Tangible Revelation

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"The Christian religion stands or falls by belief in the divine revelation that became historically real, tangible and visible--that is, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear--and thus in its very essence contains questions that we ask ourselves today about the relationship between history and spirit, or, applied to the Bible, between letter and spirit, scripture and revelation, man's word and God's."

Stands or falls on spirit made historical ... and its immediate application to letter vs. spirit. He goes on to say:

"All attempted pneumatological interpretation is prayer, is supplication to the Holy Spirit which alone, as it pleases, gives it the hearing and understanding without which the most highly intellectual exegesis is nothing. Textual understanding and interpretation, preaching, that is, the realization of God, is contained in the prayer: Veni creator spiritus [come creator spirit]."

He also wrote that textual criticism left nothing behind but "rubble and fragments."

Ok so it seems rather technical and clunky, but its because it comes from a paper. This is from Bonhoeffer's third college paper to his systematics professor, when he was 19. At 18 he turned in a 57 page essay to Adolf Harnack on "the Judaic element in the first letter of St. Clement" which he got very good marks. His second paper was on Luther's final words based on his letter correspondence which he also did good on as well.

For me one of the reasons this stands out is that very early in Bonhoeffer there is a strong stand on seeing the Bible not as "historical sources, but agents of revelation, not just specimens of writing, but sacred canon." This paper caused a fight with his professor. So much so that the professor spoke with Karl, his father referring to Bonhoeffer's rebellion. The matter was resolved when Bonhoeffer spoke with Seeburg (systematics professor) and told him his plan to write his dissertation on a subject Seeburg was interested in: the church as the historical embodiment of the spirit.

I am reading through Bethge's 900 page biography and imagine I will be blogging more. I am pretty blown away that Bonhoeffer was writing like this at 18-19, that anyone could be so well studied at that age.

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