Under the Constraint of Grace: The Story of Bonhoeffer’s Conversion

Posted on December 28, 2015 by PLT Staff

Lecture given by Charles Marsh as part of the Theology Conference 2012: Bonhoeffer, Christ, and Culture at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Marsh traces Bonhoeffer’s spiritual journey from the time of his return from America, through his university professorship, and to the eve of Hitler’s election to the Chancellorship of Germany. The lecture begins at the 4:20 minute mark. For a listing of all our Occasional Lectures, click here.

Excerpt: “The subject of the lectures was the holiness of God, God the giver of all good gifts, the origin and the end of creation’s story. Free of scholarly throat-clearing, the lectures remained nonetheless the most ponderous of all Bonhoeffer’s writings…. It is the word of a Christian dissident awakening to a strange habitation in the anxious middle. Delivered in fifty word bursts of compact prose, the narrative flow and structure create a space of contemplative awe: in the beginning God created. In the beginning there is only God. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth– not that first God was and then he created, but in the beginning, God created…. The students in the lecture hall could not have missed the defiant political notes in these brooding meditations on creation and sin. Bonhoeffer had opened the Bible to unleash the living Word against a church and nation on the threshold of catastrophic heresy.”

  • Video Information
  • Date Recorded:April 13, 2012
  • Location Recorded:Wheaton, IL
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