By Angus Harley

Further evidence of Bonhoeffer’s rejection of God’s word.

Ice hopping

“…because the witness of Jesus Christ to himself is none other than that which the Scriptures deliver to us and which comes to us by no other way that by the Word of the Scriptures. We are first concerned with a book which we find in the secular sphere. It must be read and interpreted. It will be read with all the help possible from historical and philosophical criticism. Even the believer has to do this with care and scholarship. Occasionally we have to deal with a problematic situation; perhaps we have to preach about a text, which we know from scholarly criticism was never spoken by Jesus. In the exegesis of Scripture we find ourselves on thin ice. One can never stand firm at one point, but must move about over the whole of the Bible. As we move from one place to another we are like a man crossing a river covered in ice floes, who does not remain standing on one particular piece of ice, but jumps from one to another. There may be some difficulties about preaching from a text whose authenticity has been destroyed by historical research. Verbal inspiration is a poor substitute for the resurrection! It amounts to a denial of the unique presence of the risen one. It gives history an eternal value instead of seeing history and knowing it from the point of view of God’s eternity. It is wrecked in its attempt to level the rough ground. The Bible remains a book like other books. One must be ready to accept the concealment within history and therefore let historical criticism run its course. But it is through the Bible, with all its flaws, that the risen one encounters us. We must get into the troubled waters of historical criticism.”  ” [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 73-74.]

By this time, the reader is familiar with Bonhoeffer’s espousal of Liberal biblical criticism, which supposedly exposes the bible’s myths, fake additions, and the like. The bible says ‘Jesus said’, but, on occasion, these were not his words, but were put in his mouth, and were fallible man’s attempt, by faith, to represent the actions of the Word.

Moreover, we must understand that the Scriptures are mere words- fallible ones, of course. They are propositions (see ahead). They truly take on the nature of ‘testimony’ and of ‘God’s Word’ and ‘Scripture’ when the live and living Word witnesses through them to fallen man.

In seeking out this Christ of the testimony, of the ‘Word’, and, therefore, in engaging with Scripture, the Christian has to, first, participate in ice hopping, for the Christian cannot settle with any assurance on a given passage, as it is a fallible, human, testimony that can bear only a certain weight of scrutiny by scholarship. Once this dangerous work is done, the Christian can preach the true Christ, the true Word of Scripture, the living one who encounters us in the Word. It is in and by this process, or encounter, that what we call ‘the Scripture’ takes on the value of ‘Word of God’. Not that the words or propositions are God’s word, but they become his Word by the presence of the Word meeting us in them (after being stripped of all their failings).

Rejecting ontology of propositions

The following statement by Bonhoeffer is deeper, more philosophical, but nonetheless as spurious as the previous material.

“The direct testimony of the scriptures is frequently confounded with ontological propositions. This error is the essence of fanaticism in all its forms. For example, if we take the statement that Christ is risen and present as an ontological proposition, it inevitably dissolves the unity of the scriptures, for it leads us to speak of a mode of Christ’s presence which is different e.g. from that of the synoptic Jesus. The truth that Jesus Christ is risen and present to us is then taken as an independent statement with an ontological significance which can be applied critically to other ontological statements, and it is thus exalted into a theological principle. This procedure is analogous to the fanatical doctrine of perfectionism, which arises from a similar ontological misunderstanding of the scriptural utterances on the subject of sanctification. In this instance the assertion that he who is in God does not sin is made a starting-point for further speculation. But this is to tear it from its scriptural context and raise it to the status of an independent truth which can be experienced. The proclamation of the scriptural testimony is of quite a different character. The assertion that Christ is risen and present, is, when taken strictly as a testimony given in the scriptures, true only as a word of the scriptures. This word is the object of our faith. There is no other conceivable way of approach to this truth except through this word. But this word testifies to the presence of both the Synoptic and the Pauline Christ. Our nearness to the one or to the other is defined solely by the Word, i.e. by the scriptural testimony. Of course this is not to deny the obvious fact that the Pauline testimony and that of the Synoptists differ in respect both of their object and their terminology, but both have to be interpreted in the light of the scriptures as a whole. This conclusion is not merely a piece of a priori knowledge based on a rigid doctrine of the canon of scripture. The legitimacy of our view must be put to the test in every instance. Thus in the ensuing argument, our purpose is to show how St Paul takes up the Synoptic notion of following Christ and subjects it to further development.” [Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 255-56.]

What is Bonhoeffer doing here? He is arguing against propositional ‘truth’. How can the bible be a set of propositional truths, when man’s witness in history is fallible on so many levels? Moreover, since when did mere propositions, human statements, and piling them up one upon another (theology), bring the live and risen Christ to us? In fact, argues Bonhoeffer, when you look at the bible, its testimony to Jesus is one in which he encounters people in live interactions. Thus saith the Gospels, for example. He’s not a Christ of mere words, statements, and propositions. Life in Christ is not found in mere words themselves. It is therefore fanaticism of the highest order to give to human words/propositions an eternal value, as if they were in themselves a ‘living entity’, a ‘being’, that gave to us Christ. Thus, the phrase ‘ontological propositions’: ontology = being; propositions being the statements of Scripture. Statements are mere statements. They are not living; they have no ontology. But the Scriptures come alive, however, when Jesus the Word encounters us in them (after we strip them of all their stupidity, myth, and error, of course!). In that way, by that method alone, the Scripture becomes the mode called, ‘the Word of God’. One does not experience Christ in propositions; he is experienced as he encounters us in the Scripture.

Fake Christianity and fake theology

I hope the reader is paying attention to the setting of these comments by Bonhoeffer. In his theological ‘masterpiece’, Christ the Center, he utterly trashes the words of Scripture. Yet, we are told he was an amazing theologian, who was very Christ centered. And The Cost of Discipleship many consider a classic of Christian piety. Yet, there, in a footnote, Bonhoeffer, as we saw, destroys the very basis of piety and Christian discipleship- following the Christ who has revealed himself in propositions and verbal truths. And, I know that you, the reader, will be saying that I go too far in my language. But here, brother or sister, you deliberately hide your head in the sand, and you would rather see a true disciple of Christ shamed than a false one! For was it not BONHOEFFER who said that it is sheer fanaticism, and a blatant denial of Jesus’ resurrection, to advance the doctrine of verbal inspiration? Whose side are you on? I challenge you, reader, to re-read both these books. If you read them without Bonhoeffer fanboy glasses on, you will see them in a totally new light.