Jesus for You: A Feminist Reading of Bonhoeffer's Christology (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

In a previously published essay I outlined how I see Dietrich Bonhoeffer's spirituality related to his upbringing as a dominating, aggressive self and how naive reading of his work can prove disastrous when uncritically applied to people in very different social locations, such as women in abuse. (1) In the present essay I move on to explore how Bonhoeffer's strong Christology in particular speaks to women in abuse and others with degraded self-conceptions. This essay derives from several overarching questions having to do with Bonhoeffer's own spiritual experience of Jesus Christ, his articulation of this experience in formal Christology, and the conversation arising when this Christology encounters people living in power relations different from those that shaped Bonhoeffer. So: What is the transformation Bonhoeffer experienced in his encounter with Jesus Christ? What are the contours of redemption women trapped in the shadows of reality need? And how--both with and against the grain of his legacy--can Bonhoeffer's Christology provide an authentically Lutheran spirituality of transformation for people in social locations very different from his own?