Abstract
This article discusses the two definitions for a responsible life and action that the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer provides in his book Ethics, which suggest that accepting Schuld – taking on guilt, debt, or an obligation – seems to override the risk involved in responsibility. A comparison of Stellvertretung, Schuldübernahme, and Zurechnung of the German codified civil law and their dogmatic intricacies shows that Bonhoeffer adopted jurisprudential thought into his theology of acting responsibly through taking on Schuld in accordance with Jesus Christ, the incarnated God who once existed in human reality and acted on the cross as Stellvertreter for humanity. Embracing elements of the sub-constitutional German civil law tradition of the bourgeois liberal-democratic movement of the 19th century served Bonhoeffer to emphasize, as part of his resistance to a dehumanizing totalitarian political system, an independent private space of freedom that is removed from the public sphere.
Highlights
In his book Ethics1 the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer provides two definitions for a responsible life which differ decisively in respect to risking decisions and actions, and regarding guilt, debt, or obligations (Schuld).2 In the course of Bonhoeffer’s study of “The
This shift may be explained with a view to the particular legal institutes of the German private law tradition which are defined in the 1900 Civil Code as “authorized actions in the place of someone else” (Stellvertretung), “taking on debt or obligations” (Schuldübernahme), and the “ascription” (Zurechnung) to the self of risk or Schuld
Stellvertretung, instead, became a legal institute of private law and was for economic contexts defined in the 1900 Civil Code as a form of deputyship
Summary
In the summer of 1942 while beginning to experience the underside of life as a participant in the resistance movement against a violent political regime, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote two drafts on the topic of “History and Good”.6 Both drafts addressed the issue of acting on one’s faith in Jesus Christ and the resulting consequences of accountability. Beliefs characterizing him as a theologian matured.” The constitutional lawyer Gerhard Leibholz, with whom Bonhoeffer had experienced a growing friendship since the early 1920s, and who became his brotherin-law in 1926, played a special role for Bonhoeffer as they coordinated their entry into public objection to the approaching National Socialism in 1932.47 In tune with the legal discourses of his time, Leibholz had (in his 1924 doctoral dissertation in public law) argued for interpreting the programmatic basic right of equality before the law of the Weimar Constitution as a prohibition against arbitrary use of state authority and for elevating this nominal right to a protective level for citizens He reasoned in support of subjective public rights, a need for judicial oversight, and discussed the doctrine of discretion.. 47 Karola Radler, “The Leibholz-Schmitt connection’s formative influence on Bonhoeffer’s 1932–33 entry into public theology.” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 4, no. (2018): 690
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