Customer Reviews

Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 1)

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I discovered Bonhoeffer after a short remark by my pastor and suddenly a new world was opened to me.

It was great. I loved his style and this edition with all of the notes and notes on the notes and notes on the editions etc.

The book discusses the importance of the church community and how it is essential for christians and as the author put, "A christian who stays away from the assembly is a contradiction in terms."

I chose to read this book first because i had wanted to read "The Cost of Discipleship" but i wanted to go in order as this handsome series publishes them. I am halfway through Act and Being and hope soon that i can start the book that i set out to read in the first place. However, i know i can say now that i am not disapointed in the journey.

The work that went into producing this edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's works is nearly as impressive as Bonhoeffer's work in writing it. This is the fourth edition I have purchased (also Discipleship, Ethics, and Life Together), and the editor's forewords are always thorough, intelligent, and well-written. The copious use of footnotes rather than endnotes - there is nearly as much footnote text as Bonhoeffer text on many of the pages - is perhaps my favorite touch. These are definitive editions for the English-speaking world.
This is Bonhoeffer's PhD dissertation and was written in 1930, so readers of his later works might be surprised that while he ended up a disciple, he started out a theologian. Even so I wish it were required reading for all people looking to blossom in their Christianity, as one cannot read his writings without being shaken up out of old habits and strengthened to do good in the church and in the world.

Recently I decided to make my way through Bonhoeffer's collected works in order. Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer's doctoral dissertation (completed in 1927; first published in 1930), is volume 1. In this, his first published work, Bonhoeffer lays the rich and complex foundation for much (if not all) of his future work.

Here he artfully outlines and weaves together the Christian concepts of person, community, church, brokenness, and love. We see glimpses in Sanctorum (written for the academy) of what would be further developed in works such as Life Together (written for the church): "The Spirit is only in the church-community, and the church-community is only in the Spirit" (144). And, "`To be in Christ' is synonymous with `to be in the church-community'" (140).

This book, along with the other 15 volumes of Bonhoeffer's works, is meticulously arranged and annotated by its editors. This addition is a helpful tool for serious students of the 20th century martyr, but a potential distraction (and overkill) for those new to his work. I would not recommend this book to novice readers, nor as an entry point into Bonhoeffer's works. Yet, as the editor notes in his introduction, "Understanding the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer requires a thorough understanding of Sanctorum Communio" (1).

To the newcomer: Beware. To the eager and experienced: Enjoy.

This book is my first attempt at reading Bonhoeffer. I had heard of him for a number of years, and recently viewed a PBS special on his life that piqued my curiousity. I decided to delve into his works and figured what better place to start than the beginning. Fortunately reading through Bonhoeffer's works in an orderly fashion is possible due to the publication of "Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works", the sixteen volume series in English. According to the web site of Fortress Press, the publisher of the series, it is "The definitive Englishtranslation of the Critical Edition. A comprehensive and thoroughly annotated sixteen-volume resource for the study of Bonhoeffer in thewider frame of twentieth-century thought and history." I am very impressed by the format, the footnotes, and the supplemental information, and would highly recommend that if you read Bonhoeffer you read from these editions.

Sanctorum Communio is the published revision of his Doctoral thesis. As a result the work is quite scholarly and spends most of its pages in conversation with other scholars and scholarly works. My comprehension of the book as a whole would have been greatly enhanced had I had more familiarity with the works of philosophers and theologians such as Luther, Barth, and Kant, as well as many others. The first four of five chapters are spent primarily laying a philosophical and socialogical setting for Bonhoeffer's view of the church and the Church. I couldn't tell you a single thing that I learned in the first four chapters, except that my knowledge of the works of the likes of those listed above is severely lacking! If I were to read this book again, I would at least familiarize myself with some basic understanding of the frameworks that Bonhoffer references. There are some interesting statements in these chapters however, including the following one which could apply today as easily as 70+ years ago:

"Vierkandt's concept of the invisible church expresses what the church has often become today, or rather what churches consider emancipated: religious theaters and lecture halls. The congregation is an audience, viewers who feel pleasantly edified by the music and the sermon. Each individual is happy to see many others who feel edified by the same spiritual food. And of course this feeling of shared joy is invisible... Yet shared emotion and knowledge of it, even a sense of belonging based upon this, are not enough to make a 'community'." - p.94.

The fifth chapter, which is approximately half the book, is where things start to get at least mildly interesting. In this chapter, appropriately titled "Santctorum Communio", Bonhoeffer rises from the theoretical intellectual constructs of the earlier chapters and delves into the reality of the church. At this point it becomes a historical document, written in a specific historical, geographical setting - the German Church in the early 20th Century. Excommunication and church taxes, for example, have never been part of my Church experience, but are assumed and referenced as part of the actuality of the church. From this perspective it is interesting, and there are also aspects that have given me some thoughts on a theological perspective of the church in a helpful way. However, there are many arguments he makes that I just don't agree with, including the following:

"Does this mean then that the Bible becomes the "word" only through church community? That is indeed true, namely as the church-community is created only through the word and sustained by it. The question as to what was first, the word or the church-community, is meaningless because the word inspired by the Spirit exists only where human beings hear it, so that the church-community makes the word the word, as the word constitutes the church-community as church. The Bible is the word only in the church-community, that is within the sanctorum communio." - p. 232.

In my mind, the Bible is the "word" regardless. Perhaps I am not sophisticated enough to understand his meaning. On a positive note, reading this book has inspired me to delve more deeply into both philosophy and church history, especially Luther and Protestant reformation - any recommendations? I still have to decide if I will continue reading Bonhoeffer; the next book in the series is Act and Being. Perhaps I will take some time and see if the compulsion strikes. I would also like to read a good modern study on the basis and purpose of the church as well as the Church.

In the "Editor's Afterword to the German Edition", Joachim Von Soosten sums it up nicely when he states, in translation:

"Comparing Bonhoeffer's dissertation with his later writings discloses the tendency of Sanctorum Communio toward over-systematization. This makes certain parts of it very difficult to understand, but later this sytematizing clearly decreases and the content of Bonhoeffer's arguments comes to the fore. In the later writings Bonhoeffer's language becomes more simple, dense, and concise; with the power of succint expressions Bonhoeffer skillfully carries his thoughts into the center of a given theological debate. in retrospect, he himself assessed his academic writings rather critically."

In conclusion, despite being an impressive work, I would NOT recommend this book unless you already have a level of familiarity with Bonhoeffer's writings and/or you are interested philiosophy and have a foundation in the referenced material.

Sanctorum Communio

"The Key to understanding the theology of Dietriech Bonhoeffer" - his PhD dissertation

INTRODUCTION:
Many Christians (Protestants, Catholics, and I hope Orthodox believers as well) have read and recommended to others such Bonhoeffer classics as "Cost of Discipleship" or "Life Together." Even outside the Christian Church, the world has taken notice of "Letters and Papers from Prison" (being the first book listed by [...] DVD titled "Great literary classics) and "Ethics" is sometimes studied in college philosophy courses.

"Life Together" was my first book and it impacted my world completely (read my "Life Together" review). But who was this Christian, where was his source of inspiration coming from ( the Holy Spirit) ? I learned many details about his life in the two DVD's that I could find ("Bonhoeffer" 2003, and "Nailed on a Twisted Cross). I still did not understand his theology ... even though I could feel his Lutheran influence and the contact he made with American negro Baptists in writings (I was raised in a God-fearing Baptist family and now am member of a godly lutheran evangelical church).

The best way to introduce "Sanctorum Communion" is to quote the Editor's Introduction to the English Edition: "Understanding the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer requires a thorough understanding of Sanctorum Communio, his doctoral dissertation and first published work. Here are found central ideas that inform all his writings ....In this formative book Bonhoeffer articulates the concept of 'person' in ethical relation to the 'other', ... the reciprocal relationship of person and community, ...the exercise by individual persons of responsibilities for human communities, ... social relations as analogies of divine-human relations, and the encounter of transcendence in human sociality

AUTHOR:
The 5th of 7 children intellectual German turn of the 20th century family, theologian, a pastor, a renewed child of God, a pacifist, a collaborator, A martyr for Christ at the hands of the Nazis. Today he is remembered, as an inspiration for Christians and non-Christians - a testament to the power of the Gospel lived out in every stage and trial of life. Up there with C.S. Lewis, he seems to be one of the most widely read and known modern writer. For me, he is my favorite theologian (a pragmatist at heart). One whose love to pastor the local parish and lead youth groups did hinder him from contemplatively writing about his struggles and God's "costly Grace" (to use one of his expressions).

CONTENT:

Still in the process of reading. ... Thank you for your patience.

CONCLUSION:
The only way I can conclude is again, to quite from the Editor's Introduction to the English Edition:

"All these theological ideas characteristics of Bonhoeffer [the ones listed in the Introduction] are invovled in his Christocentric theology of the Christian community, the sanctorum communio. Ecclesiology is set in the midst of a <<theology of sociality.>> [ref. to Clifford Green's "Bonhoeffer: a Theology of Sociality"]

In his preface Bonhoeffer states that the more he has investigated "the significance of the sociological category for theology, the more clearly has emerged "the social intentions of all the basic Christian concepts." 'Person', 'primal state', 'sin', and 'revelation' can be fully comprehended only in reference to sociality. This is both a far reaching programmatic statement for Bonhoeffer's theology and a specific reference to the structure of this book." (page 1)

I will end with my lutheran pastor's last words of the liturgy - "Go forth and serve the Lord!" (in Word and Deed).