From nonreligious to atheistic Christianity

In the first chapter are described the characteristic marks of nonreligious Christianity in D. Bonhoeffer’s theology. Greater attention, however, is paid to his definition of religion on four levels: as metaphysics, as man’s inner life, as human impotence and as something separate from and outside of life. From this analysis it is obvious that D. Bonhoeffer presented religion primarily as a distorted and warped Christianity. In the second chapter are presented the consequences of such theological conception of the relations between religion and Christianity as advocated by Bonhoeffer. That which in Bonhoeffer’s theology remained inchoate and not thought out to its logical conclusions becomes explicit in his followers. The theology of secularisation was born which will reject religion even more radically as something extraneous to Christian belief. The sources of this incompatibility are to be found in the diversity of the two christologies and the outcome is most clearly visible in missiology. Modern missiology prefers to enter into a dialogue with nonchristian peoples rather than to seek common grounds with their religions. Finally, in the third chapter the last stage of separation between religion and Christianity is analysed as seen in the phenomenon of atheistic Christianity. From such a point of view the attitude of Christianity towards religion hardly differs from that of atheism towards religion. Atheism and Christianity become one