So there seems to be energy around Bonhoeffer still (even if it is just to say that we should move on from Bonhoeffer). Instead of continuing the ever-growing comment section of the last post I thought I would write some thoughts in a new post. This means that people don’t need to read 40 comments before writing something. Before I make my main point I will however say that I am surprised at myself for returning to Bonhoeffer, for if you asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of his later writings I would have likely said that I thought they were mere fragments of thought done to death in the 60’s and that other thinkers have done the work that Bonhoeffer signaled and hinted at (thus rendering the letters of interest only for their historical value). And while part of me still thinks that might be true another part of me thinks of him in the same way that I think about Feuerbach, i.e. as an important transitional thinker. In particular Bonhoeffer opened up a way of thinking (or at least expressed it) that was not exhausted in the Radical Theology of the 60’s but which is a prophetic utterance concerning a much more virulent strain of theology that is vibrant and historically significant (what I am about to say relates to the great comment by Ian below – BTW I think Moot is a wonderful example of a community exploring this stuff).

Interestingly, Bonhoeffer does not attack religion as such. However he reflects that in the 20th century (though he sees it beginning in the 17th century) religion has become possible for less and less people because it has been problematical. Not because it has changed but because human beings have entered into a different epoch (my words not his, he talks of “man come of age”). In this new historical situation a religious expression of Christianity places God at the edges of human life as the Deus ex machina. Why? Because religion, for Bonhoeffer, is the belief in a metaphysical absolute from which everything hangs (onto-theology), and as human knowledge increases the more things in our existence do not require this metaphysical explanation. Religion is now exposed as advocating a God of the gaps. In addition to this the God of religion is only for those who feel a need to ask the metaphysical question, “Why”, and in a ‘world come of age”, this question is asked by fewer and fewer (a Nietzschian point par exellence). Indeed Bonhoeffer attacks with great passion those believers who would use the idea of death and illness to get people back to that metaphysical question (and even implicates existentialism and psychoanalysis in the same insidious project – which I would, of course, take issue with).

Bonhoeffer’s great insight in LPP as far as I can see, was to dimly perceive that, while religion was a predominant guise for Christianity throughout history this did not need to be the case – that Christianity could affirm all its central tenants without religion as he defined it (God could be affirmed without metaphysics – again he was not saying that this was ontologically better but rather was becoming historically nessesary). He saw religion as having served its time well, but which had finally reached its twilight.

This is interesting to me because I think it allows us to understand Fundamentalism in a different way. Namely, as an impotent reaction to the loss of religion. The attempt to place it back in the centre. Fundamentalism can thus be seen as the very evidence of the growing redundancy of religion. It is the violent kickback against the continual loss of ground that religion has had to concede in recent years. But for Bonhoeffer there is a way beyond an anemic religious Christianity that places God at the edge and a violent fundamentalism which impotently seeks to place religion in the centre and this is what he was hinting at. It has been left to others to explore what this alternative is (but for Bonhoeffer it was deeply Christocentric and exhibited itself in an unwavering concern for the world – just to relate to the important question that Lori asked).

I have recently been re-reading the later Bonhoeffer to help with my current writing and have been staggered by the insight contained in many of his letters from prison. Because he was writing under difficult conditions and only begining to formulate his thoughts on ‘religionless Christianity’ his writing is often fragmented, frustratingly embryonic and wed too tightly with his previous perspectives. However it feels, while reading these letters, that we are witnessing a metamorphosis taking place before our very eyes. It is as if we are glimpsing the very moment when a caterpillar begins to reconstitute itself in the process of becoming a butterfly. Yet, as we know, before the transformation was complete his life was snuffed out.

His letters are clearly marked by a serious reading of Nietzsche and can thus be seen as one of the early theological attempts to reflect on what faith looks like after ‘the death of God’. In these letters he imagines a church radically transformed, one which rethinks, at a core (ontological) level, its purpose and expression.

I am sticking my neck out here, but I believe that we are beginning to witness the development of dynamic faith collectives which Bonhoeffer would have recognised as concrete manifestations of his lonely prison thoughts (though there are fewer of these groups than one might imagine – for instance I do not include the vast swarm of neo-evangelical, crypto-evangelistic communities which so often cloud the horizon). While ikon, the group of which I am a part, is not in any way perfect I see it as a key experiment in this new movement (others include Aldea in Tuscon and The Garden in Brighton).

Anyway, here is a quote from Bonhoeffer (which I might use as the opening quote in the book I am currently working on),

“And we cannot be honest unless we recognise that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [even if there were no God]. And this is just what we do recognise – before God! God himself compels us to recognise it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering”.

I would recommend John Caputo’s wonderful book, The Weakness of God to see an example of how this can be fleshed out.

Brecht once famously wrote, “what is the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of founding one?” Is this not the very sentiment that we must bare in mind as we watch Batman at work? By day he is Bruce Wayne, a wealthy industrialist, by night he is Batman, combing the streets of Gotham City for criminals to beat up and people to save.

His obsession with street crime arises as a direct result of witnessing his Mother and Father murdered by a thief. His Father was a philanthropist who attempted to help Gotham City by funding social projects and local charity work. Bruce, however takes a different approach and uses his wealth to fund a vigilante war on terror.

One could say that Bruce Wayne is fundamentally different from his Father in so much as the later concentrated on helping victims of crime while the former seeks to punish the perpetrators of crime. However, it would be more accurate to say that Bruce is merely continuing his Fathers business by different, but equally flawed, means.

Both are obsessed with the subjective violent eruptions that take place on the streets of Gotham City and both seek to address them. However, in the midst of all their activities neither pay attention to their own (sublimated) violence. This violence is that which has been objectified in the very economic structures that allow corporations like Wayne Industries to make such vast sums of money in the first place. Batman is unable to see that the subjective crime he fights on a nightly basis is the direct manifestation of the objective crime he perpetrates on a daily basis. The street crime is the explosion of violence that results from greedy, large industries obsessed with the increase of abstract capital at the expense of all else. It is not enough to hate subjective explosions of crime, one must turn ones attention to the ground that feeds these expressions.

Indeed one could say that it is the very philanthropic work of his Father and the crime-fighting of Wayne that actually provide the valve that allows them both to continue in their objective violence. What better way to feel good about yourself than volunteering at a local charity in the evenings (like his Father) or beating up on street criminals in the evenings (like Wayne). Such acts (like a prayer meeting, worship service or bible study) can recharge the batteries and make us feel like our true identity is pure and good when in reality it simply takes away the guilt that would otherwise make it difficult for us to embrace our true (social) self who is expressed in the activities we engage in for the rest of the week. The philosophy here is exposed as “do something so that nothing really changes”.

Perhaps then the next film will not have Batman running around beating up drug dealers and pimps (an impotent project anyway as there is only one Batman for the whole city), but rather dissolving Wayne Industries, setting up free health care and campaigning for radically different socio-political structures.

Mind you, it might not be as fun to watch (and I am very much looking forward to seeing the new Joker in action).

Here is an interview I recently gave for “Emerging Church info”

Just thought I would write to let you know what I am up to. The Fidelity of Betrayal is now out. My third book is complete and will hopefully be hitting the bookshelves near the end of 2008 or early 2009 (title is likely to be The Orthodox Heretic) and, after a couple of very unproductive weeks, I have finally started my fourth book.

It has been my desire to create a theological triptych calling for a radical change in the way we approach faith. The first two parts being How (Not) to Speak of God and The Fidelity of Betrayal. The book that I have just begun is designed to complete it.

In addition to this I continue to be involved with the development of ikon, which has proved to be very exciting of late! I hope to write a little about our journey since How (Not)… in the new book.

This all makes me sound very productive, but in reality I have been spending a lot of time in coffee shops, watching Columbo and The Prisoner or enjoying the sun.

Promise a more interesting post next time!