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² The best example known to me of such a reinterpretation is Hall, Douglas John, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans and New York: Friendship Press, 1986).Google Scholar

³ Santmire, H. Paul, ‘Toward a New Theology of Nature’, Dialog 25:1 (1986), pp. 43–50.Google Scholar

⁴ White, Lynn, ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’; Science 155 (1967), pp. 1203–1207CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For a sensible commentary, see Nash, James A., Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981), pp. 68ff.Google Scholar

⁵ For an elaboration of this position, see my ‘Types of Ecotheology’, Ecotheology 4 (1998), pp. 8–19.Google Scholar

⁶ Rasmussen, Larry L., Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1996).Google Scholar

⁷ For further detail on ‘non-religions interpretation’, see my ‘Nature in a “World come of Age”’, New Blackfriars 78: 919 (1997), pp. 356–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹ I have opted for this order as a way of avoiding misconceptions: the ‘lay’ understanding of nature stems from attention to the rural, the wilderness, animals, etc. which are commonly understood to be other than humanity. To begin with anthropology is, implicitly, a criticism of the restriction of nature to its ‘lay’ use. See Soper, Kate, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-Human (Oxford: Blackwells, 1995), pp. 156, 180–209.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Bonhoeffer, , Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 1971), p. 374.Google Scholar

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¹³ Bonhoeffer, , Ethics, p. 120.Google Scholar

¹⁴ It is important to note that Bonhoeffer does not appeal to reason as the distinguishing feature of (male?) humanity. For a critique of the validation of hierarchy by appeal to the capacity of reason, see Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ‘The Liberation of Christology from Patriarchy’, in Loades, Ann (ed.), Feminist Theology: A Reader (London: SPCK, 1990), pp. 138f.Google Scholar

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¹⁸ Bonhoeffer, , Sanctorum Communio (London: Collins, 1963), p. 13, cf. p. 22.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, p. 46; cf. Act and Being (London: Collins, 1962), pp. 156, 173–5.Google Scholar

²⁰ Bonhoeffer, Ethics, pp. 121, 123. In forging a connection between freedom and the natural, Bonhoeffer clearly distinguishes his account from Romantic news of nature.

²¹ It would be a mistake at this point to think that Bonhoeffer understands the natural, in its independence, to be independent of Jesus Christ. Although Bonhoeffer does not employ the ‘orders of preservation’ language of his writings of 1933—see Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, pp. 90–1; ‘A theological basis for the world alliance’, No Rusty Swords (London: Fontana, 1970), pp. 153–169—that which is creaturely (‘now natural’) remains directed towards ChristGoogle Scholar. ‘The natural is the form of life preserved by God for the fallen world and directed towards justification, redemption and renewal through Christ’ (Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 122).

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²³ Bonhoeffer, , Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 282.Google Scholar

²⁴ Bonhoeffer, , Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 282.Google Scholar

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²⁶ Bonhoeffer, , Sanctorum Communio, p. 28Google Scholar; cf. Act and Being, p. 42; cf. Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 282.

²⁷ Bonhoeffer, , Sanctorum Communio, p. 36; cf. p. 42.Google Scholar

²⁸ Bonhoeffer, , Creation and Fall, pp. 47f.Google Scholar; Christology, pp. 59f.; Ethics, pp. 66–8; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 312.

²⁹ The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press, 1959), p. 85.Google Scholar

³⁰ Creation and Fall, p. 34; Christology, pp. 49, 65; in Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer proposes God as the mediator in the encounter between I and Thou rather than Christ (p. 37): indeed, although the very important phrase ‘Christ existing as community’ is to be found here, the argument itself is not Christological, but speaks rather of the presence and mediation of God (see Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 61f.). Thus discontinuities, as well as continuities, can be identified in Bonhoeffer's writings: the Christocentric concentration pertains only from 1933: in Christology, we have a clear account of the Christocentric concentration: the threefold encounter of the human nature of Jesus Christ affirms historical embodied self in community (see Green, Clifford, ‘Sociality and church in Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 21 (1968), pp. 416–434).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Bonhoeffer, , Sanctorum Communio, pp. 160f.Google Scholar

³² The title of a book by Clifford Green: see note 11. I am following Green's interpretation of Sanctorum Communio: Bonhoeffer is centrally and fundamentally concerned with sociality, not solely with ecelesiology.

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³⁴ Bonhoeffer, Christology, pp. 39–59; Jones, L. Gregory, ‘The Cost of Forgiveness: Grace, Christian Community and the Politics of Worldly Discipleship’, in Floyd, Wayne W. and Marsh, Charles (eds), Theology and the Practice of Responsibility, p. 151Google Scholar; cf. Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 67.

³⁵ Jones, , ‘The Cost of Forgiveness: Grace, Christian Community and the Politics of Worldly Discipleship’, p. 151.Google Scholar

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³⁷ The language of centre and boundary/limit is, of course, a renewed application of the pro nobis and extra nos terminology reviewed earlier; as these terms are used in the explication of the socio-ethical form of God's presence in relation and otherness (conventionally, immanence and transcendence), they occur frequently in Bonhoeffer's writing: see, for example, Creation and Fall, pp. 47f.

³⁸ Bonhoeffer, , Christology, p. 65.Google Scholar

³⁹ Bonhoeffer, , Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 380.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Marsh, , Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 101.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ebeling, Gerhard, ‘The “Non-Religious Interpretation of Biblical Concepts’”, Word and Faith (London: SCM Press, 1963), p. 106.Google Scholar

⁴² This, for some, is the worry about Barth's theology: see Roberts, Richard R., A Theology on its Way? (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), pp. 34f.Google Scholar

⁴³ Cf. Kaufman, Gordon D., ‘A Problem for Theology: the Concept of Nature’, Harvard Theological Review 65 (1972), pp. 340–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Cf. Hardy, Daniel W., ‘Created and Redeemed Sociality’, in Gunton, C. E. and Hardy, D. W. (eds), On Being the Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), pp. 21–47.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Yet we must note immediately an important limitation to Bonhoeffer's terminology: the concept of the state, although not unimportant, requires extension. The history of humanity includes economic and cultural activity, as Bonhoeffer well knew. Today Christian responsibility is not only to the state but also to the wider civil society beyond the state.

⁴⁶ Floyd, Wayne Whitson, ‘The Search for an Ethical Sacrament: From Bonhoeffer to Critical Theory’, Modem Theology 7:2 (1991), pp. 188–189.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Rasmussen, , Earth Community, Earth Ethics, p. 299.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See my ‘Nature in a “world come of age”’ for more detail on ‘non-religious interpretation’ in the theology of nature.

⁴⁹ I am grateful to William H. Lazareth, Alistair McFadyen, Lawrence Osborn, Stanley Rudman and Francis Watson for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this paper.