I enjoy biographies. A new one appeared last year by Charles Marsh entitled Strange Glory on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I've read a few biographies on Bonhoeffer and several of his own books. Marsh's book gives a good sense of Bonhoeffer in historical and cultural context. He makes plain the struggles Bonhoeffer had with both the German Church and the Confessing Church. He shares new information about Bonhoeffer's trip to NYC and relationships with Niebuhr and an amusing anecdote about Tillich. The discussion of Bonhoeffer's friendship with Barth is explored in depth helping to understand the tensions between these two high powered theological thinkers. Marsh fleshes out Bonhoeffer the person better than most because Bonhoeffer was not one to talk about himself. I have a lasting image from reading Marsh's book of Bonhoeffer in prison awaiting his fate and reading Barth's latest volume of the Dogmatics while working on his own book, Ethics. It adds a bit of drama to read Ethics with that in mind!
Books of poetry: Wendell Berry, This Day: Sabbath Poems and Brett Foster, The Garbage Eater. Walter Bruggemann, Old Testament scholar, has a book called Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth which is a book of prayers which read like poetry.
Sermons: While I don't like to read written sermons usually, I found a couple books of sermons that are a joy to read. Bruggeman's Inscribing the Text and And God Spoke to Abraham by Fleming Rutledge.
Happy Reading!
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