Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books Book 4) by Martin E. Marty (PDF)

Description

From National Book Award–winning author Martin Marty, the surprising story of a Christian classic born in a Nazi prison cellFor fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact on both Christian and secular thought since it was first published in 1951, and has helped establish Bonhoeffer’s reputation as one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century. In this, the first history of the book’s remarkable global career, National Book Award-winning author Martin Marty tells how and why Letters and Papers from Prison has been read and used in such dramatically different ways, from the cold war to today.In his late letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world. Marty tells the story of how, in the 1960s and the following decades, these provocative ideas stirred a wide range of thinkers and activists, including civil rights and antiapartheid campaigners, “death-of-God” theologians, and East German Marxists.In the process of tracing the eventful and contested history of Bonhoeffer’s book, Marty provides a compelling new perspective on religious and secular life in the postwar era.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Interesting reading. Very informative. Worth the time extended.

⭐In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography of A Book (2011) Martin Marty provides a scholarly, sensible, and serious reading of one of the most provocative set of letters published in the 20th Century. This entry, in Princeton’s Lives of Great Religious Books series, is a welcome corrective (a softer word than “Rebuke”) to all the mis-understanding/interpretation(s) since its first release a lifetime ago. Read alongside V 8 of the Fortress Press – DBWE Letters and Papers From Prison (2010) we have two major resources for the study of this profound piece from the heart and soul of Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Pastor, Professor, and Prisoner – in the final stage(s) of his brief, yet, brilliant life. We owe Professor Marty one more debt of gratitude for this volume on DB.

⭐A stupendous book for all time! Just received! Fast SERVICE. * * * * *

⭐Marty has documented the 50 year impact of Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison” on cultural and religious thought as it might have been if Bonhoeffer had lived to continue his influence on western culture. Marty’s biography provides stimulating reading to one familiar with the original Bonhoeffer work. He is very fair in suggesting the critical impact on those who would use the original work to advance their own idealogies and religious thoughts. His treatments of the contributions of Bethge are generous, thoughtful and cause the reader to join those who reflect on Bonhoeffer’s writings and life.Marty’s book is excellent. I highly recommend it to anyone who has read the original work. A companion work is the biography of “Bonhoeffer; Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metaxas. I have found myself going to each of these works to document or understand a point being made. My next adventure is to examine some of Bonhoeffer’s early writings such as “The Cost of Discipleship”

⭐Both a simple bioraphy of Bonhoeffer;s Pastoral years and extant writings, letters, poetry, noteooks, of his years in prison, Martin Marty’s version is valuable for the intensity of Chrisitan beliefes of both Bonhoeffer and Marty.

⭐I was disappointed as I thought this contained the actually letters and papers with notes by Marty. It wasn’t that at all.

⭐Not written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I bought this by accident. I meant to get the actual “Letters and papers form Prison” . This book is in demand too, so I sold it easily to a buyer on line!

⭐Martin Marty is Mr. Religion in the US. As a liberal Lutheran, he’s written about Bonhoeffer in the past and here poses a novel biographical approach to the life of a book, Letters and Papers from Prison. While overall he gets it right about the death-of-god movement and John Robinson’s co-opting of Bonhoeffer to push his own agenda and his understanding that this compilation of letters constitutes a continuity with Bonhoeffer’s previous writing, Marty makes glaringly misleading statements about Bonhoeffer. Generally his mention of the church is marginalized and receives only two references in his book. Bonhoeffer cites over 25 references to the church in Letters and Papers from Prison. He does so because the pivotal point of his theology is ecclesiology, not the Christology Marty mentions. A programmatic phrase from Bonhoeffer is “Christ exists as the church-community. Marty fails to link Christ to the church in the way Bonhoeffer mentions throughout his writing and his focus upon the church in this book. A focus missed by both liberals and evangelicals; the former, because the church has been subordinated to political causes; the latter, because no ecclesiology exists within evangelicalism.Bonhoeffer was anti-cultural when he spoke of the church, especially in his context of nihilistic Nazism. Marty lumps Barth, Bultmann and Tillich together as those who evangelicals reject saying Bonhoeffer is in league with them. There is no reading of Bonhoeffer which can remotely align his theology with Bultmann or Tillich, if you read Bonhoeffer’s Letters. He even has tensions with Barth, while noting his overall constructive impact on Bonhoeffer’s thought. Marty has a chance here to say so, but fails to do so, probably because his liberal lens forces him to remain in league with Bultmann and Tillich, not to mention the latter’s long tenure at The Divinity School, which all are to recognize as that school of theology [?] at the University of Chicago. Marty’s use of Cox is suspicious especially demonstrated by his use of a quote which only assigns Bonhoeffer’s correctness to his search, while deficient in his terminology. Ironically, the essence of this biography is the breakthrough use of new language and new vocabulary to offer Christ and the church to a world come of age. Marty fails to challenge Cox whose statement misses the essence of Bonhoeffer displayed in his popular, but misleading interpretation in The Secular City. Overall, Marty gets a lot right about Bonhoeffer; however, the liberal lens through which he views Bonhoeffer distorts this German theologian who defined liberalism as “an abridgement of the Gospel.” In the long run, Marty’s book is yet another recognition of one of the 20th century’s most provocative and challenging theologians of the church. To the degree that he maintains Bonhoeffer’s name and thought in a day of church crisis and the loss of historic Christianity, this book is a must read, if for another reason captured in the unique “biography of a book.”

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