Philip G. Ziegler - Böcker

This volume provides a comprehensive resource for those wishing to understand the German theologian, pastor, and resistance conspirator Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and his writings. During his lifetime he made important contributions to many of the major areas of theology: ecclesiology, creation, Christology, discipleship, and ethics. The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer surveys, assesses, and presents the field of research and debates of Bonhoeffer and his legacy, as well as of previous Bonhoeffer scholarship. Featuring contributions from leading Bonhoeffer scholars, historians, theologians, and ethicists, many essays draw attention to Bonhoeffer's positive contributions, while several essays also identify limits and problems with his thinking as it stands.Divided into five parts, the first section provides a detailed outline of Bonhoeffer's biography and the contexts that gave rise to his theology. The contributors explore the dynamic relationship between Bonhoeffer's life and theology. Section two provides rigorous engagements with and assessments of Bonhoeffer's theology on its own terms. Part three demonstrates how Bonhoeffer's ethical claims and engagements are deeply integrated with theological commitments. The fourth section showcases some of the best work drawing upon Bonhoeffer for engaging contemporary challenges, including feminism, race, public theology in South Africa, and contemporary philosophy. In recent decades, Bonhoeffer's theology has provoked significant critical reflection on social and cultural issues. The essays in this section exemplify how his writings can continue to contribute to such reflection today. The fifth and final section consists of essays on resources for the contemporary study of Bonhoeffer and his theology, including sources and texts, biographies and portraits, and readings and receptions. These essays also address pressing historiographical issues and problems surrounding writing about Bonhoeffer's life and theology. This authoritative collection draws together and assesses the very best of existing research on Bonhoeffer and promotes new avenues for research on Bonhoeffer.

This volume provides a comprehensive resource for those wishing to understand the German theologian, pastor, and resistance conspirator Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and his writings. During his lifetime he made important contributions to many of the major areas of theology: ecclesiology, creation, Christology, discipleship, and ethics. The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer surveys, assesses, and presents the field of research and debates of Bonhoeffer and his legacy, as well as of previous Bonhoeffer scholarship. Featuring contributions from leading Bonhoeffer scholars, historians, theologians, and ethicists, many essays draw attention to Bonhoeffer's positive contributions, while several essays also identify limits and problems with his thinking as it stands.Divided into five parts, the first section provides a detailed outline of Bonhoeffer's biography and the contexts that gave rise to his theology. The contributors explore the dynamic relationship between Bonhoeffer's life and theology. Section two provides rigorous engagements with and assessments of Bonhoeffer's theology on its own terms. Part three demonstrates how Bonhoeffer's ethical claims and engagements are deeply integrated with theological commitments. The fourth section showcases some of the best work drawing upon Bonhoeffer for engaging contemporary challenges, including feminism, race, public theology in South Africa, and contemporary philosophy. In recent decades, Bonhoeffer's theology has provoked significant critical reflection on social and cultural issues. The essays in this section exemplify how his writings can continue to contribute to such reflection today. The fifth and final section consists of essays on resources for the contemporary study of Bonhoeffer and his theology, including sources and texts, biographies and portraits, and readings and receptions. These essays also address pressing historiographical issues and problems surrounding writing about Bonhoeffer's life and theology. This authoritative collection draws together and assesses the very best of existing research on Bonhoeffer and promotes new avenues for research on Bonhoeffer.

This text comprises a comprehensive analysis of the doctrine of providence, from historical, philosophical-theological, systematic and practical perspectives. The essays in this book discuss the doctrine of providence from four central angles. First, three chapters give an historical introduction to the modern interpretation of the notion of providence, examining how it was progressively naturalised and secularized in modern times. Second, over seven chapters, and from different perspectives, the book restates the Christian notion of providence in relation to the problem of evil and the theory of evolution. Third, in two chapters, the book exhibits providence as a core theme in systematic theology.  Finally, over three chapters, the book shows the ethical and political relevance of the doctrine of providence today.

This text comprises a comprehensive analysis of the doctrine of providence, from historical, philosophical-theological, systematic and practical perspectives. The essays in this book discuss the doctrine of providence from four central angles. First, three chapters give an historical introduction to the modern interpretation of the notion of providence, examining how it was progressively naturalised and secularized in modern times. Second, over seven chapters, and from different perspectives, the book restates the Christian notion of providence in relation to the problem of evil and the theory of evolution. Third, in two chapters, the book exhibits providence as a core theme in systematic theology.  Finally, over three chapters, the book shows the ethical and political relevance of the doctrine of providence today.

What are the pressing questions concerning Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology? What impulses and provocations does his theological legacy offer to contemporary work in Christian theology and ethics? This volume draws together leading international theologians to critically engage Bonhoeffer's Christology, harmartiology, ecclesiology and contributions to Christian-Jewish encounter.

How ought Christian faith and theology understand the concept of human immortality today? And what, if anything, might be distinctively Christian about such a concept? The contributors to this volume explore how our thinking about the prospect of human immortality is decisively determined by what we receive of the limitless life of the triune God of the gospel, and how our understanding of immortality is made concrete by the Christian hope in 'the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting'. Debates about how best to understand the eternal life of God are directly significant to how we can imagine the promise of eternal life. While immortality is generally conceived to be a future qualification of human reality, theological approaches to the question of personal immortality must investigate the difference that the hope and promise of such eternal life makes in the living of present-day spiritual life as well as in our common moral and political existence. To understand immortality as an eschatological gift of God requires that we take account of it as a formative factor at the foundations of the Christian life.

What are the pressing questions concerning Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology? What impulses and provocations does his theological legacy offer to contemporary work in Christian theology and ethics? This volume draws together leading international theologians to critically engage Bonhoeffer's Christology, harmartiology, ecclesiology and contributions to Christian-Jewish encounter.

How ought Christian faith and theology understand the concept of human immortality today? And what, if anything, might be distinctively Christian about such a concept? The contributors to this volume explore how our thinking about the prospect of human immortality is decisively determined by what we receive of the limitless life of the triune God of the gospel, and how our understanding of immortality is made concrete by the Christian hope in 'the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting'. Debates about how best to understand the eternal life of God are directly significant to how we can imagine the promise of eternal life. While immortality is generally conceived to be a future qualification of human reality, theological approaches to the question of personal immortality must investigate the difference that the hope and promise of such eternal life makes in the living of present-day spiritual life as well as in our common moral and political existence. To understand immortality as an eschatological gift of God requires that we take account of it as a formative factor at the foundations of the Christian life.

Offering a series of studies on key aspects of the Bonhoeffer’s theology, this book emphasizes the biblical texture and dogmatic depth of his work and its continuing legacy. The first part of the volume explores Bonhoeffer’s work in Christology, Theology proper, and related doctrines. Ziegler argues that Bonhoeffer’s fundamental orientation in theology and ethics is best captured and expressed when he is understood as theology of the Word of God. He offers an exposition of the commonly neglected Part II of Nachfolge, in its treatment of Pauline New Testament texts, as well as Bonhoeffer’s promeity compared with the work of Kierkegaard. Ziegler examines Bonhoeffer’s extended essay and biblical study on the theme of temptation, and concentrates on the role of eschatological concepts and themes in the Letters and Papers from Prison.In its second part, the book explores elements of Bonhoeffer’s ethical and political thinking, emphasizing throughout the deeply dogmatic substance and orientation of his work in these fields. This part offers explicit discussion of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and his interpretation of soteriology, his reading and understanding of the Decalogue for Christian life and ethics, his views of the political service of the church and of Christians; and sustained reading and reflection on one of Bonhoeffer’s final prison poems, Voices in the Night.

Is there a place for Bonhoeffer’s political theology within contemporary society? With the continued interest in Bonhoeffer’s theology and life there has been an emergence of divergent voices claiming that our political climate has created a series of Bonhoeffer Moments. But what, precisely, is a Bonhoeffer Moment and does it signal that Bonhoeffer’s political theology is of continued use?These questions form the centre of Blanton's project. Bonhoeffer’s theology combines his specific historical context alongside the influence of Luther’s theology. Blanton deftly analyses Bonhoeffer's political writings with these influences in the background.The first half of this work focuses on explicating the importance of these influences and highlights various issues which emerge when Bonhoeffer is read outside of them. The second half, then, turns to Bonhoeffer’s writings themselves, covering over a decade of his work. Ultimately, Blanton highlights how Bonhoeffer’s political theology falls somewhere between resistance and collaboration. Bonhoeffer’s political responsibility is distinctly rooted in the willingness to live into God’s command and bear responsibility for the neighbour. It is a qualified action that does not easily lend itself to full-scale action or adoption, but in its emphasis on individual responsibility, does have a place in the modern political discourse.

This book explores how Catholics should speak about sin and grace in a world where structural injustice holds sway causing violence and harm. Bray brings diverse voices into creative dialogue to explore why unjust social situations can properly be called sin from a Catholic theological perspective, and how this sin can be understood to impact one’s agency, freedom, and historical condition vis-à-vis God. Discussing disparate thinkers such as John Paul II, Judith Butler, Thomas Aquinas, and key Latin American liberation theologians, Bray deepens and constructively develops the Catholic understanding of social sin. She argues that the language of social sin presents us with an idea more theologically profound than just the identification of structural injustice; it depicts the power of collective human sinfulness to shape our lives and environments in ways which harm our relations with God, one another, and the rest of the created world.

This incisive volume offers fresh historical and constructive engagements with the ever fascinating and perplexing theological ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Matthew Puffer examines the historical crises out of which Bonhoeffer composed the manuscripts that would become his posthumously published magnum opus, Ethics. He explores the ways in which Bonhoeffer understood his work as a response not only to the ecclesial, social, and political crises of Nazi Germany, but more specifically to a “crisis in ethics,” the failure of traditional forms of ethics to effectively respond to the state of emergency. Bonhoeffer famously wrestles with novel proposals for how Christians should think about responsibility, complicity, culpability, and guilt in ways that have left not only casual readers but also philosophers and Bonhoeffer scholars scratching their heads. In these chapters, Matthew Puffer argues for a critical reconsideration of the ethics supposed to have informed Bonhoeffer’s participation in German resistance, but also for an extension of Bonhoeffer’s thought to the global, ecological, and intergenerational crises of ethics that we face today. An ethics of hope proves to be an essential and ineliminable feature of Bonhoeffer’s thought, evident in his insistence that ethics is fundamentally about how coming generations will live. In Bonhoeffer we find fresh inspiration for contemporary debates regarding the meaning and political implications of human dignity, integrating the wellbeing of not-yet-existing future generations into the moral calculus regarding what it means to treat present day persons with dignity.

This book explores John Webster’s contribution to one of the most important and contested topics in Christian theology: the relationship between divine and human agency. By examining the theme of moral ontology in Webster’s constructive dogmatics, this work sheds light on his contribution to this crucial subject.Jones achieves this through close study of Webster texts ranging from his early, middle and late periods. He reveals that Webster’s moral ontology is not only a major theme in his thought but is among his most significant contributions to contemporary systematic and moral theology. As the first book-length study of a central theme in Webster’s ethics, this text will be of interest to Webster scholars and those teaching courses in late modern systematic theology and theological ethics.

In this incisive work, Michelson traces contemporary debates on the doctrine of God back in time to the philosophical critiques of Hume and Kant. Schleiermacher and Barth each offered accounts of the doctrine of God. This book offers a critical evaluation of these accounts and demonstrates how they were responding to early modern critiques of the possibility of knowing God. Michelson also leverages Charnock’s account constructively to demonstrate how this earlier writer has the theological resources to tackle those same critiques.Not content to stop there, Michelson also highlights how these critics built their arguments on faulty interpretations of classical theological tradition. In doing so, this book carves out a provocative, constructive path forward for contemporary theological reflection on the doctrine of God.

This book considers what it means to die.Trew achieves this through the prism of two significant twentieth century thinkers: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christos Yannaras. In doing so, he continues an esteemed tradition of works considering the theology and philosophy of death, including Karl Rahner’s On the Theology of Death and Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. However, Trew is also breaking new ground: this is the first English language book to compare the late Christos Yannaras with major western theologians, making this an innovative and ecumenical work.Different as they are, both Bonhoeffer and Yannaras are well-known for their robustly relational views of human existence. Trew elegantly guides us through a systematic unfolding of how they both believe that, in and through Christ and his church, human life stands newly formed and empowered before the radical individuation of death. Bonhoeffer and Yannaras both see in the means for modern theological anthropology to address the asymmetrical togetherness of historical existence and divine transcendence. Trew highlights how this is crucial for a redescription of what individual death might mean in the context of the church as ‘communion’. In doing so, he constructively recasts Heidegger’s best insights about anticipating death with Bohoeffer and Yannaras. Ultimately, Trew powerfully argues for the Christological conversion of human creaturely passivity into recapitulative activity wherein human beings, by their ‘daily dying’ take up death’s power and transfigure it into new life. Death becomes entangled within a distinctively and irreducibly relational vision of the human being.

This work traces the contours, shape, and development of Webster’s Trinitarian theology and subsequently enliven debates in contemporary systematic theology. Rempel deftly takes us from Webster’s engagement with Eberhard Jüngel and Karl Barth to his later concerns with Trinity, economy and Christian Distinction.This journey allows Rempel to identify Webster’s contributions to contemporary systematic theology with a retrieval of divine perfection as well as a reframing of the doctrines of revelation and election. This work also highlights how Webster’s work interacts with and diverges from other major theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas and Robert Jenson. This, ultimately, leaves a work that brings Webster’s theology to bear on several debated issues in contemporary systematic theology.

Jonathan Lett highlights how Barth's rejection of natural theology and the "orders of creation" does not impede his development of a robust account of creation's nature and order. This work traces the development of his theology of nature from Romans I to the completion of his doctrine creation in Church Dogmatics. It examines the way in which Barth's doctrine of creation is shaped by his doctrine of election. Lett offers a close reading of Barth's ethics of creation and shows that without this quasi-essentialist ontology of creation's nature is an important aspects of understanding Barth. The book pushes interpreters to grapple with this quasi-essentialist understanding of creation's nature and order that animate even Barth's starkest "acutalistic" moments.

Logan R. Hoffman deftly crafts a reconstruction and evaluation of the Doctrine of God in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s primary theological work: The Christian Faith. This book identifies the new-found limitations to theological speech that were contemporary in Schleiermacher’s day before offering a distinctive interpretation of Schleiermacher’s solution for these limitations.This work reconstructs what Schleiermacher had to say about the divine being, a subject seldom treated in book-length detail. By looking closely at the theological method employed (and offering a distinctive interpretation of Schleiermacher’s method among Anglophone scholars), and then tracing that method through the major sections of The Christian Faith, the book brings clarity to what exactly Schleiermacher could justifiably say about God as given in the Feeling of Absolute Dependence.

Reclaims the theology of Christian conversion by integrating Karl Barth’s doctrine of conversion within a constructive theological framework.This book delivers a doctrinally rich account of Christian conversion that challenges reductive, experience-based approaches. Drawing from Scripture and Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Tom Dove introduces a fourfold framework that defines conversion as inseparably connected to Christ’s person and work, purposive, a divine event, and integrated with the Christian life.He develops this framework through engaging with Barth’s doctrines of election, reconciliation, calling, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and creation. Subsequently, Dove constructively extends Barth’s theology to show how the Holy Spirit’s activity across Christ’s history provides the basis for connecting conversion and the Christian life.By magnifying the work of Christ and the Spirit, this study offers a holistic theological vision that integrates conversion with the reality of Christian existence.

This book presents the most significant work of the highly esteemed contemporary theologian George Schner, who died in 2000. Gathering together his writing in the areas of theology and the philosophy of religion, it offers a distinct contribution to our understanding of the prospects and perils of undertaking theology in the Christian tradition at the present juncture. Engaging key texts in philosophy of religion from the modern period, recent official Roman Catholic teaching related to the basis and doing of theology, and the work of key representatives of the so-called 'Yale School' of post-liberal theology, the essays collected here represent acute and historically informed judgment upon the problematique of the practice of contemporary theology. Drawing together a substantial body of work of recognized intellectual scope, philosophical rigour and theological richness, this volume provides invaluable insight into key questions regarding theological method, the importance of modern philosophy of religion, the nature of theological discourse and contemporary Catholic theological reflection.

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of the gospel to animate and shape doctrine and witness, as well as ethical and political life. The authors explore key themes in Christian theology and ethics - forgiveness, discernment, responsibility, spirituality, the present day tasks of theology and the role of faith in public life - making plain the unabated importance of Lehmann's work at this juncture in contemporary theology. The internationally recognized contributors draw crucial connections between the gospel of reconciliation, the form of Christian theology and witness, and the challenges of contemporary ethical and political reflection. This book demonstrates why this close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and author of Ethics in a Christian Context and The Transfiguration of Politics continues to influence generations of theologians in both the English-speaking world and beyond.

This clear and comprehensive introduction to apocalyptic theology demonstrates the significance of apocalyptic readings of the New Testament for systematic theology and highlights the ethical implications of the apocalyptic turn in biblical and theological studies. Written by a leading theologian and proponent of apocalyptic theology, this primer explores the impact of important recent Pauline scholarship on contemporary theology and argues for a renewed understanding of key Christian doctrines, including sin, grace, revelation, redemption, and the Christian life.

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of the gospel to animate and shape doctrine and witness, as well as ethical and political life. The authors explore key themes in Christian theology and ethics - forgiveness, discernment, responsibility, spirituality, the present day tasks of theology and the role of faith in public life - making plain the unabated importance of Lehmann's work at this juncture in contemporary theology. The internationally recognized contributors draw crucial connections between the gospel of reconciliation, the form of Christian theology and witness, and the challenges of contemporary ethical and political reflection. This book demonstrates why this close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and author of Ethics in a Christian Context and The Transfiguration of Politics continues to influence generations of theologians in both the English-speaking world and beyond.

This volume re-examines the history of twentieth-century Christian theology by tracing key concepts, problems and themes as they develop in context with new perspectives opened up by contemporary theology itself.The ambition is to illuminate the context, dynamism and complexities of its traditions and in doing so to offer a critical and creative ressourcement for contemporary theologians. The range of international contributors to this volume inquire afresh into the preoccupations, problems, provocations and prospects of Christian theology in the century just past to ask anew about just what in this recent history matters and why.

The devil—styled by Calvin as "God's adversary and ours"—is ubiquitous in the witness of the New Testament. Yet contemporary Christian doctrine generally remains dumbfounded about what to do with him. At the same time, our present is marked by a resurgence in the language of the "demonic"—that is, invocation of pervasive, radical, and perhaps personified evil. In light of this perplexity, Philip G. Ziegler asks pointedly: Can the gospel actually be heard and understood without meaningful reference to this inimical entity? Ziegler presents certain motivations we might have for revisiting the concept of the diabolical as a first step toward a Reformed doctrine of the infernal. Starting with an exhumation of the origins of our religious and cultural reticence about the devil, this study ventures a new diabology grounded in the witness of the Gospels. The identity and activities of the devil are discerned concretely in their manifold contradiction of Christ as the "Way, the Truth and the Life." The ensuing portrait of the devil yields revisionary consequences for both theology and our conception of faithful living.Through a historical sketch of received approaches to the devil in Western Christian tradition, God's Adversary and Ours uncoils the default dogmatic architecture of diabology and reflects upon the surrounding doctrines that position, shape, and constrain its treatment. Ziegler leads us on a cautious but determined biblical-theological exploration of the identity, ontology, and agency of "that old serpent," the Enemy, whose image becomes most discernible and salient in direct contact with the person and work of the Savior. Fixing attention upon the figure of the devil in a soteriological context confronts us with what the devil does; what the devil might be trails behind. Treating diabolical temptation, demonic possession, and devilish falsehood in turn, Ziegler demonstrates what resistance to—and faithful disbelief of—these three aspects of the devil's business might mean for the shape of a Christian life.