Theological Journal – February 6 What Dietrich Bonhoeffer (DB) Would Say to the North American Church (2)
No longer living in a “Christian” (religious) world, we must
act like missionaries and do reconnaissance on this new world we hope to
engage. This “world-come-of-age” (WCOA) according to DB is the fruition
of developments in Western culture from the 13th century through the
Renaissance and Enlightenment. Human confidence in its ability to manage and
order its own life without any need of God had reached its apogee. All of life
was now enveloped in this confidence. Bonhoeffer did not think this WCOA meant
this epoch was better or more moral than its predecessor. Or that religion had
vanished and no longer played any role in anyone’s life any more. It did mean,
however, that for large swathes of people in Europe religion and its God no
longer resonated or “computed” in their efforts to find meaning and solve their
problems. And further, it exposed religion, the Christian religion (as opposed
to faith), as a now outdated and ineffectual element of the pre-WCOA epoch the
West had left behind.
“But our entire nineteen hundred years of Christian preaching
and theology are built on the ‘religious a priori’ in human beings.
‘Christianity’ has always been a form (perhaps the true form) of ‘religion.’
Yet if it becomes obvious one day that this ‘a priori’ doesn’t exist, that it
has been a historically conditioned and transitory form of human expression,
then people really will become radically religionless—and I believe that this
is already more or less the case . . .
what does that then mean for ‘Christianity’?” (DBWE 8:10244-10247).
For Bonhoeffer it meant living etsi deus non
daretur – “as if God did not exist” (DBWE 8:13558). And then comes one of
his most mind-bending statements:
“And this is precisely what we do
recognize—before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. Thus our coming
of age leads us to a truer recognition of our situation before God. God would
have us know that we must live as those who manage their lives without God. The
same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34!).The same God
who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the
God before whom we stand continually. Before God, and with God, we live without
God” (DBWE 8:13558-13562).
In a WCOA Christians learn religion – the
existence of a God who intervenes to solve and problems and protect us from the
harms of the world – is not the biblical God. That God insists we live by
faith, being mature and taking responsibility for our lives and actions, and
not assuming God will swoop in and make it alright. God does work like that nor
does God want to be thought of or proclaimed like that. Indeed, “Before God,
and with God, we live without God.”
Bonhoeffer borrowed the term from the
philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, though he did not buy into its mythology, only the
fact of the historical development. Its connotations of maturity and having
arrived were just that, mythic. Indeed, Barry Harvey calls this WCOA an “ironic
myth” (Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real:1690).
Nevertheless, the myth was the temper and perception of the times by most
observers and the fact was that humanity was in control of its future and
destiny and was not about to return to an age where religion, superstition,
taboo, custom, or mythology regained that control over them.
We must enlarge our imaginations to dream new dreams and
innovate fresh approaches to meeting our culture where it is today. It seems
clear that if we continue to try and tweak and strategize to keep the old
Christendom church going with duck tape and bailing wire, our demise will
continue apace. You know the old saying about doing the same things over and
over again and expecting a different result, don’t you? DB repeatedly stressed
the need for a new form of church, not simply a new theology or set of programmatic
emphases.
“For
Bonhoeffer, the answers to these . . . (challenges) lie not in any nostalgic
retreat to the past. He
ultimately refused the path of shoring up decaying institutions and exhausted
forms of piety. Rather, Bonhoeffer insisted, believers must now repent of the
power and control game that they have been playing for far too long. They must
instead enter with fear and trembling into the dangerous drama of Christ’s kenosis—his
self-emptying and co-suffering identification with all of humankind. The
God-forsaken God of religionless Christianity is a living God. But this God is
no longer to be found in our stagnant and increasingly debased institutional
forms. Rather, Bonhoeffer challenges us to consider, Christ is now
paradoxically to be found at the margins, in desolate places, and in and among
‘secular’ people, who in certain ways stand closer to God than the religious
themselves” (Osborn, “Church in Crisis”).
He did not want or expect the church in the world-come-of-age
to look like the Christendom model. Bill Easum says it well:
“Following Jesus into the mission field is either impossible or
extremely difficult for the vast majority of congregations in the Western world
because of one thing: They have a systems story that will not allow them to
take the first step out of the institution into the mission field, even though
the mission field is just outside the door of the congregation . .
. Churches wanting to break free from the quagmire of their dysfunctional
systems and climb out of their downward death spiral must learn to feel, think,
and act differently than they do now. The times in which we live require us to
change our life metaphors, something akin to rewiring the human brain” (Cited in
Hirsch, 2011).
That,
in essence, is what this word from Bonhoeffer to us is about – needing a new
story, new metaphors, that will “rewire” our churchly brains.
And that means good-bye to religion (see the next word). It
doesn’t and will not work for us in the world-come-of-age. We cannot get to
fresh forms of faithfulness and authentic response to our world through it. We
don’t live in Kansas any longer and we best pray, and listen, and learn the
contours of our new situation and discover faith again to engage the
opportunities it presents us.
Then scripture may
come alive again for us as a resource for such engagement. And in the process
of hearing God address us afresh in his Word we will engage the God who is
already present and at work in that new world and can, perhaps, go forth in
faith (to which we turn now).
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