| October Meeting | | Oct 07,2006 | | | | Bonhoeffer Study Group Meeting Saturday October 21st, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 3300 Rural St., Rockford, IL
(7 blocks west of Alpine & Guilford intersection, 1 block west of Fairview/Chelsea). Enter Corbridge Lane (north) facing main entrance door.
Look for signs directing you to our location. Usually in the church office conference room to the left from the atrium.
Our October meeting will continue our Sept 23rd discussion of Bonhoeffer´s essay "After Ten Years" from "Letters and Papers from Prison". This essay is so rich that we only touched on two of the sections. If you missed the Sept meeting you will easily pickup as we continue this very relevant set of topics. Each section stands alone, although they weave together as the discussion continues.
In the eassay Bonhoeffer takes stock of what has happened in the 10 years since he and his family and Confessing Church associates began their resistance to the Nazi rise. The topics he discusses reflect a sober and matured attitude to the chaos in the world at the beginning of New Year 1943. As John Matthews presents in his book "Anxious Souls will ask..." (that we studied last spring), Bonhoeffer has come to a new mature perspectives on Christianity in the world.
For our time, it is relevant to think of the five years since 9-11. In many ways we live in parallel chaos in which Bonhoeffer becomes our contemporary. Just consider the titles of the sections in the essay: "No ground under our feet", "Who stands fast?", "Civil courage?", "Of success", "Of folly", "Contempt for humanity?", "Immanent righteousness", "A few articles of faith on the sovereignty of God in history", "Confidence", "The sense of quality", "Sympathy", "Of suffering", "Present and future", "Optimism", "Insecurity and death", "Are we still of any use?", "The view from below". Many of Bonhoeffer´s best known and most challenging quotations come from this essay. It is a rich resource and will lead to an interesting session. Some samples:
"Who stands firm? Only the one for whom the final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these, when in faith and sole allegiance to God he is called to obedient and responsible action: the responsible person, whose life will be nothing but an answer to God´s question and call."
"Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own suffering, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ died."
"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?"
Take some time to reread these pages and pick out something that strikes you as important. We will construct our discussion around this "potluck" of ideas. If you remember our Sept 2001 meeting, where following that horrible day, we found Bonhoeffer´s Baptismal sermon for his namesake, Dietrich Bethge, to be as fresh in it´s perspective in 2001 as it had been in 1944. I´m confident that we will find "After Ten Years" to be a similar revelation in 2006.
Peter Thomas, Convenor, Rockford Bonhoeffer Study Group
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I found this excellent review on the Amazon website of Bonhoeffer´s "Letters and Papers from Prison" where "After Ten Years" is published . It sets a tone for understanding Bonhoeffer´s mind at this time.
"Dietrich Bonhoeffer´s Letters and Papers from Prison show the reader the thoughts of a man who wrote with immense insight under circumstances fraught with the deepest despair.
Prior to the war, Bonhoeffer had established himself as a visionary, if somewhat moderate, young Christian theologian. His imprisonment by the Nazis in the wake of the failure of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler gave rise to this series of letters, ranging from the trivial to the most profound, reflecting the thoughts and ideas of a man whose ideas continued to evolve, even as hope dwindled. It is tempting to see Bonhoeffer as a sort of modern Christian saint "set-piece" of a man, or a Spielberg movie waiting to be made. Such an interpretation of the man would trivialize the flesh and blood reality of his life, as these letters demonstrate.
Collections of letters typically suffer from one of two defects--either they are inanely trivial and gossipy, or they spend far too much time on being "literary" for posterity, and not enough time giving real insight into the writer. Bonhoeffer´s letters avoid both of these traps. Although the letters collection is not overly burdened by the confessional, letters to his parents and fiance help us understand in very human terms the horror of imprisonment by the Nazis, notwithstanding their careful phrasing to avoid the censor´s pen.
The letters do contain some of the intentionally "literary" --Bonhoeffer writes poetry which is reasonably spare and connective and sometimes writes for the hypothetical future reader. But the real tour de force is Bonhoeffer´s analysis of the evolution of his theological thought in light of the changes wrought by modernity and made apparent to him through his experiences. In several reasonably succinct but incredibly sweeping letters, he outlines a new vision of Christianity, a form of post-Christian Christianity if you will, which has generated a half century of debate and provided inspiration to Christian and non-Christian alike.
In this age in which "liberal" religion has been sadly equated by some with "flaccid" religion, we see through these letters a deeply disciplined thinker outlining the way for Christianity to remain relevant in a world all too ready to try to "outgrow" the faith. Although his thinking is complex, and in some instances he assumes a base of knowledge of late 19th C and early 20th C. Christian theology the 21st C., something a casual reader may not have, the letters are quite accessible and profoundly human. This is not a man building a neat construct out of his dissertation. This is a condemned man hinting at the blueprint for the transformation of a faith.
Although it is tempting to suggest that this is a "Christian masterpiece" of 20th C. faith, the suggestion is a disservice. This is a masterpiece of literature which transcends genre or faith. In the interminable list of intellectual heroes of the 20th C., we rarely see Pastor Bonhoeffer among the honorees. But this book is a powerful argument that this man, who saw the need for religious people to use religion less as a crutch and more as a transformation, should be included prominently in our intellectual heroes list."
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Travel Fund
If you are able to contribute to the standing travel expense fund to help bring visitors to our group, please contact Peter Thomas at pbthomas@insightbb.com .
Invite Others
Please forward this email to anyone you feel would be enriched by sharing in our discussions.
Send their email address to and I will add them to the distribution list.
Having many perspectives makes our discussions richer and wider participation will expand appreciation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our community.
Interesting Note: Our little group is unique in the world as the only standing lay led Bonhoeffer Study Group.
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