Try as I might, it's nearly impossible for me to believe that a young man in his 20s could write something like Sanctorum Communio (the full text of the book is online here). I first read Bonhoeffer's dissertation as an undergrad, and I feel that I will never think of church in quite the same way again.
In fact, I feel like I've been given a view of a mountain that I
know I must go back and climb again, but the overall sensation of its
height is so startling that I'm not quite sure how to begin. (Maybe, in
a weird way, a kind of awed despair is the mark of all truly great
books?) They say that Barth's commentary on Romans fell on the
playground of the liberal theologians like an atom bomb. Well, Sanctorum Communio fell upon the theological playground of a young Liberal theologian like myself, and had much the same effect.Originally published in 1930, three years after it initially appeared as Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation (and 15 years before Bonhoeffer would be put to death), Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church represents a staggering achievement. Karl Barth would later say of this work, "I openly confess that I have misgivings whether I can even maintain the high level reached by Bonhoeffer, saying no less in my own words and context, and saying it no less forcefully, than did this young man so many years ago" (page 2). He would also call this book "a miracle".
It is steeped in sociological categories that many readers might find offputting. I don't claim to have followed some of the more technical aspects of the social philosophy sections, but struggling through these parts is reward enough in and of itself to warrant the effort. Even so, I daresay that the work is accessible enough to anybody who cares deeply about the church. I found it to be so anyway. (In a strange way this book reminds of Moby Dick. I had to sludge through some of the sailing history and terminology that was, frankly, foreign to me. But the story, and, on hindsight, the foundation that the denser parts of that book lend to the story, was overwhelming.)
Early on, when I first read the book, I was sure there were things wrong with Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology. Now, with the hindsight of 20-plus years of rereading it -- and having the dissertation take a very active role in my own doctoral dissertation -- I'm nearly certain Bonhoeffer got almost everything right.
Bonhoeffer strikes a clear blow to the radical individualism of Western philosophy and culture.
It is our view that there would be no self-consciousness without community -- or better, that self-consciousness arises concurrently with the consciousness of existing in community. Second, we assert that will is by its nature oriented toward other wills (p. 70).And again:
The universal person of God does not think of people as isolated individual beings, but in a natural state of communication with other human beings. Furthermore, in relations with others, I do not merely satisfy one side of my structurally closed being as spirit; rather, only here do I discover my reality, i.e., my I-ness. God created man and woman directed to one another. God does not desire a history of individual human beings, but the history of the human community. However, God does not want a community that absorbs the individual into itself, but a community of human beings. In God's eyes, community and individual exist in the same moment and rest in one another. The collective unit and the individual unit have the same structure in God’s eyes. On these basic-relations rest the concepts of the religious community and the church (p. 80).Genuine life, Bonhoeffer insists, occurs only at those places where I-You happen.
This is a Bonhoeffer book that nearly no one ever reads. That should change.