The Communion of the Saints: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church

264 Pages·1963·21.815 MB·English

by  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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THE
COMMUNION
OF SAINTS

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
THE
COMMUNION
OF SAINTS
A DOGMATIC INQUIRY INTO
THE SOCIOLOGY OF
THE CHURCH
Copyright © 1960 by Christian Kaiser Verlag. Copyright
Q~ 1963 in the English translation by William Collins Sons
Ik Co. Ltd., London, and Harper 8c Row, Inc., New York.
Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews. For information address Harper!k Row, Pub-
lishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd St., New York 16, N. Y.
This translation is published in Great Britain under
the title,
64-10749
Foreword
The student of Bonhoeffer who wishes to know the sources of his
'religionless interpretation of biblical concepts in a world come
of age', the worldly Christianity of the letters from prison, will
have to turn to Bonhoeffer's early writings. There he will find
both the basis and the starting-point for the ideas in the letters.
The letters, it is hardly necessary to say, read more easily than
those early works.
twenty-one when he presented it, in F927, as a dissertation to
the Theological Faculty in Berlin. Difficult and overloaded
though it is, in many respects unclear and youthful in style,
nevertheless it moves clearly across the continental map of
theology of that time into new country.
conflicting bases. First there is the sociological school, which
had a powerful effect on Berlin theology of the twenties by way
of Troeltsch. Bonhoeffer had studied in this atmosphere and
learned its language. He worked in Harnack's seminar, but under
Seeberg he turned to systematic theology. The second base was
dialectical theology. Though it was making stormy advances in
Germany, it had not then found a single advocate in Berlin
University. Its concern was not with the sociological and
statistical understanding of the church, but with its strict and
sole source in revelation. In spite of Harnack and Seeberg
it was this theology to which the young Bonhoeffer now became
attentive. He was attracted by the impossible. What he tried
to give in
church, or a theological sociology. He turned to this task with
immense self-conscious power.
Both these bases, the sociology and the theology of the church,
have by no means lost their pressing importance for us to-day in,
our view of the church, whether we regard them as reconcilable
or not. The revelatory character of the church points to its
concreteness. Both elements, the
worldliness, were to be constant motives in Bonhoeffer's develop-
ment. They may be discerned even in his later formulations
concerning religionless Christianity.
For his first effort, which was so much more diligently worked
over than his last, Bonhoeffer found at that time no readers. It
took him three and a half years to get
lished, in the midst of the German inflation, at an impossible
price. The work had to be shortened, and he had to subsidise
the publication himself. The publisher reproached him for not
helping to make the work known. A friend wrote to him that few
would see what he was after. The Barthians would not see,
because of the sociology, and the sociologists likewise because of
the Barth. It was the bold individuality of the letters from
prison, following the individuality of
which forced attention back upon his first work.
In fact Bonhoeffer was never interested in making his writings
better known. He never drew the attention of his students to
them. The book
view, because he was too heavily engaged with the thing itself,
the sanctorum communio. He was always ready to describe the
thing itself in a new way. For this very reason it is both exciting
and rewarding for us to read how Bonhoeffer regarded the church
when he began his work, and to see what his answers were then.
Both continuity and discontinuity can be seen.
If we are attracted by Bonhoeffer's later views, and want to
find the answers to his questions, then we are on more solid and
controlled ground if we add to our considerations this pre-
cocious and astonishing essay.