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Finkenwalde - an experiment to restore a failing ecclesiology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Donald Fergus
Donald Fergus*
Affiliation:
PO Box 13 508, Christchurch, New [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper considers Dietrich Bonhoeffer's understanding of the theological dimension of the concept of Christian community and in particular his conviction that believers must avoid the confusion that follows when ‘community romanticism’ (Gemeinschaftsromantik) is equated with the community of saints (Gemeinschaft der Heiligen). Bonhoeffer insisted that the task of building Christian community was one of crafting a space in which Jesus stands between believers, protecting them from the ‘damage of sheerly human immediacy’.1 Without Jesus' mediating presence he believed, everything could go badly wrong.

Keywords

Bonhoefferchurch-communityconfessionFinkenwaldeLebensraummediator
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 204 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Dumas, André, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality, trans. Brown, Robert McAfee (London: SCM Press, 1971), p. 134.Google Scholar

2 London, 1933–1935, vol. 13 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (hereafter DBW), ed. Barnett, Victoria J. and Wojhoski, Barbara (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996–), pp. 284–5.Google Scholar

3 See Willimon, William H., ‘Making Ministry Difficult: The Goal of Seminary’. The Christian Century 130/4 (February 2013), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, vol. 1 of DBW, p. 23.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 178; for a discussion on Lebensraum, see the author's essay in Scottish Journal of Theology 67/1 (2014), pp. 70–84.

8 DBW, vol. 1, p. 178.

9 Ibid., p. 294.

10 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 94.

11 Bethge, Eberhard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, ed. Barnett, Victoria J., rev. edn (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 84Google Scholar.

12 Ibid.

13 Webster, John, Holiness (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), p. 56.Google Scholar

14 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 294.

15 Clements, Keith, Bonhoeffer and Britain (London: Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2006), p. 78.Google Scholar

16 Gerhard Leibholz, the husband of Bonhoeffer's twin sister Sabine (1906–99), was a lawyer and popular law lecturer at the University of Göttingen. Leibholz was a baptised Christian of Jewish descent on his father's side. The Leibholz family made their way to Oxford, England, and after the war returned to Germany, where Gerhard Leibholz became a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany and Professor in the University of Göttingen. He died in Feb. 1982.

17 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, vol. 5 of DBW, p. 3.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., p. 126 (Editors’ Afterword to the German edn).

20 Ibid., p. 122.

21 Ibid.; see pp. 6–20.

22 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York 1928–1931, vol. 10 of DBW, pp. 314–15.

23 See Zimmermann, Wolf-Dieter and Smith, Ronald Gregor (eds), I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Fontana Books, 1973), pp. 59–67; and Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 208, for a reference to the ‘Bonhoeffer circle’ of students.Google Scholar

24 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 461–2.

25 Ibid., p. 467.

26 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 74.

27 Ibid., p. 79.

28 Zimmerman and Smith, I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 19–33.

29 Green, Clifford, ‘Two Bonhoeffers on Psychoanalysis’, in Bonhoeffer Legacy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981), p. 63.Google Scholar

30 Ibid.

31 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 278

32 Ibid., p. 281.

33 Ibid.

34 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter to Eberhard Bethge, 16 July 1944, in Letters and Papers from Prison, vol. 8 of DBW, p. 475.

35 Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 134.

36 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 127 (Editor's Afterword to the German edn).

37 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 221, n. 18.

38 Grenz, Stanley J., ‘Ecclesiology’, in Vanhoozer, Kevin J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), p. 262.Google Scholar

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40 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 41.

41 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, vol. 4 of DBW, p. 96.

42 Ibid., p. 98.

43 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pp. 108–18.

44 Ibid., p. 109.

45 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 465.

46 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pp. 111–14.

47 Bayer, Oswald, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Trapp, Thomas H. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), p. 270Google Scholar.

48 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 34.

49 Ibid., p. 35

50 Ibid., p. 38.

51 Ibid., p. 37.

52 Hauerwas, Stanley, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004), p. 15Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., p. 44.

54 Ibid.

55 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 35.

56 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

57 Ibid., p. 39.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., pp. 40–2.

60 Ibid., p. 44.

61 Ibid., p. 45.

62 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 54.

63 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 31.

64 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, vol. 6 of DBW, p. 90.

65 Ibid., p. 91.