Bearing Sin as Church Community: Bonhoeffer’s Hamartiology

Hyun Joo Kim claims that Bonhoeffer transforms and reconstructs the Augustinian doctrine of original sin by shifting the hamartiological premise from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of the church based on his Lutheran resources. In Bonhoeffer’s view, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin does not fully relate the doctrine of sin to the responsibility of the saints. In order to reform Augustinian hamartiology, Bonhoeffer appropriates Augustine’s notion of the church as the whole Christ (totus Christus), which is located in Augustine’s ecclesiology.

Kim explicates how Augustine relates his epistemological premises in his Christianized Platonism to his formulation of the doctrine of original sin, and examines how Luther’s Christocentric standpoint transforms Augustine’s anthropology and ultimately leads Luther to his relational hamartiology. Kim contends that Bonhoeffer’s later hamartiology and ethics contain the most distinctive characteristics of Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of sin, in that he not only incorporates both the active and passive dimensions of sin, but also intensifies his continuing notion of vicarious representative action towards the church community.