As If God Is Not Given: Bonhoeffer on Religionless Christianity

Another one of my favorites will be making an appearance in Atheism for Lent this year: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Near the end of his life Bonhoeffer famously wrote a series of letters from his prison cell that hinted at a radical form of faith which he called “Religionless Christianity.” Depending on who you talk to, these fragments are either claimed to be compatible with his earlier work, or they signal a shift into very different waters (I’m personally pursuaded by the latter perspective).

There is so much in these letters to savor, and they’ve had a deep impact on my own thinking as I attempt to put into practice a religionless vision of faith via my Transformance Art initiatives.

You can get a compilation of the most important letters here, or sign up for my course. In this post I just want to offer a brief reflection on the following comment,

We cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur (as if God is not given). And this is just what we do recognize – before God! God himself compels us to recognize it… The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.

In this pregnant passage Bonhoeffer argues that to live as though God is not given to us and instead give ourselves fully to the world, is the way in which we affirm the God of Christianity. Bonhoeffer called the God of religion a type of Deus ex Machina that is brought into the world when there is a problem, a fear or a puzzle to solve. It appeals only to our weakness and ignorance. Instead, Bonhoeffer wrote of a faith that puts such an idea aside to embrace life and work for real transformation. It is this approach which causes him to write,

I often ask myself why a ‘Christian instinct’ often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don’t in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, ‘in brotherhood’.

Bonhoeffer never got to expand on his prison thoughts, but others have taken them as the soil in which a radically different understanding of Christianity has taken root.

To sign up for Atheism for Lent, click here.