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This is a great question! For me it's about movement and presence. When we encounter God in the concrete act of walking, in which we encounter the world differently. For me, it's also about the way it puts new people in our lives--how we encounter our neighbor. Something to keep thinking about!

So who gets to make the determination of who these FEW are? Who's interpretation of scripture and doctrine gets to be the standard?

Did you actually listen to the episode? It all depends upon what you mean by religion. Clearly, Bonhoeffer DID! He says as much. But he has a particular view of religion.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world…” Genesis 1:31 “And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

@@professorlief4804 Good point. Seems like a contradiction?

@@professorlief4804 John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him, but the world did not know him.

Yes, Nietzsche focused on Apollo and Dionysius. Of course, Bonhoeffer doesn’t agree with Nietzsche on everything. But he was clearly shaped by his philosophy. Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is not all wrong. And, his “death of god” is not some shallow atheistic claim-it’s a critique of metaphysics. He’s not a saint, but he’s not the devil either. I recommend Gianni Vattimo’s After the Death of God. The death of the metaphysical god clears the space to encounter the God of Jesus Christ.

@@professorlief4804 Nietzsche wasn't just "focusing" on Apollo and Dionysus. He was speaking for and on behalf of them -- although he made it quite clear that he was much more of a mouthpiece for Dionysus than Apollo. "We Hyperboreans", as he says several times in The Antichrist. How much more plain must the prophets of these gods be before we accept what they say? Every word of The Antichrist is exactly what we would expect from those who rule in the kingdom of Satan. Welcome to the kingdom of the "will to power". Nietzsche's critique of Christianity is not all wrong? Do you really think it is coincidence that Nietzsche went insane after writing Ecce Homo, with the last words he ever published being "Dionysus versus the Crucified", when Dionysus was the god of insanity? Maybe, like most educated folks, you have a perfectly reasonable, and secular, explanation for these things. But Nietzsche absolutely did not have a secular worldview, and it is a tragedy when those who defend Christianity have less understanding of the supernatural than Christianity's foremost enemies.

@@renrichardson6517 I'll grant you that Nietzsche didn't have a secular worldview in the way we talk about the secular today, but he was definitely into disenchantment. Nietzsche's opposition to Christianity is that it turned people away from this world. It renders them irresponsible for their lives and the life of the people around them. Your constant appeal to the supernatural suggests a view of the world that is dualistic. Is the supernatural more important than the natural? Is the life to come, however you define it, more important than this life? That, for Nietzsche, is the true form of nihilism--the denial of life in favor of some abstract metaphysics. Thus Spake Zarathustra is an anti allegory of the cave. The world is not something to escape - our embodied life is not something to get through for some future supernatural life. Jesus says as much in John's gospel--he has come so we might have life! Where Nietzsche gets is wrong (and Christians too) is that Dionysius isn't the "god of wine"--Jesus Christ is. (John 2) This is why Nietzsche is important to Bonhoeffer. As to his mental illness, it seems dangerous to me to ascribe mental illness to the demonic. Who then gets to decide what is a biological condition and what is the result of demons? I assume whoever we disagree with or dislike gets labeled demonic and those with whom we agree suffer from illness. I'll just refrain from making judgements about people's suffering.

​@@professorlief4804 With respect, professor, I can't tell whether I am talking with a believer or someone who is simply a scholar of Christian thought. Only those who are born from above can see the kingdom of heaven; scholars who treat Christianity as a subject of study have never and will never understand it. They are like educated deaf people who study music. "Nietzsche's opposition to Christianity is that it turned people away from this world." Do you truly believe Christ came into the world NOT to turn people away from it? He came to save us from this world, not to turn us more into it. His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). In Christ, we die to this world so that we can live to God. Contrary to what you -- and Nietzsche -- imply, this makes them far MORE responsible for their lives and for people around them. Again, the people who don't understand this are those who are still of this world. Being of this world means you are in Adam, in death, in subjection to the ruler of this world. To redeem us from its dominion is why Christ came into the world, and this world was and always will be an enemy to Christ. If we are his followers, how could we not turn away from this world? Of course Nietzsche thought all this was unmanly, weak, slave-like, and so forth. When you understand who was speaking through Nietzsche, it will make sense. Nietzsche's philosophy isn't Nietzsche's. It comes from those he worshipped. Of course he railed on Christianity. What do you think God's enemies are going to say about how the kingdom of God calls us to live? The issue is when we don't see or understand what the kingdom of God is ourselves, when we are still in love with this world, and therefore want to make some kind of reconciliation between the Christian faith and the greatest enemies of Christ.

@@professorlief4804 Lastly, if it seems dangerous to you to ascribe mental illness to the demonic, I ask if is this less dangerous than ascribing the demonic to mental illness. Even if you don't accept the reality of demons, do a thought experiment and ask, hypothetically, which is more dangerous to the person who is suffering. Postmodern Westerners are the only humans who have ever lived to believe in this paradigm of "mental illness", thinking that these illnesses are physical, chemical, or psychological phenomena only. Every society and culture knew this was spiritual, especially those who cultivated relationships with the spirits (i.e. daimons). You ask who then gets to decide whether it is spiritual or biological. Is this a matter of voting or of medical credentials? This is a matter of the truth. It doesn't matter what postmodern people believe about it. The most pitiless thing you can do to another person who is suffering from demonic affliction is to treat it like a mental illness. That is beyond heartless.

This is great! I don’t disagree with you. The pagan piece is connected to Nietzsche who believed humanity lived too much in allegiance to Apollo and not enough Dionysius. Bonhoeffer is indeed Christian, but shaped by Nietzsche.

@@professorlief4804 Fair enough I suppose, from Nietzsche's specific perspective. I might even suggest that he's merely using specific aspects of Dionysus, Apollo & Zarathustra as representatives of his own particular points rather than incorporating their full characters when referencing them. From my perspective, Nietzsche is swinging the pendulum back towards the "realism" dominant in scripture (even too far past it) as a reaction to the wrong, late syncretic inclusions. Even if his inspiration is preferring one pagan flavor over another, much of what he's resonating with in that flavor is in fact an echo of older biblical truths (much like elements of Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Zoroastrianism, etc.). Bonhoeffer is resonating with some of Nietzsche's criticisms because he finds them aligning better with what he finds in scripture than the more mystical/idealist church tradition. Same truths highlighted from different angles through different (if perhaps cloudy) lenses, metaphorically speaking. If I were Bonhoeffer, I'd just probably be annoyed at my perspective being attributed to paganism when that's merely being used as an archetypal mirror to help confirm the older & more accurate biblical truths I'm seeing. I also just tend to prefer to define terms in a a more originalist fashion over contemporary ones to help cut through the ages' worth of obscuration.

@@SepticFuddy I would agree with you if Bonhoeffer didn't do it himself! He wrote a poem with the title Christians and Pagans. Christians and Pagans, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in July 1944: People turn to God when they’re in need, plead for help, contentment, and for bread, for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death. They all do so, both Christian and pagan. People turn to God in God’s own need, and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread, see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand with God to share God’s pain. God turns to all people in their need, nourishes body and soul with God’s own bread, takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both, and in forgiving both, is slain.

@@professorlief4804 Very interesting citation. I interpret it as a recognition that the biblical God honors even those whose prayers are sent "to the wrong address," so to speak, and that the simple faith of most "non-believers" is less distinct from the biblical model of faith than those in either camp often assume, which the bible itself does note. It makes a lot more sense out of the video title in any case, thank you.

it is

Yes, because that’s the focus of the episode. Bonhoeffer’s affection for Nietzsche.

@@professorlief4804 Oh, I see.

Thanks for the comment! My intent is to explore Bonhoeffer's thought as a way to think about Christian faith today in the West. Bonhoeffer is not a conservative--he's not really an evangelical--but neither is he a liberal. He's asking questions about how to be Christian in a world that no longer recognizes the categories of doctrine and piety. I think Bonhoeffer provides a way forward - beyond the polarization of current culture wars.

@@professorlief4804 Thank you!

John 17:16 They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world. James 4: 4 Adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is making himself an enemy of God. John 15:19 19 If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you. 1John 2: 15 Do not love either the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him;

Yes, there's a connection with the Neo Calvinist strain, though Bonhoeffer seems to push a bit further. My experience with the Kuyperian strain is an opposition to secularity, where as Bonhoeffer seems to suggest the secular--allowing the world to be the world--can be positive. My experience has also been that the Kuyperians, through Bavinck, tend to reify sphere sovereignty in a way that can, and I emphasize can, become oppressive.

I disagree--the Trinity is about relationality. Sure, when originally developed the used language taken from Greek philosophy, but why wouldn't they--it's what they had. To turn it into some metaphysical theory if irrational, yes, but as an expression of reality? It holds up.

@@professorlief4804 But 'the kingdom is within' (indoctrinated heads) proving it's fantasy.

@@williamoarlock8634 Again I disagree - it is not within, it is materiality. The combination of Greek philosophy and Christian perspective ended up with a dualistic gospel that denigrated the material world. That's not Christianity. That's why Nietzsche is such an important conversation partner for Bonhoeffer.

@@professorlief4804 You 'disagree' with reality again (John 17:16). Christianity is a hybrid of Greek sophistry and Hebrew messianic myth as reading windbag Bentley Hart's New Testament translation proves.

@@williamoarlock8634 The problem is the gospel writer uses the greek word for world in two different ways--one that means the material stuff (cosmos) and the other that refers to the social patterns and organization of that stuff. (Romans 12:1 Paul says to not be conformed to the patters of this world. Jesus says to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world" - he doesn't mean this material stuff, he means the patters. In fact, the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate is a confrontation between two different ways of life. One grounded in violence, the other in love.) The Old Testament is very earthly, very material. The created stuff is not evil, the patterns that unleash violence and death are. Of course the New Testament uses Greek philosophy and language - but that doesn't mean it is Greek.

Yes! What got me interested in thinking about black metal was an interview with Gaahl from Gorgoroth. He took the interviewer to the family farm he was living on. Which got me thinking, his way of life is similar to the way I want to live my life. So, I started exploring it further to find, at least from my perspective, that the god they reject is the same god I reject, which is NOT the Christian God. They're rejecting the metaphysical god that colonizes. In fact, my argument is that the way they use the Christian symbols, even though they're trying to subvert them, is actually tapping into the meaning of these symbols. I'm much more interested in a Christian materialism--how does the incarnation speak to an affirmation of our embodied humanity with all of its quirks and nuances. This is what I find most interesting about the pagan religions--specifically the Nordic ones--how earthy they can be. Yet--the heart of Christianity is incarnation. That's where my Christian faith lives.

Or, could it be that Christianity as we think of it today in the West has strayed from gospel message? He believes in eternal life, which includes life after life after death as N.T. Wright puts it. BUT, like the gospel of John, he emphasizes this begins now.

Of course it's not. That's a denial of ministry and deity of Jesus Christ.

For Bonhoeffer, Christianity is a way of life the pushes us back to what it means to be human. We are not freed from the world, we are freed for the world. To live this life loving God and loving neighbor.

@@professorlief4804 Except with Bonhoeffer, and plenty of others, it was another way to death. That Baal Christ and Master Two Paul pushing already pathetic humans to be sheep.

@@professorlief4804 For Bonhoeffer, and plenty more, it was just another way of death, plus the Christian ethos of being sheep makes the claim to 'human' totally false. 'Freed for the world' to ignore or hate their 'neighbor' I assume.

@@williamoarlock8634 One of Bonhoeffer's favorite conversation partner was Nietzsche. He, like Kierkegaard, believed, like Nietzsche, that people were indeed sheep, prone to abdicate their responsibility. Unlike Nietzsche, however, they see Christianity as the expression of true humanity--what Nietzsche would call the "overman". Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran pastor... so there's a line that can be drawn through Kierkegaard to Bonhoeffer.

@@professorlief4804 'True humanity' which is being sheep to that crucifixion-resurrection self-gratification hypocrisy idol.

Clear according to whom? The interpretive process is always a part of reading scripture.

@@professorlief4804 Clear according to english language dictionary. There are "dos and don'ts." Smarmy "interpretations" aren't going to wash with Him when He returns.

@@wannamonslo9626 This isn't about smarmy interpretation to make reality what we want, it's the recognition that meaning comes through language. Who decides what the dictionary says? They get a group of people together and make decisions. Sometimes words take on new meanings. I'm not sure "clear" is always as "clear" as we'd like. I mean, for the longest time some Christians were opposed to buying insurance or taking out loans. Interpretation isn't a bad word, it's the human condition.

read a few of his writings....Papers from Prison....."God does not lead us to religion but to life"..Dietrich Bonhoeffer

@@grahampaice6914 I think his ideas are hard to understand from an Anglo-American rationalistic standpoint. The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has somewhat rightly called Bonhoeffer a mystic. Perhaps a mystic of secularism?

The outworking of the gospel is secularism - the principalities and power Paul talks about are the way we imbue the creation with ideology, or to use a biblical term, idolatry. True spirituality is to free the world to just be the world. To live as human beings in relation to God and neighbor.

@@Magnulus76 Yes! My next series will be on St. Francis. I'm going to Italy in September to walk from La Verna to Assisi.

@@professorlief4804 I think it's deeper than just the world... both Luther and Francis saw the world as transparent to the Divine, in an "already" sort of state, and to develop a rich spirituality of divine immanence. Which is why Bonhoeffer is content to let the world be the world, why he finds irreligious people to be more interesting than Christians, and so forth. Because in many cases, religion, with its language of absolute transcendence obscures (eg, Karl Barth, which Bonhoeffer took issue with on several points). Barth wants to bring back Bible religion, Bonhoeffer wants to let God speak something new and fresh in the midst of godless world, precisely because it's godless, and not in spite of it.

and I think its something God is doing in the large scale. I the end there will be no ufo christians. It will taste life but yet not wordly. There has to be real love relationship secret place time with God.. 2 people Joseph and Daniel to consider in this. they were in in the world but not off the world. As Jesus was and God genuine way to be I am what I am there is nothing weird. at least weird as false, as religious spirit is. At best religious weird is to protect the person until they are made new man. then he becomes right way to live.