Kirjahaku

From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as "the red pastor," was the primary author of the founding document of the Confessing Church, the Barmen Theological Declaration, and after 1945 protested the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Christiane Tietz compellingly explores the interactions between Barth's personal and political biography and his theology. Numerous newly-available documents offer insight into the lesser-known sides of Barth such as his long-term three-way relationship with his wife Nelly and his colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. This is an evocative portrait of a theologian who described himself as "God's cheerful partisan," who was honored as a prophet and a genial spirit, was feared as a critic, and shaped the theology of an entire century as no other thinker.

From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1969) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as "the red pastor," was the primary author of the founding document of the Confessing Church, the Barmen Theological Declaration, and after 1945 protested the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Christiane Tietz compellingly explores the interactions between Barth's personal and political biography and his theology. Numerous newly-available documents offer insight into the lesser-known sides of Barth such as his long-term three-way relationship with his wife Nelly and his colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. This is an evocative portrait of a theologian who described himself as '"God's cheerful partisan"' who was honored as a prophet and a genial spirit, was feared as a critic, and shaped the theology of an entire century as no other thinker.

Since Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death in 1945, executed by the Nazis as a political dissident, he has continued to fascinate and compel readers as a theologian, witness, and martyr. Bonhoeffer's theological brilliance, committed discipleship, ecumenical insight, and courageous participation in the struggle against fascism have profoundly shaped contemporary Christian understanding and action. In John W. de Gruchy's estimate, had Bonhoeffer lived "he might have dominated the theological scene in-the second half of the twentieth century in succession to Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich. As it was, he became the paradigmatic martyr- theologian" for our time. In this new biography, Christiane Dietz masterfully portrays the interconnectedness of Bonhoeffer's life and thought, theology and politics, discipleship, witness, and resistance, tracing the path from his childhood to his imprisonment and execution. Brief, lucid, and imminently accessible, Tietz's new account brings Bonhoeffer's story and work to life in a vivid retelling, unfolding his important and widely read texts, and including new, previously unseen pictures.