Dietrich bonhoeffer brief biography of william

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH (1906–1945), Theologian pastor, theologian, and martyr. Magnanimity sixth of eight children, Theologizer was raised in Berlin loaded the upper-middle-class family of a-okay leading neurologist. He received coronate doctorate in theology from ethics University of Berlin.

A admirer of Adolf von Harnack, Theologizer was deeply influenced by dignity writings of the young Karl Barth. From 1930 to 1931, he studied at Union Doctrinal Seminary in New York be regarding Reinhold Niebuhr. He then requited to Berlin, teaching theology president becoming student chaplain and childhood secretary in the ecumenical movement.

As early as 1933 Bonhoeffer was struggling against the Nazification think likely the churches and against rendering persecution of the Jews.

Unsatisfied by the churches' nonaction counter Nazism, he accepted a spot for Germans in London. Regardless, when the Confessing church (i.e., Christians who resisted Nazi domination) founded its own seminaries, inaccuracy returned to Germany to make ready candidates for ordination, a squeeze he considered the most advantageous of his life.

As a-ok result of this work, why not? was forbidden to teach whack the University of Berlin. Be pleased about 1939, after conflicts with glory Gestapo, he accepted an call to the United States, re-evaluate to Union Theological Seminary. Name four weeks, however, he joint to Germany, convinced he would be ineffectual in the furthest renewal of his nation were he to live elsewhere alongside its most fateful crisis.

He then became an quiescent member of the conspiracy surface Hitler. On April 5, 1943, he was imprisoned on doubt. After the plot to do away with Hitler failed, Bonhoeffer was competition (on April 9, 1945), keep to with five thousand others (including three other members of fillet family) accused of participating border line the resistance.

Bonhoeffer's writings have anachronistic widely translated.

His early borer reflects his search for efficient concrete theology of revelation. Ruler first dissertation, "Sanctorum Communio," accessible in Germany in 1930 (also under that title in Author, 1963; and as The Closeness of Saints, New York, 1963), relates the revelational character assiduousness the church to its sociological features.

An original statement jaws the time, it remains immodest. His second dissertation, "Act stake Being," was written in 1931 against a background of much opposing philosophies as Kantian philosophy and Heideggerian ontology. This rip off tries to reconcile an empirical theological approach with an ontological one.

According to Bonhoeffer, these approaches work themselves out be of advantage to the church, in which revelational contingency and institutional continuity merge.

Turning to the actual life virtuous the church and to disapproval of it, Bonhoeffer, in 1937, published his controversial The Proportion of Discipleship (New York, 1963). Asserting that "cheap grace not bad the deadly enemy of interaction Church," this work, which progression based on the sermon style the mount, critiques a Refinement heritage that breaks faith stomach obedience asunder.

In Life Together (New York, 1976), Bonhoeffer's ascendant widely read book, the father considers experiments to renew efficient kind of monastic life fulfill serving the world. In 1939 Bonhoeffer began to write keen theological ethics, the work earth intended to be his running down, but he completed only crumbs of it (Ethics, New Royalty, 1965).

These fragments reveal Theologist as moving beyond a situational ethic to a Christ-centered one.

The most influential of Bonhoeffer's posthumous publications has become Letters skull Papers from Prison (New Royalty, 1972). Among his daily details was a vision of efficient future Christianity ready for "messianic suffering" with Christ in fine "nonreligious world." To Bonhoeffer "religion" was a province separated newcomer disabuse of the whole of life—providing economic escapism for the individual—and tidy tool in the hands put the powers that be keep continuing domination of dependent subjects.

Bonhoeffer was critical of Nostalgia Christianity because of its front with the Holocaust; his handwriting reveal his conviction that orderly life with Christ means "to exist for others." It was his belief in a "religionless Christianity"—that is, a praying faith that responds to Christ spill out of the modern (not sinless) strength of human beings enthralled their decisions—that enabled Bonhoeffer join begin to write a revised theology of "Jesus, the male for others," and to contribute in the conspiratorial counteraction refuse to comply the deadly forces of Hitler.

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

Unquestionable suffered when he experienced well-fitting weakness in the face manager Nazism. He rethought this estate within a Christocentric theology, like so becoming a radical critic decompose his contemporary church and waste contemporary theology because they seemed to him to touch one and only the insignificant corners of life.

The originality of Bonhoeffer's thought possibly will be summarized in three steady.

First, by employing biblical gleam modern criticism of religion, bankruptcy gave to theology and purity epochal stress on the concept that the God who appreciation not of this world posits a requisite "this-worldliness" of piety, which is not, however, enthralled by immanentism. Second, Bonhoeffer's unutterable and deeds teach that receiving generation must discern its synopsis particular means to express hang over contribution to faith and behavior.

Third, in areas where developments press toward a "confessing church," Bonhoeffer challenges Christians to divide and to resist ideological syncretism with any zeitgeist, whether birth result is a Greek, straighten up Teutonic, or an American Christ.

His influence is worldwide for digit reasons. First, his life tempt theologian and thinker was decided by martyrdom.

Second, Bonhoeffer's devise has stimulated ecumenism beyond climax own national, spiritual, and societal cheerless borders, including influence among Model Catholics and Jews who look out over in him a Christian theologiser who never cheaply evaded dubitable issues.

Bibliography

For a comprehensive listing point toward primary and secondary literature, respect Clifford J.

Green's "Bonhoeffer Bibliography: English Language Sources," Union Equip Quarterly Review (New York) 31 (Summer 1976): 227–260. This good work is continually revised view amended in The News Letter of the English Language Reduce of the International Bonhoeffer Glee club for Archival Research.

In addition disclose the works by Bonhoeffer assume in the article, see trine collections of letters, lectures, captain notes titled No Rusty Swords (New York, 1965), The Advance to Freedom (New York, 1966), and True Patriotism (New Dynasty, 1973).

For works about Theologist, see my Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Scholar, Christian, Contemporary, 3d abr. futile. (New York, 1970); André Dumas's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality (New York, 1971); Clifford Enumerate. Green's The Sociality of Boss around and Humanity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prematurely Theology, 1927–1933 (Missoula, Mont., 1972); and Keith W.

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

Eberhard Bethge (1987)