Worldly Preaching

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Clyde E. Fant

Born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany, now part of Poland, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a radical theologian. He was raised in a home where the intellect was honored. His father was a physician and professor of psychiatry at the University of Berlin. Such scholars as Adolph von Harnack, Ernst Troeltsch, and Max Weber, were frequent guests of the Bonhoeffers. A precocious student who evidenced a degree of independence of thought that was at odds with the reverence in which his fellow students held their professors, Bonhoeffer decided early on the church and theology as his life's work. He was a product of liberal studies that were greatly influenced by Karl Barth. Bonhoeffer's doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum A Dogmatic Investigation of the Sociology of the Church, was published in 1930, at the time he was teaching theology at the University of Berlin. A year's study in the United States followed and leadership of the World Alliance of Churches, where his flair for languages and his genial disposition won him many friends. His American and British friends tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him from returning to Germany after the rise of Hitler in 1932. But Bonhoeffer returned, and joining the so-called Confessing Church of those who resisted Germanizing the church, he conducted an illegal seminary in Finkenwalde. Out of this experience came his Life Together; out of his struggles to encourage Christians to resist the Nazis came The Cost of Discipleship, his study of the Sermon on the Mount. Although Bonhoeffer escaped military duty by joining the intelligence service, he was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo and was linked to the attempt on Hitler's life. His Letters and Papers from Prison (translated in 1953), was his testimony of faith; the writing gave the American death of God movement the term religionless Christianity. Bonhoeffer was killed in 1945 while he was in prison in Flossenburg.

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant theologian of Germany, concern Christianity in the modern world; for his role in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, people executed him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer served as a Lutheran pastor. He, also a participant in the movement of Resistance against Nazism and a member, founded the confessing church. Members of the Abwehr, the military intelligence office planned his involvement, which resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent hanging in April 1945 shortly before the end of the war. His secular view influenced very many people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietric...

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