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D I E T R I C H B O N H O E F F E R ’S C HR I S TI A N H U MA N IS M
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
Christian Humanism
JENS ZIMMERMANN
1
3
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To Sabine, my wife, who exemplifies “being for others.”

Foreword
Jens Zimmermann has acquired a well-deserved reputation as a distinguished

scholar for his work on culture, Christian Humanism, and Dietrich Bonhoef-
fer’s theology. Taken together with his Incarnational Humanism (2012) and
Religion & Humanism (2012), this new volume completes a splendid trilogy
around these themes. As such, it makes a major contribution to our under-
standing of the development of Bonhoeffer’s theology and its significance for
the cultural crisis of our time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism is, in
fact, not just another book about Bonhoeffer, of which there are many already
available; it is a systematic and foundational discussion of the development of
Bonhoeffer’s theology as essentially incarnational, being deeply rooted, as it is,
in the Patristic tradition. This rescues Bonhoeffer’s legacy from its shallow
appropriation by popular liberal and conservative pundits, thereby making it
more genuinely radical and relevant.
Zimmermann gives two main reasons for describing Bonhoeffer’s theology
as a form of Christian humanism. The first is that it “captures the basic thrust
of his theology and reveals striking parallels with humanistic themes in the
greater Christian tradition.” Along with the patristic theologians of the early
church, Zimmermann says, “Bonhoeffer interprets the gospel as God’s prom-
ise of our new, full humanity, a promise that has become a reality in the
Incarnation through Christ’s recapitulation of creation.” The second reason
Zimmermann gives, is that this understanding of Bonhoeffer’s legacy is
urgently needed in the world today, especially in the West with its chronic
and “unprecedented uncertainty” about what it means to be human. But there
is an equally important reason, which emerges throughout book, namely that
when we read Bonhoeffer’s theology with the incarnation as its “unifying
focus,” then all the key categories that traverse its development, from vicarious
representation and sociality, to realistic responsibility and Christianity as
participation in Christ’s new humanity, cohere.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism is thus far more than an exp-
loration of the Patristic roots of Bonhoeffer’s theology. It is about the incarna-
tional character of Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutics in his endeavor to understand
and proclaim the “Word of God here and now in the most concrete way
possible.” For that reason, the incarnational character of Bonhoeffer’s biblical
hermeneutics is central to Zimmermann’s project. Indeed, Bonhoeffer’s growing
understanding of the biblical message correlates with his emerging Christian
humanism, for his “biblical hermeneutic is subservient to Christformation, that
is, to becoming truly human by becoming Christlike.” In other words, the Bible
viii Foreword
is sacramental and therefore analogous to the Incarnation in “mediating divine
presence through human words.” As Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the Incar-
nation deepens, so his interpretation of the Bible changes. Not only does he
come to a fresh appreciation of the Old Testament, but also to an awareness of
the presence of God in the totality of life, which leads him in turn to his non-
religious interpretation of biblical concepts.
Bonhoeffer’s incarnational theology is, then, all about the embodiment of
God’s unchanging Word within our ever-changing historical contexts. Such
an approach to Christian praxis, rather than dividing the world into separate
realms, the sacred, and secular, unifies and grounds all reality, making the
humanity of Christ normative for humanity and Christian action realistic and
responsible. The consequence is that Bonhoeffer’s theology provides a creative
yet critical bridge between Christianity and other humanist projects, whether
secular or religious, which share a commitment to a more just and peaceable
world, and therefore to the renewal of a more humane culture.
My hunch is that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism is going to be
widely discussed within the circles of Bonhoeffer scholarship; my hope is
that its core message will have a much wider impact among Christians
who are as concerned as Bonhoeffer was about the future of humanity. But
whether my hunch is correct, or my hope realized, this is a book for everyone
who is seriously interested in understanding Bonhoeffer’s theology and its
significance today.
John W. de Gruchy
Hermanus, South Africa
Preface
Why a book on Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism? Indeed, why another book

on Bonhoeffer at all? The second question is easy to answer. As Jean Bethke
Elshtain once observed, scholars working with Bonhoeffer tend to become
obsessed with him, and I hoped that writing a book on Bonhoeffer’s theology
would attenuate my own fascination with this theologian that began about ten
years ago. The content of this book, however, is meant to answer the first
question: I wrote a book on Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism because no
comprehensive theological study of this kind exists, even though prominent
Bonhoeffer scholars, such as Clifford Green, Fritz de Lange,¹ and, most
extensively, John de Gruchy² have already applied the label Christian human-
ism to Bonhoeffer’s theology.
In his introduction to Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, Green suggests that “Bonhoeffer’s
Christology, his doctrine of God’s becoming human in Jesus Christ, is the
foundation of a Christian humanism” because the Incarnation promises “both
personally and corporately” the “restoration of true humanity.”³ While Green
merely hints at the humanistic quality of Bonhoeffer’s theology, de Gruchy and
de Lange have shown in greater detail the confluence of biblical and cultural
influences on his humanism, which had been nurtured by a classical, European
education. De Lange, for example, argues that both Bonhoeffer’s upbringing and
theology incline him to a “humanism of the other” that he identifies with the
most humane ideals of Western culture. For Bonhoeffer, therefore, “only a
theology which takes the incarnation of God as starting point will be able to
make the tradition of European humanism bear fruit, the inheritance of a
particular Europe, yet universal in its intentions—as is Christian faith itself.”⁴
John de Gruchy, whose Bonhoeffer scholarship and Christian humanist
outlook have largely inspired the present work, has outlined the ethical and
political dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism. De Gruchy draws
particular attention to the ecumenical, inclusive character of Bonhoeffer’s
¹ “A Particular Europe, a Universal Faith: The Christian Humanism of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics in

its Context,” in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: Old Europe and New Frontiers (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991),
81–96.
² De Gruchy is the only Bonhoeffer scholar who outlines Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism in
greater detail, in part because he identifies his own considerable and interdisciplinary, wide-
ranging theological work as Christian humanism. See De Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as
Christian Humanist,” in Being Human, Becoming Human, ed. Jens Zimmermann and Brian
Gregor (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 3–24, and Confessions of a Christian Humanist
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006).
³ “Editor’s Introduction,” in Ethics, DBWE 6, 1–44, 6.
⁴ De Lange, “A Particular Europe, A Universal Faith,” 93.
x Preface
thought as “a humanism deeply rooted in the sociality of humanity, the
struggle for peace and solidarity with social victims and with other humanists
engaged in resisting tyranny, a Christianity that affirms hope against despair,
and life against death.”⁵ My detailed analysis of Bonhoeffer’s theology
will delineate the christological structures of this ecumenical, life-affirming
humanism. In short, this book will be a further development of and critical
engagement with existing scholarship to show more comprehensively that
Bonhoeffer is intrinsically a Christian humanist.
Most fundamentally, I assume, along with Green, de Gruchy, and de Lange,
that Bonhoeffer is a Christian humanist because of his incarnational starting
point. The conviction that God became human so that human beings could
become truly human by being transformed into the likeness of Christ, the true
image of God, is the heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and
motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions,
including his opposition to Hitler. On account of God’s becoming human,
Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is all
about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. Bonhoeffer’s incarna-
tional starting point leads cumulatively to a decidedly humanistic theology as
detailed in the chapters of this book: an anthropology centered on humanity, a
theology structured hermeneutically, an ethic focused on Christformation,
a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theo-
logical politics aimed at human flourishing.
What then do these chapters contribute concretely to extant scholarship
on Bonhoeffer? It is well known, after all, that the source of Bonhoeffer’s
humanist outlook is the incarnation. The Leitmotif that informs all themes
Bonhoeffer takes up is God’s becoming human in Christ to restore human
beings to their full humanity. Whether in the ecclesiology at the heart of
his doctoral dissertation in which he develops a sociology of the church
(Sanctorum Communio), in the christological ontology he develops in his
habilitation to correlate transcendence and immanence (Act and Being), in
the quality of the Christian life as obedient discipleship in the service of others
(Discipleship, Life Together), in the theological interpretation of scripture
(Creation and Fall, The Prayer book of the Bible), or in the holistic vision for
Christian life in a secular society (Ethics and the ‘new’ prison theology of the
prison letters)—all these theological explorations find unity in Bonhoeffer’s
unwavering commitment to the incarnation. This pervasive incarnational
focus makes Bonhoeffer a Christian humanist.⁶
⁵ “Christian Humanism: Reclaiming a Tradition; Affirming an Identity,” in CTI Reflections 8

(April 19, 2009), 16.
⁶ It may be more accurate theologically to speak about Bonhoeffer’s christological humanism,
but this term is slightly awkward and hinders an immediate association with the more familiar
term Christian humanism applied to patristic and medieval theologians whose approach is no
less christological and based on the incarnation.
Preface xi
What has not been examined in any detail, however, is exactly how
Christology both grounds the Christian life as formation in true humanity
and also provides the formative structures that define human nature, knowing,
and living with others in a common secular sphere. Moreover, to my know-
ledge, few have attempted to locate Bonhoeffer within the greater Christian
humanist tradition that extends back to patristic theology. In this book, I wish
to close both of these gaps by attempting to show the christological inner
workings, as it were, of Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism with constant
reference to the greater Christian tradition.
Determining Bonhoeffer’s relation to the greater Christian tradition, and
especially to patristic writers, reveals his rootedness in a christological heritage
Rowan Williams has aptly summarized in Christ the Heart of Creation.⁷
Williams demonstrates that Bonhoeffer inherits and rearticulates for his
time the Chalcedonian patristic legacy of the incarnation paradigmatic for a
participatory ontology and a non-competitive model of finite-infinite relations
that shape his theological outlook, his ethics, and also his late prison theology.
Because for Bonhoeffer Christ “literally embodies” the “non-competitive
relation of Creator and creature,”⁸ sacred and profane are neither identical
nor opposed, and Christian discipleship as participation in Christ’s new
humanity adopts the comportment of a God who has no need to defend
himself, freeing Christians from the obsession of self-justification.⁹ Williams
helps us see that Bonhoeffer’s incarnational starting point (our knowledge
about who God is starts with the incarnation), and his this-worldly Christian-
ity (the refusal “to see the integrity of the finite somehow disrupted or
diminished by the infinite”) stem from his intuitive grasp and creative
rearticulation of patristic Christology.¹⁰ Williams’s book appeared after my
completion of the present work, thus preventing a more sustained engage-
ment; as it turns out, in some ways Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism shows in
greater detail the effects of Bonhoeffer’s patristic christological heritage
Williams has traced so astutely in his work.
For example, Williams also notes the central role Stellvertretung (vicarious
representation) plays in Bonhoeffer’s appropriation of Chalcedonian Christ-
ology that establishes at the heart of reality “the solidarity of Creator and
creation.”¹¹ We will show the foundational role of Stellvertretung for Bonhoeffer’s
Christian humanism by highlighting parallels with Irenaeus’s concept of
recapitulation to which he alludes in his prison letters.¹² Bonhoeffer’s entire
theology hinges on his conviction that in Christ all of humanity, indeed all of
creation, was summed up and renewed. In both Irenaeus and Bonhoeffer, this
recapitulation includes all of creation, and Christians participate in this
⁷ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). ⁸ Ibid., 216. ⁹ Ibid., 217.

¹⁰ Ibid., 194. ¹¹ Ibid., 203. ¹² DBWE 8:230.
xii Preface
new reality while still living in the world that awaits Christ’s final return.¹³
Bonhoeffer’s patristic heritage, filtered through Luther, thus includes the
grand, universal vison of the cosmic Christ, most fully developed in Bonhoeffer’s
insistence on a single, comprehensive Christ-Reality in Ethics. This “christo-
cratic character of reality”¹⁴ follows both Pauline Christianity and the
church fathers in emphasizing what Eberhard Bethge called the “ontological
coherence” of God’s reality with the reality of the world.¹⁵ Faith and reason
cooperate because all truth derives from and is sustained by the same
eternal Word.
The miracle of Christianity is the uncompromising and non-competitive
expression of this eternal Word in the person of Jesus Christ. For Bonhoeffer,
following the greater tradition, formation into true humanity occurs by
participation in this reality through union with Christ made possible by
the incarnation. Isolating the central notion of Stellvertretung or vicarious
representation allows us to recognize more fully than before the two basic
christological structures in Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism responsible for
formation into the new humanity or Christ-likeness. The first is the Christ
event itself, comprising “manger, cross, and resurrection”¹⁶ into which the
Christian is drawn for the sake of Christformation. The second entails
the eschatological horizon of reality, or what Bonhoeffer calls the ultimate-
penultimate relation.
Concerning the first christological structure, it is God’s becoming human
in Jesus the Christ, his death on the cross, and his resurrection, with all three
elements inseparably held together, that give Bonhoeffer’s theology its par-
ticular, humanist quality. This triad of manger, cross, and resurrection, by
which Christ stood in for humanity and recapitulated the human race to
establish the new humanity, determines Bonhoeffer’s view of reality. On
account of the incarnation, God and world are not in competition and must
be thought together. Because of the cross, however, this holism is not naïve; for
in the cross the fallen world is judged, and death, sin, and dehumanizing
practices exposed and condemned. And yet again, the world is judged not with
merciless condemnation but with an eye to redemption. The cross is judgment
but also reconciliation in light of the resurrection, which shows the world as
preserved for its complete renewal into a new creation that already dawns in
the church as the new humanity in embryo. Bonhoeffer thus balances the
eschatological tension of the ‘already and not yet’ with a firm commitment to
¹³ This theological starting point (Stellvertretung or recapitulation) appears already in

Bonhoeffer’s first academic work Sanctorum Communio, is deepened in his Genesis interpret-
ation Creation and Fall, and particularly in his subsequent Christology Lectures and the cosmic
Christology of the Ethics.
¹⁴ Larry, L. Rasmussen, Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2005), 16.
¹⁵ Qtd. in Rasmussen, 16. ¹⁶ The German phrase is Krippe, Kreuz, und Auferstehung.
Preface xiii
this world and a realistic hope for the future. This, in short, is the structure of
‘the one-Christ reality,’ in which Christians participate by virtue of their union
with Christ.¹⁷
In insisting on Christformation as being drawn into the entire Christ-event,
Bonhoeffer approximates a patristic understanding of the incarnation. As the
patristic scholar John Behr has pointed out, for the Johannine gospel and its
patristic reception, it is in the entire passion of Christ that the new human
being is shaped by God. Accordingly, we cannot speak about God’s humanity
apart from Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, for all three of these taken
together reveal to us God’s nature and true humanity. Bonhoeffer warns
against the “perversion” to “absolutize” any of these elements and thus to
invite pathological distortions of human existence.¹⁸ Stressing only the
humanity of God encourages an uncritical acceptance of creational orders or
dehumanizing cultural practices. Isolating the passion may lead to an undue
glorification of suffering, and focusing only on the resurrection easily leads to
“radicalism,” to a naïve, destructive counter-cultural warfare in the name of
religion.¹⁹ In terms of theological grammar, it is therefore misleading to
speak of the incarnation, death, and resurrection, because the term “incarna-
tion” already stands for the whole Christ event. It is surely no accident
that Bonhoeffer rarely refers to the incarnation and prefers the term Mensch-
werdung to indicate the unique and comprehensive nature of this Christ event.
We are becoming human, “a living human being,” by being drawn into this
event.²⁰ For Bonhoeffer, as for the early church, “the starting point for
theological reflection is the passion,”²¹ and being drawn into the Christ-
event initiates our Christformation. Bonhoeffer’s theology, like Luther’s, is
therefore truly cruciform, but this term includes and never loses sight of
the resurrection. Even when defining Christianity as participating in God’s
suffering with the world, Bonhoeffer affirms his trust in divine providence and
the final return of Christ.²² According to Bonhoeffer, discipleship indeed
means following Christ in this world, but without losing sight of the eschato-
logical aspect of Christ’s passion. Faith is participating in all three aspects of
Jesus’s being, in his “having become human, death, and resurrection.”²³
¹⁷ DBWE 6:261. Jürgen Moltmann’s early essay on Bonhoeffer Lordship of Christ and Social
Reality (Herrschaft Christi und soziale Wirklichkeit); Heinrich Ott’s Reality and Faith
(Wirklichkeit und Glaube); André Dumas’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality (Une
théologie de la réalité: Dietrich Bonhoeffer); Rainer Mayer’s Christ Reality (Christuswirklich-
keit); and, more recently, Barry Harvey’s Taking Hold of the Real each fully recognize this
unifying concern in Bonhoeffer’s writings.
¹⁸ DBWE 6:157. ¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ See John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2019), 110 and 255.
²¹ Ibid., 251. ²² DBWE 8:329, 377. ²³ DBWE 8:501 (my emphasis).
xiv Preface
The eschatological tension we just described forms the second, and related,
christological structure that determines Bonhoeffer’s humanistic outlook.
In Ethics, Bonhoeffer articulates this tension as the ultimate-penultimate
relation, one of his original contributions to modern theology. The ultimate-
penultimate schema allows him to embrace fully life in this world, without
opposing earthly loves to the love of God, but rather affirming whatever
is good in earthly life as the rooted in loving God. Loving God thus becomes
the cantus firmus around which one is free to develop the polyphony of
life’s “other voices” without conflict.²⁴ Moreover, as we will see, by affirming
“the natural” as legitimate penultimate sphere, Bonhoeffer becomes the sole
Lutheran voice of his time attempting to recover nature as the sphere of
God’s grace, thereby espousing an integral humanism that approximates
similar efforts by fellow Catholic Christian humanists like Jacques Maritain
or Henri de Lubac. By discussing Bonhoeffer in the context of Catholic
thought on nature and grace, including Maritain’s natural law tradition,
we also hope to stimulate conversation on this hitherto rather neglected
overlap.
While molded within the German, twentieth-century context of liberal
Protestantism and its challenge by dialectic theology, Bonhoeffer’s thinking
transcends any narrow confessional divisions. For all the Lutheran accents of
his theology, he is a remarkably ecumenical thinker. He once remarked that
God will not ask us on the day of judgment “whether we have been evangelical
but whether we did His will.”²⁵ As we will show in this book, Bonhoeffer
appropriated from patristic and Roman Catholic sources those insights he
deemed most conducive to Christformation (and therefore to humanization)
and which aided his critical engagement with nineteenth-century Protestant-
ism. Showing that his theology proceeds from a philanthropic or humanistic
interpretation of the gospel opens up the full ecumenical potential of
Bonhoeffer’s theology and reveals him as a truly catholic theologian. The
parallels between his Christian humanism and that of the church fathers,
which resonates still strongly in contemporary Catholicism, derive from his
creative appropriation of the greater Christian tradition.
We will in fact encounter significant parallels between patristic theology
and Bonhoeffer’s theology, a kinship little explored since its recognition thirty
years ago by the church historian Reinhart Staats, who rightly points to
Bonhoeffer’s affinity for and familiarity with the church fathers, attributable
to his training under Adolf von Harnack.²⁶ Characteristically, Bonhoeffer
hardly ever acknowledges individual patristic sources in his creative app-
ropriation of the tradition, wherefore a detailed genealogical approach of
²⁴ DBWE 8:394. ²⁵ DBW 4:188; DBWE 4:179.

²⁶ Reinhart Staats, “Das patristische Erbe in der Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers,” 179–80.
Preface xv
mapping source influence remains impossible. And yet, our focus on
Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism, that is, on his interpretation of the gospel
and the Christian life as the attainment of true humanity, reveals the extent of
Bonhoeffer’s creative adaptation of the greater Christian tradition, beyond the
usually explored influences of Martin Luther or Karl Barth.
We will argue, likely controversially, that one such parallel includes patristic
logos Christology with its anthropological emphasis on theosis or Christifica-
tion that endured even into the theology of the Protestant reformers, and still
shapes Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologies today. A proper
understanding of deification, to use the Latin term, reveals significant res-
emblances with Bonhoeffer’s central notion of Christformation. A careful
reading of patristic literature on this matter will allow us to move beyond
hasty judgments concerning Bonhoeffer’s relation to the greater tradition of
Christian humanism. For example, Clifford Green claims that Bonhoeffer’s
reading of the gospel as the “restoration of true humanity” “reverses” the
patristic teaching of deification.²⁷ I will show in the first chapters of this book
that this claim is misleading and rests on a typical Protestant misunderstand-
ing of theosis as blurring the creature-creator distinction. When we read
patristic theology not as departure from but faithful continuation (on the
whole) of apostolic theology, we recognize that Christian theology begins
with the basic humanist impulse formulated by Athanasius in his work On
the Incarnation: “For [the Word of God] was incarnate so that we might be
made god.”²⁸ As I will illustrate with examples from Irenaeus, the Cappado-
cians and other patristic sources, for the fathers, theopoiesis, being made
divine, does not erase the boundaries between God and creature, but refers
to the attainment of Christlikeness made possible by the incarnation and
enacted through participation in the being of Christ.
This participatory ontology also explains the similar sacramentalism char-
acteristic of both patristic and Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism. In outlining
the orientation of his humanism toward God’s presence in church and world,
I affirm and deepen recent studies on the sacramental nature of Bonhoeffer’s
thought.²⁹ As I show in another chapter, recognizing the sacramental nature of
his thought also permits us to view Bonhoeffer’s biblical hermeneutic as
integral to his Christian humanism. Exegesis, along with the sacraments and
liturgical life, becomes an essential part of Christformation, the growth
into true humanity that defines Bonhoeffer’s theology. Indeed, Bonhoeffer’s
theology becomes increasingly humanistic to the degree to which he works out
more fully the implications of what the greater tradition calls the “cosmic
²⁷ DBWE 6:6.
²⁸ On the Incarnation (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 54 (167).
²⁹ See for example, Tobias Schulte, Ohne Gott mit Gott: Glaubenshermeneutik mit Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (Regensburg: Pustet, 2013); and Nadine Hamilton, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Hermeneutik
der Responsivität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016).
xvi Preface
Christ,” i.e., the Pauline claim that all things were created for the sake of Christ
and are sustained by him.
Grasping ever more fully the ramifications of Nicean and Chalcedonian
theology, of God having become human, Bonhoeffer works out a participatory
ontology that allows him to discern sacramentally how God through Christ
takes form in believers, in the church, and world. This deepening understand-
ing of participation in Christ illuminates Bonhoeffer’s more challenging later
work, including the concepts of “religionless Christianity,” and “a world come
of age.” We will see, in fact, that even his political engagement, including
the affirmation of Hitler’s assassination, flows from this participation in one
Christ reality.³⁰
Placing Bonhoeffer within the greater tradition, however, also requires
attention to his own particular German and Lutheran cultural context. Bon-
hoeffer, for all his ecumenical spirit, was formed as a twentieth-century
Protestant theologian, wrestling with uniquely modern theological problems.
Specifically, he offers profound theological critiques, aided by Dilthey’s
emphasis on historicity and Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, of
idealist philosophy (including the Cartesian dualism that fuels rationalist
conceptions of reality) and its remnants in Barth’s theology. What has been
particularly neglected in Bonhoeffer scholarship until now is how Bonhoeffer
creatively recovers patristic themes with the help of modern thought, that is,
his innovative appropriation of participatory ontology in hermeneutic terms.
Because God has entered time and history, fusing the transcendent and the
immanent, the material world mediates all human knowledge about God.
Bonhoeffer held that human knowledge thus follows the pattern of the
incarnation in the material, historical, and linguistic mediation of transcend-
ent truths. In recognizing the epistemological import of the incarnation, he
advances a fundamentally hermeneutic theology that takes account of both
human finitude in knowing, and revelation’s intrinsically interpretive quality.
In delineating the hitherto neglected hermeneutical structure of Bonhoeffer’s
theology, our analysis of his Christian humanism further demonstrates the
contemporary relevance of his thought.
We conclude with a few words on the comprehensive nature of this
book. The best Bonhoeffer interpreters have insisted that “conducting an
adequate interpretation of Bonhoeffer’s theology is possible only within the
framework of interpreting his work as a whole.”³¹ This book follows this
admonition by keeping the entire corpus of Bonhoeffer’s work in view.
Bonhoeffer scholars have tried to capture the overall thrust of his theology
³⁰ Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance, 124–6.

³¹ Rainer Mayer, Christuswirklichkeit. Grundlagen, Entwicklung Und Konsequenzen Der
Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers. Arbeiten Zur Theologie, Reihe 2. (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1969), 16.
Preface xvii
by calling it a “theology of sociality,”³² “a theology of reality,”³³ and “a theology
of life.”³⁴ While these labels do capture key aspects of Bonhoeffer’s theology,
the underlying assumption of this book is that Christian humanism more fully
captures the overall quality and impetus of Bonhoeffer’s achievement.
Without wanting to mount an argument for the unity of Bonhoeffer’s
writings, a unifying, retrospective interpretive lens turns out to be one signifi-
cant byproduct of describing his theology as humanism. Reading Bonhoeffer’s
theology as a Christian humanism, unified by an incarnational focus, allows us
to read backwards from his more mature theology in Ethics to his theological
beginnings. Basic Bonhoefferian categories, such as vicarious representation,
sociality, realistic responsibility, and Christianity as participation in Christ’s
new humanity are established early on and continue throughout his work,
from his first dissertation to his prison letters. When read holistically as
incarnational humanism, his major writings seem to order themselves into
four phases. In the first phase, Bonhoeffer’s dissertation, habilitation, and
his inaugural lecture on the human question³⁵ form a natural unity in
which theological anthropology, over against philosophical idealism, con-
stitutes a dominating interest. Following the personalist tendencies of his
day—represented by thinkers such as Martin Buber, Søren Kierkegaard,
Friedrich Gogarten, and others—Bonhoeffer articulates a concretely historical,
ethical, responsible Christian self, whose equiprimordial individuality and
sociality persist into Ethics and the prison theology. Authentic selfhood and
self-knowledge become possible only within the church whose nature is
“Christ existing as community,” an incarnational conception of the sanctorum
communio that continues to remain essential for all of Bonhoeffer’s theology.
Bonhoeffer’s winter term 1932/33 course (eventually published as Creation
and Fall) and the subsequent Christology lectures in the summer term 1933
mark a distinct shift in his outlook. Bonhoeffer himself cites a personal turn
“from the phraseological to the real,” indicating a move from a theoretical
mode of theologizing to one of existential seriousness. Eberhard Bethge
interprets this time of Bonhoeffer’s life as “the turn from theologian to the
Christian,” a slightly misleading way of putting the same idea.³⁶ Bonhoeffer
did not, of course, forgo theology, nor did the theological conceptions he
developed disappear from his writings. He did, however, become both more
³² Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999).
³³ Heinrich Ott, Reality and Faith: The Theological Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 1st
American ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).
³⁴ Ralf K. Wüstenberg, A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998).
³⁵ DBWE 10:389.
³⁶ Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, trans. Eric Mosbacher (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2004), 202 ff.
xviii Preface
ecclesial and serious in the practice of Christianity: he adopted a meditative
reading of the scriptures, talked about the existential reality of confession,
and leaned towards pacifism. Undoubtedly, Bonhoeffer’s sojourn at Union
Theological Seminary and his contact with African-American spirituality
contributed significantly to this change.³⁷ In the early 1930s, Christ and
Christianity became a deeply existential reality for Bonhoeffer, as indicated
by his own confession that around this time “I came for the first time to the
Bible. . . . I had already often preached, I had seen much of the church, talked
and written about it—and I had not yet become a Christian.”³⁸
Bonhoeffer’s theology during these years displays a new intensity and
rhetorical quality that defies easy characterization. Even in his earlier academic
pieces, Bonhoeffer adopts an assertive voice that does not hide behind aca-
demic references to other thinkers. Yet at this time, Bonhoeffer’s tone becomes
more declaratory, as if indeed each of his new works from this point onward
attempts to answer the question that determines Bonhoeffer’s entire theology,
namely “who is Christ for us today?” The self-reflexive, confessional style of
his lectures on Genesis indicates this new urgency, demonstrating his passion
for the church and for the human need to be addressed by God in Christ.
This ecclesial, existential Christian theologizing conditions the remainder of
Bonhoeffer’s theology.
The third phase occurs following Discipleship. His Ethics continues to
outline obedient living in Christ as part of Christ’s body, or as “Christ existing
in community.” Here his theology enters an even more self-reflective and
hermeneutical mode. The influence of Catholic theology and the anticipation
of articulating Christianity for a post-war era give Ethics a different outlook
from Discipleship, even while addressing the same question, “who is Christ for
us today?” Bonhoeffer’s unique attempt in Ethics to recover for Protestantism
a sense of the “natural” confirms his growing sense that God’s presence is also
experienced within creation, providing natural human rights, and a natural
platform for public ethical reasoning.
Finally, the prison theology, with the provocative ideas of religionless
Christianity, non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts, and uncon-
scious Christianity explores further the implications of the incarnation for a
world becoming disenchanted with its particular Western Christian inherit-
ance. In this fourth phase, the question becomes how God is Lord over, and at
the same time present in, this “mature” world, and how Christians participate
in Christ’s reconciliation of it to God. Disenchanted with the Lutheran church
and its failure to resist the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer envisions a disestablished
³⁷ See Reggie Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of
Resistance (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2014).
³⁸ Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologe-Christ-Zeitgenosse. Eine Biographie. Rev.
ed. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2004), 249.
Preface xix
church that has to earn its credibility by prayer and righteous living. Yet, as in
all the other phases of his theological development, Bonhoeffer contemplates
with these developments the implications of following a God who became
human in vicarious representative action.
In sum, from beginning to end, albeit in ever more nuanced and fuller dim-
ensions, Bonhoeffer’s theology represents a Christian (christological) humanism.
That, at least, is the argument advanced in this book, backed up by readings of
Bonhoeffer’s texts, sermons, and letters from his early academic works to his last
letters from prison. What then does one gain from reading Bonhoeffer as a
Christian humanist? For one, the reader will gain a comprehensive sense of what
Bonhoeffer’s theology is about (becoming truly human through participation in
Christ). Moreover, reading Bonhoeffer as Christian humanist allows us to view
Bonhoeffer’s whole theology in light of the greater Christian tradition, from the
church fathers onwards, thus throwing into relief the catholic, ecumenical appeal
of his theology. I am certain from many conversations with Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic friends that this reading of Bonhoeffer’s anthropology and
participatory ontology will resonate with their traditions. Finally, reading Bon-
hoeffer as Christian humanist may also provide yet another aid for overcoming
residual dualistic misrepresentations of God’s relation to the world. Bonhoeffer’s
humanist interpretation of the gospel as God’s philanthropy recalls the early
church’s social engagement and concern for human flourishing based on God’s
becoming human. This recovery, in turn, is important for our assessment of
Christianity’s role within modern, pluralistic societies.
Chapter Outline
The chapters in this book are dedicated to showing various aspects of

Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism that flow from his conviction that God
became human to establish our true humanity in conformity to Christ
who is the true image of God. Chapter 1 clears the ground by explaining
Bonhoeffer’s own use of the term humanism (and Christian humanism), and
by considering how his criticism of liberal Protestant theology prevents him
from articulating his own theology rhetorically as a Christian humanism, even
though thematically he reflects many of the humanistic themes present in the
greater tradition. There is, after all, good reason why not only other Bonhoef-
fer scholars but also theologians contemporary with him, such as Helmut
Gollwitzer or Bonhoeffer’s friend Franz Hildebrandt labelled Bonhoeffer a
Christian humanist.
The next three chapters provide an in-depth portrayal of Bonhoeffer’s
theological anthropology. Chapter 2 and 3 serve as an overview to establish
that Bonhoeffer’s Christology and attendant anthropology closely resemble
patristic teaching, even while retaining certain Lutheran differences. Our com-
parison of Bonhoeffer and patristic theology on the logos doctrine, on the imago
dei, and especially on the similarities between Irenaeus’s doctrine of recapitula-
tion and Bonhoeffer’s central notion of Stellvertretung (problematically trans-
lated as “vicarious representative action”) will reveal striking parallels between
Bonhoeffer’s theology and the church fathers’ humanistic interpretation of the
gospel. Chapter 4 is dedicated to Bonhoeffer’s mature anthropology, focusing in
particular on the Christian self. Participating in the new humanity established
by Christ restores the self from its fallen, self-enclosed—and therefore, ironic-
ally, deeply fragmented—sicut deus nature to its proper imago dei character.
Chapter 5 introduces the hermeneutic quality of Bonhoeffer’s theology as
a further important feature of his Christian humanism. In contrast to secular
and religious fundamentalisms, Bonhoeffer offers a hermeneutic under-
standing of truth as participation in the Christ event that makes interpretation
central to human knowing. His acquaintance with Husserl’s phenomenology
and its deepening by Heideggerian philosophy explain Bonhoeffer’s resolute
rejection of Cartesian dualism, and his emphasis on human formation
through language, history, and cultural traditions. Commentators have not
sufficently noted how strongly these elements feature in his early works and
how hermeneutic structures also deeply shape his later theology. Bonhoeffer
also contributes to the hermeneutic tradition his christologically-founded
personalist (and thus fundamentally ethical) view of reality, the christological
xxii Chapter Outline

grounding of which alleviates certain problems in other contemporary
humanisms, such as Levinas’s humanism of the other. In showcasing the
hermeneutic character of Bonhoeffer’s theology, this chapter, therefore, re-
dresses this particular gap in current Bonhoeffer scholarship.
Having established in Chapter 5 the hermeneutical structure of his theology,
and his personalist configuration of reality, Chapter 6 outlines Bonhoeffer’s
ethics as “Christformation.” The Christian life, Bonhoeffer tells us, is partici-
pation in God’s reconciliation of the world to himself in Christ. The goal of
Christianity is becoming human through participation in the incarnate, cru-
cified, and resurrected Christ. Ethics, the discerning and doing of God’s will, is
not, in Bonhoeffer’s view, a matter of constant border line ethical decisions,
but rather a life lived freely before God, a life unified in its various responsi-
bilities internally by union with Christ through justification and externally by
the preservation mandates (church, marriage, work, culture, and government)
ordained by God for the flourishing of humanity.
Building on the hermeneutic theology and participatory ethics of the
previous chapters, Chapter 7 then shows how a major part of Bonhoeffer’s
life and theology, namely his dedication to the Bible as God’s word, is also
consistent with his Christian humanism. This chapter unfolds Bonhoeffer’s
sacramental biblical hermeneutic. He follows Barth in adopting an incarna-
tional model for reading the scriptures, and in recovering theological inter-
pretation in the service of Christformation. We will pay special attention to
Bonhoeffer’s critique of historical criticism; to his Christ-centered, spiritual, or
pneumatic, and later theological, interpretation; to his christological reading of
the Psalms; to his conscious self-positioning between the approaches of Karl
Barth and Rudolf Bultmann; and to his increasing love for the Old Testament
as providing the basis for a this-worldly Christianity.
Chapter 8 delineates Bonhoeffer’s political theology in light of his recovery
of natural life and human rights, which constitutes his most original contri-
bution to political thought. We try to show that Bonhoeffer’s views of the
church-state relation and of Christian civic responsibility make most sense
within his understanding of the natural. Indeed, the concept of “realistic
responsibility” he develops in his Ethics will provide the framework, together
with the so-called mandates, for a holistic political life dedicated to human
flourishing.
For Bonhoeffer, as for Luther, political life serves our education into true
humanity, but no one social, civic, or ecclesial structure may ever claim fully to
realize God’s kingdom on earth. We will also discuss briefly how this humility,
together with the recognition of the natural as shared platform for public ethical
reasoning, constitutes an important contribution of Bonhoeffer’s theology to
contemporary debates about religion, pluralism, and secular democracies.
The correlation of nature and grace that underlies Bonhoeffer’s recovery of
Chapter Outline xxiii

the natural invites our concluding comparison of Bonhoeffer’s thought with
Catholic natural law traditions and the integral humanism of Jacques Maritain.
Chapter 9, the conclusion, briefly summarizes the findings of the previous
chapters to reiterate the continuing relevance of Bonhoeffer’s Christian
humanism for current discussions about religion and culture. The purpose
of this last chapter is to convince the reader that Bonhoeffer’s Christian
humanism, with its Christ-centered anthropology, ecclesiology, and her-
meneutic theology, offers an important, orthodox Christian framework for
discussing contemporary social issues.
Acknowledgments
Completing a book incurs many debts of various kinds. Through my final year
in the research chair for Interpretation, Religion, and Culture, the Canada
Research Council provided teaching release and travel funding necessary for
prolonged research stints at Cambridge. Cambridge became an academic
home for one year through a visiting fellowship at Trinity Hall. Many thanks
to the master, Rev. Dr. Jeremy Morris, to my academic colleagues for stimu-
lating conversations over lunch, in the common room, and memorable
dinners, and most of all to Dr. Stephen Plant for his friendship and fruitful
discussions about Bonhoeffer. I am also indebted to the staff at Wesley House
for providing a home away from home and a wonderful workspace in their
library, where much of this book was written. Thanks to the principal Rev. Dr.
Jane Leach, the director of studies, Rev. Carole Irwin (especially for facilitating
a federation library card and long conversations over Scotch), and particularly
to business director Alastair Oatey and Wesley House support staff. Thanks
also to Westcott House Library for greatly facilitating my research mainly
through Tracey Walton, who unbureaucratically granted me the privilege of
unlimited library access. Besides Cambridge, the theological faculty at Berlin,
facilitated by the generous hospitality and collegial support of Prof. Notger
Slenczka, and access to the Bonhoeffer archives in the Staatsbibliothek pre-
sided over by Dr. Jutta Weber, were also instrumental in writing this book.
I also gratefully acknowledge those whose critical and encouraging comments
on my work, either through discussion or reading of the manuscript, have
made this a better book: Victoria Barnett, John Behr, Hans Boersma, Brian
Gregor, John de Gruchy, Carol Harrison, Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Mawson,
Jennifer Moberly, Andreas Pangritz, Matthew Puffer, Alex Trew, Graham
Ward, and Rowan Williams. A special thanks in this regard to David Robinson
at Regent College, a fellow Bonhoeffer aficionado, who read several iterations
of the manuscript and gave judicious advice for improvement, and also to
Stephen Dunning, for his careful editorial work. I return thanks also to the
students in my Bonhoeffer seminar at Regent College, who patiently endured
long lectures on this material. Thanks also to publishers for permission to use
previously printed material. Parts of Chapter 7 appeared in the essay collection
Theology, Scripture, and Culture: Acts of Interpretation (Eerdmans, 2018), and
Chapter 8 is a extensively revised version of “Bonhoeffer’s Realistic Responsi-
bility,” in Dem Rad in die Speichen Fallen. A Spoke in the Wheel (Gütersoh,
2014, 395–415). Finally, I am grateful to Tom Perridge and Karen Raith at
Oxford University Press for continuing to publish my research.
Contents
1. Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 1

Introduction 1
Bonhoeffer against Humanism: Barcelona and Berlin 1928–31 4
After Barcelona: American Christian Humanism at Union Seminary 9
Christian Humanism at the University of Berlin 11
Reversing Course: Bonhoeffer a Christian Humanist? 13
Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism in Cultural Context 21
Bonhoeffer in Relation to Other Christian Humanisms 24
Conclusion 35
2. Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology and the Greater
Tradition, Part I: Christology and Recapitulation 37
Introduction: Bonhoeffer’s Anthropology—A Reversal of
Patristic Thought? 37
Patristic Imago Dei Christology: Theology as Anthropology 44
Bonhoeffer, Theologian of the Incarnation 47
Bonhoeffer and Patristic Logos Christology 50
Recapitulation and New Humanity in Irenaeus and the Fathers 61
The Body of Christ or Eucharistic Humanism 64
Stellvertretung: Recapitulation in Bonhoeffer’s Theology 71
Conclusion 77
3. Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology and the Greater Tradition,
Part II: Christ’s Body, Eucharistic Humanism, and Deification 79
Christ’s Body: The Church as the New Humanity 79
Bonhoeffer’s Eucharistic Humanism: “Christ Existing as Community” 82
The Biblical Roots of Bonhoeffer’s Participatory Ontology 88
Christian Humanism for the Sake of the World 91
Deification as Christformation: Reversal or Congruence? 97
Deification of the Human Body in Christ 101
Deification as Ethical Formation 104
Conclusion 110
4. In God’s Image: From Sicut Deus to Imago Dei 113
Introduction 113
Theological Roots of Bonhoeffer’s Imago Dei 115
Freedom as Relation 117
The Other as Limit 119
“Subduing the Earth”: Dominion as Responsibility 122
Dominion Gone Wrong: The Imago Dei and Disordered Desire 128
The Truly Human Self: From the Divided Sicut Deus to Unified
Imago Dei 129
xxviii Contents
Sicut Deus: The Divided Self and the Rise of Conscience 131
The Image Restored: The Unified Self or “Being-in-Christ” 134
The Christological Structure of the Self: Incarnation, Cross,
and Resurrection 139
The Relevance of Bonhoeffer’s Unified Self for Other Humanisms 142
Conclusion 146
5. Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutic Theology 148
Introduction: Bonhoeffer’s Christological Hermeneutics 148
Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutic Consciousness 151
Basic Contours of Hermeneutic Philosophy 153
Hermeneutic Elements in Bonhoeffer’s Early Works 155
Bonhoeffer and the Hermeneutical Circle 159
Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutical Circle: One Christ Reality 162
Participatory Knowledge: The “Evangelical” Hermeneutics
of Discipleship 166
Following Jesus: Engaged Knowing 171
The Hermeneutic Importance of the Threefold Christ Event 175
The Interpretive Function of the Ultimate-Penultimate Relation 177
Conclusion: Realistic Responsibility 181
6. Living Freely before God: Christian Humanist Ethics
or “Realistic Responsible Action” 183
Introduction 183
Participatory Ontology: Bonhoeffer’s Ethical Realism 186
One Christ-Reality 188
The “Real One”: Relational Ontology versus Christomonism 190
Ultimate-Penultimate: The Eschatological Dimension
of Christformation 193
Renewing the Image: Ethics as Christformation 196
The Social Aspects of Christformation 204
Christformation in Western Culture 207
Discerning God’s Will: Ethics as “Realistic Responsible Action” 211
Responsibility and the Assumption of “Guilt” 219
Living Freely before God 224
Conclusion 234
7. The Vulnerability of the Word: Bonhoeffer’s Biblical
Hermeneutics 236
Introduction 236
Letting the Bible Speak: Barth’s Critique of Historical Criticism 238
God Speaks to Us: Bonhoeffer’s “Discovery” of the Bible 241
The Divine-Human Word: Bonhoeffer’s Incarnational View of
the Bible 244
Reading the Book of the Church: Bonhoeffer on
Theological Interpretation 248
Reading the Bible “from Christ toward Christ” 252
Contents xxix
Reading the Old Testament with Bonhoeffer 255
Theological Interpretation of Genesis 256
Sermons and Meditations 258
Christ in the Psalms 259
The Sacrament of the Word: Exegesis in the Service of Christformation 264
Non-Religious Interpretation of Biblical Concepts 267
Non-Religious Interpretation: Christian Humanist Implications 273
Humanism as the Polyphony of Life: Re-Discovering the Old Testament 278
Bonhoeffer’s “Creation Faith”: Toward an Integral Christian Humanism 281
Conclusion 288
8. Recovering the Natural: Humanizing Politics 291
Introduction 291
Recovering the Natural 293
Natural Life and Natural Rights 298
Recovering Natural “Law” 305
Bonhoeffer’s View of Church-State Relations 311
Bonhoeffer’s Political Thought within the Broader
Christian Tradition 315
Politics after Christendom 320
Christ, Pluralism, and Secular Democracies 323
Conclusion 329
9. Conclusion: The Continuing Relevance of Bonhoeffer’s
Christian Humanism 331
Bibliography 339
Name Index 357
Subject Index 359
Bonhoeffer and the Idea

of Christian Humanism
What does the cross have to say to us today? Is it able to replace the ideals
of humanism?¹
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
My theology is beginning to become more humanistic; what does this
mean? I wonder whether [Karl] Barth ever lived abroad?²
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
I N T R O D U C TI O N
Associating Bonhoeffer with Christian humanism is problematic for a number

of reasons. First, the term “Christian Humanism” remains controversial
among Protestants, agnostics, and atheists. Based on a long history we cannot
possibly rehearse here, the term humanism has become equated with atheism
and secularism.³ For many people, especially in the English-speaking world,
humanism is synonymous with secular humanism, i.e., with the dogmatic
philosophical belief that humanity lives in a universe without transcendent
realities. Secular humanism signifies “an alternative to religion” and stands for
¹ DBW 10:321 (Bonhoeffer’s emphasis).

² DBWE 10:64. The German Bonhoeffer edition is the main source of reference in this book
and all translations are my own. The English edition is referenced only when I have used its
translation or compare renderings. The reader working with the critical English edition will find
all German page numbers in the margins of each volume.
³ See the following for historical treatments of humanism: Florian Baab, Was ist Humanismus?
(Regensburg: Pustet, 2013); August Buck, Humanismus: Seine europäische Entwicklung in
Dokumenten und Darstellungen, Orbis Academicus (Freiburg: K. Alber, 1987); Charles Garfield
Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); Nicolas Walter, Humanism: Finding Meaning in the Word (Amherst, NY: Prome-
theus Books, 1998).
2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

“the attempt to think how we should live without religion.”⁴ Even though
there have been some scholarly efforts to recover the original Christian
character of humanism,⁵ the term Christian humanism remains controversial
except within the Anglican and Catholic traditions and (to a lesser extent)
within Orthodoxy.
The second hurdle for associating Bonhoeffer with Christian humanism is
his own understanding of this term. On the one hand, Bonhoeffer did not
simply equate humanism with atheism, but rather with the educational ethos
of the liberal arts common to the European bourgeois elite. He was quite
conscious and appreciative of having received this humanistic education. In a
letter written to his parents from Barcelona, he notes the absence of classical
antiquity from Spanish culture, which makes this country appear “strange” to
one who like him “has grown up within a humanistic education.”⁶ This
humanistic educational ethos was not hostile to religion, appreciating its
important cultural benefits.
On the other hand, while giving humanism a slightly broader meaning that
included a religious dimension, Bonhoeffer also regarded the label “human-
ism” as incompatible with the Christian faith, and therefore almost never used
it for his own theology. He did so only once, when he wondered, in a personal
diary entry from 1928, whether his own theology was becoming “more hu-
manistic.” Given the question immediately following concerning Barth’s limit-
ed exposure to other cultures, this remark likely referred to his increasing
realization, acquired through his travels, that theology cannot abstract itself
from culture. Bonhoeffer never travelled simply as a tourist but as a highly
observant theologian eager to learn from other religious cultures and tradi-
tions. Bonhoeffer’s question, “whether Barth had ever lived abroad,” points us
to a distinct theological difference between these two theologians.⁷ To be sure,
Bonhoeffer had been deeply inspired by Barth’s view of God’s revelation as
descending from above, determining and reshaping our existing conceptual
categories. Indeed, the strong Christocentrism of Bonhoeffer’s theology, which
he likely imbibed with Luther, was certainly confirmed and further enflamed
by Barth. At the same time, however, Bonhoeffer was more inclined than
Barth to recognize Christian virtues even in non-Christian cultures, and was
⁴ Richard Norman, On Humanism (London: Routledge, 2004), 14–15.

⁵ Theo Hobson, God Created Humanism: The Christian Basis of Secular Values (London:
SPCK Publishing, 2017); J. I. Packer and Thomas Howard, Christianity: The True Humanism
(Waco, TX.: Word Books, 1985); R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of
Europe. 2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Giuseppe Toffanin, History of Humanism, trans. Elio
Gianturco (New York: Las Americas Pub. Co., 1954); Charles Edward Trinkaus, In Our Image
and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought. 2 vols. (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Jens Zimmermann, ed. Re-envisioning Christian
Humanism: Education and the Redemption of Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2016).
⁶ DBW 10:57. ⁷ DBWE 10:64.
Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 3

prepared to learn from them. For example, he was impressed by Gandhi’s
resolute pacifism, and had received an invitation to visit the mahatma to
examine his practice first hand.⁸ This early desire to find Christian truth in
other cultures testifies to “a humanistic theology focused on the whole world
in its history.”⁹
Travel may well help explain a difference between Bonhoeffer and Barth’s
theology, but if so, then only because Bonhoeffer’s own formation allowed
his theology to be shaped by new experiences. His Lutheran sacramental
sensibility, combined with his research into both patristic and Catholic the-
ology while preparing for his Christology lectures, resulted in a more radical
understanding of the incarnation than Barth initially possessed.¹⁰ In Barth, the
centrality of Christ tends to occlude other “theological and non-theological
themes,” while for Bonhoeffer, “the centrality of Christ serves as the decisive
motive for opening the horizons of the church towards the world in its
concrete reality.”¹¹ Bonhoeffer’s travels, as unique in their extent as they
were for a German theologian of his day, only increased the emerging
humanism already latent in his thought. His theology as a whole, from
his early dissertation on the church to Ethics and the prison theology, is a
continual working out of the incarnation’s ramifications. As we shall see in
later chapters, Bonhoeffer’s rediscovery of natural theology for Protestant
thought, alongside the famous prison theology, follows from an ever-
deepening understanding of God “having become human.”
Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the perfect construction, der menschgewordene
Gott, helps us see that the increasingly humanistic bent of his theology derives
from his essential christological conviction that our interpretation of the
Bible, Christianity, and the world must be guided by the implications of
the unique event in which God took on flesh.¹² Instead of the term incarna-
tion, Bonhoeffer prefers “the-having-become-human God” to preserve the
⁸ Note, however, Reinhart Staats’ remark that Bonhoeffer’s desire to see Gandhi must also be
seen in the context of a general “yearning for India” in evangelical and ecumenical circles, and
thus cannot be entirely reduced to Bonhoeffer’s interest in Gandhi’s pacifism and non-violent
resistance. See “Afterword,” DBWE 10: 620.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ It is well known that Barth in his later writings emphasized the humanity of God as
revealed in the incarnation, for “it is precisely God’s deity which, rightly understood, includes
his humanity,” The Humanity of God (Louisville, KY.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 44.
For an analysis of this change in Barth and its congruence with his doctrine of election see John
Thompson, Christ in Perspective in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew
Press, 1978), 98–109.
¹¹ Andreas Pangritz, “Who is Jesus Christ for us, today?” in The Cambridge Companion to
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. John De Gruchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999,
134–53), 134–5.
¹² Bonhoeffer’s later reflections on religionless Christianity, a world come of age, and non-
religious interpretation of religious concepts must therefore be regarded as extension rather than
inversion of his earlier theology.

three aspects of the incarnation of importance to him: its status as a unique
historical event that cannot be turned into a principle or idea, its reference to
the union of the divine and human in the concrete person of Jesus, and
therefore its connotation of the renewing recapitulation of humanity in Christ.
In this chapter, we meet head-on the challenge posed by his writings to
calling Bonhoeffer a Christian humanist. Interpreting his theology as Chris-
tian Humanism confronts us with a dilemma. We want to argue for the
humanism of Bonhoeffer’s theology insofar as he defines a) the gospel as
God’s promise of a new humanity and b) Christianity as the transformative
experience of becoming truly human by participating in the incarnated,
crucified, and resurrected Christ. Bonhoeffer shares these features with patris-
tic theology, and with modern thinkers who retrieve patristic Christology for a
humanist interpretation of the Christian faith. Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of
Chalcedonian Christology,¹³ shows his theological proximity to thinkers like
Emil Brunner, Henri de Lubac, and Jacques Maritain who also articulated
Christianity as a Christian humanism.
Yet Bonhoeffer himself neither identifies with, nor even overtly supports,
the Christian humanism still alive in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
Even though he sustains an interest in Catholic ethics, he nowhere displays
sustained interest in Catholic humanism.¹⁴ In this chapter, we will trace
Bonhoeffer’s changing attitudes toward humanism, and also place his own
theology within the wider spectrum of philosophical and theological human-
isms of his era. Understanding Bonhoeffer’s own ambivalence about the terms
humanism and Christian humanism will clear the path for introducing his
own theology as a christological humanism in the subsequent chapters of
this book.
BONHOEFFER AGAINST HUMAN ISM:

BARCELONA AND BERLIN 1928– 3 1
When Bonhoeffer does engage the term “Christian humanism,” he associates

it with a problematic Hellenization of Christianity, culminating in either
mysticism or Protestant liberal theology.¹⁵ In one of the educational talks
he gave during his vicariate in Barcelona, “Jesus Christ and the Essence of
¹³ Ernst Feil, Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers: Hermeneutik, Christologie, Weltverständnis,

5. (Aufl. ed. Berlin: LIT Verlag Berlin, 2005), 220; Andreas Pangritz, “Who is Jesus Christ for us,
today,” in De Gruchy, The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 140–1.
¹⁴ Bonhoeffer did read “Zukunft der Christenheit” (see DBW 6:134), but does not engage
Maritain’s integral humanism in any detail.
¹⁵ DBW 11:204.

Christianity,” Bonhoeffer contrasts the Christian understanding of revelation
and salvation with the Greek emphasis on the immortal soul and consequent
ability to reason one’s way toward God. Unsurprisingly, given his Barthian
emphases on divine revelation and God’s otherness, Bonhoeffer considers
these two attitudes incompatible. “Where the Greek spirit dominates,” con-
cludes Bonhoeffer, “the Christian notion of God is not understood.”¹⁶
He believes that fundamentally different anthropologies account for this
incompatibility between Christianity and Greek humanism. Classic Greek
anthropology posits an immortal soul as a divine spark imprisoned within
and enslaved by a body, whose weaknesses and affections account for evil in
the world. Christian anthropology, by contrast, follows Judaism’s insistence on
a psycho-somatic unity: soul and body created by God but now fallen from
their original union with him.¹⁷ According to Bonhoeffer, there is “nothing in
human beings that make them god-like.”¹⁸ A divine spark or eternal, immortal
soul does not exist for Christians who believe instead in the bodily resurrection
from the dead. Furthermore, and again in contrast to Greek philosophy,
Christians uphold the body along with the material world as God’s good
creation. “Body and spirit” were consigned to death as a result of the Fall,
but are called back to life, to “truly new, truly pure, holy life.”¹⁹ Moreover,
unlike ancient Greek philosophers, Christians consider the will and reason
corrupted in primal rebellion against God. Indeed, Bonhoeffer asserts that
Christianity’s concept of sin-as-separation from God produces such profound
human guilt and spiritual death that humankind cannot ascend to God
through morality, religion, or intellect. Rather God, in infinite love, stoops
toward humanity in an incomprehensible act of solidarity with what has
become sinfull and powerless by becoming human and dying on the cross.²⁰
Essentially, the Christian idea of sin posits a deep rift between God and
humanity that not even the noblest moral, religious, or intellectual efforts
can bridge.
Without engaging any particular representative thinkers, Bonhoeffer
adopts Karl Barth’s verdict that Christian anthropology rules out (Greek)
humanism and religious mysticism, both of which echo the Greek spirit,
because both ignore the unbridgeable distance between God-as-creator and
man as creature. This ontological difference remains, Bonhoeffer insists,
even when God graciously condescends to make his dwelling among us.
¹⁶ DBW 10:318. ¹⁷ DBW 10:317.

¹⁸ DBW 10:317: “Es gibt im Menschen nichts, was ihn gottähnlich macht.”
¹⁹ DBW 10:318.
²⁰ DBW 10:319. Bonhoeffer rejects the notion, advanced by historical criticism in his day, that
the centrality of the cross is a Pauline emphasis not found in Jesus himself. According to
Bonhoeffer, the proper interpretation of the cross of Christ is nothing but “sharpening to the
extreme Jesus’ own concept of God (Gottesgedanken); it is quasi the historically visible mani-
festation of this concept of God” (ibid.).

Mysticism, for Bonhoeffer, is the “religious undertaking” in which human
beings seek on their own terms spiritual union with God.²¹ Similarly,
Bonhoeffer identifies humanism, along with ethics and religion, as possible
forms of human idolatry by which we mold God according to our own
image.²² At this point, Bonhoeffer clearly associates humanism with a form
of Greco-Roman paganism lacking a Christian understanding of human
corruption. He does not denigrate the cultural achievements of this humanist
spirit, but rather appreciates its intellectual honesty and rejection of religious
determinism in asserting human freedom. However, at this stage of his
thinking, Bonhoeffer believes that humanists remain too optimistic about
our innate desire to seek the divine and thus “compromise” human depend-
ency on God’s grace. He repeats the standard Reformational critique
that “Pelagius, the later Scotists, and Erasmus” embodied this spirit of
compromise.²³
Moreover, without clear demarcation between creature and creator,
humanists invest history and culture with a teleological impulse toward
God. According to Bonhoeffer, this confidence in human nature as oriented
toward the divine explains humanist interest in culture. Humanists are
“culture-happy” (kulturselig), because their belief in the divine spark within
us sustains their trust in our unlimited capability for moral and spiritual
self-improvement. The highest cultural achievements, such as art, religion,
and morality, now become reflections of our supposed god-likeness: “the
ethical-religious person is god-like (gottähnlich).”²⁴ Humanism thus falsely
equates religion with ethics, and becomes another form of the religiosity both
Bonhoeffer and Barth denounce as counterfeit to genuine faith. The religious
person lives by ethical principles and cultivates an elevated, moral inner
disposition. However, Bonhoeffer has learnt from Barth that religion as a
human construct pursues “an idol of human desires,” rather than a confron-
tation with the true reality of God.²⁵ Christianity as religion remains entirely
human—just another human attempt of reaching for God and thus, for all its
uniqueness, merely a single human religion among many.²⁶ Clearly, given his
criticism of religion, at this stage Bonhoeffer understands humanism as simply
²¹ It is not clear how deeply Bonhoeffer has thought about Christian mysticism at this point.
However, he clearly distrusts any mysticism, including Christian versions, which deny the
“insurmountable distance” between God and human beings which “continues to exist even
when God inclines himself (sich neigen) toward us” (DBW 10:318).
²² Bonhoeffer clearly identifies here with Barth’s critique of religion which he also finds in
Luther’s statement that religion too is “a piece of our carnality.” Religious attempts to find God
are idolatry (DBW 10:315).
²³ DBWE 10:441.
²⁴ DBW 10:317. Bonhoeffer will later contrast this false self-arrogated godlikeness (sicut dei)
with the true godlikeness of the imago dei (see Chapter 4).
²⁵ DBW 10:319. ²⁶ DBW 10:320.

another such pseudo “religion.” This idolatrous religious humanism creates
artificial demands, such as ethical rules or certain intellectual dispositions,
which require fulfillment before one comes to God. Biblical Christianity,
for Bonhoeffer, differs radically; neither education nor special dispositions
facilitate salvation. Only utter dependency on God’s grace realizes the full
human vocation.²⁷
According to Bonhoeffer, Liberal Protestantism, as the dominant theological
voice of the German Lutheran church, has become just such a Christian
Humanism. Humanism, or what he has called the Greek spirit, “has always
been the worst enemy of Christianity.” According to Bonhoeffer, this enemy
“is the Spirit which we as children of the 19th and 20th century have imbibed
with our mother’s milk, and which found after [the] Renaissance and
Enlightenment its strongest dissemination in the classical period of German
poetry and philosophy.”²⁸ Bonhoeffer’s phrase “classical period of poetry and
philosophy” refers to the central focus on humaneness (Menschlichkeit) that
characterized Romantic theologians and philosophers (e.g., Schleiermacher,
Hamann, Herder), classic poets (e.g., Goethe and Schiller), and Enlightenment
thinkers (e.g., Lessing). These thinkers shared the conviction that religion
should be principally concerned with fostering true humanity: a human-
ity equated with tolerance. Bonhoeffer shows no awareness of significant
differences between individual figures representative of this period.²⁹ For
Bonhoeffer, liberal Protestant Christianity, for all its positive qualities, has
become merely “religion.” Liberal Protestantism has regressed towards a
humanism equating religion with morality (Sittlichkeit). The only remedy
is to reject “the deity of humanism, of the idea of humanity, and of
mysticism,” as false “divinization of the creature” (Kreaturvergötterung).
Bonhoeffer, however, does not condemn humanism completely, but prom-
ises to accord it, in a second lecture, “a relative, limited right,” based on a
proper view of human sin and divine grace.³⁰
Entitled “Foundational Questions of a Christian Ethic,” this subsequent
lecture evinces a similar ambivalence toward humanism. Humanism does not,
as announced in the previous address, become a major topic in this lecture,
²⁷ DBW 10:322. ²⁸ DBW 10:317.

²⁹ Lessing, for example, argued that divine revelation and Christianity could offer nothing to
mankind that independent reasoning would not also reveal over time. Christianity, God, and
revelation are thus essentially superfluous. Herder, by contrast, also posits hope in human
cultural efforts to educate and morally advance society; yet his theological foundation remains
rooted in the ancient patristic tradition of divine paideia and thus dependent on God’s provi-
dential superintending of human affairs. See Claas Cordemann, Herders Christlicher Monismus:
Eine Studie zur Grundlegung von Johann Gottfried Herders Christologie und Humanitätsideal
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), 2010.
³⁰ DBW 10:319.

but Bonhoeffer’s treatment of ethics as freedom to act in the world takes up
his earlier accusation that the humanism of liberal Protestantism reduces
Christianity to morality. In this second talk, Bonhoeffer voices an idea that
will return in Ethics, albeit within the framework of his later peace ethic,
namely the emphatic denial that Christianity constitutes a universal,
abstract ethics: “There are no ethical principles enabling Christians, as it
were, to make themselves moral.”³¹ Ethics, Bonhoeffer insists, cannot be had
in the “vacuum” of principles abstracted from life, nor do we encounter
good and evil as general ideas (allgemeine Ideen). Instead, Christian ethics
entails following the will of God within the complex dynamics and demands
of concrete historical circumstances. Christian ethics is not adherence to
pre-established moral norms but the free act of the human will in “imme-
diate relationship with God’s will,” a relation to be established anew for each
concrete occasion.³² Already in this lecture, Bonhoeffer stresses the role of
the Holy Spirit, whose guidance is found not in “ideas or principles,” but
only “in the distressful decision of the moment.”³³ Neither traditional
morality nor public opinion provides any guidelines for Christian behavior.
Instead, relying on their freedom in Christ, “Christians create new tables,
new decalogues, as Nietzsche said of the Overman [Übermensch],”³⁴
creatively living out of their relationship with God.³⁵ The hermeneutic
problem of this situational ethics becomes readily apparent. According to
Bonhoeffer, “the ethical can be found only within the bounds of history and
human responsibility,” for “only through the depths of our earth and the
storms of human conscience does an eternal perspective open up to us.”³⁶
Much depends, of course, on the general theological framework within
which the search for God’s will is conducted. Since Bonhoeffer at this
stage in his theological development still thinks within a framework of
firmly established creational orders,³⁷ finding the will of God remains
beholden to nationalistic language and a just war theory Bonhoeffer will
later regret and abjure.³⁸ The more mature Bonhoeffer will retain his
rejection of moralism and abstract ethics unmoored from “the earth, our
mother,”³⁹ but also drop his earlier conception of creational orders to adopt
a more eschatological view of reality.
³¹ DBWE 10:365. ³² DBW 10:330. ³³ DBW 10:338. ³⁴ DBWE 10:366.

³⁵ Ibid. Bonhoeffer knew well, however, that Nietzsche appropriates Luther’s statement from
Freedom of a Christian.
³⁶ DBW 10:344. ³⁷ Ibid.
³⁸ See Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Reinbeck: Rohwolt, 2004), 152–5, and also the
editors’ Nachwort, in DBW 10:415. Bonhoeffer will replace “orders of creation” in Ethics, with his
“orders of preservation” or mandates.
³⁹ DBW 10:345.
AFTER BARCELONA: A MERICAN CHRISTIAN

HUMANISM AT UNION SEMINARY
After his return from his vicariate in Barcelona in 1929, Bonhoeffer once more
references humanism negatively, now as the “all too human spirit of human-
ism,” that deals only in abstractions. Such humanism distorts the genuine
human spirit as found only in concrete, lived reality.⁴⁰ Already here, however,
Bonhoeffer’s incarnational sensibility manifests itself when he adds that
“perhaps today, as never before, spirit should be found precisely in the
‘material’, in the concretely given reality and not, therefore, in the intellectual
sphere.”⁴¹ In taking this view, Bonhoeffer could acknowledge in Barcelona’s
people and culture “something like an unconscious search for truth.”⁴²
During his time as visiting fellow at Union Theological Seminary in
New York, Bonhoeffer continued to associate humanism with liberal Protes-
tantism. However, the uniquely American humanism that pervaded the
seminary possessed a distinctively pragmatic tenor. Bonhoeffer appreciated
Union’s Christian critique of both the reactionary fundamentalism represent-
ed by conservative Reformed theologians like John Gresham Machen of
Princeton on the one hand,⁴³ and the “radical immanent ethical humanism”
or “evolutionary humanism” advanced by Edward Scribner Ames (1870–1958)
of the Chicago Divinity School, on the other.⁴⁴ This shows that the term
humanism for him still connotes humanitarian secularism, if not atheism.
Despite his appreciation for the ethical emphasis of the seminary’s ethos,
Bonhoeffer sensed a lack of orthodox dogma behind Union’s theology, and
recognized a kinship between “liberal and humanist” theological literature
and the seminary’s own style of thought.⁴⁵ In both cases, he detected a
lack of theological depth and a pragmatist occupation with social issues
without wrestling with “the message of the church” to society. The only
person Bonhoeffer acknowledged to confront this question head-on was
the immensely popular preacher Harry E. Fosdick, whose homiletic course
Bonhoeffer took, and whom he judged to express the church’s message “in an
extremely humanistic sense.”⁴⁶ Knowing that theological thinking is always
guided by underlying philosophical views, he began to study prominent
⁴⁰ DBW 10:144. ⁴¹ DBW 10:144: “und gerade nicht in der ‘Geistigkeit,’ ”.

⁴² DBW 10:144.
⁴³ DBWE 10:317. Machen had just founded Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia (1929) to
counter what he perceived as liberal theology in the Presbyterian Church.
⁴⁴ DBWE 10:311. “Evolutionary humanism” is another label Bonhoeffer uses to denote the
naturalistic theism of the Chicago school. See DBWE 12:238.
⁴⁵ DBW 10:268.
⁴⁶ DBW 10:267. In his biography Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) 332, Robert Moats Miller claims that Bonhoeffer
took Fosdick’s course but left no recorded evaluation. Yet he did, and recognized the spirit of
liberal Protestant humanism.

American pragmatists and behaviourists to examine this “alien” form of
Christianity.⁴⁷ Bonhoeffer reported that in these thinkers, “and especially in
William James, I did indeed find the key to the modern theological pattern of
language and thought of the liberal enlightened American.”⁴⁸ Bonhoeffer
professed to have “learned much” from James, whom he regarded as a
counterweight to the idealist’s mistaken attempt to conform reality to ideas
rather than be taught by reality itself.⁴⁹ Yet in the end, he judged that
pragmatism’s reduction of divine reality to ethics or “usefulness” misrepre-
sents the true relation of the human and divine.⁵⁰
Bonhoeffer clearly thought that his American teachers and fellow students
subscribed too readily to pragmatist philosophy’s definition of truth as “what
works, rather than what is valid.”⁵¹ James at least, “still wants to leave room for
the real existence of God outside of the human being.”⁵² Union seminary
theology, even though not secular humanist, nevertheless had little place
for the Reformation’s wholly other God and the human need for justification
by grace. For the young Barth enthusiast Bonhoeffer, American liberal the-
ology shared with its German liberal counterpart too many philosophical
presuppositions inimical to biblical thought. The idea of approaching theology
critically with distinctive theological criteria, rather than with those borrowed
from Enlightenment rationalism, seemed foreign to Union theologians.⁵³
True, such pragmatist theologizing avoids the temptation towards abstraction
so characteristic of German academic theology, but the consequent focus
on social ethics falls into the trap of equating Christianity with “an ethical
and social idealism based on faith in [human] progress, which arrogates to
itself, by who knows what authority, the right to call itself ‘Christian.’”⁵⁴
According to the young Lutheran visiting scholar, the “ethical humanism”⁵⁵
of American liberal Christianity fails to take sin seriously enough; it has no real
use for the cross and the radical need for grace. It replaces the sanctorum
communio (the church-as-body-of-Christ Bonhoeffer extols in his doctoral
dissertation) with “the church as social corporation,” bursting at the seams
with social programs but bereft of solid theology or liturgy. Bonhoeffer hears
the gospel preached only at black churches, where “one can still hear genuinely
Christian talk about sin, grace, love of God, and of eschatological hope.”⁵⁶ In
the end, Bonhoeffer once again applies the label humanism to American
theology in the negative sense already familiar to us. He opposes the ethical
⁴⁷ DBW 10:262. ⁴⁸ DBW 10:269. ⁴⁹ DBW 6:38–9.

⁵⁰ See Martin Rumscheidt, “The Formation of Bonhoeffer’s Theology” in Cambridge
Companion to Bonhoeffer (50–71), 67.
⁵¹ DBW 10:269; “Wahrheit ‘gilt’ nicht sondern ‘works,’ das ist ihr Kriterium”.
⁵² DBW 10:270.
⁵³ DBW 10:266; “Das Faktum einer inner-theologischen Kritik ist völlig unbekannt und un-
verstanden”.
⁵⁴ DBW 10:272. ⁵⁵ DBW 10:270. ⁵⁶ DBW 10:274.

humanism of the seminary’s theology to “Pauline and Lutheran Christianity.”
The modern American, according to Bonhoeffer in a rather sweeping gener-
alization, “is not only the purest Pelagian but also a disciple of Protagoras.”⁵⁷
The implication is clear. Liberal American theology is a humanism in the sense
that not God but man is the ultimate measure of all things.
CHRISTIAN HUMANISM AT THE UNIVERSITY

OF BERLIN
Bonhoeffer maintains this critical evaluation of liberal theology as “human-

ism” after returning from his travels in Barcelona and America to begin
lecturing at the university in Berlin. In his lectures on the history of systematic
theology (WS 1931–2), he criticizes the interpretation of Christianity offered
by his admired teacher, the prominent liberal Protestant church historian
Adolf von Harnack, as conforming too much to contemporary “Christian
Humanism.”⁵⁸ Bonhoeffer shows that Harnack reduces the gospel to timeless
ethical maxims by using his rigorous historical method to free these moral
kernels from the husk of the New Testament’s time-bound expressions.⁵⁹
Consequently, humankind finds its way to God through religion and piety.
For Bonhoeffer, this approach deflects the “radical nature” of Jesus’ gospel for
a holistic life change towards the tamer and more privatized notion of the
soul’s inner union with God.⁶⁰ While Bonhoeffer greatly admired his teacher’s
intellectual honesty, his critique takes aim at Harnack’s famous book on The
Essence of Christianity, and criticizes his teacher’s moralistic view of the faith.
“Harnack,” Bonhoeffer remarks critically, “ends with [an] ethical maxim only;
the radicalism of Jesus’s preaching [is] crimped into the mild idea of the
communion between God and the soul; the nobility of the human soul [arises]
from humility. The definition of the essence [of Christianity] here ends up
actually producing the essence; religion adapts itself too closely to the Chris-
tian humanism of the time.”⁶¹
According to Bonhoeffer, the ideals of ethics, religion, and church that grew
from the humanistic spirit of liberal Protestantism as represented by Harnack
are diametrically opposed to biblical Christianity. For liberal Christianity,
ethics is morality, church is cultural institution, and religion is personal
piety or mystic spirituality, all of which focus on the self rather than on
God. Such a religion lacks any understanding of the deep rift between hu-
manity and God incurred by original sin and therefore acknowledges no need
⁵⁷ DBW 10:270. ⁵⁸ DBW 11:169. ⁵⁹ DBW 11:167. ⁶⁰ DBW 11:169.

⁶¹ DBWE 11:203–4.

of the incarnation and the cross to heal this breach. Indulging in human
projections of God rather than allowing God to shape our human desires,
Liberal Protestantism reveals itself as idolatry: “the deity of humanism, of the
concept of humanity, and of mysticism is the idol of human desires.”⁶²
Bonhoeffer, by contrast, maintains that divine grace and love, manifest in
the cross, reveal the only possible path from human beings to God. Thus, for
him the question becomes, “what does the cross tell us today? Can it replace
the ideals of humanism?”⁶³ Can the cross speak again to a generation thirsting
for something ultimate that transcends the banalities of everyday life? Later in
Discipleship, Bonhoeffer reformulates the question: “what does [Jesus] want
from us today? How does he help us to be faithful Christians today?”⁶⁴ This
question drives Bonhoeffer’s theology to the end, “moving me relentlessly,” as
he put it, in his reflections on a world come of age when he asks again: “Who is
Jesus Christ for us today?”⁶⁵
At least for the early Bonhoeffer, the term Christian Humanism would not
serve to answer this christological question. For, as we have shown, Bonhoef-
fer’s early view of humanism is, on the whole, characterized by a typically
Lutheran opposition between humanism and the cross that likely descends
from Luther’s deep suspicion of Erasmus’ Christian humanism.⁶⁶ Even in
1939, when his theology begins moving toward the integral christological
humanism expressed later in Ethics, Bonhoeffer still expresses reservations
about the term “Christian Humanism” as found in Jacque Maritain’s book
True Humanism. Bonhoeffer alleges that Catholic Christian humanism trusts
too much in human ability, and thus fails to recognize the depth of sin. That,
at least, is the impression gleaned from his remark that American theologians
theologize as if the Reformation with its emphasis on humans’ sinfulness never
happened: “The word of God has never entirely shattered and entirely liber-
ated this people. Therefore, too, the preference for Catholicizing concepts of
humanitarianism (J. Maritain: True Humanism).”⁶⁷
⁶² DBW 10:319. ⁶³ DBW 10:321. ⁶⁴ DBWE 4:37.

⁶⁵ DBWE 8:362. The English translation “gnawing question” does not quite convey the
German “die mich unablässig bewegt,” i.e., that moves his whole being.
⁶⁶ See de Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” in Being Human, Becoming
Human, eds. Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor (Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2010, 3–25), 10.
⁶⁷ DBW 15:234; DBWE 15:232. Bonhoeffer had in his library and seems to have read (Bethge
identified his friend’s sparse pencil markings on some pages) the German translation of
Maritain’s Humanisme intégral (1936) entitled Die Zukunft der Christenheit. Here Maritain
contrasts the Protestant with the Catholic view of original sin. The difference lies in Protestant-
ism’s belief that human beings are essentially corrupt, that every aspect of their nature, including
the freedom of the will, is marred by sin, whereas Catholicism confesses a “wounded nature,” in
which free will is never abrogated. At the same time, however, Maritain’s affirmation of the
secular, and his overall view of a new “integral humanism,” has many affinities particularly with
the later Bonhoeffer.

And yet, even in his early reflections on humanism, when Bonhoeffer
contrasts the cross with secular thought and liberal Protestantism, a certain
ambivalence exists toward the notion of humanism. Even at this early junc-
ture, as we saw, Bonhoeffer already wonders whether the cross can simply
“replace the ideals of humanism.” Bonhoeffer indicates that the cross does not
obviate humanist ideals or morality but relativizes their authority in light of
God’s self-revelation.⁶⁸ Already, Bonhoeffer shows an instinctual reluctance to
jettison humanistic ideals, sensing the need to integrate them into the Chris-
tian faith. As we shall see, the link that will allow for this integration is God as
the giver and sustainer of life, of full humanity. Pointing to this link in his
Barcelona lecture, Bonhoeffer anticipates motifs that recur with greater
christological depth in the prison letters. Christ as “the bringer not of a new
religion but of God,” returns later as “Jesus calls not to a new religion but to
life.”⁶⁹ These persistent motifs highlight both the continuity and discontinuity
of Bonhoeffer’s developing thought. With both expressions, he conveys the
sense that God’s grace does not oppose human freedom and action but
grounds them. Yet while the earlier Bonhoeffer describes this freedom in
terms of agonizing decision making within “a complicated reality,” the later
Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on “life” indicates his appreciation of life’s stable
structures (granted by God’s grace) that allow for an existence free from the
agony of perpetual crossroads.
REVERSING COURSE: BONHOEFFER

A CHRI STI AN H UMANI S T?
John de Gruchy has drawn attention to how Bonhoeffer reverses course in his
later writings. De Gruchy suggests that Bonhoeffer’s close friend Franz Hil-
debrandt may have shaped Bonhoeffer’s more sympathetic views on human-
ism. In contrast to Barth, both shared a view of incarnational revelation,
defined by Luther’s finitum capax infiniti, in which God’s truth is mediated
through material means. Such a sacramental view of reality more readily
acknowledges the enculturation of all human thought, including theology,
than Barth’s original position of the wholly other God. Hildebrandt worked all
his life on the relation of humanism to Reformation theology, possessed greater
familiarity with the work of Jacques Maritain than did Bonhoeffer, and
⁶⁸ Bonhoeffer suggests that whatever morality or humanistic views form part of our historical
heritage, we approve or critique them based on their compatibility with Christianity. It is notable
that, based on this reasoning, Bonhoeffer at this point still rejects pacifism as too simplistic, and
rejects literal readings of the command to love one’s enemy as naïve (DBW 10:338).
⁶⁹ DBWE 8:482; DBW 8:537.

persistently tried to articulate for the Protestant tradition a “true humanism.”⁷⁰
Hildebrandt rejected the facile opposition of Greek to biblical thought the early
Bonhoeffer had absorbed from his Lutheran teachers. He judges Harnack’s
thesis of Christianity’s “acute Hellenization” in patristic thought untenable,
given the intrinsic importance of the Greek language for creedal formulations
and the propaedeutic role of Greek philosophy for theology.⁷¹ As he made clear
in a lecture held at Cambridge in 1938, for Hildebrand the fate of Protestantism
in general and the German church in particular depended on “the question
of a true humanism.”⁷² Such a Christian humanism would overcome the
opposition of reason and revelation, acknowledging reason at least as “the
handmaiden” to revelation and thereby grounding and validating the humanist
values whose collapse under the Nazi’s had been devastating to society.⁷³
For Hildebrandt, the future of Germany depends on harmonizing the Refor-
mational emphasis on God’s revelation with humanism in the way modelled
by the Christian humanist Erasmus, and thus to unite faith with reason in
a way that “not even Karl Barth” would deny.⁷⁴ To precisely what extent
Bonhoeffer’s thinking was shaped by the intense discussions with his friend
during their shared time in London remains a matter of speculation. Clearly,
however, Bonhoeffer cultivates from this time forward a greater appreciation
of both God’s work among non-Christians and the formation of cultural
values that reflect Christian virtues.
In becoming increasingly humanistic in outlook, Bonhoeffer never relin-
quishes the critical distance between God’s humanity in Christ and all cultural
humanistic or even humanitarian efforts. It is equally true, however, that his
disillusionment with Christians who failed to resist the Nazi’s co-opting of the
German Lutheran church, as well as his increasing collaboration with non-
Christians who fought for human dignity and cultural values, led Bonhoeffer
to recognize humane behaviour as a reflection of Christ wherever he found it.
To affirm the gospel was to work for the humanity Christ died for, and this
meant “affirming humanity, expressing solidarity with the victims of injustice,
and affirming the good and great in culture.”⁷⁵ As John de Gruchy points
out, Bonhoeffer’s confession of Christ thus “united him with the few secular
humanists” who stood against the dehumanizing culture of Nazism.⁷⁶
⁷⁰ Franz Hildebrandt, Melanchton: Alien or Ally? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1946), ix. See also De Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” in Being Human,
Becoming Human, 13.
⁷¹ Hildebrandt, Melanchton, 5.
⁷² “The Interpretation of Luther at the Present Time,” in “And Other Pastors of thy Flock:”
A German Tribute to the Bishop of Chichester (Edited by Franz Hildebrandt. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1942), 137.
⁷³ Ibid. ⁷⁴ Ibid.
⁷⁵ De Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” in Being Human, Becoming
Human, 14.
⁷⁶ Ibid., 15.
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Meillä maanviljelijöillä.
Eihän maalima mahissa
Kauan pystyssä pysyisi,
Jos ei maata muokattaisi,
Kynnettäisi, kylvettäisi.
Maasta maalima elääpi,
Maasta makiat saapi,
Hapan kaikki hankitahan
Kansan kaiken tarpeheksi,
Eduksi tämän elämän,
Ravinnoksi ruumihillen.
Teillen vielä virkaveljet,
Sanon muutaman sanasen:
Siis sinä siveä vaari,
Taitava talon isäntä,
Elä suutu säätyhysi,
Elä virkaasi vihastu,
Vaikka vaivalla kovalla
Maasi mahtihin rakennat.
Tässä työssä tarvitahan
Aivan paljon ahkeruutta,
Vielä tarkkuutta tavassa
Kaikin puolin kaivatahan.
Siis on työllen, toimellemme
Aina arvo annettava,
Kun on tuiki tarpeellinen
Virka maata viljelevän.
Siitä voit kerskaten kehaista,
Kuten kerran Suomalainen
Sanoopi sanalla tuolla,
Etten vaihtas virkoani
Miehen kanssa kuuluisamman,
Joll' on kappa kamlotista,
Kallis kauhtana verasta.
Vielä virkan nuoremmille,
Kansallemme kasvavallen —
Kun olen kyllin kehunna
Esi-isäin elinkeinon;
Tään oon kautta kokemuksen
Itsekin opissa ollut,
Nämä läksyt läpikäynyt;
Aina aamusta varahin
Hikipäässä heilununna,
Ahkerana ammatissa,
Töissä toimissa monissa —
Sanan sanon nuoremmille:
Elkää etsikö etempää,
Maitten, merien takoa
Kuuluisia kultamaita;
Onhan viel' omassa maassa
Meillä armas Ameriikka.
Kyll' on täällä kyntämistä,
Kyntämistä, kuokkimista,
Paljon siemenen sijoa,
Ennenkuin on korvet kaikki
Meiltä kaadettu kumohon,
Kannot kaikki väännettynä,
Taiten tehty leipämaiksi;
Vielä niitty viimeiseksi,
Pellon äiti päälliseksi.
Siis on töitä, tehtäviä,
Oman maamme manterella,
Suomi-äidin synnyinmailla.
PELLERVON PÄIVILLÄ HELSINGISSÄ 31 p. tammik. 1900.
On taas ollut oiva juhla

Täällä Helsingin talossa,
Mik' on meitä miellyttännä
Maamme maanviljelijöitä —
Kuin on tänne tullut paljo,
Suuri joukko Suomestamme,
Saapunut satoa kuusi,
Päivillen pojan pätöisen,
Pellervoisen pellon poian.
Hauska olo ollaksemme
Tässä seurassa somassa,
Yhteistyössä, toiminnassa
Yhteisen hyvän etehen.
Se on oppi oivallinen,
Että uusia etuja
Ajateltaisiin alati
Kansan kasvavan etehen,
Tulevaisten tunnustella.
Niinpä päivät Pellervoisen
Ovat antaneet aluksi
Oppimista oivallista
Luennoista, lausunnoista
Yhteistyöhön, toimintahan
Kolmen päivän koulussamme.
Siis on päivät Pellervoisen
Kohta loppuhun kulunna.
Niinpä miehet muistakaamme
Pellervoisen päivätöitä;
Että viemme viemisiksi
Kukin täältä kotihimme
Tuliaisiks' tuttavillen;
Ehkäpä ottaapi orahan
Kantaa vielä kasvuakin,
Kun saa asian alullen
Itämähän ilman alle
Sulo Suomemme hyväksi.
Sanon muutaman sanasen
Vielä virkan vierahillen
Kyntäjillen, kylväjöillen,
Että teetten tehtävänne
Kuten poika Pellervoinen
Kylvöksensä kyyhätteli
Luojan sormien lomitse.
Käen kautta Kaikkivallan;
Sitten siunaus tuleepi
Suosiosta suuren Luojan.
Vielä lausun nyt lopuksi
Kiitokseksi kirjoittelen
Niillen herroillen hyvillen,
Jotk' on alkanna asian,
Yhteistyötä toimimahan,
Aatetta alottamahan,
Jost' on ollut kyllin meillä
Oivallista oppimista
Luennoista, lausunnoista
Kokeen aavalta alalta,
Mitä ompi mikin nähnyt
Kokemuksen koulussansa,
Jost' on paljonkin puhuttu
Kolmen päivän koulussamme,
Opin teillä ollessamme
Täällä tultu tietämähän.
VALTIOPÄIVÄIN AVAAMISESTA 15 p. syysk. 1863.
Iloinen on ilmoitella,
Josta aion kirjoitella,
Kuin on arvoinen asia
Sekä uusi aikakausi
Meitä kohti koittamassa.
Kuin jo saavat Suomen säädyt
Joka luokasta luetut,
Saavat kohta kokoontua
Niille juhlille jaloille,
Aivan suuriarvoisille,
Joit' on päätetty piteä
Kaupungissa kuuluisassa,
Herttaisessa Helsingissä.
Tämä toivottu sanoma
Ompi meillen arvollinen,
Joka suotiin Suomellemme,
Annettiin jo aika tietää,
Päivän määrä määrättynä.
Käsky saatu keisarilta,
Annettu Aleksanterilta.
Kyllä tästä Suomen kansan
Ompi aihetta aluksi
Arvoisallen asiallen
Ilon tunteilla tueta,
Kuin on kauvan odottanna
Suomi siltäkin sijalta,
Että saada edistyä,
Uutta laatia lakia,
Sovitella Suomen säädyt,
Mikä passaisi paraiten
Käytännössä kaikin puolin,
Koska aina ajan kulku
Uudistuksia anoopi,
Parannusta kaikin paikoin
Lainkin vanhan laitoksissa.
Jo on vuosia kulunna,
Jäänyt tuonne jälkipuoleen
Vuotta viisikymmenisen,
Jolloin säädyt sovitteli
Porvohossa päätöksiä,
Eikä oo sitä etua
Ajan pitkäisen perästä
Suomen kansallen suvaittu.
Nyt on aika arvollinen
Meitä kohti koittamassa,
Valtiot valmistumassa,
Joista toivomme tulevan
Monen kohdan korjausta,
Vahvistusta, virkistystä
Suloisellen Suomellemme.
Vielä toivoisin tulevan,
Että sinne sattuvaiset,
Valitut valtiomiehet
Oisi järjeltä jaloja,
Isänmaallen innokkaita;
Jotka puhuis puolestamme
Kaikki kansan kaipaukset
Pienimmästä suurimpahan,
Antain alhaisten asiat
Ylimäisten ymmärrellä.
Laittaa niillen lainkin säännöt,
Vanhat kaikki korjaella
Uutten muutosten mukahan.
Tästäkin jalosta työstä,
Kuin myöskin monista muista,
Mitä ennätti eläissään
Meillen tehdä toimellansa,
Olkoon kiitos korkeimmallen,
Meijän kuulu keisarillen
Suomen kansalta sanottu.
Vielä syyllä suuremmalla
Ompi meillä muisto rakas,
Kun hän piti tärkeänä
Tämän arvoisen asian,
Kun oli itse avaamassa,
Valtiot valmistamassa
Suomen säätyjen seassa
Ylhäisenä ystävänä,
Suomen suuriruhtinaana,
Keisarina korkiana.
Täst' ois kaiken Suomen kansan
Antaa kiitos korkeimmalle,
Ylhäisellen ystävälle
Tästäkin jalosta työstä
Suloisellen Suomellemme.
KEISARI ALEKSANTERIN KUOLINPÄIVÄSTÄ 13 p. maalisk.

1881.
Oisi mielessä minulla

Aine nytkin arvollinen,
Että ruveta runollen.
Jos vaan oikein osaisin,
Kertoella kaikin puolin
Aleksanterin armotöitä.
Vaikka jo asia vanha,
Vaan se uutena pysyypi
Miesten muistossa mukana,
Varsinkin se vanhempien;
Josta nyt nykyinen aika
Paljon puhetta pitääpi,
Kuin on Suomemme surussa,
Pahan mielen painon alla,
Että entistä enemmän
Muisteleepi muinaisia
Armo-isän armotöitä,
Aleksanterin aikakautta;
Jonka muisto ei murene
Suomen kansan suosiosta,
Vaan on ikimuistettava.
Vielä lasten lapsillakin!
Niinpä nytkin Suomen kansa
Pitää muistonsa pyhänä
Näinä huolen hetkinänsä,
Kun ne yhtyy yli Suomen,
Kantaa kauniit seppeleensä
Sillen patsaallen paraallen,
Jonka Suomi hällen nosti,
Ikimuiston ihmisillen.
Viel' on mulla muistossani
Armon-isän armotöitä,
Joita soi hän Suomellemme.
Tiesi tarkoin tarpehemme,
Katsoi kaikkien parasta;
Eikä ollut outo vieras,
Ehti käydä eläissänsä
Seitsemästi Suomessamme.
Siitä sitten rakkauskin
Kasvoi kahden puolisesti
Keisarin ja kansan kesken.
Enpä taida tarkallehen,
Enkä puolinkaan puhua,
Mitä meillen hyvää teki
Aleksanter aikanansa.
Hänpä itse valtiotkin
Ajan pitkäisen perästä
Avasi omalla suulla,
Vielä vahvasti vakuutti
Laitkin pyhänä piteä,
Kaikki kansan oikeudet.
Samoin saatti suomenkielen
Olemaan oikeustuvissa,
Virkakielenä viroissa.
Samoin koulut, samoin kirkot
Saivat uudet uudistukset,
Kansakoulut, kiertokoulut
Tuli kansallen tutuksi.
Alimmasta ylimpähän
Kääntyi kaiken kansan kasvot
Puoleen kuulun keisarimme.
Lähinnä liki Jumalan
Pysyy muisto muuttumatta.
Vielä toivon viimeiseksi,
Jos sen soisi suuri Luoja,
Antaisi armon Jumala
Lahjat laupiaat hänellen,
Keisarillen korkeallen,
Nikolaille haltijallen,
Että oisi sama mieli,
Sama armias ajatus
Jok' on ollut entisillä
Keisareilla kuuluisilla.
Että entiset pysyisi
Perustukset paikallansa,
Asetukset alallansa
Köyhän Suomen suosimana.
Eik' ole minulla muuta,
Parempata palkkiota,
Sidottua seppelettä
Panna muistopatsahallen
Jalon haltijan hyväksi,
Kuolinpäivän kunniaksi,
Kuin tää kehno kiitokseni,
Hyvin puuttuva puheeni.
KIISTELYSTÄ KIELEN PÄÄLTÄ
VALTIOPÄIVILLÄ 1894.
Jo nyt soisi Suomen kansa

Kielikiistat loppuviksi.
Sitä toivoo Suomen kansa,
Että jo ajalla ennen
Oisi päästy päätöksissä
Vallallensa vanttuhista,
Ruotsin kahleista kovista,
Jota ruotsikot rumasti
Vielä nytkin viivyttävät.
Eivät soisi ensinkänä
Miestä miehestä tulevan,
Ottavan omin varoinsa
Aikamiehen askelia,
Saapuvan sillen sijallen,
Jossa Ruotsi rehevänä
Ijän kaiken istununna.
Paljon on jo Suomi päässyt,
Paljon viel' on pääsemättä
Kahlehistansa kovista;
Jos vaan vertaamme jälellen
Vuotta kuusikymmenisen,
Kuin oli vielä ruotsin valta
Ylimmillensä yletty,
Koulut kaikki kaupungeissa
Ruotsin rahkeissa kovissa;
Mistä sai nyt kansan lapset
Oppia nyt ollenkana?
Oli tuohon tyytyminen
Oman vanhemman opillen.
Kun oli vielä vanhempamme
Aivan oppimattomia;
Samoin suomeks' kirjallisuus
Sekin ol' varsin vähässä.
Samoin kaikki virkakirjat
Ne oli ruotsiksi rykätty
Eikä suomella omalla,
Talonpojan tuttavalla.
Vaan ei vieläkään viikingit,
Herrat ruotsikot rupeisi
Suomenkieltä suosimahan.
Aina vaan he väittelevät,
Kielikiistoja pitävät,
Niinkuin näissä valtioissa,
Sanomalehdissä samaten
Paraan mahtinsa panivat
Kiistellessä kielen päältä,
Että pitäis heillä olla
Ylivalta, ylivoima,
Olla päänä, päsmärinä.
Suomalaiset saavat olla —
Mitä pöydältä putovi,
Alta ottoa muruja.
Ihme on ikäni ollut,
Minun kumma mielestäni,
Mist' on jäänynnä jälellen
Ruotsinkielen ylivalta,
Vaikk' on väkensä vähäinen,
Kaikesta osa kaheksas.
Jo nyt soisin Suomelleni,
Että nousis nuori kansa,
Suomen poiat pontevasti,
Herrat niinkuin talonpoiat;
Oisi meillä yksi mieli,
Yksi mieli, yksi kieli,
Yhdet armaat ajatukset
Kerroksissa kaiken kansan.
Niin mä luulisin lopuksi
Kielikiistain katkeavan,
Vähenevän väittelyiden.
SUOMENKIELEN ASIA RITARI- JA
AATELISSÄÄDYSSÄ VALTIOPÄIVILLÄ
1894.
Kuten sanovat sanomat,

Viikkolehdet viestit tuovat,
Mitä herrat Helsingissä,
Arvoaatelit sanovat
Suomenkielen suosiosta,
Kun ei kuulu heillen vielä
Suomi suosittu olevan,
Että kelpais keskustella
Suomalaisilla sanoilla
Aatelistenkin asiat.
Tuosta on hyvä todistus
Nähty näillä valtioilla,
Kuinka Yrjömme yritti,
Koetti Koskinen puhua
Ensikerran aatelissa,
Puhevuoroa piteä
Suomalaisilla sanoilla
Arvoisellen aatelillen.
Vaan siell' ei suomea suvaittu,
Kieltä kehnoo käytettävän.
Joka ensiksi esiintyi,
Von Poriini ponnisteli,
Kovin vastusti kovasti
Viimeiset viikinkivoimat.
Samoin muita muutamia
Suomen kielen sortajia
Yhdistyypi yhtä mieltä.
Sanoivat sanalla tuolla,
Ettei kelpaa keskustella
Suomen kieli kuultavaksi
Arvoaateli-suvullen.
En siltä sanoa saata,
Arvoaatelis-sukuiset,
Niinkuin miehet muutkin herrat,
Onhan niissä oikioita
Suomenkielen suosijoita,
Jotk' ei soisi sortumahan
Suomi-äidin suomenkielen,
Jonka ennen äiti neuvoi,
Oma vanhempi opetti
Lapsillensa laupiaasti.
Vielä teillen viikinki-herrat
Kansan puolesta puhelen:
Miksi teillä mieli musta,
Miksi, vaino ja kateus
Ompi oman kielen päältä,
Koska kerran ollaan kaikki
Yhden Suomen synnyttämät,
Yhden kantamat kanaset,
Vaikka häivyimme hajalle
Suomen saaren seutuville.
Miksi siis ei yksi mieli,
Yksi mieli, yksi kieli
Ylhäisillä, alhaisilla
Kaikuis kaiken kansan suusta;
Suomi suosittu olisi.
Sitten loppuis kielikiistat,
Kovat väitökset välistä,
Selviäisi seuraelämä,
Kateuskin kahden puolen
Ylhäisien, alhaisien;
Vielä voisi veljeskättä
Tarjotakin toisillensa
Sovinnon suloista kättä,
Joka rauhan rakentaapi.
HILJAISET VALTIOPÄIVÄT 1899.
Hiljallehen ensin hiihä,

Ettet väsyne välillen,
Maseneisi matkan päällen:
Sananlasku sangen vanha,
Valmistettu vanhemmilta,
Meiltä mielehen otettu.
Samaa saattavi sanoa
Vielä näistä valtioista,
Päivistä pidettävistä,
Hiljaisista hiihtäjistä;
Kuin ei kuulu kuulumia,
Sanele sanomalehdet
Miesten mietteistä mitänä.
Ain' on maalla arveluja,
Suomen suurilla saloilla,
Miten siellä miehet jaksaa
Tehtävänsä toimitella.
Onko miehet ollenkana
Täysin terveessä tilassa,
Vai lie tullut taudin aika,
Lentsutauti liikkehellä,
Joka maalla matkustaapi;
Tahtoopi se talvikaudet
Ukkosia uuvutella.
Vaan on arvelun alaista,
Puhe puusta katsojalla,
Tohtiskohan tuokin tulla
Suomen suurehen kylähän,
Herraisehen Helsinkihin,
Joss' on rohdotkin ramilla,
Vastamyrkyt valmihina
Taudin synnyt tappamahan.
Näitä kansa keskenänsä,
Näistä päivistä puhuvat,
Vähän leikkiä lisäksi.
Vaan sen arvaamme asian
Mekin maalla matkustajat,
Ett' on siellä edessänne
Arkaluontonen asia,
Joka säädyt seisottaapi,
Painaapi pahallen mielen,
Ajatukset ahtahallen,
Että puuttuupi puhetta,
Miettehissä meininkiä.
Mitä miehet tehtänehen,
Soveltuva sotalaki,
Jota suosis Suomen kansa
Sekä kelpais keisarillen —
Se on tointa tärkeätä.
Tästä jatkui pitkä juttu,
Vaikk' on ainoa asia

Dietrich Bonhoeffers Christian Humanism Jens Zimmermann Full Chapter

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian

Humanism Jens Zimmermann

To Sabine, my wife, who exempliﬁes “being for others.”

Jens Zimmermann has acquired a well-deserved reputation as a distinguished

Why a book on Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism? Indeed, why another book

¹ “A Particular Europe, a Universal Faith: The Christian Humanism of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics in

⁵ “Christian Humanism: Reclaiming a Tradition; Afﬁrming an Identity,” in CTI Reﬂections 8

⁷ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). ⁸ Ibid., 216. ⁹ Ibid., 217.

¹³ This theological starting point (Stellvertretung or recapitulation) appears already in

²⁴ DBWE 8:394. ²⁵ DBW 4:188; DBWE 4:179.

³⁰ Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance, 124–6.

The chapters in this book are dedicated to showing various aspects of

xxii Chapter Outline

Chapter Outline xxiii

1. Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 1

Bonhoeffer and the Idea

Associating Bonhoeffer with Christian humanism is problematic for a number

¹ DBW 10:321 (Bonhoeffer’s emphasis).

2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

⁴ Richard Norman, On Humanism (London: Routledge, 2004), 14–15.

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 3

4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

BONHOEFFER AGAINST HUMAN ISM:

When Bonhoeffer does engage the term “Christian humanism,” he associates

¹³ Ernst Feil, Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers: Hermeneutik, Christologie, Weltverständnis,

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 5

¹⁶ DBW 10:318. ¹⁷ DBW 10:317.

6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 7

²⁷ DBW 10:322. ²⁸ DBW 10:317.

8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

³¹ DBWE 10:365. ³² DBW 10:330. ³³ DBW 10:338. ³⁴ DBWE 10:366.

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 9

AFTER BARCELONA: A MERICAN CHRISTIAN

⁴⁰ DBW 10:144. ⁴¹ DBW 10:144: “und gerade nicht in der ‘Geistigkeit,’ ”.

10 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

⁴⁷ DBW 10:262. ⁴⁸ DBW 10:269. ⁴⁹ DBW 6:38–9.

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 11

CHRISTIAN HUMANISM AT THE UNIVERSITY

Bonhoeffer maintains this critical evaluation of liberal theology as “human-

⁵⁷ DBW 10:270. ⁵⁸ DBW 11:169. ⁵⁹ DBW 11:167. ⁶⁰ DBW 11:169.

12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

⁶² DBW 10:319. ⁶³ DBW 10:321. ⁶⁴ DBWE 4:37.

Bonhoeffer and the Idea of Christian Humanism 13

REVERSING COURSE: BONHOEFFER

14 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism

⁷⁰ Franz Hildebrandt, Melanchton: Alien or Ally? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

PELLERVON PÄIVILLÄ HELSINGISSÄ 31 p. tammik. 1900.

On taas ollut oiva juhla

VALTIOPÄIVÄIN AVAAMISESTA 15 p. syysk. 1863.

KEISARI ALEKSANTERIN KUOLINPÄIVÄSTÄ 13 p. maalisk.

Oisi mielessä minulla

Jo nyt soisi Suomen kansa

Kuten sanovat sanomat,

Hiljallehen ensin hiihä,

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