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Studia Theologica - Nordic

Journal of Theology
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The Concept of Religion and

Christian Doctrine
a
Kirsten Busch Nielsen
a
Faculty of Theology , University of Copenhagen ,
Købmagergade 44-46, Copenhagen K, DK-1150, Denmark
Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Kirsten Busch Nielsen (2003) The Concept of Religion and
Christian Doctrine, Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology, 57:1, 4-19, DOI:
10.1080/00393380310000235

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 Studia Theologica 57 (2003), pp. 4±19

The Concept of Religion and Christian

Doctrine
The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Reconsidered

Kirsten Busch Nielsen

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Even if religion is not in itself a concept intrinsic to Christian doctrine, dogmatics

need to develop its understanding of religion. Interpretating both early and late
writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906±45), the article takes us to the different
understandings of religion to be found in Bonhoeffer. It focuses on the relation
between religion and (the dogmatic notion of) sin in Bonhoeffer's thinking. In
this very relation one ®nds the motives behind Bonhoeffer's wellknown criticism
of religion. But surprisingly Bonhoeffer's hamartiological approach to religion
also leads him to a positive understanding of religion which has escaped the
attention of most Bonhoeffer scholarship. This positive understanding of religion
is ®nally developed further by the article which shows how Bonhoeffer also
connects religion and (the dogmatic notion of) man's God-likeness.

When theology embarks upon the task of addressing religion, it con-

fronts a rich array of thematic and methodological approaches which
range from the philosophy, sociology and psychology of religion to
theories of religious education. Dogmatics too, understood as the
sustained, critical examination of the doctrinal content of the Christian
faith belongs on this list. Even if religion is not in itself a concept intrinsic
to Christian doctrine, this latter theological discipline needs a concept of
religion and a detailed interpretation of the relation between Christian
faith and religion. In recent evangelical theology Friedrich Schleier-
macher's and Karl Barth's interpretations of religion represent impor-
tant milestones towards this end, just as their modes of getting to grips
with the concept of religion represent key moments in their theological
re¯ection. In what follows I shall examine just one strand in the weave of
issues raised by this concept when viewed through the lens of the
Christian faith. In pursuing this aim, I shall draw my material from the
work of the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906±45).
DOI 10.1080/00393380310000235  2003 Taylor & Francis
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 5

In approaching Bonhoeffer's concept of religion, we shall begin by

taking a glance at his theology in the perspective of the history of its
reception. The ground thus prepared, we shall proceed to investigate
how Bonhoeffer addresses the concept of religion, noting how he places
it in the context of a theological interpretation, linking it with the notions
of sin and forgiveness. Finally, I shall relate the issue of the doctrinal
foundation of the concept of religion to Bonhoeffer's understanding of
man's God-likeness. But I begin at the other end ± with the history of the
reception of Bonhoeffer's thought.
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Bonhoeffer between Critique of Religion and Spirituality

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known to most people for one or other of two
things. He is often described as a theologian who liberatingly con-
troverted traditional religious and metaphysical interpretations in an
attempt to establish a reading of Christianity where discernment of the
kernel of Christian faith ± faith in Christ as Lord ± is not obstructed by
the intrusion of false and inadequate world pictures. Putting it like that
captures a popular understanding of the `later' Bonhoeffer, i.e. those
parts of Bonhoeffer's corpus composed during his imprisonment in
Berlin for his part in the resistance (1943±45). `Wir gehen einer voÈllig
religionslosen Zeit entgegen; die Menschen koÈnnen einfach, so wie sie
nun einmal sind, nicht mehr religioÈs sein', Bonhoeffer says and adds the
theological observation that `(d)ie ReligioÈsitaÈt des Menschen weist ihn in
seiner Not an die Macht Gottes in der Welt, Gott ist der deus ex machina.
Die Bibel weist den Menschen an die Ohnmacht und das Leiden Gottes;
nur der leidende Gott kann helfen'.1
The other image that enjoys currency has Bonhoeffer as the ®gure
who, quite against the grain of his times, remained wedded to an old
Christian spirituality and religious culture. Here the Bonhoeffer of the
`middle' period is in focus, the author of Nachfolge, Gebetbuch der Bibel
and Gemeinsames Leben of the 1930s. Consider, for instance, a quotation
such as the following from Gemeinsames Leben in which the fervent tone
and edifying purpose seem quite at odds with the style of the prison
writings: `Wir wollen im Folgenden einige Weisungen und Regeln
betrachten, die uns die Heilige Schrift fuÈr das gemeinsame Leben unter
dem Wort gibt'.2 This would seem to be a far cry from the critical
challenge to religion and religiosity characteristic of the prison writings.
For the spirituality with which Gemeinsames Leben is concerned, must
itself be a form of religion, or must at least manifest itself in acts that fall
into the category of religious practice (prayer, worship, praise and
ritual).
 6 K. B. Nielsen

It is not dif®cult to understand how two so very different images of

Bonhoeffer can emerge. Not only does Bonhoeffer himself contribute to
the dichotomy, but in theology too during the decades that saw the early
reception of his writings ± i.e. the 50s and 60s ± it was natural either, with
the dialectical-theological and political-theological discourses, to see
Bonhoeffer as the critic of religion or to place the accent on the seemingly
fervently spiritual and conservative Bonhoeffer. Few today would frame
the issue of Christian faith and religion as an either-or. That Christianity
is (at least, inter alia) religion is no longer in dispute. The return of
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religion both to the public arena and to social science studies, to

sociological and theological re¯ection is moreover one of the develop-
ments that separates Bonhoeffer's era and its immediate aftermath from
the present. Another is the religious pluralism which Christianity in the
West today has to consider and which did not, to the same extent, form
part of Bonhoeffer's horizon. Bonhoeffer's prediction of the disappear-
ance of religion has been only partly vindicated. Once it is acknow-
ledged that it is ill-advised merely to play Christianity and religion off
against each other, it becomes clear that Bonhoeffer's thinking should
not be dichotomized either. In Bonhoeffer too, Christianity and religion
must at some level interrelate. In fact, the very quotations with which I
started out suggest that they do.
To what he says in 1944 about the disappearance of religion
Bonhoeffer raises the further question of what `eine Kirche, eine
Gemeinde, eine Predigt, eine Liturgie, ein christliches Leben in einer
religionslosen Welt (bedeutet)?' (1998: 405). Bonhoeffer does not suggest
that these religious acts have no meaning. Were that so, there would be
no point to the question. Religion does indeed have some role to play,
even in a Christianity that yields a place to a critique of religion. And if
we trace the threads of pious religiosity in the Bonhoeffer of the 1930s,
the connections between religion, Christianity and his critique of
religion are plain to see. Gemeinsames Leben is about the Christian
community. Precisely at the turning point of the book, namely in a
chapter on the signi®cance of confession and communion for the
community of believers, where one might expect the presentation of
spirituality also to culminate, Bonhoeffer makes it clear that if anything
does, just such a pious community harbours within itself a susceptibility
to hypocrisy. Religious devotion is only a hair's breadth away from
scrupulous and self-righteous religious hypocrisy (cp. 1987: 93).
Spirituality and self-righteousness, indeed, spirituality and sin, are
close cousins.
Is this to say, then, that the later Bonhoeffer, the critic of religion is, au
fond, as spiritual as the Bonhoeffer of the 1930s deep down is critical of
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 7

religion? I would contend that it is. The picture of the world-orientated

and religion-critiquing Bonhoeffer ought not to be played off against
that of his religiously exhortative and fervently pious counterpart. The
same applies at the level of principles. Christian theology has dual sets
of obligations to discharge ± both vis-aÁ-vis critiques of religion and vis-aÁ-
vis religion itself. In its dealings with either the concept of religion itself
proves pivotal. This concept mediates between a non-religious Chris-
tianity such as that encountered in Bonhoeffer's last writings and a
Christianity as `religious' as that which comes to expression in Nachfolge,
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Gebetbuch der Bibel and Gemeinsames Leben.

Religion and Sin

As the quotations suggest, there are powerful theological motives at
work in Bonhoeffer's critique of religion. Its thrust is more than a
historical diagnosis resulting in the prediction that religion will one day
disappear: the critique of religion dovetails with a theological thesis
concerning religion. When Bonhoeffer begins expanding upon the
character of the religion that he deems destined to fade away he draws
on concepts of metaphysics, partiality and individualism.3 Whether his
analysis is historically and sociologically well grounded is not a question
that we shall address here. The long and the short of the matter is that
Bonhoeffer regards metaphysics, particularity and individualism as
virtual re¯ections of sin. Each of them represents a `transgression'
against Christian faith. Metaphysics, particularity and individualism
represent aloofness from the world, a disdain for faith's intrinsic
demand for wholeness, and the renunciation of community. Bonhoeffer
is pursuing a theological agenda that involves the adoption of a critical
stance vis-aÁ-vis religion. His grafting together of religion and sin means
that Bonhoeffer's thinking about religion must be sought ®rst and
foremost in those strata of his thought that relate to the theology of sin;
this means, in turn, that religion quali®es as a phenomenon of pertinent
interest to dogmatics.4
The coupling of religion and sin has signi®cant implications for the
con®guration of religion. Sin becomes sin precisely at the point where
the individual's relationship to God is in play and it is with God that the
sinner is at odds. Sin is above all an offence against God. Strictly
speaking, then, sin is a religious concept and, correspondingly, religion
must, on its own account, ®gure in the business of human relating to
God. This determination of religion follows from Bonhoeffer's grafting
together of religion and sin and, unremarkable as that coupling might
 8 K. B. Nielsen

seem, his pairing of these concepts has important repercussions for his
thought.
Further it is important to note that what might be called the
Reformation's accentuated sense of sin is to be found undiluted in
Bonhoeffer's writings. Because sin is an offence against God ± in Christ ±
the gravity and power of sin is of in®nite weight and there is a sense in
which this power of sin is channelled into religion. Not simply in terms
of religion's qualifying as a negative concept, but also through its being a
`potent' concept in the sense of religion becoming something given and
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inescapable. To religion accrues the power, then, not to be a mere

contingency ± not to be something whose existence is a matter of chance.
Precisely because it is inherent in man's relationship to God, religion is a
given. Pervading Bonhoeffer's theology of sin is the notion that religion
is ineradicable. Godlessness, in one sense, is an impossibility.5

Religion and Reconciliation

`Religion and sin' leads me on to the concepts with which I ought
arguably to have begun ± `religion and forgiveness' or `religion and
reconciliation'. Just as the power of sin transfers to religion, so does
forgiveness of sin.
That God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself (cp. 2 Cor.
5,18f.) is a starting assumption of Bonhoeffer's theology. Bonhoeffer
brings out its implications, inter alia, by insisting that there are not `zwei
Wirklichkeiten, sondern nur eine Wirklichkeit, und das ist die in Christus
offenbargewordene Gotteswirklichkeit in der Weltwirklichkeit. ± Die
Wirklichkeit Christi fasst die Wirklichkeit der Welt in sich'.6 In
consequence, Bonhoeffer goes on, `gibt es keine Gottlosigkeit, keinen
Hass, keine SuÈnde mehr, die Gott nicht auf sich selbst genommen,
erlitten und abgebuÈsst haÈtte. Nun gibt es keine Wirklichkeit, keine Welt
mehr, die nicht mit Gott versoÈhnt und in Frieden waÈre'.
The extent to which the theological perspective informing Bon-
hoeffer's writings proceeds from forgiveness can scarcely be overstated.
The world, the human subject and sin are all seen through the lens of
reconciliation. Bonhoeffer is thus able to say that `Jesus machte nicht aus
jedem Menschen zuerst einmal einen SuÈnder. Er rief sie von ihrer SuÈnde
fort, aber nicht in ihre SuÈnde hinein' (1998: 504). Whatever the role
assigned to sin, it is sin as vanquished that is being presupposed. It is
only as vanquished that sin can be apprehended at all.
This applies in a parallel sense to religion. For if religion and sin are
closely linked religion must, on the one hand, be something determi-
nately given ± not something which can be absorbed into the historical
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 9

process. But on the other hand, the religion that is interwoven with sin is
something for-given, something that lends itself to the theological lens
precisely because it is forgiven. There are then two sides to Bonhoeffer's
trope. First, the theology of sin, in virtue of the critique of religion
inherent in it, may be said to deconstruct religion. Second, a consistent
Christological-soteriological approach leads to a second deconstruction,
namely of that very critique. It is this dual deconstruction that yields the
systematic justi®cation, according to Bonhoeffer, for religion's having an
intrinsic place in Christian theology.
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The atonement on the cross enjoins Christians to live and believe with
their attention ®xed on the world. Faith, as the letters from prison tell us,
is about suffering and watching with Christ in Gethsemane, about
participating in divine suffering in the face of a godless world and in
Christ's `being-for-others' (1998: 535 and 558). In that sense, says
Bonhoeffer, faith is religion-less. But in another sense, qua this speci®c
form of Christian existence, faith is a species of religion. For faith is
divine service. To live for Christ as Bonhoeffer describes it is divine
service, indeed the only divine service rightly understood, and
grounded once and for all in the death of Christ (Heb. 10,1±12). As
Bonhoeffer puts it in formulations that continue to prove their aptness
whenever we want to convey what it is to resist the dichotomies of
compartmentalized thinking, Christianity must place itself not at the
margins of the world, in sin, suffering and weakness, but at the very
heart of life. Putting it thus expresses the idea that the whole of life is
worship or, better, that faith itself is right praise and worship. With
Bonhoeffer concerned to emphasize the need for Christianity to unfold
at the heart of human living and not at its periphery, worship becomes
this life of faith integrally embedded in the world. Insofar as Christian
faith is concerned with the human subject's boundary experience, with
his or her coming to terms with the boundary of existence and life,
Bonhoeffer's point from ®rst to last is that this boundary must be sought
in life as lived, namely in God's Word and in the person of the
neighbour.7
Bonhoeffer reserves a place in the midst of the radical this-worldly
orientation of the Christian faith for a distinctive religious discourse and
speci®cally religious acts, thereby raising the question of the signi®cance
of worship and prayer in the religionlessness into which he believes
Western culture to be drifting ± a prospect he does not deplore. That the
substance of Christianity is Christologically determined implies reli-
gionlessness, and yet Bonhoeffer maintains that faith includes spiri-
tuality as conducted in particular places, at particular times and in
particular forms. Bonhoeffer does not translate his implicit thesis of the
 10 K. B. Nielsen

life of faith as worship into a critique of religious practices. Rather,

Bonhoeffer so understands reconciliation that spirituality, worship and
religious practice are seen as fully encompassed by it. `Nun gibt es keine
Wirklichkeit, keine Welt mehr, die nicht mit Gott versoÈhnt und in
Frieden waÈre' (1992: 70). One way of recasting this is to say that ± in the
light of the Christological-soteriological perspective ± there remains no
religious practice, expression, prayer, worship, praise or ritual not
reconciled to God and at peace.
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Religion in Bonhoeffer ± an Interim Summary

Having started out from the ways in which Bonhoeffer addresses the
concept of religion, I have already deployed this concept in several
different senses and it is time to distinguish them. First I referred to
Bonhoeffer's thesis concerning the disappearance of Christianity, a
thesis whose vindication has been no more than partial since religion
today stands as a palpable and vibrant phenomenon. Bonhoeffer held
that religion in the cultural, historical, and sociological sense was bound
to disappear from Western culture by virtue of the differentiation that he
accounted a hallmark of our contemporary societies. Differentiation,
according to Bonhoeffer, entailed not that religion would persist as just
one compartment of society among others, as one of society's `systems',
but that it would become completely redundant (cp. e.g. 1998: 532±33).
The disappearance of religion is not, for Bonhoeffer, a cause for regret.
In his view, its disappearance presents a historical chance, theologically, to
bring out particular crucial aspects of Christian faith. This brings us to
the second meaning of religion. I identi®ed Bonhoeffer's critique of religion
as essentially bound up with and construable against the backdrop of his
concept of sin, tracing the position to its source in Bonhoeffer himself.
Bonhoeffer's theology of sin locates religion in the human subject's
relationship to God and by virtue of this context religion itself becomes a
given. The relationship to God does not disappear in and through the
historical process. Moreover, Bonhoeffer assumes that the given, sin as
well as religion, becomes accessible to theological understanding only
against the background of Christology and soteriology. Sin and religion
are `available' to us only on premises delivered by forgiveness. In
Bonhoeffer's approach to theology, the conception of religion assimilates
to a concept of natural religion ± for all his explicit opposition to any
notion of a religious apriori (cp. 1998: 403). But in Bonhoeffer's theology
of sin and his Christological-soteriological understanding of religion, a
positive evaluation of religion emerges that manifests itself in the sense
of religion as a given.8
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 11

These two perspectives on religion identify it as that in which the

human subject's relationship to transcendence, to God, comes to
expression, in that the ®rst perspective concerns the expression of this
relationship in culture and society. But I have also ± in connection with
the theology of sin and the Christological-soteriological way of reason-
ing ± focused on religion's various crystallizations, religion as the
expression of spirituality articulated in prayer, worship, praise and
ritual, constituting a third denotation of the concept of religion.
Bonhoeffer sees these practices as legitimate and inevitable extensions
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of Christian theology. That spirituality occupies this place in Bonhoef-

fer's thinking is obvious and has long been recognized in Bonhoeffer
scholarship. What has not been recognized is that this dimension of
Bonhoeffer's theology is fully consonant with his treatment of the
concept of religion.
Our principal concern up to this point, then, has been to grasp
Bonhoeffer's understanding of religion as arrived at via those theolo-
gical premises that he deems correct, namely those of the Christian faith
± delivered by Christological and soteriological considerations and the
theology of sin. Even if, according to Bonhoeffer, the understanding of
sin, Christology and soteriology enjoy primacy in the determination of
theological method, when it comes to grasping the human subject in his
or her relationship to God, another level in the theological under-
standing of the human becomes operative, namely that occupied by the
conception of the creation of humanity in the image of God. What role is
there for the concept of religion at the stratum of theological anthro-
pology that accommodates the notion of God-likeness?

Religion and God-likeness

The question confronting us at this point is to what extent, if at all,
religion inheres in God-likeness. How is religion to be conceived ±
relative to God-likeness? In the text we shall now consider, namely the
lecture on Gen. 1±3 published under the title SchoÈpfung und Fall in 1933,
the concept of religion occurs as such just once.9 But it is germane to the
entire web of notions that is in play here ± religion construed as the
human subject's relation to the transcendent, to God, as embodied in
prayer, divine service and praise.
At this point I need to interpose a remark about the theological
method informing SchoÈpfung und Fall. Here too the mediatory role of
Christological soteriology is to the fore. Man's participation in God-
likeness is something enabled only through Christ. The conception of
God-likeness is, then, as much a matter of faith as is the recognition of
 12 K. B. Nielsen

sin. But even if Bonhoeffer in Gemeinsames Leben writes partly with a

`retrospective' focus as his Christological-cum-ecclesiological-cum-
eschatological and Word-of-God methodology prescribes, and partly
in an elemental, near-naõÈve and biblical-historical style, he does not see
God-likeness as something, in a historical sense, lost, a Paradise Lost, but
rather as a dimension of the human, an aspect of the human condition.10
However, according to Bonhoeffer, it is an aspect apprehended only
Christologically and eschatologically and hermeneutically, not naturally
or in the general run.
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What is it, then, about the human subject created-in-God's-likeness

that these approaches allow us to grasp? Bonhoeffer re¯ects on God-
likeness as a notion to be explicated in terms of the human subject's
relationship to God. Freedom and relationality constitute the core,
sustaining concepts here.
Qua God's creature the human subject is `das neue, freie, unbedingte
Werk Gottes', while qua God's creature he or she is `frei allein eben durch
die SchoÈpfung Gottes' (1989: 57 and 58). Bonhoeffer puts both freedom
and contingency into play. The tension between the two is dissolved by
the conception of God-likeness. Through being created in the image of
God the human subject is created as a free being: otherwise the image
would hardly be God's. At the same time, human freedom is condi-
tional: its coming-to-be is owed to God. God's freedom and freedom in
God-likeness are not one and the same.
As creator and in his freedom and love, God relates to the human
subject. The human subject displays his or her God-likeness, in his or her
freedom, by relating to God and to the co-created realm: to the
neighbour, to `the earth' (i.e. to non-human fellow-creatures, to nature
and the environment) as well as to him- or herself. Freedom is not a
substance or quality nor is it a capacity at the disposal of the human
subject. `Kein Mensch ist frei `an sich', d.h. gleichsam im luftleeren
Raum, so wie er musikalisch, klug oder blind an sich ist. Freiheit ist
keine QualitaÈt des Menschen, keine noch so tief irgendwie in ihm
aufzudeckende FaÈhigkeit, Anlage, Wesensart' (58).11 Rather, freedom is
something that occurs, or more precisely, something that comes about in
the form of relationality. Freedom is `kein Besitz, kein Vorhandenes,
GegenstaÈndliches, auch keine Form fuÈr Vorhandenes, sondern ± ± eine
Beziehung und sonst nichts' (58).
If freedom constitutes the primary articulation of God-likeness and is
to be understood as `a relation', Bonhoeffer's thesis concerning God-
likeness must accordingly encompass this relationality. And so it does.
God-likeness and relationality converge in Bonhoeffer's thinking, with
God-likeness conceived in relational terms: it is in virtue of relationality
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 13

that the human subject is a re¯ection of God. As God relates to the

human subject created in his image, so does the human subject, thus
created, relate to God ± as well as to the neighbour, the co-created realm
and to him- or herself. But just as human freedom is conditional or, as
we might say, circumscribed freedom, the conception of relationality
affords some degree of accentuation of difference. But the analogy has its
limits. Human relationality exists in virtue of and through relatedness to
God. The human subject does not possess relationality intrinsically but
receives it. He or she enjoys neither possession of self nor self-
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subsistence. What we intrinsically are, is due to our creation in God's

image.
While other theologians appeal to our upright posture, to language or
mind, as re¯ections of imago dei, Bonhoeffer points to freedom and
relationality. Thus God-likeness is subjective and intersubjective,
inherent in the individual as well as shared and social, and these
dimensions are inextricably interknit.
But what about religion: is religion inherent in the human subject
created in God's image? Indeed it is. The human subject, as we learn
from Bonhoeffer's interpretation of Gen. 1±2, is created with the capacity
for the worship and praise of God as a distinguishing mark. Here we
encounter freedom again. That God creates the human subject in his
own image means that God creates the human subject as a free being.
Freedom is the mark of God-likeness. Bonhoeffer goes on to say that `erst
dies Bild in Freiheit wuÈrde (Gott) ± ± ganz preisen, wuÈrde die Ehre seines
SchoÈpfertums ganz verkuÈndigegen' (57). The human subject, created in
God's likeness ± as a free being ± is, in other words, free to proclaim the
Creator. God-likeness is mediated through the concept of freedom, and
this freedom enables worship in the form of praise and the proclamation
of the glory of God. Through freedom the human subject qua imago dei
ful®ls the ®rst commandment. Further, through God-likeness the ®rst
commandment is ful®lled in virtue of the sheer luminosity of the human
subject's relations to the neighbour, to the created realm and to him- or
herself. The neighbour is respected as the boundary that de®nes the
human subject as the creature that he or she is.
Humanity is created with relationship-to-God as an intrinsic dimen-
sion in virtue of having been created in God's image, and this rela-
tionship to God culminates, or is forged and crystallized, in adoration or
praise, indeed in the worship of God. Even in the prelapsarian state,
then, the human subject is inherently religious. In Bonhoeffer homo imago
dei is also homo adorans. We may accordingly add this construction of the
concept of religion to those already noted.
 14 K. B. Nielsen

Sin and God-likeness: Continuity and Discontinuity

Ever since the Reformation Protestant theology has engaged in a debate

about how the polarity between humanity's created God-likeness and its
sinfulness is to be seen. Is created human nature so defaced by sin that its
God-likeness has been replaced by a kind of Satan-likeness? Or is God-
likeness preserved in the sinner, intact? In the revitalization of
Reformation theology with which Bonhoeffer's name is associated, sin
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remains a prominent theological theme, as already noted. While

emphasizing the power of sin over the sinner Bonhoeffer, charac-
teristically, goes on to argue that this power is circumscribed. The power
of sin has been vanquished. Although sin has suf®cient potency to
destroy the created God-likeness of the human subject it stops short of so
doing.
Extended quotation is needed to show how Bonhoeffer resolves the
issue of continuity or discontinuity between God-likeness and sin. With
the Fall, `verliert Adam seine GeschoÈp¯ichkeit. ± ± Damit ist seine
GeschoÈp¯ichkeit fuÈr ihn erledigt, zerstoÈrt. ± ± GeschoÈplichkeit und Fall
verhalten sich nicht so zueinander, dass der Fall ein Akt der GeschoÈp-
¯ichkeit waÈre, der die GeschoÈp¯ichkeit nicht aufzuheben, sondern
hoÈchtens zu modi®zieren oder zu deteriorisieren vermoÈchte, der Fall
vielmehr macht wirklich aus dem GeschoÈpf ± imago-dei-Menschen ± den
sicut-deus-SchoÈpfer-Menschen. ± ± es besteht auch keine MoÈglichkeit
mehr, ihn in seiner GeschoÈp¯ichkeit zu erkennen' (1989: 107±8). These
sentences show that Bonhoeffer construes the Fall as a radical rupture.
Fallen humanity forfeited its createdness and thus its God-likeness. But
however that may be, Bonhoeffer goes on to indicate that he simul-
taneously sees the relation between God-likeness and sin as one of
continuity. He claims that the destruction of the human subject's
createdness notwithstanding, God ± and God alone ± deigns to address
the human subject as his creature. Only God `koÈnnte (den Menschen) ± ±
auf seine nie aufzuhebende GeschoÈp¯ichkeit anreden, und er tut das in
Jesus Christus, im Kreuz, in der Kirche' (1989: 108). How the continuity
between the created, the fallen and the redeemed human subject is more
nearly to be understood is hinted at by Bonhoeffer in his ethical writings.
`Christus kommt nicht zu den Teufeln, sondern zu Menschen, gewiss zu
suÈndigen, verlorenen und verdammten Menschen, aber zu Menschen.
Dass die gefallene SchoÈpfung noch SchoÈpfung, dass der suÈndige Mensch
noch Mensch geblieben ist, geht ja gerade daraus hervor, dass Christus
zu ihnen kommt' (1992: 157).12 The human subject, then, retains his or
her humanity: the incarnation af®rms it.13
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 15

Religion Between God-likeness and Sin

Just as God-likeness, in Bonhoeffer's approach, with its accentuation of
contingency and rupture remains indissoluble, so too will religion
remain, insofar as religion is an ingredient in God-likeness. And religion
so understood, conceived as indissoluble, must constitute both the
relation to God as a given for the human subject and its articulation in
religious acts (prayer, worship, praise and ritual). But if religion is
immanent in the human subject in virtue of his or her God-likeness, and
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if this religiosity is enduring and so analogous to God-likeness itself,

how does the concept of religion as inherent in God-likeness ®t with the
concept of religion in Bonhoeffer examined above, and which on the one
hand concerns religion as a given in virtue of sin and forgiveness (the
given relationship to God) and on the other involves the recognition of
religious practices? How can religion be inherent both in God-likeness
and in sin?
It might be said that religion `also fell', also got caught up in the Fall.14
Right relations with God and one's neighbour implicit in God-likeness
become, in sin, misaligned relations in which the human subject ± who is
in `(der) Macht der frommen Gottlosigkeit' (1989: 124) ± is in ¯ight from
God and at odds with the neighbour. Sin means that relations to God
and one's neighbour, religion and ethics are torn apart. Even the link
between the relation to God and that to one's neighbour is skewed. Only
in the person of faith, fashioned in image of Christ who is himself the
image of God (cp. Rom. 8,29), is right relational order restored. Relations
to God and neighbour, religion and ethics recover their proper mutual
ordering. The Christian person's mode of expression is at once integral
and dual `Beten und Tun des Gerechten' (1998: 435±6). In prayer, the
quintessence of religious expression, the Christian turns towards God.
In just, ethical agency he or she turns towards the other.
And yet religion cannot simply be described as something that `also
fell'. For the relation between God-likeness and sin, between homo imago
dei and homo sicut deus (homo peccator), is precisely not a continuity merely
in the sense that the human proceeds from good to bad (for all the
unequivocalness of sin as a distortion and dislocation of the human as
Bonhoeffer sees it). Bonhoeffer insists on the rupture, destruction and
interruption that must obtain between God-likeness and sin ± and, by
the same token, between religion as praise in Paradise and as spurious
spirituality in the fallen world.
If we are, then, to say that religion `also fell' from God-likeness, from
its co-constitution of the human, to sin where it is likewise given and
crucial, it must be remembered that the very recognition that religion
 16 K. B. Nielsen

belongs to humanity ± to the sinful subject as well as to that subject

created in the image of God ± is in itself an insight of faith. Only faith in
Christ, according to Bonhoeffer, is capable of revealing both sin and
God-likeness. And continuity in religion, entailing that religion ± like
God-likeness and createdness ± will never be dissolved, is thus a
continuity it possesses not on its own account but alone in virtue of
God's Word (relationally, it might be said). The human subject's relation
to God is and will remain a relation sustained by God.
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Concluding Remarks
Why these questions and these conclusions concerning Bonhoeffer's
concept of religion? Not least because of the fresh prominence to which
the concept of religion has risen over the past 15±20 years. For Christian
doctrine too the challenge is to get to grips with religion. It is important
not to repeat the bald deprecation of religion evinced by earlier critiques,
Bonhoeffer's included, with the consequence that dogmatics both comes
to lack religion as a category in its taxonomizing of particular
phenomena and modes of expression and runs the risk of being blind
to aspects of itself. My re¯ections suggest a number of conclusions that
impinge at different levels.
By making the concept of religion an object of study, one achieves,
®rst, an appreciation of a pervasive theme in Bonhoeffer, who ± while
never having penned a comprehensive theory of religion ± wields the
concept in a manner both systematic and coherent. In light of the
systematic structure of Bonhoeffer's theology it becomes clear that, to a
greater extent than previously recognized, consistency and cohesiveness
inform his understanding of religion. The concept of religion offers a
reliable guiding thread in the reading of Bonhoeffer's theology provided
that the reader is alert to the fact that Bonhoeffer quali®es the concept in
his accounts of God-likeness, sin and faith.
Second, in what concerns the method informing his approach,
Bonhoeffer proceeds from Christological-soteriological premises. By so
doing he determines the epistemic order of theology. Together,
Christology and soteriology are ratio cognitionis for the concept of sin,
indeed, for theological anthropology as such, just as, in turn, the concept
of sin is for the concept of religion. Religion is the distorted relationship
to God. In the light of Christology and soteriology, however, it ®gures
also as the sustained, given, distorted relationship to God as well as
faith's right-orientated relationship to God.
Adopting this Christological-soteriological approach and comple-
menting it with a hamartiological approach to theological anthropology
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 17

Bonhoeffer ± and this is my third point ± is able so to frame and con®gure

God-likeness that religion is pivotal to it. This focus is mediated through
the concepts of freedom and relationality.
Fourth, Bonhoeffer exhibits an acute appreciation of the intimate
connection between religion and sin, thereby affording us an insight into
one of the cardinal of®ces of a theological theory of religion, namely, that
of effectively corralling the ambiguities of religion. Religion `crowns'
God-likeness, but religion also `crowns' sin. Both aspects of religion are
ingredients in a theological theory of religion and both are important
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contributions to an interdisciplinary discussion of religion. Against

facile critiques of religion we can join with Bonhoeffer in pointing to
God-likeness as that which grounds religion. Against a facile unre-
¯ective understanding of religion we can join with Bonhoeffer in
pointing to the concept of sin as the bar against which religion is
judged. But both ± religion as implicated in God-likeness and religion as
implicated in sin ± are, then, outright theological determinations of
religion mediated by faith in Christ. That last point too needs to be made
in any interdisciplinary discussion.

Kirsten Busch Nielsen

Faculty of Theology
University of Copenhagen
Kùbmagergade 44±46
DK-1150 Copenhagen K
Denmark
E-mail: kbn@teol.ku.dk

Notes
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Widerstand und Ergebung (1943±45), Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 8,
Chr. Kaiser, GuÈtersloh 1998 (Bonhoeffer 1998), p. 403 and 534.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Gemeinsames Leben (1939), Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 5, Chr.
Kaiser, MuÈnchen 1987 (Bonhoeffer 1987), p. 15.
3. See in this connection Bonhoeffer 1998: 402±3, 414±15 and 509±12.
4. This is not to say that Bonhoeffer's isolation of the philosophy of religion and sociology
from the concept of religion is not, in itself, unproblematic or without repercussions.
Equally, patent tensions are introduced by Bonhoeffer's interpretation of religion in
terms of sin while also, in a historical perspective, seeing religion as something destined
to disappear. For sin is not something that is simply absorbed by the historical process.
However, in the present context I shall leave that problem to one side in order to
concentrate on the doctrinal focus: religion in the perspective of the theology of sin. A
study of the relation between the historical and systematic aspects of Bonhoeffer's
concept of religion which, while not going unchallenged, has become something of a
classic, is Ernst Feil: `Ende oder Widerkehr der Religion? Zu Bonhoeffers umstrittener
 18 K. B. Nielsen

Prognose eines `religionslosen Christentumsº, Die PraÈsenz des verdraÈngten Gottes. Glaube,
Religionslosigkeit und Weltverantwortung nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. by Christian
Gremmels and Ilse ToÈdt, Chr. Kaiser, MuÈnchen 1987, p. 27±49. My account of the
relationship between religion and sin, and religion and forgiveness, draws on analyses
presented in my Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Anis, Copenhagen 2000 (Busch Nielsen 2000a) and
`PaÊ syndens grñnse. Til Dietrich Bonhoeffers overvejelser om menneskets `ñgte
grñnseº, Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 2000: 101, p. 217±29 (Busch Nielsen 2000b).
5. See in this connection Dietrich Bonhoeffer: `Ausarbeitung uÈber die erste Tafel der zehn
Worte Gottes' (1944), Konspiration und Haft 1940±45, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 16, Chr.
Kaiser, GuÈtersloh 1996, p. 658±72, p. 664: `Uns ist die Welt entgoÈttert, wir beten nichts
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mehr an. Wir haben die HinfaÈlligkeit und Nichtigkeit aller Dinge, aller Menschen und
unsrer selbst zu deutlich erlebt, als dass wir sie noch zu vergoÈttern vermoÈchten. ± Wenn
wir noch einen GoÈtzen haben, so ist es vielleicht das Nichts, das AusloÈschen, die Sinnlosigkeit. So
ruft uns das 1. Gebot zu dem einzigen, wahren Gott, dem AllmaÈchtigen, Gerechten und
Barmherzigen, der uns aus dem Verfallen an das Nichts errettet und uns in seiner
Gemeinde erhaÈlt.' Cp. Busch Nielsen 2002a.
6. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Ethik (1940±43), Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 6, Chr. Kaiser,
MuÈnchen 1992 (Bonhoeffer 1992), p. 43.
7. Bonhoeffer conceives of the boundary as constitutive of human existence (cp. Busch
Nielsen 2000b) but does not infer from that that it is the locus of religion, or that the
`management' of human boundary-experiences is the primary of®ce of religion,
justifying its existence and securing its continuance.
8. By pursuing a systematic interpretation I seek to expose various sides of Bonhoeffer's
concept of religion and ± perhaps most importantly ± their interrelations. My aims trace
a different course from that of Ralf K. WuÈstenberg (A Theology of Life. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity (1996), William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids/
Cambridge 1998). But my analysis has pro®ted from his precise historical account of
the three sources that contribute to Bonhoeffer's conception of religion. WuÈstenberg
uncovers and synthesizes a number of earlier investigations into Bonhoeffer's reliance,
in particular, on Wilhelm Dilthey's life philosophy and conception of autonomy, Karl
Barth's critique of religion (the oppositions of revelation and religion, faith and religion,
respectively) and liberal theology's positive evaluation of religion, which Bonhoeffer
encountered in Adolf von Harnack and Reinhold Seeberg (WuÈstenberg p. 33±99, esp.
p. 98). However, in my judgement WuÈstenberg draws over-hasty conclusions
concerning Bonhoeffer's view of the relation between religion and sin; cp. WuÈstenberg
p. 64±5.
9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: SchoÈpfung und Fall (1933), Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 3, Chr.
Kaiser, MuÈnchen 1989 (Bonhoeffer 1989), p. 90.
10. Cp. Paul Tillich: Systematic Theology 2. Part III: Existence and the Christ (1957), SCM Press,
London1987, p. 29f, and Paul Ricoeur: The Symbolism of Evil, transl. by Emerson
Buchanan, Harper and Row, New York 1967, p. 163f.
11. See Christine Axt-Piscalar: `Das Bild Gottes auf Erden: zu Dietrich Bonhoeffers Lehre
von der Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen', Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel) 1999: 55,
p. 264±70, espec. p. 265.
12. A similar argument is advanced by Karl Barth: `Der Streit daruÈber, ob (die Gotteben-
bildlichkeit) ± ± dem Menschen durch die SuÈnde verloren gegangen sei, ist von diesem
VerstaÈndnis der Sache her selbstverstaÈndlich dahin zu entscheiden: sie ist ihm nicht
verloren gegangen' (Kirchliche Dogmatik III/2, Zollikon, ZuÈrich 1948, p. 391). On Barth's
view, sin cannot be said to destroy the human subject's God-likeness.
This view ®nds a parallel in the writings of the Danish theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig, a
 The Concept of Religion and Christian Doctrine 19

century earlier. Grundtvig writes: `Menneske-Livet i sin allerdunkleste, sin allerfat-

tigste og sin allerureneste Skikkelse dog i grunden er af samme Art, som Menneske-
Livet i sin allerrigeste, allerreneste og allerklareste Skikkelse, (eftersom) ± ± Syndefaldet
± ± (ikke har) vanskabt eller rettere udslettet og i Bund og Grund ùdelagt Mennesket og
hele Menneske-Livet i Guds Billede, (saÊ) at der ± ± ikke (er) Gran eller Spire tilbage af
den medfùdte Herlighed og af det medskabte Forhold mellem Gud og Menneske ± ± '
(`Human life in its obscurest, most indigent and most sullied exemplar is substantially
of the same nature as human life in its richest, purest and brightest exemplar (in that) ± ±
the Fall (has not so) deformed, or rather effaced, and utterly destroyed the human
subject and all of human life in (their) God-likeness that there ± ± remains no scintilla
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nor germ of inborn glory and of the co-created relation between God and the human
subject ± ± '.) Cp. Den christelige Bùrnelñrdom (1855±61. 1868. 1883. 1941), ed. by E.
Skovrup and A. Nùrgaard, Arnold Busck, Copenhagen 1941, p. 118±9, transl. by Susan
Dew.
13. The reason for Bonhoeffer's espousal of this position is to be sought in his efforts to
align the theology of the Reformation, not least its stance on sin and grace, with
contemporary theology of the Word. In Bonhoeffer the theology of the Word makes it
possible to redeem theology's essential relationality, its essential Christological-
soteriological economy. In his efforts to advance the Reformation legacy, Bonhoeffer,
in a sense, unintentionally contradicts the thinking about the destructive power of sin
that is part and parcel of that same legacy.
14. It is worth noting in this connection that in one of the last texts from Bonhoeffer's hand,
`Stationen auf dem Wege zur Freiheit', which speci®es what `Beten und Tun des
Gerechten' amounts to, freedom is again an expression of the total determination of the
human subject in the theological and religious sense (cp. 1998: 570±72).