Bonhoeffer's Non-Commitment to Nonviolence: A Response to Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas's claim that Bonhoeffer had a “commitment to nonviolence” runs aground on Bonhoeffer's own statements about peace, war, violence, and nonviolence. The fact that Hauerwas and others have asserted Bonhoeffer's commitment to nonviolence despite abundant evidence to the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of religious ethics
Main Author: DeJonge, Michael P. 1978- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2016]
In: Journal of religious ethics
Further subjects:B Stanley Hauerwas
B Pacifism
B Dietrich Bonhoeffer
B Lutheran
B Nonviolence
B Anabaptist
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Stanley Hauerwas's claim that Bonhoeffer had a “commitment to nonviolence” runs aground on Bonhoeffer's own statements about peace, war, violence, and nonviolence. The fact that Hauerwas and others have asserted Bonhoeffer's commitment to nonviolence despite abundant evidence to the contrary reveals a blind spot that develops from reading Bonhoeffer's thinking in general and his statements about peace in particular as if they were part of an Anabaptist theological framework rather than his own Lutheran one. This essay shows that Bonhoeffer's understanding of peace as “concrete commandment” and “order of preservation” relies on Lutheran concepts and is articulated with explicit contrast to an Anabaptist account of peace. The interpretation developed here can account for the range of statements Bonhoeffer makes about peace, war, violence, and nonviolence, many of which must be misconstrued or ignored to claim his “commitment to nonviolence.”
ISSN:1467-9795
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jore.12146