“The guarantee of the validity of the proclamation of forgiveness of sins is the sacrament. Here the general saying ‘Your sins are forgiven’ is bound up with water, wine and bread; here it comes to its own particular form of concreteness, which is only understood as the concrete here and now of the word of God by those who hear it in faith. What the sacrament is for the preaching of the Gospel, the knowledge of firm reality is for the preaching of the command. Reality is the sacrament of command.” This is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in the time of Nazism has stated that the Church speaks God’s command authoritatively; speaks it concretely; and speaks it in final anticipation of God’s forgiveness.
The social reality is a call for a command of the Church to act. He considered himself a member of a Confessing Church, which was founded following the vision and instigation of Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor, as opposition to the state sponsored “German church” subservient to the Nazi ideology. His was the method of direct communication. His emphasis was heavily ecclesiological and his Christianity was a “Christianity for this world”, that is, the secularized and war stricken world. Bonhoeffer did not identify the main problem of the “German Church” Christianity, at least initially, in the loss of individuality but, rather, in an excessive emphasis on individuality: either in the form of ethical decision making of the individual or in the form of a psychological/mystical constitution and needs of the individual, German Liberal Protestantism of the late 19th and early 20th century had gone on the way of privatization, individualization, and moralization of faith at the expense of a liturgical Church community, Church tradition, and the overlaps of one’s authentic, Christian identity into the socio-political matters of this world. Faith had become the private matter of an individual. Only after the rise of National Socialism of A. Hitler, which mobilized and manipulated the German citizens based on the principles of racial ideology, it became necessary to re-emphasize the value of an individual – however, not as an autonomous, self-referential subject, but as a divinely constituted and endowed self, who lives with Christ. The value of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological-ethical reading of Søren Kierkegaard lies within his visible Body as a liturgical and diaconal community of believers and through Christ for the other.
Bonhoeffer refers to Kierkegaard as a representative of “true, Christian thinking” – that is, an authentic Christian tradition which is personified in historical figures. Reasoning must not become a substitute for the simple, yet radical obedience to Christ’s call: “Follow me!” It is the concrete existence of the concrete individual in which the reality of Christ comes to a decision. Kierkegaard’s conclusions provide inspiring starting points for a more complex scrutiny of theological anthropology, the concept of faith, and ethical responsibility with the ambition to outline possible theological-ethical implications for the present. Bonhoeffer’s ethical reflection, which eventually lead him to an active resistance against Hitler: “Abraham remains completely alone. He is again completely the single individual, just as he was long ago, when he left his father’s house. He receives the call as it is given. He does not try to interpret it, nor does he spiritualize it. He takes God at God’s word and is prepared to obey. Against every natural immediacy, against every ethical immediacy, against every religious immediacy, he obeys God’s word.” God shows him a better sacrifice, which is to take Isaac’s place. Abraham received Isaac back, but he has him in a different way than before. As the one who was prepared to hear and obey God’s command literally, he is permitted to have Isaac as though he did not have him. Externally everything remained the same. But the old has passed away; see, everything has become new (2 Corinthians 5.17). Everything had to go through Christ. We are here facing the question of primary and cardinal responsibility: the individual stands alone before Jesus! He cannot hide behind rules or social expectations, but must be ready to assume his own full responsibility.
To be in Christ means to be and to live unreservedly for this world, while the source of one’s identity and the driving force of one’s ethical, including pro-social and pro-environmental decision making, is Christ, present in the message of the Church, within a sacramental, liturgical community of believers.