Thursday, May 12, 2005 AD I'm Not Getting This Rick Saenz has written a post on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's views on community. Some of Bonhoeffer's reasoning seems to me to fall really flat. If brotherhood in Christ is the foundation of community, are we not to desire also to have walls and a roof? If a natural family has the bond of blood, is it not also to desire the maturity of its members? Is not a husband and father to have a vision for his family -- for their sanctification and for their service to God? Of course the vision -- whether in a family or in a Christian community -- can be wrong-headed and lead to disaster, but is that cause to condemn the very notion of vision? Say the foundation of brotherhood is laid. How are we to decide the floor plan, the number of stories, the architectural style etc. without a vision? Why can't those who have the vision have truly submitted it to Christ? Why can't the vision be truly prompted by and truly submitted to the Holy Spirit rather than being set up in opposition to Him? Why can't the vision be congruent with brotherhood -- why the assumption that it will be antithetical? Why must exclusion of the weak and poor necessarily occur if their inclusion is part of the vision? There's a whiff of "Doctrine divides, so ditch it" about Bonhoeffer's conclusions. There's a whiff of egalitarianism, of "authotity (the source of vision) corrupts, therefore let's not have any."
Maybe I'm just misreading or misinterpreting what Bonhoeffer is saying, but my reading, at least, isn't very favorable. Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 5/12/2005 12:15:00 AM
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