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Module code: V84307 Module Convenor: Dr. Aaron Riches

Module name: Christology

Coursework title: Liberation as Vocation in the Theology of Barth and Bonhoeffer

Assessment type (e.g. essay, Dissertation, project etc): Essay

Deadline date: October 1st, 2014 Word count (including footnotes): 8,019

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Degree programme: MA Systematic and Philosophical Theology

Lead Department: Theology

Sean Carroll 1

Liberation in Christian theology principally addresses how God in Jesus has

overcome the law of death, the “supreme law of the world in which we live.”1 Karl Barth and

Dietrich Bonhoeffer offer us a powerful perspective on what Jesus Christ means for us today,

and how He has truly, and eternally created freedom for mankind. I will demonstrate how

these two offer for us an understanding of liberation as the fulfillment of man’s God given

vocation. I will argue that a doctrine of liberation which takes Barth and Bonhoeffer seriously

will show our freedom from bondage is transferred to a vocation of action that embodies

Christ, and points to God’s revelation to mankind. To develop this thought I will begin with

how Barth and Bonhoeffer see the Bible as God’s revelation of man’s condition. This will

lead to a discussion on both theologians’ theologica crucis which will expound on the cross

as the battleground for liberation and define reconciliation and atonement. Further I then

discuss Barth’s theology of vocation as it relates to man’s freedom and contrast this with

Barth’s Christological ecclesiology. Finally, I will propose that together Barth and

Bonhoeffer provide us with a conception of liberation that encompasses man’s teleological

end attained in God’s freely offered vocation.

The Bible as God’s Revelation of Man’s Condition

Barth and Bonhoeffer shared respect and admiration for each other, and Bonhoeffer

saw in Barth both a mentor and friend.2 Together both men understood the Bible was not just

an historical document nor was God simply the highest good of human experience.3 Jesus

Christ who was attested to in the Bible must once again be taken a priori in our theology.

Bonhoeffer believed “[l]iberal theology failed because it allowed the world to assign Christ

his place in the world” instead of understanding man and creation through Jesus Christ.4

1 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 166.2 Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, A Righteous Gentile vs. The Third Reich (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 60. & Andreas Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2000).3 John Webster, Barth’s Earlier Theology: Four Studies (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 3.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ The Center (New York: Harper One, 1978), 13.

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Bonhoeffer proceeded in his theological endeavor to define the world through the lens of

what Christ did, the world did not then redefine the person and work of Jesus Christ, but

Christ redefined how we understand our world.5 Christ then is our lens to any ontology of

creation and man. While Bonhoeffer did not write a comprehensive dogmatic like Barth, all

of his theological work was Christologically centered as Christ defined every real situation

man and the Church would encounter.

Barth fought much of a similar battle and realized that the liberal approach to the

Bible had caused him to realize he did not know much of the book at all.6 Whereas

Bonhoeffer began his career in academics, Barth fought to his theological system from the

pulpit. This “perplexity and frustration caused him to read and study the Bible in and for

itself, and within it he found a strange new world: God’s world. …the Bible became for Barth

the word of God.”7 Within his pastoral duties he saw the liberal academics had not truly

encountered Christ as God’s Word to man. The Word of God then is God’s direct revelation

to man, understood both as the Word Jesus Christ, and the Biblical record of God’s

commitment to speak with man. In it is established what man’s condition is, and therefore

what Jesus Christ means for us, and most significantly how he has liberated man from his

condition. This is the priority and power with which the Bible speaks, and only by listening to

it and seeking to understand the Word, Jesus Christ, as God’s fullest revelation can we see

man’s plight, and the liberation established.

God’s revelation implicit from scripture renders for us that man stands under an

irreparable condition. This plight has a powerful grasp over all men, which delineates why

humanity is in bondage. For these two theologians the world is a world of death bonded to

sin. Barth himself writes that sin is “engraved inexorably and indelibly upon our life” and it is

5 Christopher Holmes, “‘The Indivisible Whole of God’s Reality’: On the Agency of Jesus in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 no. 3 (2010), 284. 6 Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1966), 22.7 Ibid., 22.

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the “disturbing of the relationship with God which is defined by death.”8 Since man has

fractured his relationship with God, we have sinned and the just punishment for offending

and alienating ourselves from God is evidenced by death9. Man is controlled by this sin, and

directed away from God. All men are set in motion toward death because of the power of sin.

Barth again writes from “sin came death, death as judgment, as the breaking of our life, as the

occasion of apprehension, as our misery.”10 For Barth sin has reigned in this world and as

men we cannot remove it is both a scourge upon us, and the reason for our judgment from

God.11 We have turned away from God choosing our own freedom, which is subjection to

bondage. The failure of mankind is that in our freedom we have actually chosen slavery, and

subjection. Instead of freedom, we have oppression.12 Because we have continually refused

God, we live in sin and therefore we are doomed and bound to death as our just punishment.13

Bonhoeffer agrees with Barth and offers for us an illustration of the lost man. His way

in this world is confused and misplaced because it is not focused on God. It is focused on

mankind’s own decision making as an individual. “Men rejected the Word, refusing to be

accepted by God.”14 Man’s history can be defined by the countless stories of the Bible though

which God has spoken to man, and even called man, but man continues to refuse and reject

God’s way and Word. Man chooses to live wayward and condemned. The ironic status of

mankind’s condition is that in believing to choose his own way, he continually chooses to be

bound to death, and to be an enemy to his own Creator. Humanity is lost as long as we

continue to move forward while being deaf to the Word that is spoken to us. Even more, the

condition of sin leaves us in a relationship with God in which “the only way for God to

8 Karl Barth, Romans, 166; 168.9 Genesis 2:17; 3:3,19 NRSV. Man’s created eternity and relationship with God is now an existence marked by death.10 Karl Barth, Romans, 170.11 Ibid., 167.12 Ephesians 2:1-3 We have chosen sin, and wrath because we have followed everything but God and His good.13 Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death…” NRSV 14 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 236.

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maintain his righteousness is by putting the sinner to death.”15 Therefore, we find that man

lives in the shackles of sin, and therefore “[d]eath is the supreme law of the world in which

we live.”16 Jesus Christ, if He truly liberates man, then must free man from both sin and

death, and more importantly, He must render this freedom throughout eternity.

Theologica Crucis: Liberation at the Battleground of the Cross

Liberation is won on the battleground of the Cross in the theologies of both Barth and

Bonhoeffer. Both men propose a powerful theologica crucis in their works. The Cross

establishes the full meaning of the Incarnation, and exhibits how we may conceptualize how

Jesus Christ is able and willing to free man from the bonds of sin and its concurrent penalty

death. In Romans Barth writes that at the Cross “[h]ere is Emmanuel, God with us, and God

commendeth His love toward us – while we were yet sinners.”17 For Barth the fullest

representation of God with us, and of what the incarnation really means for man is found on

the Cross in Jesus Christ. The theology of the Cross is incarnational because no other than the

Emmanuel is present when He bares our punishment and degradation upon Himself. It is in

the horror of the Cross that the angelic proclamation “Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace among those whom he favors”18 is truly seen. The Cross is God’s

revelation that He shall liberate man, and establish peace and declare His glory even in the

midst of man trying to do away with Him.

Bonhoeffer declares that the Cross demonstrates that God “by putting his own Son,

the bearer of our flesh, to death, he puts to death all flesh on earth. Now it is revealed that

none is good, save God alone and that none is righteous but he.”19 Not one person, save Jesus,

is righteous, and not bound to sin. The Cross is God’s greatest victory on the battleground for

the souls of men because it shows us for what we are, and it shows God for what He is. While

15 Ibid., 274.16 Karl Barth, Romans, 166.17 Ibid., 162.18 Luke 2:14 NRSV19 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 274.

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we are sinful, God is with us. Even in the Passion where we declare “Crucify!” God

demonstrates His love. The Cross reveals to all that “we see our own perversion and

corruption, we see what is our offense and plight, in the fact that God (who never does

anything unnecessary) can obviously be satisfied only by this supreme act.”20 Barth

expounds, it is such a powerful demonstration in the cross because God concentrates all the

sin of humanity in eternity in the punishment of the Son on the Cross. “The passion, in other

words, provides a needed temporal iteration of the future of the non-covenantal and sinful

humanity – a future in which sin is stopped, cornered, and forever cancelled .”21Or, as

Bonhoeffer recalls the Cross, he powerfully reminds us that the Cross cost God the life of His

son to atone for our condition to sin, and world of death. There is no cheap liberation, as there

may be no cheap grace.22 While we may understand from the events recorded in the Bible that

man chooses other than God repeatedly, the Cross stands paramount because it defines the

utter separation, and the cost that must be paid for us. It indicates that when we consistently

choose against God, He has eternally chosen us.

At the Cross God reveals His perfect justice and His extravagant grace. The Cross is

not just borne by Jesus as God, it is borne both in divinity and humanity. Since humanity is

bound by sin, we are helpless to free ourselves. We cannot live free of sin, and therefore,

cannot overcome death. Jesus, as both God and man, must be the one to carry the cross if

there is any salvation, any reconciliation possible. Only in the dyophysite and orthodox

conception of Christ as both fully man and fully God can the Cross mean salvation, and

reveal both justice and grace for us who are helplessly bound by sin. By this, I mean that

Barth clearly and correctly teaches that when Jesus Christ acts He acts both in full humanity,

and also fully as God.23 Barth shows us that the Cross can work for us our salvation because

20 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 13.21 Paul Dafydd Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark 2008) 221-222.22 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 45.23 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2, 115.

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there is a communicatio operationum, an interchange of actions between divine and human in

Jesus Christ. The Cross illustrates both God’s wrath and mercy at work on the Cross in the

submission of Son to the Father, and in the judgment of the Father on humanity. Barth goes

on to write “[t]here is no place for a dualistic thinking which divides the divine and human,

but only for a historical, which at every point, in and with the humiliation and exaltation of

the one Son of God and Son of Man, in and with His being as servant and Lord, is ready to

accompany the event of the union of His divine and human essence.”24 The Cross as history is

a history of the God-man Jesus Christ both taking our sins and wrath, and also extending the

grace and goodness of God simultaneously, and we do not need to worry ourselves over a

separation of the action of God and the action of man in Jesus at the Cross.25 We need not

worry because Barth teaches that “[d]ivinely and humanly, Christ renders himself the savior

that he is.”26 From eternity God has chosen to declare that reconciliation is possible, because

God is Savior.

Liberation as Grace

Going further, the Cross through Jesus Christ illuminates that the “passion is an event

that is drawn into the time and space of God’s eternal being.”27 Since Jesus is both God and

man the reconciliation event of the Cross is eternally part of the existence and even the

essence of God’s being. By God using the Cross He draws into His existence the judgment on

sin, and the execution of it and death, along with the free offering of grace and redemption as

well. Karl Barth sees then that liberation is only then possible through what Jesus suffered on

the Cross because when God draws sin into himself, it is “denied, rejected and conclusively

‘killed off’.”28 We may understand that the Cross is the place where humanity’s ontological 24 Ibid.25 Here Bonhoeffer follows Luther in his understanding that Jesus became sin to destroy sin. A powerful portrayal of what the Incarnate Son faced and the eternal ramifications of Lutheran solo gratia for mankind. We stand now under grace alone because of the removal of sin.26 Paul Dafydd Jones, “Barth and Anselm: God, Christ and the Atonement,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 no. 3 (2010), 270.27 Ibid., 257.28 Ibid., 258.

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reality is altered.29 Man has been judged, but he has also been chosen. In Jesus Christ He has

surrendered himself to our punishment, so that He may also present himself and us without

blemish, both judging sin, and ending our bondage.30 Therefore the Cross and Passion of

Jesus Christ are not simple historical events that existed in the past and have meaning only in

history. Barth and Bonhoeffer propose appropriately that the Cross has an eternal power in

that Jesus is the focus of both the judgment of sin and the epicenter for forgiveness of sin. All

sin through eternity, man’s bound condition to it and the wages of death has been met, judged

and declared naught in the being of God’s eternity. The Cross as an event in the being of God

through the incarnated Son permits grace to reverberate throughout the echo of eternity. The

impact and ramifications are omnipresent as they exist in God.

Bonhoeffer in Life Together states since “[i]t was none other than Jesus Christ himself

who suffered the scandalous, public death of a sinner in our stead. …The old man dies, but it

is God who has conquered him.”31 The death of Jesus on the Cross embodies our sinful nature

is taken within Jesus, and we stand in a new relation. What Bonhoeffer means is that our God

in flesh has both destroyed the sinful man, and instilled a new man, a man of faith. Because it

was God who executed judgment, because it was God who won the victory, we are able to

stand on a new ground, with a fresh perspective that redefines our relation to the Father. We

may now know as Barth wrote that God is “the one who looks favorably upon us.”32 We may

infer this because He looks favorably on His own Son, and we stand with God in relation as

children now through the Son.33 Both theologians agree and state that God is eternally

devoted to saving mankind. God does not make an attempt in light of our failure, but because

He is God with us, He is also God for us. We could not persuade God to do it, we did not

29 Romans 8:1-2 NRSV. Set free from the law of death, and without condemnation in Jesus Christ via the Cross.30 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 272. 31 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 114.32 Paul Dafydd Jones, “Barth and Anselm,” 260.33 Ephesians 2:1-10, NRSV. Paul’s discusses how we are made together with Christ.

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dictate that He must. Since God has eternally chosen to be with us we understand that the

Cross demands we must understand “God’s self-revelation allows the confident avowal that

God is truly disposed favorably toward us.”34 When we are confronted with the Cross we are

confronted with our plight. But when we see God’s wrath poured out upon Jesus Christ we

understand the significance that God has both judged man, and yet borne our burden in our

place. We see God in flesh, the Son, revealing that He has taken our place and that God is

truly on our side. God is with us, present among us achieving for us salvation and liberation.

Liberation and Man’s Response

God is achieving for us liberation that is the truth revealed at the Cross. Karl Barth in

Romans argues about God that “He does not simply accept the robbery of what is His. He

makes a claim upon men. Men, though fallen, are not in His sight lost. He is merciful and

wonderful. He is the God who gives the gift of grace.”35 This means that our liberation is a

freedom that must be lived before God in a certain response to the gift of grace. There is a

certain relationship with Him that must then direct our lives. Karl Barth understood our new

perspective, and relation to God is no less powerful than the previous condition of sin and

death. God has a claim upon each man and more so than sin’s grasp in the old condition. Due

to the resurrection a new victory has been achieved, and in this victory that is a certain

declaration of righteousness that is the new subject of all men.36 In Church Dogmatics IV/3

we see that liberation is Jesus as God’s eternal justification, “the justification of all sinful

men, whose death was decided in this event, for whose life there is no more place. In the

resurrection of Jesus Christ His life and with it their life has in fact become an event beyond

death: ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’ (Jn 14:19).”37 Atonement has the power to liberate

all mankind. Liberation is further a means in which God magnifies His own glory.38 Since

34 Ibid., 262.35 Karl Barth, Romans, 178.36 Ibid., 182.37 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3, 309.38 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 213.

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liberation glorifies God, man must also respond in a way in which he gives glory to God.

Since God has declared mercy to mankind and said yes to relationship with man, we are

called to action and participation. Barth and Bonhoeffer both avowal that man must do

something with Jesus. Barth states, “The Yes of Jesus demands recognition and consent on

the part of those who hear it.”39 Even more Bonhoeffer states that since this is an action of

God on behalf of man Christ “must make it clear from the start that his word is not an

abstract doctrine, but the re-creation of the whole life of man.”40 Liberation is a freedom to

stand before God, a recognition of His action, and a determination to a life lived in response

to God’s reconciliation.

Liberation as Vocation

The Passion show us that God worked through Christ to show that He has executed

His right over man to judge man and also to re-establish man by maintaining His right over

him.41 Jesus’ death and resurrection are the “basis and beginning of a new world” that define

that though God is against man in sin, He is for him in grace.42 Barth goes on to write that the

verdict of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus for grace over man is the utter

reorientation of the human condition. “He not only has reconciled the world with God, but as

the One who has done this, He is the eternal Reconciler, active at work once and for all. …

His history did not become dead history.”43 Therefore since Jesus Christ’s history is eternal

history as God, it is a history that shows God is for all men, in all times. Liberation has freed

us all to stand with God forever. God speaks and reveals through Jesus His eternal election of

man to all individuals for all time. There is an eternally present calling that occurs between

God and man each day in Barth’s thought. For him then the whole scope of liberation and

atonement are tied up in the understanding of the term vocation.

39 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.1, 12.40 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 62.41 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 311.42 Ibid.43 Ibid., 313.

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Vocation is the vital lens of understanding liberation for Barth in Dogmatics. It is this

understanding of vocation that allows Barth to propose how God has linked himself with

humanity, and how this linking allows man to live in freedom for God and to also embody

Christ and to live for others. What we understood from the beginning is that Barth proposes a

doctrine of reconciliation that begins with the conception that God is with us44. Due to this

eternal decision of God to be with us, the goal of liberation for humanity is for us to be with

God. As much as we have in freedom, chosen death, now we may stand in freedom to choose

to follow God’s calling upon us. Since Christ is fully God who submitted in humanity and

endured in divinity He is with us in that He has reconciled us to be with Him.45 Hence Barth

writes that God through Christ has eternally united himself to men “He does not leave them

to Himself as He does not remain outside of them, as He gives Himself to them, as in the

divine power of the His Spirit He unites Himself with them.”46 What Barth then seeks to

prove is that “[t]here can be no return movement from the righteousness of Christ to the fall

of Adam.”47 God has moved to curtail any fracture of forgiveness and reconciliation between

Himself and mankind. When sin had ruled we were doomed to death. Through the Son we are

set free from this death and are being united with God, God has ended the reign of sin from

Adam, and established the reign of the Son.48 Christ is the new law of the land and we must

freely submit to this law.

In the new law of Christ there is fulfillment of the old covenant. “This act of

reconciliation by God in Christ is therefore a history, a history that itself presupposes the

covenant just as it presupposes election.”49 God is now united to man and man to God

because in Jesus, the Son has fulfilled the entirety of the covenant in terms of His divinity and

44 R. Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 87.45 Ibid., 88.46 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 542.47 Karl Barth, Romans, 166.48 Liberation as vocation begins in the fact that God has called man again as He called Adam, to submit to His will as the Son obediently did in his humanity.49 Kimlyn Bender, Karl Barth’s Ecclesiology (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013), 134.

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manhood. We have been called to live with God, and yet as we have seen we have chosen to

live without Him, and have faced the punishment due us in death. But truly Jesus has lived as

the eternally faithful covenant partner that God desires. Liberation is freedom to obedience of

God’s covenant as well for Barth. It means we are called and also enabled to be faithful

covenant partners with God. Since God has said ‘yes’ to humanity we are called to action and

participation. Fulfilling the role as a covenant partner is how we live that out, how we make

use of our freedom. As partners in the covenant, God has declared ‘yes’ where and when he

should have declared an eternal ‘no’ for our rejection. Jesus Christ in addition to being

revelation of reconciliation, is also attestation to covenantal liberation. Jesus, the Word, then

is for us the first example of what a true covenant partner is called to, what a true covenant

vocation is in act. The Christian in being called by the Word and sanctified by God is also

called to action. To fulfill his life as God intends “he begins to act on the basis, i.e., on the

basis of Jesus Christ as the man he is in Him.”50

This living and action on the basis of who we are in Christ is not an isolated event in

which we must choose alone, and choose for ourselves. Even in vocation God is with us,

electing and calling us51. Barth writes that “[v]ocation is a specific action of the living God in

the time of man determined and controlled by the work and revelation of His grace. … No

matter where, when or how it occurs, vocation is thus the work of God or Jesus Christ

towards man in time, itself a temporal work.”52 As such we are free to God’s work and calling

towards us here and now. We are called to God’s vocation because we are now free to hear

and obey in adherence and linking ourselves to Christ through God’s grace and our faith.

Essentially what has occurred in reconciliation for mankind according to Barth is that we are

ontologically changed. Our being is effected by God’s grace, we are made free, and we are

also called to become those who fulfill God’s covenant. I believe that what Barth shows us is

50 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 544.51 Romans 8:30 NRSV52 Ibid., 497.

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that the fulfillment of the covenant then is an embodying of Jesus the rightful response to

God’s summons in grace. I state this because Barth argues in Dogmatics IV/1 God became

man to live out His will, and “[t]he whole doing of the will of God is the doing of His

covenant will. As this covenant will it strives and conquers against the sin of man and its

consequences.”53 Jesus was the fulfillment of the covenant because in the face of sin and its

consequences he faithfully walked with God, honoring and obeying Him in his humanity, and

therefore faithfully upheld the calling to partnership. The covenant is an ordinance to live in

full obedience to God despite the onslaught of the world of sin and death. We failed to fulfill

this covenant at Adam, and in Jesus the obedience required has been fulfilled and we are

called and enabled to live out the obedience because of God’s union with us through grace.

The covenant we live for in freedom now means we are linked with God as much as God

“has linked and bound and pledged Himself originally to man.”54

We may fulfill our vocation because we are now with God. The fulfillment of the

covenant is our freedom lived with unity in Christ. What Barth writes is that “as the Christian

unites himself with Christ it is also settled that he cannot part from Christ. In his relationship

with Him He alone is the One who gives, commands and leads, and the criterion of the

genuineness of faith.”55 Here we see that man is liberated when he is bound to Christ. An

interesting concept in our modern world, that freedom comes when we are subject to another,

and to God, but a powerful truth nonetheless. As our sin condition was created because we

sought freedom, we are now free when we subject ourselves to the calling and work of God.

Barth teaches that as God has pledged himself to man, man must also pledge himself to

Christ. That is the foundation of reconciliation in liberation. In our reconciled nature to God,

when we are united with Christ there is no failure of God to lose us56. Even more, as we are

53 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 35.54 Ibid., 37.55 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 545.56 Or for man to judge our salvation.

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united, Jesus is the one who leads us and commands us how to follow and fulfill the covenant

with God. That then is the criterion of faith as well. It is always God. It is God who calls, God

who justifies, and God who has drawn us to Him. In so doing we pledge our allegiance to

God in Christ, are kept in communion through the Spirit, and our genuine faith is judged in

the same Jesus who has reconciled and calls. Barth writes again “[f]or as they recognize Him,

they can and should recognize themselves in Him, what they are in truth.”57 Therefore, the

individual is reconciled and sees their new nature as that of a child of God.58 This same Word,

Jesus Christ, is the one who leads us, who has given us our vocation to do the will of God in

the midst of the here and now. We are free to hear this Word, or to deny it, yet we are free as

Barth states. We have a freedom to encounter God’s revelation which illuminates our dire

plight, and also the power of the Cross. We are free to respond and respond in obedience and

uphold the covenant with the God who has pledged himself to us. Liberation is a vocation to

come after the calling of God. Yet in our freedom Barth shows us we must live as the

incarnate Son did as well offering our lives to God, and living for others to continue to

proclaim the revelation of God that is our atonement, reconciliation and liberation.

Living in light of this covenant means that we must live by faith and fulfill our

vocation. We are those who proclaim the Kingdom among men, with faith in knowing God is

with us and for us. In Romans Barth remarks that we may “see ourselves as we are and

advance to meet men as they are.”59 This is of course fulfilling our vocation because Jesus

Christ the Son of God advanced as God and met men as they were and still meets them as

they are. In Christ we can see then the liberation to vocationally fulfilling the covenant is a

call for ethical living in the Christian’s life. We have a moral responsibility to bear witness

and proclaim what God has done. Molnar phrases it this way, “because God in Jesus Christ

57 Ibid.58 1 John 4:17 “because as He is, so are we in this world.” NRSV59 Karl Barth, Romans, 107.

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makes himself responsible for us, he also makes us responsible.”60 Even more to bear the

name of Christian means we are confronted with Jesus daily who was and is “the only man

who truly and completely obeyed God’s will” therefore we must strive to live the same as

Jesus calls us to the same standard in freedom and grace.61 This standard is our hope, the full

assurance of the grace given in freedom. Liberation has occurred so that we may do the work

of God yet we cannot, nor are we called to judge our work or the work of others. It is God

who has called, and God who is our hope that as we walk in obedience we do His will. Our

hope is “in Jesus Christ, in Him alone, but in Him confidently.”62 Barth shows us we are free

to God’s vocation over our life, a life to live in obedience to doing His will, and proclaiming

Jesus to others. This is freedom and grace because throughout the entire process we learn our

hope is confidently in Jesus Christ, God’s revelation that God is for us, and with us.

Primarily we learn from Barth that all of our good works could not save us from our

sin and the unavoidable penalty of death. Yet we see that in Jesus Christ God truly is present

with us and for us in our salvation. We are set free through the free gracious gift from God to

us through Jesus Christ. This grace extended to us unites us again as humanity to God. We

are made covenant partners called to live in obedience to the will of God. For Barth he

teaches that this means proclaiming Jesus and doing the works of God. In this we are

confronted with the fact that we cannot judge our own good works, nor the works of others.

We are confronted with the vocation and we are made to stand because of grace. Liberation

in Barth’s theology proposes that freedom is in vocation. Why? Because our calling and

justification come from God with us. We are justified and called by God, meaning we are

elected and made able to do the will of God. We are sanctified, and equipped in and through

the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Liberation as God with us is a calling, and a

60 Paul Molnar, Incarnation and Resurrection (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007), 42.61 Ibid.62 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 921.

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calling to freely live in Christ doing God’s will. We learn that vocation is simply man

fulfilling what liberation has created. It is a call to a real partnership between God and man.

Liberation as Vocation within the Church

So how does Bonhoeffer offer us a nuanced understanding of Barth’s conception of

liberation tied to atonement and reconciliation? Bonhoeffer was concerned with the witness

of the Church, more so than a doctrine just applied to the individual response. As he would

carry out his Christology it would also be through the lens of being within the community of

Christ, the Church. Bonhoeffer’s theological approach led him to conceptualize that since

Jesus has redefined the world, and this is an ontological reality, the Church is the example of

how the world is now called to live. Bonhoeffer would propose that the Church is the goal of

liberation, and the present revelation of God, a difference with Barth who started with God’s

revelation alone. He saw in the New Testament that men do not live in disunity, and distrust,

but in a joyous community that seeks to know the good that God has called us to. The Church

is the central hub of this activity to know God, and to be orchestrated toward the teleological

good of God in Christ Jesus.63 We are made free to be the Church, as Christ’s physical

representation on earth, and engage with all others freely as Church.64 I argue this because

“Bonhoeffer conceives of God as present specifically in the act of loving the other.

Individuals live in the reality of their election as they discern and do God’s will.”65 This

happens nowhere other than within the Church. One of the actions of this loving the other

comes from carrying others’ burdens. Bonhoeffer even went as far as to say this is the

summation of the work of Christ. If we are to see God present, and to live out our liberation,

there is a vocation to carry each other and love the other. “To bear the burden of the other

person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and in

63 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Collier Books, 1986), 26ff.64 Christopher Holmes, “‘The Indivisible Whole of God’s Reality’”, 284.65 Matthew Puffer, “Election in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: Discerning a Late Revision,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14 no. 3 (2012), 265.

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bearing with it, to break through to the point where they can take joy in it.”66 Only through

being within the Church can we understand that carrying the sin of others is the embodiment

of what Jesus Christ lived for. In our liberation we are given freedom to love, and this love is

demonstrated by living within the Church and acting as the Church. The Church that

embodies God’s love on the Cross and embodies God’s love for the other. Bonhoeffer’s

exegesis of the Bible shows us that Christ has created a community from the Cross, and this

community is bound to bear each other and love the other.67 Bonhoeffer proposes our ethical

action in reconciliation is a call, a vocation to continually uplift, and carry others.

Further Bonhoeffer argues that Jesus came for a bodily communion of followers. In

Discipleship he writes “since he is the incarnate Son of God who came in human flesh, he

needs a community of followers, who will participate not merely in his teaching, but also in

his Body.”68 Men are not freed to some idea, but to a participation in the fullness of Jesus

Christ, which is action as obedient discipleship within the Church. “For only through that

Body can we find acceptance and salvation.”69 Since Christ has borne humanity and our sin in

His body’s punishment and death, only when we come to the Body can we fully understand

salvation. Without being united to Christ and united within the Church we cannot live out our

liberation and vocation. “To be in Christ therefore means to be in the Church. But if we are in

the Church we are verily and bodily in Christ.”70 The Church again is the liberated

community of man, it is the communion of the called, who are bearing their Cross because

they are living actively and physically as Jesus Christ. The Church is the foreground of the

liberated community because “[s]ince the ascension, Christ’s place on earth has been taken

by his Body, the Church. The Church is the real presence of Christ. …We should think of the

66 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 101.67 Ibid.68 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 238.69 Ibid., 239.70 Ibid., 241.

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Church not as an institution but as a person, though of course a person in a unique sense.”71

For man to fulfill the proclamation of liberation he must enter the Church.

No one can become a new man except by entering the Church, and becoming a member of the Body of Christ. It is impossible to become a new man as a solitary individual. The new man means more than the individual believer after he has been justified and sanctified. It means the Church, the Body of Christ, in fact it means Christ himself.72

What we learn from Bonhoeffer here is the importance of the uniting of man with

God. As a change in ontological reality, man and God are united in love. The Church is this

visible sign that God is with us in love and that this love is reaching out for the world.

Christopher Holmes writes that in the Body, “God is united with humankind and humankind

is accepted by him in a way that allows life to flourish in accordance with its original and true

end.”73 The Church then is the fulfillment of how man was intended to live and how he is

oriented toward God’s teleological goal for humankind. Since Christ is God in flesh, when

we are within the Church we are allowing Christ to orient our own flesh toward its intended

end that God created us for. Even more a powerful nuance of Bonhoeffer’s not as evident in

Barth is that this good that we attain and strive for is simply Christ’s goodness, not our own.

It is not our selection of a good deed over a bad deed but a wholehearted devotion toward

knowing Christ, this is the only good. Yet this good is the declaration of God’s good, His

freedom, unity and will for all.74

The Church is the reality of a community that lives fully under the will and command

of God. The Church is for Bonhoeffer the revelation of God’s goal for how humankind lives

and loves in light of liberation. Without embracing life in the Church man misses the calling

that follows liberation. The Church is not just fulfilled in the future, but here and now it lives

as Jesus Christ, as His witness because they are living in the fullness of God’s reality. The

71 Ibid.72 Ibid., 242.73 Christopher Holmes, “‘The Indivisible Whole of God’s Reality’”, 285.74 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 33.

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Church is God’s witness to others who have not yet embraced and understood the liberation

attained by Christ. The Church then may take all current issues under the lens of how

humanity stands before God and respond as Christ. In doing this Bonhoeffer teaches us that

we may fulfill our vocation by living as the Church, by being the community that makes

evident God’s presence and show liberation lived out to the world.75 Man comes together in

his liberation because he is called into the Church. In the Church mankind is united with God

in love and fellowship for one another and as revelation to those who have yet to obey the

calling of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer writes, “[t]he Church is thus not only receiver of the Word

of revelation, but is itself revelation and Word of God.”76Again for Bonhoeffer the Church is

as powerful an attestation of revelation, as Barth’s conception of Jesus Christ as the one

Word we may heed.77 Liberation exists for humanity to become part of God’s people, and

God’s people are the Church, those who seek to live under God’s will, and become Jesus

Christ’s physical presence in this world. The Church stands free from sin, in the world of sin,

with Jesus as head, and also as every member.78

Vocational Liberation Today in light of Barth and Bonhoeffer

Together Barth and Bonhoeffer provide a doctrine of liberation that shows our

election is a “divine call to human action.”79 Liberation as a vocation is God’s summons of

how to live in light of being emancipated. Barth affords that we must live in obedience to

God’s will, upholding the covenant and living as Jesus. Bonhoeffer echoed the same thought,

but demonstrated that may only happen within the Church, embodying the presence of Jesus

Christ in community.

75 Jens Zimmerman, “‘Reading the Book of the Church: Bonhoeffer’s Christological Hermeneutics” Modern Theology 28 no.4 (2012), 776.76 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ The Center, 58.77 Bonhoeffer would argue this because since the Church is the embodiment of Jesus Christ, it in reality must become Jesus Christ to the world in which it is situated.78 Ibid., 59.79 Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 69.

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Both theologians work out their Christologies from the perspective of God being with

us and for us. The same thought of Jesus as this God man who is with us and for us, is vital to

understanding how we live in light of atonement and fulfill our freedom that is graciously

bestowed. Barth understood that God has freedom from eternity. Yet, in this freedom God

has chosen to be for man, and to even fight for man.80 Therefore, as we follow Christ Jesus

we too must be free for others. Barth again writes, “[i]n what He is for man and does for man,

God ushers in the history leading to the ultimate salvation of man.”81 As we are called and

made free, we as well must lead others to God and the source of their ultimate salvation.

Since God was with us and for us even in our depravity and rejection of Him, “Barth insists

that living by God’s forgiving grace enacted in the history of Jesus Christ means that we must

seek God in Christ (love God) and love our neighbor as well.”82 We live in a new era, one in

which man may uphold his vocation in union with the incarnated Son. The life of liberated

humanity is a free offering of love to both the called in the Church, and the disobedient in the

world. Those who are liberated and recognize God’s calling must be people of love. Since

Christ humanly subjected himself to the will of God, and humanly died for the others, in God

we are united to Christ for the same purpose. Liberation demands from humanity our

freedom must be subjected to the will of God, and to live in such a way that we are revelation

of God’s calling and love.83

For Bonhoeffer, the Church is the group of those called out of obscurity and to

become light.84 Liberation means we illuminate the world by faithfully practicing the life and

sacraments of the Church. “The Body of Christ becomes visible to the world in the

congregation gathered around the Word and Sacrament.”85 We together bear witness to the

80 Ibid.81 Ibid., 73.82 Paul Molnar, Incarnation and Resurrection,19.83 Powerfully demonstrated in Matthew 26:39 as the Son subjects His humanity to God’s good will.84 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 248.85 Ibid., 252.

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work of Jesus Christ, to the agony of the Cross for our sins, and the forgiveness of the empty

tomb. We share in the Christ’s body through communion, and we baptize those who respond

in obedience into Christ’s body. But through it all we are the physical representation of Jesus

to the world. We are to bear the world as Christ himself bore us. For Bonhoeffer “[w]hen the

Bible speaks of following Jesus it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind

from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and

torture which effects the conscience.”86 Liberation means we are to ethically engage the

world as Christ did for the liberation of mankind from all burdens until it rests in the free

grace of God.

So in closing, while Bonhoeffer and Barth lived in a time that seems different from

ours, we still face many of the same issues. We face a world torn apart by war, economic

upheaval, racism, classism and more. Yet in approaching Jesus Christ we find that in our

sinful state God’s grace has won mankind’s freedom. The Cross is the battleground we

created and God met man there and used it to destroy death and sin. This same God pro nobis

still calls us today. God’s revelation is still present in the Word, Jesus Christ. This Word

makes us free, gives us a vocation to live as He did, and to proclaim the era of the Lord’s

favor. These two theological greats teach us because our calling and justification come from

one and the same God with us, we are met with a challenge to our lives. We must accept that

our liberation means a calling to embody Christ. We are called to be full participants in God’s

covenant and to submit our entire lives to the doing of God’s will. Barth and Bonhoeffer in

the midst of the upheaval of their time teach us afresh that there is no liberation for man

without also carrying the cross. Very simply they teach us that liberation is vocation.

Vocation is simply God eternally and freely choosing to free us, and call us back to Him. He

has reoriented mankind in reality setting him teleologically toward His eternal love and

goodness. Emmanuelle has worked out our reconciliation. We are free to be God’s eternal

86 Ibid., 37.

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partners. Barth and Bonhoeffer together show us that in the freedom of God, He choose to

free us, and desires us to be with Him as He has eternally been with us. What Barth and

Bonhoeffer show us is in the light of liberation the world is in need of cross bearing

Christians once again. Those who have heard the Word proclaiming freedom must in

response turn and embrace Jesus Christ as He embraces them and fulfill their vocation by

being free in love for others they encounter as individuals and as the Church.

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