Bonhoeffer S New Beginning

Bonhoeffer’s New Beginning investigates the ethics of making new beginnings after devastating moral rupture. The work argues that new beginnings must be made in order to sustain the fundamental convictions that it is good to exist and that life in the world with others should be loved without exclusion. Bonhoeffer’s ethics of new beginning is set in conversation with the thought of four moral philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Jonathan Glover, and Jonathan Lear. DeCort argues that Bonhoeffer’s ethics of new beginning opens and energizes a more promising, world-affirming moral vision with radical hope for new beginnings vis-à-vis the perceived absence of God in the face of devastation.

Winner, Christianity Today 2015 Book Award in History/Biography Shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography In the decades since his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and anti-Hitler conspirator, has become one of the most widely read and inspiring Christian thinkers of our time. With unprecedented archival access and definitive scope, Charles Marsh captures the life of this remarkable man who searched for the goodness in his religion against the backdrop of a steadily darkening Europe. From his brilliant student days in Berlin to his transformative sojourn in America, across Harlem to the Jim Crow South, and finally once again to Germany where he was called to a ministry for the downtrodden, we follow Bonhoeffer on his search for true fellowship and observe the development of his teachings on the shared life in Christ. We witness his growing convictions and theological beliefs, culminating in his vocal denunciation of Germany’s treatment of the Jews that would put him on a crash course with Hitler. Bringing to life for the first time this complex human being—his substantial flaws, inner torment, the friendships and the faith that sustained and finally redeemed him—Strange Glory is a momentous achievement.

Since Dietrich Bonhoeffers death in 1945, he has continued to fascinate and compel readers as a theologian, witness, and martyr. In this new biography, Christiane Tietz masterfully portrays the interconnectedness of Bonhoeffers life and thought, theology and politics, discipleship, witness, and resistance, tracing the path from his childhood to his imprisonment and execution. Brief, lucid, and accessible, Tietzs new account brings Bonhoeffers story and work to life in a vivid retelling, unfolding his important and widely read texts in the process. The volume also includes previously unseen pictures.

In the decades since his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and anti-Hitler conspirator, has become one of the most widely read and inspiring Christian thinkers of our time. Now, drawing on extensive new research, Strange Glory offers a definitive account, by turns majestic and intimate, of this modern icon. The scion of a grand family that rarely went to church, Dietrich decided as a thirteen-year-old to become a theologian. By twenty-one, the rather snobbish and awkward young man had already written a dissertation hailed by Karl Barth as a “theological miracle.” But it was only the first step in a lifelong effort to recover an authentic and orthodox Christianity from the dilutions of liberal Protestantism and the modern idolatries of blood and nation—which forces had left the German church completely helpless against the onslaught of Nazism. From the start, Bonhoeffer insisted that the essence of Christianity was not its abstract precepts but the concrete reality of the shared life in Christ. In 1930, his search for that true fellowship led Bonhoeffer to America for ten fateful months in the company of social reformers, Harlem churchmen, and public intellectuals. Energized by the lived faith he had seen, he would now begin to make what he later saw as his definitive “turn from the phraseological to the real.” He went home with renewed vocation and took up ministry among Berlin’s downtrodden while trying to find his place in the hoary academic establishment increasingly captive to nationalist fervor. With the rise of Hitler, however, Bonhoeffer’s journey took yet another turn. The German church was Nazified, along with every other state-sponsored institution. But it was the Nuremberg laws that set Bonhoeffer’s earthly life on an ineluctable path toward destruction. His denunciation of the race statutes as heresy and his insistence on the church’s moral obligation to defend all victims of state violence, regardless of race or religion, alienated him from what would become the Reich church and even some fellow resistors. Soon the twenty-seven-year-old pastor was one of the most conspicuous dissidents in Germany. He would carry on subverting the regime and bearing Christian witness, whether in the pastorate he assumed in London, the Pomeranian monastery he established to train dissenting ministers, or in the worldwide ecumenical movement. Increasingly, though, Bonhoeffer would find himself a voice crying in the wilderness, until, finally, he understood that true moral responsibility obliged him to commit treason, for which he would pay with his life. Charles Marsh brings Bonhoeffer to life in his full complexity for the first time. With a keen understanding of the multifaceted writings, often misunderstood, as well as the imperfect man behind the saintly image, here is a nuanced, exhilarating, and often heartrending portrait that lays bare Bonhoeffer’s flaws and inner torment, as well as the friendships and the faith that sustained and finally redeemed him. Strange Glory is a momentous achievement.

In this four-session video-based small group Bible study (DVD/digital video sold separately), New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas will help you discover the major themes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writing and speaking and how he not only helped transform an entire faith community in Germany during World War II, but how his beliefs continue to impact the Christian faith of people throughout the world today. Filmed on location in Germany, Metaxas will take you on a religious journey of Bonhoeffer’s faith and why it has captured so many people’s imaginations and how it has inspired the Christian faith of so many today. Pulling themes from all of his major books, Metaxas helps us understand why these spiritual truths meant so much to Bonhoeffer and how they can be an inspiration and challenge to our faith. This study guide will lead you and your group deeper with session-by-session discussion topics, personal reflection, and between-session studies to enhance the group experience. Sessions include: What is the Church? Living in Christian Community Religionless Christianity Come and Die Designed for use with the Bonhoeffer Video Guide (sold separately).

Joel Lawrence offers a new methodology and a fresh perspective in this book, making it a concise guide to one of the most remarkable martyrs and theologians of the 20th century.

This volume is the documentation of a workshop at the "Dietrich Bonhoeffer Centre for Public Theology" in Kigali, that took place in February 2018 and discussed what can be gained from Bonhoeffer's theology for contextual theologies in Africa as well as in Europe. The core feature of the workshop in February 2018 was a competition in which students from Butare/Huye presented the findings of their examination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and work. The prize-winning contributions are documented in this volume. Papers from the European perspective were contributed by doctoral candidates and students of the Ruhr University Bochum, and the chairing and commentary of the event was shared amongst Dr Clemens Wustmans (Berlin), Dr Christine Schliesser (Bern), the President of the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, Dr Pascal Bataringaya (Kigali), the Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Protestant Institut of Arts and Social Sciences, Olivier Munyansanga, Ph.D. (Huye/Rwanda), and Prof. Dr Traugott Jähnichen (Bochum).