Did bonhoeffer get it right?

1/5/2019

Dikkon Eberhart

I have a question for you. Remember Christmas? This post’s question for you is prompted by a discussion that came up at our house just before Christmas and that is based on two considerations.

One consideration is related to the way that early Christians experienced the anniversary of Jesus’ birth during their own time. The second consideration is not about what you might suppose. It is NOT about how differently we today encounter the anniversary of Jesus’ birth.

Of course there’s a difference between then and now. After two millennia, how could there not be a difference? But my question today is not to explore that difference.

In order to tell you what the second consideration is, I need to describe how this discussion arose in the first place.

My wife Channa and I host a weekly dinner and Bible study at our house on Thursday evenings, dinner being provided on a rotational basis among our group. We are eleven Christian men and women of approximately the same age and family status.

Our evening’s discussion usually begins by reviewing the sermon of the previous Sunday. However, on the Thursday before Christmas we suggested each person—who cared to do so—might bring along a Christmas-related essay or poem or song, and we would focus our discussion around those.

Searching for my own contribution, I found a short passage from a book of Advent readings by Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. I’ll provide the gist of Bonhoeffer’s passage below and then articulate the second consideration that powered my question for the group and engendered our discussion.

Here’s Bonhoeffer’s quote--

When the old Christendom spoke of the coming again of the Lord Jesus, it always thought first of all of a great day of judgment. And as un-Christmas-like as this idea may appear to us, it comes from early Christianity and must be taken with utter seriousness. …. The coming of God is truly not only a joyous message, but is, first, frightful news for anyone with a conscience. …. God comes in the midst of evil, in the midst of death, and judges the evil within us and in the world. And in judging it, he loves us, he purifies us, he sanctifies us, he comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy. (Emphasis mine.)

So here’s what I asked our group, related to the two considerations.

The first. Bonhoeffer articulates what I believe are correct cultural and theological conditions concerning believers and their encounter with the birth anniversary of Jesus during the early church—their encounter is one of fright and judgment. Not—in the modern sense—very Christmas-like.

The second. Note that Bonhoeffer is speaking to us, to his contemporary audience. He reminds us—again correctly—that God’s love for us purifies and sanctifies us despite the evil of the world. But my question arises from what Bonhoeffer says next, which is bolded above.

Is it possible that God’s sanctifying grace and love makes us happy…as only children can be happy?

I acknowledge that children have the capacity in their innocence to experience total and unalloyed happiness. However, I do not believe that we adults have such a capacity, due to our mature acquaintance with doubt, misery, and sin.

Further, I believe that our limitation may remain with us even after God’s loving gift to us of purification and sanctification.

Yes, we are saved—thank the Lord!—but we are still aware that once we were not saved, that we are guilty of past failings (though God has mercifully un-remembered them), and that we retain our inherent evil inclination.

Does God’s sanctifying grace make us happy? Yes. But at a level at which anyone who has children and grandchildren has seen them attain, and which Bonhoeffer states is only available to them?

I don’t think so.

On the whole, the rest of the group did think so. I’m glad that I was in the minority—that fact testifies happily for the happiness of the others!

What do you think?

Let me know, if you care to….

7 Comments

floyd samons link

1/5/2019 06:45:36 pm

I happen to agree with you... and Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. To reach the age of accountability or understanding takes knowing the world is fallen and the revelation that we are inherently sinful.

It's difficult to be childlike happy knowing that at our core we are not good. The measure of good is God and none of us match up. Grateful, relieved, thankful, yes, but dumb and happy no.

In addition to that I think that, like Paul, once we reach that age of understanding and know the miraculous gift of God and His Son's sacrifice for us, we carry a burden for the lost.

Carrying that burden is rewarding when we see others come to know Christ... but all the souls that don't?

How can we be childlike happy when we know so many will suffer for eternity for not using their gift of free will to choose eternity with our Father?

No, childlike happy is for eternity, once we finally live in perfection as God desires.

This life of knowing God is good! But as our Father laments the lost so do we.

Dikkon

1/5/2019 09:00:58 pm

Thank you, Floyd, for your thoughts...and particularly for articulating the burden that we saved ones feel for those who are lost. I didn't think of that during our discussion. Yours is a useful contribution, my friend--as it always is, when it comes from you.

Betty Draper link

1/5/2019 06:59:07 pm

Since my little brush with a life threatening illness I think more about heaven. Not death but heaven, it does not seem so far away to me anymore.

My husband told our children at Christmas as we all shared our yucks and yeas from 2018 he has become more aware he and I are on the dying end of life. Maybe that makes some unhappy but there is a spiritual happiness that only God can give when one lives truth.

So, I guess I think we can have happiness like a child even when we are mature. But the foundation of that happiness must be build on trust in His promises. If that trust is on anything earthly, it will crumble when trouble comes. He has never made any of His promise crumble and that gives me a mature happiness, a peace that passes all understanding.

Guess I better quite. Your question was a good one, a thought provoking one. So , I would agree with you brother. I am happy that I am saved, heading for a heavenly home where sin is put to death. Amen and Amen.

1/5/2019 09:19:35 pm

Hi Betty,

Your husband's comment about your present stage of life resonates with me right now because my wife and I (at 72 and 70) are beginning to realize that old age is not just a diminution of powers, as I think it is perceived by most of our society who are younger than we are, but it is a different segment of life all together. It has its own distinct rationale and its own--what can be invigorating--challenges to be mastered, just as we all mastered various challenges in our 30s and 40s. And we're trying to rise to that distinct challenge.

My mother died when she was 80, when my dad was 90. I remember Dad telling me one time when he was probably about 85 or so (by that time they would have been married for about 45 years) that there were no more questions to be answered between the two of them, after all this time. The only question left, he said, was which of them would die first.

I remember having two reactions. One, it seemed comforting to me that all their questions had been answered after all that time together, particularly since my wife and I were still trying to answer many questions that remained open. Two, on the other hand, I wanted--for them--still there to be some urgent questions to be answered, in life, for their minds and energies to be galvanized.

But I hadn't, in my 40s, understood how fundamentally different life is when you are as old as they were then.

Perhaps Channa and I are beginning to conceive of some of that difference now.

Blessing to you and to him!

Bill Hunter

1/7/2019 10:09:15 am

I think what Bonhoeffer is saying is "We are happy as children are happy".

1/8/2019 05:34:22 pm

Hi Bill--

My contention focuses on Bonhoeffer's word "only." It implies--to me anyway--perfect happiness for them and therefore also for us. And I don't believe that perfect happiness is among our gifts, as adult, experienced, sinful creatures, even with the joy of salvation to keep us afloat.

I'm aware that I might be wrong about this...and, on the whole, the others disagreed with me, so probably I am!

Thanks for your comment.

Sally Haskett

2/5/2019 06:44:10 am

I stumbled upon your article about the Holy Spirit today through a Christian site I subscribe to. I had never heard of you or your father before. Maybe that's accountable to my sheltered Midwest upbringing. But I'm delighted I did.
Now, on to this discussion. I tend to agree with your stance on the question.
When I first came to know Christ in my twenties, because of an abusive childhood, marriage, and all that went with that, I had such joy at discovering I was loved by God. But as life went forward and many challenges came, I lost a lot of that joy. Some 42 years have passed now.
But I do at times experience childlike joy when I enter into the joy of watching one of my 11 grandchildren experience something for the first time.....like chasing after a bubble, or being tickled, or hugging my leg, looking up at me and saying how much they love me.
These, to, me, are glimpses of pure joy that is yet to come when I see my Father face to face. But so incomplete here.
Thanks for letting me have a say in this conversation.

Did bonhoeffer get it right?

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