Creation and Fall/Preface

From YoKim

GENERAL EDITOR'S FOREWORD TO DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS

Since the time that the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) first began to be available in English after World War II, they have been eagerly read both by scholars and by a wide general audience. The story of his life is compelling, set in the midst of historic events that shaped a century.

Bonhoeffer's leadership in the anti-Nazi Confessing Church and his participation in the Abwehr resistance circle make his works a unique source for understanding the interaction of religion, politics, and culture among those few Christians who actively opposed National Socialism. His writings provide not only an example of intellectual preparation for the reconstruction of German culture after the war but also a rare insight into the vanishing world of the old social and academic elites. Because of his participation in the resistance against the Nazi regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in the concentration camp at Flossenbiirg on April 9,1945.

Yet Bonhoeffer's enduring contribution is not just his moral example but his theology. As a student in Tiibingen, Berlin, and at Union Theological Seminary in New York - where he also was associated for a time with the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem - and as a participant in the European ecumenical movement, Bonhoeffer became known as one of the few figures of the 1930s with a comprehensive and nuanced grasp of both German- and English-language theology. His thought resonates with a prescience, subtlety, and maturity that continually belies the youth of the thinker.

In 1986 the Chr. Kaiser Verlag, now part of Giitersloher Verlagshaus,