conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

Thank you, brother.

Beautifully written and quite touching.

Thank you for sharing your heart with us.

Peace,

Mike

For the Bonhoeffer-illiterate: what is the difference between obeying and applying?

"Applying" for Bro. D has to do with a theology of themes, if you will. The beatitudes are not some noce metaphor or theme for Christians to consider. If they appear to be inconvenient or dangerous, well, that is because they are.

According to Bonhoeffer, they are what we Christians do. It is possible to say that for Bonhoeffer, other actions are not Christian, or are an active denial of Christianity. Though he nuances that quite a bit.

This is a very general summary of what he writes hundreds of pages about. So, let me know what you think.

Enh. I think it's an imprecise use of language.

"Apply" means "put into action," i.e., applied mathematics, as opposed to theoretical.

So for him to use the word "apply" as opposed to "obey" is inaccurate.

Again with the Bonhoeffer-illiteracy: was he writing in English, or is this a translation?

Good point. He was German. He wrote in German. There may be a translation issue at hand. That makes sense.

And it would probably make more sense in context of the wider work, whatever that would be. I might poke around a little. Again, I think it is from Cost of Discipleship, but I would have to see.

Also, for him, action was not quite enough. He did not think of these things as prescriptive but more as descriptive. Believers in Christ are poor in spirit, for example. That is the nature of the Christian, not a directive. He spoke of Christianity as a being...not as a set of prescriptive notions.

Could you expand on your final paragraph? It didn't make any sense to me. A few questions to get you started...

What is "action," that it is "not enough"?

By using the word "descriptive," do you mean that Bonhoeffer was taking it upon himself to determine who was a Christian and who was not, based on what he could see of their behavior?

What exactly does "poor in spirit" mean?

And while B. might not have been thinking he was giving direction, to imply "You must measure up to my standards or I won't admit that you're a Christian" seems pretty darned directive to me. Thoughts?

Thoughts? Gee. You ask for a lot. Heh.

The thing about B that is interesting is that he was preaching all this stuff as a German pastor during the rise of Hitler. He was pushing the government around and was part of a plot to assissinate Hitler. Obviously, it failed, and Dietrich was imprisoned and then executed.

So, yes, he had very real ideas of what actions one might take and what was and was not Christian action given a specific context. What he was not willing to say, however, is that non-violence is always the ethical thing or that there is some prescriptive ethic. It is hard to understand, really, because he died fairly young (39) and did not finish his Ethics. Many of his thoughts were left incomplete and his ideas are hotly debated even today.

So, action is "not enough" (my words) simply because it does not go into identity as much as he would like. Sure, what one does speaks to identity. Absolutely, but the Christian identity is authored by God and the very nature of the universe itself. There is always choice, but the nature of the Christian is the same. The actions may shift and slide as the context drives them, but they will always be Christian.

He played in dialectics. Action - Being. Doing - Interpreting. There are hundreds. So, you can't really locate him in one polemic. It is tempting to try, but then he seems to slip through my fingers.

I like a lot of what he seems to be getting at. I am often frustrated that there is not more from him and that he died with some incomplete thoughts out there. And I realize that it is likely that his passion might have dwindled had he lived beyond Nazi Germany. Like Barth, whom he admired greatly, he may have even retracted much of his earlier writing which contain his more confusing dialectics.

What forms one's identity, if not one's actions?

And what is "the Christian identity" and "the nature of the Christian" you refer to? Is it inborn, predestined, or what?

I'm interested in your thoughts on these questions, not Bonhoeffer's.

I think our identity is rooted in being created by God. It is that we are made in the image of God which is our core identity. Certainly our actions influence this, as it did for Adam and Eve. But the begining is always the same: We are God's creatures. Everything else is how we choose to engage that identity.

I would put Christianity in the "choices" category. As a Trinity, God created. Christ was present with God (In the beginning was the Word...), so I am a creature of a Triune God. But the choice to follow Christ, discipleship, is an identifying discipline.

And how is choice shown, except in action?

Yeah, I guess so, but there is something about faith and action that is important. It is wrestled with in scripture. Paul and James go at it. Matthew has his say as well.

Actions can lie.
Faith can be rendered useless and mute.

Okay, a quick jot on identity in all this:

I wonder if discipleship is the action/choosing piece. Certainly it is a relftion of who we are. No doubt about that. But does it reflect "whose" we are? I think it can. You are right, actions matter a great deal, and may be all we have that proclaims identity rightly.

But the identity resides in God's initial action. We cannot choose that part. That grace comes from God, through God's love for the created.