Here is our final conversation on Bonhoeffer’s essay “Protestantism Without Reformation.” Below are the closing two paragraphs that I find particularly convicting.
Next, we will discuss Bonhoeffer’s 1937 sermon from the Emergency Pastors’ Seminary at Finkewalde, “Preaching in an Evil Age.” Look for it and the link soon.
“God did not grant a Reformation to American Christendom. He gave strong revivalist preachers, men of the church, and theologians, but no reformation of the church of Jesus Christ from the word of God. Those churches of the Reformation that came to America either stand in deliberate seclusion and distance from general church life or have fallen victim to Protestantism without Reformation. There are Americans who announce with certainty and pride that they build on principles that are pre-Reformation and radical Reformation and see in this their essential nature. It cannot be denied that the dangers for American Christendom today are seen clearly by some of the leading theologians. Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr and several others among the younger theologians speak largely in the spirit of the Reformation. But these are exceptions. American theology and the churches as a whole have never really understood what “critique” by God’s word means in its entirety. That God’s “critique” is also meant for religion, for the churches’ Christianity, even the sanctification of Christians, all that is ultimately not understood.
One sign of this is the general insistence on natural theology Christendom in American theology is essentially still religion and ethics. Hence, the person and work of Jesus Christ recedes into the background for theology and remains ultimately not understood, because the sole foundation for God’s radical judgment and radical grace is at this point not recognized.
The decisive task today isthe conversation between the Protestantism without Reformation and the churches of the Reformation.”
