Bonhoeffer gave his life to the work of the church and to strengthening church communities. His dissertation was titled Sanctorum Communio, or “The Communion of Saints.” Later, when pressing political issues were ripe in Germany, he set out to write a field guide called Life Together for a seminary he helped start. The seminary lasted a little over two years before it was shut down by Nazi officials.
In a 1933 essay entitled “What Is the Church?” Bonhoeffer offers his definition of the church:
It is an institution that is not a good model of organization, not very influential, not very impressive, in need of improvement in the extreme. However, church is a ministry from God, a ministry of proclamation, the message of the living God. From it come commission and commandment; in it arise eternal ties; in it heaven and hell clash; in it the judgment on earth takes place. Because church is the living Christ and his judgment. The preached and preaching Christ, proclaimer and proclamation, ministry and word. Church is the awakening of the world through a miracle, through the presence of the life-creating God calling from death into life.2
Bonhoeffer was aware of the church’s flaws, but he was more aware of the miracle of Christ in community. Elsewhere, he insists, “It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”3 Sure, church is imperfect, but it is also the concrete community that responds to Christ’s speaking. Therefore, the church is grace all the way through.
At the center of many churches is a crucifix, on which Jesus Christ hangs dead. We all come to church gathered around a humiliated Savior. Rather than hope for a wish dream, Bonhoeffer says, join the embarrassment. Embrace the discomfort. Work where God has you, because Christ resides in that community of the church.4 Don’t go looking elsewhere.
The intriguing part about Bonhoeffer’s commitment to the church is that he had every reason to become embittered, frustrated, and critical. If anyone had a reason to abandon the institution of the church, it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The modern American church is imperfect, but we haven’t pledged allegiance to the Führer as our supreme ruler. In Bonhoeffer’s day the German church passed a resolution to remove any clergy and leaders from office if they were of Jewish descent. This travesty led to the crafting of the Barmen Declaration, which separated the Confessing Church from the Lutheran Church in Germany. Rather than abandon the church, Bonhoeffer sought to renew and build up the church. He knew the church enough to love it, because he knew that was where Christ was. In the words of novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, “In Bonhoeffer’s understanding, the otherness of God is precisely this boundless compassion.”5 Bonhoeffer displayed this “boundless compassion” to fellow church members and to his neighbors, even those who needed to be corrected.
Bonhoeffer is a complex figure.6 There are as many “takes” on Bonhoeffer as there are writers. Everyone wants to use Bonhoeffer for their own theory or tradition—liberal theologians say he was a liberal, evangelicals say he was evangelical, pacifists say he was a pacifist, and just-war theorists say his plotting to kill Hitler indicates a change of mind. In writing this chapter, I am weary of using Bonhoeffer to make a point about church and community. Some may argue he was against the church, as he spoke of “religionless Christianity”;7 the institution of the church is certainly part of religion. Bonhoeffer is a complex figure because he was a complex thinker. He cannot be stereotyped or condensed or neatly packaged. So, as best we can, we must take Bonhoeffer as he presents himself rather than fashion him in our own image.
BONHOEFFER’S BACKGROUND
Born into a family of seven children in 1906, Bonhoeffer was raised in an academic and comfortable environment. Many of his siblings would become coconspirators in a plot to overthrow Hitler. His father was a well-known physician and was surprised when Bonhoeffer decided that he wanted to be a pastor and theologian. Two ideas are essential to understanding Bonhoeffer, according to Robinson: “first, that the sacred can be inferred from the world in the experience of goodness, beauty, and love; and second, that these things, and, more generally, the immanence of God are a real presence, not a symbol or a foreshadowing. They are fulfillment as well as promise, like the sacrament, or the church.”8 Bonhoeffer encountered God not only through ideas but among creatures. He was able to see divine realities in ordinary or dark circumstances.
At twenty-two years old, he earned his doctorate in Berlin before traveling to New York. In 1930 Bonhoeffer visited Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, a historically African American and impoverished neighborhood, while studying and lecturing at Union Theological Seminary. The experience at this church was formative for young Bonhoeffer. He began to see the church from the perspective of the disenfranchised and downcast rather than the strong and powerful. He committed to this urban church and began to teach Sunday school. These experiences made a profound difference in his vision of the church. In Life Together he writes, “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually be the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door. We must, therefore, be very careful at this point.”9 In Harlem he also learned of Black spirituals, and he would later take back to Germany a record collection that he played at his seminary at Finkenwalde. It’s a staggering idea that a group of German intellectuals and pastors suffering under the weight of Nazi oppression were listening to sources of hope and renewal from Black Americans like Mahalia Jackson.
Seeing the minority church in America gave Bonhoeffer a vision for the church in Germany. For example, when Nazi Germany began euthanizing the incurably sick, Bonhoeffer had to speak up for the weak and insignificant. In an important and oft-quoted work called “The Church and the Jewish Question,” Bonhoeffer outlines his political theology. How should the church relate to the government? First, the church questions the legitimacy of the state’s action. The church reminds the government that it has a responsibility. It speaks prophetically for the sake of those who are overlooked or unseen. Second, the church serves the victims of the state. Bonhoeffer writes, “The church has an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”10 Not only is the church to speak prophetically to the powers that be, but Christians are to be prophets of action, binding up the wounds of victims. As described in the previous chapter, the church is called to be not a holy huddle but a communal shalom. The church must care for those whom the state ignores or persecutes. We are in a web of existence, after all. Lastly, and perhaps most well known, the church is not only to speak out and help the victims of the state but is also, if necessary, to put itself in harm’s way. The illustration Bonhoeffer uses is a car or bike running over victims. At a certain point, the church has to “fall into the spokes”; that is, Christians must sacrificially lay down their lives to stop the car or bike from continuing. The church must give up all privilege in speaking out for the voiceless. Bonhoeffer writes, “Real secularity consists in the church’s being able to renounce all privileges and all its property but never Christ’s Word and the forgiveness of sins. With Christ and the forgiveness of sins to fall back on, the church is free to give up everything else.”11 In other words, there are a few chosen elements of the church that we should never abandon without abandoning Christ—namely, Christ’s word and forgiveness of sins. In most everything else, we should be fairly adaptable.
In the end, Bonhoeffer gave everything up. He saw the German church as being at the final step of engagement with the political authorities. He cared for victims of injustice. He spoke prophetically. After seeing the continued suffering and victimization that the government caused, he fell into the spokes. He could not stand idly by. He advocated for the victims of the state and was arrested for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. This act of love cost Bonhoeffer his life.
Bonhoeffer was himself compelled into action by his understanding of his own identity in the world. He realized that the Jewish question was the church’s question. There is a cosmic belonging between people in place. As Laura Fabrycky documents in her memoir on volunteering at the Bonhoeffer house, “The difference wasn’t in their knowing the right thing to do. What mattered was how they understood who they were (identity) in relationship to others (belonging). How they imagined their belonging to others is what determined how they behaved.”12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer imagined himself as belonging to the least of these, and that reality determined how he behaved and how he suggested the church should function. He was able to see God among people and creatures. He saw the web of connection. Where there were two or three Christians gathered, Jesus was there with them (Matt. 18:20). When we serve “the least of these” (25:40), Jesus is among them. With Jesus, Bonhoeffer sees God through personal encounters with embodied individuals. Drawing on this logic, Michael Mawson notes, “It is only through this concrete human other that God places the human person into a situation of ethical decision and obligation.”13
CHRIST EXISTING AS COMMUNITY
In From Isolation to Community, Myles Werntz uses Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a guide for community building and church habits, not because Bonhoeffer is a practical guru but because he offers a “theological therapy.”14 I like the phrase, and I think it is fitting. Bonhoeffer does not show us the three steps to a better church or small-group program. Rather, he invites us to consider what the church is and how we should go about seeking healing and wholeness in an isolated and fragmented world. He helps us imagine the church as a different place.
There are two essential insights from Bonhoeffer on Christianity and the church: Christianity must be social, and Christianity is not merely social.15 Being social and being in Christ are two sides of a single coin.
First, Christianity is inherently social. The pursuit of Christ always happens in community. Spiritual formation occurs with others. Theology never happens in isolation. When we take on the trinitarian name in baptism, this act happens to us. We don’t baptize ourselves; we need someone else. Jesus is not merely accepted into our hearts; he is the cornerstone of a new belonging that results in community.16 Bonhoeffer implores the Christian, “But if we have been elected and accepted with the whole church in Jesus Christ before we could know it or want it, then we also belong to Christ in eternity with one another. We who live here in community with Christ will one day be with Christ in eternal community.”17 The foundation of being in Christ is the foundation of community. We don’t have one without the other.
Having spent much of my adult life in church leadership, I’ve seen many people come and go from church. Some people leave for good reasons, others for shallow ones, but when people choose to go, they’re typically not looking for feedback. Their decision is already made.
As people have left our church, one of the most frustrating comments has been “But you guys are still my main community.” These people leave our church for another one, never making deep friendships with their new church community. They imagine they can get Christ better somewhere else, since they like the preaching or music or ministry programs better there, while getting community over here, where they have no commitment. In so doing they implicitly sever Christ from community, playing into modern divisions and fragmentations. In reality, Christ and community are one.
In Bonhoeffer’s understanding, Christ always exists as community. We cannot separate those two things. The ethic of Jesus is embodied in community. In the church we are united by a work of God—not affinities or nationalities or skin color or age or preference. In the editorial introduction of Life Together, the writers propose, “The Christ of Life Together is the binding force of that community in its ‘togetherness,’ gracing Christians to go beyond the superficial, often self-centered, relationships of their everyday associations toward a more intimate sense of what it means to be Christ to others, to love others as Christ has loved them.”18 We’re bound in community by Christ’s call, not by whom we like or whom we prefer to be with. This community may include our natural enemies, and there is “no offering which a lover would bring to a beloved” that “can be too great for our enemies.”19 The church creates a community open to all who respond to the call of Christ—including not just those we don’t prefer but even our very enemies. Christ exists in community, so Christianity is always social.
Second, Christianity is not merely social. The other side of Bonhoeffer’s legacy is his idea that community exists in Christ. Sometimes people think of the church merely as a social gathering, a place to build fulfilling relationships. The church functions as a social club rather than a place where people encounter Christ. Thus, when change happens in the community, people leave.
On one level, being in Christ means that the church should not be organized according to age or interests or status. On a deeper level, Christ existing as community means that even family relationships—those between husband and wife, children and parents, and so on—are mediated by Christ. Every relationship has Christ as its core. As Bonhoeffer advocates, “Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ; it serves him alone. It knows that it has no direct access to other persons. Christ stands between me and others.”20 We love others in Christ and not as we prefer them. By seeing Christ in others, we enable ourselves to love them for who they are and not who we wish they would be.
CONCLUSION
Bonhoeffer didn’t seek community for community’s sake. He didn’t turn community into the church’s ultimate end, into an idol of sorts. But as I’ve argued, he invited the church to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty, and community emerged from the pursuit. Community was the deepening effect of Bonhoeffer’s broad spiritual direction.
He had a deep commitment to the truth of the Scriptures. When Bonhoeffer’s friend and correspondent was asked about the spiritual practices at Finkenwalde, he replied, “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian, and because therefore every day is a day lost for me in which I have not penetrated deeper into the understanding of the Word of God.”21 The Bible was central to forming a community in Christ’s name.
Bonhoeffer also developed a rule of life, which he outlined in Life Together. The community had rhythms and habits of prayer, work, and study. They wanted to be good and Christlike, to care for and love “the least of these.” To be a certain kind of people, they needed the habits that formed virtue. It wasn’t legalistic, but it was formative.
Lastly, Bonhoeffer described his community as a “new monasticism.”22 The linking of the centrality of Scripture with the rhythms of a monastic life served the purpose of purging the self and uniting people with each other and with God. Bonhoeffer desired to develop a community that was intentional about seeking the face of God, because from encounter flows transformation. He sought beauty in the face of Christ.
All of these transcendentals were wrapped in community. Even the silence of solitary prayer connected them to the company of heaven and earth.23 By praying in solitude, we become more aware that our prayers are wrapped around the community of saints.
From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer wrote his old friend Eberhard Bethge about holding the “cantus firmus,” a strong melody amid a polyphony of music.
Where the cantus firmus is clear and plain, the counterpoint can be developed to its limits. . . . Have a good clear cantus firmus; that is the only way to a full and perfect sound, when the counterpoint has a firm support and can’t come adrift or get out of tune, while remaining a distinct whole in its own right. Only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness and at the same time assure us that nothing calamitous can happen as long as the cantus firmus is kept going.24
In Life Together he was attempting to find the fullness of the cantus firmus amid life’s tragedies and dirges. He sang the tune no matter what sound was going on around him.
The life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was extinguished on April 9, 1945, at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. One British prisoner said that in his last days Bonhoeffer “always seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and a deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive.”25 He died alone, yet he was surrounded and upheld by the community of the faithful, and the faithful saints of all ages welcomed him home.
PRACTICES
CHURCH COMMITMENT
Whether our church invites us to commit through the ritual of confirmation or official membership or simply regular attendance, we all need to belong to a place. We need to know and be known by others. Christ calls us into his church, which is embodied in local, physical locations. You’re called to “obey your leaders and submit to them” (Heb. 13:17). It’s no light or easy decision; we all should get to know a local church and its leaders and see if they are worthy of that obedience. Then jump in and stay.
ACCOUNTABILITY
We need other people. One of the primary means of growth is other people. Proverbs says, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Prov. 27:17). By consistently meeting, confessing sin, and pursuing Christ in relationship, close friends can build relationships that mirror those between siblings. No one will be best friends with everyone, but everyone ought to have a few trusted friends whom they can tell anything to and who have permission to call them out. There is also something healing about confessing sins with a trusted friend rather than vaguely thinking about sin before God. These verbal acts can be the beginning of transformation. Spiritual friends come to us as gifts that keep us accountable.
HOSPITALITY
When hospitality is mentioned in the New Testament, it is always connected with love (Rom. 12:9–13; Heb. 13:1–2; 1 Pet. 4:8–9). The call to hospitality (literally “the love of strangers”) is the call to connect with others who may have no relational connections, who may be overlooked or overseen. The practice of table fellowship, or sharing a meal, is a way to welcome the stranger and turn them into the family of God. It’s a practical way to love your neighbor and connect them to community.
ENCOURAGEMENT
