Bonhoeffer’s New Beginning

Andrew DeCort is director of the Institute for Faith and Flourishing.

In mid-century Europe, totalitarians on both the left and the right sought to remake humanity, society, politics, morality, geography, and population. The scope of their hubris was astonishing, as was the body count they left behind. To accomplish their idolatrous, disastrous goals, everything was permissible.In his important new book, Andrew DeCort demonstrates that Dietrich Bonhoeffer responded theologically in Nazi Germany to this mania for remaking the world through projects of political salvation at the point of a gun. DeCort shows that Bonhoeffer's biblical theology of creation, Christ, and resurrection precluded any human project to serve as our own creators and saviors by engineering a new beginning in human life. Instead, Christians at least, know (or should know) that we are called to respond to God's creative and reconciling action, and that we must do so in love of God and others. This is a groundbreaking work, ranging exhaustively over the Bonhoeffer corpus and the secondary literature. It reveals a new dimension of Bonhoeffer's thought, and demonstrates once again that Bonhoeffer was always responding to the dangerous political and moral ideas around him with a disciplined theological and ethical response -- a response that took him to his death.Highly recommended!

• BeginningIntroduction – Our Over-All Take on Human Life: The Problem of Morality and the Ethics of New BeginningChapter 1 – The Trial: Universal Entry and The Problem of MoralityChapter 2 – Four Options: The Problem of Morality and the Ethics of New Beginning in Nietzsche, Arendt, Glover, and LearChapter 3 – “A Rift Irreparable Through Human Initiative”: Devastation and the Human (In)Capacity to Make a New Beginning in Bonhoeffer’s ThoughtChapter 4 – “Only with God Is There A New Way, A New Beginning”: Justification and Guidance For New Beginning In Bonhoeffer’s ThoughtChapter 5 – “The Dawning of The New World, The New Order”: Practices of New Beginning In Bonhoeffer’s ThoughtConclusion – After the Beginning: The Problem of Morality, Divine Absence, and the Ethics of New Beginning after DevastationBeginning Anew Appendix – Bonhoeffer’s Last Words: A Personal Testament and Theological Summary?