Abstract

Abstract In prison, Bonhoeffer reads the Old Testament over and over again. Implicitly, by doing that, he struggles for a new theological evaluation of Judaism of whose present fate he is well aware. In view of this, it is questionable whether Bonhoeffer's new theological insights can really be read from a dogmatically fixed Christology oriented solely on the New Testament. The examples of erotic love and blessing rather show that Bonhoeffer's idea of »all earthly life being utilized to testify« for God is entirely based on the diverse spectre of the Old Testament voices. When Bonhoeffer focuses on »who Christ actually is for us today«, or how central concepts of Christian soteriology such as »repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, sanctification« are to be interpreted »in a worldly sense« - and that means to him: »in the Old Testament sense« - then he does not read the Old Testament any longer with the lenses of a fixed Christology, as he has done for long in the shadow of Barth. Rather, he anticipates the basic insight of the later Jewish-Christian dialogue that the New Testament is essentially related to the Old Testament and Christianity thus stays dependent on Judaism and its truth.

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