Religionless Christianity Research Articles

Bonhoeffer's notion of maturity and the possibility of redemption

This article discusses implications of Bonhoeffer's notion of maturity (being of age), particularly for the notion of redemption and the ethical self. This is done through a reading of the relation between maturity and redemption in Kant, Nietzsche, and Levinas, which again is compared with Bonhoeffer's late thought as we find it in his Prison letters and his Ethics. All three philosophers share with Bonhoeffer the important premise that otherworldly redemption is downplayed to the benefit of a strong demand put on the self. At the same time, their notions of maturity show important differences, with subsequent consequences for their notions of redemption; Kant's notion is based on ethical autonomy, Nietzsche's on aesthetical autonomy, whereas Levinas presupposes ethical heteronomy. The reading of Bonhoeffer shows that he shares premises with all three thinkers, but particularly with Levinas. This is shown in the analyses of religionless Christianity as a turn to the practical dimension of faith, in the messianic structure of the ethical self, and in the turn to the Old-Testamently and the arcane discipline. Bonhoeffer's high estimation of the worldly and the aesthetic, however, also illustrates his affinities to Nietzsche.

A Spirituality of the Commons: Where Religion and Marxism Meet

A Spirituality of the Commons: Where Religion and Marxism Meet

Discipleship as Theological Praxis: Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Resource for Educational Ministry

This article offers Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a resource for educational ministry by placing him in conversation with what Richard Osmer calls the normative task of practical theology. In response to the practical theological question “What ought to be going on?” in a given ministry context, Bonhoeffer answers: “Discipleship.” Bonhoeffer's concepts of revelation, ecclesiology, and Christology inform a distinct theology of discipleship that culminates in his notion that “religionless Christianity” is the very possibility of discipleship. In addition to Osmer, Bonhoeffer's ideas are interpreted in relationship to Ray Anderson, Andrew Root, and Darrell Guder.

Bonhoeffer's eschatology in a world “come of age”

In this article, the author explores the eschatological development in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, from his earliest lectures in 1932, to his final fragmentary writings in the Tegel prison cell. It will be shown that Bonhoeffer's eschatological interpretation of the Book of Genesis ( Schöpfung und Fall) returns in his later work as an interpretive key to understanding his concept of “religionless Christianity.” Finally, the article attempts to show how a similarly eschatological commitment may assist the contemporary church to witness to Christ in a “world come of age,” and what such a witness may look like.

Faith and psychiatry

Worldviews, spirituality, existentialism, and even religion, atheism and the transcendental, are making a comeback in the language of both the users and the providers of mental health services. The liveliness of correspondence in recent issues of the College's journals and their polarised opinions, the growth of national and international interest groups and the thoughtful papers in this issue of International Psychiatry suggest more widespread interest in these topics than was apparent two decades ago (Bhugra, 1996; Cox, 1994). The then anticipated rampant secularism, the predicted death of God and the growth of 'religionless Christianity' have not happened. Instead, multifaith issues, new mainstream churches in Asia and Africa, the wider understanding of Islam and the search for new 'meaning-making rituals' in secular countries have each prompted a renewed interest in transcultural psychiatry, in comparative religion and in psychospirituality (Verhagen et al, 2010; Cox & Verhagen, 2011).

The Homeless God

In the remarkable letters he wrote from prison to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer hinted at a dazzling array of ideas. Though he did not live to develop them in detail, Bonhoeffer’s hints about “religionless Christianity,” the need to take responsibility in “a world come of age,” Jesus as “the man for others,” the “God of the gaps,” and other such things have haunted and influenced Christian thought for several generations. We never know for sure, of course, as we develop one or another of these ideas, whether our development has very much to do with what Bonhoeffer might have done with the same phrases, if he had lived. In some ways, the power of these phrases derives from their epigrammatic nature. Yet these phrases have been fertile, shifting the thoughts of many of us away from established lines of thought into new paths. Among Bonhoeffer’s most provocative suggestions were thoughts about God’s powerlessness. Bonhoeffer wrote, “God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. . . . [I]t is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us but by his weakness and suffering.” Often, a person wants a deus ex machina, a powerful, problem-solving God. “The Bible however directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a suffering God can help”; otherwise we end up with a God of the gaps, a God who prevents humans from coming of age, taking full responsibility for their lives. Though John D. Caputo does not explicitly build on Bonhoeffer, his The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event builds on a Bonhoefferian view of God’s powerlessness. Caputo’s striking dominant theme is to

“My” Bonhoeffer: Discipleship, Peace, Freedom

“My” Bonhoeffer: Discipleship, Peace, Freedom

Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in troubled times – By Jeffrey C. Pugh

Reviews in Religion & TheologyVolume 17, Issue 3 p. 412-414 Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in troubled times – By Jeffrey C. Pugh John Armson, John Armson HerefordshireSearch for more papers by this author John Armson, John Armson HerefordshireSearch for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9418.2010.00609.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume17, Issue3July 2010Pages 412-414 RelatedInformation

Religionless Christianity and the Political Implications of Theological Speech: What Bonhoeffer's Theology Yields to a World of Fundamentalisms

AbstractThis article seeks to utilize Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity in a formative and constructive way to aid theological speech in the complexly secular and multi‐faith setting of the twenty‐first century. It will begin by seeking to highlight trends in unhelpful contemporary theo‐politics, and to locate these in the interconnection of secular and religious forms of fundamentalism. It will then consider how a theological interpretation of Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity might assist in undermining such fundamentalisms. A further section identifies a threefold positive benefit that Bonhoeffer's thought offers in the contemporary situation: a distinction between God and religion; a genuine understanding of the sovereignty of God; and an inability to separate secular–religious concerns from inter‐faith concerns.

Why Law, Why Religion?—A Conversation Between a Lawyer and a Theologian

Categories such as religion and law are social constructs, proposed for some purpose or other, good or ill, but whose use is worthy of serious question. Consider, e.g., Karl Barth's insistence that Christianity is not a religion or Dietrich Bonhoeffer's coinage of “religionless Christianity.” I will later offer a way of delineating how I use these categories of religion and law, but I am mindful in doing so that there are many ways these, and allied terms, are invoked. We should acknowledge, for instance, that there are many Christianities; many forms of Buddhism; and differing kinds of Islam. We should take note of the serious question whether "customary law" is really “law.” How about “natural law”—is it really law or a “brooding omnipresence in the sky”? Are Torah, Shari'a, Dharma, and Tao cognate terms in some sense? Are they simultaneously “religion” and “law”? In what respect are canon law and common law both “lawful”? Should we adopt Wittgenstein's proposal that words, after all, are but tools embracing a “family of meanings”?

The Encyclopedia of Christianity (review)

Reviewed by Owen Chadwick Cambridge University The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 1: A-D; Volume 2:E-I; Volume 3:J-O; Volume 4:P-SH. Edited by Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milič Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Lukas Vischer; English-language editor Geoffrey W. Bromiley; statistical editor David B. Barrett. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmanns Publishing Company 1999, 2001. English translation 2003-5. Pp. xl, 893; 819; xxxii, 884; xxxii, 952. $100.00 each volume.) When the editors embarked upon this scholarly enterprise they judged that the time was ripe to bring up to date the Christian knowledge of our day. They took as their basis what many regard as the best Christian encyclopedia which is not so bulky and many-volumed that ordinary persons in search of truth can pay for it and find room on their shelves, the Evangelische Kirchenlexikon, its third and revised edition last published in Göttingen by Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht in 1997. The English translation of volume 1 appeared two years later and in 2005 four volumes were out in English and the fifth volume (Sl to Z) still lies in the future. Jaroslav Pelikan has been one of the most eminent experts on the Christianity of the centuries, and his loss is sad; yet he helped to give us this as his last contribution. The articles are short though not superficial, and clear-headed. The English language used is direct and almost entirely free from jargon (on this we ought to pay a compliment to Geoffrey W. Bromiley). When it is said that this is a translation from the German, that is not accurate, first because the articles contain a mass of bibliographical information which appeared at a date later than the German, and certain articles, especially those on very modern and contemporary themes, have been added or altered or supplemented to meet new knowledge and new circumstances. And much more: they have added articles, country by country, on all the States of the world except the very smallest, and enlisted the aid of David B. Barrett, well-known as expert on Christian statistics through the continents and peoples; not easy since the world map can change fast, as with the ex-Communist States after 1989. How will they treat the matter when they come to Ukraine, a fascinating theme for church history?Yet the new state of Macedonia receives informative treatment. They have thought it right to add more than seventy biographies. So we are given three kinds of article: those where study is available already and when knowledge is moving forward it walks very deliberately; those where a new discovery means that conclusions even of the remote past must still be [End Page 629] a matter of argument (for example, with the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, here under Qumran); and the modern or contemporary articles which must break the rule that one can hardly understand anything in a right perspective until at least thirty or forty years have elapsed. Within that last variety there can be much good factual information, such as the date when a female rabbi was first appointed, or the astonishing number of books by Karl Rahner which have been sold in paperback. It treats many wide themes in the history of doctrine or morals, theories or movements such as God is dead, or religionless Christianity (a truly thoughtful article), and histories of an idea or ethical question like Pacifism and the extent to which it has Christian origins and later Christian influence. Sometimes this tackles problems which are as yet impossible to get into balance. There is a contrast between two articles close to one another. Proverbs is full of matter without ever becoming boring, and the reader rises from it feeling that there is a surprise that so much more is to be learnt. And just before comes the article on Program to Combat Racism, where the material cannot help but be bitty and provisional and hardly yet in a...

Waiting for the Word: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Speaking about God

This study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, unique for its application of modern language theory, provides an insightful analysis of Bonhoeffer's use of religious language and its implications for understanding his thought more broadly.Sharpening our understanding of Bonhoeffer's powerful theology, Frits de Lange's findings shed fresh light on a great ambiguity in Bonhoeffer's thought -- his conception of religionless Christianity. Though Bonhoeffer's letters from prison seem to present a secularized theologian who sharply diagnoses a world come of age, de Lange's approach discerns instead a clear continuity in Bonhoeffer's thought. What has changed for Bonhoeffer is not his faith in the divine Word but, rather, his insight into the conditions that restrain the Word from being effectively heard.

Reviews

Books reviewed:Alice Laffey, The Pentateuch: A Liberation‐Critical ReadingO. Keel and C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient IsraelJ. J. McDermott, What are They Saying About the Formation of Israel?M. E. Mills, Historical Israel: Biblical Israel – Studying Joshua to 2 KingsN. P. Lemche, The Israelites in Israel and TraditionGerbern S. Oegema, The Anointed and His People: Messianic Expectations from the Maccabees to Bar KochbaM. Forward, Jesus: A Short BiographyJeffrey T. Tucker, Example Stories: Perspectives on Four Parables in the Gospel of LukeJ. A. Darr, Herod the Fox: Audience Criticism and Lukan CharacterizationAlison Jasper, The Shining Garment of the Text: Gendered Readings of John's PrologueHelen C. Orchard,Courting Betrayal: Jesus as Victim in the Gospel of JohnElisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in ContextT. M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early ChristianityBernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 3, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200–1350Kathleen Powers Erickson, At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent van GoghCharles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick SJ (eds), John Paul II and Moral TheologyE. J. Harris, What Buddhists BelieveG. Studdert‐Kennedy, Providence and the Raj: Imperial Mission and Missionary ImperialismLeon Roth, Is There a Jewish Philosophy? Rethinking FundamentalsFrank E. Eakin Jr., What Price Prejudice? Christian Antisemitism in AmericaR. K. Wüstenberg, A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Religionless ChristianityDouglas John Hall,Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of ‘Neo‐Orthodoxy’T. Parfitt and E. Trevisan Semi (eds), The Beta Israel in Ethiopia and Israel: Studies on Ethiopian JewsC. Smith and J. Prokopy (eds), Latin American Religion in MotionK. B. Lyon & A. Smith, Jr. (eds), Tending the Flock: Congregations and Family MinistryNantawan Boonprasat Lewis (ed.), Revolution of Spirit: Ecumenical Theology in Global ContextJohn Macquarrie (ed. J. H. Morgan), On Being a Theologian: Reflections at Eighty

Bonhoeffer's Critique of Totalitarianism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as is now well known, was a German theologian executed in 1945 by Nazis for his participation in plot to assassinate Hitler. For nearly four decades since his execution, however, Bonhoeffer has remained something of an enigma to theological world. The problem is that he was a Lutheran theologian who never disavowed Lutheran teach ing on Christian obedience to governmental authorities. One searches his Letters and Papers from Prison or four drafts of his Ethics (written during period of conspiracy), for example, in vain for anything even resembling a theology of resistance.1 Instead, one finds in former only halting and enigmatic phrases like religionless Christianity and Jesus as the man for others that, however suggestive, do not add up to a legiti mation of resistance at all. In Ethics, occasional attempts to call for responsible action beyond good and evil is hardly suc cessful theologically—Bonhoeffer knew that and so left Ethics unfinished. His early works, moreover, are completely apolitical. The place where one most yearns for an explanation is in The Cost of Disciples hip (published in 1937 only a year or two prior to his entering conspiracy), but it is also silent on matter of Christian political action.2 Indeed, Bonhoeffer even used his exposition of Romans 13 in The Cost of Disciples hip as part of his defense during Nazi interrogations.3 All of this adds up to a major problem in Bonhoeffer interpre tations. This problem is how to account for Bonhoeffer's partici pation in conspiracy while at same time explaining his rather traditional, and in some places even authoritarian, theol ogy. In general, voluminous literature has tackled this prob

Religionless Christianity: A profile of religion in the Canadian 80s

The state of religion in Canada is examined, based upon the preliminary findings of two recent national surveys which have produced both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Areas probed include: involvement in organized religion, the viewing of religious TV programs, commitment to traditional Christianity, and interest in the new religions and the paranormal. It is maintained that some three in four Canadians are neither committed nor opposed to old and new religions, but rather are ‘a-religious’, adhering to fragments of the Judaic-Christian tradition yet lacking a religious orientation which can be used to address life and death. This ‘unfocused majority’ is described as Canada's ‘religionless Christians’. The author concludes with an examination of the receptivity of Canadians to religion, and the prospects for variations in the predominant secularization pattern.

Religionless Christianity—a mistake?

Religionless Christianity—a mistake?

From Secular City to People's Religion

In what must have been one of the most dynamic decades in the history of theology the name of Harvey Cox has constantly appeared. It would be enough for a theologian to have made a substantial contribution to one development within the period, but Cox has been at the centre of several different movements, not all of them mutually compatible. The history of his own progress during the eight years from 1965 is an interesting commentary also on what has been happening to theology in the period, more particularly the status of religion in Europe and North America.Cox suddenly emerged on the theological scene in 1965 with his bestseller The Secular City. It may be seen as an appropriation of the work of the later Bonhoeffer. He spent 1962 in Berlin, participated in the Marxist-Christian dialogue of the time and was much influenced by Bonhoeffer’s idea of ‘religionless Christianity’. Perhaps Marx had been right and religion should be superceded. On his return to America he wrote The Secular City. ‘Much of that book represents my attempt to do for the American scene what Bonhoeffer had done for his’. Whether or not Bonhoeffer knew what he meant in writing of religionless Christianity we may doubt if he would have recognised Cox’s book as a continuation of the same theme. The link is rather with Bonhoeffer’s theme of ‘world come of age’. Bonhoeffer was the first Protestant theologian of standing for a generation who dared to put in a good word for the secular world. Under the influence of Barth the secular world was constantly condemned for Promethean tendencies. The enemy of the Nazis, the prisoner of the Gestapo was under no illusions of the reality of evil in the world, but he could see also the strength and achievement of that world.

Bonhoeffer: The Man and his Work by René Marlé, S. J.

BOOK REVIEW'S 179 Bonhoeffer: The Man and his Work. By RENE MARLE:, S.J. Glen Rock, N. J.: Newman Press, 1968. Pp. 141. $4.50. When Bonhoeffer's name is mentioned many of us make an immediate association: religionless Christianity. This small book is valuable because it puts that association into the perspective of Bonhoeffer's whole life and whole teaching. The life reveals a man of deep faith in Christ and in the Church, a man of constant prayer. The teaching reveals the essential complexity of his thought. No one after reading this book would ever dare to sum up his thought by the phrase " religionless Christianity " nor identify him with the secularity movement today. Perhaps MarJe's best contribution to fuller understanding of Bonhoeffer 's theology is his juxtaposition of the religionless Christianity theme from the Letters and Papers with other themes from the same book and from the Ethics, which Bonhoeffer was also writing in prison. For example, Bonhoeffer never gave up on the necessity of intense, personal prayer while dialoguing with religionless men. Also, while insisting that the Christian must have true affection for this world and its peoples before one could have true appreciation for Christ's work, since Incarnation (or God t>mbracing the world) comes before Redemption, the Old Testament before the New, the penultimate before the ultimate, still what is important in the end is Redemption, justification, salvation; what is important in the end is religion. Bonhoeffer does not make the connection between religionless Christianity and Incarnation, Old Testament, penultimate things explicit, but Marie shows that it is no distortion of his writings to say that the connection is strongly implicit. I believe Marie is right. In all, this is a very useful book for these seeking a few handles into the study of this great Lutheran theologian who was conservative in his ecclesiology, yet open to ecumenical dialogue; who stood stubbornly with the Confessing Church, while sharply criticizing it; who wrote a highly subtle book on Christian ethics, yet lived a basically simple life; and who died a hero's death. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. THOMAS R. HEATH, 0. P. Un Cardenal, Fil6sofo de la Historia, Fr. Zeferino Gonzcilez, 0. P. (18811894 ). By FRANCO DrAZ DE CERro, S. J. Rome: Lateran University, 1969. Pp. 197. Four articles published in 1870 under the title "La Filosofia de la Historia " (" The Philosophy of History ") are taken as basic writings for a study on Cardinal Gonzalez's notion on the subject. They first appeared ...

Homo Religiosus and Historical Faith

HE distinction between Christian faith and religion, which was urged so strongly by Karl Barth in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans,' has become almost a commonplace. From the 1930's through to the 1950's, the distinction was made the subject of formal theological investigation, and notably by Hendrik Kraemer.' And now in the 1960's it has found more popular expression through such books as John A. T. Robinson's Honest to God3 and William Stringfellow's A Private and Public Faith.4 Undoubtedly, though, the form in which this distinction is presently stated owes most to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose last jottings on the possibility of a religionless Christianity have aroused the widest interest and debate.5 Bonhoeffer leaves us no more than a few hints and roughly worked suggestions about his positive program, yet he sets out his fundamental starting-point with complete clarity. He argues that twentieth-century man has outgrown religion. Whereas in former ages religion supplied the cosmological frame of reference within which mankind viewed the universe around him, science has since become the purveyor of the facts of life and guide to the secrets of nature. So homo religiosus has died, or else lives on as an anachronism. But Christians, says Bonhoeffer, should not regret this development. Rather, accepting the situation as God-given, they ought to re-state their faith for a nonreligious generation. The disappearance of the gods desired by the human mind for its own purposes has opened the way for faith in the one true God. Only the fearful and the faithless, then, can wish to return to the conditions of past ages or to resurrect homo religiosus from the dead. Against the Barth-Bonhoeffer argument, which welcomes in the name of Christianity the withering-away of religion, there stands a counter-argument. It begins from the thesis that the decay of religion in the modern world is the sign of a failure in the human consciousness, a failure caused by the one-sided development of culture in the West. Consequently, the human spirit is now suffering from religious malnutrition. A return from the artificial values of contemporary civilization to the deeper satisfactions experienced by earlier generations is thus quite imperative. For those satisfactions arose out of the unquestioned sway of religion over men's lives, and the passing of religious meaning from everyday experience has brought into existence a sick world. According to this argument,