2. The Task of Public Theology: Taking on Responsibility for the Common Good
Bonhoeffer answered this call for responsibility, not only in his own life, through concrete activities, but also by contributing to the development of a theological ethics of responsibility, with a focus not on Church ethics, but on the question of how Christian ethics can contribute to t he common good. He does so most thoroughly in Ethics , his magnum opus , a collection of manuscripts which remained unpublished at the time of his death. In that work, he spells out his ethics of responsibility most concretely in his two manuscripts on “History and Good.” In his manuscript “Histo ry and Good [1]” Bonhoeffer describes the aim of Christian ethics to relate to what he calls “. . . the historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] of human existence .” 12 Living among others automatically comes with responsibility, Bonhoeffer says: “The moment a person accepts responsibility for other people—and only in so doing does the person live in reality—the genuine ethical situation arises. This is really something different from the abstract way in which people usually seek to come to terms with the ethical problem.” 13
What exactly does Bonhoeffer say here? The first part of the quotation, that ethics arises from people accepting responsibility for one another, may simply be a definition of ethics as such. But for Bonhoeffer this is not the case—in the second part of his quotation, he contrasts responsibility with the abstract approach to ethical problems that he says is usually chosen. He refers here to the standard theories of ethics that dominated in Germany at that time, especially the deontological approach, which (in its autonomous
12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 220, italics original.
13 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 221.
form) was developed by Immanuel Kant. In this approach to ethics, deliberation takes place at a distance from lived reality—ethics concerns itself with formulating principles to be applied to reality. These principles must be tested by means of the categorical imperative. This is a formal ethical approach, which was unfit to adequately engage the unique historical situation. 14
Bonhoeffer argues that in taking responsibility, one acts freely, as well as in response to one’s bond to both other human beings and to God. True freedom, Bonhoeffer argues, can only be exercised in responsibility. He works this out most fully in the second manuscript: “History an d Good [2],” in which he speaks about the “structure of responsible life.” 15 There, he introduces what in an earlier publication I have called his “matrix of responsibility,” 16 consisting of four dimensions: 1) vicarious representative action, 2) accordance with reality, 3) the willingness to take on guilt, and 4) the venture of concrete decision. In what follows, I will use these four dimensions as a heuristic device, outlining the contours of responsibility ethics as a way forward in public theology by indicating how they contribute to a number of contemporary discussions.
2.1 Vicarious Representative Action: Challenging Patriarchalism in Environmental Ethics
The first dimension is that of vicarious representative action ( Stellvertretung ). This is a foundational dimension of responsibility, Bonhoeffer argues; it speaks to the fact that we are not isolated individuals, but that a human being—any human being—as he says it “. . . incorporates the sel ves of several people in his own self. Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible.” 17 We are all, inescapably,
14 This inadequacy has been commented upon, among others, by Joshua Halberstam, “From Kant to Auschwitz,” Social Theory and Practice 14, no. 1 (1988): 41–54.
15 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 257.
16 Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Leadership and the Ethics of Responsibility: An Engagement with Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Challenges of Moral Leadership, ed. Patrick Nullens and Steven C. van den Heuvel, Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics 2 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 111–125.
17 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 258.
responsible. 18 We are members of families, inhabitants of a particular town or village, citizens of a nation, members of a church community or other communities, and in these webs of relationality we take on responsibility— we vote, we care, we work, we worship. 19 As concrete shapes, or examples of this enmeshed living Bonhoeffer mentions the example of a father, acting on behalf of his family—and that of a statesman, acting on behalf of his country.
But responsibility is not for the powerful only; Bonhoeffer asserts that every human being, even the most isolated one, is essentially responsible. He invokes the example of Jesus, writing:
The fact that Jesus lived without the particular responsibility of a marriage, a family, and a vocation does not at all remove him from the domain of responsibility. Instead, it shows all the more clearly his responsibility and his vicarious representative action for all human beings. . . . Jesus—the life, our life—the Son of God who becam e human, lived as our vicarious representative. Through him, therefore, all human life is in its essence vicarious representation. 20
Living in vicarious responsibility is to strike the right balance, Bonhoeffer says; it is the art of neither absolutizing yourself or the oth er person— because through that absolutization, responsibility is lost. 21 Instead, responsibility is the careful, difficult negotiation between justified interests, both of myself and those of others. He emphasizes that it is also possible to bear responsibility for things, or states of affairs. In this regard, one can think for example of a statesman being responsible for peace, or the maintenance of the status quo .
18 Considering the foundational nature of Stellvertretung in Bonhoeffer’s theology, it is important to note that Ethics is not the first place in which Bonhoeffer develops his thinking on vicarious representation. Instead, it has its roots already in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, and has been a theme in his theology since. On this background, see Van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 209–214.
19 This relational background to the concept of vicarious representation has a strong foundation in Bonhoeffer’s innovative theological anthropology, developed elsewhere in his works. In his lectures on Creation and Fall, discussing Gen. 1:26vv, the locus classicus of the imago Dei, Bonhoeffer argues that we are to understand this as an analogia relationis, instead of as an analogia entis. This relational understanding has become an important contribution to theological anthropology in the second part of the twentieth century. See for more on this Van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 130–142.
20 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 258.
21 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 259.
Bonhoeffer’s
Vicarious representation is a cornerstone in the ethical theology of Bonhoeffer, 22 and it has attracted a lot of study. 23 Bonhoeffer’s account of how vicarious representation—as the foundation of an ethics of responsibility—is based on Christ as the vicarious representative is a good example of how he seeks to combine a starting point with the pr imacy of Christ with an openness to reality as we live and experience it. God’s revelation in Christ is not alien to, nor disconnected from our world; rather, it reveals the true essence of our human lives, created as we are in the image of God. 24 It confirms us in our web of relationality, and declares as sin the denial of that, through—among other things—the violent “othering” of our fellow human beings. As such, this concept is an excellent example of a public theological contribution. As William Schweiker puts it, in his important study on Responsibility and Christian Ethics: “. . . Bonhoeffer’s point holds even if we bracket his ecclesial and Christological claim s.”25 As such it holds great promise for an interdisciplinary dialogue. This is attested to by Brian Gregor, who writes that, “[f]rom the perspective of contemporary
22 Friederike Barth calls it a Strukturprinzip (ET: “structural principle”), in her important study on Bonhoeffer’s Ethics—see Friederike Barth, Die Wirklichkeit des Guten: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ‘Ethik’ und ihr philosophisher Hintergrund, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 156 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 248. 23 Major studies on this subject have been conducted by Hans Friedrich Daub, Die Stellvertretung Jesu Christi: Ein Aspekt des Gott-Mensch-Verhältnisses bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Berlin: Lit, 2006) and by Cristiano Massimo Parisi, La Stellvertretung in Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Cristo e la condizione dell’uomo chiamato a esistere con/per gli altri, Collana di Teologia 86 (Rome: Città Nuova, 2016). For other important interpretive work, see Karl-Heinz Menke, Stellvertretung: Schlüsselbegriff christlichen Lebens und theologische Grundkategorie, Samlung Horizonte, Neue Folge 29 (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1991), 207–219; Heinrich Ott, “Der Begriff der Stellvertretung,” in Zum theologischen Erbe Dietrich Bonhoeffers, vol. 1 of Wirklichkeit und Glaube (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 186–192; Jørgen Glenthøj, “Der unbegreiflich hohe Gedanke der Stellvertretung,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Beten und Tun des Gerechten – Glaube und Verantwortung im Widerstand, ed. Rainer Mayer and Peter Zimmerling (Gieβen: Brunnen Verlag, 1997), 48–61; An Il Kang, “Stellvertretung,” in “Von der ‘Nachfolge’ zur ‘Ethik der Verantwortung’: Die entwicklung des ethischen denkens Dietrich Bonhoeffers” (PhD diss., Ruhr-Universität, 2008), 150–152; and Will Fredstrom, “Bonhoeffer’s Stellvertretung: A Christ-Like Ecclesial Ethic for Serving ‘Galilean’ Neighbors,” Word & World 43, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 166–174.
24 As Christiane Tietz-Steiding puts it: “Der Entwurf der Verantwortungsethik bei Bonhoeffer ist eine dezidierte Beziehungsethik, die in Bezogenheit auf Jesus Christus hin und von ihm her ihren tiefsten Grund hat. Insofern die sittliche Person in der Begegnung mit Jesus Christus die von ihm angesprochene Person ist, gründet alles nachfolgende Handeln nicht im Individualwillen der Person, sondern in Jesus Christus selbst.” Christiane Tietz-Steiding, Bonhoeffers Kritik der verkrümmten Vernunft: Eine erkenntnistheoretische Üntersuchung, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 112 (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1999), 225.
25 William Schweiker, Responsibility and Christian Ethics, New Studies in Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 57. The same point is made by Larry Rasmussen, who writes: “Bonhoeffer has shifted the emphasis from the qualitative difference between Christ’s deputyship and a man’s doing good for his neighbour to the daily Christian and non-Christian life as a life that intimately partakes of Christ’s deputyship at every turn and in a multitude of even unavoidable ways.” Larry L. Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 40, italics original.
philosophy, one of the most interesting aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought is his claim that the self is constituted in ethical responsibility for the other person [ Andere ].” 26
Many parallels to other thinkers—both theological and non-theol ogical—can be mentioned here. One such parallel is with the thought of Iris Murdoch, who argued that moral reality is constituted by the presence of other people. She sees it as each person’s moral duty to overcome what she calls the “fat, relentless ego.” 27 Other parallels can be mentioned as well. Hans Ulrich, for example, has noted a similarity between Bonhoeffer and Immanuel Levinas. 28 Important to mention as well is a surprising connection to a central concept in African philosophy, namely that of ubuntu , which can be summarized in the saying “I am because we are.” 29
Yet critical questions can be asked about Bonhoeffer’s assertion that responsibility is based on vicarious representation. 30 In my dissertation I have treated the concept quite extensively, also discussing various criticisms of it. 31 I will not repeat that discussion here but will instead focus on a critical question which has become important for me in the peri od since writing my dissertation. That question comes from the perspective of the critical ethics of care, from which vantage point we can ask about the
26 Brian E. Gregor, “Bonhoeffer’s ‘Christian Social Philosophy’: Conscience, Alterity, and the Moment of Ethical Responsibility,” in Bonhoeffer and Continental Thought: Cruciform Philosophy, ed. Brian E. Gregor and Jens Zimmermann (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 201, italics original.
27 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1970), 52.
28 Hans Ulrich, “The Form of Ethical Life,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 289–305, esp. 299. Others have noted the parallel between Bonhoeffer and Levinas as well. See for example Brian E. Gregor, “Shame and the Other: Bonhoeffer and Lévinas on Human Dignity and Ethical Responsibility,” in Ontology and Ethics: Bonhoeffer and Contemporary Scholarship, ed. Adam C. Clark, Michael G. Mawson, and Clifford J. Green (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013), 72–85. Another parallel has been drawn between Bonhoeffer’s concept of Stellvertretung and the thinking of Edith Stein. See Samuel Randall, “Suffering as an Ecumenical Paradigm in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Edith Stein,” Theologica Wratislaviensia 11 (2016): 125–143.
29 This parallel between Bonhoeffer’s relational anthropology and African philosophy has been developed in depth by my Malawian doctoral student Godwins Lwinga, in his dissertation. See Godwins Lwinga, “Addressing Corruption: The Ethics of uMunthu and of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Resources for a Responsibility-Based Anti-Corruption Approach in Malawi” (PhD diss., Evangelische Theologische Faculteit Leuven, 2023).
30 Ann Nickson writes that “. . . this concept of vicarious action or deputyship in Bonhoeffer’s ethics . . . has been subjected to the most vehement criticism.” Ann L. Nickson, “Freedom and Responsibility,” in Bonhoeffer and Freedom: Courageously Grasping Reality, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 132.
31 See Van den Heuvel, “Some Key Criticisms of the Concept of Vicarious Representation,” in Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 218–222. ‘Who
power dynamics of vicarious representative action. Because who are we to presume to act “for” others, and how do we even know that our actions are for their benefit, and not for ours? Does the danger of a cover t or even overt paternalism present itself here?
This is a justified question. With regards to Bonhoeffer’s account of vicarious representation, my answer to it would be a qualified “no.” It is a “no” because Bonhoeffer, prior to writing about vicarious representation, became intimately acquainted with the perspective of the downtrodden, in various ways. At first primarily through his friendships and his many travels, later through his own experiences as he began to experience life “from below,” in the dark days of the Nazi regime. In the essay “After Ten Years” he writes: “It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” 32 This experience colors and qualifies his ethics of responsibility in important ways. He became aware, for example, of the injustices of racial discrimination in the segregated South of the United States when he visited there in the early 1930s. 33 This awareness had implications for his theology as well. The Ethics -manuscript “Ethics as Formation” contains a powerful invocation to see human beings as they are, not as ideal types. He says: “God loves human beings. . . . . Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are . . . . What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.” 34
32 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 52.
33 On this see, among others, Joel Looper, Bonhoeffer’s America: A Land without Reformation (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021); and Gary Dorrien, “Bonhoeffer in North America,” in Mawson and Ziegler, The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 24–38.
34 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 84. Despite this moving emphasis, it can still be asked if Bonhoeffer was critical enough of his own privilege, and aware of the paternalism with which, for example, he treated women. On this topic, see, among others, Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016). Another critical reading of Bonhoeffer is offered by Anthony B. Pinn, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Discipleship,” in Beyond the Pale: Reading Ethics from the Margins, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Miguel A. De La Torre (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 137–144.
Having addressed this important point, I like to address a further question, namely how Bonhoeffer’s relational anthropology, ethically expressed as vicarious representation, can be of concrete value to us today. One specific context in which I like to answer that question is that of the ecological crisis. It has often been remarked how much this crisis is related to the social crisis. Understanding just how much the exploitation of the planet and the exploitation of people interlink has been a crucial task since the early days of the environmental movement and is commented on by writers from left to right. 35 It finds poignant expression in Kate Raworth’s proposal for doughnut economics, for example, in which she demonstrates how the overshoot of planetary boundaries corresponds to social injustices.
36
This is an insight that Christians have constructively contributed to. One important historical instance in this regard has been the work of the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ on “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States,” published in 1987, in which they demonstrate how toxic waste dumps in the US tended to be locate d in areas where the population consisted of a majority of Afro-Americans.37 It also finds expression in the World Council of Churches’ conciliar process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation . This line of research continues today. It for example finds powerful expression in Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, in which he writes: “The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation.” 38
35 In an earlier publication, I have shown how Bonhoeffer’s relational anthropology is used to support arguments from the tradition of socialist ecology—in the same publication, I argue that this anthropology can also be used to support arguments for conservative ecology. See Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Political Ecology and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Different Interpreting Strategies,” in Engaging Bonhoeffer in a Global Era: Christian Belief, Witness, Service, ed. Christoph Ramstein, Christiane Tietz, and Philip G. Ziegler, Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie 117 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2023), 349–365.
36 Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2017).
37 Commission for Racial Justice, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” (United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 1987).
38 Francis, Laudato Si’ (Vatican City: Vatican, 2015), 33.
Bonhoeffer’s concept of vicarious representation can have an important and rather unique role in addressing this interplay of social and ecological problems. Other than helping point to the fundamental situatedness of human beings in a network of relationships (which is something that many other authors recognize as well), it also invites us to reflect critically on the question of who should act vicariously for whom. If we recognize an important reason for the interrelated problems of social injustice and environmental degradation lying in Western individualism, and in the Cartesian chasm between subject and object, which radically “ot hers” nature, then from the perspective of vicarious representation we need someone to “step in,” teaching us to adopt a different approach. Recognizing the failings of a Western approach, we should let non-Western, holistic approaches “act vicariously,” demonstrating alternatives in which human and non-human communities can live together sustainably. 39
Stimulating examples of such important reversals can be found, across the world. One example comes from Canada, where a “truth and reconciliation” process has taken place around the horrendous treatment of indigenous people, from the time when the nation was colonized by European settlers, onwards. As part of this process, fresh negotiations have taken place on the management of the unceded territories in British Columbia—land that was stolen from the original population, the Inuit and Métis people. This gives room for innovation, whereby indigenous practices in the management of sea otters are being adopted, in a program entitled the Indigenous Guardians Program .
These indigenous practices entail keeping sea otters out of cer tain areas, through hunting, but also encouraging them to flourish in other areas. This active engagement between human beings and sea otters was a very important part of how these ecosystems were operating and its
39 There is a growing body of literature on this. See, for example, Melissa K. Nelson and Dan Shilling, eds., Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Heather L. Burns, “Transformative Sustainability Pedagogy: Learning from Ecological Systems and Indigenous Wisdom,” Journal of Transformative Education 13, no 3 (2015): 259–276; and Tyler D. Jessen, Natalie C. Ban, Nicholas XEMŦOLTW Claxton, and Chris T Darimont, “Contributions of Indigenous Knowledge to Ecological and Evolutionary Understanding,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 20, no. 1 (March 2022): 69–132.
renewed adoption helps in the remarkable restoration of the sea otter population. That is a crucial development, which will lead to more kelp forests, subsequently leading to a greater diversity of life. As the Canadian government notes: “When local people are empowered to manage and restore forests, forests are more resilient with positive impacts on biodiversity and socio-economic benefits for the communities.”40 This is an example of how a chastened understanding of vicarious representation, which appropriates the view “from below,” can help address the interlink between ecological and social problems—this most urgent contemporary ethical task. Further developing this understanding of vicariou s representation as a dimension of an ethics of responsibility will be an important goal in our research group, in the coming years. 41
2.2 Action in Accordance with Reality: Recognizing Hope as a Moral Emotion
The second dimension of Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility is the emphasis he places on engagement with reality as it is ( Wirklichkeitsgemäβheit ). As he puts it: “The attention of responsible people is directed to concrete neighbors in their concrete reality.” 42 This showcases the subtle but important difference in perspective of an ethics of responsibility, in distinction with other ethical theories. In responsibility ethics, theory does not come first. As we already saw in the quotations with which I opened my lecture, for Bonhoeffer ethics is not primarily about principles that are to be tested by means of either the divine commandments (in theonomous ethics), or by
40 Natural Resources Canada, https://natural-resources.canada.ca/home/biodiversity-conservationand-indigenous-peoples-well-being/24801 (last accessed August 8, 2024). I learned about this fascinating example from the Canadian environmental ethicist and hope researcher Elin Kelsey, with whom I am fortunate to work closely. In an interview I conducted with her, she remarked: “. . . people who have been highly marginalized become important actors. I consider this to be a profoundly hopeful shift. From people who have been driven out through violence, we are relearning ways that we have inhabited before.”
41 In this regard there has been a development in my own thinking. When I wrote my dissertation, I already recognized the value of Bonhoeffer’s concept of vicarious representations for ecological ethics (see Van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 237–241), but I didn’t yet link it with critical theory.
42 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 261.
Bonhoeffer’s
the categorical imperative (in autonomous ethics). Nor is it ab out individual virtuousness that predicts certain responses. As he writes about those acting responsibly: “Their behavior is not fixed in advance once and for all by a principle, but develops together with the given situation. They do not have at their disposal an absolutely valid principle that they have to enforce fanatically against any resistance from reality. Instead, they seek to understand and do what is necessary or ‘commanded’ in a given situation.”43 Bonhoeffer thus shifts the primacy away from theory, and towards the concrete situation, in which an ethical demand arises. 44 A final, important quote from Bonhoeffer in this regard: “For those who act responsibly, the given situation is not merely treated as the raw material on which they want to impose and imprint their idea or program, but instead it is included in their action as the formation of the act itself.” 45
Here, as elsewhere, the context of resistance against National Socialism forms an important key to understanding Bonhoeffer’s thoughts. He was deeply aware of the fact that statements that are factually true can be used in a way that is contrary to their intention. For example, the Deutsche Christen used the theological concept of “creation order” to justify phenomena like class struggle and warfare as part of the “natural” order. 46 Will a focus on being “in accord with reality” offer the help we need, though? Does the danger not loom here of the naturalistic fallacy, whereby we can sanction any course of action by pointing to its existence “in reality?” Bonhoeffer is aware of this danger, and he guards against it. Specifically, he warns against
43 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 261.
44 Someone who made a deep study of Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the “real” is André Dumas, in his important book Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Une Théologie de Réalité (Geneve: Labor et Fides, 1986). He writes that for Bonhoeffer, “La tâche de l’éthique consiste non pas à exhorter à partir du divorce entre le devoir et le reel, mais à decrier ce qui dans la réalité est commandement concret de Dieu. L’éthique est le compte rendu ontologique du monde, où Dieu ordonne et non la predication métaphysique d’un Dieu extérieur au monde . . . .” Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 138.
45 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 261.
46 This has been done, for example, by Paul Althaus, Theologie der Ordnungen, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935). For more on this, see Robert P. Erickson, Theologians under Hitler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), esp. 98–104; and Van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 94–96.
a Nietzschean attitude of “surrender” to the facts, whereby an appeal to the demands of the situation can justify any course of action. 47
In this regard, there has been an important development in Bonhoeffer’s thinking about taking reality seriously. Earlier in his career, when he was doing his vicariate in Barcelona, in 1929, he gave a series of lectures on Christian ethics, entitled “Basic Questions of a Christian Ethi cs.” 48 There, too, he remarks that we cannot speak in a general way about questions of good and bad. But there he goes on to argue that
Ethics is a matter of blood and a matter of history. It did not simply descend to earth from heaven. Rather, it is a child of the earth, and for that reason its face changes with history as well as with the renewal of blood, with the transition between generations. There is a German ethic as well as a French ethic and an American ethic. None is more or less ethical than the other, for all remain bound to history . . . . 49
These remarks by Bonhoeffer about ethics being a matter of blood and history can be read as an endorsement of an ideology of race and nation. Later, in both words and actions, Bonhoeffer clearly distanced himself from such an ideology—but it does invite the question how are we to guard against that kind of ethical aberration. Beneath that is the la rger question of how to guard against both an empiricism and an idealism, when it comes to the question of “reality.”
In his Ethics , Bonhoeffer provides a few guardrails in this regard. First, he emphasizes that “. . . in dealing with things in a way that is appropriate to the subject matter [sachgemäß], it is imperative to keep in vie w that in their
47 As he puts it: “It would be a complete and dangerous misunderstanding to view it as that ‘servile attitude toward the facts’ of which Nietzsche speaks that always retreats from wherever the pressure is greater, that justifies success on principle, and that in any given situation chooses the expedient as being in accord with reality.” Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 261. For a fuller commentary on how Bonhoeffer steers clear of the naturalistic fallacy, see Peter Dabrock, “Reclaiming Bonhoeffer’s Approach to Theological Ethics between Mystery and the Formation of the World,” in Mysteries in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Copenhagen Bonhoeffer Symposium, ed. Kirsten Busch Nielsen, Ulrik Nissen, and Christiane Tietz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 49–80.
48 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, ed. Clifford J. Green, trans. Douglas W. Stott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 10 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2008), 359–378.
49 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 360.
origin, essence, and goal they are related to God and human beings.” 50 This is not an idealistic way of looking at the world, he asserts, b ut instead a faithful recognition of the “. . . original relation to God and human beings. . . .”
51 Second, Bonhoeffer argues that things have an “intrinsic law,” that is to be respected. In explicating these laws, Bonhoeffer makes the point that in areas further removed from human existence—such as mathematics and logic—these laws are more easy to discern than when they are closer to human existence, due to the distorting effects of sin. But however difficult to discern, it is vital for ethics to take into account reality as it presents itself. 52
Placing in context Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on the importance of responsibility ethics being in accordance with reality, we can note several parallels because Bonhoeffer was not breaking new ground in criticizing this abstract approach to ethics. There is, first of all, a link to Nietzsche’s Lebensphilosophie . 53 More directly, in the period 1913–1916, Max Scheler had already published a criticism of, as well as an alternative to, the deontological approach in ethics, in his book Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik: Neuer versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus . 54 For Bonhoeffer, Scheler was a source with whom he interacted, even though he does not ultimately adopt Sc heler’s
50 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 270.
51 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 270.
52 The task is well described by Hans G. Ulrich, who says: “For Bonhoeffer responsibility is . . . a hermeneutic activity, in that dedication to responding to God’s reality is a form of responding to a ‘reality’ that may very well be hidden to the eyes of the ‘others’ to whom one is responding. Reality has to be discovered and attended to and then acted into in the context of the messiness characteristic of the fallen, penultimate world.” Hans G. Ulrich, Transfigured not Conformed: Christian Ethics in a Hermeneutic Key, ed. Brian Brock (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 72. See also Tomi Karttunen, “Die Polyphonie der Wirklichkeit: Erkenntnistheorie und Ontologie in der Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers” (PhD diss., University of Joensuu, 2004).
53 The most thorough study of the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche to date is offered by Nicoletta Capozza, Im Namen der Treue zur Erde: Versuch eines Vergleichs zwischen Bonhoeffers und Nietzsches Denken (Berlin: Lit, 2003).
54 See for a contemporary reprint Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik: Neuer versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus, ed. Christian Bermes, Philosophische Bibliothek 657 (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag für Philosophie, 2014). In this book he argues that the ethical task does not lie in explicating principles that are then to be applied to reality; instead, he argues that ethicists should be receptive to the values that speak to us. In describing these, Scheler utilizes a phenomenological approach. As John Raphael Staude puts it: “. . . Scheler’s phenomenology not only represented a repudiation of scientific rationalism; it was intended to counteract modern man’s tendency to filter his experience through abstract conceptual structures.” John Raphael Staude, Max Scheler 1874‒1928: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 22. Further on, Staude argues that Scheler tried “. . . forcing man to return to the immediacy of his experience prior to its symbolization and conceptualization.” Staude, Max Scheler, 22.
understanding of values. 55 We can also see an interesting parallel to an idea that has been further developed by Emil Brunner, and that is that knowledge that is closer to the Personkern gets more easily corrupted than knowledge that is further removed. 56
This focus on “what is going on” is a crucial hallmark of an ethics of responsibility and forms an important contribution to the field of contemporary ethics. In the decades after the war, this attentiveness to reality was further developed by H. Richard Niebuhr, in his important book The Responsible Self. 57 Like Bonhoeffer, he too rejects a deontological approach, as well as a consequentialist approach to ethics. He defines responsibility ethics as cathekontic ethics; this approach “. . . proceeds in every moment of decision and choice to inquire: ‘What is going on?’” 58 This emphasis also connects with other contemporary developments in ethics that ask for attention to the reality of life as it is actually lived by people, such as the novel attention to the interplay between (theologic al) ethics and
55 This phenomenological approach remains of importance in understanding what is going on. There is continuous and even resurgent interest in this approach, especially in continental Europe. As an example of that, I mention a project we did a few years ago in the Netherlands as a Working Group on Theological Ethics that resulted in an edited volume: Steven C. van den Heuvel, Patrick Nullens, and Angela Roothaan, eds., Theological Ethics and Moral Value Phenomena: The Experience of Values (London: Routledge, 2018).
56 This Brunnerian insight has been competently described and then fruitfully applied to the dialogue between Christian theology and contemporary social theory by Arttu Mäkipää, The Fall of Humankind and Social Progress: Engagements with Emil Brunner, Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies (London: Routledge, 2024).
57 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1999).
58 Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, 60. Writing about Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr’s ethics of responsibility, Robin Lovin notes: “In a world structured by competing systems and ideologies, Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer focused instead on responsible choices in specific contexts. Neither the promise of a new order nor the security of existing institutions receives uncritical endorsement from Christian realism, but the contexts where people actually live their lives provide settings in which all promises and securities can be tested.”
Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 108.
Bonhoeffer’s
ethnography. 59 Furthermore, it connects with the relatively new and fastgrowing interest in moral emotions. 60
One contemporary context in which this emphasis in responsibility ethics on “what is going on” is particularly important concerns the un derstanding of hope as an ethical emotion. There is an increasing attention to hope, which is a good development considering its importance as a crucial human driver. However, the scholarship on hope is often rather one-sided; the positive psychological approach to hope that is exclusively cognitive in its understanding of hope is dominant. According to Charles R. (Rick) Snyder, the father of this approach, hope should be understood primarily in terms of individual resilience. According to him, hope is “. . . a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of succes sful (a) agency (goal-directed energy) and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals).” 61
This approach highlights something important about hope, but it doesn’t do full justice to the phenomenon. Hope is not fully defined by the image of the individual hero who pulls himself out of the quagmire by his own hair; while individual resolve does play a role, hope is just as much a social process of influencing others and being influenced by others—in this regard, “hoping” can also be a more passive process. In the context of The Hope Project, which was mainly supported by the Goldschmeding Foundation, we developed The Hopebarometer , together with the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organisation (EHERO); by means of this instrument for
59 Cf. Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen, eds., Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics (London: Continuum, 2011).
60 The work of Martha C. Nussbaum is important in this regard—see her Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). There is currently quite a lot of attention to moral emotions, also in theological ethics. See for example Ad de Bruijne, Affect en effect: De betekenis van een Bijbelse spiritualiteit voor de christelijke ethiek (Kampen: Kok, 2010). In my own work I have tried to contribute to this research tradition, commenting on the moral evaluation of patriotism from the perspective of Bonhoeffer’s theology (Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Loving ‘Imagined Communities’: A Theological Assessment of the Value of Patriotism,” in Van den Heuvel, Nullens, and Roothaan, Theological Ethics, 165–183). I have also written on the emotion of disgust, seeing no moral value in that emotion. See Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Resisting the Yuck! Factor: The Importance of Dealing with Disgust for Diversity Leadership,” in Increasing Diversity: Loss of Control of Adaptive Identity Construction?, ed. Jack Barentsen, Steven C. van den Heuvel, and Volker Kessler, Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics 5 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 39–51.
61 C. R. Snyder, Lori M Irving, and John R. Anderson, “Hope and Health,” in Handbook of Social and Clinical Psychology: The Health Perspective, ed. C. R. Snyder and Donelson R. Forsyth, Pergamon General Psychology Series 162 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1991), 287.
measuring, we conducted surveys with varying foci, involving a panel to conduct the research. 62
In one such survey, we saw evidence for a correlation between people’s hope and their social connectedness; that is to say that the st ronger and more diverse a person’s social network, the more hopeful he or she is.63 This dynamic can be well-described by means of broaden and build theory as developed by Barbara L. Frederickson. 64 The importance of the social dimension of hope was powerfully illustrated during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a special measurement we performed during the early days of this crisis (May 2020), we found that while the economic exp ectations of people had taken a significant turn for the worse, their trust in others was markedly up—people expressed significantly more trust, not only in their family but also in their neighbors. 65 The importance of this social dimension of hope has been recognized by others as well. 66 It is vital to take this dimension into account, for example in the context of deve lopment economics. 67 The relative neglect of this important social dimension of hope in Western hope research can be criticized from the perspective of Bonhoeffer’s dimension of acting in accordance with reality as representing an inadequacy in understanding a dimension of reality.
62 See https://www.thehopeproject.nl/en/the-hope-barometer-2/ An explanation of the Hopebarometer is offered in Martijn J. Burger, Patrick A. Nullens, Steven C. van den Heuvel, and Emma Pleeging, “Understanding and Measuring Hope: The Interdisciplinary Challenge of the Hope Barometer 1.0,” in Driven by Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue, ed. Steven C. van den Heuvel and Patrick A. Nullens, Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics 6 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 3–19.
63 See Emma Pleeging and Martijn Burger, “Hoopbarometer: Hoop & Inclusiviteit” (December 2019).
64 See Barbara L. Frederickson, “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-andBuild Theory or Positive Emotions,” American Psychologist 56, no. 3 (2001): 218–226.
65 See Emma Pleeging, Indy Wijngaards, and Martijn Burger, “The Hope Barometer: Hoop & Corona” (August 2020), which reports on a survey conducted in May 2020.
66 Psychologists Anthony Scioli and Henri Biller, for example, recognize ‘attachment hope’ as one of the four fundamental drives in human hope. See Anthony Scioli and Henri B. Biller, Hope in the Age of Anxiety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). This insight is similar to the one formulated by Carol J. Farran, Kaye A. Herth, and Judith Popovich, who speak about “the heart of hope,” in this regard. See Carol J. Farran, Kaye A. Herth, and Judith Popovich, Hope and Hopelessness: Critical Clinical Constructs (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
67 On this, see also Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Hope: An Essential Capacity for Human Development,” in Van den Heuvel and Nullens, Driven by Hope, 199–210.
However, while hope may indeed be more than simple self-efficacy— and while paying close attention to the phenomenon may help us in understanding its complexity better—that doesn’t yet mean that hope is a moral good, a virtue. From a philosophical perspective, we can’t simply move from an observation of the importance of hope, as a multifaceted phenomenon, to arguing for its normative goodness without making ourselves guilty of the naturalistic fallacy. Another, related, critical question in this regard is if we are correct to qualify the experience of hope as “good.” Hope may be important to people, but it can be misguide d—are our hopes ultimately well founded? In philosophy, there is a long tradition of pessimism when it comes to this question.
68
A specific context in which both questions become concrete is in relation to the climate crisis. In this context, hope is regularly lambasted as naïve optimism that can blind us to the seriousness of the crisis. Th is has been famously expressed by Greta Thunberg. In an address to world leaders gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in January 2019, she said: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” 69 While Thunberg still sees room for action, others have more fundamentally questioned the rationality of hope at all, in light of the climate crisis; the movement of climate doomism. An example is the American ecologist Guy McPherson, who sees no way to avoid a climate apocalypse, and therefore argues that to become “hope-free” is the best way forward, for what little time remains for humanity. 70
68 There are well-known critical accounts of hope offered by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in this regard. On this, see Roe Fremstedal, “Hope in Nineteenth Century Philosophy,” in The Oxford Compendium of Hope, ed. Anthony Scioli and Steven C. van den Heuvel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
69 Greta Thunberg, “‘I Want You to Panic’: 16-year-old Issues Climate Warning at Davos,” Guardian News, January 25, 2019.
70 See Guy R. McPherson, “Becoming Hope-Free: Parallels Between Death of Individuals and Extinction of Homo Sapiens,” Clinical Psychology Forum 317 (2019): 8–11; Guy R. McPherson, Going Dark, 2nd rev ed. (Frederick, MD: American Star Books, 2019); and Guy R. McPherson, Only Love Remains: Dancing at the Edge of Extinction (New York: Woodthrush Productions, 2019).
But is this darker picture true? It relies on a belief in the tragedy of the common, as famously put forward by Garrett Hardin, in the context of the feared overpopulation. 71 He takes as his example the existence of a piece of common land on which each is free to let their cattle graze. The group has an interest in maintaining the carrying capacity of that piece of land—that forms an incentive against overgrazing. However, Hardin argues, there is a stronger incentive for an individual herdsman to nevertheless put more of his own cattle on that ground, as the negative effects of overgrazing will be shared by all. “But,” says Hardin, “this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. . . . Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” 72 This leads Hardin to his plea for more government intervention. The anthropological assumption of Hardin is that the human being is ultimately a homo economicus —his thinking is situated in the rational choice paradigm.
This anthropological assumption plays a major role in the climate crisis; we see it reflected in the appeal to embrace hopelessness by Guy McPherson, as well as in the “whataboutism” and the fear of countries such as China and Russia being freeriders. 73 In both cases, “hope” is seen as a mistake. However, there are good reasons to challenge this negative outlook for our “global common,” the climate. Concretely, Hardin’s work has been challenged, specifically by the economist Elinor Ostrom, 74 who studied the self-government of “common-pool resources” in various contexts, such as in Japan, Switzerland, and the Philippines. As the Nobel Prize Foundation— which awarded her the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work—describes it: “She showed that when natural resources are jointly used by their users, in time, rules are established for how these are to be cared for and used in
71 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, New Series 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–1248.
72 Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 1244.
73 On these arguments, see William F. Lamb et al., “Discourses of Climate Delay,” Global Sustainability 3, e17 (2020): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13.
74 Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
a way that is both economically and ecologically sustainable.” 75 In other words, people do not, in fact, act from self-interest only, which inevitably will lead to the degradation of a “global common” such as a liv able climate. Ostrom herself concludes that “The intellectual trap in relying entirely on models to provide the foundation for policy analysis is that scholars then presume that they are omniscient observers able to comprehend the essentials of how complex, dynamic systems work by creating stylized descriptions of some aspects of those systems.”76 There are good reasons, therefore, to be critical of the (often unexplicated) anthropological assumptions, such as those of the rational choice paradigm.77
This complexity most certainly also characterizes the behavior of people in relation to the “global common” of the climate—both individually, as well as on the level of governments. The fear that other countr ies will act as free riders can be challenged, if we look at the data. One interesting fact, for example, is that China—which is often pointed to as a free rider when it comes to climate change—is in fact actively seeking to limit its carbon emissions, having “. . . pledged to cap its carbon emission by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.” 78 Not only that, but climate skepticism is less prominent in China. There is hopeful news when it comes to us in Europe as well, having historically been a big polluter. In a historic shift, during the first half of 2024, Europe has drawn more energy from solar and wind energy, than from fossil fuels. 79 That does not mean that there no longer is a climate crisis. The danger of free riders does exist, and we will need to work hard to further curb our emissions of greenhouse gasses to stop anthropogenic climate change. But there is a case to be made for active
75 “Elinor Ostrom – Facts,” NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024, https://www.nobelprize. org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/facts/ (last accessed August 9, 2024).
76 Ostrom, Governing the Commons, 215.
77 Such a focus on critically examining the rational choice paradigm in economics, and contributing to formulating an alternative, is the focus of the Homo Florens project, which ILSE has been involved with since 2018. This project has led, among things, to the publication of Jermo van Nes, Patrick Nullens, and Steven C. van den Heuvel, eds., Relational Anthropology for Contemporary Economics: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Ethical Economy: Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy (Cham: Springer Open, 2022).
78 Jianxun Yang, Dimitrios Gounaridis, Miaomiao Liu, Jun Bi, and Joshua P. Newell, “Perceptions of Climate Change in China: Evidence from Surveys of Residents in Six Cities,” Earth’s Future 9, no. 12 (December 2021): e2021EF002144. https://doi. org/10.1029/2021EF002144.
79 Euan Graham and Nicolas Fulghum, “Wind and Solar Overtake EU Fosil Fuels in the First Half of 2024” (Ember, 2024).
hope; it is not naïve to hope. 80 And a positive engagement with this hope is an important task for a Christian public theology. 81
However, that does not yet answer the critical question of whether or not we are committing a naturalistic fallacy here by elevating the human experience of hope (an “is”) to a normative statement as to how we should relate to the world (an “ought”). Here we are helped by Bonhoeffer’s insistence that looking at reality is not just looking at the naked facts, but instead looking at things in their relation to God and to other human beings. Hope has the quality of trust; it is not a certainty, but it describes the positive expectation that there will be a brighter tomorrow. For a Christian, hope is ultimately based on God’s promise of a new heaven and a new earth. For non-Christians, this source of hope may be different. 82 What is similar, however, is that there is a normative commitment involved in hope, which moves people to action, and this is also the case if the eviden ce for hope is contested. So, there is not a one-on-one relationship between hopeful factson-the-ground, and the declaration of hope as an ecological virtue; instead, these facts are interpreted in a normative framework in which hope is seen as a moral good.
This extended illustration shows the importance of Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on action in accordance with reality. It is a nuanced emphasis, combining a plea to look robustly at what is going on, but committed to a normative position in which reality—though fallen—is seen as a creation of God. 83
80 On this see Elin Kelsey, Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis (Vancouver, BC: Greystone, 2020).
81 As Tom Greggs puts it: “In emphasizing hope, the Christian should demonstrate patience with creation, and seek to emphasize the character of God’s patience to the world which stands as God’s creation awaiting redemption. Christians should not be too swift to move their thoughts to the beyond, and certainly should be slow ever to offer any condemnation of the creation over which God is sovereignly Lord.” Tom Greggs, Theology Against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 223.
82 As I note in my work on hope and political ecology: Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Hope in Political Ecology,” in Scioli and Van den Heuvel, The Oxford Compendium of Hope
83 This perspective is an important presupposition of the new research project “Contesting Hopes: Navigating Hope and Faith in a Landscape of Crisis,” which ILSE is carrying out together with the Protestant Theological University, from 2024–2028, and which looks at “hope” in the contexts of agriculture and health care. ‘Who
2.3 Willingness to Take on Guilt: Technological Ethics and the Double Effect
The third dimension of the responsible life is under the aegis of freedom— according to Bonhoeffer, free responsibility means the “willingness to take on guilt” ( Bereitschaft zur Schuldübernahme ). As with the other dimensions, so also for this dimension of responsibility, Christ presents the template. Bonhoeffer describes how Jesus did not want to be guiltless at the expense of human beings. Instead, “Out of his selfless love, out of his sinlessness, Jesus enters into human guilt, taking it upon himself. . . . As the sinless one, Jesus takes the guilt of his brothers and sisters upon himself, and in carrying the burden of this guilt he proves himself as the sinless one.” 84 While Christ’s vicarious representation is unique, as through his taking on the guilt of humankind he reconciles humanity to God, his example nevertheless forms a template for ethical life. Consequently, responsibility leads one, out of selfless love, to enter the “community of human guilt.” 85
The effort to avoid incurring guilt, Bonhoeffer says, leads people away from Christ’s redeeming mystery. Also, he says, “They place their personal innocence [Unschuld] above their responsibility for other human beings and are blind to the fact that precisely in so doing they become even more egregiously guilty.” 86 Seeking to avoid becoming guilty can lead to “grotesque” conclusions, Bonhoeffer argues. He mentions as an example Immanuel Kant’s argument that, in the case in which a friend has fled to your house to hide from a murderer, that if that murderer knocks on your door, asking you where your friend is, you would have to tell him the truth. About this argument Bonhoeffer says: “Here the self-righteousness of conscience has [280] escalated into blasphemous recklessness and become an impediment to responsible action.” 87
84 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 275.
85 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 275.
86 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 276.
87 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 279–280.
‘Who
However, there are limits to this taking on guilt; two in particular. First, it is not the case that conscience no longer plays a role—it remains important as “. . . the call to unity with myself.” 88; this means that the weight of guilt one can bear depends on how much one can carry—and there are responsibilities that are too heavy to carry. 89 Second, the freedom to take on guilt that one has in Jesus Christ is not unrestricted or unguided—that would lead to irresponsibility, Bonhoeffer argues. One is bound to “. . . the law to love God and neighbor as spelled out in the Decalogue, in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the apostolic parenesis.” 90 In finalizing his thoughts on this matter, Bonhoeffer again emphasizes that this taking on of guilt is not to be taken lightly. People who decide for this, he says,
. . . do so not out of a sacrilegious and reckless belief in their own power, but in the knowledge of being forced into this freedom and of their dependence on grace in its exercise. Those who act out of free responsibility are justified before others by dire necessity [Not]; before themselves [283] they are acquitted by their conscience, but before God they hope only for grace. 91
Also here, the historical context is crucial for understanding Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the importance of the willingness to take on guilt. 92 His were times that were “out of joint”; leading to the unique situation in which he, as a Protestant theologian, was—in what turned out to be the last phase of his life—actively involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and to topple the Nazi government. In this context, all kinds of ethical rules were broken—out of
88 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 281.
89 As examples, Bonhoeffer mentions “. . . a declaration of war, the breach of a political treaty, a revolution, or merely the dismissal of a single father of a family who thus finds himself unemployed . . . .” Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 281.
90 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 282.
91 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 282–283. Because of Bonhoeffer’s insistence on responsibility, rather than virtuousness, I am critical of recent attempts to cast Bonhoeffer as a virtue ethicist, as has been proposed by, among others, Jennifer Moberly, The Virtue of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: A Study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics in Relation to Virtue Ethics, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 194 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013).
92 For a thorough study on Bonhoeffer’s concept of taking on guilt, see Christine Schlieβer, Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty: Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Accepting Guilt (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008).
necessity. 93 Reflecting on this conundrum led him to similar thinking as that of the well-known sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), to whom Bonhoeffer refers and who also mused on the difficulty of the so-called “dirty hands” problem, specifically in the context of politics. He did so in a lecture he delivered in Munich, in 1919, entitled “Politik als Beruf.” 94 Weber reflects on the role and function of the state, of the kind of leadership required for those who want to be successful as professional statesmen. Towards the end of this book, Weber turns his attention to the question of what kind of ethics is required for a politician in this new context. Weber argued that the framework of deontological ethics needed to be combine d with a consideration of consequences as well, not favoring the one per spective over the other. As he says it: “. . . an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility are not absolute antitheses but are mutually complementary, and only when taken together do they constitute the authentic h uman being who is capable of having ‘a vocation for politics’.” 95 This obviously creates tension—Weber argued that this tension should be addressed within the moral character of the statesman. 96 This line of reasoning is very similar to Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the willingness to take on guilt. 97
93 Keith Clements recounts how Eberhard Bethge told of a meeting of conspirators early in the war, during which one of the conspirators asked Bonhoeffer if Jesus’ saying “whoever takes up the sword will perish by the sword” applied to them. “Dietrich answered: ‘Yes, that’s true. That word is still valid for us now. The time needs exactly those people who do that, and let Jesus’ saying be true. We take the sword and are prepared to perish by it. Taking up guilt means accepting the consequences of it. Maybe God will save us but’—a long pause—‘first of all you must be prepared to accept the consequences’.” Keith Clements, Appointments with Bonhoeffer: Personal Faith and Public Responsibility in a Fragmenting World, T&T Clark New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics Series (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 125.
94 Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Gesammelte Politische Schriften, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 5th ed., UTB für Wissenschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 396–450. In what follows, I base myself on the ET: Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004), 32–94.
95 Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 92, italics original.
96 For more on Weber’s proposal for an ethics of responsibility, see Sung Ho Kim, “Max Weber,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/#EthConRes (accessed August 6, 2024); Nick O’Donovan, “Causes and Consequences: Responsibility in the Political Thought of Max Weber,” Polity 43, no. 1 (January 2011): 84–105; and Johan Verstraeten, “The Tension Between ‘Gesinnungsethik’ and ‘Verantwortungsethik’: A Critical Interpretation of the Position of Max Weber in ‘Politik als Beruf’,” Ethical Perspectives 2, no. 3 (1995): 180–7.
97 Another historical example, which also influenced Bonhoeffer—is the work of the well-known Niccolò Machiavelli, who in his Il Principe, written for Lorenzo de’ Medici, wrote on the importance of necessità as a principle in politics. For more on Machiavelli in relation to necessity and the dirty hands problem, see Harvey C. Mansfeld, “Machiavelli on Necessity,” in Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, ed. David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 39–57. In the next few years, Stephan Meijers whom, together with Leon van den Broeke, I am guiding, will write his dissertation on the ethics of Machiavelli.
‘Who
There has also been a significant Catholic contribution to the dirty hands problem, one that has a most interesting connection to the ETF Leuven because in the 60s it was a Jesuit seminary. Peter Knauer—originally from Germany—lived and studied here as a student and during that time he wrote a remarkable paper, in French, entitled “La détermination du bien et du mal moral par le principe du double effet” that he published in Nouvelle Revue Théologique in 1965. 98 In this article, Knauer focuses on what he calls the principle of double effect. He recognizes an early definition of this principle in Thomas Aquinas, who in his Summa Theologiae also gives an example of it—of killing someone in self-defense. This killi ng quite obviously has two effects, one good (that of self-preservation), and one bad (that of killing a fellow human being). Such an action can neve rtheless be morally permissible, as long as it corresponds to its end, Aquinas says.99
Knauer extends his analysis of the double effect; according to him, it does not only occur in borderline situations, such as self-defense, but is constitutive of our moral life as such. As he puts it: “Every human act brings evil effects with it. The choice of a value always means concretely that there is denial of another value which must be given as a price in ex change.” 100 Knauer argues that, in light of this, we should make judgements based on commensurate reason, giving significantly more room to conscience and to ethical intent, in a way that the ethical handbook-models did n ot recognize. By means of this proposal, Knauer helped revolutionize Catholic ethics in the era of the Second Vatican Council. The revolutionary aspect of it can be clarified if we compare it with the approach to the dirty-hands problem by the Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), whose unpub lished manuscript on ethics was discovered in an archive of the VU University in Amsterdam, a few years ago. He speaks about the dirty-hands problem
98 Peter Knauer, “La détermination du bien et du mal moral par le principe du double effet,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique (1965): 356–376. He subsequently reworked it into a longer article, published in German: Peter Knauer, “Das rechtverstandene Prinzip von der Doppelwirkung als Grundnorm jeder Gewissensentscheidung,” Theologie und Glaube 57 (1967): 107–133. It was then translated into English and published in the Natural Law Forum. Peter Knauer, “The Hermeneutic Function of the Principle of the Double Effect,” Natural Law Forum (1967): 132–162.
99 As Aquinas puts it: “Potest tamen aliquis actus ex bona intentione proveniens illicitus reddi si non sit proportionatus fini.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 64, a. 7.
100 Knauer, “The Hermeneutic Function,” 145.
in terms of the collisio officiorum (ET: when duties clash). 101 In resolving these conflicts, however, he turns to casuistry, drawing up detailed rules on how to make decisions in these instances. 102 This elaborate, and rather mechanical, approach leaves little room for the agency of the moral actor.
In teaching Christian ethics, I often encounter hesitation when I discuss this dimension of the ethics of responsibility. That is understandable, as an emphasis on the necessity of making dirty hands judgements seem s to clash explicitly with the Bible, particularly with the commandment from Jesus himself, in Matthew 5:48, which in the NIV reads: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How can we make room for political necessity, considering this radical but clear Biblical commandment? This is an important question to address. A key to a Biblical understanding is in fact given in that very verse I just quoted, from Matthew 5. The imperative to be teleioi , in that text, is not to be understood in the sense of clinica l perfection; rather, teleios stands for consummate human integrity, for fully grown maturity.
In other places, the Bible shows a deep awareness that such ethical maturity incorporates an awareness of, and engagement with, the willingness to take on guilt, specifically in the context of leadership. We see this in the Old Testament, for example, in the early days of the kings. One example in this regard is 2 Samuel 3, where we read about the struggle between David— who has been recognized as king by the tribe of Juda—and Ish-Boseth, son of the late king Saul, who is recognized as king by the other tribes of Israel. In this context David asks Ish-Boseth for the return of his first wife, Michal, daughter of Saul. Ish-Boseth grants this request, and his military chief, Abner, is tasked with fetching her. However, it is then that we learn that she has remarried, with Paltiel, who follows her in tears, until Abner sends him away.
101 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics: The Duties of the Christian Life, ed. John Bolt (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2021).
102 For commentary, see John Bolt, “Pearls and Leaven,” Bavinck Review 10 (2019): 109–113.
It is highly unlikely that David asked Michal back because of a ny romantic longing—rather, it was a political power move. In restoring his marriage with Michal, the daughter of Saul, David was strengthening his prospects as potential king of Israel, and not just of Juda, since because o f that marriage he could claim a direct link with Saul, who remained important, as the first king of a united country. Restoring his marriage with Michal, then, was an act of political necessità , on David’s part. But it was not without moral injury. There was Paltiel—we don’t know much about him, but we do know that he loved his wife. However, that love is broken—all he can do is follow her in tears, while Abner leads her away. In itself this story is not unique—it is just one illustration of the way in which political choices can have dramatic (and often unseen) consequences in the lives of ordinary people. But it is remarkable that the Bible mentions it—not as an indictment of anyone in particular, but as a profound recognition of the tragic dimension of human life, and of the resulting unavoidability of getting enmeshed in guilt. 103
There are many contexts in which a consideration of the “double effect” of our actions, and the subsequent necessity to make our hands “dirty” is important. Here, I want to mention one concrete context, namely the ethics of technology. Technological developments often have clearly identifiable double effects. A historical example in this regard is the increased speeds of motor vehicles. While allowing for shorter travel times, whi ch enabled everything from economic growth to more adequate medical emergency care, these higher speeds did increase the risks of accidents, causing harm and even death. A more contemporary example of the double effect of technological developments, also from the automotive world, are electric cars. While they come with many advantages (such as greater energy efficiency, less noise, greater ease of driving, etc.), they have detrimental effects as well. There is much ecological and social harm involved in mining the lithium needed for the batteries, for example. Electric veh icles are also heavier (because of their batteries), meaning that they are more likely to
103 My reading of this text is primarily theological, even though I also utilized established exegetical tools. Such a theological interpretation has particular merit for public theology. On this see, Dylan Parker, “(Un)likely Allies: Public Theology and Theological Interpretation in Conversation,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 18, no. 1 (2024): 131–148.
cause greater material and physical harm when involved in an accident— and their increased weight also leads to more wear and tear of the roads.
It has often been a challenge for ethicists to truly engage with what is going on, in technological developments. Ethicists have often chosen a metaapproach to technology, asking questions about the nature of technological developments as such. A prominent example of that approach, which has been influential up until the present day, is that offered by Martin Heidegger, in his famous essay on technology. 104 Heidegger sees modern theology as a way of “enforcing”; in the technological mindset, everything becomes a “standing reserve,” ready to be exploited by human beings. This perspective underlies all attempts at technical mastery, he argues. An alternative way of relating to the world is by disinterested contemplation, as happens in art, which is non-instrumental. While this may be a brilliant analysis of technology as such, it provides no help in answering the question of how we are to evaluate individual technologies—the question, for example, of whether we should be for or against electric cars d oes not ask for a meta-approach, but for a more grounded approach, based on what technologies actually do.
A promising approach in this regard has been inaugurated by Don Ihde, who proposed what he called a post-phenomenological approach to technology. 105 In this hermeneutical approach, he focuses on the way that technology mediates relationships between us and the world around us. Technologies may help these relationships or hinder them. Following in his footsteps, it is Peter-Paul Verbeek in particular who has further developed this approach—among others—in his book What Things Do . 106 With such an approach, it becomes possible to make much more detailed and nuanced evaluations of specific technologies. In such a framework, the question of
104 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (London: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2013).
105 See, among others, Don Ihde, Technics and Praxis: A Philosophy of Technology (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979); Don Ihde, Postphenomenology: Essays in the Postmodern Context (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993); and Don Ihde, Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures (New York: State University of New York Press, 2017).
106 Peter-Paul Verbeek, What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005).
the double effect of technologies can be fruitfully addressed—and an ethics of responsibility can be put to good use here. 107
2.4 Emphasis on Concrete Action: Stewardship as an Ethical Principle in the Theology of Work
The fourth and final dimension of the structure of the responsible life, according to Bonhoeffer, consists in “concrete action” (Wagnis der konkreten Entscheidung ); like the willingness to take on guilt, so also this dimensio n requires freedom, he says. As Clifford Green, the editor of the English translation of the Ethics notes, in his Introduction, “It is . . . freedom to risk, to venture action in the midst of the contingencies and relativities of history.” 108 However, it can be asked how realistic this invocation of free responsibility is, for all those people who are in positions where they don’t have much agency to exercise authority. What does free responsibility look like to a factory worker in Bangladesh, or to a delivery driver in a Western country, monitored by cameras in the cab of her vehicle that—among other things—measures how long she takes for a bathroom break? Bonhoeffer explicitly addresses this question, mentioning among others the example of a day laborer, an office worker, a military recruit, and a pupil in school. But, according to him, such limits to freedom also apply to those in higher positions. Mentioning independent farmers, politicians and mili tary commanders, among others, he asks “. . . how many technical det ails and prescribed routines finally do govern their lives, and how few truly free decisions do they actually make?”
109 Playing the devil’s advocate, he then
107 It would go too far to outline here exactly what such an ethics would look like, but it is an important part of the new research project which ILSE is carrying out, together with Michel Verhaegen, from Delft University of Technology, and entitled “Responsibility Ethics as a New Paradigm for Engaging Technological Developments.” This project will run from 2024–2030, and will build on some work that has already been done both by me as project leader (Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Contributing to a Theological Ethics of Technology: Reconsidering Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in The Vitality of Evangelical Theology: Celebrating ETF Leuven at 40, ed. Andreas J. Beck, Jos de Kock, and Steven C. van den Heuvel [Leuven: Peeters, 2022], 147–158), as well as by Prof. Dr. Michel Verhaegen, as co-leader of the project (see Michel Verhaegen, “Integrating Theological Ethics of Responsibility with Teleological and Deontological Ethics for Embodied AI” [ThM Thesis, Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, 2021]).
108 Clifford J. Green, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” in Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 14.
109 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 285.
asks if his plea for an ethic of responsibility only applies to a very small group. The answer to this question is “no,” he says—for however much one’s life is restricted, there is always a relation that demands responsibility. As he says it: “Whenever human beings encounter one another, including the world of work, genuine responsibility arises, and no rules and regulations are able to invalidate these relationships of responsibility.” 110
And he makes a further point as well, arguing that precisely as a pupil, or a factory worker, or a soldier, you can exercise responsibility by the attitude you take to your work. By applying themselves to their study, students actually take responsibility for their teachers, in a sense doing their job for them. The same goes for other relationships as well, that at first sight seem unequal. As Bonhoeffer puts it: “. . . responsibility does not merely begin where obedience ends, but obedience is rendered in responsibility.” 111 He stresses this point, arguing that responsibility is as much a response to the freedom one has as it is a response to one’s restraints.
Also here, Jesus Christ has shown the way, as the one who followed the Father’s will freely, of his own accord. He shows us how both obedience and freedom go together. As Bonhoeffer says it, in a crucial passage: “Obedience binds the creature to the Creator, freedom places the creature, made in God’s image, face-to-face with the Creator. Obedience makes clear to human beings that they have to be told what is good and what the Lord requires of them (Mic. 6:6), freedom lets them create the good themselves.”112 This tension is constitutive of responsibility as such, Bonhoeffer says. In summary: “Responsible action is bound and yet creative.” 113
As is the case with the other dimensions, so also here the context of resistance against the Nazi regime is crucial in understanding Bonhoeffer’s emphases. Free action, in the context of the times, meant the willingness and the ability to go beyond and above one’s “normal” duties, to resist the evil as much as possible. Bonhoeffer observed that many of the supposedly
110 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 286.
111 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 287.
112 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 287, italics original.
113 Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 288.
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“responsible” upper class in Germany were hiding behind their duty and the demands of obedience, a failing that has also been noted by many others. 114 With this emphasis on taking pro-active responsibility, however much one was bounded by one’s position, he sought to correct this moral failing. 115
But while the context of his times is crucial in understanding the full meaning of this dimension of Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility, his emphasis on taking responsibility in whatever situation you find yourself is reflective of a core motive in Bonhoeffer’s theology as such, which he had also developed earlier when times weren’t out of joint. It is deeply connected to the theme of “earthly love,” in his work—in this context, th e Greek myth of Antaeus is important to him. He refers to that myth in his lectures on Christian ethics, which he gave during his vicariate in Barcelona. Antaeus is the son of Poseidon and Gaia (the gods of water and earth), and as long as he keeps both feet planted on the earth, he cannot be defeated by anyone. He is only defeated when Heracles, during a fight, manages to l ift him from the earth. 116 For Bonhoeffer, this myth has something important to teach Christians. As he says it: “The earth remains our mother just as God remains our father, and only those who remain true to the mother are placed by her into the father’s arms. Earth and its distress—that is the Christian’s Song of Songs.” 117 This passionate appeal for loyalty to the earth continues righ t up until his last writings from prison. In a letter to Maria von Wedemeyer written on August 12, 1943, Bonhoeffer writes about their prospective marriage: “Our marriage must be a ‘yes’ to God’s earth. It must strengthen
114 Frits de Lange, Grond onder de voeten: Burgerlijkheid bij Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Een theologische studie (Kampen: Van den Berg, 1985); and John A. Moses, “Bonhoeffer as Critic of His Class in Retrospect,” in The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 173–203.
115 As Robin Lovin puts it: “In contrast to the moral theories, ideals, and excuses that had become meaningless to his contemporaries, Bonhoeffer’s ethics focuses on choices that are as concrete as the reality in which they are set. A person must finally decide what is to be done, and that decision is not about an abstraction—justice, mercy, tyranny or whatever. These people must be fed. These injured, ill, and dying must have care. This leader who commands destruction must himself be killed.” Robin Lovin, “The Reality of Christian Ethics,” in Mawson and Ziegler, The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 282.
116 “Antaeus,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, February 16, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Antaeus (last accessed August 6, 2024).
117 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 378.
our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth.”118 And, referring again to the myth of Antaeus, he also writes: “I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.” 119
How does Bonhoeffer’s insistence that we fully immerse ourselves in the world, that we take our incarnated nature fully seriously, loving the earth, relate to our devotion to Christ, and the imperative to seek God and his kingdom above all else? In engaging this question, Bonhoeffer utilizes musical metaphors. As he says it: “What I mean is that God, the Eternal, wants to be loved with our whole heart, not to the detriment of earthly love or to diminish it, but as a sort of cantus firmus to which the other voices of life resound in counterpoint.” 120 So, love of the earth and love of God are not part of a zero sum game, but in fact necessitate each other, and also strengthen each other. Bonhoeffer’s argument to hold both in dialectical tension with one another is typical of his theological approach. 121
For a contemporary Christian public theology, it matters from what positionality we talk about issues; we can only do so properly from a place of active engagement—not just because that will give us credibility in the eyes of practitioners (although that is also true), but because it gives us the knowledge we need to properly understand the ethics involved. While there is a place for meta-ethics that considers important topics such as the naturalistic fallacy, mentioned before, when it comes to the tasks of normative ethics (coming to ethical evaluations of human beh avior in specific circumstances) intimate knowledge of the contexts in which we seek to speak is crucial.
118 Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz, eds., Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer 1943-45, trans. John Browjohn (Nahsville: Abingdon, 1995), 64.
119 Von Bismarck and Kabitz, Love Letters, 64.
120 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 394. On this metaphor, see Andreas Pangritz “Cantus Firmus and Counterpoint,” in Andreas Pangritz, The Polyphony of Life: Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Music, ed. John W. de Gruchy and John Morris, trans. Robert Steiner (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 52–64.
121 On this, see more fully Van den Heuvel, “Bonhoeffer’s Imperative to be Loyal to the Earth,” in Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 179–193; and especially Ulrik Nissen, The Polity of Christ: Studies on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Chalcedonian Christology and Ethics, T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics Series (London: T&T Clark, 2020).
While formulated in light of the historical context of his time , Bonhoeffer’s plea to “love life” by taking responsibility for our situation, despite the restraints and imperfections we face in it, explicates a deep moral motive— one that has found expression in countless different contexts. I specifically want to mention its resonance in the context of organizational science that studies the process of ownership that people take of an organization. This ownership is of crucial importance for organizational performance, as well as for the vitality and flexibility of an organization. There is increasing insight into what can stimulate or hinder such commitment that can also be described under the important heading of stewardship. One author who made a significant contribution to thinking through organizational science from the paradigm of stewardship is Peter Block, who does so especially in his book Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest . 122 There, he defines stewardship as “. . . the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us.” 123 A choice for stewardship is a choice for empowerment, he says, which means “. . . placing ourselves in the position o f being creators of the organization to which we belong.” 124 He argues that people should take this responsibility regardless of the outer structure. Even if they are not the legal owners, don’t have the power of owners, let alone are treated as owners, they should nevertheless take the responsibility implied in ownership, not just for the benefit of the organization, but for themselves. As a free choice, the decision to take ownership, instead of taking other attitudes such as that of the bystander or the victim, is indic ative or a proactive engaging attitude, that affirms and strengthens our agency and helps us to see the meaning in the work that we do.
The same point is made in an interesting way by the English poet David Whyte in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity . He, too, remarks how we often experience ourselves trapped in structures, hemmed in by rules, regulations, and demanding responsibilities. 125 Like
122 Peter Block, Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1993).
123 Block, Stewardship, xx.
124 Block, Stewardship, 36.
125 David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001).
Bonhoeffer, he also observes how this not just the case for those in “lower” ranks or orders, but also for those at the top. 126 To cope with these stresses, we must find freedom in ourselves, he argues. Particularly, he invites us to connect with our inner “outlaw,” the shape that our dreams of freedom had when we were a child. 127 When we recover a sense of inner freedom, we also come to a fresh appreciation of the work we do—we feel a new ownership over it, allowing for taking free responsibility for it, Whyte argues.
This is an important point that Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on “concrete action” can help undergird; he challenges us, both in his writings and in his example, to not play the victim when confronted with trying circumstances, nor act like a bystander, but to accept the limitations that—ultimately— everyone has, while pro-actively looking for whatever freedoms we do have in these circumstances, and to use that freedom to help others. That does not mean that we must exhaust ourselves in our work, as in anot her context, Bonhoeffer also warns against such a one-sidedness.128 But it does mean that we practice what the contemporary English theologian Samuel Wells calls “improvization,” whereby we confront disappointments, changes, and limits with pro-active responsibility. 129
126 He writes: “The corporate climber expects freedom and clear decision making in the executive suite and is astonished to find himself hemmed in by politics, harangued by investors, and mauled by the media.” Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea, 153.
127 Reviewing works of classic literature, he remarks: “All of our great literary traditions emphasize again and again the central importance of this dynamic: that there are tremendous forces at work upon us, trying to make us like everyone else, and therefore we must remember something intensely personal about the way we were made for this world in order to keep our integrity.” Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea, 165.
128 Bonhoeffer’s theology can also help correct against the possibility of cynical misuse of the emphasis on taking responsibility. In this context, it is particularly his understanding of the divine mandates that is helpful. On this, see Steven C. van den Heuvel, “Challenging the New ‘One-Dimensional Man’: The Protestant Orders of Life as a Critical Nuance to Workplace Spirituality,” in Leading in a VUCA-World: Integrating Leadership, Discernment and Spirituality, ed. Jacobus (Kobus) Kok and Steven C. van den Heuvel, Contributions to Management Science (Cham: Springer, 2019), 169–184; and Steven C. van den Heuvel, “The Dangers of Charismatic Leadership: A Perspective from the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in The End of Leadership? Leadership and Authority at Crossroads, ed. Jack Barentsen, Steven C. van den Heuvel, and Peirong Lin, Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics 4 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 125–139. There is a parallel between Bonhoeffer and Reformed theology in this regard, as has been noted by Matthew Kaemingk, “Mandates and Spheres: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham Kupyer, and a Theology of Social Order,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Neo-Calvinism in Dialogue: Perspectives in Public Theology, ed. George Harinck and Brant M. Himes (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), 119–141.
129 Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (London: SPCK, 2004). Bonhoeffer’s
3. Critical Reflection on the Task and Method of Doing Public Theology
I have argued that we can draw important connections between the various dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility and contemporary debates on several issues—I mentioned the contexts of environmental ethics, the research into hope, the dirty hands problem in relation to technology, and finally an attitude of stewardship when it comes to the world of work. This serves as an example of how public theology works—and I al so present it as an agenda of how I hope to contribute to public theology in the coming years. Before moving on to a conclusion, however, it is necessary to reflect on the methodology I used in making connections between Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility and public issues. Furthermore, I like to address various critical questions that can—and have—been asked about t he endeavor of public theology as such.
3.1 Methodology in Public Theology: Proposal for a Revised Method of Correlation
First, a word on method. In my lecture, I have not been explicit on exactly how I make the connections between dimensions of Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility and various contemporary debates. It is important to do so, however, for public theology to be a scholarly discipline. Public theology should give an account of itself in this regard. Bonhoeffer himself is not of too much help to us here, as he never explicitly addressed this methodological question—his theological method is implicit rath er than
explicit. 130 Broadly speaking, however, we can qualify it as a dialectical method: Bonhoeffer combines a Barthian starting point, which puts the primer on God’s inbreaking word, with an unwavering commitment to a thoroughgoing openness to reality as it presents itself (as visible in his appreciation of particularly the phenomenological method). 131 But because he does not explicate his method, his approach runs the danger of functioning like a black box—such mystification in theological ethics is best avoided.
This means that, in developing a method for public theology, we must move beyond Bonhoeffer. In my view, an apt theological grammar for public theology has been formulated by the well-known systematic theol ogian Paul Tillich; he proposes the method of correlation. Tillich explicates this method in the opening of his Systematic Theology 132 There, he argues that there is a deep, foundational correspondence between the questions asked by people in a specific time and place, and the answers to thes e questions contained in the Christian tradition. Correlation, Tillich says, “makes an analysis of the human situation out of which the existential qu estions arise, and it demonstrates that the symbols used in the Christi an message are the answers to these questions.”
133 In his Systematic Theology , Tillich argues that, with his proposal for a method of correlation, he is not so much inventing something new; instead, he argues that he is merely explicating a methodology that has been used unwittingly. As an example of this, Tillich refers to the Reformer John Calvin, who opens his Institutes with a paragraph on how the knowledge of God and of ourselves are mutually connected ( Institutes of the Christian Religion § 1.1.1).
130 This is also observed by Gerald McKenny, in his reflection on Bonhoeffer’s ethics of responsibility. He notes: “. . . Ethics fails to show how the vicarious representative action of other human beings in the world is the continuation of action that Christ does once for all . . . .” Gerald McKenny, “Freedom, Responsibility, and Moral Agency,” in Mawson and Ziegler, The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 319, italics original.
131 For a thorough comparison between Bonhoeffer and Barth, see especially Edward van ‘t Slot, Negativism of Revelation? Bonhoeffer and Barth on Faith and Actualism, Dogmatik in der Moderne 12 (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2015).
132 Paul Tillich, “The Method of Correlation,” in Systematic Theology (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), 1:59–66.
133 Tillich, Systematic Theology 1:62.
‘Who
Tillich illustrates this method in his own works. He identified existentialism as the main issue of his time. One rather stark summary of that philosophical approach to life has been given by Albert Camus, who in his Myth of Sisyphus argued that “[t]here is only one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.” 134 In the context of this cultural climate, Tillich wrote his wellknown book The Courage to Be , 135 in which he argues that we find the courage to live in recognizing God as the ground of our being.
Tillich’s proposal for a method of correlation has become influential, but also received criticism. 136 One criticism has been put forward by the American Catholic theologian David Tracy; he takes issue with the “top-down”character of Tillich’s scheme, whereby the Christian tradition has all the “answers” to contemporary “questions.” He consequently adapted Tillich’s proposal, arguing that the Christian tradition presents questions as well as answers, and that the contemporary context contains answers as well as questions. As he says it: “Theology is the attempt to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation of the contemporary situation.”
137 In this modified form, I think we have a promising methodological paradigm of doing public theology.
In using this paradigm, we should be clear that it is some dist ance away from the approach by Bonhoeffer himself; it is not just that Bonhoeffer does not use the word “correlation,” but it also systematizes the method of his moral theology in a way we cannot claim to adequately ca ll “Bonhoefferian.” 138 However, I consider it important to take this next step since, as seriously as I want to take Bonhoeffer, I think we need a robust
134 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 3.
135 Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952).
136 For a recent discussion on the (de)merits of the method of correlation, see Wessel Stoker and DirkMartin Grube, “Tillich’s Method of Correlation: Wessel Stoker in Discussion with Dirk-Martin Grube,” NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion 74, no. 2 (June 2020): 167–180.
137 David Tracy, “Theological Method,” in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, ed. Peter C. Hodgson and Robert King, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 36.
138 For example, the word “correlation” does not appear in Bonhoeffer’s works.
methodological framework for a contemporary public theology. 139 And while there continues to be room for critical questions about this methodological framework, I believe that the dialogical, open process of correlation is wellsuited for the task of listening carefully to “what’s going on,” understanding the questions that Christian theology has to relate to, and then to bring both the proprium , as well as the epistemic culture, of Christian theology into the dialogue about these questions in a non-monarchical way. 140
3.2 “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” On Public Theology as a Christian Task
From a Christian theological point of view, critical questions are asked about the project of public theology as such, for various reasons. There are those who argue that the primary Christian engagement with public ethics should not primarily be constructive, but rather critical. Karl Barth forms an example of this approach. Especially in his early phases, he—more than Bonhoeffer—emphasized the critical function of the inbreaking word of God, in ethics. When engaging issues, he primarily took a criti cal stance. 141 Today, such a primarily critical engagement with public issues, from a Christian perspective, is discernable in the approach of radical orthodoxy, as
139 I have used this adapted version of the method of correlation in my doctoral dissertation, in which I correlate concepts from Bonhoeffer’s theology with issues in environmental ethics. See Van den Heuvel, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric Theology, 8–16. It has been a fruitful framework for me since, in doing public theology.
140 This connects to the six characteristics of public theology mentioned by Dirk J. Smit, namely “. . . its biblical-theological profile, its bilingual ability, its inter-disciplinary character, its competency to provide political direction, its prophetic quality, and its inter-contextual nature.” Dirk J. Smit “Does it Matter? On Whether There is Method in the Madness,” in A Compendium to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 71.
141 As Hanna Reichel puts it, in her important recent book on theological method: “Although the ‘dialectical’ Barth more obviously reveled in negation, even the mature, ‘dogmatic’ Barth will primarily define the task of theology as critique. . . . [His contributions] tended to be ‘against the stream’, negative counter-movements to dominant assumptions and public opinion.” Hanna Reichel, After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2023), 91. And further on she notes: “Even in his last academic lectures, Barth spoke of God’s revolt against the disorder of the world as a radical negation in service of an even greater affirmation, while also continuing to resist the identification of this revolt with any actually existing revolutionary or political movement—negating even the possibility of performing this negation positively by human means.” Reichel, After Method, 91.
it has been introduced by Graham Ward and John Milbank, among others. 142 In this movement, the emphasis is on critiquing the Babylonian captivity of the church by modernism. 143 This criticism extends to public theology. As Kjetil Fretheim puts it, referring to the work of Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank: “Public theology is seen as an undertaking that puts C hristianity in the service of institutions, groups, and powers foreign to, and often opposed to, the Christian tradition.” 144
This criticism is an important one; it is certainly a Christian theological task to take a critical distance from what’s going on, to unmask the idols that guide a fallen humanity, and to speak prophetically to the (often hidden) power dynamics that hinder human flourishing. However, this is not a task distinct from, but instead connected to the mission of public theology. I argued, for example, how Bonhoeffer’s concept of Stellvertretung can be used to critically oppose a Western dominance in environmental ethics, stimulating a reversal of hurtful historical paternalism. And by means of his concept of Wirklichkeitsgemä β heit I criticized the dominance of the rational choice paradigm, when it comes to understanding hope and despai r in the context of the climate crisis. However, this criticism does not negate or override the constructive, positive task that I believe Christian theology also has in relation to this world, as an answer to the Biblical imperative, voiced by Jeremiah, to “. . . seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer. 29:7 NIV). 145
Public theology’s desire to contribute to the common good receives criticism from other corners as well—there are also those Christians who argue that
142 John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, eds., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999).
143 This is not to say that the movement of radical orthodoxy is only critical, however. In fact, it is affirmative in its appropriation of—particularly—Plato.
144 Kjetil Fretheim, Interruption and Imagination: Public Theology in Times of Crisis (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 40.
145 This positive thrust of public theology, which I identify as “Bonhoefferian,” will remain at odds with a Barthian point of view. As Gordon Spykman puts it, Bonhoeffer saw that “Barth’s ‘wholly other’ God never really becomes an active partner in a strategized program of reformation. . . . The power of divine grace, Bonhoeffer concluded, must be experienced precisely in, under, and with the down-to-earth life of mankind in bread-and-butter terms at the very crossroads of secular affairs. He therefore called for a ‘world Christianity’.” Gordon J. Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 36.
the primary duty of a Christian should be preaching the gospel. This is an old criticism, going back to Tertullian’s critical question: “What indeed does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” 146 From this perspective, it can be critically asked if the focus should not be on other issues, such as moral questions within the church community. Why try to contribute to action to mitigate something like climate change? 147 Shouldn’t we commit to the important task of evangelization, instead?
This, too, is an important question to ask. In a way, the answer to it is the same as the one formulated in response to the question of whether our task as Christian ethicists should primarily be critical, rather tha n constructive: if we take seriously Christ’s lordship over all the world, then any advocacy of a split between evangelization on the one hand and other (“d iaconial”) activities on the other hand is a false one. However, in this context it is important to emphasize that we should not misunderstand Bonhoeffer that we somehow have to actively realize Christ’s lordship over the world. In his works, he clearly distinguished his approach with that taken by the advocates of the social gospel, a movement he encountered in the US, which turns the Christian message into a program for social change; Walter Rauschenbusch has been an important advocate of this movement. 148 Bonhoeffer wrote a report on the Social Gospel movement for the German branch of the World Alliance, in which he critically remarks: “The optimism, the ideology of progress does not take God’s commandment seriously (Luke 17:10). It is modern enthusiasm [Schwärmerei]. It fails to recognize human limits; it ignores the fundamental difference between a kingdom of the world and God’s kingdom.” 149
146 Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 7.
147 It should be noted that this question about climate change among conservative Christians also rests partly on skepticism regarding this crisis as such. On this issue, see Robin Globus Veldman, The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2019).
148 See, among other publications, Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917).
149 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The ‘Social Gospel’ (Soziale Evangelium),” in Berlin 1932–1933, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen, trans. Douglas W. Stott, Isabel Best, and David Higgins, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 12 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009), 241. Bonhoeffer did not author this memorandum by himself; he asked Paul Lehman to write a draft for it, which the latter did. On this, see Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932–1933, 236, editorial footnote 2.
‘Who
Elsewhere in his Ethics , Bonhoeffer develops his own nuanced theological grammar for understanding the relationship between the Kingdom of God and our activities in “preparing the way” —in this context, he introduces his distinction between Letzte (ultimate) and Vorletzte (penultimate). 150 By means of this grammar, Bonhoeffer emphasizes both the importance of our this-worldly action, while at the same time also nuancin g it. In his way, Bonhoeffer affirms the importance of this-worldly action, while also relativizing it, steering clear of any pretention that we are establishing God’s kingdom on earth by ourselves. 151
3.3 “Are we Still of Any Use?” Doing Public Theology in a PostChristian Context
Second, it can be asked if a public theology is still relevant in our current Western-European context, in which Christianity has become a minority religion. It may seem counterintuitive to want to contribute to a public theology in the context of post-Christendom. If we speak out on public issues as Christian theologians, who will listen to us? Our context is not the same as in the time of Bonhoeffer, or even as in the first decades after the second World War when Christianity still held significant sway in Western European culture and politics. In that light, it can be asked if a focus on responsibility ethics does not assume a power Christians no longer have? Should Christian ethics not rather adapt to the new minority st atus and adopt a church-centered ethic as a result? Hence the question “Are we still of any use?” in the title of this subsection, which is a quotation from Bonhoeffer’s essay “After Ten Years.” 152
We should certainly take to heart the changing context—but in my view it would be a mistake to renege on the effort of engaging in public theology
150 Bonhoeffer, “Ultimate and Penultimate Things,” in Ethics, 146–170.
151 As Michael Mawson puts it: “. . . his theology challenges any assumption . . . that we are responsible for making Christ present in the world or forming Christian community. Bonhoeffer makes it clear that it is Christ who is the primary agent in the Christian community.” Michael Mawson, “The Politics of Jesus and the Ethics of Christ: Why the Differences Between Yoder and Bonhoeffer Matter,” in The Freedom of a Christian Ethicist: The Future of a Reformation Legacy, ed. Brian Brock, Michael Mawson, and Scott Eipper (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 138, italics original.
152 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 52.
as Christians, be it that we should do so in a chastened, modes t, and self-critical way. We cannot let go of this task, since it is implied in our Christology and our soteriology. If we truly believe that Christ is the pantokrator , and if we are intimately involved in his mission, then it does not matter whether we are a small group of first-century Christians facing the might of the Roman empire, or if we are a minority once more, in today’s Western Europe—our mission has not changed even though, considering the fact that we are a minority again after centuries of cultural domination means that we certainly have to seriously rethink the nature of that mission.
Here I like to again refer to Tomá š Halík’s book The Afternoon of Christianity . In it, he applies the psychiatrist Carl Jung’s metaphor of the afternoon to the history of Christianity. As he says it: “. . . at the end of a long period of crisis, some features of a new, perhaps deeper and more mature form of Christianity are already shining through. . . . It comes as a possibility, as kairos —an opportunity that will arrive and present itself at some point, but will only be fulfilled when people understand and freely accept it.”
153 Famously, Bonhoeffer foresaw a non-religious time, to which Christianity had to adapt. In his writings from prison, he muses about the shape of a future Christianity that will meet the requirements of the times. In an essay he wrote on the occasion of the birth of the first child of Eberhard and Renate Bethge, he considers the future shape of the church, writing: “It is not for us to predict the day—but the day will come—when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus’s language, so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power . . . .” 154 And further: “Until then the Christian cause will be a quiet and hi dden one, but there will be people who pray and do justice and wait for God’s own time.” 155
153 Halík, The Afternoon of Christianity, 34, italics original.
154 Bonhoeffer, “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of D. W. R. May 1944,” in Letters and Papers, 390.
155 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 390. On this topic see, among others, Jonathan Malesic, “Bonhoeffer ’s Arkandisziplin: Christian Confession in a World Come of Age,” in Secret Faith in the Public Square: An Argument for the Concealment of Christian Identity (Ada, MI: Brazos, 2009), 70–80. Bonhoeffer’s
From the perspective of hope theory, we can understand Bonhoeffer’s musings as expressions of radical hope—this is a hope that occurs at the edges, when all seems lost. The term “radical hope” has been in troduced by Jonathan Lear, in his study of Chief Plenty Coups (c. 1848–1932), who led the Crow tribe through the cultural devastation caused by the European colonization of their land (as a consequence of which all the b uffalos, on which the tribe existed for its livelihood, were killed off). 156 Faced with this devastation, the tribe fell silent—with their entire life-world gone, they had no language to talk about a “tomorrow.” In this context, Chief Plenty Coups took it upon himself to search for a way forward, by trying out new agricultural methods, which he learned from the European colonizers, as well as by advocating for the rights of his people.
We can say that such an openminded searching also aptly describes the attitude which the church should take, according to Bonhoeffer, after the devastation of the Second World War. 157 An existential crisis may end certain hopes and dreams; it may even be a fatal blow to a particular expression of hope—but it does not have to lead to the loss of hope as such. In the language of Jürgen Moltmann, we can say that our times ask for an openminded adventus -hope, as opposed to a futurum -hope. I see in this an encouragement, even though Christianity is a minority again, to keep at the task of formulating a public theology, in a way that takes seriously the crisis that has befallen the church, but is nevertheless forward looking, and engaged with society. 158
156 Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
157 For an extensive treatment of the link between Bonhoeffer and hope after a crisis, see Andrew D. DeCort, Bonhoeffer’s New Beginning: Ethics after Devastation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018).
158 Jennifer McBride speaks, in this context, about the importance of “nontriumphalism.” As she puts it: “Making a theological move analogous to Bonhoeffer’s . . ., my theology of public witness will show that, like his [Bonhoeffer’s] world come of age, our pluralistic context actually helps define, clarify and shape a Christian witness that is simultaneously nontriumphal and faithful to a Christian proclamation of the lordship of Christ.” Jennifer McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9.
4. Conclusion
I come to my conclusion. 159 In this lecture, I have laid out, in dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a program of how I hope to contribute to the development of public theology in the coming years. I want to f urther develop a Christ-centered perspective that takes seriously the revelation of God in Christ, and—precisely because of that—also takes seriously the world as it is, in its ambivalence. This is a lofty goal—and I do often find myself wondering “who am I,” in seeking to contribute to it. In moments of doubt, however, I find inspiration in one of the stanzas of Bonhoeffer’s poem “Stations on the Way to Freedom.” The stanza is entitled “Action”:
Not always doing and daring what’s random, but seeking the right thing, Hover not over the possible, but boldly reach for the real. Not in escaping to thought, in action alone is found freedom. Dare to quit anxious faltering and enter the storm of events, carried alone by your faith and by God’s good commandments, then true freedom will come and embrace your spirit, rejoicing. 160
Words of Thanks
I like to end with words of thanks. First, I want to thank the ETF Leuven community—both colleagues and students—, for having me in your midst. I appreciate the trust expressed by ETF Leuven, in appointing me full professor. In this regard, I want to especially thank the Executive Team, as well as the Board of Trustees.
159 I gratefully acknowledge the helpful feedback by Ronald Michener and Maria Verhoeff on a draft-version of this lecture. I also like to thank Kay Caldwell for her assistance in the language editing. 160 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 513.
‘Who
I want to express my thanks to the colleagues in the department of Systematic Theology, mentioning specifically Ron Michener, as head of the department. Within the context of ILSE, I like to mention the warm collaboration with Patrick Nullens, Jack Barentsen and Cees Tulp, as well as with the affiliated researchers: Arttu M ä kip ää , Peirong Lin, and Emilio di Somma. With regards to the wider ETF community, I would like to especially thank Martin and Marjorie Webber for their friendship, which I value greatly.
I also want to express my heartfelt thanks to the various foundations, companies, and organizations that have funded my work within the context of ILSE, throughout the years. In this regard I especially mention the Goldschmeding Foundation, the Blankemeyer Foundation, the I ssachar Fund, and the Susanna Wesley Foundation.
Recently, we started two large research projects at ILSE: one on hope (in collaboration with Erik Olsman, from the Protestant Theological University) and one on technology (in collaboration with Michel Verhaegen, from Delft University of Technology). I look forward to working on these projects, in the time to come, with Erik and with Michel, and also with t he new colleagues which we hired in the context of these projects: Cees Tulp, Ben Wiskerke, Evert Jan Broekhuizen, and Jonathan Plender.
I also like to mention the warm collaboration with colleagues f rom the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University, our neighbors here in Leuven. Important, too, are my other colleagues, theological and philosophical ethicists from the Netherlands, most of whom I meet and collaborate with regularly in the format of the Working Group Theological Ethics.
Finally, I want to express great thanks to my parents for supporting me throughout the years, in many ways.
Surrounded by this rich community I look with hope at the coming years, and at the important tasks that awaits us, in the field of publ ic theology.
Ik heb gezegd.
‘Who
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