International Bonhoeffer Interpretations – serie

What might the often cited phrases from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison theology mean for the ethical discourse at the beginning of the 21st century? Which hermeneutical concepts might enable contemporary religious thinkers to enter into a dialogue with Bonhoeffer’s thought? This collection of lectures will address questions like these both by examining the intellectual, cultural and historical origins of Bonhoeffer’s Tegel Theology and by drawing out the ethical consequences of Bonhoeffer’s contribution for current political discourses. Going Bonhoeffer and Beyond – as the title indicates – means interpreting contemporary issues like religious pluralism and political ethics in the light of Bonhoeffer’s key ideas such as his Christological «life-concept» or his ethical distinction between the «ultimate and the penultimate things».

How does the contemporary reader make sense of the life and writings of such an icon as Dietrich Bonhoeffer? The essays in this volume seek to address this question by carefully examining the social, cultural, religious and intellectual locations that inform the Sitz im Leben of a vast readership of Bonhoeffer. The focus of each of the essays is thus on the task of articulating and clarifying a hermeneutically self-conscious and responsible approach to interpreting and understanding Bonhoeffer. The authors come from widely divergent backgrounds, both geographically and intellectually, and therefore offer a wide spectrum of dialogue. Methods and approaches examined in the essays discuss themes such as gender, religion, race, ecology, politics, philosophy, literature among others.

Bonhoeffer was convinced that God spoke to his people through the Bible. How did a theologian of his caliber, who was well acquainted with the historical-critical interpretation of the scriptures, justify such a claim, and how did he apply this conviction to his daily challenges as theologian, pastor and political dissident during the Nazi regime? This book presents the attempts by a group of international Bonhoeffer scholars to answer some of these questions. By approaching Bonhoeffer’s theology from a number of different hermeneutical angles, the contributions in this volume cast new light both on his more general hermeneutical framework and on specific theological and political issues concerning his reading of the Bible. The essays underline Bonhoeffer’s contemporary relevance for the current resurgence of theological interpretation and for postmodern discussions about the interpretive nature of truth.

The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and theology played a significant role in the church and theological struggles against apartheid in South Africa. The essays in this book align itself with this historical trajectory, but especially address the question of Bonhoeffer’s possible message and continuing legacy after the transition to democracy in South Africa. The essays argue that Bonhoeffer’s work and witness still provides rich resources for a theological engagement with more contemporary challenges. In the process, it rethinks Bonhoeffer’s understanding of time, the body, life together, responsibility, and being human.

This first volume of the new series International Bonhoeffer Interpretations (IBI) contains several impulses for translating Bonhoeffer’s key ideas on Religion, Religionlessness and the Church into current contexts. These impulses vary from prospects for a Christian university looking at Bonhoeffer’s distinction between the ‘ultimate and the penultimate things’ to an ethical understanding of Bonhoeffer’s ‘as-if-theology’ in the light of Luther’s distinction between law and gospel; from a fresh perspective on Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity in the light of his thought on ‘oikumene’ to a Christological re-interpretation of repentance as the contribution of religionless Christianity to the task of the Church in the United States of America. The impulses are framed by programmatic contributions suggesting a framework for reading Bonhoeffer in the 21st century in his hermeneutic exploration of Bonhoeffer’s theology and the crises of Western culture, and analyzing ‘religionless Christianity’ in a complexly religious and secular world.

The hermeneutics of human life is one of the most challenging issues in the fields of bioscience and of ethics today. Recent breakthroughs in bio science challenge the prevalent metaphors and paradigms which define human life in the human and natural sciences, that influence our understanding of «diseases», «illness», «therapy», «aging», «dying», and, consequently, also shape medical practice. In the essays collected in this book, scientists, ethicists, philosophers and theologians bring Bonhoeffer’s ethics and his theological anthropology into dialogue with bioscience and explore current bioethical and anthropological issues. All articles were first presented as lectures at the Third International Bonhoeffer Colloquium at Freie Universität Berlin, 2009. Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, as presented in this book, helps to articulate a semantics of human life which stimulates a debate between science and ethics, and which assists in finding fresh ways for understanding human life and the related tasks of scientific research and medical practice.