Living Wittily

Hans Kung: On Still being a Christian 5 The church must change to remain itself

This final post is a collection of quotations from Disputed Truth. One of Kung's gifts is a way of writing that has style, lucidity, and a restrained but persistent passion for his subject.

One of Kung's most important books is Justification. The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, English edition 1964, which along with Von Balthasar's volume on Karl Barth, represents some of the best appreciative Barthian criticism, both still having to be reckoned with as interpretations of Barth -(though Bruce McCormack's work has since 'reckoned with' Von Balthasar's thesis). Kung  spoke with affectionate admiration at Barth's memorial serrvice, and comments in his latest Memoir volume:

Now the theologian who could point to an incomparable theological oeuvre has returned to his God. And I remember the moving moment when he told me that if ever he had to go before his God he would not refer to his many 'works' not even to his 'good faith', but simply say, 'God be merciful to me, a poor sinner'. I do not doubt for a moment that he has been received graciously. (page 98)

The relationship between Kung and Ratzinger, now Benedict xvi, is woven throughout this volume. Is there any love lost between them? Or found? It's harder to read Kung's inner feelings than to read the well written narrative, anecdotes, and comments; a mixture of fair-minded recall, reflection after the fact and not infrequent acid aside, which could be humorous, ironic or sarcastic, depending on the tone of voice - not discernible in print! Here are a couple of his comments:

From the beginning to the present day Joseph Ratzinger has seen himself 'really at home' in traditional Bavarian Catholicism...He saw and sees himself as a theologian of tradition, who persists essentially in the theological framework marked out by Augustuine and Bonaventure. For him the 'early church', or the 'church of the Fathers' is the measure of all things...
This is the early church as he understands it. He doesn't see Jesus of Nazareth as his disciples and the first Christian community saw him but as he was defined dogmatically by the hellenistic councils of the fourth/fifth centuries, which in fact split Christianity more than they united it. The Jesus of history and the undogmatic Jewish Christianity of the beginning hardly interests him, so he also has no deeper understanding of Islam, which is stamped by their environment. Nor does he show much understanding for the diverse charismatic structure of the Pauline communities and the different possibilities  of a 'succession of apostles', and also of'prohpets' and 'teachers'. he isn't interested in the church of the New Testament but in the church of the fathers (of course without the mothers). (page 131)

In his critique of Rahner, Ratzinger and other dogmaticians, Kung can sound more Protestant than Catholic. But that would be to misunderstand him. Rather than a church where one branch claims monopoly of catholicity, Kung  insists that all Christian traditions submit to the singular authoritative criterion. However to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ as attested in the New Testament that primary criterion, as Kung does, is an obvious challenge to a too narrowly conceived Roman Catholicism:

...this criterion cannot be other than the original Christian message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means that the theologian who is catholic in the authentic sense must have an evangelical disposition, just as conversely the theologian who is evangelical  in the authentic sense must be open in a catholic direction. In this sense we can be ecumenical theologians, whether catholic or evangelical. In other words, authentic ecumenicity means an 'evangelical catholicism', centred on and ordered by the gospel of Jesus Christ. (page 167)

Jesus isn't a phantom, but a historical person with human features. And if one can learn about him only from the foundation documents of the faith, and in the end it is often impossible to decide what is historical and what isn't, the great contours of the message, the conduct and the fate of Jesus of Nazareth and his relationship with God, come out so clearly and so unmistakably, that it is evident that the christian faith has a support in history and that therefore discipleship of Jesus is possible and meaningful.  (page 225)

Another of Kung's enduring contributions is his work on ecclesiology. His book The Church, became a source of considerable anxiety to those with centralist Vatican prejudices, and is still a standard account of the church as primarily a charismatic community expressing the Body of Christ in a life which is incarnational, redemptive and sacramental, all three teleologically present both in the Church's origins and in the defining expressions of its mission. It is a singluar irony of Kung's life that he is one of the best apologists for ecumenical rapprochement and inter-faith conversation, yet has been a focus of divisive controversy within his own communion for half a century. So these words bear the weight of considerable experience and persistent hopefulness.

The church must change even more to remain itself. And it will remain what it should be if it remains with the one who is its origin; if in all its progress and change it remains faithful to this Jesus Christ. It will then be a church which is closer to God and at the same time closer to men and women. Then the catholics with their emphasis on tradition will become more evangelical and at the same time the Protestants with their epnasis on the gospel will become more catholic, and in this way - and this is decisive - both will become more Christian. (page 230)

The reading of Kung's Memoirs has been an emotionally demanding and theologically enjoyable encounter with one of the few theologians whose theological and moral programme seek to span cultures within and beyond Christianity, and on a global scale. His 'Global Ethic' is not without its serious critics, and his theological reconstructions do read at times like an older form of demythologising and disowning of mystery, removing the sharp edges of a Gospel which both wounds and heals. Like many others, there are times when I think Kung is simply wrong, and in seeking to explain, explains away, and in seeking to communicate with the modern world is perhaps too accommodating to the modern, and now post-modern mindset. But in a world that manages to be both polarised and fragmented at the same time, a message of global responsibility and a way of moving towards a more responsible and hopeful way of human existence, Kung believes, arises out of the nature of the Church and its rootedeness in the life, death and present reality of Jesus Christ.

Kung is right about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as first criterion, judging both church and world. You don't need to go to Nicea and Chalcedon to root such a message of global conciliation and human healing in the reality of Jesus Christ - 'through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things...making peace by the blood of the cross'. Kung's latest theological reflection published before this volume was on the Beginning of All Things. I hope he has time and inclination to write one on the End of all things, with Christ as the telos in whom meaning and purpose, in creation and in human life, finally and fully cohere.

Hans Kung: On Still being a Christian 4. From confrontation within to dialogue beyond the Catholic church

Kung’s detailed and documented story of how his removal was engineered, even allowing for any partisan, partial, personal perspective as the one telling the story, is profoundly moving, and very hard to read without enormous anger, regret, sympathy- and a surprising second thought. Anger because, regardless of the rights and wrongs of his Church’s case, the long inquisitorial process, the final steps taken by an international class diplomatic service with endless resources to break Kung’s by political force and personal attack, the isolation of Kung by the withdrawal of support from a number of colleagues – (under pressure from higher up is Kung’s generous explanation) and all this against a priest professor whose right to fulfil his vocation is withdrawn in all but final terms on Christmas Eve, these tactics simply outrage one like myself who stands in a so different ecclesial position.

Regret because Kung, whose ego bestrides both volumes in ways that indicate how hard he would have been to overcome in a fair intellectual fight, is a theologian who could be an important bridge between church and world; a church which desperately needs to modernise and a world moving further away from modernity and now from post-modernity. On Being a Christian remains one of the great statements of how the Christian view of God is earthed in the person of Jesus Christ, and how the Gospel can be thought, believed and lived in the flux of contemporary culture. No such book can escape some criticism, and much disagreement. Kung himself acknowledges that what he has written remains open to debate, revision and adjustment to the changing landscape of human knowledge and understanding. At the same time I can think of no other book on this scale of intellectual and theological exposition, that in the last 50 years had such popular impact and was taken so seriously by many outside Christian faith who wanted to know what On Being a Christian would involve in a world like today.

Sympathy because Kung’s fate exposes a fundamental opposition between two ways of thinking about what it means to be Catholic. Kung’s own use of the paradigm model in this book makes this clear; his opponents worked predominantly within the Hellenistic and then the Medieval paradigm of Greek philosophy and scholastic dogmatic theology. Kung works within the Reformation and Enlightenment paradigms of reforming internal critique, historical criticism and systematic rational analysis. Both would claim to go back to the New Testament and early church paradigms as their norm, but do so using their own and different intellectual structures derived from their favoured paradigms. The result is that Kung claims the portrayal of the historical Jesus in the NT as recovered by historical criticism and textual exegesis is normative; his opponents claim that the dogmatic formulations on Christ at Nicaea and Chalcedon, and in high medieval scholasticism, enables a normative Christian interpretation of the NT. As Bultmann said, exegesis without presuppositions is impossible. So is a dialogue between fundamentally different forms of theological discourse.

And a surprising second thought. Kung himself acknowledges that his removal from his teaching post, actually removed him from Vatican control of his published and public statements. He remains a priest and catholic in good standing. But in the last 28 years he ahs become a figure of global stature. His search for a Global ethic, his studies of the religious situation of our time, his involvement at high political and academic levels of reflection on cultural and religious dialogue have made him what he could never have been within the reasonable constraints of traditional Catholic dogma as imposed by a conservative curia and papacy. Long before 9/11 Kung was on to the serious global implications of conflicting fundamentalisms, religious and political. His voice is now respected and heard (and listened to) across a wide range of human religious and political diversity.

So I finish this second volume with mixed feelings. A final post will be a series of quotations from this volume. They come from a passionately critical intellect determined towards truth. They demonstrate restless impatience with unexamined tradition privileged over honest critical enquiry. As such, his words reveal the integrity and yet the enigma of a man whose devotion to Jesus and the Church, whose passion for God and for the world, whose inability to flinch in the face of truth as he perceives it, whose own formidable intelligence and intellectual self-confidence may unintentionally create communication problems with anyone who has authority over him.

And who yet, for me, is one to and from whom I have learned so very much – in agreement and disagreement, through big books and thin books, as positive example of scholarship in the service of the church and as a reminder that truth and freedom, which lie at the heart of all genuine scholarship, also lie at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life. What I take these words of Jesus to mean, I have no doubt, differs markedly from Hans Kung, but I wouldn’t like to try and argue it out with him in a classroom! Though in any such argument, it would never occur to me to think of him as anything other than a faithful follower of Jesus, seeking the truth of the One we are called to follow, asking awkward questions with the confidence of one whose self description includes phrases like ‘evangelical disposition’, ‘catholic Christian’ and ‘ecumenical theologian’.

Hans Kung - On Still Being a Christian 3. The truthfulness of truth

Having read through this second volume, I am at a loss to explain the enigma of  Kung’s self-portrait as revealed in his attitude to his Vatican opponents, whose actions are essential parts of his life story. Intransigent and seeking consensus, razor sharp frankness balanced by a conciliating respect, aware he is accused of arrogance but insisting on his willingness to be convinced of his "errors", a hermeneutic of supsicion about the motives of his opponents and a naive hope that they will see things his way- except that naivete and Kung seem oxymoronic.  Throughout he takes great care to insist that his overriding concern as a theologian is with the truthfulness of truth, and the right to speak truth in freedom. In his account of his controversies with the Curia, the German Bishops and fellow theologians, he tells truth even when it damages reputations and feelings, though not I think gratuitously. But he is a profound theologian who can write with the wit and literary savvy of a seasoned journalist who knows how to press the right buttons – on people and typepad keys! But he almost always finishes by insisting he harbours no ill will towards those who clearly intended him, and caused him, professional and vocational harm – whether or not for the good of the church. And it’s hard not to believe him – and even harder not to admire his restraint towards those who engineered his vocational derailment.

This sharply intelligent, intellectually combative and unrelentingly argumentative scholar succeeds in bringing incredible clarity and lucidity to complex theological discussions. It’s this quality that makes his big books like On Being a Christian and Does God Exist? seem far removed from other theological breeze blocks of compressed dogma. As a young newly ordained Evangelical Baptist pastor I got stuck into On Being a Christian and was given a guided tour of the intellectual passions; admiration, fascination, annoyance, concentration, discovery, resistance, wonder, contemplation, the joy of learning, the labour of argument, and on many an occasion a devotion rooted in an experience that could only be called further spiritual education in the meaning of Jesus for today.

In this second volume of memoirs, there is a long description of how On Being a Christian was written. Starting off as a modest introduction to Christianity over several years it became a thoroughly researched, carefully structured, crisply written apologia to the modern world on behalf of a faith that can be lived because centred on Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, risen and the foundation of the Church’s Gospel. Kung’s approach to a Christology from below was diametrically opposed to a dogmatic, Conciliar Christology from above as defined by the Ecumenical Councils and enshrined in the traditions of Roman Catholic Dogma. Throughout his account of the writing of the book, and its reception by millions of readers, Kung insists that though he started from below, the telos point of his understanding of Jesus Christ arrives, he believes by a much more intellectually secure route, at a view of Christ not incongruent with dogmatic orthodoxy, but with necessary restatement in the light of historical criticism and modern forms of thought. The Curia clearly did not hold so sanguine a view.

This volume covers 15 years of Kung’s life, told as two strands of a plot that at times reads like the Morris West novel that was never written. The tension created by an outspoken, provocative scholar who wishes to speak truth in freedom, but as a member of an increasingly authoritarian and hierarchical church, and the self-interests of power games and at times legitimate theological criticism of an institution which must pay some attention to public opinion, - is tightened as the book reaches its climax in the final removal of Kung’s permission to teach as a Catholic theologian. What I found depressing was the utter inability of either side to communicate; the negotiating, political and diplomatic engine of the Roman church has Rolls Royce quality, but in all the negotiations and meetings, letters and interviews, there is little sense of a meeting of minds and hearts such as would result in mutual understanding.

The next post I'll try to sum up some reflections on why Kung and the Vatican simply couldn't communicate - and how, perhaps in the providence of God, which lets none of the protagonists off the hook for their misjudgements and wrong turnings, the suffering of Kung the scholar opened the way to more expansive opportunities for his ecumenical theology.

Hans Kung: On Still Being a Christian 2 A Modern Day Luther?

I remember reading Kung’s On Being a Christian, while lying on a beach on Tiree the jewel of the Outer Hebrides, (along with Colonsay) and for years after, if I thumped it on my desk I could still find the odd grain of silver-white sand. My copy is the no nonsense Collins first edition, no pictures or other marketing gimmicks, just the author's name in bold black, the title in near luminous orange, and a sombre grey background which both highlights the text and yet succeeds in being understated.
The book was both a revelation and an intellectually and theologically formative blessing to me; and for several reasons. 

Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by this angular, formidably intelligent, Catholic priest-theologian’s combination of courage for truth and calm confidence in his sense of what lies at the core of the Gospel. Not for nothing did Third Way, in its earliest days, review On Being a Christian, and ask the question whether Kung was a modern day Luther. After all, Kung’s published doctoral thesis was on the theology of justification, a critically appreciative conversation on the subject as massively articulated by Karl Barth. Another book set a tiger loose in the Vatican pigeon lofts. It was entitled Infallible?, the question mark in the title being the most important typing character in the entire book. His book The Church was deeply informed by his previous thought on reforming the church and the ministry, by his experiences at Vatican II, it was rooted in the biblical text, and demonstrated thorough control of historical and critical questions within the tradition. No wonder the Vatican moved from defensive uneasiness to a more assertive and then offensive collision course. (The reasons why that collision was all but inevitable I’ll deal with in a later post.)

But second, On Being a Christian was, and remains, one of the most intellectually forceful yet readable expositions of what it means to be Christian in the modern world. Theological snobs might want to suggest that it was too hard, erudite, long, multi-disciplinary, to be accessible to the theologically untrained. Tell that to the publishers who revelled in a volume of serious and engaged theological scholarship up there on the bestseller lists. I remember remaindered copies of the British Fontana Paperback Edition being sold off some years later at a Baptist Assembly for £1, encouraged by the then General Secretary Rev Dr Andrew MacRae!

And again. Brought up in Lanarkshire and converted into West of Scotland Baptist Evangelicalism of a pronounced 1960’s Protestant flavour, my limited knowledge of Roman Catholic theology, popular piety and official teaching didn’t prepare me for such a book as this, written by a Catholic for whom the word Roman was historically conditioned, while the word Catholic was of the essence of the Church. He seriously qualified papal authority, he held strongly to the doctrine of justification, he took seriously the contemporary search for transcendence and meaning within and beyond the church in the 1970’s (and since), his starting point was the biblical witness to Jesus crucified and risen, he was deeply suspicious of exaggerated claims for Mary, in particular the dogmatic pronouncements about immaculate conception and assumption. In other words this was a different kind of Catholicism.

Oh there was much then, and there remains much in Kung’s faith as a Roman Catholic on which he and I starkly differ; and his conclusions drawn from an uncritical use of historical criticism are at times way to the left of my own positions. But his commitment to the Gospel of Jesus, his search for ways of expressing faith in Jesus in a way that is liveable, accessible and faithful, is everywhere evident. His courage in taking on imposed dogmatic and ecclesial pronouncements, and his sheer intellectual grasp of the contemporary nexus of history, culture, theology and philosophy, make him, for me at least, essential reading if I am to understand better, the globalised world, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church as witnessing community, and these three in their conversations and collisions.

Hans Kung: On Still Being a Christian 1 A life of expanding concentric circles

Hans Kung, Disputed Truth. Memoirs II, (Continuum: New York, 2008)

This is the first of several posts on a volume that reads like a novel. It has characterisation, plot, the tension of narrative development, delayed resolution, and the reader drawn in to care about the outcome, how the story ends. In fact the Australian ex Jesuit novelist Morris West, at the climax of Kung's conflict with the Vatican in 1979-80, visited Kung and offered to write a novel about his story; and as the author of The Shoes of the Fisherman he could have done an intriguingly good job.  Indeed at the height of the Cold War Star Wars  tensions in the mid 1980's,  West did write The Clowns of God, about a charismatic Pope, and a Tubingen theologian whose thought and character do resemble  Hans Kung.  But this volume latest volume of Memoirs is undiluted Kung - lucidly critical theologian,  historical analyst of his own tradition, self-apologist, and on my reading relentlessly loyal Catholic priest, so long as his loyalty is to be given to the Church as the people of God, rather than the Church as the hierarchical power structures of an ecclesial institution which in his view is teflon coated against necessary reform.

One of the Free Church of Scotland's greatest preachers and writers, Alexander Whyte, 100 years and entire Christian traditions removed from Kung, once urged students to get themselves 'into a relation of indebtedness with some of the great thinkers of the past and present', as a way of guarding against spiritual and theological tunnel vision, as a commitment to pastoral and theological breadth of understanding, and as an exercise in intellectual humility which guards against any of us setting ourselves up as our own pope!. He was criticised by some in his own communion who never quite understood the ecumenical and catholic spirit of ‘the hospitable hearted evangelical’. He had a meeting with John Henry Newman, his Appreciation of Santa Teresa was read in monastic communities at lectio divina at lunch, he read speculative mystics, doctrinal puritans, deep-dyed Scottish Calvinists, and tasted from most of the other tributaries that flow from distant Christian foothills into the broad stream of Christian tradition. Years ago I took his advice – and amongst those with whom I have a relation of indebtedness is Hans Kung – along with a bunch of others just about as varied as Whyte.

So having read the first volume of the Kung's memoirs last year, (My Struggle for Freedom) I have been anticipating the next volume, and like many others, wondering what he would write about his relationship to Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, along with John Paul II, easily the single most ecclesially powerful theological opponent Kung has encountered. Ratzinger’s role as the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer was always going to make Kung’s memoir potentially explosive. In fact Kung is so meticulous about context, perspective, exposition of issues and standpoints, that this volume only comes up to 1980, which clearly omits some of the most significant developments in the Catholic Church and in the life and mature thought of Kung himself. So a third volume is to come, God willing; as Kung reminds us he is now in his ninth decade – can he really be? I must be getting on myself!

Having started on this book, I think little else will get in the way till it's finished. As his own Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Kung confesses:

As a Catholic Christian and theologian with an evangelical disposition I wanted to put myself at the service of men and women inside and outside the catholic Church and…by human confusion and divine providence – was liberated and impelled to engage intensively in the increasingly important issues of world society. Without ever giving up my roots in the Christian faith, I embarked on a life of expanding concentric circles; the unity of the churches, peace among the religions, the community of nations. (Disputed Truth, pages 1-2)

It is, as far as I can judge, a deeply Christian, humane and prophetic goal worthy of his best thought and truest devotion – to Christ and church.

The unpopular idea of submission 2. Christ's submission and the identity of God

The idea of kenosis as a portrayal of self-emptying love has always seemed to me both theologically attractive and  pastorally promising. Theologically attractive because without prying unsubtly into the mysteries of eternal intra-trinitarian purposefulness, and while avoiding inappropriate precision in calibrating the relations between divine love and sovereignty, a kenotic Christology, for all its difficulties as a comprehensive theory, does acknowledge something definintive in the statement God is love, when that statement is made of the Word become flesh, crucified and risen. Pastorally promising because the story of salvation as it is told in the most significant textual locus for kenotic Christology in the NT, Philippians 2. 6-11, is a story which affirms both the identity of the God who comes to us in the humiliation of Christ, and the identity ofthe Christian community as one modelled on the reality of who Christ is, and what is therefore true about God.Self emptying love is thus definitive of Christian existence together, and in ethical demand and spiritually transformative practice, impels Christian community towards life at the radical edge of risky, costly love for the other.

In one stunning passage, the sanctified speculative imagination of Paul seems to have overcome the no less sanctified reverent restraint of one who fully recognised the limits of human thought; limits imposed not only by inadequacy of thought, but also by ineffability of subject. Yet here in this passage Paul states in a rhythmic prose poem what he conceived to be the all consuming, self-emptying motive of the One who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a right to be clung to - but emptied himself.

Now I know there are all kinds of critical and textual arguments about what Philippians 2.6-11 is about. And in this book on submission within the Godhead and the Church,the writer gives them a good hearing. But I do find her conclusion about the nature and purpose of this passage persuasive. Is it a hymn, and if so pre Pauline? No to both - Paul was quite capable of writing exalted prose, and there is no decisive evidence of other non- NT 'early hymns' in form, content or known usage such as this passage. Is it a passage explained as a contrasting parallel between Adam, who snatched at equality with God and Christ who became obedient unto death? Yes, but only if this argument isn't used to exclude the idea of Christ's pre-existence, which Dunn doubts, but Wright affirms, though both see Adam Christology as at least part of the explanation of the passage. Is it telling the story of salvation, a kerygmatic pronouncement (Martin) or is it a call to imitation of Christ (Fowl). In fact it is both argues Park - the passage proclaims the salvation story, but to pastoral and ethical purpose.

However the submission of Christ as depicted in Philippians 2.6-11 gives rise to a number of complex theological considerations. No one explanation exhausts the implications of this passage. There are strong textual  connections with Isaiah 45 where submission to the sovereign God is the attitude that wins divine approval. Christ's actions in emptying himself and taking the form of a servant, and becoming obedient to death on the cross have significance both as descriptions of the saving efficacy of his humiliation and as exemplary demonstrations of an ethic of submissive obedience to God and others as characteristic of God's salvific action in Christ. The exaltation of Christ is not the reward for humiliation, but the confirmation that 'his humiliation belongs to the identity of God as surely as his exaltation does.' (R Bauckham, God Crucified (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996), p. 61.

The revelation of God in Christ, conveyed through divine movements as depicted in this theologically unsettling passage, is of One for whom submission is not so much a precondition of exaltation, a necessary adjustment of sovereignty, but is an essential expression of divine identity and the characteristic modus operandi of divine love acting with redemptive purpose. God's approval of Jesus, bestowing on him the name which is above every name, is an announcement against grasping at status, clinging to privilege and right, selfish ambition and attraction to power. "Therefore God has highly exalted him....". The 'therefore' is a crucial theological hinge. 'He humbled himself and became obedient.......therefore.....'. This brief passage, with that eternally consequential inference has profound implications for how we think of God, how we understand the dynamics of the community of the church, and how we view submission as not only one amongst many Christian virtues, but as having the mind that was also in Christ Jesus, and points to the mind of God.

I'm not attributing all the above to this fascinating book - except that reading it, engaging with its careful arguments, pushes me into such reflection.

The Unpopular Idea of Submission 1. Is submission irredeemably coercive?

There is something disconcerting about a book that addresses submission as a theological category, not only so, but which seeks to rehabilitate the notion that self-surrender need not imply defeat, diminishment or inferiority, but may be a creative act of willed love. That said, ideas of submission are inherently suspect, for example in feminist theology, being contaminated by perceived patriarchal and authoritarian assumptions. Likewise postmodern rejection of the normativity of traditional readings of texts, expresses a powerfully antithetical resistance to the assumed dominance of such traditional interpretations; such truth claims have no inherent right either to require the submission of other minds or to negate other legitimate construals of truth.

This book sets out to explore whether submission is irredeemably locked into hierarchical sturctures and behaviour patterns. Semantically, is it the case that the term "submission" is irretrievably oppressive, coercive and indicative of a person's inferiority? Theologically, is hierarchy ruled out in any construal of the life of the Triune God that seeks to conceive of that life in relational terms? And even if it is, what of the concept of mutual submission within consensual parameters of love and being? Ethically and spiritually, in Christian existence, is it not the case that submission to the Gospel indicates that deep inner transormation of the self that discovers in obedience a radical and original freedom? Politically - and that means in social, economic and personal relations, is it not the case that the primary claim upon Christian inwardness is not the language of rights but the language of grace?

Questions like these open up wider questions of equality, freedom, mutuality - and also authority, power and hierarchy. Approached through the lens of a New Testament text such as Philippians, the concept of submission compels reflection on urgent contemporary issues of gender relations, Trinitarian theology, Christological models and the interpersonal dynamic of Christian community. Even early in my reading of this book I am aware of my own inner egalitarian prejudices. I genuinely hold to the deep conviction that the Christian mind, heart and will rightly, and only, recognise one absolute claim on their submission. And that is to Jesus as Lord - whose Lordship, authority and claim derive their power from the soul's encounter through the Spirit, with grace unspeakable and love crucified as encountered in the Risen Jesus, gift of the Father. So if I am to be persuaded by this book's title, that there is submission within the Godhead, and that submission is a defining characteristic of Christian community, then (for me, at least) these principles must grow out of an exegetical and reflective theology shaped and given content by attention to primary NT text, by creative Trinitarian reflection and by a Christological hermeneutic applied to Christian community.

The next post on this book will review chapter 1 - on Philippians 2.5-11.   ?

Discipleship as surrender to grace - and sacrifice

'Discipleship Courses' as a programmatic approach to Christian nurture and catechesis would not have commended themselves to Bonhoeffer, and for deeply theological reasons which are embedded in a theology of grace. Paul, Luther and Kierkegaard all inform Bonhoeffer's rigorous understanding of discipleship as a costly, self-sacrificing  and life threatening following after Jesus. 'I am crucified with Christ - I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.'

For Luther too, discipleship is not self conscious training in obedience, however useful and pragmatic that might seem - discipleship is surrender to the grace that invades to the very core of human being. So Bonhoeffer is characteristically uncompromising, 'With the very first step, the substance of the Gospels requires an action that affects the whole of life'. Kierkegaard's warning also provides Bonhoeffer with a strong conception of discipleship that is essentially and vitally lived as a theology of grace: 'Not "disipleship", but "grace" is the place to begin; and then discipleship is to follow as a fruit of gratitude to the best of one's ability'. And Kierkegaard, that most enigmatic writer skilled in paradox, knew perfectly well that the best of one's ability is also dependent on the grace that enables.

So for Bonhoeffer grace through faith, and faith as divinely given instrument, makes true discipleship possible. 'Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient is a believer....Discipleship is a bond with the suffering Christ' . For Bonhoeffer a programmatic approach to Christian training that uses the term 'discipleship' is in danger of trivialising the passion and suffering that gives discipleship its essential Christlike appearance and Christ-centred focus. 'Whoever wishes to carry in his person the transfigured image of Jesus must already have carried in the world the battered image of the One who was Crucified.' 

Bonhoeffer; personal identity and spiritual intensity

What I like about Sabine Dramm's book on Bonhoeffer

1. It is written by one who is familiar with both the theological amd philosophical subtleties, and the social and political commitments, that give Bonhoeffer's theology and ethics their radical edge and uncomfortable diagnostic accuracy
2. It is neither hagiography nor deconstruction, but a genuine engagement with the complexity of the man, the fragmentary nature of his writing, the large corpus of occasional and personal material, the air of menace and ominous probability that fell over Europe - and out of this nexus of varied perspectives she allows Bonhoeffer to emerge as a theologian who resists domestication
3. The writing itself is theologically sharp and unafraid of necessary critical comment, at times Dramm is lyrical in exposition of Bonhoeffer's key themes yet as translator rather than apologist for his ideas
4. The book is structured in a way that covers biography, context, theological emphases, major written corpus, political and theological ethics in the context of his life, issues of continuing significance for the Church. But these are not sections of the book so much as threads woevn in and out of an overall pattern that is allowed to emerge from these given materials
5. The book is rich in quotation from Bonhoeffer, but as aids to exposition rather than examples of cherry-picking enthusiasm, which explains the unusually high incidence of quotations not previously anthologised or decontextualised in the service of those who want Bonhoeffer to say certain things!
6. Obvious affection for Bonhoeffer is all but absent, and instead an informed respect for the life of mind and conscience that shaped Bonhoeffer's spirituality and impelled his sense of responsible freedom out into the world of politics and social consequence - obedience to Christ and live with the consequences is a breathtaking theological ethic, and it is used to explain the complicated sanctity of this least other-worldly of disciples.

These are some of the things that make this book, for me at least, a clearer window into the radical, risk-taking consequences of one man's commitment, in a dangerous world, to Jesus Christ as the centre and goal of all things.

A couple of later posts will interact with one or two of what I consider the most interesting chapters in an overall valuable book.

Bonhoeffer: Divine Love, Fragmented Existence, Human Identity

Long before 'authentic existence' became the buzz words of mid 20th Cenutry existentialism, Bonhoeffer was working out the relationship between personal identity, inner thought, life commitments and moral actions. More than most theologians, Bonhoeffer demonstrates the vital and vitalising link between biography and theology. In few people is there such unambiguous and documented evidence of the connectedness of thought and life, of faith and action, of life commitments and the life that flowed from them. As Dramm comments, '[Bonhoefer's] theo-logically centered life is inseparable from his life-centred theology'. (4) One of the telling epigrams used at the beginning of each chapter reads: 'Blessed are those who have lived before they died'.

The execution of Bonhoeffer in 1945, at the age of 39 brought to an end, from all human points of view prematurely, one of the most courageous and authentic Christian lives within the Sanctorum Communio (Bonhoeffer's phrase of choice for the church as Body of Christ). His dissertation under that name, Sanctorum Communio, which reads as a mature and grounded piece of theological research and explication, was written by a twenty one year old theology student!

Unlike some other studies, Dramm doesn't try to impose a pattern, whether a theological motif that centres Bonhoeffer's thought, or a narrative structure that imposes consistency on his views or actions. Instead she accepts the inevitably fragmenary and urgently occasional nature of his writings, the complexity of his thought and experience, and the disruptiveness and increasing danger of his life situation, and from this acceptance of incompleteness, explores what it is that gives Bonhoeffer's life and thought that singular ring of authenticity, like struck crystal. 'Is it not true that the lives of many persons remain forever fragmentary, even when they extend over more years than Bonhoeffer's and finally shatter in a manner less brutal?' (13) Bonhoeffer himself commented,'The unfinished fragmentary side of life is felt ...with special poignance here. But it is exactly this fragment that can in turn point to a consummation no human power can achieve'. This to his parents when it was becoming clear that his own life was now under grave threat.

And in all the unresolved fragmentariness of Bonhoeffer' s own experience, much of it caused by the disruption, dislocation and discontinuity of the political, social and historical context of his own times, there was for him the haunting question, "Who am I?" The question became the title of one of his best known poems, written in the summer of 1944. The last two lines express both the fear and faith of a man for whom courage was a gift of undeserved grace rather than a self-sufficient moral virtue.

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

Dramm's earlier book on Bonhoeffer and Camus finds both similarity and contrast in two men whose lives were near contemporary. Both were driven to discover and live out the ideal of a truly authentic human existence. Bonhoeffer found it in the reality of God who comes in the human person who is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ; Camus in human life lived in authentic freedom, sustained by a humanism based on the absurdity that human life, in its combination of the tragic and the noble, has unique and non-negotiable value.

While not imposing a structure on Bonhoeffers life and thought, this book is itself carefully structured to enable us to see Bonhoeffer - his thought and life- in all the variety and complexity of his character. I'll give an overview of Dramm's approach next post.