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.

Not surprised: Barth calls Bonhoeffer brilliant

As I make my way through portions of Barth's Church Dogmatics, it's been fun to see Barth refer to Bonhoeffer.  There were several references in my seminar reading for this week - selections from volume III, The Doctrine of Creation.  I'll set up the scene here for one of my favorite Bonhoeffer shout outs...

In Church Dogmatics III/4 Barth takes up the issue of ethics and identifies it as a task of the doctrine of creation.  Here, he describes how ethics cannot be detached from dogmatics.  He explains: "In books and lectures ethics can be treated independently, that is, in external separation from dogmatics, so long as it is presupposed that this separation is understood and treated as purely technical and therefore that dogmatics is not detached from its ethical content and direction and that the question of dogmatics remains paramount and decisive in ethics" (p. 3).

Basically, Barth is saying that how we think about ethical actions cannot be separated from what we think and believe about God.  I was reminded of Bonhoeffer here, and so was Barth.  Take a look at what Barth now says in the notes: "And the same attitude to the link with dogmatics is a commendable feature of the brilliant Ethik of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which unfortunately exists only in a fragmentary and provisional form" (because Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo while he was still working on the project).

That's right - the brilliant Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  And here's one reason why I gather Barth thinks so.

Barth: "The task of theological ethics is to understand the Word of God as the command of God" (p. 4).
Bonhoeffer: "Those who wish to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand - from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: "How can I be good?" and "How can I do something good?"  Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: what is the will of God?" (Ethics, 47).

Brilliant.  Ethics - for Barth and Bonhoeffer - does not and can not exist apart from the Word and will of God.  Now, certainly there is a distinction between the Word and will of God; but the point is that for both of these theologians the ethical question is ultimately a matter of theological orientation which finds its starting point in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.  Ethics is not a question of doing something good.  Ethics is obedience to the command of God.  What does that mean?  Well, more than I am going to get into now...  I recommend reading - you guessed it - Barth and Bonhoeffer.

I'm writing this quarter on Barth, Bonhoeffer, and revelation... but this ethics connection is tugging at me as well...  I guess I'll have to put it in the hopper for another paper.

Barth, Bonhoeffer, and a theology of revelation

This quarter I'm taking a Karl Barth seminar and am focusing my research on the influence of Barth on Bonhoeffer's theology of revelation.  'Revelation' is the foundation for the theology of discipleship that I am working on, so this should be a very fruitful and exciting opportunity to further my understanding of Bonhoeffer in this area.

I'm starting by getting a thorough overview of Barth's influence on Bonhoeffer by reading Andreas Pangritz's Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Pangritz focuses his research by honing in on Bonhoeffer's critique of Barth's "positivism of revelation," in Letters and Papers from Prison.  I'm still working through the book, but so far am pleased with the depth and insight that Pangritz is offering.  One of the big questions that Barth and Bonhoeffer scholars have is what Bonhoeffer could have meant in this accusation of "positivism of revelation" in Barth - even Barth himself was not sure what to make of Bonhoeffer's comments.  Pangritz treats the whole question and context quite well and so is proving to be a very valuable resource.

I think my research may focus more on Bonhoeffer's earlier work.  I'm particularly interested in seeing where I can find Barth's influence in Creation and Fall, for example.  Since Bonhoeffer's theology is always developing throughout his career, I think it's important to see where he begins in his understanding of revelation.  I will also be curious to see if I can trace nuanced developments of revelation as Bonhoeffer progresses through his middle and later period.

Theological method is the basis, the presuppositions, that someone has when they begin to address theological questions.  Barth's work challenged the prevailing theological method of his time by insisting that theology must begin with God's revelation of himself toward humanity, and not with the human pursuit of the knowledge of God.  Bonhoeffer was one of the early adopters of Barth's method, though certainly did not just accept all of the implications or outworkings (as we see in Letters and Papers).

It is important, then, to have a starting point when we talk about a theology of discipleship.  I'm going to take Barth and Bonhoeffer's lead as I put forth the conviction that only because God freely chooses to reveal himself to us through Jesus Christ can we live and move in a life of discipleship.  We'll have to give it a few weeks (for starters) of research and writing to see how this all comes together.

Bonhoeffer, Barth and Tillich's "A History of Christian Thought"

A History of Christian Thought (published in 1967) is actually a combination of two books of Paul Tillich’s lectures.  The first part, A History of Christian Thought, begins with the Graeco-Roman preparations for Christianity and ends with the post-Reformation development in Protestant theology.  The second part originally appeared as Perspectives on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Protestant Theology.  This section covers a range of topics, beginning with the rise of the Enlightenment and ending with the theology of Karl Barth and modern existentialism. 

            Tillich understands the development of Christian history and theology in terms of kairos.  He explains that the appearance of Jesus Christ happened in one special moment of history when everything was ready for it to happen.  He reminds us that Paul speaks of the kairos in describing the feeling that the time was ripe, mature, or prepared.  Kairos, he reminds us, is just one of two ways that the Greeks had to describe the concept of time.  The other term is chronos, and is clock time, time which is measured.  “Kairos,” he says, “is not the quantitative time of the clock, but the qualitative time of the occasion, the right time” (1).  The story of the gospel is one of “the right time.”  And Tillich works in this first section of his book to show how the foundation for the ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ was being set through culture and philosophy.  Tillich then returns often to this concept throughout the book to remind us of God’s constant attention to kairos throughout Christian history.

            The first part of the book moves from this first section, The Preparation for Christianity, and eventually covers six major movements of Christian thought: Theological Developments in the Ancient Church, Trends in the Middle Ages, Roman Catholicism from Trent to the Present, The Theology of the Protestant Reformers, and The Development of Protestant Theology. The second part of the book covers five sections: Oscillating Emphases in Orthodoxy, Pietism and Rationalism, The Enlightenment and Its Problems, The Classic-Romantic Reaction against the Enlightenment, The Nature of Romanticism, The Classical Theological Synthesis: Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Breakdown of the Universal Synthesis, and New Ways of Mediation.

            One of the most helpful concepts that Tillich illuminated for me is the idea of positivism in theological thought.  He touches on this concept several times throughout the book, and offers particular insight around pages 254 and 398.  Tillich understands positive Christianity as historically given Christianity, meaning that things are simply taken as they are.  So, Luther, for example, understood providence as positivism.  Tillich explains that this means that the Stoic doctrine of natural law, which can be used as a criticism of the positive law has disappeared.  “Practically,” writes Tillich, “he [Luther] says that every Christian must put up with bad government because it comes from God providentially” (255).  And, put simply, Luther can maintain this because he says that God does two kinds of work: his own proper work, the work of love, mercy and grace, and his strange work, which is also a work of love, but a strange one. 

Now, move ahead to Schleiermacher and his positivistic definition of theology (cf. 398f).  Schleiermacher’s famous book The Christian Faith (first published in 1821) is significantly about what is in fact positively given, that is, the Christian faith as such.  “Thus,” says Tillich, “systematic theology is the description of the faith at its present in the Christian churches.  That is a positivist foundation of theology.  You do not have to decide about the truths or untruths of a religion in general or of Christianity in particular.  You find Christianity given as an empirical fact in history, and then you have to describe the meaning of the symbols within it” (399).  Schleiermacher worked to make a very sharp distinction between this empirical positive theology and the so-called rational theology of the Enlightenment.  Now Tillich thinks that the problem with all of this is that it completely leaves out – for the first time in the development of theology, by the way – the question of truth.  You can describe what is going on, then educate leaders of the church in this knowledge, and move forward, without ever decisively dealing with questions of truth.

There is clearly a lot going here, and I am still working to put all the pieces together.  But the reason I am sifting through all of this is because of Bonhoeffer (big surprise, right?).  There is this odd paragraph in Bonhoeffer’s May 5, 1944 letter to Eberhard Bethge in Letters and Papers from Prison that has been stumping me and some of my other Bonhoeffer classmates for quite some time.  This question came up in my Bonhoeffer course at Princeton, and we still had a hard time even with the professor and teaching assistants trying to decipher what Bonhoeffer is saying here.  This letter is one of his more famous ones, where he’s dealing with questions of ‘religionless Christianity.’  He writes, “Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his truly great merit; but he puts in its place a positivistic doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, ‘Like it or lump it’: virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all.  That isn’t biblical.  There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation.  The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is – Christ’s incarnation – a gift for us!  In the place of religion there now stands the church – that is in itself biblical – but the world is left to its own devices, and that’s the mistake” (LPP, 286).

So, Tillich is helping me make sense of this paragraph of Bonhoeffer’s with some insight on the concept of ‘positivism.’  The question that stumped my Princeton colleagues and me was what does Bonhoeffer mean by ‘positivism’?  Of course Princeton being the holy ground for all things Barth, this was an important question – if Bonhoeffer was going to criticize Barth, we needed to know why!  Now, I don’t know if this is an accurate or fair criticism of Barth by Bonhoeffer, but it is certainly worth trying to better understand.  First of all, I’m fairly certain that Bonhoeffer is not advocating for the dismissal of such key doctrines as the Virgin birth or the Trinity.  Remember, this is Bonhoeffer jotting down ideas “in German script” – which he tells Bethge he normally only does for his own thoughts.  But the bigger picture of what he seems to be wrestling with has to do with how we understand, accept, and then apply theology.  The “positive theology” that was “handed down” to Bonhoeffer and others in the German/Lutheran church made a sharp distinction between the church and the state.  Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine (while largely misinterpreted) effectively split the world into a sacred and a secular sphere, with Christ and Christians in the sacred sphere beckoning those in the world to leave the secular and join the sacred.  This doctrine also allowed Christians to be in the sacred sphere on Sunday and the secular sphere on all other days.  The split of church and state had also bifurcated individual lives. 

Bonhoeffer says that this is not acceptable any more.  This may be positivistic theology, and thus may even be where Barth is arguing from, but all it does is leave the world to its own devices.  The church, affirms Bonhoeffer, stands not in a separate sphere, but stands with Jesus Christ in the very center of all reality.  Jesus Christ is for the world and exists in the midst of the world.  If our theology leads us to believe otherwise, be it positivistic or anything else, we need to re-evaluate our thinking based on what is biblical and revealed through the in-breaking of Jesus Christ.

Much more needs to be explored and investigated with all of this, but it is an exciting discovery nonetheless!