Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology based on all of his published works and letters. Well-known Bonhoeffer scholar, Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism— that is, an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The essence of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is all about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike.
Read moreGuarding Our Humanity: Gadamer, Ricoeur, and the Future of Philosophical Hermeneutics
Analecta Hermeneutica, 13 (2021): 15–31.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology based on all of his published works and letters. Well-known Bonhoeffer scholar, Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism— that is, an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The essence of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is all about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike.
Read moreActs of Interpretation: Scripture, Theology, and Culture
This book features essays by biblical scholars and theologians offering broad reflections on key interpretive issues, rich readings of challenging biblical texts, and interaction with the Christian exegetical tradition from Melito of Sardis to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The contributors to this volume are leading figures in the theological interpretation of Scripture. Mindful of the Bible’s role in relation to God’s purposes, people, and world, these essays together offer “acts of interpretation” that aim to advance the faithful and fruitful correlation of Scripture, theology, and culture.
Read moreIgnoramus: Gadamer's “Religious Turn”
Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought 6, no. 2 (2002): 203–217
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The Passionate Intellect: Christian Humanism and University Education
Direction 37, no. 1 (2008): 19–37.
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The Importance of Philosophical Hermeneutics for Literature and Religion
Simon Critchley: The Ethics of Deconstruction, or Metaphysics in the Dark
The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic. Ed. Deborah C. Bowen. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 122–134.
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Meaning, Hermeneutics, and Ethics: Post-postmodern Subjectivity
The Positive Psychology of Meaning & Spirituality: Selected Papers from Meaning Conferences. Eds. Paul T. P. Wong, Lilian C. J. Wong, Marvin J. McDonald, and Derrick W. Klaassen. Abbotsford, BC: INPM Press, 2007. 57–70.
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Sources of the Christian Self: A Cultural History of Christian Identity
Using Charles Taylor’s magisterial Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity as a springboard, this interdisciplinary book explores lived Christian identity through the ages.
Beginning with such Old Testament figures as Abraham, Moses, and David and moving through the New Testament, the early church, the Middle Ages, and onward, the forty-two biographical chapters in Sources of the Christian Self illustrate how believers historically have defined their selfhood based on their relation to God/Jesus.
Among the many historical subjects are Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Dante, John Calvin, Teresa of Ávila, John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, Christina Rossetti, Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, and Flannery O’Connor—all of whom boldly lived out their Christian identities in their varied cultural contexts. In showing how Christian identity has evolved over time, Sources of the Christian Self offers deep insight into our own Christian selves today.
Read moreRe-Envisioning Christian Humanism: Education and the Restoration of Humanity
Oxford University Press, 2016.
Since the early 1980s, there has been renewed scholarly interest in the concept of Christian Humanism. A number of official Catholic documents have stressed the importance of "Christian humanism," as a vehicle of Christian social teaching and, indeed, as a Christian philosophy of culture. Fundamentally, humanism aims to explore what it means to be human and what the grounds are for human flourishing. Featuring contributions from internationally renowned Christian authors from a variety of disciplines in the humanities, Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism recovers a Christian humanist ethos for our time. The volume offers a chronological overview (from patristic humanism to the Reformation and beyond) and individual examples (Jewell, Calvin) of past Christian humanisms. The chapters are connected through the theme of Christian paideia as the foundation for liberal arts education.
Read moreHermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction
Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, a behaviour that is intrinsic to our daily lives. As humans, we decipher the meaning of newspaper articles, books, legal matters, religious texts, political speeches, emails, and even dinner conversations every day . But how is knowledge mediated through these forms? What constitutes the process of interpretation? And how do we draw meaning from the world around us so that we might understand our position in it?
In this Very Short Introduction Jens Zimmerman traces the history of hermeneutic theory, setting out its key elements, and demonstrating how they can be applied to a broad range of disciplines: theology; literature; law; and natural and social sciences. Demonstrating the longstanding and wide-ranging necessity of interpretation, Zimmerman reveals its significance in our current social and political landscape.
Read moreChristian Humanism and Moral Formation in "A World Come of Age": An Interdisciplinary Look at the Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Marilynne Robinson
Since its inception in ancient Greco-Roman culture, the main goal of humanism has been moral formation through education for the attainment of true humanity. Literature and religion have always played a central role in humanistic learning, especially in the Christian humanism that has deeply shaped Western ideals of higher education. Does Christian humanism remain important today? What does Christian humanism have to contribute to the idea of moral formation in contemporary Western culture that has been characterized by many as "a secular age"? This book addresses these questions by examining two prominent Christian humanists: the twentieth-century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the contemporary American writer Marilynne Robinson. In this volume, a group of international scholars, from a variety of disciplines, bring Bonhoeffer and Robinson into conversation with current moral and ethical issues, from the residential school system to our increasingly consumerist and technology-obsessed society. The contributors demonstrate the profound affirmation of human dignity and freedom that characterize the humanism of both Bonhoeffer and Robinson, highlighting their import as resources for the relation of religion, culture and ethics. The essays in this book thus remind us that religious faith will remain relevant as we search for moral consensus in modern, post-Christian societies. The volume also features a new interview with Robinson that reveals her own religious humanism and her appreciation for Bonhoeffer's theology.
Read moreReimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God
Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based terrors since?
Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love.
Whose Will Be Done?: Essays on Sovereignty and Religion
Lexington Book, 2015.
What is the proper relationship of religion to power? In this collection of essays, a group of interdisciplinary scholars address that question, building on the scholarship of the late Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain. The first section of this book provides the reader with three previously unpublished essays by Elshtain on the subject of political sovereignty, followed by an interview with the noted ethicist and political theorist. Dr. Elshtain questions the nature of sovereignty in a world where some have elevated the state and the self above the authority of God himself. In the second section of the book, “Sovereignty through the Ages”, four scholars explore some of the key questions raised by Dr. Elshtain’s work on Just War, resistance to tyranny, political liberalism, and modernity, questioning the ways in which sovereignty may be conceived to reinforce the limitations of human societies and yet seek the greater good. In the third section of the book, entitled “Sovereignty in Context”, three essays extend her analysis of sovereignty to different contexts – Latin America, the Islamic world, and the international system as a whole, all the while demonstrating the importance of how religious interpretation contributes to our understanding of political power.
Read moreChristians and the Middle East Conflict
Routledge, 2014.
Christians and the Middle East Conflict deals with the relationship of Christians and Christian theology to the various conflicts in the Middle East, a topic that is often sensationalized but still insufficiently understood. Political developments over the last two decades, however, have prompted observers to rediscover and examine the central role religious motivations play in shaping public discourses.
This book proceeds on the assumption that neither a focus on the eschatological nor a narrow understanding of the plight of Christians in the Middle East is sufficient. Instead, it is necessary to understand Christians in context and to explore the ways that Christian theology applies through the actions of Christians who have lived and continue to live through conflict in the region either as native inhabitants or interested foreign observers. This volume addresses issues of concern to Christians from a theological perspective, from the perspective of Christian responses to conflict throughout history, and in reflection on the contemporary realities of Christians in the Middle East.
The essays in this volume combine contextual political and theological reflections written by both scholars and Christian activists and will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Religion and Middle East Studies.
Read moreQuo Vadis?: Literary Theory beyond Postmodernism
Christianity and Literature 53, no. 4 (2004): 495–519.
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Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational–Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation
This book is a careful, historical demonstration of the way in which hermeneutics was secularized yet continues to borrow on the capital of Christian theology. By exposing the problems inherent in secular hermeneutics and correcting the histories of philosophical hermeneutics on record, Zimmerman points a way forward beyond secular hermeneutics. This is a bold project that should be read not only by theologians but, more especially, by those philosophers working in the wake of Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, and Levinas. This book is an excellent addition to any course in philosophical hermeneutics.
— James K. A. Smith, author of The Fall of Interpretation
Heidegger und die Dichtung
Martin Heidegger repeatedly sought an intensive dialogue with poetry and literature. This is evident not only from his interpretations of Hölderlin’s poems but also from his sustained engagement of Greek tragedy, together with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Stefan George. In this book, leading experts of Heideggers thinking explain not only Heidegger’s relation to individual poets, but also his understanding of the proximity of thought itself to poetry. This collection contains contributions by Babette E. Babich, Ulrich von Bülow, Virgilio Cesarone, Luanne Frank, Bärbel Frischmann, Rolf Kühn, Abt Johannes Schaber OSB, Holger Schmid, Harald Seubert, Marita Tatari, Pol Vandevelde, Simona Venezia, Richard Velkley, Nancy A. Weston, Angel Xolocotzi und Jens Zimmermann.
Read moreGod Speaks to Us: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Biblical Hermeneutics
Peter Lang Press, 2013.
Bonhoeffer was convinced that God spoke to his people through the Bible. How did a theologian of his caliber, who was well acquainted with the historical-critical interpretation of the scriptures, justify such a claim, and how did he apply this conviction to his daily challenges as theologian, pastor and political dissident during the Nazi regime? This book presents the attempts by a group of international Bonhoeffer scholars to answer some of these questions. By approaching Bonhoeffer’s theology from a number of different hermeneutical angles, the contributions in this volume cast new light both on his more general hermeneutical framework and on specific theological and political issues concerning his reading of the Bible. The essays underline Bonhoeffer’s contemporary relevance for the current resurgence of theological interpretation and for postmodern discussions about the interpretive nature of truth.
