For starters, I think Jeffrey Pugh’s work puts Bonhoeffer’s theology in perspective by revisiting some of the themes of his life that have found abiding significance in Christian theology and why Bonhoeffer is still important for us today; think of the work that generated the book AJBC and the times of the followers’ lives. Then think of Bonhoeffers “religionless Christianity”….can the two studies, periods, and the cultural influences we see in those periods bring Bonhoeffer into conversation with our present situation. When we examine Bonhoeffer and his writing, we must examine the exegetical and hermeneutical perspectives. Could we say In our secular age, Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” is evergreen? 

Peter Hooton writes: “Christians now ask not what more God can do for them, but what they can do for God because they take seriously “the suffering of God in the world.” They know that they have, like Christ “to drink the cup of earthly life to the last drop.” For them, life in the Christ-reality is a fully responsible, compassionate, exceptionless sharing in the pains and delights of acceptable creaturely existence.”

Does the “religionless Christianity” that Bonhoeffer writes about address the crisis in Christianity today? 

“Man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings at the hands of a godless world,” Bonhoeffer wrote to Bethge on July 18, 1944. Three days later, after learning of the failure of the Officer’s Plot to assassinate Hitler—a plot in which he had been complicit and for which he would be executed at the age of 39 when the Gestapo uncovered his role. Bonhoeffer wrote of the “this-worldliness” of the Christian faith: This is where I think the work of AJBC can collaborate and innovate for a more grounded understanding of the teachings of Jesus.

For Bonhoeffer, the answers to many questions he struggled with lie not in any nostalgic retreat to the past. Like with see with Jordan Peterson, Barron, RadTrads, and others, Bonhoeffer ultimately refused the path of shoring up decaying institutions and exhausted forms of Piety. (Personal Piety is a product of the middle ages.) Instead, Bonhoeffer insisted that believers must repent of the power and control game they have been playing for far too long. In all too many “Christian denominations,” we see the clinging to paternalism, patriarchy, and hierarchy modeled after feudalism.

So maybe we should focus on studying Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Christianity” in Its Christological Context for living the gospel message.

“During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religious, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man…” ~ Eberhard Bethage, July 21, 1944

Just Thinking out loud here 😎