Christ the Center

The new critical edition of Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology lectures that appear in Christ the Center come out Sept 1, 2009 in Berlin: 1932-1933 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 12)

Christ the Center is an incredible, somewhat flawed re-envisioning of Christology-in fact, of Christian theology as a whole. Bonhoeffer turns the usual exercise of Christology as an elaboration of the qualities of Jesus Christ and the relationship between elements of the alphabet soup of Nicea and Chalcedon on its head, declaring that these traditional declarations of the Church are useful in reigning in conceptions of Christ that inappropriately objectify God, but they do not constitute a positive contribution to our understanding of God. The middle section steps back from this a bit and feels rather doctrinaire. If one does not subscribe to the formulae of the ecumenical councils Bonhoeffer talks about, it is hard to see why one should be convinced by his statements about the various heresies. However, he closes the second part (and thus the book-the third part is missing) with an exploration of Christ that is as shocking and radical as it is faithful to Scripture and the experience of the Church. With all that, there is no doubt this book is very, very challenging. It reads fairly easily (with some clunkiness no doubt resulting from the translation), but its proposals are so revolutionary in many cases that it is hard to wrap one's head around them and really understand all their implications. Christ the Center is worth reading many, many times, but not just once.

After seminary taught me how to dissect the Bible and faith, this pre-WWII work by the disciple of "costly grace" helped me put it back together. It is thoroughly academic, and it is unswerving in its insistence that questions of Biblical criticism cannot be placed before and above the question of our relationship to Christ. When Christ is the center, the world looks different than we arrogantly thought it would when looking from the outside in.

This is an amazing book which will challenge the way you think about Christianity. Bonhoeffer brings up issues of grace, faith, and obiedence which will compel anyone to reflect on their faith in Jesus Christ. It is a wonderful and intellectual book for anyone who wants to know what REAL Christianity is.

The book is very philosophical and filled with the language of theology. It pushes toward the question of all Christian theology: where is the place of Jesus of Nazareth in our faith? I think that Bonhoeffer's deductions are right on.