Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theological Letters and Papers

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1.April 30th 1944 Fortress Press 2015 Readers’ Edition, P. 352

  1. Another month gone! Do you find time flies as I do here? It often amazes me — and when will the month come when we shall meet again? Such tremendous events are taking place in the world outside, events which will have a profound effect on the course of our lives. This makes me wish I could write to you more frequently, if partly because I don’t know how much longer I shall be able to, but above all because I want to make the most of what opportunities I have of sharing everything with you. I am firmly convinced that by the time you get this letter great decisions will have been reached on all fronts. During the coming weeks we shall have to be very brave: we must keep our wits about us and be prepared for the worst. I am reminded of the biblical Set, and I feel as curious as the angels in I Peter 1.12 as to how God intends to resolve these apparently insoluble issues. I am sure God is about to do something which we can only accept with wonder and amazement. We shall, if we have eyes to see, realize the truth of Psalm 58.12b and Psalm 9.20f. And we shall have to repeat Jeremiah 45.5 to ourselves every day. It is harder for you to go through all this alone than it is for me, so I will think of you especially, as indeed I am already doing now.
  2. How good it would be if we could go through this time together, standing side by side. But it is probably best for us to face it alone. I am so sorry I can’t help you at all, except by thinking of you as I read the Bible every morning and evening, and often during the day. You really must not worry about me, for I’m getting on uncommonly well, and you would be astonished if you came to see me. They keep on telling me that I am ‘radiating so much peace around me’, and that I am ‘ever so cheerful’. Very flattering, no doubt, but I’m afraid I don’t always feel like that myself. You would be surprised and perhaps disturbed if you knew how my ideas on theology are taking shape. This is where I miss you most of all, for there is no one else who could help me so much to clarify my own mind.
  3. The thing that keeps coming back to me is, what is Christianity, and indeed what is Christ, for us today? The time when men could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or simply pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience, which is to say the time of religion as such. We are proceeding towards a time of no religion at all: men as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so when they say ‘religious’ they evidently mean something quite different.
  4. Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rests upon the ‘religious premise’ of man. What we call Christianity has always been a pattern — perhaps a true pattern — of religion. But if one day it becomes apparent that this a priori ‘premise’ simply does not exist, but was an historical and temporary form of human self-expression, i.e. if we reach the stage of being radically without religion — and I think this is more or less the case already, else how is it, for instance, that this war, unlike any of those before it, is not calling forth any ‘religious’ reaction? — what does that mean for ‘Christianity’?
  5. It means that the linchpin is removed from the whole structure of our Christianity to date, and the only people left for us to light on in the way of ‘religion’ are a few ‘last survivals of the age of chivalry’, or else one or two who are intellectually dishonest. Would they be the chosen few? Is it on this dubious group and none other that we are to pounce, in fervour, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them the goods we have to offer? Are we to fall upon one or two unhappy people in their weakest moment and force upon them a sort of religious coercion?
  6. If we do not want to do this, if we had finally to put down the western pattern of Christianity as a mere preliminary stage to doing without religion altogether, what situation would result for us, for the Church? How can Christ become the Lord even of those with no religion? If religion is no more than the garment of Christianity — and even that garment has had very different aspects at different periods — then what is a religionless Christianity?
  7. Barth, who is the only one to have started on this line of thought, has still not proceeded to its logical conclusion, but has arrived at a positivism of revelation which has nevertheless remained essentially a restoration. For the religionless working man, or indeed, man generally, nothing that makes any real difference is gained by that.
  8. The questions needing answers would surely be: What is the significance of a Church (church, parish, preaching, Christian life) in a religionless world? How do we speak of God without religion, i.e. without the temporally-influenced presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (but perhaps we are no longer capable of speaking of such things as we used to) in secular fashion of God? In what way are we in a religionless and secular sense Christians, in what way are we the Ekklesia , ‘those who are called forth’, not conceiving of ourselves religiously as specially favoured, but as wholly belonging to the world? Then Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, indeed and in truth the Lord of the world. Yet what does that signify? What is the place of worship and prayer in an entire absence of religion? Does the secret discipline, or, as the case may be, the distinction (which you have met with me before) between penultimate and ultimate, at this point acquire fresh importance?
  9. I must break off for to-day, so that the letter can be posted straight away. In two days I will write to you further on the subject. I hope you have a rough idea what I’m getting at, and that it does not bore you. Good-bye for the present. It isn’t easy to keep writing without any echo from you. You must excuse me if that makes it rather a monologue!
  10. I find after all I can carry on writing. — The Pauline question whether circumcision is a condition of justification is to-day, I consider, the question whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from circumcision is at the same time freedom from religion. I often ask myself why a Christian instinct frequently draws me more to the religionless than to the religious, by which I mean not with any intention of evangelizing them, but rather, I might almost say, in ‘brotherhood’. While I often shrink with religious people from speaking of God by name — because that Name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I strike myself as rather dishonest (it is especially bad when others start talking in religious jargon: then I dry up completely and feel somehow oppressed and ill at ease) — with people who have no religion I am able on occasion to speak of God quite openly and as it were naturally.
  11. Religious people speak of God when human perception is (often just from laziness) at an end, or human resources fail: it is really always the Deus ex machina they call to their aid, either for the so-called solving of insoluble problems or as support in human failure — always, that is to say, helping out human weakness or on the borders of human existence. Of necessity, that can only go on until men can, by their own strength, push those borders a little further, so that God becomes superfluous as a Deus ex machina. I have come to be doubtful even about talking of ‘borders of human existence’. Is even death today, since men are scarcely afraid of it anymore, and sin, which they scarcely understand any more, still a genuine borderline? It always seems to me that in talking thus we are only seeking frantically to make room for God. I should like to speak of God not on the borders of life but at its centre, not in weakness but in strength, not, therefore, in man’s suffering and death but in his life and prosperity. On the borders it seems to me better to hold our peace and leave the problem unsolved. Belief in the Resurrection is not the solution of the problem of death.
  12. The ‘beyond’ of God is not the beyond of our perceptive faculties. The transcendence of theory based on perception has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is the ‘beyond’ in the midst of our life. The Church stands not where human powers give out, on the borders, but in the centre of the village. That is the way it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little on the basis of the Old. The outward aspect of this religionless Christianity, the form it takes, is something to which I am giving much thought, and I shall be writing to you about it again soon. It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall an important responsibility.
  13. It would be grand to have a line from you on all this; indeed it would mean more to me than you can imagine, I’m sure. I suggest you should look at Proverbs 22:11, 12. There’s some- thing that will bar the way against any kind of pious escapism.

2.May 5th 1944 361

  1. I imagine you must be on leave by now, and this letter will have to be sent on to you. Unfortunately that will mean it will be out of date by the time it reaches you, for life is so uncertain nowadays. Yet long experience suggests that everything remains as it is rather than suddenly changes, so I should like to write to you all the same. I’m getting along pretty well, and so is the case, though the date still hasn’t been fixed. But all good things take us by surprise when they do come, so I’m waiting confidently for that.
  2. A bit more about ‘religionlessness’. I expect you remember Bultmann’s paper on the demythologizing of the New Testament? My view of it to-day would be not that he went too far, as most people seem to think, but that he did not go far enough. It is not only the mythological conceptions, such as the miracles, the ascension and the like (which are not in principle separable from the conceptions of God, faith and so on) that are problematic, but the ‘religious’ conceptions themselves. You cannot, as Bultmann imagines, separate God and miracles, but you do have to be able to interpret and proclaim both of them in a ‘non-religious’ sense, Bultmann’s approach is really at bottom the liberal one (i.e. abridging the Gospel), whereas I seek to think theologically.
  3. What do I mean by ‘interpret in a religious sense’? In my view, that means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other individualistically. Neither of these is relevant to the Bible message or to the man of today.
  4. Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there are more important things than bothering about such a matter? (Perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more than bothering about it.) I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that. But is it not, at bottom, even Biblical? Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one’s soul at all? Is not righteousness and the kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and is not Romans 3.24ff, too, the culmination of the view that in God alone is righteousness, and not in an individualistic doctrine of salvation?

RO 3:24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement[e]by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed;26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

  1. It is not with the next world that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved and set subject to laws and atoned for and made new. What is above the world is, in the Gospel, intended to exist for this world — I mean that not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, pietistic, ethical theology, but in the Bible sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  2. Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, — and that remains his really great merit — but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, ‘Take it or leave it’: Virgin Birth, Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which latter has to be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That is not in accordance with the Bible. There are degrees of perception and degrees of significance, i.e. a secret discipline must be re-established whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are preserved from profanation. The positivist doctrine of revelation makes it too easy for itself, setting up, as in the ultimate analysis it does, a law of faith, and mutilating what is, by the incarnation of Christ, a gift for us. The place of religion is taken by the Church — that is, in itself, as the Bible teaches it should be — but the world is made to depend upon itself and left to its own devices, and that is all wrong.
  3. I am thinking over the problem at present how we may reinterpret in the manner ‘of the world’ — in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1.14 — the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, sanctification and so on. I shall be writing to you again about that.

JN 1:14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,full of grace and truth.

  1. Forgive me for writing all this in German script — normally I only use it when making notes for myself. And perhaps my reason for writing all this is to clear my own mind, rather than for your edification. I don’t really want to bother you with such problems, for 1 don’t suppose you will find time to come to grips with them, and there’s no need to worry you unnecessarily. But I can’t help sharing my thoughts with you, for the simple reason that that’s the only way I can clarify my own mind. If this doesn’t suit you, please say so. — To-morrow is Cantate [the Fourth Sunday after Easter], and I shall be thinking of you, and enjoying pleasant memories. Good-bye. Be patient like me, and take care of yourself.

3.May 21st 1944 THOUGHTS ON THE BAPTISM OF DWRB274

  1. Today you are being baptized as a Christian. The ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be uttered over you, and the command of Jesus to baptize will be performed over you, without your knowing anything about it. But we too are being driven back to first principles. Atonement and redemption, regeneration, the Holy Ghost, the love of our enemies, the cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship — all these things have become so problematic and so remote that we hardly dare any more to speak of them. In the traditional rite and ceremonies we are groping after something new and revolutionary without being able to understand it or utter it yet. That is our own fault.
  2. During these years the Church has fought for self-preservation as though it were an end in itself, and has thereby lost its chance to speak a word of reconciliation to mankind and the world at large. So our traditional language must perforce become powerless and remain silent, and our Christianity today will be confined to praying for and doing right by our fellow men.
  3. Christian thinking, speaking and organization must be reborn out of this praying and this action. By the time you are grown up, the form of the Church will have changed beyond recognition. We are not yet out of the melting pot, and every attempt to hasten matters will only delay the Church’s conversion and purgation. It is not for us to prophesy the day, but the day will come when men will be called again to utter the word of God with such power as will change and renew the world. It will be a new language, which will horrify men, and yet overwhelm them by its power. It will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language which proclaims the peace of God with men and the advent of his kingdom.

—‘And (they) shall fear and tremble for all the good and for all the peace that I procure unto it* (Jeremiah 33:9)-

  1. Until then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right and wait for God’s own time.

‘The path of the righteous is as a shining light,

That shineth more and more unto the perfect day’ (Proverbs 4.18).

4.June 8th 1944 415

  1. I daresay, all things considered, you went off with a much lighter heart than you had feared at first. We had put off our meeting again from Christmas to Easter, then from Easter to Whitsun; first one feast passed then another. But the next feast is sure to be ours; I have no doubt about that now.
  2. You have asked so many important questions on the subjects that have been occupying me lately, that I should be happy if I could answer them all myself. But I’m afraid the whole thing is very much in the initial stages. As usual, I am led on more by an instinctive feeling for the questions which are bound to crop up rather than by any conclusions I have reached already.
  3. I will try to define my position from the historical angle. The movement beginning about the thirteenth century (I am not going to get involved in any arguments about the exact date) towards the autonomy of man (under which head I place the discovery of the laws by which the world lives and manages in science, social and political affairs, art, ethics and religion) has in our time reached a certain completion. Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis. In questions concerning science, art, and even ethics, this has become an understood thing which one scarcely dares to tilt at any more. But for the last hundred years or so it has been increasingly true of religious questions also: it is becoming evident that everything gets along without 'God’, and just as well as before. As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, what we call ‘God’ is being more and more edged out of life, losing more and more ground.
  4. Catholic and Protestant historians are agreed that it is in this development that the great defection from God, from Christ, is to be discerned, and the more they bring in and make use of God and Christ in opposition to this trend, the more the trend itself considers itself to be anti-Christian. The world which has attained to a realization of itself and of the laws which govern its existence is so sure of itself that we become frightened. False starts and failures do not make the world deviate from the path and development it is following; they are accepted with fortitude and detachment as part of the bargain, and even an event like the present war is no exception. Christian apologetic has taken the most varying forms of opposition to this self-assurance. Efforts are made to prove to a world thus come of age that it cannot live without the tutelage of ‘God’. Even though there has been surrender on all secular problems, there still remain the so-called ultimate questions — death, guilt — on which only ‘God’ can furnish an answer, and which are the reason why God and the Church and the pastor are needed. Thus we live, to some extent, by these ultimate questions of humanity. But what if one day they no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered without 'God’?
  5. We have of course the secularized off-shoots of Christian theology, the existentialist philosophers and the psychotherapists, who demonstrate to secure, contented, happy mankind that it is really unhappy and desperate, and merely unwilling to realize that it is in severe straits it knows nothing at all about, from which only they can rescue it. Wherever there is health, strength, security, simplicity, they spy luscious fruit to gnaw at or to lay their pernicious eggs in. They make it their object first of all to drive men to inward despair, and then it is all theirs. That is secularized methodism. And whom does it touch? A small number of intellectuals, of degenerates, of people who regard themselves as the most important thing in the world and hence like looking after themselves. The ordinary man who spends his everyday life at work, and with his family, and of course with all kinds of hobbies and other interests too, is not affected. He has neither time nor inclination for thinking about his intellectual despair and regarding his modest share of happiness as a trial, a trouble or a disaster.

FALSE CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS