Thank you David for this series. Since Bohoeffer was most sensitive to Jews, yet I feel he would have benefitted from certain dialogs that were perhaps not avaible to him. It never escapes me that he suffered the same martyrdom. He was still a product of theological Edom. In many ways it provided the biblical language you extracted out of your philosophical and post-liberal method which I have also walked. Thus I frame this Torat Edom Response: Restoring the Witness of the Redeemed Assembly
Bonhoeffer’s yearning for a community like Finkenwalde—a visible body of believers formed in obedience to Christ, standing against ideological capture—is precisely what Torat Edom names as the restored qahal and edah: not merely a “church,” but a gathered people under covenant, who live out the testimony (edut) of the Most High in the midst of corrupt empires. The terms qahal and edah are not incidental. In Hebrew Scripture, qahal is the assembly convened before the Lord, often linked to Sinai or moments of covenant renewal. Edah is the community of testimony, the collective that bears witness to God’s justice, especially when the ruling powers distort or suppress that justice.
Bonhoeffer, knowingly or not, reached back into this biblical vision. His work at Finkenwalde was not an institutional reform effort—it was a return to covenantal edut in the face of national apostasy. He sought a visible, lived testimony in a world overtaken by the principalities.
The Torat Edom view strengthens this by adding: This testimony must also include Esau. It must also include those who were historically excluded from the Abrahamic promise because of the church’s distortion of covenant through Rome.
No Christ Without the Wound—No Witness Without the Wounded Brother
Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology was forged in suffering, and for this reason, Torat Edom sees in him a “redeemed brother” figure. In our terms, he bore the wound of the covenant. This aligns with the fundamental premise of Torat Edom: there is no gospel without the wound—without Jacob facing Esau, without Israel accounting for Edom, without Christ standing in the place of both victim and estranged brother.
Bonhoeffer’s embodied resistance was not a political activism, nor a cultural retreat. It was a covenantal response to betrayal—betrayal by the German church, which had forgotten the face of its brother. The Confessing Church was not only a resistance to Nazism, but a protest against the anti-witness of a church that had forgotten the gospel’s root in Jewish covenant, and thus its call to love the stranger, protect the vulnerable, and renounce empire.
In this sense, a Torat Edom ecclesiology would say:
The true qahal cannot emerge unless it includes the wounded—the rejected, the Edomite, the Nazarene, the Arab, the Jew, the Other—gathered not under nationalism or ideology, but under the mercy and justice of God.
Bonhoeffer’s Vision and the Noahide Mandate
The Torat Edom framework affirms Bonhoeffer’s commitment to a visible, embodied community living under the lordship of Christ—but reframes this not as an ecclesial abstraction, but as the extension of the Noahide mandate. The edah must be visibly righteous because it reflects the basic principles given to all humanity: justice, mercy, truth, rejection of idolatry, refusal to shed innocent blood. Bonhoeffer’s underground seminary was, in a way, a restored Noahide community within an apostate civilization—and this is what the church must become again.
We do not need a thousand more seminaries—we need a thousand more edot (witnessing communities) formed around chokhmah (wisdom), tzedakah (justice), chesed (covenantal loyalty), and emeth (truth). These cannot be built by political alliances or synodical declarations. They are formed where people break bread, study Torah, and name Christ as Sar haPanim—the one in whose face we meet the presence of God.
Rejecting Passive Pietism and Activist Idolatry Alike
Bonhoeffer’s critique of the false Lutheran dualism—the one that separated the sword from the Spirit and blessed the state unconditionally—is matched today by a church either paralyzed by neutrality or enthralled by power. Torat Edom critiques both. It says:
Passive pietism is a form of covenantal betrayal. To ignore the cries of the afflicted is to defile the Name.
Activist idolatry is no better. To seek justice without holiness, to merge the church into the machinery of the state, is to recreate the Tower of Babel in the name of righteousness.
Bonhoeffer knew this. His resistance was not about activism, but about formation—the slow, costly process of forming a qahal that resists both collaboration and compromise. Torat Edom insists the same: the only way forward is to build communities that embody the covenant—not as reaction, but as re-creation.
The Real Church Is the Remnant That Holds the Memory of the Brother
When Bonhoeffer mourned the “invisibility” of the church in Germany, he was mourning the loss of testimony. Torat Edom would sharpen this: he was mourning the loss of the brother. The church had not only become invisible, it had forgotten the story—the story of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph and his brothers, of Jesus and the rejected stone. A church that forgets its rejected brother cannot bear witness to the risen Christ.
The only true edah is the one that remembers. It remembers the covenant. It remembers the wound. It remembers the brothers it has cast off. It remembers that the church is not a substitute for Israel, but a servant to the nations and a witness to the mercy of God.
Bonhoeffer as a Precursor of Torat Edom
Ultimately, Bonhoeffer stands not just as a Christian martyr, but as a precursor of what Torat Edom calls a redeemed Edomite witness—one who, like Obadiah foretells, comes down from the heights of pride to join the house of Jacob in restoring the kingdom of the LORD (Obadiah 1:21). His cry for a religionless Christianity is a cry for a post-Constantinian qahal, a holy people formed not by culture or custom but by covenant and presence.
Building Finkenwaldes Today
In our moment, we are called not just to admire Bonhoeffer, but to become builders of Finkenwaldes—spaces of justice, fidelity, and prayer in a world of betrayal. Let us raise up edot in our cities, qahalot in our neighborhoods, and remember again: the gospel is not an idea, nor is the church a program. It is the presence of God in the midst of a world that has forgotten its brother. And where the brother is restored, the wound is healed.
Ahhhh, Fitch, I would gladly join up with a modern-day Finkenwald, or even try to start one, but alas, I am no Bonhoeffer.... I am a pastor, trying to keep the call of Jesus before my congregation, who seem to relish the siren-call of pseudo-power of the Republican Party. "My Christians, my beautiful Christians!"... He's speaking our language... And frankly, Jesus seems to be loosing this round. I seriously wish I knew what to do... Dan Steinhart
gather 12 people around your table (I prefer Friday nights)... listen to one another, discern with one another (a text preferably), pray with one another ... stir the space for an awakening ... and let Jesus take care of the rest ... including blowing up your church with a renewal we could not have imagined ... :) ..love you bro ...we're in this together
Thank you David for this series. Since Bohoeffer was most sensitive to Jews, yet I feel he would have benefitted from certain dialogs that were perhaps not avaible to him. It never escapes me that he suffered the same martyrdom. He was still a product of theological Edom. In many ways it provided the biblical language you extracted out of your philosophical and post-liberal method which I have also walked. Thus I frame this Torat Edom Response: Restoring the Witness of the Redeemed Assembly
Bonhoeffer’s yearning for a community like Finkenwalde—a visible body of believers formed in obedience to Christ, standing against ideological capture—is precisely what Torat Edom names as the restored qahal and edah: not merely a “church,” but a gathered people under covenant, who live out the testimony (edut) of the Most High in the midst of corrupt empires. The terms qahal and edah are not incidental. In Hebrew Scripture, qahal is the assembly convened before the Lord, often linked to Sinai or moments of covenant renewal. Edah is the community of testimony, the collective that bears witness to God’s justice, especially when the ruling powers distort or suppress that justice.
Bonhoeffer, knowingly or not, reached back into this biblical vision. His work at Finkenwalde was not an institutional reform effort—it was a return to covenantal edut in the face of national apostasy. He sought a visible, lived testimony in a world overtaken by the principalities.
The Torat Edom view strengthens this by adding: This testimony must also include Esau. It must also include those who were historically excluded from the Abrahamic promise because of the church’s distortion of covenant through Rome.
No Christ Without the Wound—No Witness Without the Wounded Brother
Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology was forged in suffering, and for this reason, Torat Edom sees in him a “redeemed brother” figure. In our terms, he bore the wound of the covenant. This aligns with the fundamental premise of Torat Edom: there is no gospel without the wound—without Jacob facing Esau, without Israel accounting for Edom, without Christ standing in the place of both victim and estranged brother.
Bonhoeffer’s embodied resistance was not a political activism, nor a cultural retreat. It was a covenantal response to betrayal—betrayal by the German church, which had forgotten the face of its brother. The Confessing Church was not only a resistance to Nazism, but a protest against the anti-witness of a church that had forgotten the gospel’s root in Jewish covenant, and thus its call to love the stranger, protect the vulnerable, and renounce empire.
In this sense, a Torat Edom ecclesiology would say:
The true qahal cannot emerge unless it includes the wounded—the rejected, the Edomite, the Nazarene, the Arab, the Jew, the Other—gathered not under nationalism or ideology, but under the mercy and justice of God.
Bonhoeffer’s Vision and the Noahide Mandate
The Torat Edom framework affirms Bonhoeffer’s commitment to a visible, embodied community living under the lordship of Christ—but reframes this not as an ecclesial abstraction, but as the extension of the Noahide mandate. The edah must be visibly righteous because it reflects the basic principles given to all humanity: justice, mercy, truth, rejection of idolatry, refusal to shed innocent blood. Bonhoeffer’s underground seminary was, in a way, a restored Noahide community within an apostate civilization—and this is what the church must become again.
We do not need a thousand more seminaries—we need a thousand more edot (witnessing communities) formed around chokhmah (wisdom), tzedakah (justice), chesed (covenantal loyalty), and emeth (truth). These cannot be built by political alliances or synodical declarations. They are formed where people break bread, study Torah, and name Christ as Sar haPanim—the one in whose face we meet the presence of God.
Rejecting Passive Pietism and Activist Idolatry Alike
Bonhoeffer’s critique of the false Lutheran dualism—the one that separated the sword from the Spirit and blessed the state unconditionally—is matched today by a church either paralyzed by neutrality or enthralled by power. Torat Edom critiques both. It says:
Passive pietism is a form of covenantal betrayal. To ignore the cries of the afflicted is to defile the Name.
Activist idolatry is no better. To seek justice without holiness, to merge the church into the machinery of the state, is to recreate the Tower of Babel in the name of righteousness.
Bonhoeffer knew this. His resistance was not about activism, but about formation—the slow, costly process of forming a qahal that resists both collaboration and compromise. Torat Edom insists the same: the only way forward is to build communities that embody the covenant—not as reaction, but as re-creation.
The Real Church Is the Remnant That Holds the Memory of the Brother
When Bonhoeffer mourned the “invisibility” of the church in Germany, he was mourning the loss of testimony. Torat Edom would sharpen this: he was mourning the loss of the brother. The church had not only become invisible, it had forgotten the story—the story of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph and his brothers, of Jesus and the rejected stone. A church that forgets its rejected brother cannot bear witness to the risen Christ.
The only true edah is the one that remembers. It remembers the covenant. It remembers the wound. It remembers the brothers it has cast off. It remembers that the church is not a substitute for Israel, but a servant to the nations and a witness to the mercy of God.
Bonhoeffer as a Precursor of Torat Edom
Ultimately, Bonhoeffer stands not just as a Christian martyr, but as a precursor of what Torat Edom calls a redeemed Edomite witness—one who, like Obadiah foretells, comes down from the heights of pride to join the house of Jacob in restoring the kingdom of the LORD (Obadiah 1:21). His cry for a religionless Christianity is a cry for a post-Constantinian qahal, a holy people formed not by culture or custom but by covenant and presence.
Building Finkenwaldes Today
In our moment, we are called not just to admire Bonhoeffer, but to become builders of Finkenwaldes—spaces of justice, fidelity, and prayer in a world of betrayal. Let us raise up edot in our cities, qahalot in our neighborhoods, and remember again: the gospel is not an idea, nor is the church a program. It is the presence of God in the midst of a world that has forgotten its brother. And where the brother is restored, the wound is healed.
That is the witness of Torat Edom.
That is the hope of the qahal.
That is the call of our time.
Ahhhh, Fitch, I would gladly join up with a modern-day Finkenwald, or even try to start one, but alas, I am no Bonhoeffer.... I am a pastor, trying to keep the call of Jesus before my congregation, who seem to relish the siren-call of pseudo-power of the Republican Party. "My Christians, my beautiful Christians!"... He's speaking our language... And frankly, Jesus seems to be loosing this round. I seriously wish I knew what to do... Dan Steinhart
gather 12 people around your table (I prefer Friday nights)... listen to one another, discern with one another (a text preferably), pray with one another ... stir the space for an awakening ... and let Jesus take care of the rest ... including blowing up your church with a renewal we could not have imagined ... :) ..love you bro ...we're in this together