God's Church-Community

The Ecclesiology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

David Emerton

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567693167
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

David Emerton argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ecclesial thought breaks open a necessary 'third way' in ecclesiological description between the Scylla of 'ethnographic' ecclesiology and the Charybdis of 'dogmatic' ecclesiology. Building on a rigorous and provocative discussion of Bonhoeffer's thought, Emerton establishes a programmatic theological grammar for any speech about the church. Emerton argues that Bonhoeffer understands the church as a pneumatological and eschatological community in space and time, and that his understanding is built on eschatological and pneumatological foundations. These foundations, in turn, give rise to a unique methodological approach to ecclesiological description – an approach that enables Bonhoeffer to proffer a genuinely theological account of the church in which both divine and human agency are held together through an account of God the Holy Spirit. Emerton proposes that this approach is the perfect remedy for an endemic problem in contemporary accounts of the church: that of attending either to the human empirical church-community ethnographically or to the life of God dogmatically; and to each, problematically, at the expense of the other. This book will act as a clarion call towards genuinely theological ecclesiological speech which is allied to real ecclesial action.

1

Ecclesiological topography

i. Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the diagnosis of a problematic which is endemic to contemporary ecclesiological discourse and to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ecclesial thought, and in particular his account of the church as a pneumatological and eschatological community in space and time, is considered to be therapeutic. The chapter, therefore, functions diagnostically – a function prosecuted herein, first, by an articulation of the problematic and, then, second, by way of a detailed explication of this problematic in relation to contemporary ecclesiological literature. This explication proceeds by way of analysis of two ‘types’ of ecclesiological approach. These types, in light of the problematic, are designated ‘dogmatic’ and ‘ethnographic’, and in the course of the analysis are brought into constructive and critical dialogue.¹ Moreover, to facilitate this dialogue, each ecclesiological ‘type’ is troped with respect to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions. By presenting the material content of the chapter in this way, the chapter seeks intentionally to construct a pathway for presenting what it will be argued is a necessary ‘third way’ in ecclesiological description – one, which, in its treatment of the endemic problematic, thinks beyond but with Bonhoeffer’s ecclesial thought.

ii. The problematic articulated

‘I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’² In this Pauline appropriation of God’s covenantal promise to the church in Corinth, it is not too great an exaggeration to say that the theologian is confronted by the central problematic of ecclesiological discourse: that of the asymmetrical yet interconnected relation of divine and human togetherness in the church’s being, and the concomitant issue of holding together in an account of the church both divine and human agency. Indeed, such covenant togetherness of God and his people to which Paul indexes the being of the Corinthian church, while certainly a real togetherness in which divine commitment and human obligation is intrinsic, is nonetheless unilateral in origin: the covenant comes into being and is sustained in being by God alone, on the basis of both what God has done and on what God will do. Thus, it is God and God’s acts, past, present and future, which determine God’s covenant togetherness with God’s people: ‘I will look with favour upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will maintain my covenant with you … I will place my dwelling in your midst … I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.’³ This divine determination of Israel to be the people of God, while conditioned not by Israel’s response to God but only by God himself, nevertheless requires a human response as an indivisible aspect of it. As God’s people, Israel is to be – both for God’s sake and the world’s sake – a kingdom of priests and a holy nation: a people, who, as a particular and contingent socio-historical reality, define God as their God and thereby are oriented towards God such that they obey God and faithfully keep and observe God’s commandments.⁴

It is this vocation which subsequently the church has come to participate in by virtue of its sharing in that self-same determination of Israel to be God’s people – a point, which, by his quotation from Lev. 26.12, Paul now sets before the church in Corinth precisely to remind the church of God’s commitment to his people and his people’s obligation to God as intrinsic to the covenant togetherness in which the church exists and is to exist as God’s people. In parallel with the whole people of Israel, Paul identifies the Corinthian church in their origin and continued existence as a people determined by God, and yet, notwithstanding this divine determination, as a people who, in their socio-historical existence, are by human response to define God as their God and be oriented in space and time to God. The church in Corinth is God’s people (‘they shall be my people’), but these people are not just any people. Rather, they are a people who, in their response to God, are already at once determined by God as God’s people (‘I will be their God’). In indexing the being of the Corinthian church in this way, Paul’s ecclesiological description not only stresses an asymmetrical yet interconnected relation of divine and human togetherness but raises by this fact the question of how, in her account of the church, the ecclesiologist gives voice appropriately to both divine and human agency.

Indeed, to hold together these two aspects of the church’s being, both by a precise parsing of the Pauline καὶ in 2 Cor. 6.16 and by a careful consideration of the given order to the relation of divine and human togetherness therein – that is, to the preceding of ‘they shall be my people’ by ‘I will be their God’ – is the most basic ecclesiological task. If the ecclesiologist wishes to speak about the being of the church and to speak of it in accordance with scripture and the Christian tradition – one might say to speak of it in a genuinely theological manner – then she must speak of it first as an operative and gracious act of God, which second takes place in space and time to create a particular and contingent socio-historical human community. In other words, when speaking both descriptively and critically about the being of the church, the ecclesiologist must ensure that she affords in her ecclesiology appropriate space for an account of bot h divine and human agency – with the former relativizing but not minimalizing the latter – and gives due attention both to the being and form of the socio-historical human community that the church is and to the being of God and God’s operative and gracious acts which are the efficient, sustaining and perfecting cause of that community.

Put formally, the issue at stake here in ecclesiological description is one of systematicity: of the arrangement and locating of doctrinal loci in theological inquiry, and more specifically of where one doctrinal locus is placed in relation to other doctrinal loci; how the relation between these different loci is subsequently construed (regarding especially the proportionality of the doctrines represented); and thus ultimately of which doctrine (if any) is considered most basic or foundational.⁵ The importance of this for the task of systematic theological inquiry cannot be overstated: it is the case not only that any one doctrinal locus is untreatable solipsistically and thus must be exposited always in reference to the way it interconnects (coherently) with other doctrinal loci but also that the doctrine placed beneath or deriving from the doctrine that is considered in that interconnection most (or even more) basic or foundational will be materially affected in terms of its content by what goes before it – that is, by its ultimate (or more immediate) dogmatic res.⁶ All of this is to say that ‘dogmatic topography’⁷ in ecclesiological description (and theological inquiry) matters. Indeed, the ecclesiologist must ensure that her account of the church is always appropriately dogmatically ordered with due proportion, such that any ecclesiological discussion is dependently informed by other doctrinal loci – most basically or foundationally a doctrine of God – yet in that dependent formation always resists any move to either sublate or exclude (duly proportionate) ecclesiological speech about the socio-historical human community that the church is.

To the extent the ecclesiologist successfully prosecutes this most basic ecclesiological task, her ecclesiology will hold together an account of both divine and human agency, and in doing so give voice appropriately to the asymmetrical yet interconnected relation of divine and human togetherness in the church’s being and afford appropriate space in that account to both the operative and gracious acts of God and the being and form of the socio-historical human community that the church is. Furthermore, in terms of the material dogmatic content and formal presentation of the doctrine of the church thereby offered, both a doctrine of God (‘I will be their God’) and a doctrine of the human person (‘they shall be my people’) will be spoken of together, but with due concern for how these doctrinal loci relate, topographically, one to another in and through the καὶ of 2 Cor. 6.16. In doing so, and in consequence of such due concern for appropriate dogmatic ordering and proportionality in ecclesiological description, the ecclesiologist, moreover, will eschew what is an erroneous but endemic problematic present in approaches to contemporary ecclesiological discourse: the tendency to attend in ecclesiological description, with disregard for the Pauline καὶ, either to ‘I will be their God’ or to ‘they shall be my people’, and thus to present in an account of the church either a ‘dogmatic’ or ‘ethnographic’ ecclesiology. The former prioritizes a more properly or narrowly ‘theological’ description of God’s ad intra or ad extra life at the expense of a socio-historical account of the church particularly and contingently conceived – in ‘dogmatic’ ecclesiology the church is, essentially, what God does. The latter prioritizes a ‘socio-historical’ description of the church’s human empirical form at the expense of a theological account of God’s own life – in ‘ethnographic’ ecclesiology the church is, essentially, what humans do. Ecclesiological speech is rent asunder, and the doctrinal locus of ecclesiology problematized with respect to the relation of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Ecclesiological topography
• 2 The theological foundations of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiological methodology
• 3 God’s church-community: Bonhoeffer’s ‘both/and’ ecclesiological methodology
• 4 The pneumatological space of God’s church-community
• 5 The eschatological time of God’s church-community
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright