Moltmann on Bonhoeffer’s Approach to the Old Testament

It took him a lifetime of searching to reach that point, but in the end, while in prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer learned to read the New Testament in light of the Old, not the other way around. First in German, then auf Amerikanisch:

Bonhoeffer beginnt das Neue Testament vom Alten Testament her zu lesen und nicht umgekehrt ... "Ich habe in den vergangenen Monaten auch viel mehr Altes Testament als Neues Testament gelesen. Nur wenn man die Unaussprechlichkeit des Namens Gottes kennt, darf man auch einmal den Namen Jesus Christus aussprechen; nur wenn man das Leben und die Erde so liebt, dass mit ihr alles verloren und zu Ende zu sein scheint, darf man an die Auferstehung der Toten und an eine neue Welt glauben; nur wenn man das Gesetz Gottes über sich gelten lässt, darf man wohl auch einmal von der Gnade sprechen..." "Wir leben im Vorletzten und glauben an das Letzte", aber man darf das letzte Wort nicht vor dem vorletzten Wort sprechen.

Jürgen Moltmann, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die politische Theologie. Eine persönliche Würdigung,” Orientierung 2 (2006) 14-18; 16. My translation:

Bonhoeffer begins to read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament rather than the other way around . . . “I have in the last months read a lot more Old Testament than New Testament. Only if one comes face to face with the ineffability of God’s name, is one allowed to go on and pronounce the name of Jesus Christ; only if one loves life and this earth so much that everything seems to be lost and come to nothing without them, is one allowed to believe in the resurrection of the dead and a new heaven and earth; only if one allows the law of God to be one’s judge, is one allowed to speak of grace . . .” “We live in penultimacy and believe in what is ultimate,” but one is not allowed to speak the final word before speaking the penultimate word.

The vast majority of Christians have yet to attain to Bonhoeffer’s hard-won insight.

HT: The Swiss Catholic Biblical and Pastoral Website (go here)

Comments

[Rick Wadholm Jr]

Thanks for sharing this John...I've posted a blog entry linking here. It seems Bonhoeffer came by much of his theology and pastoral reflections the "hard way".

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Rick. I find it disheartening when 21st century Christians think they can ignore the witness of Bonhoeffer.

[David Reimer]

Great quote! Vielen dank.

Bad title?

[JohnFH]

Great catch, David. You must be a scholar or something. The correct and full title (against my source, which I did not verify) is:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Theologie: Eine persönliche Würdigung – Vor 100 Jahren, am 4. Februar 1906, in Breslau geboren – Eine akademische Blitzkarriere – Das Schicksalsjahr 1933 – Persönliche Existenz als theologische Existenz – Kritik an der kulturprotestantischen Staatstheologie – Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Deutschen Christen – Option für eine betont kirchliche Theologie – Eine prophetische Theologie – Der Weg in den Widerstand – Gefängnis und Hinrichtung – Echte Weltlichkeit des christlichen Glaubens – Lektüre des Neuen Testamentes vom Alten Testament her – Treue zur Erde – Die Bitte um das Kommen des Reiches Gottes – Wider religiöse Weltverneinung – Die Entdeckung des Themas der Bewahrung der Schöpfung – Die mündige Welt – Frei und verantwortlich leben – «Nur der leidende Gott kann helfen» – Elemente einer Kreuzestheologie nach 1945 – Bonhoeffer als persönlicher Lehrer der Theologie – Das unabgegoltene Erbe.
Jürgen Moltmann, Tübingen

The topics listed cover the bases I was expected to know once upon a time for oral examination at the Waldensian Theological Seminary in Rome. Or rather, those I and my best friend at the time, now professor of Systematic Theology, talked about in endless conversation as we walked to chapel in the early morn every weekday. Chapel was at 7:45 or something like that. Rome is still asleep at that hour. We lived in an apartment with other students on one of Rome's famous hills. The walk down every morning to the Seminary near the river Tiber was full of theological conversation.

[Tim-Christian]

Vielen Dank! Sehr interssante Zitate - werde meine Lektüre des Alten Testamentes intensivieren ... ;-)

[slaveofone]

This quote is incomprehensible to me in a variety of ways. I say this a person who spends most of his day reading and studying the HB/OT--NOT the NT. How does reading the HB/OT make one come face-to-face with the “ineffability” of God’s name? There is nothing less ineffable than God’s name in the Hebrew scriptures…unless one is speaking about the unknown pronunciation and meaning of the Tetragramaton or those places where we are dealing with divine absence. Morever, how does that have anything to do with Yeshua—let alone his name? If we say that Yeshua was acting according to a worldview, perspective, and culture defined by the HB/OT, I can understand someone suddenly understanding something about Yeshua once they understand the world he operated within and according to. Perhaps that is what Bonhoeffer meant. His comments about the belief in the resurrection of the dead and a new heaven and a new earth seem to represent that group of people I have never understood who long for an escape from reality instead of its redemption and fulfillment. Unless one’s entire world is misery, death, destruction, and torment, why long for some other that is beyond our reach and compression (at least on this side of life)? Why not first long for and work toward a transformation of what is instead of its passing away? How can one not love the world that is? How can one hate the very life that God gave us? And then this whole “law of God” being one’s judge… Is he meaning to advocate Torah-observance? If not, then in what sense is he speaking—certainly not in the sense of the HB/OT or what the law of God meant in the NT. From the usage, I’d have to guess he was meaning divine judgment in the negative sense (like wrath or punishment). But why on earth would he first or primarily equate the law of God (whatever he means by that) with wrath and punishment? Does he have no comprehension of Torah being hedged about by both curses and blessings? Furthermore, what does he mean by “grace” and why would reading the HB/OT make “grace” (of all things) stick out to him? What world of darkness, blindness, and ignorance was he living in to make that quote “insightful”?

[JohnFH]

Hi slaveofone,

Well, let me take a stab at explanation.

"Die Unaussprechlichkeit des Namens Gottes" "the ineffability of God's name" is metalepsis I think for the emphasis on divine transcendence in passages as various as Exodus 3, Exodus 33 and 34, and Isaiah 55 over against divine immanence in Jesus. Bonhoeffer is apparently depending on an interpretation of the non-pronounce-ability of the divine name in terms of holiness and transcendence.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that Bonhoeffer experienced in prison something of God's absence and concealment (Isa 8:17; 45:15) and unknowability (Job 28) in light of which God's incarnational presence (epiphany, theophany, central to the NT) is no longer taken for granted and in fact takes on sharper features by way of contrast.

Re: eschatology, utopia, dystopia. The responsible thing to do is to pursue justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God, even if the world is going to hell in a handbasket - thus Isa 56 and 58, but both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are more realistic than you seem to be, in the sense that none of those things are thought of as sufficient to usher in the new heavens and new earth which people of high moral sentiment long for with all their hearts: the in-breaking of that reality will be God's work, or it will not happen at all. See Isa 65-66; the visions of the book of Daniel.

You are right to point out that Torah is hedged about by both curses and blessings, but, ganz gesehen, the history of Israel as told in the Hebrew Bible is an account of the experience of its curses. Galut is the archetypal (Gen 3) and existential (note the way Gen-2Kgs ends) reality that results from flouting the divine command.

But I agree: Bonhoeffer missed, with typically Lutheran blindness (contrast Barth), the gospel (i.e. Good News) Torah represents, in the keeping of which is life and life abundant (Pss 19, 119; etc).

It may be helpful to draw a parallel between a pious Lutheran like Bonhoeffer rediscovering the Weltlichkeit "worldliness" of biblical teaching in both the Old and New Testaments while in prison and in advance of execution for an assassination plot against Hitler, and the uprising of Jews, not all of whom were secularized, some of them, if I'm not mistaken, were Torah-observant, in the Warsaw ghetto of about the same time.

"Next year, in Jerusalem" was never meant to suggest that in the meantime, wait around and do nothing. It was no different for Paul, who expected that (this is after Jesus), "a Deliverer will come from Zion" and all creation pants for the "manifestation of the sons of God."

A very interesting topic, eh? I deal with it at some length here:

"The Summing Up of History in 2 Baruch," Jewish Quarterly Review 89 (1998) 45-79