If you’ve not yet consulted the Oxford Handbook series, you should! The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology is especially useful! I’m very excited because the Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth are both about to be released soon! I just wish they weren’t so expensive!
I really like the timelines of Bonhoeffer’s life that are available in The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and in Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. (Those last two links are Amazon affiliate links.) However, I’m having a much harder time finding comparable timelines for the life of Karl Barth. The information is all there, but there’s no comparable table/list of dates in either The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth or Busch’s Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. (Again, Amazon affiliate links.) ...
The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer SOURCE (Amazon affiliate link): John W. de Gruchy, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), xxiv–xxvi. 1906, 4 February, Dietrich Bonhoeffer born in Breslau, Germany 1912 Family moves to Berlin, where Karl Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s father, takes up a position at Berlin University 1913 Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins gymnasium studies 1916 Family moves to the suburb of Grunewald 1918 Walter Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s brother, dies on the western front ...
I’m narrowing my focus to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. Originally, my dissertation proposal cast a very wide net. I was going to have the following chapters: Introduction (5,000 words) Chapter 1: Creation and Fall (Genesis 1–3) (16,000 words) Chapter 2: The Prophets (16,000 words) Chapter 3: The Gospels (16,000 words) Chapter 4: The Epistle to the Romans (16,000 words) Chapter 5: Completing the Biblical Critique of Religion (16,000 words) Summary and Conclusion (5,000 words) However, after doing survey work, and spending most of the previous academic year working on Barth and Bonhoeffer’s reading of Genesis 1–3, I’ve decided to narrow my focus down to Genesis 1–3 and the Sermon on the Mount. ...
I’m trying to puzzle out the meaning of the following paragraph from Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship (DBWE 4). Fundamentally eliminating simple obedience introduces a principle of scripture foreign to the Gospel.[19] According to it, in order to understand scripture, one first must have a key to interpreting it. But that key would not be the living Christ himself in judgment and grace, and using the key would not be according to the will of the living Holy Spirit alone. Rather, the key to scripture would be a general doctrine of grace, and we ourselves would decide its use. The problem of following Christ shows itself here to be a hermeneutical problem. ...
This summer, I’ve spent most of my reading/writing time working on a paper on Barth’s Römerbrief reading of Romans 10. This paper is for the 2019 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium, and it has taken way longer than I originally anticipated. Will I get to use this paper in my dissertation? I’m not sure. At first, I got excited, because, in my work on Genesis 1–3 last school year, I discovered some differences in how Barth and Bonhoeffer handled Genesis 1–3 vis-a-vis the subsequent history of Israel. Namely, while Barth takes care to work his way from Eden to the Church only after moving through the history of Israel and Jesus, Bonhoeffer jumps right from Eden to the Church via Christ. This difference in what I’m provisionally calling “Christological immediacy”—which is perhaps a confessional one that parallels some of the exegetical differences between Calvin and Luther—has me wondering whether Barth and Bonhoeffer differed in important ways on Israel. ...
UPDATE: Here is the paper that I gave at the 2019 Karl Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. INTRODUCTION: “GENTILES” = “WORLD” IS WORSE THAN “ISRAEL” = “CHURCH” On at least one level, Karl Barth’s Römerbrief reading of Romans 9–11 is supersessionist. In general, especially in the second edition, when Paul refers to “Israel” in Romans 9–11, Barth refers to the “Church.”[1] He replaces Israel with the Church. That’s supersessionism, case closed. Right? Well, yes and no. It has become increasingly common to at least mitigate or nuance the charge of supersessionism against Barth’s reading of Romans 9–11. Various scholars have broadly argued that, yes, Barth’s handling of Romans 9–11 at least leaves the door open for at least a certain kind of supersessionism, but, no, he wasn’t being quite as careless with Israel as it might initially seem.[2] By and large, I agree with these assessments. Barth should have said more about the actual people and history of Israel, but he wasn’t trying to merely displace Israel with the Church, as if the latter were superior and the former were forgotten. He was trying to bring Israel and the Church together in solidarity, in opposition to the arrogance of the Church. ...
I’m scheduled to give a paper on Karl Barth’s reading of Romans 9:30–10:21 in Der Römerbrief at the 2019 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium at Princeton in August. Now, of course, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to give a paper at the colloquium. However, in hindsight, I don’t know why I thought giving a paper on chapter 10 of Barth’s Römerbrief was a good idea! Granted, I don’t have to solve all of the exegetical issues (of which there are many) in Romans 9:30–10:21. I just have to make some sense of what Barth thought about the passage. ...
I got my dissertation proposal approved in the Spring of 2018. Working title: “Scriptural but Not Religious: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and a Biblical Critique of Religion.” Barth + Bonhoeffer + Bible + Religion. “Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Bible” is the gap/niche. But that would be too much to tackle comprehensively in a dissertation. So “religion” is designed to be the delimiter—specifically, Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s theological critiques of religion. Dissertation-wise, I didn’t make as much progress as I would’ve liked to during the 2018–19 school year. However, I became a father and I passed all my courses. So I’m counting that as a win. ...
I’m two years in to my PhD program, and I need to finish writing this dissertation soon, or it’s going to be the death of me! Don’t get me wrong. I love Wheaton’s program. My supervisor and second reader are fantastic. And I think that this Barth, Bonhoeffer, and the Bible project is worthwhile. But I’ve got a wife, a kid, a commitment to the Church, and I need to move on with my life. ...