Letters and Papers from Prison (1951)

Always an important and inspiration book for us.

Intensely moving

A very difficult work to get through emotionally, especially if you know the background of the circumstances. Bonhoeffer was part of a conspiracy against Hitler and was imprisoned in April 1943 on unrelated charges. This book represents the correspondence between Bonhoeffer and his family and friends, especially Eberhard Bethge, to whom he sent letters illegally. The book tells the story of Bonhoeffer's hopes and dreams along with this theological reflections in his circumstance.

The personal information is quite interesting. Anyone who expects the book to be mostly about theology will be rather disappointed; nevertheless, the thoughts that Bonhoeffer does put down are quite good and worthy of consideration, especially in regards to the Christian's relationship to the Old Testament and what it means to be a Christian in a "post-God" world.

A book worth reading if one has a good understanding of Bonhoeffer through other works. ( )

What does it mean to be a Christian in a post-Christian world? How does a person worship God in a world where the a priori basis of being "religious" doesn't even exist. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer thoughtfully and, at times, heart wrenchingly, faces these questions through letters to family and friends while imprisoned in Nazi Germany during WWII. Ever imperfect, in a very imperfect world, Bonhoeffer shows a thoughtful theologian grappling with tragedy, sorrow and horror. ( )

from back cover: "Dietrich Bonhoeffer died in 1945 at the hands of the hangman in a Gestapo prison. These letters and papers, smuggled out of prison, show what he might have become had he lived. His understanding of the world, balanced by humour, compassion and faith, made up a character that was, in the fullest sense of the word, saintly.
" Born in 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the son of a professor of Psychiatry. He grew up in academic surroundings and in 1930 was appointed a lecturer in systematic theology at Berlin University. In 1933 he denounced Hitler and his ideas on the wireless. Two years later, after a period spent in England, he was forbidden to teach and banned from Berlin by Nazi authorities. At the outbreak of war, against the advice of all his friends, he gave up the security of the U.S.A., where he was on a lecture tour, and returned to Germany to work for the Confessing Church and the political opposition to Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 and, two years later, after imprisonment in Buchenwald, he was hanged at Flossenburg.
" These letters and papers to friends, together with the handful of verses gathered here, reveal how both his life and work were unified by the penetration of his vision. They open the way to vast new fields of spiritual understanding."