The Creator Sovereign in Christ: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Protestant Natural Law Retrieval

This dissertation responds to recent Christian natural law retrievals by two leading evangelicals—J. Daryl Charles and David VanDrunen—with wider theological, ecumenical, and sociopolitical relevance. Charles and VanDrunen agree that the natural law is ontologically and epistemologically universal, that it provides initial knowledge of what is “good” and “right” to church and world, and that it gives societies a shared life, morality, and praxis of justice, including rights. Yet for Charles, redemption in Christ affects church and world, while for VanDrunen, the world remains in the “Noahic Covenant,” which provides only creational preservation. Charles converges with Catholic Thomism, while VanDrunen aims at “a distinctively Protestant” natural law. Our thesis: Charles and VanDrunen are right to point to the normative relevance of creation, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer shows the only life, reality, and good of church and world is the history God elects for creation in directing it in/to Christ; this makes direct appeals to natural law problematic and gives ethics and politics a different form—even as it calls into question aspects of Bonhoeffer’s approach. We pursue this thesis as follows: Chapter One outlines Charles and VanDrunen. Chapter Two demonstrates the basic thesis over against them. Chapter Three argues that Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of creation shows they do not attend properly to divine sovereignty, glorification and election while their focus on natural goods inhibits acceptance of God’s permission of suffering. Likewise, Bonhoeffer’s notion of sin problematizes their approach further, while his recognition of the unanticipatable interplay of creation, sin, and Christ challenges their treatment of sin/preservation and redemption as “principles.” Chapter Four highlights Bonhoeffer’s recognition that God commands specific histories to specific people. This, it is argued, demands a different foundation for all ethical-political discourse, even as it calls into question a reconfiguration of the “orders” concept by Bonhoeffer. Chapters Five and Six highlight Bonhoeffer’s argument that God commands a christological lifeform focused on reconciliation and loving response to divine and human Others, which enables recognition of God’s specified commands and, with a little help, fundamentally repositions the place and meaning of natural goods, rights, duties, and justice.