Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Repudiation of Protestant German War Theology

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a revolutionary in two senses. Obviously, his role in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, when it was discovered, stamped him as a political revolutionary. Beyond that, however, Bonhoeffer was a theological revolutionary in that he repudiated and refuted the prevailing Lutheran‐Hegelian‐Rankean Geschichtsbild, i.e., image of German history, that had become paradigmatic for his class, the so‐called Bildungsbürgertum, the highly educated upper middle class. Central to this image was the idea of the Creator God as essentially a “warrior” God who realized the history of salvation via the power struggles of nation states. Bonhoeffer, in his confrontation with the Third Reich, came to the conclusion that its evil triumph had a great deal to do with the image of history that underpinned it. This article traces the evolution of the doctrine of the Power State rooted as it was in Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms or realms, and shows how Bonhoeffer via his reflections expressed in the fragments known as Ethics, overturned that doctrine and thereby wrought an intellectual‐historical achievement of immense significance not only for Germany, but also for the modern world.     

Poetic Theology: Paul and Form

ABSTRACT

The article offers a reading of the letters of Paul in relation to their interpretation by a number of figures – Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou. It traces the persistence of an economy of terms in Paul, in relation to the part and the whole, death and life, spirit and the flesh, and others, to argue that this economy morphs and transforms itself in the modern world, imparting and imposing a sociality of living and dying, a coercive distribution and withholding of violence in colonization, on a global scale. And this paper argues, at the same time, that the economy of terms Paul’s letters advance is interrupted, that it comes undone, and that, in this coming undone, the theological becomes poetic – that the letters if Paul teach us to read what may be called “poetic theology.”     

耶稣与犹太教嬗变

在犹太民族的信念里,他们受到耶和华上帝的特殊眷顾,因此,先知们不断强调以色列的救世主即将降临人世,惩恶扬善,为正直善良的人提供一个和平、公正、仁爱的王国。犹太教不是一体一元信仰,经过传承沿革变得支派众多,基督教是这众多支派中的一支。耶稣基督以救世为使命,与其门徒矢志传教获得信众,基督教自身发扬犹太教教义并接受希腊—罗马文化的影响,后来脱离了犹太教演变成世界性宗教。     

Speculative Realism and Public Theology: Explorations

Abstract

The paper argues that ideas emanating from the speculative realists can inform a new approach to public theology, one that is broadly consistent with Christian realism and opposed to that of radical orthodoxy. Linking the two disciplines through an exploration of the ethical consequences of speculative realism, it takes in particular the work of Latour, his concept of the "gathering," his distinction between matters of fact and matters of concern, and his questioning of the fact-value distinction, and through a lived example shows how the language of human and non-human offers a critique of reductionist approaches to the political.     

Chipko Legacies: Sustaining an Ecological Ethic in the Context of Agrarian Change

Abstract

During the 1970s, the Chipko movement mobilised popular opposition to commercial forestry in the Indian Himalaya. Today, the legacy of this movement remains contentious. For some, it was a successful environmental movement, which led to the protection of natural resources. For others, it has stalled development in the region, preventing the creation of much-needed employment opportunities. This article engages with this contentious legacy and evaluates the ongoing relevance of Chipko in the region. It does this by presenting a case study of a Chipko-inspired seed conservation movement, the Beej Bachao Andolan (Save the Seeds Movement, BBA), which has attempted to sustain Gandhian and ecological values in the region by promoting ecologically sensitive, bottom-up village development. While BBA has been effective in mobilising people against threats to subsistence agriculture, local people remain ambivalent about aspects of its core message, which are not seen to offer solutions to growing local challenges, such as climate change and out-migration. The successes and failures of BBA point to the complex and contradictory position of farmers in the Indian Himalaya and the extent to which Gandhian and ecological values remain relevant to them in the context of agrarian change.     

Liberation Theology and Zombies: Paralysis and Praxis

In Fredric Jameson's formulation it may now be “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” What Jameson suggests is that our current preoccupation with the drama of the apocalyptic belies a deeper paralysis of the imagination, and with this the concomitant loss of actions conducive to a new politics. Jameson's comments here foreground a contradiction in our experience of late capitalism, representations of dramatic rupture which obscure fundamental political stasis. This paper takes Jameson's reflections and the contradiction of action which is also non-action as the point of departure to query the current state of Liberation Theology, particularly the work of Ivan Petrella, to defend the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, and ask how our contemporary predicament might be illuminated by Danny Boyle's zombie film, 28 Days Later.