[Religious man] must therefore live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. He must live a "secular" life, and thereby share in God's sufferings. He may live a "secular" life (as one who has been freed from false religious obligations and inhibitions). To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man--not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.
First of all, for the most part, the spirit (Spirit?) of this particular passage is one I can accept almost without reservation. I say "almost" only because the "religious man" is a kind of abstraction for me. Obviously, individuals do inhabit a variety of roles, but they are always constituted of relationships. We define ourselves as part of a variety of groups and webs of relations, sometimes crisscrossing, sometimes incommensurable. The challenge, I suppose, is taking stock of which identity we assign top priority. Are we a parent first? A spouse? A child, sibling, employee? Do we define ourselves by our jobs, as in, "I am a doctor"?
Of course, a response - and it would most certainly be mine - is that to live as a Christian embraces all these partial definitions, fulfills them, and (to follow Wesley, I suppose) sanctifies our own participation in them. To be fully human is certainly the goal of life as a baptized Christian. That means, if it is to mean anything, that in our various relationships, in the various ways we live out our lives, we live fully and completely as family member, as this or that employee/worker, as a citizen. Going further, it is precisely here that the so-called Christian right goes off course. They assume that there is a distinctive Christian sine qua non for living in the world, precisely because theirs is a kind of simplistic dualism that, silently or explicitly, gives the lie to one of the favorite Biblical passages (John 3:16).
As to whether the "world" is "godless", I guess I just cannot affirm that, from a theological view. Do we reserve God, then, only for the elect in the community of faith? Perhaps by living in the world as a Christian qua Christian, we demonstrate through just living that the world is, indeed, not godless. "Secular" is not the same as declaring the world "godless", unless one accepts a broad understanding of "secular". Since the part of the mission of the Church is to live out Divine love for the world, this would most certainly include simple living, in all the ambiguities and contradictions entailed therein. Yet, we betray that mission when we give pride of place to this living without reference to the Divine condescension in the cross and resurrection of Christ. This latter places us firmly within a web of relations that not only are horizontal - spatial, that is, relations with other individuals who also are Christian - but vertical - temporal, stretching across time, confession, even language. Thus embedded, if we allow ourselves to become aware of this intricate web, we can live in other relationships more fully precisely because we claim their fulfillment in the cross and empty tomb.
4 comments:
Come on, man! Let's be supple about the dialogue here.
The godless world Bonhoeffer is directly referring to is the one where Hitler is the leader of the Nazi Party and the head of the German State with the help of the nationalistic German Christian movement.
Don't make his "godless world" refer to the wider world at large when you just read how he would prefer the company of secular folks to religious folks like you and me.
And the point he is making is that Christ is "reserved" not for "the elect community of faith," but solely to live in and with the world. Sure, this may have patronizing edges to it, like Rahner's anonymous Christians, but it was 1940.
Can we not nuance the substance for our purposes and leave the chaff? For Habermas, too, you've been to literalist and fundamentalist a reader here. It's beneath you.
OK, let us be supple.
If you want me to take the quote seriously, then it is restricted solely to the time and place to which it refers, in which case it is meaningless. On the other hand, if it has real value, it can be far more inclusive, in which case my view still stands. Finally, the "godlessness" of the Third Reich would certainly have been news to the millions of DeutscheChristians who prayed for their Leader, and for the Archbishop who called for a Requiem Mass to be sung upon the announcement of Hitler's suicide.
You want suppleness, and yet the terms you set keep changing. So sorry. I took the words as meaningful both then and now. I agree they meant something different then than now, yet even then I cannot endorse the idea of "the world" as "godless". It just doesn't compute for me.
Finally, how else am I to read Habermas, when I am doing nothing more than echoing a criticism of someone who had far fuller access to his initial remarks? All I have to base my criticism on, at this point, is Fish's second-hand summary, with some juicy quotes tossed in, and those of respondents. I fail to see how this is being "fundamentalist". It is working with what I have to work with.
Finally, since I grant your view as having merit, but cannot, for myself endorse it for reasons that I feel are quite sound, I fail to see where that discussion is going other than the runaround.
I thought you had read Habermas more than that - and I've not read that much.
And it's precisely those German christians that Bonhoeffer was calling godless. It is the "religionless" that he was drawn to in "brotherhood."
No runaround, just seeing if some old dots can be made with new materials and connected: Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity in the world offering utopian goals as a matter of unembarrassed but un-exclusive offering in the private and public spheres of a diverse society, modeling the gift of communal ritual as an icon to the world along with other faith representations. Fatih Christian, faith ecumenical, alongside aesthetic devotions, critical devotions, artisanal devotions, all incarnating with holiness the fallible, but essential - essential - aspect of human persons as minds. How can minds get along? By touching in activity and thought? How can minds set common paths? By circumscribing goals that make holistic the joys gained from getting along.
The immediacy of honey, cinnamon, cheesecake, the Appalachian Trail, medical care, the Stanley Cup playoffs, Mystic River, Byron Steve Earle, Broadway, bridges and subways, GKS - all is given to me as a holism that is Christian and secular at one and the same time.
For someone else it is Sufic and secular at one and the same time.
How can our differently framed holistic syntheses keep their life in a common body politic? And how can we mutually deal with those who infringe our rights or violently militate against them? By a system of laws and a public dialogue of morals and ethics which is coordinated and supported by a rational structure of self-government, itself overseen by institutions which check each other's rationality and lawfulness.
The Liberal State is religionless, but the citizens need not be godless/meaningless/uninspired/unwhole - what have you.
Habermas and Bonhoeffer INTERPRETED for the 21st century and providing a rational and theological platform for Christian living.
His Theory of Communicative Action.
As for Bonhoeffer writing out of Christian communion those German Christians who, for a variety of reasons, sided with their homeland (as did Barth), I cannot be so final in my judgments. Certainly there was little evidence of Godliness in the regime and its practices. Even those (mostly domestic) policies the Party endorsed - old-age pension, limited-access highways, that kind of thing - that find echoes in other states are tainted by their inclusion under the Swastika.
Does that mean that every single German who prayed for Hitler, who sat in church on Sundays and prayed for the victory of the Reich over its foes is consigned to hell?
Sorry, can't get behind that kind of sweeping judgment. Since I have been on the receiving end of such final verdicts myself, I'm just not willing to do the same to others, especially when the historical record is ambiguous, and it should be in our nature as Christians to forgive. On this, while Bonhoeffer's heart was certainly in the right place, I deem him in error precisely because of the absence of any grace.
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