Introduction to the Volume

This special issue of Theology Today showcases the scholarship of a new generation of theologians inquiring into, thinking with, and inspired by the theological legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Twenty-five years or more of international scholarly endeavor has delivered the 16-volume critical edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke and its complete English translation, unquestionably one of the most important achievements in theological publishing in recent times. Today’s pastors and theologians are now uniquely equipped and so also especially enjoined to engage with Bonhoeffer’s theology as a whole. As Clifford Green and Guy Carter have recently remarked, from this juncture, “respect for the man, respect for truth, and responsibility to future generations require more patience, more honesty, and more effort to truly understand the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” ¹

The articles that follow are contributions to the collective work of just such patient, honest, and careful interpretation and engagement with the work of this German theologian, Christian, and man of his day. Together, they also manifest a shared discernment that Bonhoeffer’s life and writing remain a vital and provocative inheritance for contemporary theology. The promise of winning valuable insights in the fields of Christian witness, doctrine, and ethics attends our continued wrestling with this complex man and his no less complex body of theological work. Our authors pursue such insights across a diverse range of subjects. Some wrestle to comprehend aright Bonhoeffer’s own developing thought, whether his critical and creative deployment of social theory in his early ecclesiology, or his difficult but decisive education in the politics and theology of the race question in America. Others press Bonhoeffer in pursuit of answers to dogmatic questions concerning the interplay of trinitarian doctrine and christology, the meaning of the priesthood of all believers, the character of spiritual formation in the Christian life, and the nature and understanding of Christian doctrine as such. Still others find in Bonhoeffer’s corpus crucial instruction and inspiration concerning the fundamental Christian practices of private confession, public witness, and truth-telling, and the church’s ministry of radical social outreach and community formation. Whatever their specific themes, our authors commonly confront Bonhoeffer as a modern teacher of the church and a figure with whom we are yet far from finished.