Christ the Centre

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. MATTHEW 16:15–16

In the summer of 1933, while the new regime was taking hold of Germany and its universities, Bonhoeffer gave a course of lectures in Berlin on the person of Christ. He never published them. His students’ notes were gathered after his death and reconstructed, and in English they have appeared as Christology and, later, as Christ the Center. They are compressed and in places difficult. But they contain the key to everything else he wrote. For Bonhoeffer, Christian faith and Christian life begin and end with one person.

Not how, but who

Bonhoeffer opened with a question about questions. When we meet something new, he said, we usually ask how it works. We want to classify it, explain it, fit it into what we already know. Much theology has asked of Jesus Christ the same kind of question: how can God become man? How can two natures be united in one person? Bonhoeffer thought that this question, however natural, puts us in the wrong position. It makes us the masters and Christ the object of our inquiry.

The proper question is not how but who. Who are you? That is the question we ask of a person, not a thing; and when we ask it sincerely, we find that the tables have been turned. The one we are questioning is questioning us. The disciples at Caesarea Philippi did not first work out a theory of Jesus and then decide to follow him. Jesus asked them, whom say ye that I am? — and in answering, Peter found that his whole life was being claimed.

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. MATTHEW 16:16

Bonhoeffer pressed this point with an unexpected piece of advice: that the right way to begin speaking of Christ is with silence. He did not mean mystical wordlessness, or a refusal to preach. He meant the reverent silence of the church before the Word it did not invent and cannot master — the silence in which the creature waits to be addressed. Only out of that silence can the church speak rightly.

But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. HABAKKUK 2:20

Present, and for me

The second great theme of the lectures is that Christ is present. He is not merely a figure of history whose influence lives on, nor an ideal we try to imitate, but the risen Lord who is here, now, among his people. And he is present not in a vague or general way but, Bonhoeffer insisted, as the one who is for me — for us. It belongs to Christ’s very being, he argued, to be turned towards us. We cannot think of him in his majesty apart from his love for his people.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. GALATIANS 2:20

Where is he present? Bonhoeffer answered in the terms of his Lutheran tradition: in the word preached, in the sacraments, and in the church-community. Christ is present as Word, because God speaks, and his speaking is personal address. He is present in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, because God gives himself not only to the ear but to the whole person. And he is present as the community itself, gathered in his name — a theme we shall take up in the next chapter.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. MATTHEW 18:20

Evangelical readers will not all follow Bonhoeffer’s sacramental theology, and they need not. But the central claim — that Christ meets us now, and not only in memory — is one every Christian can gladly own.

The centre of everything

Bonhoeffer went on to describe Christ as the centre — of human existence, of history, and of creation. He is the centre of human existence because he stands where we have failed to stand: he is the new man before God, and our true selves are found only in him. He is the centre of history because the long hope of Israel, and the longing of every people, finds its fulfilment in him — though in a hidden way, for history does not look as if it has been conquered. And he is the centre of creation, because all things were made through him and for him, and one day all creation will be set free in him.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. COLOSSIANS 1:16–17

This was not an abstract claim in 1933. A regime was busy declaring that the centre of German life was the nation and its leader. To lecture that summer that Christ alone is the centre was to say something with consequences.

The humbled one

The third theme is the humility of Christ. Bonhoeffer spoke of Christ as present in the world in a kind of disguise — veiled in the form of a servant, walking among sinners, hidden in weakness. The glory of God is not displayed in him as the world expects glory, but concealed in a man who is born in a stable, rejected, crucified. Faith sees what the world does not.

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. ISAIAH 53:2

This has practical consequences. A church that follows a humbled Lord must not seek power and prestige in his name, and must look for him where the world does not look — among the weak, the despised and the suffering.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. PHILIPPIANS 2:8

Honouring the creeds

A word about the ancient creeds. Bonhoeffer honoured the Council of Chalcedon, which in 451 confessed Christ as truly God and truly man in one person. He valued it chiefly for what it refused to say: it drew boundaries around the mystery rather than explaining it. That is a helpful way to read the creeds. They are not attempts to dissect Christ, but fences around a holy place, warning us off the paths that lead away from the Christ of Scripture.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. JOHN 1:14

These lectures sit behind all the rest of Bonhoeffer’s work. Costly grace, the Sermon on the Mount, the church, even the strange questions from his prison cell — all circle round the same centre. The reader who wants to understand Bonhoeffer must begin where he began: not with Bonhoeffer, but with Christ.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before your next time of Bible reading, sit in silence for five minutes. Ask not how, but who.

2. Answer Jesus’ question to Peter in your own words, in writing: Who do you say that I am? Then ask what your answer requires of you this week.

3. Read Colossians 1:15–20 slowly. List the things in your life that you have quietly treated as the centre instead of Christ.

4. Where in your community is Christ likely to be found in humility and disguise? Go there this month.

5. If you have never read one of the ancient creeds carefully, read the Nicene Creed aloud and give thanks for the fences it builds around the mystery.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, I have often asked how, and seldom asked who. I have tried to master You, when You came to be my Master.

Teach me to be silent before You, and then to speak of You truly. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, and You are for me.

Be the centre of my life, as You are the centre of all things. Where I have put other things in Your place, dethrone them gently and take Your own.

Open my eyes to see You where the world does not look — in weakness, in the poor, in the despised — as You once came to us in the form of a servant. Amen.