Bonhoeffer, Community, and Witness

Abstract

This chapter examines the degeneration of meaningful communal life and its effects on personal existence as experiences that render suspect credible witness to the realities of God and world. Thinking after Bonhoeffer takes up the main Christological and ecclesial trajectories of his theological project, with two of his perennial concerns providing the most promising point of departure for addressing the questions of community and witness: how Christ takes form in a congregation and how Christians might be prepared for the day when once more we are ‘called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed’. This chapter concludes by showing how his concepts of the arcane discipline, the leisure space of freedom, and the polyphony of life adequately account for both concerns in light of the changes that mark a world come of age.