Bonhoeffer’s great book on community living, Life Together, is divided, as was life in the seminary, into five sections: Community; the Day Together; the Day Alone; Service and Confession and the Lord’s Supper. It is worth examining each of these sections in turn.

1. Community

Very often, the Christian community is regarded as, at best, a necessary burden in being a Christian: we all have crosses to bear and mine is other Christians. This was not so for Bonhoeffer. The dominant theme for both the book written and the life lived is set in the book’s lines: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity” (Psalm 133.1).

Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily community of many years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.1

There are three ways in which this is worked out. First, Christians need each other for Christ’s sake; second, Christians are only able to encounter each other through Christ; third, Christians encounter Christ and each other in a looping movement that passes from eternity, through this world of time and back to eternity (“We who live here in community with Christ will one day be with Christ in eternal community”2). We see in this the radical Christocentric nature of Bonhoeffer’s community: Christ is the Mediator. Often when that title is used of Jesus of Nazareth it refers to Christ’s role as go-between for God the Father and humanity: Christ is the intercessor and friend of sinners, and no one can come to the Father except by him. Bonhoeffer means this and more: for him, Christ as Mediator means that no one can encounter anyone else except through Christ: he is the Mediator for person-to-person as well as person-to-God relationships:

I have community with others and will continue to have it only through Jesus Christ…

Elsewhere Bonhoeffer says, in relation to the difference between spiritual and emotional love:

Spiritual love… comes from Jesus Christ; it serves him alone. It knows that it has no direct access to other persons. Christ stands between me and others.3

So, for Bonhoeffer, Christian community should be thought of as “life together under the Word”4: a position that implies both hierarchy (a submission to Christ’s judgement) and protection (gathered under his loving arms). Here we can see how Bonhoeffer the theologian has become Bonhoeffer the Christian.

1. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 31. [↩]
2. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 33. [↩]
3. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pp. 34, 43. [↩]
4. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, n. 2, p. 27, or p. 47. [↩]