Just How Augustinian is Bonhoeffer?

 

Eberhard Bethge’s definitive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer runs to over 1,000 pages in length, and contains only three references to St. Augustine.  Bethge first mentions that Bonhoeffer took a seminar on Augustine’s City of God from Adolf von Harnack in the winter semester of 1925-1926.[1]  During the same period, Bonhoeffer was reading Reinhold Seeberg’s Textbook of the History of Doctrines, from which Bonhoeffer first gained his knowledge on Augustine.[2]  Lastly, Bethge mentions that Bonhoeffer had an affinity for Augustine’s saying that “the heart is restless until it rests in God”; while an assistant pastor in Barcelona in 1928-1929, Bonhoeffer used this quote in several different sermons.[3]  By Bethge’s account (and there is little reason to take issue with it) Martin Luther and especially Karl Barth played a much more prominent role in the shaping and development of Bonhoeffer’s theology.  This seems to suggest that Augustine is present in a number of ways, especially early in Bonhoeffer’s development, but does not readily stand out as a key figure that had a direct and lasting influence on his theological formation.

            Bonhoeffer does make explicit and significant use of Augustine in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, but the great Church Father seems to fade quickly into the background of his subsequent theological work.  Bonhoeffer scholarship at large consequently limits the discussion of Augustine to the early period.[4]  Yet, careful analysis of the primary sources reveals a lasting Augustinian influence in Bonhoeffer’s thought.  The direct citation and appropriation of Augustine retreat after the Barcelona sermons, but the foundations are set for a lifetime of creative and direct application of Augustine’s theology.

            Augustinian influence on Bonhoeffer’s work is particularly evident in regards to his consideration of the Psalms – his favorite portion of Scripture.  The Psalms helped shape his devotional life and influenced his theology, especially during times of considerable hardship and anxiety.  Bonhoeffer was particularly attentive to the message of the psalmist during his time as director of the preacher’s seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 to 1937.  Life Together and the short essay Prayerbook of the Bible were both composed during this period and both contain significant reflections on praying the Psalms.  Here, Bonhoeffer employed a decidedly Augustinian approach to exegesis and hermeneutics; he placed Jesus Christ and the church at the very center of interpretation.  This was Augustine’s approach, in common with many of the Church Fathers, and even Luther much later, but entirely out of step with Bonhoeffer’s education at the University of Berlin, where historical-critical methodology was commonly (if not universally) employed.

            This paper proposes that Bonhoeffer’s commitment to a Christ-centered interpretation of the Psalms derives in part from his continuing appreciation of – and interaction with – Augustine.  Admittedly, Augustine is not the only or even the most important influence upon Bonhoeffer’s Christ-centered approach to exegesis; surely both Barth and Luther played a more active role in this regard.  But to minimize (or overlook altogether) Augustine’s influence on Bonhoeffer’s theological development would lead to a distorted view of Bonhoeffer’s own theological reflections and constructions, especially in regards to Bonhoeffer’s work on the Psalms.  More specifically, the unique meaning of his Prayerbook of the Bible and a pastoral document titled “Meditations on Psalm 119” from 1939-1940 is revealed only when they are read alongside Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms.  Not only is Bonhoeffer’s interpretive methodology for the Psalms clearly elucidated through the lens of Augustine, but Augustine’s own exegesis of Psalm 119 finds surprising parallels in Bonhoeffer’s “Meditation on Psalm 119.”  Scholars have recognized that Bonhoeffer had in his possession a marked-up copy of Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms from 1936.  Even though Bonhoeffer neglected to make reference to (or cite) Augustine in his work on the Psalms, this paper will illustrate that Augustine remained a faithful and vital theological and pastoral interlocutor for him at this crucial time in his life.

            To make this argument, it will be necessary first to set out the specific origins of Augustine’s thought on Bonhoeffer.  Of particular importance will be Bonhoeffer’s discovery of the Augustinian use of the concept sanctorum communio.  Not only did this become the title of Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation, the concept became a defining aspect of his entire theology.  Next, the investigation will describe how Augustine and Bonhoeffer each came to significant interaction with the Psalms.  Their similar, yet distinct, interpretive methods will then be displayed in a comparison of their exegetical work on Psalm 119:1-3.  Finally, the conclusions of Bonhoeffer’s work with the Psalms will be applied to a larger theological project that is seeking to describe the development of Bonhoeffer’s theology of discipleship.  For Bonhoeffer, praying the Psalms was an integral aspect of the “action of discipleship,” which found its true form as Christ-centered belief-obedience.

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[1] See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 67.

[2] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 70.

[3] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 112.

[4] See Barry Harvey, “Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. Peter Frick (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 11-18.

Is Pride the Root of All Sin?

Pride and Sin in the Augustinian Tradition

            Augustine argues that pride is the root of every sin.  In Book XII, chapter 6 of City of God, pride is identified as the cause for the evil angels’ misery; in Book XIV, chapter 13, writing of the first human sin, Augustine similarly asks, “could anything but pride have been the start of the evil will?”[1]  In both sections, Augustine employs the logic behind Ecclus. 10:13: “the beginning of all sin is pride.”[2]  Fallen angels and the first humans both turn their gaze inwards, towards themselves, and in doing so they demonstrate a longing for “a perverse kind exaltation.”[3]  Instead of fixing their gaze upon the immutable God, these creatures – created ex nihilo[4] – seek a change within themselves.  This prideful desire is the beginning of the evil will and quickly leads to the first evil act of disobedience.  Conversely, then, the sign of obedience is humility, and it is humility which in actuality exalts.  For Augustine, this is because, “devout humility makes the mind subject to what is superior.  Nothing is superior to God; and that is why humility exalts the mind by making it subject to God.”[5]  This dichotomy between humility and pride are defining characteristics of Augustine’s two cities.  Love of God is the first prize in the heavenly city, while those abiding in the temporal city seek only to love themselves.[6]

            Augustine’s understanding of pride establishes what becomes a classic theological formulation of sin.  The notion that pride caused the original rebellion against God can be traced from Augustine, through theologians like Thomas Aquinas,[7] and well into twentieth century theology.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, works from the same Ecclus. 10:13-14 passage in his 1939 book Life Together to argue that “the spirit and flesh of human beings are inflamed by pride, for it is precisely in their wickedness that human beings want to be like God.”[8]  Like Augustine before him, Bonhoeffer claims that confession of our inherently selfish pride only comes through identifying with the humiliation of the cross of Jesus Christ.  This theological tradition certainly has its merits; it seems quite clear that pride plays a crucial role in humankind’s rejection of God.  However, recent feminist theology offers a needed critique of the simple notion of equating “pride” with “sin.”

A Necessary Critique

            Bonhoeffer scholar Lisa Dahill points to the abuse and exploitation of women as a warning against a simplistic insistence that one must always humble oneself to overcome any and all sin.  She recounts the story of Shirley, who attended a lecture at her church that explained how Bonhoeffer’s concept of loving one’s enemy involved complete and utter surrender to the “other,” even to the point of surrendering one’s life.  Afterwards, Shirley remarked to the lecturer, “if I had been hearing this theology thirty years ago, I would be dead right now.”[9]  Bonhoeffer’s specific historical and contextual theological expositions on the necessity of self-denial had been universalized by the lecturer to suggest that someone like Shirley, who one night found herself being strangled by a male aggressor, could only overcome the evil through selfless humiliation.  Fortunately that night, Shirley forcefully exerted herself and was able to flee to safety.  Dahill’s point is that Bonhoeffer’s (and thus Augustine’s) unchallenged notions of the relation between selfhood, pride, and sin need to be reassessed, particularly taking into account the experience and theology of those outside a tradition that is so often dominated by Western males.

            It would not be historically and theologically fair to assert that the entirety of Bonhoeffer’s and Augustine’s understanding of sin can be reduced to pride.  Certainly both theologians argue that pride ushered in the first acts of sin, and they both frame their argument around the claim in Ecclus. 10:13 that the root of all sin is pride.  However, William Mann points out that Augustine “is careful to insist that pride is not a component in all sins.”  Some sins, for example, “are committed in ignorance or desperation.”[10]  Mann cites Augustine’s De natura et gratia in offering this clarification.  In City of God, on the other hand, Augustine does not seem to find it necessary to explore conceptions of sin beyond the inherent connection with pride.  And it is this exposition in City of God that serves, at least in part, to establish a dominant and lasting theological understanding of sin. 

Context is the Root of Application

Bonhoeffer certainly relies on this Augustinian tradition of interpretation, but Dahill is right to insist on the necessity of critical contextualization in the appropriation of Bonhoeffer’s theology, especially around the issue of selfhood.  She argues that such a claim “is consistent with Bonhoeffer's own lifelong insistence that truth is never abstract, absolute, or fixed, but requires prayerful, concrete discernment in every new context within the flow of highly complex social-historical circumstances.”[11]  Contemporary theology would then do well to appropriate the likes of Augustine and Bonhoeffer’s claim that pride is the root of all sin with careful nuance.  Application of this theology must be met with deliberate awareness of the potentially disastrous consequences that an unfettered equation of “pride” with “sin” could wreak on the life of someone like Shirley.

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[1] Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (Penguin Classics, 2003), 571.

[2] Augustine, City of God, 477.  The translator renders the verse as “pride is the start of every kind of sin” in the second instance, 571.

[3] Augustine, City of God, 571.

[4] For Augustine, that God creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – is decisive in explaining how sin could have entered the world through God’s good creation: “But only a nature created out of nothing could have been distorted by a fault.  Consequently, although the will derives its existence, as a nature, from its creation by God, its falling away from its true being is due to its creation out of nothing.”  See Augustine, City of God, 572.  William Mann explains that Augustine’s concept of good creation ex nihilo is especially important to Augustine’s work in resolving the problem of evil.  See Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, eds. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41-42.

[5] Augustine, City of God, 572.

[6] Augustine, City of God, 573.

[7] The editor references Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, 2a-2ae, q. 162, a. 7 and Augustine to illustrate the trajectory of this doctrine in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, volume 5 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 111.

[8] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 111.

[9] Lisa Dahill, “Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 3, no. 8 (August 2003), para. 3, http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/August-2003/Readings-from-the-Underside-of-Selfhood-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-and-Spiritual-Formation.aspx (accessed April 17, 2012).

[10] Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” 47.

[11] Dahill, “Reading from the Underside of Selfhood,” para. 6.