Once Again: Ebeling on Bonhoeffer and Non-Religious Interpretation

Further to my post yesterday in which I raised the question of the significance of Bonhoeffer's prison theology for biblical hermeneutics, I came across this quotation from Gerhard Ebeling's classic essay on the notion of 'non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts.' I haven't read much Ebeling before (although I bought my copy of Word and Faith on the 7th March 1989. The essay, though, is fantastic, and was written only 10 years after Bonhoeffer's death. Ebeling speaks movingly of 'a martyrdom whose gravity also silences any criticism that might come from those who have survived' (p.102). The following, though, is wonderful, punchy stuff, and possibly the longest rhetorical question ever recorded:

It is necessary to emphasize that the expression non-religious interpretation was not coined in order to loosen the reins of theological study but to tighten them, not in order that the traditional biblical and theological concepts could be cheerfully thrown overboard but in order to regain them, not in order to succumb to a snobbish freebooter jargon but to strive for new expression of the Word of God, not in order to play off life against doctrine, action against thought, but to incorporate life really in doctrine and action really in though, not purely and simply in order to enable the non-believer to understand but in order that we ourselves, we theologians, should come to the right understanding, not in order that we should now proclaim non-religious interpretation as Gospel but in order that, if we should prove appropriate, we should really proclaim the Gospel in non-religious interpretation?

Gerhard Ebeling, 'The "Non-Religious Interpretation of Biblical Concepts"' in Word and Faith (translated by James W. Leitch; London: SCM, 1963), 128.

One can only wish that some of those who appropriated Bonhoeffer in the 1960s had read and taken heed of Ebeling's observations.  Incidentally, I couldn't resist looking up the German that has been rendered 'snobbish freebooter jargon' to see if it is some weird idiomatic translation, but no, Ebeling wrote 'snobistischen Freibeuterjargon'. It sounds even better and more vicious in German, don't you think?

Comments

[Sean Winter]

Re: [Sean the Baptist (in the UCA)] craig submitted a comment to Once Again: Ebeling on Bonhoeffer and Non-Religious Interpretation

Hi Craig
This is helpful thanks. The theme of silence is an interesting one in relation to biblical interpretation. Amidst may calls for an increasingly public form of debate, there is the counter-argument that says that our loss of credibility means that something silent and secret needs to be established. Dont worry about references etc too much: I have read De Lange, and Keith Clements of course and we are fortunate to have the full DBW here so I can look at Widerstand und Ergebung in advance of the new edition of the English.

When is yours coming out?
Sean

[craig]

Hi Sean I have been meaning to commemt on these posts but have not had a chance, away at ministers conference so no books to hand but it seems to me that this is exactly right the whole point of Bonhoeffer's wor
k at this time was to prepare himself and the church that would emerge after the war, a church that would learn to wait in the silent anonymity of prayer and acts of justice until a new and radical vocabulary emerged by which they could speak with integrity and authority to the worldH this is where the discipline of the secret comes in. Of course Bonhoffer's fear was that we would climb out of the melting pot too early and return to language that had been evacuated of all practical meaning for a listening world. I will try and get to you with some refs you will probably already have but I will dig them out anyway. But absolutely on the right track, this was supposed to make talking about God more difficult, which of course has its roots in Bonhoeffer's early family life and the importance of weighing up the meaning of each word around the dinner table

[Andrew]

Thanks for posting...

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