A Model Academic

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a lot of things. A martyr. A resistance fighter. The hero of a fallen leader. He is an inspiring writer who cared about Christ and his church. Yet for all this, we rarely see Bonhoeffer as a model academic. Unless of course you are Marilynne Robinson.

Robinson's Bonhoeffer is more than this of course. But to understand Bonhoeffer you need to understand him as an academic. Earning a doctorate in theology by the age of 21, Bonhoeffer started to lecture in the University of Berlin by the time he was 22. He would go onto to teach in some of Germany's finest academic institutions of the time. And yet, unlike so many other academic contemproaries, Bonhoeffer understand the danger posed by Hitler's National Socialism. As a Christian in academia, Bonhoeffer was prepared to let his beliefs shape every part of his life, even if it lead him to the hangman's noose. Having read Robinson's homage to Bonhoeffer in The Death of Adam, I want to suggest three reasons why Bonhoeffer stands out as a model academic.

1. Christ at the Centre. The central focus point of Bonhoeffer's academic career, and indeed his life, was the Lordship of Jesus. He is the one with full authority. He is the one who is to be obeyed and trusted - in life and in death. It was his commitment to Christ at the centre that lead Bonhoeffer to shape everything around this reality. It was this reality that prevented Bonhoeffer from submitting to any other authority.
2. Religionless Christianity. I have to admit that although I've heard this phrase thrown around quite a bit, it's baffled me. Until I realized what it actually means. Often used as an excuse to stop 'stuffy, anachronistic liturgy' etc. Bonhoeffer used this phrase to challenge his culture. In a nation where everyone and everything assumed Christianity, Bonhoeffer used his place as an academic - in the university and the seminary - to call the assumed a priori of god in German society hypocrisy. His vocation as a scholar was to call Germany to denounce the Fuhrer and follow the true lord.
3. Christ at Gethsemane. These two points made Bonhoeffer an academic who was well thought-out and integrated in his faith and study, and willing to let this shape his dialogue with the world.

   "By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world - watching with Christ in Gethsemane...How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God's suffering through a life of this kind?"

   The scion of German aristocracy and one of the greatest minds of his generation, Bonhoeffer could have stayed quiet in the ivory tower of academia. He could of, but he didn't, because Christ went to Gethsemane. He would be an integrated scholar who would get involved in the world's mess. As a disciple of Christ, Bonhoeffer would stay true to his convictions. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

A brilliant mind, Bonhoeffer lived and died for what he believed in. He loved the world like his master did, and was prepared to speak up and act against injustice. And he did all this without going flaky on what lay at the centre of his life. Bonhoeffer has been an inspiration to me for over seven years now. And Robinson's reading of him has only solidified this for me. I look forward to carrying on part of his legacy in the postgrad ministry at Sydney University.

Bonhoeffer: Church and Community

"Since I as a Christian cannot live without the church, since I owe my life to the church and now belong to it, so my merits are no longer my own but belong to the church. Only because the church lives one life in Christ, as it were, can I as a Christian say that the chastity of others helps me when my desires tempt me, that the fasting of others benefits me, and that the prayers of my neighbours is offered in my stead" ~ Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 183.

h/t Alex

Discipleship is Costly

"The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out, and has to forsake his old life in order that he may 'exist' in the strictest sense of the word. The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered.The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact, quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, in to one that is necessary and calculable), out of the realm of finite (which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality). Again it is no universal law. Rather is is the exact opposite of all legality. It is nothing else than bondage to Jesus Christ alone, completely breaking through every programme, every ideal, every set of laws. No other significance is possible, since Jesus is the only significance. Besides Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters." - Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p.16. H/T MPJ

Politics of Faith II: A Vision for Australia

In a previous post, we turned back to Kevin Rudd's 2006 article on Bonhoeffer and the rule of the church in politics. In brief, Rudd understands this to be:

'The function of the church in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state: to give power to the powerless, voice to those who have none, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse...'

Rudd continues by giving voice to what Australian politics might look like if Bonhoeffer's principles were followed:

'A Christian perspective on contemporary policy debates may not prevail. It must nonetheless be argued. And once heard, it must be weighed, together with other arguments from different philosophical traditions, in a fully contestable secular polity. A Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our
society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed.

Some have argued that Bonhoeffer provides a guide for Christian action “in extremis”, but not for the workaday problems of “normal” political life. Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University, argues, though, that this fails to comprehend Bonhoeffer’s broader teaching on the importance of truth in politics. In fact, it accepts the “assumption that truth and politics, particularly in democratic regimes in which compromise is the primary end of the political process, do not mix”.'

Rudd has the former Howard Government clearly in his sights. In describing the churches voice on issues such as Australian values, climate change, industrial relations and global poverty, Rudd not only describes Bonhoeffer as the archetypal Christian Socialist, he uses Bonhoeffer's thesis of speaking truth to government to strongly criticize the then administration:

'Mr Howard’s politics are in the main about concealing the substantive truth of his policy program because when fully exposed to the light of public debate, their essential truth is revealed: a redistribution of power from the weak to the strong.'

Rudd concludes that the pragmatic goal of the Howard policies was to:

'...retain his incumbency at all costs, distracting the body politic from the reality of his faltering program for government. The substance of that program now makes for a less robust political message as he moves into his second decade in oμce: rising interest rates, declining housing affordability, slowing productivity growth, an Americanised industrial-relations system, a regressive consumption tax,
the skyrocketing costs of university education and the steady undermining of universal health insurance. Add to these the escalating failure of the Iraq war and the deteriorating security in our immediate region, complicated by our distraction in Iraq – all compounded by a failure to tell the public the truth on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi prisoner abuse and the $300-million wheat-for-weapons scandal.'

One may wonder how often the Rudd Government has distracting the body politic from the reality of his faltering program for government. Rudd's vision is for an Australia that is a 'light on a hill' (attributed to Chifley), which is to be a global leader on climate change, the Millennium Goals, and international law:

'The time has well and truly come for a vision for Australia not limited by the narrowest of definitions of our national self-interest. Instead, we need to be guided by a new principle that encompasses not only what Australia can do for itself, but also what Australia can do for the world.'

And Rudd concludes that the church must not climb into bed with the conservative political establishment. Instead, it must take up the challenge of Bonhoeffer, robustly speaking the truth to the state.

The role of the church is not to agree that deceptions of this magnitude [War on Iraq, AWA, Children Overboard, etc.] are normal. If Christians conclude that such deceptions are the stock-in-trade of the Kingdom of the State in Luther’s Two Kingdoms doctrine (and hence of no relevance to the Kingdom of the Gospel), then we will end up with a polity entirely estranged from truth. When the prime minister states that migrants should have a better grasp of the English language, while at the same time removing major funding from the program that enables them to learn English, this represents a significant prostitution of the truth. Therefore, if the church is concerned about the truth – not the politics – of social inclusion, then in Bonhoeffer’s tradition of fearlessly speaking the truth to the state, it should say so.

Politics of Faith

In an article that helped bring the current Australian Prime Minister to national attention in late 2006, Kevin Rudd has this to say about Deitrich Bonhoeffer, politics and Christianity:

"Bonhoeffer’s seminal work, his Ethics, was not collated and published until after his execution. Its final essay is entitled ‘What Is Meant by “Telling the Truth”’, and it represents a call to the German Church to assume a prophetic role in speaking out in defence of the defenceless in the face of a hostile state. For Bonhoeffer, 'Obedience to God’s will may be a religious experience but it is not an ethical one until it issues in actions that can be socially valued.' He railed at a Church for whom Christianity was “a metaphysical abstraction to be spoken of only at the edges of life”, and in which clergy blackmailed their people with hellish consequences for those whose sins the clergy were adept at sniffing out, all the while ignoring the real evil beyond their cathedrals and churches. 'The Church stands,' he argued, “not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.'

In his Letters from Prison, he wrote, reflecting in part on the deportation of the Jews, that 'We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.' Bonhoeffer’s political theology is therefore one of a dissenting church that speaks truth to the state, and does so by giving voice to the voiceless. Its domain is the village, not the interior life of the chapel. Its core principle is to stand in defence of the defenceless or, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, of those who are 'below'." - Faith in Politics, The Monthly, October 2006.

Rudd argues that Bonhoeffer went about this mission of 'speaking truth to the state' by causing dissent, primarily through the Confessing Church and the issues it protested. The goal was to “jam the spoke of the state … to protect the state from itself” (The Church and the Jewish Question). Rudd argues that Bonhoeffer:

"...was a man of action who wrote prophetically in 1937 that “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For Bonhoeffer, whatever the personal cost, there was no moral alternative other than to fight the Nazi state with whatever weapons were at his disposal,"

and concludes that:

"Bonhoeffer’s was a muscular Christianity. He became the Thomas More of European Protestantism because he understood the cost of discipleship, and lived it. Both Bonhoeffer and More were truly men for all seasons."

November 24 will be one year since Rudd's election victory over John Howard. So how Kevin 07 shaped up after twelve months in office? Has he taken up the cause of the defenceless? And as leader of the state, has he taken being told truth well? Is he the type of leader who allows the church to fulfill it's vocation to 'stand at the center of the village'? Or is he another crass politician who panders to religion when it is convinent and then shuts it away in a corner?