Dietrich Bonhoeffer paid special attention to the question of Christ's presence. In the last 1/3 or so of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer talks about the Saints, the visible community, and the Sacraments in light of the discussion in the first part of the book ("cheap" and "costly" grace, the Sermon on the Mount, etc). The angle Bonhoeffer uses has to do with Christ's presence. Bonhoeffer asks what seems to be a popular question in his time and ours: why and how should the life and work of a late Ancient Jewish man impact people today? In this part of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer is looking for theological and philosophical ways to say that Jesus Christ, and his personal call to radical discipleship, are still present to Christians today.
Bonhoeffer finds a way to articulate Christ's presence through Protestant theological ideas of Word and Sacrament. He says:
"The preaching of the Church and the administration of the sacraments is the place where Jesus Christ is present. If you would hear the call of Jesus you need no personal revelation: all you have to do is to hear the sermon and receive the sacrament."In a chapter entitled "The Body of Christ," Bonhoeffer gives Christ's body - both Jesus' flesh and the body of believers with Jesus as their head - a central role in salvation that looks theologically very similar to that which we see with Aquinas. Bonhoeffer says that Protestants must never play down the importance of baptism and the Lord's supper because these are communion with Christ's body, both the body of the Church (in baptism) and Jesus' flesh (in the Lord's supper).
Bonhoeffer also says that Christ is present in the church's preaching, something that I have been interested in. Karl Barth also focuses his discussion of God's presence more strongly on preaching than the sacraments (and in fact critiques Catholics and some Protestants for over-emphasizing God's presence in the sacraments to the neglect of God's presence in the preached Word). I'll write more about the connection between preaching and God's presence in Barth and Bonhoeffer soon. For now I wanted to point out the discussion of presence in Bonhoeffer, and his surprising similarity to Aquinas.
I look forward to hearing more about the parallel with Aquinas. Not sure what to make of it, but let's wait and see!
ReplyDeleteI've been hoping to write a post exploring the connection between B. and Aquinas on body and presence, but unfortunately I don't know if I have time to really look into it.
ReplyDeleteThe connection hit me as I was writing the post. The link really has to do with how Bonhoeffer and Aquinas both talk about the Body of Christ as participating in Christ and thereby playing a key role in how Christ is present to us.
I'm more confident talking about Aquinas than Bonhoeffer, so any B. experts can certainly take me to task here, but I'd wager that they're both just receiving scripture and late ancient Christian theology (i.e. "the Fathers") here.
It seems like it was modern theology (in liberal and conservative versions) that had philosophical difficulties with the idea of participation, difficulties which theologians who thought tradition was important, like Bonhoeffer or Barth, didn't share.