Simply amazing insights, Amos.
IMHO, we are in a period of history that strongly evokes the history of the German church in the run-up to, and during the Third Reich. The lesson to be learned from that experience is that organized churches that bend the Truth of God to the exigencies of the sociopolitical Zeitgeist of an age are selling out the legacy that God intends for man.
The other lesson to be drawn from this period is that faithful and loving men such as Dietrich Bonhoffer are the ones who pay the ultimate price for faithful and principled defense of eternal truth in the teeth of the devil's power.
Now the Reformed Church seems not to have any saints. But from my RC perspective, I just have to say: Bonhoffer was one of the few great Christian martyrs of the 20th century: He was strung up, at age 39, by piano wire, the very day immediately preceding the day Hitler committed suicide. If he were a Catholic, we would have been beatified in anticipation of sainthood long before now.
Given Bonhoeffer's experience, reason, and spirituality, it is not surprising he envisioned an ultimately "churchless Christianity" -- as the only means of escape for the spiritual life of man from the libido dominandi of the self-selected and self-divinized "masters of mankind" that emerged with a vengeance in the middle of the last century and thereafter, and unto our own day.
FWIW. Thank you so much for your beautiful essay.
Martin Luther? His actions -- and those of like pursasion both before and after him -- could be said to have bent "...the Truth of God to the exigencies of the sociopolitical Zeitgeist.." of the age; most certainly to the RC point of view.
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...envisioned an ultimately "**churchless Christianity" -- as the only means of escape for the spiritual life of man from the libido dominandi of the self-selected and self-divinized "masters of mankind" that emerged with a vengeance in the middle of the last century and thereafter, and unto our own day.
IMHO you are basing your declaration,
1)The idea that church -- both the physical building and congregation -- are simply a convenient assembly place for worship of the Divine. That it is not -- or should not be -- needed for the true believers.But while this may be good theory it is, I'm afraid, rather bad psychology. Given how long both have been in existence, both established places of worship, and the willingness of men to assemble, serve as proof to the fact that they both have a profound effect of the human spirit (the Divine) and psyche (the human). It touches a deep, needful cord in us.
[** I would direct your attention to the late 17th c. Quietism based in the Convent Saint-Cyr, near Paris, as an example of "churchless Christianity".]