God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Notes on 1 John: Part 2, The Two Assurances
So, what's 1 John's answer to the question "How do I know if I'm a Christian"?
The answer is twofold.
First, there is a confessional aspect. A Christian is one who confesses Jesus as the Son of God. For example:
The second part of the answer "Who is a Christian?" turns to love. We know we are Christians if we love. For example:"Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also." (2.22-23)
"Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ..." (3.21-23a)
"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God." (4.1-3a)
"And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God." (4.14-15)
"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." (5.1)
"Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." (5.5)
"Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." (5.10-12)
"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." (5.13)
"Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble." (2.9-10)
"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him." (3.14-15)
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth." (3.16-18)
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (4.7-8)
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus." (4.16b-17)
"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister." (4.20-21)
Notes on 1 John: Part 1, How Do You Know You're a Christian?
What struck me about 1 John is that a major theme of the book, perhaps its main and overriding theme, is the issue of assurance. How do you know you are, in fact, a Christian?
To start, consider how often the word "know" shows up in 1 John: 32 times in only five chapters. No epistle comes close to this sort of density. By contrast, Romans and 1 Corinthians, the two longest epistles, use the word "know" 31 and 39 times respectively.
You can trace this theme of assurance--How do you know?--through the whole letter:
"This is how we know that we know him." (2.3)
"This is how we know we are in him." (2.5)
"This is how God’s children and the devil’s children become obvious." (3.10)
"This is how we have come to know love." (3.16)
"This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him." (3.19)
"The way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us." (3.24)
"This is how you know the Spirit of God." (4.2)
"This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception." (4.6)
"This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us." (4.13)
"We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us." (4.16)
"This is how we know that we love God’s children." (5.2)
"This is the confidence we have before him." (5.14)
"We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one." (5.20)
The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus
You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.
...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire...
For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
The Great Campaign of Sabotage: A Film with The Work of the People
Again, you can preview the first two minutes of the film. The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model, so if you'd like to access the whole film, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime.
Today's film is entitled "The Great Campaign of Sabotage," and I start it off with this provocative claim: "I think Christianity is inherently involved in ministries of exorcism."
Again, this was in 2019, three years after my publication of Reviving of Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted. Of all my books, Reviving Old Scratch has received the most reviews on Amazon. And is in second place on Goodreads after Unclean.
Regarding the quotations in the preview. The Biblical passage I cite, describing Jesus' ministry as being primarily one of exorcism, is from Acts 10.37-38:
You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
The second quote, which is cut off at the 2:00 minute preview limit, is from C.S. Lewis, and is where the title of the film comes from:
Enemy-occupied territory--that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Psalm 45
I.
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
II.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
III.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
IV.
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.
V.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.
VI.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.
VII.
As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
VIII.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.
Jesus Has This Effect On Dead People
Casey, one of the inmates, was sharing his observations, and while he was talking he said this:
"Jesus has this effect on dead people."Casey was connecting the raising of Jairus' daughter with the healing of the woman with the issue of blood (which occurs in the midst of the story). Both women are dead, one physically, the other socially and ritually. Jesus comes into contact with each woman, bringing both to life.
As I noted when I first shared this story, Casey's observation startled me. Stopped me dead in my tracks with its simplicity and truth. So many of us have been brought to life, because Jesus has this effect on dead people.
Teaching My Students to Pray
To be clear, this isn't about some pious "add-on" to make my class "Christian." It's not really even about practicing a "spiritual discipline," some grueling work we engage in to become better Christians. Prayer is, rather, simply an enchantment. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, prayer helps us overcome our pervasive attention blindness, bringing the dancing gorilla into view (if you don't know what I mean by "dancing gorilla," read the book). Prayer is vision and perception. Cleaning the dirty windows. Prayer recovers our lost sacramental ontology.
Prayer is also good medicine. A balm for the heart, a salve for our hurts. Every time I pray with my classes after the "Amen" there is soft but audible sigh. I wish you could hear it. Some cool cloth has been placed upon a fevered brow. A moment of relief and respite found in the middle of a hard and difficult day. A stream appearing in the middle of the desert.
Be Alert!
You see this theme emerge early in the letter in 1.13. Here's how the CSB renders the verse:
Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be sober-minded.
Most translations have something similar to the idea of "preparing your mind for action." The more literal NKJV makes the underlying idiomatic expression in the Greek more clear:
Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober.As you likely know, given first-century dress, the long skirts of male clothing were pulled up and tied off prior to military action. "Girding up the loins" freed the legs for action, getting excess cloth out of the way so that you wouldn't trip over it. Obviously, since modern readers of the Bible don't do much "girding up the loins" anymore, the idiomatic expression doesn't communicate very well. Consequently, translations go with something like "preparing the mind" for action.
"Be alert and sober-minded" (4.7)"Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour." (5.8)
Apocalyptic Mysticism: A Film with The Work of the People
If you know Travis' work, you're aware of his talent in capturing and expressing spiritual and theological messages in short films. Travis has done films with Richard Rohr, Brene Brown, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Miroslav Volf, and Stanley Hauerwas, to name a few. But so many others as well. Take some time to browse all the films at The Work of the People. You'll be overwhelmed by the riches Travis has captured and curated.
Travis has been releasing videos of our wide-ranging conversation from 2019 and I'd like to share links to these over the next month or so.
The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model. So you'll only be able to view, with each film I share, the first two minutes as a preview. If you'd like to access the whole films, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime.
Here's a link to the film entitled "Apocalyptic Mysticism."
As you'll see in that clip, in 2019 I was making my way toward the book that would become Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age. I didn't use the phrase "apocalyptic mysticism" in the book, but "apocalyptic mysticism" is the book's regulating idea.
Specifically, by mysticism I mean an experiential encounter with God, "bumping into God" as I say in the film preview. Here's how I make the contrast between belief and experience in the Introduction to Hunting Magic Eels:
The issue is the difference between belief and experience. Belief is intellectual assent and agreement with the doctrinal propositions of faith. Experience exists prior to and drives belief. Experience gives birth to belief. It’s hard to “believe” in God if belief isn’t naming something in our lives, something we’ve felt, sensed, seen, or intuited. As the Christian mystical tradition teaches us, life with God is more about knowing than believing. The mystics didn’t believe in God; they encountered God.
So it’s crazy to demand or expect beliefs from people (or ourselves) where there is no experience. Without an experience of God, belief has no content, no reference, no object. No way to get to “Yes!” Demanding belief without experience is asking people to believe in nothing, for the word God would be hanging in thin air, pointing to a gaping hole in a person’s life. Belief without experience is an empty bucket, making it a very useless, discardable thing. But if there’s water in the bucket, if our beliefs are carrying precious experiences of Thanks, Help, and Wow, well, you’re going to hold onto that bucket for fear of spilling the water, especially if you’re standing in the middle of a disenchanted desert dying of thirst. I’d like us to spend less time talking about the bucket and start filling it with water.
We think religion is a matter of belief. [Andrew] Root points out that something deeper and more fundamental is going on. Faith is a matter of perception. Faith isn’t forcing yourself to believe in unbelievable things; faith is overcoming attentional blindness. Phrased differently, faith is about enchantment or, rather, a re-enchantment: the intentional recovery of a holy capacity to see and experience God in the world. Without this ability, pervasive cultural disenchantment erodes our faith, and we’re seeing the effects all around us, in our homes, in pews, and in the culture at large...That's apocalyptic mysticism.
God is there, but we’re going to have to retrain ourselves to see. I like how Marilynne Robinson describes this in her novel Gilead: “It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light...Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” Enchantment starts with this willingness to see. As the Christian mystic Simone Weil said, “Attention is the only faculty of the soul that gives access to God.” Disenchantment isn’t about disbelief. Disenchantment is a failure to attend.
Psalm 44
Angry protest: Getting angry if the attachment figure is not as responsive as we wish they would be.Again, we could frame the lament of Psalm 44 as an expression of attachment anxiety. And yet, I've come to think that attachment theory isn't the best model for thinking about lament in the Psalms.Example AGI item: “I often feel angry with God for not responding to me when I want.”Preoccupation with relationship: Worry, rumination, or obsession with the status of the relationship.Example AGI item: “I worry a lot about my relationship with God.”
Fear of abandonment: Fear that the attachment figure will leave or reject you.
Example AGI item: “I fear God does not accept me when I do wrong.”
Anxiety over lovability: Concerns that you are either not loved or are unlovable.
Example AGI item: “I crave reassurance from God that God loves me.”
Jealousy: Concerns that the attachment figure prefers others over you.
Example AGI item: “I am jealous at how God seems to care more for others than for me."
It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented…It is my judgment that this action of the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to me, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the larger number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and complaint about an incoherence that is experienced in the world…I believe that serous religious use of the lament psalms has been minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as though the very speech about it conceded too much about God’s “loss of control.”Again, we are tempted to think that lament is pathological, that "acknowledgement of negativity" in our relationship with God, like the angry protest of Psalm 44, is an act of "unfaith." But as Brueggemann goes on to say:
The point to be urged here is this: The use of these “psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith…
Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 7, Retrospective Reflections
And yet, if you've followed this series, I was alert enough in 2010 to attend to Bonhoeffer's discussion of the arcane and secret discipline in his theological letters. This aspect of Bonhoeffer's thought has been largely ignored. But this part of Bonhoeffer's vision has taken on increased importance in my own life since 2010. I now identify as a post-progressive Christian. My season of deconstruction, evidenced in the early years of this blog, gave way to a season of reconstruction. I still believe, with all my heart, that the church is only the church when it exists for others. But more and more, I think the discipline of the secret is necessary to sustain that vision.
As we've seen, Bonhoeffer was alert to the temptations of liberal humanism. As Bonhoeffer wrote, he didn't want his religionless vision of Christianity to become "the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious." Rather, faith was to be "characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection."
However, it's fair to ask, what is the connection between discipline and being there for others?
Here's my best answer.
Bonhoeffer's vision of "being there for others" is radical. Bonhoeffer is calling for a radical availability to the world. The vision is deeply kenotic and cruciform. Christ, as the man for others, gives his entire life away. And we, as the church, are called to do the same. But what can possibly sustain such radical self-offering, self-giving, and self-donation? As I describe in The Slavery of Death, as finite creatures in a world of scarcity, our worries about self-protection and self-preservation are real and pressing. Consequently, we hesitant at the boundary of sacrificial love. We recoil at the demands of love. The costs are too steep.
What we require, at the boundary of love, is a metaphysics of hope and a community of support and care. As Bonhoeffer says, we need constant knowledge of death and resurrection. For if love only ever involves my diminishment and death how can that love become joyous and sustainable?
This is why I believe the discipline of the secret is absolutely necessary for a church seeking to exist for others. If Christ calls us to die in existing for others that call is sustained by the hope of the resurrection and in our shared life together. Prayer and righteous action go hand in hand, each sustaining the other.
I think those who want to reduce Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity to ethical social justice action in the world miss the radical Christological vision of "being there" for others, the cruciform nature of this lifestyle and its associated cost. Missing this cruciformity, they overlook all that is necessary to make a lifetime of self-donation sustainable, joyful, and hopeful. Back in 2010, when I first wrote this series, as a deconstructing, progressive, social justice Christian, I thrilled to how Bonhoeffer's letters and papers described a church that existed for others. This remains my vision. And yet, fourteen years later, I'm increasingly aware of how our life together in the church, as we celebrate the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection, makes our radical availability to the world joy-filled and hopeful and, therefore, sustainable.
And finally, looking back at this series here in 2024, I would also observe that all is not ethics. Since 2010, and largely due to my prison work, I have rediscovered grace. On Easter I shared a bit of that story in a video at church. You can watch it here at the 50:53 mark.
One of the problems I discern in the progressive Christian turn against penal substitutionary atonement is the eclipse of grace, reducing the cross to ethics. To be clear, I share concerns with certain expressions of penal substitutionary atonement. But when you work with a prison population you come to see, first-hand, the transformative power of forgiveness and grace. A Christianity that is reduced to ethical action in the world misses the gospel of grace. Your shame has been overcome. Your guilt undone. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God does not treat us as our sins deserve. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. You have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. By his wounds you have been healed.
Beyond ethics, this too is the gospel. And I've come to believe that our "being there" for others means inviting a soul sick world into this grace.
Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 6, The Man for Others
1. The World Come of AgeIn light of our analysis of these themes, we can now circle back to try to answer the central question of the letters: Who is Christ for us today?
2. The Nonreligious Interpretation of Christianity
3. The Arcane Discipline
In each of these posts we've been examining how Bonhoeffer was trying to create a this-worldly spirituality, a spirituality that is to be found in the center of life. As Bonhoeffer wrote in the very first theological letter:
April 30, 1944God's transcendence, God's being "beyond," has nothing to do with other-worldliness. God's transcendence, God's way of being "beyond," is to be found "in the midst of our life." Following God, the church, therefore, isn't to be found at the edges of this world, as the religious doorstep to some other-worldly heaven. Rather, the church is to be found, with God, "in the middle of the village." As Bonhoeffer wrote on July 21: "By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities."
To Eberhard Bethge:
...God's "beyond" is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.
All well and good, but what are we to do there in the middle of the village? How do we experience transcendence in the middle of "life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities"? According to Bonhoeffer, we encounter God in the middle of life when we are there for our neighbors: "The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation."
It is in this "being there for others" that marks the Christian. The goal of the Christian life isn't to become "religious": "Our relation to God is not a 'religious' relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable--that is not authentic transcendence--but our relation to God is a new life in 'existence for others,' through participation in the being of Jesus." Thus, we finally come to the answer of the Christological question: Who is Christ for us today?
The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that "Jesus is there only for others." His "being there for others" is the experience of transcendence. It is only this "being there for others," maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection).Jesus' transcendence is found in his "being there for others." Through his incarnation, death, and resurrection Jesus becomes radically available to humanity. Consequently, Christian faith becomes "participation in this being of Jesus." Summarizing all this, in the notes he left behind for the book he was working on, Bonhoeffer gives us his most succinct answer to the Christological question:
Jesus is "the man for others."Given that answer, Bonhoeffer expects the church to follow suit:
The church is the church only when it exists for others...The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling, what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.One of the best descriptions of what this might look like, a church existing for the sake of the world, comes from a letter Bonhoeffer wrote in June, 1944 to Eberhard and Renate Bethge commenting on 1 Peter 3.9:
God does not repay evil for evil, and thus the righteous should not do so either. No judgment, no abuse, but blessing...Blessing means laying one's hand on something and saying, Despite everything, you belong to God. This is what we do with the world that inflicts such suffering on us. We do not abandon it; we do not repudiate, despise or condemn it. Instead we call it back to God, we give it hope, we lay our hand on it and say: may God's blessing come upon you, may God renew you; be blessed, world created by God, you who belong to your Creator and Redeemer. We have received God's blessing in happiness and in suffering. Yet those who have been blessed can do nothing but pass on this blessing; indeed, they must be a blessing wherever they are.That might be the best summary of what a "religionless Christianity" looks like. It is being a blessing to others wherever you are, in the middle of life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. We lay our hands on others and say "Despite everything, you belong to God; be blessed." More, we suffer with our neighbors making our lives available to them, "not dominating, but helping and serving."
Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity: Part 5, The Arcane Discipline
Bonhoeffer wrote the baptismal homily at the same time he was writing his theological letters. So it's not surprising that some of those ideas were expressed in the homily he wrote for Dietrich Bethge's baptism. Toward the end of that homily Bonhoeffer wrote:
Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christian today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men.When we think about Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity" it is often assumed that what Bonhoeffer was proposing was a demythologized, humanistic vision of Christianity, a Christianity stripped clean of any religious ritual or metaphysical content and reduced simply to prosocial ethical behavior, what Bonhoeffer calls in his homily "righteous action among men." And as we described in the last post, Bonhoeffer was refocusing Christianity upon human affairs when we described "true transcendence" as being the "neighbor within reach." True transcendence is "being there" for others, just as Christ was and is there for the world. And yet, in his baptismal homily Bonhoeffer cites two characteristics of Christianity: prayer and righteous action.
This pair might seem puzzling. Where does prayer, of all things, fit in with a religionless Christianity and a this-worldly spirituality? Isn't prayer and worship the epitome of other-worldly religious ritual?
Such questions bring us to the third phrase that reoccurs in the theological letters: "arcane discipline." We've already discussed the first two phrases--the world come of age and religionless Christianity--as they swirl around the central question of the letters "Who is Christ for us today?" But what is the "arcane discipline" and how does it relate to everything we've already discussed?
As Bonhoeffer worked through his ideas concerning his "nonreligious interpretation" of the faith, he expressed the worry that his "religionless Christianity" would be flattened into a form of liberal humanism. You see this contrast and worry in one of the last theological letters:
July 21, 1944Note here Bonhoeffer's worry that a religionless, this-worldly Christianity would become shallow and banal, a spirituality for the "enlightened," the busy, the comfortable and the hedonistic.
To Eberhard Bethge:
During the last year or so I've come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man...I don't mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.
So, how do we prevent this shallow banality? Bonhoeffer speaks of a spirituality "characterized by discipline" and by "the constant knowledge of death and resurrection." But what does this mean?
The phrase "arcane discipline" occurs just twice in the theological letters, but it does emerge in the very first letter of April 30:
April 30, 1944We see how Bonhoeffer is struggling with the role of worship and prayer in his "religionless-secular" Christianity. He calls here worship and prayer the "secret" or "arcane" discipline. Connecting the threads, the "discipline" that supports Bonhoeffer's religionless expression of faith in the world is worship, prayer, and the reading of the Word.
To Eberhard Bethge:
How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about "God"? In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we...those called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case, Christ is no longer the object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation? Does secret discipline...take on a new importance here?
Bonhoeffer continues to struggle with these issues in a letter written a few days latter:
May 5, 1944Let's pause here, in the May 5th letter, to again point out Bonhoeffer's worry that his vision of a this-worldly, religionless Christianity would become "anthropocentric," "liberal," and merely "ethical." Bonhoeffer can see that some might think that his religionless Christianity is simply warming over the liberal Christianity of his German professors which he had so passionately rejected when he discovered Barth and the Bible. To push against that liberalism and humanism Bonhoeffer wants to ground his religionless Christianity in "the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ." We've already seen how this looks. In the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection Christ becomes radically available to the world. Not in an ethical sense, but in a communal, even ontological sense (more on that in the final and last post).
To Eberhard Bethge:
It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, "Like it or lump it": virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That isn't biblical. There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation. The positivism of revelation makes it too easy for itself, by setting up, as it does in the last analysis, a law of faith, and so mutilates what is--by Christ's incarnation!--a gift for us. In the place of religion there now stands the church--that is in itself biblical--but the world is in some degree made to depend on itself and left to its own devices, and that's the mistake.Having worried about a humanistic liberalism, where Christianity is reduced to the ethical, we can now see Bonhoeffer turning toward Barth and the temptations from the other side, "a positivistic doctrine of revelation," a "like it or lump it" approach to Christian faith. We can't force feed a world come of age long lists of metaphysical beliefs--virgin birth, Trinity, etc.--without that leading to a "profanation" of the faith. A "like it or lump it" approach to Christian faith, we might say, makes God too available to the world. People confess things they don't really understand. Shades of Kierkegaard here: Where everyone is a Christian, no one is a Christian.
Bonhoeffer's best description of what all this looks like comes from a lecture he gave in the summer of 1932 in Berlin. It was his first mention of the "secret discipline" and it remains the best description he gave of how the secret discipline sustains the church as a "word of recognition between friends" and how the doctrines and rituals of the faith should not be used as "propaganda and ammunition" against outsiders seen as "enemies." Rather, the church should be silent and allow her actions to speak more loudly than any evangelistic sales pitch:
Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless. The confession of faith belongs rather to the "Discipline of the Secret" in the Christian gathering of those who believe. Nowhere else is it tenable...Here, in my estimation, Bonhoeffer's entire vision comes into view, how "prayer" and "righteous action" relate to each other, how "the discipline of the secret" supports a "religionless Christianity" in a world come of age. For Bonhoeffer, "confession of faith" is "a word of recognition between friends." The mysteries that sustain the community are for "the Christian gathering of those who believe." But among those on the outside of the church, all these see is righteous action, "the deed which interprets itself." Witnessing this religionless goodness, the world come of age comes to "long to confess the Word." But that Word is private, "a matter between God and the community, not between the community an the world."
The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself. If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word. This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda. This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community. This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world. It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies. This attitude was first learned at baptism. The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world.