BradTaylor

Bonhoeffer: Chapter 4

When Bonhoeffer’s trip to Rome was complete, he returned to Berlin to resume his studies. After seven more semesters of study (nine total), he earned his doctorate. His doctorate! He was 21 years old.

This chapter is like reading the Who’s Who of Theologians from the early 20th century. Bonhoeffer’s studies at Berlin were influenced to some degree by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Adolf von Harnack, Adolf Deissman, and others. His most profound influencer, though, would not be one of his teachers at Berlin, but one of his cousin’s teachers at Gottingen: Karl Barth.

Barth’s neo-orthodoxy was foreign to how Bonhoeffer had grown up, but he ascribed to it quickly, much to the chagrin of most of his mentors in Berlin, who were largely textual critics. One of the most profound and admirable things I learned about Bonhoeffer in this chapter was his remarkable ability to “appreciate the value in something, even if he ultimately rejected that something—and [to] see the errors and flaws in something, even if he ultimately accepted that something” (p.61). He was incredibly open-minded, keeping a healthy distance from being too heavily influenced by any one notion, even if it was a notion with which he sided.

Bonhoeffer’s dissertation was entitled Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church, and it ultimately asked the question, “What is the church?” He boldly answered the question thusly: “The church [is] neither a historical entity nor an institution, but…’Christ existing as church-community.”

Is that what the church is?