This study considers the theology and practice of friendship in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s academic writing, his pastoral work and thought, his involvement in the Abwehr plot, and his prison letters, taking special interest in the influence of Eberhard Bethge on Bonhoeffer and the influence of Bonhoeffer on Bethge. Friendship, as a locus of interpretation, also provides a fresh perspective on other aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought, including ecclesiology, divine and human agency, eschatology, vicarious representation, concrete ethics and the divine command, politics, freedom, and obedience. Part I of the dissertation investigates Bonhoeffer’s theology before Bethge. In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation and first book, friendship is described as a community that is oriented to God’s creation and eschatological future, and the friend can participate in Christ’s redeeming work through ecclesial practices of Stellvertretung. Bonhoeffer’s failed friendship with Helmut Rößler, and his remarks about friendship within the context of his ministry in London and about the relation between ethics and the concrete command, offer insight into his theology of friendship as a political and ecclesiastical phenomenon in the context of the Third Reich. Part II of the dissertation looks at the theological influence Bonhoeffer and Bethge had on one another. At Finkenwalde, we begin to see this mutual influence begin to take shape, where freedom and obedience become part of the foundation of Bonhoeffer’s later concept of the Spielraum, and where we begin to see Stellvertretung, as a practice, take place between them. In the prison correspondence and through the influence of Bethge, Bonhoeffer develops the idea of the “realm of freedom” (der Spielraum der Freiheit), an expansion of Bonhoeffer’s theology of the mandates, where freedom and friendship become part of his understanding of social and political life. Integrating these theological and biographical resources, the study makes the constructive argument that a friend can be a theological Stellvertreter, taking into special account the particularity of the friend and mutuality that is characteristic of friendship. Through this participation in Christ’s redeeming work, its ecclesial location, and its political significance, a friendship can be for others.

abstract: Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) is known for his many organ works. However, no significant portion of his choral music is in the standard performing repertoire. Buxtehude's large-scale choral work Membra Jesu Nostri should be considered a seminal "passion" composition in part because of its historic position in early German Lutheran church music. It also serves as an example of the heightened levels of affect in a seventeenth century devotional passion. To better understand Buxtehude and his music, an overview of his life, career and religious beliefs are discussed, including the incorporation of pietism and mysticism in his cantata, Membra Jesu Nostri. Details of the composition's structure, unifying thematic elements and text sources with translations are included. Historical performance practices are discussed, including the composer's probable intent of having one of the seven cantatas performed every day before Easter. This research study also provides conductors with a variety of practical performance considerations. Through these observations, it will be shown that Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri is one of the most well-conceived and well-constructed choral works of the early Baroque era. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2012

Made available in DSpace on 2013-08-07T19:11:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 000423443-Texto+Completo-0.pdf: 832855 bytes, checksum: 995dda9b38fcb00bdf0249174789c1c7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / The present research deals with the concept of ethics of the responsibility developed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer before the autonomy present throughout the modern and post-modern world. Its relevance consists exactly in the fact that it points out the risks that the lack of ethical responsibility may cause within a plural society, affecting it on its fundamental human values. Bonhoeffer develops an observation of the reality of his age, in a context of nihilism, meaning crisis, decaying of moral values and privation of the truth. Its ethics, from Christological fundaments, is concretized upon the personal decision for the good. Good is synonym for doing God’s will, accepting to live in the world as it is, filled with bad and misfortunes. What distinguishes Bonhoeffer’s proposal is the fact that he takes the responsibility for the others in the urgency of the present. The whole problematic approached by Bonhoeffer identifies itself with current difficulties that permeate ethical field. Therefore, working the topic of ethics in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work, it will be possible to elaborate a parallel between the autonomy of the contemporary world, that sort of learned how to live without the need for God, and the necessity of a universal and transcendental ethics, based on “be-to-the-others” from Jesus Christ. The analysis begins raising biographical and bibliographical data of Bonhoeffer, and it is followed by some explanation about his ethical comprehension in the works Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison; it still pervades his perception about secularization and its consequences, reaching the conclusion of a public theology as synthesis for ethics of responsibility in an adult world. / A pesquisa em questão trabalha aspectos da ética da responsabilidade desenvolvida por Dietrich Bonhoeffer ante a autonomia do mundo moderno e pós-moderno. Sua relevância consiste, justamente, em apontar os riscos que a falta de uma responsabilidade ética pode causar numa sociedade plural, afetando-a em seus valores humanos fundamentais. Bonhoeffer faz uma observação da realidade de sua época, num contexto de niilismo, crise de sentido, decadência de valores morais e privação da verdade. Sua ética, de fundamento cristológico, se concretiza na decisão pessoal pelo bem. Bem que é sinônimo do fazer a vontade de Deus, assumindo viver no mundo da forma como este se apresenta, com suas mazelas e infortúnios. O distintivo de sua proposta se encontra no assumir a responsabilidade pelos outros na urgência do presente. Toda problemática abordada por Bonhoeffer, se identifica com as dificuldades atuais que permeiam o campo ético. Por isso, trabalhando a questão ética em Dietrich Bonhoeffer, será possível elaborar um paralelo entre a autonomia do mundo contemporâneo, que aprendeu a viver sem precisar de Deus, e a necessidade de uma ética universal e transcendente, baseada no “ser-para-os-outros” de Jesus Cristo. A análise começa levantando dados biográficos e bibliográficos de Bonhoeffer, é seguida por uma explanação da sua compreensão ética nas obras Ética e Resistência e Submissão, perpassa ainda por sua percepção sobre a secularização e suas consequências, chegando à conclusão de uma teologia pública como síntese da ética da responsabilidade num mundo adulto.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-31T01:01:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 000462276-Texto+Completo-0.pdf: 1553404 bytes, checksum: a25969d3200f849d63fc6fb2453d0452 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / This thesis reflects on the theme of Faith Experience and Discipleship, analyzed from the perspective of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We seek to determinate how the experience of faith actually influences the genuine walk with Christ. In support of the issue, we have come through a literature review of the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The first chapter discusses the historical context in which Bonhoeffer was inserted, as wars, the interwar period and Christianity, besides his biography. In the second chapter, from an analysis of his works, we seek to present his theology from the perspective of the experience of faith. In the third and final chapter, the focus is the experience of faith and discipleship of Christ itself. Analyzes the concepts, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his experience of faith, salvation and martyrdom, and a brief analysis of the Theology and Pentecostal movement, helping to affirm the need for a genuine experience of faith to a real following of Christ. / Esta dissertação reflete sobre o tema Experiência de Fé e o Seguimento de Cristo, analisado pela ótica do Teólogo Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Buscamos averiguar em que medida a experiência de fé de fato influencia na genuína caminhada com Cristo. Para fundamentar a questão, percorremos, através de uma análise bibliográfica, a vida e a obra de Dietrich Bonhoeffer. No primeiro capítulo, apresentamos o contexto histórico em que Bonhoeffer estava inserido, como guerras, período entre guerras e o Cristianismo, além de sua biografia. No segundo capítulo, a partir de uma análise de suas obras, buscamos apresentar sua teologia, sob a ótica da experiência de fé. No terceiro e último capítulo, o enfoque é a experiência de fé e o seguimento de Cristo propriamente dito. Analisam-se os conceitos, Dietrich Bonhoeffer e sua experiência de fé, salvação e martírio. Apresenta-se também uma breve análise do movimento pentecostal e da Teologia, contribuindo para afirmar a necessidade de uma experiência de fé genuína para um real seguimento de Cristo.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study will contribute to the substantial corpus of secondary scholarship on the life, ministry, and theology of the German theologian, church leader, and modern-day martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer’s legacy has also elicited considerable interest in the South African context, concerning a wide variety of themes such as the Confessing Church movement, secularisation, discipleship, confessing guilt, spirituality, and ethics. The critical question articulated by Bonhoeffer predominantly in his Letters and Papers from Prison, namely ‘Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today?’ has been raised by different generations of South African theologians in rapidly changing contexts. This study will concentrate on Bonhoeffer’s own Christology. The focus will be not so much on the significance of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ within a particular social context, but on how Bonhoeffer understands the person of Christ. More specifically, the problem investigated in this study is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s evolving views on the so-called ‘two natures’ of Christ should be understood. The Nicene confession,’ that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is ‘truly God’ and ‘of one being with the Father, ’ prompted considerable reflection in Patristic Christianity. One crucial question was how the confession of the divinity of Christ reconciles with the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth portrayed so vividly in the canonical gospels. The formulation of the Council of Chalcedon, namely that one may speak of ‘two natures’ and ‘one person,’ has never been satisfactory and prompted further controversy but remains a point of reference in ongoing Christological debates to this day. The question, therefore, raised: How does Bonhoeffer understand the relationship between the ‘divine’ and the ‘human’ nature of Jesus Christ? This question is pertinent given the consistent Christological concentration in Bonhoeffer’s theology (even to the point of a Trinitarian reductionism), his increasing emphasis on a ‘this-worldly’ understanding of God’s transcendence and his consistent Lutheran intuition that the finite can indeed contain the infinite. Bonhoeffer’s Christology has been the subject of much scholarly interest. There is consensus that his Christology remains not only incomplete but also unresolved. A core problem in this regard is his understanding of the divine nature of Christ – which he assumes but of which he does not offer any full account. This study will contribute to the available literature by exploring Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the ‘two natures’ of Christ based on the primary and secondary research with specific reference to Sanctorum Communio (1927/1963), Act and Being (1930/1996), Christology, Discipleship (1937/1959), Ethics (1955, 6th edition and 2005, new critical edition) and Letters and Papers from Prison (2010). There has been considerable controversy in Bonhoeffer scholarship regarding the continuity and discontinuity in Bonhoeffer’s theological thinking from his student years to his death in 1945. It would, therefore, be wise to allow for Bonhoeffer’s ‘evolving’ views on the ‘two natures’ of Jesus Christ to speak for itself. This study will seek to describe and assess (in terms of Bonhoeffer’s sources and secondary scholarship) Bonhoeffer’s views in each of his main works to trace the developments in his thinking.

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Thesis advisor: Dermot Moran / In this dissertation, I critically evaluate the contributions of Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) to the relatively neglected topic of the phenomenology of freedom. We can have, I argue, an experience of a “bias” of freedom in favor of the morally good: willing what is morally good renders one freer, and willing against what is morally good renders one less free. Attempts to reconcile freedom and morality have often identified freedom with autonomy, most famously in Immanuel Kant, or even rendered freedom determined by the morally good, as in Socratic intellectualism and in Scheler. These attempts neglect what Hildebrand finds to be the central feature of the will and freedom: the free self-donation (Hingabe) of the person, the will’s fiat (let it be); which is the key to the reconciliation of freedom and morality. The height of freedom, I argue, is embodied particularly in our freedom to sanction and disavow value-responses (Wertantworten) of the heart (esp. affective love), which Hildebrand calls “cooperative freedom” (mitwirkende Freiheit). In order to give ourselves to what has value, what has value must first be given to us. In Chapter One, I show that doing justice to this givenness requires, for Hildebrand, holding the radically realist epistemological claim that consciousness is directly receptive to being. Receptivity is prior to any activity on the part of the person; it comes before freedom. Chapter Two explores how things are given as having “importance” (Bedeutsamkeit) and “value” (Wert). Values issue a call (Fordern, “demand”) to give a proper response (Antwort). Chapter Two also outlines Hildebrand’s conception of phenomenology as involving “reverence” (Ehrfurcht). Reverence is openness to value’s word (Wort) and call to give that response. Reverence is defined as freely allowing oneself to be formed by the “laws” of values, and it is essential to freedom. Chapter Three argues that freedom’s most fundamental aspect is defined as “self-donation” (Hingabe), encapsulated in the fiat of the will. Building on William James and Edmund Husserl, Hildebrand expands the phenomenological account of willing as giving the person’s fiat to being moved by potential motives according to their objective importance, in what amounts to an act of giving oneself (Hingabe) in one’s free response. It is this notion of self-donation that enables Hildebrand to secure the independence of the will from affectivity (in contrast to Scheler) and from the mind (in contrast to James and Husserl). Yet this independence rests upon a dependence on values being given for the will to will. Reversing Kant and aligning more with Emmanuel Levinas, Hildebrand finds reverent “heteronomy,” not just autonomy, to be the foundation of the independence of the will and “invests” it with meaning and purpose. Chapter Four explores Hildebrand’s notion of cooperative freedom to sanction or disavow experiences according to their value. For Hildebrand, the sanction can only be actualized in accord with a “general will to be morally good,” or else it is an arbitrary pseudo-sanction. Unlike our freedom to do actions, cooperative freedom is a freedom that can only be fully actualized as a moral freedom. Hildebrand claims cooperative freedom does not pertain to the will, but to a separate “free personal center” (freies Personzentrum), because he associates the will with action. I will argue, nonetheless, that every fiat of the will includes what I term the “cooperative moment” of freedom, so that only a morally good fiat is fully actualized as a fiat. Chapter Five defines this general will to be morally good. It is a will composed of fundamental moral attitudes, particularly reverence for the hierarchy of values, that are the core of the virtues. In this concept of the general will, Hildebrand unites a Kantian concern for willing what is good-in-itself with Scheler’s concern for willing higher values over lower values. In so doing he comes to a unique synthesis of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, and value-ethics in his conception of good will, which all rest on the concept of self-donation. Chapter Six argues that any ethics that is based on what is good-in-itself necessarily, if it recognizes the unique preciousness of the person, becomes a love ethics, for love is the fullest and most proper response to the value of the person. Without recognizing this connection of ethics to love, one almost inevitably misses the connection between morality and happiness. In that case a morality based on the good-in-itself ends up appearing somewhat depersonalizing and burdensome. Just as it is legitimate to pursue one’s own happiness in love by making the beloved the condition of one’s happiness, so too with morality it is legitimate to pursue the happiness that only being moral can bring. So it is in the person who has a quality of loving goodness (Güte) for all where we experience the height of personal freedom as moral freedom. From a phenomenological analysis of this person, I derive four ways moral value enhances freedom: 1) it recollects the person to his or her deepest subjectivity (Eigenleben, “own life”), 2) it “supports” the will and prevents it from being arbitrary, 3) the happiness being moral can bring “nourishes” freedom by giving it energy and strength, and, finally, 4) the happiness being moral brings “intensifies” good activities, i.e., it makes the person readier to do them in the future. Chapter Seven argues that while one is free to reject value in favor of what Hildebrand calls the merely subjectively satisfying, doing so subverts freedom itself into prideful self-enclosure. It also annuls freedom in that it enslaves one to one’s desires. In contrast to Kant, this identification of freedom with moral freedom is not because freedom is the autonomy of following a law given in pure practical reason, but rather it is the reverent acceptance (fiat) of the “heteronomy” the word and law of values impose on us. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

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[pt] O trabalho caracteriza o dualismo no protestantismo brasileiro. Com base na análise da vida e obra Dietrich Bonhoeffer apresenta estratégias capazes de iluminar a prática da Igreja Batista no país. Primeiramente apresenta- se o problema que instigou a pesquisa: os efeitos prejudiciais do dualismo para a propagação do Evangelho. Afirma-se, também, a necessidade de uma visão integrada do ser humano que resulte em prática e teologia que considerem a inseparabilidade entre mística (vida voltada para o transcendente) e militância (vida inserida e atuante no mundo). Em seguida, trata-se do processo e estratégias pedagógicas de penetração dualista no cristianismo e da formação da teologia e da doutrina batista brasileira. Por fim, o estudo da reflexão teológica e experiência pessoal de Bonhoeffer, procura extrair maneiras de articular as dimensões espiritual e prática da vida cristã e de, assim, informar maneiras renovadas de um proceder cristão que supere o dualismo. Desse estudo, cinco pontos foram tomados como pistas para essa superação: o amor a Deus e ao próximo; a inserção da Igreja no mundo; a Igreja tomada como comunidade viva; a visão ecumênica e a dimensão ética da fé. / [en] This work characterizes dualism in Brazilian Protestantism. Based on an analysis of the life and works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it presents strategies able to shine some light on the practice of the Brazilian Baptist Church in the country. Firstly, the research problem is presented: the harmful effects of dualism on the spread of the Gospel. The need for an integrated perspective of the human being, one that results in a practice and a theology that consider the inseparability between mysticism (life oriented to the transcendent) and militancy (life inserted and active in the world), is also affirmed. Next, the process and pedagogical strategies through which dualism penetrated Christianity and the formation of Brazilian Baptist theology and doctrine are discussed. Finally, the study of the theological reflection and personal experience of Bonhoeffer aims at gathering ways to articulate spiritual and practical dimensions of Christian life and, therefore, at offering renewed forms of Christian practice that surpass dualism. Out of this study five suggestions are given for overcoming dualism: love for God and the neighbor, insertion of the church in the world, the church taken as a living community, ecumenical vision, and, the ethical dimension of faith.