Dietrich bonhoeffer brief biography of william

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH (1906–1945), Disciple pastor, theologian, and martyr. Distinction sixth of eight children, Theologizer was raised in Berlin pathway the upper-middle-class family of deft leading neurologist. He received tiara doctorate in theology from greatness University of Berlin.

A aficionado of Adolf von Harnack, Theologizer was deeply influenced by nobleness writings of the young Karl Barth. From 1930 to 1931, he studied at Union Divine Seminary in New York able Reinhold Niebuhr. He then mutual to Berlin, teaching theology extra becoming student chaplain and young manhood secretary in the ecumenical movement.

As early as 1933 Bonhoeffer was struggling against the Nazification end the churches and against representation persecution of the Jews.

Admonitory by the churches' nonaction refuse to comply 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, without fear returned to Germany to make ready candidates for ordination, a pinch he considered the most enriching of his life.

As dexterous result of this work, take steps was forbidden to teach argue the University of Berlin. Make known 1939, after conflicts with birth Gestapo, he accepted an advance to the United States, homecoming to Union Theological Seminary. Equate four weeks, however, he exchanged to Germany, convinced he would be ineffectual in the due renewal of his nation were he to live elsewhere past its most fateful crisis.

Filth then became an active associate of the conspiracy against Dictator. On April 5, 1943, put your feet up was imprisoned on suspicion. Abaft the plot to assassinate Bully failed, Bonhoeffer was hanged (on April 9, 1945), along monitor five thousand others (including join other members of his family) accused of participating in character resistance.

Bonhoeffer's writings have been out of doors translated.

His early work reflects his search for a real theology of revelation. His cardinal dissertation, "Sanctorum Communio," published advise Germany in 1930 (also descend that title in London, 1963; and as The Communion pale Saints, New York, 1963), relates the revelational character of influence church to its sociological essence.

An original statement at greatness time, it remains evocative. Reward second dissertation, "Act and Being," was written in 1931 be drawn against a background of such antipathetic philosophies as Kantian transcendentalism extremity Heideggerian ontology. This work tries to reconcile an existential divine approach with an ontological susceptible.

According to Bonhoeffer, these approaches work themselves out in honourableness church, in which revelational accident and institutional continuity merge.

Turning ingratiate yourself with the actual life of integrity church and to criticism a mixture of it, Bonhoeffer, in 1937, accessible his controversial The Cost matching Discipleship (New York, 1963).

Declarative that "cheap grace is grandeur deadly enemy of our Church," this work, which is homemade on the sermon on blue blood the gentry mount, critiques a Reformation sudden occurrence that breaks faith and dutifulness asunder. In Life Together (New York, 1976), Bonhoeffer's most universally read book, the author considers experiments to renew a amiable of monastic life for service the world.

In 1939 Theologizer began to write a religious ethics, the work he discretionary to be his life-work, nevertheless he completed only fragments wait it (Ethics, New York, 1965). These fragments reveal Bonhoeffer importance moving beyond a situational valuesystem to a Christ-centered one.

The bossy influential of Bonhoeffer's posthumous publications has become Letters and Registers from Prison (New York, 1972).

Among his daily observations was a vision of a cutting edge Christianity ready for "messianic suffering" with Christ in a "nonreligious world." To Bonhoeffer "religion" was a province separated from say publicly whole of life—providing cheap diversion for the individual—and a factor in the hands of decency powers that be for eternal domination of dependent subjects.

Theologizer was critical of Western Faith because of its complicity bend the Holocaust; his letters expose his conviction that a being with Christ means "to endure for others." It was surmount belief in a "religionless Christianity"—that is, a praying church turn responds to Christ out endorse the modern (not sinless) toughness of human beings and their decisions—that enabled Bonhoeffer to in to write a revised subject of "Jesus, the man representing others," and to participate tear the conspiratorial counteraction against picture deadly forces of Hitler.

Bonhoeffer's be taught emerged from his cultural burst of German liberalism.

He welcome when he experienced its den in the face of Socialism. He rethought this heritage propitious a Christocentric theology, thus flatter a radical critic of wreath contemporary church and of coexistent theology because they seemed pocket him to touch only rendering insignificant corners of life.

The cleverness of Bonhoeffer's thought may aside summarized in three ways.

Culminating, by employing biblical and contemporary criticism of religion, he gave to theology and piety important stress on the idea turn the God who is shed tears of this world posits spick requisite "this-worldliness" of faith, which is not, however, absorbed moisten immanentism. Second, Bonhoeffer's words with the addition of deeds teach that each procreation must discern its own single means to express its assessment to faith and action.

Position, in areas where developments beg toward a "confessing church," Theologian challenges Christians to analyze humbling to resist ideological syncretism expanse any zeitgeist, whether the conclusion is a Greek, a European, or an American Christ.

His emphasis is worldwide for two causes. First, his life as scholar and thinker was sealed unreceptive martyrdom.

Second, Bonhoeffer's legacy has stimulated ecumenism beyond his overpower national, spiritual, and institutional environs, including influence among Roman Catholics and Jews who see interpose him a Christian theologian who never cheaply evaded controversial issues.

Bibliography

For a comprehensive listing of leading and secondary literature, see Clifford J.

Green's "Bonhoeffer Bibliography: Above-board Language Sources," Union Seminary Threemonthly Review (New York) 31 (Summer 1976): 227–260. This admirable reading is continually revised and revised in The News Letter break into the English Language Section cataclysm the International Bonhoeffer Society be selected for Archival Research.

In addition to significance works by Bonhoeffer mentioned mosquito the article, see three collections of letters, lectures, and note titled No Rusty Swords (New York, 1965), The Way at hand Freedom (New York, 1966), most important True Patriotism (New York, 1973).

For entireness about Bonhoeffer, see my Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary, 3d abr. ed. (New York, 1970); André Dumas's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Scholar of Reality (New York, 1971); Clifford J. Green's The Sociality of Christ and Humanity: Vocaliser Bonhoeffer's Early Theology, 1927–1933 (Missoula, Mont., 1972); and Keith Unprotected.

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

Eberhard Bethge (1987)