For the first time in nearly 20 years, the essential theological writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have been drawn together in a helpful and concise one-volume format. The Bonhoeffer Reader brings the best English translation to readers, students, and scholars and provides a ready-made introduction to the thought of this essential thinker

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer-a theologian and pastor-was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their unspeakable crimes against humanity. He was only 39 years old when he died, but Bonhoeffer left behind volumes of work exploring theological and ethical themes that have now inspired multiple generations of scholars, students, pastors, and activists. This book highlights the ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work informs political theology and examines Bonhoeffer's contributions in three ways: historical-critical interpretation, critical-constructive engagement, and constructive-practical application. With contributions from a broad array of scholars from around the world, chapters range from historical analysis of Bonhoeffer's early political resistance language to accounts of Bonhoeffer-inspired, front-line resistance to white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA. This volume speaks to the ongoing relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work and life in and out of the academy.

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer-a theologian and pastor-was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their unspeakable crimes against humanity. He was only 39 years old when he died, but Bonhoeffer left behind volumes of work exploring theological and ethical themes that have now inspired multiple generations of scholars, students, pastors, and activists. This book highlights the ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work informs political theology and examines Bonhoeffer's contributions in three ways: historical-critical interpretation, critical-constructive engagement, and constructive-practical application. With contributions from a broad array of scholars from around the world, chapters range from historical analysis of Bonhoeffer's early political resistance language to accounts of Bonhoeffer-inspired, front-line resistance to white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA. This volume speaks to the ongoing relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work and life in and out of the academy.

Questions surrounding the genesis, development, and viability of modern academic theology have drawn renewed and heightened interest in recent years. Over the past decade, an increasing number of detailed studies have inquired into the emergence of scientific theology ( wissenschaftliche Theologie ) in the nineteenth century and its uneasy relationship with the shifting intellectual culture of the modern research university. This volume presents a unique contribution to this developing conversation, offering a focused treatment of the many-sided debate surrounding the tasks and limitations of historical and critical theology as it develops in the modern German university during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fifteen chapters of the volume examine the challenges of the historical study of theology and the contested concept of scientific theology in the writings of foundational figures such as Kant, Schleiermacher, Baur, Ritschl, Harnack, Troeltsch, Barth, and Bonhoeffer. Yet it also attends to ongoing debates concerning the relationship between supernatural revelation and empirical-historical research, the rise and fall of historicism in theology, the competing locales of church and university, the appropriation of historical methods within Protestant and Catholic theological faculties, and the place and function of theology in the increasingly specialized modern research university. As the essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary discussions of the place of the study of theology and religion in the modern university.

Prompted by the 2017 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, this book examines the legacy of Martin Luther in the life, work, and reception of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most widely read modern Lutheran theologian. Framing the commemoration of the Reformation in conversation with Bonhoeffer's legacy places much more than Bonhoeffer's connection to Luther at stake. Given the fraught relationship of the Lutheran Bonhoeffer with the German Protestant Church under National Socialism, the question inevitably arises: "What happened to Luther's church in Germany?" This in turn prompts the question: "How did the Protestant tradition play out in public life in other nations?" And these historical issues in turn encourage reflection on a question that exercised both Luther and Bonhoeffer: "What will be the shape of the church in the future?" In these pages, an international group of scholars and practitioners from both church and state pursues these questions.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dramatic biography, a son of privilege who suffered imprisonment and execution after involving himself in a conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich, has helped make him one of the most influential Christian figures of the twentieth century. But before he was known as a martyr or a hero, he was a student and teacher of theology. This book examines the academic formation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, arguing that the young Bonhoeffer reinterpreted for a modern intellectual context the Lutheran understanding of the 'person' of Jesus Christ. In the process, Bonhoeffer not only distinguished himself from both Karl Barth and Karl Holl, whose dialectical theology and Luther interpretation respectively were two of the most important post-World War I theological movements, but also established the basic character of his own 'person-theology.' Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God's freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person-concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth's dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutical way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God's unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer's teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person-theology--a person-concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking--which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dramatic biography, a son of privilege who suffered imprisonment and execution after involving himself in a conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich, has helped make him one of the most influential Christian figures of the twentieth century. But before he was known as a martyr or a hero, he was a student and teacher of theology. This book examines the academic formation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, arguing that the young Bonhoeffer reinterpreted for a modern intellectual context the Lutheran understanding of the 'person' of Jesus Christ. In the process, Bonhoeffer not only distinguished himself from both Karl Barth and Karl Holl, whose dialectical theology and Luther interpretation respectively were two of the most important post-World War I theological movements, but also established the basic character of his own 'person-theology.' Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God's freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person-concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth's dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutical way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God's unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer's teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person-theology -- a person-concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking -- which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.