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Reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together as Subversion of Totalitarian Claims.

Here is an example of Bonhoeffer at his very best in creating a pastoral christology that dethrones the ego and makes space for the other, in whom we meet Christ.

Because Christ stands between me and an other, I must not long for unmediated community with that person. As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone. However, this means that I must release others from all my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love. In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life.

Because Christ has long since acted decisively for other Christians, before I could begin to act, I must allow them the freedom to be Christ's. They should encounter me only as the person they already are for Christ. This is the meaning of the claim that we can encounter others only through the mediation of Christ. Self centred love constructs its own image of other persons, about what they are and what they should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognises the true image of the other person as seen from the perspective of Jesus Christ. It is the image Jesus Christ has formed and wants to form in all people.

(Life Together. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Fortress, 1996, 43-4)

The context within which Bonhoeffer wrote these lines makes them naive, idealistic, and the route to spiritual despair. Or so it seems. Except, Bonhoeffer had a profound grasp of the spiritual nature of the conflicts in which the Church was involved. He understood that Christians struggled not against flesh and blood, nor land and blood, but against spiritual wickedness, principalities and powers, in the high places. He self-consciously and with theological and ethical deliberation opposed ideological coercion with a way of seeing the other person that had roots in the eternal purposes of God in Christ. Christians love because He first loved us. The contrast between self love which dominates the other, and Christ love which allows the other to freely be what Christ calls them to be, could not be more absolute, final and non-negotiable; it is founded on the incarnation, atonement and resurrection events of God's saving purpose.

Therefore in the immediate context of the Seminary, such words, ideas and convictions as those expressed in this passage, were a call to the seminarians to live out a love that is respectful of the other as one for whom Christ died; more generally in a Germany wracked with pressures of social coercion, ideological bullying and physical intimidation ranging from ostracism to concentration camps, Bonhoeffer was constructing a theological anthropopology, rooted in a Christology that preserved the worth of every human individual. That explicit Christological claim, Bonhoeffer opposed to all other claims, including and especially, the claims of National Socialism and Hitler as its demi-god. Life Together is a powerful, and pastoral theological rebuttal of all human claims on the human soul, and on the soul of his German compatriots.

Often enough Bonhoeffer's late theology is called revolutionary. The theological anthropology, incarnational Christology and divine ownership of the redeemed, which give Life Together its radical Christian demand are themselves entirely subversive of all forms of earthly claims to dominance. This is no wee book of monastic spirituality, which is sometimes the way it is read and praised today. It is a book about developing tough virtues, and Christlike love, and a faithful Christ enabled kenosis, nurtured in prayer and the Word, that is able to defy the seductions and oppressions of political and military power. It may be that Bonhoeffer's relevance for today lies as much in those demands for Christlike behaviour and dispositions towards the other, as in the more obvious and overt challenges of the later letters to Bethge.

13 January 2014
Ode to Joy

I love this.

11 January 2014
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Faith and Community at Finkenwalde

How many of you remember the first time you heard the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer? I'm not sure. While I was in College studying current theology in 1974, we were introduced to recent trends which included 'religionless Christianity'. Around the same time I went to a public library sale of discarded books and picked up Mary Bosanquet's The Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The coinciding of reading around radical late 1960's theology and this well written biography posed intriguing questions which still interest me. How could a man of such obvious piety be a primary source for 'religionless Christianity'? What to make of this German pastor who preached the Word, and grounded his convictions in a theology was that was radically Christocentric? Admiration but also puzzlement at his decision to return to Germany rather than stay in the safety of the United States – but also sadness mixed with gratitude that he did return, and how that decision, and many others over the next ten or so years, defined for the modern world a form of Christian witness as resistance. My own search for the connection points between Bonhoeffer's theology and writing, and the situation of the Church now – a search which can be much more substantially traced in the continuing flow of published writing on Bonhoeffer and his reception decade by decade since the publishing of his Letters and Papers from Prison. Bonhoeffer has become a decisive presence in modern theology, and there is a vibrant Bonhoeffer publishing industry, including the completion of the English Translation of Bonhoeffer's Works.

My first reading of Bonhoeffer's Life Together coincided with the reading of two other books which in some ways are at the other side of the theological dining room. Jean Vanier's Community and Growth remains a watershed in Christian understanding of kenotic community based on welcome, servant presence and profound love for the other, expressed in care, accompaniment and recognition that every person is both gifted and disabled; we are both wounded and sources of healing; we are forgiven forgivers. W H Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense was a theological eye-opener. His exposition of Divine Love as precarious, vulnerable and by its nature unable to guarantee the Divine Lover's response, reconfigured my theological assumptions at the time. While wanting to qualify some of Vanstone's conclusions, the connection he made between Divine Love and kenosis has become an essential perspective in my own theology.

So when I read Bonhoeffer's Life Together, I had already encountered two very different expositions of what Cjristian community would look like, and how it might reflect the image and ministry of Jesus Christ, and do so as the Body of Christ. Bonhoeffer's theology, his doctrine of God in Christ and the relations between Christ and Church, was altogether more radical, stern, alert to the transcendent otherness and reality of God, more biblically grounded in text and dogma. But no less pastorally aware of the disciplines and faithfulness that gives Christian love its kenotic character, expressed in humility, service, prayerful openness to the other, and gratitude to God for the gift of each person.

I mention all this because I am awaiting delivery of the volume of Bonhoeffer's Works covering the Finkenwalde period when Life Together was written, and The Cost of Discipleship was gestating in the mind of someone whose witness and actions would grow out of profound personal appropriation of the Sermon on the Mount. I fully recognise the importance of Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison, and especially the late letters to Bethge. But putting Life Together into the overall contrxt of Finkenwalde, National Socialist Germany, and the life of Bonhoeffer himself will be a fascinating process. And perhaps for me will bring me full circle with Bonhoeffer whose luminous presence has been like a winking light on the shore of the Clyde – I know, a stretched metaphor, but one used by someone who loves the Rothesay ferry!

9 January 2014
The Wisdom of St Benedict

The ancients say that once upon a time a disciple asked the elder, "Holy One, is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?"

And the Holy One answered, "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."

"Then of what use", the surprised discipole asked "are the spiritual exercises you prescribe."

To make sure, the elder said, that you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise".

…………..

"We are each an ember of the mind of God and we are each sent to illumine the other through the dark

places of life to sanctuaries of truth and peace where God can be God for us, because we have relieved

ourselves of the ordeal of being god for ourselves."

………………

Two short extracts from Joan Chittister, The Rule of St Benedict. Insights for the Ages. (Slough: St Paul's, 1992) 32, 73.

7 January 2014
The Spiritual Discipline of being an Idealist – The Prologue of St Benedict

In the Prologue of his Rule, St Benedict describes the genuine enthusiasm for holiness that is the exact opposite of dutiful discipline, grim obedience or calculating commitment. Not that he soft pedals on discipline, obedience or commitment. But what he is after is faithful discipline, glad obedience and a generous self-giving in commitment. Here is how Benedict describes the ideal spiritual disposition of the monk, and indeed of anyone who is seeking to follow faithfully after Christ.

        We shall run

on the paths of God's commandments,

        our hearts overflowing

with the inexpressible delight

        of love. (Prologue.49)

So that is the ideal. Like all aspirational goals there is the risk they will be diminished, diluted, reduced by what we call realism, and that most limiting of criteria for those who aim high, practicality. Yet Benedict is the most sane, practical, sensible and pragmatic of spiritual teachers. The Rule is replete with the mundane and the daily, the ordinary and the routine, because it is in the daily routine of relationships and work, of feeding and cleaning, of housekeeping and caretaking, that worship, study and prayer are to be pursued.

"We shall run", with eagerness, energy and enthusiasm on the paths of God. And the heart, centre of thought and emotion, engine of motive and conscience, the heart will overflow with the delight of love. The spirituality of love is complex and mysterious. Those made in the image of God, and drawn into union with Christ, are made for fellowship with God who is love, an eternal communion of self-giving grace, overflowing, creative, and purposeful. The 'inexpressible delight of love' is the reflecting in our human existence, our daily behaviour, our growing character of precisely that eternal love of the Triune God.That is neither simple nor instant; but it is the ideal to which we look, with longing and delight, and with a realism not determined by our limitations, but by grace unspeakable, sufficient alight with the fires of divine Love.

These brief words in Benedict's Prologue become a daily reminder – this is what we are made for, redeemed for, called towards, and not in our own strength but by the grace and mercy and love of God.

6 January 2014
“Sometimes” – the Importance of Evidence to the Contrary

Sometimes – Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

……………………

This was sent to me this morning from a close friend, whose instincts for the right words at the right time is unerring. It seems to me to be one of those poems that contradicts the one damn thing after another syndrome that grows out of negativity become chronic, and we are convinced there are far more valleys of deep darkness than green pastures or still waters. Sometimes it's not as bad as we think, or feared; sometimes we do get it right; sometimes we are merely looking for the wrong things, in the wrong place, or in the wrong direction, so that we miss the good that is there to be seen. But yes, sometimes life does have ambushes, hidden trip-wires, unforeseen circumstances, and recurring disappointments. But then again, sometimes……

4 January 2014
The Fascination of Modern Theology in a Postmodern or Post Postmodern and Post Christian Culture.

One of the first books I read when I was finding my feet on the terrain of historical theology was John MacQuarrie's Twentieth Century Religious Thought. It was an SCM Limp Study Edition and cost £4.95. I read it through and discovered that Christian theology is exciting, bracing and enlarging when written by someone who is well informed, fair minded, alert to contemporary philosophical and theological trends, and able to distinguish between genuine game-changing trends and those wayward currents of thought that are fashionable but prove theologically unpromising.

Further reading included direct engagement with major theologians like Barth, Brunner (does anyone still read Brunner), Bultmann, Bonhoeffer (so much now available in the translated works), Pannenberg, Kung, Moltmann (seminal in my own thinking), Tillich, Jungel, moving on to Guttierez, Boff, Lash, and MacQuarrie (himself now part of the story) and later still Torrance, Jenson, Hauerwas.

The next survey of modern theology survey I read was 20th Century Theology. God and the World in a Transitional Age, by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson. This book helped me join together and see connections between modernity, Christian theology, cultural and philosophical moves and movements, providing a helpful map of modern theology. This book is now 20 years old, and I still refer to it.

That brings me to two new books waiting to be read and near the top of the have to read soon pile. Mapping Modern Theology. A Thematic and Historical Introduction is a collection of essays on the main topics of Christian theology, in which the main theological loci such as atonement, creation, providence, pneumatology, eschatology are explored through the lens of theological writing rooted in the soil of modernity, roughly the last two hundred years. Edited by Kelly Kapic and Bruce McCormack this is a substantial anf innovative book and I look forward to reading it as an orientation to the contemporary debates.

Just arrived is The Journey of Modern Theology. From Reconstruction to Deconstruction, by Roger Olson. This book began as a revision of the Grenz Olson volume mentioned above. But for very good reasons it has become a much enlarged book in its own right and while incoporating material from the earlier version, it is a very different book. Seven hundred pages now replaces the 400 pages of the earlier book.

The usual suspects are included from Kant, Hagel and Schleiermacher onwards but the entire structure of the book is reworked under the framework of the subtitle, as each chapter explores the way theological assumptions, approaches and constructiuons have changed and adapted or resisted under the pressures of modernity.

Placed alongside the indispensable (I dont use that word often) edition of David Ford and rachel Muers, Modern Theologians (Blackwell Great Theologians series) these books provide a very rich harvest of reflection and constructive critique of contemporary Christian theology in the West and North. By the way, Ford's volume was significantly changed for the third edition, and I have kept my original second edition because they are two very different books! Olson concedes that his Western Northern bias is a significant limitation, but recognises that a very different work is required, and perhaps in several volumes, if someone is to make a serious attempt at a project which would engage with global Christianity and its diverse styles and contexts of theological traditions, without privileging one over the other. Indeed something of such a project is currently underway by Veli-Matti Karkkainen, of which I will say much more in a later post. For now, I wanted to flag up to those who might be interested some of the good tour guides for modern theology. Over the next while I'll do occasional bulletins from the desk and let you know what's what. y

3 January 2014
An Early Scottish Blessing for the New Year – Shalom and Joy to All Who Come Here.

The start of a new year is an artifical hinge point in our lives, but none the less significant for that. Looking to 2014 and all it will bring us, of blessing and difficulty, of gain and loss, somewhere in it all there will be the faithful presence of God, to be discerned, discovered and lived towards.

This old Celtic Prayer is a favourite, and is sung with reverent gusto by Lesley Garrett in the CD Amazing Grace. One of the ways I remember and recount blessings now is with my camera – the words of the prayer, and the photos, are a way of bringing a beautiful creation and my own given sub plot in the story of God and His world into a playful juxtaposition.

Deep peace of the running wave to you,

After the storm at Stonehaven

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

Low Lying Mist South of Fort William

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

A Tiny Jewel on the Beach at St Cyrus

Deep peace of the shining moon to you,

Late Autmun Moon from Our Garden in Dunecht Rd.

Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you, for ever.

Spring Sunset Over Loch Skene

Early Scottish Blessing (adapted).

1 January 2014
Charity Shops in Danger of Losing Credibility as Charitable Outlets.

Went into an Oxfam Book shop it doesn't mattter where, and had a good browse. I saw several books and a CD I would have bought, but to be honest and upfront about it, they were far too expensive. I know the second hand book market and the prices that are fair and sensible, and the Oxfam pricing policy seems to sit at the highest end of that.

That comment and what follows is from a friend of Oxfam. I am fully committed to the work of Oxfam. It's a charity I've supported for many years. The money raised is crucial to the wellbeing and improvement of life for many thousands of people, and at times Oxfam's work is a life-saving intervention. They need all the money they can get. So why did I not buy the books that interested me.

Put simply, and probably a bit controversially, I don't like being ripped off, and I don't think a charity should price itself out of the market. A CD that is £4.99 on Amazon, was deemed a collector's item and priced at 10.99 second hand. A two volume set of theology was twice the price of another second hand book seller who deals in theology and is not cheap. Add to this that Oxfam as a charity receives discount on local authority rates, is staffed by volunteers, and receives its book stocks as donations and at no cost. So why is that stock priced so high?

Now I did buy a book – it wasn't a bargain but it was a fair price which I was glad to pay. It was an anthology of Aquinas' theological writings, an Oxford hardback published in 1954. In that deal there were two satisfied parties. So I wonder if there's a need to be a bit more realistic in pricing policy, and demonstrate an interest in the customers satisfaction as well as the main mission of making a difference in human life and welfare in a fragmented unequal world – actually the main mission is possible because of customer loyalty, volunteer time, public generosity in donations and a fine track record in using funds with strategic generosity and care.

One other point easily missed in these austerity days. Charity shops started as places where those on low incomes and others struggling to get along in life could go and find warm clothing, and other necessities for knock down prices compared with the retail market. In the interests of maximising income and profits, there are now policies of only taking what is 'like new', or labelled designer, and these are priced beyond those who are looking for recycled good quality clothes at prices affordable to them. Nobody is saying charity shops should become clearance houses for worn out cast offs. But a balanced stock, with an eye to local customer base, and a commitment still to supporting the poor whether here or overseas, would restore a balance that is in serious danger of reducing the credibility of charity shops as places where the word charity stiull retains someof its meaning as gift and grace to the poor.

The need for a review of pricing policy and customer service is increased when you come across articles like this.

31 December 2013
Community Breakdown and the Fruit of the Spirit

Given the relational mess in Galatia, where people were in danger of "devouring one another" (Paul's phrase), Paul's letter to the Galatian community of Christians is understandably strong and hard hitting. He is angry, anxious, stressed out and seriously upset at the possibility the Galatian Christians will give up their freedom in Christ, start playing the safe game of rule-keeping and never learn the call of God to walk in freedom, be constantly led by and faithfully keep in step with the Holy Spirit, who purs the love of God into their hearts and calls to the risks of commitment and transformational discipleship.

Paul has no hesitation in using every rhetorical trick in the book, has no compunction about using arguments that are manipulative, persuasive, adversative and at times downright dogmatically assertive. At the same time his genuine concern for them, and for the truth of the Gospel of Jesus is couched in language of approach, with invitation to dialogue, but not to negotiation if that means compromise on the central principle of their faith in the faithfulness of Jesus, to empower, enable and ensure their freedom in Christ to live for God in the power of the Spirit.

It's against that background that we come across Galatians 5.22-23, that cluster of virtues called the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace,patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Having enumerated earlier in chapter 5.16-21, and in graphic detail, the works of the flesh, and described the chaotic, destructive impulses that drive ambition, selfishness and uncontrolled egotism, he contrasts these with the fruit of the Spirit. And while each virtue refers to individual character and personal transformation, Paul is writing not to an aggregate of individual, but to a troubled community. The Fruit of the Spirit is communal as well as individual, social as much as personal, describes the ethos of the community as well as the inner climate of the individual.

These nine virtues, together the fruit of the Spirit, are not exhaustive. Paul lists precisely the virtues of Christlikeness that most fully contradict the in-fighting, factionalism, relational breakdown, competitive rivalry, nasty back-biting, self-righteous condemning, habitual hostility and serial offensiveness of people so sure of their own rightness they have no idea how wrong they are. Pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, anger and the desire for payback are forms of blindness to the other, and of deafness to the words and the heart of the other.

By contrast the fruit of the Spirit describes a disposition that is open, receptive, courteous, kenotic, disciplined by love, focused on peace, respectful of otherness, community building, relationally healing, intentionally generous, assuming the best, utilising an hermeneutic of trust rather than an hermeneutic of suspicion, and in all these senses, Christlike. Because only the one who can say Galatians 2.20:

"I have been crucified with Christ. I n o longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me".

And when that life is lived in us the fruit of the Spirit of Christ is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. And as Paul says, no law achieves that, only the transformative presence of the crucified and risen Christ, active in the world, the church and our lives.

Going into 2014, the ninefold fruit of the Spirit would be a powerful and enlightening set of key performance indicators in a healthy church – how far are these Christlike dispositions evident in the ethos of the community, the inner climate of those who call themselves the people of God?

28 December 2013