Abstract
In this carefully argued book, Tim Judson integrates the person and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer into the reality and theology of lament. In so doing, he touches intrinsically on soteriology and introduces it creatively and critically into a theological discourse that includes issues of postmodernity, racism, and community. For this, Bonhoeffer provides J. with a critical hermeneutical lens into both the practice and the theology of lament. Recovering the brilliant, hidden mystical connection that Bonhoeffer witnessed and pondered in liturgy, ethics, and theology, J. draws the reader into an awareness of the importance of lament by drawing significantly on his own experience as well.
J. shows in a fascinating way how historical and theological developments have contributed to lament’s exclusion from Christian liturgies, prayer books of Psalms, and spiritual reflections throughout the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Part 1 follows Bonhoeffer’s lead in tracing the theological, ethical, and liturgical dimensions of lament and their internal unity. In the first chapter, entitled “A Theology of Lament,” J. introduces Bonhoeffer’s use of Stellvertretung (substitution), linking it explicitly to solidarity and its non-negotiable enfleshment in community, steering it away from a potentially isolated sacrificial understanding. He argues that “a substantive mode of the church’s being is through lament as ‘vicarious solidarity’ with and for the world reconciled in Christ” (45).
In the second chapter, “An Ethics of Lament,” J. follows Bonhoeffer’s monumental shift from understanding the Christian as a “homo religiosus,” to understanding Christians in their “full this-worldliness of life,” on the way to becoming “a human being, a Christian” (54). Inspired by Bonhoeffer’s paradigm-shifting letter (July 21, 1944), J. summarizes: “Lament is a ‘profound’ means by which disciples are formed as the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Christ, who witnesses through lament what the world really is: ultimately God’s world” (54). J. chooses his epigraph for the book from this letter, in the form of its title, Awake in Gethsemane, and also uses the letter as the basis in terms of which he summarizes the Christian vocation as a “Gethsemanian life until Christ’s return” (70).
Transitioning to the third chapter, “A Liturgy of Lament,” J. claims lament as “unavoidably . . . a sociopolitical act of witness” (70), drawing again on Bonhoeffer’s witness: “Only he who speaks out for the Jews can sing Gregorian chant” (72). Bonhoeffer discovered a polyphony of faith in the Black community in Harlem. His shock over the empty white services in New York and the suffering of the Black community shaped his whole understanding of liturgy as polyphonic and dissonant. Bonhoeffer noted, “Where the Cantus Firmus is clear . . . a counterpoint can develop . . . mightily” (78). This is an insight developed with utmost finesse by one of Bonhoeffer’s favorite musicians, Johann Sebastian Bach, and was importantly incarnated in a community in Harlem undergoing terrible suffering.
In part II, Bonhoeffer and lament get connected deeply. “A Chorus of Lament” (95) is structured around Bonhoeffer’s idea of silence from, with, and for others; as such, lament cannot be separated from the community in which it occurs. Here, J. addresses Bonhoeffer’s question about whether Christian faith makes a person “happy.” Is it not the case, as Bonhoeffer’s beautiful homily on Psalm 42 insists, that “in fact God is closest to us, precisely when we think God is farthest away” (105)? Following this, J. recapitulates a strong critique of the theological use of God’s sovereignty and providence as it had, and still has, disastrous ramifications in histories of colonialism, slave-trade, and ongoing racism. He shows the need for lament in order to defend, searingly, the sovereignty of God, separating it from traditional arguments about providence that silence those who suffer.
“A Story of Lament” operates as the final coda for J’s argument. Learning to lament in community teaches us to highlight the stories that too often are branded as inappropriate for church. J. responds: “the disruptive impact of Christ’s body performing lament . . . witness(es) and embrace(s) who Christ is for us today” (125).
This study develops beautifully, at times in quite dense language, a christological ecclesiology of lament in a Bonhoefferian key. However, I wonder if J. misses his project slightly at times. Linking the imprecatory Psalms exclusively to the crucifixion of Jesus, as he does, raises questions. Does J. adhere so strongly to the Cantus Firmus that he omits the apocalyptic horizon of the July 21, 1944 letter? Might the crucified people (Ellacuría/Sobrino) found in the cruciform lament (Judson) still be crying out in their radical “this-worldliness,” “to Come, Lord Jesus, Maranatha,” pressing the divine for a hearing for their suffering? Might Bonhoeffer himself have been caught between his deeply felt need for a consoling Cantus Firmus, apparent in his petitions to family from prison, and his wrestling with a Cantus Fractus that had become the radical “this-worldliness” of life “with ear-piercing cries” of victims killed by Fascism, welling up within him as he prayed and communicated with his friends?