Abstract
Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture
Keith L. Johnson and Timothy Larson, eds
Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2013. 213 pp. $20.00
These ten essays offer a predominantly evangelical engagement with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology. For this reason, Timothy Larson’s contribution on the evangelical reception of Bonhoeffer perhaps belongs at the beginning. While Larson exposes past evangelical misinterpretations of Bonhoeffer, he provides a helpful corrective to the accusation that evangelicals continue to misappropriate Bonhoeffer. Larson shows that Bonhoeffer shares central evangelical concerns: a critique of nominal faith, of institutional religion devoid of God’s presence, and a deeply pastoral concern for others.
Philip Ziegler’s lead essay on Bonhoeffer as a theologian of the Word confirms Larson’s point, because the centrality of Jesus Christ and his presence through preaching remains an important evangelical distinctive, even if evangelical preaching itself too often degenerates into the moralizing legalism which both Bonhoeffer and classic evangelical homiletics oppose. Ziegler’s knowledgeable exposition of Bonhoeffer’s Word-centered theology reminds evangelicals that neither apologetics nor obsession with the Gospel’s cultural relevance should motivate the church, but the living presence of God through Christ, “the very basis, measure and goal of life itself” (37).
Reggie Williams’s essay convincingly draws attention to the cultural impact of the Harlem Renaissance on Bonhoeffer’s theology, arguing that Bonhoeffer’s incarnational ethical stance, developed before his trip to America, made him receptive to the prophetic, political dimensions of black Gospel living. Sometimes Williams gets somewhat carried away, as for example when he applies his own detailed exposition of Countee Cullen’s Black Christ to Bonhoeffer’s theological formation claiming, “this perspective likely would have proven enlightening for Bonhoeffer” (69). Nonetheless, Williams succeeds in demonstrating the decisive influence of “the black Christ” for Bonhoeffer’s cruciform theology.
Stephen Plant’s essay nicely complements Williams’s essay by delineating other cultural traditions that frame Bonhoeffer’s political theology, identifying minority voices in the Bible, the theology of Martin Luther, and Bonhoeffer’s particular German culture and family as the three “wellsprings” of his political theology (77–81). Plant rightly implies that Bonhoeffer’s idea of biblical mandates for key areas of human existence (work, marriage, government, church) are an original modification of Luther’s “estates” which round off the latter’s two-kingdom theory (80). Plant sketches Bonhoeffer’s theopolitical thinking in terms of two defining concepts: “realistic responsibility” and the “penultimate–ultimate relation.” Based on these concepts, neither a merely political solution nor a radical withdrawal from politics were an option for Bonhoeffer. Rather, political action must always keep in mind the character of every Christian work as preserving the penultimate realities for the sake of their ultimate transformation through Christ (88–89).
This ultimate–penultimate tension shapes the Christian life as responsible action in light of the one-Christ reality. Lori Brand Hale applies this incarnational mode of Christian existence to the idea of vocation, and Keith Johnson to the ideals of the Christian academy. While anyone who has worked in Christian higher education will appreciate Johnson’s argument that Christian liberal arts schools should embody Bonhoeffer’s incarnational stance, one wonders whether the evangelical language of integrating faith and learning does justice to Bonhoeffer’s notion of “one-Christ reality.”
Daniel Trier’s contribution applies Bonhoeffer’s incarnational, non-dualistic theological approach to the question of technology, urging us to embrace technology as part of a world come of age, but also to acknowledge the idolatrous pitfalls of instrumental reason. Joel Lawrence takes the reader more deeply into lived theology by showing the central role of confession in realizing Bonhoeffer’s axiom that the church’s mode of being is a being for others. For Bonhoeffer, only the practice of confession provides the objective confrontation with one’s sin that allows the breakthrough to true community and life together as the new humanity in Christ (127).
Two biographical accounts complete the collection. Jim Belcher’s personal, reflective narrative dramatizes few biographical facts, but movingly conveys the importance of community for Bonhoeffer, the “secret” that gave him strength during the resistance and his imprisonment, a strength Belcher urges us to recover today. Charles Marsh offers an additional biographical narrative, which sparkles with his characteristic clarity and compositional expertise, but seems disconnected from the volume’s stated purpose of examining the relation of Christ and culture in Bonhoeffer’s theology. Marsh offers the reader a running story without explicit theme or obvious relation to the remaining essays. Still, each essay in this volume has its own merit, and readers will come away with a much greater appreciation of Bonhoeffer and with much to think about regarding the church’s ongoing struggle to embody the presence of Christ, who lived, died, and rose for the life of this world.