Bonhoeffer's Two-Kingdoms Thinking in 'The Church and the Jewish Question'
Christ, Church and World: New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics, edited by Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 141–60
27 Pages Posted: 20 Jan 2016
Date Written: 2016
Abstract
Although it has been claimed that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's controversial 1933 essay on "The Church and the Jewish Question" is riddled with inconsistencies, I argue that the essay is entirely consistent at least on the issue of church action with respect to the state. Seeing this requires recognizing that the essay is driven by the logic of the two kingdoms, that Lutheran way of understanding God's action in two dimensions of life, the spiritual and temporal.
Keywords: Bonhoeffer, Luther, Lutheran theology, two kingdoms, political theology, anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism, church and state, Third Reich
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