May 24, 2024

Dietrich Bonhoeffer often expressed gratitude for a life graced with continuity and purposeful growth. ‘I don’t think I’ve very changed very much,” he told his his best friend and future biographer Eberhard Bethge. But in the same letter, written from a Gestapo prison in 1944, he added an important caveat to his self-analysis. “I don’t think I’ve ever changed very much – except perhaps at the time of my first impressions abroad and under the first conscious influence of father’s personality.  It was then that I turned from ‘the phraseological to the real.’” In this public talk from Charlottesville’s St. Paul’s Memorial Church on March 17, 2024, Bonhoeffer biographer Charles Marsh explores these transformative impressions through the lens of Bonhoeffer’s Lenten experiences and reflections. The audience is invited to consider how Bonhoeffer brought unity to the elusive ideals of beauty and justice.

Listen to the lecture.