Bonhoeffers Theologische Anfänge: Menschenwille Und Gotteswille in Der Frühesten Phase Seiner Theologischen Existenz 1925-1929

Dominik Weyl explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological beginnings. In doing so, the author inquires into Bonhoeffer's earliest development and his first positionings between 1925 and 1929 and interprets selected texts from the period of his studies, his doctoral work, and his Barcelona vicariate. All of these writings exhibit a pronounced orientation toward ethics. Bonhoeffer's reflections are consistently directed toward the systematic?theological determination of the concordance of the human will with the divine will. Upon this rests his early responsible ethics of the moment, or situational ethics, which would later mature into his ethics of responsibility. At the same time, shadow problems emerge that Bonhoeffer only later perceives and corrects. The author shows how Bonhoeffer anchors his position in the voluntaristic Luther interpretation of Karl Holl and Reinhold Seeberg and brings it into conversation with the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Already in his student papers, Bonhoeffer integrates faith and obedience as a unity and understands them as modes of resonance in response to God's efficacious grace. The moment of responsible decision-making, which occurs when encountering the demands of another human being, takes on decisive importance. In Sanctorum Communio, the demand of God's will appears in, with, and under these demands, whereby a distinction must be made between God's concrete ethical demand and the substantive demands of the other.