[April 2000 journal entry]
There seems to be a ‘saint’ status assigned to Bonhoeffer across much of the Christian ‘religious’ sphere. The 1939-45 Bonhoeffer is either dismissed or minimized or in other ways not treated seriously (i.e., as central and radical) other than to get to his execution. His 1939-45 years are interpreted ‘religiously’. I view his 1939-45 years as the core/focus, accenting the disjunction with his pre-1939 ‘religious’ years. I think it remains unclear whether Bonhoeffer, had he survived the war, would have followed through with the ‘non-religious’ path and ideas on which he reflected in the secret prison letters. In this same line of thought, I do not share the ‘saintly’ worship/adoration of ‘Jesus’ that formed during his life, increased after his death, and led to the ‘high Christology’ of ‘religious’ traditional/orthodox (T/O) paradigm theologies.
There seems to be a ‘saint’ status assigned to Bonhoeffer across much of the Christian ‘religious’ sphere. The 1939-45 Bonhoeffer is either dismissed or minimized or in other ways not treated seriously (i.e., as central and radical) other than to get to his execution. His 1939-45 years are interpreted ‘religiously’. I view his 1939-45 years as the core/focus, accenting the disjunction with his pre-1939 ‘religious’ years. I think it remains unclear whether Bonhoeffer, had he survived the war, would have followed through with the ‘non-religious’ path and ideas on which he reflected in the secret prison letters. In this same line of thought, I do not share the ‘saintly’ worship/adoration of ‘Jesus’ that formed during his life, increased after his death, and led to the ‘high Christology’ of ‘religious’ traditional/orthodox (T/O) paradigm theologies.
