Compare Personas

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Both" — created time within God's eternity. Linear, uni-directional, non-deterministic. Bonhoeffer's theology of history is shaped by the conviction that responsibility is always for a particular moment, that the next generation's life is the proper test of present action, and that the future is genuinely open under judgement and grace.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Substantival, infinite, flat, three-dimensional, local. Bonhoeffer's spatial categories are the local geographies of Berlin, Finkenwalde, London, Tegel prison, Flossenbürg — the concrete places in which discipleship is practised.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Substantival, conserved, three-dimensional, local. Bonhoeffer's late prison theology insists on a fully this-worldly Christianity that does not flee from matter into interiority. "We have learned, rather too late, that action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility." ("After Ten Years," 1942)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Single embodied person, plural among others, actively responsible. Metaphysical agency: Personal — the Trinitarian God who is "the beyond in the midst of our life." The Christ who is present in the community and in the suffering of the world is the central category of Bonhoeffer's theology.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Conventional: finite, substantival, conserved, irreversible. Bonhoeffer does not develop a separate doctrine of energy; the relevant moral category is the discipline of finite human strength under conditions of catastrophic political demand.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Conserved at both scales. The biblical witness is the durable record by which the Church lives; the communion of saints is the persistence of the dead in Christ. "This is the end — for me the beginning of life." (Last reported words, 9 April 1945)