Bonhoeffer (2): Only in Extremity

Had some long flights this weekend, which enabled me to plow through most of the rest of Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer biography. Such a great book. God is changing my life through this book. By seeing how Bonhoeffer surrendered his life more and more to the purpose Christ, I am challenged to surrender my life more deeply to Christ.

Bonhoeffer was brilliant and received the best theological education someone in his shoes could have expected. From an early age you can tell he is a profound thinker as well as a profound Christian.  But his theology seems to me to alter over the course of his life as the call of God grips him more and more tightly. It changes in its feel – it becomes more practical, more intelligible, more humble, more actionable.  Think of transitioning from reading Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity (though not to that scale). Its probably also related to the ministry opportunities he pursued (and excelled at), such as his working with inner city teens in Berlin, his teaching theology to children in Barcelona, his preaching to tiny and relatively simple congregations at numerous points throughout his life, or his serving at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. People from his privileged status and educational background generally didn’t do things like that. And you can’t do those kinds of things without it affecting your theology and how you communicate.

In January 1935 he wrote a letter to his eldest brother, who was not a Christian, about his decision to return to Germany to lead an illegal seminary. At one point in the letter he says:

When I first started in theology, my idea of it was quite different – rather more academic, probably. Now it has turned into something else altogether. But I do believe that at last I am on the right track, for the first time in my life. I often feel quite happy about it (259-260).

I, like Bonhoeffer, have been blessed with a good theological and ministerial heritage in my family. But what is all that to me if I go my own way, if I do not seek the straight and narrow road like Bonhoeffer did, if I do not completely submit all that I am and all that I have to purpose of Christ for my life? The Lord is helping me to see, not just by faith but in my actual desires, that academic pursuits or ministry successes are not the ultimate.  Rather, the ultimate is knowing Christ, and being more fully possessed by Him.  In some ways it feels like life is opening up in new ways as I seek to surrender more deeply.

At the bottom of the page I wrote:

Only in extremity, in utter abjection, in the complete surrender of the will to God and His service – there is certainty, there is joy, there is life.

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Bonhoeffer (1): On the Bible

My current reading project for the spring is Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietreich Bonhoeffer. Eric came and spoke at our church a few weeks ago.  He’s a great speaker (very funny), and a talented writer, too. I’ve benefited a lot from the book already (I’m not quite half-way done), and I can tell its only going to get more interesting as the struggle in the German church in the 1930′s continues to heat up.

My primary interest is in Bonhoeffer’s theology. I find it fascinating to encounter theologians who are outside my own tradition of American evangelicalism because they are often exploring questions that I have not considered before. In the past this has been part of my interest with Barth, and Bonhoeffer makes for an interesting comparison with Barth, because of their friendship, and because of Barth’s influence on Bonhoeffer (which in my opinion is quite significant), and because they share some similar theological emphases.  They also make for an interesting comparison because of some of their personal and vocational and theological differences, and because of how vastly differently they have been viewed by English-speaking evangelicals.  I think it would be interesting to do a study project comparing their different receptions among English-speaking evangelicals and analyzing the underlying reasons.

My impression thus far from the book is that Bonhoeffer was, above all, an ecclesiologist.  The question posed in his doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin seems to me to be the question of his life, namely, what is the church? Out of his struggle with that question comes all that he did, from his wonderful efforts to make theology intelligible to children to his courageous opposition to Hitler and anti-semitism.  His vision of the church as a sanctified community was simply incompatible with non-action during the events in Germany in the 1930′s.

More on that again sometime.  For now I want to reproduce my favorite extended quote thus far.  It comes from a letter from Bonhoeffer to his more theologically liberal brother-in-law and concerns Bonhoeffer’s view of Scripture. I love this quote because of how its rugged, simple, and yet profound emphasis on the Bible as the place we encounter God and discover the answers to our deepest questions:

First of all I will confess quite simply – I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us alon[e] with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible . . . .

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament . . . .

And I would like to tell you now quite personally: since I have learnt to read the Bible in this way – and this has not been for so very long – it becomes every day more wonderful to me. I read it in the morning and the evening, often during the day as well, and every day I consider a text which I have chosen for the whole week, and try to sink deeply into it, so as really to hear what it is saying. I know that without this I could not live properly any longer (136-7).

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Worship: what you were made for

We just finished a series on worship among the youth called “worship: what you were made for.”  We talked about having both joy and reverence in worship, how worship is all of life, how to uproot idols that compete for our worship, how worship moves us out into mission, what our corporate worship should look like, and other things.  We finished it off with a night of worship called “Holy Ground,” drawing from Exodus 3 where Moses takes off his sandals when at the burning bush because the ground there is holy.  It was a great series and I learned a lot from it.  I want to keep growing in my personal worship.  It truly is what we were made for, and there is so much more of it that I want to experience.

In the course of my preparation and study, I ran across this old paper I wrote, which I found helpful by way of reminder as to what worship is.

(1) First, worship is a part of the fabric of the creature-Creator relationship. It is the natural and proper response of creatures to the Creator, because He is Creator and Lord. Worship exists because God exists, and implicit in God’s very nature is that he is worthy of worship – because of His majestic glory, His fierce holiness, his indescribable beauty, His enduring faithfulness, His untraceable wisdom, His mighty power, His redeeming love, His weight and worth and wonder as God. Worship is meaningless without an understanding of who God is, and who we are in relation to Him as His creatures. As His creatures, God has made us with a capacity and longing for worship, and that longing cannot be quenched. As Augustine said, “you have made us for yourself – and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Worship is hard-wired into our DNA such that the question is not whether human beings worship, but what human beings worship. This is why idolatry is such a prominent theme in biblical theology – the essence of sin is turning from worshiping God to worshiping idols. According to the Bible, God alone is worthy of worship (e.g., Exodus, 20:1-6). No other object in the creaturely realm is worthy of worship – it is a posture appropriate only from creature to Creator.

To summarize: worship is simply what creatures do (at least morally conscious creatures like humans and angels). To be a created being is to be a being created to worship, because worship is a part of the fabric of the creature-Creator relationship.

2) Second, worship is responsive. By this I mean that worship is in response to God’s covenantal and historical actions, the climax of which is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the sins of his people. Worship does not originate in human initiative, but is made possible by what God has done (redemption) and is in response to what God has said (revelation). As such, it is not free flowing and up to human arrangement, but must be on God’s terms and in accordance with his guidelines. This is an emphasis that David Peterson highlights well in his definition of worship as “an engagement with (God) on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible.” Peterson also draws attention to this point in his treatment of Romans 12:1, an important passage regarding the Bible’s teaching on worship. Peterson highlights the word “therefore” in 12:1 and argues that Paul’s understanding of worship draws from all that he has written in the previous chapters of his letter about human rebellion and the free grace of the gospel. Paul only gets to worship after 11 chapters of gospel explanation!

This emphasis on worship as tied down to God’s revelation is especially important to note because it flies in the face of many of the errors of our cultural setting, in which people often assume that our preferences are the most important aspect to our worship gatherings. D.A. Carson helpfully reminds us in Worship By the Book, “we should not begin by asking whether or not we enjoy ‘worship,’ but by asking, ‘what is it that God expects of us?’ That will frame our response. To ask this question is also the take the first step in reformation. It demands self-examination, for we soon discover where we do not live up to what God expects.”

3) Third, worship in the new covenant era is “all of life.” When traced along the lines of biblical theology, it becomes evident that worship has undergone important developments from the old covenant era to the new covenant era. This is the great insight of David Peterson’s Engaging with God. Under the terms of the old covenant, worship was associated with the cultic institutions that God had set up: the tabernacle/temple, the sacrificial system, the Levitical priesthood, and so on. Of course, worship was not exclusively tied down to the cult (private worship was still a valid category), and worship was still required to be sincere, from the heart (hence the prophetical judgments on hypocritical abuse of the cultic system). What is fascinating, as Carson points out, is that the New Testament teaches that these cultic institutions are abrogated, but still uses cultic language to describe Christian worship. So our bodies as said to be “sacrifices” in Romans 12:1. Christ is referred to as our “Passover lamb” in I Corinthians 5:7. Paul’s missionary work is considered “priestly service” in Romans 15. The church is God’s temple in I Corinthians 3:16, and Jesus’ body is the temple in John 2. Christ is our high priest in Hebrews, and the church is a kingdom of priests in I Peter 2:9 and Revelation 1:6. And so on.

What emerges is that worship under the new covenant era has been expanded into every sphere of life. Of course, this does not mean that the Israelites were expected to only devote part of their lives to God, or that new covenant Christians should not worship corporately. Nevertheless, the difference of emphasis and language reflects a priority change. As Moule puts it, “if there is no longer any ‘cultus’ in the ancient sense, it is equally true, conversely that all of life has become ‘cultus’ in a new sense.” This point fits nicely with Peterson’s observation that edification, not worship, is the dominant New Testament category of thought for corporate gatherings.

4) Fourth, worship is transformative. In worship, the worshiper is conformed to the object he/she is worshiping. Psalm 115:8: “those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”  This follows from the point that we tend to emulate what we most admire, and fits with my first point above: if worship is what we were made for, it is fitting that it should have the greatest power for moral formation.

5) Corporate worship is for God, believers, and unbelievers. In other words, it is for praise, edification, and witness. One often hears the sentiment, “worship is for God, not us.” While it is true that worship should always be grounded in God’s word and unto God’s glory, this statement unnecessarily polarizes the human and divine concerns in corporate worship, and fails to account for the New Testament focus on edification in the corporate gathering. Even more common is the idea that the corporate worship gathering is for believers only, and then from the gathering believers go out into the world to conduct evangelism and outreach events. Paul, however, shows different concerns in I Cor. 14:23-25, for part of his argument against public un-translated tongues is that it will damage the Corinthian witness to outsiders and unbelievers (whereas prophesy will disclose the secrets of their hearts, causing them to perceive God’s presence). Interestingly, his stress both for edification of believers and witness to outsiders ultimately hinges on the same point: intelligibility. In Paul’s world of pastoral concerns, evangelism and edification are not always neatly separable, for what edifies believers (in this case intelligibility) often also constitutes a powerful witness to unbelievers.

6) Worship embraces the whole human being: it is for both the head and heart, both the intellect and the affections; it consists in both adoration and action; and it is motivated by both God’s transcendence and immanence. Many worship traditions tend to focus one of these at the expense of the other, but worship that is fully in line with biblical priorities will engage the “whole man” and seek to cultivate both reverence and joy.

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Gregory of Nyssa and Intellectual Humility

I’ve been trying to branch out and read more theological journals, so this morning for my day off I read an interesting article by Stephen Pardue called “Intellectual Humility in Gregory of Nyssa’s CH II” in the latest edition of The International Journal of Systematic Theology (13.1). In the article Pardue examines Gregory’s emphasis on our need for intellectual humility in light of the smallness of our knowledge and the immensity of God. He compares this conception of intellectual humility to that advocated by some recent interpreters of Kant, who draw on Kant’s distinction between things-in-themselves and things-as-we-perceive-them to argue for an understanding of epistemic humility that is at least superficially similar to that of Gregory. But Pardue emphasizes the differences. Amidst other differences between Kantian and Gregorian humility, such as their postures toward Scripture and their theological context, I was especially struck by Pardue’s insight that for Gregory, intellectual humility is actually the road by which we come to truly know God. For Kant, epistemic limitation is strictly negative and limiting – it is a dead end, an intellectual cul-de-sac. For Gregory, it is a bridge to deeper and truer knowledge of God. Our recognition of how little we know is the very path by which we come to know more.

Such a truth can be stated dialectically: by seeing our blindness, we begin to see. By discerning God’s supreme distance, we can discern His nearness also. For precisely because God is so distant, He is able also to be near; precisely because He is so immense, He can become small. As with so many other aspects of Christian theology, an apparent death is the key to new life.

Pardue closes his article:

Thus, in Gregory, we find a vision of intellectual humility that is impressively balanced: it functions as a restraint on finite and corrupt humans, but also works as a goad toward real knowledge of God; it is based on realism about the quality of knowledge we can gain about the world, but nevertheless encourages practitioners to embrace this limitation and find respite in the gracious knowledge we have received. This balance is mirrored in the Christ, who at once consoles human intellectual with true knowledge of divine infinity and also chastens our persistent intellectual idolatry. In the face of lthe incarnation, Gregory has demonstrated, intellectual humility is the only appropriate response – and the only avenue of progress.

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