Creation

This chapter, ‘Creation: Primal Sociality’, outlines how Bonhoeffer develops a doctrine of creation (the primal state) as a basis for constructively engaging social theory. This doctrine provides Bonhoeffer with a space within which to draw in concepts and insights from existing social theory, without thereby granting these concepts and insights general applicability (i.e. validity apart from an account of reality in terms of the dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation). A doctrine of creation provides Bonhoeffer with a space to begin to develop Christian social-philosophical concepts (e.g. ‘person’, ‘relation’, etc.) and sociological concepts (e.g. ‘community’ [Gemeinschaft], ‘society’ [Gesellschaft], etc.), all of which will prove integral for his ecclesiology or account of the church. In this chapter, it is further argued that Bonhoeffer is involved in a nuanced and careful corrective of existing sociology and its normative anthropological assumptions, especially as represented by Ferdinand Tönnies and Ernst Troeltsch.