According to Bonhoeffer, 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.”¹

This has a deep impact on the meaning of community. Bonhoeffer said that it is impossible for any human, social, community to truly exist apart from the community of God:

Inherent in the Christian concept of God that we know through revelation in Christ, but ultimately through Christ’s church-community, is that community of God and social community belong together… Thus we are saying that direct community with God also demands direct human community, that the latter is absolutely necessary as the corollary to community with God, and that it is no coincidence that Genesis 2.18 reads: “It is not good that the human being [Mensch] should be alone”.²

In other words, it is impossible to be a Christian apart from community: the relational nature of being human means that if we are to be fully human, by being drawn into relationship with God, then, at one and the same time, we are being drawn into relationship with others.

This is something more than the basic huddling instinct. It is not, Bonhoeffer says, the result of mere impulse. The formation and continued functioning of the community has to be an act of conscious will:
When men are brought together by sheer impulses it is not possible to speak of human society. The impulses of imitation, subordination, sociability, and in particular of hunger and sexuality, man has in common with the animals. Specifically human community is present only when conscious human spirit is at work, that is, when community is based on purposive acts of will. Human community does not necessarily arise from such acts of will, but it has its being in them.³

The question then arises, whose community, whose will? In other words, what is the ethical component of Bonhoeffer’s theology of community? He says something about the way we should behave, towards ourselves, towards others and towards God. What will be the basis for this? Theoretically, the ethical component should be simple: human community functions best when it is completely subordinated to the will of God.

To be in community with God obviously means, first of all, the absolute identity of purpose of the divine and human wills, within the relation of the creative to the created (i.e. obedient) will— in other words, in the relation of ruling and serving.⁴

But Bonhoeffer is also a realist. He recognizes that such an “absolute identity of purpose” is no easy thing to achieve this side of the Fall:

… since every person is created with a uniquely individual character, tension between wills cannot be avoided even in the community of love. With this concession we already recognize that strife as such is by no means as a result of the fall but arises from a common love of God. The will of every individual strives to attain the single goal of serving the divine will, that is, serving the community in its own way.⁵

Which reminds me of the speech given by the vice-principal of my theological college at his farewell dinner. He touched on his relationship with another member of staff, which had been notoriously rocky, but finished by saying: “Even so, Joan and I both sought to serve God, she in her way, and I in His”!

1. Clifford Green, ‘Human sociality’, p. 115. [↩]
2. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, note 1 on p. 60. [↩]
3. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, pp. 80-81. The translation is taken from p. 53 of an earlier English edition (Collins, 1963). [↩]
4. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, note 1 on p. 60. [↩]
5. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, note 1 on pp. 60-61. [↩]