Not many theologians have had as great an impact on the study of peace and violence as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was labeled an Enemy of the State and eventually executed in April 1945. In this book, Trey Palmisano examines the theological connection between peace and violence across a range of Bonhoeffer's writings, sermons, and letters. Despite the challenges Bonhoeffer experienced in his personal life and in the life of his country, Palmisano asserts that a strong consistency emerges in Bonhoeffer's approach to ethics that resonates in the positing of Christ as the center of all ethical discourse and orients one to the ever-present challenges of a changing world. Palmisano creates distance from former studies that sought to define Bonhoeffer as a committed pacifist, a situational pacifist, or one who compromised his values to accommodate an exception for violence. By prioritizing methodology as the key to interpreting Bonhoeffer's thought, Palmisano argues that the ethical dilemma thought to be caused by Bonhoeffer's actions is avoided. The result is one that creates an authentic ethical openness by responsiveness to Christ rather than Christian virtue, and frees the individual from redundancies of action derived from deeply embedded patterns of theological engagement.

Engaging with the many debates about the meaning and character of Bonhoeffer's late resistance theology and action, particularly as it relates to his participation in the attempted coup d'état against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of the Exception attends to Bonhoeffer's understanding of the exception. Resisting the common reduction of the exception to a political or ethical concept, O'Farrell argues that the exception for Bonhoeffer is an extraordinary moment in history that disarms persons, impinging on one's understanding of politics and ethics. Through a wide engagement with the Bonhoeffer corpus, this book claims that this leads to distinctive narrations of key concepts in Bonhoeffer's corpus: responsibility, the free venture, simple obedience, and action beyond the law. It also offers a different portrait of Bonhoeffer to contemporary narrations. The Bonhoeffer that emerges is neither a Niebuhrian realist, a pacifist, or a religious fanatic, but one who is impelled to act apart from the law without this action becoming arbitrary. This Bonhoeffer provides a hopeful political witness that seeks a world beyond the conflicts and divisions of this age.

Theologian. Conspirator. Martyr. Saint. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was killed in the waning days of World War II, having been implicated in the July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler. Since his death, Bonhoeffer’s life and writings have inspired contradictory responses. He is often seen as a model for Christian pacifist resistance, and more recently for violent direct political action. Bonhoeffer’s name has been invoked by violent anti-abortion protestors as well as political leaders calling for support on a ‘war on terror’ in the aftermath of 9/11. Petra Brown critically analyses Bonhoeffer’s writing preceding and during his conspiracy involvement, particularly his recurring concept of the ‘extraordinary.’ Brown examines this idea in light of ‘the state of exception,’ a concept coined by the one-time Nazi jurist and political theorist, Carl Schmitt. She also draws on the existentialist philosopher Sören Kierkegaard to consider what happens when discipleship is understood as obedience to a divine command. This book aims to complicate an unreflective admiration of Bonhoeffer’s decision for conspiracy, and draws attention to the potentially dangerous implications of his emerging political theology.

This volume is the documentation of a workshop at the "Dietrich Bonhoeffer Centre for Public Theology" in Kigali, that took place in February 2018 and discussed what can be gained from Bonhoeffer's theology for contextual theologies in Africa as well as in Europe. The core feature of the workshop in February 2018 was a competition in which students from Butare/Huye presented the findings of their examination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and work. The prize-winning contributions are documented in this volume. Papers from the European perspective were contributed by doctoral candidates and students of the Ruhr University Bochum, and the chairing and commentary of the event was shared amongst Dr Clemens Wustmans (Berlin), Dr Christine Schliesser (Bern), the President of the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, Dr Pascal Bataringaya (Kigali), the Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Protestant Institut of Arts and Social Sciences, Olivier Munyansanga, Ph.D. (Huye/Rwanda), and Prof. Dr Traugott Jähnichen (Bochum).

This Handbook offers an overview of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's (1906-1945) biography and intellectual context; his contributions to all areas of doctrinal theology, ethics and public life; the significance of his thought for some contemporary issues and debates; and an evaluation of some existing resources for studying Bonhoeffer.

“Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.” These are words Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke to his brother a few months before he began training future pastors in the ways of discipleship. For several years he had been speaking out against war. Near the beginning of the anti-Semitic Nazi regime, he called on his fellow Christians to speak out against a state that was engaging in oppressive measures, to respond to victims of oppression, and to be willing to suffer, as a church, if it was required to stop such oppression. His vision for training disciples was rooted in pure doctrine, serious worship, a new kind of monasticism, and the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer was convinced that through the living presence of Jesus and the explosive teachings of the Sermon on the Mount “lies the force that can blow all this hocus-pocus sky-high—like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt-out shells behind.” This is the legacy of this extraordinary theologian that this book seeks to recover—exploring how this was lived out in a world full of Nazis.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is many things to many people—committed pacifist, reluctant revolutionary, Protestant saint but in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics of Formation, Ryan Huber argues that Bonhoeffer should be engaged as a Christian ethicist of formation. Huber demonstrates that formation lies at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s ethical project and personal story, providing a third way between virtue and character ethics in contemporary Christian thought concerned with moral growth.

"What is the place-if any-for violence in the Christian life? This book explores this question by analyzing a paradox of mainstream Christian history, theology, and ethics: At the heart of the Christian story, the suffering of violence stands as the price of faithfulness. From Jesus himself to martyrs who have died while following him, at the core of Christian faith is an experience of being victimized by the world's violence. At the same time, the majority opinion for most of Christian history has held that there are situations when the follower of Jesus may be justified in inflicting violence on others, especially in the context of war. Do these two facets of Christian ethics and experience-martyrdom and the just war-represent a contradiction, the self-defeating irony of those who follow a Lord who refused to defend himself taking up deadly weapons? In arguing that they do not, the book contends that any meaningful coherence between a theology of martyrdom and commitment to a just war ethic requires shifts away from a common heroic conception of Christian martyrdom and a common secularized Realpolitik conception of necessary violence. Instead, it requires a view of martyrdom that acknowledges even the martyrs as subject to the ambiguities of the human condition, even as they present a compelling witness to Jesus and the way of the cross. And it requires an approach to justified violence that reflects the self-sacrificial ethos of Jesus displayed in the lives of true Christian martyrs"--

If Protestants had saints, Dietrich Bonhoeffer--martyred under Hitler on April 9, 1945 just days before the Allies reached his concentration camp--would be one of the first canonised. Not just his unsought martyr's death, but his life's movement from privilege to growing identification with the suffering, his courageous return from the safety and beckoning success of the US to Germany, his work with the Confessing Church and, more controversially, with the underground resistance in the plot to assassinate Hitler, all argue his case for canonisation. Bonhoeffer is among ten twentieth-century martyrs above the Great West Door at Westminster Cathedral, where their portraits of ten tell more about the artists and their age than the saint and theirs, the movement of their lives and the movements they belonged to or founded. This is certainly true of Bonhoeffer and the Church of his anguished age. This collection of essays is from 'Down Under', for with the exception of the paper by UK theologian Keith Clements, are all the papers are by writers who live and work in the southern hemisphere. They include former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, South African theologian, John de Gruchy, and a number of Australian writers. These include papers by historian John Moses, and theologians Gordon Preece, Brian Rosner, Bruce Barber, Max Chamption and Neil Holm. Kevin Rudd writes in this volume that 'Bonhoeffer is, without doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the twentieth century. He was a man of faith. He was a man of reason ... He was never a nationalist, always an internationalist'. For tormented twenty-first century humanity Bonhoeffer is still one of our best guides to that new humanity being birthed by the Spirit of Christ in the midst of those seeing from and suffering below.