The Place of Bonhoeffer: Problems and Possibilities in His Thought

by Bloomsbury Academic

Overview

Less than two decades since Bonhoeffer's execution in 1945, a symposium of scholars was held to rescue the real Bonhoeffer from the so-called "Bonhoeffer mystique" that was popular in the 1960's. Martin Marty, who planned and edited this symposium, writes in his Introduction: "Here, for the first time in the U.S., a number of Christian thinkers gather to analyze Bonhoeffer's theological achievement.… The eight writers of this book try to locate his methods and emphases in the various disciplines of theological study." These disciplines include biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, ethics, sociology, philosophy, and liturgy and devotion.

Altogether, these seminal essays serve to reinstate the central question, continually reiterated by Bonhoeffer, "Who is Christ for us today?"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313208126
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/13/1981
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where for 35 years he taught religious history in three faculties. Since 1956 he has been on the masthead of the Christian Century and is editor of Context. He specializes in American religious history and headed the six-year "Fundamentalism Project" of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds the National Medal of Humanities and the medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was honored with the National Book Award for Righteous Empire in 1971. An ordained Lutheran minister, he frequently also writes on theological themes.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 1

Works of Bonhoeffer 6

1 Introduction 9

Problems and Possibilities in Bonhoeffer's Thought Martin E. Marty

2 The Question: Who is Christ for Us Today? 25

Bonhoeffer's History, Church, and World Franklin H. Littell

3 The Social Character of the Question Concerning Jesus Christ 51

Sociology and Ecclesiology Peter Berger

4 The Methods of Asking the Question Concerning Jesus Christ 81

Act and Being Franklin Sherman 81

5 The Source of Answers to the Question Concerning Jesus Christ 113

Bonhoeffer and the Bible Walter Harrelson 113

6 The Early Answer to the Question Concerning Jesus Christ 143

Bonhoeffer's Christologie of 1993 Jaroslav Pelikan

7 The Christian in the Church Responding to the Answer in Jesus Christ 167

Liturgy and Devotion Reginald H. Fuller

8 The Christian in the World Responding to the Answer in Jesus Christ 197

Realized Faith, the Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer George W. Forell