When I purchased my copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's influential Letters and Papers from Prison,
it was a relatively small, paperback book. I remember reading it and wondering about its implications. I've not played in its pages for many years, as I loaned it out while I was teaching in Manhattan Kansas and never got it back. Still, this is a book that has proven influential, offering such ideas as a "religionless Christianity." Death of God theologians found in it hints of a new way of doing theology. But other parts of the book offered insights to others. It was a collection put together by Bonhoeffer's friend and protoge Eberhard Bethge. Now, the version that fills the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 
has come out and has arrived on my doorstep. This edition is much expanded, this time including the correspondence from Bethge and others, so one can see the full discussion. To give you a sense of what has arrived, it comes in at 750 pages of introduction, text, notes, bibliography, and indexes. I'm not sure if I'll review it, but I thought I'd note its publication. In addition, I hope to dabble in it over the coming months offering my own interactions with this text, wrestling with Bonhoeffer's fertile mind, that was nurtured by his own experiences in prison as he watched his own culture fall apart. He envisioned a new world, which would need a new theology if it was to help under gird this transformation.
has come out and has arrived on my doorstep. This edition is much expanded, this time including the correspondence from Bethge and others, so one can see the full discussion. To give you a sense of what has arrived, it comes in at 750 pages of introduction, text, notes, bibliography, and indexes. I'm not sure if I'll review it, but I thought I'd note its publication. In addition, I hope to dabble in it over the coming months offering my own interactions with this text, wrestling with Bonhoeffer's fertile mind, that was nurtured by his own experiences in prison as he watched his own culture fall apart. He envisioned a new world, which would need a new theology if it was to help under gird this transformation. But, to open up the conversation, I'd be interested in knowing how this book, in its original format, has been influential to one's life.
