The sounds of the season can often sound like this. So, why do we get some grandkids? But with Hilton's season to stay sail, they could sound a bit more like this. Or this. Stay and save up to 20% off when you book before January 5th at Hilton.com. Hilton for the stay. Minimum two-night stay required excludes luxury in all inclusive properties, and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Viscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. This episode is brought to you by Too Faced Cosmetics. Give this sweetest gift this holiday season with the viral best-seller kissing jelly lip oil gloss, now in the new birthday kiss shade exclusively at Sephora. This hybrid lip oil gloss is a sparkly candy color that smells like vanilla birthday cake, softening and smoothing lips instantly, delivering 12-hour moisture and immediate shine. And with two in front written right on the packaging, it's ready to be gifted. Shop Too Faced Cosmetics new kissing jelly birthday kiss. Now it's Sephora. This episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery. Powerful gets smooth. Contained but never tamed. Proudly going their own way, but never going alone. This is the spirit inside Buffalo Trace bourbon. Made at Buffalo Trace Distillery. The world's most award-winning distillery. Buffalo Trace is always perfectly untamed. Distilled aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery, Franklin County, Kentucky, 95, 45% alcohol by volume. Learn more at BuffaloTrace Distillery.com. Please drink responsibly. This episode is brought to you by Skinny Pop Popcorn. Perfectly popped endlessly delicious. Oh, so light and crunchy. 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Listen to the Rise of Bonhoeffer, the audio documentary series, which you can find over at Bonhoeffer Podcast.com. If you want to dig deep and have some fun with Bonhoeffer, then consider joining me and Andrew Root this summer in Berlin as we do a travel learning experience on the life of Bonhoeffer. On top of going to Dietrich's hometown, we're going to be doing the conversation lecture learning parts of the class in his house. That's right, in Bonhoeffer's house. We'll get to do walking tours. We'll go to museums and history sites. We'll get to have delicious German vloggers and discuss theology at night. Anyway, if you are interested in joining that, there's a few tickets left and head over to bonhoeffertrip.com. Bonhoeffer trip, but 1P, not like my name, 2P. This would be the traveling version of trip, or your foot gets caught on a stick and you fall kind of trip. This is not like my name, 2P. This is bonhoeffertrip1p.com. Enjoy friends. Hello, everyone. This is Tripp, and on the broadcast for the first time, Eleanor McLaughlin, author of Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology, an amazing book. And for those of you who enjoy Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer Studies, History of Interpretation, and also beautiful chapter at the end on the relevance of a lot of Bonhoeffer's later work for the kinds of challenges the church is asking today and engaging culture and partnering for deep ethical commitments beyond the church. It leverages a powerful thinker for our present moment in many of the ways that you lay out. I think that he was always a theologian of reality and that occasioned some of the transformations in his own work. So I'm super excited to talk to you. Oh, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. I would love to hear the origin story of this project. Unlike some theologians of the 20th century, Bonhoeffer is one of these figures that scholars find in all sorts of contexts, from middle school small group to like college group to being a part of an intentional community to some telling of his story as an inspiration or maybe walking into a really cool church in London. How did your own kind of like story of faith in your academic work lead you to investing so much time in Bonhoeffer? Honestly, it was a lot of happenstance. So I was doing my undergraduate degree here in Oxford and in your third year you get to choose a paper where you spend a whole term, so eight weeks worth of study on just one theological figure. And we got the list from the faculty of the special figures that we could choose between. And it's an alphabetical order, right, said "Top Bart." And I was like, "Oh, I could do Bart." And I was talking to a friend of mine in the college common room and thinking, "I don't really know a lot about any of these figures. They're all people that we haven't really covered and coursework so far." And this friend of mine said, "But everyone does Bart. You don't want to do Bart. You want to do someone that fewer people are thinking about." So next on the list, Bonhoeffer and I was like, "Okay." You know, that sounds cool too. I'll do eight weeks on Bonhoeffer. And it was just a great class. There were only three of us taking this class. And so it ended up being, I think it was every Friday afternoon, we would meet together with this tutor who seemed to me to know everything they lost to know about Bonhoeffer. And he would set us quite chunky readings for each week. And throughout the term, we worked through eight key texts from Bonhoeffer's opus. And by the end of term, I just was thinking, this writer is amazing. His work is so diverse. It spans such a large range of topics and ideas. And it seems to be really relevant. You know, his work is obviously a reflection of his own life and experiences. It really intrigued me. And I kind of left it at that after my undergraduate studies. A few years later, I came back to study to do a master's degree and did my dissertation. My master's dissertation on his kind of 1938 to '44 work. And in that period, I found this note of unconscious Christianity, but I didn't have time to really tackle it in the master's thesis. And so I think there's a footnote in that that goes, there's no time to talk about unconscious Christianity. So I parked it again. And then I took more time out from study, did other stuff, came back to do a doctorate here again a few years later. And I was like, right, I know what I want to do. I want to find out about this elusive word that crops up here and they're in Bonhoeffer, but we really don't know much about it. So yeah, and I think, you know, you were asking about the kind of journey of faith aspect as well. I find him to be a really sustaining conversation partner for theological thinking. It just has so much to say, which is relevant, I think now, in terms of real responsibility to what's happening in the world. And the fact that it has to be a concrete response, it can't be, you know, you imagine something's happening in the world and so you think about it, but you can see something real is happening and you have to respond. And I really like that. Yeah, and that definitely comes through. One of the elements that shows up in the book is a kind of rejection of, you know, two kind of large trajectories of Bonhoeffer interpretation, those that go, oh, when he gets to like ethics and the prison writings, this is a complete departure from what Bonhoeffer has done before and so there's whole versions of Bonhoeffer where that's the key to understand everything. And then others can pretty much, well, maybe he wasn't even a Christian then or whatever he's saying then, he was so stressed or, you know, like we don't need to pay attention to it. And in your book, I think you do like a really compelling and beautiful job of showing how, say like when he's giving the Christology and the creation and fall lectures before he writes discipleship, life together and such, that there is a particular vision of what he means by Christ being the center that creates a kind of continuity that runs throughout and that Christological center actually generates his openness and transformations that you draw. So I'd love for you to kind of unpack that kind of Christological thread of continuity in the way it helps kind of, I don't know, connect the dots through so many of these different texts and make your work on what an unconscious Christian makes sense. That Christological center to his work and his understanding of Christ being the center is, as you were saying, just, it provides the red thread right throughout all of his opus. I think in particular in the Christology lectures, when he says it's not a question of what Christ is, it's not a question of us sitting around working out, okay, the hypostatic union, how does that even work? It's a question of who is Christ? And when you ask who of somebody, you have an encounter with that person. And that idea, you know, it's almost the same question as in letters and papers when he's saying, who is Christ for us today, right? It's that same question of let's encounter Christ and let's work out, oh, okay, this person that's calling us or this person that is challenging us, first of all is a person, not a what, and invites us into a real encounter and real relationship. As soon as you have that wholeness at the center of Bonhoeffer's Christology and that's kind of grasped, then the whole trajectory makes a lot of sense. And perhaps another example of that is in the ethics when he's talking about how in order to kind of be ethical, a clunky way of saying it, he says, you know, forget about ethical principles. They're fine for a bit, but ultimately they're going to let you down because they'll never be robust enough to help you deal with the real situation. But instead formation to Christ is what you need to act ethically because as soon as you think who is Christ, then you're able to respond. And so I think that's really crucial. The wholeness of Christ rather than the whatness of Christ. And there's that element in the wholeness part is when you answer the question of who Christ is, like it is God for us, and that is expressed in Christ being for others. In that bit of like why he's uncomfortable with ethical principles because ethical principles are abstracted in some way and then projected on the world as some kind of demand. And God is not an abstract principle. He has this critique of God and Christ is found in the other. In some sense, the right question to ask after saying God was in Christ is not an explanation of how the humanity and divinity work out, but how one orients oneself towards the neighbor. Absolutely. And this orientation, this phrase being for others, Jesus is being for others, which comes up again and again in the late work, crystallizes that idea of the outward facing which again is a kind of non-negotiable aspect of Bonhoeffer's Christology. When you've kind of come back to this footnote of promise in your master's thesis and go chasing down unconscious Christian, I think a lot of people if you hear that will go, oh, yeah, well, I know the religion was Christianity thing or world come of age or these phrases that turned into really quality memes. Bonhoeffer quotes, unconscious Christian shows up in four different places that you unpack in the book. Was there an intuition you had going to search them out that kind of like helps you frame the question that then it's kind of like a starting point for here's what I'm anticipating finding. No, I had no idea which probably maybe it was helpful because I didn't then have a template that I was trying to match, but also deeply unhelpful because I had no idea what I was doing. I really just thought, okay, well, let's check the texts where it happens, where it occurs, and let's go from there. So it really was a journey from a very unknown departure because I really didn't know what I was going to find. Where does this phrase show up? Yes, there's four manuscripts. I guess the immediate caveat to add to that is that there are some letters that have been lost that Bonhoeffer wrote to be its girl in late summer into the autumn of 1944, which basically destroyed when he was going to be called back to Berlin and he was worried that his association with Bonhoeffer was going to lead him into even bigger trouble than he was in already. And so he burned some of the correspondence before heading back to Berlin. And so it could be, it looks as if from the letters, there might have been some more correspondence about unconscious Christianity, which we may have lost, right? But in terms of the extant documents that we have, there's a marginal note in the ethics essay ultimate and penultimate things. So he just scribbles in the margin, unconscious Christianity. Okay. Who knows? Literally they know it inspired a dissertation. I know. And then there is a reference to unconscious Christians in the novel that he tries to write when he's in prison. It's an unfinished text, but some of the characters that are there in the novel are described as unconscious Christians. It occurs again in one of the letters to Bitzge, where it looks as though he's replying to a question that Bitzge has asked him about unconscious Christianity because in the letter Bonhoeffer says, your question of unconscious Christianity preoccupies me more and more. So they're clearly having an exchange about it. And then in the final set of notes that we have, for the outline of a book that he wanted to write after he was going to be released from prison, which, of course, sadly never happened, but his plan was to write this book. And we have some of his dot-ings in preparation for that book. And he mentions it there as well. So just four manuscripts and one extremely marginal mention at that. So not very much to go on, but at least it's there. Yeah. And you know, it's fascinating even about the letter exchanges for those familiar with work on Paul. That's what happens all the time, right? And the correspondence that we may have two of them put together in different ways. And there's this other one, but there's clearly exchange going both ways. And so when you go to, like, the question of idle meat or the super apostles and all this kind of stuff, you're sitting there going, well, we have all we know we get to know some things about Paul and we have to just figure out like what what's historically, you know, or his text and then what's the context of Corinth and then what's going on in him and his mission at this point. And we know there's this relationship and now we got to try to constructively where there's threads of continuity, but this new reality that he's addressing in Corinth generates a response from Paul, this particular to this context. And I think that one of the elements that you point out throughout the book is that the Bonhoeffer that people get to know in discipleship, the vision of what faith looks like and this encounter with Christ and this conscious response to the call, that there's something that's going on in there that he sees the reality of the world that he's facing. I have to like expand the category of Christian. And I'd love for you to kind of like take us into how you understand what's going on there for Bonhoeffer and what about his reality, encountering the confessing church, the failures and stuff there that kind of generate this expansion. Yeah. So we can go a bit even further back, right? I think to start unpicking this. It's very clear in the early 1930s that people who are self-identifying as Christian are doing things which Bonhoeffer really does not think are Christian things to do, right? We have the Reich Church, which is little by little, getting more and more involved with the Nazi regime, which is clearly something that he thinks is totally un-Christian. And that's when we get, as you were mentioning, the split with the confessing church and the whole struggle around getting international and ecumenical recognition for the confessing church and there are plenty of people who can talk about that much more articulately than I can. But there's already a seed planted there about the difference between Christianity and saying that you're a Christian. And that, I think, develops later kind of in the opposite, in the mirror image, if you like. Because when he starts working with the resistance movement, he is pretty much, for the first time in his adult professional life, working alongside people who don't self-identify as Christian, you know, en masse, a lot of his co-resistance and are not self-identifying as Christian. But he clearly thinks that there's something Christian going on here in what they are doing. And by Christian, to be more precise, I think he would say Christ-like, the kind of willingness to be for others that he sees in his co-conspirators. To him is a being-like Christ-type attitude. So, for example, the people who are willing to put themselves at risk to get Jews across the border into Switzerland, that's a classic example of being for others, which he sees people around him, you know, willingly doing. And so, I think, he's starting to think, okay, well, my previous assumptions about church, confession, and all of those types of things need to be challenged. And that's one of the things he's starting to do. And perhaps, in a more pastoral light, he's trying to also say to people who do identify as Christians, it's not just us who bear Christ in the world. There are other people who are doing this too. The pressure isn't just all on us, which is, you know, that's speculation, but I kind of think it's there in what he's writing. The sounds of the season can often sound like this. So, why do we get into grandkids? But with Hilton's season to stay sale, they could sound a bit more like this. Or this. Stay and save up to 20% off when you book before January 5th at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this stay. Minimum two-night stay required excludes luxury in all inclusive properties, terms, and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Too Faced Cosmetics. This sweetest gift this holiday season with the viral best-seller Kissing Jelly Lip Oil Gloss. Now in the new birthday kiss shade exclusively at Sephora, this hybrid lip oil gloss is a sparkly candy color that smells like vanilla birthday cake, softening and smoothing lips instantly, delivering 12-hour moisture and immediate shine. And with two in front written right on the packaging, it's ready to be gifted. Shop Too Faced Cosmetics' new Kissing Jelly Birthday Kiss. Now it's Sephora. This episode is brought to you by Opel, the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the U.S. Opel is FDA approved, full prescription strength and estrogen-free. Plus, there's no prescription needed. Finally, the days of needing a prescription for birth control are over. Opel is available online and at most major retailers. Take control of your health and reproductive journey with Opel. Birth control in your control. Use code "birthcontrol" for 25% off your first month of Opel at Opel.com. Something's coming. Something else to hold. Bonhoeffer, a thrilling new film from Angel Studios, coming to theaters November 22. The harrowing tale of one man's shift from preaching peace to plotting resistance. As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is swept into a deadly plot against Hitler. From the producer of Elf and director of Sully, this is one winter release you don't want to miss. Visit angel.com/spy to get your tickets today. Hey friends, I want to invite you to come with me and Andrew Root this June to Berlin, Germany for the rise of Bonhoeffer, travel learning experience. You'll be able to explore theology, culture and faith through the lens and story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It will weave together an integrative mix of lectures, tours, conversation, experiential learning against where our classroom is at Dietrich Bonhoeffer's very own home. So if you've loved thinking about us like, then consider joining us for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity perfectly constructed for anyone seeking to have a deep encounter with Bonhoeffer and wrestle with his piercing insights about faith for the modern world. We're going to explore these themes in Bonhoeffer's family home, visit various museums and sites, get to see his neighborhood, tell the story and do it all in a small group of people, right? Just the number of people that fit in the man's living room. So come join me, Andrew Root, and it's going to be a good old time for more information. Head over to bonhoeffertrip.com. Bonhoeffer trip with 1P, not likemyname.com. In the chapter and ethics on ultimate and penultimate, you spend some time there, not just because you wrote it in the margins, right? There's this like, oh, unconscious Christian. But because there, he picks back up this kind of distinction that he's working with where the life of the disciples oriented towards others. Well, what happens when those oriented towards others, you know, he says no longer even dare to call themselves a Christian. So there's something about the reality of the moment that the enactment of Christ is happening from those who have the yawn and eye role for legitimate reasons that Bonhoeffer's increasingly aware of. Yeah, and that idea in the end of that essay where he's saying, there are people who aren't first so much to, you know, say it colloquially. They're not first so much about trying to hold on to the ultimate. What is happening beyond what is happening in the transcendent, they're not so interested in that, but what they do care about is the here and now, the penultimate, and trying to hold on to that and make sure that it has value. And I think that very wildliness, the willingness of that category of people to kind of get their hands dirty to show the value of the penultimate is something that he really is trying to highlight that connects very quickly to unconscious Christianity. Can you say a bit about how like texts like Matthew 25 and such function for him to kind of challenge some of these earlier distinctions that he had? Yeah, so in the notes and the jotting that we have for this outline for a book, he links unconscious Christianity to that passage in Matthew 25, where people meet Jesus and he says, when you fed the hungry, when you closed the naked, you did that for me. And that suggests to me that for Bonhoeffer, encounter with Christ is absolutely possible without the individual realizing exactly what's going on. There's something that's happening there, you know, that's generosity, that's being for others that are self-giving, through which people are encountering Christ, but, you know, without that realization. And I think for Bonhoeffer, that's kind of the kernel of what he's trying to get at, that our actions in the world have this added dimension, this kind of extra, yeah, extra dimension, extra facet to them, which we might not realize at the time. I think it's really important at this point to say that I don't think he's saying aha, you see, you're totally all Christians, but you just don't know it. My clever old Bonhoeffer telling you who you are because you're too incapable of understanding it. I really don't think that that's his agenda here. It's much more to say there's no way that we as human beings can look at someone else and be able to categorize them and be able to say like, that person has no faith, or that person has a really deep faith, or that person is a Christian, that person's totally not a Christian. That's just not what we're able to do, and he's kind of pulling the plug on all our presuppositions. Like, we can tell who the good guys are, or we can tell who the faithful are. Yeah, I think he's really challenging us there to not make judgments about people. Yeah, and you know, one of the things that occurred to me reading your book is, like in discipleship, he picks up a lot of like Kierkegaard's kind of energy around the difference between, say, like the Savior and a teacher. And that leads to one kind of kind of play that runs through cost of discipleship. But there's also an element in Kierkegaard that gets picked up in something like this, where the category of Christian is problematic for discipleship. So like you think of like the work on like the night of faith, or in Kierkegaard, where you get like, "Oh, are you a Christian? I'm working on it. Maybe I'll become one." Right, so there's the moment you destabilize a category. When Kierkegaard destabilizes it, it like orient you to enactment. And I think a part of what he's resisting and part of what he even resonates with, because there are other places in the letters where he's like, "I just feel gross if I talk Christian too much." When these people who are enacting Christ in the present say, "I don't want to call myself a Christian." He's like, "Well, I understand what you're saying." Because that category, the category of Christian is something that he sees as a limitation for the invitation to discipleship. And then when he said yes to discipleship, he's sitting here with allies who find the category not very helpful for the moment. Yeah, and even that's absolutely right. And even as early as discipleship, he's already also saying, even for the individual, if you realize that you're doing super well on your, I don't know, such a cheesy phrase on your Christian journey, you're doing super well on your Christian journey, then that's a problem. Because ideally, you would be so geared towards Christ focused on Christ that you wouldn't even be paying attention on whether you're doing well on your Christian journey. You would just be following Christ and you wouldn't be thinking about it. And so when he has that phrase hidden discipleship in discipleship, that's really what he is getting at. The fact that our egos get in the way and we're like, "Oh, I'm doing so well. My prayer life is fantastic," whatever. He's like, "No, just forget that. Just focus on Christ and keep going. That's the whole point. That's the only thing to do." Yeah, and there he's thinking of the, "Don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing." Right, so in some sense he's going, "I'm not introducing some crazy thing into being a disciple." It was one of our, we were given this task, right? This sitting there in the Sermon on the Mount. So here's a question, and this was in my notes to myself while reading your book. And I have found sometimes on really like books, I project on them as a form of complement. But something that I think Simbonhoeffer that resonated deeply in the second half of the book is the way in which for him the incarnation, it brings reconciliation of reality in God. And you have a beautiful description of that. And so in a sense, all creation, because of the incarnation, because of, I mean, that's an ontological statement for him because all creation already participates in reality God without division, then the divine initiatives already happen, right? Like the divine initiative was the incarnation. So participation is not something that requires consciousness because the transformation occurred, namely that God gave God self to the world, or finitude has been embraced by the infinite, or like all things are being reconciled. So if participation is something that comes from God's initiative, then if we think it comes from ours as Christians, right? That's a problem. He's given us a hard time about it. But we should also recognize unless God is only participating in the bounds of a church that he rightly finds problematic, and so do those allying with the virtues of Christ find problematic, then it's not about us claiming Christ, but about that creation, reality has been claimed by Christ. And so it's a question of attentiveness. And so there's this deep secularization, that kind of logic he sees as that actually opens us up to the radical divine initiative of the incarnation and consciousness of it or not is the wrong thing to attend to. Yeah, precisely that the, I think, attentiveness really sums it up because it's possible for Bonhoeffer that you could just stroll through life without being aware of that bringing together in the Christ event of reality and God. It's possible to stroll through life without noticing paying attention to the fact that in the Christ event reality and God have been united. And the consequence of doing that, of just not paying attention, would be that, for example, again, in ethics, you would have your template of how to be good and you would just apply it onto the world whether it fits or not, and you would just follow your principles and try to live like that without paying attention to the reality that you're in. But for those who are attentive and who recognize that unity between reality and God, then the key to acting according to how God wills us to act is to simply look around us and kind of go, what does my situation demand? And we're able to do that, and we're able to do that well because of that union that has happened. The way he envisions ethics has a deep resonance with someone like Levinos. I hadn't really picked up in the same way until I was reading your book, and I was like, "Oh, that's actually something that I want to think about more, the relationship between Levinos and Bonhoeffer. I think that's actually quite a lot there, which I have not dug into yet, but I think there should be a lot of really interesting stuff to uncover there." Well, then I look forward to reading it and talking to you about it. So here's one question. So you talk in and about the importance of his relationship with his family, a family who embodies the kind of goodness that he's talking about, and he is easily the most in scare quotes, religious member of the family altogether. And then on top of that, his dad, a rather famous psychologist, which he has some daddy issues that show up throughout. And so what do you think's going on when he thinks about his family, his father, and then the word he uses here is unconscious Christian. Because unconscious has all these dimensions when your dad has, you know, Freud's work sitting on his bookshelf. Yeah, for sure. And there's so much, I think, going on there, particularly because when he's writing this, three out of the four texts that we have that mention unconscious Christianity are from the prison period where he's thinking about his family and his home all the time. Right? We see that in the letters. We see it in the fiction. And it's, I think, very clear that in the drama and in the novel, both of which are incomplete that he tries to write in person, he's writing about his family. He's writing about his home context to the extent that in their introduction to one of the editions of the fiction, Renata Bitge says, you know, clearly it's his family home, that this imaginary family, the brokers live in, right? It's clearly the Bonhoeffer home. And there are clearly parallels between the characters and the Bonhoeffer family. That's not to say they're identical, but he's clearly working on a lot of parallels here. And it's so interesting that the people in the novel who are called unconscious Christians are the Bonhoeffer parents. So are they in some way the Bonhoeffer parents, of course, right? So I think what's happening here is that he's looking back on his upbringing. He's looking back on this, on the family, but also on the social class in which he was raised. And he's saying, in this group of people we have on display a lot of the criteria which actually are recognizable in unconscious Christianity. And so he's almost offering a spiritual dimension to his family, particularly his parents, which maybe they would not have assigned to themselves. But he's kind of thinking this through and going, right, okay, the fact that they enacted this being for others, the fact that they raised us in this way and had this particular outlook on society, to him then, I think, helped him develop this idea of unconscious Christianity and what it would look like in the concrete embodiment. Yeah, and I think that one of the things that comes from that is because he has this deep gratitude for his family that runs through the letters. And for him, what is a greater affirmation of it than the grace of his family is the grace upon grace of God. And then being able to give language to the encounter with Christ that he had in a family without, you know, inscribing on them a narrative, a justifying narrative or whatever that wasn't their own. So it's interesting because it's like giving the dignity to the other and the affirmation of what they have given as a family to him a kind of ultimate significance. Yeah, I think I really like that way of thinking about it, the affirmation element. I think that's really important. Yeah. In the book, you talk about unconscious Christianity in some sense referring to the whole body of good people who have ontologically, in a sense, you wouldn't use ontology, but encountered, encountered, and materially responded to Christ in their own enactment. And the features you raise are those that have faith without knowing. And the thing there that stuck out to me when it goes to faith without knowing is it's deeply connected to what you see in cost of discipleship about that distinction between costly and cheap grace, because the church misses up a faith without knowing, shows up because they have faith, but they think their faith is just like the justification for their worldliness, rather than that faith happens in obedience to the other, right? So like the enactment he was describing there, he's going, I see that enactment materially in the lives of others. Yeah, and I think, so there's that connection to the other and there's also the fact that in the prison period, he equates faith with sharing the suffering of God in the world. And there's one of the letters I forget which date it is, when he lists these biblical figures who share in Christ's suffering, and he ends that little list of people by saying that is their faith, which is such a strong statement. And so that kind of investigating that idea of sharing God's suffering in the world and equating that to faith, because of what he writes about unconscious Christians being willing to suffer alongside God in the world, then that kind of leads you to say, and therefore that is faith, whether it's understood as faith or not. There's also really intriguing reference in his letters a bit ago when he's mentioning unconscious Christianity, where he talks about feed us directors and feed us reflect us, direct act of faith, which he compares to the faith of the infant at baptism. There's something happening there, but of course the infant can't reflect on what's happening. But for Bonhoeffer, that's still faith. And so there's something there about the nature of faith, which isn't necessarily something that we can consciously reflect on, which I think is a really intriguing idea. Yeah, that section I found like super intriguing because the reference to baptism, the lineage of that through the medieval period was the development of the concept of implicit faith. And then it gets extended during nice debates to large portions of the laity, right? I mean, this is probably still true. Even the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, if we asked everyone what the Trinity means, we're going to get a list of heresies, confused faces and such, but you aren't going, well, since your belief does not equal being able to articulate X, Y, and Z correctly. Yeah. And yet one of the things I think that you point out in the way, like the opposite of this religion is Christianity, or like the other side of it for those that are consciously Christian, is the brokenness of theological language. And that distinction of implicit belief, as Protestant comes into being, then what we mean by belief shifts from kind of a recognizing trust of our identity before God, right? That's practiced in baptism. You proclaim God belovedness on someone that's pooping in our hands, if you're clergy. And the church goes, that's already true about them and it's true about anyone that wants to be baptized. And our goal is to engage the world and them in such a way that they come to know themselves as known and loved by God, right? Yeah. But it's not like anything they ever come to understand changes their identity. And to me, part of what the reality that he's coming to grips with in unconscious Christianity, something that like the moment you laid it out, I was like, oh, well, this actually makes sense for all this, these other things I had been thinking about Bonhoeffer, is that for him, that shift of belief from trust to belief as consent or a sin thing to a set of ideas or whatever, that problematized religious existence. And then when we make that demand on non-religious people, we end up ignoring the ways they're already responding in faith, right? So that's why that second element in it is that they're selfless and participate in Jesus being for others. Yeah. And there's a wonderful example of that selflessness in the fiction. And I really hope if anyone is listening to this podcast, if you do one thing as a result of this podcast, go and read Bonhoeffer's fiction. It's hugely underread. It's not, you know, the best literature on the planet, but it's super interesting. And there's this really, really neat example where we have a flashback to the Brokker family father figure, when he's a kid and he's in school, and there's a kid who's kind of bullied and ostracized, and it's the school sports day, and this poor bullied kid is handed a pole vault to go and do the pole vaulting jump. He's handed a pole that is faulty. And this young Brokker character sees this, and he sees that it's going to end really badly. So he snatches the pole from this bullied child, and he takes it himself to vault over the challenging vault. What do you vault over when you're doing pole vaulting? I don't know. An elevated stick. And he ends up falling and, you know, being hurt, and that is just such a Christ-like figure in literature, right? It's so obvious. There's no light touch in Bonhoeffer's fiction. But there, this character who is going to end up being referred to as an unconscious Christian is showing in his youth, in his childhood, a Christ-like willingness to take on suffering for others, to be for others. So he kind of sets it out really clearly in the fiction. I think, you know, he's, as I was saying before, he's thinking about all his co-conspirators. He's thinking about his brothers and sisters who are also suffering in the cause of resisting the Nazi regime. Yeah, so there's a lot, there's a lot of links going on there. Yeah, it also makes me think of the, there are two moments in Augustine, like the laps controversy, right? So like the veracity of the baptism isn't whether or not the priest is, you know, handed over sacred text or compromised their faith. It's, God did it. So like, you know, they're, they, so that affirmation is very, is very Christocentric. Like the incarnation did this. Like, I don't know what you thought they could ruin it. It's above their pay grade, their finite being, and they're a center just like you. You're missing the point. Or later in, in his life and city of God, right? He's trying in many ways, Augustine's having the same kind of discernment of reality you see in Bonhoeffer and the letters and papers and ethics that you're bringing out. It's like the place we see this growth and his, his idea. And, and Augustine's like, well, if we're really trying to discern things, let's look at the direction of one's desires. As opposed to going in the church or out of the church or, you know, of God or not of God. We're, we're creating distinctions that are, in some sense, like human constructions, like a religion or a church. And God was orienting people. And the way one has been formed or oriented is expressed in their desires. Yeah, that's, and that's such a helpful. I had not made that connection, but that's such a helpful connection to make, to see what people are being drawn towards. I suppose. Yeah. And, and where those instincts, desires lead them. Yeah. It popped up in my head because they get in the, in your kind of points. Point three is not, is they don't seek to be other than what they are. It's kind of like a false ambition that is so easily seen in religious people. And he also, you know, it's not like it's only a religious problem, but that they don't seek to be other than what they are. Is a statement about the orientation of one's desire. And so the, the face of the other, the being there for other, the, the canotic self giving this is an actual expression of their desire that resonates with what the divine initiative, divine desire who did not count equality, you know. So the, the, anyway, that was where it emerged when reading it. And then, you know, I have my, like, this is trip reading, reading your book where there's like the outlines of the arguments followed. And then the what pops in my head. Oh, wow. So that is like those connections. And I just thought, Oh, Augustine city of God is trying to make the, that saint is doing a very similar thing about reality in God at a time of crisis and falsification of the world we assumed. And Bob offers doing it there for a modern context. Yes. I'm going to have to go back and read city of God again. I had not made those connections that's so helpful. It was on my list of when you got done with PhD books, I actually wanted to read all of, but I had to pop into for qualifying exams. And so it, once I spent a long, a long enough time with it, it just kind of shows back up. Could you talk about this? One of the places it shows up is in that ultimate penultimate chapter and part of the part of the way you describe the unconscious Christian is precisely their value of the penultimate. Or the worldly. Can you can you kind of unpack for us kind of how for Bonhoeffer, the worldly or the penultimate is actually a helpful frame for recognizing divine participation. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's, it's so important. Right. It's, it's impossible to overstate how important this concept of voluminous is because part of his critique of religious, when he's using religion in a negative sense, which he doesn't always do. He sometimes means it very positively. But when he's talking about religiousness, religious less, being religious, being overly religious, when he's talking about being overly religious, being pious. Often what he's critiquing there is a desire to forget the worldly and just be swept up into the ultimate that which is to come. And it's often well motivated, right? It's because people want to contemplate God, people want to be closer to God, and they don't think of God as being enmeshed with reality. But he says that's a real problem because what we do then is that we just allied all the involvement in the world, which we see in the Bible. We see God in the incarnation getting deeply involved in the world. And if we just glide over that and hope for, you know, a wonderful life with God to come, we're ignoring this biblical imperative to put it crudely getting stuck in. And he talks about the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane as a key point to contemplate when we're thinking about this, that there's a reality to Christ's suffering shown in his desire to not have to suffer. But there's a there's a reality to Christ's suffering, which we just have to take seriously. And if we're to be truly followers of Christ, then surely, if I'm on offer, surely that's what it means. You know, his critique of the day of sex macking that idea right hit the view of God as someone who kind of sweeps in from their wings sorts everything out and more like, give us a magical happy ending for him that's just not what Christianity is about. Yeah, I think there, you bring up his, he's very much Lutheran, the theology of the cross is central. Right. And so in many ways, he's like, well, if your religiosity leads you to cling to the ultimate or cling to Christ without recognizing that Christ is the one who died cross dead. And you don't know what you're clinging to. Right. So the ultimate is not a justification for escapism for judgment of the penultimate. It's actually to cling to Christ is to cling within divine solidarity with all those who bear crosses. And I think that the one when he gets that Christological hermeneutic that's just grounded in the incarnation, then it's kind of like he's sitting there going like what Christ told us where he would be in the least of these. And when two or three are gathered and intimate vulnerability about their brokenness in the arcane disciplines right like the Eucharist and such he said, you know, so they, there's a, there's a kind of sense that all the things that could get lumped as deeply radical. And then if you're a Bonhoeffer for him are, well, this is what happens if you take the incarnation seriously. Yeah, this is what happens if you read the gospel and you have that as your template. I think it's, it's really interesting, the reception that Bonhoeffer has had, and how he's viewed as really radical, which is true if you kind of read his works without thinking where they've come from I guess. You just read him as a mid 20th century thinker and you kind of go, Oh, wow, well, that's kind of standout and that is kind of different. But actually if you read him in the, in the tradition that he's emerged from you kind of go, Oh, yeah, of course he's going to say that. Yeah, so that yeah, the points about the theology of the cross from Luther is extremely important because of course that's what he's emerging from. Yeah, in some sense, like you think of even the debates of Luther and Calvin where Luther's like the gospel precedes the word like the text. And here at this, the kind of like the world come of age, he's like the gospel precedes the church. And so many times people take the task of the Christian theologian as bounded by kind of a confessional epoch of sorts. And he's like, that is a betrayal of what God has done in Christ. Yeah, I mean, you just can't get away from that unity of reality in God. That's just so, it underlies so much of what then kind of could look like. Oh, that's just the assumption that Bonhoe first making about the nature of reality. Well, if you go back to that bit where he's really unpacking that connection. It's done so obvious that of course he has to be consistent with that idea. Yeah. When you talk about the unconscious Christian performing acts of faith without knowing it, what's happening to the concept of faith there. That was the kind of like the fifth point on the definition. Well, I think that's also linked to sharing the suffering of God in the world, right? And the participating in that leads you to do certain things. And so I think he sees that in his family history and the widespread involvement of his family and more distant family in the resistance movement. The desire to, it's kind of difficult to say it in very different words to make it sound. Oh, yes, of course, it means this other thing. But to basically act in a way that shows you are standing in solidarity with people who are suffering and your reason for doing that, whether you're conscious of it or not, is your adherence to Christ who stands in solidarity with those who are suffering. One of the things that I guess came to mind to me is there's like a double use of knowing. So like performing acts of faith without knowing it, you don't have to have the concept or objective concept of God that theologians will argue for or against in order to trust that your will should cohere with the well-being of the one in front of you. And so if you take like the prayer of Mary, let it be unto me or the Gethsemane, not my will, but thine or let the same mind be in you. It was in Christ Jesus, like all of those things, like the content of the faith in some senses revealed in the Christ. But the enactment of it is the orientation towards the other, a kind of cooperative, collaborative engagement with the divine invitation. But because Christ's invitation shows up in material reality in the other, you don't need a concept to be encountering the divine. You need recognition that the other bears the dignity of that demand. Yeah, and that the other stands in front of you. I think that's something that perhaps we take for granted or we see the other and we recognize the challenge or the question that the other asks us. I think something that Bonhoeffer was thinking about was, well, we see the other, but we don't always recognize that they are asking something from us or of us. And so his discussion of the other and that comes up in the final point, you know, sharing in Jesus's being for others. His discussion about the other being a challenge to us and sometimes a barrier to us is the way he expresses it in creation and form. I think it's actually a really helpful reminder that we don't just see the other and kind of assume, oh, that's this, I know what they need or I know that they don't need anything from me. But to see the other and go, what is the other asking of me is something that he's very good at reminding us about. Yeah, and one of the things about that, the way the other is destabilizing for the act of faith, because their otherness is preserved in the encounter. One of the fascinating things that I thought about at the end of the book when you're talking about how this helps think about our present culture is the destabilizing spaces that you encounter the other are increasingly shrinking, because so many of our relationships to the other algorithmically mediated. And our attention is held primarily by engaging our most ancient part of our brain of anxiety, of fear, these kinds of these kinds of things. And so even times, say, sitting on a bus or at a cafe, or we even self select for where we have such ideological closure and almost all of our spaces that we are actually protect. We are creating worlds where we don't have to get uncomfortable by the call of Christ precisely in the distancing that's necessary for the dignity of the other. Yeah, that's so true. And one of, I think, the ways in which Bonhoeffer challenges us today is to say how much are you paying attention to the other who is not just the clone of yourself. You know, how much are you paying attention to the other that makes you feel uncomfortable, whose views you find really difficult. I mean, I was thinking, even you were talking about social media, even on an app like Vinted, where you can buy wonderful secondhand clothes, the app knows what you want to look at after a while. And so basically, it's just showing you the clothes of other people that dress like you so that you can buy their secondhand clothes, right? Even in that scenario, you are only engaging with people who are very similar to yourself. It's just crazy. The times that we are actually challenged to really think about other perspectives in a way that destabilizes us is, as you say, it's decreasing. What's interesting is, I think, for Bonhoeffer, in a way, his life was quite sheltered for a very long time. You know, he moved in this very specific cultural sphere. He was extremely privileged. His family had a lot of friends who were intellectuals. And it's really his trip to New York that kind of makes him go, "Oh, wait a minute. Who are people who have a vastly different reality to my own?" And the kind of influence of that year, I think, is so strong in the rest of his work, which just goes to show the importance of being confronted by people who really have a different reality to our own and how enriching as well as deeply challenging that can be. Yeah. Because you mentioned the last point of the unconscious Christianity is the one that you see the most transformation in, namely the way kind of societal class narrowing of it in the fiction, because it's in relationship to his own upbringing, gets expanded. And that's something I think runs through Bonhoeffer. Even if you're not asking the question of unconscious Christianity, it ends up going to Barcelona because he got done with his degree too fast and has this experience of what is it like to be German in another context where the pressures of World War I are different and then go in New York, and they go to the movies. Quiet on the Western Front has this experience. Frank Fisher, Avocinian Baptist, Harlem Renaissance. Then he comes back and he's a youth minister in Berlin, his hometown, but the working class side. And he didn't spend time with those most responding to the call of Nazis, right? Like you start to see how like he has this vision of Christ in community early on in his dissertation, but then those encounters with difference make him, he has to be faithful to his intuitions. He has his vision in the gospel has to grow because he's encountered the other. And the other side of that that I find seizing and challenging is in the 10 years after when he's writing to his friends in the conspiracy. And he talks about the temptation to have contempt. And there he's thinking of contempt for those who have rendered under Hitler what was requested, right? Like he's thinking of the people, not unconscious Christians, but anti Christ. Like, like, and there to go, like we cannot look on them with bearing any less dignity when then God did. And while they were yet sinners, God gave God's self for them. And so that refusal of contempt, even for those who are cooperating with vile evil is kind of to me like the moment I started noticing these kind of growing encounters with the other. One he's experiencing near the end is is an affirmation of the dignity of even those that he's, he's like, they've been seized by the anti Christ. There's a really interesting dialogue in the drama between this character Kristoff, who is very much a bonhoeffer or a bit scared type character. And this character called Heinrich, who comes from a really challenging background, he's grown up in the docks, he's not had any kind of privilege, and these two young men clash, and they have this debate. And there's a moment in which Heinrich says, but you know, you, you can never really understand what I'm thinking, you trust in everyone really easily, and you have confidence in people really easily. But I don't have that I can't just trust other people like you do, because I don't have any ground under my feet. I don't have the kind of, you know, support network that you do from your privilege position. And there's this moment in the text where Kristoff goes off and he reflects, oh, ground under my feet, I guess I have that and bonhoeffer then reflect on that. And I think it's one of the lessons he talks about ground under one's feet. Yes, it is the opening of the 10 years after bit. Has there ever been a people who had less ground under their feet as the right, right. So it's clearly something that's reverberating around. And this sense that, of course he can't judge this Heinrich character. Because what, what could he possibly have done different. So there's, there's a tension there between bonhoeffer's clear commitment to ethical action, where he's saying, you know, come on people, we, we have to do something. And his compassion, I think, for people who just, you know, what else could they do. Yeah, so really interesting dynamic going on. Oh, that's fascinating. I, I had never opened the fiction volumes until after I read your book. So now, now I'm just going to go back and find it again. One of the elements that at the beginning of the book, you use Ronner's kind of anonymous Christian as a way of contrasting what, what bonhoeffer is getting at. And underneath it is the big debate. One of the big debates in the 20th century about anthropology and the human being and whether one is naturally religious or not. I'd love for you to kind of like take, take some time to just unpack that because a lot of times when people read bonhoeffer, especially if you come from a deeply religious context, assume an anthropology that he finds problematic. And not just problematic in the sense it's not about reality. It's also a limitation to understanding, you know, the depth of the gospel. Right, so yet it's fascinating because they do these two ideas kind of come together and swing apart right there's there's points of contact and there's points of dissonance. The key difference is that for Rana, human beings have this tendency he uses the word tendency towards God. And that tendency is not necessarily something of which we're aware, but he uses the word to permeate it permeates us. It's like deeply embedded within us. And that is how when God reveals God's self to us, we're able to grasp that revelation, because we already have a tendency towards God. And so then for Rana, that can be actualized to a greater or lesser extent, and he uses is very clear in his language. He uses words like, you know, there's an ascending order of Christianity where you can be baptized into the church or you can kind of progress in your life in the church and that's definitely ascending. There's descending expressions of Christianity where people might be less aware of this tendency towards God that they have in themselves. So it's a definite hierarchical structure that based all the time on this tendency that permeates us to kind of find God or go towards God. But for Bonhoeffer in the World Come of Age, this context in which we now live, the human beings in general don't have that tendency. We're not any longer people who live in a religious framework where we're kind of seeking or trying to grasp God or seeking to have contact with God. We're just kind of poddling around in the world, quite happy to not have a divine framework. And so for Bonhoeffer, that means that when encounter with Christ happens, it's a fundamental alteration that happens, because it's not as though we are kind of predisposed to having that moment. It's a really different understanding of what it is to be a human being and it alters how we think about the relationship between the human and God. The way you develop religion as Christianity in the World Come of Age gives those concepts I think are a lot more prevalent when people think of Bonhoeffer. But read together with unconscious Christian, you see just how committed he is to a religionless Christianity is one without the kind of religious a priori being something we have to articulate, defend, and justify. And in many ways secularization that the movement of secularization where God's not the kind of like required principle to justify meaning, ethics, or you know, all these other kinds of things is that's generally experienced by religious people is a negative thing. And for Bonhoeffer, the declining of kind of the religious given is a positive thing for faith. And that I think is confusing to lots of people. So I'd love for you to go like to describe how he's understanding it and then why the setting aside religion actually opens one up to to faith in a different way. Yeah, yeah for sure. So in his ideas here he's heavily influenced by the writer Wilhelm Dolte who kind of narrated the development of humanity through historical framework. And through reading Dolte, Bonhoeffer starts thinking about what it means to be human and interacting the world as humans in a historical way. And so he looks back to Kant and the Enlightenment, and he identifies that point as the point at which humanity starts reaching maturity. And he uses as an example or he uses as a pattern for this, he talks about an adult, a person who has reached adulthood, and he says you know when we're children, we need someone to guide our decisions, we need someone to help us figure things out. But when we reach adulthood, we are able to do those things for ourselves. And he talks about things like historically a long time ago, when humans didn't really understand weather patterns and that kind of thing. You'd do a rain dance to try to get rain or you'd pray to your particular god to try to get rain, but now we understand weather patterns and we're able to tell, okay, we're going to have rain in three days because we understand meteorological movements. And so he's saying, we've reached adulthood, this isn't a value laden statement, it's just how things are. And in our adulthood, in this situation of the world come of age, we no longer need God to explain stuff for us because we can basically work things out for ourselves. And he says even extreme questions like questions of guilt and questions of death, we can work these out for ourselves now, we don't need a divine framework to do that. And he uses this image of our own knowledge kind of expanding to fit an ever growing circle. And he says, okay, so you might think then that God is occupying this ever decreasing outer ring because our knowledge is expanding and expanding and expanding and God is occupying a tighter and tighter space on the margins of our understanding. But then he says, but that's not really what's happening. Yes, our knowledge is expanding. Yes, we don't need a God who answers our questions anymore. But the Christian God is a God who inhabits the center anyway. God isn't a God who hangs around on the margins and waits to be called in by humanity. God is a God of the center and this, you know, is traced right from the beginning of his work. And so, for Bonhoeffer, in fact, almost this liberation, this human emancipation means that we can connect with God in a much truer way because we end up finding God in the center of existence rather than just thinking about God as being on the margins where our knowledge breaks down. He mentions in letters and papers, like a religious ages this that nature of inwardness and conscience elements. These are passing age and then second time it comes up he named he says metaphysics. Right. And, and when you, you know, this is happening the same time, Heidegger is making the critique of onto theology and the question of being, which the early version of that was his lectures on thessalonians. Then when he didn't get a theology chair, he became a Nazi and a philosopher. But the, but, but that sense that the, the question that that was asked at a previous in a previous history of God always entailed all these other justifying structures. And so like onto theology writ large. And, and that for the, for Christian theologians in the present, when we use the word God, if what we're defending, right, or like, let's talk about the, and I experienced this when you, and if you teach philosophy of religion in the UK system, it happens like half the time. You're sitting around discussing a concept of God, yay or nay on proof for God's existence or this kind of thing. And in some sense, Bonhoeffer is like, that is the, that is a question of a different age. And the reality of that God was historically contingent, which is different than the reality of the one who is in Christ, and perhaps setting aside that conversation opens us up to it like an actual deeper encounter with the divine. Because it doesn't begin with this. In some sense, this is something John Coddingham talks about how that those kind of philosophical debates about God make normative and enlightenment posture of knowing where it happens at a distance that it should be something everyone comes through through reason and facts. And so the nowhere is at a distance from it. And he's like, no, religious knowledge happens by engagement. And Bonhoeffer, in a sense, is going, yes, it happens by engagement. If you're a Christian with the way you encounter the other and guess what everyone else bears the divine image and it happens for them too. Right. Like, that they kind of, the, the, what is required to justify God talk for so much of modern theology debates is an excurs us and missing the point. If we, if we extend that, that's, that's one possible way of hearing, right, the critique of metaphysics. Yeah. And yes, I think that that's hugely important. And one of the things while you were talking, it made me think of when he says, when Bonhoeffer says, even the question of personal salvation has become irrelevant at this point. I think that really feeds into that he's just saying, you know, let's just stop with all these questions about who God is that depend on a different pattern of thinking. Let's just stop with these questions of interiority and personal salvation, which totally missed the point about being attentive to the world and being attentive to the other. Because what the real God is calling us to at this precise point is attentiveness to the world and to the other and active engagement therein. And I think that he, you can, you can kind of sense. It's difficult, right, because you can sense in him the frustration, I think, with all this time wasting speculation. But you can also sense in him the kind of yearning for that time when you could spend hours thinking about, you know, metaphysics and God. I think there is something in his writing in prison where there's a kind of nostalgia for that time, but then he's resolutely saying, that's, that's not what we're here for. One thing that came up in that section of the book for me is, it made me think of how Charles Taylor read, you know, talks about those different uses of the word secular. Right. And so like in the contemporary use part of it emerges when exclusive humanism is a live option for human beings, right? So where that kind of referent to God as big other and justifying regime or God of the gaps, all that stuff. Once that dissipates and there is a kind of full human existence possible without a eternal transcendent referent, that reality in a sense is what Bonhoeffer is saying yes to, and at the same time saying yes to Christ again. And I think one of the, one of the things that can make a lot of Christians uncomfortable reading the later Bonhoeffer is your concept of building out unconscious Christian is him saying yes to not just the emergence of exclusive humanism. But in a sense, it has a dignity given to it by Christ, whether or not they know it or not. And that coming to grips with us having come of age or this kind of maturity is actually an invitation for those of us within the church to take our own faith seriously in this material way, right? This encounter with the other, and to recognize that we can collaborate beyond our boundaries, and in doing so we're collaborating with Christ. Absolutely, yeah, and the fact that he labels this unchristian, a desire to go and convince people that they really need God otherwise they're in trouble. And he says, you know this, we're beyond that now, you know, that's trying to prey on people that we might see as weak, and we're not going to do that. And the fact that he, well, in his, in his life is working alongside people who would not want to self-identify as Christian, and he sees his endeavors as being a disciple of Christ. That's just, you know, very matter of fact proof that he doesn't think that the only good can come through the church. But I think for now it is extremely challenging, but extremely important for Christians to think there is an extremely blurry boundary, or even, you know, a boundary shot full of massive holes. Between anything that we might want to call that church, and anything that we might want to see as outside of the church, it's just, at least following Bonhoeffer's ideas, it's just a really unhelpful category to think in. And if we take that commitment to the world in the incarnation seriously, then the outworking of that is full commitment to worldliness. Yeah, in that section of the book, I mean, you engage a number of different Bonhoeffer interpreters, and one you didn't, that your reading resonated with deeply is Eberhard Jungle, and God, the mystery of the world. And when he's reflecting on religionless Christianity, world come of age and stuff, the fun turn of phrase he uses to get at it is that in a religious age, we all assume God is necessary. And as we come into adolescence, we sit around defending the necessity of God. But the gospel has already told us God is more than necessary. It's all excess and gift. And what Bonhoeffer's inviting us into is to recognize that in defending the necessity of God or legitimating the reality of God, we were already distancing ourselves from the divine life that has already seized all of finitude into itself. So in this religionless Christianity, he talks about what's a God where you get rid of the kind of the trappings of a religious age. It's one that's more than necessary. And I find that framing extremely helpful because it preserves, unlike some of the more radical theology readings of Bonhoeffer, it preserves that the terms of a post-religious age come precisely because of divine initiative in the incarnation. And because of the divine initiative in the incarnation, why would you think a particular historically, culturally contingent structures necessary? Like what about something humans build is necessary to encounter the reality of God. And so it has its like dual function. Yeah, and that that refusal to kind of parcel up God into something that then you could just, you know, say to someone who it is, his entire explanation of who God is. This is how it works. You know, Bonhoeffer's resistance to that is, I think, is difficult if you prefer Christianity to be kind of neat and accessible, right? It is really challenging to kind of be told, no, you can't do that. You have to see the bigger picture. Well, the bigger picture is extremely challenging and messy. I think it's the messiness, which he's kind of happy to roll with, which is really hard, actually. Yeah, the messiness can make almost any interpretive authority of an institutional structuring. Yeah, and it does for me, even if just I have a kid ask me a question that problematizes what I thought was clear. Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely love the book. And I only got through half of the questions I had that it inspired because it was so much fun. And I really enjoyed getting to talk to you about it. So is there something I completely missed or didn't bring up? Do you think I should that you want to share or places people might want to connect with you or something? You know, until you write the Levenos book and then we get that. Well, if people want to connect with me, I'm pretty sure that my email address is on the Ripon College-Cudston website, which is where I work, Ripon College-Cudston. So you can Google me and I'm pretty sure my email address is there. I think something that we've kind of touched on, but it's worth underlining, is the fact that Bonhoeffer is really trying at this period to articulate theology in new ways. And that's partly because he's realizing, okay, all these categories kind of don't really work anymore. And one of those categories is theological expression. And so once he keeps obviously writing traditional theological texts, right, he wants to write this book, he's starting making notes for it. That's still his plan. But he's writing this fiction, which is pretty exploratory. And he's also writing poetry in this period. And those other forms of text are definitely still theological. And that's fascinating to me that, you know, he says theoretically, oh yes, theological language is going to have to develop. And then he kind of, he just does it because he realizes, oh, we have to take the seriously. So he tries writing fiction and he's not great at it, but he gives it a go. And he tries writing poetry and some of his poems are pretty great, actually, some, not all. But, you know, so he's really, although Bonhoeffer is extremely problematic on a number of levels, not at least his treatment of women, and we could go on. But what really makes me warm to him is his deep commitment to, like, trying to live as a disciple of Christ. And if that means writing theology differently, he will give that a go. And I just really, yeah, I really liked that. And I think that that's a big part of his theology. Is it right that Rowan Williams was your outside examiner? Yeah. Is that as intimidating as one might think it is? I was very scared, but he was extremely supportive. So after a few minutes, I was fine. His first question to me in the Viva was something about, you know, if Bonhoeffer thinks this about church, then how does that work for what he thinks about Christianity? And I was slightly freaked out because it was, you know, the first question. And I kind of replied, I think it depends how you define church to start with. And so Rowan just said, well, pick a definition and then answer the question. Oh, my. And I kind of went, oh, right, OK. But, yeah, he's been really supportive and was kind enough to write the foreword, and we're still in touch on a variety of projects and questions. So, yeah, it's been a really, it was a nice context in which to meet him, although terrifying. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been a blast. Oh, thank you. I've had a really good time. Who doesn't love talking about Bonhoeffer? Losers? No. Hey. You made it all the way through the episode. Congratulations. If you would like to help make this possible, I would absolutely love for you to head over to homebrewedcommunity.com. There, you'll be able to join the substat community, process this, where you get ad-free versions of all the new episodes. When they come out, you'll be able to get invites to live engagements, zoom hangouts and such. And it's a real easy way to help make this happen, or you could join theologyclass.com. That is a place where you get access to the 45+ online classes we've done, and we keep adding to it. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, there are lots of ways to support the podcast, get access to extra content and interaction, and I deeply, deeply, deeply appreciate all of you who've helped make this apart. So, head over to homebrewedcommunity.com and share the brew. Smoochie-boochie, friends. Hey, friends. This is Tripp and this Advent, you know, the journey up to Christmas. In the year 2024, it's strikingly similar to a time in the early 20th century, one where there is economic, turmoil, political tensions, challenges to the burgeoning democracies, war on the horizon. And in that context, there are a host of theologians that wanted to resist the attraction, the popularity rising up in the church to right-wing despots, resistors of authoritarianism, challengers to fascism. Theologians who saw this crisis and said, "What is the word of God today?" Those theologians, Carl Bart, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul, Tilick, Rudolph, Boltmann, started a movement, the theologians of crisis. In this Advent, I'm going to be joined by friends that are happening to be theologians, specialists on each of these scholars to wrestle with their faith. What was their understanding of the times and what can we learn from it in hours? And not just that. We're going to look at the way these brilliant theologians proclaim that message from the pulpit. That's right. You'll get an intro lecture to each one of these scholars. Then you'll get to have a live Q&A with me and a specialist in that theologian, and we will be discussing their larger vision and looking at some of their sermons from Advent and Christmas, places where they picked up the tradition and brought the word of the coming of God to a time of crisis. If you want to join up, then head over to ohgodwhatnow.net. O-H-G-O-D-W-A-T-N-O-W.net. This class is donation based including zero, so head on over. Join the community and let's wrestle with theologians who have a word for their time and how it speaks to hours.
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Eleanor McLaughlin, author of Unconscious Christianity and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology. We discuss Bonhoeffer's influence on modern theology, the concept of unconscious Christianity, Bonhoeffer's changing views, and the relevance of his work today. Eleanor shares her journey into Bonhoeffer studies, the challenges of interpreting his work, and her insights into his lesser-known fiction and poetry. The conversation also touches on topics like the theology of the cross, religionless Christianity, and Bonhoeffer's ethical commitments in facing the challenges of his time.
Spend a week with Tripp & Andrew Root in Bonhoeffer’s House in Berlin this June as part of the Rise of Bonhoeffer Travel Learning Experience. INFO & DETAILS HERE
Join me this DECEMBER for our open online class exploring the 'Theologians of Crisis' - Breaking into the Broken World. Join us to learn about Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rudolph Bultmann as we explore their thoughts and timely reflections in their Advent/Christmas sermons.
Want to learn more about Bonhoeffer? Join our open online companion class, The Rise of Bonhoeffer, and get access to full interviews from the Bonhoeffer scholars, participate in deep-dive sessions with Tripp and Jeff, unpack curated readings from Bonhoeffer, send in your questions, and join the online community of fellow Bonhoeffer learners. The class is donation-based, including 0. You can get more info here.
Dr. McLaughlin is Tutor in Theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon, with a focus on doctrine and ethics. She holds theology degrees from the University of Oxford (BA and DPhil) and the University of Geneva (Maîtrise en Théologie). Her research interests include the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theological anthropology and disability theology. She contributed to BBC Radio 4's programme 'In Our Time' on Bonhoeffer in 2018, and is a trustee of the charity Project Bonhoeffer.
Ellie's publications include Unconscious Christianity in Bonhoeffer’s Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ. Foreword by Rowan Williams (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020), and ‘Disability, Technology, and Human Flourishing,’ in Human Flourishing in a Technological World: A Theological Vision, edited by Jens Zimmermann and Michael Burdett (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021).
Previously, Dr. McLaughlin worked at Cuddesdon from Sarum College, where she ran the postgraduate programmes in Theology, Imagination and Culture. She co-ordinated the MTh at the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and was Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at Regent's Park College. Ellie lives in Oxford with her husband Luke and her cat Bertie. She enjoys good food with friends, reading and travelling.
You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube
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This DECEMBER, we will be exploring the 'Theologians of Crisis' in our online Advent class - Breaking into the Broken World. Join us to learn about Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rudolph Bultmann as we explore their thoughts and timely reflections in their Advent/Christmas sermons.
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