Jesus, Transcendence, and Generosity: Christology and Transcendence in Hans Frei and Dietrich Bonhoeffer [Hardcover]

Contemporary scholars aiming to articulate a middle way between fundamentalism and liberalism regularly draw upon HansFrei and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, yet they are rarely brought together on this question, if at all. Here, Tim Boniface highlights the promise of reading them together, proposing especially that a discussion of Jesus transcendence derived from their responses to modernity is an effective locus for considering their combined contribution to a middle way discussion.

Having outlined a rationale for a theology of Christological transcendence, this work describes in detail how both Frei and Bonhoeffer point towards a nuanced approach to the transcendence of Jesusespecially in terms of the importance of articulating that transcendence at the level of the unsubstitutable historical particularity of Christ in the cultural-linguistic setting of the Christian community (Frei) and the impact of a theologia crucis and a participatory cosmic Christology on such thinking (Bonhoeffer).

Offering a unique summary of the key ways in which the two theologians works mutually critique and strengthen one another, Boniface then articulates a pneumatological emphasis lacking in both Frei and Bonhoeffer, stressing the supreme generosity of God at the heart of what it means to say that Jesus transcends.

Tim Boniface hosts a fascinating conversation between Frei and Bonhoeffer, showing that Jesus Christ, in all his inexhaustible and unmasterable particularity, stands at the centre of each theologian's thought. For both theologians, this Jesus is the word of God spoken to the world  a word that, precisely because it is spoken in this unsubstitutably particular form, can never adequately be contained within the patterns of thought, speech, and action of those who receive him. Boniface handles the works of both Frei and Bonhoeffer deftly, he asks serious questions of each, and he demonstrates that togetl3$