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D. New Research in Text and Context 15. Reading Discipleship and Ethics Together: Implications for Ethics and Public Life
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15 D. New Research in Text and Context Reading Discipleship and Ethics Together: Implications for Ethics and Public Life Florian Schmitz From the beginning, people who have researched the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have taken a particular interest in his theological development as well as in the question about the unity of his work. Different as the answers may be that have been given to these questions, there is still general agreement on one matter: many researchers have compared Discipleship and Ethics and concluded that, with his decision in support of the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer retreated from essential theological concepts in his Discipleship period in three main respects: first, by developing a broader vision of the reconciliation between Christ and the world; second, by rejecting Discipleship’s “realmthinking ” or “spatial-thinking”; third, by explicating the relationship of the disciples to the world according to Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship as distinct from his view of the world in Ethics.1 I will discuss the place of Discipleship in the Bonhoeffer corpus as a whole, and thus provide an impetus for discussing possible answers to the question of its coherence. My thesis is that Bonhoeffer’s work is much less inconsistent, including on the level of logical content, than has been assumed up to now. 1. See especially Hanfried Müller, Von der Kirche zur Welt. Ein Beitrag zur Beziehung des Wortes Gottes auf die Societas in Dietrich Bonhoeffers theologischer Entwicklung, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1966); Rainer Mayer, Christuswirklichkeit. Grundlagen, Entwicklung und Konsequenzen der Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers, 2nd ed., Arbeiten zur Theologie, Series II, vol. 15 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1980); Ernst Feil, Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers. Hermeneutik—Christologie—Weltverständnis, 2nd ed. Studien zur systematischen Theologie und Ethik, vol. 45 (Berlin: LIT, 2005). English translation: The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Martin Rumscheidt (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). 147 This especially applies to Bonhoeffer’s book Discipleship. I have come to this conclusion in the course of my doctoral thesis on Discipleship in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,2 which contains extensive evidence and arguments on the subject.3 My approach is to read Discipleship and the fragments of Ethics comparatively, or, as my title proposes, to read Discipleship and Ethics together. In doing so, I will be guided by the three previously mentioned points, in which the theology of Discipleship seems to differ crucially from the theology of Ethics. The Expanded Vision of the Christ-Reality The central dogmatic assumption in Ethics, upon which Bonhoeffer justifies everything else, lies with the claim that God reconciled himself with the whole world in Jesus Christ. No one is excluded from this reconciliation through Christ. The entire reality of the world is enclosed by the reality of Jesus Christ, and this does not depend on whether the world “recognizes it or not.”4 With regard to the concept of reality in Discipleship, one notices that the terminology of Ethics is not yet present, since Bonhoeffer does not mention “Christ-reality”; neither does he mention “reality of God” nor “reality of the world” in Discipleship. However, that does not imply that the underlying understanding of the concept of reality differs from that in Ethics. Instead, just as in Ethics, the reconciliation of God in Christ is presented in Discipleship as a universal and ontologically relevant act which is fulfilled in the entire world: “It is true that all human beings as such are ‘with’ Christ as a consequence of the incarnation.”5 What happened to Jesus Christ “happened to all of us.”6 “Wherever his human body is, there all flesh is being accepted.”7 Just as the reality of sin encloses all of mankind, the reality of the reconciliation encloses the entire world. What Bonhoeffer describes in Ethics as the concept of “Christ-reality” is described by him in substance in Discipleship by asserting that the immediacy of all human relationships is abolished through Christ, the mediator. Christ stands “between son and father, between husband and wife, between individual and 2. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kassel, 2010. 3. Florian Schmitz, Nachfolge. Zur Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Forschungen zur Systematischen und Ökumenischen Theologie, vol. 138 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 4. Ethics, DBWE 6:65. 5. Discipleship, DBWE 4:217. 6. Ibid., 4:255. 7. Ibid., 4:214. 148 | Interpreting Bonhoeffer [34.201.16.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:01 GMT) nation, whether they can recognize him or not.”8 “Ever since Jesus, there are no longer . . . unmediated relationships. . . . Immediacy is delusion.”9 Outside...