| The current work explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical concept of "person" in two of his earliest academic works, Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being. Many Bonhoeffer scholars generally, and correctly, believe that his primary concern in these works, as also in many of his later works, is to clarify the Christian understanding of the church-community. His concept of "person" aims at offering a foundation for the idea of a collective person in the form of "Christ-existing-as-the-church-community." However, in forming this concept of a collective person in the two above-mentioned works, Bonhoeffer is also keenly concerned about establishing the concept of an individual person. In his early academic works, he stands in line with the theological/philosophical trends that find fault with modern philosophical approaches toward the understanding of "person," especially that of Hegelian idealism, which, in his view, dismantles distinct individual boundaries. In Bonhoeffer's understanding of the church, the concept of an individual person is essential. His focus on the individual person, which has attracted relatively little attention among both Western and Japanese Bonhoeffer scholars, could be relevant to the contemporary Japanese theology, in which individual integrity and responsibility are easily lost when values of community are emphasized.;Bonhoeffer highlights an individual's attribute of making decisions in concrete time and place. Avoiding the Thomist static understanding of humanity in analogy with God, he attempts to integrate fundamental temporality and changeability of humans in his concept of "person." Bonhoeffer's perspective into the other, divine and human "person," or what he calls "what comes from outside," is essential in his concept of person. Encounter with the personhood that is exterior to the I determines the person of the I. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer's insight into "person," as formed by the other person, overlaps with and is sustained by his understanding of truth. He declines the idealist view of truth as comprehended through abstract spirit. Instead, he claims that truth is found only in responsible and responsive relation to the personhood that is outside---Christ or the other person. This aspect of Bonhoeffer's early theology can be observed only by closely exploring his argument about the individual person. |
