Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2145346

VOLS. 6/7 2011-12

La Revue

THÈME SPÉCIAL / SPECIAL THEME: L’AUMONERIE / CHAPLAINCY

PUBLISHED BY / PUBLIÉE PAR

FACULTÉ DE THÉOLOGIE RÉFORMÉE

FAREL

MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC

ISSN: 1712-9168

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2145346

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, THE TWO KINGDOMS, AND PROTESTANT SOCIAL THOUGHT TODAY

Jordan J. BALLOR

In his noteworthy book published at the close of the 1970s,

Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement, the Protestant ethicist James M. Gustafson strikingly observed that “the situation of Protestant churches with regard to moral teachings is only a little short of chaos.”1 Writing as he was in the midst of what has been called the period of “Barthian hegemony” in Protestant theology (ca. 1934-1990), it should not be surprising that what unity Gustafson observed amounted to “consensus on the rejection of the natural law tradition and particularly on the metaphysics of that tradition.”2 Over the last two decades, however, this consensus has been increasingly questioned and critically undermined by scholars working from biblical, historical, and constructive perspectives.3 Especially significant among the works attempting to rehabilitate natural-law thinking among Protestants, especially among Reformed and Presbyterians, is the recent work of David VanDrunen of Westminster Seminary California.4 VanDrunen has argued effectively

1 James M. Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 130. 2 Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, 62. On the period of Barthian hegemony, see Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 21-53. 3 See, for instance, James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993); Michael Cromartie, ed., A Preserving Grace: Protestants, Catholics, and Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Ethics and Public Policy Center/Eerdmans, 1997); David VanDrunen, A Biblical Case for Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2006); Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law; Craig A. Boyd, A Shared Morality: A Narrative Defense of Natural Law Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007); J. Daryl Charles, Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); Owen Anderson, The Natural Moral Law: The Good After Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Jesse Covington, Bryan McGraw, and Micah Watson, eds., Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012). I survey a number of works and contemporary developments concerning Protestants and natural law in Jordan J. Ballor, “Natural Law and Protestantism—A Review Essay,” Christian Scholar’s Review 41.2 (Winter 2012): 193-209. 4 Most important is David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

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for both the historical precedent among the Reformed for natural-law thinking, but also, given the reality of an objective moral order rooted in created nature, its ongoing relevance for today. He has pursued this latter aspect of his natural-law work especially by connecting natural law with a doctrine of the two kingdoms.5 For VanDrunen, this effort is in part fueled by concern over the errors of a transformationalist ethic associated with important streams of Dutch neo-Calvinism, which can, at least in its excesses, downplay the importance of the institutional church. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., for instance, has written against a perceived dualism between body and spirit, arguing that “the things of the mind and spirit are no better, and are sometimes much worse, than the things of the body.” A corollary, says Plantinga, is that “it is not more Christian to play chess than to play hockey. It is not more Christian to become a minister than to become a muck farmer.”6 The vision encapsulated in this latter claim is representative of what worries VanDrunen, for as he notes, a “common characteristic of neo-Calvinism, amidst its diversity, is its dedication to putting the church in its place.” With good intentions “to elevate other institutions and activities rather than to lower the church’s status,” neo-Calvinism has nevertheless “to an alarming degree lost the importance and uniqueness of the church along the way as well.”7 The attempts to recover traditional approaches to ethics by Protestants have occurred as the larger society has experienced significant decline in the vitality of normative moral institutions. The sociologist Philip Rieff noted the beginnings of these trends almost a half-century ago, as he contended that “the death of a culture begins when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling, first of all to the cultural elites themselves. Many spokesmen for our established normative institutions are aware of their failure and yet remain powerless to generate in themselves the necessary unwitting part of their culture that merits the name of faith.” He also judged that “the misery of this culture is acutely

5 See, for instance, David VanDrunen, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). 6 Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 37. 7 David VanDrunen, “Calvin, Kuyper, and ‘Christian Culture,’” in Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey, ed. R. Scott Clark and Joel E. Kim (Escondido: Westminster Seminary California, 2010), 146-48. Important critiques of transformationalist excess have come from within communities influenced by Dutch neo-Calvinism as well. See, for instance, Calvin P. Van Reken, “Christians in this World: Pilgrims or Settlers?” Calvin Theological Journal 43.2 (November 2008): 234-256.

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stated by the special misery of its normative institutions. Our more general misery is that, having broken with those institutionalized credibilities from which its moral energy derived, new credibilities are not yet operationally effective and, perhaps, cannot become so in a culture constantly probing its own unwitting part.” 8 Efforts to rehabilitate and apply traditional Protestant teachings like the natural law and the two kingdoms can be seen as responses to this failing of “normative institutions,” including the church and family. “What binding address now describes our successor culture?” wondered Rieff, “In what does the self now try to find salvation, if not in the breaking of corporate identities and in an acute suspicion of all normative institutions?”9 There are many reasons that such efforts at reforming moral institutions have not enjoyed widespread success, either within our without the church. Outside of the church there is the problem of declining, or at least increasingly ambiguous, influence of religious discourse and ecclesiastical institutions. 10 But where VanDrunen’s concerns about the importance of the institutional church and its proclamation of the gospel come into sharpest relief is in the disarray of Christian social thought that has only worsened since Gustafson’s observation that “pious Protestants can be virulent racists or civil rights activists. They can be militarists or pacifists, socialists or defenders of the free-market system, regardless of what church agencies teach about these matters.”11 Protestant ethics, which Gustafson notes have “never been developed in a setting in which there is a supreme court of appeals to adjudicate what is morally right and wrong” analogous to the Magisterium of Roman Catholicism, does not have a coherent or authoritative theological articulation of social life that reaches beyond narrow confessional, denominational, or traditional confines. Apart from the cogency of the cases made by individual moral theologians, ecclesiastical bodies at the denominational or ecumenical level seem to be the only potentially feasible analog.12 But given the array of such

8 Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 18-19. 9 Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 19. See also more generally Robert Nisbet, The Twilight of Authority (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000 [1975]). 10 On the challenge of secularism understood as the divorce of religion and public life (rather than the institutional separation of church and state), see Hunter Baker, The End of Secularism (Wheaton: Crossway Academic, 2009). 11 Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, 130. 12 On the difficulties facing social thought at the ecumenical level, and the usefulness of Bonhoeffer’s early engagement with the ecumenical movement,

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bodies and the fragmentation of Protestant ecclesiology, progress toward a unified body of Reformed social thought (to say nothing of Protestantism more broadly) has been halting, to say the least. From this perspective the “prospects for rapprochement,” to borrow Gustafson’s phrase, between ethical perspectives of diverse branches of Christianity appear rather dim. The critical reception of the work of VanDrunen by other Reformed and neo-Calvinist theologians does not portend well for unity amongst traditions with even less basic agreement, e.g. Reformed and Lutheran, or Reformed and Roman Catholic.13 It may seem odd, therefore, to argue that a Lutheran theologian and pastor like Dietrich Bonhoeffer has something important to contribute to the contemporary Reformed debates about natural law, two kingdoms, and the development of Protestant social thought. And yet this is precisely what I argue in the remainder of this article. I am optimistic about finding assistance in untangling some (certainly not all) of these complex issues from such a counter-intuitive source for a number of reasons. First, Bonhoeffer represents in many ways a figure rooted in a theological tradition radically different than that which has nourished either Dutch neo-Calvinism or American Presbyterianism. This is a strength in this context because any similarities or correspondences that might be found in his ethical thought portend well for the possibility that diverse moral traditions might achieve some level of reconciliation. There is also an intriguing struggle with natural law in Lutheran circles that provides a compelling comparative example for the renewal of natural-law teaching among the Reformed.14 Second, and more particularly, as a Lutheran, Bonhoeffer offers an intriguing, if not rather eccentric, understanding of Luther’s doctrine of two kingdoms, which mutatis mutandis might be applied to Reformed see Jordan J. Ballor, Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2010). 13 For a particularly critical reaction, see John Frame, The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdom Theology (Lakeland, FL: Whitefield Media, 2011). Frame’s book elicited a response from the president of Westminster Seminary California, W. Robert Godfrey, in which Godfrey affirmed that the school “has been and remains a confessional school. As a whole our faculty supports and promotes the consensus views of the Reformed community as summarized in the Reformed confessions. These confessions express most precisely our theology.” See Godfrey, “Westminster Seminary California Faculty Response to John Frame,” Valiant for Truth (February 7, 2012), available at: http://wscal.edu/blog/entry/westminster-seminary-california-faculty-response-to-john-frame. 14 See, for instance, Robert C. Baker and Roland Cap Ehlke, eds., Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2011).

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understandings of the doctrine as well. And finally, despite the almost univocal depiction of Bonhoeffer as standing in a Barthian tradition of rejecting natural law, and his interpretation of Luther’s two-kingdoms doctrine, he is better understood as advocating a kind of Christological natural-law approach, an ethic of normative moral orders.15 The combination of these elements show that Bonhoeffer is an important representative of an alternative Protestant tradition who, while disagreeing with the doctrine of two kingdoms understood as a structural ethical distinction, still espouses ethical teachings that have the potential to contribute toward the rehabilitation of normative moral institutions. Thus Bonhoeffer writes that the ethical “inherently involves a certain order of human community and entails certain sociological relationships of authority. Only in their context does the ethical manifest itself and receive the concrete authorization that is essential to it.”16 Gustafson has wondered, “Why don’t Protestants use the cosmic christologies of Colossians, Ephesians, and the gospel according to John for a biblical foundation for natural law?” 17 Bonhoeffer in fact does something quite like this in his christological articulation of the divine mandates, which he explicitly says is intended “to contribute to renewing and reclaiming the old concepts of order, estate, and office.”18 Once we understand, as Armin Wenz puts it, that “the notion of the orders of creation is the Lutheran equivalent to the classical notion of ‘natural law,’” Bonhoeffer’s significance for the modern development of Protestant natural-law ethics becomes even more striking.19 Bonhoeffer and the Two Kingdoms

Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms is contained in the larger context of his teaching on the divine mandates in his Ethics, particularly with respect to church and government. But his understanding of the “polemical unity” of the two kingdoms is at work in other writings, notably Discipleship, which 15 At one point Bonhoeffer terms this a kind of “Christonomy.” See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Scott, ed. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 402, n. 3. For Bonhoeffer’s Christological teaching in the context of neoorthodox debates concerning natural theology and natural law, see Jordan J. Ballor, “Christ in Creation: Bonhoeffer’s Orders of Preservation and the Question of Natural Theology,” Journal of Religion 86.1 (January 2006): 1-22. 16 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 373. 17 Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, 71. 18 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 390. 19 See Wenz, “Natural Law and the Orders of Creation,” in Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal, 84-85.

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militates against any absolute structural secularism between social institutions.20 In this way Bonhoeffer’s primary concern with the two-kingdoms doctrine as it was being used in his own time was that it allowed for a kind of radical independence of the world from the church, the former understood as secular and the latter as sacred. As Bonhoeffer writes, “This division of the whole of reality into sacred and profane, or Christian and worldly, sectors creates the possibility of existence in only one of these sectors: for instance, a spiritual existence that takes no part in worldly existence, and a worldly existence that can make good its claim to autonomy over against the sacred sector.”21 Bonhoeffer finds this division to be deeply antithetical to the biblical faith and the central insights of the Reformation: “There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world.”22 In this way Bonhoeffer describes Luther’s two-kingdoms teaching as requiring a “polemical unity,” since “in the name of a better Christianity Luther used the world to protest against a type of Christianity that was making itself independent by separating itself from the reality of Christ. Similarly, Christianity must be used polemically today against the worldly in the name of a better worldliness; this polemical use of Christianity must not end up again in a static and self-serving sacred realm.”23 Bonhoeffer is so concerned about the secularistic application of two kingdoms thinking in his own day that he even contends that “we must get beyond this two-realms image.”24

“Only in this sense of a polemical unity,” contends Bonhoeffer, “may Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms [Zwei Reiche] be used.”25 This unity is polemical because it demolishes any autonomous claims of existence apart from Jesus Christ himself: “The world is not divided between Christ and the devil; it is completely the world of Christ, whether it recognizes this or not. As this reality in Christ it is to be addressed, and thus the false reality that it imagines itself to have, in itself or in the devil, is to be destroyed.”26 At the same time, however, 20 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, trans. Martin Kuske and Ilse Tödt, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). 21 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 57. 22 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 58. 23 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 60. For Luther’s doctrine in its historical context, see William J. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010). 24 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 66. 25 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 60. 26 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 65. These kinds of claims about the universal lordship of Christ in Bonhoeffer are similar to those made in the famous quote from the

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Bonhoeffer shares with VanDrunen (and with Kuyper, as VanDrunen recognizes) the concern that the church as a visible community maintain its uniqueness.27 Bonhoeffer writes that “the church occupies a certain space in the world that is determined by its worship, its order, and its congregational life, and this very fact is the point of departure for thinking in terms of realms in general. It would be very dangerous to overlook this, to deny the visibility of the church, and thus to devalue it into a purely spiritual entity.”28 Bonhoeffer’s worry here is exactly the same as that of VanDrunen about the legacy of neo-Calvinism: “The church, unfortunately for neo-Calvinism, is not the sort of institution designed by Christ to be one among equals for Christians. Neo-Calvinism has not only made little progress in transforming Western civilization (or even Holland, or South Holland), but it has to an alarming degree lost the importance and uniqueness of the church along the way as well.”29

Robin W. Lovin argues that Bonhoeffer’s views as expressed in Discipleship “are best understood as attempts to test formulations of Protestant church-state relations against the political demands of his own time.”30 In this way we can understand that there is an element to Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the doctrine of the two kingdoms that is deeply informed by his concern over the obeisance of the leadership of the Christian church to the Third Reich. But even if we see the “polemical unity” of the two kingdoms advocated by Bonhoeffer as highly contextual, we can also see how he shares concerns with both Kuyper and VanDrunen, respectively, that there be no radical or ultimate sacred/secular distinction between the church and the world, and that the church as a visible community maintain its unique independence and responsibility: “When one therefore wants to speak of the space of the church, one must be aware that this space has already been broken through, abolished, and overcome in every neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” See Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 488. 27 See VanDrunen, “Calvin, Kuyper, and ‘Christian Culture,’” 137: “Calvin and Kuyper, in their own ways, must be accounted men of the church. They loved her, served her, reformed her, and wrote about her at length.” 28 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 62-63. 29 VanDrunen, “Calvin, Kuyper, and ‘Christian Culture,’” 147-148. 30 Robin W. Lovin, “The Christian and the Authority of the State: Bonhoeffer’s Reluctant Revisons,” in Ethical Responsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy to the Churches, ed. John D. Godsey and Geffrey B. Kelly (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), 104.

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moment by the witness of the church to Jesus Christ. Thus all false thinking in terms of realms is ruled out as endangering the understanding of the church.”31 Bonhoeffer’s Social Ethics

Bonhoeffer’s articulation of the two-kingdoms doctrine as valid only as construed within the “polemical unity” of the cosmic lordship of Jesus Christ is best understood within the broader context of his thought of the divine mandates. Bonhoeffer’s ethical thought comes to mature expression in his doctrine of the mandates, or the structures of the divine commandment, which represent his attempt at a mediating position between the modern natural law/divine command options for the grounding of ethics. This is an attempt to retain the best of both: the permanence and objective normativity of natural law, and the situational sensitivity of divine command. This lively normativity finds its expression in the living person of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the moral law. Understood properly, Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the mandates is best represented as grounded in a form of Christological natural law (e.g. “Christonomy”), or as describing what might be called a Christotelic order, with Christ as the creational and ontological grounding of and ultimate end and norm for the mandates.

Christ’s lordship is exercised in the world through four distinct “mandates,” namely, marriage (or family), work (or culture), church, and government. These are the expressions of God’s “commandment,” which is “the sole authorization for ethical discourse.”32 As noted above, however, the commandment is linked directly to Christ, so that “the commandment of God revealed in Jesus Christ is addressed to us in the church, in the family, in work, and in government.”33 The lordship of Christ over all creation, recalling Bonhoeffer’s critique of the two kingdoms, therefore cannot allow Christ to be “a partial reality alongside others.”34 Thus Bonhoeffer writes, “The world belongs to Christ, and only in Christ is the world what it is. It needs, therefore, nothing less than Christ himself. Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be. Christ has died for the world, and Christ is Christ only in the midst of the world.”35 The key point here is that Bonhoeffer is not willing to cede some portion of existence to having a purely secular character. 31 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 64. 32 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 378. 33 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 380. 34 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 57. 35 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 67.

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Although Bonhoeffer’s use of terminology shifted throughout his career, there is a strong continuity between Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the orders of preservation, as articulated in his commentary on Genesis in 1933, for instance, the “laws of life” also used in his middle period, and his use of the divine mandates in his later Ethics.36 He identifies these orders in this way: “All orders of our fallen world are God’s orders of preservation that uphold and preserve us for Christ. They are not orders of creation but orders of preservation.”37 The key here is the connection of the orders which preserve us “for Christ” and the mandates which have Christ as their “origin, essence, and goal.”38

Before concluding with some final thoughts about the relevance of Bonhoeffer, as well as some of the limitations of appropriating his thought in attempts to articulate Protestant social thought today, we can explore here briefly Bonhoeffer’s teaching on the mandate of marriage as an example of his doctrine at work on a concrete subject. In the institution, mandate, or estate of marriage, we find the clear expression of what Bonhoeffer means by orders of preservation (as opposed to creation), characteristic of his attempt “to contribute to renewing and reclaiming the old concepts of order, estate, and office.”39 Orders of preservation are marked by the reality of sin and are intended to restrain sin. In the case of marriage, for instance, we might look at divorce as a clear indication that marriage as we experience it today is an order of preservation.

Whereas Bonhoeffer draws the line of distinction between orders of creation and orders of preservation at the Fall, his older Reformed contemporary Emil Brunner finds both in effect after the

36 See William F. Connor, “Laws of Life: A Bonhoeffer Theme with Variations,” Andover Newton Quarterly 18, no. 2 (November 1977): 101-10. 37 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, trans. Martin Rüter and Ilse Tödt, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 140. 38 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 402: “The lordship of Jesus Christ is not a foreign rule, but the lordship of the Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. It is the lordship of the one through whom and toward whom all created being exists, indeed the one in whom alone all created being finds its origin, essence, and goal.” Clifford Green notes that Bonhoeffer abandoned the use of “orders” language for strategic reasons, because such language was “too susceptible of co-option by sympathizers of National Socialism.” See Clifford J. Green, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” in Ethics, 19. It also speaks to his effort to reconcile the dynamism of divine command and the stability of natural-law ethics. See Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 68-69: “We speak of divine mandates rather than divine orders, because thereby their character as divinely imposed tasks [Auftrag], as opposed to determinate forms of being, becomes clearer.” 39 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 390.

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Fall.40 There are, nevertheless, major points of agreement. Both find that God’s primary action after the Fall to be that of preserver. Brunner writes, “The manner in which God is present to his fallen creature is in his preserving grace. Preserving grace does not abolish sin but abolishes the worst consequences of sin.”41 But Brunner’s emphasis on the importance of distinguishing creation and preservation orders is in marked contrast to Bonhoeffer. For Brunner, “The distinction between this ‘ordinance of creation’ from a mere ‘ordinance of preservation’ relative to sin…is necessary for a Christian theologia naturalis, i.e. for Christian theological thinking which tries to account for the phenomena of natural life.”42 He then contends sharply, “It is the task of our theological generation to find the way back to a true theologia naturalis.”43 For example, Brunner finds that marriage is a creation ordinance, because it existed before sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, so that preservation orders are those structures and institutions which are brought into existence solely because of sin.44 In this way, “Monogamous marriage, for example, is of higher dignity than the State because, as an institution, as an ordinance, it is–apart from special concrete cases–unrelated to sin…. Therefore it has from of old been called an ‘ordinance of creation.’”45 Bonhoeffer, by contrast, would find that after the Fall marriage too is a preservation ordinance, since its inception was unrelated to sin, but it has, like the rest of creation, been affected and marred by sin, and therefore stands in need of restraint with respect to sin. Marriage is in this way for Bonhoeffer a pre-political institution, since “marriage is not made by the government, but is affirmed by the government.”46 And yet marriage is not, at least

40 An earlier form of this discussion of Bonhoeffer and Brunner on the orders of creation and preservation appears in Ballor, “Christ in Creation,” 8-10. For Bonhoeffer and Barth, see “Christ in Creation,” 10-12; and Jordan J. Ballor, “The Aryan Clause, the Confessing Church, and the Ecumenical Movement: Barth and Bonhoeffer on Natural Theology, 1933–1935,” Scottish Journal of Theology 59.3 (August 2006): 263-80. 41 Emil Brunner, “Nature and Grace,” in Natural Theology, trans. Peter Fraenkel (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), 28. 42 Brunner, “Nature and Grace,” 29-30. 43 Brunner, “Nature and Grace,” 59. 44 In this way, preservation orders for Brunner as well as Bonhoeffer mirror Kuyper’s definition of common grace as the post-lapsarian restraint of “sin, error, and misery in their manifestations.” See Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 96. 45 Brunner, “Nature and Grace,” 29. 46 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 72.

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as manifested in the fallen world, directly reflective of the creational and sinless ideal.

This distinction between orders of creation and orders of preservation is problematic for Bonhoeffer precisely because all of creation has been affected by sin. Indeed, in Bonhoeffer’s judgment, the noetic effects of sin seem to negate our ability to properly judge between that which is strictly of preservation and that which is of creation. For Bonhoeffer, those who argue on the basis of orders of creation do not realize “that the world has fallen and that sin now rules and that the creation and sin are so intertwined that no human eye can see them as separate, that every human order is the order of the fallen world and not of creation.”47 It is precisely here that Bonhoeffer is seeking to do justice to the full implications of the Fall while still maintaining some basis for the church’s concrete ethical proclamations.

We might fault Bonhoeffer here for not adequately acknowledging the value of the scriptural witness of marriage as a creation ordinance. Bonhoeffer argues against marriage as a creation order in favor of a preservation order in part because “the creation and sin are now so intertwined that no human eye can see them as separate.” But does not Genesis attest to the created order of marriage and separate it out for us? As far as I have found Bonhoeffer does not explicitly deal with this possibility, but it is likely, however, that Bonhoeffer would contend that even if we might be tempted to argue that marriage is a creation order on the basis of Scripture, we would still have to deal with the effect of sin on marriage, so that after the Fall, the ordinance of marriage itself has been altered and corrupted. Post-lapsarian marriage is simply not the same institution that pre-lapsarian marriage was. The advent of divorce, as in the case of Matt. 19:3–12, attests to this reality. Protestant Social Thought Today

Bonhoeffer’s relevance for the rehabilitation of Protestant social thought today thus lies primarily in his dynamic doctrine of ethical mandates, an effective and cogent articulation of a uniquely Protestant natural-law line of thinking. His framework of the four mandates provides an excellent beginning to the project to, as he put it, “contribute to renewing and reclaiming the old concepts of order, estate, and office.”48 This is an especially critical task as Protestant churches look for resources in the period of post-Barthian “hegemony,” to use 47 Bonhoeffer, “On the Theological Foundation of the Work of the World Alliance,” in Bonhoeffer, Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931-1932 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 363. 48 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 390.

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Grabill’s phrase. As useful and as necessary as it is to return to the traditional sources (primarily the Bible, but also the great thinkers of the Christian tradition, particularly those of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras), it is also helpful to find figures closer to our own time who exhibit the kind of brilliance and thoughtfulness apparent in Bonhoeffer’s work. Bonhoeffer’s ethical thought shows us definitively that natural law must be one of the essential tools in our theological toolbox, so to speak, when we are addressing the challenges of following Jesus Christ today. As Bonhoeffer observed, “We must replace rusty weapons with bright steel,” and the moral steeliness of the natural law and indeed of Bonhoeffer’s own work are invaluable in this regard.49

But despite the strengths of Bonhoeffer’s account, there are some weaknesses that must be acknowledged.

In the first place, Bonhoeffer’s mature ethical work, while dynamic and substantial, is fragmentary and incomplete. There are unarguably important historical and contextual concerns that have to be taken into account when seeking to understand and apply Bonhoeffer’s ethical ideas to the contemporary situation. Indeed, there is an element of crisis that can be seen as endemic to Bonhoeffer’s ethical thought.50 His involvement with the Abwehr conspiracy and attempts to assassinate Hitler, and his imprisonment and eventual execution, cannot be hermetically sealed off as irrelevant to interpreting his theological and ethical thought.

Moreover, Bonhoeffer’s biography lends him an air of moral legitimacy and integrity for many that can upset critical appropriation of his thought. For many Bonhoeffer functions as a kind of Protestant “saint,” with the moral capital, so to speak, to lend an element of credibility to ethical programs that can be attached, whether more or less convincingly, to his thought.51 This, in part, explains the wide variety of theological traditions that have found inspiration from, and claimed some grounding in, the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

An additional problematic in Bonhoeffer’s thought is the development that it undergoes throughout his life. Later elements in his thought, particularly from his period of imprisonment, are often

49 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 209. See also Ballor, “Natural Law and Protestantism,” 209. 50 This is something that Bonhoeffer himself recognized. See Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on times that are “out of joint,” in Ethics, 347. 51 On the various receptions of Bonhoeffer’s legacy, see Stephen R. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004). See also Jordan J. Ballor, “Bonhoeffer in America—A Review Essay,” Christian Scholar’s Review 37.4 (Summer 2008): 465-82.

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obscure and sometimes theologically questionable, depending particularly on how such statements are understood within the larger context of Bonhoeffer’s theological development. 52 His idea of “religionless Christianity,” for instance, could be understood as being in tension with, or even undermining, his previous emphasis on the importance of the institutional church as a visible order of God’s grace.

In addition to these challenges inherent in Bonhoeffer’s own thought, there is the challenge of distance, both historically and spatially, in attempting to bring Bonhoeffer’s ethical framework to bear on contemporary Protestant social thought, particularly from a North American perspective.53 Certainly Bonhoeffer’s thought might inform rehabilitated and renewed formulations of Protestant social thought, but such endeavors cannot simply be recapitulations of Bonhoeffer’s own views. Protestant social thought must develop beyond the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as it must any individual figure in the church’s theological history.

And yet even so, Bonhoeffer’s ethical work, particularly his doctrine of divine mandates as introduced briefly in this essay, has the potential to move forward the conversation about natural law, two kingdoms, and Protestant, even Reformed, social thought. The basic question raised in Discipleship, informed by his understanding of vocation, office, and Christological law and developed more fully in his Ethics, echoes meaningfully today: “What could the call to follow Jesus mean today for the worker, the businessman, the farmer, or the soldier?” 54 Bonhoeffer’s concerns about a particular mistaken application of the two-kingdoms doctrine, even if this understanding of the doctrine is quite different than that expressed by VanDrunen and other two-kingdoms advocates, stands as a valuable warning about potential consequences following from ill-formed conceptions of such doctrines. It is as unfair to judge all neo-Calvinist thought by the excesses and erroneous applications of its tenets by some thinkers as it is to do likewise for the advocates of two-kingdoms approaches. The abuse of a doctrine does not negate its proper use. Bonhoeffer helps us remember this in the context of disputes about natural law and the two

52 On patterns of emphasis on different aspects or periods of Bonhoeffer’s thought, see Otto Dudzus, “Discipleship and Worldliness in the Thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Religion in Life 35.2 (1966): 230-240. 53 These are concerns that do not necessarily manifest themselves in a conclusion similar to that of Barth, which sees in Bonhoeffer’s ethics of mandates “a suggestion of North German patriarchalism.” See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 22. 54 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 39.

BALLOR 75

kingdoms, and thereby gives us some help in the hopeful task of a renewed effort to develop Protestant social thought today.

CONTRIBUTORS / AUTEURS 83

_________________________________________________________ Contributions The seminary faculty and others engaged in the practice of ministry may submit articles, book reviews, and exegetical studies for possible publication. Deadlines for submissions are 31 May 2013. Late submissions will be considered on a case by case basis. Submissions should be in English or French, in Word or Wordperfect format, and not more than 1,250 words (book reviews and exegetical studies) or 4,000-8,000 words (articles) in length. Manuscripts must conform to The SBL Handbook of Style (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999) or The Chicago Manual of Style (14th or 15th ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 and 2005).

Soumissions Les professeurs du séminaire et les autres personnes engagées dans le ministère peuvent soumettre des articles à des fins de publication. L’échéance pour les soumissions sera le 31 mai 2013. Les soumissions tardives seront considérées une à une en particulier. Ces soumissions devront être en anglais ou en français, rédigées en Word ou Wordperfect et ne comportant pas plus de 1250 mots s’il s’agit de résumés critiques de livre et de 4000-8000 mots s’il s’agit d’articles. Les soumissions doivent se conformer à The SBL Handbook of Style (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999) ou à The Chicago Manual of Style (14eme ou 15eme ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 et 2005).

CONTENTS / CONTENUS

ARTICLES « PADRE, QUE FAITES-VOUS LÀ À CETTE HEURE ? » L’ÉVANGILE ET LE RÔLE DE L’AUMÔNERIE MILITAIRE PROTESTANT (J.G. ZOELLNER).................................3 LES MARINS: ORPHELINS DE LA MONDIALISATION ? (J. ZUIDEMA)................................................................................13 AUMÔNIER CARCÉRAL : SA VOCATION DANS UNE PERSPECTIVE PROTESTANTE (S. CYR)...........................................................19 NURSING HOME CHAPLAINCY IN THE 21ST CENTURY (FREDERICK A. HARMS)..........................................................27 L'APPLICATION DE LA LOI (R.C. JANSSEN)..............................38 LES FEMMES DIACRES (C. ADJÉMIAN).....................................46 DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, THE TWO KINGDOMS, AND PROTESTANT SOCIAL THOUGHT TODAY (J. BALLOR).............62 BOOK REVIEW / RECENSION DE LIVRE : RON GLEASON. HERMAN BAVINK (RECENSION PAR B. WESTERVELD)............................76 IN MEMORIAM: CHRISTIAN JEAN ADJÉMIAN (1947-2011).......................................................................................79

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