Revelation as the Foundation of Discipleship in the Theology of Barth and Bonhoeffer

Here's the introduction to my recent seminar paper...

            It is a fascinating theological exercise to investigate the places of contention, disagreement, and misunderstanding between the two theological giants Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  While belonging to the same dialectical-theological camp, and united in their opposition to the National Socialists as leaders in the Confessing Church, there are striking theological differences.  A natural place to start to investigate this question is at the end of Bonhoeffer’s career, when he accuses Barth, his mentor, of “positivism of revelation.”[1]  Barth is aghast, and perhaps rightly so, for he feels misunderstood and misinterpreted; he then offers his own less-than-enthusiastic critique of the mysterious direction of Bonhoeffer’s “worldly” theology in Letters and Papers from Prison.[2]  Further divergences can be traced to different emphases within their respective Reformed and Lutheran traditions, as in their differing explanations of the dictum, finitum non capax infiniti – the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.  As a Lutheran, Bonhoeffer feels he can challenge the Reformed interpretation, and Barth makes his own defense of it in his Church Dogmatics.[3] 

Most of these issues have already been thoroughly explored in Barth and Bonhoeffer studies.  Scholars such as Charles Marsh, Andreas Pangritz, and Heinz Tödt offer valuable in-depth analysis and evaluation of these and other issues.[4]  What is more, while Barth and Bonhoeffer clearly have their differences, these differences seem to be a matter of nuance and emphasis, rather than points of major theological divergence.  Most of the seemingly glaring disagreements can be settled as nothing more than misinterpretations or misunderstandings.  In fact, both men are, in large part, pursuing similar theological projects, and their differences are often not much more than matters of focus.[5]  The German theologian Heinz Tödt suggests that a way forward in the Barth and Bonhoeffer discussion is instead to focus on the meeting and merging of their understanding of revelation and the world and its impact for today.[6]  This paper builds upon Tödt’s suggestion by exploring the convergence of the concept of revelation as it relates to a theology of contemporary discipleship in the thought of Barth and Bonhoeffer.

Barth introduces his concept of revelation in a lengthy chapter entitled, “The Revelation of God” in Church Dogmatics I/1 and I/2, and he continues to treat the concept throughout the entirety of this work.  Bonhoeffer’s approach is quite different.  Never having produced a systematic theology, his explanations of revelation are scattered throughout his books, papers, and letters, building and working off of each other.  It is admittedly difficult, therefore, and at worst inaccurate, to organize the convergence of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s understanding of revelation into three over-arching movements, as in this paper.  However, the purpose here is not only to describe the similarities and unique nuances of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s respective concepts of revelation, but to explore these understandings in terms of setting a foundation for a contemporary theology of discipleship.  With this goal in mind, it is appropriate and necessary to propose three aspects of revelation that are readily present in both Barth and Bonhoeffer: revelation is first and foremost Trinitarian; revelation is then Christological-ecclesial; and revelation is finally ethical, in its existence as faith and obedience.  These are certainly not comprehensive categories for describing the concept of revelation in Barth and Bonhoeffer.  What they attempt to offer, however, is a clear framework for understanding a theological foundation for a life of following Jesus Christ.

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[1] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, vol. 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. John de Gruchy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 364, 373, 429.

[2] Cf. Charles Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology (Oxford: University Press, 1994), 25f.

[3] Cf. Joachim von Soosten, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” in Sanctorum Communio, vol. 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Clifford Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 302.  Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, vol. 2 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 84 and editor’s note 7.  Cf., for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (CD) I/1 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), 407f.

[4] Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 3-33; Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000); Pangritz, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Within, not Outside, the Barthian Movement’,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 245-282; Heinz Eduard Tödt, “Belief in a Non-Religious World: Must One Choose Between Barth and Bonhoeffer?” in Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context, English edition, ed. Glen Stassen (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), 30-39.  Additionally, see Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 175-177; Ralf Wüstenberg, A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 60-65.

[5] Marsh, for example, suggests that “the way to make sense of Bonhoeffer’s theological relationship to Barth is to distinguish, as Barth does, between the primary and secondary objectivity of God.”  Barth stresses the primary objectivity of God’s aseity while Bonhoeffer focuses his attention on God’s promeity.  Cf. Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 31.

[6] Tödt, “Belief in a Non-Religious World: Must One Choose Between Barth and Bonhoeffer?” 39.