http://scriptura.journals.ac.za/
Scriptura 99 (2008), pp 337-349
THE FEELING OF TIME: BONHOEFFER ON TEMPORALITY AND THE FULLY HUMAN LIFE1 Robert Vosloo Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology Stellenbosch University
Abstract This essay explores the notion of temporality in Bonhoeffer’s thought. After an introductory reference to an early text of Bonhoeffer that reveals his passion for movement and the moment, the essay comments briefly on the direction of Emmanuel Levinas’s reflections on temporality. It is argued that both Levinas and Bonhoeffer link their understanding of temporality to otherness and death. The main part of the essay traces Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the timeful nature of reality, with special reference to his Berlin dissertations, Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, two of his Barcelona sermons, his Ethics and his Prison writings. The last section of the essay offers Bonhoeffer’s timeful engagement with life as a challenge to a reductive economization of time.
Keywords: D Bonhoeffer, E Levinas, Temporality, Time, The Other A Passion for the Present In 1923 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an illuminating matriculation essay entitled “Catullus and Horace as Lyric Poets.” Bonhoeffer is clear that he wants to understand “what these poets mean for us today.”2 It is evident in Bonhoeffer’s essay that he gives preference to the poetry of Catullus and that he is moved by Catullus’s engagement with life. Bonhoeffer writes: “He hates and he loves. Everything is movement and temperament… Catullus transforms everything into passion.”3 According to the young Bonhoeffer’s observation, Horace and Catullus respond differently to the world. While Horace assumes a vantage point more external to the subject matter, Catullus sees himself in the midst of a vital part of life suddenly illumined. Whereas Horace expresses emotions about the world, Catullus expresses these emotions as they are bound up with his own emotions. Bonhoeffer also praises Catullus’s humility over against the ambitious nationalism of Horace.4 He identifies
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This essay was read as a paper at the International Bonhoeffer Conference in Rome in June 2004. Bonhoeffer, D, The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918-1927, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol 9, (eds.) Matheny, PD, Green, CJ, Johnson, MD (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 198. In this remark we already see something of Bonhoeffer’s lifelong commitment to relate what he reads to the present, to ‘today.’ This is exemplified most clearly in his question: ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ See his famous letter in Bonhoeffer, D, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), 270. Bonhoeffer, The Young Bonhoeffer, 205. In the editor’s introduction to The Young Bonhoeffer, Paul Duane Matheny refers to Bonhoeffer’s essay on Horace and Catullus in order to emphasize the value of humility within the Bonhoeffer family circle. Matheny also refers to Bonhoeffer’s appreciation for Catullus’s passionate and emotional engagement with life as mirror of Bonhoeffer’s own desire for the richness of life (partly inherited from his mother). He continues: