How to read Bonhoeffer’s peace statements: Or,Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran and not an Anabaptist

Abstract

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s strong statements in support of peace have encouraged Stanley Hauerwas and other interpreters to read him, explicitly or implicitly, as participating in the theological tradition of the peace churches. This paper argues that this reading misinterprets Bonhoeffer’s peace statements, which ought to be interpreted in the context of the Lutheran theological tradition with which Bonhoeffer identified. In fact, this misinterpretation of Bonhoeffer’s peace statements is one that he himself worked hard to avoid by carefully distinguishing his own position on peace from what he understood as that of the Anabaptists.