The Bonhoeffer Reader

9. Concerning the Christian Idea of God

135 451 1. [DBWE 10:22–23, editor’s introduction. This selection reproduces Bonhoeffer’s English, errors included.] 2. [DBWE 10:310.] 3. [DBWE 10:309.] 4. [DBWE 10:451, n. 1.] 9. Concerning the Christian Idea of God DBWE 10:451–461 Bonhoeffer was dismayed by the state of American theology,1 writing that Union Seminary had “forgotten what Christian theology in its very essence stands for.”   2 He had drunk deeply from the Barthian spring and was convinced that theology needed to distinguish itself from philosophy, ethics, or any other field of inquiry by starting from God’s revelation. Because this understanding of the theological task had not yet made inroads in America, the theological scene there must have appeared to him as stuck in a pre-Barthian era of liberal theology. Bonhoeffer’s judgment that American theology lacked critical self-understanding was closely related to his verdict regarding the frivolity of American churches: Union Seminary and the American church scene in general were preoccupied with organizational, political, and ethical projects 3 because they had set aside their essential task—preaching the gospel based on God’s revelation. In the next two selections, Bonhoeffer articulates the theological self-understanding that he judged absent from the American scene. In the paper below, written for Eugene Lyman’s Union course on “The Philosophy of the Christian Religion” and later published in the Journal of Religion,4 Bonhoeffer defines theology in opposition to other disciplines as reflection on the reality of revelation, before characteristically elaborating the personal character of that reality. In the present article I do not pretend to present the Christian idea of God in its entirety. I am trying to give no more than the framework within which this idea should be thought. The fact that I am concerned only with the The Bonhoeffer Reader 136 452 453 5. [“That is, consistent, systematic, thoroughgoing, as in the German konsequent,” DBWE 10:452, n. 8.] Christian idea of God and not some general speculation, that is to say, the fact that the theme is essentially dogmatical, has led me to select the following topics for discussion: First, the reality of God with regard to the problem of the theory of knowledge; second, God and history; third, the paradoxical God in the doctrine of justification. The connection between these three parts and the progress from the first to the last one will be seen in the course of the treatment. I. God and the Problem of Knowledge If this inquiry were purely philosophical we should never be permitted to start with the reality of God; and as long as theology does not see its essential difference from all philosophical thinking, it does not begin with a statement concerning God’s reality but tries rather to build a support for such a statement. Indeed, this is the main fault with theology, which in our day no longer knows its particular province and its limits. It is not only a methodological fault but, likewise, a misunderstanding of the Christian idea of God from the very beginning. Philosophical thinking attempts to be free from premises (if that is possible at all); Christian thinking has to be conscious of its particular premise, that is, of the premise of the reality of God, before and beyond all thinking. In the protection of this presupposition , theological thinking convicts philosophical thinking of being bound also to a presupposition, namely, that thinking in itself can give truth. But philosophical truth always remains truth which is given only within the category of possibility. Philosophical thinking never can extend beyond this category—it can never be a thinking in reality. It can form a conception of reality, but conceived reality is not reality any longer. The reason for this is that thinking is in itself a closed circle, with the ego as the center. The last “reality” for all consequent5 philosophical reflection must be an ego, which is removed from all conceivability, a “nicht-gegenständliches Ich” [non-objective I]. Thinking does violence to reality, pulling it into the circle of the ego, taking away from it its original “objectivity.” Thinking always means system and the system excludes the reality. Therefore, it has to call itself the ultimate reality, and in this system the thinking ego rules. It follows that not only the other man but also God is subordinated to the ego. That is the strict consequence of the idealistic and, as far as I see, of all [3...