¹ The first three items constitute the main advance. Bethge, Eberhard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologe, Christ, Zeitgenosse (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967)Google Scholar ; Ott, Heinrich, Wirklichkeit und Glaube: (Erster Band) Zum Theologischen Erbe Dietrich Bonhoeffers (Zürich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966)Google Scholar; Phillips, John A., The Form of Christ in the World: A Study of Bonhoeffer's Christology (London: Collins, 1967)Google Scholar; Marlé, René, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Témoin de Jésus-Christ Parmi Ses Frères (Casterman, 1967)Google Scholar ; Benktson, Benkt-Erik, Christus und die Religion: der Religionsbegriff bei Barth, Bonhoeffer und Tillich (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1967)Google Scholar; Ernst Feil, Eine These zum richtigen Verständnis des religionslosen Christentums und die nichtreligiösen Interpretation bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer, unpublished essay, University of Münster; Meier, Jörg Martin, Weltlichkeit und Arkandiziplin bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologische Existenz Heute, 136 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966)Google Scholar; Weissbach, Jürgen, Christologie und Ethik bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologische Existenz Heute, 131 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966)Google Scholar; Lange, Ernst, Kirche für Andere: Dietrich Bonhoeffers Beitrag zur Frage einer verantwortbaren Gestalt der Kirche in der Gegenwart, Evangelische Theologie (Oktober, 1967)Google Scholar ; Dudzus, Otto, Discipleship and Worldliness in the Thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Religion in Life 35 (Spring, 1966)Google Scholar; Roger A. Johnson, Religious Mythology and a Secular Faith: the Weakness of Man and the Weakness of God, unpublished essay, Wellesley College; Oden, Thomas C., Theology and Therapy: A New Look at Bonhoeffer, Dialogue 5 (Spring, 1966)Google Scholar. I have not seen the work of William Kuhns or John Wilken.

² Bethge has gathered the evidence for the significance of Bonhoeffer's interest in India, op. cit., 138, 183f., 188, 203, 209, 237, 244, 270f., 280f., 298f., 379, 381, 468–74. See also 83.

³ ibid., 977.

⁴ Ibid., 969; see also 959.

⁵ Feil, op. cit., 2.

⁶ Ibid., if.

⁷ See Hamilton, William, A Secular Theology for a World Come of Age, Theology Today (January, 1962), 458Google Scholar: “How sharply these ‘themes’ and these ‘stages’ ought to be distinguished is difficult to say.” Insofar as the multiple Christologies of John A. Phillips's otherwise excellent work on Bonhoeffer stem from the same methodological assumptions, we have the beginnings of an answer. In spite of methodological agreement, Phillips adopts only part of Hamilton's conclusions. See Phillips, op. cit., 186, 188, 194. This is not the place to develop a criticism of the Hamilton-Phillips approach. That it shatters the unity of Bonhoeffer's vision without sufficient warrant will be argued elsewhere.

⁸ The following passages in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings deal with the roots and branches of qualified silence. Variations in translation make classification of the individual sub-headings unprofitable at this stage. All periods of Bonhoeffer's authorship are covered in this sampling. Gesammelte Schriften (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag), hereafter cited as GS, Vol. I (2nd. ed., 1965), 40Google Scholar, 143, 147, 174, 177f., 181; Vol. Ill (2nd. ed., 1966), 42, 168, 177, 236, 238–41, 371, 408f.; Vol. IV (2nd. ed., 1965), 239, 608; The Communion of Saints, tr. by Smith, R. Gregor, based on 3rd. German ed. of 1960 (New York and Evanston; Harper & Row, 1963), 174Google Scholar; The Cost of Discipleship, tr. by Fuller, R. H. (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 134–48Google Scholar; Life Together, tr. Doberstein, J. W. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), 77–81Google Scholar; Ethics ed. by Bethge, Eberhard, tr. by Smith, N. H. (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 326ff.Google Scholar ; and Editor's note, 334. The advances contained in the 6th German edition with the new ordering of the material warrant its citation, Ethik (siebente Auflage; München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966), 385–95Google Scholar; Prisoner for God, ed. by Bethge, Eberhard, tr. by Fuller, R. H. (New York: Macmillan, 1954)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as PFG: p. 33, letter of May 15, 1943; pp. 80f., letter of Nov. 29, 1943; p. 83, letter of Dec. 15, 1943; p. 123, letter of Apr. 30, 1944; p. 126, letter of May 5, 1944; p. 140f., “Thoughts on the Baptism of D.W.R.” I did not have the new translation at the time of writing.

⁹ Contra Ott, op. cit., 124. Readers of Ott's book will recognize the effect which overemphasis on the interpretation issue has had on his whole thesis in spite of his successful criticism of Ebeling. See 104f. and footnote 12, p. 133.

¹⁰ Communion of Saints, 174.

¹¹ Bethge, op. cit., 301, but Bethge does not give documentary evidence that the phrase “qualified silence” was used; see GS I, 174, 177. In the unpublished notes for the Ethics Bonhoeffer grounds this advice to “learn to wait” with the following statement: “Zeit — anderer Ausdruck für Geduld Gottes mit dem Ziel das der Mensch Eigentum Gottes wird. Zeit ist leer, gefüllt durch Jesus Christus, der die Fülle der Zeit ist.” (“Time — another expression for the patience of God, with the goal that man will become the possession of God. Time is empty, filled through Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of time.”) The notes are in Bethge's collection. See also Bonhoeffer's father's remarks about time, Bethge, 380.

¹² PFG, 141, included in the letter of May 21, 1944.

¹³ Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Widerstand und Ergebung (dreizehnte Auflage; München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966), 142Google Scholar, the writer's translation. See PFG, 98–99. Fuller's translation obscures the inverse relation between “uninterpreted” and programmes of interpretation, existential and otherwise.

¹⁴ One needs only to compare Herbert Braun or Mrs. D. Sölle with Thomas Altizer.

¹⁵ Bethge, op. cit., 183–209, 729–43.

¹⁶ GS III, 262ff.; Bethge, 381, 469, 471; see Barth's negative reaction to these plans, GS II, 288.

¹⁷ Bethge, 186–205; GS I, 84–111, 323–54; GS III, 127ff.

¹⁸ At any rate, this thesis would be easier to defend than Hanfried Müller's forced attempt, in an otherwise imposing and instructive volume, to make Bonhoeffer's views conform to the deterministic assumptions of the official philosophy of the German Democratic Republic. Von der Kirche zur Welt (Hamburg-Bergstedt: Herbert Reich Evang. Verlag, 1961)Google Scholar; also Mündige Welt IV (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1963), 52–78.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Bethge, op. cit., 357–77.

²⁰ GS I, 86f., 94f., 99, 308, 312.

²¹ GS I, 61.

²² Bethge, op. cit., 762, 893; see GS IV, 601.

²³ For his un-Barthian view of religion see Müller, Dedo, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Prinzip der Weltlichen Interpretation und Verkündigung des Evangeliums, Theologische Literatur Zeitung (Leipzig, 1961), 738ff.Google Scholar

²⁴ GS I, 293–315.

²⁵ GS I, 323–54.

²⁶ GS I, 32. All translations from GS are by the writer. The insert in brackets is by the writer.

²⁷ Bethge, op. cit., 183f.

²⁸ PFG, 122.

²⁹ Feil, op. cit., 3; Feil confirms this connection between the desire to go to India and the rejection of the religious Gestalt of the West.

³⁰ GS I, 61; see also GS II, 158.

³¹ Troeltsch, Ernst, Der Historismus und Seine Probleme, Gesammelte Schriften, Band III (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1922), 6, 9–12Google Scholar, 34, 37f., 50f., 60, 104–06.

³² Contra Phillips, op. cit., 39, who maintains that although Bonhoeffer in Sanctorum Communio “had taken over Troeltsch's sociological tools, he did not really confront the presuppositions which determined the way in which Troeltsch wielded them. It is too bold a claim for Bonhoeffer's champions to say that here, in his first writing, he had encountered Troeltsch directly.” Though there is evidence of crucial direct influence from Troeltsch (such as the role of Troeltsch's Zum Begriff u. zur Methode der Soziologie, 1916, in Gesammelte Schriften, Band IV [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr], 705–20) on Bonhoeffer's Sanctorum Communio, Phillips is right if he means by “confront” a simple and direct response within the same system of linguistic coordinates. One suspects that the real reason for Phillips's assertion is that his thesis demands that Troeltsch not enter the picture until late in Bonhoeffer's career. Interpreters who use ecclesiology as the clue to Bonhoeffer will be able to agree with Phillips, who in spite of his refutation of the more obvious forms of this approach actually depends on a static ecclesiology in the early theological and the Kirchenkampf periods for the success of his argument. The contrary view is that Bonhoeffer's was a theology in motion, that Sanctorum Communio was one of the moves (incidentally coinciding with the essay on Job), and that it confronted Troeltsch by taking his problems more seriously than he himself did, and that India is one symbol of the intensity and thoroughgoing character of this response. However, nothing less than a complete theory, spelled out in full detail, can give Phillips a fair answer at the level of performance he has established.

³³ PFG, 155, letter of June 30, 1944.

³⁴ GS II, 182.

³⁵ GS III, 261, in Das Recht auf Selbstbehauptung, 1932. Bonhoeffer's naiveté about the real India, already implicit in the sentence cited, becomes incontrovertible when he continues the sentence as follows: “India, where the needs of the body are easily supplied and where therefore the soul is given over to free surrender and deepening within itself.” This feature fits our contention that India was a projection for Bonhoeffer, not simply a geographical region.

³⁶ PFG, 155, letter of June 30, 1944.

³⁷ PFG, 150, letter of June 21, 1944.

³⁸ Bethge, op. cit., 382.

³⁹ Ibid., 379.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 382.

⁴¹ Unpublished seminar paper written under Professor Sellin, in the possession of Eberhard Bethge. The date, 1926/1927, is important because it speaks against the one-sided ecclesiological view of the period of Sanctorum Communio.

⁴² GS IV, 294–320; see the racist reaction printed in GS II, 292f.; GS IV, 321–43 has parallel relevance and is of interest because of the methodological similarity between the reaction of Friedrich Baumgärtel and Walter Harrelson. For the latter see Bonhoeffer and the Bible, in Marty, Martin, ed., The Place of Bonhoeffer (New York: Association Press, 1962), 115–39Google Scholar. Instead of working up a definition of Christology from the entire Bonhoeffer corpus, Harrelson imposes a traditional definition with results which carry a note of misapplied condescension (132). Another example is the analysis on p. 134 which presupposes the reverse of what Bonhoeffer says about man's needs and longings. See PFG, 150, letter of June 21, 1944; also, “Man's religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God…. The Bible however directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God.” PFG, 164, July 16, 1944. For Bonhoeffer, who was strongly anti-Marcionite, the Bible always means the whole Bible.

⁴³ PFG, 79. See also the numerous references to Jeremiah 45: PFG, 50, 106, 121, 137, 169.

⁴⁴ PFG, 173, letter of July 28, 1944. This letter is decisive against Harrelson's analysis of PFG, 79. See Harrelson, op. cit., 134.

⁴⁵ GS III, 262f. His interpretation of Gandhi's tat tvam asi and of the discipline of suffering belong to this side of the India theme.

⁴⁶ See notes 33–37, above.

⁴⁷ Bethge makes a similar observation about the logic of Bonhoeffer's development, op. cit., 184.

⁴⁸ PFG, 124f. The exact reference of the “on us” is unclear. It may mean a role for Germany, a role for German theology, or a mediating role for his own theology which had already shown a tendency toward mediation in the pages of Act and Being (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1961)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ PFG, 124; 146f., letter of June 8, 1944.

⁵⁰ Cf. PFG, 14: “for the very reason that something new was being born which was not discernible in the alternatives of the present.”

⁵¹ GS II, 288.

⁵² Aus einem Briefe K. Barths an Landessuperintendent Herrenbrück, P. W., 21. Dezember 1952, Die Mündige Welt (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1959), 121f.Google Scholar, translated in Phillips, op. cit., 250–53.

⁵³ See Heinrich Ott, op. cit., 106ff., for a similar point.

⁵⁴ See PFG, 153, letter of June 27, 1944; and 146: “the trend … considers itself to be anti-Christian,” letter of June 8, 1944. Emphasis by the writer.

⁵⁵ A continuing proclamation within the space of the disciplina arcana is certainly one of Bonhoeffer's presuppositions, e.g.: “I am of the view that the full content, including the mythological concepts, must be maintained.” PFG, 149, letter of June 8, 1944.

⁵⁶ See for a balanced and scholarly point of view other than Bonhoeffer's, , Prenter, Regin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Karl Barths Offenbarungspositivismus, Mündige Welt III (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1960), 41Google Scholar. Prenter only concedes that Barth's position could have appeared to Bonhoeffer to be a positivism of revelation. Ernst Wolf discussed the issue with Bonhoeffer in 1942 and recalls that Bonhoeffer was willing to modify the sharpness of his revelational positivism charge against Barth (personal communication from Professor Wolf, May 13, 1967). The evidence in PFG, 126, letter of May 5, 1944, however, is later and therefore, if anything, would indicate a resharpening of the position. Bonhoeffer's position makes sense not as an objective scholarly judgment but as a corollary to his revolutionary vision. That is, the prior task is to grasp what it meant to Bonhoeffer; a quite different task occupies this part of Prenter's essay, namely, to ask how far it in fact applies to Barth.

⁵⁷ PFG, 126.

⁵⁸ Ebeltng, Gerhard, The Non-religious Interpretation of Biblical Concepts, in Word and Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), 98–161Google Scholar (German version first published in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 52 [1955], 296–360Google Scholar, and in 1956 in Mündige Welt II).

⁵⁹ Criticisms of Ebeling have come from Ott, op. cit., 104.; Meier, op. cit., 18, note 71; and Moltmann, Jürgen, Herrschaft Christi und soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologische Existenz Heute 71 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1959)Google Scholar, 40, note 43.

⁶⁰ PFG, 125, letter of May 5, 1944.

⁶¹ Mündige Welt I, 121.

⁶² See Bethge, op. cit., 933.

⁶³ PFG, 79, letter of Nov. 29, 1943.

⁶⁴ Contra Ebeling, Word and Faith, 161; see Ott, op. cit., 104.

⁶⁵ PFG, 143, letter of May 25. I944; 157, letter of June 30, 1944.

⁶⁶ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (cited above), 7f.

⁶⁷ PFG, 179; see GS III, 32.

⁶⁸ PFG, 126, letter of May 5, 1944.

⁶⁹ GS III, 48, 57f., 270ff., 494.

⁷⁰ PFG, 124, letter of April 30. 1944.

⁷¹ See the poem, “Stations on the Road to Freedom.” That the freedom was only relative is part of the significance of the poem “Who am I?” That the projection of hope onto India had been drawn back into his own experience to some degree finds confirmation in the shift of accent in statements about India. In the prison he no longer spoke of wanting to go there. Instead he spoke about taking responsibility. “It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall an important responsibility,” PFG, 125, letter of April 30, 1944.

⁷² PFG, 155, letter of June 30, 1944.

⁷³ Bethge, op. cit., 930–1000. The prison letters, which were not intended for publication, offer a constitutive example of an aspect of the disciplina arcana.

⁷⁴ PFG, 140f., letter of May 21, 1944.