|
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and the "Death of God"
by Paul Rohde
Anxious souls will ask what room there is left for God now; and as
they know of no answer to the question, they condemn the whole development
that has brought them to such straits. I wrote to you before about the
various emergency exits that have been contrived; and we ought to add
to them the salto mortale (death-leap) back into the Middle Ages. But
the principle of the Middle Ages is heteronomy in the form of clericalism;
a return to that can only be a counsel of despair, and it would be at
the cost of intellectual honesty. It is a dream that reminds one of the
song O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück, den weiten Weg ins Kinderland.
["O if only I knew the way back, the long way back to the land of
childhood." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison,
196]
These
words were written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a letter from a prison cell
in Nazi Germany in 1944. Less than a year later, he was executed. Thus
Bonhoeffer did not witness the path that history and religion took in
the years that followed. But his words about history's "coming of
age" foreshadowed-or perhaps announced-the path that Christian religious
thought would take after the War. By the 1960s, in the United States,
this path had led to the popularity of the 'death of God' theologians
or 'Christian atheists.' They were not an organized or coherent group,
but they shared a "common determination to take seriously the complete
secularization of contemporary culture. In sharp contrast to the sacral
culture of the middle ages which was pervaded at every point by reference
to God, our culture had dispensed with the concept of God. Bonhoeffer
had clearly stated their presupposition, though he was not himself a Christian
atheist." [Owen Chadwick, ed., The Pelican History of the Church,
276]
Like the 'death of God' theologians, Bonhoeffer recognized the apparent
absence of God in modern culture. But he did not believe that modern culture
had forced God out. Rather, it was God who was compelling humanity to
recognize that the 'God' that religion had created in the course of history
was an illusion. In the same letter, Bonhoeffer continued:
Our
coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God.
God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without
him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15.34). The
God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God
is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we
live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the
cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the
way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8.17 makes
it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence,
but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. [Bonhoeffer, 196]
Such
a God might not be expected to comfort 'anxious souls.' It is therefore
understandable that religion would wish to present a more powerful God-a
victorious, commanding God. But God had other ideas. Bonhoeffer saw that
God himself was undoing the God of religion.
It seemed that history, in its "coming of age," was discovering
little by little that religion's God was a fabrication. As science developed,
it found that it had no need for the 'hypothesis of God.' Politics found
that it could rule without divine authority, and found it much easier
to rule without Church intervention. And more and more of the Bible was
challenged by modern developments in biblical criticism. Humanity was
slowly coming to the conclusion that, if there was a God, he did not seem
to be interested in controlling the world, and he did not seem to demand
much recognition. Furthermore, the recent spectacles of war offered convincing
arguments against God's goodness or against his omnipotence. History seemed
to be dismissing the God of religion.
But the people who clung to the God of religion would not give up their
God easily. Bonhoeffer wrote, "Man's religiosity makes him look in
his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina."
[Bonhoeffer, 197] If modern science proved that the real world did not
conform to the religious conception of the world, and if modern culture
chose to dispense with a God that did not seem to rule the modern world,
religion would find another way to establish God as almighty. History
seemed to be stripping God of his power, so religion would turn to history
to reclaim power for God. Thus theologians and Christian historians looked
to the great achievements and great personalities in history to find evidence
of God's all-powerful hand, even though history itself seemed to be methodically
undoing such a conception of God.
For Bonhoeffer, the God of the Bible was not a God that revealed himself
in power. Thus the world's "coming of age" did not threaten
God, but prepared the way for his self-revelation. Bonhoeffer wrote, "The
Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering
God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the
world's coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false
conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who
wins power and space in the world by his weakness." [Bonhoeffer,
197] When God did appear in history, he appeared in weakness, and thus
he was not recognized. Only those who accepted Jesus in faith saw God
in him. Faith, unlike religiosity, is not threatened by God's apparent
powerlessness in the modern world. For faith discovers God precisely in
his powerlessness-in Jesus, on the cross.
Thus faith understands history better than history understands itself.
For faith knows Jesus: the meaning of all history. History does not judge
him, rather, in him history is judged and redeemed. It is not history
that confirms God's existence and power. It is Jesus, who appeared in
history in weakness and humility, who justifies history before God. So
Bonhoeffer could write: "The world's coming of age is no longer an
occasion for polemics and apologetics, but it is now really better understood
than it understands itself, namely on the basis of the gospel and in the
light of Christ." [Bonhoeffer, 182]
______________
Paul Rohde is a graduate of the University of Michigan. He spent a few
years in the Navy, became a pacifist and went AWOL seeking refuge in monasteries
in Great Britain. Currently Paul is on a self-described "pilgrimage"
walking highways around the USA to symbolize the church's alien and exiled
status in this world. You can read his journal entries at Pilgrimage Journals
|