Is the Church Dead? Bonhoeffer’s Theology-of-the-Cross and the Future of Ecumenical Ecclesiology

• Authors: Michael Fletcher

Abstracts

EN

Is the church dead? Dietrich Bonhoeffer seriously considered this question in Gland, Switzerland on August 29, 1932, and the author of this paper leads us to reflect on this question today. Early in his speech Bonhoeffer declared that, “the unbelieving world says: the church is dead.” This would lead one to believe the opposite corollary, namely, that it is the believing world which says “the church is not dead.” However, this is not what Bonhoeffer said. Rather, he also stated that it is the unbelieving world which says “the church is not dead.” How can it be that it is precisely the unbelieving world which both states that “the church is dead” as well as that “the church is not dead”? The “obvious” synthesis to this dialectic is that the believing world is allowed to say that the life of the church is hidden in her death-though this is merely one outworking of the true synthesis: that there is one reality, that is, the Christ-reality. In order to truly understand Bonhoeffer’s synthesis in his ecumenical context, the author uses Luther’s theology-of-the-cross as a hermeneutical key to examine two theological paradoxes from the “Address in Gland”: life is hidden in death, and peace is hidden in struggle. He concludes the article in the precisely the same way as Bonhoeffer did in Gland, by pointing out the implications of this “death” and “struggle” for the future of ecumenical ecclesiology.

• Publisher: Ewangelikalna Wyższa Szkoła Teologiczna we Wrocławiu
• Journal: Theologica Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 11 Dietrich Bonhoeffer na 500 lat Reformacji
• Pages: 29-45

Dates

published

2016

Contributors

author

Michael Fletcher

• KU Leuven

Identifiers

Biblioteka Nauki

2054913