The Cost of Citizenship: Disciple and Citizen in Bonhoeffer's Political Ethics

Abstract

The author suggests that a synchronic reading of Bonhoeffer's major works yields a typology of the two main images around which Bonhoeffer's political ethics orbit: disciple and citizen. Concentrating on the latter, the author shows the centrality of the question of power for Bonhoeffer's political ethics, and how it relates to responsibility and vocation. He argues that Bonhoeffer's ethics follows a christological grammar which constitutes its specific realism and provides its focus on institutions and good works. The essay concludes that the call to citizenship, the vocation of co-operative, representative and vicarious action, forms the central idea of Bonhoeffer's political ethics, which is still highly relevant for political ethics today.