Bonhoeffers ecclesiology
.PP
Every day I check my electronic mail for a commentary
on Bonhoeffer's work, but of late I have been disappointed,
and I ask again whether our apparent inability to speak
to one another reflects the fact that we are a very
disparate group.
.PP
For the past month or so I have been reading and meditating
on Bonhoeffer's Sanctorum Communio. I have several explanantions
for my particular interest in Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology. Most
important is my perplexity at my own relationship to the church;
just as important to me is my belief that just as theology
is an indispensable prerequisite for understanding the human
spirit and soul, i.e. for psychology, so ecclesiology as the
theory of sacred community is the foundation of understanding
secular community; anf the individual's making for himself
a home in the secular world, oikeiosis, is quite analogous
to his finding his home in the sacred community.
I found Bonhoeffer's doctoral thesis stimulating and
suggestive; but it did not provide me with the answers
that I sought, and it left me, in the end, only with an
even greater perplexity.
.PP
Bonhoeffer's exposition, as has been stated here before,
eschews empirical and historical considerations. It relies
on scholastic inferences and on what Bonhoeffer calls
"Offenbarung", revelation
.PP
Bonhoeffer's statement, to the effect that it
might be efficacious to rely on the study of the church
as a point of beginning (for the study of religion)
as opposed to beginning with the study of deity
strikes me as being significant both of the seriousness
of his purpose and of the difficulty of his enterprise.
.PP
For it seems to me much easier to speculate and theorize
about an invisible deity, than to come to terms with
the church as the manifestation of the divine in history.
.PP
Bonhoeffer's concern with ecclesiology reflects his emphasis
on the concreteness and actuality of the Christian experience;
and this in contradistinction to apparently self-sufficient
schemes of the idealist and the mystic, who are preoccupied
with the inventions of their own minds.
.PP
Bonhoeffer's concern with ecclesiology does not, however
imply that we should find in his works an algorithmic
exposition of what the church is and means. It would be
unrealistic and naive to expect such a solution; the only
compelling conclusion is a negative one, namely that the
incarnation of the divine which the church constitutes 
remains for us conceptually (intellectually) a dilemma,
and practically, an impossibility.
.PP
I hope it is not presumptuous of me to observe that
Bonhoeffer wrestled with this dilemma not entirely 
was only partially successful, he received the highest
grade, his family was surely proud of him, a remarkable
grasp of the sociologic and philosophical literature of
his day.
.PP
But the insufficiencies are all too apparent. "Revelation
as the source of certainty is problematic. I do not find answers
to "my" questions...