Theological Issues WAR & PEACE Trinity International University © John Stevenson, 2009

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Founding member of the Confessing Church in Germany Helped Jews to escape to Switzerland Was arrested in plot to assassinate Hitler Executed

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer How did Bonhoeffer’s theology change over the years? What were some specific events, relationships, or books which caused the shifts? In what ways did Bonhoeffer agree with Karl Barth? In what ways did he disagree?

© 1989 Too often, we depict salvation as that which provides us with a meaningful existence when we achieve a new self- understanding. Here, with our emphasis on the narrative nature of Christian life, we are saying that salvation is baptism into a community that has so truthful a story that we forget ourselves and our anxieties long enough to become part of that story, a story God has told in Scripture and continues to tell in Israel and the church.

How does this statement relate to the theology of the Kingdom of God and to the issue of Christian discipleship? What is the purpose of “salvation” according to the Bible? How does salvation occur? What do the authors mean when they say “Christian ethics... are the ethics of revolution?” (p. 62). © 1989

Is Bonhoeffer’s life an example of a Christian revolutionary? Why or why not? © 1989

Christian ethics, as a cultivation of those virtues needed to keep us on the journey, are the ethics of revolution. Revolutionaries, whose goal is nothing less than the transformation of society through revolution have little patience with those among them who are self- indulgent, and they have no difficulty disciplining such people (Pg 62).

If God is good, and He is, then why does evil exist?

Read Romans 9:14-24 and answer the following questions: What are the assumptions made by Paul in the questions he asks? How does Paul answer the question regarding evil and the justice of God?

Romans 9:14-16 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

Romans 9:17-18 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

Romans 9:19-21 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?

Romans 9:22-23 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.