From Bonhoeffer’s Bio:
The essential freedom of the church is not a gift of the world to the church, but the freedom of the Word of God to gain a hearing….But where thanks for insititutional freedom is rendered through sacrificing the freedom of preaching, the church is in chains, even if it believes itself to be free
from No Rusty Swords, p. 117 quoted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 660
When people criticize those concerned about the war in Iraq, and call them “America bashers”, it is usually accomanied by the refrain “You should instead be thankful that you live in such a country where you have the freedom to disagree”. Sort of circular reasoning. You shouldn’t criticize since you should you be tahnkful that you have the right to do so, impying that you shouldn’t do what you have the right to do? Okay…….But Bonhoeffers’s concern here is with what that does to the proclamation of the Word. God IS the God of history, whose work SHALL be done, and whose salvation WILL be proclaimed and whose ends WILL be accomplished. Jesus announced this (the latter is more “sifting” from Gerhard Lohfink’s Does God Need the Church?)
It’s been great. Good Old Testament/Torah theology stuff in the first part. Haven’t read that much good Pentateuch/Torah stuff since seminary. The best section is still to come (chapter on “The Characteristic Signs of the Church”) Right now, I’m still 40 pages shy of inishing “Jesus and the Twelve”, which followed “The Characteristic Signs of Israel”. I fully expect to be posting on this this weekend, as I have been somewhat “pumped” by what has been written here.
How is that Lohfink book, by the way?