Several books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and political theology will be published this spring. We asked four of the authors to tell us about their books by responding briefly to the question, “What does Dietrich Bonhoeffer contribute to political theology today?”
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1. Valentin Jeutner is Associate Professor of Law at Lund University and a Lecturer in Law at Pembroke College, Oxford. The paperback edition of his book The Sovereign Human Being: Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Responsible Decision-Making will be published on May 28, 2026.
Two of Bonhoeffer’s most significant and enduring contributions are the insights that ethical behaviour requires decision making and that decision-making entails responsibility. The first insight reflects the view that there is no catalogue of ethical norms that furnishes ready-made answers to the questions of our particular time and situation. Existing norms may serve as a starting point, but we must decide how they apply and relate to the challenges that confront us today. While many political actors of our time do not shy away from making decisions, Bonhoeffer’s argument that decision making inevitably entails responsibility, and even guilt, is often overlooked. Any genuine decision presupposes that there are good reasons to decide one way or another; that there are some interests that a decision protects and others it impairs. As Bonhoeffer rightly points out, every decision inevitably harms certain interests, and therefore no one can emerge ethically unscathed from the process of decision making. This insight ought to humble decision makers of our time and prompt them to act with conscience, caution, and an acute awareness of the cost of every decision they make.
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2. Claire Hein Blanton is an Adjunct Lecturer at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. She received her Ph.D. in theology from the University of Aberdeen. Her book Between Resistance and Submission: Bonhoeffer, Luther, and Christian Witness as Political Theology will be published on May 14, 2026.
From where I live in Texas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is boiled down to a single point in his life: his association with the assassination plot to kill Adolf Hitler. This is unfortunate at best and dangerous at worst. Those close to me often text pictures of restaurants, churches, and billboards which proudly display “the” Bonhoeffer quote written by Eric Metaxas and erroneously attributed to Bonhoeffer: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” While the sentiment resonates with those familiar with Bonhoeffer’s works, it is dangerous to distill Bonhoeffer’s theology to that brief period of his life. The rendering of Bonhoeffer as a renegade theologian turned would-be-assassin weaponizes and equates his political theology in complicated and nonsensical ways. How do we engage him responsibly? Is there still room for Bonhoeffer’s political theology outside of this characterization?
Yes.
When read within their historical moment, Bonhoeffer’s works reveal a deep political theology beginning in 1932 and developing through his arrest in 1943. He does not level grandiose attacks on policy with which Christians disagree. Bonhoeffer has far too nuanced a belief in Luther’s ontology of church and state to suspend obedience to the state outside of very, very limited ways. In “The Church and the Jewish Question” (1933), he calls upon the church to put a spoke in the wheel of injustice. Yet he never defines what that would look like aside from it being an apocalyptic failure of the state. He echoes this in “Theological Position Paper on State and Church” (c.1941). The state has a right to demand obedience. When, and only when, the state enacts a law that forces the Christian to abandon some essential part of their beliefs – then the individual Christian accepts the consequences of disobedience to act in a limited fashion against limited laws. Direct action by the church is disallowed. Christians disobey in limited fashions; they do not rebel or revolt. His vision leaves very little room for sweeping activism. He simply can’t be used as a theologian of revolution.
Where Bonhoeffer becomes critical for political theology is in his Ethics. This work rejects casuistry. Following rules doesn’t make one “good.” Rather, Christians are commanded to model Christ’s love toward the neighbor. To do so involves risk to the Christian and demands faith in God’s mercy when love transgresses ethical norms.
Love is political in the Third Reich. It remains political today. This, I suggest, is the most faithful and politically responsible way to read Bonhoeffer’s political theology today: not as a model for Christian grandstanding or ideological combat, but as a witness to a form of political engagement rooted in humility, neighbor‑care, and sacrificial love of Christ. Bonhoeffer invites Christians to imagine political action shaped not by power or outrage but by love. Change comes, in his theology, by the cross—not by the rioting crowd.
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3. Kristopher Norris received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and previously taught at Wesley Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary. He currently serves as Vice President of the Alliance of Baptists denomination. His book Virtue and Liberation in the Ethics of Bonhoeffer was published on February 19, 2026.
At a time when he found all other white theologians useless for the work of liberation, James Cone continued to appeal to Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an ally for liberation theology. Likewise, Stanley Hauerwas wrote an entire book on Bonhoeffer as a figure central to his own postliberal theology. These two theologians broadly represent the most significant contemporary threads of Christian ethics and political theology. And both employ Bonhoeffer to advance their ostensibly incommensurable projects of postliberalism and liberation.
My book Virtue and Liberation in the Ethics of Bonhoeffer argues that Bonhoeffer’s contribution to political theology today is to serve as a practical bridge between postliberal and liberation theologies. The book then provides analyses of ethical issues that emerge from applying this interpretative lens to his work.
To be clear, Bonhoeffer criticized many of the key concepts of both postliberal and liberation theologies. The latter confuses the penultimate kingdom with the ultimate, which he calls the “compromise” position, and the former over-emphasizes the distinction of the ultimate and the temporal, the “radical” or sectarian position. For him, both positions rely on a dualistic framework that rejects the unity of reality in Christ. Yet, I contend that Bonhoeffer’s theology resonates with both postliberal and liberation theologies. He thus contributes constructive and practical resources for advancing the field of political theology beyond an impasse between the poles of tradition and liberation, minds and bodies, virtues and results.
Bonhoeffer’s thought resonates with postliberal virtue ethics through its focus on the visibility of the church community, his Christological identification of the church as “Christ-existing-as community,” and his ethical focus on formation—akin to an ethics of communal character development. His thought foreshadows the commitments of liberation theology by “seeing history … from below” and granting epistemic privilege to the oppressed, as well as in his identification of Christ and the Christian as fundamentally “for others.”
In other ways his thought uncovers commonalities between the approaches. With both, he shares a nonfoundationalism; reflecting Hauerwas and Cone, Bonhoeffer insists, “Knowledge cannot be separated from the existence in which it was acquired.” His crucial concept of responsibility anticipates both the turn toward formation in postliberalism and the attention to concrete reality in liberation theologies. It also prefigures the focus on particularity and contextuality in both threads. At its best, Bonhoeffer’s account of responsibility avoids abstraction and emphasizes the concrete and bodily behavior of humans. At times, however, as Katie Cannon recognized, Bonhoeffer’s tendency to identify suffering in abstract and universalized terms—as discipleship itself—is in tension with his attention to concrete reality, failing to recognize the experience of those who have no choice but to suffer.
Bonhoeffer suggests a common preference for a form of virtue ethics, or an ethics of formation, that serves both postliberals and liberationists. While liberation theology does not often draw upon virtue ethics, my book explores the work of feminist and womanist theologians who employ virtue ethics to arrive at an ethics of responsibility that underlines their focus on the liberation or survival of the oppressed. Practically, my book argues that the work of faith-based community organizing encompasses this nexus of virtue and liberation and serves as a contemporary model of Bonhoeffer’s political theology in action.
Bonhoeffer recognizes the ways consequentialism, deontology, and quandary ethics fail to account for human limitation and moral uncertainty, and he offers a model of virtue ethics suited to creating communities of character Christologically formed to exist for the sake of others and their liberation. We might see Bonhoeffer’s political theology as illuminating a way of formation into a community of responsibility to and for others as a means of resistance to systems that suppress human liberation, especially for the marginalized.
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4. Hassan Musa received his Ph.D. from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and currently teaches at Jos ECWA Theological Seminary in Nigeria. His book Being a Disciple in a World Come of Age: A Reflection on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology will be published on May 29, 2026.
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:16
Dietrich Bonhoeffer believes that peace must be dared in a conflict-stricken and desperate world like ours, in which we live today. All over the world today there is the question of peace against war and any act of violence. In my book Being a Disciple in a World Come of Age, I present the theology of discipleship as put forth by Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer’s theology of discipleship is a call to costly grace rather than cheap grace. This is a theology of love, obedience, and freedom in Jesus Christ. Chapter 5 of my book focuses on the promises of Jesus to be present with his disciples in this suffering world even in his physical absence. This calls for faith and hope in the presence of a desperate and even persecuting world. The disciples of Christ are called to love and obey Jesus. This must be done on the path of peace; retaliation and violence must be rejected.
Bonhoeffer was a theologian of responsibility and Christian discipleship. All believers in Jesus are called to live in the light and blessedness of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lived not for himself but for us, for all humanity. Through such life he reconciles us to God. Bonhoeffer believes in the church for others in the same way that Jesus Christ was not for himself but for others.
Today, in the midst of the suffering and killings in the Gulf States, the violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, between United States of America and Iran, between Israel and Iran, between Russia and Ukraine, between different smaller states and regions in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland, Niger, Mali, and the townships of South Africa, and on the streets and ghettos of United States, just to mention these few, there is still hope for peace. Peace is not just the absence of war or hostility between nations but the actual experience of reconciliation among people. This can be done only in the creative and justifying peace of Jesus (Rom. 5:1-2; 8:1). God in Jesus Christ has forgiven us so that we, too, may forgive, so that God can, through us, reconcile the world in God (2 Cor. 5:20, 21).
Bonhoeffer believes that peace must be dared. Yes, we must dare to speak of peace and to work for peace. The path of peace is the receiving and giving of the gift of God’s grace and love. This is the sacrificial life of Jesus Christ. True peace in the midst of social, ethnic, political, and religious conflicts is possible when we do not live for ourselves but for God. And in living for God we live for others in love and forgiveness.
