Just seen the bibliography of Oswald Bayer at Wiki.de and remembered what a colossus Bayer is.
He is Professor Emeritus at Tübingen, a Lutheran, but more than that, he is a Luther – really shocking evangelical power, wielded with very great intellectual sophistication and gentleness. His line is that the Reformation is much more modern than ‘modernity’ will ever be. He has lots in common with Jüngel, but more spiritual authority (ludicrous, to say so, but…). I’ll translate some of his titles:
• Promise: Luther’s Reformation Turn
• Creation as Address: Towards a Hermeneutic of creation
• Living Word: Reformation and Modernity in Conflict
• Freedom as Response: Theological Ethics
• Contemporaries in Confrontation: Johann Georg Hamann as Radical Enlightener
• God as Author: Theological Poetics
• Reason is Speech (or discourse/conversation): Hamann’s demolition of Kant ‘critique’)
Hamann is one of Germany’s least explored Christian theologians. He was a contemporary, friend yet crushing opponent of Kant, with much in common with Kierkegaard and Coleridge.
Oswald Bayer would be the perfect subject for a PhD on Christian theological hermeneutics.
WHICH AMBITIOUS PUBLISHER IS GOING TO BE THE FIRST TO TRANSLATE BAYER’S WORK?
