Abstract
This article explores Bonhoeffer’s ethics of the penultimate in view of his poem “Christians and heathens” in dialogue with the Brazilian movie “God is Brazilian”, a picture of reality in North-eastern Brazil with all its ambiguities, including religious ambiguities. While religion seeks God´s help and in one way or another receives it, the real difference between Christians and heathens is that the former stand by God in God’s suffering as represented in human suffering. Bonhoeffer realized that in the penultimate there cannot be purity in real life. Latin American theologians Rubem Alves and Jon Sobrino, among others, followed the same line. For them as for Bonhoeffer, God is not a deus ex machina to fill in the gaps left by humans, but a God who is effective right in the centre and indeed the entirety of life. God is, then, present right in the midst of the ambiguities of life, in clear contrast with contemporary tendencies to shun such ambiguity.
Highlights
My first contact with Bonhoeffer was when I read Nachfolge (Discipleship)[3] as a Swiss teenager in 1983
I would like to expand further on what I mean by ambiguity in the Brazilian context
In Neo-Pentecostalism’s prosperity gospel, common in Brazil and in South Africa, and spreading out to classical Pentecostalism, as well as to historical churches, God becomes the object of requirements
Summary
My first contact with Bonhoeffer was when I read Nachfolge (Discipleship)[3] as a Swiss teenager in 1983. God goes to all people in their need, Fills body and soul with Gods own bread, goes for Christians and heathens in Calvarys death and forgives them both.[9] This poem challenged our youth fellowship position, as we far too much thought we knew who would be saved (us among them, ) and who would go to hell. His plea is for taking seriously that humans, and especially poor people, “need all these things” Their plea to God is not for private reasons and interests, says Sobrino, but they are “looking for bread and dignity, and who are helped by God to come down from the cross” – which is a different message than the one to the crucifiers.[20].
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