Abstract
Revaluation of Revaluation: On the Christian Reinterpretation of Nietzschean Motifs in Early Bonhoeffer. The Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is regarded as a Christian thinker who has most successfully integrated Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics, religion and morality into his own theology. I suggest that this assertive reception does not yet apply to Bonhoeffer’s early Barcelona lectures (1928/29), and argue that Bonhoeffer’s reference to Nietzschean motifs does not support them, but rather reinterprets them in a Christian sense, and depletes them of their original content. In doing so, Bonhoeffer refers to a method Nietzsche applies in Thus Spoke Zarathustra when he expresses his revaluation of values with reference to biblical motifs and topics. Both thinkers use this practice as an instrument of critique.
