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What I like about Sabine Dramm’s book on Bonhoeffer

1. It is written by one who is familiar with both the theological amd philosophical subtleties, and the social and political commitments, that give Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics their radical edge and uncomfortable diagnostic accuracy
2. It is neither hagiography nor deconstruction, but a genuine engagement with the complexity of the man, the fragmentary nature of his writing, the large corpus of occasional and personal material, the air of menace and ominous probability that fell over Europe – and out of this nexus of varied perspectives she allows Bonhoeffer to emerge as a theologian who resists domestication
3. The writing itself is theologically sharp and unafraid of necessary critical comment, at times Dramm is lyrical in exposition of Bonhoeffer’s key themes yet as translator rather than apologist for his ideas
4. The book is structured in a way that covers biography, context, theological emphases, major written corpus, political and theological ethics in the context of his life, issues of continuing significance for the Church. But these are not sections of the book so much as threads woevn in and out of an overall pattern that is allowed to emerge from these given materials
5. The book is rich in quotation from Bonhoeffer, but as aids to exposition rather than examples of cherry-picking enthusiasm, which explains the unusually high incidence of quotations not previously anthologised or decontextualised in the service of those who want Bonhoeffer to say certain things!
6. Obvious affection for Bonhoeffer is all but absent, and instead an informed respect for the life of mind and conscience that shaped Bonhoeffer’s spirituality and impelled his sense of responsible freedom out into the world of politics and social consequence – obedience to Christ and live with the consequences is a breathtaking theological ethic, and it is used to explain the complicated sanctity of this least other-worldly of disciples.

These are some of the things that make this book, for me at least, a clearer window into the radical, risk-taking consequences of one man’s commitment, in a dangerous world, to Jesus Christ as the centre and goal of all things.

A couple of later posts will interact with one or two of what I consider the most interesting chapters in an overall valuable book.

Long before ‘authentic existence’ became the buzz words of mid 20th Cenutry existentialism, Bonhoeffer was working out the relationship between personal identity, inner thought, life commitments and moral actions. More than most theologians, Bonhoeffer demonstrates the vital and vitalising link between biography and theology. In few people is there such unambiguous and documented evidence of the connectedness of thought and life, of faith and action, of life commitments and the life that flowed from them. As Dramm comments, ‘[Bonhoefer’s] theo-logically centered life is inseparable from his life-centred theology’. (4) One of the telling epigrams used at the beginning of each chapter reads: ‘Blessed are those who have lived before they died’.

The execution of Bonhoeffer in 1945, at the age of 39 brought to an end, from all human points of view prematurely, one of the most courageous and authentic Christian lives within the Sanctorum Communio (Bonhoeffer’s phrase of choice for the church as Body of Christ). His dissertation under that name, Sanctorum Communio, which reads as a mature and grounded piece of theological research and explication, was written by a twenty one year old theology student!

Unlike some other studies, Dramm doesn’t try to impose a pattern, whether a theological motif that centres Bonhoeffer’s thought, or a narrative structure that imposes consistency on his views or actions. Instead she accepts the inevitably fragmenary and urgently occasional nature of his writings, the complexity of his thought and experience, and the disruptiveness and increasing danger of his life situation, and from this acceptance of incompleteness, explores what it is that gives Bonhoeffer’s life and thought that singular ring of authenticity, like struck crystal. ‘Is it not true that the lives of many persons remain forever fragmentary, even when they extend over more years than Bonhoeffer’s and finally shatter in a manner less brutal?’ (13) Bonhoeffer himself commented,’The unfinished fragmentary side of life is felt …with special poignance here. But it is exactly this fragment that can in turn point to a consummation no human power can achieve’. This to his parents when it was becoming clear that his own life was now under grave threat.

And in all the unresolved fragmentariness of Bonhoeffer’ s own experience, much of it caused by the disruption, dislocation and discontinuity of the political, social and historical context of his own times, there was for him the haunting question, "Who am I?" The question became the title of one of his best known poems, written in the summer of 1944. The last two lines express both the fear and faith of a man for whom courage was a gift of undeserved grace rather than a self-sufficient moral virtue.

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

Dramm’s earlier book on Bonhoeffer and Camus finds both similarity and contrast in two men whose lives were near contemporary. Both were driven to discover and live out the ideal of a truly authentic human existence. Bonhoeffer found it in the reality of God who comes in the human person who is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ; Camus in human life lived in authentic freedom, sustained by a humanism based on the absurdity that human life, in its combination of the tragic and the noble, has unique and non-negotiable value.

While not imposing a structure on Bonhoeffers life and thought, this book is itself carefully structured to enable us to see Bonhoeffer – his thought and life- in all the variety and complexity of his character. I’ll give an overview of Dramm’s approach next post.