Abstract
Stephen J. Plant, Taking Stock of Bonhoeffer: Studies in Biblical Interpretation and Ethics, Ashgate: Farnham, 2014; 182 pp.: 9781409441052, £60.00 (hbk), 9781409441069, £19.99 (pbk)
The ‘Bonhoeffer industry’, as cynics were terming it even three decades ago, far from going into recession is very much alive and well, both in the UK and internationally. This collection of essays by the Cambridge theologian Stephen Plant, who has himself done so much to reinvigorate the research and development side of the industry, shows why this is so. Although he was rooted so firmly in his particular context, the ways in which Bonhoeffer responded to the challenges of his time still provide pertinent case-studies in what it means to do biblically based theology in face of daunting religious, ethical, social and political crises.
Nearly all the eleven chapters have been previously published, or have been adapted from lectures delivered in recent years. Here they are grouped under four headings: Historical Context; Bonhoeffer and the Bible; Bonhoeffer and Ethics; Taking Stock. They vary not only in topic but also in length and style. ‘Ethics and Materialist Hermeneutics’ and ‘In the Sphere of the Familiar: Heidegger and Bonhoeffer’, for example, live up to the academic weight implied by their titles, while ‘Faith, Political Duty and One Man’s Costly Grace’ is a much shorter biographical piece in more popular style but no less valuable for that, particularly as far as newcomers to Bonhoeffer are concerned.
Collections of essays are not to everyone’s taste, regardless of the individual merits of each piece. But with a multi-level subject like Bonhoeffer there is a strong case for several distinct forays into the territory from different directions, rather than yet another attempt to survey the whole in a single journey. I particularly welcome ‘Bonhoeffer and Moltke: Politics and Faith in a Time of Crisis’ because as well as bringing into the light another of the most outstanding figures of the German resistance it places Bonhoeffer firmly in the circle of the conspiracy as a whole and the ethical decision-making it involved – Bonhoeffer is apt to be isolated and exalted to a saintly pedestal. Also highly useful in setting the wider theological and political scene in Germany is ‘How Theologians Decide: German Theologians on the Eve of Nazi Rule’, in which Plant shows how difficult it is to identify what, if any, precise factors led theologians into either pro- or anti-Nazi stances. One of the essays, ‘Bonhoeffer’s Interfaith Encounters’, may disappoint some readers on account of its shortness – because in fact there is relatively little to say directly beyond Bonhoeffer’s encounters with Judaism and his interest in the East. The real question is whether Bonhoeffer’s biblical and Christocentric approach to everything nevertheless implies a new way of looking at the person who is both ‘other’ and inescapable neighbour. The concluding chapter, ‘Reading Bonhoeffer in Britain’ affords an illuminating, critical glance at the British theological scene in recent decades: for those less familiar with Bonhoeffer studies it would in fact be a good place to begin reading the book. In all, a most valuable harvesting of, and further stimulus to, Bonhoeffer studies and indeed to all contextual theology.