Being and Action Coram Deo

Bonhoeffer and the Retrieval of Justification's Social Import

Koert Verhagen

• Editore: T&T Clark
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567700216
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Theologie & Religion
• Categoria: Theologie

Koert Verhagen not only provides the first in-depth treatment of how the doctrine of justification crucially frames Bonhoeffer's approach to questions surrounding human being and action, he also addresses the ethical implications of retrieving this perspective for the Church today. Drawing on his early academic theology and his later ethics of discipleship, Verhagen argues that Bonhoeffer's emphasis on the social implications of justification leads to an understanding of human existence that is fundamentally relational. Along the way, he draws Bonhoeffer's thinking on this front into conversation with Luther, German idealism, the Nazi Weltanschauung, and contemporary Pauline scholarship. With an eye to the contemporary, practical value of Bonhoeffer's theology, Verhagen concludes by making the case that the retrieval of justification's social implications provides a critical corrective to ecclesial responses to white supremacy.

Chapter 1

Backgrounding Bonhoeffer

Martin Luther on Justification’s Import for Anthropology

I Introduction

Given Bonhoeffer’s own intellectual formation, the question of the role of justification in his theology inevitably sends one back to Luther. Indeed, several recent studies have convincingly demonstrated the impossibility of properly understanding Bonhoeffer’s theology apart from Luther, who, along with Paul, formed the theological vein in which Bonhoeffer sought to establish himself.¹ Beyond serving as Bonhoeffer’s theological baseline, Luther also formulated his theological anthropology explicitly with reference to justification. This is more than can be said for Bonhoeffer, who, although clearly motivated by anthropological considerations, never outlines a theological anthropology as such. Thus, Luther’s way of construing anthropology in terms of justification does not simply form an important explanatory backdrop against which Bonhoeffer’s anthropology should be understood. Indeed, it also presents a framework within which to interpret the anthropological subtext of Bonhoeffer’s early theological writings.² The following discussion will begin with a brief consideration of the case for Luther as Bonhoeffer's primary theological influence, before turning to consider how justification shapes what it means to be human in Luther’s theology. This will provide a framework for assessing the extent to which justification constitutes a controlling anthropological concept in Bonhoeffer’s own thought in the next chapter.

II Luther as Theological Influence on Bonhoeffer

To claim a significant role for Martin Luther in the shaping of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology is relatively uncontroversial. Yet, generally speaking, Bonhoeffer’s interaction with dialectical theology, especially that of Karl Barth, has ruled the day in terms of exploration of his thought.³ Perhaps this is partially due to the fact that it seems self-evident that Bonhoeffer—as a German Lutheran who was trained in the Luther Renaissance by the likes of Karl Holl and Reinhold Seeberg—bears the mark of Luther. If this is the case then it may be that Luther’s influence on Bonhoeffer has often simply been assumed in Anglophone scholarship.⁴ Whatever the case may be, a number of recent studies have emerged in English which demonstrate persuasively that Luther plays a central role in shaping Bonhoeffer’s theology.⁵ We shall comment briefly here on only three of them in order to confirm the legitimacy of reading Bonhoeffer’s theology against the background of Luther’s influence.

In a recent monograph, Michael DeJonge advances the twofold claim that first, “Bonhoeffer thought his theology was Lutheran” and second, that “he was justified in thinking so.”⁶ As such, DeJonge’s work largely aids in locating Bonhoeffer firmly within the Lutheran confessional tradition, even if his participation in it was often creative in nature.⁷ This, however, does not entail a reduction of all aspects of Bonhoeffer’s theology to his Lutheran heritage. Rather, it grounds Bonhoeffer’s thinking in such a way as to suggest “that interpretations that forget about Luther’s importance for Bonhoeffer tend toward misinterpretation.”⁸ Thus, although DeJonge does not specifically address Bonhoeffer’s anthropology—instead, he primarily focuses on defending Bonhoeffer’s Christological appropriation of Luther’s two kingdoms theology—his account implies that a proper understanding of it must take Luther’s influence into consideration.⁹

Second, H. Gaylon Barker’s The Cross of Reality explores the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Luther in terms of Christology and the theologia crucis. Like DeJonge, Barker is careful to note the dynamic nature of Luther’s importance for Bonhoeffer, asserting: “Bonhoeffer’s goal was not simply to replicate Luther’s theology; however, what he finds in Luther is the key to unlocking the church’s witness for this new time.”¹⁰ According to Barker, then, one must read Bonhoeffer’s Christocentrism with Luther in the background, yet always in a way that foregrounds Bonhoeffer’s commitment to the importance of the church’s concrete proclamation in the present.

Barker offers particularly convincing evidence for the connection between Bonhoeffer and Luther when he recounts comments made by Eberhard Bethge and Gerhard Ebeling in personal conversations he had with them. Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s best friend and biographer, notes the compulsion Bonhoeffer felt in relation to Luther when he suggests: “Bonhoeffer had to find his own Luther.”¹¹ Ebeling, a student of Bonhoeffer’s at the preacher’s seminary in Finkenwalde and a prominent Luther scholar in his own right, speaks to the deep, theological affinity between Bonhoeffer and Luther when he comments: “In my heart, I believe Bonhoeffer and Luther are one.”¹² Barker elaborates further on his conversation with Ebeling, writing: “[He] believed it was Bonhoeffer’s intention to ‘re-win’ Luther over against the interpretations of the nineteenth century and of his time to come to the original Luther.”¹³

Third and, finally, although Wolf Krötke’s essay on Luther’s presence in Bonhoeffer’s theology is considerably shorter than the aforementioned monographs, he makes a concise and powerful argument for the importance of understanding Bonhoeffer in light of Luther. Rather than consolidating Bonhoeffer’s dependence on Luther thematically, as DeJonge and Barker do, Krötke moves systematically through core tenets of Bonhoeffer’s theology—Scripture, Christology, sin, justification and sanctification, ethics, and temptation. In doing so, he ranges across Bonhoeffer’s works, showing how Luther’s influence shapes every theme. Krötke is honest about where Bonhoeffer departs from Luther, not shying away from identifying where Bonhoeffer’s departures were less than successful. However, like DeJonge and Barker, he asserts that “Bonhoeffer considered [Luther] an authority with whom he desires to be in agreement even and especially when he goes beyond him . . . His orientation towards Luther’s theology evidently constituted for him the objective orientation of the Protestant Church and theology as such.”¹⁴ Unlike DeJonge, Krötke balks at locating Bonhoeffer within Lutheran confessionalism, citing both his resistance to the Luther offered him by his Berlin professors and the freedom exercised in his incorporation of Luther into his theology. In light of this freedom, Krötke concludes his essay modestly, claiming that in Bonhoeffer “we often encounter Luther. In Bonhoeffer’s theology and life we encounter—far from any Luther cult or Lutheran confessionalism—the heartbeat of one who has a living, Reformed faith in the midst of difficult circumstances.”¹⁵

DeJonge, Barker, and Krötke all substantively ground their respective studies in Bonhoeffer’s works, giving special attention to the way in which he was shaped by the so-called Luther Renaissance.¹⁶ Yet, it is clear that Bonhoeffer relentlessly sought the “real” Luther, rather than settling for the one presented by Holl, Seeberg, Althaus, and others. Even so, Bonhoeffer had little interest in presenting “a harmonious ‘picture of Luther.’”¹⁷ Rather, “for him, Luther—who himself rejected such a picture—represented an unparalleled theological, intellectual, and spiritual impulse and source for his own experiences of faith and reality.”¹⁸

From these studies, it might seem that the flexibility with which Bonhoeffer incorporated Luther’s theological insights conflicts with the assertion that he sought the “original Luther.” However, Bonhoeffer himself provides the key to reconciling these two apparently contradictory lines of thinking in Letters and Papers from Prison. There, in a letter to his parents on October 31, 1943, he writes: “Already one hundred years ago Kierkegaard said that Luther today would say the opposite of what he said back then. I think this is true—cum grano salis.”¹⁹ By this Bonhoe ffer does not mean that he thinks Luther would abandon his core doctrinal insights, but, rather, that his application of those insights would differ markedly. Thus, in Bonhoeffer’s mind, faithfully retrieving the “original Luther” for the sake of the church in the present would, at times, necessarily entail taking up and articulating Luther’s core insights in a highly flexible manner. Viewed in this way, slavish adherence to Luther and Lutheranism is, paradoxically, infidelity to Luther. As such, any account of Luther’s influence on Bonhoeffer must move beyond sketching corresponding thoughts and ideas to a further articulation of what exactly Bonhoeffer does with those thoughts and ideas in order to put them to theological work for the church situation of his time.

Before moving on to consider Luther’s treatment of justification by faith alone as an anthropological concept, it is worth noting that not only are DeJonge, Barker, and Krötke unified in identifying Luther as Bonhoeffer’s theological baseline, but all three also identify the fundamental importance of Luther’s doctrine of justification for understanding Bonhoeffer’s theology. For DeJonge, if Bonhoeffer is, indeed, to be considered within Lutheran confessionalism then his definition of Lutheranism “is focused on justification, a particular account of the person of Christ, and the church community, where the last is defined both in terms of Christ’s presence and the correlative concept of the preached and heard word.”²⁰ Giving special attention to the role of the doctrine of justification in Act and Being and Discipleship, DeJonge concludes that justification is key to the structure of Bonhoeffer’s theology.²¹ Likewise, Barker asserts that, for Bonhoeffer, “the central theological question was that of justification, which, out of necessity, is tied to Christology, for salvation comes through Christ alone.”²² Finally, Krötke simply states that “Bonhoeffer gained his theological framework and categories from Luther’s doctrine of justification.”²³ Indeed, far from a static, theological substratum, Bonhoeffer’s theological work was driven by the doctrine of justification in a comprehensive manner.²⁴

To sum up, i...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Backgrounding Bonhoeffer: Martin Luther on Justification’s Import for Anthropology
• Chapter 2 Justified in Christ and the Church: The Shape of Bonhoeffer’s Early Anthropology
• Chapter 3 Justification against Weltanschauung: Bonhoeffer’s Evaluation of Competing Anthropologies
• Chapter 4 From Anthropology to Ethics: A Pauline Case for Continuity in Bonhoeffer
• Chapter 5 Justification and Witness-Bearing: Discipleship as Embodied Participation in Christ
• Chapter 6 Reconciling Church and World: Justification’s Coordination of the Ultimate and Penultimate
• Chapter 7 Justification against White Supremacy: Retrieval as Critical Corrective
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright