Suplemental reading

I've included a document that holds all the relevant material for those who would like to do further research, as well as a link to buying the book. In addition to this, I’ve enclosed a link to a five-week course I taught on Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity. The course is available to everyone signed up to the Blaze level of my Patreon.

reflection

I’ve begun this weeks reflections with some of Bonhoeffer’s final thoughts because of the way that this work on ‘Religionless Christianity’ takes seriously, and builds upon, Nietzsche’s understanding of the Death of God. Bonhoeffer’s final reflections on theology are fragmentary in nature, and only hint at the profoundly innovative direction his work might have taken, had he not been executed. 

However, while his prison writings only offer glimpses of the way that his theology was developing (or changing), they do contain some very incisive and devastating critiques of religion and the traditional understanding of God. In addition to this, Bonhoeffer’s talent as a writer is also in full evidence, as he communicates profound ideas with precision, clarity and passion.

There is some debate as to whether Bonhoeffer’s prison writings signal a break with his earlier work, or whether they are a continuation of it. However, setting aside that discussion for a moment, there is no doubt that the prison writings proved profoundly significant for a new breed of subversive thinkers, thinkers who were key in the development of Radical Theology. 

As you read these words of Bonhoeffer, you will be able to see that he is attempting to discern the shape of a new Reformation in Christianity, one that would embrace and sublimate the critiques we witnessed in the previous week. A Reformation that would utterly shed the religious dimension of faith that the great ‘Masters of Suspicion’ had so powerfully critiqued.

Religionless Christianity

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his resistance to Nazi dictatorship. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison. Later he was transferred to a Nazi concentration camp. After being associated with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried and executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing.

Shortly before his death, Bonhoeffer started writing on what he called "Religionless Christianity". These writings became influential in the development of a post-theistic theology grounded in the work of liberation. The following are some excerpts.