Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutic Theology

Abstract Chapter 5 explains and delineates the fundamentally hermeneutic quality of Bonhoeffer’s theology or what may be called his Christological hermeneutic. The chapter begins by describing Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutic consciousness evident from structural similarities between philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutic elements in his early works. It then describes Bonhoeffer’s Christ-Reality as the hermeneutical circle that grounds his participatory ontology and enables a hermeneutic phenomenology, i.e., a fundamentally interpretive stance toward human experience. This hermeneutic stance is then illustrated by the concept of simple minded obedience of discipleship, exemplified by the unified self, described in the previous chapter. Contrary to critics like John Webster, Bonhoeffer deliberately combines single-minded obedience with the need for hermeneutical discernment. The final sections of this chapter further deepen the hermeneutics of discipleship as engaged knowing by describing the importance of the incarnational structure of manger, cross, and resurrection together with the eschatological structure of ultimate-penultimate things for Bonhoeffer’s Christological hermeneutic. Both structures determine the interpretive discernment required for striving to live a Christ-shaped life characterized by the kind of freedom Bonhoeffer calls “realistic responsibility.”