Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works

Volume 11 in the sixteen-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931—1932, provides a comprehensive translation of Bonhoeffer's important writings from 1931 to 1932, with extensive commentary about their historical context and theological significance. This volume covers the significant period of Bonhoeffer's entry into the international ecumenical world and the final months before the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship.

From one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, Ethics is the seminal reinterpretation of the role of Christianity in the modern, secularized world. The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum; what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics. The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world; such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God’s having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. On the contrary, God’s commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world.

Here is offered the complete text in translation, annotated by the German and American editors. The historical context is explained and textual commentary is provided in a Foreword and Afterword.

Act and Being, written in 1929-1930 as Bonhoeffer's second dissertation, deals with the questions of consciousness and conscience in theology from the perspective of the Reformation insight about the origin of human sinfulness in the "heart turned in upon itself and thus open neither to the revelation of God nor to the encounter with the neighbor." Here, therefore, we find Bonhoeffer's thoughts about power, revelation, otherness, theological method, and theological anthropology.

Based on careful reconstruction of the manuscripts, freshly and expertly translated and annotated, this crown jewel of Bonhoeffer's body of work is the culmination of his theological and personal odyssey.

In this enlightening study, renowned twentieth-century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers a careful textual analysis of the story of creation, approaching the biblical tale of Genesis with the eye of a philosopher and the soul of a true Christian. “Creation and Fall” is Bonhoeffer’s lucid, brilliant analysis of the first three chapters of Genesis. Here he discusses the seeming scientific naiveté behind the creation story, God’s love and goodness, and humanity’s creation, its free will, and its blessedness. Bonhoeffer also tackles difficult questions that are raised from the first book of the Bible, questions about the seemingly redundant second story of creation, about God’s own beginning, about the source of the light that was created the first day. The author then expounds upon Adam and Eve’s fall from grace: How could they, creatures made in God’s image, have thought to oppose God so foully? Where did the first evil come from? How did humanity lose its right to live in paradise? In “Temptation,” Bonhoeffer questions how temptation appeared in the midst of Eden’s innocence, and he explores the very nature of evil. Bonhoeffer explains that Jesus Christ helps us to understand and conquer physical and spiritual temptation through His grace and goodness.

* 900 pages of never-before-translated Bonhoeffer works * Illuminating essays, letters, and lectures clarify Bonhoeffer's biographical and theological path

This book discloses a great deal of Bonhoeffer's family context, social world, and cultural milieu. Events from his life are recounted in a way that embodies and illuminates his theology. Characters and situations that represent Nazi types and attitudes are a form of social criticism and help to explain Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance movement and the plot to kill Adolf Hitler, for which he was hanged.