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Nature in a ‘world come of age’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Peter Scott
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What is striking about the reception of the account of worldliness in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison writings is how few commentators have drawn attention to the fact that Bonhoeffer concentrates on the status of nature. To be sure, nature is not part of the definition of ‘the coming of age of mankind’. But the aim of such ‘coming of age’ is ‘to be independent of nature’. Bonhoeffer writes: ‘Our immediate environment is not nature, as formerly, but organization. But with this protection from nature’s menace there arises a new one — through organization itself.’ So the claim that ‘organization’ is now the environment of humanity is to be understood dialectically: the emancipation of humanity from nature leads to new forms of domination.

For Bonhoeffer, the attempt to escape nature thus raises once more the question of humanity. Or, as Bonhoeffer puts it, if the menace of nature is displaced by the menace of social organization, ‘What protects us against the menace of organization?’. ‘Coming of age’ is thus an anthropological development (the theme of worldliness) predicated upon the emerging independence of humanity from nature which, in turn, requires a theological response (the theme of ‘secular interpretation’). Such interpretation must address the fact that nature is now mediated to us by social contexts. So the theological interpretation of a ‘world come of age’ includes judgements about the status and significance of nature for humanity.

The difficulties raised here for Christian theology by the place of nature in a ‘world come of age’ are acute for we are driven back to the origins of modernity.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 78 , Issue 919 , September 1997 , pp. 356 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 1971), p. 380Google Scholar. Andrew Shanks and Barry A Harvey discuss these sentences from Bonhoeffer but not from the perspective of the theology of nature. For the references, see Andrew, Shanks, Civil Society, Civil Religion (Oxford: Blackwells, 1995), p. 85Google Scholar; Barry A, Harvey, ‘A Post Critical Approach to a “Religionless Christianity’” in Wayne, W. Floyd and Charles, Marsh (Eds.), Theology and the Practice of Responsibility. Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994), p. 40.Google Scholar

2 Georg, Lukàcs The Ontology of Social Being (London: Merlin Press, 1978), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

3 For this interpretation of Gaia, see Donald, Worster, Nature's Economy. A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd. edn. 1994), pp. 381–87.Google Scholar

4 Paulos Mar, Gregorios The Human Presence: Ecological Spirituality and the Age of the Spirit (New York: Amity House, 1987), p. 20.Google Scholar

5 For this use of the ‘story of creation’ see, inter alia, McFague, Sallie The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 38–47Google Scholar Rosemary Radford, Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist theology of Earth Healing (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 32–58.Google Scholar

6 Barry, A. Harvey A Post‐Critical Approach to a “Religionless Christianity”’, p. 48.Google Scholar

7 See Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Christology (London: SCM Press, 1978), pp. 59–65Google Scholar; Dietrich, Bonhoeffer, Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 161–84.Google Scholar

8 Eberhard, Bethge adds deus ex machina, privilege, tutelage and dispensability as aspects of religion – see Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Theologian. Christian. Contemporary. (London: Collins Fount, 1977), pp. 779–82.Google Scholar As Ernst Feil argues, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 173–4Google Scholar, privilege and dispensability can be ascribed to partiality; deus ex machina to metaphysics. Feil makes no reference to tutelage, but this may be ascribed to partiality of course.

9 The list of letters which gives credence to this summary is long, but see especially those collected in Letters and Papers from Prison, dated 30 April 1944,5 May 1944, 29 May 1944, 8 June 1944, 30 June 1944, 16 July 1944 and the important sketch ‘Outline for a book.

10 Bonhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 362; p. 346; p. 342.

11 Feil The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 103.

12 See Sallie, McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological. Nuclear Age (London: SCM Press, 1987).Google Scholar

13 Douglas, Davies, in Holm, J. with Bowker, J. (Eds.). Attitudes to Nature, (London: Pinter, 1994), p. 40Google Scholar; John, Habgood, ‘A sacramental approach to environmental issues’, in Charles, Birch et. al. (Eds.). Liberating Life, Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1990), p. 48.Google Scholar

14 Jürgen, Moltmann The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (London: SCM Press, 1990), p. 71; pp. 172–181Google Scholar; pp. 258–259.

15 See Gordon, D. Kaufman Theology for a nuclear age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 28Google Scholar: ‘A supreme test…of the Christian symbols…is their capacity to provide insight and guidance in our situation today’; cf. McFague, Models of God, p. 21.

16 Wolfhart, Pannenberg A liberal logos Christology’ in David Ray, Griffin and Thomas, J J Altizer (Eds.), John Cobb's Theology in process (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), p. 133Google Scholar; Jesus – God and Man (London: SCM Press, 1968), p. 166.

17 McFague's subsequent book, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology discusses postmodern science but only in terms of providing a context for theological reflection. Materially, her position is unchanged from that of Models of God.

18 See McFague, Models of God. p. 45f.

19 Pannenberg ‘A liberal logos Christology’, p. 133.

20 Bonhoeffer Ethics, p. 243.

21 Cf. Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 280: ‘How do we speak…in a “secular” way about God.

22 Bonhoeffer Christology, pp. 61–65.23 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 83.

24 From the perspective of ‘secular’ interpretation, it seems likely that even Bonhoeffer mistakes his own approach. Bonhoeffer's suggestion for the ‘starting point of our secular interpretation’ is God's weakness; that is, ‘secular’ interpretation begins from the cross (see Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 361). But such a claim suggests a programme which we have seen repeatedly in this paper fails to grasp the many dimensions of nature. (Even Bonhoeffer resists appealing to the cross in the discussion of nature in Christology, see pp. 64–65.) The cross in the economy of reconciliation is not the place to start a ‘secular’ interpretation of nature.

25 I am grateful to Alistair McFadyen, Stanley Rudman and Haddon Willmer for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.