God’s Church-Community: The Ecclesiology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Description

David Emerton provides a provocative but rigorous account of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology – an account which establishes, permanently, the pneumatological and eschatological interests of a theologian who is often considered to be christomonist, and identifies the critical significance of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesial thought for contemporary ecclesiological discourse. The book argues that Bonhoeffer understands the church as a pneumatological and eschatological community in space and time, and that his ecclesial thought is thus built on pneumatological and apocalyptically eschatological foundations which give rise to a unique methodological approach to ecclesiological description – an approach that enables Bonhoeffer to proffer a genuinely theological ecclesiological account in which both divine and human agency are held together through an account of God the Holy Spirit: both God’s own being and the being of the church’s socio-historical or human empirical form are spoken of appropriately with due concern for appropriate dogmatic ordering and proportionality in ecclesiological description. Critically, the book considers Bonhoeffer’s pneumatological and eschatological ‘both/and’ ecclesiological methodology therapeutic to an endemic ‘either/or’ problematic present in contemporary approaches to ecclesiological discourse: that of attending in an account of the church either to the socio-historical or human empirical church-community ‘ethnographically’, or to the life of God ‘dogmatically’; and to each (problematically) at the expense of the other. The book suggests, therefore, that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesial thought breaks open a necessary ‘third way’ in ecclesiological description between the Scylla of ‘ethnographic’ ecclesiology and the Charybdis of ‘dogmatic’ ecclesiology, and thereby establishes a programmatic theological grammar for ecclesiology per se. Cover Half title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1 Ecclesiological topography I. Introduction II. The problematic articulated III. The problematic explicated i. ‘Hard’ dogmatic ecclesiology ii. ‘Hard’ ethnographic ecclesiology iii. ‘Soft’ ethnographic ecclesiology iv. ‘Soft’ dogmatic ecclesiology IV. Conclusion 2 The theological foundations of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiological methodology I. Introduction II. Theological foundations: Eschatology III. Theological foundations: Pneumatology IV. Theological foundations: Theology against sociology? V. Conclusion 3 God’s church-community: Bonhoeffer’s ‘both/and’ ecclesiological methodology I. Introduction II. Socio-historical human community: A threefold typology i. Gemeinschaft , Gesellschaft and Herrschaftsverband a. Bonhoeffer’s theological ontology of human personhood III. God’s church-community: A sociological structure sui generis i. The eschatological tension of God’s church-community ii. The pneumatological actualization of God’s church-community IV. Conclusion 4 The pneumatological space of God’s church-community I. Introduction II. Pentecost: The event of the foundation of God’s church-community III. God’s church-community: Confessional aspects i. The ‘space’ of proclamation ii. The ‘space’ of spiritual care IV. Conclusion 5 The eschatological time of God’s church-community I. Introduction II. The last things and things before the last i. The way of radicalism or compromise? ii. The patience of God: A motif for eschatological time III. Preparing the way: Ecclesiological implications IV. Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Index