This book argues that the central concept of Bonhoeffer’s early theology, ‘person’, positions his thought in relationship to his own Lutheran tradition as well as the two most important post‐First World War theologies, Karl Barth’s dialectical theology and Karl Holl’s Luther interpretation. Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God’s freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person‐concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth’s dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutic way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God’s unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer’s Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer’s teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person‐theology—a person‐concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking—which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.

Bonhoeffer's Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth, and Protestant Theology PDF

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