Bonhoeffer studied at Tübingen and the University of Berlin, and produced his doctoral thesis in 1927, subsequently published to no attention at all in 1930: it was only after the war and Bonhoeffer’s death that Karl Barth described Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church as a “theological miracle”¹.

Bonhoeffer’s first published book is still relatively overlooked (in favour of his monumental Ethics, the revolutionary Cost of Discipleship, and the profoundly moving Letters and Papers from Prison). Even so, some scholars in recent years have argued that the outline of Bonhoeffer’s theology and ministry begins with the argument of this book: if we want to understand what Bonhoeffer attempted and what he represents today, then we should read Sanctorum Communio. It is particularly relevant to our task, as in the book Bonhoeffer begins “exploring the nature and vocation of the church within the wider context of human sociality and historical concreteness.”²

In his study of what the communion of the saints actually means, Bonhoeffer begins with an exploration of what it means to talk about a “person”. Where do “persons” exist? He is very clear on this:
Every concept of community is essentially related to a concept of person. It is impossible to say what constitutes community without asking what constitutes a person. … The concepts of person, community and God are inseparably and essentially interrelated. A concept of God is always conceived in relation to a concept of person and a concept of a community of persons. Whatever one thinks of a concept of God, it is done in relation to person and community of persons.³

Bonhoeffer expressed this aphoristically when he said “… the Christian concept of the person is really exhibited only in sociality…”⁴ This is a crucial word to understanding Bonhoeffer’s concept of community. The Oxford English Dictionary can take us some of the way:

Sociality : 1. a. The state or quality of being social; social intercourse or companionship with one’s fellows, or the enjoyment of this.
2. The action or fact on the part of individuals of forming a society or of associating together; the disposition, impulse, or tendency to do this.⁵

There is, of course, a lot more to the word in Bonhoeffer’s understanding than this, a richness and complexity that has been ably drawn out by Clifford Green. In order to understand Bonhoeffer’s ideas about “sociality”, and thus to be able to understand something about “community”, we have to realise that we are performing theological anthropology, says Green. In other words, we are walking and thinking in that narrow space where what we say about humanity depends upon what we say about God, which in turn depends upon what we think about humanity. This is inescapable, because Christian words about God, Christian theology, can only be spoken in the light of the Incarnation, in which we have learnt that:
God’s being is not in transcendent isolation and absence. God is free for humanity in our history; that is, in the light of Jesus Christ, God is revealed as present to us in the world— God’s being is being-in-relation-to-us. This is the meaning of the incarnation: God with us, and God for us.⁶

Nicholas Lash explains this interconnection very well. He says

The Church is a people, an assembly of men and women. Therefore, we will not think sensibly about the Church unless we think sensibly about the kinds of things human beings are. Moreover, human beings are creatures, constituents of the world of which they form a part. Therefore, we will not think sensibly about human beings unless we think sensibly about the world which God creates.⁷

Because of the self-revelation of God in relation to humanity through the person and saving actions of Jesus Christ, the very nature of being human has been changed: we are fundamentally people in relationship— with each other and with God. “To be human is to be a person before God, and in relation to God. The relation of individual persons to each other, and the relations between human communities of persons, has this theological understanding of God and human existence at its core.”⁸

1. This is actually Clifford Green’s gloss on Barth. Less succinctly but in reality, Barth regarded Sanctorum Communio with “the deepest respect”, because its conclusions were so unusual in Berlin at the time (the late 1920s): Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Vol. IV, part 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), p. 641. For the punchier judgement see Clifford Green, ‘Human sociality and Christian community’, in John W. de Gruchy ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 122. [↩]
2. Geffrey B. Kelly & F. Burton Nelson, The cost of moral leadership : the spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Eerdmans, 2003), p. 8. [↩]
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, eds. Clifford J. Green and Joachim von Soosten, trans. Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, Volume 1, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 34. Emphasis in the original. Most quotations from Bonhoeffer’s works will be taken from the definitive series being produced by Fortress Press, translations of the German critical edition Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (DBW), 17 vols. Edited by Eberhard Bethge, et al. (Munich and Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser-Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1986-1999). [↩]
4. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 33. [↩]
5. “Sociality, a.1.a, 2” The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1989, OED Online. Oxford University Press, 2008 [↩]
6. Clifford Green, ‘Human sociality’, p. 114. [↩]
7. Nicholas Lash, ‘Conversation in Context’, in Theology for Pilgrims, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008), pp. 157-158. Lash glosses his explanation further: “For those readers who prefer to have these things clothed in academic dignity, I am suggesting that our ecclesiology is shaped by whatever anthropology we simply take for granted, and that our anthropology, in turn, is shaped by whatever ontology we simply take for granted.” (note 12 on p. 158). [↩]
8. Clifford Green, ‘Human sociality’, p. 115. [↩]