Abstract
The issue of the relationship between Church History and Systematic Theology has become more pressing, not only in the context of the rise of the modern critical historical method, but above all because, to an unprecedented degree, church history is presenting challenges to Christian ethics that go right through to core tenets of Christian belief and therefore to systematics. Unique in this respect is the challenge presented by the Holocaust and the response of Christian theologians in the general context of anti-semitism that surrounded and promoted it. This article takes the German martyr theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a test case of the relationship between systematic theology and history, assessing both the strengths and weaknesses of his response to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, in the light of his highly ethical approach to the theological task.
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