The
1933 summer semester at the University of Berlin opened with a massive bonfire
of burning books. Students and
professors joined the SA in celebrating May 10 as national “will to live” day
by tossing the works of Einstein, Freud, Rathenau, Heuss, and others into the
flames; the same spectacle could be observed in university towns all across
Germany. Joseph Goebbels, Adolf
Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, concluded the anti-intellectual ceremony in
Berlin by exclaiming, “Oh century, oh scholarship, it is a joy to be alive!”[1] Among those whose name was
ritualistically shouted by the crowd as his book went up in flames was Heinrich
Heine. A century earlier he had
written: “When they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.”[2]
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a junior lecturer at the University of Berlin that
summer, and he offered a lecture series on Christology. He considered the course his most
demanding and difficult because, as his biographer Eberhard Bethge explains,
“he had to bring together all of his thoughts, statements, and experiments and
test their validity and foundation.”[3] Bonhoeffer was now at the high point of
his academic career, and the series on Christology forced him to articulate succinctly
this aspect of his theology. However,
the course was not carried out in theological isolation. The stirring events around the rise and
rule of Hitler and Nazism were a constant combatant against the core of
Bonhoeffer’s being and beliefs. At
one point during the semester, Bonhoeffer chose to cancel a lecture in order to
organize and prepare leaflets for church elections. He led a group of students and German Evangelical church
sympathizers in forming the Young Reformation movement to act against the
rising influence of the so-called German Christians in church leadership. The church election was largely rigged
in favor of the German Christians, who were swept into power in July of 1933.[4]
In
the midst of these early tumultuous months of Hitler’s rule, Bonhoeffer
presents an original and cohesive Christology. The Christology lectures certainly build and work from
concepts developed in earlier works, like his dissertation Sanctorum Communio and his habilitation
Act and Being, but they also offer a clear way forward for Bonhoeffer’s
emerging theology of discipleship.
Bonhoeffer addresses the central question “who is Jesus Christ” in the
lectures. In doing so, he provides
insights that, as was noted by Bethge above, work to bring together all of his
experimental thoughts and ideas.
Two sources specifically force
Bonhoeffer into the creative work of theological construction: liberal theology
and its nemesis dialectical theology both exert a strong influence on
Bonhoeffer’s development. The
Christology lectures afford the opportunity to examine how successfully
Bonhoeffer appropriated the two divergent theological traditions. Liberal theology, espoused by his eminent
teacher and mentor Adolf von Harnack, relied solely on the science of
historical study to discover the human Jesus of Nazareth. Theologically, however, Bonhoeffer was
much more drawn to the emerging work of dialectical theology and its commitment
to revelation, represented by Karl Barth.
But Bonhoeffer was never so critical of liberal theology as to dismiss
its insights. Instead, he works,
especially in the Christology lectures, to coherently incorporate liberal
theology into dialectical theology.
The result, this paper argues, are critical Christological formulations
that serve to frame Bonhoeffer’s larger development of a theology of
discipleship. This theology of
discipleship acts as both a summary of Bonhoeffer’s driving question, “who is
Jesus Christ,” and it provides a compelling way to help formulate a
contemporary theological construction of discipleship.[5]
The
paper will proceed in three phases.
First, it will address the historically decisive divide between the
liberal theology of Harnack and the dialectical theology of Barth in order to
show how Bonhoeffer seeks to provide a critical but fair incorporation of
liberal into dialectical theology.
Second, it will show how this move of incorporation propels his
construction of a “positive” Christology in the lectures. Finally, the paper will argue that this
positive Christology in turn provides an important framework for Bonhoeffer’s
emerging theology of discipleship.
(Excerpt from Winter 2012 seminar paper)
[1] See Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed.
(Minneapolis: Fortress: 2000), 279-80 and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932-1933, vol. 12 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English
edition, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 4. Subsequent references to the English
edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works
will be abbreviated as DBWE.
[2] Bonhoeffer, DBWE 12, 4.
[3] Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 219.
[4] See Bethge, Bonhoeffer, 293-95.
[5] This paper is part of a
larger historical and constructive theological project that offers the
development of a theology of discipleship as a key hermeneutic in the life and
thought of Bonhoeffer.
