I don’t read many biographies, but I’ve been reading the new Bonhoeffer biography by Erik Metaxas before going to bed. Its gotten excellent reviews, and rightly so. I think Bonhoeffer must have lived one of the most compelling Christian lives of the last century in witnessing against Hitler’s Third Reich and prophetically calling the German church back to faithfulness. The quotes below are from Bonhoeffer’s dissertation called Sanctorum Communio. They give a nice glimpse into his thinking about the church as the revelation of God’s will through Christ.
“The church is the presence of Christ in the same way that Christ is the presence of God. The New Testament knows a form of revelation, ‘Christ existing as church community’.
“The church is God’s new will and purpose for humanity. God’s will is always directed toward the concrete, historical human being. But this means that it begins to be implemented in history. God’s will must become visible and comprehensible at some point in history. But at the same point it must already be completed. Therefore, it must be revealed. Revelation of God’s will is necessary because the primal community, where God speaks and the word becomes deed and history through human beings, is broken. Therefore God must personally speak and act, and at the same time accomplish a new creation of human beings, since God’s word is always deed. Thus the church is already completed in Christ, just as in Christ its beginning is established.
The crucified and risen Christ is recognized by the church-community as God’s incarnate love for us–as God’s will to renew the covenant, to establish God’s rule, and thus to create community.
