Christ and Revelatory Community in Bonhoeffer's Reception of Hegel by David S. Robinson (review)

This book provides another entry in the growing scholarship on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's relationship to the Lutheran tradition. In this revision of his doctoral thesis finished at the University of Edinburgh under David Fergusson, Robinson contends that Bonhoeffer's engagement with Hegel was more complex than some suggest. Robinson shows that Bonhoeffer knew Hegel's thought well and used aspects of Hegel in a constructive fashion. More specifically, Robinson argues that Bonhoeffer is not Hegelian (230) but Bonhoeffer does freely incorporate certain elements of Hegel's thought into his own work even as the person of Jesus Christ and the external Word (sacramental and preached) form the center of Bonhoeffer's theology.

The most promising chapters cover primarily Sanctorum Communio, Creation and Fall, and the 1933 Christology lectures. Robinson shows that Hegel was never far from Bonhoeffer's theological approach in these texts. Most importantly, Bonhoeffer modified Hegel's definition of the church from "God existing as church community" to "Christ existing as church community." For Robinson, Bonhoeffer travels with Hegel in refusing to set divine and human agency in opposition in the church, but Bonhoeffer's modification from God to Christ also signals his emphasis on the external Word that disrupts the inward curvature of the self in the state of sin and puts "the Word before Geist," to use Bonhoeffer's phrase (61). In this way, Robinson shows how Bonhoeffer incorporates part of Hegel's understanding of objective Geist, refusing to think of God's actions separately from his work in the church. Bonhoeffer does so, however, in a Barthian mode, subordinating the church and its thinking to Christ the head, the community and its Geist to the Word of God preached.

One of Robinson's most helpful contributions is his discussion of Bonhoeffer's use of Hegelian language, especially the English translations of aufheben and its cognates. The standard translation of the verb aufheben for Hegel scholars is "sublate," intending to convey a dual negative and positive sense in one word: such as negate/preserve, abolish/complete, overcome/redeem, or break/fulfill. In translations of Bonhoeffer, though, the technical terminology is rarely used; aufheben is rendered as suspend (61) or "supersede" (121) to avoid Hegelian undertones. Robinson, however, demonstrates that "Bonhoeffer does not merely demonise the Hegelian terms he encounters, naively thinking he can'break' with his predecessor" (85). Instead, Bonhoeffer knew Hegel's technical language from close reading of key texts and used Hegel's language intentionally. In fact, Bonhoeffer explicitly names the double sense of the word aufheben as his intent in at least one place: the law is sublated by the gospel, both "broken and fulfilled" (87). Thus, Robinson argues that "Bonhoeffer's use of the verb aufheben [in the Christology lectures] should more clearly indicate such double or triple sense—abolition, preservation, elevation. . . . Such a translation must, of course, acknowledge his post-Hegelian recoveries, particularly his insistence on the Christ who freely disrupts the human Logos" (121). Considering how often Bonhoeffer uses aufheben and its cognates, Robinson's contribution on this point is an essential one for English readers to understand Bonhoeffer's theology.

Although Robinson offers much, he is occasionally overeager to find similarities between Hegel and Bonhoeffer. Robinson never equates similarity with genealogy, nor does he lack nuance, but a few suggestions do not offer enough evidence to convince one that Bonhoeffer was indeed pulling from Hegel. Since both lie in the Lutheran tradition, Bonhoeffer could have been thinking with Luther or within Lutheran forms of thought learned from Karl Holl, Reinhold Seeberg, or the Lutheran Confessions. Despite this criticism, Robinson's work helpfully illustrates just how close Hegel was to Bonhoeffer's thinking. Not only does Robinson show how Bonhoeffer drew from Hegel in his definition of the church and use of technical language, but Robinson also explores Bonhoeffer's Christological logic and its similarity to Hegel that structured Bonhoeffer's approach to seeing...