Post on 24-Jan-2023
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
encounter with Roman
Catholicism as theology
through biography.
Neil Hinnem
MSt Theology - Dissertation
Worcester College, University of Oxford
June 2013
1
‘It has been a magnificent day; the first in which I gained some real understanding of Catholicism; no romanticism or anything of the sort, but I believe I am beginning to understand the concept of the church.’ – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘Italian Diary’, 1924.
With thanks to Barbara and Malcolm Hinnem, Thomas Ridd and Clare
Wilcockson, Gareth Evers and Jenifer Field, Alex Wilson and Kristie
Pickersgill, Angela Murphy, Fr. Kevin Ryan, Dr. Johannes Zachhuber, St.
Christopher’s Educational Trust, Culham St. Gabriels, St. Luke’s College
Foundation, Sisters of the Love of God, and the London Bonhoeffer Centre.
2
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Roman
Catholicism as theology through biography.
Table of Contents
The nature of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's relationship with Roman Catholicism: Methodological considerations concerning theology through biography. _________________________________________________ 3
Bonhoeffer and Roman Catholicism ________________________________________ 3 Bonhoeffer and Biography ________________________________________________ 7 Theology through biography: Methodological considerations _________________ 10
From Rome to unity? Bonhoeffer, the Roman Catholic Church and ecclesiology. _____________________________________________________ 13
The formative experiences of Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Roman Catholicism: From Rome to the ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’ ________________________ 13 Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology: Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being _________ 18 Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and Roman Catholicism: Positive engagement and criticism _______________________________________________________________ 21 Bonhoeffer and the ecumenical movement: Questions of church unity ________ 24 Unity with the Roman Catholic Church? The concrete command of the church as the essential criterion ___________________________________________________ 27 Summary ______________________________________________________________ 30
A ‘new monasticism?’ The relationship between the discipline of spiritual practices, Bonhoeffer and Roman Catholicism. _____________ 31
Bonhoeffer’s spirituality: A definition ______________________________________ 32 Life Together: The Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde ______________ 34 Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Roman Catholic spirituality in Rome _____________ 37 Finkenwalde: The influence of Roman Catholicism or Lutheran spiritual renewal? ______________________________________________________________________ 39 Finkenwalde and the concrete situation facing the church ___________________ 41 Summary ______________________________________________________________ 42
Conclusion: Recognising Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’ towards Roman Catholicism with theology through biography. _______________ 44 Table of Abbreviations ____________________________________________ 47 Bibliography ______________________________________________________ 50
3
The nature of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's relationship with Roman
Catholicism: Methodological considerations concerning
theology through biography. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s status as arguably one of the most important and influential
of twentieth Century Christian theologians and personalities has grown, so too has
positive reception of Bonhoeffer among Christians outside Protestantism.
Bonhoeffer’s influence is now truly found across theological and denominational
divides: ‘If he is read in both East and West, so, too he is studied in both Catholic
(Orthodox and Roman) and Protestant Christian circles.’ 1 In light of such a
development, the German Lutheran theologian’s relation to Roman Catholicism
warrants special attention. This dissertation will investigate the nature of
Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Roman Catholicism, focussing not simply on the
references to Catholic2 theology or the Catholic Church in Bonhoeffer’s writing, but
also on Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Catholicism in his biography. It will suggest
that Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Roman Catholicism can be summarised as a
‘theological attitude’ that is closely linked to theme of concreteness, notably the
authority of the church to speak the concrete command of the Word of God, and the
importance of the reality of the concrete situation facing the church.
Bonhoeffer and Roman Catholicism It is important to consider the immediate ways in which the life and thought of
Bonhoeffer has been, and might be, related to Roman Catholicism. The first is found
1 Martin E. Marty, ‘Introduction: Problem and Possibilities in Bonhoeffer’s Thought’, The
Place of Bonhoeffer, ed. Martin E. Marty (London: SCM Press, 1963), 12.
2 For ease of phrase I will employ the widely used shortened terms ‘Catholic’ and
‘Catholicism’ to refer to the Roman Catholic Church and will indicate reference to the
universal church by referring to the church ‘catholic.’ To avoid confusion with the English
meaning of ‘Evangelical’ I will use ‘Protestant’ and ‘Protestantism’ in reference to the
Evangelische Kirche.
4
in Bonhoeffer’s biography and his first-hand experiences of Catholicism and the
Catholic Church. Before continuing his undergraduate studies in Berlin, Bonhoeffer
travelled to Italy and North Africa in 1924 at the age of eighteen. The weeks spent in
Rome, including Holy Week, provided an important formative experience for the
young Lutheran, especially in regards to the formation of his thoughts on the church.
As he writes in his travel diary after a Palm Sunday attending Mass at St. Peter’s and
Vespers at Trinità dei Monti, ‘I believe I am beginning to understand the concept of
the church.’3 In addition, the observation of the seriousness of penitents preparing
for confession at St. Maria Maggiore also left an indelible mark, with Bonhoeffer
keen to note that the practice of confession ‘is the concretization of the idea that the
church is fulfilled in confession and absolution.’4 In light of the importance of these
particular experiences5 of the Catholic notion of the church, and the practice of
confession being central to Bonhoeffer’s formative encounter with Catholicism, the
question of the nature of Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Catholicism will be
examined in relation to his ecclesiology, as expressed in Sanctorum Communio and Act
and Being, and his approach to spirituality as the discipline of spiritual practices, as
promoted in Life Together.6
Although the Catholic Church was not represented in the ecumenical movement and
the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship among the Churches (which
Bonhoeffer served as a regional secretary of the Joint Youth Commission until 1937),
3 ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 89.
4 Ibid.
5 Bonhoeffer also spent a year in Catholic Spain as a pastoral assistant to a Lutheran
congregation. However, due to what he saw as an uncultivated clergy and an educated
populace often vehemently opposed to the Church, Bonhoeffer viewed the experience as a
disappointment. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker,
Man of Resistance, trans. Isabel Best (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2012), 50-4.
6 I will be primarily concerned with the expression of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology in Sanctorum
Communio and Act and Being, and the promotion of the discipline of spiritual practices in Life
Together. I will also refer to extracts from diaries, letters and papers when they are relevant to
the relation of Bonhoeffer and Catholicism, in addition to other works by Bonhoeffer that
may offer further clarification of ideas.
5
Bonhoeffer came into regular contact with Catholic clergy in his involvement in the
resistance. Activity in the resistance led Bonhoeffer to spend four months from
November 1941 near the Benedictine monastery at Ettal. Whilst at Ettal Bonhoeffer
wrote the chapter on ‘Ultimate and Penultimate Things’ later published in Ethics in
addition to meeting with several Catholic theologians, including Prelate Johannes
Neuhäusler, Angelus Kupfer, the abbot of Metten Monastery, and Father Johannes
Albrecht at Ettal, to discuss Catholic ethics and questions surrounding euthanasia and
contraception.7 Further interaction with Catholic clergy followed in Bonhoeffer’s visit
to Rome with Hans von Dohnanyi and Josef Müller (a Catholic) in the summer of
1942. Though little is known of the details of this trip,8 Müller’s records indicate that
meetings at the Vatican included conversations with Ivo Zeiger, Rector of the
Collegium Germanicum. 9 It is in this biographical context that Bonhoeffer’s
relationship with Catholicism will be focussed on Catholicism in the terms that
Bonhoeffer himself encountered it: the institution of the Roman Catholic Church,
and personalities and theologians explicitly identified with this institution.
A second way in which Bonhoeffer has been related to Catholicism is to be found in
accusations from fellow Protestant theologians that Bonhoeffer is too greatly
influenced by aspects of Catholicism. Such claims are made especially in relation to
the primary concerns of this dissertation, Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and spirituality.
In his assessment of Sanctorum Communio Karl Barth was keen to warn Bonhoeffer of
the dangers of too closely linking Christology with ecclesiology. For Barth,
‘Bonhoeffer’s view of the church as a revelational reality established in Christ’10
would be dangerously close to a sense of ‘being homesick’ for Roman Catholicism,
granting ecclesiology too great an importance in relation to the proper place of
theology in testing the proclamation of the revelatory event of Christ.11 In relation to
7 Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 252-259.
8 The only record of this visit kept by Bonhoeffer takes the form of a forged diary that
feigned loyalty to the Nazi regime. See ‘Fictitious Diary Fragments’, CI, 400-3.
9 See Josef Müller, Bis zur letzten Konsequenz (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1975), 241-2.
10 Joachim von Soosten, ‘Afterword’, SC, 293.
11 See Karl Barth, ‘Das Schriftprinzip der reformierten Kirche’, Vörtrage und kleinere Arbeiten
1922-1925, ed. Holger Finze (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1900), 500-44. Barth
6
the question of Bonhoeffer’s promotion of spiritual practices, the daily schedule of
the life in community at the seminary at Finkenwadle, the principles of which are
extoled in Life Together, from its infancy attracted claims that it was a ‘Catholicizing’
experiment; indeed, at first many of the seminarians themselves expressed resentment
‘over being the butt of jokes from other preacher’s seminaries about their
“unevangelical monasticism.”’ 12 However, there can be no doubt, as will be
evidenced, that Bonhoeffer remained a committed Lutheran. As the claims of
Bonhoeffer as a covert ‘Catholicizer’ are shown to be unfounded, there will be
further opportunity to examine the true nature of the relationship of the Lutheran
theologian to Catholicism at the points where his ecclesiology and spirituality appear
to be closely linked to Catholicism.
A third potential way of relating Bonhoeffer to Catholicism is to focus on the
reception of Bonhoeffer by Catholic writers, from professional theologians to
authors of devotional texts. There has been a steady growth of interest in Bonhoeffer
among Catholics, especially, as Bethge highlights, after the publicity generated by the
use of the theologian in J.A.T. Robinson’s Honest to God, ‘which led many Roman
Catholics to explore what it was that fascinated people about Bonhoeffer’s thought.’13
Undoubtedly greater openness towards Bonhoeffer among Catholics must be
understood against the development of closer ecumenical bonds between the
Catholic Church and Protestant denominations since the Second Vatican Council;
nevertheless, there is something particularly significant about Bonhoeffer that renders
him not simply accessible to Catholics but also an inspirational figure. Indeed, there
have even been calls from some Catholics for the Catholic Church to consider
Bonhoeffer for canonisation due to his standing as a Christian who exemplified
however praised Sanctorum Communio as an overall work labeling it enlightening, stimulating
and edifying. See John W. De Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (London:
Collins, 1988), 3-4.
12 Geffrey B. Kelly, ‘Introduction’, LT, 14.
13 Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, ed. John W. de Gruchy (London: Collins,
1975), 25.
7
sanctity in allowing a religious vision to become central to his life.14 Although there is
clearly not enough scope in this dissertation to thoroughly engage with Catholic
reception of Bonhoeffer, certain works15 on the theology of Bonhoeffer by Roman
Catholic theologians will be considered when they relate to approaching Bonhoeffer’s
ecclesiology, spirituality and the question of theology through biography.
Bonhoeffer and Biography
The key to both the interest of Catholic theologians in Bonhoeffer and the position
of Bonhoeffer as an inspirational figure for Catholics lies in the integral relationship
between his life and thought. It is not merely the case that Bonhoeffer’s biography, a
life which certainly encompassed bold action and the desire to follow Christ, is
appealing to Catholics, but the fact that this life is a mirroring of his thoughts is
central to his appeal.16 Thus, how Bonhoeffer’s theology is to be appreciated in light
of his biography becomes a pertinent question for the investigation at hand.
It is possible to approach the link between Bonhoeffer’s biography and theology in
three distinct ways. The first is to emphasise that, in light of his extraordinary
biography, Bonhoeffer’s life must be prioritised over his thought. The second
approach thus emerges as a reaction to the first: Bonhoeffer’s biography is de-
emphasised in order that his theology is better understood. That both of these
approaches are flawed is evident when Bonhoeffer’s theology is approached always
with an eye to the context of his biography. While detailed investigations into his
theology, either focussing on the whole or particular themes, are obviously needed,
14 See Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Meaning of Saints (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1980), 167-8, 173.
15 Heinrich Ott, Reality and Faith: The Theological Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1966); René Marlé,
Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work (1967); William Kuhns, In Pursuit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1967);
and Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1985). While none of these works are
exclusively an explicit Catholic reading of Bonhoeffer, they all offer suggestions of where
Bonhoeffer might be close to Catholicism.
16 William Kuhns, ‘A Catholic Looks at Bonhoeffer’, The Christian Century, 84 (1967), 830-2.
8
any assessment of Bonhoeffer’s theology must always bear in mind as a
hermeneutical principle the impressive unity of his life and writings.17
Further support for adopting this approach to reading Bonhoeffer can be found in
Bonhoeffer’s own approach to theology. In narrating his ‘conversion’ to seeing his
position of doing theology in the service of the concrete church as a movement from
‘phraseology to reality,’ 18 Bonhoeffer envisages doing theology as not mere
speculation but as living in the decisive history of humanity in the concrete situations
that meet the theologian. This is why Bonhoeffer is able to write in Discipleship, his
first major work after his ‘conversion’, that ‘knowledge cannot be separated from the
existence in which it was acquired’19 – Bonhoeffer’s own experience requires theology
to be released from the shackles of purely abstract speculation so that it can engage
with the concrete experience of the command of Christ in the reality of life.
This is not, however, a dismissal of the works written before Bonhoeffer’s movement
from ‘phraseology to the real’, including Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, as
merely abstract theology devoid of meaningful biographical context. Bonhoeffer’s
theology can only be read in the context of its integral relationship with his biography
as ‘this integration of theology and life’ already takes place in Bonhoeffer when his
theology explores the Christological nature of the church, finding Christ at the centre
of life and the need to learn ‘to have faith by living completely in our history.’20 As
will be argued, Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the church as the presence of Christ in
revelation is in part inspired by Bonhoeffer’s experience of the Catholic Church
during his 1924 visit to Rome. The importance of the biographical context of works
prior to Discipleship is further maintained when the unity of Bonhoeffer’s theology is
17 The recognition of the duality of Bonhoeffer’s witness as unity between his biography and
thought is a driving hermeneutical principle in the first comprehensive study of Bonhoeffer’s
theology in English. See John D. Godsey, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: SCM
Press, 1960).
18 LPP, 275.
19 D, 51.
20 Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality (Revised edn., Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1999), 294.
9
emphasised. In agreement with Clifford Green’s rejection of John A. Phillips’s
teleological method to reading Bonhoeffer’s theology, it is important that
Bonhoeffer’s earlier theology is understood in its own context, considering the issues
to which it is addressed, rather than simply reading the earlier works through the
theology that emerges in Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison.21 It is because
biographical context is so crucial to Bonhoeffer’s writings that ignoring the
hermeneutical principle of reading his theology in the context of the unity of his life
and work will result in a diluted and distorted understanding of his earlier work: such
an approach would not allow the ecclesiology of the church as Christus als Gemeinde
existierend (‘Christ existing as church-community’)22 to illuminate his later appreciation
of the Christ-centredness of the life of discipleship and the ethical life, or recognise
the principle of the importance of the concrete ethical command in the reality of the
world, so central to his Ethics, as already present in the personal-ethical model of
encountering God in the Gesamtgemeinschaft (humanity as a whole) due to Christ’s
representation of the ‘whole of humanity in his historical life.’23 Therefore, the shift to
emphasising the unity of Bonhoeffer’s theology, be it according to the development
of the theme of sociality,24 a struggle with the problem of reality,25 or through the
framework of Christology,26 is understandable. This investigation into the nature of
the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Catholicism will also take the basic overall
continuity of Bonhoeffer’s theology as a methodological principle.
21 Ibid. 7-11. Phillips argues that Letters and Papers from Prison signals an attempt to escape
from Bonhoeffer’s earlier theology. In his prison writings Bonhoeffer finally ‘broke free
from his intractable ecclesiological theory’ to explore the reality of the revelation of Christ in
worldly life. John A. Phillips, The Form of Christ in the World: A Study of Bonhoeffer’s Christology
(London: Collins, 1967), 30. Likewise Hanfried Müller argues that Bonhoeffer’s theology
developed in ‘qualitative leaps’ with Bonhoeffer’s understanding of ‘religionless Christianity’
being markedly different to his earlier theology. See Hanfried Müller, Von der Kirche zur Welt
(Hamburg-Bergstedt: Reich, 1961).
22 SC, 141.
23 Ibid. 147. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis.
24 Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality, 285-99.
25 Ott, Reality and Faith, 315-24.
26 Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. xx.
10
Theology through biography: Methodological considerations Consideration must be given to what exactly is meant by ‘theology through
biography.’ Theology through biography cannot be theology as biography so to mean
that the theological content of a person’s narrative merely needs to be teased out.
Neither can theology through biography remain as simply a reflection of an
individual’s subjective experiences. Instead theology through biography must engage
with the integral relationship between theological thought in its written form and
theological life as it is lived, denying that the theological content of an individual can
be found exclusively in the person’s dogmatics or biography. Therefore, the following
methodological considerations need to be applied. First, theology through biography
takes as its focal point a wide definition of theology as ‘God and person in meeting’,
which for James McClendon is the central vision of theology that emerges from the
Bible. Yet, in the same way that the expression of God’s meeting with man in the
Bible is not merely a reflection of a subjective experience, the basis of the experience
of God for the individual in theology through biography possesses an objective
quality in its expression as theology.27 The objectivity of theology through biography
can then be related to doctrine: biography and dogmatic theology are reconciled by
the raising of the subjective experiences that make up the biography to the level at
which that can ‘become the objective theme of dogmatic theology,’28 especially when
related to the ultimate goal of expressing the meaning of a person’s meeting with the
presence of God in doctrinal theology. As a result, the interplay between expression
of experience in biography and expression in theology articulated in textual form
becomes vital.
Furthermore, the importance of the interaction between theology and biography
requires that theology is not considered as an exact science and purely academic
pursuit. ‘The experienced conviction and instructed experience of faith’, writes
Johann Baptist Metz, ‘cannot be satisfactorily justified by the metalogical rules of 27 James W. McClendon, Biography as Theology (2nd edn., Philadelphia: Trinity Press
International, 1990), 70-1.
28 Johann Baptist Metz, Faith and History in Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology,
trans. David Smith (London: Burns & Oates, 1980), 220.
11
analytical argument.’29 There is indeed a ‘messiness’ in theology through biography
that recognises that a neat and pure systematic account will not be possible when
investigating the relationship between a biography that is so often the driving force
behind theology. Therefore, theology through biography requires the marriage of a
hermeneutic inspired by Gadamer that denies a theological purity to the biographical
narrative, recognising it as irreducibly infected with historical, social and
psychological concerns, with an attention to the concrete circumstances with which
the biography deals. Theology through biography must recognise that the theologian
in question does not engage with theology in a vacuum but considers the theological
task as a response to the concrete historical moment.
It is clear how relevant these considerations are for a study of Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer’s theology must be understood in light of its, sometimes untidy,
relationship with his biography. The importance of the concrete moment in which
Bonhoeffer found himself is imperative. Indeed, what Metz writes of Karl Rahner,
that a person’s canon ‘is life itself – not life as selected by the theological canon, but
life as it imposes itself and often uncomfortable life,’ 30 is undeniably true of
Bonhoeffer. Approaching Bonhoeffer as theology through biography will recognise
that the interplay between the concrete historical situation and theological concern is
a driving principle behind a theologian who is pressed to ask ‘the question what
Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.’31
The importance of theology through biography will take on even greater significance
when investigating the nature of Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Catholicism,
especially when recognising that ‘Bonhoeffer’s specific references to Roman Catholic
theology and practice are infrequent and peripheral.’32 However, the fragmentary
nature of a wide range of Bonhoeffer’s corpus should not deter the investigation.
Instead, the fragments of Bonhoeffer’s references to Catholicism must be allowed to
challenge the reader’s understanding of Bonhoeffer precisely because they are not 29 Ibid. 222.
30 Ibid. 224.
31 LPP, 279.
32 Kuhns, In Pursuit, 234.
12
developed in detail: the task is to see whether a ‘theological attitude’ towards
Catholicism can be established on the part of Bonhoeffer, and fundamental to
interpreting the meaning of these fragments is their relation to their context.
Although Bonhoeffer’s writings on Catholicism cannot on their own lead to a fruitful
construction of the nature of the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Catholicism,
their fragmentary nature underlines the key hermeneutical principle of theology
through biography: that an interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought together is
needed to make sense of the fragmentary.33 There can be no methodological qualms
therefore with building arguments on the basis of fragmentary texts.
It is expected that questioning the nature of the relationship between Bonheoffer and
Catholicism will lead to engagement with further questions relating to Bonhoeffer’s
biography: What effect did Bonhoeffer’s experience of the church in Rome have on
his ecclesiology? What can Bonhoeffer’s quest for church unity in the ecumenical
movement mean for his theological stance on Catholicism? To what extent is the
experience of the life together at the seminary at Finkenwalde linked to Catholic
spiritual exercises? How does Bonhoeffer’s experience of Catholic spirituality fit with
his call for a ‘new monasticism’? The methodological and hermeneutical principles of
theology through biography as outlined above will be applied to answering these
probing question. As a result, the investigation into the relationship between his
ecclesiology and spirituality and Catholicism must consider Bonhoeffer’s biographical
experience of the Catholic Church, and both the positive understanding and critical
stance of his theological engagement with Catholicism. These aspects will be related
where appropriate to a central theme in Bonhoeffer’s life and thought: the concrete
reality of God and the concrete command of the church.
33 For the relevance and challenge of interpreting the fragments of writing left by Bonhoeffer
see Ebehard Bethge, ‘The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology’, The Chicago
Theological Seminary Register, 51/2 (1961), 1-30.
13
From Rome to unity? Bonhoeffer, the Roman Catholic Church
and ecclesiology.
Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the church and ecclesiology is an area in which the
Lutheran theologian stands accused of being dubiously close to the Catholic Church.
However, Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Catholicism must be understood against a
backdrop in which there was ‘no contact between Germany’s two major churches’,
with the possibility of ecumenical co-operation between Catholics and Protestants
not being desired by the majority on either side of the divide34 (although some
Catholics and Protestants were to work closely together in the resistance.)35 Thus,
that Bonhoeffer’s attitude to Catholicism and particular elements of Catholic
ecclesiology was uniquely more positive than many of his contemporaries is true.
Nevertheless, to claim that Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the church is heavily
influenced by his experience of Catholicism and Catholic ecclesiology is far too
simplistic a reading of Bonhoeffer’s own ecclesiology. A more nuanced and subtle
consideration of the relationship between Bonhoeffer’s own ecclesiology, his writing
on Catholic ecclesiology, and his experiences of Catholicism is needed.
The formative experiences of Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Roman
Catholicism: From Rome to the ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’
Bonhoeffer’s travel diary narrating his experiences in Italy in 1924 reveals a young
Lutheran captivated by Catholic Rome. Not only does Bonhoeffer claim that he is
beginning to understand the concept of the church while in Rome,36 he is impressed
34 Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 257. For a background history of the lack of ‘mixing in
the confessions in Germany’ see Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich I: Preliminary
History and the Time of Illusions 1918-1934, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1987), 3-
20.
35 George Bell documents in 1942 that Lutheran Bishop Theophil Wurm kept in close touch
with the Catholic Bishop of Berlin Konrad von Preysing through the resistance movement.
See ‘George K.A. Bell: Diary Notes’, CI, 290-93.
36 ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 89.
14
with the Catholic illustration of the ‘universality of the church’ when witnessing at
Mass the presence of different nationalities of clergy ‘in clerical robes united under
the church.’37 Moreover, Bonhoeffer also states that he has become truly found of
Catholicism after an experience of the choral signing of the Te Deum in St. Peter’s,
with his experience in Rome having ‘made an enormous impression’ on him.38
Indeed, letters from Bonhoeffer’s friends indicate that Bonhoeffer was even tempted
to convert to Catholicism following his experience in Rome.39 As this encounter in
Rome is evidently so important for him, the question is raised as to its effect on the
developing ecclesiology of the young Bonhoeffer. Whilst it is possible to detect in the
young Bonhoeffer a passionate interest in new experiences, and whilst it cannot be
denied that to some extent Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Rome have an influence on
the formation of his thought, especially his ecclesiology, the extent of this influence,
whether it can be claimed that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology is directly influenced by
Catholicism, remains debatable.
It is first worth noting that Bonhoeffer’s reaction to his experiences in Rome is not
the usual response of a German Lutheran in the 1920s. During his travels Bonhoeffer
approached Catholicism ‘in a remarkable unprejudiced manner,’ which would have
been unusual for a Protestant student from Germany. 40 It is interesting that
Bonhoeffer begins to understand the concept of the church in Rome rather than
Tübingen or Berlin, and important that Bonhoeffer reflects on the apparent crisis of
the liberal Protestant Church while in Rome. In contrast to what he sees as the
Catholic Church’s meeting of the concrete needs of its followers, especially in relation
to confession, Bonhoeffer proclaims that Protestantism can no longer captivate the
masses due to its position as a state church. ‘Maybe Protestantism,’ writes
37 Ibid. 88.
38 Ibid. 107.
39 Letter from Delf Albers to Bonhoeffer, 14th April 1929: ‘On my trip I saw a great deal of
Spanish Catholicism – the Roman variety that tempted to you convert.’ Ibid. 181. See also
comments from Julius Rieger, ‘Contacts with London’, I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Wolf-
Dieter Zimmermann and Ronald Gregor Smith, trans. Käthe Gregor Smith (London:
Collins, 1966), 97.
40 Hans Pfeifer, ‘Afterword’, YB, 566.
15
Bonhoeffer, ‘should not have tried to become an established church,’ suggesting that
Protestantism should have remained a ‘large sect’ in order to retain enthusiastic
adherents, religious life with serious piety, and to avoid ‘the present calamity’ in
which the Protestant Church finds itself. 41 It is the encounter with alternative
attitudes to the church, expressed so clearly for Bonhoeffer in the spirituality of the
Catholic sacramental and liturgical practices he experiences, which provides
stimulation for his fledgling thoughts on ecclesiology. Moreover, it is evident that
what he believes he witnesses in Rome regarding the importance of the church
remains an inspiration in the development of his thought. This is confirmed by the
text of Bonhoeffer’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:27, 26 in Barcelona on 29th July
1928 (twenty months after finishing Sanctorum Communio), in which Bonhoeffer
admonishes the congregation to rediscover the meaning of a word ‘banal, indifferent
[and] superfluous’ for Protestants but evoking ‘tremendous feelings of love and
bliss…the most profound depths of religious feeling’ for Catholics. The word is, of
course, ‘church,’42 a word which Bonhoeffer believed was not being grasped fully by
the nationalistic and provincial thinking of the German Protestant churches.43
Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Catholicism in Rome played a central role in stimulating
several of the themes that would be developed in his ecclesiology. It is whilst in
Rome that Bonhoeffer experiences the universality of the church, witnesses devotion
to the church at a level which leaves a lasting impression, and engages with the
importance of the ecclesia as a living church. Furthermore, it is also significant that
Bonhoeffer’s view of the aspects of Catholicism favourable to his developing
theology are more shaped by his actual experience of the Catholic Church in Rome
rather than a systematic study of Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology. Whilst
Bonhoeffer attended lectures in Rome, though it is not clear where, these were more
focussed on ecclesiastical history rather than dogmatics.44 The appreciation of the
41 ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 106.
42 ‘Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:27, 26, Barcelona’, BBNY, 505.
43 See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, ed. Victoria J. Barnett, trans. Eric
Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, Frank Clarke and William Glen-Doepel (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2000), 61.
44 ‘Letter to his Parents, Rome’, YB, 122.
16
themes in Catholicism that were engaging to Bonhoeffer came as a result of his
concrete, historical experience of the Catholic Church in Rome. That these
experiences would contribute to Bonhoeffer’s later articulation of his ecclesiology in
Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being confirms the important interplay between
thought and biography. However, it would be wrong to conclude that Bonhoeffer’s
encounter with Catholicism in Rome is the primary influence on his ecclesiology.
Bethge is certainly correct that ‘the origins of the theological themes of his early
period can be discerned’ in the Rome experience,45 yet these experiences must be
understood more as an inspiration to engage further with particular themes rather
than an influence that directly informs Bonhoeffer’s later ecclesiology.46 It is best, in
agreement with Kuhns, to see Rome as stimulating much thought in Bonhoeffer in
the direction of ecclesiology.47
In addition, it would also be misleading not to highlight that Bonhoeffer was critical
of aspects of Catholicism while in Rome. In reporting his theological discussions with
Catholic seminarian Platte Platenius, Bonhoeffer complains of the ‘usual Catholic
vicious circles’ of confusing logical and faith-based knowledge of God in arguing that
the existence of God can be logically proven by the teleology of the world. Yet such
problems with Catholic theology are considered by Bonhoeffer as distinct from his
positive experiences of the Catholic Church as a living church, as is evident in
Bonhoeffer’s complaint against Catholic theology: ‘Catholic dogma veils every ideal
thing in Catholicism, without knowing what it is doing. There is a huge difference
between…‘church’ and the ‘church’ in dogmatics.’48
The distinction between the theology of the Catholic Church and the favourable
aspects of Catholicism in their concrete practice is also evident in Bonhoeffer’s 1927
45 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 65.
46 Green suggests that though the Rome experience was definitely significant, Bonhoeffer’s
ecclesiology is also influenced by this earlier thought on the relationship of the individual to
corporate solidarity, corporate responsibility and socio-ethical relations. See Bonhoeffer: A
Theology of Sociality, 143 n. 81.
47 Kuhns, In Pursuit, 10.
48 ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 93.
17
‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’ for his confirmation class in Grunewald. In this
paper Bonhoeffer critiques aspects of Catholic theology and soteriology which he
considers legalistic. The relationship between God and humanity in Catholic theology
is pictured as a legal transaction in which God answers the claims of the individual,
and rewards the individual, on the basis of the individual’s merits. For Bonhoeffer,
this idea restricts the freedom of a God who freely comes to the individual’s aid in
grace when the individual has realised their helplessness and guilt before God; thus, it
cannot be claimed that any individual can demand anything of God as in a legalistic
relationship. Following on from his reflection on knowledge of God in his Rome
diary, Bonheoffer claims that God cannot be known through logical knowledge but
only through faith and the full assurance of the state of grace.49 It is clearly evident
that here Bonhoeffer’s criticism of Catholic soteriology is in line with a traditional
Lutheran critique grounded in Luther’s claim that ‘by my reason I cannot grasp that I
am received into grace because of Christ’;50 however, Bonhoeffer is still able to
complement the Catholic Church as it is experienced as a living church. Hence
Bonhoeffer writes, the Catholic Church ‘is a world in itself’ where ‘infinite diversity
flows together…[giving Catholicism] its irresistible charm’ – the Catholic Church is
to be admired by Protestants because it ‘has understood how to maintain unity in
diversity, to gain the love and respect of the masses, and to foster a strong sense of
community.’51 In the same manner that Bonhoeffer’s openness to his experiences of
Catholicism in Rome is surprising given the context of the relationship between
German Lutheranism and Catholicism in the 1920s, Bonhoeffer’s conclusion to the
paper reveals a fresh appreciation of the relationship between Lutheranism and
Catholicism that can view the Catholic Church as a ‘disparate sister’, due to it being a
place where the Word of God is proclaimed, whilst hoping for doctrinal correction in
the Catholic Church when it examines its conscience and focuses on nothing but the
Word.52
49 ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’, ibid. 526-7.
50 Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke XL: I. Band, 2. Galatervorlesung (cap. 1–4), 377 cited
in B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Martin Luther (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1962).
51 ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’, YB, 528.
52 Ibid. 529.
18
Consequently, it is additionally clear that Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Catholicism is
much more than a theological encounter that has generated the traditional Lutheran
criticism of Catholicism. Instead the nature of the relationship between the young
Bonhoeffer and Catholicism must be seen in terms of the interplay between thought
and experience: Bonheoffer’s concrete experiences of Catholicism in Rome ignite and
stimulate areas of thought which are then developed into a more coherent expression
of thought. The interplay between thought and experience continues in the reflection
on past experiences that is crucial to the developing expression of thought, as is
evident in Bonhoeffer’s ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church.”’ This process of
experience, reflection and expression within the development of thought is central to
understanding Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’ toward Catholicism, which Bethge
summarises as a ‘critical affection and affectionate criticism.’ 53 Such an attitude
toward Catholicism will be important to the following investigations of the nature of
the relationship between Bonhoeffer’s thought and Catholicism, starting with his
ecclesiology in Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being.
Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology: Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being
Before examining the relationship between Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and his
‘theological attitude’ to Catholicism it will be important to briefly outline the main
points of this ecclesiology as expressed in his doctoral thesis, Sanctorum Communio
(1927), and his postdoctoral thesis, Act and Being (1931). The aim of Sanctorum
Communio is stated as the attempt to understand ‘the structure of the given reality of a
church of Christ, as revealed in Christ,’54 from the standpoint of social philosophy
and sociology. Bonhoeffer begins this investigation by considering the concept of
personhood as related to social relations, and thus to social relations in a community.
Importantly, the identity of the individual person can only be understood in relation
to others as human identity takes shape in the ethical claim of the other in which the
“I” encounters the “You” of the other person.55 Even though the “You” is then
53 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 62.
54 SC, 33.
55 Ibid. 49.
19
encountered as a barrier, the otherness of the other does not prevent community
because it is a divinely ordained otherness which reflects the ultimate otherness of
God. Therefore, the isolation of the self in sin, that which truly prohibits community,
can be overcome through the other in which one meets the transcendence of God: a
relationship with God becomes embedded in the community in which ‘God or the Holy
Spirit joins the concrete You’ to enable the other to be the You from which the self arises,
and to confirm ‘every human You [as] an image of the divine You.’56 This community is the
church.
To know that the ‘You of the other person is the divine You’ requires the knowledge
of God’s “I” through ‘the revelation of God’s love.’57 This revelation, which comes
through Christ, takes place in the church due to the reality of the church as Christus
als Gemeinde existierend, Christ-existing-as-community.58 Such an understanding of the
church is closely based on the identity of Christ with the Church. As the human
community in the Kollektivperson of Adam is trapped in the sinfulness that affirms the
self and not the other, thereby destroying community, true community can only be
restored through the Stellvertretung [vicarious action] of Christ on behalf of the
community in which the revelation of God, and correspondingly the possibility of
knowing God through the “You” of the other which is the image of God, is revealed.
The vicarious action of Christ grants uniqueness to this ‘new humanity’59 identified as
the sanctorum communio, the church, which is established by Christ in the midst of the
peccatorum communio. The community of the church is hence a unique community
where the meeting of God in the other takes places through the surrendering of
persons to each other through the love of God: the church is comprised of members
who are for each other in the service of neighbour, intercession for others, and the
mutual forgiveness of sins. Moreover, as in Christ the revelation of God has entered
into history and community, the community of the church is ‘simultaneously a
historical community and one established by God’60 – the church is realised in Christ 56 Ibid. 54-5. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis.
57 Ibid. 56.
58 Ibid. 141.
59 Ibid. 156-7.
60 Ibid. 126.
20
so that it is established in revelation with a mission to proclaim the Word of God in
preaching and sacrament, and actualised by the Holy Spirit so that it is the concrete,
empirical church in the world.61
The relation of the transcendence and revelation of God to the social community of
the church is additionally developed in Act and Being, and its criticism of
understanding revelation as purely act or purely being. Bonhoeffer sets out to solve
this problem by attempting to reconcile the Barthian emphasis on God’s freedom in
revelation as the event of faith with the revelation of God in being. The solution is
found in the presence of the Word of God in the church as Christ-existing-as-
community. For Bonhoeffer, God is free to act in the event of revelation in Christ in
which God reveals God’s self freely by coming of out of God’s self. This means that
God is not free apart from human beings but free for them in ‘the covenant in which
God is bound by God’s own action…Christ [as] the Word of God’s freedom.’62
Therefore, God cannot be conceived as being free from humanity as in a withdrawal
from humanity, and thus only accessible through a remote revelatory event; instead,
in God giving God’s self to humanity in Christ, the revelation of God’s being in the
revelatory event of Christ is given where Christ is present in the church. ‘God is
present,’ writes Bonhoeffer, ‘not in eternal nonobjectivity…but “haveable”, graspable
in the Word within the church.’63 God in Christ is still other, yet the otherness and
transcendence of God, as was claimed in Sanctorum Communio, is met in the socio-
ethical encounter with the other in the church community. It is this encounter with
God in the other that enables Christ to be present in the proclamation of word and
sacrament in the church, so that ‘the being of revelation “is”…the being of the
community of persons [the church] that is constituted and formed by the person of
Christ.’64 As a result, being in Christ is not an orientation to the purely individual
experience of the revelatory event, but being in the church where ‘individuals already
find themselves in their new existence.’65 The revelation of God still requires the act 61 Ibid. 280.
62 AB, 90-1.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid. 113.
65 Ibid.
21
of the response of faith; however this response happens in being in the church. In
both Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, Bonhoeffer emphasises the importance of
the church as established by God in Christ, and thus also the presence of God in
Christ in the restored human sociality of the community of the Church, and its
proclamation of the Word of God in word and sacrament.
Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and Roman Catholicism: Positive engagement and criticism
In turning to the nature of the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Catholic
ecclesiology, it is interesting to note Heinrich Ott’s claim that much of what
Bonhoeffer presents in his early ecclesiology appears to be peculiarly “Catholic.”66
Although it would be incorrect to argue that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology is directly
influenced by Catholic theologians,67 it is possible to suggest points of contact with
ecclesiological themes stimulated by Bonhoeffer’s experience of Catholicism in
Rome. It is in Rome that Bonhoeffer witnesses the sanctorum communio ‘as a living
reality before him’,68 and as his diary indicates Bonhoeffer is beginning to appreciate
in this early encounter with Catholicism the importance of the church, not only as an
abstract concept, but in the reality of the concrete, empirical church community. This
line of thought is carried over to the emphasis in both Sanctorum Communio and Act
and Being on the church as a concrete and historical community of believers in which
the encounter with God and Christ can take place due to Christ’s entering into
history and establishing the church in concrete, empirical history.
Moreover, the link between Bonhoeffer’s experience of the Catholic Church and his
expressed ecclesiology can also be viewed retrospectively in the recognition by
Catholic theologians of ecclesiological themes in Sanctorum Communio and Act and
Being which are close to Catholic interests. Kuhns argues that Bonhoeffer is closest to
66 Ott, Reality and Faith, 62.
67 Bonhoeffer does engage critically with Catholic theologian Erich Przywara in his critique
of the analogia entis and the concept of revelation purely as being in Act and Being. See AB, 27.
68 Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 36.
22
Catholicism where he emphasises the unique relationship of Christ to the church69:
the Christian community is not a vague sentiment or a collection of individuals who
have experienced the revelatory Christ-event; instead the church is given a definite
form and meaning in being established by the same Christ who enters history in the
incarnation. It is this radical integration of the meaning of the incarnation with
ecclesiology that resonates, for many Catholic readers of Bonhoeffer, with the
Catholic Church’s claim to being a sign and sacrament of the presence of Christ in
the world. Indeed, the presence of Christ in the church also retains an incarnational
significance in Catholic doctrine. As was proclaimed in Lumen Genitum at the Second
Vatican Council, the community of the church as an empirical society is one reality
with the ‘Mystical Body of Christ;’ thus it can be ‘compared to the mystery of the
incarnate Word’ in that the visible church serves the Spirit of Christ in the same
manner as ‘the assumed nature inseparably united to [Christ].’70 Similar themes are
also taken up in Benedict XVI’s christo-centric ecclesiology, which claims that the
encounter in the church is with the presence of Christ. For Benedict, the church is so
integrally linked to Christ that the actual life of the church can only be claimed on the
basis of Christ: ‘[The Church] is alive because Christ is alive, because he is truly
risen.’71
Yet, whilst this retrospective reading of Catholic themes in Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology
might aid a recognition of themes, in both Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Rome and his
ecclesiology, as thoroughly ‘Roman Catholic,’ it cannot be used to construct a clear
model of Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Catholicism. Due to the interaction between
theology and biography being an ‘untidy’ affair that escapes a neat construction, there
must a continued emphasis on understanding Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’ to
Catholicism. As this attitude includes an ‘affectionate criticism’ of Catholicism, it is
vital that Bonhoeffer’s criticism of Catholic ecclesiology is considered.
69 Kuhns, In Pursuit, 261.
70 Second Vatican Council, ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Genitum’, 8.
71 The text of Benedict XVI’s homily during the Mass for the Inauguration of the Pontificate,
Acta Apostolicae Sedis 97 (2005), 708, cited in Brendan Leahy, ‘“Christ Existing as
Community”: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Notion of Church’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 73 (2008),
33.
23
Bonhoeffer’s criticism of Catholic ecclesiology begins with the accusation that the
institutionalising of the empirical church hierarchy in Catholicism leads to a
prioritisation of the form of the church over the proclamation of the Word of God in
word and sacrament. In Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer is keen to disassociate his
ecclesiology from two other understandings of the church he believes to be a
contradiction to the true nature of the historical, empirical church as Christ-existing-
as-community. The first misunderstanding of the church fails to recognise the
empirical church is actually the new humanity established by God and thus retreats to
psychological ‘religious’ motives, including human desire for sociality and
communication, to explain the empirical community of the church. On the other
hand, the second misunderstanding does not take seriously that the empirical church
is bound by history and instead ‘confuses’ the church with the Kingdom of God by
objectifying and deifying the empirical church.72 For Bonhoeffer, this is the error of
the Catholic Church.
In a seminar paper on ‘Church and Eschatology’ in preparation for his doctorate
under the supervision of Reinhold Seeberg, Bonhoeffer contests that the Catholic
Church has identified the kingdom of God with itself as the empirical church, so as
to claim the kingdom of God on earth as ‘realised in the organised church,’ and the
external forms of the church as ‘immediately sanctioned, stabilised and holy in
themselves.’73 Such claims, as is clarified in Sanctorum Communio, fail to take seriously
the true claim of the church that the church can only be viewed ‘from the standpoint
of the Gospel,’ and in its place identifies the nature of the church with the claims of
an institutionalised church.74
Furthermore, the criticism of the institutionalism of the Catholic Church intensifies
in Act and Being. As Catholicism identifies the being of the revelation of God as being
in the institution of the church, whoever is in the institution of the Catholic Church is 72 SC, 125.
73 ‘Paper on Church and Eschatology’, YB, 317. One wonders what Bonhoeffer would have
made of Henri de Lubac’s insistence in Catholicism that the empirical church is not to be
identified with the Kingdom of God.
74 SC, 33.
24
considered as being in the being of revelation and so is being in God. This negates the
aspect of revelation that is concerned with faith as a response to the act of God, and
suggests that grace is merely infused into a person as a habitus entitativus, the addition
of the condition of grace to the person, without the habitus operativus, grace as
disposing the person to the act of faith, so that the person remains untouched by the
accidental quality of grace.75 Moreover, as it is within the community of the church
that a person comes to recognise the sinfulness of the self in the encounter of God in
the other person, the being of revelation in the church cannot be ‘conceived as an
institution’ because the realisation of sin needed for faith can only be found in the
encounter with persons. Whilst ‘the orientation of the interpretation of the being of
revelation toward the concept of the church is justified’, Bonhoeffer argues that the
‘concept of the church is to be developed not in terms of institutions but in terms of
persons.’76 It is in Bonhoeffer’s critique of the ‘institutional Catholic church’ that it is
evident how far Bonhoeffer believes ‘he is from Catholic ideas, as he understands
them.’77
Bonhoeffer and the ecumenical movement: Questions of church unity
If the nature of Bonhoeffer’s relationship to Catholicism is to be understood through
the method of theology through biography in addition to considering his theological
engagement, it will be essential to examine Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on the Catholic
Church during his involvement in the Bekennende Kirche [Confessing Church] and
ecumenical movement. Importantly, the strong critique of Catholic
institutionalisation appears to continue in Bonhoeffer’s early involvement with the
Confessing Church. This is clear in the second edition of the 1933 Bethel Confession,
penned by Bonhoeffer, Hermann Sasse and others, which states a rejection of the
‘false doctrine that makes the ministry an order that would take precedence over
75 AB, 105. Bonhoeffer elaborates on the problem of understanding grace in relation to the
church as an institution in a course paper for Reinhold Niebuhr on ‘The Religious
Experience of Grace and the Ethical Life’, BBNY, 446-451.
76 AB, 105.
77 Marlé, Bonhoeffer, 51.
25
Word and sacrament and would be their source,’ especially ‘in the form of the Roman
church hierarchy.’78 Interestingly this statement is qualified by a reference to ‘those
who aspire to be like’ the Catholic Church in its prioritisation of the order of the
ministry over the Word, which is almost certainly a polemical reference to the
Deutsche Christen [German Christian] movement and what Bonhoeffer perceives as its
attempt to establish a ‘Reich church for Christians of the Aryan race’79 over and
against the church’s mission to proclaim Christ in word and sacrament to all.80 It is
significant that Bonhoeffer’s references to, and engagement with, Catholicism from
the time of his involvement with the Confessing Church are increasingly made in
relation to the concrete situation facing Bonhoeffer: the nature of the Kirchenkampf
[Church Struggle] and the question of the church in relation to the ecumenical
movement.81 As will be evidenced, the concrete reality of the actual situation facing
Bonhoeffer will further shape his theological and ecclesiological engagement with
Catholicism.
Bonhoeffer became involved in the ecumenical movement through attending a
meeting in Cambridge of the Life and Work movement of the World Alliance for
Promoting Friendship among the Churches in September 1931. It is notable that
Bonhoeffer was involved with the Life and Work group and not the Faith and Order
movement, as the work of the former in the eyes of Bonhoeffer signifies what he sees
as the purpose of the ecumenical movement: to focus the life and work of the church
on addressing ‘with authority God’s commandment of peace to a world which had
78 ‘The Bethel Confession’, B, 410.
79 Ibid. 420
80 Larry Rasmussen suggests that Bonhoeffer saw the German Christians as a ‘pseudo-
Romanising’ movement. Ibid. 410 n. 71.
81 In a lecture on ‘The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation,’ Bonhoeffer
also compares the individual’s surrender to the ultimate responsibility of the Führer, in the
Führerprinzip, to Catholics’ faith in the Catholic Church as including ‘belief in the justness of
its commandments and its guarantee for obedience.’ Ibid. 277.
26
lost its sense of a viable order.’82 As a result, Bonhoeffer does not pursue an abstract
theology of the ecumenical movement but instead focuses on the concrete situation
facing the church and the basis of the church’s authoritative concrete command in
response to this situation. The basis of the authority of the church to speak the
concrete command is necessarily linked to Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology: as Christ-
exiting-as-community the church is given the commission to proclaim the Word of
God, which confers on the church the authority to proclaim the Word as the
concrete command of the church in the concrete situation. The church cannot simply
proclaim generalising statements of God’s will for all but must address the will of
God for the concrete situation in the same empirical history into which Christ
entered in the incarnation. The ecumenical movement must produce theology as
‘theology is the Church’s self understanding of its own nature…[in] the revelation of
God in Christ’; yet this theology must concern the participation in the concrete
struggle facing the church if the ecumenical movement is truly to participate in what
it means to be church. ‘No one requires a theology of such an organisation’, writes
Bonhoeffer, ‘but simply quite definite concrete action in a concrete task.’83
Therefore, as with the principle of theology through biography, the theology of the
ecumenical movement must have an integral relationship to the concrete experiences
of the church, especially in the struggle of the Confessing Church: hence
Bonhoeffer’s contention that the question of the Confessing Church has moved
beyond the stage of ‘theological conversation’ and now requires ‘clear church
decision.’84 This decision for Bonhoeffer, in light of the Confessing Church’s claim
that that the German Christian movement has set itself up over and against the
proclamation of the Word, which renders the movement anti-church, must consider
further what consists of the true church through recognition of its boundaries. In a
lecture on the church union in 1936 Bonhoeffer claims that the boundaries of the
church are revealed in whatever-is-not-what-the-church-has-been-called-to in the 82 Konrad Raiser, ‘Bonhoeffer and the Ecumenical Movement’, Bonhoeffer for a New Day:
Theology in a Time of Transition, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1997), 321.
83 ‘A Theological Basis for the World Alliance’, NRS, 32.
84 ‘The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, Ibid. 333.
27
reality of the concrete circumstance. Thus, the boundaries of the church cannot be
defined as a priori ‘theoretical knowledge.’85 For the ecumenical movement this
should mean that the German Christians are considered as outside the church due to
their failure to recognise the concrete commission of the Gospel to proclaim the
Word of God. Thus Bonhoeffer writes: ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus…Whoever
knowingly cuts himself off from the Confessing Church in Germany cuts himself off
from salvation.’86
It is clear in Bonhoeffer’s speech on ‘The Question of the Boundaries of the Church
and Church Union’, especially in its criticism of the approach of ‘Protestant
orthodoxy’ and ‘Pietism’ to theoretically defining the relationship of denominations
within the church, that Bonhoeffer does not conceive the church as a collection of
the various confessions as different branches of the one catholic church; rather,
Bonhoeffer asserts that, in contrast to where the church is not in the ignoring of its
commission from God, the church can only be identified where it proclaims the
Word of God in word and sacrament.87 The exclusive claim of the church can be the
only grounds for church unity. Importantly this definition, especially in light of
Bonhoeffer’s declaration in ‘The Paper on “The Catholic Church,”’88 enables the
Lutheran theologian to consider the Catholic Church as a legitimate Church. As
Bonhoeffer asserts in August 1935, the Confessing Church and the ecumenical
movement do not witness against Rome for ‘the Antichrist sits not in Rome, or even
in Geneva, but in the government of the National Church in Berlin.’89
Unity with the Roman Catholic Church? The concrete command of the church as the essential criterion Bonhoeffer’s intense involvement with the Confessing Church and ecumenical
movement clearly effects a deeper engagement with the meaning of the reality and
85 ‘The Question of the Boundaries of the Church and Church Union’, WTF, 75-96.
86 Ibid. 93-4.
87 Marlé, Bonhoeffer, 60-1.
88 ‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’, YB, 528.
89 ‘The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, NRS, 338.
28
identity of the church. In building upon the academic presentation of ecclesiology in
Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, Bonhoeffer considers the identity of the church
in view of the situation facing it, which is paramount if the commission of the church
is to speak the Word of God in the concrete situation. It is in light of this practical
ecclesiology that a further construction of Bonhoeffer’s conception of the
relationship between the church catholic and the Catholic Church is established.
Whilst Bonhoeffer considered when reflecting on his experiences in Rome that
unification between the Catholic Church and Protestant churches, though desirable,
would be an ‘impossible’ development for the church, 90 Bonhoeffer’s maturing
ecclesiology, in both its academic guises and its practical relation to the experiences
of the Confessing Church, is able to propose a potential basis for the unity of the
Christian church: the concrete command of the church.
For Bonhoeffer, the unity of the church does not originate in agreement on abstract
theological confession but in the active confession of Christ as Lord in word and
sacrament in the concrete moment. Knowing God, as is articulated in Sanctorum
Communio, cannot be conceived as kennen, knowing God as knowing an object, but
only anerkennen, recognition of God in the encounter of God in the present
situation91: ‘God is always God to us “today.”’92 Consequently, as it is both the act
and being of the concrete reality of God, revelation also can only be encountered
concretely. This is confirmed in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ in which ‘truth
is spoken in the concrete moment,’93 meaning that God’s entering into world in the
incarnation is an entrance into empirical history and not a mere abstract timeless
truth. Therefore, the command of the Gospel cannot remain a general truth but a
command made concrete: ‘only as a concrete saying is the Word of God to me.’94
The commission of the church is to proclaim the Word of God by speaking this
concrete command, and it is only from this concrete command that the church can
claim its authority. As the church’s authority is always relative to its obligation to 90 ‘Letter to his Parents, Rome’, YB, 111.
91 SC, 54-7.
92 ‘A Theological Basis for the World Alliance?’, NRS, 162.
93 C, 50.
94 A Theological Basis for the World Alliance?’, NRS, 162.
29
orientate itself to the Word from God for the concrete situation, and then proclaim
this Word in concrete command, identification with the church can only remain a
question related to the concrete command.
The concrete command as ‘the binding force of the empirical church’95 is therefore
the only criterion for church unity and the basis for potential unity between the
Catholic Church and Protestant churches. The significance of this conclusion for
Bonhoeffer is further evidenced in a letter to Eberhard Bethge written during
Bonhoeffer’s stay at Ettal in November 1940. In this letter Bonhoeffer suggests that
the unity of Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism in Die Evangelische Kirche der
altpreußischen Union [The Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union] exists
‘untheologically’ through the determination of history rather than theological
solution.96 Accordingly, the principle of unity that undergirds the Old Prussian Union
should be understood as a reaction to the concrete guidance and command of God in
a particular historical situation, which can only be acknowledged as the subordination
of doctrine to the demands of the reality of the presence of Christ, rather than
theological union. This model of church unity can hence be related to the question of
the Catholic Church: ‘Would not both of these things also be possible in relation to
the Catholic Church: recognition of the “guidance” of God in recent years and
recognition of the objectivity of the presence of Christ.’97 Whilst it would be incorrect
to argue that Bonhoeffer is actively pursuing unity with the Catholic Church – in the
same letter Bonhoeffer actually scalds fellow Confessing Church leader Hans
Christian Asmussen for preaching at a Catholic service – it is clear that Bonhoeffer
does not reject unity with the Catholic Church. Instead, ‘how we have acted,
practically speaking, in the Confessing Church,’ responding to the concrete demand
of God in the present situation, becomes the possibility for unity with the Catholic
Church: ‘churches unite not primarily theologically but rather through faith-based
decisions.’98 Therefore, what ‘divides the churches today,’ must be acknowledged as
being historically formed and thus potentially not ‘divisive tomorrow.’99 95 Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 40-1.
96 ‘Letter to Eberhard, Ettal’, CI, 84.
97 Ibid.
98 ‘The Question of the Boundaries of the Church and Church Union’, WTF, 75f.
30
Summary Examining the nature of the relationship of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and practical
view of the church with Catholicism through both consideration of his theological
expression and the methods of theology through biography, it has been possible to
recognise in Bonhoeffer a ‘theological attitude’ to Catholicism. This attitude
combines a positive disposition to elements within the Catholic Church, notably its
vitality and the universality of the church, with a respectful critical distance that
retains aspects of traditional Lutheran critiques of Catholic theology and ecclesiology.
Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s attitude to Catholicism is formed from his experiences of the
Catholic Church, especially during his 1924 stay in Rome: these experiences are
integral to the formation of Bonhoeffer’s approach to Catholicism. However, it is
misleading to conclude that Catholicism provides a direct influence on Bonhoeffer’s
expressed ecclesiology; rather his experiences of Catholicism must be viewed as
helping to orientate Bonhoeffer in the direction of thinking about ecclesiology and
the identity of the church. In addition, the interaction of Bonhoeffer’s attitude to
Catholicism, ecclesiological understanding of the concrete command and the church,
and the importance of the reality of the concrete situation, combine in his
involvement in the Confessing Church and ecumenical movement to suggest a
grounding for the potential unity between the Catholic Church and Protestant
Churches through ‘faith-based decisions.’
99 Ibid. 82.
31
A ‘new monasticism?’ The relationship between the discipline of
spiritual practices, Bonhoeffer and Roman Catholicism.
Following an earlier emphasis on Bonhoeffer’s biography and theology in the classic
studies of his work and thought, the last two decades of English-speaking Bonhoeffer
scholarship have witnessed an increasing interest in comprehending and articulating
the Lutheran theologian’s spirituality.100 Through this work Bonhoeffer has come to
be recognised by many as a great spiritual writer whose spirituality is especially
relevant to living as a Christian in the contemporary world. It is this relevance,
coupled with a fascination with the manner in which Bonhoeffer’s spirituality
develops in relation to the Church Struggle, which has led to a surge in the publishing
of devotional editions of Bonhoeffer’s writings101 and the inclusion of Bonhoeffer in
anthologies of devotional classics. In agreement with Haynes, ‘the image of
Bonhoeffer as a spiritual guide is more than a reflection of his “enlightened pietism”’:
the significance of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality must be found in its mirroring of the
‘“impressive unity” of [his] life and thought’102 as it ‘challenges the dichotomy
between faith and daily life in all its complexities.’ 103 The assessment of the
relationship of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality with Catholicism will be focussed on the
expression of his spirituality in the spiritual disciplines promoted in Life Together and
the establishment of the preacher’s seminary at Finkenwalde. It must also take into
consideration Bonhoeffer’s experiences of Catholic spiritual practices and liturgy and
the wider biographical context of his spirituality. Through this approach it will be
100 John Godsey, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christian Spirituality’, Reflections on Bonhoeffer:
Essays in Honor of F. Burton Nelson, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and C. John Weborg (Chicago:
Covenant Publications, 1999); Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, The Cost of Moral
Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003).
101 The first edition of selected texts reflecting Bonhoeffer’s spirituality was actually
published in German in 1963 as Bonhoeffer Brevier, ed. Otto Dudzus (Munich: Christian Kaiser
Verlag, 1963). Such editions by English-speaking editors have become increasingly prevalent
from the 1990s onwards.
102 Stephen R. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint (London: SCM
Press, 2004), 106.
103 Kelly and Nelson, The Cost of Moral Leadership, 2.
32
possible to answer the charge that Bonhoeffer attempts to influence the spirituality of
the Confessing Church movement as a ‘Catholicizer.’
Bonhoeffer’s spirituality: A definition
As the term ‘spirituality’ has a wide variety of usages, from reference to the subjective
experience of a person’s faith to spiritual exercises within a particular religion, it is
essential that its use in relation to Bonhoeffer is explained. Though ‘Bonhoeffer left
no theological legacy dealing with “spirituality” designated as such,’104 it is possible to
suggest three foundational principles for an examination of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality.
The first principle concerns the acknowledgement of the importance of maintaining a
private discipline of engagement with spiritual exercises focussed around the ‘reading
and meditation on the Word of God in Scripture, in prayer and in intercession.’105
Bonhoeffer’s spirituality in this instance is concerned with the individual’s systematic
practice of a prayerful, devout and disciplined Christian life, and in order to facilitate
this life, Bonhoeffer is interested in the exploration, understanding and practice of
particular ‘spiritual exercises’, most notably meditation on the Bible, as is clear from
his descriptions of these exercises in Life Together.
However, such spiritual exercises are not only to be reserved for the private life of
devotion but must be central to the spiritual life as lived in the community of the
church. Thus the second principle of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality is focussed on the life
of the Christian in the church as the community in which God is encountered
through the meeting of God in the other person. Hence, for Bonhoeffer, the spiritual
discipline of confession, as encountering God through confessing sins to one’s
brother, must be central to the life of the Christian in the church. Yet, with the third
principle it is also vital to note that Bonhoeffer’s spirituality is not concerned solely
with an ‘interior’ Christian life but also the life of the Christian in the world. As
Bonhoeffer expresses in several of his Letters and Papers from Prison, the Christian must
104 Kelly and Nelson, The Cost of Moral Leadership, p. xiii.
105 Godsey, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christian Spirituality’, 79.
33
suffer with Christ in the world in living wholly in the world as ‘the church is only the
church when it exists for others.’106 It cannot be the mere participation in ‘the
religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in
the secular life.’107
The investigation into the relationship of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality with Catholicism
must begin by chiefly considering the first and second principles outlined above, and
thus focussing on the importance placed by Bonhoeffer on the practice of certain
spiritual exercises. As it is the establishment of a preacher’s seminary built around the
Word encountered in communal life and the discipline of spiritual exercises that
principally raises concerns that Bonhoeffer has come under the influence of
Catholicism, it will be essential to examine the practice of confession and meditation
on Scripture at the Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde. Yet, it must be
noted that the preachers seminary at Finkenwalde cannot be seen as an indulgent
exercise of experimenting with different forms of Christian community and
spirituality; rather Finkenwalde is a reaction to the Word of God for the church, a
response to the concrete situation of the Church Struggle which requires the training
of pastors able to live wholly Christian lives in their individual devotion, communal
life and existence in the world. Perhaps Bonhoeffer’s spirituality is thus best
summarised in a comment written in a letter to his brother Karl: ‘The restoration of
the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in
common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ
according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people
together and do this.’108 This ‘new monasticism’ must comprise of the discipline of
spiritual exercises, communal life in the church and life for the world if it is to
respond to God’s commission to obediently proclaim the Word of God.
106 LPP, 282
107 Ibid. 361.
108 ‘Letter to Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, London’, L, 285.
34
Life Together: The Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde
Bonhoeffer accepted a call to the position of director of a Confessing Church
preacher’s seminary while in London in 1935. The communal life at this seminary at
Finkenwalde109 arose from Bonhoeffer’s concern that the church must be ‘a living
community of persons’ rather than a loose collection of ‘justified individuals.’110 Thus
Bonhoeffer sought to establish a community where the focus would not be on
individual self-fulfilment but hearing and speaking the Word of God from and to the
other person. The need to form a Christian community in which the other person
must be encountered through the mediation of Christ required the community at
Finkenwalde to establish a strict rule for daily life guided by the direction of six
permanent brothers, including Bonhoeffer, who stayed at the Bruderhaus. The day at
Fineknwalde thus followed a set pattern: beginning with a service of common prayer,
the day continued in individual meditation on scripture, study, and recreation, until its
conclusion in an evening prayer service. Yet, importantly for Bonhoeffer,
Finkenwalde did not act as a ‘monastic seclusion’ for its seminarians but instead
prepared them for their ‘outgoing service’ in the world;111 indeed, members of the
public were welcomed to the community’s Sunday service, with seminarians also
serving in local parishes. Nevertheless, several Protestant theologians still remained
suspicious of a Catholic monastic influence on Finkenwalde because the structure of
its life around a daily rule was unprecedented in modern German Lutheranism;
indeed, as Plant clarifies, ‘living communally was a new and daring departure’ for a
denomination founded by a man who had left the cloister to reform the church.112
109 The first seminary course directed by Bonhoeffer actually took place at Zingsthof. After
two months the seminary moved to an estate at Finkenwalde, a neighbourhood in the city of
Stettin (now Szczecin in modern-day Poland), which provided a base for the seminary until
its closure by the Gestapo in late September 1937.
110 John W. De Gruchy, ‘Introduction’, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (London:
Collins, 1988), 27.
111 GS III, 449.
112 Stephen Plant, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Continuum, 2004), 106.
35
One of the features of the common life at the preacher’s seminary so disquieting for
Protestant theologians was Bonhoeffer’s advocating of prayerful meditation on the
Bible; as is evidenced in a letter from Barth to Bonhoeffer concerning the practice at
Finkenwalde: ‘I am disturbed by an indefinable odour of the eros and pathos of the
cloister.’113 Several of the seminarians were also initially weary of the practice;114 yet,
Bonhoeffer persisted in the prescription of meditation on Scripture understood as ‘a
daily, personal communion with the crucified Jesus Christ.’115 The seminarians were
instructed to meditate daily (although this was later reduced to twice weekly) on
Losung, short passages from Scripture, as a means to exposing themselves to the
Word of God as it addresses the concrete individual personally. For Bonhoeffer,
meditation cannot be the attempt to understand the meaning of a text as exegesis, but
a discipline of faith which trusts that the text from Scripture will have something
personal ‘to say to us for this day’: Scripture ‘is not only God’s Word for the
community of faith, but also God’s Word for me personally.’116 However, meditation
should also not be approached as a completely introspective act focussed only on the
individual, because in meditating on Scripture one is alone with the Word and not in
the void of a ‘bottomless pit of aloneness [Alleinsein].’117 Being alone with the Word in
meditation, encountering the concrete Word as it is addressed to the individual,
necessarily leads to prayer, especially intercessory prayer for others. As Bonhoeffer
counsels, when one’s thoughts wanders towards others during meditation the
opportunity is presented to ‘draw into our prayer those people and events towards
which our thoughts keep turning.’118 Moreover, if meditation is to be an encounter
with the Word, Bonhoeffer recognises that the spiritual discipline cannot be
considered as automatically gratifying if it is truly founded upon the hope ‘that God
113 GS II, 290.
114 Geffrey Kelly explains that many of the seminarians simply did not know what to do
when confronted with engaging in the spiritual discipline of meditation: ‘Some read, some
slept, some smoked their pipes, some let their minds wander.’ ‘Introduction’, LT, 14.
115 GS III, 43.
116 LT, 87.
117 Ibid. 86.
118 Ibid. 89.
36
may send the Holy Spirit to us through the Word, and reveal God’s Word to us’119 –
meditation requires a waiting for God through the ‘hours of emptiness and
dryness.’120 As a result of such guidance in the practice of meditation, many of the
initially sceptical seminarians were able to abandon their opposition to the practice
and embrace meditation. The circular letters sent between the seminarians after the
closure of Finkenwalde reveal that the exhortation to meditation remained a
continual priority.121
The spiritual discipline of the confession of sins between the seminarians was also a
foundational basis for the life of the community. Bonhoeffer encouraged the practice
of confession at the preacher’s seminary as a fulfilment of the biblical exhortation to
‘confess your sins to one another.’122 The practice was to take the form of confessing
one’s sin to a fellow member of the community without a formal liturgical structure
in order that, not only might a person recognise their sins, the desire for forgiveness
can be realised in the confessor’s speaking of the words of absolution to the penitent.
Following from his understanding of the encounter with Christ in the meeting with
the other person, Bonhoeffer considers that in confession ‘other Christians have
become Christ for us in the power and authority of Christ’s commandment’ for the
church.123 Consequently, in the confessing of sins to the fellow Christian, the penitent
meets Christ in the other person, enabling the confessor ‘to forgive sins in Christ’s
name’ by speaking the words of forgiveness, which confirms the authority granted to
Christians in John 20:23. ‘When I go to another believer to confess,’ writes
Bonhoeffer, ‘I am going to God’124 – as with meditation, confession of sins to a
fellow Christian is a concrete encounter with God.
119 Ibid. 87.
120 Ibid. 88.
121 Bonhoeffer was sent requests for help in meditation from former students who were sent
to the front following the start of World War II. See ‘Letter of March 1, 1942’ in Geffrey B.
Kelly and Fr. Burton Nelson, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(San Francisco: Harper. 1990), 457.
122 James 5:16 (NRSV).
123 LT, 109.
124 Ibid.
37
Bonhoeffer suggests that the practice of confession is beneficial to both the
individual life of the penitent and the life of the community. The individual’s
confession to the other shatters the feeling of pride and emphasises the shame of sin
in being a ‘profound spiritual and physical pain of humiliation before another
believer’ – suffering in this guilt permits the penitent to ‘experience the cross of Jesus
as our deliverance and salvation.’ 125 In relation to the community, hearing the
confession of a fellow Christian enables the confessor to share in the burden of the
other and thus establishes love for the other through the mediation of Christ in
standing in the place of Christ for that person. Correspondingly, the confessor, in
speaking the words of forgiveness to the penitent, also fulfils the commission granted
to the community of the church: speaking the concrete command to the other.
Moreover, the community is restored when the sin that separates the penitent from
the community is forgiven, meaning that, for Bonhoeffer, confession is as a
‘breakthrough to community.’ 126 Nevertheless, as with meditation, the practice of
confession at times proved problematic for many seminarians at Finkenwalde who
simply believed ‘that sort of thing was not usually done in the Protestant Church.’127
Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Roman Catholic spirituality in Rome
In order to assess whether Bonhoeffer’s approach to the spiritual disciplines of
meditation and confession can be regarded as formed by Catholic spirituality, it is
important to examine Bonhoeffer’s experiences of Catholic spirituality and the
interaction of such biographical experiences with the formation of Bonhoeffer’s
thought. As with the question of the relationship between his own understanding of
the church and Catholicism, Bonhoeffer’s primary formative experience of Catholic
spiritual practices takes place during his 1924 stay in Rome. On witnessing the
prayerful preparation of people readying themselves to participate in the sacrament of
reconciliation at St. Maria Maggiore, Bonhoeffer is struck by the seriousness of
Catholics in their approach to confession and is impressed that ‘for many of these
125 Ibid. 111-2.
126 Ibid. 110. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis.
127 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 465.
38
people confession has not become an obligation, but a necessity.’128 Furthermore,
Bonhoeffer considers that the practice of confession has become for Catholics more
than scrupulousness, but rather the only way for them to speak about God due to the
nature of the experience of confession as an encounter with God. It is evident here
that Bonhoeffer is engaging with a line of thought that became crucial to
understanding the practice of confession at Finkenwalde: when a person confesses
their sins to another person who stands before them as representative of Christ, God
is encountered in the practice of confession.
It is additionally important to note that Bonhoeffer’s realisation of the living reality of
the church in Rome takes place primarily through his exposure to Catholic liturgical
and spiritual practices. As Bonhoeffer remarks, ‘Catholicism first becomes lucid and
distinctive when one studies the Missal closely’129 – once again, the emphasis is not
on theological engagement with Catholicism but a concrete encounter with
Catholicism as it is practiced: in these experiences of Catholic liturgy and spirituality,
Bonhoeffer meets the sense that ‘ritual [is] truly no longer ritual’ but ‘worship in the
true sense.’130 Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s grasping of the concreteness of the church
whilst in Rome is specifically undergirded by the possibility of the concrete encounter
with God Bonhoeffer believed he witnessed in the liturgical and spiritual practices of
the Catholic Church. Hence Bonhoeffer is able to write that he is beginning to
understand the concept of the church after attending vespers,131 further indicating the
importance of Bonhoeffer’s experiences in the formation and development of his
thought.
128 ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 89.
129 Ibid. 111.
130 Ibid. 89.
131 Ibid.
39
Finkenwalde: The influence of Roman Catholicism or Lutheran
spiritual renewal?
Although its is possible to establish a link between Bonhoeffer’s experience of
confession in Rome, and its practice at Finkenwalde, as grounded in the concrete
encounter with God, the question still remains whether the expression of
Bonhoeffer’s spirituality proceeds from his experience of Catholic spiritual practice
and liturgy, especially in relation to confession and meditation on Scripture. As his
‘Paper on “The Catholic Church”’ indicates, it cannot be denied that Catholic
spirituality retained a certain charm for Bonhoeffer; indeed, an appreciation of
aspects of Catholicism can be detected throughout Bonhoeffer’s writings relating to
spirituality and spiritual practices. At points in his writings Bonhoeffer is keen to
praise the wisdom of what he has learned from Catholic spirituality, as is evidenced in
a letter to his parents from prison which praises the ‘most effective expositions of
Scripture’ from the contemplative orders within the Catholic Church.132 Indeed,
Bonhoeffer also commends Bethge’s willingness to experience Catholic liturgy,
ceremony and spiritual practices while in Rome, despite the fact that ‘some pig-
headed Lutherans will put it down as a blot in [Bethge’s] biography.’133
It is also possible to detect a more implicit engagement with Catholic spirituality in
some of Bonhoeffer’s writings. For example, Bonhoeffer’s description of meditation
as requiring an embrace of the ‘emptiness and dryness’ the practice often presents,
thus not simply expecting a joyful encounter with the Word when meditating, echoes
with the exhortation of Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ that one cannot
approach God through the desires of the self but only in rejoicing and hoping for
Christ alone.134 As Kelly confirms, Bonhoeffer’s counsel in Life Together to ‘seek God,
not happiness’ appears as a ‘succinct amalgamation’ of thoughts expressed by à
Kempis concerning the need to seek God whether in consolation or in the midst of
132 LPP, 40.
133 Ibid. 216.
134 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Leo-Sherley Price (London: Penguin,
1952), ix.
40
spiritual desolation135 - though it cannot be assured that Bonhoeffer fully endorses
these concepts at the heart of the Imitation of Christ, it is interesting to note Kelly’s
appraisal of Bonhoeffer’s connection to a work identified by many Catholics as
essential to Catholic spirituality.
Nevertheless, to suggest that Bonhoeffer’s promotion of the practice of spiritual
disciplines such as meditation and confession is formed primarily from his encounter
with Catholic spirituality is inaccurate. Bonhoeffer’s experiences of Catholic liturgy
and spiritual practices certainly play a role in the development of his spirituality;
however, remembering that Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’ towards Catholicism
retains a critical distance in addition to its critical affection, it would be more
judicious to recognise that Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Catholicism acts as an
experience to stimulate thought rather than as a direct influence. An appreciation of
Catholic spirituality does not drive the communal life at Finkenwalde but instead
provides a helpful resource on which to draw inspiration for the practical necessities
of forming a community around the Word of God. This becomes clear when
acknowledging the Protestant background to the spiritual practices of the community
at Finkenwalde, including meditation on the Losung of the Moravian Daily Texts and
Luther’s teaching on confession. Bonhoeffer is especially adamant in Life Together that
the practice of confession must not be confused with the ‘legalistic’ Catholic
sacrament136 but understood as Luther’s recommendation for confession between
Christians as brothers. Luther’s conception of confession is interpreted as a spiritual
practice offered as a ‘divine help for the sinner’: in meeting God in the encounter
with the confessor, the grace of God breaks through the guilt of sin to reassure faith
when the words of personal absolution are received. Therefore, for Bonhoeffer,
confession is not a legalistic exercise in which the confessor absolves sin through the
135 Kelly, LT, 89 n. 14. It is important to note however that Bonhoeffer’s model of
discipleship is very much distinct from the imitatio model in its depiction of Christian life as
following [Nachfolge] the command of Christ in obedience rather than imitation.
136 Bonhoeffer voiced disquiet with the ‘Catholic dogma’ of confession, thought not its
practice, in his Rome diaries. ‘Italian Diary’, YB, 93.
41
authority conferred on him in holy orders137; instead, confession is a healing grace
that supports faith and so can be deemed as authentically Christian. ‘Therefore when
I urge you to go to confession,’ writes Bonhoeffer quoting Luther, ‘I am urging you
to be a Christian.’138
Finkenwalde and the concrete situation facing the church
Undoubtedly, Bonhoeffer’s concern at Finkenwalde is for a spiritual renewal for the
Confessing Church that would enable it to meet the concrete demands it faced in the
Church Struggle. Finkenwalde was not a monastic sanctuary but an expression of the
‘new monasticism’ that would help the church realise its commission to speak the
Word of God into the concrete situation. In this respect, Bonhoeffer’s aim for the
preacher’s seminary resonated with what the he saw as the desire of early
monasticism to recover ‘costly grace’: the communal life must be focussed on
following ‘Jesus’ strict commandments through daily exercise.’ 139 Moreover,
Finkenwalde cannot be for Bonhoeffer what he sees as the subsequent relativizing of
monasticism, the idea that concrete obedience of the commands Christ is ‘the
extraordinary achievement of individuals, to which the majority of the church
members need not be obligated.’140 Rather, the life of the community at Finkenwalde
involves the whole church in readying pastors to lead the church to speak the concrete
command to the world. As would be further expressed in his Ethics, Bonhoeffer
remained committed to the concept that the church’s commission to proclaim the
Word of God must be spoken in the reality of the concrete situation. Thus the
137 ‘Absolution proper is that act of the priest whereby, in the Sacrament of Penance, he frees
man from sin. It presupposes…on the part of the minister, valid reception of the Order of
Priesthood and jurisdiction, granted by competent authority, over the person receiving the
sacrament.’ ‘Absolution’, New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01061a.htm> See also Catechism of the Catholic Church,
II:2.2 Article 4 §1461-1467.
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm>
138 Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, sec. 32 cited in LT, 114.
139 D, 46.
140 Ibid. 47.
42
seminarians at Finkenwalde were being prepared for pastoral life through the
realisation that their existence in the church is two-fold. The Christian must be
formed into a community that gathers around the Word of God, but they must also
live as someone in the world.
If the church is really Christ-existing-as-community, the presence of Christ in the
world, then the Christian must accept that they exist for others, as ‘deputies for the
whole world.’141 The spiritual exercises at Finkenwalde are therefore validated by their
importance in preparing the seminarian to realise the necessity of the concrete
command of God, which might also demand future concrete action in a life lived
wholly in the world, particularly in response to worsening of the situation in Nazi
Germany. Bonhoeffer is therefore happy to draw on the resources of Catholic
spirituality if they are useful for achieving the spiritual renewal required to meet the
needs of the church in the Church Struggle. Consequently, spiritual renewal and the
rediscovery of the joy of spiritual practice, as Bonhoeffer preaches in a sermon on 1
Peter 1:7-9 in 1933, though it might ‘sound Catholic,’ is ‘archetypically Christian.’142
The accusations of ‘Catholicizing’ at Finkenwalde are simply unfounded.
Summary
The suggestion that the nature of the positive relation of Bonhoeffer’s thought to
Catholicism is centred in his experiences of the practice of the church, rather than a
theological engagement, has been upheld in examining the spirituality of Bonhoeffer.
In his experience of the Catholic practice of confession in Rome, Bonhoeffer begins
to contemplate the nature of spiritual practice as relating to a concrete encounter with
God. This line of thought becomes for Bonhoeffer lived spiritual practice through his
leadership of the communal life of the preacher’s seminary at Finkenwalde, and the
practice of meditation on Scripture and confession to the fellow Christian. In Life
Together Bonhoeffer promotes an understanding of both meditation, in the exposure
to the Word of God addressed to the individual, and confession, in hearing the words
141 E, 265.
142 ‘Sermon on 1 Peter 1:7b-9, Berlin’, B, 470.
43
of absolution from the confessor, as a concrete encounter with God. Yet, the
structured life of the community at Finkenwalde, and the practice of meditation and
confession, cannot be viewed as a direct influence of Catholic spirituality. Although
Bonhoeffer clearly appreciates aspects of Catholic spirituality, Finkenwalde is
primarily an exercise in spiritual renewal to meet the needs of the church and not a
‘Catholicizing’ of Lutheran spirituality. Catholic sources may be drawn upon in
building the communal life of Finkenwalde; however, Bonhoeffer’s aim for the
seminary is essentially Christian. It is here that the theme of the concrete situation
facing the church, and the commission of the church to speak the concrete command
of God to the world, is again especially relevant: the driving impetus behind
Bonhoeffer’s spirituality, particularly its emphasis on spiritual practice, is the reality of
the situation facing the church.
44
Conclusion: Recognising Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’
towards Roman Catholicism with theology through biography.
By examining Bonhoeffer’s life, both in his experiences of Catholicism and the
specific contexts of his writing, alongside his theology, it has been evidenced that the
nature of the relation of Bonhoeffer with Catholicism is best summarised as a
‘theological attitude.’ This relation can be labelled as ‘theological’, even though
Bonhoeffer’s encounter with Catholicism is primarily through the medium of lived
experience rather than systematic study, because of the integral relationship between
Bonhoeffer’s life and thought. For Bonhoeffer, life must be lived ‘theo-logically’ in
obedience to the concrete command of Christ; likewise, theology can only be done
for the church, which means for the community of believers as they exist in living in
the world. Moreover, the relation to Catholicism is an ‘attitude’ as it represents more
of a particular disposition to Catholicism than a conclusive engagement: Bonhoeffer’s
experiences of Catholicism are far from exhaustive, yet they retain a significant
relation to his theology. The ‘theological attitude’ is thus the stance of Bonhoeffer
towards Catholicism as ‘critical affection and affectionate criticism.’143
Essentially, this ‘critical affection’ towards Catholicism stems from Bonhoeffer’s
actual experiences of Catholicism as a lived religion. As has been highlighted, the
experience of the concreteness and reality of the church as witnessed in the spiritual
practices of the Catholic Church in Rome, plays a significant role in orientating
Bonhoeffer’s theological thought in the direction it would take in relation to
ecclesiology and spiritual formation. For example, what Bonhoeffer believes he
witnesses in Catholic devotion to the church stimulates the ecclesiology of Sanctorum
Communio in underlining the concrete reality of the church as Christ-existing-as-
community; likewise, the observation of the seriousness of Catholics in their
approach to the sacrament of confession helps to form an appreciation of spiritual
practices as a concrete meeting with God. Yet, the encounter with Catholicism
cannot be claimed as a direct influence on Bonhoeffer’s thought. As has been proved,
any suggestion of Bonhoeffer as a ‘Catholicizer’ must be rejected due to the fact that
143 Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 62.
45
Bonhoeffer retains at a critical distance from Catholicism. Bonhoeffer remains a
decidedly Lutheran theologian144 who clearly articulates a rejection of the institutional
basis of the Catholic Church and dismisses the Catholic doctrine of confession as a
sacrament.
It is additionally clear that the impact of biography and context regarding the relation
of Bonhoeffer with Catholicism should not be restricted to Bonhoeffer’s first-hand
engagements with the Catholic Church. Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the Confessing
Church and ecumenical movement in relation to the Church Struggle also plays a
fundamental role in shaping Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Catholicism. This is
undoubtedly evident where Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological attitude’ is at its most striking
and unique: Bonhoeffer is able to envisage the grounds for potential unity between
the Catholic Church and Protestant churches because of the concrete situation facing
the Confessing Church. Although the churches will not be united theologically,
Bonhoeffer makes the radical claim that they can be united in speaking the concrete
Word of God into the reality of the situation facing the churches.
Moreover, the theme of concreteness not only confirms Bonhoeffer’s ‘theological
attitude’ to Catholicism, but also validates the method of theology through biography
as essential for approaching a study of Bonhoeffer’s life and theology. Such a
conclusion resonates with Bonhoeffer’s own approach to understanding theology. In
moving from phraseological theology to the real encounter with faith, Bonhoeffer
argues that theology can only be carried out in obedience to the commission from
God that the concrete command of the Word is spoken into the concrete situation.
As theology can never retain its full power without the recognition of the encounter
with the concrete, any assessment of Bonhoeffer that ignores the context of his life
can never be fruitful. Indeed, it would not be possible to conclude that Bonhoeffer’s
relation to Catholicism takes place through a ‘theological attitude’ without
recognising that such an attitude is primarily formed in the experiences and
144 Importantly, accounts of Bonhoeffer’s theology by Catholic theologians have been very
keen to stress Bonhoeffer as a Lutheran. See Marlé, Bonhoeffer, 140 and Feil, The Theology of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. xx.
46
encounters of his biography. Bonhoeffer’s ‘own life provides the commentary on his
theology’145 – thus, Bonhoeffer’s theology can only be fully appreciated when it is
read in the context of the concrete moment in which Bonhoeffer found himself.
Moreover, it is in Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of the centrality of concreteness for the
Christian life that the reader can grasp the true relevance of Bonhoeffer’s encounter
with Catholicism. Truly theo-logical life, for Bonhoeffer, must be grounded in the
concrete: this life takes places not only in the concrete encounter with God, but,
crucially, in the Word proclaimed by the church, and the situation facing the church.
In his encounter with Catholicism, Bonhoeffer is calling the Christian to realise the
demands of faith by living concretely in both the church and the reality of the world:
thus Bonhoeffer is calling us to a new way of being in the church. However, this
poses an important challenge: we need to grasp the radical message that ‘the
designation of Catholic or Protestant is unimportant’ in the authentic church.
Therefore, the new way of being in the church must realise that the only ‘important
thing [for the church] is God’s Word.’146
145 Godsey, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 281.
146 ‘Paper on the “Catholic Church”’, YB, 529.
47
Table of Abbreviations
SC Sanctorum Communio: Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church
ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Rheinard Krauss and Nancy
Lukens (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 1, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998)
AB Act and Being
ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd and Hans-Richard Reuter, trans. Martin H.
Rumscheidt (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 2, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996)
CF Creation and Fall
ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans. Douglas Stephen Bax (Dietrich
Bonhoeffer Works 3, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)
D Discipleship
ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey, trans. Barbara Green and
Reinhard Kraus (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)
LT Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible
ed. Geffrey B. Kelly, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and James H.
Burtness (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 5, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005)
E Ethics
ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Neville Horton Smith (London: SCM
Press, 1955)
LPP Letters and Papers from Prison
ed. Eberhard Bethge (3rd edn. enlarged, London: SCM Press, 1971)
GS II Gesammelte Schriften II
ed. Eberhard Bethge (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1959)
48
GS III Gesammelte Schriften III
ed. Eberhard Bethge (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1960)
NRS No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1928-1936
ed. Edwin H. Robertson, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John
Bowden (Collected Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1, London: Collins, 1965)
WTF The Way to Freedom: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1935-1939
ed. Edwin H. Robertson, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John
Bowden (Collected Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer 2, London: Collins, 1966)
C Christology
trans. Edwin H. Robertson (London: Collins, 1978)
YB The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918-1927
ed. Paul Duane Matheny, Clifford J. Green and Marshall D. Johnson,
trans. Mary C. Nebelsick and Douglas W. Stott (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 9,
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)
BBNY Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931
ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Dietrich
Bonhoeffer Works 10, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008)
L London: 1933-1935
ed. Keith W. Clements, trans. Isabel Best (Dietrich
Bonhoeffer Works 13, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)
CI Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940-1945
ed. Mark Brocker, trans. Lisa E. Dahill (Dietrich
Bonhoeffer Works 16, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2006)
49
B Berlin: 1932-1933
ed. Larry Rasmussen, trans. Isabel Best, David Higgins and Douglas
W. Stott (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 12, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009)
50
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