Abstract

Over the years since his death, dozens of interpreters - scholars, novelists, dramatists, filmmakers and devotional writers- have offered a variety of perspectives on Bonhoeffer’s relationship to the Jewish people. This article describes eight distinct, though overlapping and largely compatible, perspectives on this question. It then identifies the author’s own view of this important relationship by presenting and developing eight theses. The author concludes that the desire to portray Bonhoeffer as a guide for post-Holocaust theological reflection is based less in Bonhoeffer’s theological achievements than in the compelling nature of his witness and the dire need for Christian heroes from the Nazi era.

Highlights

  • Over the years since his death, dozens of interpreters – scholars, novelists, dramatists, filmmakers and devotional writers – have offered a variety of perspectives on Bonhoeffer’s relationship to the Jewish people

  • In 1980, in a seminal article titled “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews,” Bethge wrote that Dietrich “established some presuppositions for new approaches to a post-Holocaust theology....”4 Within a decade this perspective had made a significant impact on Bonhoeffer scholarship, as can be seen in an article in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990) which declared that Bonhoeffer’s “theological influence has been significantly instrumental in the post-Holocaust rethinking of Christian relationships with the Jewish people.”[5]

  • Renate Bethge, in a letter to Yad Vashem, writes that “the fate of the Jews was Bonhoeffer’s main reason for resisting the Nazis....”14 And Anneliese Schnurmann testifies that “one of the main reasons why Dietrich opposed the Nazis was their persecution of the Jews; it was the impulse which made him reject them.”[15]

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Summary

Introduction

Over the years since his death, dozens of interpreters – scholars, novelists, dramatists, filmmakers and devotional writers – have offered a variety of perspectives on Bonhoeffer’s relationship to the Jewish people. In the first part of this article, I will describe eight distinct, though overlapping and largely compatible, perspectives on this question. In part two I will identify my own view of this important relationship by presenting and developing eight theses

Irrelevance
Guide for Post-Holocaust Christianity
Philosemite
Pro-Jewish Resistor
Victim of the Holocaust
Ambiguous Legacy
Better than His Theology
Christian Rescuer
Theses
39 No Rusty Swords
Full Text
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