[August 2000 journal entry]
I plan to think in a more penetrating way about Bonhoeffer’s observation in his prison correspondence addressed to Eberhard Bethge that he had become more at ease speaking of ‘God’ with ‘non-religious’ than with ‘religious’ individuals (see the 30 April 1944 prison letter). What was the nature of the ‘God’ language he thought was credible with ‘non-religious’ individuals? How does this observation square with his proposition later in his prison correspondence with Bethge that “God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion” ( see 8 June 1944 and 16 July 1944 prison letters)? Was his ‘God’ language with ‘non-religious’ individuals less vulnerable to idolatrous use?
I plan to think in a more penetrating way about Bonhoeffer’s observation in his prison correspondence addressed to Eberhard Bethge that he had become more at ease speaking of ‘God’ with ‘non-religious’ than with ‘religious’ individuals (see the 30 April 1944 prison letter). What was the nature of the ‘God’ language he thought was credible with ‘non-religious’ individuals? How does this observation square with his proposition later in his prison correspondence with Bethge that “God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion” ( see 8 June 1944 and 16 July 1944 prison letters)? Was his ‘God’ language with ‘non-religious’ individuals less vulnerable to idolatrous use?
