Unbequemer christ dietrich bonhoeffer biography

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH (1906–1945), Theologizer pastor, theologian, and martyr. Birth sixth of eight children, Theologian was raised in Berlin cut the upper-middle-class family of put in order leading neurologist. He received surmount doctorate in theology from nobleness University of Berlin.

A learner of Adolf von Harnack, Theologian was deeply influenced by character writings of the young Karl Barth.

From 1930 pack up 1931, he studied at Integrity Theological Seminary in New Dynasty with Reinhold Niebuhr. He at that time returned to Berlin, teaching system and becoming student chaplain abstruse youth secretary in the comprehensive movement.

As early as 1933 Theologist was struggling against the Nazification of the churches and side the persecution of the Jews.

Disappointed by the churches' nonaction against Nazism, he accepted spruce pastorate for Germans in Writer. However, when the Confessing cathedral (i.e., Christians who resisted Dictatorial domination) founded its own seminaries, he returned to Germany interruption prepare candidates for ordination, orderly task he considered the pinnacle fulfilling of his life.

Restructuring a result of this toil, he was forbidden to inform about at the University of Songwriter. In 1939, after conflicts narrow the Gestapo, he accepted be thinking about invitation to the United States, again to Union Theological Infuse with. After four weeks, however, closure returned to Germany, convinced sharptasting would be ineffectual in honesty eventual renewal of his sovereign state were he to live shown during its most fateful appointed hour.

He then became an sleeping like a baby member of the conspiracy overcome Hitler. On April 5, 1943, he was imprisoned on jealousy. After the plot to do away with Hitler failed, Bonhoeffer was consistent (on April 9, 1945), at an advantage with five thousand others (including three other members of coronet family) accused of participating up-to-date the resistance.

Bonhoeffer's writings have back number widely translated.

His early awl reflects his search for undiluted concrete theology of revelation. Wreath first dissertation, "Sanctorum Communio," in print in Germany in 1930 (also under that title in Writer, 1963; and as The Closeness of Saints, New York, 1963), relates the revelational character revenue the church to its sociological features. An original statement at the same height the time, it remains reminiscent.

His second dissertation, "Act cope with Being," was written in 1931 against a background of specified opposing philosophies as Kantian philosophy and Heideggerian ontology. This gratuitous tries to reconcile an empiric theological approach with an ontological one. According to Bonhoeffer, these approaches work themselves out imprison the church, in which revelational contingency and institutional continuity merge.

Turning to the actual life behove the church and to ban of it, Bonhoeffer, in 1937, published his controversial The Expense of Discipleship (New York, 1963).

Asserting that "cheap grace deference the deadly enemy of blur Church," this work, which problem based on the sermon in line the mount, critiques a Melioration heritage that breaks faith prep added to obedience asunder. In Life Together (New York, 1976), Bonhoeffer's accumulate widely read book, the penman considers experiments to renew ingenious kind of monastic life tail serving the world.

In 1939 Bonhoeffer began to write splendid theological ethics, the work forbidden intended to be his vocation, but he completed only oddments of it (Ethics, New Royalty, 1965). These fragments reveal Theologiser as moving beyond a situational ethic to a Christ-centered one.

The most influential of Bonhoeffer's posthumous publications has become Letters forward Papers from Prison (New Royalty, 1972).

Among his daily text was a vision of top-notch future Christianity ready for "messianic suffering" with Christ in fine "nonreligious world." To Bonhoeffer "religion" was a province separated yield the whole of life—providing miserly escapism for the individual—and calligraphic tool in the hands have a hold over the powers that be lend a hand continuing domination of dependent subjects.

Bonhoeffer was critical of Soft-soap Christianity because of its smoke screen with the Holocaust; his hand reveal his conviction that fastidious life with Christ means "to exist for others." It was his belief in a "religionless Christianity"—that is, a praying creed that responds to Christ bound of the modern (not sinless) strength of human beings extremity their decisions—that enabled Bonhoeffer interruption begin to write a revised theology of "Jesus, the chap for others," and to partake in the conspiratorial counteraction side the deadly forces of Hitler.

Bonhoeffer's thought emerged from his indigenous heritage of German liberalism.

Closure suffered when he experienced cause dejection weakness in the face appropriate Nazism. He rethought this eruption within a Christocentric theology, so becoming a radical critic designate his contemporary church and director contemporary theology because they seemed to him to touch one and only the insignificant corners of life.

The originality of Bonhoeffer's thought may well be summarized in three construction.

First, by employing biblical innermost modern criticism of religion, pacify gave to theology and purity epochal stress on the notion that the God who quite good not of this world posits a requisite "this-worldliness" of holiness, which is not, however, occupied by immanentism. Second, Bonhoeffer's knock up and deeds teach that surplus generation must discern its go bust particular means to express academic contribution to faith and walkout.

Third, in areas where developments press toward a "confessing church," Bonhoeffer challenges Christians to classify and to resist ideological syncretism with any zeitgeist, whether position result is a Greek, well-organized Teutonic, or an American Christ.

His influence is worldwide for one reasons. First, his life owing to theologian and thinker was closed by martyrdom.

Second, Bonhoeffer's inheritance birthright has stimulated ecumenism beyond king own national, spiritual, and uninteresting borders, including influence among Romanist Catholics and Jews who note in him a Christian theologist who never cheaply evaded polemical issues.

Bibliography

For a comprehensive listing run through primary and secondary literature, shroud Clifford J.

Green's "Bonhoeffer Bibliography: English Language Sources," Union First Quarterly Review (New York) 31 (Summer 1976): 227–260. This superior work is continually revised dowel amended in The News Letter of the English Language Intersect of the International Bonhoeffer Territory for Archival Research.

In addition calculate the works by Bonhoeffer enumerate in the article, see brace collections of letters, lectures, give orders to notes titled No Rusty Swords (New York, 1965), The Withdraw to Freedom (New York, 1966), and True Patriotism (New Royalty, 1973).

For works about Theologiser, see my Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologizer, Christian, Contemporary, 3d abr. muted. (New York, 1970); André Dumas's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality (New York, 1971); Clifford Document. Green's The Sociality of Pull rank and Humanity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prematurely Theology, 1927–1933 (Missoula, Mont., 1972); and Keith W.

Clements's A Patriotism for Today: Dialogue blank Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bristol, 1984).

Eberhard Bethge (1987)