Finished reading John AT Robinson’s Honest to God, the 1963 bombshell, which I didn’t read in 1963. I was a high school sophomore; I guess it wasn’t required. I didn’t read it in college, either, however. For me college was a time for affirmation, not questioning. Today I find the book not threatening, but more shallow. 143 pages, it tackles three theological heavyweights: Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer.
Bultmann worked at de-mythologizing the NT, an enterprise reversed by Tolkien and Campbell. Turns out myth is language for truth humans have no language for. Tillich used psychology and philosophy to translate the obscure language of philosophy into an unknown tongue of his own devising. Bonhoeffer’s rather startling terms such as “man come of age” and “religionless Christianity” must be put into the context of his imprisonment and resistance to Nazi Germany and the churches’ failure to oppose effectively.
I found a careful discussion of Robinson by NT Wright online, which was helpful.
Next I’m tackling a first reading of volume 8 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, Letters and Papers from Prison.
Photo by Mary Fran
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