[Series Index]
Today we continue our discussion of the chapter on Dietrich Bonhoeffer in John Stackhouse's Making the Best of It.
One Reality. Bonhoeffer rejected the Lutheran notion of two kingdoms in any strong sense. There is one reality, and Christ rules over all. There is the spiritual office and the kingdom of worldly authority, which should not be mixed, but God rules above both realities, and they answer to him. Stackhouse makes this observation:
Thus the state ought to recognize the church's claim to, and right to, enough space in which it can perform its central task of proclaiming "the reign of Jesus Christ over the whole world." The state – for its own sake, as a servant of God that needs a healthy, functioning church for its own healthy functioning – must no encroach on the church's territory and role (as the Nazis were doing). Without the church and its proclamation of Jesus is Lord, the state becomes, ironically, something other than truly and properly worldly. Lacking a divine reference point, it becomes idolatrous instead, as "the worldly will always seek to satisfy its unquenchable desire for its own deification." (131-132)
Obedience and resistance to the state. Because the state is also of God and because we simply can't know all that goes into decisions about any given situation, Bonhoeffer believed deference should be given to the state. God establishes it and we owe our obedience. This deference is not absolute, but when outright resistance is needed, it should focus narrowly "on those elements that have forfeited their mandate," as Stackhouse says.
Orders of preservation. Bonhoeffer was not a utopian. He believed life was deeply affected by the Fall but not dominated by it. God understood God to have created human institutions to promote good and restrain evil. Writing in Ethics:
Only insofar as church, family, work, and government mutually limit each other, insofar as each is beside and together with the others, upholding the commandment of God each in its own way, are authorized to speak from above to speak. None of these authorities can identify itself alone with the commandment of God. … (136)
Later in life, he speculated that the mandates listed might also be expanded to include things like education and culture. Stackhouse doesn't mention it, but this seems very similar to Kuyper's sphere sovereignty in some ways.
Stackhouse writes:
Bonhoeffer thus distinguished between life we now live as ordered by these institutions and the life to come in which Christ’s Lordship is direct and unimpeded. Yet he also sees that this life, what he calls the “penultimate,” is also given shape by, judged by, and inspired by the life to come, what he calls the “ultimate.” He therefore eschews both radicalism, which despises the penultimate, and capitulative compromise, which despairs of the ultimate. Instead he recommends the way of Christ, which means travelling through the world, doing what one can in the world, and confronting the world – informed and encouraged by the Christian Story (creation, Fall, redemption, and consummation) and especially by the story of Christ. These stories, of course have at their heart the divine project of redemption. (138-139)
Tomorrow we will conclude our discussion of this chapter on Bonhoeffer.
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