Bonhoeffer S Intellectual Formation

The authors of this volume discuss specific philosophical and theological ideas in view of Bonhoeffer’s intellectual formation. As such, all the studies converge on the thought of Bonhoeffer as a whole in order to illuminate the growth and maturation of his theology. Contributors to this volume include: Barry Harvey, Wayne Floyd, Peter Frick, Geffrey Kelly, Wolf Krötke, Andreas Pangritz, Stephen Plant, Martin Rumscheidt, Christine Tietz, Ralf Wüstenberg, and Josiah Young.

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 most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus.

Every Christian needs spiritual direction, writes Peter Frick. Regular prayer and meditation help to shape a healthy Christian life. While noting that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was more than a spiritual mentor, Frick utilizes his words to shape reflections that will guide readers deeper into the heart of meditation. Bonhoeffers prayers read like a contemporary psalter: they are praise, lament, wisdom. In these pages, readers are invited to contemplate silence, community, solitude, truth, grace, sin, worldliness, and eternity, and are encouraged to open their hearts to meditation. Peter Frick is associate professor and academic dean at St. Paul's College. He teaches a variety of subjects, including courses in Western religions, theology, and biblical studies. Frick recently published A Handbook of New Testament Greek Grammar (2007) and edited Bonhoeffer's Intellectual Formation (2008). Frick is a member of the international Bonhoeffer Society and a member of the editorial board responsible for the publication of the new standard edition of the Bonhoeffer works. His main interest lies in the intersection of philosophy and theology, both in ancient and modern times.

A detailed examination of 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 and distinguishing Bonhoeffer's theology from that of contemporaries Karl Barth and Karl Holl.

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.

In view of Bonhoeffer's contemporary readers, these essays focus on the task of articulating and clarifying a hermeneutically self-conscious approach to interpreting and ultimately understanding Bonhoeffer. Methods and approaches examined include themes such as gender, religion, race, ecology, politics, philosophy, literature among others.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is many things to many people—committed pacifist, reluctant revolutionary, Protestant saint but in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics of Formation, Ryan Huber argues that Bonhoeffer should be engaged as a Christian ethicist of formation. Huber demonstrates that formation lies at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s ethical project and personal story, providing a third way between virtue and character ethics in contemporary Christian thought concerned with moral growth.