Returning to the God-Talk after Atheism: Levinas and Bonhoeffer

This study explores the possibility of a new discourse on God after the “death of God,” moving beyond traditional metaphysical and philosophical conceptions. Emmanuel Levinas offers a phenomenological approach that grounds the discourse on God in ethics, particularly in responsibility toward the Other. Levinas argues that human autonomy begins not with the self but with the Other, and that the presence of God is revealed through this ethical relationship. His radical ethics serve as a response to the history of violence and war perpetuated by Western metaphysics, which has traditionally assimilated God into the structure of subjective reason. In contrast, Dietrich Bonhoeffer rejects Levinas’ idea of reaching God through the ethics of the Other. Bonhoeffer views ethics before faith as a barrier to understanding divine reality. For Bonhoeffer, the ethical path from human existence to God contradicts Christianity’s approach from God to humanity. Bonhoeffer sees the relationship between ethics and faith as conflicted rather than complementary. This article examines whether Levinas’ ethical discourse on God offers a viable approach to speaking of God in a post-religious era, assessing its validity through the theological differences between Levinas and Bonhoeffer.