Nearly every stripe of theology holds Dietrich Bonhoeffer up as a hero. Ironically, conservative evangelicals find themselves with Death of God theologians in claiming Bonhoeffer as their own.1 Reading his works, one can understand why this is the case. Letters and Papers from Prison has a much different feel and tone than his earlier books, such as Discipleship and Life Together. He was versatile as a writer and able to write in a variety of styles that appeal to various audiences.

What do we make of all these “variant” Bonhoeffers? To understand Bonhoeffer, we must understand his historical context but also the individuals and schools of thought that influenced him. Bonhoeffer was able to appreciate and critically engage with various philosophers and theologians. This ability allowed him to receive and critique certain teachings of liberal theologians such as Ernest Troeltsch, Adolf von Harnack, and Rudolf Bultmann. He was more conservative than he is made out to be by his liberal interpreters. At the same time, he was more influenced by early twentieth century higher criticism and neo-orthodoxy than many of his conservative interpreters recognize. While I disagree that we “can lay claim to Bonhoeffer as an evangelical,”2 it is also off the mark to consider him a theological liberal. Bonhoeffer was theologically orthodox in his doctrines of salvation and the church but neo-orthodox in his theology of the Bible. He was a student of Luther3 who sought to reform the German Church, which was progressively giving way to Nazi ideology. He followed Barth in attempting to break away from the entrenched liberal theology of his day but was influenced by that same theology.4 Evangelicals should approach Bonhoeffer with discernment and caution.

Although discernment is needed, Bonhoeffer’s creative and urgent thinking can inspire a fresh approach to ecclesiology. Theological orthodoxy permeates his reflections on the nature of the church-community. He was a theologian for the sake of the church. He lived out his love for the concrete and the real in the context of many local churches. Wherever he lived, he found a church to be a part of. He did not love “The Church” as an abstract theological category but the real individuals that made up the local church assembly. Bonhoeffer was driven by a love for the church and a desire to see the centrality of Christ recognized in the church. His Christology is inherently related to his ecclesiology5 because the church is “Christ existing as church-community.” As Nichols puts it, “Christ always and necessarily stands before and above and over Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology; and ethics, which for him can be summed up as love, always and necessarily pours out from and surrounds his ecclesiology.”6 Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology, which flows from Christology and leads to ethics, is theologically and practically rich.

This article presents Bonhoeffer’s unique approach to ecclesiology. While some interpreters believe Bonhoeffer jettisoned his theology of the church with his concept of “religionless Christianity” in Letters and Papers from Prison, I demonstrate that Bonhoeffer’s robust ecclesiology provides a key to understanding what “religionless Christianity” meant.7 My aim, therefore, is twofold: (1) to introduce Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology as theologically and practically rich for evangelicals; and (2) to present an interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity in light of his ecclesiology.

1. The Sociology and Theology of the Sanctorum Communio

In 1927, when Bonhoeffer was twenty-one years old, he presented a dissertation on the church, Sanctorum Communio, to Reinhold Seeberg and the faculty in Berlin. In this work, he explored concepts he would develop throughout his life: the social nature of humanity, the narcissism of sin, revelation and salvation extra nos, ethics, and the presence of Christ in the church-community. These concepts are the conceptual framework for Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology.

1.1. The Human Being as Socially Open and Closed

Bonhoeffer’s dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, is an interdisciplinary study of the church from a sociological and theological perspective. He begins his sociology of the church by explaining the ethical and sociological nature of the person. He builds on insights from ethics and social philosophy that the human person, by nature, is both an individual and created in and for social relationships.

To emphasize humanity’s social nature, Bonhoeffer introduced the concept of the “basic social relation.” The basic social relation is the encounter of the individual with another person. The “I” meets a “You.” This concept, while very simple, is foundational in Bonhoeffer’s theology and the starting point for not only his ecclesiology but also his Christology and ethics.

God designed the human person to be both structurally closed and open. On the one hand, the person is structurally closed, and the individuality of the person is protected. The “I” does not dissolve into the “you.” At the same time, the individual is socially open to others. Relationships are part of what it means to be a person. The person cannot exist in isolation but only in relation to others. Bonhoeffer explains:

God does not desire a history of individual human beings, but the history of human community. However God does not want a community that absorbs the individual into itself but a community of human beings. In God’s eyes community and individual exist in the same moment and rest in one another.8

In other words, God’s intention is that the individual’s social relationships do not undermine the integrity of the individual. In this insight, Bonhoeffer both appreciated and critiqued Hegel’s insight that the human person is social by nature. However, he rejected Hegel’s absorption of the individual into the social process.9 The individual is preserved and protected even though he is woven into community. This sociological foundation helped shape Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the church.

1.2. The Narcissistic Individual and the Peccatorum Communio

Bonhoeffer argued ecclesiology and Christian sociology can only be properly understood with a robust theology of the fall, sin, and death. Sin disrupts the basic social relation and steps in between the individual person, God, and other people. Community with God and man is ruptured because “the fall replaced love with selfishness.”10 Sin acts like a mirror that is placed between the individual and the other, amplifying the “closed structure” of the individual. The nature of sin is that the individual turns in on himself in a narcissistic move (cor curvum in se). “The original community of love, as mutual harmony of reciprocally directed wills, is essentially destroyed when one will changes from a loving to an egocentric direction.”11 Bonhoeffer reflects on the nature of “being in Adam” in Act and Being. He states, “‘In Adam’ means to be in untruth, in culpable perversion of the will, that is, of human essence. It means to be turned inward into one’s self, cor curvum in se.”12 In the egotistical turn, man gets what he wants: an isolated and fragmented existence away from God and community.

It should be noted that Bonhoeffer’s theology of sin and “being in Adam” is directly opposed to Enlightenment insistence on man’s autonomy. This can be seen in Kant’s description, “Enlightenment is man’s exodus from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the inability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another person. This tutelage is self-incurred if its cause lies not in any weakness of the understanding, but in indecision and lack of courage to use the mind without the guidance of another.”13 Kant’s anthropological turn to the subject cast a long shadow on liberal theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What Kant described as the freedom of self, Bonhoeffer recognized as complete bondage. Bonhoeffer strongly affirmed the doctrine of sin and argued that we need guidance from outside ourselves. Kant’s challenge to embrace freedom from “tutelage” was in fact just another expression of the descent into narcissism. According to Bonhoeffer, breaking away from God’s guidance is what it means to be “in-Adam” and nothing less than bondage to self.

In the narcissism of sin, community and relationships are fragmented, but it does not undermine the person’s structural social relation to others. In the isolated state of being-in-Adam, the person turns God and others into objects and relegates them to “the world of things” rather than true persons in communion.14 The irony is that, in this state, people can refer to God as a “religious” object and construct a religion. “God has become a religious object, and human beings themselves have become their own creator and lord.”15 This is a reversal of what is true; the creature acts as though he is the sovereign “Creator” and the Creator a creature. This blasphemous manipulation is the only kind of “religion” that fallen humanity can produce.

Fallen humanity, therefore, dethrones God and manipulates him into a customizable religious object. However, since this person is imprisoned within his closed structure and turned in on himself in narcissistic sin, the “god” he creates is nothing more than an idol within his own psyche. The religious-object god is nothing more than a golden calf. After the fall, however, the human person clings to his own sovereignty and follows a god in his own likeness or desires. Ultimately, this is more than a human being can bear because humans were never meant to be creator or lord: “Under the heavy burden of being both creator and bearer of a world, and in the cold silence of their eternal solitude, they begin to be afraid of themselves and shudder.”16 The clawing for transcendence leaves man destitute.

This is not only true of individual “beings in Adam” but is collectively true for humanity-in-Adam. From philosophical sociology and Augustine’s concept of totus Christus, Bonhoeffer introduces the concept of the “collective person.” The “collective person” is based on the structural nature of persons as both closed and open. Ultimately, people are either in the collective person of “Humanity-in-Adam” or “Humanity-in-Christ.”17 Humanity-in-Adam is a collective person who is infinitely fragmented. Because of the unity of humanity in a collective person, Bonhoeffer posits that, in the sin of the individual, there is the sin of the whole race. He explains, “When, in the sinful act, the individual spirit rises against God thus climbing to the utmost height of spiritual individuality … the deed committed is at the same time the deed of the human race (no longer in the biological sense) in the individual person. Thus all humanity falls with each sin, and not one of us is in principle different from Adam.”18 While this may be an overstatement theologically, Bonhoeffer was emphasizing that sin is not merely an individual act that harms that person. Rather, based on his understanding of the person, sin is at once an individual and “supra-individual” deed. The sinful act of the individual is bound to the culpability of humanity and represents the sin of Adam and the whole world.19

Sin, therefore, has a profound social impact. It leads to the “experience of common sinfulness” for humanity-in-Adam.20 Bonhoeffer argues that Isaiah spoke of this when he proclaimed, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isa 6:5). This is the experience of the community of sinners, the peccatorum communio, which is “one, though consisting of nothing but individuals. It is a collective person, yet infinitely fragmented. It is Adam, since all individuals are themselves and Adam.”21 The community of sin, the natural state of existence in Adam, can only be overcome and superseded by the community of saints in Christ.

The collective person of humanity-in-Adam is the foil for the splendor of humanity-in-Christ. The peccatorum communio must first be understood before we can comprehend the sanctorum communio. The religious tendencies of humans after the fall also helps us to understand Bonhoeffer’s concept of religion. Religion, even religion that claims to be Christian, may merely be a religion of humanity-in-Adam as opposed to a true religion based on the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1.3. Encounter with Christ Jesus Extra Nos

On November 18, 1943, as Bonhoeffer prepared for Christmas in the Nazi prison, he wrote, “By the way, a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.”22 To be freed from the prison of sinful narcissism, people need to be addressed extra nos—from outside themselves. God must break in and create something new. Humanity is hopeless and contributes nothing to their salvation. Even religion and philosophy fail because they arise from self and the corruption that imprisons the peccatorum communio.

1.3.1. The Nature of the Church: Supernatural Revelation and Historical Community

Bonhoeffer’s second major academic work, Act and Being, emphasizes the need of extra nos salvation and revelation. This work is both a critique and an appreciation of Heidegger’s existentialism. Bonhoeffer transforms Heidegger’s concept of Dasein in light of the revelation of Christ. Bonhoeffer critiques Heidegger’s (and, as mentioned earlier, Kant’s) assumption that human beings are capable through reason of “giving truth to themselves, of transporting themselves into the truth by themselves.”23 This is impossible because, he explained, “thinking is as little able as good works to deliver the cor curvatum in se from itself.”24 Bonhoeffer understood that sinful humanity can only be freed by the gospel. The person is imprisoned within self and cannot move beyond the confines of selfishness and sin even when he wants to.25 Sinful humanity needs to encounter truth from the outside: “Only when Christ has broken through the solitude of human beings will they know themselves placed in truth.”26

For Bonhoeffer, being “placed in truth” happens at the moment of justification. Existence in Adam, which is a prison-like existence, is traded for a new existence in Christ in that moment. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer describes this:

The origin and essence of all Christian life are consummated in the one event that the Reformation has called the justification of the sinner by grace alone. It is not what a person is per se, but what a person is in this event, that gives us insight into the Christian life. Here the length and breadth of human life are concentrated in one moment, one point; the whole of life is embraced in this event. What happens here? Something ultimate that cannot be grasped by anything we are or do, or suffer. The dark tunnel of human life, which was barred within and without and was disappearing ever more deeply into an abyss from which there is no exit, is powerfully torn open; the word of God bursts in.27

Sanctorum Communio also describes God’s salvific breaking in from the outside by the revelation of Jesus Christ. The gospel, the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, is the only way to restore community. Bonhoeffer was clear that God poured out wrath and judgment on Jesus because of the self-centeredness and sin of humanity. Jesus stood as the new humanity’s vicarious representative in his death and resurrection.28

1.3.2. Two “Religious” Misunderstandings of the Nature of the Church

The work of Christ established the reality of the church, but the actualization of the history of the church began with Pentecost and the work of the Holy Spirit.29 Bonhoeffer argued that the church is both a reality of revelation and actualized in concrete history. Therefore, there are typically two ways to misunderstand the nature of the church.30 The first misunderstanding views the church as a purely historical or social phenomenon. This misunderstanding emphasizes the “religious motives” that make sense of the existence of local churches and religious movements. Bonhoeffer was influenced by Ernst Troeltsch, who emphasized this sociological and historical approach.31 Later, in his academic lectures at Finkenwalde, he called this misunderstanding the “materialistic-secular” danger.32 The other misunderstanding, following Barth, emphasizes the transtemporal or supernatural “religious” aspect of the church that does not give proper attention to the concrete nature of the church-community. This view of the church was “idealistic-docetic.”33

Against these two misunderstandings, Bonhoeffer emphasized that the church is a reality of revelation that is actualized in concrete historical expressions. The two misunderstandings each recognize something true about the church but absolutize one truth to exclude another. Both misunderstandings of the church are, in a way, “religious” misunderstandings. Bonhoeffer is clear: the church is neither a historical religious phenomenon nor a supernatural ideal existing in the “realm of God.” He explains, “God established the reality of the church, of humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ—not religion, but revelation, not religious community, but church.”34 The church is a supernatural revelation accomplished and completed in Christ once for all; it is also a revelation that is actualized in time by the Holy Spirit.35 Ecclesiology avoids the two misunderstandings by recognizing that the church is a visible and concrete reality in history and is also supernaturally established and sustained. In this way, the church’s nature reflects the two natures of Jesus Christ.36 The church has both a concrete and visible form in the history of humanity but also has a hidden divine origin and nature.

Barth’s influence on Bonhoeffer is well known. However, Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology is an appreciative critique of Barth’s theology.37 Bonhoeffer recognized the value of Barth’s recovery of the freedom of God and his emphasis on revelation. Barth’s theology, however, remains removed from everyday life and renders the church irrelevant.38 Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology emphasizes the historical and concrete by presenting the local church or “assembly” as the place where God’s revelation of the church is actualized. The local church, what Bonhoeffer calls the “empirical” church, is central to his conception of the church-community. The “concrete function of the empirical church” is the preaching of the word and celebrating of the sacraments.39 A “Christian” who stays away from the local church is a “contradiction in terms.” While remaining imperfect and full of justified sinners, the local church is where God is present and active.

1.4. The Ethics of the Church: Being with and for Others

For Bonhoeffer, the church is a miracle of revelation and the place where the triune God restores community. Sin amplifies the “closed” structure of the person, creating isolation, and twists the “open” structure of the person, generating a community of fragmentation. God’s establishment of the church-community in Christ by the Spirit addresses both aspects of the person as “closed” and “open.” Christ heals the individual and the community. Later in his writing, in Life Together, this insight would inspire Bonhoeffer to emphasize both “The Day Alone” and the “The Day Together.”40 In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer emphasized the predestination of the individual as crucial for a theology of the church: “God sees the church-community of Christ and the individual in a single act. God therefore really sees the individual, and God’s election really applies to the individual.”41

The gospel message addresses the person as an individual and allows the Spirit to encounter him in solitude, but at the same time the Spirit leads that person out of isolation into community: “The Holy Spirit brings Christ to individuals (Rom 8:14; Eph 2:22) and establishes community among them (2 Cor 13:13; Phil 2:1).”42 Bonhoeffer made the same observation in Discipleship. The individual meets Jesus Christ and enters discipleship alone, but the individual’s discipleship takes place in the context of the church, the “community of the cross.”43 The Christian life, then, is life together in discipleship in the church-community.

The church is not only a community of the cross but also a community of love. The individual persons within the community exist with and for others.44 Existing with others points to the reality that Bonhoeffer would explore more fully in Life Together. The church is made up of members of the body of Christ, and they are also members with one another. They are connected. When one suffers, the whole body suffers. When one rejoices, the whole body rejoices. The persons in the community also exist for one another. Living for one another takes Jesus Christ as the standard of conduct and emphasizes a life of selfless action for neighbor, intercessory prayer, confession, and forgiveness of sins.45 Again, the connection between Christology, ecclesiology, and ethics becomes evident. The vicarious action of Jesus Christ becomes the basis of the church and, imitating Jesus, the loving and sacrificial action of the members forms the ethics of the community.46

The ethics of the community shape not only how members interact with each other and their neighbors but also how the collective community of the church interacts with the broader society. Bonhoeffer recognized that the church is simultaneously political and apolitical, because the church is a social community formed within a secular community. The church’s proclamation “is directed at the political order in which humans are bound.”47 The church-community as a collective person addresses the political order and limits the action of the state. However, it would be a mistake for the church to become the tool of party politics. In doing so, the church imprisons itself to the limits of the political order and would be “tortured and torn apart.” The church is to stand in the world as the witness of God’s revelation. Taking on the mantle of the party politics would be accepting the limits of the political world and close the church off from God’s revelation. Bonhoeffer witnessed the German church progressively taking on this mantle of party politics. In 1933, Bonhoeffer warned, “Nothing would be more destructive and detrimental for the Protestant church in the current situation than if, as the last politically unspent force in Germany, it unthinkingly let itself be used in party politics. That would certainly mean its end.”48 The next year, the Barmen declaration issued a strong stand against the political tide of the nation. However, over the next ten years, Bonhoeffer watched as the church capitulated to the politics of the Nazi regime.

1.5. The Presence of Christ in the Church-Community

Ultimately, for Bonhoeffer, the supernatural power of the church is not found in imitating an absent Christ but proclaiming a present and reigning Christ. Jesus is present in the church. Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology builds on the Augustinian concept of totus Christus. “Christ existing as church-community” refers to the body of Christ, which includes the head, Christ himself, and the members. In this understanding, Jesus Christ is identified with the church as his body and distinguished from the church as her Lord. Estes has recently explained Bonhoeffer’s theology of Jesus Christ pro me revealed in the church.49 Part of the pro me of Bonhoeffer’s christological ecclesiology is the presence of Jesus Christ in the local church or “assembly.” Jesus Christ is present for the individual:

If we want to hear his call to discipleship, we need to hear it where Christ himself is present. It is within the church that Jesus Christ calls through his word and sacrament. To hear Jesus’ call to discipleship, one needs no personal revelation. Listen to the preaching and receive the sacrament! Listen to the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord! Here is the whole Christ, the very same who encountered the disciples.50

The primary way Jesus is present and visible in the church-community is through the word and the sacraments.

Bonhoeffer’s love for the Bible is unmistakable.51 In the Bible, the believer should expect to meet with the risen Christ. John Webster explains that, for Bonhoeffer, the text makes Christ present through the power of the Holy Spirit.52 This is why the Bible was one of Bonhoeffer’s greatest consolations as he waited in prison near the end of his life. As Yarborough puts it, “God … spoke so powerfully to him as he pored intensively over scripture while his life drew to a close.”53 Bonhoeffer highly valued the Bible in the life of the individual. Still, the Bible is most properly proclaimed in the context of the church: “The church community is the space where the proclamation of this word takes place.”54 In this proclamation, God meets with his people and the local church is “held together by an assembling around the word.”55 It is at this assembly where the word is taught that Jesus is present in a special way for the church-community and for the individual.

Jesus Christ is also present in the local church assembly through the sacraments. The sacraments are united to the preaching of the word, and the Holy Spirit uses them to build the church-community.56 Bonhoeffer, as a Lutheran, argued that infant baptism was a demonstration of the faith of the community. He argued that infant baptism is primarily an act of the church-community, in which the child is incorporated into that community but also mandated to remain within that community for all of life. The Lord’s Supper is received by the faith of the individual and the church-community. In the Lord’s Supper, Bonhoeffer argues, “Christ’s presence in spirit is not merely symbolic, but a given reality.”57

2. Religionless Christianity

Now that Bonhoeffer’s theology of sin and ecclesiology has been presented, it is possible to understand what he meant by “religionless Christianity” and its relation to the church. On April 30, 1944, Bonhoeffer sat down in his prison cell and wrote to Eberhard Bethge, “Is there such a thing as religionless Christianity? If religion is only the garb in which Christianity is clothed—and this garb looks very different in different ages—what then is religionless Christianity?”58 Bonhoeffer’s questions and thought project about a “religionless Christianity” must be considered in a discussion of his ecclesiology. One of the major questions in Bonhoeffer scholarship is whether Letters and Papers from Prison should be read in continuity or discontinuity from his earlier works. It is undeniable that the tone is different. However, the discontinuity that has been noticed has more to do with the difference in genre than a shift in his belief and doctrine. The letters written in prison were personal, written to a close friend and not intended for publication. Not only that, but the actual content of the letters has much more continuity with earlier writings than is sometimes recognized.59 Bonhoeffer affirmed development in his thought, but a development that rested on an underlying continuity. As he reflected on Discipleship in his prison letters, he said, “Today I see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by it.”60 The earlier writings of Bonhoeffer should be allowed to assist in interpreting his theology in the prison writings.

In light of this, Bonhoeffer’s concept of “religion” informs what he means by “religionless Christianity.” From his earliest writings, Bonhoeffer linked “religion” with the religious a priori. The religious a priori assumes that man is capable of true religious experience by nature and apart from revelation. As early as Act and Being, Bonhoeffer was suspicious of this concept. Scholarship in Germany had come to assume the religious a priori until Barth thoroughly critiqued natural religion. As seen earlier in this paper, Bonhoeffer knew how “religion” could be reshaped and manipulated when the religious subject became creator and lord of this religion. Religious a priori is opposed to God’s revelation in Christ. Bonhoeffer explained, “Having been wrought by God, faith runs counter to natural religiosity, for which the religious a priori noted by Seeberg naturally holds good…. All that pertains to personal appropriation of the fact of Christ is not a priori, but God’s contingent action on human beings.”61

However, there is a true and proper “religion,” which is a religion initiated by God’s sovereign revelation, as opposed to the natural religion of religious a priori. Bonhoeffer explains the distinction between religion and revelation, “God established the reality of the church, of humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ—not religion, but revelation, not religious community, but church. This is what the reality of Jesus Christ means.”62

For Bonhoeffer, religion and church are distinct but overlapping realities. If Bonhoeffer spoke of religion positively, he meant the religion of the empirical church that was truly “Christ existing as church-community.” But religious a priori is part of humanity-in-Adam. Religion, in this sense, is driven by natural impulses and philosophy, and lacks God’s supernatural revelation. In other words, religious Christianity is a trivialized and sensationalized substitute for true church-community.63 It has the tendency to be kitsch and overly sentimentalized. It lacks the substance of real Christianity. For this reason, Bonhoeffer contrasts obedience to God’s revelation with religion. Bonhoeffer explains, “Because the church is concerned with God, the Holy Spirit, and the word, it is concerned not specifically with religion, but rather with obedience to the word…. It is not the religious question or some religious concern in the larger sense that constitutes the church … but obedience to the word.”64

When Bonhoeffer spoke of religionless Christianity, he did not mean a churchless Christianity. Bonhoeffer was familiar with the concept of the church subsiding to a more secular existence through his familiarity with Richard Rothe’s Theologische Ethik, of which he possessed a copy. Bonhoeffer’s argument was self-consciously distinct from Rothe’s conception of a churchless Christian society. What Bonhoeffer meant was the end of a “religious community” that was devoid of revelation and faith. Bonhoeffer recognized that after World War II, the emptiness of a Christless, “religious” church would be revealed. Religious community would need to be replaced with the church-community as Bonhoeffer envisioned it. This is why, even in a letter to Bethge where he speaks of religionless Christianity, he can also speak of the church’s rightful place at the center of the village.65 Bonhoeffer longed to see Christ have his rightful place at the center of the world through his body, the church.

As Bonhoeffer reflected on the “world come of age” and religionless Christianity, he began working on a summary outline of a book where he planned to write about these concepts. His outline reveals a continuity and consistency with his ecclesiology. His outline ended with a chapter that was consistent with ecclesiological concepts explored in Ethics and Sanctorum Communio. “The church,” he said, “is church only when it is there for others.”66 He continued:

The church must participate in the worldly tasks of life in the community—not dominating but helping and serving. It must tell people in every calling what a life with Christ is, what it means “to be there for others.” In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak with moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.67

Bonhoeffer’s vision of a religionless Christianity was not the dismissal of his ecclesiology. It is the outworking of his christological and ethical ecclesiology where “Christ exists as church-community” in the concrete local church as the members live life together and for others.

If Bonhoeffer had lived to develop his thought project of religionless Christianity, one can speculate where it may have ended up. Would he have taken a more classically liberal turn? Or would he have emphasized, in a fresh way, the concrete reality of the church for others in a way that resonated with his earlier writings? Attempts to answer these questions are speculation rather than interpretation. Any interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity must consider the boundaries and distinctives he set in his ecclesiology. Bonhoeffer’s earlier writings and ecclesiology informs his religionless Christianity.

3. Conclusion

Bonhoeffer’s theology of the church celebrates the wonder of the salvation of sinners and life together in the church-community. His doctrine of the church and emphasis on the local church makes him a fruitful dialogue partner for evangelicals. While there are areas where Bonhoeffer’s theology should be rejected as unbiblical and harmful, Bonhoeffer’s creativity and clarity on the relationship of philosophical sociology and ecclesiology allows us to approach the church from a fresh perspective. We do not need to be afraid of Bonhoeffer’s concept of religionless Christianity. It is a reminder that the church is not merely a social and historical entity but a reality of revelation.

The church is the place where God has supernaturally acted. Bonhoeffer reminds us of the devastation of sin on community and relationships and the solution provided in the church. He turns our eyes to the center, the beauty of the present and reigning Jesus Christ, and outward to others in self-sacrificing action. His ecclesiology does not turn us to speculative and abstract theology but invites us to the assembly of the concrete, empirical local church. There, we meet the risen Lord Jesus and discover how to live for the sake of others.

---

1 For a more liberal reading of Bonhoeffer, see Richard Weikart, “Scripture and Myth in Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Fides et Historia 25.1 (1993): 12–25. For a conservative reading of Bonhoeffer, see Georg Huntmann, The Other Bonhoeffer: An Evangelical Reassessment of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Todd Huizinga (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993). Weikart compares his reading of Bonhoeffer with reception history in Richard Weikart, “So Many Different Dietrich Bonhoeffers,” TrinJ 32 (2011): 69–81. For a summary of the complexity of reception history see Stephen R. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004).
2 Stephen Nichols, Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013). Nichols, however, provides an excellent introduction to Bonhoeffer’s theology. Metaxas portrays Bonhoeffer similarly. Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Nelson, 2010).
3 Michael P. DeJong, Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1–6.
4 Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 113–14.
5 Stephen Estes, “Christ for Us: An Analysis of Bonhoeffer’s Christology and Its Implications for His Ethic,” Themelios 48.1 (2023): 140–52.
6 Nichols, Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life, 61. Also, Strohm notes, “God’s act of becoming human in Jesus Christ characteristically determines both his ecclesiology and his entire ethical concept.” Christoph Strohm, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” in Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 11 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 484.
7 This approach is similar to Joel Lawrence, Bonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 9. Lawrence sees an underlying theological continuity between Bonhoeffer’s earlier works and prison letters.
8 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:80.
9 Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 39.
10 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:107.
11 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:107.
12 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:137. Also: “In the primal state the relation among human beings is one of giving, in the sinful state it is purely demanding. Every person lives in complete and voluntary isolation.” Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:108.
13 Quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan, A Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 69. Emphasis added.
14 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:137.
15 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:137.
16 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:138.
17 Lawrence, Bonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed, 15.
18 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:115. Italics original.
19 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:109, 116.
20 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:116.
21 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:116
22 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:188. For a discussion on the place of Bonhoeffer’s academic works in his later theology: Eva Harasta, “One Body: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Church’s Existence as Sinner and Saint at Once,” USQR 62 (2010): 17–34.
23 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:87.
24 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:80.
25 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:45.
26 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:141.
27 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Works 6:146.
28 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:150–51.
29 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:152. Bonhoeffer, “The Visible Church in the New Testament,” in Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935–1937, Works 14:438.
30 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:156.
31 Michael Mawson, Christ Existing as Community: Bonhoeffer’s Ecclesiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018),14.
32 Bonhoeffer, “The Visible Church in the New Testament,” Works 14, 435.
33 Bonhoeffer, “The Visible Church in the New Testament,” Works 14:435. This is a critique of Barth’s early theology.
34 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:153.
35 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:153.
36 Bonhoeffer, “What Is Church?” in Berlin:1932–1933, Works 12:264.
37 Joachim von Soosten, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” in Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:294. Many have noted that the approach to the extra Calvinisticum is a key difference between Barth’s Reformed theology and Bonhoeffer’s Lutheran theology. Bonhoeffer was clear: because of the incarnation, the finite contains the infinite (finitum capax infiniti). Bonhoeffer’s denial of the extra Calvinisticum in the classical sense of finitum non est capax infinitum is one of the features that made his theology susceptible to the charges of liberalism. Bonhoeffer’s insistence that the finite contains the infinite, and that Christ exists as church-community, led to the assumption that Bonhoeffer logically denied the existence of an infinite God outside of the church. Bonhoeffer’s denial of the non capax allowed liberal interpreters to collapse his theology into an immanent frame. Bonhoeffer himself avoided this by his emphasis on the relation in distinction between Christ as head and church as body. In fact, the Calvinistic extra fits well with Bonhoeffer’s emphasis that God must address us and save us extra nos. Bonhoeffer did not do away with the need for a Savior outside of us in his doctrine of Christ pro me. He held the tension of this dialect without collapsing it into a synthesis that undermined God’s fundamental freedom and transcendence. Those who interpret him as a liberal push him to conclusions in a way that Bonhoeffer never intended. DeJong, Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther, 14. H. Gaylon Baker, The Cross of Reality: Luther’s Theologia Crucis and Bonhoeffer’s Christology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 30. Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 153–54.
38 Mawson, Christ Existing as Community, 44.
39 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:226.
40 Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Works 5:48, 81.
41 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:165. Italics original.
42 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:139.
43 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Works 4:99.
44 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:184. “Christ died for the church-community so that it may live one life, with each other and for each other.”
45 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:184. Joel Lawrence demonstrates the central place of confession in Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiological ethics in “Death Together: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Becoming the Church for Others,” in Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture, ed. Keith L. Johnson and Timothy Larson (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 113–29.
46 Von Soosten, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” in Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:294; Lawrence, Bonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed, 31.
47 Bonhoeffer, “What Is Church?” Works 12:265.
48 Bonhoeffer, “What Is Church?” Works 12:266.
49 Estes, “Christ for Us,” 140–52.
50 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Works 4:99.
51 Bonhoeffer, “Lectures on Christology,” in Berlin: 1932–1933, Works 12:331. Evangelicals should note that Bonhoeffer’s theology of Scripture is neo-orthodox. In 1924/1925, Bonhoeffer was influenced by Barth’s The Word of God and the Word of Man, which undermined the liberal influence of Adolf von Harnack. Bonhoeffer’s conversion to neo-orthodox thought was initially “like a liberation.” Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 15. See also John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, 2nd ed. (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 87–110.
52 John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 81–82; Webster, Word and Church, 101.
53 Robert W. Yarbrough, “Bonhoeffer as Bible Scholar,” Themelios 37.2 (2012): 189.
54 Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Works 4:231.
55 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:227.
56 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:240. Lawrence notes, “The Spirit mediates Christ’s presence and so it is the Spirit who creates the church-community at baptism.” Lawrence, Bonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed, 47.
57 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, Works 1:243.
58 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:363.
59 Yarbrough, “Bonhoeffer as Bible Scholar,” 188; Lawrence, Bonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed, 9.
60 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:468.
61 Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Works 2:58.
62 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 153. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, Woks 2:93–94.
63 Huntmann, The Other Bonhoeffer, 109.
64 Bonhoeffer, “The Visible Church in the New Testament,” Works 14:442.
65 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:367.
66 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:503.
67 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Works 8:503–88.

---