By Angus Harley

If you read Evangelicals who like Bonhoeffer and consider him to be broadly Evangelical, they will tell you that he cast off theological Liberalism and embraced a new version of theological orthodoxy. These Evangelicals think that Bonhoeffer’s strong disagreement with his Liberal professor Adolf von Harnack is proof-positive of his non-Liberal, Evangelical-like, theology.

Except, this view is not held by any non-Evangelical Bonhoeffer-scholar that I know of. It is generally agreed that Bonhoeffer did reject the theological excess of Liberalism and forged his own Neo-Orthodox model, yet it is also commonly agreed that Bonhoeffer utilized the standard Liberal Historical-Critical method. We might illustrate this distinction in the following way: Dispensationalism and Reformed theology are contrasting theological models; yet, both have similar Christian presuppositions and rely on a core set of doctrines that are ‘Evangelical’. Bonhoeffer had his own theology that distanced him from Liberal Theology as a model, but had much in common with Liberal theology in its presuppositions. 

The Harnack connection

Bookends

If Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) was at the very beginning of Enlightenment Liberal Theology, Adolf von Harnack (1851-1931) came at its very end. These are the bookends of Bonhoeffer’s theology.

The ‘greatest’

We should not think that Harnack was, as a consequence, a tail-end theologian, someone who was more or less irrelevant because Liberalism was dying out. Far from it! He has been recognized by most as the representative of theological Liberalism at its height. We are told that there is no system of Liberalism clearer and more detailed than Harnack’s.

Bonhoeffer studied under Harnack. He held Bonhoeffer in the highest esteem as a scholar, but as time wore on, he was disconcerted by the new direction Bonhoeffer’s theology was taking, which position came to be known as Neo-Orthodoxy.  

Indebted

Like Bonhoeffer, Harnack was a German and a Lutheran. In fact, Harnack was both a neighbor and family friend. In particular, Bonhoeffer’s theology owed a lot to Harnack and the Liberal movement:

“Bonhoeffer’s theology cannot be understood apart from his life and the theologies that impacted him. One important influence in Bonhoeffer’s development was the liberal milieu of the University of Berlin, where he matriculated in 1924. Here he familiarized himself with the works of Troeltsch and Max Weber and, more importantly, attended seminars of the great liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack. Although Bonhoeffer would come to reject Harnack’s theological method, he was always impressed by the latter’s passion for truth and intellectual integrity (Woelfel 1970, 20). For these reasons Bonhoeffer was deeply attached to Harnack in particular and the German liberal tradition in general; thus, in spite of the fact that he took part in the neo-orthodox rebellion against liberal theology, he never could despise the liberal heritage out of which he came. This abiding appreciation for liberal theology influenced the kinds of questions that Bonhoeffer would articulate in his “religionless Christianity” project in the 40’s: questions about the rights of the secular, the meaning of modern history, and the necessity of translating the Bible into contemporary language and action (21).”[1] [bold text mine]


Excess, not the whole

The above quote states that Bonhoeffer cast off Harnack’s theological method. This is true if one system is measured against another- Liberalism vs Orthodoxy- but the fact is that Bonhoeffer’s theology rested very firmly upon the Liberal foundation of historical criticism. One writer notes:

“While a student in Berlin in the early 1920s, Bonhoeffer encountered Barth’s writing. This led him to begin criticizing the excesses of “historical-critical theology,” including that practiced by his teachers, Reinhold Seeberg, Karl Holl, and Adolf von Harnack. At the same time, Bonhoeffer’s relationship to his teachers was never wholly critical. According to DeJonge, in Act and Being Bonhoeffer seeks to merge Berlin and Barthian theology through “a concept of revelation that is both contingent and historically continuous, that captures the characteristics of both act and being”. The concept of “person” is the means by which he does so.”[2] [bold text mine] 

See how it is not the historical-critical method in itself that is cast off but its excesses as seen in Harnack’s model. Indeed, according to the article, Bonhoeffer’s theology, in its early form, combines Berlin (Harnack) with Barthianism. This is a failing of Liberalism that we have spoken of before, one in which Bohoeffer fully agrees with Lessing’s and Liberalism’s view that the bible is merely a human book full of error, questionable history, and mythology.[3]

‘Fresh air’ of anti-tradition

Both Harnack and Bonhoeffer had very little time for traditional theology as taken in itself as some form of reliable measurement of God’s revelation. For example, Martin Rumscheidt writes that Harnack’s open rejection of traditional theology that asserted itself dogmatically was “a form of the “fresh air of intellectual discussion with the world” “. So, for Bonhoeffer, what Christianity had to defend itself “against was not orthodoxy, and liberal theology, on the other, but the “theological” assertions of the German Christians“.[4] As stated above, the rejection of the strait-jacket of theological tradition was to the specific end of stimulating discussion with the world. Bonhoeffer openly confesses his debt to Liberal theology on this point. He says, ” “I feel obliged to tackle these questions as one who, although a ‘modern’ theologian, is still aware of the debt he owes to liberal theology.” “[5]

Religionless Christianity

This devotion to open discussion with the world and the strong rejection of theological tradition were behind Bonhoeffer’s view of religionless Christianity. Harnack wanted Christianity to transform the world in an ethical sense by adapting to modern thinking. Bonhoeffer shared this ethical and moral vision for Christianity but in his own Neo-Orthodox form. ‘The’ way to dialogue in the Gospel with the world was not through the concepts of traditional theology but according to the modern world’s non-religious mentality. Both men believed old-school Christian approaches had to be jettisoned and a modern model of Christ put in their place. Both had no time for the virgin birth of Christ, much of the supernatural of Scripture, saw mythology everywhere in the bible, and had little time for a ‘conservative’ reading of the NT’s content. So, even though, as we will see, there were differences between Liberalism and Bonhoeffer, Rumscheidt asserts that Bonhoeffer genuinely took up Liberallism’s questions about the world and religion to answer them.[6]

Contrasting Harnack to Bonhoeffer

Different values set on historical criticism

As stated over and over, both scholars accepted the highly critical view of the bible, rejecting it as God’s actual word. Each scholar had not time at all for its inerrancy, infallibility, accuracy as history, and so forth. In that regard, both were heavily reliant on historical criticism and its demythologizing model.

That being said, Bonhoeffer deplored what Harnack’s model had done to Jesus: it had so stripped away the bible’s account and flung out the majority of traditional concepts that, Christ was unrecognizable as a mere human figure who served as ‘the’ religious example of love and sacrifice, of embodied divinity, for mankind to follow. This was Harnack’s gospel. Bonhoeffer’s gospel retained all the myth of the bible and all the faulty theology of the assembly. But why would he do this? Because, like Barth, he recognized that wherever Christianity grew in history it tied itself to the bible with its myth and to traditional theology with its layers of faults. Historical criticism was not in itself the be-all-and-end-all that Harnack thought it was. For God had, and was, using the bible and theological tradition to achieve his salvific purpose. But, reader, please remember, this is the bible as a mere human document full of myth and theological tradition as full of human accretions and poor theology.

Indeed, both Bonhoeffer and Barth understood that the bible was a mere vehicle, yet ‘the’ vehicle for the live Word of God to meet with those of faith. Thus, the bible became ‘holy’, ‘the word of God’, ‘the living word of God’, and so forth, as Jesus met with those of faith in and through the bible, even though the bible was not actually God’s word as Evangelicals understand it.

Different values set on Christ

Harnack’s and Bonhoeffer’s respective models are claimed as ‘Christocentric’, for both men reduced the Gospel to the person of Christ. Harnack’s Christ was, to Bonhoeffer, completely insufficient, as it made him a mere man, who was the embodiment of divine-like living and the supreme example of sacrificial love. In this lay the pattern for all men to follow from all walks of life and all religions. Salvation was about transforming the human in the present through following Jesus’ model. We are reminded in this of today’s Progressive Christianity.

Bonhoffer’s Christ was not consumed with the Christ of the historical record, of the bible, nor with the Christ of theology, but with the living Christ who met with sinners in the bible. The fallible record of the bible about Jesus was ‘the’ way to meet him through faith, it was the ‘trysting place’ that the living Word came to the person of faith.

Bonhoeffer’s Jesus was divine and was raised from the dead in his body. Neither fact can be proved from history, said Bonhoeffer, as both truths were accepted by faith. Which is to say that, in the moment of his revelation in and through the bible, the living Word of God (Jesus) meets with sinners to impart faith, and only in that moment does the sinner (now believer) perceive by faith that Jesus is actually risen and is actually God. It is experiential proof, not historical, doctrinal, or biblical, that alone counts.

For that reason, Bonhoeffer, with Harnack, can cast off most of the miraculous in the bible as myth and the virgin birth as error; but then Bonhoeffer, arbitrarily, can assert that by faith Jesus was raised bodily from the dead and was divine.

Harnack’s Christ was fully man, totally earthly. Bonhoeffer’s Christ combined two realms: Jesus the man, of the flesh, the sinner, earthly (thus the rejection of the virgin birth); and Jesus as God in the flesh, and the divinely risen one who meets with us in the bible. Harnack’s ‘divine’ Christ was William Barclay’s the divine-like man. He was not God. Bonhoeffer’s ‘divine’ Christ was both fully God and fully man (with the sin!), operating according to two principles and realms.

Different values set on philosophy

As a historian first and foremost, Harnack had no time for a philosophically-driven Christ. Although he loved Paul’s ethical message of love, he deplored his belief in a God-man, blaming Paul for introducing to the bible the God-man concept. Similarly, John’s Gospel was battered by Harnack for its traditional version of the divine Christ. The Roman and Greek Orthodox churches had made matters worse by fully embracing this dualism of God and man. That doctrine was a philosophical model inherited from the ancients that had no place in true Christian teaching.

Bonhoeffer’s system was driven by a philosophical model. For it was impossible for him to reconcile his contradictory ideas without having some form of justification for it. This he achieved by philosophy. The inherent dualism of the God-man contrast was, to Bonhoeffer, a God-send. How so?

Because, on the one hand, it allowed for Jesus as the man, in the flesh, a sinner; it also, in that regard, permitted a fleshly, human, mythological bible; on top of these things, it also accommodated a frail, human, body of somewhat erroneous theology. Bonhoeffer’s system gloried in all these ‘human’ factors, the frailty, the myth. This was part of the mystery. Not the whole of it, as Harnack thought, but the first crucial step.

On the other hand, Bonhoeffer’s Christ was divine. Yet, as such, he could not be tied to the earth. Thus, the very sharp and clean division between Jesus the man in the flesh, and a sinner and Jesus as the sinless Son of God who came in the sinful flesh. Two Christs in one. These two views of Christ were not combined into one, but sat parallel to one another in the ultimate mystery.

Different values set on revelation and faith

Harnack’s Christ ‘revealed’ the divine by his humanity-in-sacrifice. Bonhoeffer’s Christ was God meeting with us in live-time in his Word, the risen Son, via the medium of the ‘word of God’, the bible. The bible was not revelation; it was ‘record’, the human, fallible, testimony to that real-time, live, revelation of Christ as it has happened in history. Faith not only comprehended how Christ’s revelation worked, but faith itself was part of the revelatory act of God, for man could not believe without Christ revealing himself to the sinner in live-time. In this way, faith was not tied to ‘believing the bible’. More to the point, faith could not possibly be bound to the Scripture itself, for faith came from God in the live-event of revelation. God was not ‘in the bible’, but sovereign, above, and free to reveal himself in his Son, in live-time. Thus, Bonhoeffer despised what he thought of as the ‘ontological’ value set on the bible, as if ‘faith in the bible’ gave to the bible’s language (mere human language!) some living force as a ‘being’ (thus ontology, which is the study of being). Christ and God are not bound to the human record, but use it, just as Jesus the sinless Son of God used the human flesh (in its sin) to bring about salvation. Faith comprehends this mystery, this dialectic, and glories in it!

It was this pseudo-philosophico-theological model that Harnack first saw in Barth, then in Bonhoeffer. Harnack despised it as so much mumbo-jumbo that flew in the face of the ‘human Christ’ of the Gospel. For, to Harnack (and even to Bultmann), if historical criticism gave to us a human Christ, a sinner, a man shrouded in myth, so that it was entirely impossible to prove either Jesus’ resurrection or divinity from the bible’s history, or from history itself, for that matter. The idea of an independent and divine faith simply bypassing all these ‘facts’ was an absurdity, to both Harnack and Bultmann.

Conclusion

There is far, far more we could say about Harnack’s influence on Bonhoeffer, and we could write even more about their contrasts. Yet, it is undeniable that Bonhoeffer was heavily indebted to Harnack’s Liberal theology. Bonhoeffer was, presuppositionally, a Liberal- it is as simple as that! He merely added to this yet another presupposition, that of his philosophical model, his dialectical thinking that allowed him to patch together his abhorrent theology of a sinful Christ with a sinless Christ, of a frail mythological bible with the bible as the ‘word of God’ that is peerless and holy. If Harnack’s Enlightenment rationalism wrecked the bible, then Bonhoeffer’s philosophical model turned faith into a magician’s act in which the Christ revealed himself, like the assistant of the magician suddenly appearing out of thin air! So much mumbo-jumbo, as Harnack rightly determined.

[1] Matt MacLoughlin, Derek Michaud, eds., “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 1906-1945)”, Boston University, accessed January 8, 2025, https://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/bonhoeffer.htm.

[2] Jeffrey Skaff, “Review of Michael De Jonge’s Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation“, Center for Barth Studies, April 26, 2016,  https://barth.ptsem.edu/bonhoeffers-theological-formation/.

[3] Angus Harley, “Bonhoeffer 4: the virgin-birth myth”, Things New Covenant, December 1, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/12/01/bonhoeffer-4-the-virgin-birth-myth/.”Bonhoeffer 3: the falliable and errant Scriptures- a closer look”, All Things New Covenant, November 29, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/11/29/bonhoeffer-3-the-fallible-and-errant-scriptures-a-closer-look/; “Bonhoeffer 2: the fallible word and powerful Word of Genesis 1- a lesson in the Neo-Orthodox dialectic”,  All Things New Covenant, November 28, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/11/28/bonhoeffer-2-the-fallible-word-and-the-powerful-word-of-genesis-1-a-lesson-in-the-neo-orthodox-dialectic/; “Bonhoeffer 1: Myth”, All Things New Covenant, November 27, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/11/27/bonhoeffer-1-myth/.

[4] Martin Rumscheidt, “The Significance of Adolf Von Harnack and Reinhold Seeberg for Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, ed. Peter Frick (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 220.

[5] ibid., 220.

[6] Ibid., 219.