Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity"

I want to turn to Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity".  After having spent a good deal of my own academic career with Bonhoeffer, he's become an important theological mentor.  And this phrase, unfortunately, is often misunderstood.  Pardon this rather long post, placed beneath the fold, but it's been ruminating in my head for some time.

Upon their publication in 1951-1952 Bonhoeffer's letters have stimulated a great deal of speculation, commentary, and head scratching -- particularly in reference to his notion about "religionless Christianity". Some were disturbed (then and now) by what seemed to be a liberal turn in Bonhoeffer's thinking.  It bothered people like Karl Barth that Bonhoeffer seemed to be saying things that sounded like Tillich and Bultmann. For many, it was hard to reconcile the "liberal" Bonhoeffer of the Letters and Papers from Prison with the "orthodox" Bonhoeffer of The Cost of Discipleship.  Even today, evangelicals are drawn to Discipleship while liberals are drawn to the Letters.  So would the real Dietrich Bonhoeffer please stand up?


It is Eberhard Bethge's opinion, the man who (allegedly) knew Bonhoeffer's mind better than anyone, that there is actually quite a bit of continuity between the early and late Bonhoeffer.  Bethge makes this argument in Chapter 13 -- "Tegel:  1943-1944" -- of his biography under the heading "The New Theology" (pp. 855-891). 

The theological letters were written by Bonhoeffer to Bethge during the last year of Bonhoeffer's life, 1944, while Bonhoeffer was in Tegel Prison in Berlin.  The letters spanned four months, from late April (the first theological letter is dated April 30) to the end of August.  These letters can be found from pp. 278-394 in Letters and Papers from Prison (henceforth LPP).  Toward the end of this time, in August, Bonhoeffer outlined a book planned for about 100 pages and divided into three chapters:

1.  A Stocktaking of Christianity
2.  The Real Meaning of the Christian Faith
3.  Conclusions

This outline and some notes for each chapter are found in LPP, pp. 380-383.  The theological letters were covering the material intended for these chapters.  After writing letters and jotting notes on these topics for three months, it appears that Bonhoeffer began writing the book in August.  In one of his last letters, dated August 23 (LPP 392-394), Bonhoeffer writes:

I'm now working at the chapter on 'A Stocktaking of Christianity'.  Unfortunately my output of work has come to depend increasingly on smoking, but I'm lucky enough to have a good supply from the most varied sources, so that I'm getting on more or less.  Sometimes I'm quite shocked at what I say, especially in the first part, which is mainly critical; and so I'm looking forward to getting to the more constructive part.  But the whole thing has been so little discussed that it often sounds too clumsy.  In any case, it can't be printed yet, and it will have to go through the 'purifier' later on.  I find it hard work to have to write everything by hand, and it seems hardly legible.  (Amusingly enough, I have to use German script, and then there are the corrections!)  We shall see; perhaps I shall write out a fair copy.

On September 22, the Gestapo discovered the file collected by his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi documenting Nazi crimes.  The discovery of the file effectively sealed the fate of Bonhoeffer, Dohannyi, and others .  In light of this, in early October the Bonhoeffer family made escape plans for Dietrich (there was a guard in Tegel willing to help) but these plans were called off for fear of Nazi reprisals against the Bonhoeffer family.  Bonhoeffer was moved from Tegel and, on February 7, taken to Buchenwald concentration camp.  From Buchenwald Bonhoeffer was eventually taken to Flossenbürg concentration camp.  The execution orders were given on April 5.  Bonhoeffer was executed, by hanging, four days later on April 9.

Twenty-one days later, Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered.

It appears that Bonhoeffer took the book he was working on with him when he was moved from Tegel.  Somewhere between Tegel and Flossenbürg the manuscript was lost.  All we have are the letters, the outline, and some notes for the three chapters.

So what was the book to be about?  We can begin to answer this question by looking at the first two theological letters on April 30 and May 5:

April 30, 1944

To Eberhard Bethage:

What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.  The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience -- and that means the time of religion in general.  We are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore.  Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the "religious a priori" of mankind.  "Christianity" has always been a form -- perhaps the true form -- of "religion."  But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless -- and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any "religious" reaction?) -- what does that mean for "Christianity"?  It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our "Christianity," and that there remain only a few "last survivors of the age of chivalry," or a few intellectually dishonest people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them goods?  Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them?  If we don't want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church?  How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well?  Are there religionless Christians?  If religion is only a garment of Christianity -- and even this garment has looked very different at different times -- then what is a religionless Christianity?

... The questions to be answered would surely be:  What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world?  How do we speak of God -- without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on?  How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God?  In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world?  In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world.  But what does that mean?  What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?

... The Pauline question of whether [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation.  Freedom from [circumcision] is also freedom from religion.  I often ask myself why a "Christian instinct" often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, but which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, "in brotherhood."  While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people -- because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it's particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) -- to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course.

The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God.  God is beyond in the midst of our life.  The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village ...  How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon.  It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall a heavy responsibility.

May 5, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

A few more words about "religionless." I expect you remember Bultmann's essay on the "demythologizing" of the New Testament?  My view of it today would be, not that he went "too far," as most people thought, but that he didn't go far enough.  It's not only the "mythological" concepts, such as miracle, ascension, and so on (which are not in principle separable from the concepts of God, faith, etc.), but "religious" concepts generally, which are problematic.  You can't, as Bultmann supposes, separate God and miracle, but you must be able to interpret and proclaim both in a "non-religions" sense.  Bultmann's approach is fundamentally still a liberal one (i.e., abridging the gospel), whereas I'm trying to think theologically.

What does it mean to "interpret in a religious sense"?  I think it means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other hand individualistically.  Neither of these is relevant to the biblical message or to the man of today.  Hasn't the individualistic question about personal salvation almost completely left us all?  Aren't we really under the impression that there are more important things than that question (perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more important than the question!)?  I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that.  But, fundamentally, isn't this in fact biblical?  Does the question about saving one's soul appear in the Old Testament at all?  Aren't righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and isn't it true that Rom. 3.24ff. is not an individualistic doctrine of salvation, but the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous?  It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored.  What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, "Like it or lump it":  virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all.  That isn't biblical.  There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation.  The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is -- by Christ's incarnation! -- a gift for us.  In the place of religion there now stands the church -- that is in itself biblical -- but the world is in some degree made to depend on itself and left to its own devices, and that's the mistake.

I'm thinking about how we can reinterpret in a "worldly" sense -- in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1.14 -- the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification.

So, what does Bonhoeffer mean by "religionless Christianity"?

That all depends on who you're asking, turns out.  Folks in the "Death of God" theological movement, see Bonhoeffer as a patron saint.  But I'm more drawn to what Bethge had to say about the subject.

According to Bethge, the key to unlocking the enigmatic letters from prison is to focus on the central question Bonhoeffer raises in the very first letter from April 30:

What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.  In short, the central issue behind the letters is Christology, the question "Who is Christ for us today?"

More specifically, Bonhoeffer is wrestling with how Christ can be Lord in a religionless world.  Later in the April 30 letter Bonhoeffer raises this question of Lordship:

If our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church?  How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? ...  How do we speak of God -- without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on?  How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God?  In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world?  In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world.  But what does that mean?

What does it mean for Christ to be Lord of a "religionless" world, a world "come of age"?

For Bethge, these questions are critical to understanding what Bonhoeffer is wrestling with.  Bonhoeffer wasn't, as some have mistakenly assumed, trying to figure out a way to translate religious categories into a secular ("religionless") language to make faith palatable to modern persons.  Rather, Bonhoeffer was trying to understand how Christ could be "Lord of the world" in a world that didn't recognize Christ's existence or seem to need him.  In that kind of world, who is Christ for us?  In his letters Bonhoeffer tries to crawl toward an answer.

Around this central Christological question -- Who is Christ for us today? -- there are three recurring themes in the theological letters.  The first two themes we've already mentioned.  The three themes are:

1.  "World come of age."
2.  "Nonreligious interpretation" (or "religionless Christianity")
3.  "Arcane discipline"

Most interpreters of the letters have tended to focus on Bonhoeffer's comments about "religionless Christianity".  This is only natural as these passages are the most shocking and explosive, theologically speaking.  But according to Bethge, if we place "religionless Christianity" at the theological center of the letters we'll misunderstand Bonhoeffer's project.  This is, in fact, the mistake made by the death of God theologians.  Again, for Bethge, to understand Bonhoeffer correctly we have to place the Christological question at the center of Bonhoeffer's concerns.  This is the center of gravity.  Thus, any discussion of a "religionless Christianity" has to orbit the central question:  Who is Christ for us today?

Here is Bethge on this point:

Bonhoeffer's theme entails setting out in order to discover the presence of Christ in the world of today:  it is not a discovery of the modern world, nor a discovery of Christ from this modern world, but discovering him in this world ...  Hence this question governs Bonhoeffer's dialogue and must preserve, in the correct relation and proportion, the explosive formulas of the world come of age, nonreligious interpretation, and arcane discipline.  Without the overriding theme of this question these concepts would fall apart and become stunted or superficial.  As isolated intellectual phenomena, they have little to do with Bonhoeffer's thought; but within the christological perspective of his central theme they achieve their full and independent justification.

The question to deal with, then, is "Who is Christ for us today?"  That requires, for Bonhoeffer, we deal with some fundamental issues.

First, then, there's "a world come of age".  In order to understand what a "religionless Christianity" might be, we have first to deal with the problem or diagnosis.

In his theological letters, which began on April 30, 1944, Bohoeffer's first mention of the "world come of age" appears in a letter dated June 8 (LPP pp. 324-329):

June 8, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

... I'll try to define my position from the historical angle.

The movement that began about the thirteenth century (I'm not going to get involved in any argument about the exact date) towards the autonomy of man (in which I should include the discovery of laws by which the world lives and deals with itself in science, social and political matters, art, ethics, and religion) has in our time reached an undoubted completion.  Man has learnt to deal with himself in all questions of importance without recourse to the "working hypothesis" called "God."  In questions of science, art, and ethics this has become an understood thing at which one now hardly dares to tilt.  But for the last hundred years or so it has also become increasingly true of religious questions; it is becoming evident that everything gets along without "God" -- and, in fact, just as well as before.  As in the scientific field, so in human affairs generally, "God" is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.

... Christian apologetics has taken the most varied forms of opposition to this self-assurance.  Efforts are made to prove to a world thus come of age that it cannot live without the tutelage of "God."  Even though there has been surrender of all secular problems, there still remain the so-called "ultimate questions" -- death, guilt -- to which only "God" can give an answer, and because of which we need God and the church and the pastor.  So we live, in some degree, on these so-called ultimate question of humanity.  But what if one day they no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered "without God"? ...  The attack by Christian apologetic on the adulthood of the world I consider to be in the first place pointless, in the second place ignoble, and in the third place unchristian.  Pointless, because it seems to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him dependent on things on which he is, in fact, on longer dependent, and thrusting him into problems that are, in fact, no longer problems for him.  Ignoble, because it amounts to an attempt to exploit man's weakness for purposes that are alien to him and to which he has not freely assented.  Unchristian, because it confuses Christ with one particular stage in man's religiousness, i.e. with a human law.  More about this later.

But first, a little more about the historical position.  The question is:  Christ and the world that has come of age ...

So here, in the June 8 letter, we find the first wrestling with the "world come of age".  According to Bonhoeffer the world come of age has achieved "autonomy" from God because, on a day to day basis, the "working hypothesis of God" is no longer needed.  Man is, pragmatically speaking, on her own.  God is "pushed more and more out of life".  Bonhoeffer also describes this as leaving the "tutelage" or "guardianship" of God.  Having left our Cosmic Nanny behind we enter the "adulthood of the world". 

Now, we all know what this looks like.  The would is becoming more and more secular and atheistic.  And, generally speaking, Christians tend to see this as a bad thing.  God is being chased out of the world.  Just think about all the stuff we hear about a "war on Christmas".

Now Bonhoeffer makes a really surprising move at this point.  For Bonhoeffer, the "world come of age" is actually a really good thing.   More, Christianity, to be Christian, needs the world to come of age.  For only in the world come of age can Christians fully understand both God and the gospel.

We get a hint of this move in the June 8 letter.  Bethge has us note how Bonhoeffer keeps placing "God" in parentheses.  That is, what is being "pushed out of the world" is a false view of God.  A religious (i.e., human) view of God.  This is why Bonhoeffer is so frustrated in the June 8 letter (and elsewhere) with Christian apologetics.  Such an apologetics is trying to protect and prop up a misconception about who God really is in the world today.  Resisting the adulthood of the world Christianity has clung to a heretical notion of God.  Thus, it is only in embracing the world come of age where Christianity can fully discover the true nature God.  In all this, the world come of age becomes a sort of midwife to the gospel.

So how are we to embrace the world come of age? Bonhoeffer describes what this looks like in one of his most famous (and controversial) letters:

July 16, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

... And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [translation: "as if there were no God"].  And this is just what we do recognize -- before God!  God himself compels us to recognize it.  So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God.  God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him.  The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).  The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.  Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.

The phrase etsi deus non daretur, living as if there were no God, is startling.  What's more, Bonhoeffer asks for something rather strange:  Before God and with God we live without God.  What could this possibly mean?

What we are encountering here is the theologia crucis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Theologia crucis is a term coined by Martin Luther to suggest that the true nature of God can only be ascertained in the crucifixion of Jesus.  That is, if you ask the questions "Who is God?" or "Where is God?" or "What is God like?" the theologia crucis answers in every case:  Look at Jesus on the cross.  The cross is who God is, where God is found, and what God like.  Recall the main question of the theological letters:  Who is Christ for us today?  Bonhoeffer answers with the theologia crucis.  We see this very clearly in the July 16th letter.  Right after the shocking "Before God and with God we live without God" the very next sentence picks up the theme of theologia crucis:

God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.  Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.

God is "weak" and "powerless".  God "lets himself be pushed out of the world" and "on to the cross".  God helps us in the world not through power ("omnipotence") but by "his weakness and suffering".  In this we see how the world come of age is functioning as a midwife to the gospel.  By pushing the false "Powerful God" out of the world the way becomes clear for the God revealed in the cross of Jesus.  Thus, the July 16 letter continues:

... Man's religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world:  God is the deus ex machina.  The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.  To that extent we may say that the development towards the world's coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way to seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness.

The world come of age kills off a "false conception of God" and this allows us to see the "God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness".  This is how the world come of age acts as a midwife to the gospel.  The "adulthood" of humanity has allowed us to dispose of a false conception of God, the Big Guy in the Sky, the deus ex machina, who swoops down to solve our problems or answer all mystery.  This God has been kicked to the margins in the world come of age.  And, for Bonhoeffer, this is a very good thing.  For it allows us to see the God of the cross, the weak and powerless God here in the midst of us.

To understand "religionless Christianity", we have to understand how Bonhoeffer is using the term "religion".  What is the problem with "religion" that Bonhoeffer is trying to get around?   In this letter Bonhoeffer picks out two aspects of religion that he find particularly problematic:

May 5, 1944

What does it mean to "interpret in a religious sense"?  I think it means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other hand individualistically.  Neither of these is relevant to the biblical message or to the man of today.

Bonhoeffer singles out metaphysics and individualism as problems with religion.  The problems with metaphysics should be obvious.  Modern man has a great deal of trouble dealing with the cosmology presented in the Bible.  Witness the struggles fundamentalist Christians have with Darwinian evolution.  But what does Bonhoeffer mean by individualism?  Basically, it is the religious focus on sin and personal salvation.  As the May 5 letter continues:

Hasn't the individualistic question about personal salvation almost completely left us all?  Aren't we really under the impression that there are more important things than that question (perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more important than the question!)?  I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that.  But, fundamentally, isn't this in fact biblical?  Does the question about saving one's soul appear in the Old Testament at all?

Now what is the root problem with metaphysics and this concern over personal salvation?  The problem is the same one we've encountered already.  The problem for Christianity is that when it becomes concerned with religious issues (like metaphysics and personal salvation) it becomes other-worldly; Christianity-as-religion pulls the Christian out of the world, getting us to focus on the Somewhere Beyond the Blue.  Bonhoeffer's concerns over other-worldliness become explicit as he continues on in the May 5 letter:

It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored.  What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world ...

What we see in all this is that, through things like metaphysics and concerns over personal salvation, religion pulls us out of the world:

That's the problem; so what is the solution?  Well, what we need is an interpretation of faith that is "nonreligious", an interpretation of faith that creates a this-worldliness.  This is what Bonhoeffer is trying to achieve with his vision of a "religionless Christianity", a faith that moves Christians deeper into the world.

So what would this nonreligious interpretation looks like?  Bonhoeffer gives a hint if we read a bit further in the May 5 letter:

I'm thinking about how we can reinterpret in a "worldly" sense -- in the sense of the Old Testament and of John 1.14 -- the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification.

We got a hint above about Bonhoeffer's interest in using the Old Testament as a guide for his nonreligious interpretation.  As he notes, there is very little other-worldliness in the Old Testament.  When the Psalms speak of salvation they are asking for salvation now.  In this world.  In a similar way, when the Psalms cry out for justice they are asking for justice now.  In this world. God's interests are totally absorbed with this world, right now.  Salvation and justice are about what happens today.

But it's not just the Old Testament.  The Lord's Prayer captures it well:  "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven".  But the trump card is the Incarnation itself.  Bonhoeffer cites John 1.14.  How this-worldly can you get?

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

I actually like the way The Message renders John 1.14:

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

In sum, a religionless Christianity is trying to create an interpretation of faith that creates the this-worldliness of the Incarnation.

What does this kind of this-worldly faith look like?  Well, sadly, Bonhoeffer didn't get a lot of time to work this out in great detail.  But he gets close in one of his final letters dated July 21:

July 21, 1944

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.  One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one.  By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities.  In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world -- watching with Christ in Gethsemane.  That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia [conversion, repentance]; that is how one becomes a man and a Christian ...

But perhaps Bonhoeffer's best description of his nonreligious interpretation can be found in the notes he left behind for Chapter 2 of his book.  In these notes it becomes very clear how Bonhoeffer is trying to define the transcendent encounter with God in a this-worldly manner.  That is, rather than "transcendence" drifting into other-worldliness, the great temptation of religion, we ground it in the midst of everyday life:

Encounter with Jesus Christ.  The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that "Jesus is there only for others."  His "being there for others" is the experience of transcendence.  It is only this "being there for others," maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.  Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection).  Our relation to God is not a "religious" relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable -- that is not authentic transcendence -- but our relation to God is a new life in "existence for others," through participation in the being of Jesus.  The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation ...

For me, this conclusion is stunning.  To find God I don't leave this world to search Somewhere Beyond the Blue.  I don't find God in my heart (individualism) or in heaven (metaphysics).  Although religion, on a daily basis, tempts me in these directions.  Rather, I look for the "neighbor who is within reach".  And in "being there for others" I encounter Christ.  This is a true, this-worldly, Old Testament, Incarnational, John 1.14 transcendence.  A nonreligious Christianity.  The Word is flesh and blood and lives in my neighborhood.

Eberhard and Renate Bethge named their son after Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  In May of 1944 Dietrich Bethge was to be baptized.  From prison Bonhoeffer wrote a baptismal homily for little Dietrich, just as he had written a wedding homily from prison for Eberhard and Renate's wedding.

Bonhoeffer wrote the baptismal homily at the same time he was writing his theological letters.  So it's not surprising that some of those ideas were expressed in the homily he wrote for Dietrich Bethge's baptism.  Toward the end of that homily Bonhoeffer wrote:

Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.  Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christian today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men.

When we think about Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity one of the concerns often expressed is that Christianity will be stripped clean of any arcane religious ritual and be reduced simply to prosocial ethical behavior, what Bonhoeffer calls in his homily "righteous action among men".  No doubt this is a large part of what Bonhoeffer is trying to do.  As we've seen, he is striving to create a this-worldly spirituality characterized by "being there" for others.  But in his baptismal homily Bonhoeffer cites two characteristics of Christianity:  Prayer and righteous action.

This pair's a bit puzzling.  Where does prayer, of all things, fit in with a religionless Christianity and a this-worldly spirituality?  Isn't prayer and worship the epitome of other-worldly religious ritual?

It seems that Bonhoeffer was worried, as he worked through this ideas, that his "nonreligious interpretation" of the faith would be flattened into a form of liberal humanism.  You see this contrast and worry in one of the last theological letters:

July 21, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

During the last year or so I've come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity.  The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man ... I don't mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.

We can see in these remarks Bonhoeffer's worry that a religionless, this-worldly Christianity would become shallow and banal, a spirituality for the "enlightened" (and I read this as a reference to modernity, humanism, and the Enlightenment), the busy, the comfortable and the hedonistic.

So how do we prevent this shallow banality?  Bonhoeffer speaks of a spirituality "characterized by discipline".  But what does this mean?

The phrase "arcane discipline" occurs just twice in the theological letters but it does emerge in the very first letter of April 30:

April 30, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about "God"?  In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we ... those called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world?  In that case, Christ is no longer the object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world.  But what does that mean?  What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?  Does secret discipline ... take on a new importance here?

We see here how Bonhoeffer is struggling with the role of worship and prayer in his "religionless-secular" Christianity.  And he calls worship and prayer the "secret" or "arcane" discipline.  So that is what we are talking about, the "discipline" of Christian worship, prayer, and the reading of the Word.  Given this understanding, we can see Bonhoeffer's struggle.  Wouldn't these disciplines import other-worldliness back into the faith?  Wouldn't these activities make Christ an "object of religion", the very thing Bonhoeffer is pushing against?  Rather than following Christ into the world where he is "Lord" we would end up praying to and worshiping Christ as an other-worldly religious object.  That's a problem.  Then and now.

And yet, we see Bonhoeffer wonder if the disciplines of worship and prayer might take on a "new importance" in his vision of a religionless Christianity.  And above we got a hint of what this might involve. Perhaps these disciplines might help keep spirituality from becoming banal and shallow.

Still, how are we to keep these disciplines from sliding into other-worldliness?  We get a sense of an answer in a later letter:

May 5, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored.  What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let me break in here to again point out Bonhoeffer's worry that his vision of a this-worldly Christianity would become "anthropocentric", "liberal", and merely "ethical".  Again, this is his worry that all he's creating is a flat form of liberal humanism.  To push against that flattening Bonhoeffer wants to ground his religionless Christianity in "the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ".  We've already seen how this looks.  In the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection Christ becomes available to the world.  Not in an ethical sense, but in a communal, even ontological sense.  The letter continues:

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, "Like it or lump it":  virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all.  That isn't biblical.  There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation.  The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is -- by Christ's incarnation! -- a gift for us.  In the place of religion there now stands the church -- that is in itself biblical -- but the world is in some degree made to depend on itself and left to its own devices, and that's the mistake.

We see here an attempt by Bonhoeffer to protect the Christian disciplines from "profanation".  What does that mean?  Well, what tends to happen with all this religious ritual (worship and prayer) and metaphysical doctrine (Bonhoeffer mentions the virgin birth and the Trinity) is that it gets packaged and then forced onto the world in an evangelistic "like it or lump it" fashion.  Much as if you were making a sales pitch to someone.  Bonhoeffer often uses the word "propaganda" to describe this.  Here's the product!  Buy it all (the whole thing, all doctrine and rituals) or walk away.  Like it or lump it!  Bonhoeffer recoils at this for two reasons.  First, there are "degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance".  When we "sell" the faith to outsiders a lot of what we are selling is pretty hard to swallow.  So while many people might be attracted to the faith if we insist on a "take it all or take nothing" we'll put them in a very bad position.  A "like it or lump it" situation.  And this would be sad because a lot of what the person might be rejecting isn't all that important.  Again, there are "degrees of significance".  Is the virgin birth, or the Trinity, or your theology of the end times really all that significant?  That is, do they encourage you to "be there" for others in the world?  Maybe they do, maybe they don't.  Maybe we simply have different "degrees of knowledge" about these doctrines.  Maybe I find the doctrine of the Trinity profound and motivating.  Maybe you see it as a paradoxical bit of metaphysical nonsense.  Bonhoeffer seems to think such differences are to be tolerated.  No lump it or leave it.

So are these rituals and doctrines simply optional?  I don't think Bonhoeffer wants to say that.  Rather, he wants to avoid a "positivist" account of faith.  And this goes to the second reason Bonhoeffer recoils at the "lump it or leave it" presentation of faith.  But what does Bonhoeffer mean by "positivisitic"?  I think he's referring to how Christians present their faith-claims as axiomatic and self-evident.  And in making the creeds "self-evident" they have been hollowed out and profaned.  Basically, they have become packaged and merchandised.  In wanting to "sell" the faith to outsiders we've make the gospel too available, as in "common" and "profane".  We've turned it into a sales pitch.

The problem with this is that the Christian faith isn't all that available or self-evident.  The virgin birth isn't self-evident or "available" to the modern mind.  So let's stop pretending that it is, that it can be sales-pitched to our neighbors.

So how to we protect against this?  Bonhoeffer recommends that we ground these rituals and doctrines in mystery.  Mystery keeps the faith from becoming too available, too commercialized, too marketable, too self-evident, too easy to talk about, too amenable to the evangelistic sales pitch.

But how does any of this help with the problem of other-worldliness?  For Bonhoeffer these disciplines are there to energize and sustain the church in her mission of "being there" for the world.  This prevents the church from becoming banal and shallow.  These disciplines, as Bonhoeffer mentions in the April 30 letter, give us "the constant knowledge of death and resurrection".  However, and this is key, these disciplines are to be "secret" from the world.  Not in any weird secret society kind of way, but in a Sermon on the Mount kind of way:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.   Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Prayer exists, as Bonhoeffer indicated in his baptismal homily for Dietrich Bethge, to help sustain "righteous action among men".  Prayer is a discipline that sustains us in our "being there" for others.  How it does this is a mystery.  It's not self-evident.  It's only experienced as a gift.  And if you, a skeptic or a new Christian, don't get that, well, that's okay.  Because, in point of fact, you'll never see me pray.  It's a secret discipline.  All you'll see, on the outside, is my being there for you.

The point, for Bonhoeffer, is that when the rituals and doctrines of the faith become too available we begin to import other-worldliness into the faith.  "Converting" to Christianity then becomes about believing certain metaphysical doctrines and practicing certain religious rituals.  That is, converting to Christianity is to become "religious".  But Bonhoeffer wants to keep all those rituals and doctrines as a secret, as a mystery and gift for the church.  All the world should see, on the outside, is a "secular", "religionless", being-there for others.  The church should become silent.  No more propaganda.  No more sales pitches.   It's time for the church to shut up and start "being there" for others.  So when you convert to Christianity you convert to this "being there for others".  You don't convert to metaphysics or ritual.  Conversion doesn't mean you start going to church on Sundays.  Yes, it's true that these things sustain Christians in their closets -- through mystery, faith, and gift -- but this isn't self-evident.  And it's not a lump it or leave it deal.  These disciplines only increase in "degree of significance" as your faith, curiosity, and need progresses.

Bonhoeffer's best description of what all this looks like comes from a lecture he gave in the summer of 1932 in Berlin.  It was his first mention of the "secret discipline" and it remains the best description he gave of how the secret discipline sustains the church as a "word of recognition between friends" and how the doctrines and rituals of the faith should not be used as "propaganda and ammunition" against outsiders seen as "enemies".  Rather, the church should be silent and allow her actions to speak more loudly than any evangelistic sales pitch:

Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion.  Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless.   The confession of faith belongs rather to the "Discipline of the Secret" in the Christian gathering of those who believe.  Nowhere else is it tenable ...

The primary confession of the Christan before the world is the deed which interprets itself.  If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word.  This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda.  This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community.  This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world.  It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies.  This attitude was first learned at baptism.  The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world.

In light of all this, how do we deal with Bonhoeffer's central question:  "Who is Christ for us today?"

As Bonhoeffer wrote in the very first theological letter:

April 30, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

... God's "beyond" is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties.  The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God.  God is beyond in the midst of our life.  The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.

God's transcendence, God's being "beyond", has nothing to do with heaven or other-worldliness.  God's transcendence, God's way of being "beyond" is to be found "in the midst of our life".  Following God, the church, therefore, isn't to be found at the edges of this world, as the religious doorstep to some other-worldly heaven.  Rather, the church is to be found, with God, "in the middle of the village".  As Bonhoeffer wrote on July 21:  "By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities."

All well and good, but what are we to do there in the middle of the village?  How do we experience transcendence in the middle of "life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities"?  According to Bonhoeffer, we encounter God in the middle of life when we are there for our neighbors:  "The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation."

It is in this "being there for others" that marks the Christian.  The goal of the Christian life isn't to become "religious":  "Our relation to God is not a 'religious' relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable -- that is not authentic transcendence -- but our relation to God is a new life in 'existence for others,' through participation in the being of Jesus."  Thus, we finally come to the answer of the Christological question:  Who is Christ for us today?

The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that "Jesus is there only for others."  His "being there for others" is the experience of transcendence.  It is only this "being there for others," maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.  Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection).

Jesus' transcendence is found in his "being there for others".  Through his incarnation, death, and resurrection Jesus becomes radically available to humanity.  Consequently, Christian faith becomes "participation in this being of Jesus".  Summarizing all this, in the notes he left behind for the book he was working on, Bonhoeffer gives us his most succinct answer to the Christological question:

Jesus is "the man for others."

Given that answer, Bonhoeffer expects the church to follow suit:

The church is the church only when it exists for others ...  The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.  It must tell men of every calling, what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.

One of the best descriptions of what this might look like, a church existing for the sake of the world, comes from a letter Bonhoeffer wrote in June, 1944 to Eberhard and Renate Bethge commenting on 1 Peter 3.9:

God does not repay evil for evil, and thus the righteous should not do so either.  No judgment, no abuse, but blessing ...  Blessing means laying one's hand on something and saying, Despite everything, you belong to God.  This is what we do with the world that inflicts such suffering on us.  We do not abandon it; we do not repudiate, despise or condemn it.  Instead we call it back to God, we give it hope, we lay our hand on it and say:  may God's blessing come upon you, may God renew you; be blessed, world created by God, you who belong to your Creator and Redeemer.  We have received God's blessing in happiness and in suffering.  Yet those who have been blessed can do nothing but pass on this blessing; indeed, they must be a blessing wherever they are.

That might be the best summary of what a "religionless Christianity" looks like.  It's being a blessing to others wherever you are, in the middle of life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities.  We lay our hands on others and say "Despite everything, you belong to God; be blessed".  What's more, we suffer with our neighbors making our lives available to them, "not dominating, but helping and serving".

***

How to summarize and wrap up?  I think the single best summary of Bonhoeffer's letters is a poem he wrote from prison during his final months in Tegel.  The poem is entitled "Christians and Pagans".  The poem has three stanzas and the movement of the poem is from a "religious" to a "nonreligious" interpretation of faith.

In the first stanza we find the "religious" interpretation of God, the deus ex machina, the other-worldly Powerful God who we turn to when we need a fix or a rescue operation.  Stanza one, as the "religious" interpretation of faith, is a position now untenable in the "world come of age".

In the second stanza we find a contrast with the powerful deus ex machina God of the first stanza.  In stanza two we find the theologia crucis of Bonhoeffer's letters, the God "pushed out of the world and onto the cross".  Seeing this, "religious" Christians, fearful about God getting "crucified" and pushed out of the world, rush to God's assistance.  The final line of stanza two, then, is filled with ambivalence.  Some, wanting the "religious" God of stanza one, will rush to defend God against the attacks of the pagans.  Others, by contrast, Bonhoeffer's "nonreligious" Christians, will see in the Crucified the true nature of God.  Thus, stanza two hovers between the religious -- stanza one -- and nonreligious -- stanza three -- interpretations.

In stanza three, having moved through stanza two, "nonreligious" Christians find in the Crucified the true transcendence of God:  A God who, by "hanging dead," came to us and fed us.  This is God's "being there" for the world in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Contrast the first two lines of stanzas one and three.  In stanza one we have the other-worldly flight into the Beyond looking for relief from a Powerful Other.  But this move is no longer plausible in the world come of age.  But in stanza three we find God moving toward us, God "being there" in Jesus for the entire world, "for Christians and pagans alike".

Christians and Pagans

1.
Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

2.
Men go to God when he is sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

3.
God goes to every man when sore bestead,
Feeds body and spirit with his bread;
For Christians, pagan alike he hangs dead,
And both alike forgiving.