This is the second of a two-part essay. The first part was published in the 2026 spring edition of Theology Matters.
Bonhoeffer did not “return to Germany on the next ship,” as Barth had told him to do. He returned in March 1935, about a year-and-a-half later. Therefore, he missed the Barmen Synod at the end of May 1934. He also missed much that happened before and after it. The Barmen Synod was “an extraordinarily youthful one, the average age being not more than forty.”1 So, many of his friends were there, including his best friend, Franz Hildebrandt. But Bonhoeffer was not there. He was in London, serving two German-speaking congregations.
This does not mean that he was not paying close attention to what was going on in Germany. Bonhoeffer tried to keep abreast of all that was going on in the Confessing Church, all the challenges it faced from within and without. And he addressed some of its challenges, engaged in ecumenical work on behalf of the Confessing Church, and did what he could to provide theological leadership from London. But he was busy trying to be a pastor.
Bonhoeffer as a pastor
Barth had underestimated how much Bonhoeffer wanted and felt he needed to be a pastor. Bonhoeffer had already written a lot about the church, but he had never served as a pastor. He had preached a little, served as an intern and youth pastor to a German-speaking congregation in Barcelona, taught a confirmation class of rowdy, inner city boys in Berlin, and performed other pastoral duties. But he never had to preach, teach, and provide pastoral care every week, or to sit in meetings where people talked about such things as the boiler, who are we going to get to paint this room, pave the parking lot, or replace the gutters, and other such matters that likely never occurred to this brilliant Instructor of Systematic Theology at the University of Berlin. His friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge, said he “did not care much for parish meetings and minute taking on routine matters.”2 But he learned a lot and found the work quite demanding and time-consuming, yet also edifying in surprising ways.
He preached a series on the Sermon on the Mount, which he later used for his book, Discipleship. Bethge says, “His parishioners found the severe standards of his sermons particularly hard to accept. They were accustomed to the mild, folksy, pious sermons of his predecessor. Bonhoeffer’s sermons, by comparison, seemed too oppressive and emphatic. Indeed, some responded by staying away.” But most were deeply grateful for their young, energetic pastor.3
He also began while in London to think more about how to prepare pastors for parish ministry. He wrote his friend, Erwin Sutz, “I no longer believe in the university; … The next generation of pastors, these days, ought to be trained entirely in church-monastic schools, where the pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount, and worship are taken seriously—which for all three of these things is simply not the case at the university and, under the present circumstance, is impossible.”4
Bonhoeffer did not wish to back off one bit from the academic rigor of theological education. He had been appalled by the lack of it at Union Seminary, New York, which, he said, was “accelerating the process of the secularization of Christianity in America. Its criticism is directed essentially against the fundamentalists,” which, he added, “is healthy and necessary. But there is no sound basis on which one can rebuild after demolition.”5 Bonhoeffer did not want to abandon critical reflection on the faith. What he wanted was a deeper integration of academic rigor with prayer, meditation, preaching, and worship.
He also thought more deeply about the crisis facing the church. When he went to London, he told Barth that he was going into “the wilderness” to get some “distance” from the German church conflict. After thinking and praying about it for a while, he believed that an even greater conflict lay ahead and the present conflict was only a “preliminary skirmish” in comparison. He believed few engaged in the present conflict would participate in the next one, which would require a “resistance unto death” and that the task would “simply be to suffer faithfully.” Yet, he believed, or at least he hoped, that God would, again, speak his word through his church.6
The need for well-trained pastors
So, when the governing council of the Confessing Church asked him to lead a seminary to train pastors, he immediately agreed, girded up his loins, and returned to Germany in March 1935 and in April was commissioned as its director. The first site of the seminary was at Zingsthof on the Baltic Sea, where Bonhoeffer and his students sometimes gathered in the dunes for discussion. Soon however the seminary moved to Finkenwalde in the province of Pomerania, which today is in Poland. The living space was plain, the worship space simple. It was supported by voluntary gifts of the Confessing churches. Students knew they were taking a risk by attending this seminary, which at first was only clandestine but soon became illegal. Yet they knew something important was happening in it. They had all been through German universities, but they knew they needed something more if they were going to be sufficiently equipped as pastors. And so did the leaders of the Confessing Church.
It is sterling testimony to the spiritual maturity and wisdom of the leaders of the Confessing Church in Germany, it is a shining tribute to their fortitude and foresight, that amid all the chaos and confusion they faced, all the needs their congregations had, and all the burdens they carried, they recognized the need to raise up the next generation of pastors. And they not only recognized the need. They did something about it.
And it was not just the clergy of the Confessing Church who recognized the need and did something about it. It was the “lay folk,” such as Erna Struwe, the Hausmutter, who cooked meals for these seminarians and kept order. If you look closely, you will see her in the middle of every seminary class photo. It was also Ruth von Kleist, a benefactress, who supported this endeavor sacrificially and at great risk to her and her family.
They all recognized that pastors do not fall out of heaven but must be raised up, equipped, and sent out. They recognized that they could not simply outsource this task to others but had to take responsibility for it themselves. They recognized there was nothing better, nothing greater, nothing more important they could do for the future well-being of their congregations than to help to raise up a new generation of spiritually mature, biblically faithful, theologically sound, well-trained ministers of God’s Word. And in case anyone has any trouble connecting the dots, this is what Theology Matters is trying to do and what many of you are helping to do. And we thank you!
Leaders of the Confessing Church also recognized that ministers are made in communities. Yet they are formed not just in any community but a community under God’s Word. Students at Finkenwalde were entering a life, they were told from the start, that “demands a life under the word of God. Every day must stand under the discipline of this word.” So, students were primarily engaged in interpreting the Bible at the highest level, with all the “scholarly aids” available to them as well as devotionally. A student was also expected to have “thorough acquaintance with the confessional writings of his church and be completely accountable with regard to them.” In addition, each student “was to have spent some time as an apprentice with a fellow pastor who prayed with him and guided his work.”7 Again, this is what Theology Matters is seeking to do in providing pastor-mentors for students in our M.A. program in Reformed Theology.8
The program at Finkenwalde involved daily prayer, meditation, worship, study, discussion, table fellowship, and recreation. It was, above all, an opportunity for students to experience Christian community. Some say features of it were a bit idealistic, but the basic premise was not. The basic premise was simple: Pastors ought to know what it means to be part of a Christian community before they try to lead one.9
Bonhoeffer completed his two most famous works at Finkenwalde, Discipleship in ’37, and Life Together in ’38. These books show that he never aspired to be a mere academic theologian but always sought to be a church theologian, a theologian of the church and for the church. They also show that he was always fascinated by the concrete reality of the church.
The visible church
Bonhoeffer’s dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry Into a Sociology of The Church, defends the thesis that the church is both a theological and a sociological reality at the same time, and must be understood as both and not merely as one or the other. Just as Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly human at the same time, so the theological and sociological natures of the church may be distinguished yet must not be separated. In other words, the church is the Body of Christ and as such is both a truly divine and a truly human reality; a spiritual as well as a concrete, social reality; an invisible as well as a visible reality in this world. It is this conviction that Bonhoeffer continued to develop with increasing clarity throughout the 1930s.10
What does this mean? It means one cannot come away from The Cost of Discipleship or Life Together with an idealistic or triumphalistic view of the church. Bonhoeffer sets out to shatter any such view or any “visionary dreaming” about the church. Some of you will remember, as I do, how convicted you felt the first time you read Bonhoeffer on the temptation of the “wish dream”:
Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly.11
Bonhoeffer pulls no punches when it comes to describing the concrete, human, social, and visible reality of the church “with all its unhappy and ugly aspects,” he says. Rather the church, notwithstanding her Lord’s promise to overcome these aspects, is subject to the same brokenness, corruption, weakness, fragility, and messiness as any other human community. Bonhoeffer was trying to overcome what is called “ecclesiological Docetism.” Docetism, some of you will recall, comes from the Greek word δοκέω, which means “to seem” or “to appear.” Docetism was an early Christological heresy which claimed that Jesus Christ only seemed or appeared to be human but, in fact, he was only divine in his essence rather than divine and human at the same time. So, ecclesiological Docetism is the belief that the church only seems or appears to be human but is really only divine in its essence rather than divine and human at the same time. Ecclesiological Docetism, in other words, is a false spiritualization of the church. It is the refusal to embrace the essential human, visible reality of the church, and it is as popular today as ever.
We see it in the reticence of many to participate in embodied worship. We see it in the rise of “Cyber Christians.” We used to call them “TV Christians.” Now young people call them “Larpers”—Live Action Role Players, who play at being something they are not. (“larping”). We see it in the lack of commitment to regular corporate worship. We see it in the wish to be “spiritual not religious.” We see it in the reluctance of many to become members of the visible church, that is, to identify formally and officially with it.
The flight into invisibility
Of course, the temptation of “forsaking the assembling” of ourselves (Heb. 10:25) has been with the church from the beginning. And spiritual reasons have always been given for it and for refusing to identify with the visible church. We’ve all heard “the church is full of hypocrites” from those who do not seem to realize that there is always room for one more. Or perhaps you have heard those who say, “I don’t mind Jesus. It’s organized, institutional religion I can’t stand” or “I like Jesus. It’s his Bride I can’t stand.” Or how about the preacher who says, “I love the ministry, it’s the people I can’t stand”? Or, as my middle son recently cited to me from Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”12
The visible, concrete particularity of the church has always been an offense in this world, at least when properly understood. That weak, broken, confused, fragile human beings, such as we are, could be called the Body of Christ and be used to accomplish his work on this earth is offensive. It is a scandal. We know that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God was offensive and a scandal in this world. But why wouldn’t the church also be a scandal if it is his body?13 Some say they are willing to bear the scandal of the cross, but they are not willing to bear the scandal of the church. Bonhoeffer makes clear that if we claim to love Jesus Christ, we can no more be ashamed of the visible church than we can be of him. Nor can we refuse to identify with it.14
As the price for identifying with the Confessing Church in Germany rose throughout the 1930s, increasing numbers of Christians embraced a more docetic understanding of the church. Rather than embrace the visible reality of the church, they saw the church as essentially invisible. It was easier. It was safer to think of the church as essentially invisible. But Bonhoeffer says in The Cost of Discipleship: “To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.”15
Bonhoeffer says the Body of Christ “takes up space on earth. That is the consequence of the Incarnation.”16 Because Jesus Christ took on our flesh, uniting us with his Body, we now, the Body of Christ, take up visible space in the world. We are a visible community in the world. We do not retreat from the world. We take up visible space in the world for the sake of the world. Bonhoeffer says this is what Jesus meant when he said: “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand” (Matt. 5:13–15). So, it matters that we take up visible space and how we take up visible space in the world. We do not hide ourselves. We do not retreat into the invisible or live under a bushel. We let our light shine—like a lamp on a stand, like a city on a hill. And if I understand them correctly, this is what many young people today want to see the church do again. How else will the world come to know who Jesus Christ is apart from the concrete reality of the visible church?
Bonhoeffer expressed these convictions in early 1937. By August, the Finkenwalde seminary was declared illegal. On Sept. 28, two dozen of his students were arrested. In 1938, after learning through family members about Hitler’s plans for world domination, Bonhoeffer decided to be involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I do not have time to elaborate, but suffice it to say, Bonhoeffer’s life became complicated. Friends and colleagues at Union Seminary in New York, including Reinhold Niebuhr, knew his life was in danger, and they devised a plan to bring him back to America, and he departed in early June 1939. But from the time he boarded the ship, Bonhoeffer had grave misgivings about leaving Germany. He agonized about forsaking “the brethren,” his students and fellow pastors. Two weeks after arriving in America on, he decided that he could not stay.
It grieved him that his American friends and colleagues had practically moved heaven and earth to bring him to America. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr on June 22:
I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. … Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or of willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of the alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make the choice from a position of safety.17
Protestantism without Reformation
In the weeks before he returned, he wrote an essay about Christianity in America that he had been reflecting on since his visit ten years earlier. One wonders: Why write it now with everything else facing him? Perhaps it was because he did not know what awaited him in Germany and, therefore, wanted to get his thoughts down on paper. Perhaps it was because he wanted to thank his American friends and colleagues by doing what German scholars do—by giving them his frank, critical assessment of the matter. In any case, there is a burden, an urgency in this essay that goes beyond mere scholarly assessment. He entitled it, “Protestantism Without Reformation.”18
Bonhoeffer did not believe that America had ever experienced a reformation. He claimed, “God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God.” He recognized, of course, that the churches of America had exercised enormous influence on the culture, and he believed: “The decisive task for today is the dialogue between Protestantism without Reformation and the churches of the Reformation.”19
He believed the churches of the Reformation in Europe and the churches without the Reformation in America could learn from each other. Bonhoeffer had been overwhelmed by the incredible plurality of churches in America. On the one hand, he said: “It has been granted to the Americans more than any other nation of the earth to have before their eyes the multiplicity of Christian insights and communities.” On the other hand, he said, “It has been granted to the Americans less than any other nation of the earth to realize the visible unity of the church of God.” The lack of visible unity of the church in America concerned him. And he said, “The concept of the invisible church cannot be far away,” that is, the temptation of ecclesiological Docetism.20
Sanctuary for victims of religious intolerance
Bonhoeffer was also struck by the phenomenon of denominationalism in America. In contrast to the state churches of Europe, Americans tended to see denominations as voluntary or “private associations” of individuals, as “a free association of Christians on the basis of definite common experiences.” He was surprised by the “influence” and “power of the free Church associations which are not linked to denominations,” that is, para-church organizations. He noted that some denominations, such as the Presbyterians, had exercised great influence on America, and spoke as if they still did. But what troubled him was the “incredible picture of fragmentation” that the American church represents. He said, “The unity of the church of Jesus Christ is to American Christianity less something essential, originally given by God, than something required, something which ought to be. It is less origin than goal”—and, seemingly, not a terribly urgent or pressing goal. After a decade of reflection, he came to what he believed was a key insight:
The history of the church of Jesus Christ in America is distinct from the histories of all other churches on earth by virtue of the fact that from the beginning America has been a refuge for persecuted Christians from the European continent. Since the seventeenth century, America has been the sanctuary for victims of religious intolerance, for those who wished to live in freedom for their worship.21
The earliest settlers fled Europe because of confessional intolerance. They did so in order “to serve God in quietness and peace.” So, “the Christian right to flee” has long been considered sacred in America. It is one reason the impulse to retreat (or “retreatism”) runs so deep. But there is a deeper problem: “In the sanctuary there is no longer a place for strife” over confessions. The children of those who fled confessional intolerance do not wish to be considered confessionally intolerant themselves. So, they began to think not only that struggling over a confession was no longer necessary but no longer good. Eventually, they forgot why their forbears came in the first place. They came to think that their forbears came because they wanted peace, not because they wanted to live according to some creed. And then this happened:
The struggle over the creed, because of which the fathers took flight, [became] for the sons something which is in itself unchristian. Absence of struggle becomes for them the normal and ideal state of Christianity. … Thus for American Christianity the concept of tolerance becomes the basic principle of everything Christian. Any intolerance is in itself unchristian.22
Does this sound familiar to you? The creed, the confession, and the question of truth are no longer decisive. The concept of tolerance is the basic principle of everything. “Any intolerance is in itself unchristian.” This, Bonhoeffer claims, is a primary source of America’s secularization. But there is another.
An enthusiastic doctrine of the state
In the past, the churches in America were so powerful that they could more or less dictate to the state what it should or should not do. In the nineteenth century, for example, Bonhoeffer relates, “The denominational influence still dominated the life of Christians so completely that the help of the state could be refused” when it came to public education. But Bonhoeffer recognized in 1939 this was no longer the case. The officially “religionless state” was now pushing back hard against the church. The churches in America had long embraced what Bonhoeffer calls “an enthusiastic doctrine of the state” wherein “The church proclaims the principles of social and political order, the state merely provides the technical means of putting them into effect.” This order no longer prevailed. But the churches still fancied that they were in control and had all the answers or at least many of them and could still tell the state what to do with respect to all manner of “social, political, and economic questions.”23
Fancying it was still in control and had not only the right to be heard but the right to be taken seriously, Bonhoeffer marvels, for example, at all the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was demanding that the state do in 1939. The state should demand that Uruguay not “limit religious freedom. … a new marriage and divorce law is demanded, as is vaccination legislation and female suffrage. A stand is made against games of chance, lotteries and horse racing … The government is asked to recognize Liberia as an independent republic”—as if the Presbyterian Church had its own State Department! “Further demands are made for better race relationships, old age pensions, and unemployment assistance, and for a simplification of legal procedure in civil cases,” as well as statements about “the International Court of Justice, disarmament, naturalization laws, and so on.”24
Please make no mistake, Bonhoeffer was not sanctioning silence on all these matters. He writes at length about “the race question,” the need for better race relations, and the clear betrayal of the church, baptism, and the Gospel that racial segregation represents. With respect to this and other matters, he believed the church “calls to mind the Kingdom of God, God’s commandment and righteousness, and thereby the responsibility both of rulers and of the ruled,” as Barmen’s Fifth Article states. So, Bonhoeffer was, to be sure, by no means advocating for any “spirituality of the church” or Lutheran two-kingdom doctrine wherein the realm of the church and the state remain neatly bifurcated—as if responsibilities in one realm could always be so cleanly divided or hermetically sealed off from the other. He admits what an unmitigated disaster this had turned out to be in Germany. He says: “the secularization of the church on the continent of Europe arose” precisely from this “misinterpretation.”25
Nevertheless, he says, “American secularization derives precisely from the deficient [mangelnden] distinction of the kingdoms and offices of church and state, from the enthusiastic claim of the church to universal influence on the world”—as if the church had an unlimited reservoir of wisdom, resources, and expertise to address all the world’s problems, as if the task and vocation of the church and the state were more or less the same, “as though,” as Barmen’s Fifth Article says, “the Church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus itself becoming an organ of the State.” Bonhoeffer worried that American denominations were in danger of becoming organs or tools of the state if they continued to confuse the church’s special commission, vocation, and tasks with the state’s, and he warned: “the American denominations today must learn the necessity of this distinction, if they are to be rescued from complete secularization.”26
Is this not where we are today? Are we not in need of rescue from complete secularization? Are we not more enthusiastic or eager to embrace social and political agendas than to fulfill the church’s tasks and vocation? Have not so many of our churches become organs or tools of the state—whether as witting or unwitting mouthpieces of the political left or the political right?
I know there is much more that could be said here. I know this is all more complicated than I have made it sound. But let us be clear about one thing: The church has its own “special commission.” “It trusts and obeys the power of the Word of God by which God upholds all things.” This is what the Barmen Declaration’s Fifth Article says.
Bonhoeffer believed, like Barth, that the church does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of the world. But the church exists for the sake of the world not by being the world but by being the church and not the world, by living in solidarity with the world without conformity to the world. Why solidarity without conformity to the world? Because Jesus said: “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14).
Bonhoeffer worried about the secularization of the American church, and he wanted his friends and colleagues to know why—even though he had plenty of other things to worry about in the summer of 1939. When he returned to Germany, nearly a thousand pastors were in prison. Some were his friends. Many were tortured. Hundreds would die. Half the students he taught would be killed, many on the Eastern Front. He went to Sigurdshof where there was no inside plumbing and only a handful of students. He taught there until March 1940. And most of you know, I trust, what eventually happened to him. He was hanged.
Bonhoeffer’s journey and ours
So, what does Bonhoeffer’s journey have to do with ours? What does the journey of his students and fellow pastors have to do with ours? Perhaps not much. We are not facing what they faced. No one is threatening to arrest us, to put us in prison, to torture or to interrogate us and our family members. Sure, we face opposition and feel pressure. Who doesn’t? Yes, many of us have had to deal in our congregations, classrooms, or elsewhere with censors who have tried to restrict our speech. But we are still free to speak God’s Word and let the chips fall where they may, are we not? Yes, it may cost us our jobs, and for some it already has. But this is a price that many Christians have been willing to pay throughout the centuries.
Owing “to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions,” as Barmen’s Third Article puts it, there has been pressure on many of us for quite some time “to abandon the form of [the church’s] message and order,” especially many of us in the Presbyterian Church (USA). And now some would seek to exact from us an oath of allegiance to the god of tolerance. At least that is what one recent amendment amounts to for some of us. Since so many are still so unaware—genuinely unaware—that the god of tolerance is a jealous god and is anything but tolerant but supremely intolerant, we do not know what will happen to us. We do not know what the courts or higher governing bodies of our church will do with us.
We cannot betray our ordination vows to be under the authority of Scripture and be guided by our confessions. We cannot bless or sanction what God has not blessed or sanctioned in his Word. We live by “the power of the Word of God by which God upholds all things.” We cannot allow our conscience to be bound by any authority other than God’s Word. It may be that some of us will be forced to walk the plank, so to speak. If so, we will do so, I hope, decently and in order, as Presbyterians, albeit not silently and not without sadness, but also not without joy.
And perhaps here our journey does have something to do with Bonhoeffer’s. What an opportunity we have today to bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ in this world! What a joy to be called by Jesus Christ to be his disciples, to be commissioned and sent by him. What a privilege to serve his church and to be part of his body, both visible and invisible. What an honor to follow him, the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep.
What a blessing to see so many young people among us who, rather than fleeing from the visible church like so many in their generation—and, frankly, like so many in their parents’ and grandparents’ generation, too—they are coming back to it and calling others to do the same. Rather than being bored by the church’s tradition, they are curious about it. Rather than thinking they already know enough about the Bible and theology, many are hungry to learn more. And some are asking us to teach them and to equip them for service in the church. What an opportunity we have. What a responsibility, too.27
These young people are not seeking to retreat from the world. They understand perhaps better than any previous generation that there is no escaping or retreating from the world. Rather than retreating from the world, they want to be the church in the world. And they want our help. They want us, above all, to be salt and light. They want us to live in solidarity with the world without conformity to the world. They want us to hold our posts and to stand faithfully for the faith. “Therefore,” as the apostle Paul tell us,
Take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph. 6:13–17).
This address was delivered on March 5, 2026, at the fifth Theology Matters’ conference at Providence Presbyterian Church, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Notes
- Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler (Westminster: Philadelphia, 1962), 137. ↩︎
- Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Eine Biographie, 384; ET 330. ↩︎
- Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Eine Biographie, 384f.; ET 330f. ↩︎
- Letter to Erwin Sutz, Sept. 11, 1934 in DBW 13:217. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes 1928–1936 from the Collected Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1965), 91. ↩︎
- Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Eine Biographie, 380f.; ET 326–327. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBW 14, Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935–1937, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2013), 171, 173–174. For further reading, see Paul House, Bonhoeffer’s Seminary Vision (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2015). ↩︎
- Through a partnership with the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Theology Matters has offered since 2023 a Master of Arts program in Reformed Theology. It is a 36-credit degree offered in a hybrid format that includes both face-to-face and online learning. For more information, please go to: https://theologymatters.com/institute/#ma-program or
contact us at admin@theologymatters.com or 1-864-378-5416. ↩︎ - The seminary was an effort at communal living where students stove to live out, as Bonhoeffer put it, “the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ.” See letter to Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Jan. 14, 1935 in DBW 13: London (1933–1935), trans. Isabel Best (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 273. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche (Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn, 1930; ET: DBW 1, Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church, trans. Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).
“[I]t is in the totally visible being of the community that the totally invisible calls for manifestation and declaration in the totally visible” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–62), IV/3.2:726.
“What [the Church] is invisibly wills as such to become generally visible, and it has the promise that one day it will do so” Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2:728. ↩︎ - Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 27–28. ↩︎
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Lowell Press, 1912), 57. ↩︎
- “It would not be His community if offence could not be taken at it too” Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2:724. ↩︎
- As Karl Barth later put it, “We should be inhuman where God is human, we should be ashamed of Jesus Christ Himself, were we willing to be ashamed of the Church. . . The Church is not too mean a thing for Him but, for better or for worse, sufficiently worthy in His eyes to be entrusted with His witnessing and thus His affairs in the world—yes, even Himself. So great is God’s loving-kindness” The Humanity of God, trans. Thomas Wieser (Richmond: John Knox Press), 64 ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 113/The Cost of Discipleship, 118. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 248. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Reinhold Niebuhr, June 22, 1939, cited in Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Eine Biographie, 736; ET 655. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Protestantism Without Reformation” in No Rusty Swords, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John Bowden (London: Collins, 1965), 94ff. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 117–118. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 94–95. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 101. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 103. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 107. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 109. Part of Bonhoeffer’s surprise derives from the fact “that in this case we are dealing not with enthusiasts, but with Presbyterians, who are reformed in their doctrine of church and state.” ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 108. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 108. ↩︎
- “Presbyterians for the Kingdom,” a group of young people dedicated to the concrete reality of the visible church and to theological renewal in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), attended the Theology Matters’ conference where this address was given and held their first conference immediately before it. ↩︎
