Kościół i polifonia życia. Publiczny charakter Kościoła w świecie, który stał się dorosły

In this paper I propose a constructive extension of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s figure of the polyphony of life to represent the church’s public standing in the modern world. He uses this figure to describe personal life before God and with others, but implicit in his comments is an ontological surmise regarding the relationship between God and the world that is central to his understanding of the life, worship, and witness of the church. The idea of polyphony, elaborated ecclesially with assistance from Richard Strauss’s opera, is well suited to represent the body of Christ as publicly present and active in the world.