An Invitation to Discover Bonhoeffer Again
A Review of
Bonhoeffer for the Church: An Introduction
Matthew D. Kirkpatrick
Hardcover: Fortress Press, 2024
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Reviewed by Jeff Kennon
I rarely read a book twice. Don’t know why! That’s just the way I am, I suppose. Now don’t ask me about movies—I rewatch them constantly. However, of the handful of books that I have read more than once, one is by the pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s his book Life Together. It’s a fairly short piece, but has so much in it which I feel the church needs to deeply work through today to be a people for each other and for the world.
As a result of Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and writing holds both freshness and conviction for me. It moves me to contemplative action towards the suffering of the world. It propels me to be both a better theologian and neighbor, by which, Bonhoeffer believes that you can’t be one without the other. So enter now, the new work by Bonhoeffer scholar Matthew D. Kirkpatrick, Bonhoeffer for the Church: An Introduction. And at almost 400 pages, it’s quite an introduction. Such a lengthy book just goes to show you the extent of Bonhoeffer’s work and how it has grabbed the attention of so many.
Bonhoeffer for the Church is as the title suggests. It is Kirkpatrick’s compilation and explanations of Bonhoeffer’s writings concerning the church. However, if you are familiar with Bonhoeffer, all his writing is connected to an understanding of what it means to be church—to be the human community for which we were created and are now redeemed to become. And it’s this community we call church, that is, Christ’s body, “that becomes the source of God’s activity and revelation on earth. It is the new humanity that appears among the old humanity, the new world among the old world” (321).
Kirkpatrick begins his writing with a quick overview of the life of Bonhoeffer which I feel is vital in understanding his theology. That Bonhoeffer lived in Germany during a time of war, rebuilding, and then war again, helps us grasp his strong words regarding the church—specifically the German church— when it stops “letting God be God” and succumbs to its own understanding of ethical behavior. It’s easy for us American churchgoers to presume we would not have fallen prey to the ploys of Nazi Germany, but Bonhoeffer’s writing serves as a mirror to our own fallenness by which we would do well to ponder in humility.
This book’s organization is one of its greatest assets. When you read through it, you will discover weaved throughout the story of God starting from the good of creation to the fall to our rescue and finally, the culmination of creation being made whole again, once and for all. For Bonhoeffer, it is the Scripture as a whole where we must meditate and read lest, as he warned his seminary students, we disconnect our “faith and salvation from the biblical account” (245). Thus, I feel if the creation, fall, and redemption story was not discovered in such an introduction of Bonhoeffer, it might not have been true to his theology and ethics.
The church for Bonhoeffer, as alluded to above, is foundational. We were made to be with God and each other. When we were stopped in our tracks to speculate on “Did God really say?” spoken by the serpent, we quit letting God be God and as a result, became relationally stunted as we masquerade our lives and manipulate others to further our esteem. Instead of living for the sake of others, we live to the glory of ourselves. But Jesus, who was pushed out on the cross (374) and became our “vicarious representative” as he “literally stood in our place as us” (115), creates in us a new humanity so that now we live as Christ lived, freely serving our neighbor.
Becoming a church, as described above, is a journey. And it has several facets. Thus Kirkpatrick expounds upon Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the tasks of the church as being service, prayer, and forgiveness of sins. These tasks understood by Bonhoeffer are more than this reviewer can tackle in the space allotted. However, I would like to say that reading Bonhoeffer’s take on the church and the forgiveness of sins made me rethink the role the church has in pronouncing forgiveness to others and the potential healing such a declaration could bring. Personally, from my protestant background, this can be a dicey conversation and one that rarely happens. Thus, once again, the need to engage with Bonhoeffer.
There is much more to write here, such as Bonhoeffer’s take on the functions of the church—worship, sacraments, preaching, evangelism, etc…—which are by the way, in conjunction with the tasks. They really cannot be separated. Yet I would like to wrap up this review and mention a couple of positives about Kirkpatrick’s work. First, it is abounding with quotes from Bonhoeffer. And the quotes come from everywhere from his dissertations to his letters written to others. One might assume that any introduction to a theologian would be replete with words from his work, but such is not always the case.
Second, Kirkpatrick lets Bonhoeffer’s writing speak for itself. In other words, he lets us as readers wrestle with Bonhoeffer’s thought. This means we won’t agree with everything, And that’s okay. Kirkpatrick didn’t write this introduction to defend Bonhoeffer’s theology. He wrote it to cause his readers to question and reflect in order to spur us to be the “renewed, redeemed, revitalized, and revolutionized” people of God (13).
Is this a book that everyone will pick up and read? Maybe not—though it should be. Its length might deter some. Plus, though it’s an introduction, it’s not lightweight reading by any means. But it’s Bonhoeffer. What should we expect? Yet I feel that though it might be slow reading, this is a good thing. For as we slowly digest the thoughts of Bonhoeffer, I think we might find ourselves diving more slowly into the heart of God realizing that, as Bonhoeffer himself wrote: “To be a Christian is not a matter of moment but takes time. God gave us Scripture in which we are to recognize his will. Scripture needs to be read and pondered anew everyday. God’s word is not the sum of a few general sentences that could be in my mind at any time; rather it is God’s daily new word addressed to me, expounded in its never-ending wealth of interpretation” (301).
Jeff Kennon
Jeff Kennon lives in Lubbock, Texas where is the director of the Baptist Student Ministries at Texas Tech University. He is also the author of The Cross-Shaped Life: Taking On Christ’s Humanity, published by Leafwood Press. You can find him online at www.jkennon.com.
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