Religion, Religionlessness and Contemporary Western Culture

This first volume of the new series International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) contains several impulses for translating Bonhoeffers key ideas on Religion, Religionlessness and the Church into current contexts. These impulses vary from prospects for a Christian university looking at Bonhoeffers distinction between the ultimate and the penultimate things to an ethical understanding of Bonhoeffers as-if-theology in the light of Luthers distinction between law and gospel; from a fresh perspective on Bonhoeffers religionless Christianity in the light of his thought on oikumene to a Christological re-interpretation of repentance as the contribution of religionless Christianity to the task of the Church in the United States of America. The impulses are framed by programmatic contributions suggesting a framework for reading Bonhoeffer in the 21st century in his hermeneutic exploration of Bonhoeffers theology and the crises of Western culture, and analyzing religionless Christianity in a complexly religious and secular world.