Bonhoeffer, pt. 2

Too good not to share...this snippet comes from a section where Metaxas deconstructs the story that Bonhoeffer radically changed in prison and his Christianity was suddenly co-opted by bad theology and theologically liberal techniques. Sadly theological liberals aren't the only ones who have bought this story, theological conservatives have too.

Here is a paragraph of Metaxas' thoughts on the whole thing:

Bonhoeffer's theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew "the world," but that saw it as God's good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended. According to this view, God had redeemed mankind through Jesus Christ, had re-created us "good." So we weren't to dismiss our humanity as something "un-spiritual." As Bonhoeffer had said before, God wanted our "yes" to him to be a "yes" to the world he had created. This was not the thin pseudohumanism of the liberal "God is dead" theologians who would claim Bonhoeffer's mantle as their own in the decades to come, nor was it the antihumanism of the pious and "religious" theologians who would abdicate Bonhoeffer's theology to the liberals. It was something else entirely: it was God's humanism, redeemed in Jesus Christ. (p.468)

In addition, Metaxas provides information that Bonhoeffer's closest confidant in those prison days, Eberhard Bethge, lamented how many misconstrued his letters/thoughts in prison. It should be further noted that these thoughts and letters were written privately to Bethge, and were only released by Bethge after the war to give certain theologians a glimpse of what prison life was like for Bonhoeffer the person and theologian. Bethge's own thoughts were,

The isolated use and handing down of the famous term 'religionless Christianity' has made Bonhoeffer the champion of an undialectical shallow modernism which obscures all that he wanted to tell us about the living God.

Nearly finished with the book, already highly recommend it for all to read!

Bonhoeffer

Winter Quarter is over, been spending a few days in the warm Florida sun (West Palm Beach/Port St. Lucie) reading Eric Metaxas' great biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Go out and get this book, I'm halfway through (300+ pages of an almost 600 page book, but don't let that scare you!) and this book has rocked my world. There have been so many quotes Metaxas has provided of Bonhoeffer's that have touched me, but I felt compelled to post this one in particular. The context is Bonhoeffer's second trip to America, he writes in his diary:

The voice of Lutheranism is there in America, but it is one among others: it has never been able to confront the other denominations. There hardly ever seem to be "encounters" in this great country, in which the one can always avoid the other. But where there is no encounter, where liberty is the only unifying factor, one naturally knows nothing of the community which is created through encounter. The whole life together is completely different as a result. Community in our sense, whether cultural or ecclesiastical, cannot develop there. Is that true?

The year is 1939, and he's about ready to return to Germany to have an encounter with the anti-Christian German Christian Church and Hitler himself. What kind of encounters are we having in America? Lutherans especially...

Heavy