Recovering the Natural: Humanizing Politics

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 8, sketching out Bonhoeffer’s political vision to argue its validity for modern, secular states, falls into two main parts. The first section offers a detailed analysis of Bonhoeffer’s recovery of the natural for Protestant theology in the contexts of Protestant and Catholic thought of his time. It becomes clear that prompted by Nazi atrocities, Bonhoeffer recovers Reformational natural law theory in a particular Christ-centered way that is similar to the nature-grace relation proposed by Henri de Lubac, and to the concept of natural law propounded by Jacques Maritain. The second part of the chapter describes Bonhoeffer’s political theology as reflected in his view of church-state relations. The chapter shows that Bonhoeffer appropriates the greater Christian tradition from Augustine to Luther’s two-kingdom theory for his own day. He envisions a secular society and forum of public reasoning on the basis of the natural, a society in which the church bears witness to Christ’s true humanity and labors for the common good of a humane society.