War in Christ's World: Bonhoeffer and Just Peacemaking on War and Christology

Abstract : In this paper, I apply Dietrich Bonhoeffer's exposition of the nature of war as found in his unfinished magnum opus, Ethics, to the contemporary peacemaking movement known as “just peacemaking.” Using Bonhoeffer, I argue that the just‐peacemaking approach accomplishes tactical peace, but only by undermining its stated purposes of bringing theology to bear on war. By assuming theological reasoning as secondary to historical conditions, just peacemaking has, by Bonhoeffer's logic, already abandoned the world to itself and severed it from theological resources.     

A “Manual” for Escaping Our Vicious Cycles: The Political Relevance of Enemy-Love

In his 2017 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis made a subtle yet stunning move when he called the Sermon on the Mount the Church’s “manual” for peacemaking at every level. Continuing the “fresh reappraisal” of war that the Second Vatican Council launched, Francis's choice of a term associated with the “Manualist” tradition of natural-law casuistry signaled the Catholic magisterium’s growing commitment both to rooting its teaching on peace and war in biblical sources instead, and to active nonviolence in pursuit of just peace. Given centuries of dismissal of Jesus’s teaching as irrelevant to real-world politics by both Catholics and Protestants, reception of Francis’s signal will benefit both from fresh biblical exegesis and new insights into natural law. Informing the biblical side is the groundbreaking work by Glen Stassen on the triadic structure of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5-7, and its practical implications for just peacemaking. Informing the natural-law side are recent findings from social psychology and neuroanthropology on the role of mimesis in human formation. The two fields join in underscoring the creative power of what Stassen called transforming initiatives for breaking cycles of violence.     

EBERHARD BETHGE: INTERPRETER EXTRAORDINAIRE OF DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Bethge was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's closest friend and confidant during the last ten years of Bonhoeffer's life. Bonhoeffer held him in high esteem, and he regarded no one better able to understand and clarify his thought. Anticipating his own death, Bonhoeffer designated Bethge to care for his legacy and write his biography, responsibilities Bethge later fulfilled with remarkable dedication and erudition. In the process he produced a significant number of interpretative essays, becoming internationally respected for his historical and theological scholarship, as well as his own engagement with church and social issues. Without Bethge, Bonhoeffer's legacy would not have become as well or as widely known as it did, or interpreted in the way that it has.     

Can Lutheran Theology and Virtue Ethics Be Friends?

Lutheran theology is generally suspicious of virtue ethics. This suspicion arises from (1) the Lutheran commitment to justification by faith in God's unconditional promise; and (2) Luther's corollary understanding of sin as existential self‐absorption. Some Lutheran theologians have sought to incorporate virtue ethics by using it as an orientation for Christian life, while making sure to avoid any contamination of the doctrine of justification by virtue ethics. My project is to consider the possibility of a mutual illumination and interaction between the doctrine of justification and virtue ethics’ focus on formation by habituation. As an aid in exploring this possibility I use the distinction in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics between the “ultimate” and the “penultimate.”     

Violence,Atonement, and Retributive Justice: Bonhoeffer as a Test Case

Recent soteriological discourse has worried that atonement theologies like satisfaction and penal substitution have potentially damaging effects like inoculating us to our violence, further buttressing retributive justice, and inducing passive acquiescence in the face of abuse. Though legitimate concerns in their own right, this essay investigates whether certain views on the atonement do in fact produce the issues of concern. By investigating the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who believed that God had to punish sin, this article will seek to identify the complex nuances in Bonhoeffer's work that would potentially safeguard against some of the concerns being raised about atonement theologies like his.     

“Peace with the Earth” in the Context of the Decade to Overcome Violence

Abstract In this article, Guillermo Kerber situates theWorld Council of Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence against the background of debates about war and peace that have taken place within the ecumenical movement since the Second World War. He shows how this initiative has contributed to an understanding of the concept of “just peace” that goes beyond being the opposite of “just war, but rather demands the absence of all forms of structural violence, including gender‐based, cultural and media violence”. Against this background, this article underlines the need for an ecological understanding of “peace with the earth” to be an integral part of such a “just peace”.     

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER—AN ETHICS OF GOD'S APOCALYPSE?

Bonhoeffer's theology generally and his Ethics in particular have not commonly been thought to be ‘apocalyptic’. Indeed, many have adjudged him to be “almost immunized” against such eschatology. Yet, a close reading of Bonhoeffer's Ethics shows unmistakable resonances between the themes, tasks and argumentative forms of his theological ethics and the contours of pauline apocalyptic as set forth recently in the work of J. Louis Martyn and others. In this text, Bonhoeffer confronts the question ‘What has paraenesis to do with apocalypsis?’ and experiments with answers which acknowledge that ‘the incursion of a new world’ in Christ ‘renders ancient good uncouth.’ Seeing this illumines several aspects of Bonhoeffer's theological ethics, clarifies the importance of the doctrine of justification therein, and emphasises its dynamic, dialectical and pauline character.     

Reclaiming Bonhoeffer After Auschwitz

Abstract : Christians having sought refuge from guilt by claiming Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer to be their representative have come under critique by Jewish Holocaust thinkers. Was the historical Bonhoeffer complicit in the anti‐Semitism of his era or a model of prophetic heroism in the face of state sponsored racism and genocide? This article traces the early history of Bonhoeffer's thinking on the “Jewish Question” and the implications of his prison writings for the future of Jewish‐Christian relations. Simplistic defenses and simplistic dismissals fall short of understanding this most complex of theological figures.     

Election in Bonhoeffer's Ethics: Discerning a Late Revision

Evidence that Bonhoeffer incorporates and responds to portions of Barth's Church Dogmatics II/2 in chapters thought to have been produced without access to Barth's fresh treatment of election mandate a revaluation of Bonhoeffer's controversial ethic and a reconsideration of the hermeneutic proper to his Ethics. Bonhoeffer's conception of election underwent a development from his public academic genesis in Sanctorum Communio to his posthumously published Ethics. His treatment of election in ‘God's Love and the Disintegration of the World’ demonstrates the doctrine's prominent role in his final attempts at reforming Christian ethics and his critique of all previous ethics. Attending to the influence of election illuminates developments in Bonhoeffer's thinking about two of the primary concepts associated with his Ethics–Stellvertretung and Schuldübernahme.     

Redeeming the penultimate: discipleship and Church in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There are striking parallels between the theologies of discipleship advanced by the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard and the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer's notion of ‘costly grace’ closely resembles Kierkegaard's critique of the misuse of the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. After the publication of Cost of Discipleship, however, Bonhoeffer's view of discipleship moves in a different direction from that of Kierkegaard. Whereas Kierkegaard takes discipleship to mean that the Christian must be in irrevocable conflict with the world, Bonhoeffer sees discipleship as living in the world and cultivating a ‘worldly holiness’. This article tracks the reasons why their initially similar theologies of discipleship result in Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer developing different understandings of Christian discipleship and church. The discussion is organised around the distinction Bonhoeffer makes in his Ethics between the ‘ultimate’ and the ‘penultimate’. Kierkegaard emphasises the ultimate to such an extent that the penultimate is virtually eliminated and the Christian disciple is called upon to live in a state of constant eschatological opposition to the world. For Bonhoeffer on the other hand the penultimate is not to be condemned but to be transformed in the light of the ultimate. The article argues that the differing notions of discipleship advanced by Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer arise from the different political contexts in which they were living and writing. Whereas Kierkegaard's historical situation prompted him to affirm the ultimate by confronting his contemporaries with New Testament Christianity's radical opposition to the world, Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazi régime prompted him to reflect on how the ultimate can be integrated into the penultimate and how the Christian disciple can engage with the world without being of the world.     

Journal of South African Trip: January 14-March 1, 1986

This article is Carl's personal account, dictated en route, of his experiences during his trip to South Africa. He documents his extensive commitment to people and to a process leading to peace. He ends his journal with the conviction that violence can be avoided and that no group really wants violence.     

A teleological interpretation of Bonhoeffer's concept of “A World Come of Age”

This paper explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of “the nonreligious interpretation of biblical terms in a world come of age,” best known from his Letters and Papers from Prison (LPP). As a case study of its possibilities, we will survey South African thinkers who have explored the concept in rapidly changing contexts. Our leading question is whether academic theology can develop a teleological narrative for a nation that has “come of age.” When a nation or culture becomes so secular that it “outgrows” a traditional use of biblical terms, can those terms be reinterpreted to provide a teleological narrative for the nation? Bonhoeffer can be a resource for academic theologians to address issues in public theology, especially the suffering and oppression of communities still in pain despite a democratic system.     

Pastoral leadership lessons from Bonhoeffer: The alt-right,the twitter mob,and ressentiment

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's radio address “The Younger Generation's Altered Conception of the Führer,” has much to teach us about what kind of pastoral leadership is needed in our present social and political contexts. Personal antipathies have blossomed into generational antinomies, and the resentments of one side versus another threaten to take over our perceptions of reality and perhaps even reality itself. In looking at Bonhoeffer's diagnosis of why the “younger generation” was seeking a strong-man leader to help them demolish the adversaries who had aggrieved them, we can see ourselves. In listening to Bonhoeffer's cure, we may find our own medicine.     

History as a Literary Weapon: The Gospel of Barnabas in Muslim-Christian Polemics

Even if religion is not in itself a concept intrinsic to Christian doctrine, dogmatics need to develop its understanding of religion. Interpretating both early and late writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45), the article takes us to the different understandings of religion to be found in Bonhoeffer. It focuses on the relation between religion and (the dogmatic notion of) sin in Bonhoeffer's thinking. In this very relation one finds the motives behind Bonhoeffer's wellknown criticism of religion. But surprisingly Bonhoeffer's hamartiological approach to religion also leads him to a positive understanding of religion which has escaped the attention of most Bonhoeffer scholarship. This positive understanding of religion is finally developed further by the article which shows how Bonhoeffer also connects religion and (the dogmatic notion of) man's God-likeness.     

The Calling of the Whole People of God into Ministry: The Spirit,Church and Laity

This article discusses implications of Bonhoeffer's notion of maturity (being of age), particularly for the notion of redemption and the ethical self. This is done through a reading of the relation between maturity and redemption in Kant, Nietzsche, and Levinas, which again is compared with Bonhoeffer's late thought as we find it in his Prison letters and his Ethics. All three philosophers share with Bonhoeffer the important premise that otherworldly redemption is downplayed to the benefit of a strong demand put on the self. At the same time, their notions of maturity show important differences, with subsequent consequences for their notions of redemption; Kant's notion is based on ethical autonomy, Nietzsche's on aesthetical autonomy, whereas Levinas presupposes ethical heteronomy. The reading of Bonhoeffer shows that he shares premises with all three thinkers, but particularly with Levinas. This is shown in the analyses of religionless Christianity as a turn to the practical dimension of faith, in the messianic structure of the ethical self, and in the turn to the Old-Testamently and the arcane discipline. Bonhoeffer's high estimation of the worldly and the aesthetic, however, also illustrates his affinities to Nietzsche.     

A Response to “Participation: A Religious Worldview” by James M. Gustafson

This response offers an interpretation of James Gustafson's “Participation: A Religious Worldview,” which thinks with Gustafson on the theme of “participation,” while highlighting points where my own thoughts diverge from his. The essay begins by drawing the reader's attention to Gustafson's style, arguing that the simple elegance of his writing constitutes part of his larger claim about the need to remove ourselves from the center of our thought. Next, the essay analyzes Gustafson's use of “participation” by putting it in context and connecting it with his broader methodology. Finally, I draw the reader's attention to important loci in the text in order to show how Gustafson's essay helps address various extant misinterpretations of his thought but also to point to ways in which my “thinking with” Gustafson leads me to think otherwise than he does.     

Bio‐Theoacoustics: Prayer Outdoors and the Reality of the Natural World

What does it mean to pray when the Earth—the fabric of our bodies’ lives, and indeed of the incarnation itself—is profoundly endangered from human action? What would Christian prayer look like that was not “losing track of nature” but following its tracks, physically and spiritually immersed in the actual, present, threatened and wild life of the more‐than‐human world? Using categories outlined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics, this essay asserts that prayer and worship that take place entirely within the wall‐, speech‐, and screen‐mediated bubble of anthropocentrism risk becoming an abstraction. The essay explores this assertion in three moves: first, it delineates Bonhoeffer's assertion of the “abstraction” created by forms of Christian life in which God is conceived in separation from the world. Next, it shows how these categories—“God” and “world”—come together in prayer outdoors, understood both literally and metaphorically. And finally, it proposes how prayer outdoors might take shape for individuals or communities: a bio‐theoacoustics of prayer for the life of the world.     

The View from Way Below: Inter‐Species Encounter,Membranes, and the Reality of Christ

Viewing modern life from the perspective and world of those whose lives are treated as expendable commodities in our current economic systems—humans and creatures of every other species—creates, Bonhoeffer asserts, the most reliable hermeneutical standpoint for seeing and living in reality. This essay attempts to fashion in broad strokes a Christian theology of creaturely re‐engagement: learning to live again “way below,” in literal and metaphoric touch with reality. I assert that Bonhoeffer's theology of I/Thou encounter as the means of humans’ ethical formation has the potential to ground a broader theology of inter‐species encounter as well.     

Is this America? Unfinished business with the U.S. national imaginary,religion and violence

This article first proposes definitions and raises questions about what it means to be a nation. I then analyze the national imaginary of the United States, and suggest that at its deepest core we find “substitute ultimates” regarding America's sacrificial war‐culture. This cultural violence perpetuates destructive consequences, including the phenomena of “U.S. war‐culture,” and “moral injury” among military servicemembers and veterans. But widespread legitimation of the imaginary largely inhibits citizens from awareness about their own reality. Lastly, I inquire about the role of prophetic public theology to address nationalism, and engage in a thought experiment with an imagined community of diverse partners.     

THE RELATIONSHIP OF ‘EXCHANGE-ORIENTATION’ AND ‘COMMITMENT’ SCALES TO MARRIAGE ADJUSTMENT*

Believing that “exchange” and “commitment” are basic dimensions associated with marriage adjustment (MA), scales measuring these three dimensions were administered to 40 married couples. Exchange was predicted to be negatively correlated with MA, commitment positively associated with it, and an individual's exchange and commitment qualities were predicted to affect his partner's MA. The hypotheses were all supported. Further analyses, however, revealed that husbands' MA was more strongly associated with their own exchange and commitment scores than those of their wives. However, wives' MA was equally associated with their own and their husbands' exchange and commitment scores. The implications of this finding for women's position in marriage are discussed.