This is a pre-publication author’s version. For the final, published version, see T&T Clark Handbook of Suffering and the Problem of Evil edited by Matthias Grebe and Johannes Grössl.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Michael P. DeJonge
The theodicy problem solved in the cross Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) strikingly claims, “The question why there is evil is not a theological question”. Why? Because, he says, the question “presupposes that it is possible to go back behind the existence that is laid upon us as sinners. If we could answer the question why, then we would not be sinners”. 1 The question “why evil?” is, in other words, a speculative philosophical question posed from an existential position of sovereignty over the world and God. In contrast, theological questions about suffering and evil must come from the position of the redeemed sinner. In ruling out “why evil?” from theology, Bonhoeffer applies a favorite distinction, that between philosophical and theological reflection (Tietz 2009). In refusing “why evil?” as a theological question, then, Bonhoeffer does not ban the topic of suffering and evil from theology. Indeed, he offers some of the twentieth century’s most influential theological reflections on suffering. Rather, he insists on approaching the topic in a particular way: “The theological question is not a question about the origin of evil but one about the actual overcoming of evil on the cross”. 2 The cross of Christ is the place where evil is overcome and where the sinner’s existential position is transformed into that of a redeemed sinner. So, theological reflection on suffering starts at the cross. Bonhoeffer’s approach is therefore resolutely a theology of the cross. This is so in the straightforward sense that his thinking about suffering takes its orientation from the cross. Beyond this, his thinking about suffering is a theology of the cross because its prototype is
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, ed. John de Gruchy, trans. Douglas Bax (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 120. 2 Ibid.
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