Stephen Plant in the bibliography to ‘Bonhoeffer’ (Outstanding Christian Thinkers series – Continuum) writes “At the risk of appearing arrogant, it seems to me there are very few books on Bonhoeffer’s theology that continue to be valuable beyond their initial print run!”.  This book could be added to a list of survivors.

Westminster John Knox Press deserves thanks for republishing a book first published by Abingdon Press in 1972.  The text remains the same and, as Rasmussen himself admits, the exclusive masculine language may jar, but the book, while demanding time and effort, will repay both.

If I am learning any lessons from my own recent reading correctly, one is that the complexity of the relationships between Bonhoeffer’s life and thought, action and being, is increasingly recognised.  To get near to Bonhoeffer requires our acceptance of that complexity and living with the tension.  In his introduction for this publication Rasmussen asks this about Bonhoeffer – “Does his journey, varied in form and perhaps contradictory and ethically problematic, also belong and hold together?”  That question is the theme this book addressed thirty-five years ago.

There are a couple of sentences on page 91 which capture the worth of this book for me – “No claim is made here that the resistance experience gave Bonhoeffer his theological base, exactly the opposite has been shown – his theological base led him to and through resistance.  But the resistance did forge the ethical consequences of his Christology” (emphasis mine).  Recently many pages have been filled exploring just that.  I only wish I had come across this book years ago.

This is not an easy read and it helps to have Bonhoeffer’s works to hand.  The range is wide and the mine deep, including consideration of the character of Bonhoeffer’s pacifism, the nature of tyranny, and an intriguing final chapter on a Critique of Resistance.

Perhaps it takes a tyrant to overthrow a tyrant, Stalin to get rid of Hitler, and the July plotters never stood a chance.  The story of David and Goliath is a myth, but a myth we need to live by.

Clive Scott