How does the contemporary reader make sense of the life and writings of such an icon as Dietrich Bonhoeffer? The essays in this volume seek to address this question by carefully examining the social, cultural, religious and intellectual locations that inform the Sitz im Leben of a vast readership of Bonhoeffer. The focus of each of the essays is thus on the task of articulating and clarifying a hermeneutically self-conscious and responsible approach to interpreting and understanding Bonhoeffer. The authors come from widely divergent backgrounds, both geographically and intellectually, and therefore offer a wide spectrum of dialogue. Methods and approaches examined in the essays discuss themes such as gender, religion, race, ecology, politics, philosophy, literature among others.

Bonhoeffer remains enigmaticapreacher, theologian, visionary, ethicist. The variety of his public roles and the breadth of his thought ensure that Bonhoeffer eludes even as he captivates. In this volume, Peter Frick seeks new dimensions of that complexity by tracing and then weighing the influence of Bonhoeffer's philosophical, theological, and social formation in order to understand his lasting significance. Frick divides his study into three parts: "Reading Bonhoeffer" explores hermeneutical and translation difficulties; "Backgrounding Bonhoeffer" unpacks how the thought of Kempis, Nietzsche, Bultmann, Tillich, and Ebeling informs Bonhoeffer's work; and "Foregrounding Bonhoeffer" models concrete ways in which Bonhoeffer speaks to issues of race, globalization, peace, politics, and social responsibility. If Bonhoeffer is enigmatic, it is equally true, as Frick reveals, that he remains endlessly relevant.

How are we to understand Bonhoeffer? In these essays, Peter Frick attempts to answer this question by examining different aspects of Bonhoeffer's thought, thus illuminating the hermeneutical, philosophical, theological, and social dimensions of his writings. All sixteen essays collected here were written between 2007 and 2014; some of them address the question of methodology, others contribute to Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation, and still others seek to connect with contemporary questions. The aim of the volume is to present Bonhoeffer's key theological and philosophical ideas, and to emphasize their contemporary relevance.

One of the remarkable developments in the contemporary study of Paul is the dramatic interest in his thought amongst European philosophers. This collection of leading scholars makes accessible a discussion often elusive to those not already conversant in the categories of European philosophy.