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K. E. Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand, first published in 1956, has proved to hold insights that give it continued resonance in Scandinavian theology and beyond. Among other things, its rejection of a Christian ethic continues to be debated. Such a critical stance towards Christian ethics can also be found in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But in contrast to Løgstrup, he can still endorse a Christian discipleship and the call to bear witness to Christ. By bringing Løgstrup and Bonhoeffer into conversation it can be argued that an ethic of responsibility as a responsive concept can open up for a Christian ethic in a third positionbetween compromise and radicalism.

The works of H. Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr provide an appropriate starting point for renewed attention to the idea of responsibility in Christian ethics. While responsible choice and ‘the responsible society’ were important themes in ecumenical Protestant ethics in Britain and the US from the 1930s to the late 1950s, the idea has been neglected in recent decades. German theology, however, has considered Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wartime writings on the ‘venture of responsibility’ and a biblical theology of judgment and responsibility in light of a growing literature in philosophy and social thought that structures the moral life around a technological society’s responsibility for the human future. These different ways of thinking about responsibility invite further theological and ethical reflection on their history, their disagreements, and their possibilities for the future.

Even in its unfinished state, the depth of insight in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics is inescapable. Though written in Nazi Germany in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust, it provides profound guidance for the formation of our own Christian ethics, after Au schwitz, after Hiroshima, and after the Cold War. Our changed context means that we cannot uncritically adopt all of Bonhoeffer's theological ethics as our own. There are to be sure, needs in today's world that Bonhoeffer addresses inadequately or not at all.1 Yet one urgent con temporary need is a strong ethic of human rights, and here Bonhoef fer's Ethics provides firm guidance.2 A Christian ethic of human rights must be able to perform two tasks. First, it must be deeply rooted in the central themes of biblical faith and classic Christianity so that it may speak clearly to church members from the center of their faith convictions. An ethic of human

This article examines Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead in dialogue with her speculative reflection upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology to read the novel as a radically ambivalent text which exposes an aporia at the core of the Reverend Ames's Christian ethics. This ambivalence appears in the way that Ames's version of his own family history works assiduously to expiate the perceived violence done to ethics by his grandfather's support for abolitionist violence while remaining haunted by the thought that in the unforgiving context of Bleeding Kansas simply to insist upon an absolute distinction between violence on the one hand and ethics and law on the other may be irreconcilable with the workings of good faith and the ends of justice. Reinterpreting Ames's narrative in the light of Jacques Derrida's reflection on the paradoxical structure of ethical responsibility, the article argues that the violence done to Ames's ethical reflection by the memory of the grandfather, John Brown, and the excluded black body reveals the agonistic location of the ethics of abolitionist history between two kinds of violence on the uncertain border between justice and law which defines the ground of every genuinely ethical decision.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) was a German pastor and theologian whose scholarly works focused on Christian ethics. Beginning in 1933, Bonhoeffer had an important role in the Confessing Church, a movement among German Protestants that opposed the Nazi reorganization of religious life in Germany. During World War II, he worked to maintain a network of pastoral leadership for the Confessing Church, drafted a systematic treatise on ethics, and undertook secret contacts with European church leaders aimed at securing peace after the overthrow of Hitler. Arrested in 1943, Bonhoeffer continued to anticipate the renewal of European Christianity after the war, and while in prison he developed some of his most provocative ideas about religion in the modern world. His association with the plotters in a failed attempt on Hitler's life led to his execution on April 9, 1945.

Book reviewed in this article: Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy. Edited by Ian T. Ramsey. Evil and the God of Love. By John Hick. Blondel et Teilhard de Chardin, Correspondance Commentée. By Henri de Lubac. The Structure of Behaviour. By Maurice Merleau‐Ponty. New Testament Essays. By Raymond E. Brown, S.S. Ideologies. By Patrick Corbett. Worship in Israel. By Hans‐Joachim Kraus. Translated by Geoffrey Boswell. The Theology of St John. By Joseph Crehan, S.J. Jesus and the Kingdom. By George Eldon Ladd. Finding the Historical. By James Peter. The Shape of Christology By John Mcntyre.Christology. By Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated by John Bowden, with an introduction by Edwin H. Robertson. Theology of the English Reformers. By Philip Edgcumbe Hughes. The Execution of Justice in England: A True, Sincere, and Modest Defense of English Catholics. By William Cecil and William Allen. Edited by Robert M. Kingdon. The Revolution of the Saints. By Michael Walzer. L'Église au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliaire (1378–1449). By E. Delaruelle, E.‐R. Labande and P. Ourliac. John Hus at the Council of Constance. Translated and introduced by M. Spinka. Mission to France 1944–1953, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII. Edited by Don Loris Capovilla. Translated by Dorothy White. The Vatican Council and Christian Unity. A commentary on the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council. By Bernard Leeming, S.J. The Documents of Vatican II. Edited by Walter M. Abbott, S.J. Translations edited by Mgr Joseph Gallagher.

This article explores the process of teaching Christian theological ethics beyond the common focus on European and North American sources. In conversation with moves to decolonise university curricula, the article proposes a theology of listening, an example of a research seminar for master’s and doctoral students at the University of Aberdeen on Christian ethics beyond Europe and North America, and an exploration of broader challenges for the formation of the theologian. The article asks, what can we learn when we give up power and control when teaching and learning theology? How can we shift our methods of knowing and practising theology? We write as theologians from India, Mexico, and the United States living in the United Kingdom. We reflect on forms of exclusion in theological method and formation that arise from colonising, systemic violence, and inequalities. The article considers intercultural challenges when encountering different methods of reflection on the Christian experience. In a search for a more profoundly theological approach, we propose listening to the other as integral to doing theology. In an intercultural move, we draw on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of listening, proposing that theology must be an advent of voices from beyond our usual places and methods.

The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology, MatthewLevering, Eerdmans, 2021 (ISBN 978‐0‐8082‐7950‐9), viii + 360 pp., hb $45

This essay introduces “ecologies of violence” as a problem for Christian ethics. Understanding the links between violence and the natural environment will be critical to the pursuit of justice, peace, and sustainability in the twenty-first century. Yet these links often evade political action and escape moral attention because they do not fit comfortably within any of the fields requisite to address them. In most cases, the available resources for confronting these issues—“environmental issues” and “peace and conflict issues”—exist in separate toolkits, and no single discourse has developed resources to address their progressively merging spheres of concern. The essay outlines four types of ecological violence, examines recent work in Christian ethics relevant to them, and then argues for a dialogical method of ethics to confront them. Doing Christian ethics at the intersections of violence and environmental issues will require careful attention to environmental ethics as well as to the ethics of violence. More than that, it will require judicious efforts to navigate between them within case-based and place-based ethical analyses. Ecologies of violence invite Christian ethics to develop possibilities of ethical discernment and reparative action that do justice to the deep entanglement of ecological and sociopolitical systems.

This special issue of Theology Today showcases the scholarship of a new generation of theologians inquiring into, thinking with, and inspired by the theological legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Twenty-five years or more of international scholarly endeavor has delivered the 16-volume critical edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke and its complete English translation, unquestionably one of the most important achievements in theological publishing in recent times. Today’s pastors and theologians are now uniquely equipped and so also especially enjoined to engage with Bonhoeffer’s theology as a whole. As Clifford Green and Guy Carter have recently remarked, from this juncture, ‘‘respect for the man, respect for truth, and responsibility to future generations require more patience, more honesty, and more effort to truly understand the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.’’ The articles that follow are contributions to the collective work of just such patient, honest, and careful interpretation and engagement with the work of this German theologian, Christian, and man of his day. Together, they also manifest a shared discernment that Bonhoeffer’s life and writing remain a vital and provocative inheritance for contemporary theology. The promise of winning valuable insights in the fields of Christian witness, doctrine, and ethics attends our continued wrestling with this complex man and his no less complex body of theological work. Our authors pursue such insights across a diverse range of subjects. Some wrestle to comprehend aright Bonhoeffer’s own developing thought, whether his critical and creative deployment of social theory in his early ecclesiology, or his difficult but decisive education in the politics and theology of the race question in America. Others press Bonhoeffer in pursuit of answers to dogmatic questions concerning the interplay of trinitarian doctrine and christology, the meaning of the priesthood of all believers, the character of spiritual formation in the Christian life, and the nature and understanding of Christian doctrine as such. Still others find in Bonhoeffer’s corpus crucial instruction and inspiration concerning the fundamental Theology Today 2014, Vol. 71(1) 5–6 ! The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0040573613519392 ttj.sagepub.com

While theme of this issue of International Journal is future of diplomacy, indicating new trends and instantiation of new forms, actors, and issues, relationship between Christianity and is anything but new. Peeling back secularist assumptions of international politics demonstrates degree to which religious and in particular Christian actors, ignored for much of 20th century, have always been and continue to be part and parcel of diplomatic practice/ Nevertheless, it is still extremely important to ask what types of religious diplomatic practices are occurring currently as opposed to past.Christianity's legacy forms a prominent, though relatively unexamined, component of history of western diplomacy. It also has a historically complicated relationship with state sovereignty, foundational international institution that makes modern possible. Christian guidelines have long helped to construct foundation for western understandings of goals to be achieved in diplomatic practice, including legitimate use of violence and forms of international intervention. Augustinian formulations shaped modern definitions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, laws of war and laws in war, respectively. Christian ethical debates, divisions, and actions shaped creation of nation-state system and ideas of United States's founding fathers, as well as supranational and international forms of governance.2 In other words, Christian debates about nature of sovereignty versus universalist projects address essence of traditional diplomacy: question of how - or insideoutside problem of world politics - is mediated.3Many features of this complicated relationship between Christianity and are important to analyze, but in this article I examine role of Christian actors in diplomatic struggles over meaning of territoriality, representation, and governance during two periods: 1930s and 1940s (from end of interwar years to just after World War II) and postCold War era - 1990s to present. In each case, I focus on James Der Derian's understanding of as mediating to ask what types of estrangement are mediated by Christian ethics and actors.4 I argue, first, that universalist pretensions are a recurring feature of Christian diplomatic interventions, and second, that these pretensions produce ethical tensions over specifically Christian and global character of representation and governance.I first look at way in which Christian attempts to navigate temporal and spiritual played out in interwar ethics and promoted a secularized form of universalism, even while they justified use of force by sovereign states. This form of universalism justified consolidation of global governance from League of Nations to United Nations, but it also privileged United States's role in UN's leadership. As articulated by John Foster Dulles in US, post- World War II great power universalism also owed much to, although it also differed from, dual morality justification for states' use of force legitimized by Rienhold Niebuhr.These universalist pretensions regarding territoriality and governance, along with statist justifications for use of force, shaped diplomatic practice in the west throughout Cold War. They also continue to exist, still frequently in tension, in post-Cold War era. Examining humanitarian diplomacy in post-Cold War era (see also Ole Jacob Sending's article in this issue) offers an opportunity to assess content of Christian ethical struggles over representation within universalist pretensions of global international organization. More specifically, some Christian humanitarians today argue that universal rights to religious freedom allow and even require proselytizing. This type of faith-based participation in tasks of mediating also is not new, as it has important antecedents in successive periods of Christian missionizing. …

Theologians such as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas found a significant following when they claimed that the Church as a body and a people has an inherent ethical and even political character. They remind us of the elementary theological truth according to which ecclesiology is ethics, and ethics is ecclesiology. This article defends this insight and its critical value over against individualized, dehistoricized, and disembodied accounts of morality and Christian ethics in particular, while at the same time attempting to add depth by exploring the dialectic which elucidates why the Church that ‘is’ a social ethic still needs to ‘have’ a social ethic. The first section examines Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a still under-acknowledged forefather of the new ecclesio-ethical emphasis. His treatment of the Church as a ‘distinct sociological type’ underlies the all-important claim that the Church is not and should not be made the fundament of Christian ethics. Rather than having or needing a foundation, Christian ethics is given an ever new beginning in worship. The section that follows argues that the Church both ‘is’ and ‘has’ a social ethic. That is, the Church cannot content itself with lively and controversial debates about moral matters, but must at the same time venture unambiguous moral proclamation. The next section examines Luther's notion of the hiddenness of the Church as a liberating alternative to the scheme of visibility or invisibility. The position developed in these sections are tested in the following section which considers the controversial issue of an ‘ethical status confessionis’: that is, are there moral issues (in addition to doctrinal issues) in which the very identity of the Church is at stake?

Reggie Williams’ reflections on the lives of three significant activist- theologians – Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer – serve as the starting point for a consideration of the anti-racist elements in the ethics of James Wm McClendon Jr. Both Williams and McClendon exemplify a narrative approach to Christian ethics out of recognition of the possibilities and limitations that both our embodied selfhood and our cultural heritages bring to the ethical task. Other voices incorporated here are those of Glen Stassen, John Howard Yoder, and George F. R. Ellis.

This essay examines and compares the treatment of the Decalogue in the theological ethics of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It argues that while both theologians orient their exposition of the Decalogue by attending to its primary character as divine self-revelation, approach it with a view to a Christian ethics of divine command, and frame their understandings in decisively christological terms, they differ markedly on the extent to which the commandments themselves can and ought to be understood as representing concrete divine commands.

Book reviewed in this article:CHRISTIANS: THEOLOGIANS AND SOCIAL AGENTS: Toward a Christian Political Ethics, by José Míguez Bonino.CHRISTIANS: THEOLOGIANS AND SOCIAL AGENTS: The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics, by Stanley Hauerwas.CHRISTIANS: THEOLOGIANS AND SOCIAL AGENTS: Christian Ethics and Political Action, by Donald E. Messer.CHRISTIANS: THEOLOGIANS AND SOCIAL AGENTS: Politics and the Christian Vision, by Paul Rowntree Clifford.HEALTH, CULTURE AND THEOLOGY IN AN AFRICAN SETTING: Man Cures, God Heals, by Kofi Appiah‐Kubi.HEALTH, CULTURE AND THEOLOGY IN AN AFRICAN SETTING: A Fifth Gospel, by Joseph G. Healey.HEALTH, CULTURE AND THEOLOGY IN AN AFRICAN SETTING: Theology in Africa, by Kwesi A. Dickson.RESEARCHING MISSION HISTORY: Missionary Ideologies in the Imperialist Era: 1880–1920, by Torben Christensen & William R. Hutchison.