Books in the Bonhoeffer Secondary Studies series

Liberating Faith remains an effective introduction to the theology and spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. After a brief biographical portrait of Bonhoeffer's adult life, Kelly offers a thematic overview of Bonhoeffer's Christological theology with an emphasis on the sociality of Christ. Other chapters focus on the ""liberation of faith,"" which is essentially Bonhoeffer's theology of revelation that emerged from his own existential crisis regarding his own faith and an examination of his theology of the Church. While Kelly draws heavily on Bonhoeffer's later writings like The Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, and especially Letters and Papers from Prison, he also uses key texts spanning the entirety of Bonhoeffer's career to develop the critical ideas at the heart of Bonhoeffer's theology. Therefore, Liberating Faith does very well to set the stage for Bonhoeffer's overall theology.

This volume presents two of Bonhoeffer's writings that are vital to understanding his life and thought. The first, "Thy Kingdom Come," is a passionate lecture delivered in 1932 -- a year before he left Germany in protest of Nazism. "The First Table of the Ten Commandments," written twelve years later from a Nazi prison, is a mature and insightful study of the first three commandments.

Godsey''s seminal study is the first dissertation to be written on Dietrich Bonhoeffer''s theology. It first appeared in 1960 when Bonhoeffer''s name was relatively new in English-language circles. This work, which surveyed the entire Bonhoeffer corpus available at the time, quickly became a standard text that laid the groundwork for Bonhoeffer studies thereafter. Godsey explores Bonhoeffer''s life and the key themes of his Christocentric theology, providing an introduction to mid-century Protestant theology, and showing how Bonhoeffer''s theology can serve as a resource for those who seek to engage theology with the world. In the intervening years since its publication, Bonhoeffer scholarship has progressed, but much of what we think about Bonhoeffer''s theology can be found in the pages of this work. Bonhoeffer''s life and work bear witness to the fact that the church cannot live on ""cheap grace,"" but only on the present Christ.""The reissue of Godsey''s ground-breaking Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a doctoral dissertation directed by none other than Karl Barth, illuminates how Bonhoeffer''s forceful Christocentrism was a foundation and unifying principle of his thought throughout his life and well into his prison letters.""Geffrey Kelly, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology, La Salle University John Drew Godsey (1922-2010) was a renowned scholar of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. After earning his doctorate in theology from the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he studied under Karl Barth, Godsey enjoyed a rewarding teaching career at Drew University and Wesley Theological Seminary. He was a founding member of the International Bonhoeffer Society, served as president of the American Theological Society, and was active in the American Academy of Religion and the Karl Barth Society of North America.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) remains the most seminal theologian of those whose work was forged and tested in the worst years of the twentieth century. A German who loved his country and culture, and who mourned its crimes and actively resisted them, his ethic was wholly contextual, attuned to what he must do in his own land as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He might have been surprised to find that a half-century and more later his work has been widely appropriated by others in different circumstances for their exercise of Christian responsibility. This volume of essays is one example of Bonhoeffer's ongoing relevance.Rasmussen engages Luther, Barth, Niebuhr, Hauerwas, Yoder, and Berrigan as a way to illuminate aspects of Bonhoeffer's ethics. He also compares the post-holocaust theology of Rabbi Greenberg with Bonhoeffer's own treatment of divine presence and human responsibility in a world that has ""come of age."" One essay, ""The Meaning of the Theology of the Cross for Social Ethics in the World Today,"" pulls the main themes of the book together. This 2016 edition also includes a new chapter, which relates Bonhoeffer's ethics to the current environmental crisis.