From Bonhoeffer’s introduction to Creation and Fall/Temptation, his study of the early chapters of the book of Genesis:

The Church of Christ bears witness to the end of all things.  It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.  “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43.18-19).  The new is the real end of the old; Christ is the new.  Christ is the end of the old.  he is not a continuation of the old; he is not its aiming point, nor is he a consummation upon the line of the old; he is the end and therefore the new.

Within the old world the Church speaks of the new world.  And because the Church is more certain of the new world than of anything else, it recognizes the old world only in the light of the new.  The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church because the Church speaks of its end as thought it had already happened– as though the world had already been judged.  The old world does not like being regarded as dead.  The church has never been surprised at this, nor is it surprised by the fact that again and again men come to it who think the thoughts of the old world– and who is there entirely free of them?  But the Church is naturally in tumult when these children of the world that has passed away lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves.  They want the new and only know the old.  And thus they deny Christ the Lord.  Yet the Church, which knows the end, knows also of the beginning . . .

The Church doe all this because it is grounded upon the testimony of Holy Scripture.  The Church of Holy Scripture– and there is no other “Church”– lives from the end.  Therefore it reads all Holy Scripture as the book of the end, of the new, of Christ.  What does Holy Scripture, upon which the Church of Christ is grounded, have to say of the of the creation and the beginning except that only from Christ can we know what the beginning is?  The Bible is nothing but the book upon which the Church stands.  This is its essential nature, or it is nothing.  Therefore the Scriptures need to be read and proclaimed wholly from the viewpoint of the end.  Thus the creation story should be read in church in the first place inly from Christ, and not until then as leading to Christ.  We can read towards Christ only if we know that Christ is the beginning, the new and the end of our world.

I used part of this in a sermon that I preached yesterday this past Sunday morning about Paul’s “rule” that a life of “new creation” is what truly matters.  I like Bonhoeffer’s approach here, though I have not always approached Hebrew Scriptures in the way he advises here.  I do think it interesting that he thinks of the Church as being “more certain of the new world than of anything else, it recognizes the old world only in the light of the new.”  It’s a hopeful statement, and not one that I immediately think of as true in these days.  How great it would be, though, if he was correct on that point?

(image from digital-photo-secrets.com)