WHO SEE THEMSELVES CALLED TO DO SO” Challenging the state on matters of justice falls not only to humanitarian associations but also to “individual Christian men who see themselves called to do so.” 25 With this, then, we can discern yet another agent of resistance,

16

Michael P. DeJonge

individual Christians exercising their vocation. This means the church as an agent of resistance is to be distinguished not only from the state and humanitarian associations but also from individuals. This follows again from Bonhoeffer’s “right concept of the church,” 26 because the defining tasks of the church are not the defining tasks of the individual Christian. The church is defined by the proclaiming and hearing of the gospel. Both of these are, in Bonhoeffer’s thinking, communal tasks. Therefore, the resistance work of any individual necessarily differs from the work of the church. Specifically, when individual Christians resist state injustice, they follow the same logic that humanitarian organizations do. “It remains,” Bonhoeffer writes, “for the humanitarian associations and individual Christian men who see themselves called to do so, to make the state aware of the moral aspect of the measures it takes in this regard, that is, should the occasion arise, to accuse the state of offenses against morality.” And, “individual Christians, who know that they are called to do so in certain cases . . . accus[e] the state of ‘inhumanity.’” 27 While the church acts from the gospel, individual Christians are driven by faith but appeal to elementary morality and humanitarian concern, which ought to compel any decent (even if non-Christian) political authority. In “The Church and the Jewish Question,” then, Bonhoeffer distinguishes between the various actions of the church corporate, appropriate to the church’s definition in terms of the gospel, and the action of the individual Christian, appropriate to the exercise of vocation in accord with the humanitarian and moral order by which God rules. 28 By this point we have followed Bonhoeffer’s distinction between church and state as well as his distinctions between the church and other agents of resistance, namely, humanitarian associations and individuals. All of these distinctions work to ensure that the church, should it resist, resists as the church. “EITHER TOO LITTLE LAW AND ORDER OR TOO MUCH LAW AND ORDER COMPELS THE CHURCH TO SPEAK” Before proceeding to the ways the church might resist, we first need to ask under what conditions the church should resist. How, within the logic of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” does Bonhoeffer get from the church’s initial restraint to eventual resistance? It has frequently been claimed that Bonhoeffer’s initial call for restraint and eventual calls for resistance render the argument of “The Church and the Jewish Question” fundamentally inconsistent. But Bonhoeffer’s understanding of state and church actually makes this apparent contradiction not only non-contradictory but in fact logically necessary. The relationship between church and state is, for Bonhoeffer, one of relative autonomy. That there is

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

17

autonomy means, as a general rule, the church leaves legislating to the state, and the state leaves preaching to the church. But this is a relative rather than absolute autonomy. The word that the church preaches is the word of Christ over the entire world, which means the church does, under certain circumstances, bring that word to bear on the state’s worldly rule. 29 To say, as Bonhoeffer does in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” that in one case the church should not speak and in another case the church should speak is not contradictory but rather the logical conclusion of his relatively autonomous account of state and church. Bonhoeffer himself marks the threshold between the church’s restraint and resistance in several ways in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” but the most prominent is the language of “too much” and “too little” law and order. This language provides the boundaries between which the church should restrain itself, leaving the state to its relative autonomy. So long as the state’s exercise of law falls within these bounds, any injustice on the part of the state should be addressed within the machinery of the state itself, urged on by humanitarian associations and individuals in the exercise of their vocation. If the state crosses these thresholds, then the church moves from restraint to resistance. That the church resists when the state crosses the thresholds of “too little” and “too much” law and order must mean, given his insistence that the church’s resistance rests on the gospel, that these thresholds mark the points when issues of justice (ethical or humanitarian concerns) become matters of the gospel. Although there are a number of ways to explain how matters of justice become matters of the gospel, perhaps the simplest is as follows. As long as the state operates within those bounds, issues of justice are questions about how the state fulfills its mandate, questions that, as a matter of course, fall outside the church’s mandate. When the state crosses these bounds, however, the question arises whether the state is fulfilling its mandate at all, and this question falls under the purview of the church, for it alone fully understands the state’s mandate as an order of preservation in God’s plan for preservation and redemption. This distinction between how and whether the state fulfills its mandate is difficult in practice, but something like this is again necessary to remain committed to the relationship of relative autonomy between church and state. Looking at Bonhoeffer’s concrete instances of “too little” and “too much” law and order illustrates this distinction between how and whether. “There is too little law and order,” he writes, “wherever a group of people is deprived of its rights; although in concrete cases it will always be extraordinarily difficult to distinguish actual deprivation of rights from a formally permitted minimum of rights.” 30 The (difficult-to-discern-in-practice) threshold of “too little” law and order is crossed when the state’s action moves from a formally permitted minimum of rights to an actual deprivation of rights. In the case of

18

Michael P. DeJonge

a permitted minimum of rights, the question is how the state exercises its mandate. In the case of “too little” law and order, however, the issue becomes whether the state exercises its mandate. This is a matter of the state’s character, which falls within the authority of the church, for the church, through its knowledge of the gospel, which includes the distinction between law and gospel as well as the distinction between preservation and redemption, knows that the state’s role is preservation through law. “At the other extreme,” Bonhoeffer continues, “there can be too much law and order. This would mean the state developing its use of force to such a degree as to rob the Christian faith of its right to proclaim its message,” as when the state might legislate against the church’s preaching to non-Aryans. 31 So, “too much” law and order comes about when the state oversteps its mandate and interferes in the church’s mandate for proclamation. In this way, “too little” and “too much” mark the places where the state’s injustice moves from an issue of moral or humanitarian concern into a theological or gospel concern. When these boundaries are crossed, the state is not merely acting unjustly here or there but is either abandoning its mandate for law and order (in the case of “too little”) or overstepping it (in the case of “too much”). If either or both of these boundaries are crossed, the threat is not only to justice but also to the gospel, and the church must respond on the basis of the gospel. It is at this point in the logic of the essay that Bonhoeffer names the famous “three possibilities for action that the church can take visà-vis the state.” 32 “TO BIND UP THE WOUNDS OF THE VICTIMS BENEATH THE WHEEL” I present Bonhoeffer’s three possibilities for church action out of order to emphasize yet another distinction in resistance agency, namely, the previously mentioned (and relatively soft) distinction between the church in its diaconal office and the church in its office of preaching and teaching. The distinction between the office of the word and the diaconate reaches back to the New Testament 33 and is maintained by Bonhoeffer. 34 This is indeed a distinction, for it is one thing for the church to preach the gospel and another for it to serve the neighbor. But it is at the same time a relatively soft distinction because the two offices belong together in the one definition of the church as the community that preaches and hears the gospel. On the one hand, we can say of the church that it preaches the word, which would be to define the church in terms of its preaching office. But, on the other hand, the church’s proclamation of the divine word also generates (and, paradoxically, presupposes) the church as the community that hears the word. This is that twofold definition of the church as the word of Christ and the body of Christ.

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

19

Focusing on the second fold brings the diaconal office into view. By being Christ in the world, the church acts corporately in service of the neighbor. And the exercise of this diaconal office is one way that the church responds to state injustice. It “provides service to the victims of the state’s actions . . . bind[ing] up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel.” 35 The other two of the three church actions, to which Bonhoeffer dedicates much more energy in the essay, both belong to the church’s preaching office. 36 “MAKING THE STATE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT IT DOES” The less drastic of these word-responses can be called the church’s indirectly political word. 37 In the passage outlining the three church actions, Bonhoeffer describes this word thus: the church “question[s] the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that is, [the church makes] the state responsible for what it does.” 38 Elsewhere in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” Bonhoeffer elaborates on this, writing that the church must keep asking the government whether its actions can be justified as legitimate state actions, that is, actions that create law and order, not lack of rights and disorder. It will be called upon to put this question as strongly as possible wherever the state seems endangered precisely in its character as the state [Staatlichkeit], that is, in its function of creating law and order by force. The church will have to put this question with the utmost clarity today in the matter of the Jewish question. 39

Imbedded in this elaboration is a distinction between the state’s actions and the state’s character. Recalling the passage where Bonhoeffer initially urges restraint on the part of the church, we can note the preponderance of “state action” language there: “There is no doubt that the church of the Reformation,” he writes, “is not encouraged to get involved directly in specific political actions of the state. . . . The actions of the state remain free from interference by the church. . . . Even on the Jewish question today, the church cannot contradict the state directly and demand that it take any particular different course of action.” 40 When Bonhoeffer urges church restraint, he does so with regard to state actions. When he transitions to church resistance, he does so in part by transitioning from the issue of state action to the issue of state character, as in the passage quoted in the previous paragraph. Therefore, the line between state action and character is also the line between how and whether, which is also marked by the boundaries of “too little” and “too much” law and order. Questions about state action arise when the state operates within these boundaries; questions about the state’s character arise when the state crosses them.

20

Michael P. DeJonge

The distinction between state action and character also relates to the distinction between humanitarian associations and the church, for the former speak out about state actions and do so on the basis of morality while the latter speaks out about state character and does so on the basis of the gospel. And this reminds us that when the church does finally speak out against the state here, the logic and form of its word must qualitatively differ from that of the humanitarian organization. What form might this word take? It is by definition not a moralizing critique but a critique from the word. 41 And this means the church cannot at this point speak directly to state actions but rather to its character. The church should “make the state responsible for what it does,” in effect asking, Are you behaving as a state should, as an order of preservation? This might seem like a disappointingly weak word of confrontation, but two things must be kept in mind. First, there remains yet another response of the church to be considered in the next section, which is more direct and confrontational. Second, this word that “makes the state responsible” is actually more confrontational than it initially appears. In the context of the early Third Reich, the Nazi state had made clear that it was not interested in what Bonhoeffer considers the proper task of the state, preserving order in a way that is just for all of its citizens. Rather, the Nazi state showed its character as a state interested in the pursuit of an ethno-nationalist agenda at the expense of the rights of certain groups of people, as revealed in the action of the Aryan paragraph. What Bonhoeffer imagines in this indirectly political word of the church, then, is a challenge to the Nazi regime on the crucial matter of the concept of the state. The church asks, in effect, what the purpose of the state is. Does it exist to promote an ethno-nationalist agenda, or does it exist to maintain order and justice? And on this issue Bonhoeffer thinks the church has the gospel authority to speak, reiterating the modest, justice-preserving vision of the state against the pseudo-messianic, ethno-nationalist Nazi vision of the state. Because the church’s word here concerns the character of the state rather than any specific issue of injustice, the church speaks without “moralizing,” without reducing itself to a humanitarian association. But notice, too, that in this moment of word-resistance, the church also continues to observe the boundary between church and state. The church does not do the work of the state, nor does it try to rule the state. Rather it forces the state’s own responsibility on itself, “thrusting the entire burden of responsibility upon the state itself for the actions proper to it.” 42 The goal of this word of resistance, then, is to return church and state to what Bonhoeffer imagines as the status quo ante, that cooperative situation where each institution fulfills its divine mandate. Because the church refrains here from commenting on particular laws or actions of the state, this word can be described as indirectly political.

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

21

“SEIZE THE WHEEL ITSELF” The final kind of church resistance considered in “The Church and the Jewish Question” is the famous seizing of the wheel itself. This word of resistance escalates the church’s confrontation to a directly political word that temporarily intervenes in politics. What brings this escalation about? If the indirectly political word of the church is necessitated by a state that enforces “too little” or “too much” order, then the directly political word is called for when the state does so “without any scruples”: “This is only possible and called for if the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order, that is, if the church perceives that the state, without any scruples, has created either too much or too little law and order.” 43 An unscrupulously unjust state invites a directly political word from the church. This, then, is the logical trajectory that the church’s preaching and teaching office has followed vis-à-vis the state over the course of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” propelled in large part by the character of the state. Initially, Bonhoeffer maintains that, in general, “the church of the Reformation is not encouraged to get involved directly in specific political actions of the state.” 44 When a state whose character is not in question nonetheless acts unjustly, the church’s word remains unpolitical. When the state’s character comes into question, however, either because it fails to fulfill its mandate (“too little” law and order) or because it oversteps it (“too much”), then the church’s proclamation becomes indirectly political. The church “makes the state responsible for what it does,” reminding it of its mandate. If the state goes further yet and unscrupulously disregards or oversteps its mandate, this puts the church in the position of a directly political proclamation, seizing the wheel itself. What does seizing the wheel itself look like? The provocative image together with the phrase “direct political action” have encouraged interpreters to see here some action other than church proclamation, be it nonviolent political protest or coup d’état and tyrannicide (as if Bonhoeffer here peeks into his future). But this direct political action remains explicitly the action of the church. It must be the kind of action proper to the community that preaches and hears the gospel. When Bonhoeffer later in the paragraph reserves this direct political action for an ecumenical council, this makes clear that he remains in the realm of the church’s proclamation. Even further evidence of the word-character of this direct political action comes when Bonhoeffer describes this as a status confessionis, for the proper response in such a situation is a confession, i.e., an authoritative proclamation of the word, the sort of word delivered by ecumenical councils. Seizing the wheel itself is a directly political proclamatory action of the church.

22

Michael P. DeJonge

What distinguishes this proclamation from others is its directly political character; this word steps directly into politics, into the law-making and lawenforcing actions of the state’s mandate. In this extreme situation of a state that unscrupulously disregards its mandate, the church’s preaching does what it normally does not do, stepping for a moment into the sphere of the political to proclaim something about the concrete business of the state. This is a qualitatively different, directly political word that is not an element of the church’s ongoing preaching and teaching activity. Although I do not have the space to expand on the point here, Bonhoeffer had by 1933 recently developed the logic of the ecumenical church’s directly political word under the concept of the concrete commandment. 45 When he did this in his 1932 “World Alliance” lecture, the situation was a state agitating for a war not for the preservation of peace but for nationalistically motivated expansion of territory. Because such a state would stop functioning as an order of preservation, Bonhoeffer called for an intervention from the church, which would take the form of the concrete commandment: do not fight this war. 46 In “The Church and the Jewish Question,” the situation is a state that disregards its mandate by persecuting Jews (“too little law and order”) while simultaneously threatening to overstep its mandate by dictating to the church regarding its ministry with and to the Jews (“too much law and order”), both of these resting in the state’s self-conception in racial and pseudo-messianic terms rather than as an order of preservation. Bonhoeffer does not specify in “The Church and the Jewish Question” the content of the appropriate concrete commandment in such a situation, referring that decision to the ecumenical council. But based on the parallels with “World Alliance,” we might guess that a two-part concrete commandment might be in order: repeal the unjust civil Aryan paragraph legislation and do not encroach on the church’s mandate through an ecclesial Aryan paragraph. It seems that would be the content of the proclamation that seizes the wheel itself. Again, even in this most directly political act of the church, Bonhoeffer is careful to keep the church’s agency distinct from that of a humanitarian association. Certainly, there are humanitarian grounds for avoiding war and repealing unjust legislation. But Bonhoeffer is careful to guarantee that the church which speaks the concrete commandment or seizes the wheel does so on the basis of the gospel, specifically on the basis of the sin-restraining use of the law that falls under the broad sense of the gospel. The messages of the church and humanitarian associations might overlap here, but their logic and authority remain distinct. Similarly, even in the concrete commandment that seizes the wheel, Bonhoeffer is keen that the church remains distinct from the state. Even as the church steps into the mandate of the state, it does so temporarily as an emergency measure in the face of a state that abandons its mandate. The goal of such a proclamation is not to take over the business of the state nor to

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

23

become the state’s consigliere but rather to restore the state’s proper functioning so that both state and church can return to their divinely mandated business. Bonhoeffer envisions the concrete commandment or seizing of the wheel not as a part of the church’s everyday proclamation but as a word reserved for extraordinary situations. This, then, is what seizing the wheel itself means in the context of “The Church and the Jewish Question.” In the face of a state that unscrupulously fails to fulfill its mandate as an order of preservation, the church offers its most directly political form of proclamation, which temporarily steps into political matters that normally would be the remit of a properly functioning state. This proclamatory act is both empowered and constrained by the unique resistance agency of the church as the community that lives from the gospel alone. Even in this most political action, the church remains distinct from humanitarian associations, individuals, and the state. The remarkable care with which Bonhoeffer defines and protects the unique resistance agency of the church in this essay frequently drops from view when the phrase “seizing the wheel itself” is lifted out of the context of “The Church and the Jewish Question.” NOTES 1. David Brooks, “How Should One Resist the Trump Administration?” New York Times (February 14, 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opinion/how-should-one-resist-thetrump-administration.html?_r=0. 2. The German is “dem Rad selbst in die Speichen zu fallen.” This translates literally as “to fall within the spokes of the wheel.” It has been translated, however, as “to jam a spoke in the wheel itself” and “to seize the wheel itself.” The latter translation is favored in DBWE 12:365. 3. DBWE 12:365, emphasis added. 4. The essay has two parts, the second of which deals with a second question, “What are the consequences for the church’s position toward the baptized Jews in its congregations?” (DBWE 12:362). I focus on the first part of the essay in this chapter. 5. DBWE 12:362. 6. DBWE 12:363. 7. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles Arand, Eric Gritsch, et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 43. 8. This account of the church as gathered by the word rather than race or nationality is especially important in the second half of the essay as well as in “The Aryan Paragraph in the Church” (DBWE 12:425–32). 9. To put this twofold definition in explicitly Christological language, as is Bonhoeffer’s wont, the church preaches the word of Christ and is the body and presence of Christ: “The church is the place where Jesus Christ’s taking form is proclaimed and where it happens” (DBWE 6:102). 10. I am using “proclamation” as a shorthand for all of the activities that fall under the preaching and teaching office of the church. This includes not just Sunday morning sermons but whatever other forms of teaching the church undertakes under the authority of the word, including teaching theology, making declarations and confessions, and so forth.

24

Michael P. DeJonge

11. Mary Jane Haemig, “The Confessional Basis of Lutheran Thinking on Church-State Issues,” Church and State: Lutheran Perspectives, ed. John R. Stumme and Robert W. Tuttle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 172n6. 12. DBWE 16:514–15. 13. I am using “political use of the law” more narrowly than some others do. It is more traditional to use this to name what I earlier introduced as the sin-retraining function of the law. I prefer to limit the “political use” to the specific sin-restraining use of the law that is proper to the state. This is in keeping with the narrow sense in which Bonhoeffer tends to use the term “political,” referring to the law-making and law-enforcing tasks of the state. 14. DBWE 16:514–15. 15. For example, DBWE 12:275; also 6:391. 16. DBWE 16:522. 17. DBWE 12:362. 18. DBWE 11:332. 19. Ibid. 20. DBWE 12:362. 21. Ibid., 363. 22. Ibid., 362–63. 23. Ibid., 363. 24. Ibid., 362–64; emphases added. 25. Ibid., 363. 26. Ibid., 362. 27. Ibid., 363–64; emphases added. 28. I argue that his later participation in the conspiracy should be read as an extension of this individual resistance mentioned in “The Church and the Jewish Question” but in the extreme case. See Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance: The Word against the Wheel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 128–47. 29. DBWE 11:332. 30. DBWE 12:364. 31. Ibid., 365. 32. Ibid. 33. Acts 6:2. 34. For example, DBWE 6:362. 35. DBWE 12:365. 36. I argue that this diaconal resistance of the church, mentioned briefly in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” soon gets much greater theological elaboration in Discipleship and related writings. See DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 109–27. 37. In “What is Church?” Bonhoeffer uses the language of the first and second political word of the church, which informs my language of indirect and direct political word. Recall the narrow definition of political in note 13. 38. DBWE 12:365. 39. Ibid., 364. 40. Ibid., 362–63; emphases altered. 41. See also DBWE 11:332. 42. DBWE 12:364; also 11:332. 43. Ibid., 366. 44. Ibid., 362. 45. For more, see DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 79–87. 46. DBWE 11:356–69.

WORKS CITED Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.

The Church as an Agent of Resistance in Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology

25

———. Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932. Edited by Eberhard Amelung et al. Translated by Anne Schmidt-Lange et al. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 11. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. ———. Berlin: 1932–1933. Edited by Larry L. Rasmussen. Translated by Isabel Best, David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945. Edited by Jørgen Glenthøj et al. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 16. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Brooks, David. “How Should One Resist the Trump Administration?” New York Times. February 14, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opinion/how-should-one-resist-thetrump-administration.html?_r=0. DeJonge, Michael P. Bonhoeffer on Resistance: The Word against the Wheel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Haemig, Mary Jane. “The Confessional Basis of Lutheran Thinking on Church-State Issues.” Church and State: Lutheran Perspectives. Edited by John R. Stumme and Robert W. Tuttle. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. Kolb, Robert, and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Translated by Charles Arand, Eric Gritsch, et al. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

Chapter Two

Recovering the Natural for Politics Bonhoeffer and the Natural Law Tradition Jens Zimmermann

One of the most remarkable features of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s unfinished Ethics is his recovery of natural law in the text fragment “Natural Life.” As we shall see shortly, his return to the natural law tradition was likely prompted by the particular political circumstances of Hitler’s euthanasia program, which aimed to eliminate “life unworthy of life.” 1 This inhuman policy impressed on Bonhoeffer the need for Protestants to reason from the natural structures of life without an immediate appeal to divine revelation against “arbitrariness and disorder” in social matters. 2 The Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) anticipated Bonhoeffer’s efforts to engage politics on the basis of natural law during his famous debate with Karl Barth (1886–1968) about natural theology in 1934. Brunner, in fact, not only predicted the danger of neglecting a theologia naturalis, but also identified Barth’s overreaction to the church’s abuses of natural theology as a major hindrance to overcoming this neglect. Brunner concedes that in the nineteenth century, a distorted understanding of natural theology had allowed the church to slide into liberal Protestantism, and that Barth’s sharp opposition of nature and grace had served as important “counterweight to dangerous aberrations” of this cultural Protestantism. Moreover, under the current Nazi rule, once again, “a false theology derived from nature,” namely the nationalist theology of the German Christians, was “also at the present time threatening the Church to the point of death.” 3 Yet in this case, Brunner argues, Barth’s nature-grace opposition turns out to be counterproductive, because his uncompromising rejection of any creational basis for ethics deprived Christians of a platform for public reasoning about the common good and social responsibility. 4 Therefore, Brunner concludes, “it is the task of our 27

28

Jens Zimmermann

theological generation to find the way back to a true theologia naturalis,” which is “to be found far away from Barth’s negation and quite near Calvin’s doctrine.” 5 Brunner’s imperative for shared moral reasoning based on the natural was taken up much later than he expected. For the “Barthian hegemony” of disparaging the natural remained untroubled until the 1990s when a spate of publications indicated a renewed interest among Protestants in natural law theory. 6 In fact, among Brunner’s notable contemporary Protestant theologians, only the rising theological star Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself greatly influenced by Barth, similarly defied the theologian’s rejection of natural law and, in so doing, became the sole German Lutheran voice of his day (a voice soon muted by the ban on his public speaking and publishing by the Gestapo) for natural human rights. 7 In this chapter, we will describe Bonhoeffer’s recovery of the natural within his political context and in light of his theology as a whole, examine his grounding of human rights in natural life, and finally, point out his conscious reliance on the natural law tradition. We will then conclude with a few remarks on the continuing relevance of his retrieval of the natural. POLITICAL CONTEXT Hitler’s program for murdering disabled children and adults, as part of the Nazis’ quest for “racial hygiene” (including forced sterilization), lasted from 1939 until its official shutdown in 1941 on account of public protests by physicians and clergy. The program reemerged soon afterwards as the Endlösung, with gas chambers and crematoria originally used in the Euthanasia program repurposed for the genocide of the Jewish people. 8 Through his medical connections, Bonhoeffer’s father, the noted psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer, knew about Hitler’s euthanasia plans early on and protested them. It is, therefore, surely no accident that Bonhoeffer discussed with his brotherin-law, Gerhard Leibholz, a constitutional lawyer, the need for natural law as early as 1939. In a letter from 1940, Bonhoeffer reminded Leibholz of their common interest in such law, relating that he had “thought and read much about our old discussion topic [of natural law]” 9 and wondering whether there were “legal principles [Rechtsprinzipien] in creation that one should consider as absolutely valid” or if the law was “tied to actual historically extant power [faktische Macht]?” 10 In other words, Bonhoeffer poses Dostoyevsky’s question whether moral reasoning is determined by political expediency in the absence of a transcendent source of morality. In Germany, this question confronted Bonhoeffer with an ironic twist: the German Christians evoked God’s orders of creation (Schöpfungsordnungen) to support Hitler’s nationalist and racist agenda, rendering even more urgent the need to

Recovering the Natural for Politics

29

find a broader, nonreligious moral framework that could challenge Hitler’s program. Bonhoeffer’s letter provides us with two important insights for understanding his recovery of the “natural” in Ethics. The first insight concerns the term natural law. Bonhoeffer explicitly employs this term for his own interest in discovering moral principles in creation. He acknowledges the importance of “the teaching of lex naturae which underlies Catholicism” and recognizes the importance of Catholics’ ability to uphold unique but interdependent areas of rights (Rechtsgebiete) like “family, economy, etc., which all have one source, the creator of the world.” 11 As the remainder of his letter to Leibholz makes clear, Bonhoeffer wants to retrieve just this kind of natural law in seeking a middle path between certain Catholic and Protestant positions. He wants to recover “inner-historical legal norms [Rechtsnormen].” 12 Why then does Bonhoeffer not use the term “natural law” in Ethics but prefers “the natural” or “natural life”? Likely because he follows Karl Barth in avoiding the dangers of invoking “orders of creation” or “orders of nature,” which were used by Nazi theologians and scientists to justify nationalism and the extinction of so-called unnatural (entartete) forms of life—what Nazi propagandists termed “lebensunwertes Leben.” 13 Bonhoeffer’s terminological caution about natural orders notwithstanding, his letter indicates already what we will show below: Bonhoeffer is recovering a concept of natural moral law, and it is legitimate to discuss his Ethics fragment on the natural in terms of lex naturalis in comparison with Protestant and Catholic natural law traditions. In this fragment, Bonhoeffer pursues a Christologically grounded rehabilitation of natural moral principles in general and of the ius naturae (Naturrecht) in particular. He clearly assumes “a natural order of the world,” woven into the fabric of God’s creation, to which human action ought to conform. 14 Second, this letter already lays out the basic concerns that structure Bonhoeffer’s approach to natural law. His main goal is to correlate divine justice (Recht) “within creation and within redemption,” avoiding either equation or separation between them. The basic question is whether “God reveals himself in history . . . or only in the scriptures that bear witness to Christ?” 15 Catholic confidence in positive natural law, he fears, “relativizes revelation” by too much emphasis on an independent realm of nature, while Protestants’ overemphasis on revelation denigrates “the historical, [and] creational norms.” 16 His own preference is to follow Barth, who, in “good biblical fashion,” relates and orients “all orders of creation strictly to Christ.” 17 Yet how does one correlate on this basis the laws of society, justice, and divine love what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount? 18 How does a society’s earthly law align with penultimate creational structures on the one hand, and with God’s ultimate word of justification of the sinner in Christ on the other hand? These are the questions occupying Bonhoeffer already from 1939

30

Jens Zimmermann

onward. He wants to recognize a natural law that is concretely but only partially realized in actual historical laws that aim at justice and yet remain open to Christian love and righteousness. He surmises that “the ultimate meaning of all earthly law [Recht] . . . should ensure the possibility of love in the Christian sense without ever desiring or being able to become identical with it.” 19 In the opening lines of the fragment “natural life,” Bonhoeffer restates the dilemma resulting from Protestantism’s separation of nature from grace. Protestant theology ends up with two unworkable alternatives. The first is an excessive emphasis on the Fall’s effects that disparage nature, allowing “everything human and natural to sink into the night of sin.” The second alternative is to regard the natural as “primal creation,” a quasi-unfallen natural realm with discernible orders of creation that are then used to justify dehumanizing cultural practices like antisemitism for the sake of nationalism. Either way, without a nuanced understanding of the natural as a shared sphere of human moral reasoning about the common good, “the evangelical church lost the clear, guiding word concerning the burning questions of life,” 20 leaving natural ethics to the Catholics. And indeed, Catholic and Protestant responses to Hitler’s euthanasia campaign confirm Bonhoeffer’s verdict. Catholics appealed more readily to general natural principles, reminding the public that “not only belief in God as Lord over every human being’s life and death, but also the lasting welfare of every earthly communal life, especially the life in a state and its moral authority, require that the inviolability of individual life is to be maintained at all cost.” Protestants, by contrast, could appeal “only” to God’s revelation in the Bible. 21 Bonhoeffer’s response to these extremes is remarkable because, in full recognition of the danger inherent in pursuing an order internal to creation given the German Christians’ abuse of this concept, he refuses to surrender the natural. When Bonhoeffer realized the need for inherent normative creational structures in light of Hitler’s politics, he acknowledged the potential danger of reasserting norms within the created order. “You are right,” he conceded to Bethge, “it is dangerous material.” That he found this material “all the more attractive for that reason,” 22 indicates his sense that the potential poison actually contained the antidote to Hitler’s politics of genocide. The recovery of natural moral reasoning allows Bonhoeffer to insist that civic law ought to recognize the priority of natural rights “over all positive law.” 23 CHRISTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF THE NATURAL The Christological foundation and eschatological structure for Bonhoeffer’s recovery of the natural are found mainly in related Ethics fragments. 24 In

Recovering the Natural for Politics

31

“Christ, Reality, and the Good,” he draws on Paul’s cosmic Christ in 1 Collossians 16–18 25 to argue for “the one realm of Christ reality” against any dualistic conceptions of reality. 26 Since everything created exists through and for Christ and continues to exist only through Christ, Bonhoeffer concludes that “nothing stands outside this relation to Christ, neither persons nor things, indeed only in its relation toward Christ does anything created have its characteristic being [sein Wesen], not only the human being but also state, economy, science, nature etc.” 27 With this statement, Bonhoeffer dismisses the two-kingdom teaching of his contemporary Lutherans, who believed the church should be apolitical and not interfere with affairs of state. 28 For Bonhoeffer, this separation is unwarranted because all things exist in, through, and for Christ, having their origin and end in him, so that “the world, the natural, and the profane, and reason are seen as included in God from the beginning.” 29 However, Bonhoeffer also avers that this unified reality is to be thought in “polemic terms,” that is, neither static opposition nor equation of nature and grace should determine Christian thought. Rather, a hermeneutic of discernment is required for which the “‘supernatural’ is found only in the natural, the holy in the profane, the revelational only in the rational.” 30 In another Ethics fragment, “Ultimate and Penultimate Things,” Bonhoeffer delineates more clearly the eschatological structure that determines the “polemic relation” of the unified reality in Christ. He works out in Christological terms the full legitimacy of fallen creation and humanity in light of God’s ultimate judgment and renewal in Christ. Does this ultimate word simply interrupt and negate everything preceding it? We are asking, Bonhoeffer writes, “about the penultimate in the life of a Christian.” 31 How is one to imagine temporal continuity between penultimate creation and its ultimate renewal already extant in Christ but fully to come with his return? Bonhoeffer’s solution is a Christological ontology that insists on the Christian’s participation in the incarnation. Participating in all three inseparable aspects of Christ’s life allows for a proper correlation of ultimate and penultimate elements of reality. The eternal word’s becoming flesh affirms creation but without simply validating its fallen state. Jesus’s death on the cross indicates God’s judgment of creation, but also already includes the world’s reconciliation to God, and it does so in light of its ultimate renewal in the resurrection. 32 The Christian life is participation in all three of these aspects, 33 wherefore “the Christian life means neither a destruction nor a sanctioning of the penultimate,” but rather “participation in the Christ-encounter with the world.” A Christian life, in other words, entails living fully in the penultimate while adjudicating concrete situations in light of the ultimate reality of Christ in whom both aspects are united. 34

32

Jens Zimmermann

RECOVERING THE NATURAL IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS That Bonhoeffer carefully grounds his recovery of the natural in his Christological and eschatological convictions is clear from his insistence that “the concept of the natural must be recovered from the gospel itself.” 35 For Bonhoeffer, the gospel is the incarnation, the good news that in the God-humanity of Jesus God reconciled the world to himself by recapitulating all things in Christ. The goal of Christ’s Stellvertretung (i.e., his standing in for and recapitulation of humanity) is to establish true humanity. 36 Based on this gospel, the natural is creation as structured by this Christ-event. The natural is the fallen creation, the penultimate, which is affirmed and upheld by Christ, but only for the sake of its ultimate origin and destiny, that is, for its complete renewal upon his return. 37 Through the Fall, Bonhoeffer writes, “creature becomes nature; the immediate relation with God of the true creature becomes the relative freedom of natural life.” 38 This distinction between creation and the natural (as good but fallen creation) allows Bonhoeffer to differentiate in Christological terms the natural from the unnatural: “The natural is that which, after the fall, is directed toward the coming of Jesus Christ. The unnatural is that which, after the fall, closes itself off from the coming of Christ.” 39 Immediately after making this distinction, however, Bonhoeffer reminds his readers of the hermeneutic quality of the Christian life. “To be sure,” he writes, “the difference between that which is directed toward the coming of Christ and that which closes itself off from Christ is relative” 40—hence his talk about the “relative freedom” of natural life. This freedom can be used to remain open toward the coming of Christ, and thus attentive to what is naturally good; however, the structures of natural life and their shaping by human agency can also be used to close oneself off from orientation toward Christ and thereby succumb to the unnatural. What counts as natural or unnatural requires rational reflection, and this assumption requires in turn that reason is capable of such discernment. Affirming the natural as the penultimate dimension of reality thus allows Bonhoeffer to acknowledge a positive role of human reason as neither completely blinded by nor free from the noetic effects of sin. Indeed, his entire theology rests on the understanding that neither true understanding of self nor of God is possible without liberation by grace from the self-enclosed reasoning of the sinful mind. 41 Accordingly, in Ethics, he concedes that only Christians know by faith the formal determination of the natural as the penultimate in relation to Christ. 42 Yet true to his intent to rescue the natural from the all-leveling “night of sin,” he affirms the ability of natural, fallen reason to discern the “content” of the natural as “the form of preserved life that comprises humanity as a whole.” 43 As part of fallen creation, reason therefore possesses no ability to deduct salvific knowledge of God from nature. Yet because reason is part of the divinely affirmed natural, fallen reason is

Recovering the Natural for Politics

33

able to perceive reality as something given rather than constructed, and discern within being the “foundational will” for the preservation of life. 44 In granting fallen reason the power to discern creational directives for human flourishing, Bonhoeffer establishes the natural as common ground for public moral reasoning. In terms of the greater Christian tradition, Bonhoeffer’s working out of the cosmic ramifications of the incarnation moves him close to a position of classic Catholic moral theology, where “grace does not destroy” nature. 45 It is of no less ecumenical interest that Bonhoeffer offers a Christological foundation for the correlation of nature and grace based on the ultimatepenultimate schema that results from the incarnation. Natural life is grace filled and the divinely blessed sphere of properly worldly life because God became human. Natural life may not be understood simply as a preliminary stage toward life with Christ; instead, it receives its confirmation only through Christ. Christ has entered into natural life. Only by Christ’s becoming human does natural life become the penultimate that is directed toward the ultimate. Only through Christ’s becoming human do we have the right to call people to natural life and live it ourselves. 46

In resisting the devaluation of natural life as merely “a preliminary stage toward life with Christ,” Bonhoeffer wants to claim whatever is “human and good” for Christ, arguing against the “narrowing of the gospel” by theologians who proclaimed the nearness of Christ only to “what is broken and evil.” 47 He distances himself from the Christian extremes of either neglecting the penultimate as the arena of God’s grace or affirming the penultimate for its own sake, because these imbalances cheapen both worldly life and the gospel. With these few bold strokes, Bonhoeffer recovers for himself and thus for Lutheran theology what Gustaf Wingren called “belief in creation.” 48 On the basis of this restored faith in creation, Bonhoeffer could now delineate human rights accessible to common human reason and thus denounce their violation as unnatural. NATURAL LIFE AND NATURAL RIGHTS Bonhoeffer’s earlier definition of the natural as the penultimate, fallen creation that is nevertheless reconciled to God and awaiting complete renewal, provides the framework for his detailed sketch of “the natural life” and correlative natural human rights. His work represents “the only systematic attempt to conceive of human rights” within “German-speaking Protestantism before the end of the Second World War.” 49 Bonhoeffer stresses the importance of natural rights that are discernible even by sinful human reason,

34

Jens Zimmermann

and of our corresponding civic duties as “reflections of God’s glory in the midst of a fallen world.” 50 Bonhoeffer insists that civic law ought to recognize the priority of natural rights “over all positive law.” 51 He affirms within creation the presence of “abiding laws of human communal life” that we violate at the peril of losing our humanity. Writing in the context of political resistance, Bonhoeffer affirmed that the world is in fact so ordered that the fundamental honoring of life’s basic laws and rights at the same time best serves self-preservation, and that these laws tolerate only a very brief, singular, and, in the individual case, necessary trespass against them. But those laws will sooner or later—with irresistible force—strike dead those who turn necessity into a principle and as a consequence set up a law of their own alongside them. History’s immanent justice rewards and punishes the deed only, but the eternal justice of God tries and judges the hearts. 52

We recognize in these sentences Bonhoeffer’s own theological wrestling with his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler, which could be at best a “necessary trespass” to restore the natural civic order, a trespass that was not morally justifiable but, as willing, exceptional incurrence of guilt, could only be surrendered to God’s judgment. Bonhoeffer thus assesses his own political action in light of his fundamental belief that “Life is its own doctor” in resisting unnatural, nihilistic, life-denying practices. 53 This is so because God gave life a certain form [Gestalt], a form that grants life intrinsic value without absolutizing it. This intrinsic yet relative value of life anchored in God avoids both vitalism on the one hand, and the instrumentalization that regards life as mere means to some higher ideological end on the other. Life has its own intrinsic Gestalt that resists the imposition of our ideologies and requires conformity of mind and action. Moreover, Bonhoeffer believed that we encounter life’s intrinsic form in discerning life as a gift containing rationally perceptible rights with their attendant duties. 54 Commensurate with Catholic moral theology, Bonhoeffer puts natural rights before obligations. 55 He contrasts here the biblical view of the natural to Kant’s duty ethics. “God gives, before he demands,” he declares; therefore, we can discern in the naturally given, without any reference to God, natural rights that are nonetheless “a reflection of God the creator in the midst of a fallen world.” 56 He reiterates that these basic human rights to life and justice are discernable by human reason, which is clouded but not totally disabled by sin. 57 Again in keeping with classic Catholic teaching, Bonhoeffer identifies as the basic natural right from which other rights and also human duties follow the maxim “suum cuique,” to each his own, or to each his due. 58 Bonhoeffer discerns in the “naturally given” the uniqueness and dignity of human being

Recovering the Natural for Politics

35

(a fact that redounds to God’s creation of each individual and his destination to eternal life), 59 from which flow a number of natural rights that he then groups under two main categories: the right to bodily life and the right to spiritual life. Unfortunately, he did not have time to work on the latter, leaving only a few evocative hints. The penultimate sphere of spiritual or mental life encompasses “judging, acting, and enjoying,” as activities through which human beings engage reality and shape their lives in freedom, and in doing so “demonstrate their humanity.” 60 From his sparse notes on this topic, we know that Bonhoeffer planned to criticize violations of this spiritual right by the Nazi’s imposition of pseudo-science on academic research, the suppression of nonconformist views, and their campaign against “degenerate art.” 61 Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the natural right to bodily life are much more substantial. The right to bodily life includes pleasures based on the intrinsic worth of the body, 62 the right to shelter, to sustenance, and to private life. 63 It also includes the right to life as intrinsic good that cannot be measured according to one’s usefulness in society. 64 In another place, he also affirms the “right to family and work,” as grounded in God, and concludes that good forms of government will ensure these rights. 65 While Bonhoeffer does not refer to God’s image in describing natural rights, this biblical concept of the Imago dei nevertheless undergirds his tying of human dignity to the body. “Humankind,” he writes in his commentary on Genesis, “is the image of God not in spite but precisely in its bodily nature.” 66 According to Christian doctrine, he asserts, “the human being is a bodily being and remains so in eternity. Embodiment and being human belong inseparably together.” 67 Beginning from this (classic Christian) understanding of the body’s special worth, in Ethics, Bonhoeffer reworks this anthropological insight into a brief phenomenology of the body to ground rights to bodily joy and happiness. In describing embodied life, Bonhoeffer follows the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler in consistently employing the term for the subjectively experienced body (Leib) instead of its objectified representation (Körper). 68 Like Scheler, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the particularly human experience of the world through the body. Human beings relate to their body in personal freedom through a self-reflexivity that transcends homeostatic needs. 69 Bonhoeffer argues, for example, that a human being’s dwelling in a home differs from an animal’s seeking only protection from the elements; similarly, for humans, sex is not merely for procreation, nor are food and drink merely means for sustenance. 70 Rather, all these things are experienced through the body with typical human, personal self-awareness characterized by conscious enjoyment. 71 This phenomenology of the body serves Bonhoeffer’s recovery of the natural and of natural human rights in three ways. First, the strong orientation of embodied life toward enjoyment shows that the body is more than a means

36

Jens Zimmermann

to an end. Indeed, true to the openness of the natural to the supernatural, Bonhoeffer affirms “the joys of the body within natural life as pointer to the eternal joy promised to human beings by God.” 72 Even without this perspective, however, all can affirm that aesthetic and bodily pleasures are not accidental but essential, defining elements of human life. Thus, taking away the possibility of someone’s bodily pleasures by reducing the body to functionality is a violation of “the primordial right to bodily life.” 73 Second, by grounding natural rights firmly in the body’s experience of natural life, he counters the typical Western penchant for anchoring human rights in the autonomous subject usually defined as individual consciousness independent from social relations. While eschewing the dangers of subjectivism in this way, Bonhoeffer also insists on the individuality of rights. 74 Ultimately, the natural right of the individual follows “from the will of God, who creates individuals to give them eternal life.” 75 This divine origin of individuality is reflected in the penultimate sphere by its inscription in life itself insofar as “the body in each case is ‘my’ body,” and never owned by anyone else. The body also spatially differentiates my embodied being from others; therefore, “violation of my body marks an intrusion into my personal existence.” 76 Yet at the same time, as he explained in his Genesis lectures, Bonhoeffer also holds that the body connects us in solidarity with others and the earth. 77 His phenomenology of the body thus establishes individual natural rights while avoiding the tendency of Cartesian subjectivity of confusing rights with personal preference. Third, by anchoring human dignity in the body, Bonhoeffer offers a solution to a dilemma that still plagues current discussions about the source of human dignity. Does dignity reside in some “inner transcendent kernel” of the human being, such as Kant’s self-transcendence or the Christian conception of God’s image, or do we locate dignity in human capacities such as rationality or relationality? 78 The problem with this latter view is precisely what Bonhoeffer encountered with the Nazis’ murderous campaign against the disabled. Those who do not possess certain capabilities are deemed subhuman. To avoid this problem, some have suggested that dignity is not an anthropological property but rather something relational that happens between human beings. According to this solution, humans are constituted as “subjects of ethical responsibility” who have to receive and accord to others recognition of their humanity. 79 This suggestion goes a far way in underlining the relational base and non-empirical nature of human dignity. The question remains, however, from what shared presupposition should we derive this right of recognition? Bonhoeffer overcomes this dilemma by arguing that the transcendent kernel is not a substance or capacity but the image of God, which is tangibly present in the embodied mind and responsible relation we call a human person. For him, the dignity of the person deriving from the

Recovering the Natural for Politics

37

divine image shows up phenomenologically in the dignity of the body, because personhood is inseparable from embodiment. With regards to Hitler’s euthanasia program, Bonhoeffer therefore concludes, “among free, independent persons, conscious encroachment on the body of another means destruction of the first natural right of human beings and therefore a fundamental deprivation of rights and the destruction of natural life.” 80 Consequently, Hitler’s murder of the disabled is condemnable on both ultimate and penultimate grounds. According to the first, “There is no worthless life before God, because God holds life itself to be valuable. Because God is the Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer of life, even the poorest life before God becomes a valuable life.” 81 According to the second, penultimate criterion, Hitler’s actions are unnatural because they violate the fundamental natural individual right to life rooted in the dignity of the body. Bonhoeffer also used his theory of natural rights to criticize the objectification and violation of the body in slavery, faithful to his motto that “the living human body is always identical with the human being itself”; thus, “violation, exploitation, torture, or arbitrary deprivation of freedom of the human body are grave intrusions into the [right to natural life] granted by creation,” that will “sooner or later incur punishment like all interference with natural life.” 82 Not only euthanasia of the disabled, but also the problem of suicide attracted Bonhoeffer’s attention in reflecting about the natural, because of the increasingly pressing question of whether suicide was permissible for political resisters to elude capture and torture by the Gestapo, which could result in the betrayal of family and friends. Bonhoeffer treats suicide as, fundamentally, a problem of freedom, because in contrast to the animals, human beings possess the power of freedom to affirm or take their own life. This freedom is intrinsic to our humanity, for “without the freedom to sacrifice one’s life in death there would be no freedom for God, and there would be no human life.” 83 For Bonhoeffer, “the freedom to risk and to give one’s life as a sacrifice is the counterpart of the right to life.” 84 Being thus linked to the natural right of preserving life, the freedom of taking one’s own life is to be exercised “only when the good sought through sacrifice, and not the destruction of one’s own life, is the reason for risking one’s life.” 85 An additional criterion for exercising the freedom to kill oneself is faith in God, for “the freedom toward death granted to human natural life is abused when exercised without faith in God.” 86 Perhaps Bonhoeffer wanted to forestall with this proviso the typical Nazi appeal to sacrificing oneself for the cause of the nation, documented in melodramatic propaganda movies like “Ich klage an” [I accuse, 1941] that depict the heroic self-removal of “useless” lives that burden society. At any rate, he rejects any self-killing that constitutes a final act of selfvalidation or defiant self-justification because only God can ultimately provide

38

Jens Zimmermann

life’s meaning and justification. For this reason, “the right to suicide shatters only on the living God.” 87 Based on the natural right to life, pertaining to body and spirit, Bonhoeffer recovers a common secular idiom for discussing and criticizing the discrimination, deprivation, and disregard for human dignity practiced by German authorities in his day. Bonhoeffer thus demonstrates how important recourse to a natural order may prove to be for Christian theology. Bonhoeffer’s ultimate-penultimate relation is integral to his recovery of natural rights. We recall his conviction that “only by Christ’s becoming human, does the natural life become the penultimate that is directed to the ultimate.” For Bonhoeffer, this eschatological schema (as we have seen) links these natural human qualities to Christ. “The human and the good,” he insists, “should not have a value by themselves, but they should and may be claimed for Jesus Christ.” 88 He similarly declares that “human and natural rights exist only on the basis of Christ [von Christus her], that is, based on faith.” 89 Bonhoeffer’s position on natural rights—a position rooted not in a neutral theology independent from revelation, but on his Christological ultimate-penultimate schema—constitutes one of his original contributions to modern theology. What has escaped the notice of Bonhoeffer scholars until now is that this recovery of the natural life as the penultimate sphere is his creative appropriation of a longstanding Protestant tradition on natural law. BONHOEFFER, THE NATURAL LAW TRADITION, AND POLITICS In his continuing and maturing reflections on this question of the lex naturae, Bonhoeffer deliberately recovers the natural law tradition of the early Reformers, something Brunner also attempted earlier but was countermanded by Barth’s famous “No” to natural theology. By returning to Reformational and Catholic sources, Bonhoeffer retrieves the connection between the Decalogue and natural law that had remained unbroken from the patristic tradition to the latter half of the eighteenth century when Lutheran and Reformed theologies succumbed to rationalist currents of thought. 90 An important document for Bonhoeffer’s engaging the natural law tradition is “Theological Assessment of the First Use of the Law,” presented in 1943 to the council (Bruderrat) of the confessing churches. In this assessment, Bonhoeffer discusses the accountability of government authority to divine law in light of the Jews’ deportations to concentration camps. Along with the natural law tradition of many Protestant Reformers, 91 Bonhoeffer affirms the providential congruence between the second table of God’s commandments and the moral law “inherent in historical life itself,” a law everyone, Christian or not, can discern by the power of natural reason. 92 He cites

Recovering the Natural for Politics

39

approvingly Phillip Melanchthon’s statement that the content of the Decalogue corresponds to “the natural law congenital and written into the human heart which is in harmony with the law of Moses or the ten commandments.” 93 Bonhoeffer notes that Melanchthon does not even consider “the possibility of a lex naturae that deviates from the Decalogue” and could thus create a conflict between natural law and God’s revealed law. 94 Bonhoeffer’s answer, then, to how non-Christian authorities may receive guidelines for human flourishing commensurate with God’s will, echoes the Protestant confessions: “reason dictates to authorities the same law as the Decalogue,” without any “contrast between the lex naturae and the Decalogue in principle.” 95 While reason is able to discern principles for human flourishing in creation, the Decalogue that unites natural and revealed law “always remains the norm” of any natural precepts, because “what counts” in both the revealed and natural law is “the will of God.” 96 Grounding natural law in God ensures the limits of secular governing authorities and provides space for political resistance. Bonhoeffer reiterates that for the Lutheran “confessional writings, the natural is determined solely by the Decalogue.” 97 Both natural law and revealed law have their origin in God: for this reason alone “can natural right, [and] reason serve as foundation” for secular authorities. 98 Bonhoeffer endorses the Reformational view that this divine basis for natural law “frees and honors the natural, worldly life” within the parameters of the Decalogue. The Reformers, he realizes, could not have conceived of a situation like the one that Germany faced under Hitler, one “where natural law rises up against God’s law in the Decalogue [i.e., when German Christians justify antisemitism through creational orders], where the power of authority no longer wants to serve the Decalogue.” 99 In Germany’s unprecedented situation under the Nazis, he concludes, the church is bound to preach God’s law against “such perversion of nature and reason.” 100 Bonhoeffer’s theological assessment shows that he finds, in the natural law tradition, warrant for recovering the natural as the framework for the holistic human existence that forms the humanistic vision of his Ethics fragments. The Ten Commandments themselves point to the humanity that has become fulfilled in Christ and thus define the boundaries that enable a life of freedom in responsibility before God. 101 Bonhoeffer rejects the fragmentation of human life through inherent conflicts between different aspects of reality. True human existence, though full of competing interests, is inherently unified in Christ and not essentially determined by ethical conflict. Instead, Bonhoeffer views political order through the same “cosmic” Christ image that governs his theology as a whole. Thus, from a Christian point of view, the task of government and the purpose of civic law are to retain the orientation of natural life toward Jesus Christ, “who became human and died for the sins of all human beings, procuring salvation even for his enemies.” 102 Civic order exists because God, in his demonstrable

40

Jens Zimmermann

love for humanity and world, desires a holistic existence for humans through peaceful flourishing. It is through these orders that God, in a manner of speaking, “calls all to faith.” 103 Grounding the natural in Christology allows Bonhoeffer to articulate positively the relation of nature and grace. Christ’s Lordship over “worldly orders” is not an imposition of an external power [Fremdherrschaft] on a self-contained nature—because “all things exist in him,” and by becoming human “he came into what was his.” 104 Nor does God’s rule abrogate the inherent structures proper to created beings, “their created, inborn laws specific to them” which are self-contained and independent of God. Rather, through God’s rule, creational structures “receive within the world God created, loved, and reconciled in Christ their own essential, characteristic place.” 105 This Christological grounding of the natural therefore enables Bonhoeffer to affirm an almost Aristotelian dynamic properly internal to creation, while also insisting that this autonomy is relative to Christ’s rule. Only as mandate of God are creational dynamics divine—not by virtue of their “factic givenness in this or that concrete form.” Since everything exists in Christ, it is “under the dominion of Christ” that all things “arrive at their own nature and come under the law innate to their created being.” 106 Bonhoeffer articulates a correlational understanding of nature and grace, yet avoids simply sanctioning human interpretations of what counts as natural by allowing for the corrective freedom of divine grace. The origin and goal of everything created lies in God, under whose loving rule everything is designed to flourish in freedom: “within the world created, loved, and reconciled by God in Christ [all created things] obtain their own essential, particular, appropriate place. Thus, under the dominion of Christ they receive their own law and their own freedom.” 107 The Decalogue, he asserts, “liberates [human beings] for genuine worldliness.” For Christians, it “is the framework for free obedience of worldly life.” For non-Christians, Christ’s rule and the Decalogue imply “not servility to a human ideal of ‘natural law,’ nor to the church, but the liberation to genuine worldliness,” granting secular authorities their relative autonomy. 108 In a text written in Tegel prison (1944), his last attempt to interpret the first table of the Decalogue in a more nonreligious manner, Bonhoeffer demonstrates how natural law is congruent but not identical with God’s revealed moral law. The congruence of natural law and revealed law lies in God’s desire for human flourishing. Bonhoeffer notes that throughout human history, especially in times of crisis, human reflection has produced “basic orders” for human living that are strikingly similar to the Ten Commandments. By the power of natural reason and experience, people discerned “basic rules of life” [Lebensgesetze] indispensable to human society: “without fear of God, without honoring parents, without safeguarding life, marriage, property, and honour—however these goods may be structured—no human cohabitation is possible.” 109

Recovering the Natural for Politics

41

The Christian should not be surprised at this congruence of natural law and God’s commandments because “God is the creator and sustainer of life.” 110 God’s law is therefore not a “formal” or abstract moral checklist to observe for obedience’s sake, but a blueprint for a holistic life. The Decalogue, he believes, “is the framework within which a free obedience of worldly life becomes possible. It liberates one for free life under Christ’s rule.” 111 God’s law is intended “not [for] the responsible person faced with conflicting duties but the realization of certain conditions, not [for] the Christian within worldly order, but the form[ation] of worldly orders according to God’s will.” 112 Within the public sphere, therefore, “Christians and non-Christians” should “cooperate” to produce the most humane society possible. 113 According to Bonhoeffer, what matters is not “a Christian state, or a Christian economy, but the right state, and the right economy as worldly orders for the sake of Christ.” 114 He warns, however, against the temptation to equate any such cooperative achievement within the iustitia civilis with divinely ordained political structures. Successful social structures are indeed the welcome products of human reason but should never be allowed to attain the character of divine proclamation and thus confuse political work with God’s self-revelation. 115 Within this carefully nuanced, holistic view of political reality, Bonhoeffer can claim that “before God, there is no autonomous realm; instead, the law of God revealed in Jesus Christ is the law of all earthly orders.” 116 Based on this view of reality, Bonhoeffer argues that the government “has the divine task of preserving the world with its divinely given orders [ Ordnungen ] toward Christ.” 117 These divinely given orders introduce Bonhoeffer’s notion of the mandates. Within Bonhoeffer’s political theology, the mandates, including the mandate of government, provide the spheres of responsibility and freedom for human flourishing within God’s creation. The state does not create but merely guards the divine orders or “mandates” of marriage, work, culture, 118 government, and church within which humanity is to flourish. 119 The mandates are, so to speak, the interpretive link between natural law and the Decalogue. They are the best intimation of how to order life in accordance with the will of God, who has revealed true humanity in Christ. While the church proclaims this Christ, and encourages the state to uphold these mandates and their relative autonomy, the church’s task is not to create a Christian state, but to support or admonish the government to realize a society that reflects God’s philanthropy. 120 CONCLUSION Bonhoeffer’s recovery of the natural law tradition demonstrates the relevance of his theology for politics in our time and testifies to his ecumenical appeal. Bonhoeffer rediscovered natural law at a time when the traditional sensus

42

Jens Zimmermann

communis about human dignity and rights deteriorated along with their Judeo-Christian roots; today’s policies on euthanasia, immigration, and regulations for biogenetic intervention in medicine operate under similar constraints. 121 Politically engaged Christians would do well to emulate Bonhoeffer’s clearsighted pursuit of natural law as the foundation for humane politics. Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s retrieval of the natural exemplifies a much needed ecumenical appeal. He himself admitted that Catholic social teaching on this score was more helpful than Protestant thought, and he drew especially on Josef Pieper’s work to develop a unified view of nature and grace that allowed for the kind of “realistic action” [wirklichkeitsgemäßes Handeln] based on internal creational dynamics. 122 Indeed, Bonhoeffer’s view of natural law was more similar to some Catholic precedents than he cared to admit. For example, despite his sparse and rather disparaging comments on Jacques Maritain, everything we have read in Bonhoeffer so far suggests that he would agree with Maritain’s definition of natural law: “this means that there is, by virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of human being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that.” 123 Maritain’s insistence that this natural law participates in God’s eternal law but is interpreted by human reason only with difficulty and emerges through historical-social developments is also commensurate with Bonhoeffer’s view. Both theologians hold that the natural is something generally given—normative, but not invented by human beings or identical their institutions. Human actions can realize or receive aspects of this “given,” but they cannot establish it. One should recall in this context Bonhoeffer’s warning that going against this natural grain of the universe recoils on the violator. 124 Given recent acknowledgment by legal scholars of human rights’ Christian roots and our society’s current uncertainty about euthanasia legislation concerning human dignity in suffering, 125 Bonhoeffer’s retrieval of natural moral reasoning appears more politically relevant than ever. NOTES 1. The Nazis’ term was “lebensunwertes Leben.” 2. DBWE 6:172. 3. Natural Theology. Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Emil Brunner and the Reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth, trans. Peter Fraenkel (London: Geoffrey Bless, 1946), 59. In his response, of course, Barth claimed John Calvin’s position for his own. 4. Ibid., 58–59. 5. Ibid., 59–60. 6. See, Stephen J. Grabill. Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 21.

Recovering the Natural for Politics

43

7. In his deliberations on the natural, besides consulting Catholic sources, Bonhoeffer was also influenced by Brunner, in whose ethics book Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (Engl. The Divine Imperative) he detected “many wise things on the matter” (DBWE 15:300). 8. For an excellent summary of this history, see https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ en/article/euthanasia-program (accessed March 23, 2019). 9. The English translation of lex naturae or ius naturale as natural law could be taken to mean a physical law, an ambiguity the German “Naturrecht” avoids. 10. DBW 15:297. “Law” (Recht) could also be translated “justice,” explaining Bonhoeffer’s focus on just distribution (suum cuique) in Ethics. 11. DBWE 15:301. This idea of relatively autonomous areas with their own creational integrity under God’s will for human flourishing returns with Bonhoeffer’s idea of the mandates as creational orders of preservation. 12. Ibid. 13. Bonhoeffer takes up this term in Ethics when he writes, “There is no life unworthy of being lived [Lebensunwertes Leben] because God holds life itself to be valuable” (DBW 6:188; DBWE 6:193). The English translation misses this linguistic resonance by translating the phrase, with understandable desire for elegance, with “worthless life.” 14. DBWE 6:205. 15. DBWE 15:298 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. DBWE 15:299. 20. DBWE 6:171 21. See the Catholic piece “Euthanasie ist unerlaubt,” and the Protestant counterpart “Die Kirche darf nicht schweigen,” in Klaus, Drobisch, and Gerhard Fischer, Widerstand aus Glauben: Christen in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Hitlerfaschismus (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1985), 214–21. 22. Bethge, A Biography, 719. 23. DBWE 6:175. 24. It is also evident that Bonhoeffer in Ethics draws together and deepens many theological views from his earlier writings. 25. DBWE 6:54 (also DBWE 6:363, 403, 406). 26. DBWE 6:43. 27. Studie zum Thema: “Personal”—und “Sach”ethos, DBW 16:553. 28. This distinction also explains the bizarrely strict separation between the ecclesial and civic aspects of the “Jewish Question” characteristic of Lutheran theologians in Bonhoeffer’s day, and their general agreement with Luther’s exclusion of the Jews from civil service, including the pastorate, as “hard but understandable measure by the state” against which the church should not interfere. See Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich (München: Ullstein/Popyläen, 2000), 393. 29. DBWE 6:59. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 152. 32. Ibid., 148–50. 33. Ibid., 150. 34. Ibid., 151. 35. Ibid., 173. 36. For the importance of recapitulation as the basis of Bonhoeffer’s humanist interpretation of the gospel, and Christian existence as transformation into true humanity or Christ-formation, see Jens Zimmermann, Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 37. DBWE 6:174 (DBW 6:166). 38. DBW 6:166. 39. DBWE 6:173. 40. Ibid.

44

Jens Zimmermann

41. For the fullest description of Bonhoeffer’s epistemology see Christiane Tietz, Bonhoeffer’s Kritik der Verkrümmten Vernunft. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). 42. DBW 6:166. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 168. 45. René Marlé, Bonhoeffer. The Man and his Work (New York: Newman Press, 1968), 100. 46. DBW 6:166. 47. Ibid., 161. 48. Gustaf Wingren. Creation and the Gospel. The New Situation in European Theology (Toronto: Edward Mellen Press, 1979), 79. 49. Tödt, Authentic Faith, 144. 50. DBW 6:174. Usually, the writings of Josef Pieper are cited in this context. It is reasonable to suppose from Bonhoeffer’s markings on the texts that Pieper’s Die Wirklichkeit und Das Gute, and Zucht und Maß influenced his thinking on this topic. The first clearly influenced his theological realism, and the second his appreciation for Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics; Pieper helped him to link natural human traits to the humanum shared by Christians and nonChristians. See the editors’ afterword in DBWE 6:419, and for the last point DBW 8:417 (Letter to Bethge, 6.5.44, and note 7). 51. DBW 6:175. 52. DBWE 8:46. 53. DBW 6:169. 54. Ibid., 173–74. 55. For the same position in Catholic teaching, see Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues, 45–46. 56. DBW 6:174. 57. Ibid., 167. 58. For the same Catholic reasoning, see, again, Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 46. 59. DBW 6:176–77. 60. Ibid., 217. 61. Ibid., 217 n.150. 62. Ibid., 179. 63. Ibid., 181. 64. Ibid., 188. 65. DBW 16:535. 66. DBWE 3:79. 67. DBW 6:180. In affirming the world as experienced through the body, Bonhoeffer thus joins phenomenology in rejecting a disembodied, Cartesian self. For a clear, representative statement of this problem see Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2013), 204–5. It is worth considering to what extent Bonhoeffer’s “worldliness” carries not just ethical but also epistemological implications commensurate with Ponty’s (and Heidegger’s) embodied being in the world and thus with the current neuroscientific consensus on embodied cognition. 68. If not from Husserl, Bonhoeffer certainly could have adopted this use from Max Scheler’s Formalismus in der Ethik und Materielle Wertethik, which he studied for his early works. See, Max Scheler, Formalismus in der Ethik (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921), 248–429. 69. See, Scheler, Formalismus in der Ethik, 300–303. 70. DBW 6:181–82. 71. For a similar phenomenological view of enjoyment as human consciousness of the world, see Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, PEN: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 245. 72. DBW 6:181. 73. Ibid. 74. Tödt, Authentic Faith, 146. 75. DBWE 6:183.

Recovering the Natural for Politics

45

76. DBWE 6:182. Bonhoeffer considers such intrusion justified for limited educational purposes and in physically punishing criminals (ibid.). 77. DBWE 3: 66–67. With personalist philosophers, Bonhoeffer insists that human beings exist only in the plural, as responsible relation, concretely embodied in the Genesis account as the “duality of man and woman” (66). 78. Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 9–10. 79. Heiner Bielefeld, Auslaufmodell Menschenwürde, 46. 80. DBWE 6:188–89. 81. Ibid., 193. 82. DBW 6:212. 83. DBWE 6:197. 84. Ibid. 85. DBW 6:192. 86. Ibid., 194. 87. Ibid., 199. 88. Ibid., 162. This claim is especially the case where these qualities exist “as remainder of a previous connection to the ultimate,” that is, when they are carried by cultured traditions and are drawn upon by those acting “unconsciously Christian.” 89. Ibid., 363. 90. Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 2. 91. For an overview on this topic and the treatment of natural law in the context of two kingdom theories, see D. VanDrunnen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms. A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010). 92. DBW 16:520: “From where does the governing authority know these contents? . . . What counts for the pagan government is a providential harmony [Übereinstimmung] between the content of the [Decalogue’s] second table and the laws inherent in historical life itself.” 93. DBW 16:606; For this passage in Melanchton’s Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Apologia Confessionis Augustana), see The Book of Concord: The Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 33. 94. DBW 16:606. 95. Ibid., 608. 96. Ibid., 607. 97. Ibid., 609. 98. Ibid., 608. 99. Ibid., 609. It is open to speculation why Bonhoeffer freely uses the term natural law in this report but in Ethics prefers to speak of “the natural.” The likely reason is that he feared the term would encourage the perception of nature as a self-enclosed, neutral realm rather than suffused by God’s grace and open toward Christ, leading once again “to a false theology of the orders” (ibid. 618). 100. Ibid. 101. DBWE 6:360. Here too Bonhoeffer emphasizes the general nature of this order proscribed by the Decalogue, within which what constitutes faithful Christlike living “must be determined ever anew” (Ibid.). 102. DBW 16:613. 103. Ibid., 613. 104. DBW 16:558. 105. Ibid., 559. 106. DBWE 16:548. 107. Ibid. 108. DBW 16:559 (emphasis original). 109. Ibid., 659; DBWE 16:634. 110. DBWE 16:634. 111. DBW 16:559; DBWE 16:548.

46

Jens Zimmermann

112. DBW 16:617; DBWE 16:599. 113. Ibid. 114. DBW 16:553; DBWE 16:543. 115. DBW 16:617; DBWE 16:599. 116. DBWE 6:162. 117. DBW 16:523; DWBE 16:518. 118. In a prison letter, Bonhoeffer wonders whether “culture and education” belong to the mandate of work because they do not fall under obedience but rather into the “leeway of freedom that surrounds the areas of all three mandates” including “friendship and play” (DBW 8:291). 119. DBW 16:527; DBWE 16:521. 120. DBW 16:528; DBWE 16:522. 121. Contemporary Reformed theology, for example, has returned to natural law theory for similar ethical reasons in the context of bioethics. See Anné H. Verhoef, “Sources of Bioethics: Lex Naturae versus Sola Scriptura and Sola Gratia? A Response to Voster” in Skriflig (Online) vol.50, n.1 (Pretoria, 2016). 122. DBWE 6:229. Bonhoeffer writes that good and historically concrete action is grounded in Christ: “action in accordance with Christ is action in accord with reality” (Bonhoeffer’s emphasis). 123. Maritain, Man and the State, 86. 124. DBW 6:168. 125. See, for example, Samuel Moyn. Christian Human Rights (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2015), and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard: Belknap, 2018), and John Witte Jr. The Reformation of Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

WORKS CITED Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Translated by Eric Mosbacher. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. Bielefeld, Heiner. Auslaufmodell Menschenwürde: Warum sie in Frage steht und warum wir sie verteidigen müssen. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2011. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Stephen Bax. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 3. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945. Edited by Mark S. Brocker. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. ———. Theological Education Underground: 1937–1940. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Translated by Claudia D. Bergmann, Scott A. Moore, and Peter Frick. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 15. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011. ———. Ethik. Edited by Ilse Tödt, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ernst Fiel, and Clifford Green. Dietrich Bonhoffer Werk, Volume 6. Gütersloh: Chr Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992. ———. Widerstand und Ergebung. Edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, Renate Bethge, and Ilse Tödt. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Volume 8. Gütersloh: Chr Kaiser/ Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998. ———. Illegale Theologenausbildung: Sammelvikariate 1937–1939. Edited by Dirk Schulz. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Volume 15. Gütersloh: Chr Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998. ———. Konspiration und Haft 1940–1945. Edited by Jørgen Glenthøj, Ulrich Kabitz, and Wolf Krötke. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Volume 16. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996.

Recovering the Natural for Politics

47

Brunner, Emil, and Karl Barth. Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth. Translated by Peter Fraenkel. London: Geoffrey Bless, 1946. Grabill, Stephen J. Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Klaus, Drobisch, and Gerhard Fischer, eds. Widerstand aus Glauben: Christen in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Hitlerfaschismus. Berlin: Union Verlag, 1985. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Maritain, Jacques. Man and the State. Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1998. Marlé, René. Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work. New York: Newman Press, 1968. Melanchthon, Philip. Apology of the Augsburg Confession. In Concordia or The Book of Concord: The Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950 (pp. 27–135). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge, 2013. Moyn, Samuel. Christian Human Rights. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2015. ———. Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Harvard: Belknap, 2018. Pieper, Josef. The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance. Rosen, Michael. Dignity: Its History and Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Scheler, Max. Formalismus in der Ethik und Materielle Wertethik. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921. Scholder, Klaus. Die Kirchen un das Dritte Reich. München: Ullstein/Popyläen, 2000. Tietz, Christiane. Bonhoeffer’s Kritik der Verkrümmten Vernunft. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Tödt, Heinz Eduard. Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. VanDrunnen, David. Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Verheof, Anné H. “Sources of Bioethics: Lex Naturae versus Sola Scriptura and Sola Gratia? A Response to Vorster.” Skriflig 50, no. 1 (September 2016). https://doi.org/10.4102/ids.v5 0i1.2109. Wingren, Gustaf. Creation and the Gospel: The New Situation in European Theology. Toronto: Edward Mellen, 1979. Witte, John Jr. The Reformation of Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Zimmermann, Jens. Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Chapter Three

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys The Political Theologies of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer W. David Hall

This chapter places Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the relationship between theological enquiry and political life in conversation with the ideas of two figures who are not his typical interlocutors: Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. The thought of conservative jurist and legal scholar, Carl Schmitt, has become virtually synonymous with the study of political theology, if only because Schmitt brought the term “political theology” into the lexicon of contemporary political philosophy. What Schmitt meant by this term is somewhat peculiar, as we will see, but he has nonetheless become an important figure to reckon with in any treatment of the intersection of the religious and the political. Like Schmitt, Walter Benjamin has become a central figure in contemporary studies of political theology. Benjamin corresponded with Schmitt concerning Schmitt’s somewhat unorthodox understanding of the nature of political sovereignty, and there are strong indications that Schmitt and Benjamin developed their ideas in a sort of covert critical dialogue with each other. 1 For these and other reasons, Benjamin has provided a valuable perspective for scholars trying to better understand Schmitt’s ideas and influence, for those looking to articulate a political position in opposition to Schmitt’s, or for those interested in Benjamin’s own peculiar understanding of the relationship between religion and politics. Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, is not a name generally associated with the study of political theology, which may seem odd given his influence on 49

50

W. David Hall

contemporary Christian theology and his own intensely political life, not to mention the political cooption of his legacy by many across the political and theological spectrum. Much of the reason he is largely ignored has to do with the directions the study of political theology has taken. Without too much oversimplification, two trajectories can be mapped within political theology: one in political philosophy and one in theology and religious studies. In the field of political philosophy, political theology has proceeded from the assumption that the political has displaced the religious as the principal arena of human association and cultural development. As such, the political is a secular realm, largely independent of religion, but a realm that continues to benefit in significant ways from the religious—for example, in generating appeal for political causes by annexing these causes to religious ideas, in showing how religious fervor can become politically effective given the right circumstances, or, as in the case with Schmitt and Benjamin, in showing the degree to which modern political concepts are covertly funded by theological ideas. In the fields of theology and religious studies, “political theology” has generally designated religious and theological perspectives that are explicitly political and praxis oriented, perspectives frequently associated with liberation movements or with anticolonial, postcolonial, and de-colonial theory. In cases where Bonhoeffer’s name has been invoked in the service of political theology, it has usually been in relation to this latter understanding of the term. I am interested in placing Bonhoeffer in the former trajectory of political theology, that pursued by political philosophers. Schmitt and Benjamin are principle figures in this trajectory of political theology. Bonhoeffer clearly is not. 2 Most important among many reasons for this neglect of his thought, Bonhoeffer did not share the opinion that the political had displaced theology, nor that politics is primarily the realm of secular human affairs, indeed quite the opposite. However, there are good historical and conceptual reasons to place Bonhoeffer in conversation with Schmitt and Benjamin. Historically, they are German contemporaries, addressing a common set of intellectual, economic, and political circumstances: the rise of liberalism as a philosophical, political, and economic force, the crisis and eventual collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of National Socialism and Adolf Hitler. Schmitt, Benjamin, and Bonhoeffer offer distinct perspectives on these events, perspectives inflected through distinct theological vocabularies. Conceptually, this comparison yields a number of important insights. First and foremost, it puts Bonhoeffer in a trajectory of political theology where he does not usually appear. Placing him in the trajectory of political philosophy broadens his possible relevance. Second, comparing Bonhoeffer’s ideas to those of Schmitt and Benjamin reveals how different theological orientations configure the relationship between politics and theology. Schmitt was a conservative, though lapsed, Catholic, Benjamin a Jewish Marxist, and Bonhoeffer a Lutheran

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

51

Protestant; these theological-confessional stances affect the way they think through theo-political ideas. Finally, all three offer strikingly different understandings of the source and possibility of an authentic political decision. Addressing this question of the authentic political decision reveals much about how each thinker was influenced by a particular theological-confessional position and how that position shaped his perspective on the historical situation all three occupied. CARL SCHMITT: THE FRIEND-ENEMY DISTINCTION AND THE SOVEREIGN DECISION Schmitt was an influential, if controversial, legal scholar in the interwar period in Germany. Growing up devoutly Catholic, Schmitt eventually broke with the Catholic Church, but remained active and influential in conservative Catholic legal circles. Intensely critical of the Weimar government, he eventually joined the Nazi party and taught law at the University of Berlin throughout World War II. Schmitt became known by the moniker “Crown Jurist of the Third Reich” and though he was detained by Allied Forces after the war, he was not charged with crimes. However, because he refused to undergo the process of de-nazification, he did not hold any university posts after the war. Though he was prohibited from teaching, he continued to write and to speak, and eventually emerged as an enigmatic public figure in Germany. 3 Schmitt was a vitriolic critic of the Weimar Republic. Many figures from across the ideological spectrum criticized the failing, liberal parliamentary government of the Weimar period, so Schmitt was not unique in this respect. Schmitt’s critique became a particularly trenchant one, however, because it was directed not at a particular failed instantiation of the parliamentary system, but at the very idea of parliamentarianism and what he viewed as the ideology that gave rise to it: liberalism. At issue, for Schmitt, were the liberal principles undergirding parliamentary process, namely, openness in the communication of opinion, balance of power between the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of governing, and the resulting rule of law. According to liberal political theory as Schmitt articulated it, the open debate over opinion in the legislative branch aims at a rational consensus on true principles leading to the enactment of laws to restrict the infringement of individuals or government on the freedoms of citizens. The executive is responsible for enforcing these laws while the judiciary is charged with determining when infringement on individual liberties has taken place and how to rectify the situation. “The oldest justification for parliament,” Schmitt explained takes into account an extreme “expedient”: The people in its entirety must decide, as was originally the case when all members of the community could

52

W. David Hall assemble themselves under the village tree. But for practical reasons it is impossible today for everyone to come together at the same time in one place; it is also impossible to ask everyone every detail. . . . So the familiar scale originated: Parliament is a committee of the people, the government is a committee of parliament. The notion of parliamentarism thereby appears to be something essentially democratic. 4

The parliamentary process supposedly expresses the people’s will, and so liberal parliamentary process appears synonymous with democratic government, government by and for the governed. For Schmitt, this equation of democratic government with liberal parliamentarianism is deceptive for two reasons. First, parliamentary process is not the only way to conceive of government by and for the governed: “If for practical purposes and technical reasons the representatives of the people can decide instead of the people themselves, then certainly a single trusted representative could also decide. Without ceasing to be democratic, the argument would justify an antiparliamentary Caesarism.” 5 Second, and more importantly, modern processes of government had witnessed the emergence of a new political entity that, for all intents and purposes, undermined the notion of representative government: the political party. Governors, as members of parties, no longer represented the interests of individual citizens, but party platforms; decisions were no longer reached through open and public discussion, but in private party deliberation. For Schmitt, liberal parliamentarianism had come to represent the antithesis of democratic government. Worse still, liberal theory completely misconstrued the nature of the political relation. In Schmitt’s sketch of political history, liberal theory conceives of human society as composed of different autonomous realms of interaction—for example, religion, economics, and so forth—each with its own distinct set of activities. The “state” on this understanding is one aspect of broader civil society, alongside others—church and enterprise, for instance— with its own distinct set of activities, broadly understood as politics. The goal of good politics is the enactment of laws that will, among other things, protect the autonomy of other realms of human activity. Schmitt argued, however, that the twentieth century had witnessed the emergence of a new state form that arises precisely with the possibility of democracy: The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other. What had been up to that point affairs of state become thereby social matters, and, vice versa, what had been purely social matters become affairs of state—as must necessarily occur in a democratically organized unit. Theretofore ostensibly neutral domains—religion, culture, education, the economy—then cease to be neutral in the sense that they do not pertain to state and to politics. As a polemical concept against such neutralizations and depoliticalizations of important domains appears the total state, which potentially embraces every domain. . . . In such a state, therefore, everything is at

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

53

least potentially political, and in referring to the state it is no longer possible to assert for it a specifically political characteristic. 6

In a state where everything has become a matter of the will of the people, in a total democratic state, that is, everything potentially becomes a matter for political deliberation and, hence, potentially an affair of state, a question of one way of life as opposed to others. In such a situation, Schmitt argues, the basis of the political relation is not the rule of law reached through rational consensus, but something far more basic: the friend-enemy distinction. In Schmitt’s understanding, for there to be a political entity there must be a unity—understood both in terms of a unified populace and a homogenous people. In other words, for there to be a state, the individuals composing that state must be bound together by strong ties of affinity and oriented toward the common endeavor of preserving a particular way of life. If the political nature of this political association is typically in the background in the normal situation, it comes front and center in the exceptional case where the common way of life of a people comes under threat. In this exceptional case, the friend-enemy distinction reveals itself as the basis for political relations: The specific distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. . . . The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor. . . . But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specifically intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. 7

The existential threat posed by an enemy shocks the unified political entity into the effort to preserve the threatened way of life, in the most extreme case through a declaration of war against the enemy. The existence of the political enemy and the threat of the extreme case are central to Schmitt’s proposal of a political-theological account of sovereignty and is at the heart of his famous claim that “All significant concepts of the modern theory of state are secularized theological concepts.” 8 Schmitt suggests two different origins for this transfer of theological concepts to the secular theory of state: one historical-genealogical, the other conceptualstructural. Though he does not trace the historical-genealogical transfer, Schmitt argues that theological understandings of an omnipotent God became superimposed onto the political sovereign as politics eclipsed theology as the primary conceptual apparatus for understanding human relations. Schmitt’s political theology is devoted instead to articulating the conceptual-

54

W. David Hall

structural relations between theological and political ideas in modern theory. 9 Schmitt argues that a viable account of political sovereignty depends on properly understanding these conceptual-structural relations. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” Schmitt exclaims in the opening line of Political Theology. 10 Central to this account of sovereignty is his presentation of the “state of exception,” that is, the emergency situation of extreme peril to an established way of life posed by the existence of the political enemy. The emergency situation brings the political order into a state of crisis that requires a suspension of the normal order in order to protect that order; that is to say, the sovereign decision—the only genuinely political decision—resides in the suspension of the normal order, the declaration of a state of exception, in order to defeat the political enemy to relieve the emergency. Political norms and rule of law are not capable of dealing with the emergency situation precisely because norms can only apply in the normal situation; the emergency is abnormal in the extreme, and yet is, paradoxically, the basis for the normal order. The state of exception, then, “makes relevant the subject of sovereignty, that is, the whole question of sovereignty,” according to Schmitt. “He decides whether there is an extreme emergency as well as what must be done to eliminate it. Although he stands outside the normally valid legal system, he nevertheless belongs to it, for it is he who must decide whether the constitution needs to be suspended in its entirety.” 11 As such, the sovereign is the political analogue for the theological concept of an omnipotent God, the state of exception the analogue for the theological miracle. The political sovereign’s decision on the state of exception is conceptually-structurally the same as the sovereign God’s suspension of the natural order through the miracle. 12 This is the basis of Schmitt’s political theology. At this point we can return to Schmitt’s criticism of political liberalism and representative parliamentarianism. On his estimation, the development of liberal, constitutional forms of democracy aim at the ultimate elimination of political sovereignty by subjecting all political decision to the rule of law. For political liberalism, there is no exception to the rule and, hence, on Schmitt’s view, no basis for sovereign decision; everything must be decided in advance by the application of the norm. Critically, this does not mean that liberalism operates without a political theology. Rather, liberalism espouses a rationalist political theology indebted to deism: the deist God creates a rationally ordered universe and then steps back to allow that universe to function on the basis of its intrinsic laws. Politically, however, this theology is disastrous, in Schmitt’s assessment, as it undermines needed structures for dealing with situations of crisis like the ones he saw looming in the Weimar period. As such, liberalism is bad political theology. The only way to avert the crisis, Schmitt argued, was to recognize the ineffectiveness of the parliamentary system and return to a strong notion of

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

55

sovereignty as the extralegal basis for the rule of law. Declaring the state of exception was the only way of saving the situation, hence, the rise of the National Socialists and the suspension of the republic appeared as the return of the sovereign. The emergence of Hitler was nothing short of a miraculous intervention in the course of the German state. WALTER BENJAMIN: MYTHICAL VIOLENCE, DIVINE VIOLENCE, AND WEAK MESSIANIC POWER Like Schmitt, Benjamin witnessed the crisis and eventual collapse of the Weimar government, and he offered equally comprehensive criticisms of liberal parliamentarianism: [Parliaments] offer the familiar, woeful spectacle because they have not remained conscious of the revolutionary forces to which they owe their existence. Accordingly, in Germany in particular, the last manifestations of such forces bore no fruit for parliaments. They lack the sense that they represent a lawmaking violence; no wonder they cannot achieve decrees worthy of this violence, but cultivate in compromise a supposedly nonviolent manner of dealing with political affairs. . . . For what a parliament achieves in vital affairs can be only those legal decrees that in their origin and outcome are attended by violence. 13

As much as liberal parliamentarianism may try to conceive itself as a nonviolent means of establishing law, the very notion of law implies the necessity of coercive force or violence. When parliamentarians lose sight of this coercive element, when they propose compromise as a substitute to coercion in establishing the force of law, the parliamentary process itself falls into decay and becomes ineffectual. In a profound sense, Benjamin was in agreement Schmitt that the emergence of liberal parliamentary government problematized the idea of political sovereignty by substituting political decision with endless discussion and compromise. However, unlike Schmitt—for whom these processes signaled a decline from more legitimate forms of political organization, forms which should be resuscitated, if on different grounds—Benjamin saw these developments as revealing the ultimate illegitimacy of law as such. What was needed was not a return to pre-liberal understandings of political sovereignty, but a critique of state sanctioned violence that might unleash a revolutionary establishment of justice apart from legality. Until fairly recently, few students of Benjamin showed much interest in his political thought. His essays dedicated to explicitly political matters are few and scattered throughout his more familiar works on art, literature, and culture. Additionally, it is difficult to fit Benjamin’s political writings into established

56

W. David Hall

categories of political thought. He clearly identified with Marxist-materialist politics, yet his engagement with Marxism was refracted through the lens of Judaism, and Jewish messianism in particular. James Martel suggests that this “uneasy intersection” between materialist political thought and esoteric Jewish theology has led many to dismiss Benjamin as a serious political thinker. “In refusing to resolve that conflict (indeed, irresolution being the basis of the connection between the theological and the political), it seems that Benjamin is often seen as falling between these two stools; [he is] too mystical for the Marxists and too Marxist for the mystics.” 14 However, a growing number of scholars are turning to Benjamin’s political writings, viewing them as an important prism for understanding his work as a whole; rekindling of interest in political theology has been a driving force. A central concern throughout Benjamin’s political writings is the relation of Gewalt—usually translated as “violence” in the English works—to the spheres of law and justice: “The task of a critique of violence can be summarized as that of expounding its relation to law and justice. For a cause, however effective, becomes violent, in the precise sense of the word, only when it enters into moral relations.” 15 Benjamin’s critique aims to determine if and on what grounds Gewalt—not in the sense of discreet acts of violence, but violence as a principle—can be justified. The critique, therefore, necessarily sets violence in a means-end calculation; the goal is to determine whether violence can be justified as a legitimate means to an end. Two opposed methodological starting points for critique present themselves: natural law theory and positive law theory. If justice is the criterion of ends, legality is that of means. Notwithstanding this antithesis, however, both schools meet in their common basic dogma: just ends can be attained by justified means, justified means used for just ends. Natural law attempts, by the justness of the ends, to “justify” the means, positive law to “guarantee” the justness of the ends through the justification of means. This antinomy [over whether ends justify means or means justify ends] would prove insoluable if the common dogmatic assumption were false, if justified means on the one hand and just ends on the other were in irreconcilable conflict. 16

Benjamin argues that natural law theory cannot serve as a starting point as particular ends can only determine the justness of particular instances of violence as their means. Instead, given that the critique aims to establish the legitimacy of violence in principle, positive law theory must be the starting point. Yet, an impasse opens immediately: in order for violence to be legitimate, justifiable, there must be a system of laws in place to sanction it. But what about the foundation of the legal system itself, and more importantly, the violence required to establish it? This problem signals a distinction central to

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

57

Benjamin’s critique, that between lawmaking and law-preserving violence. In order for the legal system to serve its law-preserving function, that is, to draw and preserve the distinction between sanctioned and unsanctioned violence, it must be founded through an act of violence that brings it into existence. The question of the legitimacy of this founding act is left unanswered; in fact, its legitimacy is unanswerable as there exists no prior system of law to sanction it, and this raises the specter that any sanctioning of violence is simply and arbitrary act. Indeed, Benjamin analyses four types of violence—military violence, capital punishment, police force, and parliamentary democracy—to show that the distinction between lawmaking and law-preserving violence cannot be maintained; the one continually slides into the other making all sanctioning an act of brute force; might makes right. The antinomy between means and ends is irresolvable, on Benjamin’s accounting, “For it is never reason that decides on the justification of means and the justness of ends: fate-imposed violence decides on the former, and God on the latter. An insight that is uncommon only because of the stubborn prevailing habit of conceiving those just ends as ends of a possible law.” 17 Thinking justice in terms of legality is a form of mythical thinking; parliamentary process is the most dangerous form of such thinking as it hides its violence behind the myth of legitimate founding. That the modern state preserves for itself a monopoly on legitimate use of violence is cause for worry. Indeed, law aims not at justice but at order; the state, as the agent wielding the legal apparatus, aims not at the good but at power. Whether that order is a just one, whether that power is used for good purposes, is beside the point from a purely legal standpoint. All legally sanctioned violence is a form of what Benjamin calls mythical violence, “a bloody power over mere life for its own sake.” 18 From this perspective, the rise of the National Socialists was merely the end product of the march of legally sanctioned violence; Adolf Hitler was the manifestation of mythical violence incarnate. Opposed to this mythic violence, however, stands another, pure violence—pure both in the sense of being purified of the manifestation of brute power over mere life, and pure in the sense of being unalloyed with the concern for ends—what Benjamin calls divine violence. Just as in all spheres God opposes myth, mythic violence is confronted by the divine. And the latter constitutes its antithesis in all respects. If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood. . . . [D]ivine violence is pure power over all life for the sake of the living. 19

58

W. David Hall

Here, the theological register of Benjamin’s political thought manifests itself. But the idea of a divine violence raises puzzles for an understanding of political decision. The claim that justice depends on divine intervention— whatever “God” might mean in a Marxist framework—seems to put the striving for justice outside the bounds of human action. Likewise, what could a pure power unalloyed to the calculation of means and ends mean for action? What is the basis of a political decision without an end in mind? Benjamin clearly thought there were just forms of human political action, but it is difficult to conceive what those might look like. The resolution of this puzzle rests is a particular orientation to history. Benjamin poses this orientation, which he calls historical materialism, to the world historical approach to history, or historicism. The places where his historical materialist approach is made most manifest are in two writings, “TheologicalPolitical Fragment” and “On the Concept of History,” where the uneasy tension between Benjamin’s Marxism and his messianism is most apparent. Comparing his materialist method with historicism, Benjamin explains: With whom does historicism actually sympathize? The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of prior conquerors. Hence, empathizing with the victor invariably benefits the current rulers. . . . Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which current rulers step over those who are laying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried in the procession. They are called “cultural treasures,” and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. . . . There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is never free of barbarism, so barbarism taints the manner in which it was transmitted from one hand to another. The historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from this process of transmission as far as possible. He regards as his task to brush history against the grain. 20

Historicism, on this reading, is the history of power; the historical materialist aims to “brush history against the grain” to recover the voices of the vanquished. Benjamin’s materialist approach to history insists on two principles: (1) a look to the past rather that the future for the impetus for political action, and (2) an openness to the historical past such that it is allowed to inform the present in what he calls a Jeztzeit, or “now-time.” 21 Looking to the past in this manner, the historical materialist hopes to locate moments of resonance between a past time and the present in which she might “blast open the continuum of history” 22 to unleash a revolutionary potential for thinking differently about the future. “The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption,” Benjamin explains. “If so, then there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

59

that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim.” 23 Such a resonance “crystalizes” history into a figuration, a now-time, a sort of glimpse of the messianic reign of justice. This weak messianic power is a human power, but it is a weak power in that it does not aim directly, but only indirectly at the accomplishment of the reign of justice. In “Theological-Political Fragment,” Benjamin is clear that only the Messiah can inaugurate the Kingdom of God. The political and the messianic operate on different registers; the secular and the divine travel different paths. However, they are not entirely unrelated, “But just as a force, by virtue of the path it is moving along, can augment another force on the opposite path, so the secular order—because of its nature as secular—promotes the coming of the Messianic Kingdom. The secular, therefore, though not itself a category of this kingdom, is a decisive category of its most unobtrusive approach.” 24 Though political action cannot establish the reign of justice, it can prepare the way for the Messiah. The genuine political decision is a decision to resist the mythical power of the law and to prepare the way for the reign of justice. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: THE TWO KINGDOMS AND RESPONSIBLE ACTION Unlike Schmitt or Benjamin, Bonhoeffer’s political theology is explicitly theological, that is to say, his is a political theology as opposed to a political theology. As such, he speaks from a different register than the other two. This makes his placement in this discussion awkward at first blush. Bonhoeffer does not subscribe to the notion, shared by both Schmitt and Benjamin, of an autonomous secular reality independent of theological concerns. If, for Benjamin, the easy cohabitation of law and justice is among the more dubious “gifts” philosophical liberalism has bequeathed to modernity, the view that autonomous secular politics has eclipsed religion as the realm of human interaction was so for Bonhoeffer. As already indicated, however, there are good historical and philosophical reasons to place Bonhoeffer here. He offers a clear political theology and a clear account of responsible action that makes the comparison interesting and enlightening. Bonhoeffer’s political theology is best characterized by a particular understanding of the Lutheran “Two Kingdoms” doctrine. On this understanding, church and state are distinct, though not unrelated, institutional realities by which God has ordered reality, each having a particular function assigned to it by the ultimate sovereign, God. The state is charged with preserving order through force of law; the church is charged with announcing the gospel message of judgment and reconciliation. Normally, each carries

60

W. David Hall

out its mandated function recognizing the authority of the other without meddling in its affairs. Bonhoeffer lays out these dual functions clearly and forcefully in a short essay, and I quote him at length here to get this structure on the table: The church has neither to praise nor censure the laws of the state. Instead, it has to affirm the state as God’s order of preservation in the godless world. It should recognize and understand the state’s creation of order—whether good or bad from a humanitarian perspective—as grounded in God’s desire for preservation in the midst of the world’s chaotic godlessness. . . . [T]he true church of Christ, which lives by the gospel alone and knows the nature of state actions, will never interfere in the functioning of the state in this way, by criticizing its history-making actions from the standpoint of any sort of, say, humanitarian ideal. The church knows about the essential necessity for the use of force in the world, and it knows about the “moral” injustice that is necessarily involved in the use of force in certain concrete actions. . . . As long as the state acts in such a way as to create law and order—even if it means new laws and new order—the church of the Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer cannot oppose it through direct political action. 25

All things considered, the church recognizes the authority of the state in its preserving function. For Bonhoeffer, the church in fact depends on the state in this regard, as order is necessary for the church to fulfill its function to bear witness “to God’s breaking into history.” While the church may expect the state to act morally in normal circumstances, moral decisions are not necessary, and may even be detrimental, to the state’s efforts to fulfill its function, particularly in abnormal circumstances. However, Bonhoeffer is clear that, while the state functions independently of the church, it is not free from responsibilities vis-à-vis the church. Part of the church’s proclaiming function is precisely the awareness of and responsibility for God’s proper ordering of creation; as such, the church is called upon to admonish the state in some circumstances, not from a moral or humanitarian perspective, but to assure that its actions can be justified as legitimate state actions. The church is called to perform this function of admonishment in cases where the state either enacts too little law—that is, cases where it fails to preserve order and protect the rights of citizens—or too much law—where it attempts to infringe on the mandates of the church. In such cases, there are three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-à-vis the state: first (as we have said), questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second is service to the victims of the state’s actions. The church has an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. . . . The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

61

victims beneath the wheel but to seize the wheel itself. Such an action would be direct political action on the part of the church. This is only possible and called for if the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order, that is, if the church perceives that the state, without any scruples, has created either too much or too little law and order. 26

The “without any scruples” clause of this final statement is important; the church only has the right and duty to intervene in affairs of state if the state has willingly shirked its responsibilities as assigned by God. Such a situation would represent, for Bonhoeffer, a crisis situation in which the state ceases to be the state. “In such a case, the church would find itself in statu confessionis, and the state would find itself in the act of self-negation.” 27 Short of such an apocalyptic situation, the church is restricted to admonishing the state and caring for its victims. But, what constitutes direct political action on the part of the church where the state is in the act of self-negation? What is the role of the church as church in the political realm? Bonhoeffer is clear that the state never counsels rebellion against the state, let alone revolution. Status confessionis indicates a special confession on behalf of the church condemning particular policies of the state, for instance, the Nazi’s attempt to ban ethnically Jewish Christians from full participation in the church, not a direct challenge of the state’s authority as such. 28 To take stock, then, for Bonhoeffer, the church and the state are distinct, but mutually dependent, institutions with functions mandated by God. So, long as each fulfills its function, there is not cause for interference of one in the duties of the other. The state is charged with preserving order through force, occasionally even with unjust force. The church is charged with preaching the gospel of judgment and reconciliation and caring for the victims of the social order. But even in its second, diaconal function, the church is not a humanitarian organization, and this point is critical. The church cares for the victims not on humanitarian, or even moral, grounds but by virtue of its mandate. However, though church and state serve neither humanitarian nor moral functions, Bonhoeffer does not leave the matter at that. “It remains for the humanitarian associations and individual Christian men who see themselves called to do so, to make the state aware of the moral aspect of the measures it takes in this regard, that is, should the occasion arise, to accuse the state of offenses against morality.” 29 In such cases, individuals and associations take upon themselves the responsibility for acting more directly in political affairs, including the possibility of disobeying the state. The issue, then, is determining whether such actions are undertaken responsibly, and here we bump up against the need to determine what, for Bonhoeffer, constitutes a responsible political decision. The key lies in his understanding of the structure of responsibility, which he works out in some of his last writings.

62

W. David Hall

For Bonhoeffer, responsibility is structured “in a twofold manner, namely, by life’s bond to human beings and to God, and by the freedom of one’s own life.” 30 The two sides of responsible action are, in turn structured by two concepts (to be discussed shortly) that are themselves parallel in their structuring function. These two sides of the responsible life delimit both the social character of responsibility (responsibility to God and others) and the necessity of human freedom for responsible action (responsibility for oneself). Regarding its social character, responsibility is structured by two concepts: “vicarious representative action,” and “accordance with reality.” By vicarious representative action, Bonhoeffer articulated the Christomorphic character of authentic human existence. Just as Christ acted as a vicarious representative for humanity before God, so every responsible individual acts for the concrete other whom she encounters: “Jesus—the life, our life—the Son of God who became human lived as our vicarious representative. Through him, therefore, all human life is in its essence vicarious representation. . . . Only those who are selfless live responsibly, which means that only selfless people truly live.” 31 The vicarious nature of responsible human action aims to correct two misconceptions of abstract ethical theory: first, the responsible individual is never an isolated ego, but a social being, always in relation to others, and second, all responsible action is action with and for others. By accordance with reality, Bonhoeffer aimed to highlight, first, that responsible action is never based on moral principle; an abstract ethics of principle assumes that the distinction between absolute good and absolute evil is clear cut, but reality proves that the distinction is rarely so clearly demarcated. “The goal is not to realize an ‘absolute good,’” he explains. “Instead the self-denial of those who act responsibly includes choosing something relatively better over something relatively worse, and recognizing that the ‘absolute good’ may be exactly the worst.” 32 Concrete responsible action deals with the messiness and indeterminacy of reality and aims to respond to that reality without imposing “a foreign law” on it. Second, responsible action “allows the world to be world and reckons with the world as world, while at the same time never forgetting that the world is loved, judged, and reconciled in Jesus Christ by God.” 33 In other words, the one who acts responsibly does not fool herself that her actions redeem the world. While responsibility demands that we not be complicit with the injustice of the status quo—the threat of “pseudo-Lutheran,” bourgeois conformism—the responsible individual neither presumes to bring about the kingdom of God; such is the mistake of the religious radical. Only God redeems the world, in God’s own time and idiom. With regard to freedom, responsibility is structured by the parallel concepts of accountability and the venture of concrete decision. Bonhoeffer discussed accountability in terms of the ability and willingness to take on guilt for acting. The responsible individual freely takes on this guilt precisely

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

63

out of her sense of responsibility and hope that she will eventually be acquitted by virtue of God’s grace. In this sense, the responsible individual freely takes on the guilt of the situation just as Christ took on the sins of the world; accountability is a parallel concept to vicarious representative action. Such free responsible action is always a venture of concrete decision because the distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong are rarely if ever clear cut. “‘Right collides with right,’ as Aeschylus stated. This very fact defines responsible action as a free venture [Wagnis], not justified by any law; rather those who act responsibly relinquish any effectual self-justification; indeed in doing so they relinquish any ultimately dependable knowledge of good and evil.” 34 Because responsibility must accord with the messiness of reality, free responsible action is always a venture into unknown territory. On this account, then, responsible action is the free decision of an accountable individual with and for concrete others in the fallen world. An authentic human life guided by responsible action is lived according to God’s commandment as revealed in Christ, the very form of responsible human action. Such an authentic life is structured by the Lutheran understanding of orders of creation, or what Bonhoeffer called the divine mandates: church, marriage and family, work, and government. A life takes form most immediately in the creation of new life in the family and the creation of culture through meaningful work; these endeavors are properly directed and preserved through membership in the Christian community (church) and citizenship in the political unit (state). 35 Church and state, then, play an important role in the maintenance of life, and the individual owes these institutions her obedience so long as each performs its function. But what if one institution should fail in its function? What is the individual’s responsibility in this case? Bonhoeffer’s answer is clear with regard to government: The duty of Christians to obey binds them up to the point where the government forces them into direct violation of the divine commandment, thus until government overtly acts contrary to its divine task and thereby forfeits its divine claim. When in doubt, obedience is demanded, for the Christian does not bear the governmental responsibility. But if government oversteps its task at some point . . . then at this point it is indeed to be disobeyed but for the sake of conscience and for the sake of the Lord. 36

How does one determine whether the point for disobedience has been reached? This is less clear: “Because in all decisions of the state the historical entanglement in the guilt of the past is incalculably large, it is for the most part not possible to judge the legitimacy of a single decision. Here the venture of responsibility must be risked.” 37 In the political realm, then, responsible action may consist in taking upon oneself the responsibility, and hence the guilt, to disobey the state. Whether such political action might entail direct, violent resistance to the state would

64

W. David Hall

depend upon whether the individual judged state actions had made life impossible. That Bonhoeffer decided to become involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler indicates that he thought the actions of the Nazi dictatorship had reached that point. We remain in the dark about his actual motives for involvement in the conspiracy, but the decision itself is defensible within his account of responsible action. THE CONFESSIONAL BASES FOR POLITICAL DECISION I suggested at the beginning of this chapter that these three thinkers operate out of distinct confessional stances, and that these stances shape their understanding of the political situation. In conclusion, I aim to show, in an all too cursory way, that this is the case. First a point of agreement between the three: state-craft is not subject to morality, at least not necessarily. For Schmitt and Benjamin, one is deluded to search for a political ethics of the state, though each has slightly different reasons for asserting so. While Bonhoeffer assumes that the state will act morally in normal circumstances, morality is not a necessary component to the state’s functioning, and there may be real situations where the state must forgo ethical decision in the interest of preservation. It would be inaccurate, I think, to characterize Schmitt’s political theology as “Catholic.” A more accurate characterization of his stance is as a sort of secularized, modern version of the Medieval Synthesis. The sovereign rules, for Schmitt, on the basis of a paradoxically nontheistic divine right; he (or she?) represents the viceroy of the now-absent God, the God which has been evacuated from the political by modern, secular theories of state. 38 The sovereign is the sole, legitimate political agent. His decisions have no moral bearing—morality is, for Schmitt, a matter for private relations and has only indirect political significance—and those decisions must be final if there is to be a political order at all. The sovereign’s decision, unfettered by constraints, is the only authentic political decision. Following others, I have characterized Benjamin’s political theology by an uneasy tension between Marxist materialism and Jewish messianism. 39 As such, state sanctioned violence is an idolatrous, mythical violence that works contrary to the righteousness commanded by the true God. Siding with the state amounts to siding against the messianic reign of justice. As such, the authentic political decision rests in resistance to the mythical violence of the state as an indirect form of preparation for the eschatological advent of the Messiah. Bonhoeffer’s stance on government falls squarely in his understanding of the Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, and I suggest that we view this as a political theology. The church and the state are both aspects of God’s ordering of creation, and each serves a function mandated to it by God; the

Political Meditations in Confessional Keys

65

state is charged with the perseveration of order, the church with the proclamation of the gospel. While God is the ultimate sovereign of heaven and earth, the state receives its authority from God. While that authority is to be respected and obeyed so long as the state fulfills its function, the individual may be called to question the state in instances of injustice, and in extreme cases, may be called to responsible action in resistance of the state. Such action must, if it is to stay true to responsibility as Bonhoeffer understands it, chart a narrow path between conformism with the status quo and religious enthusiasm. The authentic political decision rests in determining what the concrete situation demands concerning the individual’s responsible action with and for other others vis-à-vis the state. For all three thinkers, the political is informed by deep religious-confessional stances that shape an understanding of the situation. NOTES 1. Marc de Wilde, “Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt,” Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, eds. H. de Vries and L. E. Sullivan (New York: Fordham University, 2006), 188–200. 2. A notable exception is Petra Brown, “Bonhoeffer, Schmitt, and the State of Exception,” Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 26, no. 3 (October 2013), 246–64, though Brown indicates that Bonhoeffer scholars would likely disagree with her treatment of his thought. 3. For a detailed examination of Schmitt’s enigmatic career, see Jan-Werner Müller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven: Yale University, 2003). 4. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge: MIT, 1988), 34. 5. Ibid. 6. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995), 22. 7. Ibid., 26–27. 8. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005), 36. 9. Ibid., 36–52. 10. Ibid., 5. 11. Ibid., 6–7. 12. Ibid., 36–37. 13. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913–1926, eds. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1996), 244. 14. James Martel, “Taking Benjamin Seriously as a Political Thinker,” Philosophy & Rhetoric, v. 44, no. 4 (2011), 298. 15. Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” 236. 16. Ibid., 237. 17. Ibid., 247. 18. Ibid., 250. 19. Ibid., 249–50. 20. Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938–1940, eds. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2003), 391–92. 21. Ibid., 395. 22. Ibid., 396. 23. Ibid., 390 (original emphasis). 24. Walter Benjamin, “Theological-Political Fragment,” in Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935–1938, eds. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2002), 305. 25. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” DBWE 12:362–64.

66

W. David Hall

26. Ibid., 365–66 (final emphasis added). 27. Ibid., 366. 28. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Aryan Paragraph in the Church,” DBWE 12:427–32. 29. Bonhoeffer, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” 363. 30. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “History and Good,” DBWE 6:257. 31. Ibid., 258–59. 32. Ibid., 261 (emphasis added). 33. Ibid., 264. 34. Ibid., 284. 35. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates,” DBWE 6:388–94. 36. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “A Theological Position Paper on State and Church,” DBWE 16:516–17 37. Ibid. 38. Schmitt’s reliance on the anti-liberal, Catholic, counter revolutionaries of the early modern period, de Maistre and Donoso Cortez, buttress my claim here. 39. The angle of refraction is an open question here. The question of where Benjamin’s ultimate allegiance lies, with Marxism or Judaism, is a matter for debate, and hence whether Marxism is refracted through messianism or the reverse. I have interpreted him as Marxist first and messianist second without attempting to argue this position, which would go beyond the confines of this chapter. However, a different interpretation might place him closer to Bonhoeffer than I do.

WORKS CITED Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913–1926. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1996. ———. Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935–1938. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard University, 2002. ———. Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938–1940. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard University, 2003. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Berlin, 1932–33. Edited by Larry L. Rasmussen. Translated by Isabel Best, David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940–1945. Edited by Mark S. Brocker. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 16. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Brown, Petra. “Bonhoeffer, Schmitt, and the State of Exception,” Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 26, no. 3 (2013): 246–64. de Wilde, Marc. “Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt.” In Political Theologies: Public Religions in a PostSecular World, edited by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, 188–200. New York: Fordham University, 2006. Martel, James. “Taking Benjamin Seriously as a Political Thinker,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 44, no. 4 (2011): 297–308. Müller, Jan-Werner. A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought. New Haven: Yale University, 2003. Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995. ———. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge: MIT, 1988. ———. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005.

Chapter Four

Bonhoeffer, the Discourses on Status Confessionis in Apartheid South Africa, and Confessing the Faith Anew Robert Vosloo

THE GOSPEL AT STAKE The Accompanying Letter to the Belhar Confession opens with the words: “We are deeply conscious that moments of such seriousness can arise in the life of a Church that it may feel the need to confess its faith anew in the light of the specific situation. We are aware that such an act of confession is not lightly undertaken, but only if it is considered that the heart of the gospel is so threatened as to be at stake.” 1 The Belhar confession—a Reformed confessional document that arose out of the church and theological struggles against apartheid in South Africa—was first accepted in draft form by the then Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 1982 at its general synod, and in 1986 it was officially adopted as part of this church’s confessional base. 2 Given how apartheid, with its logic of separation and segregation, was justified on biblical and theological grounds in certain circles within the Reformed tradition in South Africa, the Belhar Confession—with its focus on unity, reconciliation and justice—was born as a theological response to what was experienced as a travesty of the gospel. The Dutch Reformed Mission Church thus came to a position of theological clarity that a moment of truth has dawned in this specific ecclesial and political situation in which it could not do otherwise than to confess its faith in Jesus as Lord anew. Therefore the Accompanying Letter states: “(W)e make this confession, not as a contribution to a theological debate or as a new summary of our beliefs, but as a cry from the heart, as something we 67

68

Robert Vosloo

are obliged to do for the sake of the gospel in view of the times in which we stand.” 3 This strong emphasis in the letter accompanying the Belhar Confession that the act of confession is undertaken because the theology of apartheid threatens the heart of the gospel, calls to mind the discourses around the Latin expression status confessionis, a term that can be loosely translated as a state or stance of confession of faith. In the events leading up to, and following, the acceptance of the Belhar Confession this term was indeed often evoked and discussed in church and ecumenical circles. This expression is also found in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings from 1933 onwards, playing a central role in his theological logic on how to respond to the challenges posed by the rise of Nazism. As Michael DeJonge observes, “if there is one concept with which Bonhoeffer’s key writings of 1933 should be associated, it is that of status confessionis.” 4 It is not a throwaway phrase for Bonhoeffer, but rather “shapes the logic of his early resistance to Nazism.” 5 It is not surprising that the South African discourses on status confessionis and the need for confessing the faith anew in the light of a situation in which the heart of the gospel is threatened drew upon the German church struggles in the 1930s, and that Bonhoeffer’s writings also played a key role in this regard. Although the Accompanying Letter to the Belhar Confession and the discussions at the Belhar synodical meetings, strongly bear the mark of the influence of Karl Barth’s thinking on confession, 6 the broader context of the German church struggle, including Bonhoeffer’s 1933 writings and his subsequent correspondence with Karl Barth on status confessionis, also had an influence on the discussions that contributed to the birth of the Belhar Confession. In this chapter I want to make some historical and theological remarks concerning the use of term status confessionis in South African theological discourses in the late 1970s and early 1980s in South Africa, also with an eye on the reception and resonance of Bonhoeffer’s thought in these discourses. With this in mind, the chapter first highlights the use of the term status confessionis in some of Bonhoeffer’s writings against the backdrop of his knowledge of the Lutheran tradition, before turning to the discussions on status confessionis in (mainly) Reformed circles in South Africa. Drawing on some of Bonhoeffer’s writings, and his reception in South Africa, the final part of the chapter offers a few brief comments on what an engagement with the discourses on status confessionis might contribute to the discussions on what it might mean to confess faith anew.

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

69

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LUTHERAN DISPUTES, STATUS CONFESSIONIS, AND BONHOEFFER As is often highlighted in scholarly discussion, the phrase status confessionis has its origin in one of the intra-Lutheran disputes after Luther’s death in 1546, known as the adiaphora controversy. 7 The context of this controversy had to do with the reinstatement by Emperor Charles V, in alliance with the papacy, of many Roman Catholic liturgical customs in Lutheran churches. This led to disagreement among Lutherans whether these church practices forced upon them should be accepted or not. The Philippists (named after Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s friend and colleague who was the leader of the group) felt that these liturgical changes do not belong to the realm of the gospel, but to the realm of adiaphora (i.e. “indifferent things” or “neutral matters”) and therefore they can be accommodated. On the other hand, the gnesio-Lutherans, with Matthias Flacius as prominent figure, saw these changes not as matters that one can be indifferent to because the emperor encroached on the terrain of the church, and therefore resistance is called for. The controversy became settled through article X of the Formula of Concord (1577), which sided with the gnesio-Lutherans over against the Philippists. This authoritative Lutheran document states that although church arrangements are indeed adiaphora, and can therefore be amended freely, the status of adiaphora changes in casu confessionis, that is in situations when an unequivocal confession of faith is demanded because the pure teachings of the gospel are threatened. In these cases there are no neutral matters. In such moments even indifferent matters can initiate a time of confession in which nothing is adiaphora, and hence no compromise is permitted. Although the specific words are not used in the Formula of Concord, the idea behind it later came to expression in the phrase in statu confessionis nil adiophoron. Michael DeJonge summarizes the logic of the Formula of Concord, and the subsequent understanding of the term status confessionis in the Lutheran tradition, as follows: “To say that the church is in statu confessionis is to say that the gospel itself is under threat, an outside threat led by political authority and an inside threat of false teaching. Even though the threat appears to address only minor or indifferent matters (adiaphora), the gospel itself is in fact at stake.” 8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer—well-steeped in Lutheran theology—famously also took up the phrase status confessionis in his writings from 1933 onwards. Bonhoeffer turned to this notion of status confessionis within the broader context of Hitler’s systematic attempt to bring all aspects of life in line with Nazi worldview. The infamous Aryan paragraph excluded Jews from certain civic functions, including positions in church ministry. Thus the church was confronted with a situation—and Bonhoeffer saw parallels with the sixteenth-century adiaphora controversy—in which the state was perceived as

70

Robert Vosloo

overstepping its mandate by forcing its will on the church, with a group within the church (i.e., the German Christian movement) giving theological sanction to this imposition. In his much-discussed text “The Church and the Jewish Question” (published in June 1933, but already completed on April 15, 1933), 9 Bonhoeffer states that “the church of the Reformation is not encouraged to get involved in specific political actions of the state.” 10 The state, in its role to preserve order, remains free from interference by the church, and therefore “the church cannot primarily take direct politic action.” 11 However, this does not mean that the church should stand indifferent to the state’s political action. Rather, it should keep questioning the government “whether its actions can be justified as legitimate state actions, that is actions that create law and order, not lack of rights and disorder.” 12 The church will be compelled to speak if there is either too little law and order (for instance when a group of people is deprived of their rights), or, at the other extreme, when there is too much law and order (for instance when the state uses force in such a way that the message of the Christian faith cannot be proclaimed). Such an encroachment should be repudiated, and in this context Bonhoeffer makes his wellknown observation of three possible forms of action that the church can take over against the state. The first is to question the state regarding the legitimacy of its actions as state. The second is to be of service to the victims of state actions, including those who do not belong to the Christian community. The third possibility is not just to attend to the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel, but “to seize the wheel itself” (dem Rad selbst in dem Speichen zu fallen), 13 resulting in direct political action from the side of the church. Bonhoeffer is clear that this possibility is only an option if the state has created too much or too little law and order. He comments further in this regard: There would be too little if any one group of citizens are deprived of their rights. There would be too much in the case of an attack, coming from the state, on the nature of the church and its proclamation, such as the obligatory exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or a ban on mission to the Jews. In such a case the church will find itself in statu confessionis, and the state would find itself in an act of self-negation. 14

This is the first time Bonhoeffer uses the term status confessionis. But Bonhoeffer is clear that even this third kind of direct political action still recognizes the state’s authority as state. It is Bonhoeffer’s judgment at the time of writing this essay that the Jewish question puts forward for the church the challenge of the first two options, but that the hour requires that the option of immediate political actions must be decided by an ecumenical council when the right moment arises, “and hence cannot be casuistically construed beforehand.” 15

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

71

Bonhoeffer does not only deal in this essay with the threat from the side of the state but also with the internal threat from within the church itself. The church can become heretic and legalistic in terms of the position taken toward the baptized Jews in its congregations. The exclusion of Jews from membership and ministry threatens the church as it undermines the gospel of justification. As Bonhoeffer comments (with reference to the early Christian controversy in which the Jewish Christians wanted to make circumcision a prerequisite for membership of the Christian community): “To exclude persons who are racially Jewish from our ethnically German church would mean to make it into a church of the Jewish Christian type. Such exclusion is therefore not possible in the church.” 16 And toward the end of his essay, Bonhoeffer writes: “If someone feels unable to continue in church fellowship with Christians of Jewish origin, nothing can prevent him from leaving this fellowship. But it must be made clear to him, with ultimate seriousness, that he is turning his back on the place where the church of Christ stands.” 17 Bonhoeffer’s use of the term status confessionis is not only limited to his text on “The Church and the Jewish Question.” For example, in his memorandum from mid-July 1933 on “The Jewish-Christian Question as Status Confessionis” (meant to draw the attention of the ecumenical world to the implications of the new church constitution), 18 Bonhoeffer clearly states: The Aryan paragraph in the form contained in the first program of the “German Christians,” is a “status confessionis” for the Church. Nothing is more dangerous than for us to allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by statements as to its relative harmlessness. . . . Do not let us be conceived by the all sorts of material considerations about the significance or insignificance of the matter, and lose sight of its spiritual substance, which demands a spiritual decision. 19

And in Bonhoeffer’s “Theses on ‘The Aryan Paragraph in the Church’” from September 1933—again indicating the sixteenth-century adiaphora controversy in the background—we read: “The German Christians say: The Aryan paragraph is adiaphoron which doesn’t affect the confession of the church. We answer . . . the church and the ministry have been attacked in its substance, that is, the confession has been attacked.” 20 Also in Bonhoeffer’s text “What Should a Student of Theology Do Today?” (either written at the beginning of August or in October 1933) 21 the term status confessionis is prevalent. Through the study of theology, writes Bonhoeffer, one should prepare oneself to discern the spirits in Christ’s church. One should learn from the Holy Scriptures and the confessions of the Reformation what is the pure and true teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and which are human teachings, false doctrines, and idolatry. . . . One should know where the wellspring of the church’s life is found and how it became clogged and poisoned. One should

72

Robert Vosloo learn to recognize where and when the church of Christ reaches its hour of decision, when it is time for confession—the status confessionis. 22

The term status confessionis is also at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s correspondence with Karl Barth in 1933. In his letter, dated September 9, Bonhoeffer reminds Barth of Barth’s earlier statement that when the church introduces the Aryan paragraph it ceases to be a Christian church. Now that this has happened (from the resolution accepted by the Old Prussian General Synod on September 6, 1933), Bonhoeffer wants to know whether one can stay in a church in which the office of minister is only a privilege for Aryans. Concerning his own thoughts on the matter, Bonhoeffer writes: “There can be no doubt that a status confessionis exists, but what is the most appropriate way today to express what the confession says?—that is not clear to us.” 23 In Barth’s response to Bonhoeffer (in his letter of September 11, 1933), he writes that he too believes that a status confessionis is here. This implies for Barth that one will need to say to the church government by direct communication and public proclamation that they are, in this respect, no longer the Christ of Christ! This protest “cannot be made once and for all, but must be made again and again, until the cause has been removed.” But he also adds that “if there is to be a schism, it must come from the other side,” 24 and that “we shall never have cause for regret having assumed a highly active, polemical position of waiting.” 25 Even the above brief references to Bonhoeffer’s use of the notion of status confessionis brings one to concur with Michael DeJonge that “Bonhoeffer’s repeated invocations of status confessionis in his early church struggle writings are not merely rhetorical flourishes but rather point to the underlying logic of his resistance thinking.” 26 And it also makes it quite clear why it is not surprising that Bonhoeffer’s use of the notion of status confessionis (as part of the broader resistance coming from the circles of the Confessing Church in Germany) was also evoked during the church struggle in apartheid South Africa. BONHOEFFER, STATUS CONFESSIONIS, AND CONFESSING THE FAITH IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA The influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as one of the resources for the church and theological struggles against apartheid in South Africa is well-known. Many drew inspiration and insights from the witness and words of the German pastor, theologian, and resister as they sought to respond to the oppression and injustice associated with the apartheid regime. 27 Although the differences between Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa were often readily acknowledged, many nevertheless saw important parallels between these contexts. In the process names like Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth, and Die-

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

73

trich Bonhoeffer, together with the confessing church movement and the Barmen Declaration (1934), served as hope-giving signifiers for churches and individuals of a liberating theological trajectory that could be drawn upon in order to strengthen and sustain their witness for freedom, reconciliation, and justice. Notably the South African pastor and anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naudé called in the mid-1960s for a confessing church movement, with reference to the German Church Struggle and the Barmen Declaration. 28 Naudé left the Dutch Reformed Church in 1963 and became the Director of the Christian Institute (an ecumenical anti-apartheid organization that would continue to play a vital role in the South African church struggle until its banning in 1977), and in these ecumenical circles the German church struggle was often appropriated as a point of theological orientation, with Bonhoeffer serving as an inspiring example. In 1973 Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge visited South Africa on invitation of the South African Council of Churches, and presented several lectures on Bonhoeffer at various places in the country. Bethge’s visit contributed much to introducing Bonhoeffer to a wide spectrum of South Africans, with many of them immediately grasping the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought for their context amidst situations of deepening despair. 29 Following Bethge’s visit, John de Gruchy edited a collection of several of Bethge’s essays, which was published in 1975 under the title Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr. Of special interest is Bethge’s appendix essay on “A Confessing Church in South Africa? Conclusions from a Visit.” 30 Bethge mentions in this text that the question “Are we involved in a ‘church struggle’ like that in the Third Reich and do we have to create a ‘Confessing Church’ as you did in Germany?” was raised in almost every discussion he had in South Africa, commenting further: “The term ‘Confessing Church’ is indeed current in South Africa today and excites and troubles friend and foe alike. In many quarters the view is that a status confessionis now exists.” 31 There were of course other theological influences than the German church struggle that served as resources for the anti-apartheid movement within the churches, with liberation and black theology especially finding fertile ground. This said, the talk of a confessing church movement and a status confessionis—as Bethge’s comment indicates—also formed part of the debates in the mid-1970s on what a theological response to the oppression and injustices in apartheid South Africa might entail. The details of how the idea of status confessionis (also with reference to the German church struggle) was received, developed, and contested in the church and theological struggles against apartheid deserves a fuller historical account than I can give in this chapter. For our purposes here, I merely want to note a few important episodes pertaining to this history of reception, and

74

Robert Vosloo

highlight some theological commentary that emerged from the discourses on status confessionis in apartheid South Africa. In an article “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” written for the volume A Moment of Truth that appeared in the aftermath of the acceptance of the Belhar Confession in draft form, Dirkie Smit notes that the “sudden way in which the unknown expression ‘status confessionis’ appeared in the churches in South Africa and became common property practically overnight, vigorously discussed in every forum from the daily press to church council meetings, is simply amazing.” 32 Smit continues in this article by providing an extensive overview of the use of status confessionis in various discourses. He refers in the process not only to how the phrase functioned in the sixteenth-century adiaphora controversy and in post–World War II discussions in the Netherlands and Germany, but also to its reception in the German church struggle in the 1930s, with Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as important figures, and the Barmen Declaration as key document. With regard to Bonhoeffer, Smit writes: In April 1933, Bonhoeffer foresaw in his article “Die Kirche vor den Judenfrage” that a moment of decision can occur in which ongoing disputes in church and theology are suddenly ended and changed into a situation of confession, because the gospel itself is put at risk. . . . He was of the opinion that the Church, in such a moment, would have to confess and act over against a double threat, namely “too little order and justice” in that the rights of some citizens, that is, the Jews, were threatened, as well as “too much order and justice” in that the very right of the Church was threatened by the state, because membership, formerly determined only by Christian baptism, was now determined by biological (racial) factors. In such a situation the Church would find herself in a status confessionis, while the state would have exceeded its own limits. The church then would have to express itself verballyprophetically against this “too little” and “too much,” would have to identify itself in solidarity and Christian stewardship with those who suffer under the “too little” and “too much,” and would have to enter into political conflict with the state by deeds of disobedience whenever the essence of the church was really threatened by a racist restriction of its membership. 33

Given this description, it is immediately clear why the ideas expressed by Bonhoeffer in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” and the broader discussion on status confessionis in the German church struggle, resonated strongly in the ecumenical rejection of racism. At the Sixth Plenary Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in 1977 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the South African Lutheran priest Manas Buthelezi delivered an influential address, “In Christ—a community of the Holy Spirit,” and at this meeting the “Resolution on Southern Africa: Confessional Integrity” was adopted that stated:

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

75

Under normal circumstances Christians may have different opinions in political questions. However, political and social structures may become so perverted and oppressive that it is consistent with the confession to reject them and to work for changes. We especially appeal upon our white member churches in Southern Africa to recognize that the situation in South Africa constitutes a status confessionis. This means that, on the basis of faith and in order to manifest the unity of the churches would publicly and unequivocally reject the existing apartheid system. 34

Although this resolution was met mostly with appreciation, there were also voices of critique and rejection. 35 A study commission advising the Lutheran World Federation even recommended that the term status confessionis should be dropped while still retaining the description of an abnormal confessional situation. 36 A second important discourse in which the idea of status confessionis was central concerned a resolution adopted by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) in August 1982 in Ottawa, Canada. Four years earlier, in 1978, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church expressed at its general synod meeting “its conviction that apartheid policy as maintained by the government is in contradiction with the gospel.” 37 As part of the intensification of the theological critique against apartheid in black Reformed circles, the Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in Southern Africa (ABRECSA) was formed, with Allan Boesak playing a key role. At the first conference of ABRECSA in October 1981 at Hammanskraal (north of Pretoria), Boesak gave an important opening address entitled “Black and Reformed: Contradiction or Challenge?” At the heart of this address was the question of the relationship between the Reformed tradition and social justice. Boesak also proposed that “Black Christians should formulate a Reformed confession for our time and situation in our words. Beginning with our own South African situation, we should accept our responsibility to salvage this tradition from the mighty and the powerful. . . . It is important to declare apartheid to be irreconcilable with the gospel of Jesus Christ.” 38 In some ways a charter adopted by ABRESCA in 1981 gave expression to this call, especially the section on the theological basis of the charter. Although not using the words status confessionis, it contains the unequivocal declaration “that apartheid is a sin, and that the moral and theological justification of it is a travesty of the Gospel, a betrayal of the Reformed tradition, and a heresy.” 39 The charter also indicated the need for black Reformed Christians to contribute to the ecumenical conversation, and a special opportunity arose to do just that at the meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) to be held in Ottawa, Canada, in the following year. In a text prepared for the meeting, “God Made Us All But . . . Racism and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches,” Boesak writes that in South Africa apartheid is not just a political policy, but that it depends on a theological

76

Robert Vosloo

justification, therefore for Reformed churches “this situation should constitute a status confessionis: Reformed churches should recognize that apartheid is heresy, contrary to the gospel and inconsistent with the Reformed tradition.” 40 Boesak then goes on to say that this might be a difficult thing to do for the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, but that the issues has been too long deferred. And in this regard he specifically mentions Bonhoeffer’s call to the ecumenical movement “at a time not unlike that in South Africa today”: Not to act and not to take a stand, simply for fear of making a mistake, when others have to make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost a contradiction of love. . . . Too late means “never.” If the ecumenical movement does not see this now and if there are none who are “violent to take heaven by force” (Matt. 11:12), then the ecumenical movement is no longer the church, but a useless association for making fine speeches. 41

At the meeting of the World Alliance in August 1982 in Ottawa—where Boesak was voted in as President of the Alliance—a strong statement on racism was indeed adopted that declared: Therefore the General Council declares that this situation constitutes a status confessionis for our Churches, which means that we regard this as an issue on which it is not possible to differ without seriously jeopardizing the integrity of our common confession as Reformed Churches. We declare with black Reformed Christians in South Africa that apartheid (“separate development”) is a sin, and that the moral and theological justification of it is a travesty of the Gospel, and, in its persistent disobedience to the word of God, a theological heresy. 42

A few months later, at the synod meeting of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, the commission for ecumenical matters brought the decision of the World Alliance to synod and it was discussed at length on Friday October 1, 1982, with Synod accepting a proposal stating: “Because the secular gospel of apartheid most fundamentally threatens the reconciliation of Jesus Christ and the very essence of the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ, the DR Mission Church declares that it constitutes a status confessionis for the church of Jesus Christ.” 43 After some discussion, this proposal was followed by the acceptance of the recommendation of the commission, declaring that “apartheid (‘separate development’) is a sin, that its moral and theological justification makes a travesty of the gospel and that its continued disobedience to the Word of God is a theological heresy.” 44 After this important decision, Gustav Bam, professor in Practical Theology at the University of the Western Cape, made a speech that pointed out to the Synod that the declaration of a status confessionis implies that the words that follow such a declaration will have the character of a confession: “It is

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

77

not a mere decision that I take, or a policy declaration that I proclaim, or an administrative arrangement that I make, or a procedure ruling in my deliberations with others. It is a confession on the level of the other confessions of the church.” 45 Bam also pointed to Karl Barth’s discussion of the requirements for a confession in his Church Dogmatics, namely that a confession should serve to honor God and not be the result of any ulterior motive; that it is a deep-cutting protest that results when our faith is confronted with life; that it is a deed of confrontation and conflict, and not a lyrical effusion or an emotional catharsis; and that it is a free deed, performed only under the compulsion of the Holy Spirit and the Word. 46 After Bam’s speech a proposal was accepted that a confession be presented to the same synod. And on October 6, 1982, a draft confession was indeed adopted by the Synod. 47 Much more can be said on the history of the reception of the phrase status confessionis in the South African context, also concerning the history of origin and reception of the Belhar Confession, than briefly indicated above, but I want to highlight some of the theological commentary that surfaced in the process, with reference to Dirkie Smit’s article “What does status confessionis mean?” Smit defines status confessionis by noting that, strictly speaking, the expression means “that a Christian, or group of Christians, a church, or group of churches are of the opinion that a situation has developed, a moment of truth has dawned, in which nothing less than the gospel itself is at stake, so that they feel compelled to witness and act over against this threat.” 48 Smit then goes on to make three poignant remarks in the light of this description, that are worth revisiting, also in view of the question what it means to confess the faith anew. A first remark relates to the fact that this description presupposes the idea that a moment of truth has struck in which the gospel is at stake. Therefore the role of the ripened situation, of the kairos, cannot be overemphasized. “The power of the confessional word emerging from a status confessionis lies exactly in the fact that it is a word aimed at the concrete moment in the present,” writes Smit. The analysis of the existing situation, therefore, is of vital importance in arguing for a status confessionis. Such an analysis can of course be done under normal circumstances in a variety of ways, therefore the recognition that a status confessionis exists may never be, in Smit’s words, “an immature and arbitrary attempt to cut the Gordian knot with force instead of unraveling it with fairness, wisdom, and responsibility.” 49 Status confessionis, one can say, is not something to be used as a weapon or as part of a show of strength, but is something done in trembling acknowledgment that the hour has struck in which something must be said. In this sense, “such a word is consequently not calculated or planned, but born . . . it surprises all those concerned.” 50 Smit refers here to Bonhoeffer’s statement that in a

78

Robert Vosloo

status confessionis all tactical considerations are abandoned, quoting from his text “What Should a Student of Theology Do Today?”: The apparent certainties, based on loud expressions of one’s own viewpoint . . . has nothing to do with the assurance of repentance and of the gospel, so that those who have been brought to new knowledge are standing guilty as well, substituting and interceding next to the misdirected and misled brothers, because they themselves do not live from the confidence of being know-all’s or from the complacency of being correct (Rechthaberei), but only of the remission of the gospel. 51

Next to the affirmation that the recognition of status confessionis has to do with being surprised by the dawn of a moment of truth, Smit—secondly— emphasizes that this is not just any moment, but a moment of truth in which the gospel itself is at stake. Matters that in themselves may be under normal circumstances a custom or not fundamental, can become a focal point in which the gospel is at stake. Smit refers in regard to a remark by Manas Buthelezi to illustrate the point: “Separate houses of worship and structures of administration may be neutral in themselves, but when racism sets up its idolatrous shrines in them they lose their neutrality, they become confessional symbols of a counter-church within the church of Christ.” 52 Smit also remarks that in a situation of status confessionis the problem is also not primarily that “a specific confessional tradition or its articles are at stake, but the heart of the gospel itself.” Therefore our theological argumentation should be based not primarily on the creeds but should appeal to the heart of the biblical message itself. This said, Smit also cautions that the announcement of an “extraordinary situation of confession” or status confessionis “may only occur in extremely extraordinary cases, where the gospel itself is truly and evidently at stake, where the ‘boundaries’ are already drawn and the church need only acknowledge it, where Christians take a stand simply because ‘they cannot do anything else.’” 53 Moreover, when such as situation does arise, neutrality is no longer a possibility. Smit quotes from Bonhoeffer’s 1936 “Essay on Church Communion,” words that also played a role in the discussions that led to the declaration of a status confessionis at Ottawa and the adoption of the Belhar confession: First of all it must be said that indeed there are no neutral people. They rather belong to the other side. But subjectively they would prefer to be neutral. To take up a simple position towards them is consequently not possible, because their own position is not simple, because the boundaries they themselves draw over against the true church are unclear. Jesus Christ made the double declaration concerning the “neutral” people: Anyone who is not for me is really against me (Matt 12. 30); and “For whoever is not against us if for us” (Mark 9:40). Neither can the neutrals only make the second word applicable to themselves, nor can the church only use the first word against them. But it must be

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

79

said again and again that the neutrals are exactly in this questioned situation described by the two words together. As soon as the neutrality is elevated to the level of principle, the possibility becomes manifest only to use the second word. . . . The acknowledgment of a status confessions is a reminder to the church leadership that a choice must be made in this hour. 54

For Smit the announcement of a status confessionis is not merely about the fact that a moment of truth has dawned, or that one is conscious of what is at stake, but—thirdly—that it is more specifically the gospel that is, in a particular moment, at stake. Precisely because it does not concern merely the postulation of a personal opinion or the viewpoint of a group . . . but the truth of the gospel itself, such an announcement is never calculated to result in a schism. The intention is, on the contrary, always the purification or (re-)uniting of the “true church,” the defense of and witness to “the credibility of the gospel.” 55

The conflict that arises in the process should be about the gospel itself, and therefore the recognition of a status confessionis is not a call for schism but for unity; it is ultimately “the idiom of the gospel” and therefore it must occur in the spirit of the gospel. But the invitation implied in the stance of confession might be rejected: “When the invitation, the plea for real unity, reconciliation, and community is rejected or ignored, then a division does indeed occur—but then the dividing line is drawn from the other side by those who declare that they interpret the gospel differently.” 56 Also in this regard reference is made to Bonhoeffer, and specifically his comment that the withdrawal of fellowship was still the very last offer of fellowship. 57 In addition Smit refers to the Accompanying Letter to the Belhar Confession, where we read that the confession is not aimed at people but at false doctrine and therefore implies an invitation to conversion and communion: Our prayer is that this act of confession will not place false stumbling blocks in the way and therefore cause and foster false division, but rather that it will be reconciling and uniting. . . . We pray that our brothers and sisters throughout the Dutch Reformed Church family, but also outside it, will want to make this new beginning with us, so that we can be free together and together walk the road of reconciliation and justice. 58

The three remarks of Smit discussed above provide important commentary to his description that the expression status confessionis has to do with the fact that “a moment of truth has dawned, in which nothing less than the gospel itself is at stake,” a situation in which Christians or churches “feel compelled to witness and act over against this threat.” 59 The above brief comments on the discourses on status confessionis in South Africa indicate a complex but also highly influential history of recep-

80

Robert Vosloo

tion. These comments also attest to the fact that the German Church struggle, the Barmen Declaration, Karl Barth, and also Dietrich Bonhoeffer served as sources of inspiration and theological orientation within these discourses. BONHOEFFER AND WITNESSING TO THE GOSPEL ANEW Today we are of course living in another time and context than Nazi Germany in the 1930s or apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore a certain amount of caution seems prudent if one wants to bring the decisions and discussions that developed in another era and place to bear on our contemporary situations and challenges. Any overhasty and inflated appropriation of the notion of status confessionis that takes hermeneutical shortcuts should rightly be viewed with suspicion. Indeed, the specific historical and theological trajectories of the term should be respected. Moreover, we should take note of the fact that in different theological traditions the term derives its intelligibility from the particular ways in which these traditions understand the nature and meaning of confession and confessional documents. In addition, we should also consider Eugene TeSelle’s remark: “(T)here are other resources on which we can draw to fight the evils of our time. Not everything rests on proving that we are in the midst of a status confessionis. One does not need a status confessionis to confess.” 60 Yet it is also true that the discussions around the notion of status confessionis at specific moments in history—that some experienced as moments of truth that compels confession in a particular way in the light of the belief that the gospel itself was a stake—can still provide theological resources and orientation for our discussions on what it means to witness anew to the gospel in our current contexts. With this in mind, I conclude with some brief remarks in light of some of the discourses on status confessionis and the theological commentary it evoked, also through drawing on aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought. A first remark concerns the fact that the confession of faith in a “moment of truth” does not imply a mere repetition of the truths of the tradition. Bonhoeffer’s own indebtedness to the Lutheran tradition, also with regard to his understanding of church-state relations and the nature of confession, is well acknowledged. Yet, for Bonhoeffer the point was not to repeat what Luther said, but to witness to the gospel anew in light of the challenges of the moment. For instance, in a sermon on Reformation Day (November 6, 1932), Bonhoeffer states: “Let us leave the dead Luther to rest at long last, and instead listen to the gospel, reading his Bible, hearing God’s own word in it.” 61 This statement by Bonhoeffer does, of course, not imply that the authoritative figures and documents from our respected traditions are not important, but it does point to the fact that in order to be true to our tradition we

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

81

need to risk new articulation and embodiment. John de Gruchy, too, points to this aspect in his article “Bonhoeffer and the Relevance of Barmen for Today,” (1984) writing: To celebrate Barmen, or to celebrate the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, . . . must not become a means of escape from taking them seriously. That would result in consigning them to the pages of the past, or repeating their words as we so often repeat the phrases of the creed. To do so would not only be a sign that we misunderstood Barmen and Bonhoeffer, but that we ourselves have not really responded to the liberating Word and grace of the gospel. 62

Confessing anew is thus not to be equated with a repetition of the past, but requires creative and performative remembrance. In this regard some liberating symbols—as many in church and ecumenical circles in apartheid South Africa viewed figures and documents from the German church struggle— play a vital role. But as De Gruchy rightly observes about the Barmen Declaration (and the same can be applied to the Belhar Confession): “Barmen cannot be repeated in a different context. To idolize Barmen is to deny its message. . . . The confession remains ‘Jesus is Lord,’ but the concrete implications differ. To know the implications requires listening, as did Bonhoeffer, to the cry of the victims that has brought the status confessionis into being.” 63 De Gruchy’s comment with its reference to the cry of the victims invites a second remark. Confessing our faith anew in a situation in which we experience that the gospel itself is at stake can never be a mere tactical strategy that is dislocated from the solidarity and communion with the victims; it requires, in Bonhoeffer’s phrase, “a view from below.” 64 Or to use the words from the Belhar Confession: “The church as the possession of God must stand . . . against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.” 65 Allan Boesak has spoken of the need for a “kairos consciousness,” 66 that is, an engaging, liberationorientated consciousness that is no longer neutral and blind to the cry of the poor, the wronged, the destitute, and the vulnerable, and urges us “to respond to the discernment of a moment of truth, in resistance to the powers of evil, for the sake of the wronged and the powerless, and for the sake of the Gospel.” 67 The witness and confession of the church therefore arises out of solidarity with the vulnerable and wronged. Moreover, it is often born out of a position in which the church finds itself in a situation of powerlessness and precarity. One can consider in this regard a remark by Dirkie Smit toward the end of his article on “What Does Status Confessionis Means?” After noting several reasons why the use of the term status confessionis should be used with caution and why it could be disputed, Smit nevertheless concludes by referring to the fact that the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in apartheid

82

Robert Vosloo

South Africa had the feeling (correctly or incorrectly) that it had not been heard: “This indeed is the ‘black experience.’ This is the climax of powerlessness and ultimate frustration. This is the life experience of voicelessness. The acknowledgment of a status confessionis was a final cry from the heart to be heard and to be taken seriously. But it was an evangelical cry, a cry full of love—and therefore the Church confesses explicitly, in order that the real unity, based on the truth, may be revealed.” 68 A third remark concerns the fact that the recognition of a status confessionis is a cry in which the gospel is experience to be at stake, as Dirkie Smit has reiterated in his theological commentary on status confessionis. The cry from the heart is thus an evangelical cry. It is clear about how the gospel is at stake, but the goal is not destruction but conversion, not schism but renewed communion and restoration. In his essay “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement”—an essay that was influential in theological conversation during the church struggle in South Africa—Bonhoeffer writes that the Confessing Church enters into contact with confessionally different churches not viewing them as its mortal enemies, but rather “acknowledges first of all its own guilt and the inadequate powers of its own proclamation.” 69 Something of this sentiment is also expressed in the Accompanying Letter to the Belhar Confession, where we read: The confession is not aimed at specific people or groups of people or a church or churches. We proclaim it against a false doctrine. . . . And while we do so we are aware that an act of confession is a two-edged sword, that none of us can throw the first stone. . . . Therefore this Confession must be seen as a call to a continuous process of soul-searching together, a joint wrestling with the issues, and a readiness to repent in the name of Jesus Christ in a broken world. 70

Amidst new threats to the gospel in our day, the main challenge for Christians and the church probably still concerns the question how to embody our confession and live out our witness in such a way that it testifies to the fact that it is indeed the gospel that is at stake. NOTES 1. See http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Belhar-Confession.pdf for the text of the Accompanying Letter. This letter (which is part of the long tradition of accompanying letters associated with Reformed confessions) serves as an important source for understanding the confession’s historical origin and theological intent and content. Cf. Piet Naudé, Neither Calendar Nor Clock: Perspectives on the Belhar Confession (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 1–5. 2. The Dutch Reformed Mission Church was at the time one of the churches that formed part of the racially segregated “Dutch Reformed family of churches,” which consisted of the white Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (predominantly with members of mixed descent, or so-called “colored” members), the Dutch Reformed Church

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

83

in Africa (predominantly with black members) and the Reformed Church in Africa (predominantly with Indian members). In 1994 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the largest part of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA) united to form the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), and the Belhar Confession is part of this church’s confessional base (together with the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort). 3. See http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Belhar-Confession.pdf 4. Michael DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance: The Word against the Wheel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 8. Cf. Michael DeJonge, “Bonhoeffer, Status Confessionis, and the Lutheran Tradition,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 3, no. 2 (2017): 43. 5. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 8 6. For important comments in this regard, see Dirkie Smit’s chapter “‘No other motives would give us the right’—Reflections on contextuality from the Reformed experience,” in Dirk J. Smit, Essays on Public Theology; Collected Essays I, edited by Ernst M. Conradie (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007), 157–78, and Rothney S. Tshaka, Confessional Theology? A Critical Analysis of the Theology of Karl Barth and its Significance for the Belhar Confession (Newcastle upon Tine: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010). 7. See, for instance, DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 88–94 and Martin Schloemann, “The Special Case for Confessing: Reflections on the Casus Confessionis (Dar es Salaam 1977) in the light of the History of Systematic Theology,” in Eckehart Lorenz (ed.), The Debate on Status Confesssionis. Studies in Christian Political Theology (Geneva: Department of Studies, The Lutheran World Federation, 1983), especially 48–54. See also D.J. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” in G. D. Cloete and D. J. Smit (eds.), A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1982 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 8–9. 8. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 93. DeJonge adds: “The specific gospel values under threat are, on the one hand, the two kingdoms, and on the other hand, the message of justification, which is undermined when indifferent matters are treated as necessary for salvation. This dual threat puts the church on a special stance of confession” (93–94). 9. See DBWE 12:496. 10. Ibid., 362. 11. Ibid., 363. 12. Ibid., 364. 13. Ibid., 365. 14. Ibid., 366. 15. Ibid., 367. 16. Ibid., 369; cf. Ibid., 372. 17. Ibid., 370. 18. Ibid., 371, 496. 19. Ibid., 372. 20. Ibid., 431. 21. See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, revised and edited by Victoria Barnett (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 322. 22. DBWE 12:434. Bonhoeffer continues: “And if the church that one serves is in status confessionis, he is called upon to recognize that the gospel is being turned into false doctrine; he must see with his trained vision that new and strange meanings are being concealed behind the old words—and he must say so out loud, openly, right where he is. As a student of theology, no one can and should do otherwise than keep inquiring after the true gospel, ever more attentively and objectively, in ever more truth and love” (434–35). 23. Ibid., 165. 24. Ibid., 167. 25. Ibid., 168. 26. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance, 99. 27. See John de Gruchy’s chapter “Bonhoeffer, Apartheid, and Beyond: The Reception of Bonhoeffer in South Africa,” in John W. de Gruchy (ed.), Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 353–65; also Robert Vosloo, “Interpreting Bonhoeffer in South Africa? The Search for a Historical and Methodological Respon-

84

Robert Vosloo

sible Hermeneutic,” in Peter Frick (ed.), Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 119–42. 28. See Naudé’s articles in Pro Veritate, the monthly publication of the Christian Institute: “Die tyd vir ’n ‘belydende kerk’ is daar” [“The Time for a ‘Confessing Church’ is Now”], in Pro Veritate 4/3 (1965); Beyers Naudé, “Nogeens die ‘Belydende Kerk’” [“Once again: the ‘Confessing Church’”], in Pro Veritate, 4/7 (1965); and Naudé, “Nou juis die ‘Belydende Kerk’” [“Now indeed the ‘Confessing Church’”], in Pro Veritate 4/ 8 (1965). 29. For a more detailed discussion of Bethge’s visit to South Africa, see John de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit (London: SCM Press, 2005), 158–75. 30. Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, edited and with an Essay by John W. de Gruchy (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 167–78. 31. Ibid., 167. 32. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 7. 33. Ibid., 9. Smit also refers in his discussion to the correspondence between Bonhoeffer and Barth in September 1933 (10). 34. See In Christ—A New Community, Proceedings of the Sixth Assembly of the LWF, Dar es Salaam, 1977, 179–80. Cf. Eckehart Lorenz (ed.), The Debate on Status Confesssionis. Studies in Christian Political Theology (Geneva: Department of Studies, The Lutheran World Federation, 1983), 11; and Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 13. 35. In his introductory notes to the volume The Debate on Status Confessionis. Studies in Christian Political Theology (Geneva: Department of Studies, The Lutheran World Federation, 1983), the editor Eckehart Lorenz refers, for instance, to Willem Visser’t Hooft (the first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches) who praised the statement as “the boldest step which any international church organization had yet dared to take,” as well as to a letter addressed to the Lutheran World Federation in which a West German synod member asked: “How could the LWF takes such an incredible step and make a political issue a matter of faith” (7). 36. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 13. 37. Acts of Synod, Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1978: 399. 38. Allan Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition (Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1984), 103. 39. John W. de Gruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio (eds.), Apartheid is a Heresy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 162. 40. Boesak, Black and Reformed, 118. 41. Ibid. This quotation is taken from Bonhoeffer’s letter of April 7, 1934, to Henry Louis Henriod. See DBWE 10, 127. 42. See Agenda of Synod, Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1982: 717–20; Cf. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 15. 43. Ibid.; cf. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 15–16. 44. Acts of Synod, Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1978: 706. 45. Ibid., 605. 46. Ibid., 605; cf. Naudé, Neither Calendar nor Clock, 79–81. For Barth’s well-known reference to status confessionis, see Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4/3: The Doctrine of Creation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 73–86. 47. Acts of Synod, Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1978, 637. 48. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 16. 49. Ibid., 17, 18. 50. Ibid., 19. 51. Ibid., 20. Cf. DBWE 12: 435. 52. Ibid., 20. 53. Ibid., 21. 54. Ibid., 22. Cf. DBWE 14: 674. 55. Ibid., 22–23. 56. Ibid., 25. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 25. Cf. http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Belhar-Confession.pdf

The Discourses on Status Confessionis, and Confessing the Faith Anew

85

59. Ibid., 16 60. Eugene TeSelle, “How Do We Recognize a Status Confessionis?” Theology Today 45/1, 1988, 72. TeSelle ends his article by stating: “Let us hope that awareness of the multiplicity of possibilities will loosen the tongue of the church to speak all the more pertinently and convincingly” (78). 61. DBWE 12: 442. Cf. Robert Vosloo, “Bonhoeffer’s Reformation Day Sermons and Performative Remembering,” Theology Today 74/3, 2017: 252–62. 62. John de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa, 140. 63. Ibid., 130–31. 64. DBWE 8: 52. 65. Cf. http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Belhar-Confession.pdf 66. Boesak writes with regard to such a “kairos consciousness”: “Kairos is not so much a ‘time’ or a ‘season’ but a moment, unique for people of faith to see, understand, and act upon. But speaking of a ‘kairos consciousness’ already indicates that what is meant here is more than just the realization of some matter of momentary import. It suggests an abiding awareness, what one could call a prophetic alertness, a readiness for when such a moment may arrive.” See Allan Boesak, Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid: The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 10. 67. Boesak, Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid, 17. Boesak also writes, with reference to Bonhoeffer, that our solidarity is also a solidarity with God in God’s grieving: “Discipleship, Bonhoeffer argues, is to ‘stand with God in the hour of God’s grieving’—that is ‘to be caught up in the way of Christ.’ . . . We are disciples of Christ when we stand by God in the hour of God’s grieving. In other words, if we stand by those who suffer in the world, wherever and whoever they may be, we are standing by God. It is for their sake that God is at work in the world, so that creation as a whole may be redeemed” (23) 68. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” 32. 69. DBWE 14: 407. 70. See http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Belhar-Confession.pdf

WORKS CITED “Accompanying Letter to the Belhar Confession.” http://urcsa.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 02/Belhar-Confession.pdf “Acts of Synod, Dutch Reformed Mission Church.” 1978. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics 4/3: The Doctrine of Creation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961. Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Revised and edited by Victoria Barnett. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. ———. Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. New York: The Seabury Press, 1975. Boesak, Allan. Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition. Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 1984. ———. Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid: The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928–1931. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). ———. Berlin, 1932–1933. Edited by Larry L. Rasmussen. Translated by Isabel Best and David Higgins. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. ———. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 1935–1937. Edited by H. Gaylon Barker and Mark S. Brocker. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 14. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013.

86

Robert Vosloo

Cloete, G. D., and D. J. Smit, eds. A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church 1982. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. de Gruchy, John W. (ed.). Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. ———. Daring, Trusting Spirit. London: SCM Press, 2005. de Gruchy, John W., and Charles Villa-Vicencio (eds.). Apartheid is a Heresy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983. DeJonge, Michael. “Bonhoeffer, Status Confessionis, and the Lutheran Tradition.” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 3, no. 2 (2017): 41–60. ———. Bonhoeffer on Resistance: The Word against the Wheel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Frick, Peter, ed. Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013. Lorenz, Eckehart, ed. The Debate on Status Confesssionis. Studies in Christian Political Theology. Geneva: Department of Studies, The Lutheran World Federation, 1983. Naudé, Piet. Neither Calendar nor Clock: Perspectives on the Belhar Confession. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Smit, Dirk J. Essays on Public Theology; Collected Essays I. Edited by Ernst M. Conradie. Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007. TeSelle, Eugene. “How Do We Recognize a Status Confessionis?” Theology Today 45, no. (April, 1988), 71–78. Tshaka, Rothney S. Confessional Theology? A Critical Analysis of the Theology of Karl Barth and its Significance for the Belhar Confession. Newcastle upon Tine: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010. Vosloo, Robert. “Bonhoeffer’s Reformation Day Sermons and Performative Remembering.” Theology Today 74, no.3 (October, 2017): 252–62.

II

Critical-Constructive Engagement

Chapter Five

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality A Theological Resource for Dismantling Mass Incarceration Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

The United States has experienced a 500 percent increase in rates of incarceration over the last forty years. We now have 2.3 million people in prison or jail while 7 million are under some form of correctional control; even our least punitive individual states have higher per capita rates of incarceration than authoritarian nations around the world. 1 There is a growing consensus that this is a problem. As a means of promoting public safety and reducing violence, mass incarceration has been a failure. Crime has decreased dramatically since the 1990s, but even the most generous analyses have concluded that rising rates of incarceration played only a small role in this decrease, and came with severe costs. 2 In fact, rising rates of incarceration have contributed to violence. Mass incarceration has meant separating people from their families and other social support systems while exposing them to violence and trauma at extraordinarily high rates. 3 It has had a ripple effect on friends, neighbors, and families, and especially on children of incarcerated people. 4 All these effects have been concentrated among communities who already face systemic inequality and exclusion. Mass incarceration is notoriously fueled by and implicated in racial and economic injustice 5—if, at the individual level, it promotes widespread trauma, at the social level it is one of the most powerful existing engines of white supremacy. 6 And yet, even as consensus has grown that reform is needed, public proposals for reform remain strikingly modest 7—reducing sentences or providing alternatives to incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent offenses, for example, will not end mass incarceration. And this naturally raises 89

90

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

the question: If we all know that the prison system is a crucible of violence and injustice, why do we not see more urgent calls to radically transform or end it altogether? We know that there are better ways to address harms, whether through processes of restorative justice or transforming social conditions rooted in inequality and poverty. But prisons hold our moral imagination so captive that when we imagine some act of violence, we are prone to think immediately of punitive laws, arrest, and imprisonment as the natural, fitting means of responding. To explain this situation, we have to consider the economic and political interests at play as well as deep-seated cultural attitudes and structural inequities in which prisons are rooted, especially systemic racism. We know that mass incarceration has a disproportionate effect on poor people of color, that it carries on elements of slavery, Jim Crow, settler colonialism, and racial terror by other means, and that it produces and depends on racialized ideas of “criminality.” 8 But we must also consider how all these factors are entangled with moral discourses that support and mask them: The carceral system depends on the idea that people whom we police and imprison are deserving of this treatment. Officially, the legal system is supposed to incapacitate, deter, and punish people who violate the rights of others. But these justifications are always accompanied by popular notions that people who commit crimes are “bad guys” who need to be locked up. We see this idea come up, for example, in reactionary responses to critiques of the harshness of the system, when people cite sensationalistic, exceptional cases of violence to say that we need the prison system with all its problems—or when they say, “well, people in prison should have thought of that before they committed a crime.” Here, as in so many other areas of contemporary American society, inequity and oppression are sustained by a moralizing discourse of meritocracy—that our social order is now or could one day be one in which good, innocent, and deserving people succeed and are rewarded, while bad, guilty, undeserving people fail and are punished. The prison depends on and produces these moral distinctions. 9 They are inevitably racialized, although they can be mobilized without any overt appeal to racism, and they are bound up with the maintenance of concrete forms of social subordination, from white supremacy to economic exploitation and the disciplining of the poor. If we wish to end mass incarceration, then, we have to think of it as part of a broader carceral system that includes policies and institutions as well as ideologies, values, and discourses. Many contemporary proposals for prison reform are focused on technocratic changes to particular elements of policy—sentencing and bail reform, the use of risk assessments to promote decarceration, releasing people convicted of low-level offenses, or limiting the power of prosecutors. 10 These are all valuable and should be pursued. But it is an open question whether any of these reforms can be achieved—not to mention more fundamental changes like prison abolition—if we do not also

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

91

challenge the moralizing ideology that legitimates the prison system and the social order of which that system is an expression. This is a challenge to which theology and faith leadership are well suited, and for which they have a special responsibility. There is no question that Christian theology has played a role in constituting the racialized moral order of mass incarceration. 11 Christian theologians and faith leaders consequently have a particular vocation to critique moral discourses and open our moral imagination to new ways of envisioning goodness and doing justice. Bonhoeffer’s critical writings on morality serve as a vital resource to that end. We will begin by outlining the content of his moral critique before considering its relevance for contesting the moral order of mass incarceration. BONHOEFFER’S CRITIQUE OF MORALITY Bonhoeffer learned to critique “morality” from Karl Barth, whose writing he first encountered in 1925. Barth’s first major work, his 1919 theological commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, was described as a bomb that dropped on the playground of modern theologians, because in it he depicts “the strange new world” of the Bible in which God is wholly distinct from human beings. 12 Nineteenth-century German Liberal Protestantism had made religious experience and human ethics the object of reflection and in doing so had attempted, according to Barth, “to speak of God by speaking of” the human being “in a loud voice.” 13 Instead, Barth argues that theological thinking must begin with God’s self-revelation and only from this decentered perspective may human beings speak accurately about themselves. Barth reads in Paul’s letter to the Romans the radical statement that God alone is righteous: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10). This explosive discovery, which echoes Luther’s Reformation insight four centuries earlier, is at the heart of Barth’s refusal to situate Christian faith within a paradigm of morality. While the claim that God alone is righteous is one to which many Protestants might intellectually assent, Barth is countering in this claim a conviction that often goes unexamined: the idea that belief in Christ ensures human “religious righteousness” or right morality. As we will see, the assumption that Christians possess special knowledge about good and evil is at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s critique as well. The Christian who “boasts that he possesses something” that enables human righteousness, “even if that something be” a decision of faith or the receiving of grace, “still retains confidence in human self-justification”—in self-righteousness, says Barth. 14 When Christians justify themselves by appealing to their own morality, they evade divine krisis—God’s grave and loving judgment on our present thinking and action, which is necessary for both personal and social transformation.

92

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

Barth, like Bonhoeffer, is critiquing the categories of morality operative in society at the time, and so his critique includes, but is more than, a condemnation of religious arrogance or self-righteousness as such. Barth and Bonhoeffer each challenge the idea that Christian faithfulness may be expressed through human standards of morality, especially, for Bonhoeffer, standards of morality disconnected from Jesus’s way of being in the world. Their critique is radical because it is based on the notion that everything humans do stands under judgment and grace. All our actions, Christian or otherwise, are imperfect, fallen, and lead to unforeseen consequences. In particular, Barth argues, Christians who are socially and economically privileged appeal to “religious righteousness,” or their devotion to principles rooted in individualistic notions of morality, in order to exonerate themselves from present complicity in social sin and injustice. Of note is Barth’s observation that appeals to morality readily lead to an individualistic interpretation of reality. Barth writes, We tear ourselves loose from the general unrighteousness and build ourselves a pleasant home in the suburbs apart—seemingly apart! But what has really happened? . . . Is it not our very morality which prevents our discerning that at a hundred other points we are . . . blind and impenitent toward the real deep needs of existence? . . . There seems to be no surer means of rescuing us from the alarm cry of conscience than religion and Christianity. 15

By situating faith within a paradigm of personal morality—“bourgeois morality” as Barth calls it—privileged Christians not only blind themselves to the ways their lives effortlessly benefit from and uphold an unjust status quo, they also distance themselves from other human beings who suffer societal harm. They “take flight” to morality, Barth says, where there is “a wonderful sense” of comfort and security from unrighteousness. 16 When Christians appeal to morality to evade divine judgment, in Barth’s words, they “secretly identify” themselves with God. 17 Early in his career in a 1928 lecture delivered a few years after discovering Barth’s krisis theology, Bonhoeffer offers an account of morality that echoes some of Barth’s central claims, including the notion that appeals to morality are misguided attempts to be like God—an argument that will be central to his analysis in Creation and Fall. Bonhoeffer writes, Every knowledge, every moral claim before God, violates [God’s] claim of exclusive honor. . . . Religion and morality contain the germ of hubris . . . of arrogance. People think they have discovered deep within themselves, something that does after all resemble the divine, or even is divine, . . . something giving us the right to make claims. In this sense, religion and morality can become the most dangerous enemy . . . of the Christian message of good news. Thus, the Christian message is basically amoral and irreligious, paradoxical as that may sound. 18

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

93

In his 1940s manuscript, Ethics, Bonhoeffer makes similarly stark claims about the amoral nature of Christian faith—claims that are understandably bewildering to those of us who are religious because they undercut the common sense notion that faith in God and concern for morality are interconnected. Bonhoeffer opens the Ethics manuscript this way: “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 the 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?’” Instead, according to Bonhoeffer, Christians must ask, “What is the will of God?” 19 In a similar vein Bonhoeffer begins another chapter with these piercing words, “The knowledge of good and evil appears to be the goal of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to supersede that knowledge.” 20 Bonhoeffer distinguishes moral certitude (How can I be good) and the presumption to be able to act in an untainted manner (How can I do something good), from conformation to Jesus Christ. In his 1932 book Creation and Fall—a “theological exposition,” as he calls it, of Genesis 1–3—Bonhoeffer offers the theological grounding and narrative frame that is necessary to make sense of his counterintuitive understanding of morality. 21 The book develops themes from the 1928 lecture and anticipates key themes in his later work. Central to the book’s analysis is the theological significance of Adam and Eve eating from the prohibited tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The forbidden nature of the knowledge of good and evil is rooted, for Bonhoeffer, in the “creatureliness” of human beings—in their God-given vocation to be the creatures they were created to be—a vocation characterized by limitation and freedom. The creaturely freedom of the human being mirrors God’s freedom, in which God chooses to be free not from others but for others. The very act of creation demonstrates God’s being “for us.” In the beginning, as the Genesis story reads, God creates in freedom, as a result of God’s will and desire. God then gives creation its own being and form and, in doing so, “increases the power of the creation” to exist in a distinctive way in relation to God. 22 The good of creation, which God repeatedly affirms, is its very creatureliness. Although creation arises from God’s own free act, Bonhoeffer argues that creation as depicted in the first five days is not itself free, because as creation it is conditioned and determined. But God wants a portion of it—the human being—to be free as God is free. In order for something created to be free, “the Creator must create it free,” writes Bonhoeffer. 23 The creature must be made to mirror God, must be created in the image of God. Here Bonhoeffer offers a new interpretation of the imago dei. The image of God refers to freedom.

94

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

While we in the West tend to define freedom (whether divine or human) as the ability to do as one pleases—to be free from the need and imposition of others—Bonhoeffer argues that biblical freedom entails being-free-for-others. God’s freedom for us is demonstrated in that first act of creation and is also the heart of the gospel message. “Because God in Christ is free for humankind . . . we can think of freedom only as ‘being free for,’” he writes. 24 Creaturely freedom is not a substance individuals possess on their own—“no one is free ‘in himself’ or ‘herself’”—but is “a relation and nothing else.” 25 Human beings are creatures created in binding relationship to one another and God. In relation to God, creaturely freedom entails being free for the Creator through worship and obedience. Creatures are free to worship the Creator and obey the Creator’s commands—God’s Word that, as the first creation story tells, brought forth life, that same Word that when obeyed continues to bring forth life. For Bonhoeffer, creaturely freedom requires obedience to God’s Word, especially to Jesus’s commands in the Gospel narratives. While obedience issues from freedom, when obeyed, these commands also help human beings perform creaturely freedom, often by establishing limits. 26 In human relations, being free for the other requires recognizing limits— our own limits and the limit of others—which is why creatureliness is characterized not only by freedom but also by boundaries. To recognize my limit is to honor the otherness of another person, to refuse to treat them as an extension of myself, to refuse to control them with my own will and demand. Recognizing limits also means respecting the other person as a limit I shall not violate. “The other person is the limit that God sets for me, that limit that I love and that I will not transgress because of my love,” writes Bonhoeffer as he reflects on Adam and Eve’s fellowship in the garden. But “at that point where love for the other is obliterated, a human being can only hate the limit. A person then desires only, in an unbounded way, to possess the other or destroy the other.” 27 Instead of trying to master or control, we are to treat any person “as God’s creature,” as the one “who stands beside me and constitutes a limit for me,” writes Bonhoeffer. 28 The story in Genesis 2 places creaturely limitation at the heart of its narrative. The Lord God commanded Adam, “You shall eat from every kind of tree in the garden, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; for on the day you eat from it you shall die” (Gen. 2:16–17). Bonhoeffer writes, “Here in the picture language of the Bible . . . the tree of knowledge, the forbidden tree that denotes the human being’s boundary, stands at the center. The human being’s limit is at the center of human existence, not on the margin.” 29 What this means is that the prohibition is not for Adam a temptation he could stray into but an affirmation of his creatureliness, since at this point in the story Adam does not know about evil. He lives, as Bonhoeffer says, “in the strictest sense beyond good and evil.” 30 The story itself demonstrates that the limit is a gift by its placement beside the tree of

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

95

life. The ban means this: “Adam, you are who you are because of me, your Creator; so now be what you are. . . . You are free, so be free; you are a creature, so be a creature.” 31 For Bonhoeffer, then, the Fall as depicted in Genesis 3 is a fall precisely from our creatureliness. When Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they become “like god”—sicut deus—just as the serpent predicted (Gen 3:5). They lose their creatureliness and in this sense they die. They are no longer creatures but are like god. The irony is that by forfeiting their creaturely freedom, they have forfeited the part of themselves that most resembles God. Conversely, in becoming like God, they oppose God by finding the origin of the knowledge of good and evil in themselves rather than in God’s clear and direct commands. They have “bought this knowledge at a price,” Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, “the price of disunion from the origin.” Consequently, the good and evil that they think they know is not good and evil as defined by God. 32 Only as “god-against-God” have human beings become like God. 33 Central to Bonhoeffer’s theological reading of the Genesis story, then, is the juxtaposition of two structures of being: imago dei and sicut deus. While the image of God refers to humanity’s original creatureliness, limitedness, and interdependence, “being like God” entails breaking our limits as creatures by positioning ourselves as equal to God and superior to other human beings. 34 It entails operating out of our own understanding of the knowledge of good and evil and then setting ourselves up as judge based on a moral paradigm we humans create. As judge, we divide human beings into categories of innocence and guilt according to our knowledge of good and evil, certain where we belong. To this Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, Behold God become human . . . God loves human beings. . . . Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are. . . . What we find repulsive . . . namely, real human beings . . . this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. . . . While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, . . . God becomes human; and . . . God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction. God has no patience with our dividing the world and humanity according to our standards and imposing ourselves as judges over them. . . . God stands beside the real human being . . . against all their accusers. 35

The desire to be like God—to grow beyond our humanity and live out of our own moral resources—is, at its core, a religious one. It is a desire, therefore, that has a particularly strong hold on those of us who are Christian. Bonhoeffer argues that the serpent’s question, “Surely you won’t die?” is a “perfectly pious one”; for, by attaining the knowledge of good and evil, the serpent suggests that human beings will become more godly, a seemingly worthy

96

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

goal by moral and religious standards. “But with the first pious question in the world,” Bonhoeffer soberly observes, “evil appears on the scene.” 36 At this point in the story, Adam still lacks any knowledge of good and evil. Instead, he only knows God. Because of this, the serpent knows “that it has power only where it purports to . . . represent God’s cause.” 37 Bonhoeffer writes, “Were the question to come to us with its ungodliness unveiled and laid bare, we would be able to resist it. But Christians are not open to attack in that way”; they must be presented with “a better, prouder God than they seem to have, if they are to fall.” 38 In the absence of the knowledge of evil, the Fall comes not by way of temptation toward obviously evil things but by way of religious and moral impulse. Adam can hear the serpent’s promise “in no other way than as the possibility of being more pious, more obedient, than he is in his imago-dei-structure.” 39 Bonhoeffer writes, “It is only because the question is asked in such a way that Adam understands it as a new possibility of ‘being for God’ that it can lead him to ‘being against God.’ The possibility of Adam’s own wanting to be for God, as Adam’s own discovery, is the primal evil in the pious question of the serpent.” 40 This attempt to “be for God” that bypasses obedience to God’s concrete commands is, according to Bonhoeffer, “disobedience in the semblance of obedience, the desire to rule in the semblance of service.” 41 The exchange of imago dei for sicut deus is “the destruction of creatureliness,” says Bonhoeffer, and is therefore nothing short of rebellion. 42 THE RELEVANCE OF BONHOEFFER’S CRITIQUE FOR CONTESTING MASS INCARCERATION The first thing that stands out about Bonhoeffer’s critique of morality is the radicalism of the “outrageous demand” that Christians give up trying to be or do good. Before we build in detail on Bonhoeffer’s critique of morality, we want to first note how this radicalism sets his critique apart from the kind of moral critiques that are typically present in reformist discourses about mass incarceration. Calls for changes to the system usually focus on how it is out of line with existing moral intuitions, especially intuitions about who deserves what. You see this kind of moral critique most often in the now frequent public calls to release or reduce sentences for “nonviolent offenders,” especially people convicted of drug crimes, who are supposed to pose less of a danger to society and to be less deserving of punishment. Scholars who study mass incarceration have pointed out that releasing or reducing sentences for people charged with nonviolent drug offenses would only make a small dent in the current prison population, and would be entirely insufficient as a means of promoting lasting decarceration. 43 But we want to point out a deeper problem, that this discourse does nothing to challenge the moral

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

97

ideology that constitutes carceral society; when we distinguish between the deservingness of “nonviolent offenders” and “violent offenders” we simply transplant the old racialized moral distinctions onto new terrain. In fact, we reinforce and lend legitimacy to these distinctions, as when you hear a politician say, “we need to start releasing low-level offenders so we can direct our resources to locking up the people who really deserve to be in prison.” Reformist discourses always risk promoting the idea that there are just bad people out there who are congenitally dangerous or deserving of punishment. This belief is precisely why we need to engage in a more radical transformation of our moral orientations, to undertake a “revaluation of all values,” to use Nietzsche’s term. This is the counterintuitive route that Bonhoeffer takes. What he asks—that we relinquish any claim to know or judge who is good or evil—is certainly difficult. It also unsettles the common-sensical foundations of our moral order. We have already gestured to certain implications that Bonhoeffer’s critique might have, in this vein, for social practices dedicated to mastery, control, and righteous judgment. Now we want to spell out these implications in more detail. We will do so by outlining four reasons why we should take Bonhoeffer’s “outrageous demand” seriously as a challenge not only to mass incarceration, but to American carceral society. The first reason is that Bonhoeffer’s critique challenges moral reductionism. It challenges the tendency we see in the carceral system to cover over the moral complexity of real human beings. Each of us has, at different times, been victim, witness, and perpetrator of harm. For those who live in conditions defined by poverty, racial inequality, and pervasive violence, the harms in question tend inevitably to be more severe. In a recent study with people who had been released from prison in the previous year, Bruce Western and other researchers at Boston University found the vast majority had been exposed to substantial violence before incarceration, with 40 percent having witnessed someone being killed, half having been beaten by their parents, and 16 percent having been sexually abused. 44 Western writes, “Because violence is so prevalent in the social world of incarceration, the good and bad, the wicked and the innocent, cannot be neatly differentiated. Instead, victims and perpetrators are often one and the same. . . . This is a world whose material conditions are shot through with ethical ambiguity.” 45 In the place of this human complexity, the system imposes reductive distinctions between the guilty and innocent, victims and offenders, felons and citizens. These distinctions define who people are in the public imagination and shape the most intimate details of their lives for years, in and after imprisonment. Such moral reductionism defies what we know about human beings—that we are complicated and changeable, and that none of us can easily be defined by the worst thing we have done. But it also serves an ideological function. If we can reduce justice to locking up “bad people” who have done bad things, then we do not need to deal with the social conditions that led to the harms in

98

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

question—conditions whose transformation should be foremost in our minds if we really care about promoting life or ending violence. The first point leads to a second: as we resist moral reductionism, we resist the dehumanization and violence to which it leads. Bonhoeffer claims that when we engage in moral judgment we violate our human creaturely limits. We do so by being sicut deus and by transgressing the boundaries of others. This claim may be difficult to understand in the abstract; the carceral system shows us exactly what it looks like in practice. The system depends on an otherworldly confidence in our moral authority: not only that we can, through our legal system, rightly and consistently discern legal culpability, which is always doubtful given its deep-seated structural biases, but that condemned people should be—indeed, deserve to be—separated from their families, caged, stripped of human rights, and exposed for years on end to the violence and trauma that everyone knows are endemic in American prisons. In short, moral reductionism opens the door to forms of disempowerment and cruelty that we would otherwise find unconscionable. Undoubtedly part of what disturbed Bonhoeffer in his own context was that dehumanizing violence and mastery over others could be granted moral authority and legitimacy. There is no question that prisons, as total institutions, resemble authoritarian states in that respect, where officers and staff are granted extraordinary power over incarcerated people along with a moral mandate to use that power. Of course, prison staff do not typically intend to abuse power, and of course there are official legal and procedural limitations on such abuses, but in practice they are as easily committed as they are justified by the idea that people in prison are inherently bad or dangerous in ways that set them apart from other human beings. Bonhoeffer saw that when you claim to judge good and evil, you expose the people whom you condemn to dehumanization and violence. He also saw that this kind of dehumanizing moral judgment leads to social separation. If I can see myself as morally righteous, I can excuse myself from being responsible for or concerned with others. The prison system is a concrete manifestation of this unconcern, which brings us to the third point: moral othering produces and legitimates social division. When people presume to judge righteously, they set themselves in “suburbs apart,” in Barth’s apt phrase, and at times they do so quite literally. The carceral system erects boundaries between groups of human beings. Prisons are typically hidden in remote corners of rural America and protected fiercely by layers of administrative procedures and legal policies from outside scrutiny. This physical separation is intertwined with sociological forms of division and stratification that fuel mass incarceration—redlining, voter suppression, the boundaries of food deserts and school districts, and the borders between communities that are policed and surveilled and those that are not. These social divisions are always also moralized. Those fortunate enough to live in communities that

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

99

are relatively untouched by the violence of the carceral state can always appeal to the idea that they are good, productive people who are undeserving of scrutiny or punishment, even as the system submits other communities to surveillance and violence. This dehumanization and social separation leads to a fourth and final consideration, one that makes Bonhoeffer’s critique especially relevant and urgent in the context of the United States today. As we saw, in Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer joins the demand to resist moral judgment to a shift in our theological anthropology, to a demand that we see ourselves as “free for others” rather than “free from others.” In the American social milieu, the implications of this shift are radical. The aspiration to be “free from others” forms part of the nation’s defining mythology. It is there in stories about revolutionaries overthrowing British rule, in the mythology of settlers building new homes and communities in the virgin frontier, in the hagiographies of tech innovators, and in the liberal imagination of the free market, where freedom is defined as the ability to buy and sell our goods and labor independent of other social entanglements or distinctions. It should go without saying that these mythologies cover over the social and political histories on which they depend—they cover over slavery and settler colonialism, the genocide of indigenous people, and capital’s expropriation of land, labor, and resources. They cover over the fact that the freedom of some has always depended on the unfreedom of others. And here again this situation is sustained by a moral order that determines what and who is blameworthy. We are prone to condemn theft, for example, when it involves someone stealing property directly from another person or company; we have a harder time condemning the dispossession of land or expropriation of labor that was necessary to produce that property. To begin to imagine human beings as created to be “free for others,” then, can awaken us to forms of justice grounded in responsibility and in the interdependence of human life. Such an orientation opposes the foundational lie of the carceral system: that we can be free from violence and harm by finding and condemning bad people. It demands instead that we recognize our complicity in the social order, and that we take responsibility for the human world and the lives of others. And this recognition leads to other ways of doing justice. It leads in particular to practices of restorative and transformative justice that have taken on growing importance among those who are working to dismantle the carceral system. The system is based on the premise that crimes are violations of rules for which people need to be punished; advocates of restorative and transformative justice begin instead from the premise that addressing harms means promoting responsibility and healing. Survivors of harms have a number of needs that arise from experiences of trauma: needs for validation, for example, for safety, for support, and for accountabil-

100

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

ity. Common wisdom has it that these needs are met through imprisonment, whether as a means of retribution or incapacitation. But accounts and studies of the experiences of survivors tend to tell a different story—one that shows that our carceral system fails at every point to provide for these needs. 46 Restorative justice puts these needs at the center of practices of justice. Rather than focusing on what rule has been violated or what punishment is deserved, it asks instead who has been harmed, who has the obligation to address that harm, and what should be done to restore the broken relationships in question. 47 This restoration usually means holding those who have committed a harm directly accountable to the person whom they have harmed, so that the survivor can not only have their experience validated and heard, but can also determine what repair will look like. Practices of restorative justice grant survivors means to hold the person who committed the harm responsible for carrying out that repair and to ensure it will not happen again. These practices do not always produce the intended results. But they do so surprisingly often, far more often than imprisonment. Survivors who choose to participate in processes of restorative justice report satisfaction rates at 80–90 percent, where satisfaction rates for court systems are around 30 percent. 48 Moreover, rates of recidivism are lower for participants in these processes than they are for those who are incarcerated. 49 It is not hard to imagine why: hearing from and being held accountable to human beings you have harmed and being given an opportunity to try to make some amends engages you actively in rehabilitation and deterrence—more so than being caged and exposed to arbitrary violence for years on end. Transformative justice takes core principles of restorative justice from the individual to the social level. It asks what social conditions need to be transformed in order for meaningful restoration to take place. 50 We know, for example, as Bruce Western and others have long shown, that endemic poverty and the unavailability of resources in certain communities are directly implicated in violence. If we want to end violence and promote healing, we should be concerned with ending poverty; we should understand that we have a responsibility to do so. Restorative approaches that focus on individual wrong-doers and survivors may help those individuals and contribute to public safety, but those gains are tenuous when people are put back in the exact same conditions under which the original harms took place. Indeed, transformative justice recognizes that the violence that individuals experience also harms their communities, and that those communities also require restoration. Communities who experience pervasive violence have long advocated for social programs and support services as a means of crime reduction—though they have rarely received that support. 51 On the contrary, retributive approaches to crime reduction have only deepened legacies of historical injustice, which opens the question of accountability in a new way. That is to say, to do justice, we must see and address the violence that

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

101

mainstream, punitive attitudes and laws have wrought on communities of color, in particular, and the ways they have preserved racial and economic subordination. Neither transformative nor restorative justice are, of course, panaceas for addressing violence. But they represent substantial, manifest improvements over our current system, whether our aim is to increase accountability, reduce violence, or promote wellbeing. And they reflect the kind of shift that we see in Bonhoeffer’s critique of morality, from moral reasoning that focuses on judging wrong-doers to practices of justice that restore human relationships and ask that we assume responsibility for one another. Therefore, while we might worry that a radical critique of morality like Bonhoeffer’s could leave us without a way of addressing harms, it in fact challenges us to operate out of a new paradigm: when we see harms, instead of directing our energies to judging who is morally blameworthy, it asks that we instead consider what responsibilities this harm creates—including our collective responsibility— and what relationships it involves. Responsibility is a key theological category for Bonhoeffer, especially in Ethics, and is central to his understanding of what it means to be conformed to Jesus Christ. Because, for Bonhoeffer, Christian ethics is rooted not in abstract or universal moral principles but in conformation to Christ. Christological conformation provides a new paradigm for addressing mass incarceration, one that grounds transformative and restorative justice in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As such, it may serve as a theological resource that helps Christians reorient our imaginations away from the destructive paradigm of individual morality. To conclude, we will briefly introduce this new paradigm by connecting our discussion of Creation and Fall to Bonhoeffer’s other writings, especially his manuscript Ethics. A NEW PARADIGM: CONFORMATION TO JESUS CHRIST While pious individuals in rebellion try to become like God, God-incarnatedin-Jesus-Christ becomes the “real human being,” leading us back to our intended creatureliness. 52 Human beings made in the image of God are now to be remade in the image of the incarnate God. We are to live out of our intended imago dei structure by taking the form of Jesus Christ in the world, the one whom Bonhoeffer defines as the human being for others. Christian ethics, for Bonhoeffer, necessitates that human beings in community take the form of the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus and out of that formation discern the will of God in light of the facts that constitute a concrete situation, in “accordance with reality.” 53 Taking the form of the incarnate God entails embodied immersion in situations of social concern like mass incarceration; it then entails loving real human beings in all their

102

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

complexity and being in solidarity with those deemed guilty. Conforming to the crucified Christ means insisting that the guilt falls on oneself or one’s group instead of others; it means accepting guilt by taking collective responsibility for the sin and injustice that harms human beings rather than judging the individuals victimized by social sin. Conforming to the risen Christ means living as the new human being, the restored creature, who is free for others and thus free to act in creative new ways that participate in and make visible the reign of God. Two elements of this new paradigm are especially relevant for overcoming the framework of morality that drives mass incarceration. First, central to what it means to be conformed to the crucified Christ is the acceptance of guilt, a notion that Bonhoeffer aligns with taking responsibility for the sin, suffering, and injustice that harms human beings. Accepting guilt addresses the need emphasized above, that we take collective responsibility when harms occur, including responsibility for the present and persistent harm unleashed by mass incarceration. While Bonhoeffer ties Jesus’s acceptance of guilt most directly to his work on the cross, where Jesus dies a guilty criminal, even before the crucifixion Jesus accepts guilt by taking the form of a sinner in his public life. Jesus is in solidarity with real human beings and is a companion of sinners, especially those whom the political and religious establishments despise and reject. In this sense, “he was not the perfect good,” argues Bonhoeffer in his 1933 Christology lectures. “He did things which . . . looked like sin. . . . He became angry, . . . he escaped from his enemies, he broke the Law of his people, he stirred up revolt against the rulers and religious men of his country.” 54 According to the religious and moral standards of his day, he is not innocent nor does he try to appear to be. Jesus is indeed sinless in the sense that he perfectly obeys the will of God, but God’s will at times scandalizes our moral intuitions. Highlighting this paradox, Bonhoeffer refers to Jesus as “guilty yet sinless.” 55 His genuine sinlessness is demonstrated, Bonhoeffer argues, “precisely by entering into community with the guilt of other human beings for their sake.” 56 While Christians who live out of the knowledge of good and evil identify themselves with God and attempt to evade divine judgment by appealing to their own moral righteousness, Jesus does the opposite. Throughout his ministry, he repudiates any assertion about his own moral standing. “Why do you call me good,” Jesus says to the rich young man, “No one is good but God alone.” 57 Jesus’s acceptance of guilt in his public life culminates in the crucifixion. Rather than giving himself a religious exemption from God’s judgment on the sin that harms human beings, on the cross Jesus directs God’s judgment to himself. Bonhoeffer writes, “In an incomprehensible reversal of all righteous and pious thought, God declares [Godself] as guilty toward the world and thereby extinguishes the world’s guilt. God treads the way of humble

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

103

reconciliation and thereby set the world free. God wills to be guilty of our guilt. God takes responsibility for godlessness.” 58 As the sinless one, Jesus’s acceptance of guilt is not the result of a burdened conscience but is an active determination that judgment falls on him instead of others. Bonhoeffer writes, “Jesus does not want to be considered the only perfect one at the expense of human beings, nor, the only guiltless one, to look down on humanity perishing under its guilt. . . . Because he loves them, he does not acquit himself of the guilt in which human beings live. A love that abandons human beings to their guilt would not be a love for real human beings.” 59 In a fallen world, accepting guilt and taking responsibility for sin and injustice is the definitive expression of goodness and love. By refusing to set himself apart as a moral paragon and judge—in his life and in his death—Jesus shows that the reign of God comes not through the enforcement of moral principles but through the acceptance of guilt. When Bonhoeffer returns to his analysis of the knowledge of good and evil in Ethics, he makes clear that the human being as judge is the direct opposite— “the counter-image”—to the form of Christ, and in doing so reinforces the opposition between the two structures of being laid out in Creation and Fall, sicut deus and imago dei. 60 By fashioning oneself as judge, the human being finds the origin of good and evil in oneself; by taking the form of Christ, human beings find their origin in God. One configuration directs God’s judgment away from oneself or one’s group toward others, while the other directs God’s judgment on the sin that harms human beings not to others but to one’s self. Referencing Jesus’s clear command, “Do no judge” (Matt. 7:1), Bonhoeffer writes, “Knowing about good and evil, human beings are essentially judges. As judges they are like God, but with the difference that each judgment they pass [unintentionally] falls on themselves. By attacking people as judges, Jesus demands a turn-around of their entire nature.” 61 What is needed is a complete paradigm shift, a new second nature, a new normal, in which our instinct is not to moralize but to recognize our own complicity and responsibility. If acceptance of guilt, for the sinless Jesus, is active determination that guilt falls not on others but on oneself, acceptance of guilt, for the Christian, is the same with one important distinction. Unlike the sinless Christ, we are complicit in the social and structural sin of our society, especially those of us who benefit from and maintain an unjust status quo. The community that accepts guilt plays a central role in exposing the sin of the world by acknowledging it in itself. Acceptance of guilt for privileged Christians means acknowledging our complicity, our solidarity with others in sin, and, therefore, it means repentance. 62 In light of the carceral system, repentance first means that we recognize our responsibility to address the root causes of violence in our society and the harm perpetuated by prisons. Repentance leads from recognition of sin to concrete acts of obedience that align with the will of God. In contrast, those who engage in moral

104

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

judgment excuse themselves from responsibility and action. Bonhoeffer writes, “Judging another always entails an impediment in my own activity. Those who are judging never arrive at doing.” 63 This understanding leads to the second element that is integral to taking the form of Christ in the world. The good that has its origin in God—not in the knowledge of good and evil—“consists entirely in doing,” namely doing the will of God by obeying Jesus’s concrete commands. 64 As Bonhoeffer argues in Creation and Fall, obedience to these concrete commands is a requirement for creaturely freedom, for being free for others according to our intended creatureliness. Conformation to the incarnate God centrally includes, as Bonhoeffer makes clear in Discipleship, obeying Jesus’s commands in the Gospel narratives—commands like judge not, condemn not, refuse to resist evil with evil, visit the prisoner, love mercy, heal the sick, welcome the estranged, forgive one another, and challenge principalities and powers. Jesus commands that we do justice, but this justice must encompass these other imperatives, which press toward models of justice based on restoration and healing. 65 We have these models of justice ready at hand; what many of us lack is the will to implement them. For the Christian, though, practicing obedience to Jesus’s concrete commands is nonnegotiable and urgent. Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the parable of the Good Samaritan in Discipleship highlight the nonnegotiable role of obedience for the Christian, while challenging the bourgeois tendency to let the complexity of social problems be an excuse for passivity. Recall that Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in response to the lawyer’s question about what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus’s answer is that he must love his neighbor as himself. “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” 66 Bonhoeffer uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to highlight the lawyer’s inaction—inaction disguised as intellectual work. He says that the lawyer’s question is “intended to dead-end in the perplexity of ethical conflict.” 67 The question “who is my neighbor?” has “the good reputation,” Bonhoeffer says, “of being a serious and reasonable question from an inquiring person. But . . . it is a question without end, without answer.” “Yes, this question,” he says, “is rebellion against God’s commandment itself.” For Christians who say, “I want to be obedient, but” I do not know what God wants me to do, Bonhoeffer responds: The answer is: do the commandment that you know. . . . The answer is: You yourself are the neighbor. Go and be obedient in acts of love. Being a neighbor is not a qualification of someone else; it is their claim on me, nothing else. At every moment, in every situation I am the one required to act, to be obedient. There is literally no time left to ask about someone else’s qualification. 68

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

105

Bonhoeffer makes the same point in relation to the Sermon on the Mount, the summary of Jesus’s direct teachings. He writes, “From the human point of view there are countless possibilities of understanding and interpreting the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus knows only one possibility: simply go and obey. Do not interpret and apply, but do it and obey. . . . We are simply to begin acting.” 69 Bonhoeffer concludes, “I can only learn what obedience is by obeying, not by asking questions. I can recognize truth only” by practicing obedience now. 70 By defining the Sermon on the Mount as gospel mandates—nonnegotiable commands to love neighbors, strangers, and enemies—Bonhoeffer counters a habit of thinking within dominant forms of Christianity. From the fourth through twentieth centuries, the majority of Western Christians have held that the Sermon on the Mount does not apply to our social and political lives. Bonhoeffer’s German Lutheranism was one such tradition that deemed adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in the public realm impractical and irresponsible. Against this dominant logic, Bonhoeffer argues that Jesus’s teachings are indeed realistic, precisely in the social and political realm. He grounds the realistic nature of Jesus’s teachings in the incarnation itself—the fact that God becomes “the real human being.” In Ethics he writes, “Jesus Christ does not encounter reality as someone who is foreign to it. Instead, it is he who alone bore and experienced in his own body the essence of the real and who spoke out of the knowledge of the real like no other human being on earth.” 71 Bonhoeffer contends that Jesus’s so-called hard sayings—to make peace, love enemies, creatively resist evil—are trustworthy and true for social and political life because they arise out of a realistic knowledge of what it means to exist in a fallen world. “The sayings of Jesus are . . . the interpretation of his existence,” he writes. 72 Bonhoeffer not only emphasizes that Jesus knows what he is talking about, he also makes clear that ignoring or rejecting these teachings is paramount to claiming that the origin of good and evil resides not in God but in oneself. Because the person or identity of Jesus cannot be separated from his teachings, Christians cannot make faithfulness to Jesus in the social and political realm mean whatever we want. Jesus embodies and proclaims the reign of God, a reign that has specific content and is marked by specific practices articulated through his Gospel commands. This is why Bonhoeffer can say so starkly, “Those who treat the word of Jesus any other way except by acting on it assert that Jesus is wrong; they say no to the Sermon on the Mount; they do not do his word. . . . I can insist on my faith . . . as much as I want; Jesus calls it inaction. . . . I have no unity with [him]. He has never known me.” 73 None of Jesus’s commands are, for Bonhoeffer, theoretical ideas or moral principles that may be integrated into an already existing knowledge system about good and evil. Rather they are practices—conforming to Christ’s public presence—that can only be worked out in the messiness of concrete

106

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

existence, the truth of which may only be known when obeyed. Jesus’s commands do not offer a blueprint or program. And yet they offer a realistic and practical way forward. Consider the facts of the matter: we know that our carceral system is not working; we know that it is an engine of trauma, violence, broken relationships, and fractured communities; we know that Jesus commands us to reject moralizing judgment and to pursue justice based on restoration; and we know that people are already doing the difficult work of challenging the carceral system and developing these new models of justice. Christians are called to obey Jesus’s direct commands and enter into this work. How might obeying the command to visit the prisoner now participate in these new forms of justice? How might we be neighbors now to those affected by violence and mass incarceration? How can we learn from and ally ourselves with incarcerated people and others involved in the carceral system? We cannot fully know the outcomes of these practices. The way of obedience unfolds one step at a time. In that creaturely limit we may find comfort, as we live into the weight of the Gospel commands. NOTES 1. Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019 (Prison Policy Initiative, 2019), https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html. 2. Patrick Sharkey, Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2018); Don Stemen, “The Prison Paradox: More Incarceration Will Not Make Us Safer,” (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017). 3. Gergõ Baranyi, M. Cassidy, S. Fazel, S. Priebe, and A. Mundt, “Prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Prisoners,” Epidemiologic Reviews 40 (2018): 134–45; Marieke Liem and M. Kunst, “Is there a Recognizable Post-Incarceration Syndrome among Released ‘Lifers’?” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 36 (2013): 333–37. 4. Eric Martin, “Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children,” National Institute of Justice Journal 278 (2017), https://www.nij.gov/journals/278/ pages/impact-of-incarceration-on-dependent-children.aspx. 5. Sawyer and Wagner, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html#slideshows/ slideshow6/2; https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html#slideshows/slideshow6/5. 6. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012). 7. For example, The FIRST STEP Act, H.R. 5682, 115th Congress (2018). 8. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). 9. Bernard Harcourt, “The ’73 Graft: Punishment, Political Economy, and the Genealogy of Morals,” Columbia Public Law Research Paper, 14–485, 2015: 1. 10. See, for example, Rachel Barkow, Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration (Harvard University Press, 2019). 11. Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (New York: Orbis, 2015); Dominique Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2018); Megan Sweeney, Reading is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), Chapter 1. 12. Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1978), Chapter 2.

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

107

13. Ibid., 196. 14. Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 110. 15. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, 18–19. 16. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 56. 17. Ibid., The Epistle to the Romans, 90. 18. DBWE 10:353–54. 19. DBWE 6:47. 20. Ibid., 299–300. 21. DBWE 3:2. 22. Ibid., 39. 23. Ibid., 61. 24. Ibid., 63. 25. Ibid., 62–63. 26. Ibid., 84. 27. Ibid., 99. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 86. 30. Ibid., 87. 31. Ibid., 85. 32. DBWE 6:300. 33. Ibid., 302. 34. Ibid., 300–301. 35. Ibid., 84–85. 36. DBWE 3:107. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 113. 40. Ibid., 109. 41. Ibid., 117. 42. Ibid., 120. 43. Sawyer and Wagner; John Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration-and How to Achieve Real Reform (New York: Basic Books, 2017); Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Road to Repair (New York: New Press, 2019). 44. Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the First Year after Prison (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 2018), 67. 45. Ibid., 180. 46. For a comprehensive and compelling account of this failure, see Sered, chapters 1–2. 47. Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice (Intercourse, PA: 2002). 48. Sered, 143. 49. Ibid., 133. 50. James William Kilgore, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (New York: The New Press, 2015), 210–13. 51. In his recent study Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), legal scholar James Forman Jr. describes how African American communities requested support in the 70s, 80s, and 90s for addressing the root causes of crime—“what many termed a Marshall Plan for urban America.” But these calls went unheard. Forman writes that, “because African Americans are a minority nationally, they needed help to win national action against joblessness, segregation, and other root causes of crime.” At the time that they were asking for help, “Reaganism was ascendant, the Great Society was under assault, and there was little national appetite for social programs—especially those perceived as helping blacks. So African Americans never got the Marshall Plan—just the tough-on-crime laws” (12–13). Forman’s account points us to another principle of transformative justice, that true justice and restoration means recognizing our collective complicity in violence and in failures to do justice in the past. 52. DBWE 6:84–99.

108

Jennifer M. McBride and Thomas Fabisiak

53. Ibid., 92-97, 221–23. 54. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 108–9. See also DBWE 12:357. 55. DBWE 6:234. 56. Ibid., 276. 57. Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19. 58. DBWE 6:83. 59. Ibid., 233. 60. Ibid., 134. 61. Ibid., 313–14. 62. For a full account of social and political repentance rooted in Bonhoeffer’s theology, see McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 63. DBWE 6: 314. 64. Ibid. 65. See Christopher Marshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). 66. Luke 10:29 67. DBWE 4:75. 68. Ibid., 75–76 69. Ibid., 181–82. 70. Ibid., 75–76. 71. DBWE 6:263. 72. Ibid., 263. 73. DBWE 4:182.

WORKS CITED Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012. Baranyi, Gergõ, M. Cassidy, S. Fazel, S. Priebe, and A. Mundt. “Prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Prisoners.” Epidemiologic Reviews 40 (2018): 134–45. Barkow, Rachel. Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration. Cambridge: Harvard University, 2019. Barth, Karl. Epistle to the Romans, 6th edition. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. ———. The Word of God and the Word of Man. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1978. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Christ the Center. Translated by Edwin H. Robertson. New York: Harper Collins, 1978. ———. Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Douglas Stephen Bax. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 3. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Discipleship. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928–1931. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) Douglas, Kelly Brown. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. New York: Orbis, 2015. Forman, James, Jr. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Morality

109

Gilliard, Dominique. Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores. Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2018. Harcourt, Bernard. “The ’73 Graft: Punishment, Political Economy, and the Genealogy of Morals.” Columbia Public Law Research Paper, 14–485, 2015: 1. Kilgore, James William. Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time. New York: The New Press, 2015. Liem, Marieke and M. Kunst. “Is there a Recognizable Post-Incarceration Syndrome among Released ‘Lifers’?” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 36 (2013): 333–37. Marshall, Christopher. Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Martin, Eric. “Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children.” National Institute of Justice Journal 278 (2017). https://www.nij.gov/journals/278/pages/ impact-of-incarceration-on-dependent-children.aspx. McBride, Jennifer M. The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness. New York: Oxford University, 2011. Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pfaff, John. Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration-and How to Achieve Real Reform. New York: Basic Books, 2017. Sawyer, Wendy and Peter Wagner. Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019. Prison Policy Initiative, 2019. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html. Sered, Danielle. Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Road to Repair. New York: New Press, 2019. Sharkey, Patrick. Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2018. Don Stemen, “The Prison Paradox: More Incarceration Will Not Make Us Safer.” Vera Institute of Justice, 2017. https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-prisonparadox_02.pdf. Sweeney, Megan. Reading is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Western, Bruce. Homeward: Life in the First Year after Prison. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 2018. Zehr, Howard. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: 2002.

Chapter Six

The Interfaith Imperative How Dietrich Bonhoeffer Compels Interfaith Action Lori Brandt Hale

“Responsibility is based on vicarious representative action [Stellvertretung]. . . . The attention of responsible people is directed to concrete neighbors in their concrete reality.” 1 This concept of Stellvertretung is central to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thinking throughout his life, from Sanctorum Communio to Ethics. It has theological, ontological, and ethical implications, and it is the key to reading Bonhoeffer constructively with regard to interfaith action. The concrete reality of the twenty-first century, globally, is marked by religious diversity and interreligious conflict. The conflict comes in the form of racial and religious bigotry, intolerance, and violence. It is fueled by fundamentalisms that preach exclusive claims to truth and nationalist ideologies that seek racial homogeneity and religious conformity. It even claims and destroys the lives of people praying peacefully in churches, mosques, and synagogues. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not an interfaith activist. This chapter does not try to make him out to be one. But Bonhoeffer’s work, particularly his ethical project, not only supports but commends interfaith work. Others who have written on the “interfaith promise” of Bonhoeffer’s theology have recounted his participation in the earliest days of the ecumenical movement, his interest in studying nonviolent resistance with Mahatma Gandhi, and his resistance to the Nazis in solidarity with Jews as indications that his work and thought lend support to religious pluralism and interfaith action. 3 While I certainly do not discount these personal, and important, proclivities in assessing Bonhoeffer’s possible contributions to contemporary interfaith work, this chapter will tend more closely to his ideas. 111

112

Lori Brandt Hale

In particular, those ideas include basic terms that are not always used with care. Bonhoeffer understands religion, theology, theological anthropology, and ethics in ways that are interconnected, but distinct. And he does so in a particular historical and intellectual context. Any constructive use of Bonhoeffer for reflection on contemporary issues, including this one, must take this work and this context into account. I will say something briefly about each of these terms here in the introduction, and then elaborate on those remarks in what follows. Religion, for Bonhoeffer, is a human construct, an arrogant human attempt to reach God and, as such, always but partial truth. This critical appraisal of religion holds true for Christianity in its manifestation as a religion and remains a consistent, though complicated, feature of Bonhoeffer’s thinking from 1928 until the end of his life. Understanding Bonhoeffer’s disposition toward the idea of religion is important for sorting out his thoughts about religions. In short, all religions are equally problematic for Bonhoeffer. From this point of view, Bonhoeffer is not the most helpful in considering interfaith cooperation and action. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of religion motivates his consideration of a religionless Christianity. Counterintuitively, perhaps, this nonreligious construal of Christianity is dependent on Bonhoeffer’s discernment that theology is inherently Christological; it is tied up with the coming of God into the world in human form, in the person of Jesus Christ. Fallen humanity is reconciled to God through God’s action, God’s coming into the world, not by humans searching for God. In other words, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentrism reorients, vis-à-vis religion, the relationship between God and humanity. This reorientation is the truth of the Christian message for Bonhoeffer. Christ did not come to establish a new religion, but to bring life. Christian faith, in Bonhoeffer’s estimation, is not something partial, it is the whole of life. This theological position is also present throughout his life, from his dissertation to his letters and papers from prison. And it is an exclusive claim. Authentic humanity is human existence reconfigured in Christ. This theological stand does not, at first blush, lend itself easily to interfaith support. 4 But the committed pluralism on which interfaith work is grounded embraces, even requires, particularity. Therefore, Bonhoeffer’s theological stance does not preclude him from serious use by interfaith advocates. Bonhoeffer’s ethics align with his critique of religion insofar as he finds systems of ethics that purport universal applicability fraught with human pride. For him, ethical principles can neither be predetermined nor be good for all times, in all places, because an ethical response is one that serves actual people with specific needs in real circumstances. An ethical response is just that, a response. It is an ethical demand in which the responsible person is called to act vicariously on behalf of others (Stellvertretung), all others, in their concrete particularity. This ethical position is inherently open

The Interfaith Imperative

113

to others as other and will serve as the primary source for a Bonhoefferian warrant for interfaith cooperation and activism. Finally, Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology has already been identified: authentic humanity is human existence reconfigured in Christ. This claim bridges his theology and ethics. True humanity takes the form of Christ, is conformed to Christ, and that conformation to Christ determines ethical action and concrete decisions that help neighbors. That is, authentic human existence is not a religious expression, but an actively empathic one tied to Bonhoeffer’s incarnational theology. What matters to him is human beings in the world in all their relationships. Accordingly, Bonhoeffer’s pivotal question, “who is Jesus Christ for us today?” or, stated elsewhere as a concern about “how Christ may take form among us today and here,” is apropos to this point and carries theological, ontological, and ethical weight. 5 Thus, the apparent tension between Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric theology and his concrete ethics, in supporting interfaith work, finds relief in his theological anthropology. Bonhoeffer began his career in the midst of the political malaise of the failing, post–World War I Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism, and lost his life at the hands of the Nazis. His life and death are intricately entwined in this political context. His theological and ethical concerns are also shaped by these realities. And growing apprehension about the rise of secularism, or the perceived rise of secularism, also shaped Bonhoeffer’s theological and ethical thinking. The “today” of his famous question takes all this into account. Contemporary readers of Bonhoeffer live in a different context. Politically, some disconcerting similarities exist in the form of rising nationalistic and isolationist trends, manifest most readily in anti-immigration sentiments and policies. 6 These developments beg for intercultural understanding and cooperation, and point us in the direction of interfaith action. Moreover, the predicted secularism of Bonhoeffer’s “world come of age” did not come to fruition. More than 84 percent of the global population identifies with a religious tradition. 7 The twenty-first century “today” is an inherently religious and religiously diverse society. Problematically, many of those nationalistic ideologies are driven by religious division. So, plurality—and the need for engaged pluralism—not secularism is the context that shapes our current theological and moral imaginations. The goal of this chapter is twofold: to make the case that interfaith cooperation is necessary in our twenty-first-century global context and to demonstrate that twentieth-century German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, compels us to reach this conclusion. Three sections will follow: (1) an examination of the meaning of interfaith action and committed pluralism through the work of Eboo Patel and Diana Eck; (2) a review of Bonhoeffer’s key anthropological, theological, and ethical claims; and, (3) a conclusion, naming the ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work obliges contemporary readers to imagine

114

Lori Brandt Hale

and articulate a commitment to the inherently political and ethically imperative work of interfaith cooperation and action. EBOO PATEL AND DIANA ECK One hundred years ago, the great African American scholar W.E.B. DeBois famously said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” I believe that the twenty-first century will be shaped by the question of the faith line. On one side of the faith line are the religious totalitarians. Their conviction is that only one interpretation of one religion is a legitimate way of being, believing, and belonging on earth. Everyone else needs to be cowed, or converted, or condemned, or killed. On the other side of the faith line are the religious pluralists, who hold that people believing in different creeds and belonging to different communities need to learn to live together. 8

Eboo Patel, the founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), is an interfaith activist. His commitment to this work is primarily ethical-political. The mission of the IFYC is to make interfaith cooperation a societal norm and, in the context of a religiously pluralist society, to respect identities, create mutually inspiring relationships across difference, and to commit to a common good: “where different people share common values, even despite theological disagreements, that support principles and structures that a range of groups benefit from and people generally agree we have a collective interest to uphold. Think safe communities, good schools, defeating poverty, access to healthcare, and addressing climate change.” 9 Patel’s latest book is devoted to defining the field of interreligious/interfaith studies. 10 It underscores the ethical-political nature of interfaith work for him. In it, he names five civic goods that he associates with interfaith work: “reducing prejudice, strengthening social cohesion, building social capital, strengthening the continuity of identity communities, and finally, creating binding narratives for diverse societies.” 11 These goals are not theological, but social, political, and ethical. Patel’s aims animate the idea that interfaith work is ethically and politically imperative. His mission is to gather people, people of different religious identities and faith expressions, on the pluralist side of the faith line, “to learn to live together.” 12 Diana Eck, the founder and director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard, is also an interfaith activist. Her commitment to defining and endorsing committed pluralism is longstanding. In her book, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, she makes the case for engaging one another across difference, especially religious difference, from a position of committed pluralism over against other starting points. Eck explains that some, like Gandhi, assert that all religions are true. Others claim that all religions are false. “A third option is to insist that one religion is true and the

The Interfaith Imperative

115

rest are false [exclusivism]. Or one might claim that one religion is true and the others are partially true [inclusivism].” 13 Committed pluralism, on the other hand, insists that “truth is not the exclusive or inclusive possession of any one tradition or community.” 14 Diversity of “communities, traditions, understandings of the truth, and visions of God is not an obstacle for us to overcome,” but invites, even requires, engagement. 15 Moreover, that engagement “does not mean giving up our commitments; rather, it means opening up those commitments to the give-and-take of mutual discovery, understanding, and indeed, transformation.” 16 It means recognizing the limits of one’s own understanding of God and the world. And, it means thinking about religious diversity not just from a theological point of view, but socially and politically, too. Exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism are “social and political responses to diversity” with ethical consequences. 17 The future of the “blue planet,” she argues, is at stake. 18 Her work, like Patel’s, affirms that interfaith work is of utmost ethical and political importance. Both Patel and Eck draw the important distinction between diversity and pluralism: diversity is a fact; pluralism is an achievement. The Interfaith Youth Core website cites Diana Eck on this very point. “Pluralism . . . is the ‘energetic engagement of diversity toward a positive end.’” 19 To reach that positive end, not only is engagement required, but (Eck emphasizes) tolerance is insufficient, and syncretism is not its goal. Pluralism seeks understanding, assumes commitment, respects differences, and engages in interreligious dialogue. These features of pluralism are all intuitive, I imagine, save the “assumes commitment.” The idea that pluralism is congruent with particularity is, perhaps, a little more difficult to grasp. Eck explains, “Pluralism is not, then, the kind of radical openness to anything and everything that drains meaning from particularity.” 20 She continues, The word credo, so important in the Christian tradition, does not mean “I believe” in the sense of intellectual assent to this and that proposition. It means “I give my heart to this.” It is an expression of my heart’s commitment and my life’s orientation. Relativism may be an appropriate intellectual answer to the problem of religious diversity—all traditions are relative to history and culture. But it cannot be an adequate answer for most religious people—not for me, nor for my Muslim neighbor who fasts and prays more regularly than I do, nor for my Hindu colleague whose world is made vivid by the presence of Krishna. We live our lives and die our deaths in terms of cherished commitments. We are not relatively committed. 21

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not relatively committed. He was committed to the idea that God took human form in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived and died vicariously on behalf of humanity. The language he used to describe this commitment was nothing short of exclusive. And yet, his participation in the ecumenical movement early in his life signaled an openness to new and

116

Lori Brandt Hale

varied interpretations of that commitment, and his exploration of a religionless Christianity late in his life was driven, in part, by his hope to figure out what it meant to have faith at all, in a world that seemed to be increasingly irreligious. It is interesting to note that Eboo Patel spent a year as a Visiting Distinguished Lecturer at Union Theological Seminary in 2013, the very institution where Bonhoeffer studied during the academic year 1930–1931. In his time there, Patel examined the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, noting a “powerful thread running through their lives: the question of what it means to be a person of faith in the times in which we live.” 22 Accordingly, Patel pointed to Bonhoeffer’s famous question—who is Jesus Christ for us today? 23—but he did not explore the contextual implications of the word today. It was a missed opportunity. Patel was in a position to describe the way the context had changed from the time Bonhoeffer asked that question to now. He could have drawn on his experience starting an interfaith movement or serving on President Obama’s Interfaith Council to establish the rise of religions and religious diversity around the world. 24 Patel delivered three key speeches while at Union, his third speech titled, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of Interfaith Cooperation.” In it, Patel noted other similarities between King, Heschel, and Bonhoeffer: “the levels of scholarship they achieved within their traditions, the lyricism of their writing, their view that their faith called them to stand up for other people, their willingness to die for that faith.” 25 Patel’s speech is clever and highly accessible, replete with anecdotes and metaphors, but it is not a constructive read of Bonhoeffer’s ideas to support his interfaith work. Bonhoeffer’s interest in Gandhi and his deep regret over his refusal to preach at the funeral of his twin-sister’s Jewish father-in-law certainly suggest an openness on Bonhoeffer’s part to those who would be considered other. But these stories do not constitute an argument. That said, Patel’s Interfaith Youth Core work is critically important. As I finish editing this chapter, in the summer of 2019, the news is filled with religious violence around the globe, including xenophobic tweets by the sitting president of the United States against elected members of the US Congress. In particular, Donald Trump launched hate-filled accusations against four freshmen representatives—all women of color, including the Somali-born, Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota—rife with racism and Islamophobia. 26 His actions normalize these attitudes and his supporters are emboldened to spew the same vile rhetoric, to chant “send her home.” 27 When people view the other, the ethnic other, the socioeconomic other, and especially the religious other, as a threat to their own identity or security, it is more important than ever to recognize Patel’s plea to gather on the pluralist side of the faith line as a moral and political imperative where

The Interfaith Imperative

117

“people believing in different creeds and belonging to different communities need to learn to live together.” 28 DIETRICH BONHOEFFER For me, the main issue for individuals and for peoples is whether or not they have learned to live with other human beings and peoples. That’s more important to me than all their ideas, thoughts, and convictions. 29

In this excerpt, buried in a fragmentary, but highly autobiographical, work of fiction written while in Tegel prison, the “Speech of the Major,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers contemporary readers language for embracing interfaith cooperation. It lands him squarely on the pluralist side of Eboo Patel’s faith line. However, this declaration may be something of a surprise even to accomplished Bonhoeffer scholars who have wrestled with the question of the relationship of Bonhoeffer’s theology to current sensibilities about interfaith engagement: John Matthews, in an unpublished presentation given at the 2016 International Bonhoeffer Congress in Basel, Switzerland, worries that Bonhoeffer’s dogmatic Christology is a barrier to this work, though he looks to other clues in Bonhoeffer’s legacy to move us to authentic interfaith activity. 30 Terence J. Lovat claims Bonhoeffer is an architect of modern interfaith theology, but makes some odd moves and equations in his reading of religionless Christianity, secular theology, “non-faithed,” and more, in his attempt to do so. 31 Even David H. Jensen’s beautifully constructed look at the interfaith promise of Bonhoeffer’s theology, based on what he describes as “Bonhoeffer’s own posture of vulnerable discipleship,” does not cite this passage. 32 Jensen does, though, offer an avenue for reading Bonhoeffer’s exclusive commitment to Christ as “a way unto difference” that has strong resonance with Diana Eck’s understanding of committed pluralism, as we will see. 33 Bonhoeffer’s call to “learn to live with other human beings” regardless of their thoughts or convictions is inextricably tied to his understanding of the “structure of responsible life,” outlined in Ethics, which I posited at the outset as the key for a Bonhoefferian warrant for engaging in interfaith work: “The structure of responsible life is determined in a twofold manner, namely, by life’s bond to human beings and to God, and by the freedom of one’s own life. . . . The bond has the form of vicarious representative action and accordance with reality. Freedom exhibits itself in my accountability for my living and acting, and in the venture of concrete decision.” 34 In short, vicarious representative action is about living with (and for) other human beings in accordance with reality (in the messiness of the world), that is, in a world in which people are different. How Bonhoeffer’s understanding of vicarious representative action, in accordance with reality, develops over the course of

118

Lori Brandt Hale

his life and work, and compels contemporary interfaith cooperation, requires explanation. And, as indicated in the introduction, the explanation will tend to the congruities and incongruities in Bonhoeffer’s work between religion, theology, theological anthropology, and ethics. Bonhoeffer introduced the idea of Stellvertretung (vicarious representative action) in his dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church. The English editors of that volume indicate that Bonhoeffer introduced the idea as both a “Christological and anthropological-ethical concept,” though Bonhoeffer is clear that, initially, “the idea of vicarious representative action . . . is not an ethical, but a theological concept.” 35 His initial use of the idea of vicarious representative action is not in reference to civic life or ethical behavior, but tied to concepts of sin and punishment. “Though innocent, Jesus takes the sin of others upon himself, and by dying as a criminal he is accursed, for he bears the sins of the world and is punished for them. However, vicarious representative love triumphs on the criminal’s cross, obedience to God triumphs over sin, and thereby sin is actually punished and overcome.” 36 This account is Bonhoeffer’s brief outline of Christ’s vicarious representative action on behalf of humanity. It gives voice to the way vicarious representative action is, foundationally, a theological, or a Christological, idea for him. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer claimed, even in this early work, that his theological understanding of vicarious representative action has “profound implications for social philosophy.” 37 This contention makes sense because Bonhoeffer also claims that this principle—Stellvertretung—not only unites the “new humanity” with Christ, but links “its members to each other in community.” It is an initial nod toward the ethical force of Stellvertretung that Bonhoeffer will develop in his later work. 38 In a footnote in Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer indicated even more clearly the ethical possibility implicit in his theological idea. He wrote, “there is, however, also an ethical concept of vicarious representative action; it signifies the voluntary assumption of an evil in another person’s stead.” 39 He could not possibly know, when he wrote these words in 1927, just how prescient they were, nor the great personal cost he would suffer to live into them. The aforementioned footnote is not the only place in Bonhoeffer’s early work where the seeds of his later ethical project are planted. For example, already in his dissertation, he posited a real, concrete human person living in the midst of time, over against an abstract understanding of the “I” consonant with transcendental philosophers like Immanuel Kant and others. Bonhoeffer posited a real, concrete human person who enters a state of responsibility in relation to and encounter with another human being. He wrote, “[a]t the moment of being addressed, the person enters a state of responsibility or, in other words, of decision. By person I do not mean at this point the idealists’ person of mind or reason, but the person in concrete, living individuality.” 40 Moreover, “the You-form is to be defined as the other who places before me an ethical decision.” 41

The Interfaith Imperative

119

To review, Bonhoeffer’s initial presentation of Stellvertretung is theological. It is theological because it is about Jesus’s vicarious death on behalf of humanity. Michael DeJonge and Clifford Green, the editors of The Bonhoeffer Reader, explain: “the role of ‘vicarious representative’ (Stellvertreter) and the behavior of ‘vicarious representative action’ (Stellvertretung) is [sic] central in Bonhoeffer’s theology. Christ is the Stellvertreter as the one who enters into the situation of humanity and acts on its behalf and for its sake.” 42 Thus, the very idea of Stellvertretung in Bonhoeffer’s earliest work is conceptually, and by definition, Christological. As such, it does not offer help in making the case for twenty-first-century interfaith action, but at the same time, this foundation of Bonhoeffer’s thinking never changes. And it need not. Inherent in Bonhoeffer’s theological understanding of vicarious representative action is his ontological thinking. Christ as Stellvertreter informs Bonhoeffer’s answer to the question, what does it mean to be human? In his view, to be human is to be reconfigured in Christ, thereby reconciled to God and to others; to be human, for Bonhoeffer, is being-for-the-other. Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s ontological claims are rooted not only in his Christology, but the concomitant sociality of that Christology. A central claim of his dissertation is that the ongoing incarnation of Christ happens in community, expressed as “Christ existing as community.” This claim affirms the basic sociality of his theological project and points to a relational component of human freedom, a claim that resonates across his work: “Only by being in relation with the other am I free. No one can think of freedom as substance or as something individualistic.” 43 In other words, human beings exist only in relationship to and responsibility for other human beings. When “I” confront the “Other,” the other places an ethical demand on me to respond. Additionally, Bonhoeffer’s ontological claims, which is to say, his theological anthropology, are also supported by his understanding of discipleship. The central theme of his text by that title, Discipleship, is to live vicariously and suffer vicariously on behalf of others, as Christ did; and, to do so in commitment to and obedience to Christ. Put another way, Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology has Christological footings and ethical outcomes, and thereby provides continuity for Bonhoeffer’s move from a theological interpretation of Stellvertretung to his ethical construal of the same idea. This continuity finds expression in the resonance between the end of Discipleship and the section of the Ethics titled, “Ethics as Formation.” In both, Bonhoeffer calls for “conformation to Christ,” and posits “ethics as formation,” over against established ethical frameworks that claim universal moral principles, as the foundation of his ethical project; which, in his own words, is a “venture of speaking about the form of Christ taking form in our world neither abstractly nor casuistically, neither programmatically nor purely reflectively.” 44

120

Lori Brandt Hale

“To be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ,” Bonhoeffer wrote in Discipleship, “is not an ideal of realizing some kind of similarity with Christ which we are asked to attain. It is not we who change ourselves into the image of God. Rather, it is the very image of God, the form of Christ, which seeks to take shape within us.” 45 The Christological grounding of his theological anthropology is even more explicit in Ethics. “To be conformed to the one who has become human—that is what really being human means . . . to be conformed to the crucified—that means to be a human being judged before God . . . to be conformed to the risen one—that means to be a new human being before God.” 46 But the ethical outcomes of this Christological starting point resound in both texts. In Discipleship, Bonhoeffer describes his vision for human interaction that accompanies conformation to Christ: “He became like human beings, so that we would be like him. In Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. . . . Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attack Christ. . . . The incarnate one transforms his disciples into brothers and sisters of all human beings . . . the incarnation of Christ is the reason for Christians to love every human being on earth as a brother or sister.” 47 Here, in recognizing all human beings on earth as brothers and sisters, we begin to find resonance with the words Bonhoeffer put in the fictional speech of the Major, cited above. That resonance finds its full measure in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. What it means to be human, in conformity to Christ, is ultimately an onto-ethical understanding that instantiates the structure of responsible life. Still, Christ is not a principle according to which the whole world must be formed. 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, come what it may. Christ was not essentially a teacher, a lawgiver, but human being, a real human being like us. Accordingly, Christ does not want to us to be first of all pupils, 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. Christ was not interested like a philosopher, in what is “generally valid,” but in that which serves real concrete human beings. Christ was not concerned with whether “the maxim of an action” could become “a principle of universal law,” but whether my action now helps my neighbor to be a human being before God. God did not become an idea, a principle, a program, or a universally valid belief, or a law. God became human. 48

Bonhoeffer’s Christology commits us to his ethics as formation, that is, to act vicariously on behalf of others, all others, in response to their concrete needs. Or, put in words that resonate with Diana Eck’s articulation of committed pluralism, Bonhoeffer’s particularity commits us to others in their particularity.

The Interfaith Imperative

121

The tie between Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics can be articulated another way. The ethical question for Bonhoeffer is not “what does it mean to do good?” but what “what is the will of God?” 49 This second question encompasses the complicated relationship between freedom and obedience that marks Bonhoeffer’s understanding of responsibility, and ultimately, his usefulness in making a case for twenty-first-century interfaith work. “Responsibility,” he wrote, “is human freedom that exists only by being bound to God and neighbor.” 50 Restated, the ethical question for Bonhoeffer asks, what is it that I am called to do in this time, in this place, in response to people with real needs who stand before me? It envisages what Bonhoeffer will come to describe, in Letters and Papers from Prison, as the “this-worldliness” of Christianity. 51 It resonates with his famous call to “view the great events of world history from below . . . from the perspective of the suffering.” 52 And, it is premised on his contention that “[t]he question about the good always finds us in an irreversible situation: we are living.” 53 Bonhoeffer was living. He was living in a particular time and place. He wrote from a specific and problematic historical and political context; it was especially problematic by the time he was working on Ethics and penning Letters and Papers from Prison. His work was not an exercise in academic speculation or abstraction. In the context of Nazi Germany, with lives at stake, vicarious representative action, including willingness to suffer and take on guilt on behalf of others, was not optional but an answer to the question “what is the will of God?” In his well-known letter to Eberhard Bethge, written on July 21, 1944, Bonhoeffer wrote, Later on I discovered, and am still discovering to this day, that one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life . . . this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities—then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the sufferings of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane. And I think this is faith; this is μετανοια [metanoia]. And this is how one becomes a human, a Christian. 54

Here, the theological, anthropological, and ethical elements of Stellvertretung are all present, but the focus on suffering, on acting in solidarity with those who were suffering at the hands of the Nazi State, “proved decidedly subversive.” 55 David Jensen notes this willingness to become vulnerable to others based on a “cruciform interpretation of discipleship” (or, ethics as formation) as the key to active engagement with others who are most often identified as threatening “others.” The consequences of this interpretation “are visible: away from a secure interpretation of Christianity that saw Jews as a threatening ‘other’ to be converted, toward an envisagement of worldly discipleship in a polyglot setting, resulting in risky action on behalf of Jews forced to wear the yellow star. Bonhoeffer’s posture, in other words, un-

122

Lori Brandt Hale

veiled the radical particularity of the others with whom Christians exist in the world.” 56 This July 21 letter is what might be considered the punctuation mark at the end of Bonhoeffer’s intermittent reflections on religionless Christianity. Inherent in his quest to articulate an understanding of Christianity in an increasingly secular world, a world “come of age,” and devoid of false concepts of God, is a sharp critique of the concept of religion itself. His critique of religion, as well as morality writ large, was not new. Throughout Bonhoeffer’s life, he condemned human attempts to reach God through “the human paths of religion, morality, and the church.” 57 Rather, he articulated an understanding of the Christian gospel, influenced by Karl Barth among others, that moved in the other direction, that is, from God to humanity via the cross of Christ. Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion (over against theology) began in his dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, but did not find firm footing there; he vacillated between competing definitions of the term, particularly its relationship to revelation and the church, including the formation of the church-community. 58 Nevertheless, by the time he delivered his 1928 lecture in Barcelona titled, “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” less than a year after completing his dissertation, he no longer wavered. “Ethics and religion and church all go in this direction: from the human to God. Christ, however, speaks only and exclusively of the line from God to human beings, not of some path to God, but only of God’s own path to humans.” 59 The consequence of this thinking, for Bonhoeffer, is that the Christian message is basically “amoral and irreligious, as paradoxical as that may sound.” 60 It is no surprise, then, when he states early on: This understanding of Christ’s cross also answers another urgent question. What are we to make of other religions? Are they nothing compared to Christianity? The answer is that it is not the Christian religion itself that, as a religion, is something divine. It is itself merely one human path toward God, just as is the Buddhist and the other religions, albeit, of course, of a different sort. Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but the bringer of God. 61 Hence as the impossible path from human beings to God, the Christian religion stands alongside other religions. Christians can never boast of their own Christian religiosity, for it, too, remains humanly all-too-human. 62

Accordingly, Bonhoeffer does not offer grounds for exploring interreligious relationships on the basis of his definition of religion (as a human path to God) because he finds all religions to be under the same illusion of a false sense of certainty regarding this human endeavor. This misplaced confidence, a cultural confidence that buys into a divine and “unlimited potential of the human spirit” is what he means by the term humanism which explains why he argues vehemently against humanism, describing it as the “most severe enemy of Christianity ever.” 63 Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion aligns

The Interfaith Imperative

123

with his critique of humanism, and modernity itself. Sardonically, he writes, the “crown of human culture . . . is morality and religion.” 64 At this same time, Bonhoeffer delivered lectures—first in Barcelona and then in New York—flirting with nationalism. It is ironic that he did so, for nationalisms are constructed on the same foundation of human pretense that support the idea of religion that he so disdained; but it is, nonetheless, understandable. It was the 1920s and 1930s; they were marked by opposing ideological and theological positions: internationalism and ethno-nationalism: “on the one side, the ecumenical affirmation of internationalism, reconciliation among the nations, and pacifism; on the other side, the fascist dedication to nationalist and ethnocentric agendas.” 65 Eventually, he was drawn to the ecumenical movement, but not at first. Initially, he was caught up in the resentments and bitterness of his generation of Germans, compounded by the “devasting loss of a brother in the first world war.” 66 Victoria Barnett elaborates: “Bonhoeffer understood and perhaps to some extent even felt the appeal of nationalism—and yet for several different reasons he also was capable of critiquing it and drawing very different conclusions. One of those reasons was the ecumenical movement. The initial attraction for Bonhoeffer was the possibility of forming friendships with young Christians from France, from Holland, from Great Britain. Bonhoeffer was a young German drawn to rethinking things, especially his country and his faith, and he was drawn to the international stage.” 67 There is an interesting parallel with Eboo Patel’s personal story. In his book titled Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, Patel reports disillusionment, even resentment, about injustice in the world; he also reports conflicted personal racial, national, and religious identity manifesting in a profound, and unpleasant, liminal experience he describes as “two-ness.” 68 These feelings of frustration and isolation, he says, could have led him down the path of religious extremism instead of interfaith cooperation. But by reclaiming his identity as a Muslim, that is, reclaiming his particularity, and by recognizing the positive animating force of faith in his Muslim grandmother and in people he met in the Catholic Worker House Movement, he was able to move in a constructive rather than destructive direction. 69 His insight about the divine inspiration of their work in the world, coupled with an openness to the other, transformed his own anger about social injustice into constructive efforts to build an interfaith movement, or in his words, to build bridges of cooperation. In sum, his particularity as a Muslim is foundational to this interfaith work. Bonhoeffer’s articulation of religionless Christianity includes this same mélange of particularity and openness. It eschews claims to absoluteness and designates religion as something partial in contrast to faith, which, Bonhoeffer notes, is life itself. 70 Herein lies the critique of religion described above. Religionless Christainity embraces the particularity of the Christian narrative and names Jesus as the one who enters the world, weak and without power,

124

Lori Brandt Hale

to claim space in the center of human lives, over against a concept of God on the boundaries of life, functioning only as a deus ex machina, or stop-gap for incomplete knowledge of the world. In Bonhoeffer’s “Outline of a Book,” written in August of 1944, he claims, “our relationship to God is a new life in ‘being there for others,’ through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbor within reach in any given situation.” 71 In sum, Bonhoeffer’s particularity as a Christian is foundational to the possibility of contemporary readers’ interfaith encounter. THE INTERFAITH IMPERATIVE An assault on the freedom of any one of us who practices their faith or religion, is not welcome here. Violence, and extremism in all its forms, is not welcome here. 72

As the second decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, the news is filled with accounts of religious violence and bigotry. Clashes between Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been a hallmark of life in the Middle East. There is rising tension between Buddhists and Muslims in Southeast Asia. 73 And attacks on churches, synagogues, mosques, and gurdwaras are practically commonplace. These conflicts do not represent “learning to live with other human beings and peoples” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer so aptly put it. Rather, these examples represent the violence and extremism that New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, rejected with her powerful words (above) in the days after the mass shootings at the Linwood Mosque and the Masjid Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch. Dietrich Bonhoeffer may not seem the most likely choice to offer guidance to interfaith activists living seventy-five years after his death, but his thought and life not only support interfaith work, but commend it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work, especially his lifelong reflection on the concept of Stellvertretung, obliges contemporary readers to imagine a commitment to this interfaith work. In the same way his question, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” prompted his own theological and ethical imagination, it serves as a catalyst for ours. Bonhoeffer desired to articulate an authentic Christian identity in the space between the religious malfeasance of the German Christian Church (Deutschekirche), on the one hand, and rising secularism, on the other. Religionless Christianity is this articulation, but one would be hard pressed to understand it without an attendant understanding of Stellvertretung. One would be hard pressed to understand Bonhoeffer’s participation in the conspiracy without it, too. Theologically, Bonhoeffer held tight to the idea of God’s self-revelation in Christ and Christ’s role as Stellvertreter. Ethically,

The Interfaith Imperative

125

Bonhoeffer understood that Jesus Christ took form, here and today, in “the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled . . . [and] the suffering.” 74 More explicitly, Bonhoeffer was able to imagine Jesus Christ taking form in the lives of the victims of the Nazi State, particularly the Jews. He gave his life on their behalf. Contemporary readers of Bonhoeffer—whether Christian or non-Christian— are called to engage their own moral imaginations. Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Certainly those who are suffering and oppressed, marginalized or overlooked. But context matters. Religious plurality and nationalistic fervor characterize our times. Our moral imaginations must also include the colonized, the racially marginalized, the poor, the immigrant, and the religious other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself, compels us to do so: “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.” 75 NOTES 1. DBWE 6:257, 261. 2. For example, on March 15, 2019, a lone gunman killed more than fifty people at two mosques—the Linwood Mosque and the Masjid Al Noor Mosque—in Christchurch, New Zealand. 3. Most prominently, Eboo Patel—whose important interfaith work will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter—takes this approach in “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of Interfaith Cooperation: Third Speech in the Union Theological Seminary Interfaith Cycle, Originally Delivered March 14, 2003,” Cross Currents 63, no. 3 (September 2013): 286–95. Patel relies primarily on biographical details to establish a connection between the thought of Bonhoeffer and interfaith activism. David Jensen, Terence Lovat, and John Matthews have also addressed the relationship between Bonhoeffer and interfaith work explicitly; they do not rely as heavily on such anecdotal evidence as Patel. See David H. Jensen, “Religionless Christianity and Vulnerable Discipleship: The Interfaith Promise of Bonhoeffer’s Theology,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38:2–3 (Spring–Summer 2001), 151–67; Terence Lovat, “Bonhoeffer: Interfaith Theologian and Practical Mystic,” Pacifica 25 (June 2012), 176–88; John W. Matthews, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Blessings of Interfaith Relations: Might Too Dogmatic a Christology Restrict God’s Vision of Tikkun Olam?” (paper presented at The International Bonhoeffer Congress, Basel, Switzerland, July 6–10, 2016). 4. John Matthews has written that Bonhoeffer’s “dogmatic Christology” has been named as a “stumbling block for non-Christian participants involved in interfaith conversation.” Matthews, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Blessings of Interfaith Relations,” 4. 5. DBWE 8:362; DBWE 6:99. 6. See Executive Order 13780, also known as the “Muslim Ban.” https://www.dhs.gov/ publication/executive-order-13780-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states-initial and https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreignterrorist-entry-united-states/; Betsy Fisher and Samantha Powers, “The Trump Administration is Making a Mockery of the Supreme Court.” New York Times, January 27, 2019, https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/opinion/trump-travel-ban-waiver.html. For additional information on current anti-immigration sentiments and activities in the United States, see the ADL’s study, “Mainstreaming Hate: The Anti-Immigrant Movement in the U.S.” https://www.adl.org/ the-anti-immigrant-movement-in-the-us#executive-summary. The relationship between nationalism and Brexit is also pertinent. See John Denham, “Nationalism in England Is not just a

126

Lori Brandt Hale

right-wing nostalgia trip.” The Guardian, August 13, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2019/aug/13/english-nationalism-brexit-remain-and-reform. 7. See data at World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/this-isthe-best-and-simplest-world-map-of-religions/. 8. Patel, Acts of Faith, xv. 9. Interfaith Youth Core Website, https://www.ifyc.org. 10. Eboo Patel, Jennifer Howe Peace, and Noah J. Silverman, eds., Interreligious/Interfaith Studies: Defining a New Field (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018). 11. Ibid., xii, my emphasis. 12. Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), xv. 13. Diana Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, 2003), 167. 14. Ibid., 168. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 170. 18. Ibid., x. 19. See https://www.ifyc.org. 20. Eck, 196. 21. Ibid., 195–96. 22. Patel, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of Interfaith Cooperation,” 287. 23. Actually, Patel wrote, “What does Jesus Christ mean for us today?” Ibid., 288. 24. Diana Eck traces the shifts in context through the work of Harvey Cox. See Eck, 167–68. In 1965, Harvey Cox named secularism the dominant worldview, bypassing religion and making religion a private or irrelevant matter. By 1985, he noted the return of religion, with the rise of the Moral Majority and the number of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in the United States. Eck then notes continuing shifts into the 1990s with a return of traditional religions and questions about identity which pose “the challenge of our encounter with real difference. Responses to this question take theological, social, and political forms.” Eck, 168. Barry Harvey concurs with this assessment. Barry Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 127. 25. Patel, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of Interfaith Cooperation,” 288, my emphasis. 26. Donald Trump. Twitter Post. July 14, 2019. 7:27am. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448 27. See https://www.cbsnews.com/video/trump-rally-crowd-chants-send-her-back-whilehe-attacks-ilhan-omar/ 28. Patel, Acts of Faith, xv. 29. DBWE 7:167. 30. Matthews, 1. 31. Lovat, cf 182. 32. Jensen, 151. 33. Ibid., 164. 34. DBWE 6:257. 35. DBWE 1:1; DBWE 1:156. 36. Ibid., 155–56. 37. Ibid., 156. 38. Ibid., 157. 39. Ibid., 156, note 17. 40. Ibid., 47–48. 41. Ibid., 52. 42. Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge, eds. The Bonhoeffer Reader (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 43, note 25. 43. DBWE 3:63.

The Interfaith Imperative

127

44. DBWE 6:102. 45. DBWE 4:284. 46. DBWE 6:94–96. 47. DBWE 4:284–85. 48. DBWE 6:98–99. 49. Ibid., 47. 50. Ibid., 284, my emphasis. He also writes, “That is, freedom is in the first place not an individual right but a responsibility; freedom is not in the first place oriented toward the individual but toward the neighbor.” DBWE 16:532. 51. DBWE 8:485. 52. Ibid., 52. 53. DBWE 6:246. 54. DBWE 8:486 55. Jensen 162. 56. Ibid. 57. Green and DeJonge, 57. 58. See Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real. See also Tom Greggs, Theology against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth (New York: T&T Clark, 2011). 59. DBWE 10:354. 60. The whole passage reads as follows: “Religion and morality contain the germ of hubris, the quintessential Greek concept of hostility toward the divine, the germ of pride, of arrogance. People think they have discovered deep within themselves something that does after all resemble the divine, or even is divine, something elevating us to the level of the divine, something giving us the right to make claims. In this sense, religion and morality can become the most dangerous enemy of God’s coming to human beings, the most dangerous message of the Christian message of good news. Thus the Christian message is basically amoral and irreligious, as paradoxical as that may sound.” DBWE 10:353–54. 61. Bonhoeffer reiterates this sentiment in 1944 when he writes from prison to his best friend, Eberhard Bethge, “Jesus calls not to a new religion but to life.” DBWE 8:482. 62. DBWE 10:357–58. 63. Ibid., 355. 64. Ibid. 65. Victoria Barnett, “The Ecumenical and Interfaith Landscape in Bonhoeffer’s Times,” The Ecumenical Review, 67, no 2 (July 2015), 304. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. The ecumenical movement led him away from his brush with nationalism, which included joining, briefly, the paramilitary “Stahlhelm” organization. 68. Patel, Acts of Faith, 13. 69. Eboo Patel, “The Space between Fact and Faith.” Filmed in 2012 in Washington, D.C. TedxWomen Video, 14:28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIaEOl6tLF8 70. “The ‘religious act’ is always something partial, whereas ‘faith’ is something whole and involves one’s whole life. Jesus calls not to a new religion but to life.” DBWE 8:482. 71. DBWE 8:501. 72. “Jacinda Ardern’s speech at Christchurch memorial—full transcript.” The Guardian, March 28, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/jacinda-arderns-speech-atchristchurch-memorial-full-transcript 73. Hannah Beech, “Buddhists Go to Battle: When Nationalism Overrides Pacificism,” The New York Times, July 8, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/world/asia/buddhismmilitant-rise.html 74. DBWE 8:52. 75. DBWE 7:168.

128

Lori Brandt Hale

WORKS CITED Barnett, Victoria. “The Ecumenical and Interfaith Landscape in Bonhoeffer’s Times.” The Ecumenical Review 67, no 2 (July 2015): 302–7. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Bonhoeffer Reader. Edited by Clifford J. Green and Michael P. DeJonge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Fiction from Tegel Prison. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 7. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928–1931. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940–1945. Edited by Mark S. Brocker. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 16. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. Denham, John. “Nationalism in England Is not Just a Right-Wing Nostalgia Trip.” The Guardian, August 13, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/englishnationalism-brexit-remain-and-reform. Eck, Diana. Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Green, Clifford J. and Michael P. DeJonge, eds. The Bonhoeffer Reader. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. Greggs, Tom. Theology against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Harvey, Barry. Taking Hold of the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015. Jensen, David H. “Religionless Christianity and Vulnerable Discipleship: The Interfaith Promise of Bonhoeffer’s Theology.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38:2–3 (Spring–Summer 2001), 151–67. Lovat, Terence. “Bonhoeffer: Interfaith Theologian and Practical Mystic.” Pacifica 25 (June 2012): 176–88. Matthews, John W. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Blessings of Interfaith Relations: Might Too Dogmatic a Christology Restrict God’s Vision of Tikkun Olam?” The International Bonhoeffer Congress, Basel, Switzerland, July 6–10, 2016. Patel, Eboo. Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007. ———. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of Interfaith Cooperation: Third Speech in the Union Theological Seminary Interfaith Cycle, Originally Delivered March 14, 2003.” Cross Currents 63, no. 3 (September 2013): 286–95. ———. “The Space between Fact and Faith.” Filmed in 2012 in Washington, D.C. TedxWomen Video, 14:28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIaEOl6tLF8. Patel, Eboo, Jennifer Howe Peace, and Noah J. Silverman. Interreligious/Interfaith Studies: Defining a New Field. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.

Chapter Seven

Self and Shadow Bonhoeffer, Social Location, and Gender as Genre Lisa E. Dahill

The 2009 film Precious explodes off the screen in opening the heart and life of an impoverished sixteen-year-old African-American girl in Harlem. 1 Claireece Precious Jones has been a victim of rape by her father and of horrific layers of abuse by her mother apparently most of her life. She is now pregnant for the second time by her father. Overwhelmed with the pain of her daily life, friendless and shamed by the assumptions of promiscuity her pregnancies evoke, Precious is illiterate and failing in seventh grade until she is referred to an alternative school. There for the first time she experiences herself seen and loved as she is, and she slowly begins to stand up for herself and, soon, her newborn son: a fragile hope and humanity. Precious’s bodily experience is far indeed from that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at least in his pre-war life. Raped, tormented, pregnant, impoverished, HIV-positive, and belonging to an oppressed racial minority whose members’ bodies bear centuries of such torture, Precious is everything Dietrich as a privileged Aryan male body is not. Yet she too is human, and the film’s greatest power comes not in its scenes of torture, shocking as those are, but in so profoundly evoking this humanity. 2 In my book, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation, I examine Bonhoeffer’s spirituality and ethics as it emerges from his social location and context in Hitler’s Germany. 3 Bonhoeffer’s vision is prophetic for countless contemporary Christians, particularly those living in contexts like his of privilege or of resistance to oppressive political structures. But “for all its beauty and convincing power,” I argue there and in later publications on Bonhoeffer and social location that 129

130

Lisa E. Dahill his is not a universal [Christian vision] (nor, given his lifelong repudiation of reliance on general principles, would he desire us to see it thus). In the ways he writes as a member of his society’s elite—assuming his readers have similar mobility, freedom, power, and the means of life at their disposal—his words may not always ring true with redemption function for those in situations of captivity, abuse, desperate poverty, or immediate danger. 4

For instance, his almost always unqualified insistence on not asserting one’s own needs and instead learning to be “a person for others” was a whole new reality for him as a privileged male. 5 Yet what for Bonhoeffer was transforming—to turn down the volume of his own needs and shift his focus toward others—doesn’t translate readily into a new life of hope or freedom for Precious, in her completely different social and psychic context. Already consumed by others’ demands to the point that her inner world is shattered by the internalized cruelty of her mother, various school bullies, the force of her father’s body raping her, she inhabits a psychically fractured reality. Her problem is not alienated self-absorption, the bubble of the privileged, but sheer survival, the necessity of attending constantly to others’ demands before they attack her again. Such literally selfless other-orientation is not liberation for her but a prison that survivors of abuse and many kinds of trauma know well: it is a dissolved selflessness, not a redemptive one. Precious and others traumatized by violence into this psychic fracturing don’t need an injunction to turn away from their own needs and care better for others; grace dawning for her is to turn off those others’ voices, to arrive within herself, to assert herself against her parents and risk losing the only home she has ever known. It’s still relational—caring people are her lifeline too—but the direction and energy are very different from his: a previously unthinkable level of orientation toward her own needs, creating stronger defenses, and asserting herself against those who are attacking her. 6 The example of Precious provides an important counter-narrative to Bonhoeffer’s experience, drawing on theologian M. Shawn Copeland’s insistence that the test of the adequacy of any theology in a racist and sexist society is its impact on the bodies of black women. 7 Precious and every other person violently socialized into submission and silence are reminders that some of Bonhoeffer’s insights—especially to do with selfhood and gender, power, the shape of sin—can efface and harm those most vulnerable today and, I will assert, reflect his own deeper confusion about questions of gender. While at times he does acknowledge needs like those of Precious, he didn’t live long enough to create a truly liberating vision for her directly. This chapter can touch on only some of this larger analysis. I will first briefly sketch Bonhoeffer’s perspectives on gender. Second I will note how the gender binary he inhabits violates his own best insights on the inadequacy of universal or general principles and his otherwise consistent rejection of dual-

Self and Shadow

131

ism. Finally I will sketch how the more mature, discernment-based spirituality I see as the real through line of his life’s work makes possible a more fluid, mutual, complex, and creative vision of human life that he is groping toward in his conspiracy and prison writings, one that makes space even for his own possibly non-normative sexuality. Taking his best theology as the means to expand his rigid, caricatured perspectives on gender will make possible a considerably richer vision. Ultimately I sense that this is holy ground for Bonhoeffer, his shadow, the place he was himself perhaps more than any other visibly struggling—and thus a resource for us in our shadow places, where we too are confused or blind. BONHOEFFER ON GENDER In a keynote address to the Seventh International Bonhoeffer Congress in 1996 in Cape Town, South Africa, Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung challenged one of Bonhoeffer’s most cherished concepts, that of becoming a “person for others”: “Woman for others” doesn’t give me any new theological imperative or inspiration. Why? Because that is what we women have been for the last five thousand years of patriarchal history. Remember our mothers,’ grandmothers,’ and great-grandmothers’ lives? They sacrificed their lives for others. . . . Let’s add some adjectives to this term. . . . Think about “Asian women for others.” . . . The images that come up in my head are Korean comfort women under Japanese militarism; Vietnamese, Filipino, and Thai prostitutes; migrant women workers from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh who are maids in First World countries; Asian picture brides [or travel sex lures] in catalogues widely circulated in Europe, North America, and Australia. Then let’s change the adjective again. “Black women for others.” What images come up . . . ? I remember black slave women who were forced to give birth and then to put their babies up for sale. Black women cleaners, maids, and nannies who work for others. 8

Kyung is pointing to the obvious: Bonhoeffer’s spirituality and ethics emerge from a privileged social location that experiences “being for others” as a fresh new idea. His work is not written for women or girls like Precious; indeed, as I wrote in my deep dive into questions of social hierarchy generally and gender specifically in Bonhoeffer: his writings show no real awareness of sexism or patriarchal social structures as a problem in the first place, let alone any attempt to think beyond them. . . . The largely unexplored nature of these topics in Bonhoeffer—along with the fact that many readers interpret him rather naively as a saint whose views on every possible topic carry unquestioned authority—reveals the importance of this analysis, lest Bonhoeffer’s unexamined thinking on gender be imported,

132

Lisa E. Dahill on the coat-tails (as it were) of the many compelling and transforming aspects of his thinking, into contemporary life. 9

Such uncritical reading would represent the worst possible use of Bonhoeffer’s theology: to take literally those aspects of his writing emerging from his own limits, shadow, and biases and in the process reinforce structures of massive injustice in our world today. These questions of gender justice and the adequacy of our theology in relation to women and girls matter. Journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have documented the extent to which systemic gender-based discrimination, violence, and oppression devastate lives and societies. Based on medical patterns of male/female conceptions, birth, and longevity, for instance, and comparing these against the actual numbers of men and women in the most gender-discriminatory societies in the world, they report that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years [in gender-specific abortion, infanticide, and violence] . . . than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls were killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century. 10

This statistic demonstrates the murderous reality of gender-based violence visible also in rampant levels of global sexual trafficking and enslavement, rape and its normalization, genital mutilation, “honor killings,” domestic captivity and femicide, withholding of food and medical care from girls and women, their lack of legal rights and education or public voice and power, and the neglect of maternal health. To attend seriously to these billions of voices, the sickening, unbelievable levels of global human suffering and waste, is to question any God-given patriarchal order, from the hermeneutical priority of those “below.” Yet Bonhoeffer’s views on gender and hierarchy in human relationships do the opposite. He supported patriarchal family and social structures all his life, defending them theologically as God’s intention for the world from creation on, and only hesitantly—at the end—beginning to sense a contradiction between these views and the Christian Gospel. The fact that his beliefs grew out of an almost entirely patriarchal social context and church in early twentieth-century Germany, 11 out of his apparently happy experience of such a family structure, and out of a perception that traditional beneficial orders of society were crumbling with catastrophic effects like Hitler’s election, does not alter the reality that his writings on these points fail to redeem. In fact, they reinforce oppression. Of course, Bonhoeffer would never have tolerated the vicious dehumanization cited above, and he consistently upheld bodily autonomy, the right to life and self-defense, even the right to bodily joy, for all people. Yet his upholding also of male “headship” and female subordination in the home, and female silence or absence in the world—part of the

Self and Shadow

133

structure of “above” and “below” by which some males bear the divine authority to speak and rule over other men, all women, children, and the natural world—echoes the patriarchal beliefs still legitimating sexual oppression around the world today. For instance, he writes, [The] authorization for ethical discourse . . . is granted to and bestowed on people . . . because of their objective position in the world. Thus it is the old person and not the young, the parent and not the child, the master and not the servant, the teacher and not the student, the judge and not the defendant, the governing authority and not the subject, the preacher and not the parishioner, to whom the authorization for ethical discourse is granted. This is an expression of the orientation from above to below, which is an intrinsic and essential quality of the ethical, even though it is so highly offensive to the modern mind. 12

Elsewhere, Bonhoeffer states, “[The woman] should and can learn, but in submission. Learning should not make her quarrelsome. She is not supposed to teach and to dominate.” 13 Thus Christians reading Bonhoeffer in contexts where the full humanity of girls and women is still a matter of debate will find his writings reinforcing beliefs that give rise to grave oppression, his legitimation of such views making resistance to them all the more difficult for these Christians. And those whose experience questions the existence of static binary gender categories altogether, or their expression in male-female partnering, force an examination from the ground up of these questions of the shape of authentic human relationships in the freedom and form of Jesus Christ. 14 Yet, as I note in “Gender in Bonhoeffer,” Bonhoeffer’s efforts to defend his patriarchal views do not align with the rest of his thinking. 15 In fact, Bonhoeffer’s support of patriarchy cripples his own ethical analysis. That is, he is unable to imagine letting his male privilege itself, or its structures, be challenged through the encounter with a female Thou asserting herself to threaten his privilege and claim her full humanity. As a result, both male and female personhood remain stunted for him—gendered abstractions—within a rigid social hierarchy closed from the outset to the voices of those unten. 16 His theology of personal formation through the disorienting ethical encounter with another Thou is a crucial resource for a theology of radically relational personhood, but it works for redemption only when those on the margins, those unten, specifically women and all those kept down, finally begin to speak: when those “below” are heard and taken seriously even when they’re [“quarrelsome,” or “hysterical”] or “uppity,” brazen or shrill. 17

Precisely this speaking is the possibility he rejects for most of his life, repeatedly and explicitly disallowing women, children, servants, or “the rabble”

134

Lisa E. Dahill

from having a voice over against those God has placed “above” them: they are to obey, not to speak. REJECTING ALL GENERA . . . This is jarring, given that Bonhoeffer is explicitly asserting for gender and other aspects of humanity what he so courageously and farsightedly rejects with race: the “orders of creation” (Schöpfungsordnungen) by which Nazi theologians claimed that God had ordained some races to dominance and others to submission, slavery, or death. That courageous stance is in line with his larger suspicion of abstract categories, general principles that violate the uniqueness and mystery of each concrete person before God. From Sanctorum Communio through Ethics, he eschews ideals, rules, thinking with or treating people according to a priori categories, the creation of universal principles—all forms of violence against concrete persons and contexts. All his life he strained toward a maturity of fine-grained, risky discernment of the will of God, new each morning, in each new situation. 18 So how odd to find him of all people supporting patriarchy as God’s ordained pattern in creation (another Schöpfungsordnung): men dominant and even mediating their wives’ relationship to God, a single categorical female vocation for all women solely to home and family. I have come to see this as a genre mistake, and I find insights from literary genre theory most useful in analysis of Bonhoeffer at this point. 19 As I wrote in “Gender in Bonhoeffer,” Genre is a term often thought to function in prescriptive or normative ways (such as regulating the construction of poetic forms); in this view, genres are timeless abstractions functioning from on high to channel artistic creativity into fixed, pre-set forms and judging works of art by their faithful adherence to or deviation from such norms. This prescriptive understanding of genre corresponds to views of gender—like Bonhoeffer’s—that are similarly rigid, viewing “male” and “female” in terms handed down from on high, with fixed and pre-determined meanings. Bonhoeffer has made of gender a general principle abstracted from the concrete reality of particular women and men; he has viewed it as a prescriptive essentialist assignment of pre-determined roles and values removed from the gifts and personhood of the individuals involved and—even more—from the concrete call of God to each human being. 20

In fact, however, theorists of genre insist that its function is not so much a matter of classification into fixed structures as a fluid process of meaningmaking between evolving traditions of art or literature and present-day creativity and reception, all of which affect both the author’s shaping and the reader’s or viewer’s perception of a given work. 21 That is, genre is a primary means of making meaning, as much by innovative breaches or deviations

Self and Shadow

135

from expected norms as by adherence to them, as each new instance stretches, recasts, crystallizes, or blurs the conventions of the genre/s it inhabits. The primary purpose of genre, in this view, is hermeneutical, not classificatory or prescriptive. It is a means by which we make sense of what we encounter, and a hermeneutical orientation privileges the ways we encounter each work as original, unique, particular: both inhabiting and recasting the “genre/s” to which it might be said to belong. This perspective has clear connections with Bonhoeffer’s privileging of the particular, the concrete, over any sorts of abstractions. 22 It makes possible a world like that of which queer theorist Judith Butler speaks, in which gender is not static at all but enacted, each new “performance” of gender in real time both creating anew what a particular person’s gender identity might mean and stretching or outright dismantling any rigid binary of preordained male or female roles. 23 Butler is much more Bonhoefferean than Bonhoeffer himself, therefore, at this point. SPACE FOR ALL The final place I hear Bonhoeffer critiquing his own views on gender is in his famous essay written at the end of 1942: the “view from below”: It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering. 24

We in the early twenty-first century have grown so accustomed to the normativity of this perspective—thanks to the transformation of theological discourse by those from previously marginalized groups in the last sixty years— that we miss its truly revolutionary nature for Bonhoeffer himself. 25 That someone so committed to preserving oben and unten in God’s design for humanity could write of glimpsing “for the first time” the hermeneutical priority given by God to those who are “below” is truly astonishing, a first articulation for Bonhoeffer of that “contradiction” between oben/unten thinking and the Christian Gospel that he voices hesitantly also in his prison fiction. Scholars quote this passage from “The View from Below” frequently, and we generally do so as if these words represented the consistent core of his thinking, not acknowledging how revolutionary and largely undeveloped these insights were for him! 26 The insight crystallized here—had he lived to pursue it—would surely have contributed to a new valuation and reevaluation of the perspectives and humanity of those “below” and a challenge, through their voices and suffering and agency, both to structures of oben/

136

Lisa E. Dahill

unten and to the concomitant silencing and effacing (like his own) of all who are located “below.” In his later prison letters we see him outlining what might have become that entirely different theological schema: rather than God being located “above,” 27 so that divine authorization becomes so easily (and fatally) confused with the positions of those in power, as he has been asserting up to this point, he is now groping toward a whole new framework for the God revealed and visible—from a Christian perspective—most authentically “below.” The puppet-master controlling god, an image of that deity “above,” which his own spatial metaphor of oben/unten explicitly supported, from which those oben receive their divine mandate from above, is giving way to the One “pushed out of the world and onto the cross.” 28 This recasting of the entire framework of oben/unten, with GOD located now no longer oben but as the most unten of all, is much more faithful to the heart of his incarnational Lutheran tradition and its theology of the cross than the “God from above” ever was; it aligns without contradiction with the best of his own theology of divine encounter with each person; and it corresponds much more profoundly with the reality of Jesus Christ who challenges structures of authority, gives voice to the voiceless, heals the broken, and raises the dead. Might an interpretive approach to gender have meant liberation for Dietrich also? Of course! The privileged are as deformed—if not more so—than those they are trying to dominate, precisely by the unreality of their own assumed superiority. But at an even deeper level I hear his odd gender rigidity as a clue to something stuck in his heart and psyche. Bonhoeffer himself seems to have been caught in gender constrictions, I believe due to questions around his own sexuality. Diane Reynolds has written one of the most original and insightful books on Bonhoeffer in some time, exploring these questions of gender in Bonhoeffer’s own life. Through meticulous research and tracing of sources, Reynolds fills in key pieces of Bonhoeffer’s biography sidelined, downplayed, or ignored in other studies: namely, the centrality to his development and thought of relationships with women throughout his life—and the significance of his love for Eberhard Bethge. 29 For alongside the complex pivotal relationships he had with women— from his twin Sabine to professional colleagues to his fiancée Maria—there appears a central absence: namely that of any woman at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s sexual desire. Instead, Reynolds clearly shows Bethge’s centrality as the focus of Bonhoeffer’s relational affection and erotic energy. An appendix sketches Reynolds’s nuanced views on the contested questions of Bonhoeffer’s sexual orientation, passionate bond with the apparently heterosexual Bethge, and possible sexual activity; she considers thoughtfully that he may have been a committed celibate. 30

Self and Shadow

137

Whatever the truth of these questions, Reynolds points to a level of homoerotic energy in Bonhoeffer that must have been disconcerting if not impossible to imagine actually living in his time and place, his family and context. It raises the question whether Bonhoeffer’s rigid gender views and idealizing of hetero-patriarchal marriage precisely during the Finkenwalde years when he was experiencing the intensity of connection to Eberhard may have had more to do with efforts to create an alternative reality for himself than with a coherent theological position. 31 The fact that his portrayals of marriage feel so stiff and static is itself perhaps a clue that this whole line of his thinking emerges as a defense against what might have seemed much worse: namely the force of his own chaotic desires welling up unbidden, quarrelsome, threatening, and wild from below . . . I have sketched aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought that can ground a more authentically Bonhoefferean theology of gender. In his lifelong rejection of general categories, in his theology of personhood that takes seriously the challenge of every human Thou when extended personally and politically to women and all those on the underside, and in his late explorations of the revolutionary implications of a God located “below,” indeed way below, Bonhoeffer himself provides resources toward a more hermeneutically suitable understanding of gender. 32 Precious Jones, beloved, safe, outspoken, and fearless. . . . Dietrich, free to love whomever he loves. . . . Earth itself, the most unten of all, speaking and singing, squawking and clamoring for our attention. We’ve seen some of Dietrich’s shadow in this journey through his thinking on gender—and seen too his efforts to stretch and grow precisely here. Ultimately he leaves each of us with the question: what for you is in the shadows? What pieces of your own psyche, your own or others’ trauma, voices suffocated and silenced in the world today, are suppressed in you, in us? Might they be forms of Christ yet unspoken, that we now need to hear? NOTES 1. Based on Push: A Novel by Sapphire (New York: Vintage Books, 2006). 2. These first two paragraphs draw from my 2010 essay, “Con-Formation with Christ: Bonhoeffer, Social Location, and Embodiment,” in Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, ed. Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Books/Wipf & Stock, 2010), 177. Used with permission. 3. Lisa E. Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Books/Wipf & Stock, 2009). 4. Dahill, “Con-Formation with Christ,” 186. See also my detailed 2013 analysis of social hierarchy and gender in Bonhoeffer, cited in note 9 and used later in this chapter. 5. This broad assertion requires complex unpacking, a task I undertake across the chapters of Reading from the Underside. In particular, see chapter 2 on Bonhoeffer’s own formation as a “separative” self, chapter 4 on the very different socialization of those who experience trauma

138

Lisa E. Dahill

or abuse, and chapter 5 in which I place these perspectives in mutually illuminating conversation with one another. See also the studies by Serene Jones, Trauma + Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009), Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), and Andrew Sung Park and Susan L. Nelson, eds., The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), for further perspectives on the interrelations of trauma, power, feminism/gender, and sin in Christian spirituality. In Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism: A Critical Reader (London: SCM Press, 2009), editor Björn Krondorfer has gathered a wealth of material exploring many of these topics from masculine perspectives. 6. In Reading from the Underside I trace many important ways Bonhoeffer’s writings and witness do open resources for just such self-awareness, self-assertion, self-defense, and selfoffering in the world; see especially pages 195–222, where I outline how Bonhoeffer read through this social-location lens provides crucial means of psychic and spiritual empowerment for those on the “underside of selfhood,” including the ultimate gift of invitation into the life of Jesus himself. 7. M. Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 2. Copeland asserts that this “privileging [of] the black woman’s body” recasts completely what being human means; I develop this perspective more fully in “ConFormation with Christ,” 183–84. 8. Chung Hyun Kyung, “Dear Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 14. She is responding to Bonhoeffer’s formulation of the Christian imperative to be Menschen für andere (“men for others” in the edition of Letters and Papers from Prison she was using [Macmillan, 1972]; Menschen itself is gender-inclusive). This quote appeared also in the 2013 essay on Bonhoeffer and gender (cited in note 9), page 53. 9. Lisa E. Dahill, “‘There’s Some Contradiction Here’: Gender and the Relation of Above and Below in Bonhoeffer,” in Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Method and Understanding, ed. Peter Frick, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations Series, volume 6 (Berne/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2013), 54. Abbreviated hereafter “Gender in Bonhoeffer.” Here I explore in depth Bonhoeffer’s defense of patriarchy itself along with his pervasive androcentrism and gender essentialism, showing how each of these contradicts theological principles at the core of his thinking and, indeed, his entire vision of mature Christian discipleship. The following paragraphs of the present chapter, through note 14, and several further pieces in sections below draw directly from this 2013 publication, at times in verbatim form. I refer those interested in the detailed, historically grounded documentation of this material and its dramatic and subtle shifts across Bonhoeffer’s own thinking to that essay. Used here with permission from Peter Lang GmbH. 10. Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity Worldwide (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), xvii. The researchers whose studies they cite calculate the number of “missing women” at that point at somewhere between 50 and 100 million lives lost around the world. “Every year, at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination” (xv). 11. On women’s movements in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, see RuthEllen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes, eds., German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), and Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation, trans. Stuart McKinnon-Evans (Oxford/New York: Berg, 1997). 12. DBWE 6:372–73, 375. His assertion in a later sentence of this paragraph that “without the objective order of above and below . . . ethical discourse degenerates into generalities and vacuous talk” articulates the precise opposite of my thesis in this chapter, which is that in fact it is Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the structures of oben/unten generally—and patriarchal gender roles in particular—that violates the concrete individuality of persons, obscures the ever-new call of God, and degenerates into abstraction and generality. See also DBWE 15: “The husband is the head of the wife and the family. He is the priest. He speaks with God on behalf of his own . . . Human and pious ideals are the enemy of the divine ordinances and command-

Self and Shadow

139

ments . . . [leading] to disorder in the relation between man and woman. Often it is the case that overzealous [schwärmerisch] teachers will try to win women over by promising them special rights. For Paul the order is clear: Women have full part in salvation and truth. But they have a different vocation from that of the man. Woman’s finery is not to be sought in public. . . . This is not merely conservatism but biblical order: 1. The man was created first and, from him, the woman. 2. The woman was seduced by the devil; she is more susceptible to the temptations of Satan. It follows from this not that the woman has lesser value but that she has a different calling. . . . God gave the woman her calling in submission to the man so that she is not exposed to temptation but is under her husband’s protection” (330–31, Bonhoeffer’s italics). Note how far these views are from those of Creation and Fall, where—despite its androcentrism—Eve is not explicitly denoted as inferior in her creation, uniquely susceptible to Satan, or needing the protection of Adam from the world. See also Bonhoeffer’s 1935–1939 Finkenwalde lectures on wedding sermons (in “Seelsorge,” Gesammelte Schriften V 413, omitted from DBW 14), which note, “Under the lordship of God, the marriage is also to have its order in that the man is lord within the marriage, in loving his wife, and the woman is subordinate to her husband, similarly in loving her husband. It is to be laid out concretely how this looks and what it means” (my translation). 13. DBWE 15:331. 14. The preceding paragraphs, including their quotes and footnotes, draw from “Gender in Bonhoeffer,” 54–56. 15. Dahill, “Gender in Bonhoeffer,” 57ff. 16. Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood, 171–73. 17. Ibid., 57. 18. Indeed, his suspicion of general principles and universal ideals echoes from Sanctorum Communio’s understanding of the “person,” through Discipleship’s definition of “costly grace,” to his insistence on the apprehension of the individual other in Life Together and of the concrete will of God in Ethics. See Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood, 32–34, 44–46, 172f., on his lifelong suspicion of general principles. 19. We can see the close etymological connection between “gender” and “genre” in English; as literary scholar Mary Gerhart points out, “when we locate the term genre etymologically in a family of meanings across several disciplines, we find that the family of resemblances to which genre belongs includes such words as general, gender, genes, genus, generic, generation, generative.” Mary Gerhart, “The Dilemma of the Text: How to ‘Belong’ to a Genre,” Poetics 18 (1989), 367. My emphasis. 20. Dahill, “Gender in Bonhoeffer,” 74. The paragraphs that follow here, including their footnotes, draw also—verbatim or in summary—from pages 74 and 75 of this article. 21. Think what happens when one approaches a play assuming it is a tragedy, only to realize mid-production it is actually a farce. 22. I see a connection between Fowler’s descriptions of a given text’s “originality” and Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the discerned will of God being “always new” (DBWE 6:321) while also—in each case—in necessary communal continuity with past forms. Fowler states that genre “is best thought of, perhaps, as a collective or group creative process; . . . dealing in terms of changing genres offers frequent reminders that works of literature come to us from literary communities, with which we in our turn have to form a relation” (Fowler, 277f.). On discernment in Bonhoeffer see DBWE 6:320–26, and Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood, 87–92 and 219f. Many implicit articulations of the necessity of discernment show up throughout Bonhoeffer’s writings as well; for instance, in DBWE 5:43, he notes the impossibility of knowing in advance how love should be expressed concretely in community. 23. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, second edition (New York/London: Routledge, 2006). In “The Genre of Gender,” I use Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex (New York: Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002) as a window into articulating seven levels of human gender and its function in the full complexity of human spirituality experience, from the chromosomal level to the ways a given person experiences God’s mirroring of her/his gender. 24. DBWE 8:52.

140

Lisa E. Dahill

25. This sentence, the rest of the paragraph, and the following paragraph along with their footnotes draw verbatim from “Bonhoeffer and Gender,” 82–83. 26. In fact, this emerging openness to the perspectives of those unten does not yet noticeably alter his oben/unten thinking, as the chronology of his writings reveals: “The View from Below” is dated at the end of 1942, while the material in the Ethics cited above (for instance, the quote from DBWE 6:372 in which Bonhoeffer attributes divine authority to speak only to those who are “above”: the master and not the servant, the governing authority and not the subject, etc.) came subsequently, in early 1943. Commentators on the Ethics often articulate the meaning of Bonhoeffer’s oben/unten dichotomy as primarily or solely theological: he asserts that the Word of God with its divine power to challenge and remake all things derives not from human structures, desires, ideals, impulses (“from below”) but solely from God (“from above”). It comes to those who are in positions of authority not to reinforce any privilege they may exercise over those “below” but to orient them toward service, specifically the proclamation and embodiment of this divine Word—from “above”—to them. Yet such attempts to assert a purely theological meaning to these spatial metaphors ring hollow. My concern with Bonhoeffer’s oben/unten framework comes in the ways—sometimes implicitly and sometimes quite explicitly—he really does conflate these with the structures of social injustice, the longing for a restored upper class, the fear of the “rabble” who elected Hitler, the insistence that women remain subordinate. It is simply too convenient to be able to associate God with male social elites in this schema; and despite his occasional insistence that he means nothing of the sort, the overriding tenor of his use of this language is that in fact, on some level, he truly does. That is the contradiction he has been increasingly aware of. 27. The locating of God in the “above” position—as, in fact, above those oben so that they receive their mandates “from above”—is crucial to this entire framework. See DBWE 6:371–77, 380, 390–94. 28. DBWE 8:479. 29. Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016). 30. Dahill, review of Reynolds, The Christian Century 135 (March 1, 2017): 39. 31. Other scholars, similarly noting Bonhoeffer’s gender conservatism rising in the Finkenwalde years, have attributed this shift to the impact of Nazi patriarchy wearing down Bonhoeffer’s earlier, more gender-inclusive thinking; I trace these questions carefully in “Gender and Bonhoeffer,” 80. I find more convincing my own thesis here, juxtaposing these later texts (emerging only after 1935) with Reynolds’s portrayal of Dietrich falling in love with Eberhard at Finkenwalde. I reflect on examples and implications of Bonhoeffer’s earlier and moreinclusive thinking in “Bonhoeffer and Gender,” noting that “his early articulation that all social forms, including marriage, are open to the transforming revelation of Jesus Christ provides an intriguing ‘road not taken.’ For instance, in the summary of his July 1932 lecture at Černohorské Kúpele in Czechoslovakia, he criticizes the ‘orders of creation’ theology regnant at that time,” noting his clear insistence then that because of sin “There are no orders that are holy in themselves” (“Bonhoeffer and Gender,” 78, citing Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt: 1932–1932, DBW 11:345, my translation, emphasis added). There I also cite lecture notes from this period that explicitly show his intention to include marriage too among those orders not holy in themselves (79). At this point in his life, therefore—unlike his later writing on gender that returns to the logic of Schopfungsordnung to justify patriarchal marriage—he includes marriage as an imperfect human construct open to and requiring divine critique (80). 32. This paragraph draws from “Bonhoeffer and Gender,” 83.

WORKS CITED Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly. Translated by James H. Burtness and Daniel W. Bloesch. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.

Self and Shadow

141

———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. Theological Education Underground, 1937–1940. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Translated by Claudia D. Bergman, Scott A. Moore, and Peter Frick. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 15. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, second edition. New York/London: Routledge, 2006. Coakley, Sarah. Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. Dahill, Lisa E. Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation. Eugene: Pickwick Books/Wipf & Stock, 2009. ———. “Con-Formation with Christ: Bonhoeffer, Social Location, and Embodiment.” In Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought. Edited by Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor, 176–90. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene: Pickwick Books/Wipf & Stock, 2010. ———. “‘There’s Some Contradiction Here’: Gender and the Relation of Above and Below in Bonhoeffer.” In Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Method and Understanding. Edited by Peter Frick, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations Series, volume 6. Berne/ Berlin: Peter Lang, 2013. de Gruchy, John W. (ed.). Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. Frevert, Ute. Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. Translated by Stuart McKinnon. Oxford/New York: Berg, 1997. Gerhart, Mary. “The Dilemma of the Text: How to ‘Belong’ to a Genre.” Poetics 18, no. 4–5 (October, 1989): 355–73. Joeres, Ruth-Ellen B. and Mary Jo Maynes (eds.). German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1986. Jones, Serene. Trauma + Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009. Kristoff, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity Worldwide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Krondorfer, Björn (ed.). Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism: A Critical Reader. London: SCM Press, 2009. Park, Andrew Sung, and Susan L. Nelson (eds.). The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. Reynolds, Diane. The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2016. Sapphire. Push: A Novel. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Chapter Eight

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene Ecoethics and Earthly Christianity Dianne P. Rayson

Welcome to the Anthropocene: the new geological epoch defined by the human mark on Earth’s own face. After 11,500 years of stable Holocene in which Homo sapiens developed agriculture and civilizations, the Anthropocene represents an instability and non-analogue state that threatens much of life on Earth including our own. 1 The mass extinction event that has commenced 2 signals both the precariousness of life’s continuity on Earth and the human capacity to be inured to this knowledge. Such an existential threat requires theological interrogation. The behaviors and beliefs that have initiated climate change, biodiversity loss, and other breaches of planetary boundaries 3—all features of the Anthropocene— invite critique concerning Christianity’s own complicity and our moral obligations. As such, it invites a distinct political theology for the twenty-first century facing an existential crisis of an unprecedented magnitude. Does Christianity have within it the theological resources with which to apprehend and negotiate this crisis, and if so, to what extent is Bonhoeffer’s Christological theology a useful dialogue partner? Furthermore, what does Bonhoeffer’s ethics provide in terms of a suitable ecoethic for the Anthropocene? Truly, “how is a coming generation to go on living” 4 as ice melts, sea levels rise, catastrophic weather events increase in severity and frequency, as low lying areas are swallowed by the sea and the world’s greatest mass migration gathers pace? 5 Is there any place for Christian hope in such an apocalyptic scenario, and if there is, how might it speak into contemporary political discourse? This chapter will outline some key features of a Bonhoefferian-inspired theological apprehension of climate change and a commensurate ecoethic. 143

144

Dianne P. Rayson

Drawing on his resources, it proposes a move to “Earthly Christianity,” which is Bonhoeffer’s worldly Christianity 6 interpreted for a new age. It proposes that our species might be better described not as the wholly wise, but rather, as belonging wholly to the world—Homo cosmicos, and as such our intrinsic sociality extends throughout the biosphere of which we are a part. The potential for utilizing Bonhoeffer’s theology to consider questions of relationship to Earth, its demise, and ecoethics, is rich. This chapter centers on Bonhoeffer’s contribution to ecotheological and ecoethical thinking in his Christological theology and the intrinsic sociality that derives from Christ’s immanence and, hence, validation of the material first described by Larry Rasmussen. 7 It extends this thinking to a sociality that permeates throughout the biosphere, and from the human perspective, between us and other species. Moreover, God’s explicit affirmation of the world demands a particular ethical responsibility from the human species which is brought into focus as the climate shifts. The chapter will touch on three aspects of Bonhoeffer’s contribution to ecotheological thinking: Bonhoeffer’s Christology and the implications for human-Earth relations; Earth as Mother and our groundedness; and the search for a Bonhoefferian ecoethic. BONHOEFFER’S CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION TO ECOTHEOLOGY The centrality of Bonhoeffer’s Christology to his entire theology is widely acknowledged. Christ as God’s intervention in history and immanent presence in the world provides for a unified reality in which God is intimately interested. Bonhoeffer’s threefold formula of Christ in Ethics provides the platform for an ecotheological investigation: “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.” 8 Bonhoeffer’s reliance on Christ, who is incarnate, crucified, and risen, has wide-ranging, direct implications across theological understanding. It has particular significance for the validation of the natural world, of which the human species is a part. “In the body of Jesus Christ,” Bonhoeffer says, “humanity is now truly and bodily accepted . . . as it is.” 9 The material world is not merely the theater of a spiritual drama, the “environment” where humans are the key players. Rather, Christ’s immanence validates and justifies the goodness of creation. Bonhoeffer’s move, seen consistently throughout his work from Creation and Fall to Ethics, is to validate the human body as an end in itself and not merely a vessel for the pious soul. Being fully human means relishing the bodily life. It is a positive affirmation of things corporeal

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

145

as a valid space for human spirituality. He expressed it this way in Discipleship: “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.” 10 Such a move is consistent with Bonhoeffer’s insistence on engagement with the world in an ethical agency that is derived from following Christ. At the fundamental level of this theological positioning of humans in the world lies Bonhoeffer’s appreciation of the unified Christ-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. 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. 11

In “Thy Kingdom Come! The Prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth” (November 19, 1932), Bonhoeffer argues that praying for God’s future kingdom necessarily invokes our own action to manifest such a kingdom in the present. He rejects the retreat to piety for the sake of one’s soul in heaven and invites instead an immersion in this world, participating in Christ’s work here and now. Such a unified reality underpins Bonhoeffer’s commitment to the world. The “this-worldliness” theology implies both spatiality and temporality: the world here and now. The roots of his oft-quoted prison letter, wherein the “this-worldliness of the Christian faith” 12 is expressed, are found within Bonhoeffer’s ongoing search for the relevant and appropriate way of understanding Christ in a new time and what would be a post-Holocaust age. In “Thy Kingdom Come!,” he establishes that being committed to the present world is the Christian’s task and purpose. As such, hope in the resurrection is mediated by God’s profound investment in Earth. Such a role for us, the species permitted to partner with God, can be occluded either by excessive piety—the private spirituality that is not engaged in the real world—or by being focused overly on the world to come. Bonhoeffer’s Christology has implications beyond the validation of the human body. In Christ’s becoming human Bonhoeffer recognizes God’s love not only for humanity, but for all creation. This is poetically expressed in Bonhoeffer’s Good Friday sermon from 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.” 13 Such apparent affection for Earth is mirrored in Bonhoeffer’s references to Mother Earth. As early as his farewell sermon to the Barcelona congregation in February 1929, are the foundations of what can be developed into an ecotheology:

146

Dianne P. Rayson 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 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. 14

Bonhoeffer’s first description of Mother Earth occurs in “Basic Questions for a Christian Ethic,” 15 (Barcelona, February 1929) wherein he refers to the Greek myth of Antaeus. In this story, the hero, Heracles (Hercules), tasked with a series of seemingly impossible labors, comes upon Antaeus, the Libyan giant who is son to Gaea (Earth) and Poseidon (Sea). Antaeus is strong but unpleasant, collecting the skulls of defeated passers-by atop Poseidon’s temple. Despite Antaeus’s 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 so that none could overcome him until, inevitably, he meets his match. Heracles realizes that whenever Antaeus falls to the ground, Mother Earth restores him. Heracles bear-hugs Antaeus and separates him from his Mother, lifting him off Earth long enough to finally sever his connection and so bring on his death. Bonhoeffer makes use of this story to warn of “abandoning the Earth or fleeing the crisis of the present.” Those who do so, he says, “will lose all the power still sustaining them by means of eternal, mysterious powers.” 16 It appears that Bonhoeffer is being more than metaphorical in his meaning here. Linking ethical action on Earth with our spiritual home in heaven, just as he did in “Thy Kingdom Come!,” has a very real, material intent. Bonhoeffer’s “crisis of the present” might have been National Socialism’s abuses, but this only makes our literal problem of “abandoning the Earth” in the Anthropocene all the more acute. Bonhoeffer continues: “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.” 17 What makes us human, and to be taken seriously, he says, is our Earthly bond with Mother Earth, for we have our existence in bodily form, 18 a theme that Bonhoeffer relies on throughout Creation and Fall:

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

147

[Humans] 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 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. 19

This very materiality—being made of the Earth—deeply influences Bonhoeffer’s understanding of what it means to be fully human and hence the implications for ethical action, something we shall return to in the latter part of this chapter. He insists that one cannot be fully human if one denies the bodily aspect of life or denies the physicality of living among others on Earth. In Bonhoeffer’s 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 naturally pays attention to what he eats and smokes, where he sleeps and exercises, and his thoughts also go to the natural world. In this letter to Eberhard Bethge (June 30, 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. 20

Bonhoeffer had written to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer (August 12, 1943), that Christian faith is a “yes” not only to God, but to God’s Earth. It “must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on Earth. . . . Christians who venture to stand on Earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.” 21 There is a literal aspect to standing on Earth that is reflected in the Jain and Hindu understandings of Earth’s sensate facilities. When Gandhi spoke of “walking gently” on Earth 22 he portrayed both the metaphorical and literal ways humans might be in the world: leaving behind little evidence through pollution, and actually walking with a light step, being mindful of Earth feeling our weight, capturing us in our gravity freefall. One wonders how the two might have developed this thinking interreligiously if Bonhoeffer had made it to Gandhi’s ashram rather than return to Germany. There is a distinctive relationship between Bonhoeffer’s references to Mother Earth and his notion of groundedness. The Greek myth makes its way into Bonhoeffer’s Tegel fiction writing, forming the conclusion of “Drama,”

148

Dianne P. Rayson

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.” 23 Success for the character, Heinrich, is dependent upon 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 characterizing 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 senses, our connection to Earth strengthens and sustains us, as Mother Gaea rejuvenates her son, Antaeus. Groundedness occurs again in Bonhoeffer’s Christmas 1942 piece, “After Ten Years,” regarding people with “so little ground under their feet” and Bonhoeffer asking, “who stands firm?” 24 In this, we see Bonhoeffer teasing out the layers of meaning that the lack of ground has for those facing desperate circumstances. Again, the parallels with our generation’s problem of climate disruption are profound. In this letter, being grounded is contrasted with being dreamers out of touch with reality. The double notion of groundedness, in the senses of being practical and responsible, whilst also having a literal connection to Earth, becomes vital to re-establishing a Christian connection and an ethical response commensurate to the demands of the Age. Bonhoeffer quotes Sirach 40:1b, “the Earth . . . is the mother of us all,” both in Creation and Fall and in “Thy Kingdom Come!” 25 The bond that Bonhoeffer wants to be taken seriously, the physical connection between humans and our Mother Earth, contrasts with the mystical relationship with Father God’s transcendence. God chooses to be bound to Earth (“God is not bound to what is created. Instead, God binds it to God”), 26 but humankind is naturally bound by virtue of being born from Earth. In light of our current understanding of the biosphere, abandoning the Earth seems to include forgetting our biophysical connection to the soil beneath us and our intrinsic embeddedness in the ecology. Gerard Manly Hopkins portrays the impact of generations of industrialization and our disconnect from Earth: “the soil / Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.” 27 The rift between humans and Earth (one that Bonhoeffer takes up in “the Right to Self-Assertion” and elsewhere) 28 is a filial estrangement finding its manifestation in the climate crisis.

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

149

RECONCILIATION Bonhoeffer’s Christology defines our ontology and it also speaks to reconciliation, establishing conditions for changed relationships. Reconciliation applies to all things, to the gathering up of all things in heaven and Earth. No part of the world is outside Christ’s work of reconciliation. 29 Indeed, God’s work pro nobis is a great act of mercy which serves to reconcile humanity and God and mend the state of dividedness between people. Christ as mediator mends dividedness between us, permitting the creation of the sanctorum communio. Relationships potentiated by such reconciliation are not only between us and God and us and each other. Of great significance is the reconciliation now available between us and our fellow species and between us and our Mother Earth. We may now reinterpret our relationships within creation: our relationships not only between people, but between humans and other-than-humans both as individual persons and as communities and ecologies. Not only does our common creation out of Mother Earth define our ontological relationship to other species. Additionally and importantly, the potential for restored relationships with our fellow creatures, through Christ’s reconciliatory work, provides for ethical agency. It takes us beyond notions of stewardship or caring for creation: 30 it provides for horizontal relationality throughout the biosphere in ways we have only begun to explore. As an example, understanding our human bodies as communities of species (whereby biomes of microbes line our gut and coat our external surface) tell us about our inherent sociality in ways that models of anthropocentric stewardship cannot. In understanding ourselves as mobile communities of species we might better picture our human bodies as embedded within the biosphere rather than being either merely separate from it, or worse, viewing it as the environment for human endeavor. Science continues to inform us of discreet communication systems within this biosphere, such as chemical signaling between trees across forests and underground among rootlets and microorganisms. 31 Our own microbiome communicates to us via the vagus nerve influencing our mood, perception, cognition, and aging. 32 As God’s Word is the source of life and Christ’s immanence sustains it, we recognize a particular continuity in such examples of communication and relationality between species. 33 Christ mediates all 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 our pursuit of reconciliation as the means for participating in the love which is Christ. 34 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 what Bonhoeffer describes as God’s act of mercy, pro me, to one that explicitly includes all of creation, that is, pro mundo (as

150

Dianne P. Rayson

Green has proposed), 35 or potentially pro multiverse. This extension of Bonhoeffer’s Christological framework to be inclusive of all that is becomes so crucial that Green has claimed that it represents a “new paradigm in Christian thinking.” 36 Christus in mundo, 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. It is an epoch that carries the burden of human responsibility for catastrophic disruption of Earth systems and death to extinction of her creatures. TOWARD A BONHOEFFERIAN ECOETHIC Christ is lord of the world, in part, because Christ is already in the world, through all of creation (Col. 1:15–20). 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 which 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 kenosis alongside the victims of humanity’s self-assertion over against the Earth community. This section raises two aspects of Bonhoeffer’s ethics that inform an approach to eco-ethics: Stellvertretung and Sachgemaßheit, that is, vicarious representative action that is appropriate to the demands of the context. As Bonhoeffer suggests, “what is at stake are the times and places that pose concrete questions to us, set us tasks, and lay responsibilities on us.” 37 How then, might we best act in the Anthropocene? How might we demonstrate our “belonging wholly to the world”? 38 For Bonhoeffer, concrete action in response to the demands of the situation is not so much a matter of following principles but of engaging in the world in a Christ-like manner. Christ is immanent in the world, validates it and loves it. Christ’s being-for-the-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. As Christ’s body on Earth, the churchcommunity participates in Christ’s project for the Earth as we turn toward Earth and stand alongside her and her creatures in sacrificial acts of love.

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

151

Taking vicarious representative action (Stellvertretung)—a legal notion that Bonhoeffer borrows to articulate the complex idea of standing in the place and for the sake of another 39—in the face of the climate crisis might have very real implications. We know that those most at risk in this epoch are the poorest and most vulnerable people, both at a national level (for example, Bangladesh) and within richer countries (the victims of hurricane Katrina in the United States, for instance). The poor are most vulnerable to both extreme weather events like Katrina, and to climate processes like sea level rise. The forced migration that has commenced, and will exceed the number of human migrants ever seen, has the potential to disrupt the world in significant ways. It is likely to be the most significant human impact of the crisis, with perhaps 200 million climate migrants by 2050. 40 However, the picture is complex because the people most likely to be affected are those least able to migrate (reflecting practical and policy constraints at home and abroad), and this only adds to the burden on poorer countries, who remain least culpable for the carbon pollution at the source of climate change. 41 Moreover, as this chapter has identified, in the broader context of our relationship with the entire biosphere, the greatest burden in this crisis is being born by our fellow species. Our patterns of behavior that include population growth, land use changes, and pollution (particularly carbon and plastic) are leading to the deaths of other creatures: individual lives and permanent extinction of species. Such a context, described to us ad nauseum by the scientific community, 42 to apparently deaf policy-makers’ ears, is precisely the kind of context that Bonhoeffer indicates “lays responsibilities on us.” Under such circumstances, the church-community must be guided not by what is necessarily lawful or principled, but by notions of kenotic participation in Christ. The concrete actions which are scaffolded by Bonhoefferian ecoethics necessarily take place in the church-community which Bonhoeffer describes as a “community of spirit,” and which must result in concrete love for the other. 43 A key difference for Bonhoeffer between the community of spirit and any other organized 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 Thinking about our kenotic role within the ecology takes on this notion of loving Earth and her creatures, not only out of sacrifice and servanthood, of standing in the place of others, but also expecting nothing in return. This point is where the conjunction of a Bonhoefferian ecoethic and secular human ecology offers a distinctive perspective on the issue. In the language of ecological sciences, humans receive services from the so-called environment, placing humans as the recipients and the world at our service. Such an approach is anthropocentric to the extent that it assumes humans as

152

Dianne P. Rayson

mere players, albeit the stars, in a theater of the natural world, rather than being intrinsically part of it. Even “best practice” land management or water conservation, as examples, under such models still assumes the anthropocentric privilege. The Bonhoefferian approach developed here has challenged such thinking and reconstructed it along the following lines. Christ is immanent in the world, validates it and loves it, and Christ’s being-for-the-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, acting on behalf of those suffering, seeing Christ in the other, including the broader Earth community of species. As noted, such love for the other desires, but does not expect, reciprocity; rather, we are the church precisely when we exist for others, just as Christus in mundo, Christus pro mundo expresses our ontology and mission. As Christ’s body on Earth, the church-community participates in Christ’s project for the Earth as we turn toward 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.” Participation in Christ in this ethical turn to the Earth finds us fully participating in our ecology and finding ourselves more fully human. We can thus be described as homo cosmicos. Homo cosmicos has two aspects of meaning: as an adjective, to belong to the world, and as a noun, to be a citizen of the world. Belonging and responsibility have been articulated as components of an ecotheology derived from Bonhoeffer’s theology and so the use of Homo cosmicos is consistent with a fuller expression of Christianity in the Anthropocene. Furthermore, as Bonhoeffer sought a type of Christianity that responded to the world in a post-religious age on its own terms, I suggest that, by extension, the term “Earthly Christianity” captures a type of spirituality that respects our scientific understanding of our place in the ecology. Earthly Christianity not only understands this theologically, according to Bonhoeffer’s Christological notion of sociality that extends throughout the biosphere, but it also represents the ecoethical imperative implicit in such an understanding. That is to say, as Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit are enacted in our engagement with the world, our Earthly Christianity plays out as humans place the needs of others before our own. As we consider the rights and potential of other species, recognising them as part of the interdependent family of Mother Earth, then our own actions within the church-community are called to be commensurate with the urgent needs of the times. I propose that as citizens of Earth our role is to become vulnerable to our fellow Earthlings, including the other life species, landforms, elements, and hence, to Earth herself. Vulnerability to other species will invert the utilitarian reasoning that underpins contemporary industrialized “farming” of animals for

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

153

food production, and will challenge our ways of growing and collecting food, for example. An emerging theology of vulnerability to landscape 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 “civilization” 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. To return to “Thy Kingdom Come!,” Bonhoeffer weaves together ideas of being bound to Earth, being responsible, and being this-worldly: The hour in which the church prays for the kingdom today forces the church . . . 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. . . . 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 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. 45

This is a time of mutual silence and screaming, as we face the effects of unrestrained pollution and land clearing, and approach tipping points that will initiate cascading effects within Earth’s systems, setting off sequelae not amenable to human intervention. 46 For many, this is a time of great desperation and hopelessness, and for this reason it is incumbent upon the church, now more than ever, to offer concrete action as well as hope. To leave the final word to Bonhoeffer: 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. 47

NOTES 1. Andrew Glikson, “Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep-Time Blueprints of the Anthropocene,” Anthropocene: Human Interactions with Earth Systems 3 (2013). 2. Gerardo Ceballos et al., “Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction,” Science Advances 1, no. 5 (2015). 3. Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461, no. 7263 (September 24, 2009). 4. DBWE 8:42. 5. IPCC, “Summary for Policymakers. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related

154

Dianne P. Rayson

Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty,” ed. V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, and H.-O. Pörtner (Geneva: 2018). 6. DBWE 8:365, 490. 7. Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Geneva: WCC, 1996). 8. DBWE 6:157. 9. Ibid., 66–67. 10. DBWE 4:214. 11. DBWE 6:58. 12. DBWE 8:365. 13. DBWE 9:520. 14. DBWE 10:546. 15. Ibid., 359–78. 16. Ibid., 378. 17. Ibid. 18. DBWE 3:77. 19. Ibid. 20. DBWE 8:448–49. 21. Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz, eds., Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria Von Wedemeyer 1943–45 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 64. 22. Dianne Rayson and Terence Lovat, “‘Lord of the (Warming) World’: Bonhoeffer’s EcoTheological Ethic and the Gandhi Factor,” The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 2, no. 1 (2012). 23. DBWE 7:68. 24. “An Account at the Turn of the Year 1942–1943: After Ten Years,” DBWE 8, 37–52. 25. DBWE 12:289. 26. Ibid., 41. 27. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” in Poetry and Prose (London: J. M. Dent, 1998), 44. 28. See Dianne Rayson, “Bonhoeffer and ‘the Right to Self-Assertion’: Understanding Theologically the Mastery of Nature and War,” in Ecological Aspects of War: Religious Perspectives from Australia, ed. Anne F. Elvey (ATF, 2016). 29. DBWE 6:67. 30. On this point, see also Peter Manley Scott, “Beyond Stewardship? Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Nature,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 18, no. 2 (1997). 31. Harro J Bouwmeester et al., “Rhizosphere Communication of Plants, Parasitic Plants and Am Fungi,” Trends in Plant Science 12, no. 5 (2007). 32. Mak Adam Daulatzai, “Chronic Functional Bowel Syndrome Enhances Gut-Brain Axis Dysfunction, Neuroinflammation, Cognitive Impairment, and Vulnerability to Dementia,” Neurochemical Research 39, no. 4 (2014); B. Frank, “On the Nutritional Dependence of Certain Trees on Root Symbiosis with Belowground Fungi (an English Translation of AB Frank’s Classic Paper of 1885),” Mycorrhiza 15, no. 4 (2005); S. H. Rhee, C. Pothoulakis, and E. A. Mayer, “Principles and Clinical Implications of the Brain-Gut-Enteric Microbiota Axis,” Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology 6, no. 5 (2009); Leigh K. Smith and Emily F. Wissel, “Microbes and the Mind: How Bacteria Shape Affect, Neurological Processes, Cognition, Social Relationships, Development, and Pathology,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 14, no. 3 (2019). 33. On this, see Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustín Fuentes, “Human Being and Becoming: Situating Theological Anthropology in Interspecies Relationships in an Evolutionary Context,” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1 no. 2 (2014). 34. On this, see DBWE 6:50–55; DBWE 14:475. 35. 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 Zimmermann, International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012).

Bonhoeffer in the Anthropocene

155

36. Ibid. 37. DBWE 6:101. 38. DBWE 8:364. 39. Karola Radler, “Equality and Human Dignity: Substantive Foci of Enduring Significance in Bonhoeffer’s and Leibholz’s Interdisciplinary Discourse,” in Christian Humanism and Moral Formation in “A World Come of Age,” ed. Jens Zimmermann and Natalie Boldt (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016). 40. Oli Brown and IOM, “Migration and Climate Change,” in IOM Migration Research Series, ed. International Organization for Migration (Geneva: IOM, 2008). 41. 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). 42. Eunice Foote, “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays. Conference Paper 23 August,” The American Journal of Science and Arts 23 (1856). 43. DBWE 1:170–73. 44. Ibid., 171–72. 45. DBWE 12: 290. 46. Oliver D. Bettis, Simon Dietz, and Nick G. Silver, “The Risk of Climate Ruin,” Climatic Change 140, no. 2 (2017). 47. DBWE 12:530–31.

WORKS CITED Bettis, Oliver D., Simon Dietz, and Nick G. Silver. “The Risk of Climate Ruin.” Climatic Change 140, no. 2 (2017): 109–18. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Sanctorum Communio. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 1. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. ———. Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Douglas Stephen Bax. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 3. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Discipleship. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Fiction from Tegel Prison. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 7. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. The Young Bonhoeffer, 1918–1927. Edited by Clifford J. Green, Marshall D. Johnson, and Paul Duane Matheny. Translated by Douglas W. Stott and Mary C. Nebelsick. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 9. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. ———. Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928–1931. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. ———. Berlin, 1932–1933. Edited by Larry L. Rasmussen. Translated by Douglas W. Stott, Isabel Best, and David Higgins. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009. ———. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 1935–1937. Edited by Mark Brocker and H. Gaylon Barker. Translated by Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 14. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013. Bouwmeester, Harro J., Christophe Roux, Juan Antonio Lopez-Raez, and Guillaume Becard. “Rhizosphere Communication of Plants, Parasitic Plants and Am Fungi.” Trends in Plant Science 12, no. 5 (2007): 224–30.

156

Dianne P. Rayson

Brown, Oli, and IOM. “Migration and Climate Change.” In IOM Migration Research Series, edited by International Organization for Migration. Geneva: IOM, 2008. Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle, and Todd M. Palmer. “Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction.” Science Advances 1, no. 5 (2015). Daulatzai, Mak Adam. “Chronic Functional Bowel Syndrome Enhances Gut-Brain Axis Dysfunction, Neuroinflammation, Cognitive Impairment, and Vulnerability to Dementia.” Neurochemical Research 39, no. 4 (2014): 624–44. Deane-Drummond, Celia, and Agustín Fuentes. “Human Being and Becoming: Situating Theological Anthropology in Interspecies Relationships in an Evolutionary Context.” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1, no. 2 (2014): 251. Foote, Eunice. “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays. Conference Paper 23 August.” The American Journal of Science and Arts 23 (1856): 382–83. Frank, B. “On the Nutritional Dependence of Certain Trees on Root Symbiosis with Belowground Fungi (an English Translation of AB Frank’s Classic Paper of 1885).” Mycorrhiza 15, no. 4 (2005): 267–75. Glikson, Andrew. “Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep-Time Blueprints of the Anthropocene.” Anthropocene: Human Interactions with Earth Systems 3 (2013): 89–92. Green, Clifford J. “Christus in Mundo, Christus pro Mundo: Bonhoeffer’s Foundations for a New Christian Paradigm.” In Bonhoeffer, Religion and Politics. Fourth International Bonhoeffer Colloquium. Edited by Christiane Tietz and Jens Zimmermann. International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) 4, 11–36. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “God’s Grandeur.” In Poetry and Prose. London: J. M. Dent, 1998. IPCC. “Summary for Policymakers.” In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. Edited by V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai and H.-O. Pörtner. Geneva, 2018. Radler, Karola. “Equality and Human Dignity: Substantive Foci of Enduring Significance in Bonhoeffer’s and Leibholz’s Interdisciplinary Discourse.” In Christian Humanism and Moral Formation in “A World Come of Age.” Edited by Jens Zimmermann and Natalie Boldt, 178–98. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016. Rasmussen, Larry L. Earth Community, Earth Ethics. Geneva: WCC, 1996. Rayson, Dianne. “Bonhoeffer and ‘The Right to Self-Assertion’: Understanding Theologically the Mastery of Nature and War.” In Ecological Aspects of War: Religious Perspectives from Australia. Edited by Anne F. Elvey, 95–110. Adelaide: ATF: 2016. Rayson, Dianne, and Terence Lovat. “‘Lord of the (Warming) World’: Bonhoeffer’s EcoTheological Ethic and the Factor.” The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): 57–74. Rhee, S. H., C. Pothoulakis, and E. A. Mayer. “Principles and Clinical Implications of the Brain-Gut-Enteric Microbiota Axis.” [In Eng]. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology 6, no. 5 (May 2009): 306–14. Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, et al. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461, no. 7263 (September 24, 2009): 472–75. Scott, Peter Manley. “Beyond Stewardship? Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Nature.” Journal of Beliefs and Values 18, no. 2 (1997): 193–202. Smith, Leigh K., and Emily F. Wissel. “Microbes and the Mind: How Bacteria Shape Affect, Neurological Processes, Cognition, Social Relationships, Development, and Pathology.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 14, no. 3 (2019): 397–418. von Bismarck, Ruth-Alice, and Ulrich Kabitz, eds. Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria Von Wedemeyer 1943–45. Nashville: Abingdon, 1995. Woodward, Alistair, Simon Hales, Navitalai Litidamu, David Phillips, and John Martin. “Protecting Human Health in a Changing World: The Role of Social and Economic Development.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78, no. 9 (2000): 1148–55.

Chapter Nine

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”? Lessons for White Christians from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Confederate Monuments Debate Karen V. Guth

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, “where the veil is rent, there shame shrouds itself in the very deepest concealment,” 1 he is reflecting on Adam and Eve’s fall from union with God, the origin. But when I reread these words recently, it was not the fruit or the serpent that came to mind. I pictured the Robert E. Lee Statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, draped in a black shroud. We are all familiar by now with the events of August 12, 2017, when white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville to protest the city council’s efforts to remove the Lee statue from a prominent downtown park. We are perhaps less familiar with an event that occurred in the wake of that day’s skirmishes between white supremacists and counter-protesters: On August 23, the city acted on a unanimous vote by the city council to cover the Lee statue and another statue of Stonewall Jackson with huge black tarps. The city described the shrouds as symbols of mourning for the death of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who was killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians during the rally. Of all the proposals for what to do with Confederate monuments, this temporary measure strikes me as better than many of the permanent proposals on the table. Those who see Confederate monuments as ways to honor Confederate ancestors or as celebrations of Southern heritage and states’ rights often insist that they ought to remain where and as they are. Those who view Confederate monuments as celebrations of racist traitors, symbols of 157

158

Karen V. Guth

white supremacy, or as reminders of both a traumatic, terror-filled past and a death-dealing present and future, often suggest other responses. Their proposals include destroying or removing the monuments; relocating them to museums or other more appropriate contexts; erecting counter-monuments nearby; or otherwise contextualizing them. If Bonhoeffer were alive to witness this debate, I like to think that he, too, would opt for the shroud—but not only as a symbol of mourning for Heyer’s death, but also as a marker of the shame of racism and as a symbol of mourning for the abysmal state of racial relations in the United States. When Charlottesville covered the Lee and Jackson monuments in black, it acknowledged that all is not well. In concealing the monuments in shrouds, it simultaneously revealed an estrangement at the heart of our union that threatens to undo us, even to this day. Indeed, the story of race relations in the United States is a shameful one from which white Americans often try to hide. For Bonhoeffer, shame is a deeply theological reaction to a deeply theological problem. While Bonhoeffer himself was of course not privy to the events of August 12, he was certainly no stranger to the fraught nature of racial relations in the United States. And his profound theological reflections on shame provide a useful lens through which to reflect on the current state of the Confederate monuments debate. As such, this chapter draws on Bonhoeffer’s theology to illuminate that debate. After providing a justification for turning to Bonhoeffer, I offer a Bonhoefferian reading of Confederate monuments as markers of racism’s shame that deny our true heritage in Christ and that demand acts of concrete repentance and justice from white American Christians. First, I argue that Bonhoeffer would have us begin the Confederate monument debate by starting with God, and that this starting place reveals the real problem to be a theological one: disunion from our black neighbors and from God. I then read the city of Charlottesville’s action to cover the Lee statue in a black tarp as a sign of mourning for racial injustices and an acknowledgment of white and black estrangement. I next suggest that an espousal and celebration of Southern heritage—even if it insists it is not implicated in hate—is nevertheless what Bonhoeffer would call a “heritage in decay.” I then argue that Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on continual discernment of the will of God not only counsels against the rationale of monuments in general, but also invites us to see the image of God in the faces of our estranged neighbors. Finally, I turn to Life Together to identify three lessons Bonhoeffer’s theology offers white American Christians in grappling with the legacies of white supremacy: the need to confess white supremacy as a sin, to listen and learn from our black neighbors, and to engage in concrete acts of repentance and justice. In short, I argue that Bonhoeffer’s thought enables us to see the problem of racism in America for the deeply theological problem that it is.

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

159

WHY BONHOEFFER? It may seem odd to draw on a German theologian to reflect on this distinctively American problem. But Bonhoeffer faced, in his own context, many of the same issues that animate the Confederate monuments debate. Like us, he confronted racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism. Like us, he was concerned with how to move from the devastations of a terror-filled past and present into a more flourishing future. And, like us, he identified the church as both implicated in and responsible for addressing these evils. Moreover, he connected these problems in his context with those in the United States. Shortly after his time at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Bonhoeffer reflected on race relations in the United States and in American churches. He opens these reflections by noting that “The race question has been a real problem for American Christianity from the beginning,” and concludes that “The solution to the negro problem is one of the decisive future tasks of the white churches.” 2 I detect paternalism in Bonhoeffer’s identification of the “negro problem” as one to be solved by white churches. But what if we read his statement as an address to white Christians? In other words, while not needing to address the “negro problem” out of any sense of noblesse oblige, it is the case that the responsibility for white supremacy lays with white Americans. It is white Americans, not black Americans, who have work that needs to be done when it comes to acknowledging racism and white privilege. It is white Americans, not black Americans, who need to make reparations for the sins of the past. And it is white Americans, not black Americans, who need to learn how to listen to their neighbors of different races. And of all white Americans, white Christians bear perhaps the most responsibility as they have created and relied on distorted forms of Christianity to theologically justify their evil actions. In addition to these similarities between the problems Bonhoeffer confronted and those we confront in our time, the themes of his theology are well-suited to the particular challenges Confederate monuments pose. His emphasis on the “one reality” of God, the importance of “otherness” for community, “costly grace,” and responsible action, all recommend his ethics as a resource. 3 So, to that task, I now turn. PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD ARE OUT OF HAND . . . WE FIRST MUST FIND THE STARTING POINT For Bonhoeffer, addressing the problems highlighted by the Confederate monuments debate requires a reorientation before we even begin. If we want to solve the problems of the world, we cannot start with human problems that

160

Karen V. Guth

need solutions; we must start with God. As Bonhoeffer puts it, the “problems of the world are out of hand . . . the church has thus far failed. . . . What is necessary is a concrete directive in the concrete situation. . . . We will not recognize its legitimate task unless we first find the concrete starting point.” 4 This conviction follows from Bonhoeffer’s conception of Christian ethics as a critique of all ethics. Rather than starting, as one might presume, by asking how to be good, Christian ethics instead begins by asking “what is the will of God?” 5 If we are to ask the question of how to address Confederate monuments from a Christian ethical perspective, then, we must begin not with the monuments themselves, but with God. As odd as this seems, for Bonhoeffer, this means that we go back to the beginning—namely, Genesis. What we find there is a story of disunion. It is the story of human beings attempting to make themselves their own origin and act from their own knowledge of good and evil rather than recognizing God as the origin. 6 “God is the undivided and eternal origin, and the overcoming of all disunion,” 7 Bonhoeffer writes. When Adam and Eve disobey God and divide themselves from the point of unity, their origin, they feel shame: “Shame is the irrepressible memory of disunion from their origin.” 8 They recognize that they have separated themselves from God and attempt to hide. And this, for Bonhoeffer, is the human reaction to shame: to conceal it. What can we say about Confederate monuments in light of these theological reflections? MONUMENTS AS MARKERS OF RACISM’S SHAME In his study of public monuments Sanford Levinson notes an irony about monuments. Quoting satirist Robert Musil, he notes that “‘the most important [quality of monuments] is somewhat contradictory: what strikes one most about monuments is that one doesn’t notice them. There is nothing in the world as invisible as monuments.’” 9 On one hand, this characterization seems accurate. Monuments do seem to fade into the background of any public scene. They are meant to remind us of what should not be forgotten, but many of us would be hard pressed to locate the monuments in our towns, much less identify what they commemorate. On the other hand, we might ask, “Invisible to whom?” I lived in Charlottesville for six years but never really noticed the Lee monument. But I suspect my obliviousness to the statue is a product of white privilege. I could afford to ignore it; my existence is not threatened by what Lee represents. Since August 12, 2017, it is more difficult not to notice the Lee statue. Among the many realities revealed by events in Charlottesville and other places where removal of Confederate monuments is under discussion, is that these otherwise invisible (to some) features of the landscape make visible the

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

161

existence of whiteness and its claims to supremacy. The white supremacist rage that has emerged in the wake of these discussions gives the lie to any claim that the United States is a post-racial society. If we agree with Levinson’s observation that monuments are some of the most invisible features on the public landscape, we must add important caveats: they may be invisible, but only to some. And they become all too visible when what they represent is threatened. Interestingly, when the city of Charlottesville covered the Lee statue in a black tarp as a symbol of mourning, it at once covered the statue and rendered it more visible. It is easy enough to walk past a monument without particularly noticing it; it is much more difficult to do so when that monument is covered in a large black tarp. By shrouding the Lee monument in black, the city simultaneously hid and highlighted it. Reading the city’s action through the lens of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on shame and concealment are suggestive. According to Bonhoeffer, it is shame that seeks cover; it is shame that tries to conceal itself. Shame, Bonhoeffer writes, seeks a cover to overcome the estrangement. But at the same time the covering implies an affirmation of the estrangement that has taken place, and is thus unable to repair the damage. Human beings seek cover, they hide from other human beings and from God. The covering is necessary because it keeps shame alive, reminding them of their estrangement from the origin; it is also necessary because human beings must now just endure themselves and live a hidden life as the estranged and divided beings they are. 10

In this light, the Charlottesville shroud takes on a meaning beyond mourning for one counter-protestor’s death. Just as Adam and Eve sought to hide in plain view, the city covered the statue only to really reveal it. The shrouded monument points beyond itself, drawing attention to the estrangement it signifies. By concealing its shame, it reveals the deep problems of racial injustice in which it is implicated and from which white Americans often seek to hide. The shroud reveals our shame as a nation, and identifies our sins of racial disunion. It may be a way of mourning Heyer’s death, but it also testifies to the estrangement between white and black Americans. Indeed, if it accomplishes nothing else, the debate on the fate of Confederate monuments has revealed just how divided we are from each other and from God. It reveals just how much we have to hide and the lengths to which we go to conceal our violations. “Sin wants to remain unknown,” Bonhoeffer contends, and “The invisibility is killing us.” 11 Bonhoeffer’s reflections make clear that what we have on our hands is not merely a civil problem, but a theological one. In theological terms, the problem with racism is disunion, which is counter to God’s intention of unity. And theological problems demand theological responses. As Bonhoeffer

162

Karen V. Guth

notes in the passage above, shame is “unable to repair the damage.” The only way to overcome shame is to confess one’s sin. 12 “Shame can be overcome,” he writes, “only by being put to shame through the forgiveness of sin, which means through the restoration of community with God and human beings. This takes place in confession before God and before another human being. Human beings are clothed with God’s forgiveness, with the ‘new human being.’” 13 Having been clothed in a black shroud, is there any hope that the Lee statue and what it signifies can be re-clothed with God’s forgiveness? I will return to this question and the importance of confession of sin in a moment. HERITAGE NOT HATE, OR HERITAGE AND DECAY? Those familiar with the larger debate over Confederate symbols know that defenders of these symbols often use the motto “Heritage not Hate” to explain their intended meaning. Confederate monuments, flags, and other symbols are said to be representative of pride in Southern heritage; they enable Southerners to honor Confederate ancestors; they have nothing to do with hate. Levinson refers to this interpretation as the “symbol-of-Southern-culture (independent of slavery)-andlocal autonomy” meaning of Confederate symbols. 14 Even if one grants the possibility of this meaning, it seems incumbent on those who wish to celebrate this understanding to opt for alternative symbols of states’ rights that do not risk being misinterpreted as racist. But are there any such symbols? Even if there are, I believe Bonhoeffer’s reflections would point us away from the usefulness of such symbols. Even the potentially “positive” meaning of Southern heritage and states’ rights runs counter to the will of God, according to my reading of Bonhoeffer, because it is an appeal to a heritage other than Christ. In “Heritage and Decay,” Bonhoeffer identifies Christ as the true heritage of West and indicts nationalism as a betrayal of this heritage. 15 Nationalism is characteristic of Western godlessness which is “emphatically Christian.” 16 In light of these reflections, I believe Bonhoeffer would identify appeals not only to white supremacy and nationalism, but also to Southern pride as part of this godlessness. It stipulates a heritage for white Southerners separate from that of black Americans and the rest of the United States. It celebrates a heritage based on disunion. And for Bonhoeffer, heritage staked on anything other than Christ ends in decay. It is telling that on Bonhoeffer’s account, this godlessness is emphatically Christian. Here again, the role of white evangelicalism and other forms of Christianity that support white supremacy provide American examples of the larger phenomenon Bonhoeffer diagnoses. But because this godlessness is distinctively Christian, it is also the case that “the church has a unique

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

163

task.” 17 The church is responsible for bearing witness to the West’s true heritage in Christ. In Bonhoeffer’s words: The church must bear witness to Jesus Christ as living lord, and it must do so in a world that has turned away from Christ after knowing him. As bearer of a historical heritage, the church, while waiting for Judgment Day, has an obligation to the historical future. Its vision of the end of all things must not paralyze its historical responsibility. . . . In sticking to its calling—that is, preaching the risen Jesus Christ—the church deals a deadly blow to the spirit of annihilation. 18

Bonhoeffer places special onus on the Christian church to preach Christ as its heritage, to condemn white supremacy and white nationalism, and to lead the way in confessing the true Lord. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS NO “STATIC ENTITY”: THE NEED FOR CONSTANT DISCERNMENT Even the central purpose of a monument—to fix something in stone—seems to run counter to Bonhoeffer’s ethics. While his ethics shares with Confederate monuments an emphasis on the “concrete” (or, granite, in the case of many monuments) the similarities end there. Contrary to efforts to memorialize a person or make permanent an idea in stone, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the need for constant discernment of reality and God’s will. “The knowledge of Jesus Christ, the metamorphosis, the renewal, the love, and whatever else one may call it, is, of course, a living reality,” he writes. “It is not something that is given once and for all, a static entity, something possessed. With every new day, therefore, the question arises, how, today, here, in this situation, can I remain and be preserved within this new life with God, with Jesus Christ?” 19 The very idea, then, of a static entity like a monument is questionable in Bonhoeffer’s framework. One must continually discern reality in order to know the answer to the question “Who is Christ for us today?” Moreover, it is not only the will of God that requires constant discernment, but how God appears to us. “I can never know in advance how God’s image should appear in others,” Bonhoeffer writes. “That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God’s free and sovereign act of creation.” 20 This discussion mirrors that of his reflections on the will of God. It privileges otherness as something to be celebrated. “This diversity,” he says, “is a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.” 21 Whereas monuments may fix certain (graven) images in stone, Bonhoeffer’s ethics privileges a living reality, an image of the other which is completely new at every turn. Bonhoeffer’s ethics also offers practical guidance with respect to how we should handle Confederate monuments. His emphasis on concrete situations

164

Karen V. Guth

and constant discernment of the will of God suggests a need to pay attention to each context of each monument, to place decisions about those monuments in the hands of those closest to it, most affected by it. It suggests that rather than looking to Confederate monuments, the images we should be looking to are those of God as revealed to us in those who are “other” from us. Most importantly, he would bid us to look beyond the monuments to what they seek to conceal: estrangement and racial strife. Given my argument that a Bonhoefferian reading of Confederate monuments diagnoses the debate as a deeply theological problem, what might he then say about a solution? What about the church’s role in addressing the problem? Is there any hope? At first glance, the situation seems pretty hopeless. Despite increasing numbers of interracial churches, churches in America remain divided predominantly along racial lines. Contrary to Bonhoeffer’s counsel in Life Together, we don’t pray together, we don’t worship together, we don’t sing together, we don’t read scripture together, we don’t work together, we don’t confess our sin together, we don’t celebrate the Eucharist together, and we don’t serve each other. 22 We don’t even have the same account of our history. Is it any wonder that we fail at “life together”? While Bonhoeffer was at Union Theological Seminary, his brother KarlFriedrich wrote to him, commenting on the racial situation in the United States: “I had the impression when I was over there that it is really the problem. . . . It seems impossible to see the right way to tackle the problem.” 23 Indeed, it is difficult to see the right way to address the problem. But I think Bonhoeffer can help us with an answer. When he faced the threat of white supremacy in his nation and his church, he went back to the basics. From 1935–1937, Bonhoeffer ran an underground seminary of the Confessing Church at Finkenwalde. He detailed the results of this experiment in Life Together. The same disciplines and practices of life undertaken in that community can help white Christians in America as well. In the next section, I explore three lessons white Christians in America can learn from Bonhoeffer that might prepare us to better address not only the Confederate monuments debate, but also the more pressing white supremacist legacies of structural injustice that they symbolize. I argue that we must, first, confess the sin of slavery and white supremacy. Second, we must listen and learn from our black neighbors. And third, we must repent through acts of justice.

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

165

LESSONS FROM LIFE TOGETHER #1: Confess the Sin of White Supremacy The first lesson Bonhoeffer offers white Americans is to confess their complicity in the sins of slavery and white supremacy. Not only is it the case that the United States has never undertaken appropriate reparations for slavery, it has also never issued an official apology. Only recently has the United States begun to acknowledge its history of lynching. As Angela D. Sims notes in her oral history project on lynching, despite its reality as a frequent and recent aspect of our history, lynching remains largely invisible. Prior to the April 2018 memorial, there was no official recognition of lynching: “Unlike the Jewish Holocaust, which has international recognition, lynching continues to be associated with shame and denial.” 24 And it was not until December 19, 2018, that the US Senate passed a federal anti-lynching bill after 200 attempts to do so since 1882. 25 Sims demands recognition for a history whites are all too eager to forget, seeking to reveal both the visible wounds of lynching—to which we often turn a blind eye—and the “invisible wounds” of that terror. 26 The issue raised earlier about the “invisibility” of public monuments arises here again. While lynching remains “invisible” to those who enjoy the privilege of not enduring or remembering this awful chapter in US history, it is all too visible for those who lived through this terror and endure its present-day legacies. Many of the elders Sims interviewed can point to trees in their neighborhoods and communities from which friends and family were lynched. These trees, these “Chambers of horror and death, though hidden in plain sight, are etched forever in the recesses of the mind[s]” of the elders. 27 To relieve victims of their suffering from this all-too-visible reality and to combat the invisibility around lynching for those eager to forget, Sims identifies storytelling as a powerful tool. Along with confessing the unacknowledged sins of the past, there is also a need for white Americans to better acknowledge the connections between slavery, Jim Crow laws, and lynching with their current manifestations. Womanists, like Sims and Kelly Brown Douglas, and legal scholars, like Michelle Alexander, have done the important work of drawing connections between lynching and its current legacies like stand your ground laws, 28 mass incarceration, 29 and police brutality. 30 Moreover, the church needs to confess its sins in supporting the horrors of slavery and its white supremacist legacies. Bonhoeffer speaks of the need for the church to lead the way in confession of guilt: “With this confession the whole guilt of the world falls on the church, on Christians, and because here it is confessed and not denied, the possibility of forgiveness is opened.” 31

166

Karen V. Guth

And, for Bonhoeffer, “confession is about admitting concrete sins.” 32 Or, as is often the case with monuments, “granite” ones. Confession is powerful because it opens up the possibility for new life. “In confession there occurs a breakthrough to new life. The break with the past is made when sin is hated, confessed, and forgiven. ‘Everything old has passed away.’ But where there is a break with sin, there is conversion. Confession is conversion. ‘Everything has become new’ (2 Cor. 5:17). Christ has made a new beginning with us.” 33 Confession restores the possibility for relationship between those who are estranged. It is a humbling exercise because “Confession in the presence of another believer is the most profound kind of humiliation.” 34 This power of confession to overcome estrangement is one reason the shroud in Charlottesville is a more powerful response to the Lee statue than destroying or removing it. The latter approach risks a kind of erasure or forgetting, whereas the shroud recognizes the estrangement that needs to be confessed. Rather than erasing the sins of the past, it marks them, prompting us to move from concealment to confession. For Bonhoeffer, this is the only way forward: “The command of complete truthfulness is only another way of expressing the total claim of discipleship. Only those who are bound to Jesus in discipleship stand in complete truthfulness. They have nothing to conceal from their Lord. They live unveiled before him. . . . Complete truthfulness emerges only from sin that is unveiled and forgiven by Jesus.” 35 If the city of Charlottesville sought to veil its shame by draping the Lee statue in black, the next step is to recognize the estrangement it represents, to confess it, and to live into an unveiled future. #2: Listen and Learn The second lesson Bonhoeffer offers is for white Americans to listen and to learn from our black neighbors. Bonhoeffer identifies listening as the “first service one owes to others in the community.” 36 In his account of life together, he emphasizes the importance of the other, whether that other is one’s neighbors, God, or scripture. We need to listen to these others, according to Bonhoeffer, because our salvation depends on it. So central is “the other,” that Bonhoeffer identifies the very goal of Christian community as “encounter[ing] one another as bringers of the message of salvation.” 37 Or, as he puts it elsewhere: “Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them.” 38 “Our salvation is ‘from outside ourselves.’” 39 The ability to listen to “others” is grounded in the ability to listen to God, who is the Other. Bonhoeffer describes prayer as a form of listening and learning. It is a “process of learning, appropriating and impressing God’s will in Jesus Christ on the mind.” 40 In addition to listening to others and listening to God in prayer, Bonhoeffer identifies scripture reading as another form of

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

167

listening. Learning the Word of God is not a once-and-for-all possession, but a process: “Mature Christians keep on learning it and learn it better and better; and as they read and hear it on their own, they will never finish this learning.” 41 This is an other-centered practice. When we read scripture, we enter into a “revelatory world”: “Forgetting and losing ourselves, we too pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land.” 42 Listening and learning are clearly not things white Americans are doing. The differences between white and black American perceptions of racial issues indicate as much. In a 2016 report, “On Views of Race and Inequality, Black and White Americans are Worlds Apart,” the Pew Research Center found that only 8 percent of black Americans think that the changes needed to achieve racial equality have been made, as compared with 40 percent of white Americans. 43 The same survey found that “the majority of blacks feel they are treated less fairly in the courts, when applying for loans, in the workplace, and in stores or restaurants. About one-third of whites agreed.” 44 A more recent NBC/Survey Monkey poll showed greater overall awareness of racial problems, but still reported that nearly 30 percent of Americans did not identify racism as a major problem, and 25 percent characterized racial discrimination against blacks as either “not so serious” or “not serious at all.” 45 The same poll indicated that “Liberals and black people are much more likely to view racism as a major issue in the country than do white people and conservatives.” 46 These figures are telling. White Americans are evidently not listening to their black neighbors’ experiences and perspectives, let alone learning from them. Moreover, study after study reveals how little Americans know about their own history, including the institution of slavery. A recent study conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery,” reveals that only 8 percent of high school seniors can identify slavery as the main cause of the Civil War; less than 25 percent were knowledgeable about provisions for slave owners in the Constitution; 58 percent of teachers reported that their textbooks were lacking when it came to information about slavery; and virtually no state had education standards that require teachers to address how white supremacy justified slavery. 47 This lack of education no doubt contributes to the failure of white America to acknowledge connections that are so clear to our black neighbors between terrors of the past, like slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and lynching, and their contemporary manifestations. As one article put it, “Americans often . . . fail to imagine the straight-line path from our nation’s slave-owning past to contemporary racial challenges such as persistent housing discrimination, unjustified surveillance and arrests of black shoppers, and the sort of senseless, near-daily indignities faced by black people in America.” 48 We do not know our own history. We do not know our black neighbors. It is any

168

Karen V. Guth

wonder that we do not know our own privilege and cannot acknowledge the ways we are complicit in white supremacy and perpetrate racist acts against our black neighbors? It is not only Bonhoeffer’s counsel to listen from Life Together that provides us guidance here; his own example of seeking to learn from his black neighbors in Harlem offers a model. Reggie L. Williams provides a fascinating account of Bonhoeffer’s experience at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem where he construes Bonhoeffer as just such a “learner.” 49 Williams argues that Bonhoeffer’s experience of the black, suffering Jesus at Abyssinian played an important role in his own resistance to the Nazis. This experience informed Bonhoeffer’s concept of responsibility. For Bonhoeffer, Christ is “the responsible human being par excellence” 50 because he humbly stood in humanity’s stead. Bonhoeffer’s experience in Harlem was transformational because it afforded a privileged Bonhoeffer the opportunity to put himself in another’s place. He went to Harlem “not as the professor come to give oppressed people the benefit of his knowledge” but rather as a learner who “allowed himself to be vulnerable” 51 by “empathically entering the epistemological process of others.” 52 My reading of Williams’s account is that it invites white Christians to imagine how we, too, might be christologically transformed by putting ourselves in another’s place. #3: Be for Others: Repentance and Justice The third lesson Bonhoeffer offers is to “be for others.” In his discussion of service in Life Together, he speaks not only of listening and learning but also “the service involved in bearing with others.” 53 This idea of bearing with others is perhaps best understood through Bonhoeffer’s central ethical concept of Stellvertretung, or “vicarious representative action.” 54 The meaning of this term derives from Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Christ as the vicarious representative for humanity. Jesus is “the human being for others.” 55 As such, being responsible involves the daily task of “being there for others” in response to the command of God made concrete in the mandates of marriage and family, work, government, and church. In short, Stellvertretung constitutes the very structure of life and discipleship lived in response to Christ and the claim of others. 56 In keeping with Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on “otherness” and learning, the content of Stellvertretung might best be explained in light of themes that develop in Bonhoeffer’s later theology of “seeing from below.” 57 In Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer affirms the value of learning “to see . . . 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.” 58 Jesus, as the vicarious representative for humanity, gave up his Godly “view from above” to see “from the below” of humanity. So, we

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

169

too, cannot “be” for others unless we can see as others. Seeing from below, from the perspective of those who suffer, enables us to participate in Christ’s being for others. For white Americans, this means renouncing and repenting of white privilege. In order to be for others, one must empty one’s self of one’s privilege. “Real worldliness consists in the church’s being able to renounce all privileges,” 59 writes Bonhoeffer. “Every pretense came to an end in Christ’s presence.” 60 The repentance that makes for life together is not an easy one. It’s not “cheap grace.” For Bonhoeffer, “Repentance demands deeds.” 61 What then must we do? NOT ALL WOUNDS . . . CAN BE HEALED: JUSTICE AS PRECONDITION FOR INTRAHISTORICAL FORGIVENESS When Karl-Fredrich wrote to Bonhoeffer at Union, he described the race problem in America as seemingly “impossible” to solve. When one watches the news and observes current events playing out, one sees that the legacies of slavery and white supremacy are alive and well. It does sometimes seem as though America will never be able to heal the wounds caused by slavery and its contemporary legacies. The problems seem too entrenched, too intractable. Bonhoeffer is no fool. He acknowledges the difficulty—perhaps impossibility—of addressing such problems. But just as Christ bears the guilt of humanity in being the human being for others, nations must bear their guilt. And while there is no way to reverse the damage that has been done, there is a way to move forward such that new wounds are not inflicted. As he puts it: The nations bear the heritage of their guilt. Yet by God’s gracious rule in history it can happen that what began as a curse can finally become a blessing on the nations, that out of usurped power can come justice, out of rebellion order, and out of bloodshed peace. . . . To be sure, the guilt is not justified, not removed, not forgiven. It remains, but the wound that it inflicted is scarred over. . . . Not all wounds that were made can be healed; but it is critical that no further wounds be inflicted. . . . The precondition for this intrahistorical forgiveness remains the scarring over of guilt, in that justice emerges out of violence, order out of arbitrariness, peace out of war. Where this does not happen, where injustice rules unchecked and inflicts ever-new wounds, there can certainly be no talk about such forgiveness. Instead, our first concern must be to resist injustice and to convict the guilty of their guilt. 62

Slavery and its legacies are wounds so horrific that they may never be healed. But, as Bonhoeffer says, we must ensure that no new wounds are inflicted. There is only one way to avoid this fate: we must commit ourselves to justice. The critical lessons from Bonhoeffer do not end with his emphasis

170

Karen V. Guth

on the importance of confessing one’s sins, listening and learning from others, and engaging in acts of repentance. These are merely practices to help prepare the way for justice. CONCLUSION On one level, the Confederate monuments debate is about monuments; on another level, it is a much deeper theological problem: our estrangement from each other and our estrangement from God. And we are rightly ashamed. Perhaps the day will come when white and black Christians can open the day together, read the Word together, and sing together, work together . . . share life together. But my reading of Bonhoeffer’s thought suggests that that day will not come without white Christians first confessing rather than concealing our wrongdoing; listening and learning from those who endure injustice; and serving and repenting. The legacies of slavery and white supremacy in the United States will never end unless white Americans devote themselves to the cause of justice alongside their black neighbors. Bonhoeffer’s ethics remind us that the form of these concrete acts of repentance and justice will vary depending on one’s discernment of Reality and one’s concrete context. But his ethics also insist that this is the only way to pursue a flourishing future out of a heritage of decay. NOTES 1. DBWE 6:305. 2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Report on a Period of Study at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, 1930–1,” in No Rusty Swords, trans. John Bowden, ed. Edwin Robertson (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 112–14. 3. Larry L. Rasmussen notes some of these features of Bonhoeffer’s ethics in his introductory remarks of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics, “Costly Grace: Race and Reparations, Theological and Ethical Readings of Communities,” held at Union Theological Seminary on October 10–11, 2002. His remarks are published as “Scrupulous Memory,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1: 85–89. 4. DBWE 6:352–353; 356. 5. Ibid., 299; 47. 6. Ibid., 301. 7. Ibid., 302. 8. Ibid., 303. 9. Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 7. 10. DBWE 6:304. 11. Letter to Helmut Rössler, as quoted in “Editor’s Afterward to the German Edition,” DBWE 5:119. 12. DBWE 6:304. 13. Ibid., 306. 14. Levinson, Written in Stone, 96. 15. For an account of how Bonhoeffer’s theological project is at once caught up in and struggles against the racialized project of creating the modern West, see J. Kameron Carter,

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

171

“Bonhoeffer’s (and Our) Postracial Blues,” lecture delivered at Covenant College, January 28, 2013, https://soundcloud.com/covenantcollege/1-28-evening-dr-j-kameron. 16. DBWE 6:122. 17. Ibid., 132. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 323. 20. DBWE 5:95. 21. Ibid., 95. 22. As Jennifer Harvey notes, laments about eleven o’clock on Sunday being the most segregated hour in America conflate segregation with separation. She argues that this lament is often reflective of a “reconciliation” paradigm that fails to acknowledge the material effects of racism and the legacies of slavery as well as the important differences between white and black Christianity. It also fails to acknowledge that this separation “is rooted in the rejection by communities of color of racist Christianity and white Christians’ general unwillingness . . . to give up leadership and control” (35). In her words, “Given decades upon decades of overt racism in the United States, even after legal enslavement came to an end, and given the centrality of white Christian participation in racism, it would be more surprising today if our churches did not remain racially separate! . . . It is important to respect the possibility that racial separation . . . plays an important role in the lives of Christians of color” (17; 35). Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). My chapter is indebted to Harvey’s important work and shares her emphasis on the need for a “reparations” paradigm. 23. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 151. 24. Angela D. Sims, Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 32. 25. Mihir Zaveri, “Senate Unanimously Passes Bill Making Lynching a Federal Crime,” New York Times, December 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/lynchingfederal-hate-crime.html. 26. Sims, Lynched, 43. 27. Ibid., 93. 28. Ibid., 65. See also Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015). 29. Ibid., 64. See also Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010). 30. Ibid., 96–97. 31. DBWE 6:136. 32. DBWE 5:113. 33. Ibid., 112. 34. Ibid., 111. 35. DBWE 4:131 (italics added). 36. DBWE 5:98. 37. Ibid., 32. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 62. 40. Ibid., 58. 41. Ibid., 62. 42. Ibid., 61–62. 43. Ericka Cruz Guevarra, “Report: Black And White Americans Are ‘Worlds Apart’ On Views Of Race,” National Public Radio, June 30, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/30/483861826/study-black-and-white-americans-are-worlds-apart-on-viewsof-race. 44. Ibid. 45. Eugene Scott, “Most Americans Say Race Relations Are a Major Problem, but Few Discuss It with Friends and Family,” Washington Post, May 31, 2018, https://

172

Karen V. Guth

www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/31/most-americans-say-race-relationsare-a-major-problem-but-few-discuss-it-with-friends-and-family/?utm_term=.bd4b3ae66709. 46. Ibid. 47. Sam Fulwood, III, “America is Plagued by a Chronic Misunderstanding of Slavery and White Supremacy,” May 14, 2018, https://thinkprogress.org/america-is-plagued-by-a-chronicmisunderstanding-of-slavery-and-white-supremacy-89560f69ec4d/. 48. Ibid. 49. Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Baylor, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014). 50. DBWE 6:232. 51. Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, 105. 52. Ibid., 82. 53. DBWE 5:100. 54. DBWE 6:257. 55. DBWE 8:501. 56. For problems with and criticism of the concept of Stellvertretung, see Rachel Muers, “Bonhoeffer, King, and Feminism: Problems and Possibilities,” in Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought, eds. Willis Jenkins and Jennifer M. McBride (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press), 33–42; and Karen V. Guth, “To See from Below: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Mandates and Feminist Ethics,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 33, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2013): 131–50. Howard Pickett offers a substantial analysis of the ethical problems Stellvertretung presents in “Taking the Place of Another: Is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics of Substitution Oppressive?” Paper presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics. 57. The question of whether Bonhoeffer’s ethics pays enough attention to the relationship between institutional structures and Stellvertretung to account for the ways de jure and de facto segregation conspire against white Americans who are interested in “being for” their black neighbors is another question altogether. This is neither to downplay individual white persons’ responsibility for overcoming racism nor to deny the role white Americans play in establishing the very institutional structures that create segregated patterns of life. It is to acknowledge that these structures often serve as obstacles to actually being able to listen and learn from “others.” It also points to the important role reform of these structures plays in overcoming ethical problems inherent to Bonhoeffer’s notion of Stellvertretung. I borrow this insight about the need for institutional reform as a correction to Bonhoeffer’s over-individualistic conception of Stellvertretung from Pickett, “Is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics of Substitution Oppressive?” 58. DBWE 8:52. 59. DBWE 5:11. 60. Ibid., 109. 61. DBWE 6:165. 62. Ibid., 143–44.

WORKS CITED Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010. Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. ———. Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly. Translated by Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

“Heritage Not Hate” or “Heritage and Decay”?

173

———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. ———. “Report on a Period of Study at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, 1930–1.” In No Rusty Swords. Translated by John Bowden. Edited by Edwin Robertson. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Carter, J. Kameron. “Bonhoeffer’s (and Our) Postracial Blues,” lecture delivered at Covenant College. January 28, 2013. https://soundcloud.com/covenantcollege/1-28-evening-dr-jkameron. Douglas, Kelly Brown. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2015. Fulwood, Sam, III. “America Is Plagued by a Chronic Misunderstanding of Slavery and White Supremacy.” ThinkProgress.org. May 14, 2018. https://thinkprogress.org/america-isplagued-by-a-chronic-misunderstanding-of-slavery-and-white-supremacy-89560f69ec4d/. Guth, Karen V. “To See from Below: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Mandates and Feminist Ethics.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 33, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2013). Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Levinson, Sanford. Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Muers, Rachel. “Bonhoeffer, King, and Feminism: Problems and Possibilities.” In Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought, eds. Willis Jenkins and Jennifer M. McBride. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Rasmussen, Larry L. “Scrupulous Memory.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 56, no. 1: 85–89. Sims, Angela D. Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016. Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2014.

III

Constructive-Practical Application

Chapter Ten

The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence John W. Matthews

“The first confession of the Christian church-community before the world is the deed! . . . The deed alone is our confession before the world.” 1 At times I have wondered whether I appreciated this idea of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s because it simply reinforced what I was already thinking, or because it actually shaped my faith from very early on. Perhaps both. Nonetheless, his understanding here of what constitutes Christian witness (confession) in the world has informed my faith orientation and sense of vocation for over four decades. While most people know there is a relationship between a person’s beliefs and their actions, not everyone would speak of the importance of actions as superior, or more important, to words in the way Bonhoeffer does. Perhaps like many Christian people, I went through a stage when verbally sharing my faith was extremely important. I distinctly remember in college using the “Four Spiritual Laws” of Campus Crusade for Christ to give witness to the faith within me. 2 My hope was that others, upon hearing that fourfold summary of what it meant to be Christian, would: believe God created them with a wonderful life plan; accept that said plan was being frustrated by their sin; believe in Jesus’s substitutionary atonement for them; and trust that this atonement could restore a right eternal relationship with God. Of course, living out that faith commitment in obedience to God through righteous actions was important, but putting in straight forward verbiage what the Gospel was more clearly fit the description of “witnessing” at that point in my life. I should quickly add that verbally witnessing for Christ in that proselytizing way lasted about three years, a time during which I was also exposed to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. While I value that chapter of my early, adolescent Christianity, I moved beyond it and matured in what I 177

178

John W. Matthews

consider significant ways, thanks in no small part to the insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I begin with this significant quote from Bonhoeffer (above) because it has, in fact, created and confirmed in me a belief in the greater importance of actions over words, deeds over verbiage with regard to Christian witness. This understanding of Christian witness has transformed what I and—fortunately or unfortunately—the sheep of my congregation understand to be evangelism. While we never did use anything resembling the Four Spiritual Laws for reaching out with the gospel in this congregation, I believe our witness to Jesus Christ has been felt in significant ways through deeds and actions. In what follows, I trust the reader can glimpse just how the redeeming and reconciling love of God, in Jesus Christ, is experienced and shared through Grace Lutheran Church of Apple Valley, Minnesota. For sure, in the life of our congregation, we share in worship, study, prayer, and sacraments as most congregations do, using such proper Christian activity to inspire lives of loving service in God’s world. We understand these proper activities as fundamental for the sustenance and ongoing life of any Christian congregation. Within a week of my arrival to serve as the congregation’s senior pastor, I was asked, “Have you heard about Community Meals at Grace?” I said, “Not yet!” Following a brief description, I was invited to attend, and offer the table grace for the next Monday’s meal, offered in the fellowship hall at 6:00 p.m., to approximately 100 people from the community. This free meal is always hosted by Grace, but several other congregations provide the persons to prepare and serve each Monday. I was so impressed with this tangible expression of love for many in our community who are less fortunate. Also, of note was the supportive community that gathered each week. No verbal evangelism, but a “deed” done in Jesus’s name that helped with what Judaism calls tikkun olam, “mending the world.” By the second week of my time in this new parish, I was approached by one of our Parish Nurses who had been instrumental in establishing a Faith Partners chapter at Grace. 3 This national organization exists to educate and advocate for those with addictions; local chapters in congregations use Faith Partner materials to establish opportunities for people to learn about addiction and intervene when necessary. Our Parish Nurse was interested in knowing what my feelings were about this type of ministry; I quickly assured her that I was completely on board and even excited to learn more about this ministry and support the committee’s efforts in every way. Programs were being implemented for all ages and, once again, while there was no verbal evangelism, these were “deeds” done in Jesus’s name that serve tikkun in our corner of the world. I learned quickly that weekly AA and ALANON groups were meeting in our parish space where their mantra was also ours: “Don’t tell me, show me.” 4

The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence

179

It was in about 2008 that my involvement with the organization World without Genocide (St. Paul, Minnesota) led to greater awareness of the ongoing tragedy in Darfur, both the physical genocide and the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the African country of Sudan. 5 The Save Darfur movement had grown considerably and people everywhere were encouraged to contact legislators with words of challenge to help end this very wellknown disaster. After briefly discussing—and garnering support—with our congregation council, I had a banner created for the outside wall of our building which faced a very busy street, with the following words: Auschwitz—Bosnia—Rwanda . . . now DARFUR . . . call 1-800-GENOCIDE! Although a modest public gesture, I thought, we were doing what we could to raise awareness and make a difference. A week into this display, our maintenance engineer arrived one morning noticing the sign had been vandalized with “stars of David,” Aryan Nation symbols and F.U. spray painted in red across the Darfur sign, our building, and our regular church sign on the front lawn. It was, in part, remembering the words of Bonhoeffer’s friend, Martin Niemöller, that leaving protest until later can mean there is no one left to protest, that led us to create this public display. 6 We also remembered the morning of November 9, 1938, when Germans awoke to the ugliness of destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops after Kristallnacht, which came to mind as we saw the ugly graffiti on our church building. Around 10:00 a.m. on the morning our sign was desecrated, a man driving by the sign stopped in our church office to ask if he, a sign maker, could restore our sign. He was appalled by the vandalism, but impressed that our church had made an important issue more visible. Hopefully, our sign—with its desecration—witnessed to the reconciling love of God; a witness through a deed, not words. My recollection of Kristallnacht was not coincidental. Personally, I have for forty plus years focused my continuing education on the Holocaust and genocide study, flowing out of my graduate study on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and time spent at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Doing what is possible to honor Elie Wiesel’s charge “Never Again,” our congregation observes an annual Yom Ha Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance) service during worship. We have invited numerous rabbis, Holocaust survivors, and educators to share different perspectives and challenges for our Christian congregation. Part of that annual observance includes education on the role of Christian anti-Judaism and supersessionism in Hitler’s “final solution,” awareness that, after almost two decades, is now in the congregation’s DNA. While not explicitly evangelical, in the strictest sense, we have discovered that no authentic conversation with Jews happens without Christian awareness and acknowledgment of that great caesura in history called the Shoah. We, at Grace, consider Yom Ha Shoah a witness, a necessary deed of reconciliation, even though the name of Jesus is not mentioned.

180

John W. Matthews

It was a Saturday in October 2015 when we created the Dakota Experience on the west lawn of our church. Our congregation is located on native Sioux land in Dakota County, and it only seemed right to create a program that sought greater knowledge, sensitivity, and advocacy for Dakota peoples. On that day we ate Indian food using recipes from the fifteenth century, heard stories told by middle-age Dakota men and women, interacted with a person holding an American bald eagle, witnessed art from Dakota children, viewed a film on the “Doctrine of Discovery,” and petted horses from a local stable that did therapy with indigenous people dealing with loss and trauma. On a number of occasions, peoples native and other asked, “Now why is an Anglo-Lutheran church hosting a day dedicated to indigenous peoples?” You see, the name of Jesus was never mentioned on that cool October day, yet the peace of Christ was experienced and even “longed for.” It was this legacy of truth-telling and reconciliation in Dietrich Bonhoeffer that led me to believe that studying genocide in twentieth-century Europe would mean little if the present genocide in America (to this day mostly denied) was not addressed. Thus, the Dakota Experience on a Saturday in Apple Valley, Minnesota, at a primarily Anglo-Lutheran congregation, became a confession of faith, without words, only deeds. Did I mention that we invited a community group of fifty Vietnamese elders to use our church facility each Friday morning for their social time? Mostly Buddhists who came to America with the ending of the War in Viet Nam (1975), they needed a gathering place; aware of their need for space, but not a Christian conversion experience, we simply extended the invitation. They are deeply grateful for our hospitality. Nothing heroic, nothing extremely generous. Hopefully, understood for what it is: simple hospitality, in the name of Jesus. Three years ago, our associate pastor inquired about whether Grace had ever considered becoming a “Reconciling in Christ” (RIC) congregation. Such a designation indicates that the congregation is not only generally “welcoming” of all, but that explicitly and assertively it welcomes persons of “all ages, ethnicity, race, national origin, family configuration or relationship status, physical or mental ability, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” To receive that designation from the national organization, Reconciling Works: Lutherans for Full Participation, a congregation takes part in a year or two of study, prayer, and conversation, all of which is designed to create a majority consensus within the church about this wide-open welcome. 7 I informed our associate pastor that we had had many discussions and many people were open to this designation, yet we had not sought any formal recognition for such. She then, with the approval of the congregation council, proceeded to set up an RIC Committee and process. Two years later, following many opportunities for learning and sharing, a congregational vote was taken and 95 percent of those assembled voted in

The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence

181

the affirmative. Granted this issue was not on the radar of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but I believe his passionate pursuit of truth and his asking the question “Who is Christ actually for us today?” would have led him to this same discussion and designation. Words like “all are welcome” mean little if gestures and deeds of unconditional acceptance do not follow. It was a gray day one early December when our church received a call from the social service department of Dakota County, inquiring whether our congregation might be open to house homeless people, especially because the next two weeks were likely to include days and nights of subzero weather. A number of organizations had been contacted, and we were the only one to give an immediate “yes.” Asking for forgiveness, not permission, from our congregation council, the two pastors said yes and opened our doors for two weeks from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. for about fifty persons to sleep overnight. Quickly we recruited congregants to provide food and supplies; law enforcement was hesitant to affirm our openness, because it would “bring people into our community that were . . .” The generosity of our people amazed us as the supplies continued to come in. A year later, several other congregations joined in and the temporary homeless shelter was open every night from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. from November 1 to March 31. Law enforcement still has its “concerns,” yet we press onward. Way before Bonhoeffer spoke up in defense of defenseless Jews and other “undesirables,” Jesus said, “as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me” (Matt. 25:40). Nothing heroic; we were simply responding to people in need, actually to the God and Father/Mother of us all. At one point, a person asked if we shared the gospel with all those who stayed overnight. I remembered saying (in the spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I believe): “No, because some were Muslim, some Hindu, some atheist, and we were offering shelter not religion. Jesus loved others, but didn’t foist religion on them.” We have a significant population of men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four in our community who are wandering and temporarily homeless. There are resources that can be of help, but often these individuals do not know where to turn initially to get help. After our new building addition was completed in 2013, we were approached by an organization, with a program for this demographic, called The Link. 8 They were seeking office space in the south metro area, wondering if we might be able to rent them rooms to use for their outreach program. Many in our congregation remembered that such outreach was precisely why we built our new addition. We then began conversation about how much and what kind of space they needed. Finally, we agreed on leasing them three rooms in our new education wing that could be used for office, counseling, and storage. When youth come to them, they often need a place to wash and dry their clothes, being transient and often without employment. Within a week, the congregation stepped up and installed a washer, dryer, and small refrigerator.

182

John W. Matthews

Currently, ten to twenty individuals per week make use of our facility and the resources needed for referrals. Who could have guessed that Jesus was in the business of providing detergent, food, referrals, and condoms for people in need? We believe our deeds of assistance witness to the love of God. More recently, our Grace congregation was approached to rent space to an organization responsible for coordinating the county’s emergency housing project. Because the preschool that had been using that space for almost fifty years recently closed its doors, the congregation was contemplating what to do with the empty space; was there some organization—consistent with our vision and mission—that might make use of it? After some engaging and challenging conversation with our leadership and membership, a decision was made to offer ten rooms as the community center for emergency housing. Our leadership believed that such ministry expressed the open arms of Jesus Christ. Finally, on a more personal note, in addition to my role as congregational pastor, I have been able to serve our greater community as a police/fire chaplain for over four decades. Working closely with the officers and fire fighters in five communities, I have been able to experience life from what Bonhoeffer called the “underside.” Often, when emergency personnel are called to homes, it is in response to tragic losses and death. Many times, people have no church affiliation and hence no immediate pastoral care available. That is when the police call upon their chaplains to complement their presence and offer a healing touch. Like Bonhoeffer in prison, chaplains are able, in some small way, to be the presence of Christ for others. A story is told about Bonhoeffer’s last days while traveling in a caravan to his final place of incarceration. Before arriving at Flossenbürg, the place of his execution on April 9, 1945, the convoy stopped briefly at Schönberg. Bonhoeffer was invited to offer prayers and a brief worship service for the prisoners being transported, yet his innate aversion to imposing religion on others, who were not particularly religious, caused him to pause. He trusted that his human presence would witness to the graciousness and kindness of God; he never felt that witnessing to Jesus Christ could only occur by using words. He did finally agree to read selections from scripture and offer a brief reflection. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concern, even caution, about depending on words to carry the weight of Christian witness in the world did not begin at the time or at the place where our opening quote is situated. Rather, he showed an interest in what I have described as “responsibly sharing the mystery of Christian faith” against profanation as early as a lecture in 1932 on “The Essence of the Church,” further in Discipleship in 1937, and again in a 1937 lecture on homiletics at the Finkenwalde seminary of the Confessing Church. 9 Later in prison he was reflecting regularly on the ways that words in ecclesiastical and theological usage were rendering the reality of Jesus

The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence

183

Christ inauthentic. In Bonhoeffer’s (written) sermon for the baptism of his godchild in May 1944 (from Tegel prison), “Thoughts on the Day of the Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rüdiger Bethge,” he wrote: “So the words we used before must lose their power, be silenced, and we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings.” 10 Whether in Nazi propaganda or Church publications, words and ideas were being hijacked for ulterior motives not always consistent with traditional values or Christian virtues. Authentic deeds and responsible actions, grounded in prayer, were urgently needed in that time of great confusion and evil duplicity. Bonhoeffer recalled and drew on an ancient church concept, arkandisziplin, for assistance in dealing with this abuse of language and the deception being practiced by authorities. 11 In the early Church, the gospel (i.e., the mystery of Christ’s presence in Word, sacrament, and community) was threatened by overt pagan hostility (e.g., Nero, Decius, Diocletian), Gnostic efficacious initiations (specifically assent to particular spiritual conditions being required for Christian salvation) and religious banality (following Constantine’s “tolerance” of Christianity in 340 CE and Theodosius’ “endorsement” in 380 CE). The catechumenate was established in the early Church to gradually lead people to authentic faith through vigorous instruction and careful mentoring. This early Church practice of arkandisziplin, also called the “Discipline of the Secret” (disciplina arcani), seemed relevant for Bonhoeffer’s times. Clearly physical violence and intimidation had become standard practice during the Nazi times, reminiscent of earlier pagan hostility. Similarly, conformation with German Christian theology was required and, while not specifically Gnostic, was certainly a litmus test for inclusion in the National Socialist Gleichschaltung. Finally, the tacit equation of Deutschtum with Christentum created religious banality much like Constantinian ecclesiology in the fourth century. The Discipline of the Secret was here retrieved to assist in guarding and protecting the sacred and sacramental presence of Jesus Christ, as it had fifteen centuries earlier. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the authentic, responsible “deed” became the more authentic medium of Christ’s presence; words might later be able to speak a word of truth again, but not right then. In that baptismal sermon for his godchild, he wrote, “It is not for us to predict the day—but 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. . . . Until then the Christian cause will be a quiet and hidden one, but there will be people who pray and do justice and wait for God’s own time.” 12 It is worth our reflection today to ask whether “God’s own time” has arrived, or whether “prayer and doing justice” are still the (primary) medium of sharing Christ’s presence. Most likely, witnessing to the reality of Christ’s authentic presence resides in some combination of words and actions.

184

John W. Matthews

My encounter and ongoing conversation with the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer began in college, deepened in my time of seminary studies, and has continued for forty-four years of parish ministry. More than a saint to be emulated or a theologian to be studied, Bonhoeffer has been for me an inspirational conversation partner. From first reading his Cost of Discipleship in 1968, then steadily plowing through all his collected works and numerous secondary tomes over four decades, and finally serving as President of the International Bonhoeffer Society—English Language Section, this obedient servant of Christ has helped me understand what it means to “participate in the reality of Jesus Christ,” and to be “Christ for other.” 13 Hopefully, this understanding has also helped me inspire “congregations for others.” 14 The most consistent and persistent theme that I have observed in Bonhoeffer’s life and witness is that Jesus Christ takes form in the concrete life and actions of the Church; through the proclaimed Word, the enacted sacraments and the physical presence of people, Jesus Christ is made present. While words will forever serve as tools for expressing human experience and emotion, “The first confession of the Christian church-community before the world is the deed!” 15 NOTES 1. DBWE 11:314–15. 2. “Would You Like to Know God Personally,” Cru, accessed June 18, 2019, https:// www.cru.org/us/en/how-to-know-god/would-you-like-to-know-god-personally.html. 3. Faith Partners, accessed June 18, 2019, https://faith-partners.org/. 4. Alcoholics Anonymous, accessed August 28, 2019, https://aa.org and Al-Anon, https:// al-anon.org. 5. World without Genocide, accessed June 18, 2019, http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/. 6. “First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me” (Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Jews [Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2000], 47). 7. Reconciling Works: Lutherans for Full Participation, accessed June 18, 2019, https:// www.reconcilingworks.org/. 8. The Link, accessed June 18, 2019, https://thelinkmn.org/. 9. John W. Matthews, “Responsible Sharing of the Mystery of Christian Faith: Disciplina Arcani in the Life and Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Dialog 25, no. 1 (Winter 1986): 19–25. See also, John W. Matthews, Anxious Sous Will Ask (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans, 2005), 59. 10. DBWE 8:389. 11. Ibid., 373. 12. Ibid., 390. 13. Ibid., 501. 14. Ibid., 503. 15. DBWE 11:314.

The Deed Is an Important Medium of Christ’s Reconciling Presence

185

WORKS CITED Al-Anon. August 28, 2019. https://al-anon.org. Alcoholics Anonymous. August 28, 2019. https://aa.org. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. Eccumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work, 1931–1932. Edited by Victoria J. Barnett, Mark Brocker, and Michael B. Lukens. Translated by Douglas W. Stott, Isabel Best, Anne Schmidt-Lange, Nicholas S. Humphrey, and Marion Pauck. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 11. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012. Faith Partners. June 18, 2019. https://faith-partners.org/. Gerlach, Wolfgang. And the Witnesses were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Jews. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. The Link. June 18, 2019. https://thelinkmn.org/. Matthews, John W. Anxious Sous Will Ask. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans, 2005. ———. “Responsible Sharing of the Mystery of Christian Faith: Disciplina Arcani in the Life and Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Dialog 25, no. 1 (Wint 1986): 19–25. Reconciling Works: Lutherans for Full Participation. June 18, 2019. https:// www.reconcilingworks.org/. World without Genocide. June 18, 2019. http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/. “Would You Like to Know God Personally.” Cru. June 18, 2019. https://www.cru.org/us/en/ how-to-know-god/would-you-like-to-know-god-personally.html.

Chapter Eleven

Between Sundays What the Church Is For Paul Lutter

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “the church is church only when it is there for others.” 1 Since before I understood a call to public ministry, this clause from Bonhoeffer has stirred my imagination. Now, it is the thread that runs through the stories from my life as a pastor—shared in this chapter—that might, otherwise, seem disconnected. “What do you do the rest of the week, between Sundays?” As a parish pastor in a small town, people in both the congregation I serve and the wider community in which the congregation lives and serves like to deliver this joke with some regularity. They do this as a way to relate with me. My usual response is to chuckle, and follow that with a head nod that acknowledges their attempt. 2 Much of what a pastor and congregation do between Sundays is hidden work, veiled from the vast majority of the surrounding world. Hiddenness, though, is neither absence nor a secret known only to a few select persons. Rather, this work hides in its specificity, for the sake of the world. While the world around the Church is known for its wheeling and dealing, trying to get ahead, the Church works primarily with the currency of mercy and grace. The posture this currency affords is found in the ways the Church opens up and reaches out in ways far more concrete than might be imagined. As a result, the Church doesn’t run on a clock. The Church is wide open. The Church is hard at work. As Christ’s concrete presence in the world, the Church’s passion is not about the end of the day or week or month or year. The question that gives life to the Church is about what’s new. Paying attention to this question for the sake of the world is not an hour a week job. It is relentless. 187

188

Paul Lutter

I don’t say this to people whose joke lands in my ears. Instead, once the laughter dies down, I often ask people what’s new with them. And then I listen as they bear witness to God’s presence and work in their own lives. They often aren’t aware they are doing this. When I reframe what they are saying through grace and mercy, people’s response tends to be surprise. I take this to be the result of what happens when the Church takes seriously Bonhoeffer’s call to be there for others, between Sundays. One day, a husband and wife knocked on my office door. When they sat down, they told me about a home they had built a few years prior. They poured every last resource they had into their home. Visions of growing old, with children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, filled their imaginations as they built. I often drove by their home, where I would see these parents play with their three children in the front yard. In the community, their home was known as beautiful, one people should see if they could. The night before they arrived at my door, I heard the sirens of fire engines fill the air. Their home had burnt to the ground; they had lost everything. This couple was understandably devastated. The future they had imagined had been destroyed in the fire. Though I didn’t know them, they were wondering whether there was anything the congregation could do to help them. It was the middle of January, a low season for the husband who made his living in construction. Members of the Church Council organized a coffee to raise funds for the family. The congregation’s quilters gave warm quilts they had made. The Sunday school children gave their weekly offering so the couple’s children could have gloves and hats and other warm clothes. Members of the congregation shopped with them for food. One of the couples in the congregation provided space for the family to stay until they could make more permanent living arrangements. Every week, the congregation would pray for this family, not only on Sundays, but on the rest of the days of the week as well. In the weekly Bible study, I would hear stories from those in the group who reached out to the family, invited them to a meal, or for coffee, or a beer. Others offered to babysit the children so the couple could do the things they needed to do. When members of the congregation asked me how else they could help this family, I invited them to ask the family directly. Stories from those conversations reveal something that provided partial exegesis to Bonhoeffer’s description of the Church: the more the Church was there with and for the family, the more they wondered who else the congregation might help. The more they were present with others, the more capacity for compassion and mercy they found in themselves. They were also humbled by the experience. “I don’t know what I did for them, but they sure blessed me,” is something I heard time and again.

Between Sundays

189

When the couple later came to my office to tell me they would be moving into a new community where both husband and wife found new jobs, they said, “We don’t’ know how to thank the congregation for all they’ve done for us.” When I assured them the congregation was thankful for this couple and their children, they were surprised. “You were also there with us,” I said. “We are forever changed because of it.” In another small town, in another congregation I served, juniors and seniors from the local high school gathered for lunch in the fellowship hall of the congregation every Thursday during the school year. The town is in one of the most economically unstable counties in the state. One of the results of this financial instability is a high percentage of families experience food insufficiency. Years before I arrived, the congregation decided to provide a weekly meal for high school juniors and seniors. When I arrived, we were feeding an average of one hundred students a week. Members of the congregation and other congregations from other denominations in the community provided, made, and served the food to those who gathered. When they arrived, the youth would go through the line to pick up their food and then sat around tables with their friends. I would offer a prayer for the food and for those gathered. Our Director of Children, Youth, and Family played a game with the youth, and then the youth ate. After the youth left, volunteers from the congregation cleaned up and put away dishes. The charge for the meal was $3, though because of the economic reality in the community, no one was turned away. Everyone ate. Often, we would see kids fill their pockets with food they would eat for supper, because otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to eat. “This is one of the best things we do as a congregation,” I was told when I interviewed there. What makes it so powerful is not only the act of making and serving meals to those who are hungry. Community is formed between the adults who serve and the youth who eat the food. Hunger is fed. Relationships were formed. Life is embodied in the midst of hunger’s decay. Two years into my life with this congregation, the Church Council faced a difficult financial reality. The mortgage on the congregation’s building stressed their budget, and so there was always concern about how to make the next payment. Because many congregation members donated money to the meal for these high school students, this donation was reflected in the congregation’s budget. The Council wondered if they could take money from the meal’s budget line to pay an extra mortgage payment. This would zero out the meal’s budget line. The action would potentially have ended the weekly meal. The Council was in a tough position, yet their decision would mean taking food out of the mouths of some of the youth in the community who would otherwise go hungry. Other members of the congregation caught wind

190

Paul Lutter

of the predicament, and were unpleased. They spoke to the Council. They wrote letters, urging the Council to not move in the direction they heard was coming. As their pastor, I was not in favor of the possibility of moving money away from a program that fed the hungry so that the mortgage could be more quickly paid off. I explained my concern to the Council. “With this decision, do you realize you are voting to allow kids to go hungry?” Silence filled the room. “You know that isn’t what we want to do, right, Pastor?” The question was asked by a faithful member of the Council, someone who has belonged to the congregation her whole life. “What are we supposed to do?” The Council decided to leave the money for the weekly meal alone. Feeding the hungry is more important than a quicker mortgage reduction. The Council’s president stood before the congregation to let them know the Council’s predicament and decision. “We will find another way,” the president said. Four years prior, in another small town and congregation, I met Gage. Then a seven-year old, Gage had just arrived home to the rural community where he lived with his parents and siblings. He had been airlifted to the Twin Cities days before, where doctors determined that he had an inoperable brain tumor. “We’re going to fight this,” his parents told me. “He’s going to be cured.” They did not fight this alone. Members of the congregation worked alongside other members of the wider community to fight beside Gage’s family. Spaghetti dinners, other meals, and events were arranged to raise funds to help Gage and his family fight this brain tumor. Doctors put Gage in a research study, giving him medicine they hoped would change the condition and outcome of the tumor. Caring Bridge updates were written every day by Gage’s family and friends, to update readers on every aspect of what was new with Gage’s condition. Every Sunday, the congregation I served prayed for Gage and his family. Every day, various members of the congregation would go to see and spend time with Gage and his family. Every conversation I had with people during that time often included questions like, “What’s new with Gage? How is he? How is his family? What can we do to help?” For Easter that year, I asked members of the congregation to shred white cloth strips and to dress every inch of the sanctuary with them. The effect we were hoping for was that when people would enter the sanctuary, they would get a glimpse of what it might have been like to enter the empty tomb on Easter morning. As a part of that Sunday’s sermon, I invited people to drape these cloths around their shoulders, around their homes, around the wider community. “You are wrapped in resurrection,” I told them. Soon after Easter, we learned there was nothing else the doctors could do for Gage. Friends and family would hold vigil, in Gage’s living room and in the garage attached to the family’s house. Smoke and swear words intermingled, filling the air with fear and despair. This was the liturgy repeated day

Between Sundays

191

and night, in the house and garage, at street corners and restaurants. Everywhere people gathered, there was an understandable dread in the air. I was with the family and their friends daily. Prayer shawls and hotdishes and cards and chocolate and Kleenex and anything else the family might have needed came from both members of the congregation and the wider community. We were with the family as they surrounded Gage. I asked if I could bring Gage and his family communion. “Gage is only eight,” his mom said. He had yet to receive instruction in Holy Communion. “Yes, but what better time to have communion than this?” She agreed, and invited me to join them. When I arrived the next day, Gage was laying on the couch as his parents sat close by him. “He doesn’t have much longer,” his mom whispered, her nose and mouth buried in Kleenex. “It’s not fair,” his mom and dad said over and again. “I told him he would be with Jesus, and that one day we would be with him again,” his mom said. Gage said nothing. He stared blankly at us. What could he say? From my coat, I took a white strip of cloth I brought with me from the sanctuary. “Gage, this is like the strips of cloth Jesus wore after he died. He was raised from the dead. Death will no longer have the last word. I want you to have this.” He took the long strip in his hands and studied it. When I turned to give him communion, I noticed the strip of cloth wasn’t in his hands. Gage had tangled himself in the cloth. “You are wrapped in resurrection,” I said. “You are too,” he said. A few days later, on a Sunday, Gage died. Already the next morning, the congregation’s secretary called people to see who could make and serve food. This would not be a small funeral. Neither the visitation nor the funeral could be held in the church, since the number would be far larger than the church could hold. The high school gymnasium would host both the visitation and funeral. Eight hundred people attended the visitation, and 1200 people gathered for Gage’s funeral. There would be a great deal of help needed so people could be fed and cared for. Cakes lined the counters in the congregation’s kitchen. Hotdishes and salads were stored in church freezers across town. Linens were washed and dried and put on tables set up all around the fellowship hall. Bulletins were written, copied, and folded. White strips of cloth were torn so they could be used at the funeral. The funeral director and his staff prepared Gage’s body, set up the visitation, made arrangements so both the visitation and funeral could happen at the high school. Balloons were blown up and tied so they could be released after the funeral and before the burial. Police escorts led the funeral procession from the high school to the cemetery. When people arrived, a bulletin and a white strip of cloth were placed in people’s hands. “What is this white cloth for?” When people would ask this, they often heard, “Wait and see.” These words accompanied slight smiles.

192

Paul Lutter

During the funeral sermon, I told the story of how Gage tangled himself in the resurrection cloth. I invited those who were present at the funeral to do the same. Looking out over those who gathered for the funeral, the pieces of cloth looked like a wave as people put them over their necks and around their shoulders. “You are wrapped in resurrection,” I told them. A week later, as I drove through the center of town, I noticed several strips of white cloth from the funeral tied around signposts. I saw them displayed in restaurants and businesses. I saw them at gas stations and tied outside of peoples’ homes. People tied them to their bumpers and around their radio antennae. Two years later, after I returned home from a mission trip in South Africa, to an empty home and a note from my now ex-spouse, a parishioner arrived at my door with a white strip of cloth and a loaf of freshly baked banana bread in their hands. “You too are wrapped in resurrection, pastor. Don’t ever forget that.” After the funeral of a teenager whose death was a suicide, a group of clergy and lay leaders of six congregations from five different denominations in the community where I now serve decided to come together in order to help teenagers help other teenagers who are struggling with mental health issues. Together, we hosted a Peer Ministry Leadership training event. The training brought together nearly forty youth and adults from these congregations in order to learn skills in helping other teenagers, including how to identify warning signs that would lead them to refer their friends on to caring adults who could either give or help them locate help for what is going on in their lives. While the training itself was remarkable for this small town, several things stood out that are worth mention. Though these six congregations are part of a larger collection of congregations in that community that would meet monthly, this was one of the first times these congregations worked together on something that had significant impact for the life of the community in which we serve. Also significant is the fact that while we all imagined we would hold this training in one of our congregations, we soon realized that to do so would be to preference one of the congregations over the others. This seemed problematic, given the common work we were doing together. Together we wondered if we might use the local high school for this training. The superintendent, the high school principal, and assistant principal were all members of congregations represented in this training. We wondered what their response would be to the request—would they invite us to hold the training there, or would we need to find somewhere else to hold the event? It turns out there was a genuine receptivity to our group holding the event in the high school library. This may sound surprising, given the strin-

Between Sundays

193

gent boundaries between Church and state issues that many schools hold. Yet, the openness came from recognizing that this wasn’t so much a Church/ state issue; rather, the issue was first and foremost about equipping youth and adults to care for other youth and adults in their community, and, hopefully, to carry these tools with them into the wider world as well. The openness demonstrated in this event, from congregations working together to congregations and the school working together was a surprise for many. As a result of the same suicide, the two local ELCA congregations in the community, including the one I serve, wanted to do more in addition to the Peer Ministry Leadership training. The congregation I serve already hosts a mental health drop-in center once a week for those persons who are in need of mental health care but who do not have the financial resources to receive the care they need. Yet, was there more we could do around mental health care for young and old alike? Our synod office had just received a $10,000 grant to address mental health and youth. What could we do locally? The two congregations developed a Mental Health Advisory group, whose work it is to address this concern locally. Though we are located in the same small town, because of various congregational histories from the past, working together as congregations has been difficult. The present pastors of these two congregations get along well and work well together. Both see the need for their congregations to work together. This goes a long way in working through and beyond these previous histories. The advisory group has met twice so far. The plan is to develop programming that will help people educate themselves around issues of mental health and wellness, not only for the youth of the community, but really for the whole community. Each month, the congregations will take turns hosting programs in which people who attend will learn a little more about mental health, and find answers and support for what concerns them. During the seasons of Advent and Lent, the pastors and lay leaders of the congregations will preach and teach about aspects of mental health. The pastors will take turns preaching in the other’s pulpit, to further demonstrate the partnership we share. This, too, will surprise some people. This, too, will be new. “The church is church only when it is there with others.” I carry these words with me in the work I do as a pastor. It is work that happens on Sundays, but not only then. More surprising than when it happens is often alongside whom it happens. The surprise of it all is one of the gifts I experience in this work. The surprise is not only a result of this work. The surprise is the work itself. After Jesus is raised from the dead in Luke’s account, two disciples walk away, disgruntled and tired. They’ve had it. They’re done. They’re closed off. Then a stranger walks beside them. Notice in this story how Jesus does

194

Paul Lutter

not correct their stories as they tell them. He asks questions and listens. It isn’t until they are together around the table, when Jesus breaks bread in their presence, that they remember, that hope floods in again. In their surprise, everything changes. Maybe this is one of the things Bonhoeffer gets at in his words about what the Church is for. The Church is present, and in that presence, sets the stage for an encounter that surprises and stuns back to life those who are in need. And, in the surprise, maybe the Church, too, finds life again. After they experience Jesus around the table, the two run back to tell the other disciples of Jesus’s resurrection. It may have been late on a Sunday when they told them, but it’s a story that’s repeated ever since, no matter what day it is. NOTES 1. DBWE 8:503. 2. My imagination that spurs this response comes from Jacqueline Bussie, The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo (New York: T&T Clark, 2007).

WORKS CITED Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. Bussie, Jacqueline. The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo. New York: T&T Clark, 2007.

Chapter Twelve

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville Jeffrey C. Pugh

Sweat dripped down my back as I stared at my reflection in the mirrored sunglasses of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia member standing in front of me, his AR-15 slung causally over his shoulder. He fixed his gaze on me, impassive, and I hoped the finger resting on top of his trigger guard indicated training that had prepared him to stay calm when the chaos hit. Turning my attention from him, I looked up and down the line of clergy and other counter-protesters who had marched onto Market Street to take space at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, the morning of August 12, 2017. I considered our raggedy little group chanting and singing “This Little Light of Mine” as the humid August air permeated our robes, stoles, shirts, and bodies. In the face of strutting and smirking racists it seemed like a small thing, but it was what we had; waging peace is always a vulnerable exercise. 1 I was standing with my new church, a flash mob of resistance to the evil that had come to our town intending to mark Charlottesville as their territory. As far as churches go this one was unique—Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, atheists—all sisters and brothers in that moment as we waited for the inevitable explosion of violence. As the crowds thickened around me my thoughts turned to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I pondered his life and the choices he made. Would the growing crowds of fascists seeking violence have been familiar to him? Would he recognize our meager line of resistance as the church? As the morning progressed and the atmosphere of violence drenched us all, Bonhoeffer haunted me. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and racists swaggered past our line, carrying the flags, shields, clubs, pictures of Hitler, and symbols of their allegiances, videotaping us for later doxxing, certain we posed no real threat to them. Once positioned inside the temporary metal police barricades at Emancipation Park they took to taunting us, chanting 195

196

Jeffrey C. Pugh

“Blood and soil! Jews will not replace us! You will not replace us!” They echoed a world I knew only from books and videos, a world I never expected to encounter on the streets of America. Struggling with my own fears, I recalled Bonhoeffer’s confession: “I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have 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.” 2 When the shouts of “Jews will not replace us!” sound out in your city and parades of tiki torch bearing Nazis light up the night sky as university students, faculty, and staff are attacked, you cannot be absent; if you do not resist the hatred when it appears, it will metastasize. Silence is complicity. In the intensity of that moment all the theology, all the theory I had absorbed in a lifetime of learning and teaching, was not enough to adequately respond to the spirit of death and destruction that hung in the air. Violence struck later that morning as fascists and antifa clashed on the streets, causing the governor of Virginia to declare a state of emergency, shutting down the rally before its official beginning. Even so, violence continued on the streets for hours. At the end of a long, exhausting, and horrible day, three people would be dead: Heather Heyer and two state troopers who died in a helicopter crash after monitoring Charlottesville all day. In addition to this, dozens were seriously injured, and my city of ruins (#Springsteen) was left to deal with the trauma of assault. If not for a couple of concerned and savvy upstart clergy who were dissatisfied with the church’s response in Charlottesville, there would have been no clergy presence that day at ground zero of the Unite the Right rally. City and university officials asked citizens to not show up on August 12, urging caution in response to the fascists. “Ignore them and you won’t give them space,” they argued. Fortunately, Seth Wispelwey and Brittany CaineConley, cofounders of the newly formed Congregate Charlottesville, realizing that Charlottesville needed a more robust form of resistance to this impending attack, set up training for those who were committed to a nonviolent witness. They also issued a call on social media for people of faith to come to Charlottesville on August 12, though the numbers of those who showed up was disappointing. For five weeks that summer we met and trained with the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou, a black activist and theologian who came to Charlottesville to help prepare us for what he had experienced in Ferguson and Baltimore. Thirty some years of studying and teaching about Bonhoeffer and the German church struggle had taught me one thing—when the Nazis come to town, you have to show up. Absence is not an option. You cannot cede space to fascists. When the National Socialists took power in Germany, the abject

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

197

failure of Christianity to escape its own captivity to anti-Semitism remains a stain not yet erased. Standing there that morning I recalled what I had learned about Germany in the early thirties—the masses out in the streets, the violence of the brown shirts, the pitched battles for social and political space. If we were in a similar historical moment—the beginning of upheavals that lead to social catastrophe—I could not escape the feeling that the church was going to fail the challenges of this age as miserably as it did in Bonhoeffer’s day. He would have recognized the missed moment when the church could have flooded the public space to say that racial hatred corrupts and destroys. Instead of masses fighting racism, our meager band was inconsequential to the crowds gathering around us. The experience of August 12 pushed me to think about community. What type of communal spaces has the church created that can adequately respond to the world as we now experience it? What are the visions of life being created in those communities and what are the public manifestations of their visions? Where is the church when so much is at stake? I fear large segments of American Christianity are unable to discern the moment and too weak and captured by the idolatries of nationalism and security to respond to the assaults of those who desire to dominate and control public life. When I first encountered Bonhoeffer in college one of the most compelling aspects of his theology was his continuing struggle to understand the way that Christ takes shape in the world. What does Christ’s presence truly mean? In his first dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer claimed that Christ exists as community—Christus als Gemeinde existierend. 3 Early on in his life Bonhoeffer connected theology to a particular social body. This theology was not based on metaphysical speculation or theological abstraction, but a concrete community existing in the material world. At the time of this dissertation Bonhoeffer had not yet acquired the critical distance from his own community to question German exceptionalism and the religious justification for war, but his concerns about Christ, community, and concrete reality would later compel him to question everything about the traditions of German Christianity. 4 Observed from a biographical perspective, Bonhoeffer’s entire life could be seen as the relentless search for a community where Christ was present. From his time as an assistant pastor in Barcelona, to his work in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and on through his ministry as youth pastor in Berlin, to the seminary in exile at Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer was a man in search of a community that took seriously the demands of discipleship. The idea of how such a community takes form and is shaped would change with each experience Bonhoeffer had, however, the ground and center of all these communal expressions was the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Viewed from a certain perspective, one of the tragedies of

198

Jeffrey C. Pugh

Bonhoeffer’s life (and ours as well) was that the community that should have been most resistant to oppression, hatred, and mass murder—the church— collapsed when tested by the fires of authoritarianism and political idolatry. Christians have struggled with this legacy of failure, but continuing attachment to political power and nationalism still indicates authentic discipleship to the suffering God eludes us. The presence of those on the streets of Charlottesville in resistance to the Unite the Right rally was an attempt to fashion a community who believed that a larger vision of life, of God’s hope for the world, should inspire them. Most of those present were Christian, however, there were many who were not, but did it matter? Community is crucial to stopping oppression, and bearing witness to God’s love has many different communal expressions. Nazi flags floating in the summer morning breeze, and Hitler T-shirts adorning the bodies of marchers cannot be ignored with, “Stay home and let them have their parade.” Since that day I have pondered how Bonhoeffer offers us wisdom concerning Charlottesville as a symptom of some larger dis-ease in the world. I constantly wrestle with how to respond to the rising hatred and divisions created by our present struggle among those who seem committed to the rule of law verses those who desire authoritarianism. But I have also grappled with how I responded to the fearful and cowering lost souls with their guns and other weapons pouring down curses on our heads. They wanted us dead, gone, erased, even as they chanted, “You will not replace us!” Standing on the curb, sweat streaming down my back, listening to the shouts of “faggot priests,” I confess that I wanted them erased from my city and my life. In the face of such implacable hatred does Christ have a word for us? Does a church of white privilege offer any true and authentic witness in the face of continuing oppression? What possible word of reconciliation with Nazis can there be? Since Bonhoeffer’s theology took shape in one of the most horrific expressions of authoritarianism and racial hatred in the last century, he can be our guide when society turns to its worst instincts and Christianity becomes little more than a handmaiden of the authoritarian state. WHERE ARE THINGS NOW? It can be risky making too easy a comparison between eras. We are not “just like” Nazi Germany because the circumstances are very different. We do not have government-funded churches, a long legacy of Lutheran theology concerning the role of church/state relations, or a society shaped by massive defeat from a world war. The United States is far removed from the Germany of 1933, however, the differences should not blind us to the fact that a creeping authoritarianism of our political life appears to be expanding. Our

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

199

future has yet to be written, but the growing strength of right wing extremism and authoritarian government in the United States should set off alarms. Too much caution about lessons from the past causes us to miss historical family resemblances. The pull of authoritarianism is a recurring political dynamic. Acquiescence to political authority is baked into many religions and Christianity is no exception. Religion often serves to legitimate and justify political orders, pushing our political constructions into the realm of transcendence. From the divine right of kings, to present day supporters of Donald Trump claiming God has installed him as president, religion offers the patina of divine authority to the institutions we create. There is even a sizable contingent of Christians who happily support, without question, any regime that dangles political power in front of them in return for their unquestioning loyalty. Various expressions of Christianity have always held a strong attraction for those who worship power and call it “God.” We should be wary of theologies that assume a connection between political power and God. Bonhoeffer’s life and theology offer us the ability to resist the seductions of political and economic power. Even at the very beginning of Hitler’s regime, Bonhoeffer understood the danger. One of the most striking examples of his insight is Bonhoeffer’s radio address on decrying the Führerprinzip, the Führer principle, just a couple of days after Hitler’s ascent to power on January 30, 1933. Though the plug was pulled on the broadcast and no script of that particular speech exists, there are two addresses on the same subject where Bonhoeffer expresses his concerns about authoritarian leadership. 5 He discerned the menace of a man who used theological rhetoric to argue he alone could fix all of Germany’s problems and restore German greatness. Bonhoeffer’s insight into the nature of totalitarian rulers carried through to his analysis of how his society functioned, and the role of such things like religion and ideology to move populations to action. He grasped that behind Hitler’s rhetoric and the nation’s acceptance of Hitler’s promises, there was a profound danger of political and social nihilism. He gives different accounts of this descent into nihilism, most particularly in Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison, as he explored both the promise of humankind’s “coming of age” and the peril of a society that had unhinged itself from any sense of its Christian heritage. In a section of Ethics entitled, “Heritage and Decay” Bonhoeffer mourned the loss of Christian heritage and cultural tradition to shape society. He observed that nihilism too often occupies the vacuum of Christian absence: “Having lost its unity that was created by the form of Jesus Christ, the West is confronted by nothingness [Nichts].” When nihilism rules in society, “Uncontrolled powers clash with each other and everything that exists is threatened with annihilation.” 6 All things—family, nation, identity—are up for grabs as the desire for power drives social and political life. 7

200

Jeffrey C. Pugh

We all are vulnerable when unscrupulous rulers manipulate the political and social factions scrambling for position and privilege. When nihilism overtakes the world, political and economic power are the only things that matter, which erases the sacred from public life. When the state becomes the only space of meaning, even the truth becomes contested space: “Because truth is not trusted, specious propaganda takes over. Because justice is not trusted, whatever is useful is declared to be just.” 8 Our world presently mirrors this reality, as the law itself seems up for grabs by political actors. We are adrift in a world that desires safety and security above all else, even at the expense of the truth. In response to the uncertainty of our lives some political rulers promise they will deliver us if we only acquiesce to their agendas. Safety can be a totalitarian call that opens the door to new oppressors. The Nazis and racists that attacked Charlottesville were driven by fear and their targets were not their oppressors. Their own leaders, who stoked the fires of racial hatred, were the ones who took away their humanity. Tribalism became the weapon of choice to mobilize the mob because without a firm sense of who we are, our very lives are up for grabs. Our identities are being shaped by the technologies of social media to prevent us from seeing clearly the nihilism that rests at the heart of the present political and economic orders. Political propaganda and mass media create meaning for millions of persons who cannot recognize the forces at work to shape them. Since the last presidential election we have discovered ways we are being manipulated on social media and through big data companies like Cambridge Analytica to accept propaganda as truth. The contempt of seeing entire populations as marks for propaganda campaigns is something Bonhoeffer recognized and warned of as well. 9 When nothingness reigns, the world loses its memory of the reality that desires to nurture all life into the fullness of being. The political orders fashioned by nihilism too often map the world into the pure and impure, consigning the impure to destruction. The agenda for purity experienced on the streets of Charlottesville is also a totalitarian agenda driven by the spirit of fear. The taking of public space by force is an attempt to dictate to others what reality looks like. Totalitarians use fear for dominance and control of persons. Not to put too fine a point on it, there are political orders that are happily willing to use chaos to seize power, claiming they take power in the name of the people. In the aftermath of Charlottesville we must be clear and resolute about confronting the powers that are relentlessly creating human beings who believe no one has worth other than their tribe. In the world they desire to create, offering a cup of cold water to a thirsty person in the desert becomes a criminal act. In the face of powers that desire to divide human beings from one another along class and racial lines, we proclaim all human (and nonhuman) life has a moral claim on us.

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

201

In the world of nothingness, social arrangements are built on lies and corrupted ideologies, which is a betrayal of the type of community Bonhoeffer desired. Bonhoeffer’s comment that “the desire for absolute freedom leads people into the deepest servitude” 10 is a penetrating look into humankind’s vulnerabilities. Political cries of “freedom” often mask the creeping shadow of totalitarianism. Concretely, one of the church’s tasks in this moment is to continually confront the world with what authentic freedom looks like, a freedom Christians should locate primarily in Jesus Christ, who creates and is made known within the community gathered in his name. How would we know what an authentic expression of this community is? We do know what it doesn’t resemble. It isn’t a world constructed around lies creating a spirit of destruction where community breaks down, relationships are destroyed, and society gives into the spirit of fear as mobs are mobilized against the “enemy.” Under the influence of nihilism, political and economic ideologies create human beings as commodities to serve the gods of efficiency and the market. This impersonalization and alienation from others creates the conditions for resentments to emerge as unscrupulous politicians and “despisers of humanity” manipulate emotions and thoughts. 11 No true community emerges from such forces. In the cultural wasteland of negation and nihilism, people lie without remorse because power is more important than true community. Bonhoeffer would recognize a society that was being conditioned to believe the lie because in Germany those who told the truth were locked away. The loss of true community is certainly reflected in the fact that many Christian communities desire to preserve their privileges in uncertain times. The idols of institutional maintenance and the grasping of privilege only weaken a church that cannot stand on the side of the oppressed. The failure to stand with the victims of an oppressive state is precisely what Bonhoeffer confronts us with. In the section “Guilt, Justification, Renewal” in Ethics, Bonhoeffer challenges us: “The church confesses that it has witnessed the arbitrary use of brutal force, the suffering in body and soul of countless innocent people, that it has witnessed oppression, hatred, and murder without raising its voice for the victims and without finding ways of rushing to help them. It has become guilty of the lives of the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.” 12 One of the concrete realities in front of us is that children and adults are being abused and dying in detention camps on our southern border. We too bear witness to enormous “oppression, hatred, and murder” and the suffering of countless persons.

202

Jeffrey C. Pugh

WHAT ARE WE WILLING TO DIE FOR? If Bonhoeffer offers us the resources to tell the truth about the world we have constructed, he also helps us minister to its brokenness. Once we see things without deception, we are able to consider what is truly at stake. Attention to the reality in front of us is necessary to answer the most crucial question Bonhoeffer asks, “What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that our lives depend on it?” 13 For most of us, this last question seems remote because we do not experience the types of risks where our lives are at stake. Still, the question lingers. Would we follow Jesus into the deserts of Arizona, risking arrest or worse, to give water to the thirsty? Will we stand in solidarity with those Muslims and Jews who are being attacked? We constantly stand in front of this haunting question. There are some things worth dying for. While presence in the face of evil is urgent, the reasons and motivations for showing up are important as well. Bonhoeffer embraced a reality hidden from many people—there is something beyond the material culture and concrete societies that shape our existence. The knowledge that a reality stands beyond the world helps us escape the trap of nihilism. Bonhoeffer’s struggle to understand reality clearly, the double nature of reality, reveals one of the most radical claims Christian theology makes about the world—Christ’s life, death, and resurrection defines and points us to the ultimate reality. Bonhoeffer directs us to the realization that the story we often tell about the world is a story of the penultimate, of politics and economics, when, in truth, God is the ultimate reality behind all things. 14 Discerning the nature between the ultimate and penultimate gifts us with the freedom to interpret the world in a different way than that demanded by our political masters. True freedom does not let penultimate things define us. Commitment to the ultimate is the freedom to not be manipulated by political propaganda, to not be controlled by the fear of losing space or privilege. If Christ ultimately defines the world, all things that erase the penultimate, that degrade, destroy, and harm it, must be resisted in the name of the ultimate. Physical needs must be taken care of, justice must be given to the oppressed, human deprivation should be replaced with human flourishing, and the oppressed must be freed. 15 Bonhoeffer’s theology of the penultimate and ultimate gives us a different lens with which to interpret the world. When the ultimate informs our present engagement with reality, political or economic forces do not drive our vision and commitments. Bonhoeffer offers a corollary to this tension between the ultimate and penultimate: “Wisdom is recognizing the significant within the factual” 16 The significant is always present in the factual if we have the heart to see it. If Christ represents the significant, the ultimate, than our lives are committed to the streets, prisons, homes, and gathering places of our cities

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

203

and communities, even if the world “exhausts its rage on the body of Christ.” 17 Bonhoeffer’s focus on concrete reality challenges us to penetrate past the appearance presented to us to something deeper. In the midst of multiple penultimate realities calling for our allegiances there is only one true 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.” 18 In light of the Incarnation we peer past the nihilism that seems so dominant to see the reality that truly rests within all things. We are even empowered to address those whose identities have been so intensely constructed on the fascist architecture of fear that their ability to understand the entirety of the world as holy and sacred has been erased. The concrete reality in which we presently live, move, and have our being, will continue to be disruptive. Structures that have shaped the world since the Enlightenment and the rise of the modern state are facing new challenges as power grabs among the powerful and wealthy accelerate. In the US context, an ideology that seeks oligarchic control of the political process, and police control of all resistance, has been remarkably successful. 19 In the name of all those who will suffer under this order, we must resist this consolidation of power. In the face of political events that threaten to unleash more hatred and social unrest, if the church seeks political power to ensure its survival and status alone, it becomes captive to those powers and will in the end do their bidding through acquiescence, complicity, or silence in the face of crimes and even atrocities. As a concrete example of this, where are the Christian voices protesting the treatment of refugees and immigrants in our detention centers, or protesting the rising hatred of Jews and Muslims? Are churches providing sanctuary for those who face death back home in Guatemala if they have to return to their homes? These examples can be multiplied of persons and communities who are suffering at the hands of individuals and systems that continually diminish life. The more the church holds to its confession of Christ as Lord and moves to those who suffer in the world, the greater threat it is to corruption. The community of Christ often suffers because allegiance to Christ threatens the powers that order the world: “The more the church holds to its central message, the more effective it is. Its suffering is infinitely more dangerous to the spirit of destruction than the political power that it may still retain.” 20 In his struggles with the National Socialists and a church that had capitulated to them, Bonhoeffer’s focus on Christ’s presence in the midst of life reminds us that God’s reality in Christ is made known when communities of faith manifest Christ in their public lives. This is our center. The crucified body of Christ calls into question all those political orders that rule and discipline other bodies. A true rendering of reality cannot happen without

204

Jeffrey C. Pugh

recognition that Christ claims the totality of our lives: “In Christ we are invited to participate in the reality of God and the reality of the world at the same time.” 21 The political implications of this are profound because our immersion in the world strips legitimacy from all those orders that destroy penultimate life. The life of God in the world reconfigures reality away from the cynical politics of nihilism. The hope that this world and those who inhabit it belong to God threatens those political and social forces that command our allegiances. Faithfulness to the gospel may mean betrayal of the state, even to the point of stopping the state in its tracks when it attacks the vulnerable. 22 Bonhoeffer’s physical and spiritual exile during the Nazi regime, and the collapse of so much of his world, focused his theology on the suffering of Christ, the one body that revealed the suffering of so many bodies. He knew that only the suffering God could help humankind. The suffering God centered his response to the world. “It is not the religious act that makes someone a Christian, but rather the sharing in God’s suffering in the worldly life.” 23 Communities who enter into this space of suffering manifest Christ existing in community. Telling the truth about what we see unfolding around us means confronting the powers that create suffering in order to maintain their power. Immigrant children being stolen from their parents and forced to live in squalid tent cities, or trafficked out to predators, while Nazis march on the streets are material realities of racial hatred and animus. Leaders are using fabricated injuries (“They’re taking your jobs”) to dehumanize human beings and pit them against one another. Whispers in dark places of “They want to replace you. They want the white race to disappear,” are slashing wounds to the world of inclusion and grace God desires. As Bonhoeffer pondered the future of Christianity toward the end of his life, especially in his “Outline of a Book” found in the prison letters, he cuts to the core of Christian faith. He reminds us that the future of Christianity rests in those who are willing to be there for others by participating in the being of Jesus. 24 That question again—what are we willing to put our lives on the line for? For Bonhoeffer the willingness to sacrifice one’s life was not for the defense of doctrine or theological abstraction. We are most fully an authentic witness for the ultimate when we are present for others, when we are willing to confront the harm that racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other systems of fear and exclusion use to scar us. The commitment to the ultimate in our time also entails our willingness to fight for those ground under the wheels of social oppression and participate in the healing of the wounds that harm penultimate life.

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

205

THE COMMUNITY KEEPS ME FROM BEING A KILLER In this confrontation with those forces that bring harm to the “others,” we must be alert to the danger of losing our own souls, which brings me back to Charlottesville. What I did not anticipate happening that morning was how deeply I would struggle with who those “others” are. I assumed they were those in Black Lives Matter, the Jewish community, or the various counter protesters who came to say “No” to fascism. I was certain the others were those targeted by the Nazis, those who shared that clergy line, the black and brown bodies, the queer folk who stood fast. But, was the other also the scared and fearful fascist in my face shouting “Faggot!”? If I truly believe that God becomes flesh to suffer and absorb the hatred of the world, then I cannot say that God’s grace is closed off from those who seek to destroy me. My anger at those who came to Charlottesville to assault us put me in jeopardy of losing the reality of the gospel. This is the true danger of the spirit of nothingness—that our struggle against those forces that harm God’s good creation ends up being solely about political ground. Bonhoeffer understood the dangers here, even as he was pulled by the gravity of responsibility into political violence. Reflecting on the way we become captive to evil, he wrote: When evil becomes powerful in the world, it simultaneously injects the Christian with the poison of radicalism. Reconciliation with the world as it is, which is given to the Christian by Christ, is then called betrayal and denial of Christ. In its place come bitterness, suspicion, and contempt for human beings and the world. Love that believes all things, bears all things, and hopes for all things, love that loves the world in its very wickedness with the love of God (John 3:16), becomes—by limiting love to the closed circle of the pious—a pharisaical refusal of love for the wicked. . . . Thus a world that has become evil succeeds in making Christians evil also. 25

Being on the receiving end of threats and physical abuse August 12, I experienced the power of this warning. Shortly after a group of neo-Nazis punched through a band of us occupying one set of the stairs leading into the park, the League of the South was headed in our direction when a collection of groups labeled “antifa,” rushed up to protect us. These street armies clashed right below where we were standing and the fury, violence, smells, noise, and chaos of that moment were overwhelming. In the heat of that moment I wanted a club in my hands to fight back. Some primal dark place inside me wanted to lash out and beat someone. That was at least “doing something.” I discovered my commitment to nonviolence wavers under the right conditions. I was guilty of exactly what Bonhoeffer spoke of—hating the wicked with every fiber of my being, or wanting them gone the same way they want

206

Jeffrey C. Pugh

Jews and people of color erased. I had no space for reconciliation in me. We too often respond to personal injury with the desire to avenge our dignity, and when this happens, we lose sight of the true evil in front of us, the type of malevolence that can turn us into the very thing we hate. This is why the community is so important; without the community to support me I am fully capable of the worst kinds of violence; absent the community of faith, I am a potential killer. Bonhoeffer’s movement into the conspiracy was tragic for many reasons, but if the church had been a stronger community, if Christianity had not been captive to centuries of conditioning by questionable theology, would that move have been necessary? Speculation can be a fool’s errand, but we must at least consider that it was the failure of Christianity itself in the face of political authoritarianism that drove Bonhoeffer to the conspiracy. The political implications of faithful communities are crucial in our struggle with white supremacy and anti-Semitism. I wish the church would speak with a stronger voice against these evils. And this brings me back to the type of communities we are weaving together that will sustain us in troubled times. Even if it appears a meager and ineffective thing in the face of such great powers, communities of faith offer hope in their courage to bear witness to Christ. They help prevent us from becoming the monster ourselves. Those who want to discipline themselves into beloved communities will be tested as to the depths of violence that rests in each of us when they occupy public space. We need one another to resist the siren call of violence. We also need informing by spiritual disciplines and practices to sustain our communal life. This is one of the reasons that Bonhoeffer’s references to arcane disciplines are so compelling. Eucharist, prayer, contemplation, even singing, form the spiritually disciplined grounds of strengthening resistance to the spirit of nihilism in our political orders. On the morning of August 12, hundreds of people packed First Baptist Church on Main Street for a service soaked in gospel hymns. It was a baptism of sustaining strength. Later that morning, when I was not feeling so strong, standing amidst an escalating swirl of chaos, I thought about the failure of the church in Bonhoeffer’s day and in that moment I most admired those on our line who professed no belief in Christianity, but responded to visceral hatred by defending the vulnerable. Was this community a church? Perhaps. All I know is that they were present to stand with Christ in this particular moment of suffering. Standing against the spirit of nihilism that feeds on hate, those brave souls bore witness that humanity, indeed, all of God’s good creation, is threatened when we lose the vision that we are all in this together and the suffering God desires nothing more than we be healed from our present brokenness.

Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville

207

NOTES 1. The right wing groups that came to assault Charlottesville were a gathering of ideologies, ranging from the neo-Confederates of the Ku Klux Klan and the League of the South to neo-Nazis from the Traditionalist Workers Party and The Daily Stormer. In the disparity what united them was a commitment to white supremacy and nationalism, fed from many political streams in America in 2017. In addition, numerous right wing militias such as the heavily armed Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, The Oath Keepers, and 3 Percenters were also on the streets, heavily armed, in some cases more than the police. They claimed they were there to “protect First Amendment rights,” but their real purpose was to protect those who marched under the numerous fascist banners. For the rest of the chapter I’m grouping all these groups under various general terms like “fascists,” though “Nazi” would suffice given the amount of Swastikas I saw. 2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBWE 6:137. 3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBWE 1. 4. Charles Marsh calls attention to a particular passage in Sanctorum Communio where, using Israel as an example, Bonhoeffer says a country may go to war when it submits to God’s will to fulfill its historical mission. Bonhoeffer later would feel shame about this idea. Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 59. 5. Marsh, Strange Glory, 159–60. 6. Bonhoeffer, DBWE 6:127. 7. Ibid., 128. In a compelling description of how nothingness shapes the world Bonhoeffer writes: “It is a creative nothingness that blows its anti-God breath into all that exists, creates the illusion of waking it to new life, and at the same time sucks out its true essence until it soon disintegrates into an empty husk and is discarded. Life, history, family, people, language, faith—the list goes on forever, because nothingness spares nothing—all fall victim to nothingness.” 8. Ibid., 130. 9. Ibid., 121. Bonhoeffer points to the relationship between technology, mass movements, and nationalism, pointing out that while they help to create one another, they are also in such conflict as to be enemies of reason. 10. Ibid., 122. 11. Ibid., 85–89. Bonhoeffer critiques, obliquely, Hitler and his impact on the nation and how Hitler’s corruption changes the very moral stance of those around him. As just one small example of the way Bonhoeffer was processing the contempt of persons he experienced, this short section points out that the “tyrannical despiser of humanity” portrays himself as a man of the people, of true community, when in truth, he holds the masses in contempt. 12. Ibid., 139. 13. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBWE 8:502. 14. Bonhoeffer, DBWE 6:146–70. In Bonhoeffer’s reflections on ultimate and penultimate things he continues a central theme in his work, that the world is ultimately defined by Christ. It is the totality of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, that gives us the most robust account of how all of these fill out the picture of what is truly real. 15. Ibid., 160–61. 16. Ibid., 81. 17. Ibid., 83. 18. Ibid., 58. 19. For those who may think this is alarmist language, I would point them to several extremely well-researched books, including Nancy MacLean’s, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking, 2017); Jane Mayer’s, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Anchor Press, 2017); or Cass Sunstein’s, Authoritarianism in America (New York: Dey Street Books, 2018). This last book is a compilation of thinkers from different perspectives who explore whether or not American society is headed for authoritarian rule. I should also mention Madeleine Albright’s book, Fascism: A Warning (New York: HarperCollins, 2018). There are many others that speak to the dangers we face. 20. Bonhoeffer, DBWE 8:6:132.

208

Jeffrey C. Pugh

21. Ibid., 55. 22. This reference comes from a 1933 address, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” DBWE 12. Bonhoeffer never developed a theology of resistance as such, however, in this address the idea that the church should be prepared to stop the state in its tracks, so to speak, bordered on revolutionary, given the context within which Bonhoeffer is writing. 23. This emphasis on the suffering of the Christ and the necessity to enter into it on behalf of others is found all through Bonhoeffer, but it is deeply and acutely explored in the prison letters. See, for example, DBWE 8:479 ff., where Bonhoeffer explores how the very idea of God must be rooted in suffering. The power of his statement that only the suffering God can help resonates as we wrestle with the demands of our age. 24. Bonhoeffer, DBWE 8:501. 25. Bonhoeffer, DBWE 6:155–56.

WORKS CITED Albright, Madeleine. Fascism: A Warning. New York: HarperCollins, 2018. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Sanctorum Communio. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 1. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. ———. Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945. Edited by Mark S. Brocker. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006. MacLean, Nancy. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. New York: Viking, 2017. Marsh, Charles. Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. Mayer, Jane. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right. New York: Anchor Press, 2017. Sunstein, Cass. Authoritarianism in America. New York: Dey Street Books, 2018.

Index

above/below (oben/unten) distinction, 12, 81, 121, 168–169; and gender, 133–136, 138n12, 140n26, 140n27 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 168 adiaphora controversy, 69, 71, 74 Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in Southern Africa (ABRESCA), 75 Antaeus myth, 146, 148 anthropocentrism, 151–152 antisemitism: in Nazi Germany, 10; in the United States, 179, 195–197 apartheid, 75–76 Ardern, Jacinda, 124 arkandisziplin, 183 Aryan paragraph, 10, 13, 22, 69–72 Augsburg Confession, 10 authoritarianism: Bonhoeffer’s concerns about, 199, 206; in the United States, 9, 98, 197–199, 207n19 authority, moral, 14, 15, 28, 91 Bam, Gustav, 76–77 Barnett, Victoria, 123 Barth, Karl, 27–29, 72, 91–92; Barmen Declaration, 3, 74, 81; Church Dogmatics, 77; Commentary on Epistle to the Romans, 91 Belhar Confession, 67–68, 78–79, 81–82, 82n2 Benjamin, Walter, 49; historical materialism, 56, 58, 64; liberalism,

critique of, 55, 57; messianism, 58–59, 64; mythical violence, 57, 59, 64 Bethge, Eberhard, 73, 121, 136, 147 Boesak, Allan, 75–76, 81, 85n66, 85n67 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, life of, 2, 28, 113, 116, 136–137, 147, 164, 168, 182 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, works by: “After Ten Years,” 148; “Basic Questions for a Christian Ethic,” 146; Christology lectures (1933), 102; “The Church and the Jewish Question,” 2, 9–10, 11, 13, 14, 16–17, 19, 21, 22, 70, 71, 74, 208n22; “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement,” 82; Creation and Fall, 92, 93, 99, 104, 138n12, 146, 148; Discipleship, 2, 104, 119–120, 139n18, 145, 182; “Essay on Church Communion,” 78–79; “The Essence of the Church,” 182; Ethics, 2, 27, 29–32, 35, 43n10, 45n99, 93, 95, 103, 105, 117, 119–120, 139n18, 140n26, 144, 157, 199, 201; farewell sermon, Barcelona (1929), 146; Good Friday sermon (1927), 145; “Guilt, Justification, Renewal,” 201; “Heritage and Decay,” 162, 199; “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” 122; “The Jewish-Christian Question as Status Confessionis,” 71; Letters and Papers from Prison, 121, 136, 168, 182–183, 187; Life Together, 2, 209

210

Index

139n18, 164, 168; “Outline of a Book,” 124, 204; radio address decrying Fuhrer principle (1933), 199; Sanctorum Communio, 1, 111, 118, 122, 139n18, 197, 207n4; sermon on Reformation Day (1932), 80; “Speech of the Major,” 117; Tegel prison document, 40, 147–148; “Theological Assessment of the First Use of the Law,” 38; “Theses on ‘The Aryan Paragraph in the Church’,” 71; “Thy Kingdom Come! The Prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth,” 145, 153; “The View from Below,” 135, 140n26; “What Should a Student of Theology Do Today?,” 71, 78; World Alliance lecture, 22 Bonhoeffer, Karl, 28 Bonhoeffer, Karl-Friedrich, 164 Brooks, David, 9, 10 Brunner, Emil, 27–28, 38, 43n7 Buthelezi, Manas, 74, 78 Butler, Judith, 135

Deutsche Christen. See Protestants, German dignity, 34–37 disunion, 95, 158, 160–162 Dutch Reformed Mission Church, 67, 75, 76, 82n2

Christian Institute (South Africa), 73 Christianity, religionless, 112, 122–124, 162–163 Christology, 30–31, 39–40, 102, 117, 119, 120, 125n4, 197; and ecology, 144–145, 149 Chung, Hyun Kyung, 131 church, diaconal versus preaching function, 18–19, 61 Church, early history, 183 church, failure of, 197–198, 206 church, Jewish members of, 70–71 church, political proclamation by, 21–22, 23n10 church, right concept of, 10–11, 15, 16, 151, 194 climate change, inequality and, 151 community, 119, 151, 189, 197–198, 206 Confessing Church, 3, 73, 82, 164, 182 conversion, 166 Copeland, M. Shawn, 130, 138n7 crucifixion, 31, 102–103, 144, 203

Formula of Concord, 69 freedom: authenticity of, 201; and commitment to the ultimate, 202; contingency of, 130; and creation, 93–95, 104; and liberalism, 51, 99; and natural law, 32, 35, 37, 39, 40; and relation to others, 119, 133; and responsible action, 62–63, 117, 121

de Gruchy, John, 73, 81 DeJonge, Michael, 68, 69, 72, 83n8, 119

Eck, Diana, 114–115, 120 ecology: and Christology, 144–145, 149; and responsibility, 150, 152–153; secular, 151–152; and “the other,” 150–152 ecumenism, 2, 21, 22, 70, 75–76, 82, 111, 123 embodiment, 35–37, 93, 132–133, 144–145, 147, 149 ethics: central question of, 41, 62, 93, 101, 121, 159–160, 163; and concrete action, 150, 151; and conformation to Christ, 102, 119, 120; and critique of religion, 112–113; and spiritual life, 146. See also Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, works by euthanasia, 27, 28, 33–34, 37

Gandhi, Mohandas, 111, 147 Genesis story (Adam and Eve), 93–96, 160 genocide, 28, 132, 179–180 genre, 134–135 Good Samaritan, 104 gospel, 10–12, 17–18, 22, 32; in early Church, 183; and status confessionis, 69, 78–79, 82 Green, Clifford, 119, 150 Haynes, Stephen, 2 heritage, US Southern, 158, 162 Heyer, Heather, 157, 196 Holocaust remembrance, 145, 165, 179 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 148 humanism, critique of, 122–123

Index

211

humanitarian organizations, 14–16, 20, 22, 61

Lutheran World Federation, 74–75, 84n35 lynching, 165

identity: gender, 135, 139n23; religious, 116–117, 123–125, 126n24 imago dei, 35, 36, 93, 95, 96, 101, 120 incarceration: and complicity with guilt, 103; description of problem, 89–90; inequality and, 97; and moral reductionism, 96–99; strategies for reform of, 90 Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), 114, 115 invisibility: and privilege, 165; and shame, 160–161 Islamophobia, 116, 124

mandates, divine, 13, 63 Maritain, Jacques, 42 Martel, James, 56 Matthews, John, 117, 125n3–125n4 Medieval Synthesis, 64 Melanchthon, Philip, 39 monuments, as counter to ethics, 163–164 morality, 14–16, 20, 28, 51, 64, 91–93, 96–97, 101, 103–104, 122 Mother Earth, 145–146, 148, 152–153

Jensen, David H., 117, 121, 125n3 Jesus, “guilty yet sinless,” 102, 118 Jews: and Holocaust remembrance, 179; as members of Christian congregations, 70–71; solidarity with, 111, 125, 181; as “threatening other,” 121–122. See also antisemitism; Aryan paragraph justice, restorative and transformative, 99–101, 107n51 justification, doctrine of, 11, 14–15, 29–30, 71, 91 kairos, 77, 81, 85n66 kenotic role, 151 Kristof, Nicholas, 132 law, church preachings about, 11–12 law, natural, 28–29; Catholic view of, 29–30, 33–35, 42; and Decalogue, 39–41; and embodiment, 35; and “penultimate,” 32–33, 36, 37; viewed by Walter Benjamin, 56 law and order, “too little, too much,” 17–19, 21, 60, 70 Leibholz, Gerhard, 28, 29 Levinson, Sanford, 160–162 liberalism: critique of, 51–55, 57; and freedom, 51, 99 liberation, theology of, 50, 81 life, intrinsic value of, 27, 30, 34–35, 37, 40, 43n13, 123–124, 200; and ecology, 144; and gender, 132–133 Lovat, Terence J., 117, 125n3

nationalism, 123, 127n67, 162–163 National Socialism (Nazis), 3, 20, 28–29, 35, 37, 39, 54, 69, 72, 121, 134, 183, 196 Naudé, Beyers, 73 NBC, 167 new kingdom, 145, 150, 152 nihilism, 199–202 other, the, 1, 36, 53, 62, 201, 205; and ecology, 150–152; and gender, 130, 131; and interfaith action, 112–113, 116, 118–122; and morality, 90, 92–94, 98–99, 103–104; and race relations, 163–164, 166–169 Patel, Eboo, 114–117, 123, 125n3 patriarchy, Bonhoeffer’s support for, 132–133, 138n12, 139n23 penultimate versus ultimate in Christian life, 31–33, 38, 145, 202, 204 Pew Research Center, 167 Pieper, Josef, 42, 44n50 Pluralism Project (Harvard University), 114 pluralism, religious, 112–115, 122, 180, 181, 195 privilege: anthropocentric, 152; male, 129–131, 133, 136; white, 159, 160, 167–169, 198 proselytizing, 177 Protestants, German, 2–3, 27, 28, 31, 124–125, 183

212

Index

race: in American churches, 159, 164; as central problem of America, 2, 158, 159, 164, 167, 169, 171n22, 172n57; and disunion, 161; and incarceration, 90; and rejection of categories, 76, 77, 134 Rasmussen, Larry, 144 reconciliation, 31, 60, 61, 76, 103, 149–150, 171n22, 179–180, 205–206 Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation, 180 religion, definition of, 112, 122 repentance, 103–104, 169–170 responsibility, 1–2, 20, 36, 39, 61–64, 150, 152–153, 168, 205; and ecology, 150, 152–153; and interfaith action, 111, 117, 118, 121; and morality, 99–104 resurrection, 31, 144, 145, 190–192 Reynolds, Diane, 136–137, 140n31 rights, human, 33–35 Schmitt, Carl, 49; critique of liberalism, 51–54; friend-enemy distinction, 53, 54; life of, 51; state of exception, 49, 54–55, 197 Sekou, Osagyefo, 196 Sermon on the Mount, 105 shame, 158, 160–162, 166 sicut deus (violation of human limits), 95, 96, 98, 103 Sims, Angela D., 165 slavery, 37, 164, 165, 167, 169 Smit, Dirkie, 74, 77–79, 81–82 South Africa, parallels with Nazi Germany, 72–73 Southern Poverty Law Center, 167 state, as theological concept, 53–54, 64–65; two kingdoms doctrine, 31, 59–60, 64 state, church and, 10, 12–13, 16–20, 22, 39–41, 60–61, 63, 70, 183 status confessionis, 21, 61, 68; Bonhoeffer’s use of term, 70–72; and

kairos, 77, 81; origin of term, 69; in South Africa, 73–75, 77–79, 82 Stellvertretung. See vicarious representative action suffering, 102, 119, 121, 168–169, 201, 203–204, 206, 208n23; of Earth, 150, 152; and gender, 132, 135 suicide, 37–38 TeSelle, Eugene, 80, 85n60 theological anthropology, 113 theology, inherently Christological, 112 theology, political, 27, 49–50, 53–54, 64, 143 tikkun olam, 178 Trump, Donald, administration of, 9, 116 Union Theological Seminary, 116, 125n3, 159, 164 vicarious representative action: as central Bonhoeffer concept, 62, 111, 117–119, 124–125, 150–151; context for, 150, 152, 159–160; and ethics, 120, 152; as lived by Bonhoeffer, 121; and racism, 168, 170, 172n57 violence: divine, 57–58; gender-based, 132; and incarceration, 89–90, 97–99; justification for, 56–57, 64; and liberalism, 55; mythical, 57, 59, 64; religious, 124; response to, 195–196, 205–206; and transformative justice, 100–101 Weimar Republic, 51 Western, Bruce, 97 Williams, Reggie L., 168 Wingren, Gustaf, 33 World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 75–76 WuDunn, Sheryl, 132, 138n10

About the Contributors

Victoria J. Barnett was director of the programs on ethics, religion, and the Holocaust at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from 2004–2019. She also served as one of the general editors of the 17-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters about the Protestant churches in Nazi Germany and during the Holocaust she has written several books: Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (2000) and For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (1992). Her most recent books are “After Ten Years”: Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Our Times and The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2. Lisa E. Dahill, PhD, is professor of religion at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California. She is a scholar and translator of Bonhoeffer’s works: translator of DBWE 16 (Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945, solo translation) and DBWE 8 (Letters and Papers from Prison, one of four translators), and author of Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation, as well as many other articles, essays, and book chapters. A recent president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, she is passionate about the natural world, and much of her recent scholarship explores implications of Bonhoeffer’s thinking for contemporary ecological theology. Michael P. DeJonge is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of South Florida. He earned his PhD in religion from Emory University in 2009 and has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, a Volkswagen/Mellon Fellow at the Leibniz-Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany, and Visiting 213

214

About the Contributors

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology and Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author or coeditor of Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation (Oxford, 2012), The Bonhoeffer Reader (Fortress, 2013), Translating Religion (Routledge, 2015), Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther (Oxford, 2017), Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics (Lexington, 2018), and Bonhoeffer on Resistance (Oxford, 2018). Thomas Fabisiak is a member of the faculty at Life University in Marietta, Georgia; a founding member of the Georgia Coalition on Higher Education in Prisons; and the director of the Chillon Project, an initiative of Life University’s Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics to bring college degree programs to people involved in the carceral system in Georgia. In 2016, Chillon launched an associate of arts degree program in positive human development and social change, the first accredited college degree program to be offered in a Georgia state women’s prison since 1994. Life University now provides a bachelor of science in psychology at the facility. Fabisiak holds a PhD in comparative literature and religion from Emory University. He has published work on higher education in prisons as well as on religion, secularism, and modernity, including The “Nocturnal Side of Science” in the Work of David Friedrich Strauss (SBL, 2015). Karen V. Guth is assistant professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She holds a PhD in religious ethics from the University of Virginia and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life (Fortress, 2015), as well as numerous articles at the intersection of political theology and feminist ethics. Her current book project, tentatively titled The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts, explores the ethical ramifications of engaging religious, cultural, and political traditions implicated in past wrongs. Lori Brandt Hale is professor and chair of religion at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the vice president of the International Bonhoeffer Society—English Language Section and co-chair of the Steering Committee for the Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit of the American Academy of Religion. She is the coauthor of Bonhoeffer for Armchair Theologians (Westminster John Knox, 2009) and has written on Bonhoeffer’s political resistance, understanding of vocation, and relevance in contemporary times—including the now perennial question, “Is this a Bonhoeffer moment?”—in articles and book chapters. W. David Hall is W. George Matton Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Centre College. Dr. Hall has addressed topics in the philosophy of religion,

About the Contributors

215

philosophical theology, religion and literature, and political theology in articles in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion and Literature, Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, and Intertexts, as well as in numerous book chapters. He is coeditor and contributor to Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought (Routledge, 2002) and author of Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative: The Creative Tension Between Love and Justice (SUNY, 2007). Paul Lutter is senior pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Mora, Minnesota. He first read Bonhoeffer in college, on the shores of Deer Lake in northern Minnesota. The experience of reading Letters and Papers from Prison in those years shaped his interest in theology, philosophy, and writing. He is in the MFA program in creative writing at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. John W. Matthews is an ELCA Lutheran pastor and adjunct instructor of religion at Augsburg University, Minneapolis. He did postgraduate study at the International Center for Holocaust studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Reverend Matthews is the author of Anxious Souls Will Ask: The Christ Centered Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006) and Bonhoeffer: A Brief Overview of the Life and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Lutheran University Press, 2011). He is a past president of the International Bonhoeffer Society—English Language Section. Jennifer M. McBride (PhD University of Virginia) is associate dean of doctor of ministry programs and assistant professor of theology and ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary. Prior to McCormick, McBride held the Board of Regents Endowed Chair in Ethics at Wartburg College and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology at Emory University. At Emory, she served as program director for the Atlanta Theological Association’s Certificate in Theological Studies at Metro State Prison for Women. McBride is author of Radical Discipleship: A Liturgical Politics of the Gospel (Fortress Press, 2017), The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford University Press, 2011), and is coeditor of Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought (Fortress Press, 2010). She is president of the International Bonhoeffer Society—English Language Section and has served on its Board of Directors since 2008. Jeffrey C. Pugh was Maude Sharpe Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University until he retired as distinguished university professor in 2018. He has published books in religion and science, eschatology, the problem of evil, and postmodern readings of Christian tradition. A lifelong student of Bon-

216

About the Contributors

hoeffer, he has presented nationally and internationally on Bonhoeffer’s significance for contemporary Christianity. His book, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times, was published by T&T Clark in 2009. He presently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dianne P. Rayson completed a PhD in theology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her topic concerned Bonhoefferian theology as a response to climate change. She lectures in theology and is an adjunct research fellow, Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre, Charles Sturt University. She is assistant editor of The Bonhoeffer Legacy: An International Journal and presented a Bonhoeffer and Public Ethics Lecture in Chicago in 2019. She has published on a range of concerns for public theology including rape culture and the ecological impact of war. Her book, currently pending with Lexington Press, is titled Bonhoeffer and Climate Change: Theology and Ecoethics. Robert Vosloo is professor in systematic theology at the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and a senior researcher at the Beyers Naudé Center for Public Theology at the same institution. He is the author of Reforming Memory: Essays on South African Church and Theological History (Sun Media, 2017). His research interests include Reformed theology, historical memory, twentieth-century South African church and theological history, philosophical and theological discourses on hospitality and recognition, and the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Jens Zimmermann is J.I. Packer Chair for Theology at Regent College/ UBC in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and visiting research fellow at the Center for Theology and European Modern Thought in Oxford. His main research areas are theological and philosophical anthropology, hermeneutic philosophy, together with religion, culture, and ethics with the most recent focus on technology, personhood, and human flourishing. His more recent publications include Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2015), Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism (OUP 2016), and Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism (OUP 2019).