Holy Scripture, Holy Church, Holy Spirit

Abstract

This editorial essay takes up Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s correlation of Scripture as the book of the church and true church as the church of the holy Scriptures to argue for the salience of his reconceptualization of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Correlating scripture and church, Bonhoeffer put both under the saving Lordship of Jesus in the concrete circumstance of the German church struggle. At the same time, he legitimated historical critical scholarship so far as it was exercised in theological exegesis rather than history of religions scholarship at a time when the latter was producing an Aryan Christ coordinated with the Nazi world. Theological exegesis is then shown to be the way of Christian reading of the Bible giving form to the language of faith in confessing Christ alone today. As the work of the Spirit both in the production and canonization of the Bible as well as in its reception by theological exegesis, the Bible ministers the scandalous justification of the ungodly, promising life to the dead. When this work of the Spirit is neglected in reading the Bible, however, Scripture itself becomes an unholy work, a Spiritless letter dealing death with which to shame and exclude.