Dietrich Bonhoeffer on The Body of Christ

Yesterday I asked for collaborative detective work to identify which of two versions of a Bonhoeffer sentence was authentic. Here now is the full quotation with the correct phrase underlined.

" We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate lord makes his followers the brothers and sisters of all humanity. The "philanthropy" of God (titus 3.4) revealed in the Incarnation is the ground of Christian love towrd all one earth that bear the name of human. the form of Christ incarnate makes the Church into the body of Christ. All the sorrows of humanity fall upon that form, and only through that form can they be borne. The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed: in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil. 3.10; Rom. 6.4f). The Christian life is a life of crucifixion."

(The quotation comes from R. H. Fuller's 1963 translation, as anthologised in A Testament to Freedom, ed. G. B. Kelly and E. B. Nelson (San Francisco: harper, 1990, 1995), page 321. The misprint was in the phrase "we too much…" – the correct citation as noted above, was "we too must…."

However in the Fortress Critical Edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, which is the most recent and reliable English translation, the passage reads rather differently again. Compare the one below with that above, and ponder the fluidity of language, while admiring the skill required to translate an author's words adequate to the author's intended meaning, such that those who later read them apprehend that intention. ( Assuming of course that the author's intended meaning is in any definitive sense accessible to us, and that authorial intention and reader apprehension can coincide…. which I do.)

"Since we know ourselves to be accepted and borne within the humanity of Jesus, our new humanity now also consists in bearing the sins and the troubles of all others. The incarnate one transforms his disciples into brothers and sisters of all human beings. The "philanthropy" (Titus 3.4) of God that became evident in the incarnation of Christ is the reason for Christians to love every human being on earth as a brother and sister. The form of the incarnate one transforms the church-community into the body of Christ upon which all of humanity's sin and trouble fall, and by which alone these troubles and sins are borne".

"The form of Christ on earth is the form of the death [Todesgestalt] of the crucified one. The image of God is the image of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is into this image that the disciple's life must be transformed. It is a life in the image and likeness of Christ's death (Phil. 3.10; Rom. 6.4f). It is a crucified life."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Volume 4. Discipleship. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), page 285.

I think the differences in nuance, style, punctuation and even paragraphs makes a marked difference to the passage. So when we are trying to establish the most reliable text of the New Testament, and working at the best translation of koine Greek into 21st Century English, it's a bit of a challenge eh?