Bonhoeffer and Bowen Theory: A Theological Anthropology of the Collective-Person and its Implications for Spiritual Formation

Accounts of spiritual formation which depend overmuch on individualism are likely distorted by that individualism, and this article argues that an account of collective-personhood can provide a necessary corrective to this anthropological distortion. The article begins by diagnosing the problem of individualism in formation, utilizing Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, and critiquing several common practices of spiritual formation. Following this, we consider Bonhoeffer’s theological vision for the collective-person from his first book, Sanctorum Communio. Next, we examine Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory to help us envision, from a social scientific perspective, how such a collective-personhood might look. The article concludes with a provisional model for spiritual formation of collective-persons.

Bonhoeffer and Ecumenism

Bonhoeffer’s ecumenism was central and decisive to both his theology and activity from his later student days to his imprisonment. It was founded upon his ecclesiology as basically set out in Sanctorum Communio. The church being ‘Christ existing as community’ was applied by him to the fellowship of Christians across national and confessional boundaries and especially in its calling to embody and proclaim peace in the wold. In the Church Struggle he vigorously promoted the claim of the Confessing Church as the authentic Evangelical Church of Germany and argued for the ecumenical movement, for the sake of its own integrity and renewal, to accept that claim. His recruitment into the German resistance owed much to his having so many ecumenical contacts in the allied and neutral countries, but it also enabled him to pursue still more deeply his ecumenical interests, including relations with the Roman Catholic Church.

Christ Existing as Community

How can theologians recognize the church as a historical and human community, while still holding that it has been established by Christ and is a work of the Spirit? How can a theological account of the church draw insights and concepts from the social sciences, without Christian commitments and claims about the church being undermined or displaced? In 1927, the 21-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer defended his licentiate dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. This remains his most neglected and misunderstood work. Christ Existing as Community thus retrieves and analyses Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory and attempt at ecclesiology. Against standard readings and criticisms of this work, Mawson demonstrates that it contains a rich and nuanced approach to the church, one which displays many of Bonhoeffer’s key influences—especially Luther, Hegel, Troeltsch, and Barth—while being distinctive in its own right. In particular, Mawson argues that Sanctorum Communio’s theology is built around a complex dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation. On this basis, he contends that Bonhoeffer’s dissertation has ongoing significance for work in theology and Christian ethics.

Conclusion

The Conclusion makes a case for the ongoing importance of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology by positioning his approach in Sanctorum Communio with respect to more recent approaches to ecclesiology, namely, those of Stanley Hauerwas, John Webster, John Milbank, and the ecclesiology and ethnography movement. The Conclusion argues that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology includes and holds together insights and emphases that these more recent scholars have all (each in their own way) placed in opposition to one another. On this basis Sanctorum Communio makes a compelling contribution to ecclesiology that has ongoing significance.

The Concrete Community

This chapter, ‘The Concrete Community’, turns to and examines Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the empirical or existing church. For Bonhoeffer, the church is established by God only as an existing community or empirical entity. In developing and deepening this insight, Bonhoeffer again draws upon his earlier engagement with social theory. In particular, the chapter indicates how he relies upon the social-philosophical concept of objective spirit. This concept allows him to attend to the church in its concrete forms and functions (i.e. preaching and the sacraments). Moreover, this concept allows him to reflect on what kind of social formation the existing church is. Accordingly, the chapter examines what is at stake with Bonhoeffer’s claim in Sanctorum Communio that the church presents a distinct sociological type.

Introduction

The Introduction demonstrates why a book focusing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s early ecclesiology is necessary at this time. In a context of widespread and increasing interest in Bonhoeffer’s theology, only limited scholarly attention has been given to Bonhoeffer’s first dissertation. Most scholars have deemed this work to be theologically problematic, in ways that Bonhoeffer later goes on to correct. Those few scholars who have been more positive about Sanctorum Communio have tended to focus on only parts of it, while neglecting its structure and integrity as a whole. The Introduction, therefore situates this book as a systematic study of Bonhoeffer’s early ecclesiology which both addresses this neglect and responds to these ways it has been misread. At the end of the Introduction, a detailed overview of the monograph and its chapters is provided.

The Christian Concept of Person

This chapter examines the role of Bonhoeffer’s Christian concept of person in Sanctorum Communio. Many of Bonhoeffer’s readers identify this concept as the cornerstone and foundation of Sanctorum Communio, and sometimes of Bonhoeffer’s theology more broadly. Against this view, this chapter argues that this concept of the person plays a much more delimited (albeit still crucial) role in Sanctorum Communio’s argument. Rather than providing a foundation, this concept clarifies at the outset how God encounters and judges the individual human being through a concrete other following the fall. With this concept, Bonhoeffer is clarifying the real situation or standing of the human being before God and others.

Christ, Spirit, and Church

This chapter, ‘Christ, Spirit, and Church’, examines what is entailed in Bonhoeffer’s claim that the church is a reality of revelation. Bonhoeffer provides a rich and nuanced account of the church as established in Christ and actualized by the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, he also insists that the church is a reality of revelation only as a human community and social entity. It is thus argued that Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory is integral to sustaining this dual nature of the church. This is demonstrated with reference to two of Bonhoeffer’s core theological formulations in his ecclesiology: ‘vicarious representative action’ (Stellvertretung) and ‘Christ existing as church-community’ (Christus als Gemeinde existierend). Drawing on this exposition of these core formulations, the chapter reviews and contests Ernst Feil’s charge that Sanctorum Communio lacks a robust Christology.

Beyond Troeltsch and Barth

In this chapter, situates Bonhoeffer’s dissertation in relation to broader tensions between liberal and dialectical theology in early twentieth-century Germany, as exemplified by the work of Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth. While situating Bonhoeffer in this way is relatively uncontroversial, this chapter indicates some specific ways in which Bonhoeffer is moving beyond Troeltsch and Barth with Sanctorum Communio. In particular, it is argued that he moves beyond them by turning to the church. Against Troeltsch and the early Barth, Bonhoeffer sets forth an explicitly ecclesial approach to theology, an account of how theology is to proceed from and attend to the existing church as simultaneously a fully human community and a reality of God’s revelation.